Just in time for summer heat waves in the USA, worrisome model outputs from Stanford with the all important could qualifier. No mention of UHI, asphalt, or heat waves of the past. No mention of weather stations that read hot in Tucson. Just CO2 driven modeling. Stanford’s Press Release is here. No published paper was provided with the press release, but there is a link to GRL in the body of the PR. – Anthony
Heat waves could be commonplace in the US by 2039, Stanford study finds
The effects of global warming will be felt sooner than expected, say Stanford researchers.
BY MARK SHWARTZ, Stanford
Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.
“Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health.
“In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities,” said Diffenbaugh, a center fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields.”
The GRL study took two years to complete and is co-authored by Moetasim Ashfaq, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow now at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The study comes on the heels of a recent NASA report, which concluded that the previous decade, January 2000 to December 2009, was the warmest on record.
2-degree threshold
In the study, Diffenbaugh and Ashfaq used two dozen climate models to project what could happen in the U.S. if increased carbon dioxide emissions raised the Earth’s temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) between 2010 and 2039 – a likely scenario, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.
In that scenario, the mean global temperature in 30 years would be about 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) hotter than in the preindustrial era of the 1850s. Many climate scientists and policymakers have targeted a 2-degree C temperature increase as the maximum threshold beyond which the planet is likely to experience serious environmental damage. For example, in the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Accord, the United States and more than 100 other countries agreed to consider action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.”
But that target may be too high to avoid dangerous climate change, Diffenbaugh said, noting that millions of Americans could see a sharp rise in the number of extreme temperature events before 2039, when the 2-degree threshold is expected to be reached.
“Our results suggest that limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial conditions may not be sufficient to avoid serious increases in severely hot conditions,” Diffenbaugh said.
Record heat
For the GRL study, the researchers analyzed temperature data for the continental U.S. from 1951-1999. Their goal was to determine the longest heat waves and hottest seasons on record in the second half of the 20th century.
Those results were fed into an ensemble of climate forecasting models, including the high-resolution RegCM3, which is capable of simulating daily temperatures across small sections of the U.S.
“This was an unprecedented experiment,” Diffenbaugh said. “With the high-resolution climate model, we can analyze geographic quadrants that are only 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) to a side. No one has ever completed this kind of climate analysis at such a high resolution.”
The results were surprising. According to the climate models, an intense heat wave – equal to the longest on record from 1951 to 1999 – is likely to occur as many as five times between 2020 and 2029 over areas of the western and central United States.
The 2030s are projected to be even hotter. “Occurrence of the longest historical heat wave further intensifies in the 2030-2039 period, including greater than five occurrences per decade over much of the western U.S. and greater than three exceedences per decade over much of the eastern U.S.,” the authors wrote.
Seasonal records
The Stanford team also forecast a dramatic spike in extreme seasonal temperatures during the current decade. Temperatures equaling the hottest season on record from 1951 to 1999 could occur four times between now and 2019 over much of the U.S., according to the researchers.
The 2020s and 2030s could be even hotter, particularly in the American West. From 2030 to 2039, most areas of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico could endure at least seven seasons equally as intense as the hottest season ever recorded between 1951 and 1999, the researchers concluded.
“Frankly, I was expecting that we’d see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming,” Diffenbaugh said. “I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades. This was definitely a surprise.”
The researchers also determined that the hottest daily temperatures of the year from 1980 to 1999 are likely to occur at least twice as often across much of the U.S. during the decade of the 2030s.
“By the decade of the 2030s, we see persistent, drier conditions over most of the U.S.,” Diffenbaugh said. “Not only will the atmosphere heat up from more greenhouse gases, but we also expect changes in the precipitation and soil moisture that are very similar to what we see in hot, dry periods historically. In our results for the U.S., these conditions amplify the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Besides harming human health and agriculture, these hot, dry conditions could lead to more droughts and wildfires in the near future, he said. And many of these climate change impacts could occur within the next two decades – years before the planet is likely to reach the 2-degree C threshold targeted by some governments and climate experts, he added.
“It’s up to the policymakers to decide the most appropriate action,” Diffenbaugh said. “But our results suggest that limiting global warming to 2 degrees C does not guarantee that there won’t be damaging impacts from climate change.”
The GRL study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The high-resolution climate model simulations were generated and analyzed at Purdue University. GRL is a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Mark Shwartz is communications manager at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
” Jimbo says:
July 9, 2010 at 5:31 am
I came accross this yesterday. A completely different conclusion! We will just have to wait it out and see where we are headed.
“According to Dr. Lu, the phase-out of CFCs will be reversing the global warming effect by ushering in a 50 to 70-year period of global cooling.”
Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed publication produced at Harvard-Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/07/06/lawrence-solomon-global-cooling-underway/”
Just gave it a quick read. Most is over my head but a very interesting angle. Now can he devise a real world experimental test for his observations?
The bigger problem is how will they ever tax CFCs when they are being phased out? Oh that won’t generate any where near as much as CO2 taxation!
“Those results were fed into an ensemble of climate forecasting models….”
An ensemble! The entire bloody orchestra in concert! Who would dare to argue against any finding that sprang therefrom?
Alan F:
Similar weather here in WY. Just now moving into a real summer. Much cooler and much more precipitation/clouds than “normal” up untill last week. But I have seen it like this before here, about 15 years ago. That’s why they call it “climate change”. As we have seen, they can blame it for anything that happens.
Yes, heat waves are common in the US, especially due to the High Pressure that forms over the 4 Corners region.
It’s called Summer…drrrrrrr.
Read the Lewis & Clark Expedition. They talked of the oppressive heat along the Missoula. A merciless baking sun in 1802, gee who woulda thunk it?
How’s about that 1875 heat wave & drought in California? Never seen a hotter year in Redding & Red Bluff since.
They don’t make toasty like they used to.
MSM digs.
…-
“Heat can’t beat records of the good old days
By JUSTIN SADLER, Ottawa Sun”
“Contrary to news reports based on readings at the airport, temperatures in recent days have only come close to breaking records.
Temperatures recorded at the Ottawa airport only go back to 1939, said Environment Canada meteorologist Peter Kimbell, but records at the Central Experimental Farm date as far back as 1897.
“If you look at that site, which is not much farther away, no records are broken,” he said.
Monday’s temperature of 34.2C didn’t quite reach a stifling 36.1C recorded in 1897. Tuesday hit 34.1C and in 1912 it reached 35C. Wednesday soared to 35C, but didn’t pass the 36.7C mark Ottawans felt in 1921.
The record temperature on July 8 was recorded in 1897 at 36.1C.
“I don’t think we’ll break the record (Friday),” Kimbell said.
Expect temperatures to moderate in the coming days, he said, as a stagnant ridge of high pressure dissipates allowing a cooler front to push through.”
“Record temperatures
July 5, 1897 — 36.1C
July 6, 1912 — 35C
July 7, 1921 — 36.7C
July 8, 1897 — 36.1C
July 9, 1911 — 35.6C ”
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/07/08/14654631.html
“”” “Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study. “””
So there we have it; Noah now has himself a nice Playstation just like Peter Humbug has; so now he is playing “a large suite of” video games on it; well he called them CLIMATE MODEL EXPERIMENTS.
Say Noah; how about doing some REAL climate experiments rather than some “MODEL” experiments.
And then come and tell us your results. And could you bring a reconstructed (back model) of say just the 20th Century; to back up your claim that this contraption is actually modelling the climate of planet earth.
“”” Ric Werme says:
July 9, 2010 at 11:09 am
Noah Diffenbaugh, spoke at last US Mensa’s Annual Colloquium last year. (I would’ve preferred going to the ICCC, but they had James Hansen as the keynote speaker and I figured I’d better look after my “flock.” “””
I asked my 91 year old Mexican MIL, if she would like to be a member of MENSA; and she burst out laughing. “Why would I want to belong to an organisation for crazy ladies ?”. was her response. In colloquial Mexican Spanish, MENSA does NOT mean a Table; remember the Spanish word for table is MESA; from a quite different Latin root.
No need to go into that other Latin root and why it relates to crazy ladies, and some other common words.
“”” Gail Combs says:
July 9, 2010 at 6:05 am
PaulH from Scotland says:
July 9, 2010 at 2:22 am
For me, the biggest flaw in the AGW argument is the models…..
I’d really appreciate anyone throwing a bit more light on the arguments FOR the AGW models – just so I can get clear on the specific areas of disagreement.
_______________________________________________________________
Paul, you are asking about “climate sensitivity” perhaps these articles by Dr. Spencer and Willis Eschenbach may help. Yes they are AGAINST the AGW models but they do explain the positive feedback mechanism of water hypothesis.
In a nut shell CO2 causes warming. Warming increases evaporation of water. Water is a very powerful greenhouse gas and causes further warming. “””
Professor Stephen H. Schneider; the dean of the Climate biology experts at Stanford University says that H2O is a weak greenhouse gas compared to CO2; I believe he made that claim in an interview he gave regarding the book Climategate authored by Meteorologist Brian Sussman; in which (interview) he said Sussman was misfiring on all cyclinders.
So which is it; it H2O vapor a weak GHG compared to the all powerful CO2; or is it a positive feedback warming enhancer of CO2 initiated warming.
And why the hell does it cool down so rapidly at night in a previously (daytime) very hot and very arid desert; when all of the CO2 (see it is well mixed) is present and accounted for; and ONLY the H2O is missing; well it isn’t missing; it still is more than the CO2 even over the dryest of deserts.
I can’t buy it; whenever CO2 is left on its own to do its thing; it fails miserably to keep the earth warm.
Peter Humbug recently did a Playstation experiment; where he eliminated all the atmospheric water vapor; he didn’t quite duplicate my suggested “Birdseye” experiment; but he did get rid of all the water vapor. Anmd when he let everything run (on his playstation; ALL of the H2O vapor returned in about 3 months proving the positive feedback thesis.
Well I would like to see him do the converse experiment; and get rid of all of the CO2 in the atmosphere; and see how long it takes for all of that to come back. In fact why not keep it out; and see what temperature the earth reaches with nothing but the H2O feeding on itself.
And then do the Venus experiment too, and flood the atmosphere with H2O vapor and pole to pole cloud cover from the ground to say 20 km high. Show us what happens then when we start from way past the “tipping point”.
Does the H2O in the atmosphere continue its positive feedback perpetual increase; or does something else happen to circumvent that ? Enquiring minds want to know. (well not me; because I already know what happens in both cases.)
Dave Springer (7:00am):
You’re dead right about the significance of results from “experiments” with unproven computer models. I suspect that the only way to keep young assistant professors from falling in love with acts of computational onanism is to tie their predictions to pay and prospects for tenure. Make them ineligible for raises one year for every tenth of a degree by which their prediction is off. And make them ineligible for tenure if the accumulated error exceeds 2 sigma of natural variability.
Peter Miller says:
July 9, 2010 at 9:44 am
“I am seeking funding for a very important project:
But first I need a subject, a new and really scary one on how global warming is going to dramatically affect ……………………………”
Male fertility. That’s always good. Do we already have it in the warmlist?
Yes, but a dead link. So you’re good. Go ahead, reduced male fertility is the ticket.
@george Smith
Water vapor is a weak greenhouse gas but it makes up for it in quantity. So much so that 95% of the greenhouse gas effect is due to water vapor. The other thing of major interest about water vapor is how much and how quickly it can vary. The other greenhouse gases don’t wax and wane like water vapor does. Saying CO2 is responsible for throttling water vapor is pretty analogous to saying the tail wags the dog.
George E. Smith says:
July 9, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Nevertheless, they manage to suck it in and tough it out, there is a Mexico Mensa, see http://www.mensa.org.mx/ . Their name probably reminds them to not take themselves too seriously.
Heh – babelfish can translate Mensa, e.g. “The Stupid word means “table” in Latin, and makes reference to the quality of our group….” and “Our vision is to develop to the maximum to the capacity and leadership of the integral members of Stupid in Mexico to the benefit of the community.”
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mensa.org.mx%2F&lp=es_en&btnTrUrl=Translate
Mensa is like the Genuis Club for Dummies. Requires 98th percentile on standardized intelligence tests. True Genius (like True Scotsmen, ha) begins at the 99.95th percentile. I choose that point because I tested out at 99.97th percentile on both the SAT and military GCT tests. I’m not all that smart and I’d hate to think a True Genius could test out lower. Seriously though, it’s a curse. At a Mensa meeting I still feel like the driver on the short bus. Most IQ tests, or widely accepted proxies like the SAT and GCT, are rather narrow in what they measure. Little long term memory or knowledge base is measured. What it measures is speed of thought and to some extent your ability to prioritize your time. Tests aimed at measuring very high IQs typically have no time limit and have exceedingly difficult problems which eliminates thinking speed and ability to prioritize. Gives a better measure of raw problem solving skill which I think generally manifests in what we commonly call intuition. The modern SAT, since it was re-centered in 1995 can’t measure IQs above 99.97 (a perfect score) unless the time to complete it is taken into account. I took the pre-recentered SAT in 1978 and scored 1480 (99.976th percentile). But I aced the math section and finished the entire test with quite a bit of time to spare so it wasn’t a really accurate measure. I didn’t practice for it and took it about a month before my 4-year tour in the Marine Corps was over so it wasn’t like I’d been intellectually challenged much in the 4 years that had lapsed since graduating high school.
The reason I’m so skeptical of so-called scientific experts and political elites is that I know that super-smart people are found in all walks of life. Highly intuitive people often find the most pleasure in doing things that engage the body instead of the mind. The result is that an academic climatologist’s auto mechanic or plumber might be a lot smarter than the scientist and if that plumber bothers to put some effort into studying climate science on a need-to-know basis he’ll arrive at sound conclusions in short order.
Climatology is more pattern recognition than anything else. You have a super complex system with borderline chaotic behavior, scores of important influences ranging from known and understood to unknown and unknowable, and thousands of minor influences. You can’t teach pattern recognition in universities. You either have a talent for it or you don’t and IQ in large part is a measure of your speed and ability to recognize patterns and make sense of them. So in the case of AGW what we have is very many high IQ individuals who don’t happen to be academics coming out of the woodwork to focus on this because the conclusions being drawn by the academics and the politicians sucking it all up because controlling energy use equates to controlling the world is threatening their way of life. These brilliant non-scientists have a compelling reason to apply their brainpower to it and, thank God for the intertubes, they have a cost-free effective way of making themselves heard.
I’m still working through some of the numbers but it appears to me that water vapour actually has a negative impact on the climate.
The Albedo of clouds outweighs the positive greenhouse contribution of water vapour.
We can calculate how much impact the Albedo of clouds has which something on the order of -13C to -17C. The greenhouse potential of water vapour is less, maybe 10C.
This would mean rewriting the greenhouse theory since the feedback of water vapour would not be close to 2 for 1 but would be something close to Zero or slightly negative.
We could use a real-world example of two locations which are very close to each other, have about the same solar energy coming in, would have similar CO2/GHG levels given how close they are, but have very different water vapour levels.
Sudan in the Sahara at 15N, 30E has an average temperature of 32C in April. In Zaire at 0N, 30E, the average temperature is just 23C in April (April is a good month to compare since the solar forcing at the TOA is about the same in both locations).
So one location with extremely low water vapour levels (and no clouds) is 10C higher than the very close location which has very high water vapour levels and lots of clouds. There is also more variation between night and day (23C in the no water vapour location versus 9C in the high water vapour location) as would be expected.
Edward Bancroft says:
July 9, 2010 at 8:28 am
The GHGs don’t add heat. They act like blankets slowing down the migration of heat from hotter to colder. In the daytime the GHGs in the upper atmosphere slow down infrared radiation from the sun. In whatever frequency band they are in they absorb photons from a directional source and then quickly emit it in a random direction. The random direction of re-emission is what causes the slowdown in heat transport as it’s just as likely an IR photon from the sun will be re-emitted right back at the sun rather than at the ground.
So in the daytime the GHGs cause upper atmosphere temps to rise and surface temps to fall by an equal amount. At night the situation is reversed. The IR photons are coming up from the ground and the surface GHGs impede their progress. The reason why the net result is more warming at the surface than the upper atmosphere is that much of the insolation is in visible wavelenghts which pass through the GHGs unimpeded. These visible wavelengths are absorbed (more or less depending on reflectivity of the surface) by the ground and then at night are re-emitted as infrared radiation which the surface GHGs impede.
Another good blanket analogy is that GHGs aren’t linear. If you have no blankets on a cold night having just one blanket will help a lot. A second blanket will help some but not as much as the first. If you have four blankets a fifth one would hardly help at all. If you have 999 blankets adding one more won’t have any measurable effect. Greenhouse gases work the same way. The first bit has the most effect and adding more is a case of diminishing returns. A fair characterization of increasing levels of CO2 is that the more there is the less you have to worry about the effect of adding even more.
Yet another good blanket analogy is heat capacity. Air can’t hold much heat compared to rocks, dirt, and water. A one square inch column of air 10,000 feet long weighs about 14 pounds. A one square inch column of water only 30 feet long weighs about 14 pounds. Moreover, pound for pound, water can hold 4 times as much heat as air. So basically a pond that is 8 feet deep holds as much heat as the entire atmosphere above it. The oceans hold roughly 1000 times as much heat as the atmosphere. And the average temperture of the ocean is fairly close to freezing. Only a relatively shallow top layer gets warm enough for brass monkeys. Whatever factors regulate how much of the icy cold ocean depths mix with the warm top layer cause the most noticeable climate changes which is why it’s always pretty easy to see the fingerprint of major oscillations in SSTs (sea surface temperatures) like ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), and AMDO (Atlantic Multi Decadal Oscillation) in global weather patterns. These all have different periodicities so depending on how the peaks and valleys line up or oppose they cause a plethora of different climate patterns. And who the hell knows if there are SST oscilations with periods of hundreds or thousands of years. We only know about the ones we’ve noticed since thermometers were invented and there were enough sailing ships plying the world’s oceans and keeping good enough logs that survive to this day to see the patterns emerge. Given the average ocean temperature is close to freezing it’s safe to assume that it reflects the average surface temperature over tens of thousands of years which handily explains why interglacial periods like the one we’re in now last about 10,000 years while the glacial period lasts about 100,000 years. Our so-called average global temperature measured over the long term is freezing cold. In the long view the arctic region today is the average climate for the entire earth most of the time. We should be afraid of altering the atmosphere in ways that accelerate cooling and cheerfully do whatever we can to encourage warming. Unless of course you’d like to see year round glaciers covering Washington, D.C. and everywhere north of it.
Dave Springer says:
July 9, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Mensa is like the Genuis Club for Dummies. Requires 98th percentile on standardized intelligence tests. True Genius (like True Scotsmen, ha) begins at the 99.95th percentile. I choose that point because I tested out at 99.97th percentile on both the SAT and military GCT tests. I’m not all that smart and I’d hate to think a True Genius could test out lower.
A fair number of the most widely accepted geniuses have not done all that well on I.Q. tests. Most notably Einstein, Feynman, and Tesla. One of Feynman’s biographer’s claimed he only scored 125 when tested in high school, though he was already demonstrating the capacity for breakthrough mathematics at that stage. I’ve always thought that the defining characteristics of really revolutionary geniuses were the ability to recognize the implicit fallacies in accepted dogma and the ability, when faced with a problem, to find the best question to pursue an answer for to provide its solution.
BTW, here is a neat little video of Feynman taking about honors and scientific elitism.
@Bill Illis
Don’t neglect to consider the water cycle as a heat pump. Water has a lot of unique properties and one of those is an enormous latent heat of vaporization. It takes one BTU to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. It takes almost a thousand BTUs to convert one pound of water to one pound of water vapor at the same temperature. Thus when water evaporates at the surface and rises up thousands of feet to form a cloud it carries an enormous amount of heat from the surface and releases it thousands of feet in the air when it condenses into a cloud. This effectively pumps the heat through the insulating surface layer of GHGs and releases it high above. The surface GHGs then act to impede the heat high in the atmosphere from reaching the surface. The GHGs in this case are helping to keep the surface cooler instead of warmer. Adding insult to injury (if you’re an AGW fanatic) the cloud further serves to raise the albedo during the day drastically, I mean REALLY drastically, reducing the amount of insolation reaching the surface. The models the climate boffins wave about don’t account for the heat pump effect and because it’s practically impossible to accurately measure the quite variable average albedo of the earth they just throw in a constant for the albedo. Interestingly different models use constants for albedo that vary by 7%. This 7% variation in average solar insolation between models is greater than the variation caused by all greenhouse gases combined. So ask yourself what worth is a model that attempts to isolate the effect of a single variable such as CO2 when there is an unmodeled, unknowable variable which has one or two orders of magnitude greater potential effect? The answer, of course, is the model is worthless for the task of isolating the effect of a minor variable. Until you have the major variables correctly modeled you can’t begin to isolate the smaller ones with any reasonable degree of confidence. Albedo and water cycle heat pump aren’t the only poorly modeled variables. Ocean circulation patterns along with timing and magnitude of mixing of cold deep water with warm surface waters is a hugely important variable that is still largely a mystery. Complicating things even more is there’s an obvious correlation between solar magnetic field activity and global climate change. We don’t really know what the hell is going on there. It’s hypothesized that waxing and waning solar magnetic activity, through it’s effect of more or less shielding the upper atmosphere from galactic cosmic rays (very high energy particles from things like supernovas) throttles the formation of wispy very high altitude clouds. Those high altitude clouds in turn throttle the average albedo of the earth and thus the amount of solar insolation reaching the surface and thus the near surface atmospheric temperature.
Obvious to everyone (seemingly except a majorty of so-called climate scientists) is that we have a lot of bigger climate changing variables that need to be understood before we can begin to understand the effect of a small increase in a modestly effective greenhouse gas. CO2 is almost certainly a bit player in this great climate mystery.
The really biggest insult to my intelligence with this CO2 nightmare fabrication is that what we can reliably know about increased CO2 concentration from the basic physics and biology (or botany to be specific) is it’s beneficial. Dig it. From a physics standpoint we know that adding a bit more CO2 insulation is going to keep the lower atmosphere a little warmer at the expense of a colder stratosphere. There’s no real argument there. But the effect is going to be noticeable mostly at night in cold dry air where there’s relatively little water vapor. Elsewhere the blanket (insulating effect) of water vapor, the major greenhouse gas by a long shot, overwhelms the smaller role of CO2. So where do we see the extra surface warmth? At night in freezing weather. If we could order up some warmer air that’s right where we ask it to be delivered! This will have the decidedly beneficial effect of reducing killer frosts and thus extend growing seasons for agriculture. From a botany standpoint higher levels of CO2 increase the growth rate of plants and also reduce their water requirements. If we could order up a boon to agriculture we’d order more atmospheric CO2! The downside of higher CO2 is just about nil in comparison. Coral reefs will suffer from a slightly less alkaline ocean? Cry me a river. I don’t eat coral and none of the animals I eat feed on coral either. BFD. Polar bears won’t have icebergs to frolic upon? BFD. They’re friggin’ bears. They’ll adapt. With an open northwest passage we can have cruise ship passengers feeding them like black bears in a park. Their population hasn’t diminished in any case. Only thing that has actually happened is some morons took some pictures where they look sad and lonely sitting on an isolated berg. If they were actually sad it would have been because they were looking at a 200 pound chunk of warm red meat holding a camera and couldn’t get close enough to eat it. So where’s the reliably known DOWNside of higher levels of CO2 that might offset the large benefits? In a nutshell, there are none. And THAT insults my intelligence more than anything else.
Oh, I forgot about rising sea levels story that is making kids have nightmares about drowning. The oceans have been rising, near as we can tell, a couple of millimeters per decade for thousands of years. This is what happens in interglacial periods as landlocked glaciers melt and thermal expansion takes place. There aren’t enough landlocked glaciers left where it’s anywhere near above freezing for that to be a factor. The vast majority of landlocked ice is sitting at the south pole and it will take many thousands of years to put a dent in it. A temperature rise of a few degrees from -40F to -37F won’t do it. That ice is there to stay. It’ll be there when the interglacial ends and so will the much smaller glacier covering Greenland. So that leaves thermal expansion as the only thing worth worrying about. The reliably known ability of CO2 to raise surface temperatures can’t possibly account for more than an extra millimeter per decade of sea level rise through thermal expansion. 100 years from now the ocean will be 4 inches higher than it would be otherwise. I’m supposed to be alarmed about that? 4 inches with 100 years to adapt to the rise? Give me a friggin’ break. That is a non-concern. Even the IPCC in their wildly exagerated global warming scenario is only predicting a one or two foot rise over 100 years. Even that isn’t hard to deal with. The natural rise of the ocean during that time would have been a foot. If a one foot rise in the ocean per century is a horrible problem why haven’t we seen our ancestors over the course of thousands years of recorded history in which the oceans rose 20 feet complaining about how terrible it was to deal with? In the past 15,000 years the oceans have risen 300 feet. The ecosphere appears to have nicely accomodated it. Is modern man so inferior in the big scheme of life on this planet that we won’t be able to cope with an extra foot of rise per 100 years while every other member of every phyla takes it in stride? Are we that weak and pathetic? Maybe so.
@Dave Wendt
Years of concentrated focus on a single narrow range of problems by a moderately fast thinker is nothing to sneeze at. Personally I have a problem staying focused on such a narrow range of intellectual pursuits as those guys and have a great many more not-so-intellectual physical pursuits as well. My big project at the moment is building a house from scratch with just me for labor and Home Depot for most of the materials. Going on my second year with it. Coming along very nicely. It’s all weathered in now with roof, siding, insulation, and interior walls & ceiling finished. Put in the A/C last month so the rest of it is a piece of cake in climate controlled comfort. The previous several years I became expert with a tractor & chainsaw clearing the several of acres of land where I’m building it, grading the beach, building a large boat dock, runnning utilities all over it, fencing, putting in fresh water supply system & septic field, pouring a 500 foot long concrete driveway from the road to the shore, and stuff like that. Only native plants are growing on it. No lawn and no irrigation. My motto is if it couldn’t survive here before I arrived it ain’t gonna survive with me here. There’s a really wide range of plants and critters to observe. I spend a couple hours a week just looking around. Forrest Mims, the amateur scientist and personal computer pioneer, is a friend of mine and we’re both of a like mind in the way we love to observe the smaller features in nature outside our back doors. Last we talked was about ice flowers. I had a ton of them this winter and learned all about the white crownbeard plants that produce them.
I bet Einstein & Feynman never did anything like what I described above and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for me. Tesla was a bit different in that he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. He’s by far the most interesting character of the three you mentioned. There’s a bit of cult surrounding Tesla and an old friend of mine has been obsessed with him for at least 20 years. I’m rather skeptical about any of Tesla’s more flambouyant inventions actually working as advertised but who knows, maybe you really can construct a massive power grid out of thin air. I’d have to see it to believe it though. In the meantime I made my personal power grid with about 2 miles of 6 guage copper.
I agree with their statement that “heatwaves could become common”. I also agree that “heatwaves could become rare”, and “cold snaps could become common”, and “wet spells could become common”, and “drought could become common”.
If we wait 26 years, we can check. If heatwaves are common, they’ll be right. If not, well that just said “could”, and what exactly does “common” mean? And who’ll remember their vague prediction anyway.
@Dave Wendt
By the way, I tend to hold inventors and expermentalists as the greatest thinkers. Famous mathematicians and physicists seem more like idiot savants to me. Leonardo Da Vinci is at the top of my chart. Prolific in all kinds of art, science, and engineering. Estimated IQ is off the charts. 200+. I’d also put guys like Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison above Einstein and Feynman. That would also be why I zeroed in on Tesla as the most interesting of the three you mentioned.
You piqued my interest with Feynman’s measured IQ of 125. I wasn’t aware it was that low. That’s below par for university college professors in the sciences. I think the explanation begins with him not uttering his first word until he was three years old. To get a high score on a standardized intelligence test you have to excel at both math/spatial & verbal thinking. Feynman probably had a deficit in the latter and was beyond the ability of the test to measure in the former. Standard IQ tests don’t measure well beyond about 150. So if he had average verbal IQ of 100 and maxed out the math portion at 150 that would give a reading of 125 since math & verbal are equally weighted. His actual math and spatial IQ was probably more like 180. He might have also simply been not interested in the test and didn’t put much effort into it.
Einstein never took an IQ test but best guestimates put him between 160 and 180 which is borderline high genius in anyone’s book and he too was probably much higher in math and spatial relationships than verbal performance.
Likewise, I found no record of Tesla ever taking an IQ test but best guestimates place him at or into the high genius range too. He was a child prodigy in math. He teachers thought he was cheating somehow. Also reported as a young child was that he would construct machinery in his mind, test it in his head, and then start bending metal to instantiate the design. This is characteristic of high mathematical IQ as spatial thinking goes along with talent for numbers. I build and test stuff in my head like that too. Everything from Rube Goldberg tinkertoy contraptions as a pre-schooler to entire personal computer motherboards as an adult and more lately a whole house I built in my head then started buying materials and putting it together. I don’t know where you read Tesla’s IQ wasn’t extraordinary. Nothing I found indicates that although I did google up that same three man group (Einstein, Feynman, and Tesla)who someone claimed all had less than remarkable IQ without providing any support at all for the claim except in Tesla’s case. I think you fell for a baseless meme there that someone with a less than remarkable IQ made up to feel better about himself.
At this time it looks like your link to http: // news.stanford.edu / news / 2010 / july / images / wayhot1_news . jpg has gone dead. This could be a site housekeeping issue or they could be sensitive to the use of these images here as examples of unwarranted alarmism.
Dave Springer says:
July 9, 2010 at 10:55 pm
“[….]
mentioned. There’s a bit of cult surrounding Tesla and an old friend of mine has been obsessed with him for at least 20 years. I’m rather skeptical about any of Tesla’s more flambouyant inventions actually working as advertised but who knows, maybe you really can construct a massive power grid out of thin air. […]”
Tesla had this intuition of seeing electricity as something dynamic and flowing, like waves on an ocean, and exploited waves, frequencies and potential differences, and resonance. In a few years we will wonder why people mounted a ton of lithium ion batteries into a Lotus Elise when all you had to do was transmitting the energy wirelessly (via a cable in the road. Yes i know we need a big cable to run thousands of cars on a freeway. I propose superconductors.). And then we will have cars that we can really call “Tesla’s”.