NASA
scientists study changing conditions in the
Arctic as part of the agency's ICESCAPE mission,
or Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and
Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific
Environment/Credit: NASA, Kathryn Hansen
The global warming debate in Congress, the states and on the campaign trail centers on two issues: Is Earth warming, and if so are humans to blame?
But ask most climate scientists, and they'll tell you that these are the only questions not in dispute. Climate change is a matter of how bad and by when, they'll say—not whether.
"Scientists are inherently skeptical," says Lonnie Thompson, a paleoclimatologist at Ohio State University, who has led studies of glaciers and ice sheets in 16 countries. "After enough evidence and observation, though, you have to start to accept findings. That is what happened with climate change. This wasn't a rash conclusion."
"There is not any serious debate about whether anthropogenic climate change is happening," says Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University and a professor of science and society. "Scientists are certain about that, and it is unfortunate that the national debate is lagging so far behind."
The public and political discourse on global warming was framed by the 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which concluded that climate change is occurring and human activity is the cause. That seminal report, and the subsequent coverage and debate, split the country into two partisan camps, with Democrats generally accepting the scientific consensus and Republicans questioning or flat-out denying it.
Missing from the discussion is the perhaps surprising, and rising, view of many scientists—that the UN climate panel gravely underestimated the immediacy and danger of global warming.
The IPCC process itself is partly, though not entirely, to blame. "It takes seven years to produce an IPCC report," says Thompson, who is also an IPCC author. "By the time it is published, the science is already dated ... and the models being used aren't accurately assessing how rapidly these changes are taking place."
There are real-world implications at stake, Thompson says. "We are in for tougher scenarios than what are being relayed in the reports."
A Flawed IPCC Assumption
The IPCC, the world's leading scientific body on global warming, is charged by the UN with assessing research and releasing periodic reviews of climate risks, which governments often use to set targets for cutting carbon emissions. In 2007, the panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.
At the core of its assessments are IPCC "scenarios"—summaries of coming climatic conditions like global temperature and sea-level rise, which are based on a number of assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions. One of those assumptions is that the world will make good on its carbon-cutting pledges.
Therein lies a key flaw, says John Reilly, co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and an expert on climate economic models. Many nations have failed to take promised steps to slash global warming emissions, particularly China and the United States, the world's biggest polluters. Even in the European Union greenhouse gases are on the rise. Yet the IPCC doesn't account for this.
The result, says Reilly, is that emissions today are
higher than what the IPCC predicted in 2007. The panel's
middle-of-the-road scenarios, for example, estimate that the
world would emit between 27 and 28 billion metric tons of
carbon dioxide in 2010. In reality, 30.6 billion metric tons
of CO2 were released that year, the latest figures
available, says data from the International Energy Agency.
While that may seem like a small difference to a lay person,
climate experts say that small increases can steamroll into
something much bigger.
What Newer Climate Models Show
In 2009, Reilly and his colleagues at MIT, along with researchers from Penn State, the Marine Biological Institute in Massachusetts and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, decided to model forecasts for climate that assumed the world would continue with business as usual.
Their results, published in the June 2012 issue of Climatic Change and online last year, found that without major greenhouse gas cuts the median global temperature would increase by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, compared to the IPCC's worst-case prediction of a 3.5 degree Celsius rise (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit).
The study found that the Arctic would warm up to three times as much as was foreseen by the IPCC. There would also be more severe extreme weather events and greater ocean warming, sea-level rise and ocean acidification.
"The IPCC suite of scenarios provide ... a bit too rosy of a picture," says Reilly. "Our study shows that without action, there is virtually no chance that we won't enter very dangerous territory."
Even moderate action isn't likely to help. Follow-up work by these same researchers published this year in MIT's annual Energy and Climate Outlook found that if countries achieve the emission cuts they promised at international climate negotiations, the global temperature would still increase by over 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit), with a significant chance of a 5 degree Celsius rise by century's end
For some scientists, however, the IPCC's findings are extreme.
"I'm surprised there are those who think the IPCC is too
conservative," says
John Christy, atmospheric scientist at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, IPCC author in 2001 and a well-known
skeptic of human-caused climate change. "I think the simple
evidence is very clear—the IPCC models overestimate the
warming of the climate system." The IPCC declined to comment
on the record.
Missing Ice Sheets and Slow Timing
Perhaps the biggest controversy surrounding the IPCC scenarios is that they omit the rapid melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in sea-level rise projections.
Several researchers, including Thompson, the polar ice expert from Ohio State University, and James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, have been vocal critics of that omission, which they say dramatically skews the IPCC scenarios. If the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the only two in the world, continue to melt at their current pace, Thompson and other scientists believe sea levels could rise several feet and swamp coastlines this century, not the 8 to 17 inches projected in the IPCC mid-range scenarios.
"Those [ice sheets] are the big elephants in the room," says Thompson. "They are going to play a big role, yet they aren't taken into account." (The IPCC left them out because of uncertainty about how to predict effects of ice-sheet meltdowns in climate models.)
Some scientists say the very nature of the IPCC process means its reports can never be truly up to date. Research must be published at least two years before the release of an IPCC assessment to be considered. That lag time also means the projections will be on the conservative side, Thompson says. He argues that as scientific understanding of climate change improves, and as CO2 emissions continue to rise, the predictions grow more dire.
Reilly, the MIT scientist, says most scientists studying climate change today are viewing "the seemingly unstoppable rise in global greenhouse emissions" with "increasing alarm."
Why Aren't Scientists More Vocal?
So, if climate scientists are convinced that the Earth is
warming faster than expected, then why aren't more speaking
out?
The researchers interviewed for this story said many have retreated into silence to avoid the small but vocal band of climate skeptics. "Researchers find it hard to raise significant questions even within the climate science community for fear that it will be exploited by the skeptics," says Sarewitz, the science and society professor from Arizona State University.
"Climate science is a huge, sprawling area of discussion," explains Sarewitz, and skeptics are known to seize on arguments as proof that the science linking human activity to global warming is dubious.
Indeed, there are still many points not understood in climate science. Long-term changes in solar activity and their effects on the climate system are not well known. The effect of aerosols on global temperature is still uncertain, because they all react differently to atmospheric heat. Sulfates, for example, block sunlight, which in turn can cool the climate, while black carbon absorbs sunlight and can accelerate warming. Few doubt that sea levels will rise, but how fast and by how much is hotly contested.
There are also major limitations with climate models. They can predict whole-Earth scenarios better than localized scenarios, meaning regional trends still can't be predicted with much accuracy. They also don't reflect the physics of cloud formation well, an issue the IPCC has made a research priority.
While none of these undermine the consensus that climate change is human-caused, Sarewitz says, any dissension helps skeptics chisel away at the perception of scientific agreement. "It all makes it hard for the disinterested citizen ... to actually know how to untangle the conversation and who to trust."
Is silence the answer? Not according to Thompson of Ohio State, who admits to being "frustrated' by skeptic tactics and scientists' lack of response to them. "If they want to be more than just a historian documenting the change—if they want to make a difference—[scientists] have to speak out about these issues." Thompson himself regularly speaks about climate change, even allowing TV and print journalists to join his polar ice expeditions.
Reilly agrees. "Without interaction [with the public], it becomes too easy for people to vilify or defy those who disagree or agree with them, and there is little chance for real understanding."
Misrepresenting Hansen
To the person who posted a quote mine from James Hansen to try to make him look bad: I'm not really sure what your point is. How has grant money changed his argument? Reducing CO2 and reducing other forms of GHGs aren't mutually exclusive. Let's take a look at some other things he says in that paper:
"Climate forcing by CO2 is the largest forcing, but it does not dwarf the others. Forcing by CH4 (0.7 W/m2) is half as large as that of CO2 and the total forcing by non-CO2 GHGs (1.4 W/m2) equals that of CO2"
"increasing GHGs are estimated to be the largest forcing and to result in a net positive forcing, especially during the past few decades"
"We suggest equal emphasis on an alternative, more optimistic, scenario that emphasizes reduction of non-CO2 GHGs and black carbon during the next 50 years."
"Aerosols cause a climate forcing directly by reflecting sunlight and indirectly by modifying cloud properties. Forcing by atmospheric aerosols is uncertain, but research of the past decade indicates that it is substantial (IPCC 1996). The aerosol forcing that we estimate (4) has the same magnitude (1.4 W/m2) but opposite sign of the CO2 forcing. Fossil fuel use is the main source of both CO2 and aerosols,"
"Climate forcing by anthropogenic aerosols may be the largest source of uncertainty about future climate change. The approximate global balancing of aerosol and CO2 forcings in the past (Figure 1) cannot continue indefinitely. As long-lived CO2 accumulates, continued balancing requires a greater and greater aerosol load. This, we have argued (Hansen and Lacis 1990), would be a Faustian bargain. Detrimental effects of aerosols, including acid rain and health impacts, will eventually limit aerosol amount, and thus expose latent greenhouse warming."
Basically, the global warming we can expect from CO2 had been roughly offset by the cooling properties of other pollutants emitted at the same time as CO2. However, we can't expect this to last, because CO2 remains in the atmosphere for much longer. But we can also slow down global warming by minimizing other greenhouse gases, which are likely 50% reponsible for warming so far.
And this is all in 2000 mind you. You have to go back 12 years to selectively pick words to try to make him look bad. Yet you still fail. He said even back then (actually, as early as 1981) that GHGs drive global warming and we need to minimize them. Now he says...the same exact thing, just with a different emphasis on which specific GHG, based on another decade of research. Which is what scientists do. Unlike people like Anthony Watts, who do little to no actual research and instead pore over old papers in an effort to make real scientists look bad.
Climate Change
I think one of the reasons there is very little publicity of the scientific reports on Climate Change is because the media get paid for their ads from the Candian Association of Petroleum Producers and others. This generates millions in advertising revenue. They don't get a dime from global warming advocates.
If it was not for the internet, man's contribution to Global Warming would be known by just a few scientists.
The same applies to politics, no political party will stand up to the oil or coal companies because they need the money.
I don't know how much worse the weather is going to have to get before the media and polictical leaders take an interest in this subject.
Scientists don't eschew any debate
Scientists never run from debate. A scientist depends on their argument. A correct argument stands on its own merits. The alarmists community continues to seek to silence debate which is not science at all.
When will the alamrists get back to science?
Humans not able to solve this kind of problem.
Human beings are good at dealing with very pressing emergencies such as a house on fire or being attacked by a wild animal. We have evolved over millions of years to deal with such things. However, we have not evolved the necessary psychological mechanisms to deal with diffuse, long-term threats like climate change. Nor do we really have the social instincts that would permit effective cooperation for decades on end. Thus, I expect that we will diddle around until it is way too late to solve the problem, then we will have a bunch of brutal wars over the remaining natural resources and habitable land.
My sons, who are still college-age, tell me that
their generation will "use the Internet" to
solve this problem, much as the Egyptians used
the Internet to bring down Hosni Mubarak, and
that will be nice if they can pull it off.
However, I am in my sixties, not my twenties,
and I have a whole lifetime of watching people
behave very badly, so I see little real reason
for optimism. Indeed, in my late teens I
spent a year on the ground in Vietnam, and I see
very little reason to expect anything much
different from that as the climate problem gets
worse.
So, I suspect very strongly that their generation is simply screwed beyond belief.
As for me, I am probably too old to see the worst of it, since I will likely be dead before the effects are felt in full force.
© InsideClimate News
Full Article & Comments:
What is most striking about denier arguments against AGW....
...is their utter and complete incompetence.
For example, the Anthony Watts and his followers are still going on and on about how climate scientists are "hiding" raw temperature data and making it impossible for anyone to check their global-average temperature results.
This is utterly absurd -- raw temperature data collected from thousands of temperature stations around the world has been available for *years*. Google up "GHCN" to find it.
Furthermore, computing global-average temperature results that closely match the officially published NASA/NOAA/CRU results is really quite straightforward. I could teach first-year computer-programming students how to do it.
Here are examples of what I was able to produce on my laptop by running raw temperature data through a straightforward averaging algorithm that I coded up.
1) This plot shows my raw data results vs. the NASA "meteorological stations" results (5-year smoothing)
2.0) This plot shows my results from just *2 percent of the temperature stations* (all rural) vs. the official NASA results (again from raw data).
2.1) This Google Earth image plot shows the locations of the stations used by NASA:
2.2) This Google Earth image plot shows the locations of the stations I used to generate the results in (2.0) above:
As you can see, you can get results that match NASA's very closely even when you throw away 98 percent of the temperature stations.
Note: I did no station "cherry picking" -- the above results are "first try" results generated from the first "2%" set of stations that I selected.
Let me repeat: all results were produced from raw data run through a straightforward averaging procedure that involved no more than high-school math and college-undergraduate programming skills. I really could teach first-year programming students how to do all of the above.
Yet in spite of this fact, the deniers who have spent *years* attacking the NASA/NOAA/CRU global-average temperature work have been unwilling/unable to perform their own independent checks of the NASA/NOAA/CRU work, even though a competent programmer/analyst could easily do so in a few days at most.