Climate Slowdown Means Extreme Rates of Warming 'Not as Likely'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023

by rpm4321 • 13 years ago

31 50 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

hristov2• 13 years ago

I am going to quote the end of the article in order to make valiant attempt to prevent a budding flame war:

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"Is there any succour in these findings for climate sceptics who say the slowdown over the past 14 years means the global warming is not real?

"None. No comfort whatsoever," he said.

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So global warming is still real and it is still happening. It is just that the rate of warming has slowed down somewhat.

sultezdukes• 13 years ago

You're not trying to prevent a budding flame war, you're just trying to preempt the "deniers" from denying.

And I guess you didn't get the memo. You can't call it global warming now. You have to call it climate change. That way, no matter what happens and no matter how cold it gets, evil man and evil capitalism can still be blamed.

Afforess• 13 years ago

Give it a rest. "Climate Change" is a term for any change in climate in any timeframe. The ice age was climate change. Global Warming refers to man made climate change. It's a more specific term.

throwaway9848• 13 years ago

He's quoting the article verbatim.

btilly9• 13 years ago

If you're trolling, that kind of trolling is not wanted around here.

If you're not trolling, then you didn't understand the article. This study finds a rate of warming at 80% the consensus average of predictions from several years ago, and well within the previous uncertainty bars. So evidence of warming is getting stronger, not weaker, even though the exact predictions of how fast it is warming are coming in on the conservative side of previous estimates.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

You sound angry. Relax. Take a deep breath. Maybe go outside and enjoy the nice late-May weather. Hell, it may not be a bad idea to fire up the grill, even, and make yourself a nice hamburger or hot dog. I promise you will feel better afterward.

emmett• 13 years ago

1) I agree with you that the parent comment is not preempting anything, it's just a political jab.

2) You're simply wrong that the name change to "climate change" was a leftist thing. Luntz is a chief political strategist for the right wing in America:

The phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favour of "climate change", Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as "conservationist" instead of "environmentalist", because "most people" think environmentalists are "extremists" who indulge in "some pretty bizarre behaviour... that turns off many voters".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.cli...

rickhanlonii• 13 years ago

You're using two terms which are propositions (that is, they can be either true or false), and demonizing them as if they're subjectively defined and able to be manipulated for individual or group gains. That's simply not the case.

Global warming is the fact that the global temperature of Earth has been rising since the 19th century. It either has been warming, or it has not been warming. By fact, it has.

Climate Change is a statical fact. If the Earth is in a state of Climate Change, then there is a significant change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over a given time period. Whether or not the change is hot or cold is irrelevant, as both cases are alarming.

It's called Climate Change now because it's better defined, characteristic, and accurate than the rather obvious and uninformative term 'global warming.' The planet is not just warming, it's warming at a rate that is statistically significant. If that warming slows, but still stays above a significant rate, then we're still in a state of Climate Change and should still be alarmed.

Now, if you want to have a conversation about the validity of Climate Change with integrity, you would need to focus around the merit of the statistical thresholds defined. It could be the case that the thresholds in which leading climatologists have set are too low to merit being alarmed about. Make that case if you can. Otherwise, there's really no basis to make an argument against it.

ekianjo• 13 years ago

Poor Al Gore and his claims that global warming was "accelerating". Next time better wait a little before early conclusions.

beedogs• 13 years ago

I'm accustomed to seeing this kind of garbage on Drudge-linked articles, not on HN.

rayiner5• 13 years ago

The thing that really put climate change in perspective for me was when a professor pointed out that the last ice age was just 4-5C colder than today, but that meant that the place where we were sitting, on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, was under a mile of ice.

glurgh2• 13 years ago

That seems like a (probably inadvertently) awful example. Chicago is right smack in the middle of the 'tongue' of the Laurentide ice sheet that sticks out way to the south - even today, without miles of ice the climate of NYC and Barcelona are quite unalike while being at the same latitude. At the point of maximum extent global mean temperatures were already rising, there were great big gobs of the Pleistocene in which they were far lower.

'Mean surface temperature' is something that can be directly measured or estimated from paleometeorologic proxies but without models for the underlying mechanisms, it's pretty uninformative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WhereIsTheHeatOfGlobalWarm...

And the linked references give some idea of how very misleading, taken at face value, mean global temperatures can be.

Even just doing a bit of napkin physics - if one applied the energy needed to heat the top meter of ocean by one degree to the first meter of air, it would be like taking a blowtorch to the layer of air in question.

Examples like that are pithy but they're almost like walking up to a denialist and saying 'I want you to hit me in the face, as hard as you can'.

rayiner5• 13 years ago

The point is that a relatively small change to the average can mean major changes locally. It's irrelevant what the ice coverage in New York was. We weren't in New York.

ankitml2• 13 years ago

this is a big problem when you judge the climate of whole earth by just one number. "Mean surface temperature" it is called. Even in present article, the author clearly talks about this number being not as increasing as expected, but cautioned the increased uncertainty.

Which means, local variations will increase and that should increase worry not decrease.

flagnog5• 13 years ago

in other words: we don't understand it, but we're still going to blame it on mankind.

we can make short range predictions, but still don't know all of the variables that are controlling the climate.

rayiner5• 13 years ago

In still other words: it doesn't matter what's causing it, we're fucked if the average temperature in the breadbasket of the U.S. becomes similar to that of Texas, as is projected. The question isn't: did we cause it, the question is: can we slow it down?

harryh2• 13 years ago

If mankind is causing it, then we're likely to keep causing it, and be fucked in the way you describe.

If mankind is not causing it, then we don't know what's going on and our predictions about the long term (next 100 years) trend are likely wrong.

btilly9• 13 years ago

There is a form of argument which is essentially to take all incoming facts, pattern match them against your existing beliefs, then spit out a matching statement with no evidence of comprehension. This is very common in certain subjects, including politics.

This form of argument is not wanted here. Please do not engage in it.

If you read the article with comprehension you'd find that global warming is happening as predicted, but on the conservative side of those predictions.

Go out and investigate for yourself. You'll find that the error bars on those predictions remain large. Though smaller than they were. And the conclusion that it is human-caused has only become better supported with time.

ramblerman2• 13 years ago

> There is a form of argument which is essentially to take all incoming facts, pattern match them against your existing beliefs, then spit out a matching statement with no evidence of comprehension. This is very common in certain subjects, including politics.

This is very true on both sides of this argument though.

ori_b• 13 years ago

Right, we don't fully understand it. Our models have large error margins, and while they all agree on the trend, the specifics are relatively vague. More research is needed.

What we do understand, on the other hand, tells us we should be extremely conservative when it comes to the environment, and avoid pumping it full of greenhouse gasses, because having the planet heat up may lead to really bad things happening.

I don't get this "We don't understand what's going on, therefore we can keep making a mess" argument that so many people seem to be making.

sethbannon• 13 years ago

These two sentences summarize the article pretty well: "The authors calculate that over the coming decades global average temperatures will warm about 20% more slowly than expected. But when it comes to the longer term picture, the authors say their work is consistent with previous estimates."

JeremyKolb• 13 years ago

Thanks for the summary, I started reading but wasn't going to get far on this one.

ramblerman2• 13 years ago

Why? I think climate change is happening personally,but why the need to cling to it like religion.

If evidence comes out, look at it, revaluate, repeat...

ankitml2• 13 years ago

Not sure what they wanted to achieve with this article, as the article paints a picture different from the title.

1. Likelihood in long term remains the same. (title betrays its readers) 2. In medium term likelihood of most extreme scenarios is less than what was expected. (hey ho, extreme scenarios are not to account for, thats why they are extreme) 3. people should be exactly as concerned as before about what climate change is doing

ANyway, the whole news-article is based on one publication. Meh. I would rather ignore the details of one publication because minor difference in details dont matter. The broad picture remains the same.

Climate Slowdown Means Extreme Rates of Warming 'Not as Likely'

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