Originally Posted by RATpin
And it's finished. Leaked report from the IPCC."The Australian friday 18 Nov"
Err, no it's not. The Australian's reporting on climate science is nothing less than appalling and has been that way for a long time. I've read the article from the Australian, and note that their usual bumper cherry-picking season is opening early.
Originally Posted by konstantin
A little less certainty than just a few years ago with AR4, fellas?
IPCC AR4: "very likely increase in frequency of hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation"
New Report: "It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, including heat waves, will continue to increase over most land areas..."
IPCC AR4: "likely increase in tropical cyclone intensity; less confidence in global decrease of tropical cyclone numbers"
New Report: "Mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase...low confidence in tropical cyclone frequency"
Similarly, there is no remarkable difference in drought predictions between the new report and AR4.
But trust us, it will still happen...eventually...Honest.
Scientists have been saying for decades that climate impacts are going to occur over a long period of time and they've discussed natural variability within these changes at great lengths. As knowledge and data increases, those predictions will change slightly, but the ultimate result of adding greenhouse gas to a planetary atmosphere at a rate much higher than natural forces can scrub it out will not change, unless freaky new physical processes are discovered.
At the moment it appears that we humans might have a small amount of extra breathing space in which to start adapting or mitigating on top of what scientists originally thought. But to draw comfort from this is like drawing comfort from the locomotive driver when he says "oh it's not as bad as you think - that train on the collision course with us is actually 20km further away than I initially calculated, and he's only doing 80 km/h, not 90 km/h. So rest easy mate. She'll be right."
People get bogged down in the details and end up using ridiculous arguments a bit like "well heck first you said 20 years and now you say 30 years, so that just proves it's all bunkum and I don't need to believe anything you say". There are many parallels with the smoking/cancer argument. For example, are you going to start suffering the effects at the age of 50 or 60 or 70? Well heck, do you really care? Really? Yeah sure, highlight the uncertainties. Emphasise the fact that doctors can't pin down exactly when your lung cells will start turning cancerous and everything is just an estimate. But nothing.....absolutely nothing.....you say is going to change the fact that the research shows that you're "very likely" to eventually start suffering regardless!
