Is it science or is it a marketing machine?
This press release with psychedelic art tells us land regions will warm by more than the global average, because oceans are slower to heat. No kidding. They use more broken models to breathlessly talk about being locked in to 1.5 °C rise — “more than preindustrial times”. How scared do we need to be about a 1.5C rise — it’s not just locked in, it’s already here. NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt says so — ” 2016 so far is about 1.5 degrees Celsius ( 2.7 degrees) warmer than pre-industrial times.” Since Gavin is talking “globally” the extra rise over land above and beyond that is not so much programmed in, as pre-baked.
The art might be the most original part of the paper.
Let’s redesign those cities:
The results of the new study have implications for international discussions of what constitutes safe global temperature thresholds, such as 1.5°C or 2°C of warming since pre-industrial times. The expected extra warming over land will influence how we need to design some cities.
Human civilization already lives in towns from -50C to +40C. I reckon we’ll manage a 1.5 degree rise (especially one that’s already happened). Can we cope with -48.5 to +41.5, The UN wants $89 trillion to do it. So give me $88T. I’ll give you a trillion in change.
How much redesigning will these warmer cities need anyway? A move from Sydney to Brisbane produces an apocalyptic 4 degrees rise. And we have about a thousand years to accomplish a transformation that big.
The inanities just keep coming. It’s like the peer reviewers have missed the last three decades of the climate debate. Here are the two big news flashes.
1. The climate is out of equilibrium (was it ever “in” equilibrium?)
The research team found two main reasons behind the result.
First, even if it was possible to keep carbon dioxide concentrations fixed at their current 400 parts-per-million concentration levels, then the planet would continue to warm towards new equilibrium higher temperatures. At present, the climate is out of equilibrium, with the oceans drawing down very large amounts of heat from the atmosphere. However this will decline as the planet is bought towards a stable climatic state.
2. Wait for it… Land heats more than ocean.
Second, warming rates over land are far higher than those when averaged globally which include temperatures over the oceans. This is a feature observed in meteorological measurements and reproduced across a large suite of climate models.
Not just observed in climate models and meteorological measurements, but observed on the nightly news too. Even at primary school.
Is this the voice of guilt?
Lead author Dr Chris Huntingford from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said, “It would certainly be inappropriate to create any additional fear over climate change.
This paper wins the Trite Science Prize for 2016 —
That’s the peer reviewed science paper that tells us what we already know.
…what this paper does is re-iterate that the oceans are currently acting as a very strong sink of heat. Even if carbon dioxide was somehow stabilised at current levels, additional warming will occur as we move towards an equilibrium climate state. Furthermore, both data and computer models all indicate enhanced temperatures over land, compared to global mean warming that includes temperatures over the oceans.”
The research was carried out by scientists from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Exeter, UK.
How much was that grant?
This research was funded by the NERC National Capability fund.
A decade ago the scare was about a prophesy of a 4 – 6 °C rise, now, the words are nearly the same, but the numbers have changed, and hardly anybody notices.
Reference:
Chris Huntingford, Lina M. Mercado. High chance that current atmospheric greenhouse concentrations commit to warmings greater than 1.5 °C over land.Scientific Reports, 2016; 6: 30294 DOI: 10.1038/srep30294