“It’s the most dire prediction yet”!!!
Guest post by David Middleton
Featured image borrowed from here.
In even the bleakest climate change scenarios for the end of this century, science has offered hope that global warming would eventually slow down. But a new study published Monday snuffs out such hope, projecting temperatures that rise lockstep with carbon emissions until the last drops of oil and lumps of coal are used up.
Global temperatures will increase on average by 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees F) over preindustrial levels by 2300 if all of Earth’s fossil fuel resources are burned, adding five trillion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere, according to the research by Canadian scientists published in Nature Climate Change. In the Arctic, average temperatures would rise by 17 degrees C (30.6 degrees F).
Those conclusions are several degrees warmer than previous studies have projected.
If these temperatures do become reality, greenhouse gases would transform Earth into a place where food is scarce, parts of the world are uninhabitable for humans, and many species of animals and plants are wiped out, experts say.
“It would be as unrecognizable to us as a fully glaciated world,” says Myles Allen, head of a climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Allen was not involved in the new study, but his research has focused on carbon’s cumulative impacts on climate.
Noting that it took less warming, 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F), to lift the world out of the Ice Age, Allen said, “That’s the profundity of the change we’re talking about.”
[…]
What croc of schist!
First off, we haven’t been lifted “out of the Ice Age.” Earth has been in an ice age since the Oligocene. We are fortunate enough to be living in an interglacial stage of an ice age.
The current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide doesn’t even break out of the Cenozoic noise level…
This latest bit of nonsense from NatGeo is based on Katarzyna et al., 2016. Here’s the abstract…
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | LETTER
The climate response to five trillion tonnes of carbon
Katarzyna B. Tokarska, Nathan P. Gillett, Andrew J. Weaver, Vivek K. Arora & Michael Eby
Nature Climate Change (2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate3036 Received 29 July 2015 Accepted 21 April 2016 Published online 23 May 2016
Concrete actions to curtail greenhouse gas emissions have so far been limited on a global scale1, and therefore the ultimate magnitude of climate change in the absence of further mitigation is an important consideration for climate policy2. Estimates of fossil fuel reserves and resources are highly uncertain, and the amount used under a business-as-usual scenario would depend on prevailing economic and technological conditions. In the absence of global mitigation actions, five trillion tonnes of carbon (5 EgC), corresponding to the lower end of the range of estimates of the total fossil fuel resource3, is often cited as an estimate of total cumulative emissions4, 5, 6. An approximately linear relationship between global warming and cumulative CO2 emissions is known to hold up to 2 EgC emissions on decadal to centennial timescales7, 8, 9, 10, 11; however, in some simple climate models the predicted warming at higher cumulative emissions is less than that predicted by such a linear relationship8. Here, using simulations12 from four comprehensive Earth system models13, we demonstrate that CO2-attributable warming continues to increase approximately linearly up to 5 EgC emissions. These models simulate, in response to 5 EgC of CO2 emissions, global mean warming of 6.4–9.5 °C, mean Arctic warming of 14.7–19.5 °C, and mean regional precipitation increases by more than a factor of four. These results indicate that the unregulated exploitation of the fossil fuel resource could ultimately result in considerably more profound climate changes than previously suggested.
We analyze prescribed-concentration simulations from… (CMIP5) driven by the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 Extension scenario (RCP8.5-Ext)…
In summary:
- Make a WAG as to the total fossil fuel resource potential (presumably the authors know the difference between reserves and resources).
- Assume mankind will burn all of it over the next 284 years.
- Apply RCP 8.5 “The stuff nightmares are made from”.
- Issue “most dire prediction yet.”
I will give them “credit” for not using the phrase “business as usual.” However, the following quote from the abstract is just a wordy version of “business as usual.”
In the absence of global mitigation actions, five trillion tonnes of carbon (5 EgC), corresponding to the lower end of the range of estimates of the total fossil fuel resource, is often cited as an estimate of total cumulative emissions.
RCP 8.5 is bad science fiction…
Based on a real world “business as usual” emissions scenario, with natural gas displacing oil at its current pace and no carbon tax, I come up with a CO2 right about inline with RCP 6.0, “a mitigation scenario, meaning it includes explicit steps to combat greenhouse gas emissions (in this case, through a carbon tax)“.
Then I took my real world “business as usual” relative concentration pathway and applied three reasonable climate sensitivities to it: 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5 °C per doubling of atmospheric CO2, starting at 280 ppmv (TCR 0.5, TCR 1.5 and TCR 2.5). HadCRUT4, referenced to 1850-1879 is clearly tracking very close to TCR 1.5…
Since it is generally assumed that at least half of the warming since 1850 was natural, the actual climate sensitivity would have to be significantly lower than 1.5 °C per doubling. Therefore, RCP 8.5 should never be described as “business as usual,” “expected” or a “baseline case.” Since its assumptions are mind mindbogglingly unrealistic, it shouldn’t be used in any serious publication. It is bad science fiction.
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Hello Mr. Middleton
First off, we haven’t been lifted “out of the Ice Age.” Earth has been in an ice age since the Oligocene. We are fortunate enough to be living in an interglacial stage of an ice age.
======——
Your opening statement in your argument in this article (as selected above) is not quite correct and creates confusion.
As per the terminology and its reference to the climatic periods, an Ice Age is actually not an ice age, it is a glacial period, the last one that ended ~18K years ago.
Colloquially an ice age some times is used in an argument or a conversation as to mean a glacial period.
The other way around is a fallacy………
Colloquially the Ice Age and a glacial period could be expressed as in the term of ice age, so you can say ice age and mean the Ice Age or a glacial period, but make sure that you stay in the terms of a glacial period.
Like the other day when a poster, Ira I think her name was, in her article referred to the last glacial period, the Ice Age, by using the term “ice age” and then clearly showed that she was actually referring to an ice age instead…….and the end of the last glacial period by default and automatically became the and of an ice age and the next glacial period therefor by implication of that reasoning (a confusing one I think) will start hundred of thousands of years later when the supposed next ice age will start.
I know the terminology is a real mess, but that is how it is…….till it will get better hopefully.
Please consider that when you could be not correct with your first sentence, your second one shows that Ira (hopefully got her name right) was wrong in her argument the other day.
Both of you contradict each other in the main point of argument, as per “ice age” versus glacial period (the Ice Age)…..
cheers
I’m a geologist. I don’t speak colloquial-eese.
The geological definition of “ice age” is a period in which at least one of the polar regions has year-round ice or snow cover.
The alternating advances and retreats of Quaternary continental ice sheets are referred to as glacial and interglacial stages.
The Phanerozoic Eon (last 540 million years has experienced at least four ice ages…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Phan_CO2.png
The current ice age began during the Oligocene, or possibly late Eocene…
It’s not certain the Mesozoic “Ice House”, ie a long interval of cold climate, actually included an “ice age” with permanent ice or snow at low elevation high latitudes. There was definitely snow at the poles, but whether it remained all year or not is unknown. Ice of course even less so.
But maybe you have more recent information.
The other Phanerozoic ice houses, such as the present one, did however definitely have ice ages.
The key point is Antarctica. Its ice sheet has been present since at least the Oligocene. While it almost certainly shrank during the Miocene and Mid-Pliocene, there is no indication that it totally melted.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031018294902518
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n5/full/ngeo2119.html
Year-round polar ice cover has been the exception, rather than the norm over the Phanerozoic Eon.
David Middleton
May 24, 2016 at 2:22 pm
I’m a geologist. I don’t speak colloquial-eese.
—————
Thank you for the reply.
First, no every one reading and commenting here is geologist.
Second if you do not speak and do not consider colloquial-eese than you by default accept that putting an equal sign between the Ice Age and an ice age, or a glacial period and an ice age is not correct,and a mistake,,,,,,,,, what actually is and constitutes as the “jumping” platform of your article.
In the paper you picked at, “out of the Ice Age ” means “out of the last glacial period”. (the Ice Age = the last glacial period, not colloquially , properly)
glacial period = ice age only colloquially, otherwise these two kind of periods different to each other in meaning.
cheers
I agree completely that the current ice house has suffered an ice age. With waxing and waning ice sheets in both hemispheres for almost three million years and a massive ice sheet in the southern hemisphere for about 34 million years, this is the biggest ice age since the Carboniferous-Permian monster of the Paleozoic.
Yep. We are still in an ice age. The only debatable point is whether or not ice age conditions persisted throughout the Miocene.
As I was taught back in high school, when communicating (either written or oral) you must always keep your audience in mind.
If you are writing to other scientists, avoiding colloquialisms is required.
If you are writing to lay people, avoiding the use of colloquialisms may result in misunderstandings.
Your desires to remain pure, while they may seem noble to you, can be counter productive if they result in your target audience not understanding what you are trying to get across.
They adopt the missionary position from the first words, with prim and prurious missionary bossyness uttering policy prescriptions with delusions of grandeur. “You bad boys have carbon-sinned, here’s a lovely new hell I’ve got cooking just for you”. I’m astonished how fast we are falling backwards culturally to an environmental Victoriana.
Does fossil fuel use actually accelerate global continental drift? Because, it seems to me that the only possible way to get a 14.4 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature is for Antarctica to glide on northward so that year round, brilliant white, South Pole albedo gets replaced half a year by dark seawater. Burn baby, burn!
It probably slows it down because we are de-lubricating the crust…
Well for six months of the year that brilliant white South Pole is a beautiful ebony black .
Albedo on the other hand remains about constant at 0.35, as has been verified from at least the last 16 years of observation of moonshine; excuse me, that’s earthshine.
There is one number for earth albedo; you don’t get to pick and choose your own local albedo, just as you don’t get to choose your own local Global mean Temperature.
G
Cameron is predicting worse than this if the UK leaves the EU
Worse??? Like cats and dogs living together?
These passages from the published paper instantly caught my attention:
“An approximately linear relationship between global warming and cumulative CO2 emissions is known to hold [for] up to 2 EgC emissions on decadal to centennial timescales” and “Here, using simulations
from four comprehensive Earth system models, we demonstrate that CO2-attributable warming continues to increase approximately linearly up to 5 EgC emissions. These models simulate, in response to 5 EgC of CO
2 emissions, global mean warming of 6.4–9.5◦C.”
Two obvious questions arise. First, if the modeled output has a 3 degree range of uncertainty centered around an 8 degree anomaly, how can the output of the model be used as a basis for the assertion that the response is linear? I can fit a lot of different types of curves in that band. Second, and more broadly, wouldn’t the linearity of the response be something that was forced via the computer’s programming? Aren’t they really just saying, in an oblique way, that up to now climate models have been programmed with a logarithmic response to CO2 omissions, but what if we programmed in a completely linear response – oh, look at that warming! WOW! We’ve got crocodiles in the Arctic.
I noticed ” projecting temperatures that rise lockstep with carbon emissions”. Have temperatures ever risen in lockstep with “carbon” emission? And why is it so hard to write “carbon dioxide”?
“Palm Trees in the Arctic”?!?!?!
And National Geographic reports this, “A New Study Suggests Yes”!?!?!
Does this study get into the details of just how burning fossil fuels will result in hydroponically grown palm trees?
Won’t burning fossil fuels also cause sea levels to rise flooding lots and lots of beachfront and miles-from-the-beachfront properties? (I’m sure the flooding where there is no land anyway will be even worse!)
Are they saying that burning fossil fuels is also responsible for plate tectonics? Burning fossil fuels is going to move Mount Everest to the North Pole?
Do any of the editors at National Geographic still read what they publish?
Or are they just out to make a “splash”?
ptolemy2
May 24, 2016 at 1:57 pm
—————————————-
Hello ptolemy2
Thanks for the reply.
Some times the problem is not with extremely exaggerated and foolish claims about the AGW impacts, but actually with the arguments against such claims…
In both cases of Mr. Middleton and Ira, as named in my comment above.
In principal they both wrong, as clearly contradicting each-other…..and therefor creating more confusion.
When crazy claims of CAGW can be at times silly and short term bubbles, with no any real effect in the progress of climate knowledge, the impact of the arguments against such claims could be at times very counterproductive.
Case in point to show this is the argumentative approach of Mr. Middleton and Ira…….
Both saying and telling every one subjected to their articles clearly one thing:
Be free and energetic, and hopefully fruitful in challenging the orthodoxy of climate science but as long as it covers the AGW part of it, but stay away from challenging the same orthodoxy when it comes to natural climate, the long term one.
Middleton’s argument forces the point that the knowledge about glacial – interglacial periods is good enough for it not to be challenged and questionable (problems may be minor but not a real problems) because you see we have data and know well enough for even bigger periods like the ice age periods.
And Ira has even a better “suggestion” that makes go away like magic the problem the data show about our interpretation of climate and climate change when it comes to the actual present interglacial, which for the lack of better word is shown to be an “alien” one when compared to previous ones in record.
Ira simply suggest that it could be acceptable (the anomaly) because you see this present interglacial is not in an ice age period as the previous ones actually were……
So is acceptable that it could be so much different and “deformed” when compared to the previous ones.
It could be acceptable that this interglacil happens to be ~2-3C warmer in its ~7K cooling trend because you see this one happens to be not in an ice age period as the previous ones in record….
So both points do suggest and offer support to the orthodoxy, indirectly and most probably unintended and unconsciously (not in purpose or motive )..
A 100K years of glacial period versus 15K years of interglacial periods by default increase the RF effect in climate……and an ~30ppm/1C relation (as per the “scientific” orthodox projections) versus 90ppm/1C relation (as per GCMs projections) increases even more the effect of RF in climate… In a 5-7C temp climatic swing versus ~3C the AGW is more plausible and easier to push it through the numbers and the extent of CAGW fiction becomes more imaginative.
There is a lot of problems with the understanding and the “certainty” of climate science in whole its aspects, anthropogenic and natural, long term and short term…..
Whole of it is still challengeable, as far as I can tell
cheers
Science relies on words and phrases having specific definitions. Colloquialism is the antithesis of scientific nomenclature.
The colloquial use of the phrase “ice age” has no geological significance. Referring to the most recent glacial stage (the Wisconsin Stage in North America) as “the Ice Age” is the equivalent of referring to yesterday as “the Day.”
On the chart below, you can see that East Antarctica was glaciated throughout the Miocene. This places the Miocene in an “ice age.” The sea level and oxygen isotope curves depict glacio-eustatic changes in sea level; most likely glacial-interglacial stage, albeit with a much lower amplitude as Late Pleistocene cycles.
http://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8301595/e3538733-d894-47b9-ad6b-2e9919fc8d50.jpg
http://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8301595_18064.htm
If you are writing for WUWT, then you aren’t writing to other scientists.
[??? And who are the other “scientists” writing for? Their politicians, and the bureaucrats who provided their next year’s funding increases? .mod]
The vast majority of the readers here are not professional scientists.
“In the Arctic, average temperatures would rise by 17 degrees C.”
It would have to do WAY better than that for the crocs to like it. I’ve lived in the Northern Territory (Australia) where the “norm” is around 30 C. and crocs abound. They don’t like the cold. If the arctic is normally somewhere around or below 0 C. (freezing point), no way are they going to like 17 C. (17 C. up from freezing = 17 C). In the tropics if it gets down to 25 C (Dry Season), we get the jumpers out! 17 C and we’d want to light a fire!!! No joke. 17 C is freezing cold when you’re used to the tropics.
Good point. Crocs clearly wouldn’t like the Arctic year-round even if 17 degrees C warmer.
The average high temperature in the Canadian Archipelago, for instance, in summer approaches 10 °C, while the average low temperature in July is above freezing, though temperatures below freezing are observed every month of the year. While crocs might tolerate 27 °C in summer, they’d have to swim away to balmier climes for the rest of the year.
Besides, the killer whales would probably eat them, at least the females. Would they all be of one sex, due to the cold climate?
In the Top End, as it’s known (Northern Territory), it’s usually 32 or 33 C. In the Dry Season (equivalent to Winter) it drops below 30 C., but never below about 25 C. Barramundi (fish) are all one sex while young. Not so with crocodiles, though. The cold wouldn’t influence that as they keep their… er… equipment tucked away inside their bodies.
the key word is “average”. Both dinosaurs and crocs could have hibernated during the winter.
“Could have” doesn’t mean they did. One half of the year the temps remain at 32 or 33 C. day and night, the other half they drop to around 27 C in the Northern Territory, which is why I used the “average” of 30 C. It’s still a long cry from 17 C.
Freezing cold at 17C? You guys are wimps! Here in Rockford, Illinois we have experienced -32.77C. We have also experienced +44.44C. Daytime highs occasionally fail to reach -20C.
As I realize you already know day length, snow cover and great distance from an ocean cause our extremes. Still, I envy your temps during winter
Seriously now: How much heat would it take to melt the world’s ice? And warm the ocean (more correctly prevent the transfer of oceanic heat to the atmosphere)? Might slow warming a bit. Add in evaporation to “absorb” heat and the timeline is fake.
I’m in the cold now, John – moved to Victoria’s mountain region which gets snow in Winter (I love it). We get -10 C here, so yes, to me now 17 C might seem like a heat-wave! 🙂 The thing with the tropics is the humidity. Throughout the world you’ll find crocs in tropical and sub-tropical regions, usually where “Winter” means the Dry Season when there is no rain, and “Summer” is the “Wet” when it rains all the time.
Further south, the heat changes and yes, I’ve experienced heat in the mid 40s C. I’ve never experienced your cold though – we’re going to need better housing down here for that! 🙂
You are right AD, I don’t like anything colder than 26C! I even use a heater in tropical Broome from June to August.
Exactly! And think of the people who never -ever- see 26 C., living in the cold. And idiotic Gang-Green think we should all be getting our knickers in a twist over 1 C. It’s an insult to ANY level of intelligence.
‘adding five trillion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere’
Oh, noes !!!
The atmosphere has a mass of about 11,350,000,000,000,000,000,000 lbs.
Five trillion metric tons of carbon seems rather trivial.
Yabbut, how many hiroshimas izzat?
They entirely skip mentioning that the half-life of atmospheric CO2 is about 5 years. It would be very hard to maintain the high CO2 they predict as the oceans and photosynthetic lifeforms would be sucking CO2 up faster and faster as the world greened like crazy. This would also mean much more transpired water vapor and more rain in many regions. The truth is in the details that they leave out.
Just to cheer you all up,
(These guys were hoping for this 10 years ago),
Enjoy.
Thanks!
Love the line about not having any cares and turning or our snow shovels into lawn chairs.
This hurts my head. Perhaps the only way to rationalize this report is that they assume a weather machine as depicted on the Underdog cartoon See link below.
After skimming through the whole paper, it appears that the weasel language that makes the results pointless are that there is an asserted “approximately” linear “relationship” between temperatures and “cumulative” CO2 emissions. They get an exponential rise in temperatures in the future based on assumptions about how fast emissions rates will grow in the future.
Several problems with this. First, given that they only postulate a linear “relationship” between temperatures and cumulative CO2 emissions, I’d like to know how they came up with the slope of this linear relationship. Since their charts indicate that from pre-industrial times to date, we haven’t yet emitted 1,000 trillion tons on their 5 trillion scale, and the total observed temperature rise to date is only a mere fraction of a degree centigrade spread over that 1,000 trillion tons, it’s hard (no, truly impossible) to believe that we have observational evidence of this slope that is accurate to within a half degree C, especially since we have no way of telling what portion of the observed temperature rise from pre-industrial times was due to CO2 and what was natural fluctuation (or due to other unknown factors).
Add to that the fudge factor about the relationship being “approximately” linear – which I’m taking to mean something that could be either somewhat exponential or somewhat logarithmic (sinusoidal is probably out of bounds), well that could throw the end point all over the place.
And anyone thinking that these unknowns are reflected in their 6.4C-9.5C range of outcomes is in for disappointment. That merely reflected the spread of the different models they used. God knows what unfounded assumptions were baked into the models.
Finally, they acknowledge that the emissions scenarios they consider extend “well outside the range” within which the parameters of model are observationally valid, but then just say that this defect is counterbalanced by using four different models. The stupidity of that assertion is just astounding. If you run the models outside the range within which the assumptions that went into the model can be empirically verified, you can’t trust the model’s output. Period.
Oh, great, that will be just like the golden age of the British Empire.
How are the crocodiles going to get there ? Sorry, but I didn’t waste 3 minutes of my life even skimming the BS.
The crocs are probably attracted to here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-24/raw-sewage-contaminating-antarctic-ecosystem-researchers-say/7437170
Croc-nados?
philincalifornia May 24, 2016 at 9:31 pm
“How are the crocodiles going to get there ?”
Greyhound bus? They just strap a handle on their back and plop themselves close to the luggage. The baggage handler thinks it’s an alligator-skin bag and tosses them in the the luggage compartment. Sneaky little b@stards, eh?
“projecting temperatures that rise lockstep with carbon emissions until the last drops of oil and lumps of coal are used up.”
And therein lies the problem, since when have temperatures risen in lockstep with co2, except for very brief periods?
” returning the climate to 52 million years ago ” finally a return to normal !!! The way it should be. The poor alligators are now suffering in limited areas. ( sarc)
Re-unite Pangea!
I wanna unified Gondwana!
We have always been at war with Laurasia!
Pannotia broke apart because, climate change
Vaalbara died for your sins
Ur oceanfront property for sale!
Music to watch continents go by: Tangerine Dream, Thru Metamorphic Rocks
Palm trees in the Arctic is a tropical paradise. Better than a glacial period. We have to burn all our fossil fuel reserves at the onset of the glacial period to raise atmospheric CO2 to 1,000 ppm and mitigate the cooling. If not enough, burn the forests to release more CO2. Glacial period is not pleasant. Canada and the northern states will be under a kilometer thick ice sheet. Burning fossil fuels and forests is our salvation.
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, there’s already a palmetto plague washing ashore on Long Island, NY. Before you know it, backyard gardeners there will be growing bananas & coconuts commercially and running Honduras and the Philippines out of business. Next thing you know, Maine will be a haven for sugar cane, and Nova Scotia will go into large scale avocado production. Here on Cape Cod coral reefs are already encroaching on harbor entrances, as the yearly average water temperatures climb into the 70s. Life is getting tough, I tell you!
We need DINOSAURS in the Arctic!
Nothing less!
Settle for crocs? No earthboiling way!
Crocs in the Arctic is so, kind of, like, DONE….
Dozens of old climate papers, dozens.
I mean, where’s the novelty in that?
In 2009 in Copenhagen, Ed Miliband was speaking about global warming bringing crocodiles in Stockholm.
By now.
What else is new?