Impact of climate change may be underestimated
By David Mark
26 March 2012 A new study suggests climate scientists may have underestimated the effect of greenhouse gases, with global temperatures now predicted to rise by between 1.4 and 3 degrees Celsius by 2050. The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team of international scientists who ran 10,000 computer simulations of climate models in an attempt to explore the range of global warming predictions made by climate scientists. The researchers found that while their results matched the predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the lower end, they were higher than earlier predictions at the higher end. One of the certainties about predicting climate change is uncertainty, which is why climate change professor David Frame and 26 of his colleagues from around the world have tried to narrow things down. “We set out to look at how a large range of climate models could try to span a range of uncertainties to try to get a better handle on the sort of range of plausible climates we might see in the next half century and beyond,” said Professor Frame, who works at the Victoria University of Wellington. […] “If people keep emitting fossil fuels in the way we expect, with no price on carbon or no future policy initiatives, we expect a range of 1.4 to 3 degrees by 2050,” he said. Those numbers are based on average temperatures between 1960 and 1990. At the bottom end it is similar to the last prediction made by the IPCC, but it exceeds that group’s prediction at the higher end. “What we’ve kind of got is just a broader sweep of that uncertainty range,” Professor Frame said. […] The journal has also published a paper which states that extreme weather events over the past decade have increased and were “very likely” caused by man-made global warming.
G.I.G.O. Garbage In = Garbage Out
Have you caught up on an analogue to this situation, where it was finally realized you could not 'model' snowpack.
Anyone looking at cycles of natural variation in temperature should realize from the get go that short term change is so dramatic as to make the 'analysis' problem more like one of vector analysis of waveforms.
When your model 'does not compute' it is time to reassess the validity of primary assumptions.
That is already the case with constant use of 'fudge factors' to give a multiplier effect to calculated effects of co2 feedbacks. That's not science. That's making the facts fit the hypothesis.
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. – a climatologist – is scathing about the basic reasons it is impossible to build a proper model, let alone presume you have anything useful for projecting forward from the present. Nor is he alone.
Nor is dealing with thieves taxing the world going to deal with the emergency they posit as our biggest problem. You of all people should know that means ignoring reality.
"If people keep emitting fossil fuels in the way we expect, with no price on carbon or no future policy initiatives, we expect a range of 1.4 to 3 degrees by 2050," he said.
Uh, no. And I mean emphatically, "NO". More like 7 – 8 degrees (minimum) by 2050. We will most likely see 1.4 to 3 degrees this summer (2012). By 2050, things will be absolutely hellish. ~Survival Acres~