Repeat after me: “This is GQ,” “This is GQ,” “This is GQ,” “This is GQ,” “This is …
I am working on a report about a country. (Which one isn’t really germane; this issue has come for reports about countries in different parts of the world. At the moment, the country is in sub-Saharan Africa.) In describing the country context, there is the following sentence:
“Climate change effects have increased droughts and floods.”
I’ve called Cite! (hey, how many Dopers get to do things like that for a living?) from the author of that section, but none has been forthcoming. I’ve been involved in CC issues since the late nineties, but for a few years now I’ve diversified issues-wise and am much more policy oriented. But as last I recall, there are claims that there will be effects, and there may be some increase in the amplitude of events, but none that claim there are increased droughts and floods that can be tied to climate change.
I don’t believe the IPCC has put out anything so dramatic—especially at the country level. Are there major, bona fide reports that have? Am I really behind in my climate science?
Thanks,
Rhythm
Please, please, if at all possible, please don’t let this shuffle off to GD or the Pit from post #2. If you do not believe or accept that AGW is occurring or will occur, please don’t hijack this thread out of GQ. I ask that you to either refraining from posting, or, if you feel you must register in protest/proclaim your opposition, please tell an off-topic joke, preferably one with pirates. If you disagree with a post because you fundamentally disagree with the premises of AGW, simply quote the post and tell a joke. Disagreeing with cites or posts is fine, of course, and of course I really have no control over the thread—these aren’t Jr. Mod rules—I’m just asking for a favour in hopes I can get an answer.
It is a prediction of global warming that weather will become more extreme on both ends - so more droughts and more floods are a prediction.
The problem is trying to pin it on any one cause in particular. I don’t really know much about sub-Saharan Africa’s weather patterns, but you can see the issue with hurricanes. More powerful Atlantic hurricanes are a prediction of global warming. However, hurricanes go through their own cycles. From the 1930s to the 1950s, we saw three decades of stronger and more frequent hurricanes. From the 60s to the 90s, we saw mild and less frequent activity. Now, we’ve had a whole string of powerful hurricanes. But what’s the cause? Are we repeating the cycle that already existed, are we seeing global warming interrupt a previous cycle, or are we seeing two cycles overlap and complement? Probably it is a combination of the two influences, but it’s very hard to answer those questions with any great confidence.
Shagnasty, thanks for the interesting example. However, the problem is that we know so little about the historical variation in many of these types of examples that it is difficult to say whether what we are seeing is natural or a result of humans. From your citation:
The inconvenient part of the Greenland example is that current temperatures in Greenland are less than 1940’s temperatures. This makes it unlikely that whatever is happening in Greenland is a “current observable effect of climate change”.
However, the real problem is that the OP’s question is poorly phrased. Since the globe stopped warming about a decade ago, supporters of AGW have changed the rubric from “global warming” to “climate change”.
But climate has always changed … so in fact, anything you see happening is an “observable effect of climate change”. Warmer or colder, wetter or dryer, it is a result of our constantly ever-changing climate.
While this has allowed the AGW supporters to keep the debate alive in the face of a lack of global warming, it has also led to much confusion, as evidenced in the OP’s question.
So Rhythmdvl, perhaps you could rephrase your question in a way that it might actually have a possible answer?
Look, climatologists predicted a couple decades ago that increased CO2 in the atmosphere would have such and such effects. The CO2 has stayed high and many of these effects have come to pass. Not just Greenland, but also the arctic ice and increased calving of Antarctic ice. Can I prove that this is due to human action? No, scientific theories can never be “proved”. Only mathematical theorems can be proved (subject to possible errors). You make predictions and then see if they come true. If not, your theory is wrong. If so, your theory gets better confirmed. But never proved.
I would like to see the evidence that warming ended ten years ago. That claim contradicts everything I’ve heard.
And in a deeper sense, Does it matter? I realize that the US seemed to act as though they believed the gov’t had no responsibility for natural disasters (Katrina, anyone?) but my take on the gov’t is that if global warming is going to lead to natural disasters, then it is up to them to act. Was it Cheney who said that even if the probability of a terrror attack was 1% then the gov’t had to act and if that meant trampling civil rights, get used to it. Well, hardly anyone (save for Inhofe, whose state would seem uniquely vulnerable to drought) doubts that there is a 1% probablility of disaster.
As someone who has some passing familiarity with the literature, I would definitely edit that out or at least make if much more non-committal. To my knowledge at least there is no definite evidence for such a linkage, especially on a country scale. Increases in extreme weather events are one prediction of global climate change, but it would be difficult if not impossible to tie individual instances to it. For example, there have been regional changes in rainfall in Costa Rica, but it is debatable whether these are due to climate change or local deforestation (or some other cause). Increases in droughts and floods in particular could be tied to local processes such as deforestation, wild fires, etc.
If the author of the report doesn’t come up with a cite, drop it. If there is statistical evidence that droughts and floods have in fact locally increased, it might be mentioned that this could be due to climate change, though other factors might also be mentioned if they are likely to be present. That’s as far as I would go.
How on earth can pointing out that the OP’s question cannot have an answer because it is too vague be anything other than “commentary to the question in the OP”? The question as posed cannot be answered. Perhaps, Colibri, you might toss it out of GQ because of that, or you might claim that I’m wrong and the question can have an answer so it does belong in GQ … but claiming that my observation does not cut to the heart of the OP’s question is simply not true.
I appreciate your input, but I believe statements such as “Since the globe stopped warming about a decade ago” and “While this has allowed the AGW supporters to keep the debate alive in the face of a lack of global warming” strongly suggest you should have led off with a pirate joke.
The GQ is fairly simple. Basically, is there a peer reviewed or otherwise credible study that has tied regional climactic events to AGW? That is, is there a cite for the statement “Climate change effects have increased droughts and floods.”? From the context of the OP, I thought that a relation to AGW was implied.
I didn’t think so, but since I have not been keeping up with the literature as I once did I thought to ask. It seems my intuition was correct. There may be a connection, but at best it’s extraordinarily slight. If the claim was about other effects (e.g., melting ice) the connection would be closer and a citation might exist, but at this juncture no scientific entity is endorsing a connection between AGW and regionalized climatic events.
The report I’m working on is fairly high profile (within a particular development niche), and the project manager is keen on including the sentence. In various rounds I’ve hinted at and then strongly suggested cutting it, but before I go to bat over it I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing something. In addition to accuracy, I’d hate for one of my projects to end up getting cited by other documents, resulting in an institutional my-post-is-my-cite situation.
In short Rhythmdvl, I don’t think there are many absolute dead-to-rights regional climatic events tied to the effects of the massively increased concentrations of infra-red absorbing gases over the last century. Some dramatic events which might look like they are due to climate change, such as the shrinking of Lake Chad actually aren’t.
Having said that, thirteen of the fourteen warmest years on record have now occurred in the past fourteen years: The Earth is undeniably a warmer place when you look at overall trends and don’t simply say, hey 1997 was the warmest ever so we’re cooling now, right? Polar ice is also undeniably melting much quicker. I guess the question is, what would convince you that a local event was caused by the overall temperature rise, and that this rise is due to increased IR-absorbing gas concentrations?
Note that some people would likely never be convinced. As Young Earth Creationists say: Same Facts, Different Views.
And if that energy was then radiated outwards at a similar rate to, say, 1700, there wouldn’t be a problem. It is not the energy used by mankind that is relevant here, but how they produce it: by digging up safe stores of carbon and burning it. This exta carbon dioxide prevents the sun’s energy radiating back into space as efficiently as it used to.
This is called the Greenhouse Effect, discovered by Joseph Fourier (yes, the maths guy) nearly two centuries ago.
Oh, and since you’re interested in Sub-Saharan Africa, Rhythm, you could cite decreased fish catches in Lake Tanganyika. (You’ll need to subscribe for your report, but it’s an impressive study and the authors strongly rebut subsequent alternative interpretations of the results.)
SentientMeat, you’ve picked an interesting example, as I’m the one who submitted the peer reviewed “Communications Arising” to Nature showing that that report was mistaken. What are the odds?
My interpretation was published by Nature, and despite its being “strongly rebutted” by the authors, the temperature data shows a step change in a single year. That is to say, it was at one temperature for half the record, and then jumped up about a degree in a single year. This is absolutely not an “observable effect” of climate change. The most logical explanation is quite mundane, a change in either thermometer or thermometer location … not anywhere near a sexy as “climate change”, but much more likely.
It’s not just the Greenland glaciers – glaciers and snowcaps all over the world are in retreat. I visited the Paradise Ice Caves on Mount Ranier some 15 years ago. I had to hike several miles from the lodge they used to be near in order to see them. Today they don’t exist at all – the entire glacier is gone.
I don’t know the names of the other glaciers around the world that have been reduced in size, or disappeared, but I’ve seen a great many photos of them.
The snowcap atop mount Kilimanjaro has shrunken severely
It’s true, I understand, that a handful of glaciers and snowcaps have acually increased, but my understanding is that they’re few and far between. The vast majority of such deposits, the world over, have declined significantly.
Specifically related to Africa and sub-saharan climate I remember a PBS show that demonstrated it was the continual tectonic rise of the Himilayan Mountains that caused the arid climate of Africa. They had a model that showed the changes over time in weather patterns as the mountains rose. It may be this NOVA program: Cracking the Ice Age. Not sure. I don’t see it qued up for broadcast anywhere.
It may not be “droughts and floods” per se. However, it is a 50+ year old scientific study addressing climatic change. If you want to stretch it a bit, warming coupled with inadequate precipitation (drought) are causing the glaciers to shrink.
Given all kinds of NON climate reasons for fish populations to fluctuate…yes. Just the fact that pretty much anywhere folks and fish are and fishing isnt highly regulated total fish catches virtually always drop should give one serious cause for pause.
Sounds about as practical as using folk’s heating and cooling bills to measure the climate change. Actually, that sounds more practical.
Sure, in theory, yeah, its doable.
But, in practice there are probably much better ways.
Sounds like a fish biologist trying to horn in on some global warming research dollars to me because fish are what he/she knows.
And the thermometer thing mentioned above doesnt inspire any confidence either.
Oh, I don’t doubt there is decent evidence for global whatever you wanna call it, but just the very premise of this one has me rolly eyed from the start.
