New Study: Global Temperatures to Rise 9 Degrees by 2100
A new study, which researchers have called “the most exhaustive end-to-end analysis of climate change impacts yet performed”, predicts that global warming could be twice as bad as previous estimates had suggested.
Published this month in the Journal of Climate, the MIT-based research found a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100.
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Pulling from a variety of data sources back in 2007, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) projected temperature increases anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century. Now due to this new data, it looks like the higher range of that projection may be closer to the truth.
The new study was done using 400 applications of a computer model, which included looking at complicated factors such as atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems data, as well as global economic activity. A similar 2003 study had predicted a mere– but still significant– 4 degree increase in global temperatures by 2100, but those models weren’t nearly as comprehensive, and they didn’t take into consideration economic factors.
The most impactful way to lower the projections would be to significantly reduce human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, according to the researchers.
While complex factors such as human economic activity can be difficult to quantify exactly in a computer model, it’s increasingly clear that those kinds of factors have a significant impact on global climate. As this study portrays, the more comprehensive and sophisticated our computer models get, the grimmer the news.
In other words, as our models become increasingly more accurate compared to previous models, global warming reveals itself as more acute rather than less. And it becomes much more apparent just how large of an impact human-induced factors can have on climate change.
Via USAToday.com
Image Credit: lorentey at flickr under a Ceative Commons License
I remember when the Club Of Rome told us that by the 21st century the world would be so overpopulated that civilisation would pretty much end. That was over 40 years ago. They had a computer model too. A decade after that, when none of their predictions came true they came out with a press release saying they had purposely exaggerated their doom prediction to sort of “wake up” the world to the problem. Well here we are, 21st century, 6 (or is it 7) billion souls and we are still as civilised as we were in 1960. Which isn’t saying much but we haven’t blown ourselves up just yet so thats something.
Now its “the world is gonna boil away by the 22nd century!” I’m sure the folks that did all this research meant well and probably believe the results of their work. But somehow I am not convinced that their computer model or ANY computer model can predict even the direction of climate change, much less the magnitude, plus or minus one degree.
By then we may have discovered an entirely new source of clean power. A plague may have reduced the population. We might even find a warmer earth to be preferable to this one. Have you ever read predictions made in 1900 or 1800? Those fellows, many of them learned scientists, foretold a world full of dirigible airships, optical television, guns shooting people to the moon, while totally missing the automobile, computers and communication satellites. Prophecy is a rough business to be in.
Astroboy:
You’re right about one thing in particular, that these predictions won’t come true if we invest in clean energy and reduce our impact on the Earth’s climate. That’s the theme here: these are only projections, and they rely upon factors not changing over time for them to be accurate.
So we need to do everything we can to change those factors, and change our impact on the planet for the better.
I think it’s a good thing that we have scientists warning us of where our actions might lead us if we do nothing to change. It may very well be due to their warnings that certain disasters and plagues never happened.
What I want to know is to what extent natural forces are part of the model. …because the wheels are coming off the man-made global warming theory.
I am a Democrat. For the past 20 years I believed global warming was caused by CO2. Now I’m not so sure, after taking an objective look at the wellspring of man-made global warming theory, the United Nations’ Climate Change 2007 report. Whereas the report should have considered all possible global warming culprits then narrow the field, it instead removed from consideration the possibility that natural forces might drive global warming. It is little wonder that the report pinned the blame on CO2 when in their own words (p. 95), “The topics have been chosen for…assessing…risks of human-induced climate change.” The fix was in. It was politics not science. The mission statement should have read, “Topics have been chosen for assessing risks of human-induced and NATURE-INDUCED climate change.” Remember, the UN developed in Kyoto Protocol. They have a vested interest in demonizing CO2. For further discussion of the report see
http://energyplanusa.com/ipcc_reports_dont_pass_smell_test.htm
yes i think this is good topic and all of them government think about it.
due to it lot of energy is emerging in this and in 2021 this can be rise 9 degree.
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Mark Jones
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Online job–Online job
It seems to me that believing the global warming science is a hoax, and that there is a vast conspiracy among scientists and politicians to pull one over on the world is a form of insanity.
Mountains of evidence support the models.
Nobody is claiming the models are highly accurate, just the contrary. The models do have large margins of error… but what scares me is the direction global mean temperatures are going as the models are refined. It’s worse than we thought is the prevailing theme. The temperatures being predicted in this latest study are nothing less than catastrophic! That will be a world we won’t recognize. http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/six-degrees-could-change-the-world-3188/Overview#tab-Videos/05029_00
It has been apparent for some time that Global Warming was accelerating beyond the predictions of all the climate models.
It looks like we will meet the temperatures predicted by 2100 by 2060 or so. This is why people need to “grow up” and realize we need to achieve some appreciable reductions of GHG emissions within the next 10 years at the latest.
People think Hybrids will do it but it will take hybrids 20 years to achieve maybe a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions from cars. This will be too late to make a difference. We can however, triple Ethanol production in 10 years and that would produce a reduction much sooner when it will have a much greater impact.
In twenty years a 20% reduction won’t matter. CO2 concentrations and the warming affect will be too ’strong’ for 20% or een 30% reduction to slow it down.
But alas, people won’t realize this until it’s too late.
All this arguing about whether man causes global warming is largely unnecessary for the time being.
We can harvest Convective Energy and waste heat and produce electricity much more cheaply using Atmospheric Vortex Engines, than by burning coal and using nuclear. China and India would follow in our footsteps because it is simply more economic than those two.
If we developed this technology, which could be proved in two years, we could start reducing the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a large scale. see
http://vortexengine.ca
Since when do we accept the output of a computer as gospel fact when the input data has not been thoroughly examined, the assumptions not made crystal clear, and the data cannot clearly account for what we are presently seeing? And since when do we make public policy that is based on nothing more than silicon dreams and which have the power to enlarge the size of government, raise tax revenues, and curtail personal freedoms?
Can these researchers be trusted when they might have a massive conflict of interest in that their funding can be traced back to government sources with a self-interest agenda? One side claims that studies funded by oil companies may be corrupt and self-serving, what about the contrarian view of the other side?
If these weasles were really serious about doing something, why not fast-track nuclear power plants and test the hypothesis instead of screwing around with subsidized solar and wind power?
And finally, has anybody consulted the sun, our orbital position, the troposphere over the tropics, our ocean currents, and a host of other large-scale macro factors?
Sorry to be skeptical, but I find it hard to believe anything that is now published based on model runs which cannot be verified by others. Let these guys put their models out for public scrutiny (and not in some half-ass version of Fortran IV, assembly, C and C++ using old compilers and oddly coupled programs. Reproducibility is the key here. And the results of the computer runs should be reproduced by others.
But it all comes down to the question of whether or not you can accept computer modeling as FACT. I say not.
change a couple of the paramaters (guesses) in the computer model and you will find that the next ice age will be upon us soon. if the wise folks who predict weather can’t give us an accurate forecast for next month, how can they accurately predict events next year?
Who cares we all dead by that time