Replies to post #403601 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[DesertDrifter]

The book is a pile of assertions and conspiracy theories, but let's say he is correct, and has better science than the other millions of scientists...

We need to stop using the atmosphere as an open sewer, and reducing emissions (formerly known as pollution) is a good thing to do even if he is even partially correct.

When in grad school, (late returner in the 90's) I didn't believe that global warming was real, either. So I took a climatology class, and was shown the error of my conclusions.

All one needs to know about human induced climate change is that the long term Milankovic cycles (due to a slight wobble in the earth's axis) we were progressing at a steady march to the next ice age. Global cooling. Climate change deniers point to 40 years ago when we were learning about it and say "science says cooling" but the science has advanced beyond that, to understanding that it is no longer cooling. Measurements and observations have shown that there is an increasing in global temperature that is clearly a statistically valid departure from the long-term, geologic scale trends, and the culprit is us to a large degree, due to the link between CO2 and global temperature, which has been known for a long time, largely from ice cores that are extremely old in antarctica. Your guy denies much of the observational science or calls it a coordinated conspiracy.

What the consequences will be are largely known, but some are good fodder for science fiction. I think it is neat that you are convinced by fringe literature so easily.

[B402]

Hap...Climate Misinformation by Source: Fred Singer

https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Fred_Singer.html

[fuagf]

hap, Some years ago i said here, maybe even to you, something like: say all the science supporting human induced global warming was wrong. For arguments sake. What then? Then we still, because of our concern about the idea, end up with cleaner air. Cleaner air worldwide for all the children born today. Good result, eh.

Even if all the science, which i believe on balance supports woan-made climate change, is wrong we still end up with cleaner air.

DesertDrifter, would have also felt the same back some 10 years ago. He said it again today in the first reply .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168052871 .

That aside, the first very familiar name in your author list was Dr. S Fred Singer. on a search i first got [...]Koch Industries and the Web of Denial in Australia .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=60364052 .. 2010. There would be many more. That led to

Email of July 25, 1996 to Lead Authors of IPCC Working Group I Report1

Date: Thu, 25 Jul 96 21:02:35 PDT
From: Ben Santer <[e-mail]>
To: (78 undisclosed recipients)2
Subject: Latest zinger from Singer

To all Lead Authors of the 1995 IPCC Working Group I Report, and to all Contributors to Chapter 8, You will all have received (from Dr. S. Fred Singer) copies of Dr. Singer’s letter of July 25th to the Wall Street Journal. This letter makes some very serious allegations, and again raises the spectre of “scientific cleansing” of Chapter 8. I am disturbed by the use of this term. Over the last few years, “ethnic cleansing” has taken on vivid meaning for most of us. We have seen examples of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and Rwanda. “Ethnic cleansing” is a synonym for genocide – the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Singer’s allegations of “scientific cleansing” are morally repugnant to me, playing as they do on our familiarity with the use of the word “cleansing” in a non-scientific context.

Singer’s latest letter to the Wall Street Journal contains serious factual inaccuracies.

Continued - https://www.realclimate.org/docs/Email_25_July_1996.pdf

[fuagf]

hap, New IPCC report highlights urgency of climate change impacts

Posted on 1 March 2022 by dana1981

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/02/new-ipcc-report-highlights-urgency-of-climate-change-impacts/

All links. If there are more.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) second part of its Sixth Assessment Report summarizes the latest scientific research on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities.

The new IPCC Working Group II report paints an alarming picture of rapidly growing risks currently being felt around the world, including widespread damages to human and ecological health. It finds nearly half the world population living “in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change.”

For example, the IPCC says in its report that climate change has exacerbated food and water insecurity, extreme weather disasters, declines in people’s physical and mental health, premature deaths, species loss and extinctions, and vector-borne diseases in regions around the world. Citing the Paris Climate Agreement ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, the authors warn that each additional increment of global warming above that threshold will bring increased risks of new and worsened climate damages.

Adaptation measures – which the report finds woefully underfunded – can reduce risks from climate impacts, but those efforts will be overwhelmed by increasingly extreme weather events unless combined with aggressive efforts to curb global warming. The IPCC report cautions that:

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The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.
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Extreme weather causing food and water insecurity

The new report echoes the IPCC Working Group I report .. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/08/key-takeaways-from-the-new-ipcc-report/ .. from August 2021 in finding that climate change is worsening extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes. “Increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security,” the report finds.

Those concerns are reported as especially problematic in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South America, which along with portions of Asia are the most vulnerable regions to climate change impacts. These equatorial countries also lack the resources to deploy climate adaptation measures. Climate-worsened droughts and floods in recent years have increased acute food insecurity and malnutrition in these regions.

Over the past 50 years, technological advances have increased global food productivity, but climate change has slowed that growth. The IPCC projects that rising temperatures will decrease agricultural productivity in many regions, including much of North America. As IPCC report coordinating lead author Rachel Bezner Kerr said in a press briefing, “Climate change is projected to reduce overall yields of important North American crops such as wheat, maize, and soybeans” and also have adverse impacts on livestock and fisheries. “The picture is stark for food systems,” she added. “No one is left unaffected by climate change.”

Worsening droughts and shrinking glaciers and snowpacks have also contributed to water insecurity in many regions. The IPCC concludes that roughly half of the world’s population currently experiences severe water scarcity for at least some part of the year.

Declining physical and mental health

The IPCC also reports that climate change has adversely affected both the physical and the mental health of people around the world. Mental health is stressed by the trauma caused by extreme weather events and the associated loss of livelihoods and culture, and by concerns about the future stability of human society in a hotter world.

People’s physical health is particularly threatened by worsening extreme heat waves and resulting heat stress, which have increased the number of premature deaths in all regions of the world. Vector-borne diseases like West Nile virus, Lyme disease, malaria, and dengue fever are also on the rise in many countries. Warmer temperatures allow disease-bearing insects like mosquitoes and ticks to thrive and expand into regions previously too cool to provide suitable habitat.


IPCC Figure SPM.2: Observed global and regional impacts on ecosystems and human systems attributed to climate change. A minus sign indicates increasing adverse impacts to human systems, while a ± sign indicates increasing adverse and positive impacts in a given region. Blue indicates high or very high confidence in attribution to climate change, purple indicates medium confidence, gray indicates low confidence, and white denotes limited or insufficient evidence of climate change attribution. Most of the identified impacts – especially to health, wellbeing, and infrastructure – are negative.

Climate adaptation a necessity

A number of climate researchers have cautioned that effectively addressing climate change risks comes down to a combination of three choices: “mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.”

So far, mitigation and adaptation efforts are falling well short of international targets. IPCC report coordinating lead author Edwin Castellanos estimated that developing countries will need around $127 billion per year for climate adaptation efforts, and much more in developed countries. For comparison, “In 2009, developed countries committed to mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries,” Castellanos said. That figure includes both climate mitigation and adaptation costs, and wealthy countries have failed to even raise the promised amount .. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02846-3 . The “adaptation gap,” as the report puts it, is growing and is largest among lower-income population groups.

The report notes that many adaptation measures can yield additional benefits by also protecting ecosystems or curbing greenhouse gas emissions. For example,

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Energy generation diversification, including with renewable energy resources and generation that can be decentralized depending on context (e.g., wind, solar, small scale hydroelectric) and demand side management (e.g., storage, and energy efficiency improvements) can reduce vulnerabilities to climate change, especially in rural populations.
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But the IPCC also warns against “maladaptation,” actions that inadvertently increase risks of adverse climate outcomes. For example, excessive fire suppression in naturally fire-adapted ecosystems in the western U.S. has led to overly dense forests that, combined with climate-worsened hotter and drier weather, now burn in more uncontrollable wildfires.

Declining biodiversity

Some species and ecosystems have struggled to adapt quickly enough to keep up with the pace of human-caused climate change. The IPCC reports:

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Approximately half of the species assessed globally have shifted polewards or, on land, also to higher elevations. Hundreds of local losses of species have been driven by increases in the magnitude of heat extremes, as well as mass mortality events on land and in the ocean and loss of kelp forests. Some losses are already irreversible, such as the first species extinctions driven by climate change.
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As a result, the IPCC estimates that risks of near-term biodiversity loss in a variety of ecosystems are moderate to very high, including in forests and other terrestrial ecosystems, coral reefs and other marine ecosystems, and those dependent on Arctic sea ice, now rapidly shrinking.

The report suggests that conserving approximately 30% to 50% of Earth’s land, freshwater, and ocean areas could help preserve the resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem services. But so far, less than 15% of global land, 21% of freshwater, and 8% of ocean are protected areas.
The importance of the 1.5°C Paris target

The IPCC report frequently references the risks of surpassing the 1.5°C Paris target, including in terms of declining biodiversity. For example, more ocean and coastal ecosystems face high to very high risk of biodiversity loss in a 2°C (3.6°F) world than at 1.5°C, and most marine ecosystems face high to very high biodiversity loss risks at 3°C (5.4°F). In terrestrial ecosystems, up to 14% of the species assessed in the IPCC report will likely face very high risk of extinction at 1.5°C; that number rises to 18% at 2°C; 29% at 3°C; 39% at 4°C; and up to 48% of species extinctions at 5°C.

“Near-term actions that limit global warming to close to 1.5°C would substantially reduce projected losses and damages related to climate change in human systems and ecosystems, compared to higher warming levels, but cannot eliminate them all,” the IPCC report authors conclude. Projected flood damages in a 2°C warmer world are nearly double those in a 1.5°C warmer world, and about three times worse if global warming reaches 3°C, barring substantial adaptation efforts. Food insecurity risks in vulnerable regions rise from moderate to high levels between 1.5°C and 2°C, as worsening heat and drought extremes would combine to pose a threat to corn crops in major food-producing regions. As IPCC report lead author Adelle Thomas put it:

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For both losses and damages and limits to adaptation, we find that 1.5°C is a critical level of warming. Exceeding 1.5°C means that we will experience greater levels of losses and damages, with some of them being irreversible. It also means that there will be additional people and ecosystems that will reach the limits of adaptation.
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But few countries, including the U.S., are on track to meet their Paris targets. The U.S., pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 on a path to net zero emissions by 2050, but currently lacks the federal policy to achieve those goals.

The IPCC Working Group II report concludes that time is short for securing a livable and sustainable future by transitioning away from fossil fuels.

https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-ar6-wg2.html

[fuagf]

Last for now, hap - Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC
Ch 01

ASIDE: It's raining like hell in Sydney now. Forget cats and dogs. Elephants and hippopotamuses.

Framing and Context

Understanding the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways in the context of strengthening the response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.

Download (pdf, 1 MB) Authors FAQ Figures

ES Executive Summary

This chapter frames the context, knowledge-base and assessment approaches used to understand the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, building on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.

Human-induced warming reached approximately 1°C (likely between 0.8°C and 1.2°C) above pre-industrial levels in 2017, increasing at 0.2°C (likely between 0.1°C and 0.3°C) per decade (high confidence). Global warming is defined in this report as an increase in combined surface air and sea surface temperatures averaged over the globe and over a 30-year period. Unless otherwise specified, warming is expressed relative to the period 1850–1900, used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures in AR5. For periods shorter than 30 years, warming refers to the estimated average temperature over the 30 years centred on that shorter period, accounting for the impact of any temperature fluctuations or trend within those 30 years. Accordingly, warming from pre- industrial levels to the decade 2006–2015 is assessed to be 0.87°C (likely between 0.75°C and 0.99°C). Since 2000, the estimated level of human-induced warming has been equal to the level of observed warming with a likely range of ±20% accounting for uncertainty due to contributions from solar and volcanic activity over the historical period (high confidence). {1.2.1}

Warming greater than the global average has already been experienced in many regions and seasons, with higher average warming over land than over the ocean (high confidence). Most land regions are experiencing greater warming than the global average, while most ocean regions are warming at a slower rate. Depending on the temperature dataset considered, 20–40% of the global human population live in regions that, by the decade 2006–2015, had already experienced warming of more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial in at least one season (medium confidence). {1.2.1, 1.2.2}

Past emissions alone are unlikely to raise global-mean temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (medium confidence), but past emissions do commit to other changes, such as further sea level rise (high confidence). If all anthropogenic emissions (including aerosol-related) were reduced to zero immediately, any further warming beyond the 1°C already experienced would likely be less than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence), and likely less than 0.5°C on a century time scale (medium confidence), due to the opposing effects of different climate processes and drivers. A warming greater than 1.5°C is therefore not geophysically unavoidable: whether it will occur depends on future rates of emission reductions. {1.2.3, 1.2.4}

1.5°C emission pathways are defined as those that, given current knowledge of the climate response, provide a one- in-two to two-in-three chance of warming either remaining below 1.5°C or returning to 1.5°C by around 2100 following an overshoot. Overshoot pathways are characterized by the peak magnitude of the overshoot, which may have implications for impacts. All 1.5°C pathways involve limiting cumulative emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, and substantial reductions in other climate forcers (high confidence). Limiting cumulative emissions requires either reducing net global emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases to zero before the cumulative limit is reached, or net negative global emissions (anthropogenic removals) after the limit is exceeded. {1.2.3, 1.2.4, Cross-Chapter Boxes 1 and 2}

This report assesses projected impacts at a global average warming of 1.5°C and higher levels of warming. Global warming of 1.5°C is associated with global average surface temperatures fluctuating naturally on either side of 1.5°C, together with warming substantially greater than 1.5°C in many regions and seasons (high confidence), all of which must be considered in the assessment of impacts. Impacts at 1.5°C of warming also depend on the emission pathway to 1.5°C. Very different impacts result from pathways that remain below 1.5°C versus pathways that return to 1.5°C after a substantial overshoot, and when temperatures stabilize at 1.5°C versus a transient warming past 1.5°C (medium confidence). {1.2.3, 1.3}

Ethical considerations, and the principle of equity in particular, are central to this report, recognizing that many of the impacts of warming up to and beyond 1.5°C, and some potential impacts of mitigation actions required to limit warming to 1.5°C, fall disproportionately on the poor and vulnerable (high confidence). Equity has procedural and distributive dimensions and requires fairness in burden sharing both between generations and between and within nations. In framing the objective of holding the increase in the global average temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C, the Paris Agreement associates the principle of equity with the broader goals of poverty eradication and sustainable development, recognising that effective responses to climate change require a global collective effort that may be guided by the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. {1.1.1}

Climate adaptation refers to the actions taken to manage impacts of climate change by reducing vulnerability and exposure to its harmful effects and exploiting any potential benefits. Adaptation takes place at international, national and local levels. Subnational jurisdictions and entities, including urban and rural municipalities, are key to developing and reinforcing measures for reducing weather- and climate-related risks. Adaptation implementation faces several barriers including lack of up-to-date and locally relevant information, lack of finance and technology, social values and attitudes, and institutional constraints (high confidence). Adaptation is more likely to contribute to sustainable development when policies align with mitigation and poverty eradication goals (medium confidence). {1.1, 1.4}

Ambitious mitigation actions are indispensable to limit warming to 1.5°C while achieving sustainable development and poverty eradication (high confidence). Ill-designed responses, however, could pose challenges especially – but not exclusively – for countries and regions contending with poverty and those requiring significant transformation of their energy systems. This report focuses on ‘climate-resilient development pathways’, which aim to meet the goals of sustainable development, including climate adaptation and mitigation, poverty eradication and reducing inequalities. But any feasible pathway that remains within 1.5°C involves synergies and trade-offs (high confidence). Significant uncertainty remains as to which pathways are more consistent with the principle of equity.
{1.1.1, 1.4}

Multiple forms of knowledge, including scientific evidence, narrative scenarios and prospective pathways, inform the understanding of 1.5°C. This report is informed by traditional evidence of the physical climate system and associated impacts and vulnerabilities of climate change, together with knowledge drawn from the perceptions of risk and the experiences of climate impacts and governance systems. Scenarios and pathways are used to explore conditions enabling goal-oriented futures while recognizing the significance of ethical considerations, the principle of equity, and the societal transformation needed. {1.2.3, 1.5.2}

There is no single answer to the question of whether it is feasible to limit warming to 1.5°C and adapt to the consequences. Feasibility is considered in this report as the capacity of a system as a whole to achieve a specific outcome. The global transformation that would be needed to limit warming to 1.5°C requires enabling conditions that reflect the links, synergies and trade-offs between mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development. These enabling conditions are assessed across many dimensions of feasibility – geophysical, environmental-ecological, technological, economic, socio-cultural and institutional – that may be considered through the unifying lens of the Anthropocene, acknowledging profound, differential but increasingly geologically significant human influences on the Earth system as a whole. This framing also emphasises the global interconnectivity of past, present and future human–environment relations, highlighting the need and opportunities for integrated responses to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. {1.1, Cross-Chapter Box 1}

Citation

Much much more - https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-1/