Warming: 6°C unlikely, 2°C nearly certain Under “business as usual” global warming will almost certainly exceed 2°C by 2100, but the high-end extreme range of warming of 6°C is unlikely to occur. That “good news, bad news” scenario comes from work conducted by Dr Roger Bodman from Victoria University, with Professors David Karoly and Peter Rayner from the University …
Briliant quote, will be used by me too when writing my next business case...
In the meantime we shoukd do some thing we can all agree are a good thing.
1. Cut suphur dioxide emmissions because acid rain isn't a good thing
2. Cut particulate emmissions because smog is a bad thing
3. Increase the standard of living in the developing world as more prosperous people have fewer babies
4. Provide better healthcare for the developing world so those babies survive
<Devil's attorney>
Well, you know... sulphur dioxide actually had some "cooling" effects...
Same goes for the smog.
The last two parts are actually very dangerous, as it may trigger overpopulation woes (demographic transition is not an instant process...)
So it seems that we cannot agree on those either.
</Devil's attorney>
The less overall pollution there is, the better it should be.
"In the meantime we shoukd do some thing we can all agree are a good thing.
1. Cut suphur dioxide emmissions because acid rain isn't a good thing
2. Cut particulate emmissions because smog is a bad thing
3. Increase the standard of living in the developing world as more prosperous people have fewer babies
4. Provide better healthcare for the developing world so those babies survive"
I agree with Beelzebub's Eggnog that there is a certain amount of The Pub Landlord's wisdom that 'they haven't thought it through'. I Also think were a being incredibly two-faced as we go on about how we 'started the industrial revolution' but seem to fail to admit that it was only by producing toxic gases and materials, by polluting the rivers and land, by enforced poverty and pretty much slavery and by having a large population of readily available replacements for those we killed or got too sick or were maimed that we became The Empire.
We then told the rest of the world that 'this is how it's done' and they went 'Ta for that' and took our advice.
While this was going on the local 'industrial revolution' hit the buffers before the 1950's and we now look down on those who are merely emulating our road to success.
We caused this pile of poo in the first place and are now trying to blame it on others for doing the same.
Hence, 'two -faced'.
Think of all the money spent on cleaning up a small part of the River Lea for the Olympics - how much back slapping went on and then remember why it had to be cleaned up.
The last two parts are actually very dangerous, as it may trigger overpopulation woes (demographic transition is not an instant process...)
The problem here is that we're already going balls-out on 4, courtesy of that well-known justification; "Oh noes! Think of the children!", while letting 3 go to hell in a bucket. Hence the rather obvious lack of demographic transition.
The trouble is that starving babies and kids' schools make great wallet-openers for a TV campaign, while infrastructure projects and higher education programmes do not.
What "rather obvious lack of a demographic transition" would that be then?
TFR is falling in sub-saharan Africa and is already around replacement in Latin America and most of Asia. Brazil is 1.8, for instance, which is well-past transition. What we're getting is the post-transition baby boom, as the last big generation goes through the fertile age.
Non-SSA territories with a TFR over 3: Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, Gaza Strip, Iraq, Vanuatu, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Jordan, Papua, Marshalls, Philippines, Guatemala, Belize, Tuvalu, American Samoa, Samoa. There aren't a lot of people in all of those countries combined, and the one big one (Philippines) has a TFR that's falling rapidly.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
Now, sure, Nigeria has a huge population, and a TFR of 5.31 and a positively vertiginous population pyramid, but that's very unusual.
We in the uk are in the upswing part of the baby boom cycle (you can see the ripples down the years from the post ww2 baby boom)
The key thing we have to do is increase the SOL for the less developed countries whilst also avoiding the mistakes we made in the industrial revolution. We cannot turn to people.and say they can't have the SOL thatbwe have because of the environment al damage, we hav to find a way around it.
Is "nearly certain" somewhere between a "strong maybe" and a "we think so"? The "climate scientists" don't have enough real data points and don't even understand all the elements and variables yet. It is just as easy to use the data that leads these people to believe in their guess, to say civilization thrives during warm periods and suffers during cold periods. Here is another theory: plants eat CO2 and it spurs growth, so the planet could be more green in 2100 and consume more CO2, because of the extra foliage, while human production of C02 stabilized decades earlier. There is no tax to collect, so my theory is not actionable to feed governments, in their minds.
Been reading a very interesting book about the last ice age and the melting of the ice caps, and warmer temperatures/smaller ice caps led, around 9,000BC, to early sedentism amongst hunter-gatherers of the middle east. The ME at that time had much higher rainfall and was more suitable for agriculture than it is now.
If you want a stable climate then you could do worse than the Jurassic when atmospheric CO2 was over 1900 ppm and the Earth's climate was fairly stable for 60 million years. Unlike now when we dip into ice age climates for 150,000 years of every 165,000 - wiping out vast swaths of species including man on a regular schedule, glaciers sweeping the evidence into the sea. Strangely enough estimates have temps in the Jurassic period only 3C above current levels. Something tells me the archaeologists haven't been talking to the climate wizards because their numbers don't align.
"Strangely enough estimates have temps in the Jurassic period only 3C above current levels. Something tells me the archaeologists haven't been talking to the climate wizards because their numbers don't align."
Not this shit again. When are you tards going to learn to factor in the fainter Sun back then?
Now could be get on and start doing something about them in terms of effectively modelling them?
BTW weren't people saying it was going to be a 2 deg average rise by 2050, or have I mis-remembered?
Not quite worth a thumbs up as no new data or better model yet.
All that is required is to create an economic system that does allows the Rich to remain rich without the requirement of a continually expanding society ( ie Bye Bye Capitalism).
Imagine the impact on the environment of the world population was reduced to 2 Billion within the next 50 years.
We honestly do not need to expand eternally and we don't need to deploy drastic solutions to reduce the populations, we simply need to educate people and ensure that every remains fed. The chinese "one baby" solution is not such a bad idea if only it could be done in a manner which avoids system abuse .
The real pollution is the quantitiy of "Human Beings" on the earth. Scientists and politicians need to stop looking anywhere else. We are eating up and using/abusing all of the earths natural resources at an alarming rate, what else did anyone expect as an outcome.
It sounds bad when you phrase it like that, but fundamentally we either resource limit ourselves or external constraints will do it for us. Few people using lots of stuff, gazillions of people killing each other over limited stuff, or nature killing people via the absence of stuff.
Its the elephant in the room no one discusses.
... and we're already doing it. Everywhere except sub-saharan Africa. Hell, Latin America has a sub-replacement TFR. Sure, there's a baby boom going on because the biggest generation are having their 1.8 kids right now, but go and look at Brazil's population pyramid - their biggest 5-year group is 25-29.
Even India's peak generation is 10-14. So is Indonesia's.
Malthus was right as will be proven eventually. He underestimated our ability to discover new ways to grow food. Ultimately he cannot be wrong because it is a truism that we can outgrow our planet. Like bacteria in a dish we will eventually exhaust the energy available in the dish and die - unless we escape the dish.
"your plan is to kill everyone?"
Yeah, that was exactly what he was saying.
A few ideas, from the top of my head:
1) hand out free condoms in continents where the population is dense and the standard of living is low
2) educate people (same places as above)
3) improved contraceptives
4) reduce government subsidies for child #2 (In Norway you get a hefty sum of money for each kid produced -- stop it!)
etc...
I don't know about you, but where I live the cities are crowded enough already. There is absolutely no need for bigger cities or more cities. None.
Besides, more people means more consumers and more impact on the environment. If CAGW is real (I personally disagree and have been praying for a warmer climate ever since my birth) then adding more humans to the mix surely cannot help (quite the opposite I'd imagine).
The argument that there is a hard limit on resources, and therefore we should stop expansion in a controlled fashion before it stops abruptly on its own, is very popular these days.
The problem with this argument is that it's a non sequitur: while it is technically true that resources are limited, this isn't sufficient to state that we need to stop expansion now.
You would also need to prove that we're close to the limit. That's a lot harder, but without that the argument doesn't prove anything.
Except that expansion is not mandatory in the first place. What is the point of 12 billion humans compared to 10 billion - what does that acheive *except* stressing resources?
It may be that we are not at that point, it may be that technology can push the point out farther, but why rush to find that point, where inevitably human suffering will occur - if indeed it is not already?
We're supposed to be intelligent not a virus.
A global average rise of 2 degrees by 2100 is fairly meaningless.
Here in the UK its unseasonaly cold, wet and grim, in Europe its snowing in the mountains and the overall melt is delayed.
This all flies in the face of the doom merchants predictions that we will boil in our own juices unless we build windmills.
Global averages are meaningless what we need are more precise local estimates.
Mostly it is happening in rather clumsy simplistic computer models that fail to take into account about 80% of the relevant factors.
Back here in the real world, the natural thermostats that keep the climate more or less constant over the millennia seem to have kicked in to provide lots of cooling cloud and ice formations that will reflect the incident sunlight back into space before any CO2 has a chance to do its thing.
The exercise is left to the reader to establish whether a 1% change in global coud cover has more or less impact than a doubling of CO2 concentration.
"Back here in the real world, the natural thermostats that keep the climate more or less constant over the millennia seem to have kicked in to provide lots of cooling cloud and ice formations that will reflect the incident sunlight back into space before any CO2 has a chance to do its thing."
That's not the real world - that sounds more like your imagination. There is regulation, but not the simplistic scenario you've just outlined. As far as current data suggests, there is a net increase in globally retained energy (see e.g. satellite data, ocean temperature data). Is it accumulating at an imminently catastrophic rate ? No, that certainly doesn't seem to be the case. Is is cause for concern ? Well some folk think so, and some don't.... personally I prefer to be aware of possible outcomes and attendant likely-hoods, but i'm not building a concrete bunker in a boat at the top of a mountain.
Personally I find people who stick their fingers in their ears and shout 'La la la - the world will prevent anything bad happening - we poor humans can't possibly effect it" almost as irritating as the politicians stoking the fires for personal gain, or the business helping them for their own agendas. Getting taxed to the hilt to spend it on stupid plans like using wind power for base loads is helping no-one, quite the opposite, ignoring evidence as it comes in is hardly a good plan either though.
In short bursts and sometimes prolonged periods in America, Australia, Africa, Middle East, India and Indonesia et al. Some parts of the globe will experience more heat generally and reduced rainfall whilst we will experience the reverse. Then throw in some short periods of the opposite in each case. It all needs to balance out in the end, but the 'middle ground' is getting smaller. If global warming means a continued decline in the strength of the North Atlantic Conveyor our (UK) weather will continue to be much wetter and colder than it is now. Add to this the shift(s) in our local bit of the jet stream, which have played the biggest part in altering our rainfall / weather patterns over the past 10 years, and quadruple glazing specialists will be all the rage, as well as flood-risk managers. We are likely to see short heat waves, rather extreme in nature, as well. It's all rather bizarre and perhaps counter intuitive but in all likelihood that's what is in store for UK and northern Europe. I don't give a toss whose data set is cobbled together from what kind of readings, or how much anthropological input has played a part, we are all heading for some rather radical changes. Globally, farming and fishing, ecological systems and bio-diversity will all alter because of this. How much this will precipitate a decline in human population is difficult to say, but globally, and gradually, there will be millions of peeps in migration-mode that's for sure. So 'April' showers in May / June don't seem quite so bad right now do they. Everywhere the 'squeezed middle' is in decline, be it in terms of wealth, health, politics, climate or conflict, extremes are growing in strength. That is all.
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Of course you can't use single data points as arguments for or against climate change. Just as a single record sea ice retreat can't be used, a single bad winter can't be used. However you can use multiple record sea ice retreats in a decade or two, and you could use multiple unusually cold winters (not explained by other things, e.g., volcanoes) as well.
In general, climate change is meant to make the UK wetter - not everywhere gets hotter. Indeed many places will get colder because of shifting climates.
"Dr Bodman emphasises that predictions with less uncertainty still don't count as “certain”. “Waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy," he said. "Some uncertainty will always remain, meaning that we need to manage the risks"
There is your justification for the iraq war. The possible danger which we know nothing about and dont understand will result in our doom if we dont do something about it now and find out the truth later. So where else shall we invade? We can selectively choose evidence (if only 1 official hates us and the others love us we will quote only that 1) and mitigate all threats now.
Or we can choose a religion and deem it the truth because we dont know any better but on available evidence and lack of knowledge we can disregard knowing and go with belief.
Exciting times. I wonder if this is how the dark ages started. I hope there will be a good place left on earth for those who want fact and truth.
For the nutters and believers who are about to downvote (and probably have nothing to say) I am aware that some uncertainty always remains in scientific theory, but that is not the current state of our understanding of climate. Our understanding is much closer to WTF, it aint doing what we expected. This is good, this means we are learning. But we cant claim to know the outcome of something we dont even understand the basics of. We certainly cant blame co2 exclusively with 63% uncertainty surrounding the carbon cycle.
That's your post-war justification for the war. The pre-war justification was that there was evidence of real and imminent threat. This turned out not to be the case, because the 'evidence' turned out to be scanty and from very few sources. That is not the case with the study of global climate.
@bep:
Not at all. We were told in no uncertain terms that we needed to stop the imminent threat of saddam husain. A real guy in existence at the time with visible and measurable actions. Yet the claim was bogus by a load of people who wanted to see something and so saw it. The conclusion was drawn first. Even various agencies argued the 'evidence/informants' were unreliable.
The study of MMCC is done in the same way. Real workers and real scientists look for facts. Those facts exist and they seek to understand them. Then there is the the entire MMCC debate which is the diviners of truth from chicken bones who think they already have the answer and dont need to wait for fiddly things like facts. So when a fact pops up one side jumps up and says 'see see'. Both certain of a truth that nobody yet knows. The danger is the group looking to inflict the most damage (not imaginary damage) and so the MMCC nutters are the problem. They are a danger.
And this article clearly states that not knowing is fine, the answer is obvious, its *insert desired deity or cause* causing the problem. Even if we know so little that we cannot predict anything nor understand it.
Again this is a wonderful approach which doesnt let fact and reality get in the way of a poor justification.
2 degrees would be quite nice in the UK. But it's not happening until after virtually everyone reading this will be long dead.
So now politicians have to keep everyone convinced that in the midst of recessions, it's better to spend trillions on something that will not benefit them or (in most cases) their children rather than helping them put food on the table.
I wonder if the pendulum of mass support for environmentalism will swing the other way in the next few years.
@JDX:
"I wonder if the pendulum of mass support for environmentalism will swing the other way in the next few years."
I seriously hope not. I am on the fence about the MM bit of CC and dont believe we know enough to do anything with confidence yet. But I have seen the word science abused to criminal proportions and been told the world is going to end based on many deadlines we have shot past.
As a result there is less trust in 'scientific' discovery and much less faith in what a scientist can claim to know. Real threats could be ignored because of this abuse and what is worse is that MMCC could potentially be true, but by the time we have real factual evidence everyone would expect it to be the same scam with the same sham.
Not forgetting that the money and resources wasted on fixing what we dont have a clue about cannot be reclaimed to deal with real problems, real pollution and real solutions. And yet with no clue we are told we need to do something now.
All the MMCC debate has done is damage reputations and rob the people. We have been robbed of truth, fact and wealth.
"2 degrees would be quite nice in the UK."
Not necessarily, it depends on how the 2 degrees is distributed globally. In a warmer world we might find the Jet Stream switches to be almost always South of the UK leaving the UK with almost permanent wet summers.
We were told in no uncertain terms that the forecasts were for at least 6 degrees of warming due to man made CO2 emission, now it’s revised to 2 degrees by 2100. Why? Because the estimates for climate sensitivity were over calculated, this then fuelled a political green assault on taxpayers. The current literature is dialling back on the propertied climate sensitivity figure as observational data (not the Mickey Mouse modelled output) comes in. For years a small number of people have had valid concerns that CO2 sensitivity was not right and been shouted down or marginalised, we have even had people calling for “deniers” to face war crimes style Nuremberg courts or our children blown up ala 10:10. This report is a climb down and an attempt to keep the gravy train going with 2 degrees being the new scary doomsday figure.
@nomnomnom
How exactly am I revising history?
From Hansen 2007 "this implies a ‘long-term’ climate sensitivity of ~1.5 W/m2 or
about 6°C for doubled CO2."
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/EastWest_20070925.pdf
Spouting a cottage industry of green 6 degrees bogeymen:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209053
You only have to google "Hansen 6 degrees warming"
@nomnomnom
Good God 2100 was the long term forecast!
Hansen testified:
"Business-as-Usual fossil fuel use will lead to global warming of at least 5°C by 2100."
http://www.eesi.org/files/hansen_climate_testimony_06.pdf
If Hansen aint good enough then what about the IEA in 2011 who said
"We cannot afford to delay further action to tackle climate change if the long-term target of
limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C, as analysed in the 450 Scenario, is
to be achieved at reasonable cost. In the New Policies Scenario, the world is on a trajectory
that results in a level of emissions consistent with a long-term average temperature increase
of more than 3.5°C. Without these new policies, we are on an even more dangerous track,"
for a temperature increase of 6°C or more."
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2011/executive_summary.pdf
Look at the press quotes for this:
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/pressmedia/quotes/18/index.html
i.e.
"The chief economist for the International Energy Agency said Monday that current global energy consumption levels put the Earth on a trajectory to warm by 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100, an outcome he called “a catastrophe for all of us.” "
Reported on climate progress here:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/11/09/364895/iea-global-warming-delaying-action-is-a-false-economy/
It has been mentioned before 2°C was the safe limit it’s now the new doomsday but only because the higher projected figures are now untenable.
Interesting you don't cite the IPCC forecasts.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-spm-5.jpeg
Why is that? You must have looked at the IPCC forecasts but you chose to omit them because they didn't match your propaganda that rigid 6C warming forecasts by 2100 were being made.
@Nom:
"Interesting you don't cite the IPCC forecasts.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-spm-5.jpeg
Why is that? You must have looked at the IPCC forecasts but you chose to omit them because they didn't match your propaganda that rigid 6C warming forecasts by 2100 were being made."
Just a note about that graph- it kinda covers all options there doesnt it. Considering we are still coming out of an ice age and 2100 is beyond most of our lifespans we can be fairly certain that some claim can be made regardless of the outcome. And if something else happens we get some poor excuse instead of them learning.
We are not still coming out of an ice age. That's just an old climate denier canard to handwave away the late 20th century warming. Warming they didn't expect in the first place and now have to frantically find an excuse for because they don't want to accept man's role.
There's no reason to expect the world to continue warming over the 21st century apart from human emissions. In fact some of the more deniery skeptics are even predicting cooling over the 21st century! That option doesn't even appear on the IPCC forecasts.
@Nom:
"We are not still coming out of an ice age. That's just an old climate denier canard to handwave away the late 20th century warming. Warming they didn't expect in the first place and now have to frantically find an excuse for because they don't want to accept man's role."
Odd. The initial problems with the MMCC theory is splitting the natural warming which is the part of the cycle we are currently up to. That was towards the start of the climate debate. I also dont see anyone going frantic apart from the headless chickens trying to stop the sky from falling.
"There's no reason to expect the world to continue warming over the 21st century apart from human emissions"
The first problem to this statement is the lack of proof of how our emissions are affecting things. The next step would be proving the Co2 emissions effect (to prove your belief in co2 theory). But 63% of the predictive uncertainty is the lack of understanding of our emissions. Which means when the models fall over it is usually due to a lack of knowledge of emissions. Boom.
"That option doesn't even appear on the IPCC forecasts."
I dont know if the world will be warming or cooling, there are a lot of variables and as acknowledged by this paper we dont understand them. However I have zero faith in the IPCC forecasts, reports or actions. Even if they cleaned up their act and moved to a more scientific and fact based reporting I feel they have demonstrated severe bias and I couldnt trust them. Wasnt there an article on the reg a while ago about a couple of countries ignoring the IPCC because they are unreliable and make baseless claims?
@Nom:
"Wrong. You just deny it. Just as creationists deny evolution. You throw out "there is a lack of proof" just as the creationists do."
At no point do I deny evolution. There is actual proof. You claim I throw out the lack of proof, yet it is stated in this article that 63% of the predictive uncertainty in the climate models is-
"climate sensitivity, the future behaviour of the carbon cycle, and the cooling effect of aerosols."
followed by:
"the remaining 37 percent driven by combinations of sources."
Sounds like you are the creationist arguing against the facts
Hansen does have nothing to do with the IPCC. You need to snap out of your denial. The IPCC forecasts have always shown far less than 6C warming by 2100. So when you claimed that "they" had been "in no uncertain terms" predicting 6C by 2100 you were WRONG.
While I concur all the "scientists" claiming AGW is settled, the Jetstream is actually pretty much the key to all the Bad Things (TM pending) the warmists claim will happen. Shift it so it doesn't hit the UK and your weather changes radically (colder as I recall). Shift it in the US and the weather changes radically (hotter colder depending which way it moves).
The problem is, no matter how much they try to deny it, they don't have a long enough observational baseline to determine what is normal. And that's assuming you have actual usable definitions for the terms you are measuring as well as the instrumentation to measure all of it.
Pretty sure it used to be the Gulf stream that was shifting south which would lead to the polar ice caps settling around Leicester and the entire of England becoming home to polar bears. Now it's the Jet stream too?
That global warming, always making things horribler. Why is it that a warmer, wetter climate can't be good for any parts of the planet?
There seems to be some confusion.
If you DONT accept this study which says humans will very likely cause about 2C warming by 2100, then you have no reason to think anything has changed.
You can't say "Can I have my money back now please?" as if this new information is game changing if you don't actually accept what the study says!
Of course climate skeptics do want to have their cake and eat it too!
@NomNomNom:
"You can't say "Can I have my money back now please?" as if this new information is game changing if you don't actually accept what the study says!
Of course climate skeptics do want to have their cake and eat it too!"
You seem not to be paying attention. Skeptics have always been asking for their money back. I want my money back. Why should I buy your crud cake and be forced to eat it?
This information only demonstrates the unity and knowledge of the climate scientists. Pretty much bugger all. So yeah give us our money back and pay for your own toys
"You seem not to be paying attention. Skeptics have always been asking for their money back."
The study provides both a lower and upper limit for the range of warming. Skeptics are pointing at the study and demanding everyone take the upper limit seriously, but when faced with the lower limit they themselves throw the study under the bus, because they still want to toy with the idea that man isn't causing warming. well if they are right and we shouldn't take the lower limit seriously, why should we take the upper limit seriously?
If the study is wrong and "we know nothing" to paraphrase, does that mean 6C is back on the cards?
@NomNomNom:
"Skeptics are pointing at the study and demanding everyone take the upper limit seriously, but when faced with the lower limit they themselves throw the study under the bus"
You really dont pay attention do you. Skeptics demand proof. Your proof is nothing to something unknown might happen. Believers demand money, skeptics demand proof. We mock your studies which claim something will happen... but only if the figures are fluffed. Otherwise your predictions say nothing will happen up to absolute doom. Otherwise known as nothing is known.
"If the study is wrong and "we know nothing" to paraphrase, does that mean 6C is back on the cards?"
Yes, just as absolutely nothing is also on the cards. It leaves the situation back to the range of completely useless.
"because they still want to toy with the idea that man isn't causing warming"
How many witches have you burned? Failure to do so is just toying with the idea of letting children be gobbled up.
"Looks like it was settled to me."
If you only look to the left you will never see the right. Considering the comments on here that line really does make me laugh.
"Humans, not nature, are driving global temperature changes. They are not saying 2C by 2100 because of the Sun. They are saying humans. It's nice to see climate skeptics finally accepting this."
Who is saying humans? You do. The IPCC does. In fact everyone in the religion does. But step outside your religion and look to the world and you see it is not settled. Some of us are still waiting for proof that it isnt the natural trend.
"Waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy".
If the predictions are now in the lower range, a policy of wait and see, and adapt if and when we have to becomes much more attractive. It was only ever the catastrophic predictions that could be used for wrecking the ecomony etc.
Looks liek a game-changer to me.
Waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy.....
Translation - if we wait until we know much more about all this rot, then our funding will be jeopardized and we will all lose out gubmint cheese and gubmint supported jobs, not to mention a crippling of our agenda....
THAT is the FAIL these climate "scientists" speak of.
If you're in a position where sea level rise is threatening your imminent demise you should turn your back to the sea and walk forward 20 yards or so. If you can't walk then roll your wheelchair or crawl or flop or ask the person who brings you food to drag you. There. Now you should safely meet your end from some other cause when your time comes.
No one seems to have taken notice of the fact that the (UK) Met office was forced recently to admit to parliament that there has been no statistically significant warming trend since 1880.
i.e. there's no trend, there's nothing to suggest temperatures will increase. It's all random natural variability.
"No one seems to have taken notice of the fact that"
Of course the Met Office haven't admitted anything of the kind.
It's both ludicrous and amazing that climate deniers think they can get away with making up such ridiculous statements for propaganda purposes. I guess some people really do fall for such things?
Other times they'll act all "reasonable" and claim they don't deny the world has warmed, they just question the cause. But as you point out here, they will happily change their tune deny any warming since 1880 if they think they can get sufficient propaganda mileage out of that.
The figures they have for ocean heating though, they compute to an atmospheric heating of about 90C. I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. They're counting ocean temps for carbon sinks now, but I don't believe they're correctly accounting for the thermal variation in solubility of CO2 in water. It turns out that cold water holds SCADS more CO2 in solution than warm water does. In fact, that sort of explains the "atmospheric CO2 as a lagging indicator of warming" as the warmer water gives up its dissolved CO2 to the air. That water is as cool as it is because 15,000 years ago when it had been cold as a Republican's heart all over the planet for 140,000 years the oceans had become cool enough to absorb far more CO2. It takes a long time for that much water to heat up after the Earth's orbit comes to a warmer clime for the brief interglacials like the one we're in now. As the cold deep water surfaces and warms in warmer sun after up to 1600 years it's going to give up some of the CO2 it captured long ago. It takes many cycles to give up it all because most of the water isn't in a conveyor and the CO2 blanket keeps the air and sea warmer even as the orbital cycle has moved to a cooler zone.
They're including solar cycles too now, and orbital variations. That's nice because the Sun's periodic variability and the Earth's varying orbit are "settled science" in hard sciences. The Earth has moved out of our "sweet spot" where men can live in current numbers but it will take a while before our CO2 blanket is depleted. Wait until they hear about geothermal energy. They're going to have to "adjust" again.
Seriously, it's nice they're starting to refine the models to include some basic primitives that should have always been in there. Another hundred years and they might be able to be able to make a nice reliable prediction. By then it ought to start getting cold again and the fall into the ice is rather steep. Frankly climatologists need to get some instruction from thermal physicists on the quality of data from a thermocouple and the meaningfulness of averaging data in excess of the instrument's ability because they have their statistical analysis all wrong. The mean of many points of ignorance is not "data". At the level of their reportage the data is random. They rely too much on statistical analysis.
What is amazing to me how despite decades of "settled science" we keep getting these huge admissions that "we didn't include or correctly calibrate this overwhelming factor that hoses up our predictions" about every three months. If you add up all of these corrections for the last few years they make more than 100% of the result. Yet the science is "settled". The toe of that hockey stick was a ski jump to some astronomical projections and now it turns out it was an anomaly if it was even more than an observational error artifact, or data manipulation. Nobody screaming "settled science" now wants to talk about the thermal cataclysm that didn't happen back when that was "settled science".
Still folk feel free to write fear-mongering articles like Phil Plait's recent The Arctic Ice "Death Spiral" that dramatize the issue with phrases like "ice-free Arctic by 2040" without mentioning they mean "at the height of summer, for 15 minutes". "Death Spiral?" Really? And without mentioning that Antarctic ice is increasing so the net ice balance is the same - so no global net energy transfer whatsoever. Really, I expect more science and less art from Phil. Maybe he should stick with astronomy. He's good at that, and shouldn't turn his fame into a bully pulpit about stuff he doesn't understand.
Frankly, +2C isn't quite enough for me. I would like +6, or even +8. Thankfully after we run out of oil and gas we have Methane Clathrates to keep us warm and turn the wheels of industry. Evolution has found a way to prevent oil, coal and gas, but methane clathrates can be farmed. We might yet keep the planet warm enough to sustain our culture through the next cold period. That should get us to 40 billion humans, self-sustaining interstellar colonies, fusion energy and the like. If we don't kill each other first.
"And without mentioning that Antarctic ice is increasing so the net ice balance is the same - so no global net energy transfer whatsoever. "
You are wrong, the decline in the Arctic is much greater than the increase in the Antarctic. Plus the Arctic decline is in summer when solar insolation is greatest while the increase in the Antarctic is during the winter.
"Frankly, +2C isn't quite enough for me. I would like +6, or even +8."
Then you are a reckless dick.
Erm Noms - when it's summer in the Arctic it's winter in the Antarctic. PS you might went to tone back the Arctic ice loss panic, the hysteria might come back to haunt you (we only have 30 years of satellite data not even one full cycle) . Also given as an ice free artic allows the ocean to cool quicker it might be self limiting.
"when it's summer in the Arctic it's winter in the Antarctic"
There's less sunlight during winter. Therefore changes during summer make more of a difference. It's the arctic loss in summer that has the most effect on energy balance. The antarctic change in winter has relatively little impact.
And in any case the arctic as a region is impacted by the decline in sea ice. What happens in the Antarctic can't "undo" what is actually happening in the Arctic.
"you might went to tone back the Arctic ice loss panic, the hysteria might come back to haunt you"
The Arctic is losing ice at a rapid rate and heading towards a summer free of ice. It's you who needs to tone down the denial of that fact.
"Also given as an ice free artic allows the ocean to cool quicker it might be self limiting."
An ice free arctic absorbs more sunlight. In an ice free arctic all that sunlight can go into heating water, rather than being used on melting ice. There are a lot of feedbacks with regard to sea ice and temperature but the evidence is strongly that positive feedbacks dominate. That's the only way to explain why the arctic in the distant past got so hot and was ice free all year round. It's clearly not self-limiting.
What matters is how much water vapour there is and how much sunlight is reaching the ground. As a star gets older, it gets bigger and hotter. There is nothing we can do about that. When we burn hydrocarbons for fuel, we add tons of water vapor to the atmosphere. The tonnage of water vapour from burning hydrocarbons is far greater than the tonnage of carbon dioxide. Water vapour, just in case you are still among the mislead, is a far better "greehhouse gas" than carbon dioxide. Also, all that waste heat must go somewhere and there is nothing that we can do about that. Even if we converted to all nuclear power today, we would still be confronted with the problem of waste heat. More importantly, when we build roads, buildings and parking lots, we change the albedo of Earth and it soaks up much more sunlight than it ever did before. You don't really hear anyone arguing for fewer and poorer roads, now do you? There are costs involved with improving things and guess what? We in the west will have fewer people to pick up that tab. Our populations, and those of Russia and Japan or in decline. So is the population of Brazil. It has started to decline as well.
So, ignoring the problem might well be the best solution. The climate will stabalize because we are about to consume far less in the way of resources and that includes energy.
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