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Climate Change Report Actually Understates Threats (thebulletin.org)
"Dire as it is, the latest IPCC report is actually too optimistic," writes Slashdot reader Dan Drollette. "It ignores the risk of self-reinforcing climate feedbacks pushing the planet into chaos beyond human control. So says a team of climate experts, including the winner of the 1995 Nobel for his work on depletion of the ozone layer." From their article:
These cascading feedbacks include the loss of the Arctic's sea ice, which could disappear entirely in summer in the next 15 years. The ice serves as a shield, reflecting heat back into the atmosphere, but is increasingly being melted into water that absorbs heat instead. Losing the ice would tremendously increase the Arctic's warming, which is already at least twice the global average rate. This, in turn, would accelerate the collapse of permafrost, releasing its ancient stores of methane, a super climate pollutant 30 times more potent in causing warming than carbon dioxide.
By largely ignoring such feedbacks, the IPCC report fails to adequately warn leaders about the cluster of six similar climate tipping points that could be crossed between today's temperature and an increase to 1.5 degrees -- let alone nearly another dozen tipping points between 1.5 and 2 degrees. These wildcards could very likely push the climate system beyond human ability to control. As the UN Secretary General reminded world leaders last month, "We face an existential threat. Climate change is moving faster than we are.⦠If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences."
In related news, a court in The Hague "has upheld a historic legal order on the Dutch government to accelerate carbon emissions cuts, a day after the world's climate scientists warned that time was running out to avoid dangerous warming. Appeal court judges ruled that the severity and scope of the climate crisis demanded greenhouse gas reductions of at least 25% by 2020 -- measured against 1990 levels -- higher than the 17% drop planned by Mark Rutte's liberal administration. The ruling -- which was greeted with whoops and cheers in the courtroom -- will put wind in the sails of a raft of similar cases being planned around the world, from Norway to New Zealand and from the UK to Uganda."
Meanwhile, a new article in GQ cites estimates that more than 70 percent of global emissions come from just 100 companies, complaining that "there is no 'free market' incentive to prevent disaster."
By largely ignoring such feedbacks, the IPCC report fails to adequately warn leaders about the cluster of six similar climate tipping points that could be crossed between today's temperature and an increase to 1.5 degrees -- let alone nearly another dozen tipping points between 1.5 and 2 degrees. These wildcards could very likely push the climate system beyond human ability to control. As the UN Secretary General reminded world leaders last month, "We face an existential threat. Climate change is moving faster than we are.⦠If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences."
In related news, a court in The Hague "has upheld a historic legal order on the Dutch government to accelerate carbon emissions cuts, a day after the world's climate scientists warned that time was running out to avoid dangerous warming. Appeal court judges ruled that the severity and scope of the climate crisis demanded greenhouse gas reductions of at least 25% by 2020 -- measured against 1990 levels -- higher than the 17% drop planned by Mark Rutte's liberal administration. The ruling -- which was greeted with whoops and cheers in the courtroom -- will put wind in the sails of a raft of similar cases being planned around the world, from Norway to New Zealand and from the UK to Uganda."
Meanwhile, a new article in GQ cites estimates that more than 70 percent of global emissions come from just 100 companies, complaining that "there is no 'free market' incentive to prevent disaster."
Um, hard to know where to start, basically your entire post is disconnected from actual facts. The UN report was dire, but didn't include the effects of methane locked in permafrost.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qv9nm7/unpacking-the-devastating-un-report-on-climate-change
Idiot. Every single IPCC report has understated the danger because they didn't want to be accused of being scare mongers. They did this by suppressing the more extreme projections in favor of the less extreme ones. And this information is publicly available in the articles about how they put together the reports.
It is true that they also suppressed the extremely understated projections, but their influence on mean values would have been considerably less. That's the way calculations of mean deviation work.
The IPCC has intentionally tried to be only somewhat alarmist rather than accurately reporting what the projections indicate. They hoped in this way to gain political acceptance that there was a real problem. I feel this strategy has backfired, with many claiming that they're alarmist anyway, and most just ignoring them. But they were trying to be cautious.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Grab a bag and pass the soda, this is gonna be great. What excuses will we hear today? How are we going to justify ignoring science and instead trust the spin of the industry this time?
I really hope for something new, just sticking fingers into ears and going "lalala, I can't hear you" is getting old.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But first, let me demonstrate what a pile of horseshit you just linked to.
The article was written in 2014, based in data through 2013, and talks about a "15 year pause in global warming". 2013 - 15 = 1998. 1998 when it happened was the hottest year ever by a huge margin --an outlier. It was also a massive El Niño year, and El Niño is a weather event that produces unusually warm years..
This is a classic technique of statistical misrepresentation: cherry picking a baseline to obtain the comparison you want. If you start in 1997 or 1999, the "disappearance" of warming disappears. If you use a moving average, even just a *two year* moving average, the disappearance also disappears. In other words, the supposed pause is just statistical horseshit.
Cherry picking a baseline year is possible because weather isn't climate. Some years are warmer than the underlying climate trend and others are cooler than the trend. Sometimes you have a run of several years that are over or under, and in fact this is normal with real data. It's just like flipping a coin 13 times. It's normal to get runs of heads and tails, even with a fair coin.
El Niños, which produce warm years, and La Niñas, which produce cool years, are not predicted by climate models because they are both random weather events, like flipping a coin.
Of the 15 years of the Horseshit Pause, six were La Niña event years, a number of them particularly strong ones, however some of them were record warm years for La Niñas. Five were El Niño years, but relatively weak ones. So basically over the Horseshit Pause, we had a run of events which produce cooler weather than the underlying climate trend; even so the Horseshit Pause was the warmest decade on the instrumental record.
Now you extend the Horseshit Pause period to include the following four years, you happen to get the four hottest years on the instrumental record: 2016, 2015, 2017, 2014. Note that 2016 and 2015 were El Niño, but 2017 was a La Niña year and should have been a cool one.
More to the point, if you make the run of years just a little bit longer supposed inconsistency of the climate models from the weather record disappears.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.