Climate Chaos - was global warming

I'm experiencing great intensities and swing in the weather...and starting to plan for it.

The Earth warms, the Earth cools, weather IS -- expect it. There's a quote from the 1984 movie version of "Dune": Perhaps climate change has something to do with species evolution -- change or die off. It seems the same group who have been pushing evolution over creation are the same folks who fear climate change and that's a little counter to what I'd have expected from them. Don't fear the change, embrace it.

I don't "push" evolution or climate change. I'm a scientist, both by training and inclination. I go where the data takes me. And the data supporting both evolution and anthropogenic climate change is very robust. Other's may choose to ignore or in some cases deliberately distort the implications of that data, but that is their problem, not mine.

Change happens. Mitigate undesirable change if possible. In any case, prepare for change.

Climate change does happen, the Earth has warmed and cooled numerous times just in the past few thousand years. I just can't buy the anthropogenic adjective.

I think it's pretty settled science by now. Pity it has become politicized. Dealing with the change is going to be a big survival issue in years to come, on an individual level and for us as a species.

It's interesting to note that people are even saying that they notice consistent changes in the weather and climate.

It wasn't all that long ago that the timeline was framed in terms "think of your grandchildren" and we thought we still had all the time in the world to decide what to do before we started noticing any changes.

So what kind of preparation or planning have you been doing?

The current long term solar forecasts I'm following suggest cooler than normal temperatures for the next 15 or so years so I planted some apple trees. They usually don't do well in Houston but I think we'll get enough chill hours moving forward.
-Blast

Not By Fire, But By Ice by Robert Felix. No affiliation. His research centers around the geologic records.

It's not that things are changing, hot or cold, as much as people's perceptions are changing. Climate change is constant and inevitable. It is human perception that fails.

I note that the Pentagon considers it a foregone conclusion that things will be hotter, much hotter. They're already planning for it. It also appears we need to prepare for a lot higher seas levels, soon...we're talking the next year or two.

Wind was also identified as a national security threat as it was forecasted in 2001 that it will keep getting stronger and with periods of longer duration. The basic threat of high wind impacts on Transportation which affects manufacturing.

Unstoppable and significant rise in sea level coming soon to a beach near you. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014...-be-unstoppable


I wonder what climbing Denali will be like once all the glaciers melt.....

Worst case several centuries, best case 900 years according to their computer models? Did they take into account volcano eruptions and Maunder Minimums? Those have a way of drastically cooling things down.
-Blast

Kind of depends on your definition of "significant", does it not?

The IPCC Report suggests a range of .25 to 1 meter by the year 2100. If I were a young person living in Florida or New Orleans, I might consider that significant.

Since you seem to suggest that volcanic eruptions and Maunder Minimums will save us, please give us your predictions for sea level change by the end of the century? Please be specific about your assumptions, and and give us quantitative results and an uncertainty range. That way we can fairly compare and evaluate your model with the others.

Volcanism and sun spot cycles have resulted in short term reversals in the past ("Little Ice Age"), but have not altered longer term trends.

What seems significant to me is the inevitability of their model, feedback loops and all. If only their lower range estimates are valid, profound consequences will result - increased coastal erosion for one.

The current models do take natural factors into account.

Exactly.

Phil Plait's blog has a fascinating graph showing models of natural effects only, natural effects combined with human effects, and the actual observed data. The graph is from the National Climate Assessment, which focuses on effects on the US.


Especially interesting is the section on how changes are effecting local regions.

Gentlemen all,

I have observed that this topic is the deadliest of poisons, particularly in discussion forums. Let us handle it very, very carefully.

Respectfully,
-Doug(wa)

I think climate change is real. I've already seen in my lifetime how we went from 4 to 2 seasons. Its really put a damper on outdoor activities when you go from winter to summer and summer to winter with no spring and fall in between.

Individuals deal with higher water levels by moving to higher ground. Google "alton road flooding" to track the submergence of parts of South Beach. The political aspects of this matter are beyond the ambit of this writer, or this forum. And while the science is important and convincing, it is weather science, which gives us 'weather forecasts', not 'weather promises', and this forum is composed of folks who ignore the forecast and carry a poncho, and an umbrella anyway.

I can not predict these events and neither can the other scientists. To say they won't happen is just as invalid as saying they will.

That being said, I predict a worldwide sea level increase of 5" plus or minus 6" based on my computer algorithm. Granted, this algorithm has not successfully predicted recent trends nor past trends but I still believe it is 100% accurate.

Frankly, I feel there are worse man-made disaster coming on a much shorter timeframe. Look at Detroit, less than a hundred years ago it was the fourth richest city in the world and was expected to become THE richest city in the world. Now it's its own 3rd world country. It doesn't take global warming to destroy a city.
-Blast