A new study suggests the idea, seen as a last - ditch way to deal
with runaway climate change, could cut rainfall in the tropics by 30 %.
Not exact matches
Early signs of scientific discomfort
with some allusions to
climate - related tipping points came in a 2006 blog post, «
Runaway Tipping Points of No Return,» by Gavin Schmidt of Realclimate.org and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
This article minimizes what credibly could be the largest challenge in dealing
with climate change: Holding the atmosphere to a CO2 content no greater than 450 PPM to prevent an increase of no more than 2 degrees C, beyond which
runaway growth in CO2 could occur from natural sources.
With an 80 % reduction in GHGs by 2050 we have a 50 % chance of dangerous
climate change or
runaway global warming.
Clearly individual weather events are not unconnected
with global
climate (perform an extreme conditions thought experiment: are weather events somehow invariant to snowball earth or
runaway GW conditions)?
Leading
climate scientists believe that maintaining carbon dioxide levels in excess of 350 ppm will result in
runaway global warming
with catastrophic impacts to humans, wildlife and ecosystems.
(There are equilibrium
climates between the points where the
runaway starts and where it ends, but they are unstable equilibria, and the equilibrium coverage of snow / ice increases
with forcing that would cause warming.)
Once the ice reaches the equator, the equilibrium
climate is significantly colder than what would initiate melting at the equator, but if CO2 from geologic emissions build up (they would, but very slowly — geochemical processes provide a negative feedback by changing atmospheric CO2 in response to
climate changes, but this is generally very slow, and thus can not prevent faster changes from faster external forcings) enough, it can initiate melting — what happens then is a
runaway in the opposite direction (until the ice is completely gone — the extreme warmth and CO2 amount at that point, combined
with left - over glacial debris available for chemical weathering, will draw CO2 out of the atmosphere, possibly allowing some ice to return).
This has been reinforced
with increasing urgency by scientists around the world,
with US
climate scientist James Hansen this week publishing a paper highlighting that «conceivable levels of human - made
climate forcing could yield the low - end
runaway greenhouse effect» including «out - of - control amplifying feedbacks such as ice sheet disintegration and melting of methane hydrates».
So, for that case
with rapid northern temperature change and other rapid changes in the
climate system, the methane acted as a feedback, fast enough to be considered in economic planning, but not so fast that most people would consider it a
runaway.
About 1980ish, some old ideas like the greenhouse effect were brought out of mothballs and re-examined
with new tools and techniques; simultaneously several researchers and theoreticians released their notes, published, or otherwise got together and there was a surprising consilience and not a small amount of mixing
with old school hippy ecologism on some of the topics that became the roots of
Climate Change science (before it was called Global Warming); innovations in mathematics were also applied to climate thought; supercomputers (though «disappointing» on weather forecasting) allowed demonstration of plausibility of runaway climate effects, comparison of scales of effects, and the possibility of climate models combined with a good understanding of the limits of predictive power of weather
Climate Change science (before it was called Global Warming); innovations in mathematics were also applied to
climate thought; supercomputers (though «disappointing» on weather forecasting) allowed demonstration of plausibility of runaway climate effects, comparison of scales of effects, and the possibility of climate models combined with a good understanding of the limits of predictive power of weather
climate thought; supercomputers (though «disappointing» on weather forecasting) allowed demonstration of plausibility of
runaway climate effects, comparison of scales of effects, and the possibility of climate models combined with a good understanding of the limits of predictive power of weather
climate effects, comparison of scales of effects, and the possibility of
climate models combined with a good understanding of the limits of predictive power of weather
climate models combined
with a good understanding of the limits of predictive power of weather models.
A concern
with «large»
climate changes (i.e., on the scale of snowball Earths or
runaway greenhouses) is that there's bifurcation (loosely, tipping points) in the system.
Evans continues demonstrating his misunderstanding of basic
climate science
with a reference to
runaway global warming:
Rather than replacing this energy source
with fossil fuels, thus boosting carbon emissions and encouraging
runaway climate change, the world can use this opportunity to pursue a much safer electricity sector powered largely by wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
These tipping points could be ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica melting permanently, global food shortages and widespread crop failures
with more extreme weather, rising ocean temperatures and acidity reaching triggering a crash in global coral reef ecosystems, and warming oceans push the release of methane from the sea floor, which could lead to
runaway climate change, etc..
As it stands there's no empirical evidence of any sort that CO2 causes
climate warming, and indeed now the ipcc is maintaining that CO2 is both a cause and an effect of temperature change, which, unless CO2 was only an insignificant contributor to warming, would without a doubt lead to a
runaway greenhouse
with boiling oceans.
The IPCC's
climate science has long claimed that human CO2 emissions are producing an accelerated global warming,
with a «
runaway» warming trend, which is then being amplified in the north and south polar extremes.
Then this type of anti-science insanity preached by the
climate modelers would finally be D.O.A., never again to poison a public scientific debate
with «
runaway» catastrophic
climate absurdities.
The problem arises because
climate alarmist prefer to assume there are only positive feedback mechanisms in play
with increasing CO2 emissions such that we will have
runaway temperatures and catastrophic
climate outcomes.
It's an appropriate name for a group that's attempting to slow some of the
runaway misinformation about
climate change, by doing what scientists do
with their published work: review it.
The
runaway greenhouse effect has several meanings ranging from, at the low end, global warming sufficient to induce out - of - control amplifying feedbacks, such as ice sheet disintegration and melting of methane hydrates, to, at the high end, a Venus - like hothouse
with crustal carbon baked into the atmosphere and a surface temperature of several hundred degrees, a
climate state from which there is no escape.
Ingersoll [105] discussed the role of water vapours in the «
runaway greenhouse effect» that caused the surface of Venus to eventually become so hot that carbon was «baked» from the planet's crust, creating a hothouse
climate with almost 100 bars of CO2 in the air and a surface temperature of about 450 °C, a stable state from which there is no escape.
Hansen began his career studying Venus, which was once a very Earth - like planet
with plenty of life - supporting water before
runaway climate change rapidly transformed it into an arid and uninhabitable sphere enveloped in an unbreathable gas; he switched to studying our planet by 30, wondering why he should be squinting across the solar system to explore rapid environmental change when he could see it all around him on the planet he was standing on.
21 March, 2018 —
Runaway climate change will alter the pattern of ocean productivity and circulation and play perhaps irreversible havoc
with fish catches.
Schuur agrees
with Lenton that the methane emissions are «not a
runaway effect but an additional source that is not accounted in current
climate models».
(found
with Google, searching:
runaway climate realclimate)
Since no such effect has been observed or inferred in more than half a billion years of
climate, since the concentration of CO2 in the Cambrian atmosphere approached 20 times today's concentration,
with an inferred mean global surface temperature no more than 7 ° K higher than today's (Figure 7), and since a feedback - induced
runaway greenhouse effect would occur even in today's
climate where b > = 3.2 W m — 2 K — 1 but has not occurred, the IPCC's high - end estimates of the magnitude of individual temperature feedbacks are very likely to be excessive, implying that its central estimates are also likely to be excessive.
But of course that has nothing to do
with the only issue that matters: will an increase in CO2 cause
runaway global warming and
climate catastrophe?