Climate change

[Al_U_Card]

Sounds familiar...

 

The Practice of Personal Attacking Global Warming Skeptics – Rather than Responding to Their Scientific Criticisms

By Bill Gray

 

While visiting the Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Poona, India in August 1966 I met and interacted with a young (~21) and promising Indian meteorologist named Jagdish Shukla. I have not been surprised to see his later scientific rise and very successful meteorological career in the US.

 

At an evening social event in Poona (August 1966) a number of us (including Shukla) were discussing the then recent China-India War (1962) over China’s infringement on India’s northern border and the political tensions which had continued up to that time. China was then in its isolated cultural–revolution period and was belligerent to most outside nations. China’s strong intervention in Korea (1950-53) was still relatively fresh in people’s minds. The US was in the early stages of the Vietnam War and there was worry about China’s possible intervention on the side of the North Vietnamese as they had done in Korea. China was also rapidly advancing in its effort to develop a nuclear bomb. Some people (at the time) were advocating the bombing of China’s nuclear facility before it had developed the bomb (as Israelis did to the Iraq nuclear development facility a number of years later). We discussed the desirability of the US and its allies taking such action. As best I can remember, I did not advocate taking such action and I’m glad that no such action was ever taken.

 

Fast forward 35 years later to a NOAA Climate meeting Shukla and I attended in Washington around 2001. I was trying to obtain NOAA funding for my CSU project hurricane research which was partly involved with seasonal prediction. My talk at this meeting was directed to the complicated nature of the earth’s climate system and the lack of confidence we should have in the then current numerical climate prediction models of rising CO2 amounts causing large global warming. I specifically criticized the unrealistic positive water-vapor feedback in the climate models, the inability of the models to resolve individual convective units, the lack of proper inclusion of deep ocean circulation processes in the models, and other factors. This was not what the government officials and most of the meeting attendees wanted to hear (and I didn’t get the funding I was seeking). I now see that I was naïve in thinking that the global warming question was not totally dominated by governmental and environmental politics unrelated to the science behind the warming issue.

 

I expected and was prepared for negative comments about the meteorological problems I had pointed out in my talk. The first response came from Shukla. But he didn’t question anything I had just presented. He went directly after me personally – by announcing I was the type of fellow who had earlier advised the bombing of China’s nuclear development facility. He implied by this that I was the type of person too far out of the mainstream to be trusted on any of the serious questions concerning the AGW topic. Shukla was not at all hesitant about bringing up and twisting what he thought I had said 35 years earlier. I was 36 at the time I was then in Poona and about 70 when I gave my later NOAA talk.

 

These types of personal attacks on us AGW skeptics (unrelated to the physics or science of the topic) are not so unusual. I have heard a number of similar stories about the aggressive isolation and criticisms of skeptics who do not follow the global warming party-line. Most skeptics, as a result, are not able to obtain federal grant support. They pay a high price for trying to tell the truth.

 

The attempt of the warming crowd to discredit us skeptics can take many forms other than the merits or demerits of the scientific questions we ask. Warming proponents will typically not discuss or defend the physics behind the AGW hypothesis or how their climate models produce the large global warming results they do. They tend to have a ‘take-it’ or ‘leave-it’ mentality or they refuse to discuss the warming mechanisms of their models on the grounds that the scientific questions have already been settled.

 

The warmers usual response to criticism seems to be to try to dig up whatever negative personal information they can uncover about the skeptic and then from this manufactured degraded outlook to imply that the science behind the skeptics criticisms must be similarly flawed.

 

Why are the warmers so afraid to have open and honest discussion about the basic nitty-gritty assumptions of their AGW hypothesis? I think it is because they well know (but will not admit) that the science behind the AGW hypothesis is ripe with conceptual errors and might (or likely), in the long run, be proven to be wrong.

I am but one of many AGW skeptics who have been subjected to the warmer’s attempts to isolate, ignore, and personally marginalize us, in order to deflect attention away from the basic scientific problems confronting the AGW hypothesis and its model output representations. I doubt that the global warming crowd would so act if they were really confident of the reality of their science. The warmers are now on a downward slide (which I believe they know but won’t admit) and cannot or will not face-up to the fact that they have picked the wrong horse to bet their future scientific reputations upon. The older warmers are now too far down the AGW road to be able to gracefully extricate themselves. Other warmers may feel that their prestige-enhancements and the governmental funding rewards they have gotten have been worth it – even if their warming alarms are later proven wrong.

[Zelandakh]

Sounds familiar...

 

The Practice of Personal Attacking Global Warming Skeptics – Rather than Responding to Their Scientific Criticisms

By Bill Gray

Surprised you didn't link to this here.

[y66]

Einstein re-interpreted existing data to good effect. Anyway, each day brings more climate data. For example, in the UK we're experiencing unusually high rainfall.

 

The OP addresses the causes of climate-change and what we should do about it. As Winstonm regards the subject closed, perhaps he would share his views on practical remedies. For example, the UK government is currently deciding at which London airport, we should build a new runway. Should we instead be ploughing up existing runways? and should most rational people agree broadly on the way to proceed?

LOL at the suggestion that the runway decision will be made by rational people. It will be made by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin and MPs claiming that the new runway will increase airport capacity by 50 percent and usher in a new golden era of jobs, trade, travel and prosperity.

 

Prosperity for whom Mr. McLoughglin?

 

It's normal to exploit the commons at the expense of others and claim it is for the best but this is hardly rational.

 

Most rational people I know would say if you want a new runway, fine, provided the people who benefit are covering all of the costs, including environmental costs, and not shifting them onto others.

[Al_U_Card]

Surprised you didn't link to this here.

He is welcome to take on John Stuart Mill...as for his "analysis" of what "denialism" is and its motivations, it doesnt seem to apply, at least in my case. Still, it is good to know just how the other side thinks and believes.

 

Not addressing the scientific questions is a greater issue than motivation, although that is usually important in understanding the position held and defended, on both sides.

[nige1]

Most rational people I know would say if you want a new runway, fine, provided the people who benefit are covering all of the costs, including environmental costs, and not shifting them onto others.

A massive tax on aviation-fuel might begin to cover the environmental costs of air-travel. Just as banning private-transport from urban areas might be a tentative start to reducing car-pollution. And so on... But are those who've made their mind up about the climate-change issue (on either side of the debate) prepared to live with the logical consequences of their beliefs? I fear that our selfish greed and amazing ability to rationalize might prevent us from doing anything sensible :(

 

Far easier for both sides to go on falsifying and ignoring data or attempting to export problems.

[Al_U_Card]

There is also economics viz

 

"In Nevada there is a lot of sunlight and a lot of solar panels, but they generate electricity at a cost of 25 – 30c per kWhr. With subsidies and tax benefits, the cost “falls” to 15c. (In this context, the word “falls” means “is dropped on other people”.) But the retail rate for electricity is 12.5c. So having solar panels doesn’t help you much unless you can sell that excess electricity, which the state of Nevada was buying at 12.5c. That price sounds fine and dandy til we find out that they could have bought the same electricity at wholesale rate of around two cents.

 

So Nevada has decided that’s what the state will pay… 2c, not 12.5c. The latest decision is to apply normal free market rules. Nevada will now pay wholesale rates for electricity."

 

Obama promised skyrocketing electricity prices....now instead of nuking other countries/ideologies/faiths, perhaps nuking the energy sector with reactors might solve several issues at the same time?

[y66]

A massive tax on aviation-fuel might begin to cover the environmental costs of air-travel. Just as banning private-transport from urban areas might be a tentative start to reducing car-pollution. And so on... But are those who've made their mind up about the climate-change issue (on either side of the debate) prepared to live with the logical consequences of their beliefs? I fear that our selfish greed and amazing ability to rationalize might prevent us from doing anything sensible :(

 

Far easier for both sides to go on falsifying and ignoring data or attempting to export problems.

+1 x 2 for distinguishing rational from rationalize and for mentioning banning private-transport from urban areas.

 

-1 for "might prevent".

[Daniel1960]

IMO, we should try to keep an open mind. In science, there are no final truths.

 

There remain uncertainties about climate change. Not least, the question raised in the OP: If we're under immediate threat, should we allow for that contingency by changing our behaviour? What remedies are likely to be effective. For example

• Are solar and nuclear power a better bet than wind-farms? and,
• Should we urgently curb aviation and private transport?

 

The other issue with climate change is whether the changes are more harmful or beneficial. There is no optimal climate for the planet, as some species will almost benefit preferentially over others as changes occur. That said, life tends to prosper during the warmer, wetter periods compared to the colder, drier ones. The real question, is at what point is too hot? This has not been adequately answered, although some scientists have stated that after a 1.8C temperature rise, the detriments begin to outweigh the benefits. There is little argument that life has benefitted from the recent temperature rise; plants have flourished, the growing season has expanded, and animals have not perished during bitter winters. I doubt that many humans wish to return to the colder periods either, except for some winter enthusiasts. Perhaps we should focus on maintaining the most reasonable climate for all.

[Al_U_Card]

Reverting to the varve thing, I have seen others that show a MCA in the southern hemisphere but I will allow that sediments have issues as climate proxies. (Tiljander comes to mind and ClimateAudit has some good stuff on other studies that are used in the same analysis but with different interpretations as to how the width relates to conditions...)

 

As for the benefit/risk calcs, I am still on the "Is there a problem?". While the absence of the upper tropospheric hotspot is a model issue, I saw this recently concerning stratospheric cooling.

 

http://data.remss.com/msu/graphics/TLS/plots/RSS_TS_channel_TLS_Global_Land_And_Sea_v03_3.png

 

Aside from the effects of El Chichon and Mt. Pinatubo, that looks like a fairly steady-state climate system to me.

[1eyedjack]

Heat is work and work's a curse

And all the heat in the Universe

Is gonna cooool down 'cos it can't increase

Then there'll be no more work and there'll be perfect peace

Yeah - that's entropy, man!

[hrothgar]

The other issue with climate change is whether the changes are more harmful or beneficial. There is no optimal climate for the planet, as some species will almost benefit preferentially over others as changes occur. That said, life tends to prosper during the warmer, wetter periods compared to the colder, drier ones. The real question, is at what point is too hot? This has not been adequately answered, although some scientists have stated that after a 1.8C temperature rise, the detriments begin to outweigh the benefits. There is little argument that life has benefitted from the recent temperature rise; plants have flourished, the growing season has expanded, and animals have not perished during bitter winters. I doubt that many humans wish to return to the colder periods either, except for some winter enthusiasts. Perhaps we should focus on maintaining the most reasonable climate for all.

 

For ***** sake Daniel, are you really stupid enough to be echoing arguments from "C02 is green".

There was a time when you at least pretended to be something other than a sociopathetic, brain dead troll.

 

No one other than trolls frames these arguments around the "optimum" temperature for the earth.

Its a meaningless construction and not conducive to an informed debate.

 

On the other hand, there is a lot of great discussion around the rate of speed at which the climate is changing and how this impacts the ability of species and population centers to adapt.

 

There's also a lot of really good discussion around the ethics of climate change and whether one relatively small group of people should be allowed to generate enormous negative externalities that impact everyone else on earth.

[Daniel1960]

For ***** sake Daniel, are you really stupid enough to be echoing arguments from "C02 is green".

There was a time when you at least pretended to be something other than a sociopathetic, brain dead troll.

 

No one other than trolls frames these arguments around the "optimum" temperature for the earth.

Its a meaningless construction and not conducive to an informed debate.

 

On the other hand, there is a lot of great discussion around the rate of speed at which the climate is changing and how this impacts the ability of species and population centers to adapt.

 

There's also a lot of really good discussion around the ethics of climate change and whether one relatively small group of people should be allowed to generate enormous negative externalities that impact everyone else on earth.

 

It would be nice if your posts on this thread were informative and respectful, rather than antagonistic and propaganda. Several scientists have investigated this issue, and I will link to a few of these articles.

 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01387.x/full

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/2973.short

http://www.perc.org/articles/benefits-climate-change

http://goklany.org/library/Goklany_WIREs.pdf

[PassedOut]

The chickens are coming home to roost: 2015 Was Hottest Year in Recorded History, Scientists Say

 

“The whole system is warming up, relentlessly,” said Gerald A. Meehl, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

 

It will take a few more years to know for certain, but the back-to-back records of 2014 and 2015 may have put the world back onto a trajectory of rapid global warming, after period of relatively slow warming dating to the last powerful El Niño, in 1998.

 

Politicians attempting to claim that greenhouse gases are not a problem seized on that slow period to argue that “global warming stopped in 1998” and similar statements, with these claims reappearing recently on the Republican presidential campaign trail.

 

Statistical analysis suggested all along that the claims were false, and the slowdown was, at most, a minor blip in an inexorable trend, perhaps caused by a temporary increase in the absorption of heat by the Pacific Ocean.

 

“Is there any evidence for a pause in the long-term global warming rate?” said Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s climate-science unit, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in Manhattan. “The answer is no. That was true before last year, but it’s much more obvious now.”

Fortunately this has become clear to all, with the exception of a few knuckleheads.

[y66]

From Tim McDonnell's story at citylab:

 

 

Shattered global temperature records are becoming increasingly commonplace, thanks to climate change; with today's announcement, all five of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last decade. But the amount by which 2015 shattered the previous record, in 2014, was itself a record, scientists said. That's due in part to this year's El Niño, characterized by exceptionally high temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

 

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the effects of El Niño only really appeared in the last few months of the year, and that 2015 likely would have been a record year regardless.

 

"2015 was warm right from the beginning; it didn't start with El Niño," he said. "The reason this is such a record is because of the long-term trend, and there is no evidence that trend has slowed or paused over the last two decades."

[Al_U_Card]

Would that be before or after (Gavin Schmidt's) "adjustments" to the historical record?

 

 

Even a knucklehead has a head to use, whereas a true believer only has his faith that the high-priests would never lie about dogma...

 

Speaking of which, [CO2] FORCING of the climate is just what exactly? (From a comment regarding forcing efficacies and their "vagueness".)

 

"According to the IPCC, radiative forcing is defined as follows:

 

"The radiative forcing of the surface-troposphere system due to the perturbation in or the introduction of an agent (say, a change in greenhouse gas concentrations) is the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus long-wave; in Wm-2) at the tropopause AFTER allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, but with surface and tropo-spheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values".

This is not the definition of a measurable physical quantity.

 

You can't measure the change in the radiation balance at the troposphere *after* the stratosphere has readjusted, but with the surface and tropospheric temperatures *held fixed*. The troposphere itself is an indeterminate thing. So yes, radiative forcing (as per the IPCC) cannot be measured. It can exist Only in climate models. It seems very strange that one of fundamental concepts of climate science cannot exist in the physical world only in computer models."

[y66]

Guest post from Piers J. Sellers, the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times.

 

I’M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

 

This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?

 

After handling the immediate business associated with the medical news — informing family, friends, work; tidying up some finances; putting out stacks of unread New York Times Book Reviews to recycle; and throwing a large “Limited Edition” holiday party, complete with butlers, I had some time to sit at my kitchen table and draw up the bucket list.

 

Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon. Instead, I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible.

 

I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own, not NASA’s). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating.

 

Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in Paris set a goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

 

While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.

 

It’s doubtful that we’ll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises, model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.

 

All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.

 

Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.

 

The initial heavy lifting will have to be done by policy makers. I feel for them. It’s hard to take a tough stand on an important but long-term issue in the face of so many near-term problems, amid worries that reducing emissions will weaken our global economic position and fears that other countries may cheat on their emissions targets.

 

Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term impacts to the climate.

 

Ultimately, though, it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world to save us. They must come up with the new technologies and the means of implementing them. The technical and organizational challenges of solving the problems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution are enormous, and they must be solved within a few decades with minimum disruption to the global economy. This will likely entail a major switch to nuclear, solar and other renewable power, with an electrification of our transport system to the maximum extent possible. These engineers and industrialists are fully up to the job, given the right incentives and investments. You have only to look at what they achieved during World War II: American technology and production catapulted over what would have taken decades to do under ordinary conditions and presented us with a world in 1945 that was completely different from the late 1930s.

 

What should the rest of us do? Two things come to mind. First, we should brace for change. It is inevitable. It will appear in changes to the climate and to the way we generate and use energy. Second, we should be prepared to absorb these with appropriate sang-froid. Some will be difficult to deal with, like rising seas, but many others could be positive. New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways we cannot anticipate.

 

There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks. History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat.

 

As for me, I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.

 

And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.

[Al_U_Card]

"Is out-gassing another fart joke?"..at 3:13.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq4Bc2WCsdE Sorry, couldn't resist.

[PassedOut]

A sobering article from Nature: Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise

 

Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 15 metres by 2500, if emissions continue unabated. In this case atmospheric warming will soon become the dominant driver of ice loss, but prolonged ocean warming will delay its recovery for thousands of years.

And this is Antarctica alone, ignoring Greenland. Of course we can expect that emissions will not "continue unabated," but the current acceleration in sea level rise is already unstoppable for many years.

[blackshoe]

It is estimated that once upon a time, the water level in the Mediterranean Sea rose some 2500 feet over the course of a couple of months. Of course, that was several million years ago, so there were no humans around to stage protests or lobby for lots of government money to "study" the phenomenon.

[hrothgar]

It is estimated that once upon a time, the water level in the Mediterranean Sea rose some 2500 feet over the course of a couple of months. Of course, that was several million years ago, so there were no humans around to stage protests or lobby for lots of government money to "study" the phenomenon.

 

That was also the result of an outburst flood rather than ice melt / thermal expansion

 

Its about as relevant to this discussion as hockey scores from 1954

[Zelandakh]

A sobering article from Nature: Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise

The link is not opening for me so I cannot check more than your quote but if the suggestion is that a quarter of the Antarctic ice sheet will melt (SLR from the entire sheet is ~60m) then I would like to see what evidence they provide for such a scenario as that seems somewhat unlikely based on current evidence. The entire Greenland ice sheet represents a potential of ~7m SLR, so probably another 2 or 3 metres in this (seemingly ridiculous) scenario. Perhaps the 15m is made up of thermal expansion as well as ice melt but if that were the case the quote is obviously flawed and simply alarmist.

[Al_U_Card]

Likely has to do with the 2 models that they used. (Surprise, surprise!)

 

More tangible measurements from the previous inter-glacial (Eemian) showed that a thousand years or so of 4-5 deg. C greater warmth than today actually provided quite a bit less SLR than what this study suggests for the current inter-glacial.

 

May have something to do with the inability of [CO2] to either affect or control the climate. It does, however, coincide causally with increased energy availability as well as a greener planet that can provide more food for its inhabitants but we can't have that, now, can we?

[PassedOut]

The link is not opening for me so I cannot check more than your quote but if the suggestion is that a quarter of the Antarctic ice sheet will melt (SLR from the entire sheet is ~60m) then I would like to see what evidence they provide for such a scenario as that seems somewhat unlikely based on current evidence. The entire Greenland ice sheet represents a potential of ~7m SLR, so probably another 2 or 3 metres in this (seemingly ridiculous) scenario. Perhaps the 15m is made up of thermal expansion as well as ice melt but if that were the case the quote is obviously flawed and simply alarmist.

For those who can't access the actual paper, here are some links that fairly (IMO) describe the analysis.

 

From Nature: Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse

 

DeConto and co-author David Pollard, a palaeoclimatologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, developed a climate model that accounts for ice loss caused by warming ocean currents which can eat at the underside of the ice sheet and for rising atmospheric temperatures that melt it from above. Ponds of meltwater that form on the ice surface often drain through cracks; this can set off a chain reaction that breaks up ice shelves and causes newly exposed ice cliffs to collapse under their own weight.

 

From the Guardian: Sea levels set to 'rise far more rapidly than expected'

 

Sea levels could rise far more rapidly than expected in coming decades, according to new research that reveals Antarcticas vast ice cap is less stable than previously thought.

 

The UNs climate science body had predicted up to a metre of sea level rise this century - but it did not anticipate any significant contribution from Antarctica, where increasing snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance.

 

According a study, published in the journal Nature, collapsing Antarctic ice sheets are expected to double sea-level rise to two metres by 2100, if carbon emissions are not cut.

 

Previously, only the passive melting of Antarctic ice by warmer air and seawater was considered but the new work added active processes, such as the disintegration of huge ice cliffs.

 

This [doubling] could spell disaster for many low-lying cities, said Prof Robert DeConto, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the work. He said that if global warming was not halted, the rate of sea-level rise would change from millimetres per year to centimetres a year. At that point it becomes about retreat [from cities], not engineering of defences.

 

As well as rising seas, climate change is also causing storms to become fiercer, forming a highly destructive combination for low-lying cities like New York, Mumbai and Guangzhou. Many coastal cities are growing fast as populations rise and analysis by World Bank and OECD staff has shown that global flood damage could cost them $1tn a year by 2050 unless action is taken.

 

The cities most at risk in richer nations include Miami, Boston and Nagoya, while cities in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Ivory Coast are among those most in danger in less wealthy countries.

 

The new research follows other recent studies warning of the possibility of ice sheet collapse in Antarctica and suggesting huge sea-level rises. But the new work suggests that major rises are possible within the lifetimes of todays children, not over centuries.

 

From the NYT: Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly

 

The new research, published by the journal Nature, is based on improvements in a computerized model of Antarctica and its complex landscape of rocks and glaciers, meant to capture factors newly recognized as imperiling the stability of the ice.

 

The new version of the model allowed the scientists, for the first time, to reproduce high sea levels of the past, such as a climatic period about 125,000 years ago when the seas rose to levels 20 to 30 feet higher than today.

 

That gave them greater confidence in the models ability to project the future sea level, though they acknowledged that they do not yet have an answer that could be called definitive.

No one claims that this is the last word on the matter, and we all hope things don't get that bad. But, for anyone with children, it would be foolish to ignore it. We're getting record warm years with increasing frequency, and the collapse of the permafrost would release enough methane to escalate the problem further.

[Al_U_Card]

Not so for methane nor for "extreme" weather. Perhaps our children and theirs as well would rather we improve economic well-being rather than spending our resources foolishly trying to change the weather by controlling something which has little or no effect. People, OTOH appear to be amenable to such control if you scare them enough....

[Daniel1960]

For those who can't access the actual paper, here are some links that fairly (IMO) describe the analysis.

 

From Nature: Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse

 

 

 

From the Guardian: Sea levels set to 'rise far more rapidly than expected'

 

 

 

From the NYT: Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly

 

 

No one claims that this is the last word on the matter, and we all hope things don't get that bad. But, for anyone with children, it would be foolish to ignore it. We're getting record warm years with increasing frequency, and the collapse of the permafrost would release enough methane to escalate the problem further.

 

Their results are based upon modeled ice loss forecasted due to warming waters. NASA has data on the actual growth of Antarctic sea ice. So yes, this is not the last word on the matter.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses