Newsweek: Climate-Change Calculus

[IDemo]

Why it's even worse than we feared.


Sahron Begley
Published Jul 24, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Aug 3, 2009

Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away.

Let me deconstruct the phrases above. The "shock" came when the International Polar Year, a global consortium studying the Arctic, froze a small vessel into the sea ice off eastern Siberia in September 2006. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen had done the same thing a century before, and his Fram, carried by the drifting ice, emerged off eastern Greenland 34 months later. IPY scientists thought their Tara would take 24 to 36 months. But it reached Greenland in just 14 months, stark evidence that the sea ice found a more open, ice-free, and thus faster path westward thanks to Arctic melting.

The loss of Arctic sea ice "is well ahead of" what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast, largely because emissions of carbon dioxide have topped what the panel—which foolishly expected nations to care enough about global warming to do something about it—projected. "The models just aren't keeping up" with the reality of CO2 emissions, says the IPY's David Carlson. Although policymakers hoped climate models would prove to be alarmist, the opposite is true, particularly in the Arctic.

The IPCC may also have been too cautious on Greenland, assuming that the melting of its glaciers would contribute little to sea-level rise. Some studies found that Greenland's glacial streams were surging and surface ice was morphing into liquid lakes, but others made a strong case that those surges and melts were aberrations, not long-term trends. It seemed to be a standoff. More reliable data, however, such as satellite measurements of Greenland's mass, show that it is losing about 52 cubic miles per year and that the melting is accelerating. So while the IPCC projected that sea level would rise 16 inches this century, "now a more likely figure is one meter <39 inches> at the least," says Carlson. "Chest high instead of knee high, with half to two thirds of that due to Greenland." Hence the "no idea how bad it was."

more -> http://www.newsweek.com/id/208164

[SpiralHawk]

1. Wow.

Thanks for posting. This should go in GD, too, so more folks can see it.

The k and the r.

[silverweb]

2. And there are still deniers. Amazing.

:kick:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Infact whole nations of them

India and China come to mind

[silverweb]

7. True, but I'm thinking more of educated people right here.

In particular, I have family members who are both intelligent and educated, yet who vociferously deny that there is any such thing as "global warming" or "climate change." They repeat Inhofe's canard that it's "just a hoax" to make money (which I thought they believed was a good thing?) and to justify enforcing some kind of "socialistic environmental utopia" (like that would be a bad thing).

It's very voluntary and very selective ignorance. I know there are many more otherwise intelligent and educated people in this country just like them, and I simply don't understand it.

Undeveloped and underdeveloped nations tend to deny the crisis because they blame developed nations for taking all the goodies from the planet and leaving nothing but the mess for them. I really don't blame them for feeling that way because it's mostly true, but their leaders need to get off their pity-pot and recognize the urgency of the situation... hard to do when WE have our own vocal deniers.

[kristopher]

9. It's extremely easy to understand

Just stop thinking of it as a scientific discussion and realize that it is purely political, and you'll find everything falls right into place.

[Javaman]

23. There are people who are willful contrarians.

They live to argue, even when there is no point.

Then there are the ones who enjoy fear. Fear of attack, fear of a whatever and fear of the truth. They enjoy the simple answers. The ones that fit conveniently into their model of things. facts that don't upset, facts that paint broad generalities, facts that are only supported by a select few that are "closed-out-of-the-conversation-by-the-government", they love the faux "rebel spirit" by the uneducated experts because the educated experts aren't the types they would "like-to-have-a-beer-with".

because if the scientists can't sum up the problem or explain the what climate change is during the commercial break of a >insert your favorite team sport here< then think they are full of shit. See? If it's not fed to them in sound byte form, they won't have anything to do with it.

[Native]

3. I love Sharon's columns. Very talented writer.

[XemaSab]

4. .

[Chemisse]

5. It's as though the sky really IS falling and nobody cares

The global warming situation is very dire but we live our lives doing the little we can (recycling, turning down the heat, driving a smaller car) then tuning out the rest.

There will come a day when we will wonder why on earth we didn't do more when there was still a chance.

While we worry about the economy and the wars and health care - all really important issues - I think we need to remember that the MOST important issue, the one that represents the very survival of the human race, is protecting the earth itself.

[Lorien]

10. That day is coming very swiftly. Within the lifetimes of most on this board

the disaster capitalists are relishing global catastrophe. They truly see it as an opportunity to push through every deregulation and reform they've dreamed up to profit from the suffering of the masses. Less land mass? Wonderful! We'll buy up what's left and charge the wealthiest to live there and rid the world of the less desirables! No food? So what? We'll grow it in high rises using Japanese hydroponic technology-and only the rich will be able to afford it! To them it's a wonderful way to rid the planet of those pesky endangered species, old growth forests the poor and middle classes....everything that has stood in the way of more golf courses and gated communities. It WILL effect them, but they refuse to believe this. Nothing is being done for the same reason that nothing was done before Katrina or the economic crisis; they WANT catastrophe. It suits their purposes.

[Javaman]

24. It works like this...

real action on climate change will only occur when Washington DC is hit by a cat 3 or better hurricane.

Until it inconveniences them, no real effort to deal with it will happen.

[northernlights]

8. just read the comments afterwards

Amazing. Just amazing. The stupid is unbelievable.

I ran into a nutcase like that this afternoon, leaving the library minding my own business. Some woman in the parking lot commented on the awful weather. Turned out she was visiting from Ohio. I agreed, described how it rained the entire month of June and had been raining much of July.

Which became her lead in to the stupid myth of global warming, which obviously is false because it's so cold here this summer. Turned out that was her purpose the entire time. To spread stupid. I tried to explain the science, that the warming is the *average* for the planet, and that it was leading to weather extremes. She interrupted and insisted that the vast majority of scientists don't believe there is any global warming. I explained that the vast majority of scientists know there is global climate change and that it is caused by man's activities. She kept insisting. I told her "I AM a scientist. The vast majority of scientists believe that global climate change exists and accept that it is do to man's activities." So then she started exclaiming, "Gawd does everything. It's all Gawd." I finally just said, "Whatever." and walked away.

The woman was a total troll. Accosted me in the parking lost specifically to pick a fight.

There really is no hope. The stupid is *everywhere*.

[jimlup]

11. People have learned not to trust the media

but unfortunately, without a brain, they seem to be unable to direct their skepticism coherently. Thus we get global warming deniers: brainless babbling idiots who wouldn't know scientific evidence if it flooded around them - and it might.

[pscot]

26. Should've killed her on the spot

One less mind to change.

[excess_3]

12. anything from the IPCC is BS .n/t

[NickB79]

13. The problem with the IPCC report is that they have been too conservative

So the predictions in the IPCC report may indeed be BS, because everything we're seeing is happening FASTER THAN EXPECTED by the IPCC.

[excess_3]

14. my concern .. conflicts of interest

these people get paid by people who would benefit from the
existence of the pronlem

[Viking12]

16. The authors of the IPCC are not paid at all for their participation.

Strike One.

[excess_3]

17. I didn't say 'publicly"

follow the money.

the idea is to create a demand for a product
(carbon offsets) that they create out of thin air.

[Viking12]

20. Is this you?

[NickB79]

19. Then why not hype the worst-case scenarios to increase concern?

That would be the logical thing to do if you are trying to "sell" global warming. Tell the world the ice caps will be gone in 20 years, cities will be underwater, hundreds of millions dead in the next few decades, etc. Instead, what we have seen is that the IPCC has UNDERSTATED the severity of the problem. Things they estimated would take decades to occur are happening NOW.

The IPCC was produced by thousands of globally renowned scientists, using data gathered and analyzed by thousands of other scientists. What you are suggesting is a global conspiracy amongst the climatology field to bilk the entire planet out of huge sums of money. That might make sense in the mind of someone like Michael Crichton, but in the real world even small conspiracies tend to implode rather shortly.

[excess_3]

21. their mantra is, 'worse than expected'.

Key word, worse.
make sure the public sees the word, 'Worse'
...............................
when I say, BS, what I mean is...
might come true, partly true, might not, nobody knows.
made-up BS could work out, who knows.
..............................
I'm not sure I would use the word 'conspiracy'.
more like Jimmy Swaggart, Bernie Madoff , and the Wizard of OZ walking in the same direction.
some believe what they say, many make their living from
global warming, others are carbon offset scammers,
others are rich and won't suffer.

some act in good faith.
heard on NPR radio some time back,
somebody saying, words to the effect....
we should be upfront about things,
one or two percent of the worlds wealth will be foregone,
if these anti-global warming measures are implemented.

as for the ones that don't act in good faith,
they don't want to bilk the world, only the US.
Look at the Kyoto treaty, because of convienietly-for-then
chosen baseline, Europe gets off easy, so does Australia.

[NickB79]

22. Uh, "worse than expected" is not the mantra of the IPCC

What is "expected" is what is mentioned IN the last IPCC report. What is "worse" is what we are now seeing globally since it was released.

[Javaman]

25. Are you a recent repuke turn coat?

because most thinking people aka DU population believe in climate change.

If you are on here to disrupt, you will be easily found out.

Now if you want to believe there are conspiracies under every rock, knock yourself out, but the fact that majority of the worlds scientists all agree that climate change is happening.

And if you believe that it's all a grand scheme to make money, let me clue you in on something, the world is runs on money, if it takes money to solve the issue of climate change, then so be it, as long as it gets done.

Now please, I have a pretty strong stomach, but they level of horse shit you bring to the table is down right moronic.

Cheers and have a nice day.

:)

[Nihil]

28. He is a low-volume troll - not enough to be worth banning but enough to waste posts on ...

He has had several previous incarnations (e.g., "razzleberry")
and is quite easily recognised from his posting style but, as he
is largely harmless, people don't bother alerting on him ...
:hi:

[pscot]

27. You are an idiot

n/t

[CrispyQ]

15. The human species is so totally unprepared for what's about to happen.

I went to one store yesterday & saw three Hummers in the course of my trip.

k&r

[stuntcat]

18. too late to rec

I can't look in e/e much, since the nature-hating deniers are depressing me almost as much as the full-throttle Earth-rape :crazy: But I can kick this.
The only thing I feel anymore is that the "advanced, educated" people will not take responsibility, and they'll be the last ones to pay. It is made clearer and clearer to me every day by almost every single human I see.

[ramapo]

29. Most people are ignorant

Sure there is a widespread, general awareness of global warming/climate change. But like the frog in the pot of gradually warming water, we don't sense that anything is really amiss.

Life as we know it continues day-to-day. That is about as much as most people can focus on and to a large degree, care about.

[GliderGuider]

30. It's our built-in "hyperbolic discount function"

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Hyperbolic%20Discount%20Functions.html

Why is it so difficult to generate concern for events that are seen as belonging to the future even though their consequences may be dire? Why is it so easy to generate concern for much smaller events that are happening right now?

This happens, apparently, because of the way we're wired. It is the result of many millenia of mutation, genetic drift and natural selection - selection that favoured people who responded immediately to threats or rewards. Those individuals that did not respond immediately (perhaps they didn't run from the tiger or eat the food that was in front of them) were more likely to be "selected out" of the gene pool. They were the original Darwin Award winners. This selection reinforced our responses to immediate and clearly understood rewards or dangers. In fact, the further away in time the reward or danger was, the lower our response to it became, because its influence on our survival was correspondingly less. Even if we waited to run until the tiger got closer, the chances were good that we would escape anyway, so there was no need to leave our meal just yet. This idea is known as the "discount rate". It's the same concept used by banks, where the present value of a future event is discounted depending on how far in the future it is.

While banks use a linear discount rate (expressed as a percentage), there is strong evidence that human beings use a more complex function that comes from different parts of our brain. The more primitive parts (the brain stem and limbic system) are concerned with immediate survival and emotional responses. They are much less capable of long-term evaluation, but provoke the strongest reactions to pleasure or fear. The neocortex, on the other hand, is our thinking brain. It analyzes, predicts and plans for the future, but has more limited access to our emotional triggers.

As a result, immediate threats or rewards that require no deep analysis tend to activate the "earlier" portions of our brain and prompt very strong responses. More abstract threats and rewards identified through the analytical capability of our neocortex don't activate our limbic system, and so usually prompt a much less intense reaction. In addition, emotions easily override the intellect, so you get reactions like, "Yes, I think Global Warming is important, but I have a date tonight with the hottest guy on the face of the planet!" That's not a lack of concern for the future, it's a direct result of the way we are constructed. It's because of our hard-wired "hyperbolic discount function". Immediate and concrete concerns always strongly outweigh the distant and abstract; it's the reason we got this far as a species. The discount function is called "hyperbolic" because it falls off rapidly at first, then flattens out as time passes. Events that are very near term evoke a sense of urgency that falls off steeply as the time horizon passes from the domain of the limbic system to the domain of the neocortex, resulting in the characteristic shape of a hyperbolic curve: