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The Forum > Article Comments > Climate shocks: more to come > Comments

Climate shocks: more to come : Comments

By Julian Cribb, published 16/11/2006

The science necessary to adapt society to unavoidable climate change has barely begun.

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Laughable article. My personal favorite
"Pittock is a scientist one listens to with respect. Twenty-five years ago he was an influential figure in a group that persuaded the superpowers - the US and USSR - there would be no survivors of an atomic war, because of the nuclear winter it would unleash. Thus one of the first uses of climate modelling was to save the human race."

You mean the nuclear winter myth?
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html

The myth that was used to try and scare people into doing what the scientists wanted? How appropriate.

And these darn incredibly cold days in Australia? All caused by global warming I guess. rofl
Posted by Grey, Thursday, 16 November 2006 9:22:18 AM
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Yes I laughed when I read this piece in the paper. Where is the evidence that the Antarctic is melting. See "Apocalypse cancelled" by Christopher Monckton in the last two editions of the Sunday Telegraph in the UK www.telegraph.co.uk, download and read the discussion, calculations and references in the .pdf in the first article.

I quote him: "Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice, Greenland another 4%, all other glaciers and ice sheets account for only 6%..... There has been local warming in the Antarctic peninsula...but much of the interior has cooled...sea ice has increased (references) the trend is increasing...The Antarctic sea-ice season is three weeks longer today than in 1979...Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ice mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate estimated at 26.8 gigatons per year, reversing a melting trend that has persisted for 6000 years(reference)"
Methinks we need to take a much closer look at the Antarctic, after all it is much closer to home, particularly as this trend since 1979 has coincided (I think) with the increase in the ozone hole, which I recall this year is the biggest ever.
Richard 42
Posted by richard42, Thursday, 16 November 2006 10:02:07 AM
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What an absolute joke. The climate models are built around the grossly overstated scenarios,which them selves can't properly model the way clouds are formed and the effect they have on climate, cant take account of local topography, can't model things like the Freemantle doctor, and are put togther by the same people who think Gores film was absolutely wonderful, and the science behind it was correct.

Anytime there is a value judgement to be made about a variable these clowns can be predicted to always take the most extreme, to further exaggerate their case.

Very few of their predictions are supported by the available evidence. They cant even separate out correlation and causation, because the former is easy to do, the latter is critical and more difficult to establish.

Its as about the best example of fraud on the public purse anyone could imagine
Posted by bigmal, Thursday, 16 November 2006 10:31:19 AM
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Ooops. Thought this was meant to discuss the findings of the latest research. Instead it's a forum for the remaining 10%.
Posted by bennie, Thursday, 16 November 2006 12:50:36 PM
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Who gets shocked remains to be seen, but I'm putting my money on the precautionary principal. A bit of context wrt the above scepticism:

(1) Lord Monckton was (according to other posts on onlineopinion) Maggie Thatcher's science advisor. His arguments strike me as brilliant and compelling in their logic, a bit like the affirmative in a debate at the aeronautical engineering society, on "The Bumblebee Cannot Fly"

(2) Brian Martin probably drew, for his "mythology", on a long-running debate in the open, peer-(not as in peerage) reviewed literature. A summary from 1990 is pasted below for those who want to carry forward. My understanding is that nuclear war strategists allowed that discretion is the better part of valour, after the MAD strategy revealed this potential complication.

12 January 1990
This Week in SCIENCE [AAAS Science Magazine]
RUTH LEVY GUYER

Nuclear winter update

"IN the early 1980s, the first nuclear winter scenanos were proposed.

"Since then, mathematical simulations,global cimate models, laboratory experiments, studies of fires and natural dust clouds, and various other analyses have provided new information critical to our understanding of how nudear war could alter dimate and life on the earth.

"A review of the nudear winter scenano is provided in this issue by Turco et al. (page 166). After a nudear exchange, urban fires would generate soot, ash, dust, oily droplets, and other products. (Different flammable materials - lumber, fossil fuels, plastics, vegetation - generate different combinations of these.)

"The most important combustion product for producing the nuclear winter conditions is black sooty
smoke. Studies ofthe optical and physical properties ofsoot have made predictions more accurate of soot's effects on surface temperatures, atmospheric temperatures, circulation patterns, precipitation, and insolation.

"There remain a number of uncertainties in the nudear winter equation, but the basic physics ofthe phenomenon has remained essentialy as originally formulated.

The seminal article is available at a library near you:

Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions
R. P. Turco, O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan
Science 23 December 1983 222: 1283-1292
Posted by Sir Vivor, Thursday, 16 November 2006 3:57:04 PM
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Even as a social scientist, the above rhetoric from the Posts so far makes one feel like a dumb outsider looking in.

Seeing you are all mostly lining up peace-makers against scientists, surely the peace-makers are not that bad they could have the world down tools, with any sensible scientist in agreement with the peace-makers, except with the odd queer Jekyll turned Hyde.

What we are facing by the time our great great grandkids grow up, is an end to dangerous fossil fuels, anyhow, so why not Mr Howard and Mr Bush join Kyoto Mark 1 and get along with it, because you can bet your life, that China and India will then join up too.

Can give praise about your research, but aren't most of you just wasting precious time?
Posted by bushbred, Thursday, 16 November 2006 5:19:55 PM
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We cannot discount any possibilities,nor should we just listen to the doom sayers.This type of change can gather it's own momentum [ie ice melting and not reflecting the sun's energy into space]and accelerate out of control.Our largest nuclear power plant is the sun.Just in the western parts of NSW in arid areas there is enough energy to support 2 billion people to our present living standards.We need to put much more effort into solar technologies and energy storage either through batteries or through hydrogen.

The other positive side of of solar energy is that it turns stores heat energy that can be converted to kinetic energy.If we produce too many solar panels ,we could actually cool the planet and bring on an ice age.Then we would have to burn more fossil fuels to heat up the planet again,"doh".

Perhaps we should save our fossil fuels as an antidote to those future ravenous solar panels that will starve the planet of vital energy.
Posted by Arjay, Thursday, 16 November 2006 6:23:07 PM
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The world was warned in 1992 when 1,600 eminent scientists half of them Nobel Prize winners in their respective fields sent a joint report to the U.N. predicting this would happen. What is beginning NOW is the price the world's wealthy make the rest of us pay for their ignorance of this warning.

As usual the almighty U.S.A. dollar is the basic reason, the grandchildren of these enormously wealthy people will be on a space flight to an inhabitable planet, while our granchildren will be left with a world reminisent of the Mad Max movie

Why do we worship the rich? They do nothing but evil to us!
Posted by SHONGA, Thursday, 16 November 2006 11:14:03 PM
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Of course Dr Pittock is talking nonsense, and the CSIRO is well known to be a hotbed of islamists and North Korean spies (led by, err, Rupert Murdoch) dedicated to destroying us for our freedums.. tho they'd better hurry or Ruddock & the High Court (that Howard stacked) will beat them to it.

Thank goodness we have failed lawyers and teachers like John Howard and Alan Jones to do our science for us. Just one question: when will Johnnie make it rain?
[/hysterical laughter]
Posted by Liam, Friday, 17 November 2006 12:36:58 AM
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The last paragraph “Australia urgently needs a national plan for coping with inevitable climate change in all sectors of industry, the community and daily life”

If something is inevitable, we can do nothing. The best way of dealing with that is to allow market economics to rebalance the values, which has been found to be the best way in the past and will remain the best for the future.

However, if these scientists are so right and climate change is a matter of human produced green house gases, then the continued production of such gases is not “inevitable” it is “optional”.

Now, if something is “optional” or “avoidable” we can work at changing the occurance of that thing to reflect its considered significance..
This, in a sentence, is what Kyoto attempts to do but not on a level playing field, on a game skewed against Australia (hence the prudent and responsible response of the current federal government, a prudence and responsibility absent in the populist offerings of the federal opposition).

The challenge here is; how do you decide how to measure and account for those economic impacts?

I do not accept the conjuring trick being proposed to supposedly measure CO2 emissions and then using the result as a basis for transfer of significant wealth between nations.

The EEC ended up with wine lakes of tasteless french plonk and mountians of butter, which it sold at a discount to Russia, to maintain an uneconomic price to EU members.

It is the same school of tossers who are promoting this carbon credit trading scheme.

To me it sounds like giving an alien authority right to suck the marrow out of our economy, that is the economy we hold in trust for our children and grand children etc.

I am seriously discomforted by committing our descendents to a corrupt plan simply because a lot of people have got it wrong and signed up to Brussels expedient.

I wonder how much Al Gore will make out of his investment and options portfolio from all his blatant spruiking.
Posted by Col Rouge, Friday, 17 November 2006 8:43:38 AM
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It seems to me that on web sites such as this, some people are poised to rush in and discredit any evidence/article trying to warn us about global warming. How quickly they jump to the attack ! I wonder who they are exactly. Excuse my cynicism. The coal industry has so much dough. For example, it's just been revealed that one company gave a cheap "loan" of a mere $300,000 to a former Minister. But, anyway, to those "attackers" who are in fact genuine climate change sceptics, I can only say that I would prefer to err on the side of caution. Let's get on with massive funding of research into renewables and any and every alternative to fossil fuel. If we can afford billions for an immoral and illegal war we can surely afford the same for the sake of the planet and future generations.
Posted by kang, Friday, 17 November 2006 8:54:36 AM
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It never ceases to amaze me how many armchair critics are prepared to snipe from the sidelines on issues peripheral to the topic at hand. Whilst I cannot claim to have the intimate personal misgivings about the author this article (that some have expressed) I do recognise the basic commonsense of his views. Also my technical training does not include me into the club encompassing the specific scientific field of atmospheric modelling so I am limited to reading opinions of (and occasionally talking to) the various experts and researchers around the world. My meandering readings and chance discussions with such qualified people all seem to be indicate there is big trouble ahead. What really clinches it for me though are my own observations. I have been involved in aviation from the age of 10 and 35 years later I have noticed big changes over that time. As a child sitting in the backseat of light aircraft the main discernable atmospheric pollution was located as a brown smear above Sydney and Melbourne at around 5000’. This line of demarcation between clean and polluted air has been gradually climbing and widening. It is now Australia wide and currently lying at around 18,000’. In Europe it lies at over 30,0000’. At 18,000’ over half the atmosphere (density) lies below, at 30,000’ two thirds lie below, its pretty easy to see what’s happening really. Casting my eye downwards on Australia I marvel at how little of the original vegetation remains. The Great Dividing range is the only saviour of the East Coast, whilst only small pockets of National Park remain over the rest of the continent. In Europe it is not so much the lack of vegetation , but the size and extent of urban development that stands out. I then project the emerging industrial economies of India and China into the equation and begin to have an uneasy feeling of what the term ‘unsustainable’ really means.
Posted by Spigoni, Friday, 17 November 2006 9:14:11 AM
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Notice how the CO2 Flux Clan are now calling it "climate change" rather than Global Warming? Could it be that against all the advice of sensible men and women, they insisted on projecting from the past decade of data showing a very minor warming that was entirely within the normal, natural, range of temperature variation?

So what can we conclude from the SNOW that fell on the Queensland Granite Belt on the 16th November 2006? Snow has never been recorded in November in Queensland and all the climate shonkers are quick to now claim that this record cold event is just part of the normal range of extreme events.

Talk about hypocrites. Talk about SPIVS with a bob each way. On ya bike, Mr Cribb. The last thing we need is the gratuitous mutterings of those who have never even defined a problem correctly, let alone fixed one.
Posted by Perseus, Friday, 17 November 2006 12:36:30 PM
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What gets me is that this science communicator is quoting third hand the supposed comments of another person, and lists some reasons why AGW might be understated. He may do well to ask Mr. Pittock for his evidence, because it doesnt take much to find out that most of his phantom 9 are open to dispute.

For example the NOAA recently produced a document to show that the area of snow on the Antarctic has increased, not decreased, further the major currents of the earth are not going to change unless and until some one stops the earth from rotating, and the winds from blowing. In addition if there was more reflectance up, then why doesnt that show in the amount of radiation going out at the top of the atmosphere.

Its grossly overstated, aided and abetted by failed politicians from other countries like Gore, who are using it to further his own ends.
Posted by bigmal, Friday, 17 November 2006 12:57:39 PM
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Julian Cribb is told "He may do well to ask Mr Pittock for his evidence--", but - instead of having the information delivered second-hand by Julian, readers of OLO might like to see it themselves first-hand. They would be well advised to start by reading his book "Climate Change" published by CSIRO Publishing in 2005 (ISBN 1-84407-300-9). It deals dispassionately with data and various climate models treating it, as available at the time of writing. But, a word of warning - although he gives fair treatment to the extent of uncertainties, probabilities, and best-available projections - it will not be preferred reading by those who might find its information inconvenient.
So, have a read and make up your own mind first-hand. Personally, I think he concludes with too much optimism for the determinedly blinkered human race. And those thoughts have been reinforced by the data which has come to light since the book was written. That data which so many seem to find inconvenient enough to flagrantly filter, or misconstrue and falsify, on OLO.
Posted by colinsett, Friday, 17 November 2006 3:53:10 PM
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The classic BS from Cribb and his expert was the item about the permafrost melting and reducing albedo or heat reflection. The first problem with this is that he seems to be implying that permafrost is permanently white and reflective when for most of the, albeit short, summers it is under a thick bed of lichens etc. The fact that it is frozen or otherwise has minimal impact on heat reflection.

The more important consideration is that all this claimed reduced reflection will still be taking place in latitudes higher than 60 degrees north and south. And that means that from equinox to summer solstice the angle of the suns rays will still range from less than 30 degrees to 53 degrees at best. And these angles are already very condusive to bouncing rather than absorption. AND THAT IS WHY THE #@%^& POLAR CAPS ARE COLD. They simply do not absorb the suns heat.

Furthermore, the climate wonkers are mad keen to calculate an increase in absorption at the poles but neglect to point out that a band of increased albedo around the globe in the desert belts closer to the equator would only need to be much less than half as wide as a similar band of decreased albedo at 60 degrees north to completely negate the latter. The reason for this is that the circumference at 60 degrees is only half the circumference at or closer to the equator.

The southern tip of Greenland is 60 degrees N, as is all of Alaska and much of Siberia, so all these claimed "significant" changes are taking place north of this at latitudinal circumferences that are closer to a third of those within the tropics where the offsetting increases in albedo (through desertification) will take place.

Combine this with the effects of the suns angles and it is clear that these high latitude wonkers just cannot get their minds around the fact that they occupy a comparatively insignificant part of the planet.
Posted by Perseus, Friday, 17 November 2006 10:44:43 PM
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re:
“The classic BS from Cribb and his expert was the item about the permafrost melting and reducing albedo or heat reflection. The first problem with this is that he seems to be implying that permafrost is permanently white and reflective when for most of the, albeit short, summers it is under a thick bed of lichens etc. The fact that it is frozen or otherwise has minimal impact on heat reflection.”

Perseus misses the point here, entirely. Let’s forget about what Perseus thinks seems to be implied and take a more detailed look at peatlands in Canada. My hope is that Perseus may then re-calibrate his model and wonder about the effect of global warming on the Siberian permafrost:

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/climate/peatland_e.php

Climate Change

Canadian Peatland Database

The Canadian Peatland Database contains information on the nature and distribution of peatland in Canada. There is an estimated 154 GT of carbon in Canadian peatlands, 95% of which is found in boreal, subarctic, and arctic areas (Tarnocai, 1998).

Sixty percent of the area of Canadian peatlands is expected to be severly to extremely severly affected by climate warming caused by a doubling of CO2 (Kettles and Tarnocai, 2000). In areas of discontinuous permafrost, permafrost distribution is closely tied to the distribution of peatlands.

(snip)

With climate warming, release of greenhouse gases from peatlands will be influenced by the degradation of permafrost, particularly in areas which are discontinuously frozen. At present the production of greenhouse gas is extremely limited within the extensive areas of permafrost-bearing peatlands. Within unfrozen fens, degrading peat may produce greater than 100 times more methane, a major greenhouse gas, than peat in nearby frozen areas, per unit area (Watson et al., 1990).

The Canadian Peatland Database will serve as baseline data for monitoring the effects of climate change on peatland and its impact on the Canadian environment
Posted by Sir Vivor, Monday, 20 November 2006 12:14:21 PM
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So Sir Vivor would have us believe that once thawed, peat suddenly starts degrading and emitting methane and CO2. So how come we have peat bogs in the rest of the world that are stable?

The simple answer is water. If the bog remains waterlogged then the processes of decay are severely retarded and the carbon and methane remain in situ.

The climate wonkers appear to be assuming that all the water will instantly drain away when these permafrosted peat bogs thaw. But this is totally unrealistic to the point of pure delusion. Even the reasonably well drained locations will take time to drain and, given the short duration of arctic summers, the actual change in emissions is negligible.

The only way that the soil moisture levels could be reduced sufficiently to allow a significant increase in carbon and methane emissions would be if the warming also produced an explosion in plant growth. The resulting increase in transpiration would dry out the soils but it would also increase the absorption of CO2 by those plants and counteract the adverse effect of warming on the soils.

It is what nature does, folks. Get used to it. And be very cautious of climate wonkers who try to scare you with only half of the equation.

Al Gore has the stategic vision of a cost clerk.
Posted by Perseus, Tuesday, 21 November 2006 9:50:31 AM
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Fellers, go have a read of Frederic Junemon's piece in today's "On Line Opinion" and absorb what he is saying about "hidden variables", and "precursor events". I wish to make it clear that I understand that climate change is a reality, some coal industry $$...I wish. I am skeptical about the motives and "facts" sprayed about by politicians and others. Christopher Monckton freely admits to taking the UK Govt's shilling, that does not mean his research can be dismissed out of hand, his views on the role of the Sun, in the attachment to his articles is worth following up. He also makes a convincing case on rising Co2 levels as being a "precursor event"

Richard42
Posted by richard42, Tuesday, 21 November 2006 10:17:07 AM
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“So Sir Vivor would have us believe that once thawed, peat suddenly starts degrading and emitting methane and CO2. So how come we have peat bogs in the rest of the world that are stable?”

Here’s Perseus, speculating on motives and intentions. I guess that Al Gore would have others acting against the worst case scenarios of climate change. Yes, Al Gore has financial stake in his position, as do we all.

Peat-bearing permafrost is one of a chorus of “miners canaries” that deserve our attention. I named a website which publicises a watching brief on permafrost, for those whose interest goes beyond glib dismissals.

What would Perseus have us believe? He/she values scepticism, but implicit in his/her remarks is the assumption that they are somehow an expression of higher truth, a set of questions not to be questioned, despite the skywide absence of Perseus’ declaration of vested interests.

There is every good reason to apply the precautionary principle to the threat of climate change. There are multiple nonlinear feedbacks in our global climate system which are beyond our control, but which we are perturbing.

Anyone who is familiar with the story of the Manhattan Project can appreciate the genius, courage and total self-assurance of Enrico Fermi, who worked on the growing pile of graphite blocks under the squash court of the University of Chicago, back in December of 1942. As blocks were added and moved, as measurements were made, he recalculated on his slide rule toward the geometry which would lead to the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.

The nonlinear variables there, then, were within the grasp and control of one towering intellect. The consequences, the fallout (no pun intended) were another matter.

Anyone who believes we are in control of our global climate ought to head over to a nearby bookstore and skim through Lovelock’s “Revenge of Gaia”. It is simplistic and gives his predecessors (HT Odum and others) no credit whatever, but it is a useful “Dummy’s Guide to Runaway Feedback Cycles”.

I’d keep an eye on those thawing peat bogs.
Posted by Sir Vivor, Tuesday, 21 November 2006 12:09:03 PM
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Sir Vivor, my post dealt with detailed attributes of a specific refutation of a claim that melting permafrost would increase global warming. I detailed other events associated with the same process that would counteract the claimed adverse effects.

And all you can come up with in reply is semicoherent ramblings about Fermi that have no bearing on the topic. This is absolute par for the course for the climate wonkers. You are nothing but a propagandist.
Posted by Perseus, Wednesday, 22 November 2006 12:24:52 PM
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