Also, here is an overview in Nature of a Kevin Trenberth paper on the extreme weather linkage. The overview is quite a short read and you may find it informative. As I said, there are many more recent papers but I don’t have the cites at hand ATM.
And here is another blurb on Pielke Jr. from Sourcewatch. It quotes the late Stephen Schneider, a highly respected climate scientist, who said of Peilke Jr.: “one consistent pattern emerges – he is a self-aggrandizer who sets up straw men, knocks them down, and takes credit for being the honest broker to explain the mess – and in fact usually adds little new social science to his analysis”. Roger Pielke Jr. - SourceWatch.
It’s kind of futile getting into a pissing contest about who said good or bad things about who, but it ought to be clear that several mainstream respected scientists (actually, most) totally disagree with Pielke Jr. whereas he himself has no real credentials in the field. Furthermore, a careful and knowledgeable reading of that Sourcewatch piece (which I think is thorough and evenhanded) reveals tons of red flags – the Schneider assessment of him; the fact that he is unquestionably extremely controversial yet has no credentials in the field; his association with denialists; his publication in the low-quality denialist junk journal Energy and Environment; his joint presentation with known denialist asshat Steve McIntyre, among other things.
One point of clarification, lest there be any misunderstanding. I posted the above before I’d seen your quick comments on the IPCC SREX in #60, and provided the link to a summary of the Trenberth paper just as something I’d remembered about and passed it on since you seemed genuinely interested. It wasn’t a direct response to your #60 which I had not even seen, my point being that the SREX alone in my view provides compelling evidence for likely linkages that are also fully supported by theory and are seen in the climate simulations. The problem with your analysis is that it takes the extreme reticence and conservative approach to evidence that is the essence of true science, and one that is much further exacerbated by having to pass it through a consensus filter at the IPCC – a constant source of much frustration about the resultant understatement, and then judges it from an everyday skeptical perspective, where a carefully calibrated phrase like “medium” or “low” confidence is dismissed as “probably not true, then” whereas if you polled scientists on their actual personal views you’d get quite a different story.
Just wanted to make that clear. That said, the Trenberth paper is more recent and offers strengthened evidence on many of the same issues.
Uh, the subject of the tread was “the worst single consequence” it was not “the most likely” although I’m beginning to suspect that the OP did not want just that but it wanted others to point at the worst effects that could happen as a way to setup a gotcha.
Consider the Hurricanes, It has been pointed out by experts that Hyper-canes could be possible. But what most of the media does not report is that what the experts said was that while Hyper-canes could happen they are unlikely.
I can appreciate this point. The drive for consensus is essentially a drive for moderation. What do you think are the best source(s) of polling individual scientists on their actual personal views"?
Are there other areas of study in which the IPCC is now considered wrong / inaccurate? My impression had been that it was essentially the gold standard, but your post here makes me think that may be not be correct.
One complaint I have seen several times is that several researchers worry that the IPCC is too conservative. This is a result of the IPCC reviewing the best of the current or recent research but sometimes also very optimist papers are considered. And then the report has to pass reviews to be used by policy makers. It is at this stage that some point out that the IPCC is erring on the side of conservative projections because many nations do not want to be hurried up. (And still most of the contrarian media out there tell their readers and viewers how alarmist the IPCC is!)
One clear discrepancy so far was in the projections of how much and how soon we would lose cap ice.
Unlike other projections like surface temperatures the rate of ice loss really missed the mark… it was worse that it was feared.
The point here is that cap ice loss is also a feedback that does increase the temperature, meaning that it is likely that the expected rise in temperature will increase more than the conservative projections are telling us.
Yes, Al Gore was exaggerating there, but he is not a scientist. The point was that even the people that did point at a less dire scenarios as the one Gore posted were also called alarmists (contrarians still do), another point is that the researchers that worried more about the ice (not Gore) were correct.
And even further: virtually all the ones the right wing point as “more accurate” researchers that are in reality contrarians continue to be wrong about the earth getting cooler:
Thanks for the link. I did find it informative. It sounds like Trenberth is taking a significantly different approach to his analysis than the IPCC. I’m going to attempt to summarize, and you can correct me where you think I go astray. When the IPCC says:
they’re telling us that they’re actually counting storms, and measuring their duration and intensity, (and taking a bit of a guess at the ones they couldn’t count decades ago because we weren’t monitoring the oceans with planes and satellites like we are today) and it doesn’t look like things are getting worse, at least yet (in this one particular category).
Ternberth seems to take a different approach:
Ternberth isn’t going out and counting actual storms. He’s looking at various storms and saying, “well, we are pretty certain that warmer SSTs make storms stronger, so we built a computer model that simulates cooler SSTs and our best understanding of the effect of SSTs on storms and our model tells us that Sandy wouldn’t have been as bad if all this global warming hadn’t been increasing the SSTs”.
That’s certainly an interesting approach, but I don’t think I’d call it evidence that “we are already seeing … stronger storms”. The IPCC is explicitly looking at this exact thing and says it’s probably not happening. OTOH, Ternberth is saying that if the oceans were cooler, we might expect to see less severe storms.
The reason I zeroed in on the portion of your post that I’ve quoted several times now is because it deals with actual observable metrics (“we are already seeing…”), not just computer models about what we think will happen in the future. It’s stuff we can actually go out and count today, and the people doing that counting say we’re not really getting bigger and worse storms than we were years ago. In short, it looks like Roger Pielke Jr.'s claim that “there is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally” is largely correct, at least as far as we’ve been able to observe up through 2016.
Not wolfpup, but I think I did call it, you jumped from the worst single consequence to “small potatoes” there and like Pielke it is used in attempt at discrediting all observations.
Like Richard Alley pointed at, that bit about extreme weather events is a piece of the puzzle that is not as sure as others, but it is not a reason to avoid the rest of what has been observed.
In essence, worse consequences as increase in drought intensity and probability ([that has more than just scant evidence](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4386330/)) [has been observed](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/sep/17/global-warmings-one-two-punch-extreme-heat-and-drought), precipitation increases in other areas and ocean rise too. And related to that Ice cap loss. Those items are attempted to be ignored by Pielke and others that are not publishing their opinions in science journals but they choose to make books and write opinions in the popular press forgetting to make science to convince others properly.
So, while there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding hurricanes and tornadoes, the missed point there is that uncertainty is not our friend, it is preferable to make efforts to prevent other more likely changes that are coming thanks to the increase in temperatures brought by releasing that many greenhouse gases. The point here is that while other issues are more likely and should guide most of the reasons to deal with the issue; basing our actions on the worry that tornadoes and hurricanes will become more numerous is not the main one. Still, I would not want to bet that we will be lucky on those items while we are frying in general and the oceans rise. If we are unlucky an increase in hurricanes and tornadoes will be issues that will be add to the costs of the most likely consequences.
When I mentioned hurricanes I was referring to Atlantic hurricanes impacting the continental US. The fact that the oceans are warmer and that total energy is higher is uncontroversial I assume. I know there’s some controversy but global tropical cyclone frequency and energy dissipation increasing is pretty much what I would expect with warmers waters. But North Atlantic storm/hurricane frequency, news making hurricane frequency (cat 5 making landfall), and economic damages are… eh, pretty unremarkable. I was genuinely surprised by this. I mean in general I thought there would be obvious increases. But there aren’t. If a climatologist told me it was likely a fluke I would believe it. If they told me the Atlantic will actually be unchanged but SE Asia will get hammered as time goes on I’d believe that too. But to a skeptic noaa’s data and our recent cat 5 drought isn’t going to convince them of shit.
I’ve read the IPCCs reports of course and while they’re interesting they fail to answer the op’s question which I think is broadly a fair one. It lacks precisely the hard figures a lot of people are looking for. If coastal cities are going to be subject to flooding and hurricanes how much will it cost?. If freshwater supplies will are going to be more costly how much will it cost to address it? If agricultural productivity and marine fisheries are going to fail when will we start to see that?
Obviously no one can answer these questions with any degeee of cettainty. But flooding and hurricanes are going to have to actually cause measurable damage on a year to year basis, water bills for consumers are going to have to rise, agricultural productivity is going to have to fall significantly in a way that actually affects Americans in their day to day lives before anyone cares or believes.
Let me close by saying I’m a firm believer in climate change and while my research focus was biology obviously even deca es ago the impact of climate change on biological systems was a hot topic. The.sneering condescension in this thread and most discussions on this topic annoys the shit out of me. Roll eyes indeed.
To answer the ops question, speaking as a non specialist, I would venture to guess the worst single impact of global warming from an American perspective will be unrest and violence in less developed parts of the world resulting in regional armed conflict. A small drop in agricultural productivity in the industrialized world can be countered by technology. Even a slight increase in crop failures in the developing world could result in enough migrants to spark violence and waves of refugees. As many others have pointed out the Rwandan massacres weren’t purely racial. In areas where land was at a premium everyone took the opportunity to kill their rivals for inheritance, even within their own families. In the short to medium term I can easily see dealing with and stabilizing such areas in terms of refugee camps, relocations, military aid and assistance, etc as vastly more expensive than say coastal flooding or loss of wheat production in the ISA
Well, IMHO a lot of what you are talking here is said by missing a lot of information:
Were you aware that most experts did report that there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the number of hurricanes? And that many did report that it was likely that because of issues like wind shear it was possible that less hurricanes could form?
You see, this is crucial IMHO because just like with the misunderstanding that claimed that in the 70s scientists predicted global cooling (most in reality were not) a lot of the blame with the idea that most scientists predicted more hurricanes in the North Atlantic falls with popular media that failed to report properly what most scientists did report.
Of course ocean rise and loss of crops are likely to cause more unrest like the one you are talking about here.
I also did notice in the past that lots of refugees are likely to be a result of this, and as my background has social studies I have to say that the current levels of xenophobia shown by many nations just about makes sure that many will die as a result of less affected countries not letting people move around thanks to the displacement.
And the biggest irony will be to see the likely misguided efforts of a Trump administration to make the situation worse and in the end saddle his (maybe) or future administrations with more immigrants coming to the USA but this time as climate refugees.
It is like in the trope that was supposed to be just fictional called “nice job breaking it hero”. Where the moral is about the dangers of getting seriously involved in things without learning much about them and causing harm as a result.
Er, what exactly are you arguing here? If you are claiming that the effects of climate change on hurricanes is unpredictable and there isn’t firm proof of increasing hurricane frequency/intensity I’m pretty sure climate change skeptics would agree with you. This also contradicts the multiple pop science articles (and other posters in this thread, heh) that argue the opposite. Either way I don’t blame them for skepticism.
Also, even if climate change causes refugees, the US has the advantage of enormous oceans to protect them. They will be taking refugees voluntarily for the most part, if and only if they decide to. The bottom line is how many billions does it make sense to spend to avoid these future problems? Are refugees that expensive for the US? I’m more a of geoengineering guy myself, though I’m open to arguments otherwise.
I’m curious on the OP’s opinion: does he feel like he got a clear answer to his question? I sort of doubt it.
Climate change is a problem that will affect all of humanity, many countries much worse than the U.S. I’m always disconcerted when problems are judged only from the U.S.'s interest. Asians, Africans, and Europeans are hominids too! … Or if localization is key to values, why not just focus on Wisconsin, or Oshkosh or whatever your locale is?
[off-topic] U.S.-centric thinking gets very perverse and always confuses me. I recall one discussion board dialog that went something like this:
“The purpose of the Iraq invasion was to help the Iraqis. It was very successful with less than 5000 deaths.”
Me: Iraqi deaths were in the hundreds of thousands …
" :: Only American casualties matter to Americans." (This after defining the war’s purpose as helping Iraqis!)
:smack:
Too late, back in the 2013 tread I noted that most fake skeptics out there do pump up the idea that all scientists were telling us about “humongous and numerous hurricanes are coming” when that was not the case. As in the case of the 70s and the myth of “most scientists predicted cooling” the hurricane issue looks to me as a very successful effort by deniers to discredit scientists by erroneously or on purpuse to point at erroneous popular science articles to make the point that “you see, I’m an skeptic because their prediction failed”, when the prediction (like the 70s one) came really from media that often gets science wrong.
Once a disaster happens a border is not going to be a limitation, and specially when I do think that a lot of Americans will realize that they will have to take many for humanitarian reasons, specially from Mexico and central America that are likely to suffer a lot with the projected changes.
I do not think he wanted any answers.
TVtropes was cited only to explain the concept of “nice job breaking it, hero”. Pointing at the current “hero” of many deniers that was elected president, he is selecting a cabinet were climate denial is a way of life.
One thing that generally makes this place enjoyable is the default assumption that posters are being sincere. You seem to violate that norm. This wasn’t some giant “gotcha” thread. I had a question, I figured I knew a place where some generally smart, generally liberal people hang out and I’d pose it to them. It has generated some interesting discussion, given me some thing to think about (I wasn’t aware of the ocean acidification concerns prior to this thread, for example), and offered a chance to evaluate some assumptions (like the extreme weather claim that I see repeated frequently). I thought it was worth my while to read the posts and cites presented and consider the (variety of) answers provided.
I think this sort of tribalism is a pretty common bit of human nature. I’ll admit that when I hear the hand-wringing over rising sea levels, there’s a tiny bit of an element of “well, I’m at 4000 feet above sea level, so f*** you, NYC, CA, and the rest of you coastal liberals”, but it’s never more than a fleeting thought before my mind moves on to more analytical thoughts on the subject.
On the contrary, I found pretty much everything wolfpup said to be enlightening and helpful, even if I disagree with some of it. I dove deeper on one particular sentence of his post #55, and, in an allusion to campaign fact checkers, assigned it a “mostly false” rating, but I wasn’t questioning the sincerity of his posts. That’s the difference. I questioned (one of) wolfpup’s assertions, you questioned my sincerity.
: Only American casualties matter to Americans." (This after defining the war’s purpose as helping Iraqis!)