Global Warming Predictions May Now Be a Lot Less Uncertain (wired.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Humanity must not pass a rise of 2 degrees Celsius in global temperature from pre-industrial levels, so says the Paris climate agreement. Cross that line and the global effects of climate change start looking less like a grave situation and more like a catastrophe. The frustrating bit about studying climate change is the inherent uncertainty of it all. Predicting where it's going is a matter of mashing up thousands of variables in massive, confounding systems. But today in the journal Nature, researchers claim they've reduced the uncertainty in a key metric of climate change by 60 percent, narrowing a range of potential warming from 3C to 1.2C. And that could have implications for how the international community arrives at climate goals like it did in Paris. The metric is called equilibrium climate sensitivity, but don't let the name scare you.

Comments

Re:Scaring

[serviscope_minor]

I thought the entire point of Anthropomorphic Global Climate Change was to scare us?

If you think that you're stupid. And by this point there are no rational arguments which would penetrate your skull, so I won't waste the pixels.

And that any attempt to minimize the fear was being a denier of settled science?

You have no expertise and you're being contrarian against the vast majority of experts because because it disagrees with your "viewpoint".

You're not smart, you're foolish.

Anyway, mod me down if you wiah, I have karma to burn.

Re:climate scientists vs slashdot anonymous coward

[NettiWelho]

Bad things will happen at just a couple of degrees warmer.

Global temperature has risen more than 12 fahrenheit since the ice age. Hunter-gatherers didn't have cars or coal power plants.

Re:Climate changes. It always has.

[tsqr]

If someone wants to live in an unchanging climate, go to a tropical island along the equator.

The people of Dominica, Barbuda and Puerto Rico would like to have some words with you. Angry, 4-letter words about what you can do to yourself, and if you'd like to trade places with them, I'd bet.

I guess he should have boldfaced the "along the equator" part. Or used "astride" instead of "along"

Dominica: 925 miles north of the Equator
Barbuda: 1058 miles north of the Equator
Puerto Rico: 1093 miles north of the Equator

Re:Safe Words

[slashrio]

I'm very skeptical with regard to AGW.
Many scientists have already shown that solar activity shows much more (delayed) correlation with climate's average temperature than (hint: even more delayed) CO2 levels.
I'm even so skeptical, that I tend to deny AGW in view of the evidence presented to me.

Re:Global Warming Alarmism

[slashrio]

Temperatures have been much higher than they currently are, and atmospheric CO2 levels as a result have also been much higher than they are now.
And the earth thrived.
AGW is a hoax or at least utterly insignificant, and CO2 has nothing to do with it.