IPCC Scientists Wrong Again

By BJ Bjornson

Yep. It turns out all those scientists got it all wrong and have had to reassess their work in light of more recent data. They’ve even went and published a new report, The Copenhagen Diagnosis, and I took a peek at their Executive Summary, which you may find interesting.

Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present -day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2ºC. Even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2ºC warming.

Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-based warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19ºC per decade, in every good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short- term fluctuations are occurring as usual but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.

Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.

Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. This area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.

Current sea-level rise underestimates: Satellites show great global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be 80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.

Sea-level prediction revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4, for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as - 2 meters sea-level rise by 2100. Sea-level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperature have been stabilized and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.

Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental icesheets. Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds ("tipping points") increase strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.



The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2ºC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society - with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases - need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-95% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

Over at The Island of Doubt, from which I plucked this report, James Hrynyshyn adds:

The US per capital emissions are about 20 tons. 

East Antarctica is more sensitive to temperature changes and is melting faster than even this report assumes. 

The new report manages to include a mention of the recent finding that the ability of the Earth's ecosystem to absorb our carbon emissions is declining.

I tell you, it's a good thing that anthropogenic climate change keeps getting all of these coffin nails driven into it. A guy could get worried.

Comments

[geoff]

I suspect it is actually worse than even this new re-calibration indicates just because the analysis of data always lag 2, 3 years. Past estimates have been too conservative.

Some think we've got maybe 'til 2030 to get down to 20% of mess we currently pump out - 20 years. Some think the issue now is a moral one, along the lines of what slavery was in late 1700 after Wilberforce made it so. Funny the arguments for keeping slavery in place were almost the same as the current arguments being made over using fossil fuels - the original "black gold" expression referred to African slaves - i.e. economies will be destroyed, we won't use them but our competitors will etc. etc. . Some think that we simply don't have forms of gov't democracy or not that can deal with anything in an effective manner unless it is a real crisis i.e. death is at the door. I agree with this latter view. Drastic action is needed now but not perceived in it's true horror yet so little or no action will be undertaken until maybe we need geoengineering and its problems. Can't help paraphrasing Oppenheimer at Trinity: "Now we have become Death, the destroyer of our world." I really hope not, eh.

Anyway it's US thanksgiving and the great ones will fix everything over in Sweden. In case you haven't seen it below is a link to the great Newfie Gwynne Dyer's lecture on the mess from TVO. It's better good:

Gywnne Dyer

[Ron Beasley]

I never has any illusions that anything was going to be done about climate change. People believe what they want too as history as shown. When the gulf stream shuts down and North Eastern North America and Northern Europe become uninhabitable because of extreme ice and cold there will still be deniers. When sea level rise floods the land where many of the worlds people live there will still be deniers. When the drought in places where we grow most of the world's food gets even worse there will still be deniers. Man will survive but in far far fewer numbers - it's inevitable.