Top scientist's fears for climate

[Barrett808]

Top scientist's fears for climate
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

One of America's top scientists has said that the world has already entered a state of dangerous climate change.

In his first broadcast interview as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren told the BBC that the climate was changing much faster than predicted.

"We are not talking anymore about what climate models say might happen in the future.

"We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we're going to experience more," Professor Holdren said.

(more)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5303574.stm

[mainegreen]

1. I'm not clicking that link. I know what lies beyond it.

Horrors. Untold horrors. x(

[longship]

2. Here's the crux of the matter.

From the article:

...

For more than a year, the BBC has invited the US government to give its view on safe levels of CO2. Our request is repeatedly passed between the White House office of the Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the US chief scientist.

To date, we have received no response to questions on this issue that Tony Blair calls the most important in the world. Professor Holdren called on the US Government to back the UK position.

Ignore this and it isn't going to go away.

Idiots!

[Jim__]

3. But, some of our leading intellectuals ....

... Hannity, rush, bush tell us it may not even be happening. It's "junk science." :sarcasm:

[hatrack]

4. Or, to quote Aldous Huxley . . .

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

[BeHereNow]

8. LOVE Huxley...GREAT QUOTE! n/t

bhn

[ixion]

5. I grew up in the midwest. In any given winter, we would have a snow

heavy enough and persistent enough that we could cross country ski around town for several days. I can remember winter after winter like that. Now, from what I hear, the midwest has pretty mild winters, and the snow melts pretty fast, even in January/Feb.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. ;-)

[aasleka]

6. climate

Lots of young palm trees have been spotted in yards around Raleigh/Durham, they seem to be doing very well. Can't wait for the first malaria outbreak.

[pitohui]

10. that isn't what causes malaria, north carolina had malaria in colony days

if tropical weather caused malaria, we'd have it in new orleans -- they did have malaria in the carolinas in the early days when europeans first arrived on the continent

what ended malaria in louisiana in the 1920s was when the damn cisterns people had were capped and we got a decent public water system -- good public water systems is prob. what has largely eradicated malaria from continental usa despite some areas of the north that lack decent mosquito control programs

i am confident that raleigh/durham will not get malaria no matter how many palm trees

that said, i am of course eager to have something done to get a decent climate back on track, for reasons that are probably abundantly obvious

you can do something about malaria, not much to be done if you're getting run over by cat 4 and 5 storms every time you turn around and your economy is completely disrupted

[alfredo]

9. We used to get snow cover for much of Jan-Feb and we could

cross country ski all through those months. Now it is odd if it snows, and if it does snow, it is gone in a day or so. (Lexington Ky) 20 below zero happened, snow drifts covering mail boxes, and now all we get is ice storms and pitiful little snow showers.

Now we have thunderstorms in Dec through Feb. Tornadoes are a threat year round.

[Lisa]

11. and these are the kinds of things that were predicted 20 years ago

Recently I went through a bunch of scientific papers and reports from the 1970s and 80s, written at a time when even a lot of climate researchers weren't focused on global warming as an issue. The types of changes which they said would happen, based on mathematical models -- warming especially noticeable in the Arctic and in the middle of the continent, increases in heatwave duration/frequency/intensity, milder winters, changes in precipitation patterns and river flow -- they saw it coming. They even said that by the year 2000, we would start to observe changes in our surroundings.

One researcher I know recently moved up North -- he said that Indian and Inuit elders have been telling him about weird weather and changes in the types of plants and animals they've seen.

[greenman3610]

14. In Mid Michigan, I used to XC ski from december to march

every year.
That's what I did for exercise.
Thats been gone for 20 years.
Most winters I'm lucky to ski twice, if
we happen to get some snow that doesn't immediately
turn to ice...

[Reckon]

7. Our current government is playing "Republican Roulette"...

... in more ways than one.

[PurityOfEssence]

12. But it's all the liberals' fault

If all the scientists hadn't been stark raving lefties, the administration might not have had to quash EVERY warning. Don't you see?! It's all the fault of liberals.

[MasonJar]

13. I insisted on reviewing Al Gore's book at my 2 book clubs. That

is the least I can do.

[Lorien]

15. K & R

Important stuff.

[Psephos]

16. The climate IS changing...do we know why?

But those who say it's only due to a cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and global temperature fundamentally misunderstand the mechanisms of climate change.

Are humans pushing the change? That's beyond reasonable doubt. But is it due only to atmospheric CO2? Anyone who says an unequivocal yes is substituting what they want to believe (usually because of politics) for what the facts show. The same is true for anyone who says an unequivocal no.

The facts show that there is no one determinant of climate change, and furthermore, that there can not be a single factor.

"We must strive to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler than possible."
- Einstein

A number of powerful influences underly climate trends. Some of them are oceanic, others are astronomic. Others are due to feedback loops that amplify or suppress change as the relationships and linkages between ocean, atmosphere, Earth orbital variations and Sun energy output swing smoothly through cycles, as they have for uncounted millions of years.

Chaos Theory arose from attempts to model weather on early computers. Chaos theory is a mathematical attempt to describe nonlinear, nondeterministic systems. (Other frequently-cited examples are the minute-by-minute direction of the stock market, and the flow of traffic.) Climate is a classic example of a non-deterministic system of linked influences. That means that direct cause and effect syllogisms ("if this happens, then that will happen") are invalid tools for understanding. Only the mathematically ignorant attempt to force deterministic outcomes from chaotic systems.

"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple."
- Oscar Wilde

I'm not putting anyone down here. A big problem is that most journalists who write about climate are mathematically and/or scientifically uneducated. They create simplified explanations about the obvious physical changes occurring in the world, explanations that resonate with common-sense (but false) understandings of the way the physical world actually works. We have a deep urge to find a single cause (or especially, a person or group of people) to blame for whatever worries us. When this urge becomes married to political urges, the mixture is toxic.

That's exactly what has happened in the global warming political wars. It's not about science, it's about belief.

Again, the debate is not over climate change. That's a scientific fact. The debate is over what's driving that change.

The prudent response is to limit human influence on the atmosphere and oceans as much as possible, even at some cost to economic health (although we must remember that such actions will also condemn some people to misery or death). Let's listen more to the scientists and less to the politicians to figure out how best to do that. While we're at it, let's weed out the scientists who have become overwhelmed by political emotions, too.

Only a nonpolitical, science-based call to action will be able to unite all people to move for change. Politics as usual has already shown that its chief product is division, finger-pointing, and worst of all, inaction.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
- Groucho Marx

Peace.

[Reckon]

17. Care to share with us..

"what the facts show". Do you have a link?

Yes, methane plays a greater role than CO2 alone.

Also, "Earth orbital variations and Sun energy output" cycles does not match up with current trends.

The "feedback loops" and the change in "ocean" currents are both due to global warming -- man made in my view.

We are listening to scientists: 918 peer-reviewed global warming scientific literatures to zero peer-reviewed refuting it's man made.