2100 AD - A world of wild weather

[sandbender]

Interesting New Scientist article on climate change...

http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19325874.000&feedId=online-news_rss20

 

[leon-1]

Makes some interesting reading, I can't help but feel that all the projections that they make are terribly wrong.

So far all the predictions have been wrong about climate change, very few people theorized that changes that have happened in the UK over the last ten years would of happened as quickly as they have. If they have failed to manage to get it correct for individual countries so far how are they going to come up with a globale idea of what is happening.

As it is there are many factors to take into account and the general knock on effect that some of these factors have had in the past have not been predicted or factored into future predictions.

In other words they cannot program in a factor that they know nothing about untill after the event, by then it is a bit too late. A lot of thinking and theorizing has been kept well and truly within the box and this is a situation that requires people to be thinking outside of the box.

 

[ilan]

afraid i have to agree climate change is happening at a faster rate than predicted and i think we will soon lose control of it. thus small rises in temperature are causing larger than predicted increases in carbon releases /or the reduction in carbon netralization by the flora ilan

 

[rik_uk3]

afraid i have to agree climate change is happening at a faster rate than predicted and i think we will soon lose control of it. thus small rises in temperature are causing larger than predicted increases in carbon releases /or the reduction in carbon netralization by the flora ilan

I agree 100%, changes are going on at a very fast rate. I've now lived in South Wales for 18 years, and for the last 10 or 12 have not seen snow that lasts more than a couple of days for instance. Even the Beacon's snow cover seems to be less and less and I can see them from where I work. All we seem to have is a good summer, then mild, wet and windy weather; no four seasons anymore

 

[gregorach]

[...]If they have failed to manage to get it correct for individual countries so far how are they going to come up with a globale idea of what is happening.[...]

That's a common misconception about climate modelling - it's actually far easier to get a general idea of large-scale, long-term trends than it is to predict small-scale changes. Once you're down to level of a single country, you're not really dealing with climate any more - you're looking at weather. Climate is far more predictable than weather.

 

[Kane]

Fast changes in climate aren't unknown - the Smallholder magazine ran an article a couple of years ago that showed changes occuring in as little as 25 years - I'll try to hunt the mag out - it's in the house .... somewhere

 

[leon-1]

That's a common misconception about climate modelling - it's actually far easier to get a general idea of large-scale, long-term trends than it is to predict small-scale changes. Once you're down to level of a single country, you're not really dealing with climate any more - you're looking at weather. Climate is far more predictable than weather.

Fair point there, but the point stands that if the weather here changes to a degree that it can have a greater effect on something else it cannot be modelled or factored into the model hence the outcome is unknown.

I believe that this is one of the issues facing people with the melting of perma-frost in Siberia and with that the release of methane, the methane then accelerating global warming and having a greater effect on climate change.

Some thing that could not be factored into climate change because the scentists just can't figure out an unknown, they had thought about it, they have terms like "tipping point" for it, but it is a best guess scenario when you have a peat bog the size of France and Germany combined thawing out for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago.

You can take a good stab in the dark at how many tonnes of methane has been encased inside it for all that time, but it is still a SWAG and as a result the factors going into the model are wrong from the beginning.

 

[gregorach]

Certainly there is a large degree of uncertainty about feedback effects (both positive and negative) and this is largely what's responsible for the apparent over-optimism. Then again, you have to remember that things like the IPCC reports are consesus documents, aiming to lay out the most likely scenarios given current knowledge, and that many individual climatologists are much more concerned about the potential for severe feedback effects.

There's also the consideration that at some point negative feedbacks have to start predominating, otherwise the Earth's climate would never have been stable anyway. It's quite possible that we're on a S-shaped curve, that takes off quite rapidly (due to positive feedback dominating) but then slows down (due to negative feedback dominating). So it's entirely possible that the overall change will turn out about as expected, but that it will ocurr in a non-linear fashion, with most of the change happening earlier than you might expect.

 

[leon-1]

I do appreciate the intracacies of it, it may not always seem like it, but I do. The S shaped curve that you mention there is tonnes of evidence to suggest you are correct. Yet what we are seeing at the moment would suggest that we are just at the beginning of the S, it will get a lot worse a lot faster is one possible scenario.

We know that the planet goes through cycles of global warming and global cooling, but what we have never been overly clear on is how long these phases appear to of taken to implement going either way and at what rate they progress.

We cannot for instance say that "The Day After Tomorrow" scenario hasn't happened many times in the planets past, wasn't it the baby mammoth that they found in a glacier was found with food in it's throat which suggest extreme cooling.

The point that I was trying to make is that the models can give us ideas, but they are rarely going to be 100% correct / accurate. The likelyhood is that if they are even accurate to a level of 75% then they have done very well to model to that level of accuracy.

Generally the way the creators of such models give themselves leeway by providing a generous bracket, but unknown factors can have a positive or negative effect on the accuracy of a model. Before making a model what are they basing thier base line (norm) on when nobody really knows what the norm is.

Other things like the reindustrialisation of China haven't been studied for long enough for thier impact to have made significant difference to models and such, the possibility of war between America and Iran is a factor that needs to be modelled. All of these things have an effect. So far research looks like it indicates that the change is not linear at all.

 

[BOD]

..., wasn't it the baby mammoth that they found in a glacier was found with food in it's throat which suggest extreme cooling.

Not disputing any thing else you are saying but isn't it more likely that the baby mammoth choked and or fell into water and drowned and what was found was vomitus rather than snap freezing between bites?

 

[leon-1]

Not disputing any thing else you are saying but isn't it more likely that the baby mammoth choked and or fell into water and drowned and what was found was vomitus rather than snap freezing between bites?

That's just it, nobody knows for sure. Personally I couldn't say one way or the other and people that work on absolutes 100% of the time are foolish, why? Because nothing is 100% certain apart from we all will of been born at one stage and we will all die at some stage. What happens inbetween cannot be predicted or computed with any certainty and as with human life the life of the planet is proving to be very much similair.

The organs of human body have to have somewhat of a symbiotic relationship for the overall body to survive, instabilities in any one of the systems of the human body can cause quite drastic effects on the overall health of a person.

There are many different organisms on this planet, most work in a symbiotic relationship with others and by affecting one relatioship there is a domino effect that moves onto the rest of the organisms.

The tipping effect that was mentioned before, in a case of human illness could be very serious, the doctors would for certain be trying a damn site harder to fix it, it could trigger so many other things, but because we have not really got enough knowledge about what we have already damaged and how the planet really works people have virtually no idea on how to fix it or how to predict what is to come.

The question that begs to be asked for me is "Why do the people in power require diagrams to be shown something that they already know and can feel themselves?", that is then followed by "Isn't showing diagrams to things that don't understand what you do with children?", then we could go with "If they are not bright enough than to be able to see beyond there own corrupt bank balances, then why do we employ them in the first place?"

Sorry rant over

 

[BOD]

Completely agree.

They require proof that human impact is causing climate change but anyone can see if they are honest with themselves that what we put out into the environment is not good at all in itself whether or not it is the main factor in climate change or just an add on to cyclical changes