This is more alarming to me.
Posted on 04/07/2006 11:52:35 AM PDT by cogitator
Tim Flannery believes no one can know the future with certainty, but the evidence is overwhelming that global warming will likely have devastating impacts. The time for debate and discussion has long since passed, he writes in his new book, “The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change.”
“If . . . we wait to see if an ailment is indeed fatal, we will do nothing until we are dead.”
A noted zoologist and director of the South Australian Museum, Flannery says our fate is in our own hands – “for we are the weather makers, and we already possess all the tools required to avoid catastrophic climate change.”
We contacted Flannery, who will speak at the San Diego Zoo Monday, via e-mail while he was on tour in Barbados.
QUESTION: What are the most devastating impacts of global warming now, and what will they be in the future?
ANSWER: Many Inuit and Pacific Islanders are already suffering devastating impacts. They've lost their homes, livelihoods and familiar habitats already. The world's coral reefs are already substantially damaged, and, of course, we've already seen extinctions as a result of climate change.
In the short term, impacts will continue to be most severe at the poles and among the coral atoll nations of the Pacific and Indian oceans, but within a few decades, if we continue polluting with greenhouse gases, severe impacts will become far more widespread.
I think it's likely that the Netherlands, for example, will see severe damage from extra-tropical low pressure systems, floods and rising seas, while damage will continue to mount in hurricane zones.
Fifty years out, it may well be that all low-lying regions of the planet are under stress from rapidly rising seas. But honestly, the possible impacts are so various that when we consider where the worst damage will be in a century, it could be almost anywhere.
For a long time, the argument seemed to be that global warming either wasn't real or that it wasn't being caused by man. Has the world seen enough evidence now to move beyond that?
The argument you outline has been dictated by a small group of skeptics, many of whom are paid by those who make money from polluting and who don't wish to see changes to the way they do business. They've gone through at least three stages of denial: first that climate change doesn't exist; then that it does exist but it's not human caused; then that we are causing it, but it's too expensive to fix.
Who knows what the next state of denial will be? And of course, ever since the 1980s we've had sufficient evidence to justify gradually increasing restrictions on the polluting gases.
How do you respond to those who say it's too expensive to fix?
This is the third stage of denial, and it's the flimsiest of them all because its proponents never try to estimate the cost of letting business go on as usual. The insurance companies, however, are doing a pretty good job of keeping track of the cost, and they know that it's not only sending them broke, but is growing so swiftly as to threaten the global economy.
A few years ago, Swiss Re, the world's largest re-insurer (they take the risk from the insurers), threatened to withdraw director's liability insurance for directors of the worst polluting companies, which gives you some idea of their mood.
What do you say to global warming naysayers who say climate-change models are flawed?
The climate models all agree on one thing – the planet will warm as greenhouse gases accumulate. They disagree on how much warming will occur, but even at the lowest end of the projections, if we go about business as usual, the changes will be immense.
Some have argued that global warming is a good thing – it allows longer growing seasons, expands the range for some agriculture and could increase the area where human habitation can be comfortable.
Is global warming a good or a bad thing? To answer that, we need to know a little about the scale and rate of change, because big, fast changes are very bad for almost everything adapted to conditions prevalent before the change.
It turns out that even conservative projections of climate change to 2100 indicate a change almost as big, but 30 times faster, than that which occurred at the end of the ice age. And that, even on a geological time scale, is almost as fast and hairy as change gets.
How do you convince the potential losers to go along with a corrective program?
As we switch to the low-emissions economy required to limit climate change, there will be big winners and losers. The Danes, for example, have already monopolized wind power and are set to do the same with the enzymes needed to produce new biofuels. The Japanese have a huge head start with hybrid engines and photovoltaics.
It really scares me when I look at my own country of Australia squandering time on the idea that coal has a future, and not building up its intellectual property portfolio in the renewables. As far as I can see, the same applies to the U.S., which used to be a world leader in wind and solar in the 1970s. I think both countries need to start carving out their turf in the renewables now.
Should we fear the unknown – damaging consequences that are impossible to foresee or pick up in a climate-change model?
Yes, it's certainly the things that we don't know that are most worrying. Just consider two facts: The global climate system is full of positive feedback loops that amplify small initial changes, and we don't fully understand the system yet. That implies that our computer projections are underestimates. And indeed, that's what we're seeing in the real world. Shifts, such as increases in hurricane intensity, are progressing decades ahead of the projections.
Greg Bell, at the Climate Prediction Center, argues that the recent wave of intense hurricanes striking North America is part of a normal, multi-decade cycle. Would you agree?
Bell seems to have confused regional and global trends. There is cyclicity in regional hurricane activity, but overlain on this is a sharp global rise in the energy expended in hurricanes (60 percent over the past 30-odd years) and a big increase in the amount of that energy going to category 4 and 5 hurricanes.
Does the American populace, in your estimation, still need convincing?
Americans, like everyone else, need to educate themselves more fully about climate change, because big investment decisions, both personal and corporate, need to be made. This applies regardless of whether you are convinced climate change is real or not. I'm convinced that climate change will soon become the only issue of global importance, and among individuals, as with nations, those best informed will be the most successful in dealing with the altered world.
What can and should the average citizen do to fight global warming?
It's simple: Reduce your emissions as close to zero as possible, then encourage your business to do the same. And finally, never vote for anyone who you are not absolutely convinced understands the issue and will act in the national interest to combat climate change.
Having reduced my emissions substantially (with international air travel excepted – which I'm working on), and having cut my museum's emissions by 15 percent, I can tell you that it's economically sensible and fun to do. In my case, solar panels were the obvious option and a hybrid fuel car. In other parts of the world, other options may be more sensible.
What you are essentially arguing is that there are sufficient push-"backs" in the system to counter a slow, steady push-forward in a single direction. It's fine to think or hope that, but it's not scientifically defined as likely. The models can and do cover the systems that are involved. That does not deny there are uncertainties; the predictions come with associate uncertainties.
That's one of the most idiotic analogies I've ever heard. I say one of the most idiotic because it's typical of the feeble minded BS that comes from most global warmers.
It was not so much an analogy as an illustration. If you want an analogy; take a bathtub and fill it nearly to the brim with water. Turn on the faucet, and open the drain. Provide you have enough incoming water flow, balance the incoming flow with the drainage so that the water level is stable. Clearly there will be turbulent circulation in the tub, temperature variability, etc.
Now start adding a teaspoonful of water from the sink next to the tub once a minute. What will happen to the level of water in the tub?
The point of the analogy is to show that a small steady change in one direction will influence other variables in a system in one direction.
Nonsense. Systems where positive feedback dominate blow up.
I agree. This is a climate concern, where "blow up" would mean accelerated warming. Loss of ice albedo, increased absorption of solar radiation by seawater, and methane release are all potential positive feedbacks.
Your analogy is still flawed. Heat doesn't escape the earth through a fixed size drain, it is reradiated and reflected into space. Both of those are affected by weather which must be modeled to determine the resulting heat loss. A GCM without a weather model might be like your bathtub scenario. But the real earth is like a tub with waves that splash water over the sides. The real earth doesn't reradiate heat evenly using a single parameter like your bathtub drain. In the real earth the vortexes change how energy is lost into space, unlike your bathtub where they don't matter. Finally the extra water vapor in the real earth as postulated by the forcing theory, does affect the weather and therefore the energy lost to space.
I absoLUTELY do not ignore that. Here's why: we are in the middle of a stable interglacial period right now.
Not true. We are nearing the peak of another cyclical warm spell, according to all available measurements.
The main factors that cause glacial/interglacial shifts are simply too slow to be operative factors now; they could not cause the observed trends ---
That can be said only if you ignore the sharp peaks of previous cyclical shifts. -- Feel free to dream on.
And also to you.
I think you missed my meaning. Blow up means runaway warming or cooling. Neither has happened in the Earth's 4.5 billion year history. One must therefore conclude that the Earth's climate is not dominated by positive feedback.
Your comment about positive feedback loops makes sense in the absolute but I think it's a bit more complicated. With climate you have lots of different cycles all operating on different time scales. While a positive feedback loop (like loss of snow albedo leading to more warming) may dominate for a while, it may eventually be overturned by another cycle, such as long term changes in the orbit of the earth around the sun (Milankovich cycles) which would eventually act to cool the earth back down.
But we need to be concerned with the short term effects, and most science suggests that these are going to hammer us in the near term (the next decades and possibly centuries).
Since coral reefs are a phenomena of tropical waters, wouldn't it make sense that increased water temperature would increase the area where coral growth is viable?
I think the comment about corals would make sense if both growth and death occurred at the same rate. But it doesn't. It takes coral and awful long time to establish itself and grow, but you can have a massive die-off in a single season. So we're starting to see some large die-offs in warmer waters. Maybe in a few hundred years it will balance out, but that's not really too comforting if you are dependent on fish now that lives off of the coral.
The pursue the analogy even further --- Since we know that brain tumors can cause pain, the next time you get a headache, you should go directly to surgery instead of waiting to see if it's something else causing the pain.
Right. But what if you've had hundreds of scientists look at your "headache" and tell you that it's more serious than that and you do need surgery?
I have been hearing about large scale reef destruction (pick a cause, any cause) for over 30 years now since the Frog in scuba gear started his junk science soap opera for National Geographic, yet I am not aware of any reef that has ceased to exist in that time.
Are you?
And where is the evidence that a degree or two change in water temp. will kill them off just like that?
I know what you're saying - the crisis is always just over the horizon, right?
But, I think there is some pretty recent evidence of coral kills. This article was just posted on CNN a week ago, and it sure sounds pretty alarming and immediate to me.
Caribbean coral suffers record die-off:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/03/31/coral.death.ap/index.html
The proper analogy would be that "surgeons" would recommend an operation --- because --- well, that's what Surgeons do.
A good doctor would say take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
For a damn theory based entirely on computer models that are not even close to accurate on "predicting" past trends, that ignore major variables because they are more complex that we can model or compute, on a warming trend that isn't even a century old, using proxy data for measurements older than 200 years, is the equivalent of allowing someone to dig into your skull 30 seconds after your headache started because he told you that you will die if he doesn't. It's junk science at it's worst.
And you notice how this book huckster dismisses climate scientists who don't buy on to his religion? (Tools of big polluters). Yet this guy knows squat about climate science --- he's a freak'n zoologist yet he plays the guilt by association card on people infinitely more qualified than he. Not surprising since something like 60% of the IPCC sign-ons are from the biological sciences not climate or atmospheric scientists. (Most of the rest are "social" sciences, BTW)
I'll read it over later, but if I had a nickle for every "alarming" article I have read on the environment from the MSM over the last 40 years, I'd own my own damn coral reef by now. ;~))
People that study climate for a living overwhelmingly say this is a problem.
If I've got a large number of mechanics that say my car needs a new alternator, then I'd buy one. If I have a large number of surgeons that say I need surgery, then I would do it. That's not to say that you don't shop around, but at some point you make a rational decision based on evidence and testimony.
You're never going to have a climate model that is 100% accurate, but that goes for a model of pretty much anything. If you could measure every single variable empirically and produce absolute causal relationships, then why would you need a model?
If you live in a fault zone, a seismologist might tell you that your house stands a 1-in-50 chance of being destroyed by an earthquake in your lifetime (probably based on a model). And you decide whether to buy earthquake insurance. But, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us that we are at an extemely high chance of some pretty bad consequences from climate effects induced by our actions, during our lifetime, and we do nothing. Actually, insurance firms are starting to take quick notice because they understand this principal.
I just want to make this clear:
The majorities of climate scientists do say there are climate changes but at the same time does not contribute this to human influences.
It is mainly just the corrupt minority of scientists that are trying to make a buck which claim it is human created weather changes.
You don't say. And where did you get that information?
This is more alarming to me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.