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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…Ice melt, sea level rise, to be less severe than feared – study…
Ice melt, sea level rise, feared to be less severe than hoped – study
There. Fixed that for ’em…
This is interesting!
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lynn-davidson/2008/02/16/western-greenland-ice-growing-still-global-warming
The problem I find at times with this blog is that scepticism tends to go only one way. There is very little consistency in counter arguments for “mainstream” scientific opinion. For example, studies which point towards climate sensitivity at being around 1.5 to 2 degrees C are often favoured as showing there to be no reason to worry about climate change. The article quoted above suggesting we may be on track for a tripling or quadrupling of CO2 makes a valid point as far as I’m concerned. Who cares if the media has never talked about it before? A business as usual scenario could plausibly result in such levels. If such a case were to occur, then a climate sensitivity of only 1.5 C would still result in significant change. Should this not be cause for at least mild concern and planning to reduce future emissions? I’m not talking about raising alarm over it, but some sceptical consistency would be nice to see.
REPLY: One way? Apparently you have not read my position on those people who use a warped interpretation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to claim the greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere is “bogus”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/11/the-spencer-challenge-to-slayersprincipia/
or how about this one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/28/a-misinterpreted-claim-about-a-nasa-press-release-co2-solar-flares-and-the-thermosphere-is-making-the-rounds/
Look for another one shortly – Anthony
Dave says:
May 15, 2013 at 12:04 pm
“Should this not be cause for at least mild concern and planning to reduce future emissions? I’m not talking about raising alarm over it, but some sceptical consistency would be nice to see.”
There’s no need for concern. Since 1980 the price per Wattpeak for Solar Power has halfed once a decade; pretty much independent of subsidy regimes, simply through progressive efficiency gains in the many production processes involved, coupled with experience curve (scale) gains. Given the low climate sensitivity we seem to have we have many decades available to switch to new sources of energy, and in about 30 years a combination of solar power and battery or fuel synthesis storage will be economic. My estimate might be too optimistic and it might take 50 years; which would still be good enough.
There’s simply no need to rush it or subsidize a roll out of these things when we know they’ll only make our economies less viable. Well we know that’s not how it works and solar power is used as centerpiece for a giant scam but that’s not the fault of the technology.
As its numerical value is not observable, the climate sensitivity (aka equilibrium climate sensitivity) is a scientifically illegitimate concept.
Thanks Phil, but I would think that this is verifiable through direct measurement rather than theoretical calculation. In other words, take a sample of air and use proven spectroscopic and other methods to identify each element and compound and its ratio in parts per million, and then simply log the results in a completed table. This should be categorized right down to the last PPM and if it doesn’t add up to a million I want to know where our knowledge and techniques are lacking and why.
Call this a scientific control to gauge our ability to determine such minute quantities, especially since we can allegedly do the same for far off planets, stars, nebulas and galaxies, not to mention allegedly in ice cores and sediments too. It’s not a trick question, just a genuine appeal for truth. Please note that identifying a few of the present compounds and then “calculating” the remainder is NOT what I had in mind. So can we do this? Does it ever happen?
Oxygen is removed from the atmosphere when critters breathe and added to it when plants thrive. This dynamic alone trumps the lazy method of guesstimating any part of the chemical makeup of air.
Willey Ley in An Engineers dreams said to flood the Qattarra Depression, Also there is the Danikil Lake Assal and the Dead Sea. The flooding would probably kickstart the greening of the Sahara and evaporation would allow the collection of sodium hydroxide to put back in the ocean and increase the alkalinity to reduce acidification.
Blade says:
May 15, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Phil. [May 15, 2013 at 7:03 am] says:
Blade [May 15, 2013 at 12:06 am] says:
Wow! CO2 quadrupling.
Tell you what, now I really would like the answer to a great question posed by Elmer here, and that is this … What other components of air will be displaced from the PPM total by the C02 increase?
In other words, if C02 gets to 1000 ppm, what other gases will be “removed” from the air makeup? If those removed gases are better GHG’s than C02 the net effect with be less greenhouse effect ( naturally assuming air pressure remains constant ). Can’t wait to hear them try to slip out of this one 🙂
Oxygen is removed from the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, about three molecules of O2 for every molecule of CO2 produced.
Thanks Phil, but I would think that this is verifiable through direct measurement rather than theoretical calculation.
Well we know the composition of the fuels we burn so we can estimate that overall, burning those fuels removes 3 O2 molecules/CO2 produced, this is also known by measurement. As a result we would expect a corresponding reduction in O2 to go along with the increase in CO2.
It’s also shown by measurement: http://www.worldgreen.org/images/stories/KeelingOxygenCurve.jpg
Re rgbatduke says: May 14, 2013 at 10:20 pm
Abuse of statistics is also covered in this old article which is unfortunately not on line:
“A Matter of Opinion – Are life scientists overawed by statistics?”, William Feller, Scientific Research, February 3, 1969.
[Begin quote (upper case added for emphasis)]
To illustrate. A biologist friend of mine was planning a series of difficult and laborious observations which would extend over a long time and many generations of flies. He was advised, in order to get “significant” results, that he should not even look at the intervening generations. He was told to adopt a rigid scheme, fixed in advance, not to be altered under any circumstances.
This scheme would have discarded much relevant material that was likely to crop up in the course of the experiment, not to speak of possible unexpected side results or new developments. In other words, the scheme would have forced him to throw away valuable information – AN ENORMOUS PRICE TO PAY FOR THE FANCIED ADVANTAGE THAT HIS FINAL CONCLUSIONS MIGHT BE SUSTAINED BY SOME MYSTICAL STATISTICAL COURT OF APPEALS.
[End quote]
Well that’s one compound. So I guess the answer is no?
Looking for actual measurment of all 100% of the chemical makeup of air, no guestimates or calculations or assumptions. A table of all ingredients in PPM. Make believe we were on another planet and have a sample of the atmosphere and want to determine it’s composition and detail it in a report. Does it ever get done? Has it ever been done?
I’m not trolling you, it’s a truly skeptical and Missouri-style “show me” type of query. I see PPM thrown around like tablespoons in a recipe or gallons in a gas station. I am starting to suspect everything now, especially precision to hundredths of a part per million.
This is one of the consequences of the damage that the AGW hoaxsters have done to Science itself. Alarmism is everywhere, dwarfing the unenlightened eras of the past and even exceeding the countless and never-ending historical examples that Steve Goddard finds daily. Trust is no longer an option when the world starts to resemble the Matrix. IMHO.
2000ppm by 2100!
Grrr. Offset … how much? Which direction? Labelling is obscure. What does “m” stand for? Minutes? months? which direction (+ or – ) ?
Hilarious. Oxygen starts out (now) at about 200,000 ppm. Increasing CO2 by, say, 400 ppm would affect oxygen by 2% of 1%. Not even a rounding error. Not detectable.
Negligible, means “can safely be neglected”, immaterial, irrelevant, insignificant, meaningless. Like your posts.