After Doonesbury, my morning reading begins with a peek at the RSS feed from Real Climate. Most mornings it's worth a repeat look at posts I've already reviewed as the comments left there offer one of the highest signal-to-noise ratios in the blogosphere. Today I came across this noteworthy note from one Lawrence Brown:
Even Albert Einstein was no Einstein when it came to quantum mechanics. Neils Bohr turned back Einstein's skepticism several times on certain aspects. Which ought to give all of us pause. If Einstein can be wrong what can anyone expect from the rest of us?!
However if you're going to challenge an Einstein you'd better have the goods. [Wilhelm] Reich, [the controversial Freudian psychoanalyist] didn't, Bohr did. The same holds true of climate science. If you want to challenge someone with the stature of say a James Hansen, you'd do well to have an excellent grounding on all aspects of this discipline.
Which brought to mind a new paper in Environmental Research Letters, "What do recent advances in quantifying climate and carbon cycle uncertainties mean for climate policy?" by Joanna House of the University of Bristol and eight other British climatologists who should receive some kind of prize for succinct and clear science writing.
There are plenty of good explanations of the science of climate change out there. Almost any paper co-authored by the aforementioned James Hansen, for example, includes an excellent summary of the basics. But the science is moving so rapidly that new summaries are needed every few months. And for the tail end of this year, I'd have to nominate House et al 2008 as the best way to introduce a global warming rookie, or anyone who considers themselves a skeptic of the consensus, to the state of the science. Unlike many other journal articles, it's freely available through the Institute of Physics.
Almost everything in the six pages (including a page of essential references) is a money quote, free of jargon and written at a high-school level. For example, here's a vital point:
If CO2 concentrations were stabilized on a timescale of 100 or so years, temperatures would still take several centuries to stabilize, sea level rise due to thermal expansion would take centuries to millennia, and sea level rise due to ice melting would take millennia.
The paper's main thrust is a comparison of two approaches to reducing fossil-fuel emissions, one from the G8 gang of big economic powers that would cut emissions in half by 2050 and then do nothing further. The other, from the 2006 Stern report, would require only a 25% cut by 2050, but continuing bringing them down, settling at a fifth of 2007 values by the end of the century.
The sad truth to emerge from the author's computer models, is that both approaches would leaves us with CO2 levels in the neighborhood of 500 ppm (compared to 387 today and 280 pre-industrial). That would probably leave us at risk of seriously bad climate change. The Stern report suggested otherwise, but its data are now woefully out of date, and it's beginning to look like we have to stabilize emissions at somewhere between 350 or 450 ppm to avoid catastrophic effects.
However, if we were to adopt a strategy that combined Stern's long-term goal with the G8's short-term target ;;;; aiming for a 50% cut by mid-century and 80% by 2100 ;;;; we stand a good chance of keeping temperature rise to 2°C, which might, if we're lucky, keep things manageable. Even this modest target is less demanding than what Britain is embracing, and what Barack Obama says he wants to see: an 80% cut by 2050. Again, that's because what we know now gives us good reason to believe that even the combined Stern-G8 approach won't be enough. And House et al imply as much in their conclusion:
Ultimately, however, climate stabilization at any level can only be achieved if net global CO2 emissions decline over centuries to the level of persistent natural sinks (<<1 PgCyr-1, or just a few % of today's emissions).
The only thing I would add is that a Pg = a Gt, or a billion tonnes. We're at about 10 billion tonnes of carbon emissions now and so we need to bring that down below 1 billion. Read it. It will be the most worthwhile 15 minutes you spend today. Unless, of course, you're casting an early vote in today's U.S. presidential elections. Don't let me keep you from that.
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Joanna I House, Chris Huntingford, Wolfgang Knorr, Sarah E Cornell, Peter M Cox, Glen R Harris, Chris D Jones, Jason A Lowe, I Colin Prentice (2008). What do recent advances in quantifying climate and carbon cycle uncertainties mean for climate policy? Environmental Research Letters, 3 (4) DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/3/4/044002
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Hocky Stick Hansen is [edited for libel]." At least James is only a goober. You're not technically a liar for being a blind kool aid drinker. Just a big Goober for trying to make a living off a farce. But then, what else is a job-less Canadian biologist to do?
[Groundless insults and poor spelling are fine. But libel will not be tolerated. -- jh]
I call Poe's Law on "James is a Goober."
Thank you for calling this paper to everyone's attention, James.
Does any one know what the contribution of direct man made produce heat (ie heat from car combustion etc) is to global warming and whether this is significant enough to be included in the climate models?
paulm,
It's not much. See, for example, here and here.
RealClimate simply filters out posts that conflict with their tautology. It's raison d'etre is to defend the bad science of the likes of Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt.
James, I get the idea that you aren't such a bad fellow. You are just highly susceptible to the romantic pull of a good lefty cause. The fact that you attended Uncle Al's Climate Camp says that you have a tendency to let your emotions get ahead of your scientific skepticism.
Every few days you dutifully post a few links to the most sensationalist climate science papers and wax mournfully about the dire fate that awaits, if we don't cut CO2 emissions back to Neolithic levels.
You get a couple of pats on the back from the faithful and a couple of jabs from skeptics and then the cycle repeats.
Still, you aren't as virulent as the miscreants at Deltoid so I drop in every so often to see what run of the mill climate calamity you are lamenting this week.
Do you go to therapy to deal with the pervasive sense of dread that you must live with if your outlook is really as bleak as your writing? For you must certainly know that even if these doomsayers are correct (and I for one don't loose much sleep over that remote possibility) that there is exactly zero probability that modern civilization is going to cut CO2 emissions at all in the coming decades let alone back to the "pre-industrial" levels you are constantly pleading for.
Seriously what is it you hope to accomplish with your boy-crying-wolf little corner of the web?
And I thought the trolls were bad on evolution-related threads.
Looks like a good article; I'm going to have to read it all the way through.
Lance: First, you tell me what you're trying to accomplish.
Lance: First, you tell me what you're trying to accomplish.
I'm trying to be a gadfly. Plato used the term, muapo in the original Greek, to describe Socrates' relationship to the stayed and contrite politic elite of Athens.
While I am no Socrates, I hope in my own way to goad people that have accepted the overblown hype of climate change into actively investigating the science behind the hype rather than just accepting the prevailing dogma based upon their political leanings.
If I often appear overly acerbic or sarcastic it is, as Socrates explained, "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."
So what do you hope to accomplish with your tireless sycophancy to the climate apparatchik "party line"?
Mother Nature will have the last say in this debate -- that is, assuming the Climate Alarmists will allow a debate -- as no global warming has occurred for some years now. A new cooling phase is upon us, with snow and such happening even as our alarmed political leaders are debating in parliaments and congresses passing new laws demanding toxic CFL bulbs and such. Does anyone recall Mr. Hansen once being a champion of Global Ice Age Theory? I do, as it-he was taught as such back in the days when climatic stability was the orthodoxy. So we've gone from climate stability to global cooling to global warming. Somewhere in all that is the truth, but excuse me if I remain skeptical when people with multi-billion-dollar "science" budgets start acting like they are little Gods, to know so very much. Excuse me also while I fetch my snow-shovel.... ;-)
And PS. Einstein's relativity theory may not last too many more years into the 21st Century. It also is a top-heavy dinosaur-theory, supported by Billions of dollars, and maybe as many bibliographies. Those who are "believers" in that metaphysical idea might wish to research the old ether-drift experiments with fresh eyes, to learn that, just like the "climate deniers" of today, the last century had its "relativity-theory deniers" such as Dayton Miller -- President of the American Physical Society and Chair of Physics at Case-Western in Cleveland -- who were equally or even more pathologically subject to political repression and censorship for their robust and positive ether-drift experimental results. Others have likewise since. And even the much-denigrated Wilhelm Reich had his books "banned and burned" by a US government agency for declaring the finding of a very ether-like phenomenon! History tells us, that scientists behave like barbarians when confronted with something truly important and challenging. There was no internet around back then to set the record straight, however, so only the voices of the Top Dogs got heard, after all the corpses were neatly buried. I'd suggest, it becomes something pathological for "science journalists" to get too cozy with advocates of well-funded popular theories. It tends to elevate the stature of Big-Wigs without rationality, and cement their theories onto the social landscape -- which creates scientism when what's needed is a thriving and productive interchange between conflicting ideas.
Personally, I'm betting James Hrynyshyn wants to pilot one of the sleek black helicopters of the Great Environmentalist Conspiracy.
Personally, I'm betting James Hrynyshyn wants to pilot one of the sleek black helicopters of the Great Environmentalist Conspiracy.
Hey, everyone is entitled to their dream.