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Global warming predictions are underestimated say scientists
Ian Sample, The Guardian
Climate change models have dramatically underestimated the extent to which global warming will raise temperatures, scientists warned yesterday.
The flaw means existing predictions for temperature rises are inaccurate and will have to be revised upwards by as much as 2C, suggesting the world could experience a hike of up to 7.7C by the end of the 21st Century.
British efforts to combat climate change have focused on preventing carbon dioxide levels rising above 450 parts per million, equivalent to a rise of 2C. If the world warms by more than this, many climate experts believe fragile ecosystems will be pushed beyond their “tipping point”, triggering runaway global warming.
The flaw came to light during a study of the effects of global surface temperatures on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Scientists have long known that greenhouse gases raise temperatures by insulating the planet. But a less well known mechanism is that the warmer the planet gets, the more carbon dioxide is released naturally by soil and oceans. The result is a mechanism where atmospheric carbon dioxide creates warming that causes even more carbon dioxide to be released.
Peter Cox, scientific director for climate change at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset, with researchers from the US and the Netherlands, used ice cores from the Antarctic to study carbon dioxide levels trapped during a period called the Little Ice Age, from 1550 to 1850. They found carbon dioxide increased rapidly with warming, as soils decomposed faster and oceans lost more of the gas.
Because scientists have been unable to quantify the effect before, it has not been included in many climate models. But when it is taken into account, it lead to carbon dioxide levels that boosted temperatures by between 15 and 78%.
(23 May 2006)
UPDATE: The second paragraph originally ended, “… by the year 3000.” The Guardian has since corrected the date to “by the end of the 21st Century.”. As a reader pointed out, that’s a minor difference of 900 years!
Feedback Loops in Global Climate Change Point to a Very Hot 21st Century
Lynn Yarris, Researach News (University of California, Berkeley)
BERKELEY, CA —Studies have shown that global climate change can set-off positive feedback loops in nature which amplify warming and cooling trends. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have been able to quantify the feedback implied by past increases in natural carbon dioxide and methane gas levels. Their results point to global temperatures at the end of this century that may be significantly higher than current climate models are predicting.
Using as a source the Vostok ice core, which provides information about glacial-interglacial cycles over hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers were able to estimate the amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, two of the principal greenhouse gases, that were released into the atmosphere in response to past global warming trends. Combining their estimates with standard climate model assumptions, they calculated how much these rising concentration levels caused global temperatures to climb, further increasing carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and so on.
“The results indicate a future that is going to be hotter than we think,” said Margaret Torn, who heads the Climate Change and Carbon Management program for Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division, and is an Associate Adjunct Professor in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. She and John Harte, a UC Berkeley professor in the Energy and Resources Group and in the Ecosystem Sciences Division of the College of Natural Resources, have co-authored a paper entitled: Missing feedbacks, asymmetric uncertainties, and the underestimation of future warming, which appears in the May, 2006 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).
In their GRL paper, Torn and Harte make the case that the current climate change models, which are predicting a global temperature increase of as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, may be off by nearly 2.0 degrees Celsius because they only take into consideration the increased greenhouse gas concentrations that result from anthropogenic (human) activities.
“If the past is any guide, then when our anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, it will alter earth system processes, resulting in additional atmospheric greenhouse gas loading and additional warming,” said Torn.
(22 May 2006
Greenhouse gases: Who produces most?
Michael McCarthy, The Independent
Britain’s first full survey of household emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for global warming, was published yesterday – and was full of surprises.
The most polluting homes in the country, the study found, were in the local authority area of Uttlesford in Essex, which is based on the charming market towns of Thaxted, Great Dunmow and Saffron Walden, and was once named as the best place to live in England and Wales.
The most polluting town or city, in domestic CO2 terms, was Reading, ahead of London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, and the biggest-emitting region – by household – was non-industrialised eastern England.
The survey, commissioned by British Gas from the Cambridge-based consultancy Best Foot Forward, is the first full calculation of the amount of CO2 produced by British dwellings.
It examined all 386 British local authorities, looking at energy consumed in terms of electricity, gas and solid fuel, and converting that to a CO2 equivalent.
…British Gas said domestic CO2 emission levels were due to a variety of factors, including age and type of housing stock, quality of heating systems, ownership of appliances, occupancy levels, fuel mix and habits of occupants.
One conclusion to draw from the figures, which indicate that areas of relative affluence are the worst performers, is that people who have more money, spend more on energy.
(23 May 2006)
Peak Water?
deconsumption
And speaking of indexes, I thought it might be a good time to check back in with the price of water–or rather a rough proxy for it in the demand for shares of companies in the newly emerging “Water Industry”. How newly emerging? Well the most comprehensive index is called the Palisades Water Index, which was inaugurated on the Amex. just over 2 years ago. Check out the PR statement:
“The Palisades Water Index is the premier vehicle developed for investors to capture the potential associated with the substantial increase in the economic value of water. We believe that this value will inevitably be unlocked as the global population adjusts to the linkages between human health, economic development and resource sustainability.”
Is that last statement a chilling double entendre or what?
Anyway, as things stand now the wild bull-market in water appears to be taking a header with all the other Industrials. [Click Image for Bigness] But this likely only affects the inflated market-cap of the underlying stocks, and not the actual price on your utility bill. Water is still looking like the next oil, and the world’s industrialists are climbing all over themselves not only to own it, but to take water handling “technology” ever forward (i.e. filtration, desalinisation, distribution, waste-water treatment and handling, etc.). Which should serve as a reminder to us all that complex systems are very precarious and require large energy-inputs to maintain.
(22 May 2006)
