Abandon all hope, ye who read this

Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios

New paper in Nature Geoscience examines inertia of carbon dioxide emissions

New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four metres.

The study, to be published in the Jan. 9 Advanced Online Publication of the journal Nature Geoscience, is the first full climate model simulation to make predictions out to 1000 years from now. It is based on best-case, ‘zero-emissions’ scenarios constructed by a team of researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (an Environment Canada research lab at the University of Victoria) and the University of Calgary.

“We created ‘what if’ scenarios,” says Dr. Shawn Marshall, Canada Research Chair in Climate Change and University of Calgary geography professor. “What if we completely stopped using fossil fuels and put no more CO2 in the atmosphere? How long would it then take to reverse current climate change trends and will things first become worse?” The research team explored zero-emissions scenarios beginning in 2010 and in 2100.

The Northern Hemisphere fares better than the south in the computer simulations, with patterns of climate change reversing within the 1000-year timeframe in places like Canada. At the same time parts of North Africa experience desertification as land dries out by up to 30 percent, and ocean warming of up to 5°C off of Antarctica is likely to trigger widespread collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, a region the size of the Canadian prairies.

Researchers hypothesize that one reason for the variability between the North and South is the slow movement of ocean water from the North Atlantic into the South Atlantic. “The global ocean and parts of the Southern Hemisphere have much more inertia, such that change occurs more slowly,” says Marshall. “The inertia in intermediate and deep ocean currents driving into the Southern Atlantic means those oceans are only now beginning to warm as a result of CO2 emissions from the last century. The simulation showed that warming will continue rather than stop or reverse on the 1000-year time scale.”

Wind currents in the Southern Hemisphere may also have an impact. Marshall says that winds in the global south tend to strengthen and stay strong without reversing. “This increases the mixing in the ocean, bringing more heat from the atmosphere down and warming the ocean.”

Researchers will next begin to investigate more deeply the impact of atmosphere temperature on ocean temperature to help determine the rate at which West Antarctica could destabilize and how long it may take to fully collapse into the water.

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The paper “Ongoing climate change following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions” by Nathan P. Gillett, Vivek K. Arora, Kirsten Zickfeld, Shawn J. Marshall and William J. Merryfield will be available online at http://www.nature.com/ngeo/index.html

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I really had to laugh at the headline provided with the press release:

Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios

Let’s see, did the climate change at all during the last 1000 years?

It depends on who you ask.

The Hockey Team says no:

Others who are not members of the Hockey Teamsters Union of Concerned Scientists say yes:

History tells us the second graph is the more likely truth.

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Natsman
January 10, 2011 2:00 am

This game is becoming increasingly ( and predictively) more boring as time goes by. Why do they waste their money, and their time? And why do we waste ours reading it?
[Power. Energy. Control of your life. Control of all people on earth. 1.3 trillion in new taxes in the US alone. Freedom of choice. The lives of billions. The deaths in utter poverty of billions more. Robt]

January 10, 2011 2:01 am

Can anybody out there explain to me how these “scientists” with all their tax funded computers cannot predict what’s going to happen 3 months ahead yet can confidently tell us what will happen 1000 years from now?
They ought to show us their competency first….how about a competition between them all? That should expose them.

Ceri Phipps
January 10, 2011 2:03 am

Dear Canadians,
I feel your pain at having your tax dollars so utterly wasted!

Alan the Brit
January 10, 2011 2:04 am

Can I go back to sleep now?
BTW O/T. Did anybody pick up my post from Friday Funnies last week, about a UK ITV news item about the cold weather, broadcast on Monday night 20th December at 10:30. In it Prof Mike “yo-yo” Lockwood changing his mind yet again, & actually claiming that the Sun’s activity is rapidly declining so we should expect colder winters! Climate realists has it covered. Usual MSM technique of burying it on a cold Monday late night news item for a few seconds only.

Disputin
January 10, 2011 2:06 am

Just what is it these bozos do not understand about chaotic systems? Did Edward Lorenz live in vain?

Antonia
January 10, 2011 2:06 am

It wasn’t research; it was modeling.

Patrick Davis
January 10, 2011 2:15 am

And in the Australian MSM, we are bombarded with yet more rubbish…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/studies-warn-of-glacier-melt-danger-20110110-19k1h.html
I’d imagine many Europeans wouldn’t be too worried about a little melt in favour of a little warming.

January 10, 2011 2:18 am

I wish I could get paid to lie. Then again, you have to have no principles and see truth and lie as moral equivalents in order to lie as these do.

Robinson
January 10, 2011 2:25 am

I can’t remember, but have you done the story about farming insects for protein instead of cattle?. I think it should be filed under loon.

Robinson
January 10, 2011 2:28 am

Can anybody out there explain to me how these “scientists” with all their tax funded computers cannot predict what’s going to happen 3 months ahead yet can confidently tell us what will happen 1000 years from now?

Yes Mike, afaik, it works like this: you take your obviously incorrect model and think up 10,000 permutations with different parameters and perform a run of each one. You then take the average of the results and – hey presto – you’ve still got the wrong answer BUT, you call it an “ensemble ” and issue a press release calling for action to be taken to prevent the dire outcomes it predicts.
Simple innit.

Princess Leia
January 10, 2011 2:28 am

The more these alarmist squeal and rant, the more rational people will disbelieve them.

Lew Skannen
January 10, 2011 2:34 am

OK. So now that we are totally and utterly doomed how about we just make the best of the situation.
At least now there is no point getting involved in all that pointless carbon reduction nonsense.
I mean it would have saved the planet if we had no been so arrogant and had listened to the alarmists only a few years earlier. Even up until Cancun we had a chance but we foolishly chose not to listen.
They were right and we were wrong and now there is no hope for any of us.
Oh well.
Someone start up the band and we will play on bravely as the planet sinks…

Patrick Davis
January 10, 2011 2:37 am

Ah, my link is to an article about the same study. My bad…

Manfred
January 10, 2011 2:39 am

4 meters in 1000 years are just 4 mm per year, not really different from what sea levels have done over the last 100 years.

January 10, 2011 2:47 am

My results are showing that it has not been warming during the past 37 years.
At least not here, in Pretoria, South Africa.
I think you might find this investigation done by myself interesting!?
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/assessment-of-global-warming-and-global-warming-caused-by-greenhouse-forcings-in-pretoria-south-africa
You too can do this! It is easy. Prove it for yourself that it is not warming.
just remember the final note on the bottom.
blessings
Henry

Brian D Finch
January 10, 2011 2:52 am

So, in a thousand years or so the Met Iffice (sorry, Office)
will be right and we will have a barbeque summer.
Is this cause for concern?

DEEBEE
January 10, 2011 2:52 am

Since the job Hansen did 20 years ago was so accurate, these guys want to out-Hansen Hansen. But they have learnt well. Make the scale so large that you can never be caught like Hansen .

1DandyTroll
January 10, 2011 2:52 am

What if all them hippie vagabonds went to Tuvalu for a thousand years? While they lament, all very heuristic like I’m sure, if the poor island would sink first under the weight of the amount of hubris minds or the incredible total amount of over weight (the latter, of course, already having displaced the locals by the first comers.)
Mayhap the rest of the world could enjoy peace, prosperity and some much needed entertainment in the play of the hippie vagabonds involuntary recreation of the Lord of the flies (or in this case also known as The sinking island’s last lament of happy thanksgiving 3000.)

Perry
January 10, 2011 2:53 am

Anthony,
I congratulate you on the accuracy of the headline, “Abandon all hope, ye who read this”, as people frequently misquote the original phrase mounted over the gates of hell “lasciate ogne speranze voi qu’intrate ” as “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.
Isn’t the ‘net useful?
Regards,
Perry

January 10, 2011 2:58 am

Lets turn back the clock a thousand years, its the year in wich a bloke called Thorfinn Karlsefni is trying to colonise Vinland (New Foundland).
And the village-idiot is predecting that in a thousand years time, world-warming caused by his decendants is going to cause worldwide disasters and that it would at least take another 3000 years from that point before things are normal again.
300 years later the world starts to cool.

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
January 10, 2011 3:00 am

This is how my path to climate skepticism started. During online confrontations with rabid hysterical “OMG We’re all going to die if we don’t cut emissions NOW!” types, I researched global warming and what the IPCC reports said (thanks Wikipedia).
I realized there was so much unavoidable warming already in the pipeline, launching immediate efforts to stop it was fruitless. That National Geographic “documentary” Six Degrees Could Change the World that was getting people all worked up? There would be centuries of warming coming, we’d end up getting those degrees and more. Shut down civilization and all emissions right now, and it still might take a millennium until the warming slows down to a halt.
Thus there is no rush to “fix” global warming, as it’ll happen for many generations regardless. We can wait until continuing economic forces and technological advances bring us the desired lower-emission civilization. And adaptation is required, it’s unavoidable. Thus it’s better to retain and grow our wealth to afford successful adaptation, rather than throw it away on the proposed “quick fix” “better than nothing” schemes that wouldn’t have a noticeable effect for centuries to come, except for severely crippling society and destroying our way of life.
After that revelation, going the rest of the way to full-blown skepticism was easy. I started wondering about why these people and these groups were going against their own science and insisting we had to make all these changes now
Added thought: As said, there’ll be several centuries of adaptation, many generations after us will adapt to and grow used to the warming. When the warming finally does stop, to those future humans the warmer world will be normal, they’ll be adapted to it. Would they even want to return the planet to the colder state experienced by their long-forgotten ancient ancestors?

Peter Miller
January 10, 2011 3:02 am

This is probably no more than the reaction of the University of Calgary’s geography department to proposed budget cuts.
Taking a leaf out of the time proven strategy of loony religious cults and the professional purveyors of bad science like Greenpeace, they have produced an unfounded scare story designed to inspire the faithful and have them open up their pockets.
Anyhow, this is all about computer simulations, so this is simply no more than GIGO.

David L
January 10, 2011 3:07 am

Nostradamus has got nothing on these guy! Such accuracy extrapolating 30 years of data out to 1000 years! Really unbelievable. Imagine if the government bought them a bigger computer! They might have the same accuracy out to 2000 or even 5000 years.
Only one word comes to mind: BOGUS!

Kate
January 10, 2011 3:14 am

THE DESPERATE EMPLOY THE IGNORANT FAMOUS TO BRAINWASH THE PUBLIC
This is from today’s Guardian –
“Al Gore, Gary Neville or Cheryl Cole: who would you trust on climate change?”
A survey commissioned by Climate Week suggests celebrities can help to communicate climate change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jan/10/climate-change-celebrity-power-survey
“Climate Week asked Millward Brown, a brand research consultancy, to utilise its “Cebra” (celebrity-brand) index. Twenty celebrities were chosen to represent a spread of people who were either a “well-known activist”, “environmentally inclined but not an activist”, or “not known for activism”. A “nationally representative sample of 500 adults aged 16-65” was then asked how much influence each celebrity had on environmental issues. [Strangely, they never asked me] They were also asked to allocate a score to each celebrity using the measures of “familiarity”, “affinity”, “media attention”, “role model” and “talent”.”
The top 20 influence-peddlers are listed in the Guardian as:
1) Al Gore
2) Bill Gates
3) Arnold Schwarzenegger
4) Boris Johnson
5) David Beckham
6) Ken Livingstone
7) Chris Martin
8) Cheryl Cole
9) Gwyneth Paltrow
10) Duncan Bannatyne
11) Phil Schofield
12) Robbie Williams
13) Fearne Cotton
14) Leonardo DiCaprio
15) Holly Willoughby
16) Colin Firth
17) Graham Norton
18) Sienna Miller
19) Paloma Faith
20) Gary Neville
Notice that there is not a single scientist, let alone a climate scientist on that list. Also, I can’t find this survey anywhere on the Climate Week website http://www.climateweek.com/
In their desperation to get the AGW train wreck back on track, are the Global Warming liars actually making this stuff up? Or are they just thrashing around trying to get the brainless famous to associate themselves with the dying Global Warming religion? After the complete and total failure of the Guardian’s “10/10” campaign, I expect so-called “Climate Week” (due in March) is just the same old “Global Warming” lying propaganda wrapped up in a new package.

Asim
January 10, 2011 3:18 am

Hopefully another scientist who will write a similar paper with their own model can call it “The day the Earth stopped spinning”.
It will be interesting to see how the AGW activists review this paper, I think it could be hailed as prophetic work by them, good on em in advancing the civilisation of mankind by playing with their models for 1000 years and not actually being of any use now.(!)