Research suggests climate change target ‘not safe’
From the University of Exeter via Eurekalert
An analysis of geological records that preserve details of the last known period of global warming has revealed ‘startling’ results which suggest current targets for limiting climate change are unsafe.
The study by climate change experts at the University of Exeter has important implications for international negotiators aiming to agree binding targets for future greenhouse gas emission targets.
Professor Chris Turney and Dr Richard Jones, both from the University’s Department of Geography, have reported a comprehensive study of the Last Interglacial, a period of warming some 125,000 years ago, in the latest issue of the Journal of Quaternary Science.
Caption: This is Professor Chris Turney in the field in Svalbard. Credit: University of Exeter
The results reveal the European Union target of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels shouldn’t be considered ‘safe’.
From their analysis, the scientists found 263 estimates of the conditions when sediments and ice were laid down during the Last Interglacial, allowing them to reconstruct past temperatures around the globe. To compare the reconstructed estimates with today, they took the Last Interglacial values away from modern temperatures averaged over the period 1961 to 1990.
The results show temperatures appear to have been more than 5˚C warmer in polar regions while the tropics only warmed marginally; strikingly similar to recent trends. Not only this, but taken together, the world appears to have been some 1.9˚C warmer when compared to preindustrial temperatures. Critically, the warmer temperatures appear to have resulted in global sea levels some 6.6 to 9.4 metres higher than today, with a rate of rise of between 60 to 90 centimetres per decade — more than double that recently observed.
The higher temperatures seen during the Last Interglacial are comparable to projections for the end of this century under the low emission scenarios contained within the recent Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Turney said: “The results here are quite startling and, importantly, they suggest sea levels will rise significantly higher than anticipated and that stabilizing global average temperatures at 2˚C above pre-industrial levels may not be considered a ‘safe’ target as envisaged by the European Union and others. The inevitable conclusion is emission targets will have to be lowered further still.”
The full paper, Does the Agulhas Current amplify global temperatures during super-interglacials?, appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Quarternary Science. It can be viewed here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.1423/abstract
Notes for editors:
A blog by Professor Chris Turney on this subject, called A Lesson from Past Global Warming, can be viewed on his website at www.christurney.com
“I am sure there are people who would prefer that we abstain from either process and give nature a chance to replace all the carbon we have removed from the ground.”
We can do it, but it will take time.
18% (by mass) of the human body is carbon, there are about 7 billion people alive today, over the next 75 years about 100% of those people will die, if the average death weight of a person is 60kg; and if they were all buried; it would sequester an average of 1,008,000,000 kg of carbon per year for 75 years.
7,000,000,000 X 60kg X 0.18 / 75 years = 1,008,000,000 kg/year
(“18% by mass” from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_makeup_of_the_human_body)
The only human created long term carbon capture and storage system that has ever worked is a graveyard.
So when do the graveyard operators start selling carbon-credits?
John Marshall says:
October 2, 2010 at 1:33 am
“Why did the temperature rise then? Not CO2!!! And are we constrained about a 2 deg. rise? or is a 2 deg. fall ok. I would rather it was a rise as I hate cold. CO2 never caused climate change in the past! Why now?”
Milankovitch forcing followed by CO2-CH4-WV feedback.
BTW folks – in the UK, Glaciology/Quaternary research tends to come under the wing of “Physical Geography”. Geology departments deal with the pre-quaternary stuff. Hope that clears that up!
Cheers – John
? they compared 61 to 90?
and wasnt that when we ere Cooling according to erhlich holdren et al?
and why not go to 2000 or even to 2010.
cos it dropped ?
What the……………….!
“with a rate of [sea level] rise of between 60 to 90 centimetres per decade — more than double that recently observed”
I think the measured rate is less then 60 to 90 cm per CENTURY… not decade.
Probably a typo, but is is so typical. Climate science is just sloppy in every respect.
Ammonite,
“edmh, your chain of reasoning assumes the water vapour content would not be affected if all other GHGs are removed from the atmosphere. This is not the case. Your conclusion is flawed.”
Water vapour is just one part of the water cycle, and one of the open questions in climate science is whether the net feedback to CO2 forcing is negative, positive or highly positive. Any concerns about AGW are based upon the non-existent evidence that it is highly positive. In the other cases, AGW becomes a minor perturbation of natural variation and we are looking at only 1 degree C over the next century. Since natural variation is greater the decade 100 years from now may well be cooler despite CO2 warming impact.
Like you I often cite Hegerl and Knutti. Rather than repeat them, you might want to look at previous assessments here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/05/spencer-on-climate-sensitivity-and-solar-irradiance/#comment-406784
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/15/off-to-the-conference/#comment-390880
These erudite people should occasionally look at data in a more unbiased manner.
In the recorded history the steepest rise in CO2 emissions (1940 – 1980 ) coincided with the steepest fall in the Arctic temperatures.
Does that qualify as a negative feedback?
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
An analysis of geological records that preserve details of the last known period of global warming has revealed ‘startling’ results which suggest current targets for limiting climate change are unsafe.
So we have some more CAGW Porn, eh? I’m just soooo excited….can’t wait for the next episode….and Thank You, Climate Scientists!
Am I the only one who reads these articles and then feels like they got hit by a truck at their conclusion? The last interglacial showed sea rise way above the current trend and was much warmer. So manmade CO2 could not have been the culprit. But then WHAM!!! manmade CO2 IS the culprit and we must do everything to lower it.
John Hayte says:
October 1, 2010 at 8:51 pm
It seems the global warming debate on blogs like this now boil down to a partisan popularity contest. Meanwhile the world’s major Scientific Bodies still believe Global Warming is a dangerous reality as much as they did before “climategate.” Imperfect as they are, I’ll take “eco-fascist” scientific community over blog chest-thumping.
Many, many people have taken your route, preferring to simply believe in a (mythical) “consensus”, rather than to do the work required of reading and researching on their own. It’s sort of the sheep approach to knowledge, and exhibits an astounding amount of intellectual laziness, lack of curiosity, and a general dullness of mind. Sad, really.
Surely one of the most obvious points to make here is that:
“during the last interglacial, tempertures were higher than today and sea levels were higher than today ALL WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE OF HIGHER CO2 LEVELS”
(excuse the shouting !!)
Does it not occur to these folk that today’s warming might also be nothing to do with CO2 but the result of the same natural forces that were at play in the last interglacial (and the 3 before that too…)????
So the earth is now allowed to warm 2 degrees C. But it was a lot warmer (more then 5 degrees C) earlier in history. So how did the warming back then occur? It was through natural causes obviously. So what is there to say that this current warming isn’t through natural causes as well. So there has been a human increase to CO2, but what’s to say that it has affected how much the Earth will warm/has warmed. If the Earth naturally has been warmer and colder then present days, it can NATURALLY warm or cool that much again, and human influence is negligable.
So why is there now a limit on how much the Earth can warm, if it can naturally warm more than that?
Vorlath says:
October 2, 2010 at 8:05 am
“Am I the only one who reads these articles and then feels like they got hit by a truck at their conclusion? The last interglacial showed sea rise way above the current trend and was much warmer. So manmade CO2 could not have been the culprit. But then WHAM!!! manmade CO2 IS the culprit and we must do everything to lower it.”
Well, that’s the thing about feedbacks, you see. They kick in once an initial forcing agent tips things. Milankovitch forcings affect insolation, especially in the N Hemisphere. Plate tectonics affects weather-patterns e.g. drifting a big continent to occupy the area of the South Pole creates a very dry and very cold place, but with moist fringes with lots of precip there. CO2/CH4 feeds back if Milankovitch forcings cook the permafrost. After that, water vapor follows suit.
This time – uniquely, outside of the armageddon-style Siberian Traps type events of volcanism on a quite mind-boggling scale, we are the primary forcing agent as a long-life GHG generator. What we are doing is unprecedented in geological history – in fact, the last time an Order of life affected CO2 concentrations so drastically was in the Devonian, when land-based vascular plants went forth and multiplied. That time of course it meant that CO2 levels went down. Antony has posted the graph before.
It’s a Dirty Harry-style experiment we are performing with our future, and the geezer saying “do you wanna make my day” ain’t Clint. It ain’t Antony, it ain’t Richard Curtis (people should, senso stricto, only explode on Monty Python sketches), and is sure as hell ain’t me. It’s the biosphere.
Cheers – John
If people think todays climate pseudo scientist will be the laughing stock of the future, it’ll be nothing compared to what will smear on the eurocratic politician who took the pseudo climate fear to heart and actually wrote it in the new law (that also got us a not by the people elected president) that it is now illegal for EU to have world with a global climate that is plus 2 degrees C above the normal 79-00 reference line.
Imagine the rationale of it all without laughing yer pants off twice on the same day. If you ever have lacked a stellar example of arrogance and hubris working together in perfect harmony we now have it.
John Mason,
They’ve got you worried, I see. That’s their method: to scare folks so people willingly open their wallets. But nothing unusual is going on with the planet’s climate. Nothing.
And if the Earth starts to cool instead, then they will make that the new scare tactic. Because CAGW isn’t science, it’s politics. And politics is interested in your wallet.
“It just goes to show, it’s always something.”
~Roseanne Rosannadanna
It really is unbelievable that two professors can present information with this degree of inaccuracy.
We are all aware in the UK how our education system has been dumbed down from the bottom to the top, this includes these two.
“Peter Miller says: October 2, 2010 at 12:00 am
The article below is from the October 2008 edition of New Scientist – note the comments by Turney. This strikes me as being one of the goofier types of green technology being touted around today.
“The world’s first commercial plant that uses microwave technology to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help reduce the effects of global warming has started operating in New Zealand.
One way to sequester this carbon before it’s released is to turn plant waste into charcoal. “It’s a stable form of carbon and can last tens of thousands of years,” says Chris Turney of the University of Exeter, UK.
Carbonscape, based in Blenheim, New Zealand, has developed technology that turns organic waste, such as wood and wood chips, into charcoal using microwaves. Turney, who advises Carbonscape, says that at full capacity the plant can produce a tonne of charcoal a day. And even when the plant is using electricity generated by conventional non-renewable sources, the process will result in a net reduction of one tonne of CO2 in the atmosphere every day, claims Turney.”
—————————————————————————-
What Turney is saying that this company can make a ton of charcoal with a process hat uses electricity off the power grid. He is also saying: “even when the plant is using electricity generated by conventional non-renewable sources, the process will result in a net reduction of one tonne of CO2 in the atmosphere every day”
This is the classic perpetual motion machine. Coal burning power plants can be modified to burn charcoal just fine. Using Turney’s process, we can make more than a ton of charcoal by burning less than a ton of coal in a power plant.
FANTASTIC!!
“Peter Miller says: October 2, 2010 at 12:00 am
The article below is from the October 2008 edition of New Scientist – note the comments by Turney. This strikes me as being one of the goofier types of green technology being touted around today.
“The world’s first commercial plant that uses microwave technology to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help reduce the effects of global warming has started operating in New Zealand.
One way to sequester this carbon before it’s released is to turn plant waste into charcoal. “It’s a stable form of carbon and can last tens of thousands of years,” says Chris Turney of the University of Exeter, UK.
Carbonscape, based in Blenheim, New Zealand, has developed technology that turns organic waste, such as wood and wood chips, into charcoal using microwaves. Turney, who advises Carbonscape, says that at full capacity the plant can produce a tonne of charcoal a day. And even when the plant is using electricity generated by conventional non-renewable sources, the process will result in a net reduction of one tonne of CO2 in the atmosphere every day, claims Turney.”
—————————————————————————-
Turney is saying that this company can make a ton/day of charcoal with a process that uses electricity off the power grid, even if the electricity comes from coal fired plants (which are about 40% efficient).
This is the classic perpetual motion machine. Coal burning power plants can be modified to burn charcoal just fine. Using Turney’s process, we can make more than a ton of charcoal by burning less than a ton of coal in a power plant.
FANTASTIC!!
We can close all the worlds coal mines and run the world’s power plants using Turney’s charcoal, and have charcoal left over to bury!
Somebody please tell AlGore about this.
John Mason says:
“Plate tectonics affects weather-patterns e.g. drifting a big continent to occupy the area of the South Pole creates a very dry and very cold place, but with moist fringes with lots of precip there.”
—
I hope you’re being sarcastic. I’ve done modelling of the Earth with respect to the seafloor age. New seafloor production has actually been even or going down for the last 30 million years. This production is under water. So there is no drifting of big continents. We’re talking 120,000 years since the last ice age. Not millions required for significant plate movement. And I’m not sure what to say about the rest of your comment except WOW!
Martin Lewitt says: October 2, 2010 at 7:23 am
Water vapour is just one part of the water cycle, and one of the open questions in climate science is whether the net feedback to CO2 forcing is negative, positive or highly positive. Any concerns about AGW are based upon the non-existent evidence that it is highly positive.
Firstly, it is a pleasure to converse with someone who is familiar with this literature. In relation to http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf the paper makes a strong case that the lower limit of climate sensitivity is well constrained, at least 1.5C for a doubling of CO2. From their opening paragraph, “various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.” The 10 differing approaches assessed all centre around 3C.
My reading indicates that 3C is more than enough to initiate large scale changes to the earth’s climate system with the potential to significantly impact agriculture in many parts of the world. My uncertainties are how long, how much and what regional affects will unfold. Many people seem to imagine “catastrophe” as near instantaneous disaster. My concern is more that if CO2 emissions are not addressed a long series of haphazard problems will gradually eat into the surplus and resilience of many nations until they are unable to cope.
Ammonite says:
October 2, 2010 at 3:02 pm
From their opening paragraph, “various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.” The 10 differing approaches assessed all centre around 3C.
——————–
Show me one set of actual observations that results in 3.0C per doubling.
I’m talking about temperature and CO2/GHG observations (historical or recent).
That is the problem with these papers, there is no actual data in them. There is a chart that somehow shows 3.0C per doubling and this is just accepted as evidence. However, when looks into any set of actual observations that the chart is based on – it is a mystery where the 3.0C per doubling came from because the math does not work.
Bill Illis says: October 2, 2010 at 3:45 pm
“Show me one set of actual observations that results in 3.0C per doubling.”
Hi Bill, my best suggestion is to follow the most promising papers listed in the Knutti and Hegerl summary. For example, some “last glacial maximum data” estimates are listed below. I understand the reticence of many to accept GCM results at face value. Are there bugs? Has data-fitting/parameterisation been (unconsciously) used to generate a pre-determined outcome? Are there factors that are not included or modelled incorrectly (clouds, vegetation, ocean, X-factors…)? For some their value is zero. For me they represent an ambitious endpoint to a series of independent factors pointing to AGW – not hard data, not conclusive, but not worthless either.
Lorius, C., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Hansen, J. & LeTreut, H. The ice-core record—climate sensitivity and future greenhouse warming. Nature 347, 139–145 (1990).
Hoffert, M. I. & Covey, C. Deriving global climate sensitivity from palaeoclimate reconstructions. Nature 360, 573–576 (1992).
Covey, C., Sloan, L. C. & Hoffert, M. I. Paleoclimate data constraints on climate sensitivity: The paleocalibration method. Clim. Change 32, 165–184 (1996).
From the Hoffert and Covery abstract: “An alternative to model-based estimates is in principle available from the reconstruction of past climates, which implicitly includes cloud feedback. Here we retrieve the sensitivity of two palaeoclimates, one colder and one warmer than present, by independently reconstructing both the equilibrium surface temperature change and the radiative forcing. Our results yield T 2x = 2.3 +/- 0.9 °C. This range is comparable with estimates from GCMs and inferences from recent temperature observations and ocean models.”
I am very skeptical about the ability of climatologists to determine with accuracy the temperature 125,000 years ago from the settling of sediments and especially to determine the ocean rise of 60 to 90 centimeters per decade. I am surprised that they use such rough estimates to suggest that 2 degrees Celsius climate change is unsafe.
Ammonite,
Get a clue, bro. Observations falsify your models.
Next question?
Smokey says:
October 2, 2010 at 9:22 pm
What is “UHI” in this context?
Phillip Bratby says:
Exeter University is next door to the Met Office. Both are full of CAGWers, all paid for by taxpayers.
Actually they are several miles apart on opposite sides of the city.