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130 comments on DrumBeat: October 20, 2006

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davet on October 20, 2006 - 9:55am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
On "Climate change is real, but how bad it will be and how fast it will happen ...": all of our climate models have large uncertainties. Furthermore, the system is nonlinear and aspects of climate may be chaotic, and many climate interactions are poorly understood and many more poorly characterized. Having said that, by far the largest uncertainty in all the climate models is the human response. How we deal with the situation is key. In a way this is encouraging: if the models have any skill at all, it means we have significant control over the situation, and that our decisions matter. OTOH, it means taking responsibility, and that's a tough demand.
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mencial on October 20, 2006 - 12:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
¿May be chaotic? ¿May be? That is the understatement of the month. A million gnus in the savannah are chaotic, but they are like the Bolshoi Moscow ballet company compared to the weather.

So, noone can tell you with certainty what the weather will do, or how it will react to some event. Science can only tell you generalities and probablities. It is always like that, but in this case more so. But you ignore what the scientists say at you own peril.

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davet on October 20, 2006 - 3:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Climate, not weather. There's a fair amount of discussion on just how chaotic the climate system is, and on what sort of timescale.
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BartB on October 20, 2006 - 6:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
And one issue that is underestimated in the IPCC models of 2001 report is in my opinion the rise in sea levels. The figures below are from The Future Oceans - Warming Up, Rising High, Turning Sour; WBGU 2006

The measured sea level rise is above the predictions of the IPCC models.

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Leanan on October 20, 2006 - 6:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, sea levels are rising a lot faster than the models predicted even a year ago.  

I think we are going to have to retreat from the coasts.  Something to keep in mind, before spending billions of dollars on new infrastructure (new transmission lines, banks of wind turbines, new rail lines, etc).  

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Gail the Actuary on October 20, 2006 - 10:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
James Lovelock, in "The Revenge of Gaia," says that atmospheric conditions now seem to him to be equivalent to those in the Eocene period, and his prediction is for temperatures 5 degrees centigrade warmer than it is now. If he is correct (his forecasts are gloomier than most), based on your graph, we may be looking at 75m or 80m rise in sea levels. Since the relationship looks linear, we may expect a considerable rise in sea level well before we get to +5 degrees.
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130 comments on DrumBeat: October 20, 2006

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