Perhaps off the mark - but looking at the graph above, knowing it doesn’t account for melting permafrost feedbacks (right?) - intuitively, it looks to me like, if we include those feedbacks, it would drop to zero by 2050. No? (Am I not reading this right? Or reading too much into it?)

Scenarios are starting to make Lovelock look not so crazy anymore…but prescient.

Given this choice quote (quickly pulled from an abundance of possibilities) from Sr. on his 4-28-08 post:

“The current focus of the IPCC and others on climate change with their emphasis on global warming, as a guise to promote energy policy, therefore, is an erroneous and dishonest approach to communicate energy policy to policymakers and the public. The optimal energy policy requires expertise and assessments that involves a much broader community than the climate science profession.” linky - http://climatesci.org/ category/ ra-pielke-sr-position-statements/

Is it me, or does it feel like an Irving Kristol/Bill Kristol thing going on? No?

It’s all much clearer to me…thanks Kim.

What is also simple is the typical seizure by the denialist crowd to grasp the latest of anything that they hope validates their ideology. Many times they have done this, many times we see that time has told us of this tactic (CRF being the latest).

What science does, as Spencer says, is look at work and test it in different ways. Has anyone taken Spencer’s work to heart on their models yet? No? Then we don’t know whether he is right or wrong*. Therefore we can’t use a blog post or single paper as evidence yet.

In the meantime, society has moved on and is debating adaptation and mitigation strategies. That’s right: what will we do in the face of future warming (much of it man-made, as Spencer says is plausible)? That’s what society is discussing now. Will the future decision-making be better informed when modeling is more robust? Certainly.

Best,

D

* Note to denialists: this does not mean I reject Spencer’s findings. Don’t try to make it sound as if I do.

The current focus of the IPCC and others on climate change with their emphasis on global warming, as a guise to promote energy policy, therefore, is an erroneous and dishonest approach to communicate energy policy to policymakers and the public.

RP Sr finally comes out and says it. Certainly his hobbyhorse of land-use change is a component of man-made climate change, but a minor part and not all of it.

The current energy policy of most countries on this planet looks likely to be a major component of the recent man-made climate change, so it is entirely appropriate to communicate an approach to alter current energy policy to avoid additional climate impacts.

IOW: RP Sr sez doublespeak buncombe.

Best,

D

And wrong.

As usual.

I have no knowledge of the intensity of CO4 release from the permafrost and into the atmosphere arising from this loss area of permafrost—is all permafrost equal?—so that loss of area doesn’t necessarily translate into released CO4 of similar rates. But isn’t it likely that this historical loss has resulted in some CO4 emissions?

Given this, and as a point of clarification, I think a better tack to take would be to discuss the much larger magnitude of the loss possible under various temperature rising scenarii. Again just eyeballing this graph, it looks like the SRES A2 would decline to around 3.5 millions of km^2 by 2050, which is again about a 2.1% annual decline, or some 11 times larger than the 0.18% decline. Even the SRES B1 looks to decline to 5 millions of km^2 by 2050, which is again about a 1.4% annual decline, or some 7.6 times larger than the 0.18% decline. Both of which are huge accelerations in the rates of loss of permafrost and hence potential release of CO4.

We had in our large local newspaper an editorial from George Will about how we don’t have to worry or even think about global warming, all the worry is about some Polar Bears dying and we should just decide to not hunt them, everything would be fine. I wish our newspaper would have articles about this subject from people explaining the real dire possibility of catastrophe from those who can explain that kind of stuff instead of stuff writing that stuff from a longtime political hack.

How should we look at Global Warming, with pessimism or optimism? I sure do think that many try to never think that we may be giving future generations trouble. We do in our minds look at them with the mental filters we evaluate all information with. I think I try hard to look at it with realism, not pessimism or optimism. But if these studies are realism, all that realism is sure depressing.

Try the RealClimate post on Spencer for all the demonstrating a rational person needs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7408808.stm

To follow on your clathrates comment - did you see this New Scientist article? (subscription for the whole thing) http://environment.newscientist.com/ channel/ earth/ climate-change/ mg19826575.000-earth-may-hide-a-lethal-carbon-cache.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

“Perhaps the greatest threat of an unexpected release of carbon from the deep comes from an indirect effect of human-made CO2. Global warming could destabilise some deep carbon reserves, notably in clathrates - ice lattices which are found beneath the ocean floor and continental permafrost, and even under freshwater lakes like Lake Baikal in Siberia (pictured). These ice structures may hold trillions of tonnes of methane. …
“If you raise temperatures even slightly, they could be released.” According to Ronald Cohen, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution, natural warming caused large releases of methane around 55 million years ago.
…Though the deep carbon cycle could theoretically absorb human-made emissions, Hazen points out that this would take millions of years. Catastrophic methane emissions could happen over just a few decades….Natural processes such as volcanism are also known to bring carbon to the surface, but there may be other mechanisms to release buried carbon that have not been considered by mainstream climate science. For example, there is growing evidence that microbes living deep in the crust may be converting carbon into forms that can migrate to the surface - notably methane.”

Joe, perhaps another feel good series on clathrates?

Have you references?

http://solarb.msfc.nasa.gov/science/timeline/

The Gaia hypothesis suggests that the earth regulates its temperature by modulating atmospheric CO2. The recent natural level of 280ppm is low historically, but this may be because “Gaia” is fighting a losing battle against the long term rise in luminosity. In which case we are playing with fire by artificially raising CO2 at all. No level should be considered safe, and certainly not 450 ppm+

And the moon was much closer, exerting much more tidal force on the earth.

Personally, I’m polluted with an ecological education & I’d say Gaia adapts rather than modulates. She’s not moving the moon away & lessening volcanism as a result. But that’s just me.

Best,

D

I would say from the graph we are pretty much there. The next 18 months will tell. It was pretty much the same for the arctic sea ice. I mentioned on seeing the graph, posted in here, that it looked like it had tipped for 2007 - well they are now saying an ice free arctic next year!

These graphs are scary, but many (even those in the know) seem to be in denial as to the catastrophic message they are portraying.

The permafrost melt is pretty dire - I don’t see how higher concentrations of CO2 are avoidable now, what ever action we take.

The Gaia hypothesis also places us humans within the system or superorganism. In what way do you suppose our actions are ‘unnatural’ and a cause for concern? Is it possible we just aren’t seeing the big picture?

That’s what the planet’s saying.

Somehow, I can’t (yet) get too excited about a small amount of methane release.