IPCC Report on Climate Change

On Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report addressing the impacts of climate change. This is the fourth in a series of periodic assessments presented to governments around the world for the purposes of making policy decisions.

The IPCC synthesizes the work of hundreds of climate scientist from all over the world who are experts in their field. Each report has continued to paint the same picture. The previous conclusions have been significantly strengthened by the new report and the uncertainties have been reduced. The world climate is heating faster than anytime in recored history and it is beyond doubt that it is being exacerbated by human actions. To quote from the report the uncertainties in the science mainly involve the precise nature of the changes to be expected, particularly with respect to sea level rise, El Niño changes and regional hydrological change - drought frequency and snow pack melt, mid-latitude storms, and of course, hurricanes. A very good summary of the report can be found at RealClimate.org. A wonderfully clear background article can be found here.

Climate change has become a controversial topic. It is no different than the denial of the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. Big money was threatened and it responded by attacking the messenger. The film thank you for smoking illustrates this particularly well. The same is true with the subject of global climate change.

There is a lot of misinformation out there that is being used to confuse the issue. KTCat points to a recent Chicago Sun Times article by Mark Steyn to question the findings of the IPCC report. Mark frames the issue thusly; whether what's happening now is just part of the natural give and take of the planet, ... or whether it's something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings. The answer being yes and no! Yes something unprecedented is happening, but no it isn't necessary to cripple the global economy to do something about it. In fact, if action is delayed, the costs will be more severe. By framing the question as he does, he's resorting to the same attack the messenger strategy used for so long by the cigarette companies.

The key here is to ignore what the politicians and the special interests are saying. And definitely don't listen to the press. Try listening to the scientists. Would you go to a senator, the NYT, or your priest to diagnose a medical condition? Read it yourself! Don't take someone else's interpretation of it. Over 99% climate experts agree with the report's findings. Of the handful of climate scientists who don't, most are tainted by their financial connections with the oil industry. Lets look at what the skeptics are claiming.

KTCat asks, the climate is it's always changing. So what? Greenland used to be green. Now it's covered in ice. Climates change. Get over it. This is common misunderstanding. Climate, by definition, doesn't change. Its the average behavior of the weather. Year to year local weather will diverge from the mean, but with a stable climate the mean doesn't change. I live in Denver now. We're looking to have double the typical snow fall for the year. Does this mean we're experiencing global cooling? No. A single location isn't what is being considered here. Rather the entire globe needs to be considered. Much of the Midwest, the North East and the West experienced warmer than normal winters. All of this needs to be averaged together to see if the year is warmer or not.

What is the big deal about a few tenths of a degree. First of all it is currently 3/4 of a degree, but that is besides the point. Lets ignore the cause for the moment. If we agree that things are getting warmer, what will that mean for the world we currently live in:

Sea level will rise. It will rise because the fresh water glaciers will melt and because water expands when it gets warmer. This isn't conjecture. The current sea level rise has already placed a handful of Pacific islands at risk of becoming uninhabitable. As little as a meter will flood much of the gulf coast. A third of Florida gone! One half of Louisiana under water. See the maps on my earlier blog entry. Major ports and oil refineries gone. Both people and industry will have to be relocated. We could see this perhaps within our life time, but most certainly with in our children's life time. It will have an enormous economic impact. So saying that it costs too much to do something now, is only dumping the cost of the next generations.

An increase of extremes. Dry areas will experience more severe drought and wet areas will experience increased flooding. Since some of the largest US cities reside in the desert west and south west, expect to see increased drought in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. The tightening of water sources will disrupt both industry and agriculture in these states, because populations will get the water first. Expect to see greater forest die off and more frequent firestorms like those experienced in many western states. Expect to see a reduction of hydro-electric power as water becomes scarce. This isn't fiction. The recent Colorado drought brought the lake levels in Reservoir Powell and Mead to levels where if it continued for another few years, power generation would have to cease.

Steyn states if "global warming" is real and if man is responsible, why then do so many "experts" need to rely on obviously fraudulent data? The famous "hockey stick" graph showed the planet's climate history as basically one long bungalow with the Empire State Building tacked on the end. Completely false. He couldn't be more wrong! Look at this figure. It shows three curves. The first (black) is the data. Assume for the sake of argument, it represents truth. The second (blue) is a computer simulation where no anthropogenic influences are built into the simulation. The third (red) is the same model, but now with the anthropogenic influences included. Anyone can see from the figure that without including anthropogenic influences, such as green house gases, the simulation just doesn't mimic reality.

One can go on like this all night. People who don't want to be confused by the facts will never accept the conclusion they don't want to be true, but nonetheless it still is. the scientific fact of global warming is! What to do about it a messy political question I don't want to touch here. Still it would be nice if all sides could agree that something is happening and it has the potential for causing us significant problems.