Worst-case global warming scenarios not credible: study

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Earth's surface will almost certainly not warm up four or five degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a study released Wednesday which, if correct, voids worst-case UN climate change predictions.

A revised calculation of how greenhouse gases drive up the planet's temperature reduces the range of possible end-of-century outcomes by more than half, researchers said in the report, published in the journal Nature.

"Our study all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities," said lead author Peter Cox, a professor at the University of Exeter.

How effectively the world slashes CO2 and methane emissions, improves energy efficiency, and develops technologies to remove CO2 from the air will determine whether climate change remains manageable or unleashes a maelstrom of human misery.

But uncertainty about how hot things will get also stems from the inability of scientists to nail down a very simple question: By how much will Earth's average surface temperature go up if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled?

That "known unknown" is called equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), and for the last 25 years the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the ultimate authority on climate science -- has settled on a range of 1.5 C to 4.5 C (2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit).


Worst-case global warming scenarios not credible: study
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The Climate-Change Doomsday Just Got Canceled

Of course this is just one study, but it supports the contention climate skeptics have been making for years — that the computer models used to predict future warming were exaggerating the impact of CO2, evidenced in part by the fact that the planet hasn't been warming as much as those models say it should.

Why is this important? Because all those horror stories told over the past decades are based on predictions of temperature increases that are much higher than 3.4 degrees.

A 2008 National Geographic series, to cite just one example, contended that scientists are warning that the global average temperature could increase by as much as 6 degrees Celsius over the next century, "which would cause our world to change radically." Oceans, it said, would become marine wastelands, deserts would expand, catastrophic events would be more common.

The Obama administration's EPA put out a report in 2015 claiming that climate change would triple the number of extremely hot days in the U.S. by 2100, increase air and water pollution, cause $5 trillion in damages for coastal property, and result in tens of thousands of premature deaths.

The EPA assumed a global temperature increase of 5 degrees.

The Nature study blows a hole in these and other doomsday scenarios that have been peddled for decades by everyone from Al Gore to Prince Charles.

In other words, it's big news.

And don't be surprised if scientists end up revising peak warming down even further. That's been the trend up until now, after all. Back in 1977, the National Academy of Sciences said temperatures would shoot up 6 degrees C by 2050 because of CO2 emissions. In 1985, James Hansen claimed that doubling CO2 levels would boost temperatures up to 5 degrees, and other computer models at the time put the upper bound at 5.5 degrees.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
A 2008 National Geographic series, to cite just one example, contended that scientists are warning that the global average temperature could increase by as much as 6 degrees Celsius over the next century, "which would cause our world to change radically." Oceans, it said, would become marine wastelands, deserts would expand, catastrophic events would be more common.

I have a copy of a 1972 Nat Geo that has a lengthy piece on the impending ice age climate disaster caused by too much CO2 being produced by man's activities. In there they predict global cooling of 7 degrees which, they said, would be catastrophic. They also suggested, in a hopeful sense, that the disaster might be avoided if we ended up relying entirely on nuclear power over the next 20 years and stopped burning coal and oil to make electricity.:killingme
 

Grumpy

Well-Known Member
I have a copy of a 1972 Nat Geo that has a lengthy piece on the impending ice age climate disaster caused by too much CO2 being produced by man's activities. In there they predict global cooling of 7 degrees which, they said, would be catastrophic. They also suggested, in a hopeful sense, that the disaster might be avoided if we ended up relying entirely on nuclear power over the next 20 years and stopped burning coal and oil to make electricity.:killingme

I read that and remember it well..:yay:
 
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