Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/science/earth/panels-warning-on-climate-risk-worst-is-yet-to-come.html

by platz • 12 years ago

27 38 12 years ago

nytimes.com

jamhan2• 12 years ago

The other side: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/27/un-climate-a...

jamhan2• 12 years ago

Wow, downvoted for simply posting a report on a dissenting opinion from a former IPCC review panel member. WTF?

platz• 12 years ago

Downvotes seem to be as much emotionally driven as anything else. Also, there is the perpetual confusion between "I do not agree" and "This is not constructive"

duncan_bayne2• 12 years ago

I got downvoted just for asking someone to explain the reasoning behind the report, given the acknowledged (by the IPCC!) flat-spot we're experiencing.

This seems to be a hard issue for people to discuss rationally.

HoochTHX• 12 years ago

Fear the mind killer, used too often...

spikels• 12 years ago

I understand and believe in the science - so why does this article trigger my suspicion I am being sold something. I know balance has gotten a bad name with because the crackpots in the global warming denier camp but this just seems so one-sided that it strains credibility.

naturalethic• 12 years ago

To even use the word "denier" strains your credibility as a "scientist"

steve192• 12 years ago

Apparently the warming is going to give us bad tempers [0] ...

"In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees ... retired U.S. Navy Adm. David Titley, now a Pennsylvania State University professor of meteorology, wrote in an email. “The Arab Spring and Syria are two recent examples.”

They sully the real science with this kind of nonsense.

[0] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/warmer-temperature...

pfraze2• 12 years ago

Actually, no. One of the big events leading up to Egypt's revolution was a grain shortage brought on by a heat wave and bout of fires in Russia [1].

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08...

steve192• 12 years ago

The webpage you cite does not support your argument that Climate Change caused the Egyptian population to rise up against their oppressive/corrupt dictatorship. It simply states that Russia had fires destroying wheat and Egypt was an importer.

Food price inflation[0] is cited by Wikipedia as one of the causes (with just a single link). There are pages and pages of other much more important reasons[1]

Food price inflation is not necessarily connected to Global Warming/Climate Change.

The 2007/2008 World Food Crisis, which caused violence in Egypt[2], significantly raised food prices (which stayed high after the rapid rise). A major cause, according to the World Bank, was biofuels [2] which raised food prices by up to 75%.

Its easy to claim that X was the spark that made Y happen. All you need to show that X had some minuscule effect and people will readily agree, ignoring the big picture.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011#cit... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011#cit... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_pr... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_pr...

fleitz2• 12 years ago

In most sciences when the hypothesis fails to account for what happened one decides the theory is bunk and moves on.

In GW/CC (whatever they are calling it this week) the hypothesis is a forgone conclusion and you merely search for evidence to support it.

So since we're having a 'warming hiatus' one concludes that the worst is yet to come, because the alternative is the model has not been validated by evidence and one should not make predictions based on an unvalidated (or more correctly invalidated) model.

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-mi...

crazy1van2• 12 years ago

Yeah, I think we've lost touch with the whole scientific method on climate change. Propose a theory. Test the theory. Revise the theory. Repeat and repeat as we gain a more accurate understanding of our world.

Climate is so complicated. Of we're going to get things wrong. The trick is revising our theories in light of recent discoveries. Unfortunately, many people have a lot of money and clout invested in The One True Theory that they don't want to admit any mistakes at all. That is closer to religion than science.

jjoonathan• 12 years ago

I think we've lost touch with the whole scientific method on climate change. Propose a theory. Test the theory. Revise the theory. Repeat and repeat as we gain a more accurate understanding of our world.

I think you've never been in touch with the scientific method on climate change because your "how it should work" outline is exactly how I saw it go down in the literature.

Theory: Earth is warming ~1K/century, we have a bunch of models to project from here, most of which are bad news.

Observation: Temperature dips below predictions on enough models over enough time to be statistically significant.

Theory: Some negative feedback mechanism kicked in to reverse our forcing on the climate. We no longer have to worry about the previous trends.

Observation: Radiative flux measurements say that the difference in energy going in and going out of the planet is still positive. Whatever the negative feedback mechanism is, the energy is staying on Earth, so thermodynamics says the feedback mechanism must eventually fail.

Theory: The heat is being stored in the ocean. It's the biggest heat sink around.

Observation: If we adjust the models to use observed ocean currents instead of predicted average currents, we find that that the refined models reflect the observed heat storage.

Theory: Parts of the ocean are heating up, as seen in the models.

Observation: Yep, we went and measured them, and they're heating up. Corrected to reflect this evidence, the models still point to upward trends.

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Climate is so complicated. Of we're going to get things wrong. The trick is revising our theories in light of recent discoveries.

Good thing that's exactly what happens. The real trick is in convincing people like you that it has happened. Clearly it's not enough to

1. Publish cross-referenced short summaries alongside detailed methodologies (papers) in a system where people compete to prove each other wrong

2. Provide high-level reviews to connect the dots established by #1 (the IPCC reports)

3. Have the thousands of scientists doing #1 sign off on #2 so that you know it's not misrepresenting how their #1 results fit into the big picture

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many people have a lot of money and clout invested in The One True Theory that they don't want to admit any mistakes at all.

If someone can prove an alternative there is far more money and clout in it for them than if they had toed the line. There is a large social penalty for false alarms, but that's because there is a political party, monied industry, and media apparatus poised to turn a false alarm into actual counterproductive action.

How can the debate be considered fair if one side is censored? Easy: "false alarm" hypotheses are only ever stated in the context of research results that prove them wrong (i.e. as null hypotheses). They still get proposed, inspected, and analyzed, just not in a way that allows political forces to trivially misrepresent them. Research that could disprove the whole GW/CC theory gets done in the context of investigating puzzling nuances of GW/CC. So far, the overall theory has endured, even though the details have evolved to account for new information.

Consider a debugging analogy. Suppose you're convinced that you have a compiler bug, but you know that you'll get laughed at if you say so out loud. The social stigma is never an issue because you can do reductions without getting laughed at. If it really is a compiler bug, you will eventually have a "smoking gun" test case to prove it. If not, no harm done. Your social status hasn't suffered because you can claim you never really believed it was a compiler bug anyway.

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That is closer to religion than science.

How many actual research papers have you read on this subject? Because if you think climate scientists aren't following the scientific process I suspect the answer is 0.

Start here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-o...

(notice how the discussion revolves around primary literature with links at the bottom)

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One choice quote from the link above:

And a reminder: The warming trend of the 15-year period up to 2006 was almost twice as fast as expected (0.3°C per decade, see Fig. 4 here), and (rightly) nobody cared. We published a paper in Science in 2007 where we noted this large trend, and as the first explanation for it we named “intrinsic variability within the climate system”. Which it turned out to be. - See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-o...

dmk23• 12 years ago

This alarmism is getting really ridiculous.

Just 5 years ago, Al Gore claimed North Pole ice cap will be gone by now and instead we just had a record cold winter.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/16/editorial-al...

fleitz2• 12 years ago

The less the sky falls the more imminent the danger. Ask any christian, or other believer in an apocalyptic cult, the end times have never been closer.

From the wiki page on doomsday cults: "Referring to his study, Festinger and later other researchers have attempted to explain the commitment of members to their associated doomsday cult, even after the prophecies of their leader have turned out to be false. Festinger explained this phenomenon as part of a coping mechanism called dissonance reduction, a form of rationalization. Members often dedicate themselves with renewed vigor to the group's cause after a failed prophecy, and rationalize with explanations such as a belief that their actions forestalled the disaster, or a belief in the leader when the date for disaster is postponed."

yequalsx• 12 years ago

I don't know about Al Gore's prediction or the basis of it. He is not an expert but perhaps his prediction was based off of the opinion of experts. The opinion piece you linked to hardly qualifies as a valid counter to alarmism.

The variation of the extent of arctic ice is much less during winter than it is during summer. Since 2007 there have been three years where the minimum ice extent has been below 2 standard deviations of the 1981-2010 mean according to the National Snow and Ice Center. Since the 80s the volume of arctic sea ice has been halved.

Al Gore's predication was wrong. Arctic sea ice continues to decline and the arctic experienced an unusually warm winter. This is according to the National Snow and Ice Center. Here is a quote from their blog,

"While the eastern half of the United States has dealt with a cold and snowy winter, temperatures in the Arctic have been distinctly higher than average."

Everything will be fine for the planet as it is an inanimate object. Not everything will be fine for humans.

tzs• 12 years ago

The sources that page cites do not agree with what that page says: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-i...

yongjik• 12 years ago

Anybody who thinks "we" (I guess North America?) just had a record cold winter aren't just ignorant of climate science, they aren't even reading xkcd.

http://xkcd.com/1321/

How... uncultured.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

Sweet Jesus the HN comments here are scary. I'd have hoped for some sort of sense here.

I really should get over my idea that comments here are any better than any other internet cesspool....

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

Who knew that HN was a hotbed of climate denialism?

rjdagost• 12 years ago

Apparently your idea of "better" means "comments that I agree with"?

epistasis• 12 years ago

There was a time when HN was less political and more interested in fact.

Can you imagine any other context where a political editorial would be accepted as fact in a discussion on science? Some people have such little shame.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

What makes you say that?

ethana• 12 years ago

On the contrary, what if George Carlin was right and mother nature just needed human to make plastic?

bsbechtel2• 12 years ago

Why do we believe climate scientists when they can't even predict the weather 10 days out? Yes, weather doesn't equal climate, but climate is weather in aggregate. That means we should be able to predict short-term, local weather events more accurately before we even begin to start predicting long-term, global weather phenomenons. If our short-term weather models are so pitifully inaccurate, what on earth makes us believe our climate models predicting what will happen 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now are anywhere close to being correct?

badsock2• 12 years ago

In many systems you can predict larger scale events (when the pot of water will boil) despite being unable to predict smaller scale ones (turbulent flow inside the pot).

bsbechtel2• 12 years ago

Your pot of boiling water prediction is based on past experience, not modeling of the smaller scale system. Climate science is akin to modeling turbulent flow inside the pot to predict when the pot will boil.

Lambdanaut• 12 years ago

You're comparing apples to oranges here.

Predicting the exact type of precipitation in a specific locale is one thing. Extrapolating a global trend based on past data is another.

They don't need to know whether it will be raining next month in Istanbul to tell you that the world is warming at a specific rate and what are the likely culprits.

betaclass• 12 years ago

I predict the average value of fair dice thrown into the future will be 3.5.

I predict the next value thrown by a given fair die is _____.

Sometimes aggregate predictions are easier than fine-grained ones.

zabomber• 12 years ago

Wtf is their a linked item on HN to a payed news site?

duncan_bayne2• 12 years ago

Could someone please explain to me how the IPCC can be calling for urgent action when their models are looking increasingly busted?

http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/04/causes-and-implications-of....

I can see three main possibilities:

- their models aren't busted (Judith Curry is wrong, as are those whom she cites)

- their models are busted, and that increases the risk (i.e. risk increases as a result of forecasting being essentially impossible)

- their models are busted, and they're doubling down on a bad bet for political reasons

Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come

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