McDowell posted:

cheese, are you betting on the free market to save us from this?

Ad Astra posted:

Are you all properly scared yet?

It is important to be scared so you can give up another bit of freedom or souvereignity to make the problem go away.

Ad Astra posted:

If this doesn't suffice they can make you another map for 2070 with even more red in it. These are the same people who can't reliably predict the weather for the next few days.

quote:

For the six SRES marker scenarios, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007:7-8) gave a "best estimate" of global mean temperature increase (2090-2099 relative to the period 1980-1999) that ranged from 1.8 °C to 4.0 °C. Over the same time period, the IPCC gave a "likely" range (greater than 66% probability, based on expert judgement) for these scenarios was for a global mean temperature increase of between 1.1 and 6.4 °C

Ad Astra posted:

If this doesn't suffice they can make you another map for 2070 with even more red in it. These are the same people who can't reliably predict the weather for the next few days.

Ad Astra posted:

The difference between climate and weather is that you can reliably predict weather for a few days whereas climate can easily be predicted decades into the future.

Deleuzionist posted:

If you have a coherent argument to make on the topic of this thread, do it. I haven't laughed yet today.

cheese posted:

While I think there is a lot we can learn from climatology data and predictions, attempting to show us a heat map of rainfall levels 50 years in the future is kind of insulting to my intelligence.

Kilted Canuck posted:

You're right, scientists just sit down with crayons and 'ballpark it'. You caught us.

Kilted Canuck posted:

These are outputs from very large and complex models that use physical laws, known climate cycles and patterns, teleconnections, and geophysical variables to plot these trends. They are tested by using inputs from the past to predict the present (which most do fairly well, within an acceptable margin of error).

So yes, we assume they work because they accurately predict the present based on the past, and they are continually improved to include physical processes and fine-tune them to better match reality.

Got a better idea to understand this mess?

cheese posted:

Of course not, but what good is a map like that if it can be so easily dismissed?

No I have no better idea, although "66% probability of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees of warming. Those are some big error bars." kind of worries me. If that is the most accurate they can be then a 2070 rainfall map seems like a good intentioned conversation starter at best and just more easily dismissed, intellectually dishonest propaganda at worst.

Desmond posted:

On a different subject, there's a couple new pieces out in the last week about methane:

New York Times

cheese posted:

No I have no better idea, although "66% probability of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees of warming. Those are some big error bars." kind of worries me. If that is the most accurate they can be then a 2070 rainfall map seems like a good intentioned conversation starter at best and just more easily dismissed, intellectually dishonest propaganda at worst.

Orbital Sapling posted:

I don't understand this. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about, have zero expertise in the field and (probably) no real experience in science and yet you still spout bullshit like this as if you have something of merit to contribute.

I can understand a little skepticism, but outright dismissing legitimate research here as irrelevant or propaganda based on feelings like "I don't like the margin of error" or calling it "insulting to my intelligence" is just worthless tripe.

Strudel Man posted:

It's not "I don't like the margin of error." It's "the margin of error makes it clear that any predictions are extremely imprecise."

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

Is the problem that we cannot tell precisely the future or that the science does not extend it's claims further than it can to remain honest? Even on the low end of severity and high probability data that we have gathered in the last few decades (measurement of methane release/dying phytoplankton/ocean levels rising), we should be doing things right now to fix them. I applaud the reserved predictions and honest probabilities. The margin of error also leaves room for things to be WORSE.

Salt Fish posted:

"Sir, as your doctor I must warn you; unless you undergo treatment we can predict with 66% certainty that you'll have 1-6 years left to live."

Salt Fish posted:

"Sir, as your doctor I must warn you; unless you undergo treatment we can predict with 66% certainty that you'll have 1-6 years left to live."

"Wait, you mean you have a 6 year margin of error and only with 66% certainty?? Those error bars indicate to me that you have no idea what you're talking about, cannot tell the future, and that I don't need treatment. See you later!"

Desmond posted:

That's a pretty succinct way of putting it. It will still go over some people's heads!

Strudel Man posted:

But when our most reliable predictions are just that it will be somewhere between "nothing" and "unbridled catastrophe," it's hard to get a good grip on how much sacrifice will be needed.

Ignatius M. Meen posted:

Shouldn't the take-home message be that we need to actually do something now to treat the problem? To continue the medical analogy, it's like a patient who doesn't want to get the recommended treatments because their doctor can't give them a precise estimate on how many they'll have to have/how long they'll have to be treated for.

Ignatius M. Meen posted:

Shouldn't the take-home message be that we need to actually do something now to treat the problem? To continue the medical analogy, it's like a patient who doesn't want to get the recommended treatments because their doctor can't give them a precise estimate on how many they'll have to have/how long they'll have to be treated for.

Strudel Man posted:

Let's try to avoid argument by analogy. It rarely helps, generally getting bogged down into back and forth about what the situation is really like.

And while it's easy to say that we need to do "something," the trouble is that given the wide spread of possible severities we face, any specific "something" is always going to be simultaneously too much and not enough. Translating 'do something' into action requires a fairly strong sense of how bad the problem is and how much what we're doing is going to help...which, unfortunately, we rather lack at the moment.

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/special-features/to-be-perths-hottest-year-ever/story-e6frg19l-1226224717115 posted:

METEOROLOGISTS say 2011 will be Perth's hottest year in history - our third consecutive hottest year since records began.

Perth's mean daily maximum temperature from January to November was 25.3C, topping the 2010 record of 24.9C, according to the WA Bureau of Meteorology.

"When we factor in the seven-day forecast, for us not to break the record we would have to have average temperatures of less than 20.7C (this month) and we really don't think that is going to happen," bureau weather services manager Neil Bennett said.

"The interesting thing is we have 114 years of records of temperatures for the Perth metro area and when you take all the maximum temperatures over a year and you average them out, to get 25C or more, that has only happened on four occasions in that whole 114 years.

"Three of those four occasions occurred in the last three years."

The fourth was in 1978, he said.

Perth has experienced above-average temperatures every month, except for November, since July 2010.

Mr Bennett said rising city temperatures, which noticeably spiked in the 1970s and have continued to climb each year - particularly in the past decade - were consistent with climate change.

"It's an indication that Perth is warming and that is consistent with the whole of the South-West of WA and consistent with global temperatures as well," he said.

The director of the State Centre of Excellence on Climate Change, Giles Hardy, said WA was perceived as one of the global "guinea pigs" for climate change.

"The rising temperatures that we are seeing is climate change," Prof Hardy said.

Globally, 2010 was the warmest on record, melting Arctic sea ice cover to record lows in December that year.

The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998 and each decade in Australia since the 1940s has been warmer than the last.

In August, the Federal Government's Climate Commission reported on the impacts of climate change in WA.

It said that sea levels along the coast had been rising at more than double the global average and that, "there is significant evidence that climate change has contributed to the marked drying trend in the South-West of the state".

This year, Perth experienced one of the wettest Decembers on record, with a one-in-100-year storm on Monday bringing the monthly rainfall to 75.8mm almost six times the average.

The unseasonal rain is caused by warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures. Sea temperatures have risen 1C in the past 50 years and waters between 7.1mm and 7.4mm a year since the 1990s almost double the national average.

In January, abnormally hot ocean temperatures 3C warmer than usual bleached Ningaloo Reef.

WA Farmers Federation president Mike Norton said farmers had lost millions in crop yields from two months of unseasonal rain.

"It started raining out in the central Wheatbelt in early October, which virtually wrecked thousands of acres of export oats that were to be exported to Japan. The losses on that would be a very, very large amount of money,'' Mr Norton said.

The wet weather, which changes the consistency of the grain causing it to darken and go mouldy, is devaluing grain by $100 a tonne, he said.

THE COST OF CLIMATE CHANGE
- Across WA, between 20,000 and 30,000 residential buildings, valued at over $8 billion, stand to be inundated if sea levels rise by 1.1m
- Most affected will be low-lying areas such as Mandurah, Bunbury and Busselton
- A 1.1m sea level rise will also put up to 9,000 km of roads, 114 km of railway and up to 2,100 commercial buildings at risk, currently worth up to $11.3 billion, $500 million and $17 billion respectively in WA
- Changing rainfall and rising temperatures could result in agricultural yield losses of more than 30 per cent by 2050, costing the industry billions in lost revenue
- Perth is predicted to be up to 70 per cent drier and up to 6C hotter by 2070
* Source: Federal Department of Climate Change

ThinkProgress posted:

Narxysus posted:

Can definitely attest to the last few years being odd - the cycles of weather have been way out of kilter from what I remember in my childhood. I used to love autumn for the overcast, mild days which would occur for weeks at a time, but it's been years since that happened like I remember.

Edit: the comments on that article remind me I live in a state of bogans

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

Seriously, it was raining a week or two ago in Minnesota, in the middle of December. For the past week it has been hovering around freezing with absolutely no snow on the ground. If there were still leaves on the trees it would look like early fall.

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

Likewise for Southern Alberta, Canada.

quote:

Heavy rainfall began falling in California as the longwave trough moved down over the state, remaining there until the end of January 1862 and causing rain to fall everywhere in the state for nearly 40 days.

quote:

The entire Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys were inundated for an extent of 300 miles (480 km), averaging 20 miles (32 km) in breadth.

quote:

For a week the tides at the Golden Gate did not flood [flow in], rather there was continuous and forceful ebb of brown fresh water 18-20 feet deep pouring out above the salt water. A sea captain reported that his heavily laden ship foundered in the Gulf of the Farallons off of San Francisco, due to the layer of fresh water. Fresh-water fish were caught in San Francisco Bay for several months after the peaks of the flood. These events have not happened since.

quote:

Mr. Tennent, in San Francisco, recorded nine days with below freezing temperatures in January alone, including a 22° reading on January 28, a full 5° colder than any temperature ever measured in the modern era of the city.

JBark posted:

Saw this article when reading the news this morning:


I gave up trying to bold important parts, since I was doing pretty much the entire article. Basically, WA is one of the places most likely to feel the effect of climate change first, and surprise! we're warming consistently almost every year, and have been since the 70s.

duck monster posted:

Febuary was an absolute horror. A month straight of 40C (~104f) days. I ended up going through a good $800 in air consitioner power useage just to stay sane. I can't recall another year qquite like it, and I say that as someone who detests winter, usually.

VideoTapir posted:

What kind of house do you live in? If you have doors and windows front and back, you can do a lot to keep the house cool with minimal AC use. Open up at night, close the sunward side early, don't close the shaded side until it's cooler inside than out. You can be comfortable and run your AC just a few hours a day. My dad in AZ spends less than 1/6th what you do for electricity (don't know what the difference in rates is) with a ~1400 square foot house, in the hottest months of summer, about as hot as you're talking about.

If you're in an apartment facing north with no windows in back, well, I don't envy you I guess.