[Vision2020] Climate Science: Introduction to Feedbacks: 150 Responses "...exactly the right level for interested laymen."

[Ted Moffett]

Please offer a reference from a credible peer reviewed science journal
article that states that "No feedbacks, or balanced positive and negative
feedbacks, mean warming of about 1.2C for a doubling of CO2 from
pre-industrial levels."  The news article you offered as though it
represented reliable science reporting states differently:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6841153.html

"All agree concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are increasing, and
there's a general agreement that a doubling of CO2 levels this century, by
themselves, will produce an increase of 1.5 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit in
global temperatures."
------------------

Also, I'm puzzled why you write "It seems odd to me that more work wasn't
done early on regarding
feedbacks, since they are so critical to the question at hand."

Climate feedbacks have been studied intensively for decades by climate
scientists.  Without an understanding of the dominant climate feedbacks,
there would be no reliable basis for the conclusions of numerous major
scientific organizations, that human increases in atmospheric CO2 are highly
probable to dramatically alter climate.  It appears you think you know more
about this subject than the scientists involved with the National Academy of
Sciences, or scientists at MIT (read MIT paper sourced lower down), who are
taking human impacts on climate very seriously, as this NAS release states
from May 19, 2010, regarding a series of reports on climate change:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=05192010

----------------
"My gut feeling is that since in the past CO2 levels have been much higher
than they are now and the system didn't end up with boiling oceans or a
snowball earth, that the idea of tipping points and runaway feedbacks is a
fantasy."

Regarding the preceding statement, to claim that because a snowball earth or
boiling oceans from CO2 levels much higher than they are now did not occur
in the past, that the idea of tipping points is a fantasy, is simply false.
If inducing sea level to rise dramatically, as has occurred in the past
linked to increased atmospheric CO2, involves a "tipping point," this is no
fantasy.  Consider the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 55 million
years ago, when CO2 levels were much higher, an Earth where there were
little or no polar ice caps, and ocean levels were far higher.   The
following scientific article from "Nature" (
http://es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Zachos_Dickens_Zeebe_08.pdf )states that
"During the most prominent and best studied hyperthermal, the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, ...the global temperature increased by
more than 5 C. in less than 10,000 years.  At about the same time, more than
2000 Gt C as CO2---comparable in magnitude to that which could occur over
the coming centuries---entered the atmosphere and oceans"
-----------
The news article you offered, "2 climate studies offer hope on global
warming" is a good example of misleading pseudo-science reporting.  For
example, the following statement from the article in a discussion of
feedbacks, gives the reader the impression scientific understanding of
climate feedbacks is so uncertain that the balance of positive to negative
feedbacks is still highly debated, as they quote Lindzen, whose climate
science work has been discredited by extensive peer review:

"For some scientists, including the skeptical Richard Lindzen of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the jury on feedbacks remains out.

“Climate science is a field that is not highly developed,” he said. “Really,
it's still in its infancy.”

Other climate scientists would disagree, but as the two new papers this week
show, researchers are still grappling to understand the balance of feedback
loops"
While there is a degree of uncertainty, and climate science continues to
make new discoveries, there is a large consensus among climate scientists
that the climate feedbacks from human CO2 emissions are mostly positive, as
the following paper from MIT concludes:

http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Rpt169.pdf

News release from MIT on this scientific paper:

Climate change odds much worse than thought
 New analysis shows warming could be double previous estimate

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 10/2/10, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Understanding feedback in climate science is essential not just for
> laypersons but for climate scientists as well.  It's really the crux of the
> whole debate. No feedbacks, or balanced positive and negative feedbacks,
> mean warming of about 1.2C for a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels.
>  Not much to worry about, it might even be beneficial to humanity.  Negative
> feedbacks reduce this value down from 1.2C to even less warming.  So the
> whole meat of global warming comes down to positive feedbacks.  How strong
> are they?  Are they strong enough to overcome the negative feedbacks?  Etc.
>
> The climate models, whose results have driven the fears of climate change,
> have always assumed positive feedbacks.  They just differ on how large of a
> magnitude those values will have.  Too large, and you get into "tipping
> point" territory.
>
> Simply identifying all of the possible feedbacks is difficult, let alone
> modeling them.  Feedbacks can cause other feedbacks, positive or negative,
> in a cascade of secondary effects.  Granted, modeling the behavior of what
> is basically the prototype for complex systems is difficult.  Which is why
> I've always wondered why they are so sure the end result is catastrophic.
>
> It seems odd to me that more work wasn't done early on regarding feedbacks,
> since they are so critical to the question at hand.  Lately, there has been
> some work done on feedbacks, some of which aren't modeled by current climate
> models.
>
> For example, here is a news report about two papers that give some more
> data on two separate feedbacks which aren't currently modeled.  One would
> tend to increase the positive feedbacks from the models, the other would
> tend to decrease them:
>
> http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6841153.html
>
> My gut feeling is that since in the past CO2 levels have been much higher
> than they are now and the system didn't end up with boiling oceans or a
> snowball earth, that the idea of tipping points and runaway feedbacks is a
> fantasy.  That doesn't mean that smaller positive feedbacks won't be
> catastrophic, but at least the worries about the climate snowballing out of
> control seem unfounded.  Maybe in a couple of decades we'll have been able
> to model things much more closely and will be able to pin the numbers down
> much better.  Until then, I'd rather we worked on reducing gasoline
> consumption because of pollution and geo-political concerns, and ramping up
> nuclear energy to reduce the need for coal.
>
> Paul
>
> Ted Moffett wrote:
>
>> Some people will argue that climate science is too complex and specialized
>> for an educated layperson to comprehend, so the subject should be left to
>> those with PhD level knowledge.  Of course, such an argument, when applied
>> broadly, is a major blow to the democratic principle that an educated public
>> can make informed choices at the ballot box regarding the positions
>> politicians assume on domestic economics, education, international politics
>> and war, gender, "race" and sexual orientation equality, freedom of
>> religion, and so forth; and any scientific issue that effects the public:
>> stem cell research, genetic engineering of plants, animals or perhaps human
>> beings, the safety or not of new IV Gen. fast nuclear reactors, the brain
>> development of a human fetus regarding how this impacts the ethics of
>> abortion, whether anthropogenic climate warming has a high probability of
>> being a significant problem in the future, and so forth.
>>  If a layperson, meaning someone who is well educated but not at the PhD
>> level on a given issue, cannot conduct an informed broad survey of expert
>> opinion, to arrive at a rational objective assessment of the likelihood of
>> there being a consensus view, then perhaps society should be managed by
>> committees of PHd level experts, not by elected politicians, given many
>> politicians and the public at large simply cannot comprehend highly
>> technical problems sufficiently enough to make rational informed decisions.
>>  Perhaps this argument has some similarities to the argument of Plato in the
>> "Republic" ( http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm : "This
>> rule by society’s best minds is the core concept of Plato’s so-called
>> “philosopher kings.” )
>>  Committees composed of PHds in ethics, law, religion, economics,
>> international politics, military strategy, education, numerous specialized
>> scientific fields, and so forth, would make the important decisions
>> governing society for us... Perhaps in some sense this is happening now,
>> given the US Congress', and the US public's, manipulation by powerful
>> economic and political interests.
>>  Regardless of the truth of this admittedly thorny question, I assume
>> that, given the possible planetary altering magnitude of anthropogenic
>> climate warming, for centuries and potentially millennia, that will
>> profoundly impact the US, it behoves every citizen, every voter, to educate
>> themselves as much as possible regarding the climate science involved,
>> because the problem boils down to whether the science is reliable or not.
>>  Anthropogenic climate warming is not similar to many other pollution or
>> industrial development problems, where we can pollute or impact an ecosystem
>> with future plans to realistically recover the ecosystem.  Once powerful
>> climate feedbacks begin to accelerate impacting global climate (albedo
>> reduction from ice loss, ocean warming and carbon sink reversal, etc.) the
>> problem is likely to be significantly out of humanity's control, unless by
>> extreme and untested geo-engineering.  There is no compromise or negotiation
>> with the physics of Earth's climate system.  Regardless of how emotionally
>> politicized this issue has become (rather irrationally political, it seems),
>> it is fundamentally a scientific question, that should be resolved first, if
>> possible, before assuming that strong action is indicated to address the
>> problem, involving economics, technology, lifestyle and the political arena.
>>  The following scientific presentation on climate feedbacks can perhaps be
>> understood by an educated layperson:
>>  Introduction to feedbacks
>>
>> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/09/introduction-to-feedbacks/#more-4993
>> ------------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
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