Climate Change in the Himalayas
| Sat Nov. 29, 2008 11:14 AM PST
CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE HIMALAYAS....Joe Romm passes along the news today that Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than anyone has previously predicted. You can add this to Romm's list of other climate change impacts that are happening faster than most climate models predict, including the canonical IPCC models:
"The recent [Arctic] sea-ice retreat is larger than in any of the (19) IPCC [climate] models" [PDF] — and that was a Norwegian expert in 2005. The retreat has accelerated in the past two years.
The ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule." That was Penn State climatologist Richard Alley in March 2006. In 2001, the IPCC thought that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.
Sea-level rise from 1993 and 2006 — 3.3 millimetres per year as measured by satellites — was higher than the IPCC climate models predicted.
The ocean carbon sink is saturating sooner than expected.
The subtropics are expanding faster than the models project.
This is why climate scientists have been running around with their hair on fire for the past couple of years. It would be nice to think that perhaps our current climate models are too pessimistic; or even that they're right but maybe we'll end up at the low end of the predicted warming ranges; or at worst that the models are right and we'll end up right at the center. But that just doesn't seem to be the case. What it really looks like is that our current models aren't pessimistic enough and that the growth in greenhouse gas emissions is exceeding even the modelers' highest estimates. We are fast approaching a point of no return that will likely kill hundreds of millions of people, destroy much of the world's food supply, and spark resource wars that make Rwanda look like a mild family quarrel. More from Romm here and here on what's happening and what to do about it.
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Comments
Why should that long list not cause me to view climate modeling with skepticism? Does it mean that today's climate models are well off base? If so, what does that mean for our certainty that human CO2 is the cause of the current warming?
Hair on fire? Are you serious? Press releases are not urgent. We need scientists demonstrating, or holding rallies or something. Hell they're not even moving to places that will be least affected, they're dooming themselves and their families.
Because when you look out there, there is noting except more data releases. This does not do anything to create urgency because you have a billion study results released every year.
I'm not arguing that scientists should really set their hair on fire like the monks in SE Asia but--well, actually I am. That would get people to realize the scientists really believe it.
As Dave @2:10 has already demonstrated, a climate prediction that underestimates any aspect of the changes is fodder for the denialist camp. Precautionary principle be damned, expect a full scale assault on the science as the inevitability of some sort of government response comes closer. This is a last chance for those whose agenda is to prevent action to stop (or reduce the efficacy) legislation to deal with emissions.
Joe Romm passes along the news today that Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than anyone has previously predicted. You can add this to Romm's list of other climate change impacts that are happening faster than most climate models predict, including the canonical IPCC models:
More proof that a conspiracy of climatologists exists that are putting out purposefully erroneous climate models intended to shock, shock us when they are proven optimistic.
Wake up sheeple!
Isn't there a evolutionary psychology (or something) argument that claims humans are equipped to respond only to crisis situations? That slaying the lurking saber-toothed tiger was a lot more successful than worrying about where next month's food supply was coming from?
As I get older, this theory seems more plausible to me. I think when cities start to go underwater and we're at war with Canada over the wheat supply, then we'll take action. Until then, it's all pretty abstract and what's right in front of our face seems more important. In my more pessimistic moments, it seems that a case can be made that the next large-scale human die-off is coming. I mean, it has been a while since we've had one, hasn't it?
Submitted by Julia Grey (not verified) on Sat Nov. 29, 2008 12:13 PM PST.
I think when cities start to go underwater and we're at war with Canada over the wheat supply, then we'll take action.
Actually, by the time it gets to that point, the reduction in overall global economic activity will curtail greenhouse gases considerably all by itself.
"Gaia" wins again....
Hmm, that might explain the unusually severe flooding of the Mekong in recent years. I was in Pakxe, Laos a few years back, and half the town was underwater. And this year's flooding was even worse. Fortunately, the Lao build their houses on stilts. They'll be fine. But if this messes with the dynamics of the Tonle Sap river and lake, Cambodia could be in big trouble. Half the protein consumed in Cambodia comes from Lake Tonle Sap. They love their fish paste.
In my more pessimistic moments, it seems that a case can be made that the next large-scale human die-off is coming. I mean, it has been a while since we've had one, hasn't it?
Nothing pessimistic about it - this is a certainty. No other living population can just get bigger forever, so why would we think humans could? The only question is whether I'll be alive to see it. I think the odds on that are about 50-50.
It's just so tedious, all this doom and gloom. I mean, it's not like I'm going to have to...do anything, is it? And really, does this mean I'm gonna have to listen to a bunch of noise about some brown skinned people losing their homes, dying of disease and starvation, and just generally being pathetic? I mean, really. We got ours; everyone else can go f**k themselves. God Bless America.
In my more pessimistic moments, it seems that a case can be made that the next large-scale human die-off is coming. I mean, it has been a while since we've had one, hasn't it?
I don't think there's ever been a serious species-wide die-off in historic times. Even the Black Death was only a regional phenomenon.
In what's coming, it'll be the regions that don't die off that will be the exceptions.
The IPCC is a political, not a scientific organization. Scientists' views did not dominate in the report; it was heavily influenced by denier regiemes like the USA and Saudi Arabia.
This was the best politically achievable document, not the best technical document. the models in the report are off base, far too heavily weighted toward "no problem!" because that was the political push. The same "hair on fire" climate scientists would have produced a far stronger document, had that been allowed.
The working group reports are consensus documents, which tends to make them a bit conservative and out of date in comparison to peer reviewed literature. This is also true of the national academy reports.
It's particularly difficult to make official statements like "2006 was the warmest year since . . ." The global integration of imprecise paleoclimate proxies is not simple or easily conveyed. Not really relevant to folks worrying about rain in Iowa anyway.
We are facing (and have been facing) significant global climate change. For me (a climate scientist), I think the scariest thing is how our population size, global economic infrastructure, and diminishing resources constrain our ability to adapt. My understanding of climatic, political, and economic processes is such that I don't think much purposeful action will take place to directly confront climate change.
"My understanding of climatic, political, and economic processes is such that I don't think much purposeful action will take place to directly confront climate change."
B, don't worry, mate! Unless we kill the economy with carbon taxes, "political and economic processes" (i.e., innovative, free people and free markets) will create the methods and means to allow mankind to adapt to climate change just as we have since Noah survived the flood. If invest all our intellectual and financial capital trying to halt the inexorable natural processes, we're likely to end up living in caves when the next ice age arrives.
A couple of teaching pieces from realclimate.org, one a little mathy, one more mathy, make it clear that the increase in CO2 levels caused by the human injection of gigatons of fossil carbon (about 20*10**9 of CO2) every year into the atmosphere has a forcing effect. First link:
Learning From a Simple Model
The takeaway - a doubling of CO2 levels would have an approximately 3 degree centigrade forcing effect. "All else is commentary". (Positive and negative feedback effects in response to forcing effects not included, effect of aerosols not included, etc. And professional climate modelers work with models orders of magnitude more complex. Note: changes in solar output would also be a forcing effect.)
I really appreciate these pieces - they are the basis for a good mental filter when reading about alternative theories.
Here is a moral question that I have not seen answered or even really asked much.
Is it moral to use your time, energy, and smarts to use the world's resources as quickly and efficiently as possible to enable more people to live even though those people will not have a full lifetime but will die early of starvation?
Cause in my view that is what is happening and now we're arguing over who does the dieing.
We never had the discussion about whether this is the moral thing to do. Those in power simply put the process in place. Well, either that or it was done by instinct instead of intention.
Either way it would have been interesting to have had the discussion. I guess there wasn't time.
global climate change is
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 7:13 AM PDT.
global climate change is happening! just because its not effecting you right this second doesnt mean its not happening other places in the world. the word is bigger than the town you live in people. do your research and it will show you whats really going on. check the sourses and make sure they are creditable. have a good day and think about the people it is effecting everyday
