Climate Predictions: Worst-Case May Be Most Accurate, Study Finds
news.nationalgeographic.com
news.nationalgeographic.com
For reference, during the last ice age, global temperatures were 5C colder than today. At that time, Chicago was under two miles of ice.
The best case would be for the environment to re-balance itself -- of course, human cause or not, our environment is not static and is destined to continual change.
Unfortunately James Lovelock's worst case scenario is an earth which is capable of producing enough food to support single digit percentages of the world's current population. That is a pretty brutal death sentence for the current state of human civilization.
The best long-term outcome for humanity is to use capitalism and science/technology to generate as much wealth as possible AND do as little damage to the environment as possible, but I think the "have a much lighter footprint and generate less wealth" option is off the table -- it's not going to be acceptable to generate less wealth than we have now, so really the most favorable outcome is to try to scale the wealth generation up faster than the harm done, and then use some wealth to ameliorate specific severe problems.
It does seem likely we can have a somewhat lighter footprint, or at least a more efficient one. The problem that lurks down that path is that if energy became more efficient it's possible people will just use more to do more, and the end result stays the same or even increases.
So I do think things like geoengineering and adapting to the changes have to be on the table. It's getting to a point where it seems irresponsible to not be exploring those options more fully.
I agree -- it's a big deal, but we have great natural experiments for some forms of geoengineering. Sulfur in the air is pretty well understood due to volcanos, with the main effects being cooling and some seriously awesome sunsets. It happens quickly, so if we wait a decade or two (with or without CO2 reductions), and see that climate change is causing clear problems, it is probably time to do the sulfur.
Our understanding is only getting better every year, so delaying action makes some sense. The most economically efficient thing is probably a moderate reduction in CO2, extreme reduction in point sources of pollution, and continuing to observe. Extreme cuts to CO2 would cause enough economic problems that they would be worse than the cure, and doing nothing at all seems like it has a higher expected cost, based on the evidence available today, than doing a moderate amount.
Some things we can do are not really restricted to reducing CO2 -- making cars more efficient in general saves money, reduces other much more direct and observable forms of pollution (local air pollution), etc. A few other specific fixes (cement production, agriculture, replacing coal with natural gas, ...) also seem prudent and overall cost savings, at least if done at the right time in capital equipment replacement lifecycle.
There's also iron seeding (to make algae).
Bill Gates is funding it. I still think his work on Polio eradication is more valuable, but this is pretty awesome too.
It also makes a difference if there's a seasonal change -- like, right now, all of the ice melts in the summer at the southern extent of an ice sheet, but if the temperature drops a critical amount, the ice lasts all summer, and starts to accumulate. Or temperature rises and the reverse happens.
The fastest Cray in 1990 could do (I think) 60 GFlops when loaded with 32 processors, which is roughly the sustained GFlops as a high end i7.
So clearly it is not a case of "just need a faster supercomputer and we will have an accurate prediction".
Reality is, from what I can tell, is that we don't have an accurate mathematical model of all the pieces that go into global climate to run on a supercomputer, no matter how powerful.
If the data was collected, linked together and published in an accessible form, more people could experiment with statistics, machine learning and visualization. Right now the data is in labyrinthine web forms, SOAP services, XLS files, GIS systems, etc. The barrier to entry needs to be lower.
Take the weather forecast as a (very) slimmed-down version of this problem. Yes, weather forecasts are better now than they were 20 years ago, but how much better? In the UK now, the 24h forecast is pretty accurate most of the time, but the three-day is very iffy, and a week out is still a crap shoot. That's despite a metric fuckton of satellite data and some serious hardware (the UK met office numbercruncher consumes more than a megawatt!).
We're always going to be making guesses here. It seems, to my non-climatologist brain anyway, that the most up-to-date models produce predictions that are fairly consistent with the real world data we have.
I would say the political and economic problems are much more important, and harder to solve.
Those factors may represent positive feedback, they may be negative feedback, or they may not exist at all.
But to me the further into the unknown we go, the further into the unknown we are, if that makes sense.
To be absolutely clear, I think the models probably work well enough for the near range. It's the far ranges I wonder about.
> "Satellite observations of clouds are sketchy, and contain errors."
A better paraphrase would be "they say that accurate data on one part of the system are hard to get, so they compared several models using another, correlated, part of the system, for which better data are readily available."
Also, since their claims relate to which of 16 models match "actual observed data" best, it's incorrect to characterize their work as using a model to prove their claims. The models are the subject of their claims, not tools used to prove them.
I'm not sure how you can determine whether their approach is good or bad from that article.
[Edit: ok, let's not all pile on.]
Models predicting GW are completely unproven. The fact that any number of models say the earth will warm is not further proof that these models are correct.
I have witnessed attempts to model some really complicated activity. This is typically done with massive amounts of data, we're talking millions of precise observations per day. These models are back tested with decades of daily data available. Most importantly, almost all of these models fail to produce and accurate prediction of the future.
Now, these climate scientists, with models that are based on mostly extrapolated data, want me to believe that their models accurately predict the future. To prove it we just have to wait 50 years to see if their predictions come true...
Along the way, they seem to take every opportunity to use current events as further evidence that their models are correct. If there's a hurricane, then it's GW, if there's an earthquake[1] it's global warming, if it's a cold winter[2] it's global warming. As if none of these things happened before we started burning coal and oil.
Here is how the models can be proved correct though:
Produce a single, completely objective method for measuring the earth's temperature using the exact same hardware, locations, and environments. No recalibrations, no changes to the equipment or its environment at all. Then take the current measurement, use their models to predict the next 10 years, use the exact same hardware to recalculate that measurement every year for the next 10 years. Then we'll really see how good these models are.
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/15972840.h... [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1341388/Globa...
From this dataset the measurement function can interpolate or extrapolate how ever much it wants, but it must use the same algorithm year after year.
There is nothing scientific (falsifiable) about this argument, and you seem plenty ignorant and dismissive to me.
Disregard if you're not American.
It's the same people that swore to me, up and down, bet me and made foolish statements that Romney was going to have some magic emotional boost and that Nate Silver was the devil working for the liberals and that his numbers were "wrong".
That you don't like the facts or that they don't fit with your world view does nothing to make them any less true.
I don't know why you're calling me names. I made a single comment that had to do with the actual issue of global warming and now that's grounds for me being a climate change zealot? I'll ask you again, do you realize that dismissing science as zealotry with no actual evidence or argument makes your position look less legitimate?
I care a lot about science - it distills reason by holding it accountable to observed reality. I dismiss your offensive reaction to alternative viewpoints. That should be obvious.
I'm tiring of repeating myself and I feel like I'm spamming. This is all I'll say unless you are interested in articulating yourself.
I doubt you respect this debate enough to bother, but then I won't be reading the next IPCC report either.
My point was not that consensus = correct. As someone who got to count many firsts for fellow LGBT people on Tuesday, I know that the majority is not always right. My point is very different. There are people who think that they have an opinion and that their opinion is as good as a hypothesis that is the result of data, research and people that are frankly smarter than them.
I'll again ask you, but this time in a more pointed manner. Do you have an alternative viewpoint about global warming and this article... or do you have alternative SCIENCE about global warming and this article?
You must have different data or analysis given your vehement denial of global warming... but I would have assumed you would have offered it before your 5th post in this thread. That's literally all I've been asking for from you. WHY do you not believe this article? Is that so much to ask?
edit: I see that you finally offered a single scratch of something that I can go look into. About the laziest way of engaging in a conversation, but at least it's something. I don't know why you're again insulting and dismissing me with that last sentence, I've literally been asking for this from the get-go and you're the one that held out.