# Leaked IPCC report: 90% confidence in AGW is now 95% -- and sea level will rise! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 23, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002 "2013-08-23T20:36:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/321 "2013-09-10T21:38:33Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > (shortened for clarity) > > What do you mean, “very LIKELY a problem”??? Are you saying that you’re not sure there is a problem? Was it the current plateauing of the global tempurature that gives you pause? Was it the fact that the IPCC’s various predictions have all overshot the actual global temps? > > Here’s hoping that the new-and-improved IPCC report will but everyones mind at ease. Then you won’t have to say that there is “very likely a problem” any more. You’ll know, I’ll know, heck, we’ll all know. Very likely, in that the large consensus of climate scientists are in agreement. Nothing is 100%, but I the consensus is that human caused AGW is real and happening now. Again, if you aren’t a climate scientist, you’re very likely an untrained guy grousing about stuff you don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/322 "2013-09-10T21:43:48Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > It reminds me of a typical horoscope, e.g.: So you only speak in absolutes? Interesting. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/323 "2013-09-10T21:46:59Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > LOL. Of course, everyone who questions the zealotry of MMCO2GW is mislead or deceived or ignorant, according to you. > > You admit that Trenberth is having issues with the then current technology, just like many of the skeptics, but Trenberth is well informed, according to you. You know, I have made the observation many times before, many sources that are too conservative or that do not want to see any flaw in their thinking have lots of trouble with timelines or the march of time. It is very simple, all researchers, skeptical and proponents have troubles, but the progress that helps remove the problems continues to favor the ones that report that this is going to be a big problem if we do not deal with our emissions, the deniers have more trouble with the new tools and data. But the explanation is that they also are using ideology first and then data last. One has to eventually stop listening to the ones that are getting it wrong more often. It is not the climate scientists. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/324 "2013-09-10T21:54:36Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > (shortened for clarity) > > What do you mean, “very LIKELY a problem”??? Are you saying that you’re not sure there is a problem? Was it the current plateauing of the global tempurature that gives you pause? Was it the fact that the IPCC’s various predictions have all overshot the actual global temps? > > Here’s hoping that the new-and-improved IPCC report will but everyones mind at ease. Then you won’t have to say that there is “very likely a problem” any more. You’ll know, I’ll know, heck, we’ll all know. The buzz is that it will be reported that the ice loss is accelerating in the north, and ocean rise will be higher that it was estimated before, (funny how that is not reported much by contrarians) in the surface temperature front other low estimates will be considered, but still, the middle of the range will be higher than 2 degrees Celsius for a doubling of the CO2 in the atmosphere. As reported by the scientists at Realclimate, It is only a cavalier attitude that can tell you that that increase will not be harmful. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/325 "2013-09-10T22:45:35Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > Again, if you aren’t a climate scientist, you’re very likely an untrained guy grousing about stuff you don’t understand. Like you, you mean? Becasue if what you said is true, it hasn’t stopped you at all from participating in th thread ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/326 "2013-09-11T05:21:55Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > Like you, you mean? Becasue if what you said is true, it hasn’t stopped you at all from participating in th thread I’m ignorant, but I’m not arrogant enough to think my ignorance equals years of specialist training. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a position on how we should act on the scientific consensus. I said you very likely don’t know enough to intelligently challenge the consensus. Can you see, why what you said is nonsense? I’m saying you probably aren’t skilled enough to intelligently interpret the scientific data. And nothing you’re likely to be able to figure out is going to invalidate the consensus and thousands of peer reviewed papers. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t post in this thread. I’m saying that the posts you make trying to undercut the science are laughable. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/327 "2013-09-11T14:34:24Z")
People who say dismissive things like this need to keep in mind that we do not have a system where the credentialled experts get to make controversial political/policy decisions. You may bemoan that fact, and in many cases I may even agree with you. But it is the reality. So the actual deal is that you are going to have to convince politicians (and by extension regular folks) of the need to take the actions you advise, or it’s just not going to happen. If you don’t really care if any prophylactic mitigation actually occurs, and just want to state your view for the record so you can preserve your right to smugly jeer “I told you so” from the front porch of the nursing home, then fine: duly noted. But if you are trying to actually change the trajectory, this is not an efficacious approach. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/328 "2013-09-11T14:51:27Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > People who say dismissive things like this need to keep in mind that we do not have a system where the credentialled experts get to make controversial political/policy decisions. You may bemoan that fact, and in many cases I may even agree with you. But it is the reality. So the actual deal is that you are going to have to convince politicians (and by extension regular folks) of the need to take the actions you advise, or it’s just not going to happen. > > If you don’t really care if any prophylactic mitigation actually occurs, and just want to state your view for the record so you can preserve your right to smugly jeer “I told you so” from the front porch of the nursing home, then fine: duly noted. But if you are trying to actually change the trajectory, this is not an efficacious approach. This sounds suspiciously like the “reality has a liberal bias” jeering about: “sure, you may be have the facts on your side, but we have the power, so what are you gonna do about it?” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/329 "2013-09-11T15:21:25Z")
To clarify, if we only advanced propositions that had a reasonable chance of being enacted, the vast majority of posts in Great Debates would not exist. My position is that the world should reduce carbon emissions at least to the point where the expected economic hardship from doing so is equal to the lowball estimates of the economic hardship from the CO2 increase. Not doing so would, by definition, cause even more economic hardship down the road, barring some miracle. That it is politically impossible to do, even within this country, let alone globally, does not change the view of what should be done. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/330 "2013-09-11T15:31:07Z")
Your riposte is fair. I had the impression of a different tone from your side than in other debates where we all seem to understand that we are talking about what we think is right, not about what is going to realistically be done. If you are under no illusions that any of these steps will actually be taken, then I withdraw my objection. I do want to ask something specific about your position, though. You say that it is that “the world should reduce carbon emissions at least to the point where the expected economic hardship from doing so is equal to the lowball estimates of the economic hardship from the CO2 increase.” Are you factoring in the multiplier effect, interest, etc.? What if we avoid the economic hardship now, and in doing so invest the proceeds in things that grow exponentially? Then it would not be right to say that the benefit later is worth the cost now, because you’re leaving out the potential windfall. I think this is what someone meant earlier by the “discount rate”, although I have never taken a course in economics so I am not familiar with that term. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/331 "2013-09-11T19:10:09Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I’m ignorant, but I’m not arrogant enough to think my ignorance equals years of specialist training. > > I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a position on how we should act on the scientific consensus. I said you very likely don’t know enough to intelligently challenge the consensus. > > Can you see, why what you said is nonsense? I’m saying you probably aren’t skilled enough to intelligently interpret the scientific data. And nothing you’re likely to be able to figure out is going to invalidate the consensus and thousands of peer reviewed papers. > > I’m not saying that you shouldn’t post in this thread. I’m saying that the posts you make trying to undercut the science are laughable. You assume that I can’t. You’re wrong. I can intelligently read and challenge lots of what I read about climate science. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/332 "2013-09-11T20:22:28Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And it was shot down awhile ago: > > [Rabett Run: Consider a Spherical Truncated Icosahedron](http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/03/toy-model.html) This is the type of language that is actually anti-science, and I see it a lot with defenders of the AGW model. A paper or scientist who calls into question or even rebuts a previous paper does not constitute a ‘shoot down’. The process of science absolutely calls for a dialectic: You propose a theory, other people dispute it. You respond with a paper showing experimental support. Others try to replicate your paper, or propose counter-theories with their own experimental support. And so it goes until we converge upon the best understanding consistent with the evidence to date. However, in climate science, this process is short-circuited with cries of heresy, denialism, conspiracy theories involving ‘big oil’ or shadowy forces, etc. Editors of journals who publish ‘denialist’ papers have to live in fear for their jobs. Climate scientists are slandered as liars. Billions of dollars of funding are at stake. The whole of climate change science, on both sides, has been polluted by special interests, money and politics. Scientists have made sweeping public statements which then inhibits them from doing objective science that might contradict their earlier claims. This is not an argument for or against global warming. This is a meta argument about the quality of of the science on both sides in such an atmosphere. When science is hard to distinguish from political advocacy, you have a problem. > [@](#): > > It’s true that Earth’s a massive jigsaw puzzle, with lots of pieces intricately fitting together. But, Richard Alley argues, we already know enough to see the Big Picture. The missing pieces of scientific understanding - exactly how clouds work, how extreme weather will change with global warming - are important, but we can already see how Earth works. Now here’s a fundamental problem: The statement above suggests that the climate is a machine - a very complicated machine, but one that can be understood through a traditional reductionist process of breaking it down into pieces and learning about each piece like you would reverse-engineer an automobile engine. However, that’s not what climate is. Climate is a Complex Adaptive System. These systems are not amenable to reductionist understanding. In a CAS, the more you drill down, the more complexity you uncover. And if you drill down far enough, the system vanishes. It’s like trying to understand what consciousness is by looking at individual neurons. You can learn a lot about the mechanical structures underneath, but there are so many interconnections, feedback loops and alternate pathways that learning the mechanisms tells you very little about how the large-scale phenomenon behaves. Likewise, you can know everything there is to know about the physical structure of a carpenter ant, and it will tell you absolutely nothing that would allow you to predict the future growth patterns of an ant colony, or help you figure out how the little buggers know how to build structural bridges with their massed bodies to cross gaps in terrain. The same is true of other complex systems like the economy, the immune system, or an ecosystem. We have never come up with a good way to predict the behavior of any of them, because they are very sensitive to initial conditions and complex in their response to them. For all we know, a warmer world will trigger a series of responses that result in negative feedback, and because climate is an adaptive system, the result may be one we’ve never seen before and may be created through multiple interactions over decades of seemingly random iterations. I am skeptical of the rapid positive feedback model for the simple reason that complex systems tend to be stable due to negative feedback, and a system with strong positive feedback would not remain stable for very long. For example, the water vapor feedback model appears logical in the short run when looked at in isolation. But as part of a complex system it may actually result in negative feedback as part of a more complex feedback loop involving other aspects of the climate system. Traditional scientists don’t like dealing with complex systems, and neither do politicians. It’s tough to admit that your tools don’t work. If you’re someone trying to ‘get things done’ it’s hard to admit that you can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future or whether your interventions will have the effect you think they will. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/333 "2013-09-11T20:44:26Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > It is important to see who is telling that that is the case, yes. The point here is that already in the past you pointed at someone that you reported was from that middle, it turned out that it was not, in the end he recommended that we should control our emissions, so yes, a cite of the groups recommending to go slow or not do anything is important, because the conservative politicians in power have only one choice nowadays: > > Assume that it is not happening and do nothing. > > That is not the middle, and I do not think that even most of the skeptical scientists would recommend that choice. The point I was making is that the ‘overwhelming consensus’ AGW activists reference is actually a consensus around a very basic claim: 1. The earth is warming. 2. Man is contributing to that warming to some degree. That’s it. There is indeed almost universal consensus around that claim, and that includes most of the prominent ‘deniers’ like Dr. Roger Pielke, Anthony Watts, Judith Curry, and Steve McIntyre. My point was that AGW activists make much more extreme or specific claims, then when arguments are presented they fall back on the ‘consensus of scientists’ as an appeal to authority when in fact there may be no consensus at all on the specific claim they are making. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/334 "2013-09-11T21:58:33Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The point I was making is that the ‘overwhelming consensus’ AGW activists reference is actually a consensus around a very basic claim: > > 1. The earth is warming. > 2. Man is contributing to that warming to some degree. > > That’s it. There is indeed almost universal consensus around that claim, and that includes most of the prominent ‘deniers’ like Dr. Roger Pielke, Anthony Watts, Judith Curry, and Steve McIntyre. They have been found to get it wrong regarding the mechanisms that they claim that will gets us only the low end of the predictions. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > My point was that AGW activists make much more extreme or specific claims, then when arguments are presented they fall back on the ‘consensus of scientists’ as an appeal to authority when in fact there may be no consensus at all on the specific claim they are making. Sorry, but the point stands, already the results of the predictions from the skeptics (many of those mentioned by you BTW) are failing to work out or the confirmations are not coming, that is enough to point out that we should not be giving them too much value. As pointed many times before, many lines of inquiry and research, that has been confirmed several times, points at 3 degrees of warming as the most likely result by the end of the century if nothing is done to control our emissions soon. > **[How sensitive is our climate?](https://skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm)** > > \Climate sensitivity can be calculated empirically by comparing past temperature change to natural forcings at the time. Various periods of Earth's past have been examined in this manner and find broad agreement of a climate sensitivity of around... > [@](#): > > Some global warming ‘skeptics’ argue that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is so low that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in a surface temperature change on the order of 1°C or less, and that therefore global warming is nothing to worry about. However, values this low are inconsistent with numerous studies using a wide variety of methods, including (i) paleoclimate data, (ii) recent empirical data, and (iii) generally accepted climate models. > [@](#): > > Figure 4: Distributions and ranges for climate sensitivity from different lines of evidence. The circle indicates the most likely value. The thin colored bars indicate very likely value (more than 90% probability). The thicker colored bars indicate likely values (more than 66% probability). Dashed lines indicate no robust constraint on an upper bound. The IPCC likely range (2 to 4.5°C) is indicated by the vertical light blue bar. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/335 "2013-09-11T22:06:05Z")
As for your previous post: “For all we know, a warmer world will trigger a series of responses that result in negative feedback” No matter how you cut it, the problem is that the sources you rely on can not make a good case for the mechanism that will get us that pony, what you miss is that after more than 60 years of the modern understanding of why we should not release so much CO2 and other gases, all the mechanisms proposed are failing to get us a plausible good negative feedback. In the end what you push is in reality magical thinking. Richard Alley and many of the scientists already know the score of all those failed proposed mechanisms that could give us such a negative feedback. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/336 "2013-09-11T22:54:42Z")
You don’t understand - with complex systems you don’t really _know_ what the mechanisms are. That’s the ‘complex’ part. When systems have massive networks of interconnected effects, the emergent behavior is not easily understood or predicted. That’s one reason why models that can predict the past often fail to predict the future - studying its responses in the past may not tell you much about its responses in the future or how it might respond if the initial conditions were just a tiny bit different. It’s also a reason why macroeconomic forecasts are often so wildly wrong, and why medical treatments for many diseases are so frighteningly hard to design, and why psychology is still in a state of relative infancy as a science. When you’re dealing with complex adaptive systems, cause and effect can be hard or impossible to suss out, and trying to manipulate that system involves trying to hit a moving target based on very sketchy data about why and how the target moves in the first place. Often, it seems that scientists resort to measuring and studying the emergent properties of such systems. That’s useful and you can learn a lot about the system that way (and indeed our knowledge of climate and how the various pieces interact is growing constantly), but that doesn’t mean you can predict the future behavior of the system, or that studying large-scale emergent properties really helps you to understand the fine-scale structure below it which is critically important to its future behavior. Again, a good analogy would be an ant colony. You can study it to death. You can track past behaviors and examine ant anatomy down to the molecular level. You might even learn the simple rules like pheromone response that govern ant movement. But all that knowledge might not give you any insight into what the exact structure of a new colony will be as it grows and changes, because the ant colony is a complex adaptive system, and even incredibly small changes in its initial conditions can result in a radically different structure over time. If we had a time machine so we could watch the climate system respond to our current events and see what it looks like in 100 years, and then go back and make a tiny change and watch it again, the result might be completely different. As many times as you want to repeat that, you might get a different result every time. That makes prediction pretty difficult. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/337 "2013-09-12T00:28:27Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You don’t understand - with complex systems you don’t really _know_ what the mechanisms are. That’s the ‘complex’ part. When systems have massive networks of interconnected effects, the emergent behavior is not easily understood or predicted. That’s one reason why models that can predict the past often fail to predict the future - studying its responses in the past may not tell you much about its responses in the future or how it might respond if the initial conditions were just a tiny bit different. > **[How reliable are climate models?](https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm)** > > \While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.\ > [@](#): > > What the science says… > > While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s also a reason why macroeconomic forecasts are often so wildly wrong, and why medical treatments for many diseases are so frighteningly hard to design, and why psychology is still in a state of relative infancy as a science. When you’re dealing with complex adaptive systems, cause and effect can be hard or impossible to suss out, and trying to manipulate that system involves trying to hit a moving target based on very sketchy data about why and how the target moves in the first place. > > Often, it seems that scientists resort to measuring and studying the emergent properties of such systems. That’s useful and you can learn a lot about the system that way (and indeed our knowledge of climate and how the various pieces interact is growing constantly), but that doesn’t mean you can predict the future behavior of the system, or that studying large-scale emergent properties really helps you to understand the fine-scale structure below it which is critically important to its future behavior. > > Again, a good analogy would be an ant colony. You can study it to death. You can track past behaviors and examine ant anatomy down to the molecular level. You might even learn the simple rules like pheromone response that govern ant movement. But all that knowledge might not give you any insight into what the exact structure of a new colony will be as it grows and changes, because the ant colony is a complex adaptive system, and even incredibly small changes in its initial conditions can result in a radically different structure over time. I think the problem here is the assumption that climate scientists are dealing at the level of the weather, that is not the case, just like one can not predict the future shape of an ant colony there are ways to simulate the general shape and where an ant colony would not go or avoid in the long run. I do think that using the example of macroeconomics is comparing apples and oranges, the complexities are more and even human agents are constantly conspiring in the attempt of making more changes to their benefit and that also increases the complexity. The thing that has to be noticed in the climate change issue is once again that the agents that would conspire to give us a negative feedback are few and missing in action (Lindzen’s Iris effect) and the mechanics remain at the levels of wishful thinking. OTOH the mechanics of this turning for the worse are more likely (Methane release from permafrost and the oceans) > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If we had a time machine so we could watch the climate system respond to our current events and see what it looks like in 100 years, and then go back and make a tiny change and watch it again, the result might be completely different. As many times as you want to repeat that, you might get a different result every time. That makes prediction pretty difficult. Actually you missed a big point, CO2 is not likely to have reformed from what it was doing in the past. Paleo-climate is one of the lines of evidence that also points at the future warming to be more than the low balling estimates that the many times wrong real skeptics claim we will get. As it turns out we do have a time machine of sorts. [http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/rapid-change-feature.html](http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/rapid-change-feature.html) > [@](#): > > New research into the Earth’s paleoclimate history by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated. > > By looking at how the Earth’s climate responded to past natural changes, Hansen sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: “What is the dangerous level of global warming?” Some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change. But Hansen said at a press briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Tues, Dec. 6, that warming of 2 degrees Celsius would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica. > > Based on Hansen’s temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than .1 degree Celsius every decade. This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, in cars and in industry. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century. A doubling of carbon dioxide would cause an eventual warming of several degrees, Hansen said. > > In recent research, Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato, also of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the climate of today, the Holocene, with previous similar “interglacial” epochs – periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers. In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, Hansen said. > > “The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient,” Hansen said. “It would be a prescription for disaster.” > > Hansen focused much of his new work on how the polar regions and in particular the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland will react to a warming world. > > Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters higher than today, Hansen said. In using Earth’s climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet’s response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold. IN this video, at 4:53, we have a very good explanation of why the past is a window for the future: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/OJ6Z04VJDco/hqdefault.jpg "27 -- The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models or the IPCC") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ6Z04VJDco) ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/338 "2013-09-16T00:47:42Z")
For a “settled”, 5AR will bring lots of changes or, at least, clarification to doom-and-gloomers. - 0.12°C per decade instead o 0.2 since 1950 (wow, wrong by 40%) - MWP is back and equal to now. - Models not really working for the recent past. - There’s a pause, not sure why. - Not sure about aerosols or clouds. - Antarctic ice is growing a bit, not decreasing. - Lower limit for doubling of CO2 is now lower. - Sea level rise about 0.5m and no 2m scares. Also, science is done in the studies, not the briefing for politicians or newspaper headlines. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/339 "2013-09-16T01:09:37Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > For a “settled”, 5AR will bring lots of changes or, at least, clarification to doom-and-gloomers. > > - 0.12°C per decade instead o 0.2 since 1950 (wow, wrong by 40%) > - MWP is back and equal to now. > - Models not really working for the recent past. > - There’s a pause, not sure why. > - Not sure about aerosols or clouds. > - Antarctic ice is growing a bit, not decreasing. > - Lower limit for doubling of CO2 is now lower. > - Sea level rise about 0.5m and no 2m scares. > > Also, science is done in the studies, not the briefing for politicians or newspaper headlines. Indeed, and the warming is not stopping, once again it is really misleading to ignore the ocean temperature increase as Hansen and others report: https://www.youtube.com/embed/047vmL6Q_4g?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque > [@](#): > > In recent months, a lively media conversation has taken place in regard to what the surface temperature record is telling us. Here, a group of leading Atmospheric and Ocean experts put the data in context. From the video: “It is not true that the temperature has not changed in 2 decades, in the last decade it has warmed .1 of a degree compared to .2 of a degree from the preceding decade but that is just natural variability, there is no reason to be surprised about that at all.” -Hansen. Once again, refer to what Latif warned us and said about what the contrarian media would do about a “slowdown”: that out of malice or misunderstanding of what scientists like Latif reported they would claim that the scientists are “now telling us that warming is not coming”. Warming was not predicted to show as a constant rise in surface temperatures, and we forget about the misrepresentation that the popular media did with the “global cooling coming” of the 70s out our own peril, when another even longer slowdown made most of the popular media misunderstand what most of the science was actually reporting. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002/340 "2013-09-16T01:19:21Z")
Since the OP is about 5AR, I’ll refer to it. I’m sure warmist-alarmists will soon convert it into a horribly-compromised document and only refer to headlnes on websites instead of the actual results ofr the actual studies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leaked-ipcc-report-90-confidence-in-agw-is-now-95-and-sea-level-will-rise/667002.md?page=18)