Considerations should include the technical differences between radio and wireless applications, the value of precedence in regulatory matters, and
the consequences of abrupt changes to traditional spectrum allocations that contradict decades of careful planning.
Not exact matches
By now, enough
of the hard work
of measuring and modeling has been done to provide high scientific confidence that while we are and will affect the north Atlantic with climate
change, and this will have
consequences, it is very unlikely that there will be a huge and
abrupt change in the coming decades.
Even the relatively staid IPCC has warned
of such a scenario: «The possibility
of abrupt climate
change and / or
abrupt changes in the Earth system triggered by climate
change, with potentially catastrophic
consequences, can not be ruled out.
The range
of uncertainty for the warming along the current emissions path is wide enough to encompass massively disruptive
consequences to societies and ecosystems: as global temperatures rise, there is a real risk, however small, that one or more critical parts
of the Earth's climate system will experience
abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible
changes.
In a report released yesterday in Washington by the National Research Council, the research arm
of the National Academy
of Sciences, a panel
of 11 scientists examined the possibility
of abrupt climate
change, in which small events can bring on rapid and great
consequences.
The results support previous assessments that it is very unlikely that the MOC will undergo an
abrupt change to an off state as a
consequence of global warming.»
To the long list
of predicted
consequences of global warming — stronger storms, methane release, habitat
changes, ice - sheet melting, rising seas, stronger El Niños, killer heat waves — we must now add
abrupt, catastrophic coolings.
Opening with a biographical sketch
of Broecker — who, we learn, was born to an Evangelical suburban Chicago family, and initially drifted into his scientific vocation via a summer job in a radiocarbon dating lab — the book explains the currently - accepted Milankovitch theory
of Ice Age glaciation; proceeds to an account
of the Dr. David Keeling's measurements atmospheric CO2; continues with a summary
of research work on glacial ice cores, sediments, and fossil pollen from around the world showing startlingly
abrupt prehistoric climate
changes; and moves on to the possible
consequences of continued warming, closing with an account
of the prospects
of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The most scientifically interesting, and societally relevant topic in climate
change is the possibility
of abrupt climate
change, with genuinely massive societal
consequences (the disappearance
of Arctic sea ice and regional forest diebacks arguably don't qualify here).
Kopp et al. (2016b) suggest that a «tipping point» implies immediate
abrupt change, whereas some mechanisms are better described as «critical thresholds,» points
of no return whose
consequences could take centuries to develop.BACK
An unintended
consequence of this strategy is that there has been very little left over for true climate modeling innovations and fundamental research into climate dynamics and theory — such research would not only support amelioration
of deficiencies and failures in the current climate modeling systems, but would also lay the foundations for disruptive advances in our understanding
of the climate system and our ability to predict emergent phenomena such as
abrupt climate
change.
If we are mitigation laggards and the response
of the Earth System to the
abrupt chemical
changes we are delivering to the atmosphere turns out to be severe, the
consequences could be dire.
[ii] The range
of uncertainty for the warming along the current emissions path is wide enough to encompass massively disruptive
consequences to societies and ecosystems: as global temperatures rise, there is a real risk, however small, that one or more critical parts
of the Earth's climate system will experience
abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible
changes.