Friends: I am one of those persons who believes that unless we stop adding to
the greenhouse gas burden of the atmosphere in the near future that serious
consequences are in store. On the other hand, are we looking at a 20 ft rise in
the ocean level in the next century? Probably not, even though climatologists
warn that ice cap melting maybe be subject to non-linearities due to strong
feedback loops (such as methane emissions from melting permafrost).
Still, a recent story from the NY Times on the melting of ice in Greenland had
this sentence:
"Carl Egede Boggild, a professor of snow-and-ice physics at the University
Center of Svalbard, said Greenland could be losing more than 80 cubic miles of
ice per year."
If this number is right, you can easily calculate that such melting would
would add about 1 mm per year to sea level assuming that the additional water
is spread uniformly among the world's oceans and that the melt-rate is not much
more than 80 cubic mi per year. So if this melt-rate neither accelerates nor
decelerates, then we are looking at an increase of 100 mm (10 cm or 4 inches)
to the ocean level in the next century due to Greenland ice melting - probably
not catastrophic.
But then we are also assuming that significant non-linearities do not kick
in.
ken
Ken Piers
"We are by nature creatures of faith, as perhaps all creatures are; we live by
counting on things that cannot be proved. As creatures of faith, we must choose
either to be religious or superstitious, to believe in things that cannot be
proved or to believe in things that can be disproved."
Wendell Berry
>>> "Don Perrett" <donperrett@theology-perspectives.net> 1/23/2007 11:23 AM
>>>
Part of the prolem with predictions is that they are past on as fact. The
data may be factual, but the predictions are just possibities (or
probabilities).
In the early hours of Katrina, the mayor of N.O. said that thousands were
dead. This was not based upon actual numbers of dead found (facts) but on
the report done years prior which made predictions of worst case scenarios.
Does anyone who is in full (human caused) support of global warming see a
picture that is anything less than the worst case? Or, are we going to end
up like Nagan apologizing for being alarmists for basing our "facts" upon
something that is only a possibility?
Don
_____
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 1:14 PM
To: Al Koop
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: [asa] Global Warming, Ethics, and Social
Sciences
Al, that's an interesting graph, but what is the basis for those scary
predictions? Another Wiki entry on the report notes that the report's
"predictions are based on scenarios, and the IPCC did not assign any
probability to the 35 scenarios used."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Assessment_Report
In fact, the IPCC report itself states with respect to socioeconomic
scenarios that "Socioeconomic scenarios in general have been developed to
aid decisionmaking under conditions of great complexity and uncertainty in
which it is not possible to assign levels of probability to any particular
state of the world at a future point in time. Therefore, it usually is not
appropriate to make a statement of confidence concerning a specific
socioeconomic scenario" (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/127.htm)
So, yes, we can create plausible scenarios in which all the bars on a graph
turn red and society melts down. But we can also create plausible scenarios
in which the bars only reach orange, or stay green. There doesn't really
seem to be any real predictive "science" to this kind of scenario-making,
which is why I included "social sciences" in the post title.
On 1/18/07, Al Koop <koopa@gvsu.edu <mailto:koopa@gvsu.edu> > wrote:
>>> "David Opderbeck" < dopderbeck@gmail.com <mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> 01/18/07 9:56 AM >>>
*My thinking concerning the consequences of global warming is that there is
about a 99.99% chance that it will be an unmitigated disaster if the
temperature of the earth goes up a few degrees Centigrade in the next
several decades*.
Al, what's the basis for that statement? What studies support this kind of
claim?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming>
Look at the figure in the upper right corner. By that assessment, if the
temperature increases 6 degrees C in the next hundred years, there will
severe impacts across the globe--many extinctions, many extreme climatic
events, negative impacts almost everywhere, extensivel negative economic and
ecological impacts, and some significant chance of abrupt and irreversible
large scale transitions. If significant amounts of Greenland ice and
Antarctic ice melt, I understand that the ocean levels will rise meters, and
I cannot imagine that could be good for most coastal areas. From what I
know about ecology, ecosystems cannot adapt to such large temperature
changes over such short times, and the balance that now exists will be
thrown off and the results can hardly be anything but bad.
It all depends on the amount of temperature increase; the worst impacts
won't be felt by today's older generations no matter what happens. Any
changes will be a gradual over decades and the visual evidence won't be
convincing to anyone who wants to see something obvious happening now.
I really don't think the question is whether a 6 degree temperature increase
will be catastrophic; it will be. The question is whether there will be
that much of a temperature increase.
-- David W. Opderbeck Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com <http://www.davidopderbeck.com/> Blog: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html <http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html> MySpace (Music): <http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke> http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke -- David W. Opderbeck Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com Blog: <http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html> http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.Received on Tue Jan 23 12:02:16 2007
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