MIT: Global Warming of 7°C 'Could Kill Billions This Century'

This MIT study was pretty thorough…except they forgot to project how this catastrophe will affect Santa and Rudolph. I’ve read that elves are quite heat intolerant. And that fluffy red suit will be a scorcher when the arctic starts looking like maui.

The picture shown at the heading of this article must be of London because London bridge is in the background. Since the elevation of London is only 20-50 feet, global warming of that magnitude would raise sea level enough to swamp the whole town. It certainly wouldn’t look like a desert.

Funny how the ‘experts’ never manage to come up with anything positive happening in the future. They spend years obtaining an MIT degree, years of experience working with super-duper-computers to compute the odds of natural disasters — supervolcanoes, earth-killing asteroids, supernova gamma ray bursts, super earthquakes, super tornadoes, super-intense hurricanes, intense global warming, ice ages, etc., etc. — and, as yet, nothing of the sort has ever occured.
Seems like the only thing they have learned in all those years of academic effort and employment is that, if you don’t predict doom and gloom, you lose your funding/grant/goverment employment, and you don’t get your picture in the news.
Gore apparently learned that lesson early on. There’s money to be made in disaster predictions. It isn’t honest money, but hey, who cares when you make so much that you don’t have time to worry about how much your spend on mansions and private jets that run contrary to the cause you espouse?

““MIT predicts “a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100.”””
Does anyone know how “90% ” was obtained. Did 360 of their 400 computer games show this? I haven’t been able to figure out where this and similar probabilities in other AGW studies pop out.

p.s (all very contentious… yeah, I started of with only points 1 and 2…)

Sadly there are already flames in the Antarctic … but they are not caused by AGW…Sir Ed’s hut just burnt down…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10574378
but if we wait long enough I’m sure someone will claim it was caused by man … and I don’t mean with a match!

Bob Wood re Original TDTECF artwork.
The heading photo was originally a Matte painting by Oscar winning [Superman Visual Effects] Les Bowie, a Brit who employed me as his gopher on The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Having just left the RAF and in need of work I was amazed at what an extremely low budget and lateral thinking can achieve! Total budget for Visual Effects on that picture was 17,000 Pounds Sterling. How times have changed. In two years I was driving down the River Thames in February in my Mini Cooper S from Old Windsor to Runnymeade and back because the ice was so thick. Not even a crack. That night we had an ice party [450 people and spit roast lamb + alcohol in the middle of the Thames. The Times was predicting a New Ice Age nearly every day around that time [Feb 63]
What a scam all this CO2 poison/pollution really is.

jorgekafkazar (18:19:38) :
“This has all the finesse, prudence, and precision of playing darts with hand grenades in the dark.”
Wonderful metaphor, can we have it as a Quote of the Week?
Bob Wood (21:50:37) :
It was London, because it was set and filmed there, but it’s Tower Bridge in the background.

They want the public to accept the idea of personal carbon credits as a new form of global currency by 2018-2020. Ed Milliband let slip that very date and time schedule in a February Guardian article. It’s up the media and academics to scare the shit out of the public to accept the new currency.
Personal carbon credits sounds like a good idea (you force yourself to be more efficient, save money, and if you can’t you can buy credits from the poor anywhere in the world) but it requires the state to observe all your consumption patterns and energy use to ensure your carbon credits are properly accounted for, which means your personal privacy will almost entirely be demolished.

I actually admire Steven Schneider’s attempt at honesty. He admits that scientists are also humans, which naturally means they will have biases and not always be objective. In addition, he admits that the truth may sometimes have to be sacrificed for the message.
For a true believer, this makes perfect sense.

rbateman:-)
Sorry to be Mr Picky, I get the point you’re making, but surely Canada et al would suffer from Arctic temperatures as opposed to Antarctic ones?
Question! Is the MIT’s “puter” called Deep Thought by any chance? (5 x 9 = 42!!!!) As an engineer, if I lied, I’d be out! How good will these predictions be @ 90% probability if we changed the stakes, put a little money on the table, maybe a few lives & careers on there too? Incentive is a good thing, prove your prediction & I won’t sack you, you get to keep your pension, & your house. If you’re wrong, you lose the lot. How scarey would their message be then I wonder. Now I can see many would think that unreasonable.
AND can someone tell me when any of the many predicted scare stories that have blighted our lives past & present, ever come true? Can any one name just one? Deja Vu, aliens from Mars we’re all going to die, aliens full stop we’re going to die (& they’re always evil, not once do any of them offer us a cup of tea!), Nuclear Holocaust we’re all going to die, Biological Warfare we’re all going to die, Chemical Warfare we’re all going to die, Ice Age wagtd, Asian Flu, wagtd, AIDS wagtd, BSE wagtd, Flesh eating bugs wagtd, Superbugs wagtd, Foot n’ mouth wagtd, Avian Flu wagtd, Swine Flu wagtd! Have I missed one? Oh I forgot the Chinese are tunnelling under the Pacific Ocean to invade America as I type so watch out you Colonials, (now that was a bad movie.) Why is it they always thought we would have a crummy digital clock to tell the time?
Dear Met Office,
I put off the gardening yesterday morning because you forecast heavy rainfall but we didn’t get it. It was lovely weather after all! What’s the weather going to be exactly next Sunday at 11:07am as I want a barbecue lunch & need to get the charcoal lit in time! MIT please respond for a second opinion!
Yours sincerely
AtB with bad back!

Steven Goddard (20:23:43) :
Consider the late Jurassic. CO2 was at least 400% of present values, and temperatures were no more than 5 degrees warmer.
Doesn’t that prove current warmist theory then.
assuming doubling CO2 produces 2C rise in temp then a 400% increase would give 4deg C rise
But you still have not given the reference for the proof of temperature and CO2 levels 500MY to 5MY.

@anna v
Indeed, in the full context the quote is the same if not worse. I find troubling the opening part:
“On the one hand, as scientists […] On the other hand, we are […] human beings as well”
Now apply that “ethics” to being a police officer. Or a high court judge.
He really doesn’t seem to have thought deeply about ethics, or is simply not well informed. It only requires asking, how is it that different people can come to very different ethical choices? “Being human” is not a virtue in and of itself… humans display a vast range of ethical IQ, so if this chap wants to talk ethics, let him take training and study the field and actually develop his ethical IQ, before he gives up the professional science day job. If I may say, I would prefer these people to remain scientists DESPITE being human. I expect the police to remain fair and honest DESPITE their feelings about criminals.
Anyway, that quote only serves to illustrate what we all already know, that climate science and the UN is composed of many many individuals who share a common worldview, and in their heart of hearts believe they are bringing that worldview (and lifestyle) to the rest of the world. It is probably what attracted them to the job in the first place.
It is essentially ‘religious’ in the strict sense of being a teaching about how we should live and what it is that is of ultimate concern for humans (not a judging/saviour God as in traditional Christianity, but a bonded united humanity in balance with our place in the web of life of ecology).
This is how he defines his “humanity” (even though if you asked a broad range of the 6 billion people on the planet today to define their “humanity”, you’d get about 7 different classes of answers, or more).
It is also an interesting place for them to be, as the scary scenarios are supposed to grab the attention of a public that apparently isn’t as ethically developed as they are, isn’t in touch with their own (nature-bonded) humanity. Perhaps we should all change how we do our jobs and become more “human”. Somehow these ‘scientists’ see themselves as being the most ethically advanced individuals (even though they have had no training) and are unaware that perhaps some people consider their ethics a bit limited and counterproductive…..?

wws (15:48:34) :
‘Oh, and they added another heating bias to the temperature record by “accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling………’
Let me get this straight. Things have cooled down even though things are still warming. It’s just the “cold” is “masking” the “heat” as we get hotter.
I think the MIT boys and girls need to take their bi-polar drugs.

Was it not long ago that they were yammering on about even a slight rise of 1C being the point-of-no-return catastrophy? What I mean to say is that their 7C increase doesn’t sound much worse than the 1C rise, so I have to wonder why they upped the conditions for doom in their computer-generated predictions. Hmm…
I think references to smaller rises with the same outcomes will cease to be uttered and will in time disappear. Since it’s looking like we’re really in a cooling period in the cycle, they can just use those 7C predictions later when things start to warm again in order to try and associate whatever might happen then with “catastrohpic” rising temps. Preparing for their future, ie, where they hope to come back in popularity. Either that or they are just buying time because they know how the cap-and-trade battle is going. Nice of them to “play god” for us and dely things, eh?

It will take a long time for billions of people to die due to AGW – they had better start soon.

I hate to say it, as a fervent AGW denier, but my understanding of the first graph (and by extension, all other similar graphs) is that it doesn’t show the decline of global temperatures, since I assume the graph is showing temperature anomoly.
What I think it shows is a decreasing temperature anomaly, but since the anomaly is above zero then it does actually show that temperature is still rising, but at an increasing slow rate, and if the trend continues (and I hate straight line trends) it will eventually start to drop.
I am not a scientist so if my understanding is wrong, please correct me.
If you take into account the “background” temperature rise due to recovery from the LIA then any other influencing factor, anthropogenic or natural, may actually result in a falling temperature conribution, and certainly don’t come anywhere near temperature runaway.
I make this point because AGW proponents criticise this and other sites for making claims that they don’t agree with. I think that a more rigourous use of language would ensure that they have less foundation for criticism.

Peter Plail,
If the temperatures anomalies (relative to a fixed baseline) are declining, then the temperatures are also declining. Adding a constant to a linear equation does not change the slope.

The shrill is getting louder because they know the public isn’t buying into their propaganda. It’s becoming painfully obvious what Freeman Dyson meant when he said this is bad science. I think there is a concerted effort by the AGW forces to try and manipulate public opinion, especially since important legislation is pending in the Congress. But, I think this is great news. It should be widely circulated and the public should be made very aware of this chicken little theory so that when the apocalyptic projects don’t materialize, the public sentiment will turn even more negative, hopefully killing legislation such as cap and trade for good.

The reason for this story is obvious– The Climate Bill.
This MIT study, which will later be withdrawn or changed, is timed to give Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic alarmists in congress a powerful public relations weapon for their cap and trade scheme.

IRT Schneider’s dissing Skeptics and others who point out how full of it AGW promoters are:
Be careful what you wish for, AGW believers.

Also the MIT ‘study’ puts AGW in a quandry:
The IPCC/Hansen, etc. all say that the great models they use to tell us about AGW are correct.
Not one of those models predict 7oC by 2100.
So if their models are wrong, why should the AGW promoters have any credibility at all?
Another question is this:
How many times has the AGW community come out in the last ten years or so to claim loudly that “AGW is much worse than predicted”?
Has anyone bothered to correlate those predictions with actual climate events vs. political events that required prodding along?

i would just like to share these pictures with you. as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. these are taken in switzerland, in the simplonpass area of the alps
http://gianmarco.dyndns.org/varie/snow1.jpg
this picture is taken the 30th of april, there is a lot of recent snow, like i have never seen in the last 6 or 7 years.
http://gianmarco.dyndns.org/varie/snow2.jpg
this is how a bus stop sign looks like, the same day.
http://gianmarco.dyndns.org/varie/snow3.jpg
this is taken from a local newspaper. the 27th of may the gottard pass is supposed to open, but in some places there are still FIVE meters (thats 17 feet) of snow, and the roadworks department had to remove 220,000 metric tons of snow.
there was so much snow on the mountains that there were numerous and massive snow avalanches, and many skiers and trekkers were killed (because cold kills, but that is just weather, i guess. wonder if all those deaths will be attributed to global warming, in the stats)
many people living in the mountains got their houses destroyed by avalanches.
http://gianmarco.dyndns.org/varie/snow4.jpg
these are the remains of a 2 or 3 weeks old massive snow avalanche, air temperature is 25 C at an altitude of about 700mt, but still a lot of snow is there. it is reduced to a quarter or a fifth of the original mass, but is still quite impressive. the “tunnel” in the middle has been produced by the river water. Also, all rivers are very swollen, because of the massive amount of water coming from the thawing of the enormous snow mass.
we had a very harsh winter, with massive snowfall and record low temps. i would have really liked to have a few greenies trying to live out of sun and wind in my garden last winter, with down to -14C temperatures.

The fact that they predicted a “90% chance that temperatures will be at least 9 degrees” tells you this is complete nonsense. If thats the 90/10, what the 50/50 ? 15 degrees ? ha ha. These chumps can’t even describe a basic expectation curve.
I have to laugh at some of the EcoWorldly comments as well. “The models are all getting worse and worse” … oh no – we are all doomed. Its funny how the models seem to be getting worse and worse, but the actual data seems to be showing us getting cooler and cooler.
And given that Richard Lindzen is Professor of Meterology at MIT I find it difficult to believe that MIT was involved at all.

Pat:-)
I have to say that when one listens to or reads a diatribe from the greeny loonies/econuts (I won’t say Nazi so as not to offend), it sounds suspiciously & frighteningly just like a cunningly worded invitation to join the Borg Collective!
AtB

If you want to see just how far from reality these modelers have pushed themselves, check out this graph of how temperatures would have to increase to go from today’s +0.6C to +5.2C by 2100.
MIT warming required. You really have to have faith in your climate model to publish these numbers.
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2693/mitmodelc.png

Wow. I wonder how many of the people commenting on this have read the actual paper?
Or, maybe even the real press release and not the misquoting by random other websites?

As an interesting addendum to my earlier comment, the ecologist observed that the tidal barrage scheme was of marginal value in the overall scheme of things and that he saw nuclear energy as the most important contributor to solving the “problems” of AGW.

Well, if a computer says so, then it must be true. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble to write-up this report if it wasn’t true. Why would they lie?

On a very general note, if socially and ecologically concerned scientists want to help the world improve, I think they need to think about what it is that they specifically want.
Take for example, “caring for creation”. I for one am happy to accept this as a noble, worthy, and ethically-sound drive. But as with all ethical and spiritual aspirations, at some point, you have to live it. And that means, concrete specific actions. And those actions need to be demonstrated to actually achieve or move towards the desired outcome. You can be the most enlightened person on the planet, but unless you have concrete specific tangible and practical knowledge that can be applied, there will be no “better world”. May as well keep quiet and let things run their course.
My feeling is that these scientists are indeed genuinely concerned individuals. The quibble is that they don’t know how to achieve what they wish for a better planet. Can “better planet” even be defined? A recent bit of research documented something like 200 schools of thought on ecology and the environment. But you don’t have to be a researcher to notice that. As people here have rationally questioned, if it is getting too warm, what is the correct temperature? Does windpower actually reduce CO2? Does hydrogen use actually conserve energy?
You don’t have to be a skeptic to ask these questions. Too often the green movement takes these questions as a sign that the questioner is somehow evil or just doesn’t care, and is nitpicking to create confusion and doubt, to protect their own selfish lifestyle.
And yet, these are the questions that the greens should be first and foremost asking for themselves. They should be the most critical ones. The practicalities are everything.
And this leads us to something which several people have commented, which is simply that the so called skeptics are often enough more involved in practical solutions for the environment than the so called greens are.

I too am a little disappointed with MIT for letting them put their brand on this GIGO party.
The way that I am reading this, they tweaked the dynamics of the model even farther in favor of their desired outcome, and got their results as expected 90% of the time.
Yes, it sounds a lot like the hockey stick graph, but pay no attention to the Mann behind the curtain. Please only read the headlines.
As far as grant money, it is clearly being distributed to the more dramatic alarmist studies. Who wants to pay millions to someone studying what they believe is a non-problem? How do you write that grant proposal?
The personal carbon credits as currency does not sound far fetched at all. Energy is without question the very source of our prosperity. It is therefore a natural currency, and a perfect way to control behavior.

Steven —
Thanks for the post. However, you give the study undue credence by attributing it to MIT. There are many good people at MIT, notably Richard Lindzen, who don’t deserve to be associated with this study.
The Reuters report you cite, which is lifted uncritically from a Guardian site, mentions no names (or even the “Center for Global Climate Change” you give). JorgeKafkazar (5/25 18:19:38) did find a more detailed press release, at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/miot-mcc051909.php, but oddly this is from something called “Eureka Alert” rather than an MIT PR office. In any event, the lead author is Ronald Prinn of MIT, and the study appears in the Journal of Climate, so it would be more appropriate to call it the Prinn or J. Climate study than the “MIT study.”
BTW, Pielke Sr’s challenge to debate Schneider, mentioned by Ron de Haan 5/25 17:19:15, would make a good WUWT post in itself. It kind of gets buried in this thread. I believe Pielke Sr was at CU, however, not Colorado State.

Peter Plail,
If there is a global oil conspiracy, I’m not in on it. I don’t get any compensation for writing other than personal satisfaction. I do my writing because I enjoy it, and out of concern for the credibility of science.
The climate-Industrial Complex concerns me.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286145192740987.html

Global warming of 7C ‘could kill billions this century‘. Global temperatures could rise by more than 7C this century killing billions of people and leaving the world on the brink of total collapse, according to new research

Wouldn’t that be a good thing? With fewer humans to destroy the planet, the earth will soon recover to its natural state. The human virus will be controlled so the survivors can live in harmony with Mother Gaia.
A new civilization will rise from the ashes of the old like the
proverbial Phoenix.

One of the problems we’re facing is that lefty environmentalist types go to University to study Earth Sciences, which include Atmosphere & Oceans type courses. There is an inherent bias therefore in the candidates up for tenure/fellowship as they are the people more likely to believe in AGW in the first place. I doubt there are many raised eyebrows in the lecture halls at MIT, unless of course Prof. Lindzen is doing the lecturing (it would be nice if you could persuade him to guest post on this story).
Anyway, the propaganda onslaught has only just begun. There’s a big conference later in the year where the Western Nations will make the decision to roll back the industrial age (as Lindzen would say). Ever worn Hessian underpants? The future is indeed bleak!

The thing to remember with this kind of research is that we the taxpayers of the US order these “products” through the NSF, DOE, and other government agencies. The researchers merely deliver the “products” to us in the form of a research paper and project reports, many of which have their conclusions (or “goals”, if you will) stated before they start the research.
In this specific case, it appears that Mr. Prinn and his colleagues at MIT received a juicy $2.6 million dollar, multi-year NSF award to generate this “product” for us.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0120468
It would be interesting to see how this money was spent. What is the salary + benefits for an MIT prof these days?
Perhaps everyone here can contact the NSF to express your appreciation for the “product” delivered to you after (apparently) 7+ years of effort. Also, everyone should search the NSF awards archive at http://www.nsf.gov, using the keyword “climate”, to see for themselves how much money we are spending to stimulate the AGW industry…

Peter Plail (03:56:42) :

What I think it shows is a decreasing temperature anomaly, but since the anomaly is above zero then it does actually show that temperature is still rising, but at an increasing slow rate, and if the trend continues (and I hate straight line trends) it will eventually start to drop.

What the positive number above the anomaly zero line shows is that the temperature has risen since the calculated anomaly period. So no it does not mean that temps are still rising. The graph shows that temperatures in real terms have been falling since 2003. The anomaly zero line is immaterial.
If the anomaly was calculate over a different period of time then it may result in a different anomaly reference point but it would not effect the actual calculated temperature movement between any two given time periods.

Roy Spencer posted his observations on the ‘study’ on his blog:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Climate science took another step backward last week as a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was announced which claims global warming by 2100 will probably be twice as bad as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted.
The research team examined a range of possible climate scenarios which combined various estimates of the sensitivity of the climate system with a range of possible policy decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which (presumably) cause global warming. Without policy action, the group’s model runs “indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees”.
Since that average rate of warming (about 0.5 deg. C per decade) is at least 2 times the observed rate of global-average surface temperature rise over the last 30 years, this would require our current spate of no warming to change into very dramatic and sustained warming in the near future.
And the longer Mother Nature waits to comply with the MIT group’s demands, the more severe the warming will have to be to meet their projections.
Of course, as readers of this web site will know, the MIT results are totally dependent upon the climate sensitivity that was assumed in the climate model runs that formed the basis for their calculations. And climate modelers can get just about any level of warming they want by simply making a small change in the processes controlling climate sensitivity – especially cloud feedbacks — in those models.
So, since the sensitivity of the climate system is uncertain, these researchers followed the IPCC’s lead of using ‘statistical probability’ as a way of treating that uncertainty.
But as I have mentioned before, the use of statistical probabilities in this context is inappropriate. There is a certain climate sensitivity that exists in the real climate system, and it is true that we do not know exactly what that sensitivity is. But this does not mean that our uncertainty over its sensitivity can be translated into some sort of statistical probability.
The use of statistical probabilities by the IPCC and the MIT group does two misleading things: (1) it implies scientific precision where none exists, and (2) it implies the climate system’s response to any change is a “roll of the dice”.
We know what the probability of rolling a pair of sixes with dice is, since it is a random event which, when repeated a sufficient number of times, will reveal that probability (1 in 36). But in contrast to this simple example, there is instead a particular climate sensitivity that exists out there in the real climate system. The endless fascination with playing computer games to figure out that climate sensitivity, in my opinion, ends up wasting a lot of time and money.
True, there are many scientists who really do think our tinkering with the climate system through our greenhouse gas emissions is like playing Russian roulette. But the climate system tinkers with itself all the time, and the climate has managed to remain stable. There are indeed internal, chaotic fluctuations in the climate system that might appear to be random, but their effect on the whole climate system are constrained to operate within a certain range. If the climate system really was that sensitive, it would have forced itself into oblivion long ago.
The MIT research group pays lip service to relying on “peer-reviewed science”, but it looks like they treat peer-reviewed scientific publications as random events, too. If 99 papers have been published which claim the climate system is VERY sensitive, but only 1 paper has been published that says the climate system is NOT very sensitive, is there then a 99-in-100 (99%) chance that the climate system is very sensitive? NO. As has happened repeatedly in all scientific disciplines, it is often a single research paper that ends up overturning what scientists thought they knew about something.
In climate research, those 99 papers typically will all make the same assumptions, which then pretty much guarantees they will end up arriving at the same conclusions. So, those 99 papers do not constitute independent pieces of evidence. Instead, they might be better described as evidence that ‘group think’ still exists.
It turns out that the belief in a sensitive climate is not because of the observational evidence, but in spite of it. You can start to learn more about the evidence for low climate sensitivity (negative feedbacks) here.
As the slightly-retouched photo of the MIT research group shown above suggests, I predict that it is only a matter of time before the climate community placing all its bets on the climate models is revealed to be a very bad gamble.

I am a Democrat who for the past 20 years believed global warming was caused by CO2. Now, I think the wheels are coming off the man-made global warming theory. More and more it looks like is a natural phenomenon to me.
A year ago I launched http://www.energyplanusa.com where I try to bring common sense discussion to our country’s energy policy. Since energy policy is closely tied to global warming (i.e. climate change) I set out to find the ‘smoking gun’ that proves global warming is driven by CO2. Instead, I found that the wellspring of man-made global warming theory, the UN’s IPCC reports on climate change, are compromised by politics, and that man-made global warming theorists cherry pick facts and ignore contradictory evidence from reliable studies. In short, there is no smoking gun and the man-made crowd refuses to entertain other possibilities.

Better 7 deg C warming (vs which baseline?) than 5 deg C cooling.

Can anyone say…”this is a bunch of bull!” How do scientists justify their studies on this crap basing it on things that happened 10 million years ago (when there was no modern science to record such things), as if they know for a fact the earths history over that time. Also, say they do a study of the ground in certain places. How do you go supposedly 10 million years back in the earths history. We can’t get that deep if the earth is constantly changing. AAAAAHHHGGGGGG…I can’t take it anymore!

May 26, 2009
American Thinker Blog: Is Big Oil behind Global Warming Scaremongering?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/is_big_oil_behind_global_warmi.html
Is Big Oil behind Global Warming Scaremongering?
Richard Henry Lee
If the website, Exxon Secrets, is correct, then Big Oil has switched sides and now forecasts unprecedented global warming.
A new MIT study warns that global temperatures might increase twice as much as originally predicted.
The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees.
But as discussed in an article at the WattsUpWithThat website, the MIT study is full of holes. In particular, the temperatures have been dropping since the original study in 2003, not rising as models had predicted.
But these scary predictions can be dismissed on other grounds. It appears that Big Oil has its sticky fingers all over this study. According to the Exxon Secrets website, the lead author, Andrei Sokolov, is merely a tool of Exxon Mobil since he works at MIT, and that educational institution has received almost $1 million from the oil giant.
Exxon Secrets makes a habit of smearing any and all climate researchers who disagree with the “scientific consensus” that humans are causing unprecedented global warming. It is therefore quite amusing that they are now smearing one of their own.
We also wonder how long it will take for the Exxon Secrets website to be “updated”. We grabbed a screenshot just in case.

So what has changed since 2003…?
The hype and nothing but the hype.

TonyB,
Thank you for mentioning Agenda 21. Probably about less than 1% of the world population understands what UN Agenda 21 is really about. Global warming, which I like to call ‘the weather’, is the vehicle to bring it about.
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations

Ashish (09:04:51) :
I think MIT is one of the known universities in the world. I don’t see any reason why they would do all this carelessly, at least I would support their report and follow precautions to reduce the effect, rather than listing to some of us here who think they know better sitting in their homes and workout the model and facts predict what will happen.
Earlier I posted

John Galt (06:42:20) :
Well, if a computer says so, then it must be true. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble to write-up this report if it wasn’t true. Why would they lie?

That was sarcasm.
This is just more junk science created in order to support their already determined conclusion. The assumptions that went into the computer model are not based upon reality.
Computer climate models do not output facts. That is a fact you should keep in mind.
What I don’t understand is how this passed any of MIT’s internal review processes.
The scientific method is dead. GIGO is alive and well.

Does anybody have a psychiatrist friend, to invite him to give his opinion on this issue?. This is not longer a case for physicists, chemists and least for meterologists.
Is there that kind of research in China, Japan, Russia or India?, Is this kind of research made in countries of the EU, US and Canada only?. If that is the case then we have found something in common, perhaps an unconcious projection of an era ending, the era of the so called “occidental culture”.

What did adolf hitler postulate about lies ?
If the public is not accepting it , just make them bigger and it will be accepted.

You can get here the PDF:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html

Here, a copy of David Chandler’s article on MIT Journal:
The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago — and could be even worse than
that.
The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer
simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters,
selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge.
Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well — such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.
Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and
director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding
global warming, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science,” he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. “In that sense, our work is unique,” he says. The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90 percent probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than
any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming
effect. In addition, measurements of deep

Smokey (17:36:51) :
Ron de Haan (17:19:15),
Anyone who thinks Steven Schneider is ethical should read Schneider’s own words:
“…we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
IOW, Schneider advocates lying in order to promote the AGW agenda. Therefore, he won’t debate. He knows his quote will hound him — as it should”.
Smokey,
You are as sharp as a razor, as always and I agree 100%.
I think Pielke was just trying to be polite.

The degree to which they expect the tempurature to rise is ridiculous. Not to mention that the temperature wouldn’t even have to rise much to make people aware enou

Steven Goddard (07:16:59) :
Peter Plail,
If there is a global oil conspiracy, I’m not in on it. I don’t get any compensation for writing other than personal satisfaction. I do my writing because I enjoy it, and out of concern for the credibility of science.

Steve, I think “.. out of concern for the credibility of science ..” is a rapidly vanishing noble art. I personally thank you for your continued contributions in attempt to preserve that credibility!

I like Roy Spencer’s wheel better.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/the-mit-greenhouse-gamble-small31.jpg

“The personal carbon credits as currency does not sound far fetched at all. Energy is without question the very source of our prosperity. It is therefore a natural currency, and a perfect way to control behavior.”
No, energy is a byproduct of effort. It takes work to create it so that in turn it can fuel more work. Therefore it is not a natural currency but rather a part of the labour process. And the idea out behaviour has to be controlled and modified by politicians who indulge in our taxes to pay for the mortgages of their three homes is not something I would accept peacefully or otherwise.

As I have repeatedly noted in other threads, you cannot rely on articles about articles about studies. The Reuters and Telegraph articles quoted by Steve Goddard grossly mischaraterize the actual results of the study. The MIT researchers did NOT predict “a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100.“ They did NOT say billions would die. In the first comment in this thread, “wws” pointed this out and posted a link to the actual MIT press release about the study. It is worth posting again:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html
WUWT readers should read that article (or the actual study itself if you have access to it) before bashing the MIT team. Not that the team is beyond reproach; the use of the roulette wheel at their press conference was overdramatic and unprofessional. With respect to the study itself, another commenter noted that Prinn himself is quoted as saying “we don’t pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds.”
In summary, two big stories are generally being missed here:
1. The journalisitc fraud committed by the mainstream media who wildly exaggerated (certainly intentionally) the results of the study
2. The claim by MIT that this study is “The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out” while the lead author admits “we don’t pretend we can do it accurately.”

MIT Model conclusions:
1.0 You are doomed.
2.0 You are doomed.
3.0 You are doomed.
Sigh….who, me?
MIT researchers’ psychiatrist: “Sorry but they are doomed”
🙂

I don’t think economic growth models take into account the shrinkage that has happened in the past year and a half, nor do they take into account the fact that the reason we had an economic shrinkage in the past year and a half is because it was discovered that much economic data being used for investment was unknown or false.

Mike T (12:56:00) :
We, the “poor people” of the third world….will inherit the world, for sure, after you disappear from the face of the earth by your own self fulfilled prophecy.

tudobeleza (09:40:51) : said
“TonyB,
Thank you for mentioning Agenda 21. Probably about less than 1% of the world population understands what UN Agenda 21 is really about. Global warming, which I like to call ‘the weather’, is the vehicle to bring it about.”
As you can see no one else in this thread has referred to my comment that Steven Goddard should write a story about it. This suggests either they know everything about it already, no nothing of it and don’t understand the significance or are just uninterested;
Bearing in mind the questing minds here #3 is unlikely.
To me Agenda 21 enables us to put AGW into its proper context and understand why Govts and other bodies are so keen to embrace a philosophy (agw) that is still only a hypotheses, yet is claimed as a settled fact.
Did you see the discussion I had with Smokey and Aron about it a month or so ago?
Come on Steven-is it worth an article?
Tonyb

Man my grammar is bad at this time of the night 😛

Actually, just like between 700 A.D. and 1000 A.D., the earth’s termpurature has been dropping since 1998, not 2003 as stated above.

The Club of Rome created this hoax.

Never mind 2100, it’s going to rain all bloody day in the UK tomorrow. Awful.

Enviros have turned ‘science’ into a new religion. Actually it’s not science but pseudo – science.

For the US, 1934 is the “corrected” warmest year. This has been discussed repeatedly. Considering the state of temperature data I’m not sure how one can accurately say these sorts of things but if you want to say it, then say 1934. Globally it is claimed that 2005 holds the honor. Check these things out on your own if you like.
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2007/08/1934_warmest_year_on_record.php

Joel Shore (19:18:22),
Scneider says:
“ And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. ”
Which assumes that man in his infinite power is ABLE to cause “disastrous climatic change. “