FUTURE CHANGE: Scientists warned U.S. senators that climate change could have severe and costly future impacts if not addressed soon. Pictured: downtown New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
Image: Flickr/Ross Mayfield
In a probable scenario for climate change, New Orleans will no longer exist. Neither will Atlantic City, N.J. Boston will look much like it did in the 17th century, before the city was dredged up to build a port. And Florida will no longer keep its distinct appendage shape.
These geographical changes due to sea-level rise are only the beginning, scientists bluntly stated at a briefing yesterday convened by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
"Today's talk underscored what I already knew, but gives me more facts," said Boxer. "We have to act because our children and our grandchildren need us to act."
Storms are likely to travel in different patterns than they did before, much like Superstorm Sandy did. Increasing temperatures are changing the cycles of plants and trees and extending the pollination period to exacerbate allergies. In the hottest cities, it will be uncomfortable to step outside during the day. And limited agricultural growth will severely strain the world's ability to feed itself, said a panel composed of two atmospheric scientists, one public health expert and one biological oceanographer.
"These two years [2011 and 2012] have had the largest number of billion-dollar events," said Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois.
Heat waves and precipitation patterns have changed dramatically, and it's due to human causes. The Texas heat wave of 2011 was 20 times more likely to be tied to human-induced warming than to natural causes, said Wuebbles. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared 2012 the warmest year on record late last year.
The worst-case scenarios predict a 14- to 15-degree-Fahrenheit increase by the end of the century, said Wuebbles. Chicago would feel like Birmingham, Ala.
While many skeptics assert that climate change is a natural process, previous warming and cooling took place over thousands of years, said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society and director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia.
Rolling the dice with Mother Nature
People are asking the wrong questions about climate change, said Shepherd. Instead of asking whether a single extreme weather event is linked to climate change, one should ask whether humans are increasing the probability of that event.
"If we think about the weather and we roll this pair of dice here," said Shepherd, with a pair of dice in his hand, "and we come up with a six two times, that would be a storm like Sandy. Climate change is like we're adding a six to the die. We're loading the die towards more of these events."
He added, "In other words, we're speaking of probabilistic risks."
Rising temperatures will increase human exposure to mold, microbial pathogens and infectious diseases, said John Balbus, senior adviser for public health at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Studies are indicating that the greatest heat-related harm come may not from extreme exposure but rather from the lower but more frequent stress of increasingly hot summer days.
"We've seen the geographical range of ticks that cover Lyme disease shift northward, and is predicted to shift further northward in the United States and in Canada," said Balbus, adding that there are limited studies on the actual incidence of Lyme disease.
Melting ice is causing heat exchanges between the oceans and the atmosphere that were not possible before, said James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University.
"Storms like Superstorm Sandy that begin in the tropics and escape the tropics [now] because of the exceptionally warm surface water remain intense until landfall," he said. "When that storm hits, as it did, we have unprecedented potential for disruption."
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34 Comments
Add CommentYou can help solve that problem by installing solar power panels on your roof to lessen the number of coal burning power plants. If you don't your a fool because the tax rebates make it economical and cheaper than using the utility company for your power needs. I know this as a fact as I have mine producing 103% of my needs--a net energy producer IN FACT and that's while charging two EV's to pollute ZERO.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSolar power panels have gone up considerably in efficiency just in the last two years and are now about one-half the cost of them just three years ago.
Any homeowner can lease them for a fixed cost that is LESS than the costs of consuming electricity from your local power producer.
But then who cares anyway I live up north and welcome the higher temperatures. Those down South too bad because your too stupid to recognize the math that solar pays and pays well.
Global warming and climate change are major movements of a very large 'eco-ship' that is slow to change direction. I'd guess that even if we embarked on a program to reduce emissions to zero, here in America by 2020, it would have little impact in the short term (say the next 100 years). This due mainly to the fact that other countries are on a geometric course to rapidly replace in a few years what this country produces today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, I just don't see anything positive happening until and unless the root cause is addressed. This planet and the population of humans living on it are not at all in balance and the projected growth to levels beyond 8 billion will continue exacerbate the strain on all levels of the ecosphere. What we really need, and will not see pending an act of God, would be a massive reduction in our numbers. Just a thought...
Scientific basis for reporting stories related to climate change and the need to develop sustainable industries include massive hurricanes inundating aging American infrastructure, epic droughts, rampant corn fungus, unprecedented wild-fires out west, warmer weather year after year and international consensus that natural resources are in-fact limited and humanity needs to turn away from pollution in order to leave a cleaner planet for our children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnickweilbach
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcept that there is no reliable evidence to tie any current bad weather to increased level of atmospheric CO2.
Just because someone claims that they are related does not make it the truth. Climatewire is pushing an agenda and not valid science.
Is sea level rising at an alarming rate? NO. It is rising at a rate very consistant with the rate it has been rising at for several thousand years and there has been no indication that the rate of rise has increased since we have had a method to make accurate assessments. (1992)
So what are the specific harms again when they can't attribute an increase in severe storms to CO2 and sea level isn't rising at an alarming rate??? What is increasing is the propaganda by Climatewire!
The sad and, yes, inconvenient, truth is that human beings will not change their ways until they experience catastrophe. The various scenarios for the outcome of anthropogenic climate change are plausible and have increasing probability as we come to more understanding of climate and obtain more data. Yet, we seem mired in rhetoric rather than moving ahead with contingency plans. It seems that the most useful contingency will be mitigation: accept that, collectively, homo sapiens will extract and burn all the hydrocarbons we can find, with increasing technological ability to get at even the most expensive petroleum during the ensuing hundred years or so; develop and implement technologies to cope with the inevitable climate change. Not a plan which would seem worthy of our cerebral capacity, but perhaps the only locus of actions which is consistent with our current behaviour and our knowledge of how human society has functioned in the past. Of course one can hope for better. But plan for the worst and hope for better is a more pragmatic strategy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't help but disagree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it hard to understand how someone would ignore especially the most simple aspects of the science.
For instance, how can you dispute that carbon dioxide levels are increasing in our atmosphere? Haven't you ever traveled to various parts of the world and seen the enormous amount of gas being emitted to fuel the energy needs of huge cities? Do you think the 'Revelle curve' based on the daily CO2 measurements made for decades from Hawaii are made up?
I've participated in simple experiments showing that air containing higher concentrations of CO2 holds in more heat, so that also seems pretty basic and hard to dispute.
I'm wondering what specifically you mean when you say 'there is no scientific basis for any of this'?
I did not say anything about CO2. I am not a scientist but I have observed a changing climate and fully support an aggressive agenda to educate preparedness in dealing with the increasing frequency of natural disasters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrocketlauncher
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere are increasing at people around the world gain access to electricity and personal transportation.
Yes, the additional CO2 is likely to be impacting rise in surface temperatures worldwide.
The key questions are:
How much is it warming due to the additional CO2?
Answer is we really don't know yet, but the latest data suggest that the rise is significantly less than was projected just a few years ago.
Will a warmer world result in net harms or net benefits for humanity overall and perhaps more importantly which nations will benefit vs. being harmed?
Amswer is we do not know. There have been many peer reviewed papers written on this topic and virtually all of these papers have been based on the outputs of various general circulation models that were designed to forcast future conditions as a function of additional CO2. The problem is that as we have learned more, we know know that these models do not work with sufficient accuracy to be used to make the forecasts used in these many peer reviewed papers. If a person uses a bad model to write a paper, the conclusions of the paper can't be considered valid.
What should we be doing?
Answer- build and maitain a robust infrastructure. It is the one action that actually helps prevent harm from bad weather
Utter trash comment. You DENY the mountain of scientific evidence and the statements of several scientists that is the basis for this article. Please spare us from your vacuous rants inspired by fossil fuel propaganda.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have a range of future climate scenarios and the biggest uncertainty is the human GHG emissions profile. BTW, climate models have been UNDERESTIMATING ice melt, sea level rise and a whole host of other effects of a warming climate. Cherry-picking the last 10 years as proof that climate models are unreliable is highly reckless. Climate models cannot predict the timing of ENSO or the solar cycle any more than they can predict human aerosol emissions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, we have a fairly good idea that more CO2 = more warming and I've posted countless times a list of peer-reviewed scientific papers that shows the effects of climate change will be mostly negative. The IPCC's synthesis reports say basically the same thing and I've ALSO posted countless times that NO SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL ORGANIZATION OF NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL STANDING DISAGREES WITH THE IPCC'S CONCLUSIONS.
How many times do I have to post this information? To maintain your doubt and your self-defeating attitude concerning emissions mitigation just strikes me a wilfull ignorance. The fact that you have presented ZERO credible evidence supporting your position leads me to believe you are forming your opinions using unscientific information, possibly supplied to you by the fossil fuel companies that have a LARGE VESTED FINANCIAL INTEREST in keeping our atmosphere open as their free dumping ground.
Don't plan on fooling anybody as long as I'm around to correct things.
Sault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcept you only avoid the truth.
You are being untruthful regarding the performance of GCMs. BTW- the are not called climate models but are called general circulation models.
What specific model do you believe accurately forecasted sea level rise? Anyone can develop a model that concludes that sea level will rise between .1 meters and 3 meters between 2000 and 2100. Is this a meaningful forecast?
GCMs do not forecast sea level rise. I personally do not care about ice melt except as it contributed to sea level rise. Since sea level has not been rising at an increasing rate during the same period when you state there has been an ice melt- it appears the connection is weaker than you believe.
In fact GCMs did provide forecasts of future circulation patterns that would come about from more atmospheric CO2 and the models predicted changes in rainfall patterns that have been demonstrated to be inaccurate. Many of the papers written predicting harms were based on the conclusions formed by the outputs of these flawed models.
To state otherwise is being untruthful-please stop.
You do not care about ice melt because you do not care about climate change itself. Isn't open ocean 10, 20, 30C or more WARMER than the pack ice that used to cover it? Doesn't the open ocean evaporate while ice pack keeps the air above it relatively dry? Do you understand that these changes affect snowfall, storm tracks and the jet stream? I mean, you spout off nonsense about how the models are inaccurate but then you conveniently leave out any PROOF of their inaccuracy. Funny how that works...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Skeptics argue that we should wait till climate models are completely certain before we act on reducing CO2 emissions. If we waited for 100% certainty, we would never act...The main point is we now know enough to act. Models have evolved to the point where they successfully predict long-term trends and are now developing the ability to predict more chaotic, short-term changes. Multiple lines of evidence, both modeled and empirical, tell us global temperatures will change 3°C with a doubling of CO2 (Knutti & Hegerl 2008).
Models don't need to be exact in every respect to give us an accurate overall trend and its major effects - and we have that now. If you knew there were a 90% chance you'd be in a car crash, you wouldn't get in the car (or at the very least, you'd wear a seatbelt). The IPCC concludes, with a greater than 90% probability, that humans are causing global warming. To wait for 100% certainty before acting is recklessly irresponsible."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
"NO SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL ORGANIZATION OF NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL STANDING DISAGREES WITH THE IPCC'S CONCLUSIONS."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile that may be true, the numbers used in this article for temperature rise and sea level rise way above the IPCC's conclusions. They're not even within the error range.
Look at the skeptical science article I posted. OBSERVED sea level rise is on the very upper end of IPCC projections and the IPCC DOESN'T ACCOUNT FOR ICE MELTING! With the dramatic retreat of ice all over the globe, we are GUARANTEED to experience more sea level rise than the IPCC predicted. The 14F potential rise in temperatures is a worst case scenario as identified by the article, so it shouldn't be used to cast doubt on climate models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The main conclusions of the IPCC on global warming were the following:
1.The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.[6]
2."There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.[7]
3.If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise.[8] On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.[9]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
BTW, 5.8C is a little over 10F, so the article isn't too off AND more recent climate science has shown that the IPCC is too conservative in its projections:
"Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate far quicker than predicted by climate change computer models and could disappear completely before the middle of the century, scientists have warned.
"This suggests that current model projections may in fact provide a conservative estimate of future Arctic change, and that the summer Arctic sea ice may disappear considerably earlier than IPCC projections," said NSIDC's Julienne Stroeve who led the study."
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/05/02/arctic.ice/
Sault,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for the well thought out responses. I personally don't deny global warming, but sometimes I feel we miss all the correlations. Carbon Dioxide has been the biggest fall guy, and as you pointed out towards your last comment before I posted it is not the only. I too have read that our predictions are conservative and that we are probably on a much more aggressive path. Did you also catch the article about permafrost, and the carbon dioxide that is being released with that process? I don't remember if you were the one to say it in this chain of comments but I strongly believe that our international society will wait until its too late to react or counteract the changes we have unleashed. I think the seat belt example was a very good way of putting it.
Perhaps another way to look at it is to say we see an upcoming stop sign yet we refuse to slow down. People are even trying to through up caution signs that a stop sign is coming but it isn't enough. It won't be till we come right up next to the stop sign that we'll slam on the breaks and hope oncoming traffic doesn't destroy us.
-Joshua B
Sault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou continue to be less than truthful. There are MANY in the science community that disagree with the conclusions of the last IPCC report and it is likely that those same conclusions will be revised in AR5.
Scientists arguing that global warming will have few negative consequences
Scientists in this section have made comments that projected rising temperatures will be of little impact or a net positive for human society and/or the Earth's environment. Their views on climate change are usually described in more detail in their biographical articles.
• Craig D. Idso, faculty researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change [50]
• Sherwood Idso, former research physicist, USDA Water Conservation Laboratory, and adjunct professor, Arizona State University[51]
• Patrick Michaels, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and retired research professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia[52]
Scientists arguing that the cause of global warming is unknown
Scientists in this section have made comments that no principal cause can be ascribed to the observed rising temperatures, whether man-made or natural. Their views on climate change are usually described in more detail in their biographical articles.
• Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks[41]
• Claude Allègre, politician; geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris)[42]
• Robert C. Balling, Jr., a professor of geography at Arizona State University[43]
• John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC[44][45]
• Petr Chylek, space and remote sensing sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory[46]
• Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology[47]
• David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma[48]
• Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists[49
Scientists arguing that global warming is primarily caused by natural processes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this• Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences[16]
• Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics[17][18]
• Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa[19]
• Chris de Freitas, associate professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland[20]
• David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester[21]
• Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University[22]
• William M. Gray, professor emeritus and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University[23]
• William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy, Princeton University[24]
• William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology[25]
• David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware[26]
• Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa[27]
• Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.[28][29]
• Ian Plimer, professor emeritus of Mining Geology, the University of Adelaide.[30]
• Nicola Scafetta, research scientist in the physics department at Duke University[31][32]
• Tom Segalstad, head of the Geology Museum at the University of Oslo[33]
• Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia[34][35][36]
• Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics[37]
• Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville[38]
• Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center[39]
• Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, professor emeritus from University of Ottawa[40]
Some of the benefit of alternative energy is local and some is global. An individual company or home owner will not be swayed by the global benefit if he alone is making changes. Individual action cannot possibly change the global situation unless everyone else joins in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen innovation increases the benefit of individual action, that solution will be adopted.
Otherwise, the solution must be mandated like the ban on cfc's or the requirement for catalytic converters on cars.
Sault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou write that skeptics want models to be 100% accurate in order to be accepted, but that is simply untrue.
Sault- I am an engineer who uses models. Models are virtually never 100% accurate. They need to have accuracy reasonable for the purpose. Up to now GCMs have not met that benchmark when it comes to accurately predicting changes to conditions that are important to humans.
As an example- If location “A” currently gets 25” of rain per year a GCM might provide outputs that would lead a researcher to conclude that that area would only get 12” of rain per year. In conjunction with AR4, researchers wrote reports concluding that location “A” would suffer great harm due to a reduction in farm outputs due to drier conditions caused by global warming.
Unfortunately, when you compare what the model forecasted vs. observed conditions we find that location A did not get less rainfall. So the conclusions written of potential harm were based on a series of bad models where their outputs were averaged.
Sault- try to find a single engineer who believes that using GCMs to make government policy decisions is good engineering or good science.
Just doing a few searches refutes the validity of your references (just a sample from your first post; I need not take the time to look up all of them):
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-Craig Idso has been paid as much as $11,600/mo. by the Hartland institute to attack legitimate climate science and his father, Sherwood is a member of the Marshall Institute and does the same.
-Robert Balling has received $200,000 in funding from the fossil fuel industry in the last 6 yrs.
-Patrick Michaels says that 40% of his funding comes from the fossil fuel industry.
-John Christy is a member of the Cato, Hartland, and Marshall institutes.
I glanced at your second post and you had the balls to reference Soon and Spencer (they have basically been castigated from legitimacy by peer reviewed studies showing their lack of research ability and the carelessness of such).
What kind of shit are you peddling here (rhetorical question)? It is ironic that you attempt, with failure, to refute current climate trends, and in doing so undermine your own efforts by using sources that also point to a trend, i.e. immoral scientists being paid by the fossil fuel industry.
The answer you're looking for is profits. Money is god and the people who are against this are older and don't stand to see their profits shrink in their lifetimes. Giving that up for a new clean energy industry will cost them immediately. Of course they're going to ignore scientific evidence and lie and do everything they can to keep things the way they are. They're counting on being dead before anything catastrophic happens and don't give a damn about the future after they're gone. The problem is, however, it's happening a lot faster than they counted on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Patrick Michaels, senior fellow at the Cato Institute..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Murray Rothbard, Ed Crane and Charles Koch,[6] chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc..[nb 1]"
i.e. paid off by fossil fuel interests!
"Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics[37]"
"In 2011, it was revealed that Soon received over $1,000,000 from petroleum and coal interests since 2001.[27] Documents obtained by Greenpeace under the US Freedom of Information Act show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave Soon two grants totaling $175,000 in 2005/6 and again in 2010. Multiple grants from the American Petroleum Institute between 2001 and 2007 totalled $274,000, and grants from Exxon Mobil totalled $335,000 between 2005 and 2010. Other coal and oil industry sources which funded him include the Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation and the Electric Power Research Institute."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon
Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
"She has served on the scientific advisory board,[4] and the board of directors of the Marshall Institute.[7]
"Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work,[17] was appointed executive director of GMI in September 2001.[18] He left the GMI after 5 months, saying that the institute was "fonder of some facts than others". He contended a conflict of interest in the funding of the institute,[19] In Shop Class as Soulcraft, he stated about the Institute:
“ ...the trappings of scholarship were used to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. These positions served various interests, ideological or material. For example, part of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank. ”
—Matthew B. Crawford[17]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Institute#Funding_sources
Follow the money!
I could do this all day!
Try to find a single engineer that thinks pumping a pressure vessel with more and more gas is a good idea. We know it will eventually rupture. We KNOW that a rupture will be bad. While we can't pinpoint the EXACT pressure that will cause failure or the EXACT material grain where the failure will occur, we know that, on the whole, higher and higher pressures aren't good for the long-term survival of the pressure vessel. The smart move is to find ways to slow the flow of gas into the vessel and eventually lower the pressure to a safe level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the Earth's atmosphere is more chaotic than a steel gas canister, we know that more and more CO2 will bring about stronger and stronger responses in the climate (and ocean acidification and species extinction, etc.). The IPCC reports and all the other stuff I have provided link to all the climate science you can shake a stick at. Skeptical Science has compared past climate predictions to how they stacked up against subsequent observations here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/contary-to-contrarians-ipcc-temp-projections-accurate.html
"Although the IPCC climate models have performed remarkably well in projecting average global surface temperature warming thus far, Rahmstorf et al. (2012) found that the IPCC underestimated global average sea level rise since 1993 by 60%. Brysse et al. (2012) also found that the IPCC has tended to underestimate or failed to account for CO2 emissions, increased rainfall in already rainy areas, continental ice sheet melting, Arctic sea ice decline, and permafrost melting. Brysse et al. concludes that the on the whole the IPCC has been too conservative in its projections, "erring on the side of least drama" — in effect preferring to be wrong on the conservative side in order to avoid criticism."
I've posted this many times too and you just ignore it. You just keep moving the goalposts and continue on with the same song and dance.
"BTW, 5.8C is a little over 10F, so the article isn't too off AND more recent climate science has shown that the IPCC is too conservative in its projections:"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, recent temperature observations have shown IPCC climate models to be overestimating warming AND many recent climate sensitivity studies point to median lower than 3C.
BTW, Arctic sea ice does not affect sea levels.
Also note that skepticalscience.com is on the alarmist side and over-represents most of the science.
Mossboss, while you are throwing out how much everyone is paid off, how about Michael Mann being paid almost $6,000,000.00? Guess that means we sure can't trust anything he has to say either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the proponents of alternative energy have a plan for improving CO2 emissions, an endless debate does not seem to be purposeful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaking goals, identifying resources/managers,organizing, setting objectives, picking initiatives, planning projects and getting feedback are tasks that will pay off in the long run.
A couple good sites that document the vast corporate & super-rich( i.e. Oil Barons) wealth that is financing ENGO's:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistinyurl.com/corporate-wealth-ENGO
fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/
The few $millions Sault talks about is dwarfed to insignificance by the 10's of $billions flowing to ENGO's.
"..America’s 12,000 Environmental Non-Government Organizations (ENGOs) have assets of $30 billion and annual revenues of $10 billion (2004).."
"..Early conservation clubs were "whites only." Their preserves had "whites only" signs. The prejudice lingers. A third of major ENGOs do not have a single person of color on staff. Movement leadership is snow white and stacked with millionaires.."
"..NRDC founder..John Adams...raking in cash from corporate-based foundations...Adams earned $760,000 a year. Conservation ENGOs spend half their budgets on salaries and consultancy fees. National Park Foundation’s President James Maddy, with an annual salary of $833,290, was America’s highest paid environmentalist in 2006.."
"..USA’s Big 5 conservation ENGOs – TNC, CI, WCS, WWF-USA and CF – experienced dramatic growth after 1990. The Big 5 have myriad partnerships with the very corporations commonly demonized by environmentalists: ExxonMobil, Shell, International Paper, etc..."
The Rockefeller Brothers [Oil Barons] Campaign Against Canadian Energy: WWF, Pembina, Greenpeace:
fairquestions.typepad.com/files/pp-rbf-tar-sands.pdf
The Super-Rich have figured out that ENGO's create shortages of public & private land, of water, of food & agricultural land, of housing, of energy, of minerals/ores, of timber & forest products, of electricity. All of these are fundamental economic inputs that have a highly INELASTIC supply-demand curve. That means shortages cause profits to jump at a far faster rate than prices, which of course must also rise. ENGO's are money in the bank for Corporate Bandits and the Super-rich Plutocrats that control them.
A couple simple examples: anything that blocks Nuclear Power or the Tar Sands development will inevitably cause increased Oil & Gas prices which mean big profits for global Oil & LNG exporters - especially OPEC. A 1% drop in Oil production typically results in ~ 10% increase in Oil price. It is a NO-BRAINER for them to surreptitiously finance anti-Nuclear, anti-Tar-Sands ENGOs. High Electricity prices reduce Oil substitution (i.e. Electric Heat). Opposing GMOs reduces agricultural productivity = higher prices = much higher profits. Notable that anti-Nuclear ENGOs are also anti-GMO & anti-Tar-Sands.
A simple carbon tax is the most efficient answer but is political poison.If gas prices rise a nickle it is the end of the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut pickup trucks must be politically protected.No one is really serious about raising waters until it happens.
However infinite tax resources will be available to build dams and dikes to ameliorate it. They spent millions where I live to restore hurricane ravaged beaches so owners wouldn't have to go wading when they walked out of the back doors of their condominiums.
Australia currently has a carbon tax. Unfortunately it will be short lived when the current government is changed in the forcoming election in Sept this year. Sad that the Australian people have been hoodwinked by vested interests that control the media to disseminate misinformation about global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis attitude will change eventually as global warming starts to bite hard....the little nibbles we are currently getting (like heatwaves, hurricanes and floods) have been quickly forgotten as the media push the panick button on how carbon tax will destroy the world.
Oil and gas consumptions has been inelastic. This means that an increase in price has not had a significant effect on demand. The carbon tax can therefore be passed on to the consumer without a significant change in demand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe way to reduce demand for carbon creating products is to offer consumers cheaper alternatives.
As I have said before, innovation in the alternative energy industry is the solution to too much carbon in the atmosphere.
Given a reasonable alternative, consumers will change the demand curve and a beneficial equilibrium will reduce the use of carbon based energy.
As it stands now, taxing oil and gas will increase the cost of energy but will not move the oil and gas industry to alternative energy. In this case taxes will not be effective.
When utilities plan out their generation mix, prices are VERY important. If they see a carbon tax liability hanging over a proposed new coal power plant or something, it will change their calculus on whether to build it or not. However, there is a time lag on these decisions. While this is significant, it does not mean that a carbon tax is ineffective. The same goes for vehicle purchase decisions or how close people decide to live to their jobs. People can't make the switch overnight, but when gas prices spike, people tend to reevaluate which kind of vehicle they'll buy or how long they can stand commuting every day. The inelasticity you claim is partly due to this time lag.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou could be right about the lag to some degree, but it is the unavailability of comparably priced alternatives that makes carbon based energy so favored. When alternatives come down in price, people will change from oil and gas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis will make demand for oil and gas elastic which is a good thing for the consumer.
Alternatives may be cheap enough already but the distribution of alternatives is expensive. We need economies of scale to solve that issue.
You should care, because there are now 8 feedback loops in progress, some affecting the north much more than the south. The. Ian one being the drastic disappearance of the arctic ozone. The hole went from 40% in spring 2011, to 80% in October, just six summer months later. At 80% depletion, that's around 160% more uv coming through. Last summer there was so much uv that the northern boreal forest burned severely, and don't think drought. It rained almost everyday. It was uv burn, and it burned everything. My farm grows apples in Alaska, and even the yellow transparent apples were red last summer. Trees went crispy all over. If the entire n. boreal dies, it's 703 Pg of carbon to be released as co2 when it decomposes in just a few years now, as it won't survive many years of burn without outright killing the entire forest. That amount of co2 will take the planet to 800 ppm, which we will not survive. Look at what 391 ppm is doing. Watch you tube video called the twin sides of the fossil fuel coin, and know the uv burn isn't even on the radar screen yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are wrong on this. Look it up. There are more scientist saying it IS related than not. The only agenda climate wire has is trying to educate people to the point of us having a fighting chance of saving the planet. Watch you tube called the twin sides of the fossil fuel coin for further education. There is an ozone hole 80% now over the arctic killing massive numbers of forest trees, and if the forest dies we die...it's 200 years worth of global emissions all in ONE forest, and its dying. How do you think we will survive 800 ppm, when 391 is doing what you see today? Answer....we won't. Get on this movement, educating everyone you know as to our future so we might have a chance.
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