Climate Change To Drive Weather Disasters, Say UN Experts 572
mdsolar writes "Climate change is amplifying risks from drought, floods, storms and rising seas, threatening all countries, but small island states, poor nations and arid regions in particular, UN experts warned on Tuesday. In its first-ever report on the question, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said man-made global-warming gases are already affecting some types of extreme weather. And, despite gaps in knowledge, weather events once deemed a freak are likely to become more frequent or more vicious, inflicting a potentially high toll in deaths, economic damage and misery, it said."
From the "fact sheet" (Score:0, Informative)
Ok, so.. Less hurricanes, but about a 50% chance wind speed might increase (by how much? 1mph? 2? 30? 5000000?)
I just hate how they take the conclusion "the same number of hurricanes, or less" and yet still spin it into a scary prediction, by leading it with a "the wind might blow harder". I guess that truth needed a little bit of PR work to make it convenient.
It also predicts larger economic damages due to weather. Well, no duh. We're building more and more expensive stuff. The weather could stay the same and this will be true.
Missing is any mention of anthropogenic CC, CO2, or anything like that. So yeah, it's pretty safe to predict the climate will change with 100% confidence, if you don't tag it with that.
Re:Yeah yeah (Score:4, Informative)
it's a theory
You keep using that word. [wikipedia.org] It doesn't mean what you think^W suppose it means. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Conservative meltdown in 5..4..3..2..1.. (Score:5, Informative)
Also, ad hominem is a logical fallacy. If you want to find the actual truth, rather than descending into political squabbling, you would do well to avoid it.
Re:From the "fact sheet" (Score:4, Informative)
I just hate how they take the conclusion "the same number of hurricanes, or less" and yet still spin it into a scary prediction, by leading it with a "the wind might blow harder".
Use your common sense. Hurricanes are routine events. We have them every single year, and the majority don't cause much damage. It's the most extreme hurricanes that cause damage, so it's the frequency of those extreme hurricanes that matters.
Re:It's more than just global warming gas (Score:3, Informative)
There's a problem w/ the ocean as carbon sink isn't there? It becomes more acidic and shellfish have their shells dissolved by the acidic water, while problem species like jellyfish flourish, no?
Re:Yeah yeah (Score:5, Informative)
Huh, IPWC.... I'm looking at the IPCC report this slashdot article is about, right now. It does not sound anything like "consensus". It sounds like properly nuanced presentation of their analysis. This is not what you will read in the news:
There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences, including
increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led
to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale. There is medium confidence
that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is
likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to an increase in
mean sea level. The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical
mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide
only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic
influences. Attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging.
Re:Yeah yeah (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know what "likely" refers to when used by the IPCC? What about "medium confidence", etc? If not, are you qualified to interpret their statements? Please at least skim the report that millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours have produced for you. First, go to page 21.
ALSO: No Snow In the UK (Score:2, Informative)
By the year 2005, young children won't even know what snow is. (It's funny how all these dire warnings from the UN and other nation-level climate bureaus never seem to come true. - ed.) BTW the rate-of-rise of sealevel on these island nations is only two-thousandths of an inch per year. Hardly a great tragedy.
LINK Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html [independent.co.uk]
LINK # 2 http://www.uncommondescent.com/science/no-more-snow-in-england-say-global-warmists/ [uncommondescent.com]
Re:Conservative meltdown in 5..4..3..2..1.. (Score:4, Informative)
Uhhh, yeah, they are. If a theory is non-falsifiable, it isn't science. Evolution is highly falsifiable. AGW isn't. Sorry, but that's the way it is. The change is so small that it falls within the noise of natural variability of both weather (fluctuations in water vapor content have hundreds of times as much effect on atmospheric heat retention as all the CO2 ever produced by man), and climate (we don't really understand long term climate, or what caused past climate changes). We don't even have a single control (whereas we have practiaclly unlimited controls and unlimited samples to show that evolution happens, and the ability to read paste changes in the genetic code, which are predictive, etc etc).
Ways anthropogenic global warming can be falsified:
1) Extended period of stable or declining temperatures, while atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase. (And no that doesn't mean you can disprove global warming by comparing a downward fluctuating year and an upward fluctuating year in the past.)
2) Average daytime temperatures increasing more than nighttime temperatures. (One of the signatures of the greenhouse effect versus solar driven temperature change is that nighttime temperatures increase more than daytime)
3) Equatorial temperatures increasing more than polar temperatures. (One of the signatures of the greenhouse effect versus solar driven temperature change is that temperatures in the polar regions increase faster than the equator)
4) Upper atmosphere temperatures increasing instead of decreasing. (Yes, another way to differentiate between the greenhouse effect and solar temperature driven changes.)
I'll leave out the highly improbable ones (like a declining level of CO2 in the atmosphere with an continuing to increase temperature or the disproof of most of modern physics which would be required to actually call the underlying physical model into question.)
Re:ALSO: No Snow In the UK (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, when I'm looking for a careful assessment of scientifice evidence, my first source is always uncommondescent.com (actual byline: "serving the intelligent design community").
As for your first link, it quotes one actual climate scientist saying that in the future, snowfalls in parts of England are going to be rare and exciting (the "in a few years" is from the journalist, not the scientist). Apparently you regard this statement as absolutely ridiculous on its face?
Well, global warming is expected to warm global temperatures by 2degC or more by 2100. More so on land (as compared to oceans) and more so in the Northern hemisphere. Now let's compare the average minimum winter temperatures of two cities:
London, UK: 2.7 (Dec), 2.3 (Jan) 2.1 (Feb).
Marseille, France: 4.1 (Dec), 3.0 (Jan), 3.9 (Feb).
Guess what? Snowfalls are rare and exciting events in Marseille, right now! What do you think will happen in London when daily temperatures increase by two degrees?
Re:Yeah yeah (Score:4, Informative)
According to wikipedia the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was a 6 degree rise over 20,000 years. That's a lot of time to adapt. Compare that to the rate of change happening now. See the difference?