
Scientists warn of perilous climate shift in decades, not centuries - kdazzle
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/science/global-warming-sea-level-carbon-dioxide-emissions.html
======
cryptoz
Here is the paper that has just been peer-reviewed and published in
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics:

 _Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data,
climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be
dangerous._

[http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/](http://www.atmos-chem-
phys.net/16/3761/2016/)

And the 15-minute video by the author to accompany the paper:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-
cRqCQRc8&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-
cRqCQRc8&feature=youtu.be)

~~~
nonbel
>"The net forcing driving climate change in our simulations (Fig. S16 in the
Supplement) is almost 2Wm^-2 at present and increases to 5–6Wm^-2 at the end
of this century"

Thanks, from the paper it looks like they just hardcoded the warming into
their model, ie it is not due to simulation of a physical process. Is that
correct?

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jamesblonde
I was at a climate science workshop in Stockholm a few weeks ago and a well
known researcher from Bremen University, who has a well known simulation for
expected increases in global temperatures, showed that recent changes in their
assumptions due to new measurements increased their expected temperature
increase from 4.5 degrees by 2100 to 7 degrees. And nobody was that shocked.
Shocking!

~~~
lololomg
7 degrees? Holy shit

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Gravityloss
Very good ice sheet dynamics presentations from AGU 2015 are available on
youtube or on AGU page.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p9uRxX95f4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p9uRxX95f4)

You can think of an ice sheet like a cathedral. Once you melt away the side
buttress, a large portion of the whole thing falls into the sea. Many large
glaciers have surprisingly small "gatekeepers". It's a dynamic process [x]. We
have never seen a massive ice sheet collapse so don't know for certain if it
takes two decades or two centuries. The potential to raise the sea level is
large, many meters.

This now adds the ocean dynamics there, but I wonder if I got this right: The
melt water has no salt, is thus less dense and hence stays on top and just
keeps on warming and warming and will then melt the ice a lot quicker.

x: by dynamic I mean that one can't just get a linear relationship between
temperature and melt rate. Think more of a collapsing building.

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percept
"He gained fame in 1988 when he warned Congress that global warming had
already begun. He was ahead of the scientific consensus at the time, but it
became clear in retrospect that Earth had been in the midst of a period of
rapid global warming at the time he testified."

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meow_mix
Does anyone who understands the methods they use for prediction care to chime
in? I'm curious to know how people model such a complex system with any hope
of accuracy. Do they simply rely on some sort of time series data? Or is it
something more interesting?

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jbattle
Are there any credible options for geoengineering our way out of this? If
prevention fails that is

~~~
neffy
There are a couple of ideas for engineering that would make the albedo
(reflectivity) of the North Pole area controllable. One involves a space
shield, the other is floating panels (one side black, one side white). The
larger issue is a) predicting the result and b) the 'it could be good for
Ontario' problem that all types of climate change bring benefits as well as
costs. f.ex. a return to glacial conditions would suck for the Northern
Hemisphere, but be good news for India, Africa etc.

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guard-of-terra
Let's launch a solar shade! Plus - we get to decide what parts of earth to
shade. I propose arid areas and also those who withholds from paying a
voluntary shade tax.

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justsaysmthng
"Why worry about things you cannot control? "

My wife, my parents and most of my friends tell me when I try to bring up the
climate topic.

"Either do something about it or let's talk about something else, it's
depressing"...

And I often wonder - what is the root cause of this climate thing? We need to
fix the root cause and then things will fall into place... Right ?

See, I don't think it's the fossil fuels. I don't think it's the pollution and
the destruction of forests and the mining and the toxic rivers and the plastic
in the oceans.

All these mechanistic manifestations of human activity are consequences of our
dominant philosophy of life.

What's important to us, what matters more, about choices we make every day.

Forests or nice furniture ? Clean air or 6.3 liter V12 (yeah!) ? Clean rivers
in China or iPhone 6s ? Beef or Lentils ? Me or my competitors ?

Ultimately it's the answers that we have to some very simple questions - about
who we are and why we are here... These are spiritual questions.

So my conclusion was that: The state of the Planet is mirroring humanity's
spiritual health.

So if this is the root cause, is there a way to cure it ? Well :)

Can you envision a way to make 7 billion people of various races and religions
agree on one and true "spiritual" code ? I find it very hard.

But maybe not spiritual - maybe we can use Science and invent new things...
Well, isn't it "science" that got us here in the first place ? Isn't it like
"throwing good money after bad" ? I don't know. As a scientist I sure hope we
can figure something out. There are a couple of ideas we could use... But
there are other issues..

How can we renounce our way of life, our growth, our social order, the
economy, the stock market....

Because that's what it would take to fix things.. "Going green" is too little
too late.

We need to stop consuming, we need to stop growing, we need to stop competing.
And that's political and economic blasphemy right there.

Edit: Changed my mind. Although I think our chances of fixing this mess are
slim, I still think there's hope.

There are things we can do about it. We are technologists. We have a lot more
power than we care to admit.

Imagine Facebook "spamming" all users about climate change, about recycling,
about respecting nature. Imagine Google showing up "red spots" of pollution on
the maps. Instead of ads, why not climate propaganda from time to time ? What
if every iPhone's or Android's alarm went off at the same time warning users
that the Planet is in danger ? Go plant a tree now!

Simple, cheap, yet could have dramatic effects.. Eventually it would cause
political changes and hopefully we'll at least extend the problem further into
the future.

If only the Planet could pay us back somehow...

~~~
Houshalter
The problem is Moloch. Tragedy of the Commons. No individual has an incentive
to care. And even if they do, even if you do consume less, nothing stops
someone else from burning up the resources you would have used.

The only solution is political. Not just a tax on using fossil fuels, but a
tax on mining them out of the ground in the first place. If they aren't kept
in the ground, they will keep pumping them out until its not ecomical to do
so.

~~~
spodek
> No individual has an incentive to care.

I agree, for everyone who stays in a more-material-stuff-is-better mentality.

By contrast, I've found reducing how much I pollute has improved my life. My
experiment to buy no food for a week where I'd have to throw away packaging --
[http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-
packaging](http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging) \-- went
incredibly well. After avoiding packaging for a 2.5 weeks, I don't completely
avoid it not, but I've switched to almost only fresh fruits, vegetables, and
dried legumes I get in bulk with bags I bring.

Similar experiments in other areas have improved my life in many ways I
wouldn't have expected before.

People found ways to be happy before oil, many probably more happy than most
are today.

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kirk21
Looking into Kiva green loans to add value with some spare cash.

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whitegrape
Hasn't this been the party line for..decades? (Since sometime in the 90s at
least?)

~~~
splawn
is there a science party?

~~~
metasean
In the US, I think the closest is the Green Party -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States)

~~~
cjslep
As long as it isn't nuclear science.

Edit: I do mean nuclear science, not just nuclear power.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Is the hatred of nuclear really so irrational? It's an expensive way of
generating electricity which has frequent safety issues and gives the state
the means to build nuclear weapons.

~~~
mturmon
...with a track record of concealing problems by supposedly neutral and
trustworthy experts.

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drallison
duplicate

~~~
cryptoz
Not a duplicate.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Scientists%20warn%20of%20peril...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Scientists%20warn%20of%20perilous%20climate%20shift%20in%20decades,%20not%20centuries&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

~~~
dalke
The title of this submission is "Scientists warn of perilous climate shift
_in_ decades, not centuries". The previous two links used "Scientists Warn of
Perilous Climate Shift _Within_ Decades, Not Centuries".

Note the difference between "in" and "within".

The actual NYT article uses "within", so this submission title is incorrect.

(Edit: originally I thought it was due to the different URLs used, then I
thought it was the difference in case. On the third try I noticed that one
differing word.)

