The forecast: It seems there’s less chance of gloom and doom these days.
For sea level rise, now a maximum of about two feet by 2100. As for climate sensitivity, now for the first time ever, we are seeing mentions of a quadrupling of CO2 rather than a doubling to get scary scenarios. From Reuters:
Ice melt, sea level rise, to be less severe than feared – study
* Melt of Greenland, Antarctica less severe than expected
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle
OSLO, May 14 (Reuters) – A melt of ice on Greenland and Antarctica is likely to be less severe than expected this century, limiting sea level rise to a maximum of 69 cm (27 inches), an international study said on Tuesday.
Even so, such a rise could dramatically change coastal environments in the lifetimes of people born today with ever more severe storm surges and erosion, according to the ice2sea project by 24, mostly European, scientific institutions.
Some scientific studies have projected sea level rise of up to 2 metres by 2100, a figure that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a worst case that would swamp large tracts of land from Bangladesh to Florida.
Ice2sea, a four-year project to narrow down uncertainties of how melting ice will pour water into the oceans, found that sea levels would rise by between 16.5 and 69 cm under a scenario of moderate global warming this century.
“This is good news” for those who have feared sharper rises, David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey who led the ice2sea project, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Full story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/climate-ice-idUSL6N0DV2V420130514
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Now onto climate sensitivity. Pierre Gosselin reports on his blog NoTricksZone this passage from yesterday’s NYT story on climate sensitivity.
Some experts think the level of the heat-trapping gas could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in. […] Even if climate sensitivity turns out to be on the low end of the range, total emissions may wind up being so excessive as to drive the earth toward dangerous temperature increases.”
There you have it. Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.
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Notice that radical changes in prognostications by the “experts” evokes little skepticism
or wonder at why previous estimates were so wrong. .
Oh Noes!!!! Where did my rubber dingy get to?
Oh Boy… just how dumb do they think we/they are? They’ve been preaching doom and gloom for some 20 odd years now about what will happen when CO2 level doubles. Now we’re supposed to believe them when they say: “Sorry, we meant when it tripled or quadrupled. But it will still be dangerous.”
Don’t you love it- the editing that is…..! Last paragraph of story-
“Many studies since 2007 have had higher upper numbers, including by the World Bank, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a report for the Arctic Council. NOAA put the upper limit at 2 metres. ($1 = 0.7703 euros) (Editing by Alison Williams)”
Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.
So where does that leave us? A quadrupling from 280 ppm would be to 1120 ppm. So subtracting the 400 we have now, that would mean another 720 ppm. Since the rate for the last 17 years has been a steady 2 ppm, that would mean trouble in 360 years.
I think James Hansen’s and my grandchildren will be just fine!
“Some experts think the level of the heat-trapping gas could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in”
This does not look at all like a clear admission of lower sensitivity as such. Instead, they are beating the drum harder saying it “could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in” They go on to say “Notice that these recent calculations fall well within the long-accepted range — just on the lower end of it.” (5 degrees F) The alarmism continues in the article, it seems, almost unabated. The inference to the other conclusion seems stretched, even though I would like to hear them say it.
Well, there goes my beach front property in Richmond. The upside is I won’t have to drive as far to get to the beach. The doom predictions that have been coming out all this year predict quite a rise in the next 40-50 years. Some sort of logarithmic increase they don’t really explain.
I recently saw an upward projection from 400ppm. WUWT? They have begun shifting the goalposts – again.The Guardian now talks of storm surges instead of an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. The slow climb down is clear.
PS I have already started my attack while my account name stays active. 😉 I will soon be banned for my comment.
My question – which is intended to be semi-serious, is this – does anyone think these more recent kind of ‘new’ revelations are perhaps being ‘guided’ by government? I mean, they have a majority of ‘green’ taxation in place – they now know that we ‘know’ that it’s BS – so they (gov’ment) think that some kind of gradual back track is in order to prolong the actual ‘withdrawal’ of the doom and gloom green taxation reasons? How long before the people are up in arms about the green taxes and waste of public money on the green agenda – to my way of thinking, this seems like a great way of ‘semi-justifying’ the crap over the last 10-20 years?
just sayin’……..(well, kind of thinking out loud, really!)
Incredible…Good news,but still qualified with a scare scenario.
OCD obsessive climate disorder.
These mollusks claiming that quadrupling the CO2 concentration will burn up the Earth might want to reference the fact (as reported several times here on WUWT) that the existing level of CO2 presents about 95% of the maximum possible greenhouse effeect of any concentration of CO2.
No amount of hard bservational, empirical, physical proof will ever stop the alarmies from pushing their meme, which is not even about the environment, but is about control and perverse motives. These are people who do not deal in reason and facts. They will only be stopped when they are forced from any position from which they can peddle their slop.
A side note: if any of the regular posters here have not read A.W. Montford’s book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, it is definitely worth the read. His presentation of Steve McIntyre’s analysis of Mann’s hockey stick is devastating – it shows, inter alia, that random numbers may even correlate better to actual temperature data than Mann’s “proxies.” In other words, solid proof that Mann’s data is garbage.
Did you notice the article did NOT mention the 17 yr cooling trend? Were they trying to protect the sensitivities of their environmentally sensitive readers?
CO2 quadrupling!!! It’s still going to be a bloody disaster! Head for nearest hill!
Here is what tripling can do. Remember, co2 is not plant food but an atmospheric poison of the worst kind. Worse that cobra venom – it’s that bad.
http://youtu.be/P2qVNK6zFgE
Somewhat related–on the WUWT “sea ice page”, NSIDC indicates Antarctic ice above normal, and DMI indicates Arctic ice at or above normal.
If we merely project the present rate of increase in CO2 continuing indefinitely, we will have a quadrupling and more. But that supposes that we won’t have discovered other more efficient and more plentiful forms of energy in the meantime. The chances for no such discovery seem quite low to me, with all the promising research that has already been reported.
The hysteria continues: “Carbon emissions may be self-limiting. It is likely that, before atmospheric CO2 reaches 500ppm, extreme weather events would disrupt industrial and transport fossil fuel-combusting systems enough to lead to reduction of emissions. However, the feedback processes like methane release, forest bushfires and warming oceans will drive CO2 levels further.”
And he’s serious!
From: http://theconversation.com/as-carbon-dioxide-hits-a-new-high-theres-still-no-planet-b-14074
The Day After aired in 1983, 6 years to the month before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Day After Tomorrow debuted in 2004, 6 years before global temperatures began their decline.
Must we wait another 9-10 years for the next in The Day After series? I can’t.
Kev-in-Uk says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:39 pm
My question – which is intended to be semi-serious, is this – does anyone think these more recent kind of ‘new’ revelations are perhaps being ‘guided’ by government?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well of course!
The meme used to be that they had to raise taxes to reduce emissions. Now they are admitting that no matter what they do, emissions will probably double to triple before they level out. So….
They will now have to tax us to lower emissions AND tax us to pay for mitigation efforts.
“There you have it. Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.”
——————————————-
If current CO2 is 400 PPM & we quadruple to 1600 PPM & we assume “temperature of worry ” is 2° C increase (which commonly seems to be the alarmist number of worry) – from where it is today, we can calculate the implied sensitivity :
1.00 °/C per doubling – that’s definitely at the low end of the range!
Even if we boost that to tripling (1200 PPM ) & keep the same 2°C temp rise, sensitivity would still be only 1.26 °C/ doubling – still also very much on the low end, especially considering when alarmists & the IPCC have been pushing for values in the 3-4 °C/ doubling range.
Oh, and how long will that take until we get there , you ask ? At the current rate of 2 PPM /yr – that would be 600 years from now in the year 2613 (using the quadrupling to 1600 PPM as input). Even if we doubled our “carbon footprint ” (that term makes me cringe ) & were increasing CO2 by 4 PPM per year, it would still take 300 years to get to an “alarming” 2 ° C increase in temps.
I don’t know about you, but I am not alarmed.
Four cheers.
Yeah but it’s hot as hell in southern California. Or it was a couple days ago. So that proves our case. The globe is a warming big time.
So the oceans aren’t rising and the climate is insensitive (please, don’t be so insensitive!) to CO2. Who cares! The globe is warming in socal. And the proof that CO2 is causing this warming is that we have twelve and a half dozen models that say so. Proof is not in the pudding, but in the (super) computer models, models that, like HAL, are free of human error. Our super models are going to go on tour and show you under-educated deniers a thing or two, despite the fact that ALL the models have failed spectacularly. ALL the super models have done great big belly flops, every single one of them.
To quadruple pCO2 you would have to emit 6 times more CO2 than we have since we came out of the caves, assuming prehistory pCO2 of 280ppmV.
Current 400 ppmV
Prehistory ~280 ppmV
Difference 120 ppmV
Quadruple = 4 x 280 = 1120 ppmV
Amount needed to get there = (1120 – 400) / 120 = 6 times more
Which would mean burning 6 times more coal and oil than we have done so far in all of history. So much for ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak coal’.
And that would get us a rise of 1.4 C from prehistoric levels due to CO2, ie about 0.7 C more than today.
Wow! 0.7 C more! That’s so much its amazingly amazing! Why my eyeballs could almost fry with that amount of temperature rise.
Of course I am using Lindzen’s median value for 2XCO2, which is what I also get by modelling the CET. And which is what the climate GCM’s will also derive once they bother to include both the oceanic cycles and the full effect of the Sun.
Not long now ’til this silly climate fad is over.
It’ll be interesting to see how they try to spin out of this one. They must just hate good news.
How about a 1600ppm countdown-to-midnight graphic from Josh, with the danger-hand poised at about 3 o’clock? Ho hum.
Here’s another one: next above average snow year (bound to be next year, same as the last several), show an alarmist bending by the shoreline examining sea-level change with a magnifying glass (“watching for dangerous sea-level rise”) while snow cover rises like a tsunami over Montreal and Moscow. Could even include a little secondary comment in the corner, as Oliphant used to do, with a miniature monkey or something peering through his own outsized magnifying glass saying: “Wait a minute? Is sea level actually going down?”
One of the posters at http://notrickszone.com/ linked to this very interesting New Yorker article.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=
THE TRUTH WEARS OFF Is there something wrong with the scientific method?
Just a sample:
Here was a scientist who had repeatedly documented the decline of his data; he seemed to have a talent for finding results that fell apart. In 2004, Schooler embarked on an ironic imitation of Rhine’s research: he tried to replicate this failure to replicate. ….The craziness of the hypothesis was the point: Schooler knows that precognition lacks a scientific explanation. But he wasn’t testing extrasensory powers; he was testing the decline effect. “At first, the data looked amazing, just as we’d expected,” Schooler says. “I couldn’t believe the amount of precognition we were finding. But then, as we kept on running subjects, the effect size”—a standard statistical measure—“kept on getting smaller and smaller.” The scientists eventually tested more than two thousand undergraduates. “In the end, our results looked just like Rhine’s,” Schooler said. “We found this strong paranormal effect, but it disappeared on us.”