Climate ‘Tipping Points’ May Arrive Without Warning, Says Top Forecaster
From a UC Davis press release
A new University of California, Davis, study by a top ecological forecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict when sudden shifts in Earth’s natural systems will occur — a worrisome finding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points that could push climate change into an irreparable global disaster.
“Many scientists are looking for the warning signs that herald sudden changes in natural systems, in hopes of forestalling those changes, or improving our preparations for them,” said UC Davis theoretical ecologist Alan Hastings. “Our new study found, unfortunately, that regime shifts with potentially large consequences can happen without warning — systems can ‘tip’ precipitously.
“This means that some effects of global climate change on ecosystems can be seen only once the effects are dramatic. By that point returning the system to a desirable state will be difficult, if not impossible.”
The current study focuses on models from ecology, but its findings may be applicable to other complex systems, especially ones involving human dynamics such as harvesting of fish stocks or financial markets.
Hastings, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy, is one of the world’s top experts in using mathematical models (sets of equations) to understand natural systems. His current studies range from researching the dynamics of salmon and cod populations to modeling plant and animal species’ response to global climate change.
In 2006, Hastings received the Robert H. MacArthur Award, the highest honor given by the Ecological Society of America.
Hastings’ collaborator and co-author on the new study, Derin Wysham, was previously a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis and is now a research scientist in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the John Innes Center in Norwich, England.
Scientists widely agree that global climate change is already causing major environmental effects, such as changes in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, droughts, heat waves and wildfires; rising sea level; water shortages in arid regions; new and larger pest outbreaks afflicting crops and forests; and expanding ranges for tropical pathogens that cause human illness.
And they fear that worse is in store. As U.S. presidential science adviser John Holdren (not an author of the new UC Davis study) recently told a congressional committee: “Climate scientists worry about ‘tipping points’ … thresholds beyond which a small additional increase in average temperature or some associated climate variable results in major changes to the affected system.”
Among the tipping points Holdren listed were: the complete disappearance of Arctic sea ice in summer, leading to drastic changes in ocean circulation and climate patterns across the whole Northern Hemisphere; acceleration of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, driving rates of sea-level increase to 6 feet or more per century; and ocean acidification from carbon dioxide absorption, causing massive disruption in ocean food webs.
The new UC Davis study, “Regime shifts in ecological systems can occur with no warning,” was supported by the Advancing Theory in Biology program at the U.S. National Science Foundation and was published online today by the journal Ecology Letters, in its Early View feature: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123276879/abstract.
======================
FYI The image is by Anthony, and of course, it’s a spoof.
Manipulation of the masses is quite an art form.
George W. did it.
Religion does it.
So do scientists with vested interests such as the Global Warming and greenhouse gas craze.
If you keep confusion and counter arguements going, they take up precious time that is in very short supply until the real weather annomalies hit.
The current weather pattern is just a small prelude to what is about to really happen.
A great deal of suppressed science is available. At times some data is hidden by what is shoved in your face. But the data certain people try to suppress is still there. Send in the junk science to further cloud the waters.
It is sometimes truly scary how some people with power and education have no clue to all the science. Only what is manipulated in front of them.
Pamela Gray (06:56:29) :
oops, I meant “…of the affects of climate change on regional ecology…”
or maybe I meant “…ecological affects of climate change…”
Hell, I don’t know. Just trying to seriously add to the “tipping point” thread.
—…—
(Robt was already thoroughly and ecoillogically distracted by the previous images the red-headed research towards temporary numerical unions of dissimilar sets …)
And now she discusses tipping multiple Friday night beers.
(My pristine image of the divine M. P. Gray has been completely tipped.) 8<)
Funny without being vulgar.
I read a statement by a rodeo cowboy that bull-riding is more dangerous than bronco riding, because (he said) a horse will try to avoid stepping on a person, but a bull has on the contrary an inclination to trample on annoyances.
Without alarmism, the money would be going to Pauxsutawney Phil and the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and climatology would return to being the backwater it once was.
About 2/3 through a previous thread here I posted long extracts from Joel Best’s book, Flavor of the month: Why smart people fall for fads, that relate to what you are saying. Go here and search (Ctrl + F) for “flavor”:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/05/pielke-senior-arctic-temperature-reporting-in-the-news-needs-a-reality-check/
Future Strategy
There’s no doubt the warmers are in full retreat at the moment at the scientific sceptics are jumping for joy. But can I just add a sobering thought, whilst their position was clearly unsustainable, they will simply retreat to a position which isn’t so vulnerable and using their massive advantage of funding and insider-contacts to government, continue to plug the message: “It’s hotter now than 40 years ago QED mankind must have done it”.
And given the nature of the climate, they will be able to plug that message irrespective of the actual temperature for another decade because it takes a decade for significant climate change – and there’s even the chance natural variation could make it even hotter.
Somehow we have got to find an effective strategy against the ubiquitous empty column filler … the “Global warming could …. ” story, which every third rate researcher is using to plug their research on the lesser spotted goat-warbling rat-frog.
How do we stop someone with some worthless research take a minuscule change in numbers and suggest a link to the natural warming and then plug the manmade warming by the cheap PR “global warming could … see the extinction/plague numbers of the lesser spotted goat-warbling rat-frog?
Less we forget that Government does not want to know the truth.
The headache would be all the committees started to discuss and use up massive amounts of time and money discussing what to do.
By the time even one committee is finished, the 10 foot snow dumps would have started.
Joe, the government and lets be honest in the UK, all the parties, and even a lot of other bodies who should know better, have nailed their reputation to the climategate mast, and if it sinks, then their reputation goes down with it.
There is no “do not want”, it’s “cannot allow” the truth to get out.
And the truth is pretty sordid, because the green lobby have been writing much of government policy for years ( 10 years to knowledge in the UK) and if the public knew that their committees were staffed by lobbyists A-spreg-ooo (sorry got a cold). Anyway, if the public knew just how much collusion there was, then they’d never trust the government or science community again. Then where would the drug companies get all their vaccine money? Think about it, if people didn’t believe the scientists telling them the next flu pandemic was around the corner how would you get the public to push government to give the drug companies all that money for a vaccine we don’t need?
And what would the public think of the chief “scientists” if they found out they hadn’t a clue about half of what they were talking about and only got their jobs by being the only half-decent party-loyalist who did any science degree and only went along with climategate guys: “because the big boys told me to”.
Too many reputations, too much at stake, too much money riding on it all to let the truth get in the way.
Referring to the topic of the previous thread,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/climategate-plausibility-and-the-blogosphere-in-the-post-normal-age/
this departmental merge illustrates the problems with post-normal science!
Hastings, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy,
Isotherm, science is so polluted with junk and theories that unless you could clear everything including religion and start over again with a clean mind to see clearly. Just start with simple known science and simple math (mostly measuring distances), the unknown becomes known. You do see where science went and crashed and burned itself as moral and values and family life was ingrained into our heads. Erogance of people who think they are intelligent when actually they are protecting science that is soulfully incorrect.
Joe, there is a classic example of science trying to hold onto the orthodoxy despite the evidence in the early 20th century. Electricity and Magnetism were a well established “orthodoxy”, it worked superbly if the body concerned was stationary, but move it at all and phut..
But the fact it didn’t work, didn’t immediately force people to adopt newer theories, the institutions had their reputations staked on the old explanations, and they simply could not admit they were wrong.
It’s a while since I studied it, but from memory it was around a decade from the “concrete proof” it was wrong before it all imploded and we got acceptance for more modern theories heralding the end of the ether, and introduction of relatively, special relatively and pole vaulters running at the speed of light fitting into barns.
The simple truth is that you don’t get to the top of science by being a good scientists – you get there by being a good politician with a science degree and the ability to find the right co-workers to propel you to the top. The good side is that these people can organise science, they can keep the money flowing because they have the people skills to interact with the political elite, the bad thing is that they really aren’t the best scientists, and even if they were, you can hardly know every subject inside out.
So, it’s kind of inevitable, that you get people at the top of science that get there on the back of the latest trend in science, without much clue to the real science behind the trend. All they know is that their position in the science establishment relies of them maintaining the status of the fad that got them to their position.
That is why the establishment will never admit manmade global warming is wrong for at least another decade or so until the people who need it to be true retire!
This is what I understand that the scientist is saying,
There are plenty of unknowns, we know that there are unknown and known data, the unknown and known data predicts that there may be an unknown or known event sometime in unknown future, although this is also unknown. Because there is so many unknown unknowns, this unknown event may, because it is not known, cause some kind of unknown or known damage to the environment.
The damage may or may not be known damage, it could be unknown damage. Reversing unknown or known damage is, well unknown.
I hope I summed up the theory correctly, is this peer reviewed?
Gravitational waves and radiation, from the centre of our galaxy and even from higher regions in our universe, are pouring on our earth planet. The findings of Weber (1970, 1972) for the effect of gravitational radiation coming from the regions near the Galactic centre were termed as pseudodiscoveries. However, I think that Weber was right. Such radiation is the main cause of sudden shift in Earth’s natural system. I will come up with further details soon.
I feel that time has come to consider synthesis of faith based predictions and scientific findings. Then only uncertainty over known and unknown data prediction will be removed to a great extent and they can be understood well. I am highly impressed with the high level philosophical views of ianpp. Thanks
“Weber (1970) had demonstrated experimentally the reception of gravitational radiation. He reported that massive aluminium cylinders cylinders (1.5 tons each) spaced 1000 km apart start vibrating at a frequency of about 〖10〗^3 Hz under the effect of gravitational radiation coming from the regions near the Galactic centre. The power of this radiation, if it really originates near the Galactic centre (the distance of about 〖10〗^4 parsecs ≈ 3.〖10〗^22cm), must be as high 〖10〗^50 or 〖10〗^52erg s^(-1)and higher. The energy corresponding to the Sun’s rest mass is M⊙c^2 ~ 〖10〗^54 ergs and hence if there really occurs emission of radiation from the Galactic centre with the power of 〖10〗^52-〖10〗^52erg s^(-1), then the mass of this region must decrease by (〖10〗^3-3.〖10〗^5) M⊙ a year due to gravitational radiation alone. It is hard to believe that such a powerful gravitational radiation exists, although it is feasible energetically. [Source: Key Problems of Physics and Astrophysics by V.L.Ginzburg, Translated from the Russian by Oleg Glebov, Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1976].” Later this was termed as pseudo discovery. But these findings seem to be more relevant now in view of very uncertain and unpredictable behavior of Earth climate.
If the effect of radiation from the region of Galactic centre is so immense, then what about the effect of emission of gravitational radiation coming from very far distant galaxy than the region of our own galactic region? And also think over the effect of Radiation coming from the Centre of our Universe. This is unimaginable. We should take these unknown factors under our consideration before making predictions.