Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

......The truth is, no one has a clue.

To be P or not to be P, that is NP's question. A million-dollar question, in fact. That's how much prize money the Clay Mathematics Institute will award Alice if she resolves the tractability of library splitting. (She will also be shipped to Guantánamo by the CIA, but that's a different essay.)

Landmark UN study backs climate theory
TheStar.com - News - Landmark UN study backs climate theory
2,000 scientists all but end the debate: Human activity causes global warming

January 19, 2007
Peter Gorrie
Environment Writer

A major new United Nations report shows global scientists are more convinced than ever that human activity is causing climate change, the Toronto Star has learned.

The rate of warming between now and 2030 is likely to be twice that of the previous century, it says.

And it concludes that most of the global warming since the middle of the last century has been caused by man-made greenhouse gases.

The report, to be released in Paris Feb. 2, should all but end any debate on climate change and compel governments and industries to take urgent measures to deal with it, scientists say.

"It is very likely that (man-made) greenhouse gas increases caused most of the globally average temperature increases since the mid-20th century," states the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the clinical language of science, it paints a stark picture of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions:

"Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including continental average temperatures, atmospheric circulation patterns and some types of extremes."

It is "very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent." Storm tracks will move from the tropics toward the poles.

The widely anticipated report is the fourth by the IPCC, which every few years publishes the definitive conclusions of about 2,000 scientists who are recognized as experts in their respective fields. Each one has moved closer to closing debate on the causes and effects of climate change.

The portion of the report obtained by the Star is called the final draft of the "Summary for Policy Makers."

The summary states that the warming effect of greenhouse gases increased by 20 per cent during the past decade - "the largest change observed or inferred for any decade in at least the last 200 years."

Global warming would be even greater had it not been slowed by other forms of pollution that stopped some of the sun's energy from reaching the Earth.

Rebutting one of the main arguments of climate change skeptics, it says observations of temperature increases and shrinking ice cover, "support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years" was caused by solar flares or other natural events.

Eleven of the past 12 years have been the hottest in Earth's recent history, it says.

All the continents except Antarctica have warmed during the past half-century, with the biggest impacts in Canada's Arctic and other northern regions.

Research since the third report was released in 2001 increases the certainty about climate change and the likely scale of most of its effects, including warmer temperatures and severe weather, the report states.

One crucial prediction has been made a bit less worrying: Although sea level is rising - for now, mainly because the oceans are warming to a depth of at least 3,000 metres, and expanding - the estimates for how much it will go up have been lowered.

The summary also notes that there has been, as yet, little change in the North Atlantic Drift, the warm current that gives Britain and northern Europe a relatively temperate climate and that is expected to slow, or stop, as climate change alters the ocean.

It will slow, but not abruptly during the coming century, the report says.

For the most part, though, the conclusions point in a single direction:

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

The report estimates that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be kept below 550 parts per million - which would take a major worldwide effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions - the average global temperature would rise by 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius above the level before the Industrial Revolution started about 250 years ago.

The current carbon level is about 380 parts per million and rising steadily, compared with 280 at the time humans began burning large amounts of coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

The temperature estimate depends on which combination of computer model and research data is used.

The upper forecast is higher than in previous reports.

"Values higher than 4.5 C cannot be excluded" because of "feedbacks," such as the increased ability of the atmosphere to absorb water vapour - an extremely potent greenhouse gas - as it heats up, and the greater warmth absorbed as Arctic ice melts.

Regional forecasts of climate change effects are better than in the previous report, and they predict the greatest warming at northern latitudes and high altitudes, and the least over the North Atlantic and the southern oceans.

The north faces the biggest increase in precipitation.

Quote:

The widely anticipated report is the fourth by the IPCC, which every few years publishes the definitive conclusions of about 2,000 scientists who are recognized as experts in their respective fields. Each one has moved closer to closing debate on the causes and effects of climate change.

The portion of the report obtained by the Star is called the final draft of the "Summary for Policy Makers."

The alarmists constantly invoke as an authority the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet none of those who wrote the sections on malaria have relevant research credentials and several have no scientific credentials at all.

Besides, the "Summary for Policy Makers", the only document that journalists read (which is due out in July, not next 2 Feb, ...

Besides, the "Summary for Policy Makers" ... is a massaged summary of the scientific summary of the WG1 and it is made by bureaucrats, not scientists.

miniTAX wrote:

Besides, the "Summary for Policy Makers" ... is a massaged summary of the scientific summary of the WG1 and it is made by bureaucrats, not scientists.

Okay, "written by more than 600 scientists, reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries " is of course disqualifying.

One of - admittedly few - positive points of the IPCC is the ridicule heaped on Prince Charles (by our press in the States as well as the European press) for flying to New York with an entourage of 20 persons in a private jet in order to... accept an environmental award from Al Gore

Walter - it wouldn't matter if they were 600 million instead of 600; they still would only be able to come up with some probability estimates for future events.

Probabilities aren't prophesies, or, in the immortal words of Niels Bohr: "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future".

So the authors of it are wrong (or hoe they are quoted) that "the first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week"?

Walter Hinteler wrote:

So the authors of it are wrong (or hoe they are quoted) that "the first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week"?

The Star is wrong saying "The report [Summary for Policymakers], to be released in Paris Feb. 2". What will be published on Feb is the scientific reports of the Working Groups.
Nitpicking but well, that's not the only thing wrong it said...

Main agenda items of the Tenth Session of IPCC Working Group I will be the acceptance of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and approval of itsSummary for Policymakers (SPM). The Session will begin at 10:00 hours on Monday, 29 January 2007.

President Bush, in Tuesday's State of the Union address, will propose a plan to cut U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent while bolstering inventory in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Republican sources say. Bush will also address health care, Social Security, AIDS in Africa, and Iraq.

Thanks for the free shows. Is there going to be a
counter to the slant of an INCONVENIENT TRUTH? Let me
know, thanks again. S

Dear S,

An Inconvenient Truth has won numerous awards as best documentary of 2006. It is also one of the most talked-about films of 2006. Those factors are the main reasons that we use to show any film and the reason we chose to show this film.

All documentaries are "slanted" or framed towards their makers' point of view; that is their nature. They tell the truth as the film-maker sees it, just as artists tell their own truths. Have you ever been to one of our screenings? If so, you'd know that I typically talk a little about the film we are going to show.

In this case I will be saying that this film is controversial -- as I mentioned in my advertisement where I said "See for yourself what they've been talking about." I plan to talk about the two problems which scientists from Real Climate have brought up in regards to An Inconvenient Truth. One is that you cannot see the changes in the ice cores from the drop in aerosol pollutants -- they are microscopic. The other, and far more important, is that while CO2 has indeed risen to unprecedented levels in the time frame which Gore provides, i.e. the past 650,000 years, he has limited himself to the CO2 levels that were determined from the ice core samples he saw. The earliest ice samples from that Antarctic drilling goes back 800,000 years and while the full analysis has not yet been published the earliest core samples show a similar curve. EPICA, who ran the core samples, said that they quit drilling when they were within 5 meters of bedrock. There are a few places in Greenland where core samples have gone back 1 million years. These also show a similar series of curves relating CO2 to temperature.

(Please see this website for a lot more information: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299)

Scientists tell us that the earth is far older than 650,000 years, approximately 4.5 billion years old. I will point out at the film screening that it is scientifically accepted that CO2 was much higher than the current levels during several stages of this planet, for example, they were higher during the time of the super-volcanoes such as the one under Lake Yellowstone, which coincidentally last erupted about 650,00 years ago. Of course, the planet was much warmer at many times in the past, as witnessed by fossil finds in Alaska, Northern Canada, Northern Europe and Siberia. Many factors are believed to affect the temperature of this planet, from the long-term effects of the movement of continents to the short-term effects of volcanic activity including atmospheric ash and CO2 levels. Whether anthropogenic CO2 is causing the current rise in global temperatures, there is, indeed something that is making it occur. Climate change cannot be denied.

I will also, say that during the entire span of Homo sapiens on earth, i.e. for the past 250,000 years, there have never been such high levels of CO2 as we have today. I may mention that in the last 200 years, from 1800 to 2000, the population of humans has risen from 1 billion to 6 billion, and I will mention that while the film focuses on CO2, it ignores many other considerable anthropogenic pollutants: heavy metals, plastics and other noxious chemicals. CO2 is being touted at this moment and in this film, but there is much more to be said on the subject.


All the Best,

P

Now, isn't this something I and others on the left have been calling for for some time?

I'm showing An Inconvenient Truth at the library next week and rec'd this in response on an art list-service where I commonly advertise. I wondered if any of you here would like to comment on what I have missed in my response. Thanks, Piffka

Gore's claim is deceitful on four counts. Nairobi was dangerously infested when it was founded; it was founded for a railway, not for health reasons; it is now fairly clear of malaria; and it has not become warmer.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Now, isn't this something I and others on the left have been calling for for some time?

The left have been calling for Kyoto and its huge cost as Europe is bearing NOW for infintesimal gain. Do you endorse Kyoto Cycloptichorn ?