They do think that it is manmade stuff that is causing the temperature to rise. I am most impressed with their figures for the impact of this warming though. They estimate that the sea level in 2100 will be 17 inches higher than it is now. That is a far cry from Gore’s film’s hysteria. That film predicts a 21 foot rise in the same time period. Why the difference? The big thing is that the new estimates on Greenland’s ice melting is much lower, something like 6 1/100 of an inch PER DECADE. That’s mighty slow. In addition, the ice shelves in Antarctica are expected to grow over the same time period. This is the first report on global warming that I have seen that has managed to avoid hysteria, and it is the first one that I don’t really mind the outcomes. Surely people can adapt to 17 inches of sea rise over the next 93 years without massive expenditures. We’ll see if these findings crack the news media. News organizations seem to be addicted to doomsday scenarios, I would think that good news would be better received…
Isaac
5 replies on “UN’s report on Global warming…”
He he.
Guess we can all go buy that SUV after all eh?
I think I would rather prepare for the worst and act accordingly.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, renewables ect…
Randy
Re: He he.
Yeah, but preparing for the worst in many people’s eyes goes way beyond what car you drive and if you recycle or not. If those were the only “cures” needed, then there really wouldn’t be much controversy. Still, I wish we’d hear more about the revised statistics instead of trying to scare the shit out of everyone. It isn’t just this either, there are plenty of things where we only hear the worst case scenario.
Isaac
Re: He he.
Check out the Wiki on the IPCC report. It gives a good overview of the report and even points out what some critics of the report say about the report being the most recent but that its still based largely on data from three years ago.
You remember three years ago right? A lot of people still felt like it was a toss-up that climate change was even happening.
Here is the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#Criticism
Oh, also, governments were allowed to rewrite a lot of the report before the scientists delivered it. Sounds like they did a rather linear interpretation of the data and left out recent hypothesis about what are termed sources of “positive feedback”. Positive feedback are unknown variables, like the carbon sinks that are the melting permafrost in the north and increases in wildfires around the globe. Both of these are caused by the small increases in temperatures we have experienced so far. Higher temps cause the permafrost to melt causing untold tons of veg matter to rot and release the carbon that has been frozen in them for so long. Same with the forests burning. Climate change induced drought increases the risk of forest fires which release greenhouse gasses. Discounting sources of greenhouse gasses like these which are not directly caused by humans but happening as we speak just the same, might make the report seem a little bit easier to take since it only looks at direct human contributions to global warming like pollution. It makes it sound like just cutting down on our carbon emissions slowly over time may be all we need to do. But ignoring these potentially huge additional sources of greenhouse gasses may be very dangerous.
Randy
Re: He he.
The key to the positive feedback effects are that they are unknown and therefore impossible to predict or prevent. For example, higher temperatures will cause more water vapor to be in the air. But will this be in the form of humidity (which is a VERY effective greenhouse gas) or will it lead to more cloud formation, which would effectively reduce the temp buildup. I’m all for easy fixes to possible problems, but I get very nervous when people start talking about spending 3%-5% of global GDP to combat a possible problem. The doomsday folks have mysterious, admittedly unknown factors to support their hypothesis. Does the report mention solar radiation at all?
Isaac
Re: He he.
Never mind, found the mention of solar effects…
Isaac