If I followed it all correctly it's not even trying to relate to global warming, just a distraction.
Humanity is causing Global Warming, for sure.
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I agree that it was not as crucially straightforward to view in terms of being on-topic, due to having more to do with science
But, as noted clearly, the posts had the starting premise that given there is no scientific (in this context one dealing with a physical/material system) claim which has 99,999% certainty, this study can be seen as pretty much non-scientific.
Old Hippy
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I think it is we are all going to die anyway argument, so what is so special about global warming...
when in the end it will be a cold dark Universe.
No it's not
Entropy was mentioned only after SS-18 brought it up; i was originally only alluding to inherently less than 100% stable physical laws (even the 2nd TD law, which famously is supposed to be the least likely to change a lot in the future. You see, the 2nd law of Thermodynamics has very high entropy, amirite).
Old Hippy
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No it's not
Entropy was mentioned only after SS-18 brought it up; i was originally only alluding to inherently less than 100% stable physical laws (even the 2nd TD law, which famously is supposed to be the least likely to change a lot in the future. You see, the 2nd law of Thermodynamics has very high entropy, amirite).
Ok, glad you clarified it for me...
What they were saying if I understand it correctly is that their modelling doesn't produce the observed recent warming in 99,999 out of 100,000 runs. This us statistically significant, the assumption being that the models reflect the real world. In order to see if the model was accurate, they ran it against known historical climate data to see how it conformed.
The only way they could produce the 300+ months of above average global temperatures was by including anthropogenic carbon. Leave that out, and in 99.9% of the trials the climate system doesn't look like the one we see.
The only way they could produce the 300+ months of above average global temperatures was by including anthropogenic carbon. Leave that out, and in 99.9% of the trials the climate system doesn't look like the one we see.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Isn't it possible that an external agent unknown to us is responsible, such as aliens or time travellers?
I'm surprised that the potential economic gains could outweigh the potential losses of, say, sea level rise along. Relocating millions of people, billions (trillions?) in infrastructure - seems to me overwhelming.
Of course I could be totally wrong...
It also seems like a no brainer to me, too. I've certainly seen many reports regarding the potential damages, but I've not seen many that directly compare the 'business as usual' oil usage plus climate damage versus a deliberate restriction on fossil fuel consumption. And, of the few I've seen, very few show a net harm from fossil fuel use.
Now, what does this mean? It means that we don't know. It still behooves us to try to be very efficient with our remaining fuel. Regardless of what the models end up showing, we're not going to have 'regretted' efficiency.
Now, what does this mean? It means that we don't know. It still behooves us to try to be very efficient with our remaining fuel. Regardless of what the models end up showing, we're not going to have 'regretted' efficiency.
The main problem is that human civilization has only existed in the Holocene and has adapted to the specific conditions of the Holocene. The Holocene has been a plateau of remarkably stable temperatures: from around 10000 years ago to today, global temperatures haven’t left a narrow band of around 1 C around the 20th century average (which we exceed by 0.6 C today).
Before this, climate was obviously colder on average but also far more chaotic, prone to extreme fluctuations like the Younger Dryas cold period at 12800 to 11500 years ago, the last gasp of the last glacial cycle, which at the most extreme locations (e.g. the Greenland ice sheet summit) featured temperatures that fell from a short-lived peak near present-day values, down to about 15 C below present-day conditions in a series of rapid steps, and then shot back up to near-present levels in the span of a few decades at the end of the period. Temperature changes get far less extreme away from the poles, so on a global average basis this was probably something like 2-3 C, but the variation that occurred in the space of those 1300 years exceeded by far the variation we’ve seen in the entire last 10000 years, and by extension the entire history of agriculture.
The previous interglacial, the Eemian (about 130 kyr to about 115 kyr ago), featured peak average temperatures that exceeded present averages by something like 1-2 C worldwide, but it was a very “spiky” and variable interglacial. Even though several species of humans existed at this time, including our own, nobody developed agriculture.
Our agricultural systems are based on the current rainfall and temperature patterns as they exist now (or at least as they existed in the 20th century), and much of our population is near sea level. We’re used to treating coastlines like things that don’t change, but again the last ~7000 years (it took some time for the last Northern Hemisphere ice caps outside Greenland to melt) have featured bizarrely stable sea levels against a background that has fluctuated enormously in the geologically recent past.
Anthropogenic climate change is a problem mostly because it’s a sudden, abrupt change that has never been experienced before in the history of human agriculture. Its magnitude will probably be something like 3 C worldwide at peak (of which 0.8 have already happened), possibly a bit less, possibly quite a bit more, depending on climate sensitivity and GHG emissions. There will probably be some winners, but they will certainly be drowned out by the costs of rapid climate change of a magnitude unprecedented in the last 10000 years. We may derive a net benefit in the short run (<50 years), but ultimately the costs of this problem will overwhelm us just as cheap fossil fuels become extremely scarce (which does mitigate the climate change problem, but would also have huge economic impacts).
Before this, climate was obviously colder on average but also far more chaotic, prone to extreme fluctuations like the Younger Dryas cold period at 12800 to 11500 years ago, the last gasp of the last glacial cycle, which at the most extreme locations (e.g. the Greenland ice sheet summit) featured temperatures that fell from a short-lived peak near present-day values, down to about 15 C below present-day conditions in a series of rapid steps, and then shot back up to near-present levels in the span of a few decades at the end of the period. Temperature changes get far less extreme away from the poles, so on a global average basis this was probably something like 2-3 C, but the variation that occurred in the space of those 1300 years exceeded by far the variation we’ve seen in the entire last 10000 years, and by extension the entire history of agriculture.
The previous interglacial, the Eemian (about 130 kyr to about 115 kyr ago), featured peak average temperatures that exceeded present averages by something like 1-2 C worldwide, but it was a very “spiky” and variable interglacial. Even though several species of humans existed at this time, including our own, nobody developed agriculture.
Our agricultural systems are based on the current rainfall and temperature patterns as they exist now (or at least as they existed in the 20th century), and much of our population is near sea level. We’re used to treating coastlines like things that don’t change, but again the last ~7000 years (it took some time for the last Northern Hemisphere ice caps outside Greenland to melt) have featured bizarrely stable sea levels against a background that has fluctuated enormously in the geologically recent past.
Anthropogenic climate change is a problem mostly because it’s a sudden, abrupt change that has never been experienced before in the history of human agriculture. Its magnitude will probably be something like 3 C worldwide at peak (of which 0.8 have already happened), possibly a bit less, possibly quite a bit more, depending on climate sensitivity and GHG emissions. There will probably be some winners, but they will certainly be drowned out by the costs of rapid climate change of a magnitude unprecedented in the last 10000 years. We may derive a net benefit in the short run (<50 years), but ultimately the costs of this problem will overwhelm us just as cheap fossil fuels become extremely scarce (which does mitigate the climate change problem, but would also have huge economic impacts).
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
I couldn't find anything at first glance..
but my point is completely unrelated anyway. I'm just saying that given the evidence that we have of course it's possible that humans aren't responsible for climate change, because that's just the nature of the sort of pronouncements the scientific method allows you to make.
The examples I throw out are the exceptions, some of those that lie in that 0.001%
Of course they're going to be "crazy" fantastical ideas, given the probabilities involved.
Bootstoots said:
They very well can, if we don't step it up a notch and start working on more solutions, not to mention preparing for some of the changes.
The biggest problems in my opinion are going to be the refugees and the problems that they bring with them. It's going to create a lot of instability not only in countries directly affected..
I'll throw in some more examples: maybe we're all living in a simulation, or the universe could have been created last Friday and our memories of times before it were created in the initial creation event. Or maybe the world was created 6000 years ago, and all our evidence of times before that was created in the initial creation event to look as though the universe were billions of years old. I don't even think we can assign probabilities to any of those things because they're all totally outside what science can do. Physics is one thing, metaphysics, on the other hand...
I think the "99.999%" figure would have to exclude those sorts of things entirely.
I'm not sure there really are "solutions", exactly, at least based on the way humans empirically seem to behave. There certainly are more rational ways to behave in order to mitigate the damage, and I think the burden resettling the refugees should (but probably won't) be placed on the worst historical carbon emitters.
I'm deeply pessimistic about any deliberate attempts to cut our carbon emissions rapidly. We're obviously going to continue developing renewables and improving efficiency to get more energy and use out of our energy, respectively. But it appears, empirically, that humans won't willingly make changes that involve otherwise unwanted cuts to their consumption. The backlashes in the three biggest non-petrostate per-capita emitters of CO2, Canada*, Australia, and the USA, are enough to convince me that well-intentioned plans usually fall apart if the population perceives a short-term benefit to burning or producing more fossil fuels. Economic considerations certainly can influence behavior, but I think that is what it will take to cut emissions in any serious way.
*now sort of a petrostate
At the same time, humans have locally adapted to mean temperatures that stretch more than 30 K between the extremes. So we have shown to be quite adaptable and it is not a given that climate change is too fast for us to adapt, especially as we are much better equipped than our ancestors migrating to new lands.
I also don't see any reason for the assumption that the current climate provides the best conditions for humans to thrive. Maybe a hotter earth would be actually more fertile, so in the long run we might recoup any losses during the transition period. Maybe we are actually long past the optimum point and higher temperatures will make it much worse. We probably want to minimize the risk of finding out the hard way, but the point is that we have no evidence either way.
Oh yes, we are very good at adapting, and humans can figure out ways to live in most regions of the planet. There's no question, in my mind at least, that human civilization (or at least humans) will survive even under the worst case scenarios. The question is how severe the consequences will be during the rapid transition period.
I do not necessarily think that the current climate provides the best conditions for humans to thrive. It's not really a question of the current climate being optimal - it's all about the transition. We might well be happier on a world even 4-6 C above present average temperatures (more warming than I expect), provided the climate is stable. Conditions like that have been the norm for Earth over most of the last half billion years, and life thrived.
Rapidly changing a variable in a highly complex and poorly understood system tends to bring about substantial (and difficult to predict) changes, and it is expected that global average temperature increases will substantially shift precipitation patterns and just about everything else related to typical weather conditions in a given place (exactly what will happen where is much more uncertain). Furthermore, the transition period may cause far more crop-destroying local fluctuations than would occur under the normal Holocene regime.
We may have better technology than our ancestors, but there's a huge problem that wasn't as true in the past: the world is pretty much full, at least in terms of arable land. Some land will become more arable, some less, some will support different kinds of agriculture, etc; but the world population density is extremely high by historical standards - there's no new land to migrate to, and most land is owned by people and governments that object to migrants taking it over. Add in water, fuel, fertilizer, and other shortages and the problems get even worse.
So yes, we can probably adapt ultimately. But over timescales of the next couple centuries, it appears we're in for a wild ride.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
I meant solutions such as for example Dutch know how regarding the protection of cities and other low lying areas. These problems are going to be far reaching and affect many different things, and in many cases nothing can be done, and in a lot of cases solutions will be too expensive, but I think we have to look at all of them anyway. In some cases you'll find solutions that help.. maybe not much, but I think that's what we need to do, whether we think it's really going to help or not.
We have to become better at living on a planet with a potentially rapidly changing climate.. which involves getting good at controlling the chaos when conditions around the planet change. We suck at it now, but the only way to get better is to try some things and see what sticks, then go from there. It's not meant to stop the problem, but rather make it easier for people to get by when crap goes down.
I guess I'm a bit more optimistic. I'm very happy with the steps China has finally begun to take to control their emissions for example. They are finally beginning to see that progress has a cost, and if you're not careful that cost will hit your economy in many ways, whether by affecting the health of your citizens or driving away tourists or whatever. And I have to admit I'm only very happy because they haven't really cared much until now. I'm happy that they finally care and are trying to do things about it, even if they are still probably polluting quite a bit every day in terms of raw output of garbage into the atmosphere.
Not enough yet, but even the events in Ukraine should push parts of the planet towards more sustainable energy policies... which in turn help reduce emissions and so on.
Basically I think what's going to happen is things are going to get worse before they get better.. for a while. It's going to force us to do more and more. People are going to suffer as a result, but what can you do.. We're human, we're driven by greed first and foremost. We'll keep doing things until things start falling apart. Then we'll rely on our children to fix the mess.
I certainly agree - no argument at all there.
That's pretty close to what I think too.
Regarding the Chinese, that they would finally worry about emissions (of everything ranging from particulates to CO2) is laudable but it's more or less exactly what I would expect at their current economic position. Air pollution from smog, vehicle emissions, and the like is a relatively "easy" problem to fix, and they now have both the political pressure from their own citizens and the resources to clean up their air. But their CO2 emissions will continue climbing at a rate about a percentage point or two below their growth rate, based on everyone else's trajectories so far (economies become somewhat less carbon intensive as they grow, but the growth itself is more than enough to outweigh this effect). Fossil fuels are unparalleled as energy sources; no doubt they'll continue efforts with alternatives just like the rest of the world, but if anything they'll probably do what everyone else so far has done and continue to emit more carbon every year that they have GDP growth above 1 or 2%.
As for events in Ukraine: if things remain seriously bad through the winter, we'll see how structurally dependent Europe is on Russian gas imports. It's an interesting question; I expect they'll respond by developing both green and non-green energy resources to try to compensate. Ukraine itself is undoubtedly emitting less CO2, because its economy is contracting; the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions by any major country in recent times was the Soviet Union: its remnants' 50% or so collapse in GDP between 1989 and 1999 or so made it proportionally less carbon emitting by a similar fraction. Now Russia is doing decently economically and is a major oil and gas exporter, so they've more than
compensated for their lull in the 90s. The greenest thing any economy can do is collapse (with respect to fossil fuel consumption anyway; other problems like deforestation can get worse).
I don't think there's much chance people will voluntarily reduce emissions for environmental reasons, but economic conditions imposed by resource scarcity, damage from climate change and other environmental problems, and improved sustainable energy technology will result in some sort of painful transition followed by societies that have adapted to whatever the new conditions are. So I more or less agree with you here too, but felt like writing a bunch anyway.
Huge dislocation in the agircultural sector too, you'd think.
On China, just wanted to note that they're planning on coal use plateauing for the next couple of years and then dropping, and they're also winding back support for their inefficient and electricity-intense aluminium sector. And their national carbon pricing scheme (a trading scheme) is due to start in 2016.
Chinese coal consumption actually seems to have dropped this year based on domestic production and import data (uncertainty over stockpiles remains0, which may sugegst peak coal consumption has already been reached there.
Chinese coal consumption actually seems to have dropped this year based on domestic production and import data (uncertainty over stockpiles remains0, which may sugegst peak coal consumption has already been reached there.
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