<div>Why was/is this 2009 MIT study not given widespread "front page" coverage in all forms of media, while climate scientists and the problem of anthropogenic climate warming were being bashed and discredited due to the criminal e-mail hack of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University?</div>
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<div>Quotes from MIT website regarding the MIT study that this post references:</div>
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<div><a href="http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/no-policy.html">http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/no-policy.html</a></div>
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<div>"The "roulette" wheel below depicts the MIT Joint Program's estimation of the range of probability of potential global warming over the next hundred years..."</div>
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<div>"...the smallest predicted change, less than 3 °C (shown in blue), has a probability of less than 1% (1 in 100 odds)."</div>
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<div>Discussion of predictions regarding climate sensitivity (increase in global average temperature from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 level) sometimes focuses on the lower range of possible temperature increases, below 2 degrees Celsius, to argue that the impacts of anthropogenic climate warming are not probable enough to take profound action to address the problem. But what are the probabilities of minimal impacts, compared to the more costly, such as global coastal flooding from sea level rise?</div>
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<div>The MIT study referenced below indicates the odds of minimal impacts from anthropogenic climate warming are far less probable than very costly impacts. Those who argue policy should be based on the improbable low range of temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions and other human impacts are making a very risky bad bet on the future of humanity and life on Earth.</div>
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<div>A brief article summarizing the findings of this study regarding the range of probabilities for different values of temperature increases is at the first website below, followed by a reference to the paper published in the "Journal of Climate":</div>
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<div><img alt="The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change" src="http://globalchange.mit.edu/images/header-jpspgc.gif"></div>
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<div><a href="http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/no-policy.html">http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/no-policy.html</a></div>
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<div><a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1">http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1</a><br> </div>
<div class="articleMeta"><span>Journal of Climate </span>2009; 22: 5175-5204 </div>
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<div class="arttitle">Probabilistic Forecast for Twenty-First-Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (Without Policy) and Climate Parameters</div>
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<div class="artAuthors"><strong>A. P. Sokolov, P. H. Stone, C. E. Forest<a class="ref" href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1#n101">*</a>, R. Prinn, M. C. Sarofim<a class="ref" href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1#n102"><sup>+</sup></a>, M. Webster<a class="ref" href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1#n103"><sup>#</sup></a>, S. Paltsev, and C. A. Schlosser</strong>
<p class="fulltext"><a name=""></a>Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts</p><strong>D. Kicklighter</strong>
<p class="fulltext"><a name=""></a>The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts</p><strong>S. Dutkiewicz, J. Reilly, and C. Wang</strong>
<p class="fulltext"><a name=""></a>Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts</p><strong>B. Felzer<a class="ref" href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1#n104"><sup>@</sup></a> and J. M. Melillo</strong>
<p class="fulltext"><a name=""></a>The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts</p><strong>H. D. Jacoby</strong>
<p class="fulltext"><a name=""></a>Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts</p>
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<th valign="center" align="left" width="95%">Abstract</th></tr></tbody></table></p></div>
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<p>The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model’s first projections were published in 2003, substantial improvements have been made to the model, and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections; for example, the median surface warming in 2091–2100 is 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the twentieth century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting gross domestic product (GDP) growth, which eliminated many low-emission scenarios.</p>
<p class="last">However, if recently published data, suggesting stronger twentieth-century ocean warming, are used to determine the input climate parameters, the median projected warming at the end of the twenty-first century is only 4.1°C. Nevertheless, all ensembles of the simulations discussed here produce a much smaller probability of warming less than 2.4°C than implied by the lower bound of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) projected likely range for the A1FI scenario, which has forcing very similar to the median projection in this study. The probability distribution for the surface warming produced by this analysis is more symmetric than the distribution assumed by the IPCC because of a different feedback between the climate and the carbon cycle, resulting from the inclusion in this model of the carbon–nitrogen interaction in the terrestrial ecosystem.</p>
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<p class="fulltext"><font size="-1"><span class="keywordsLabel">Keywords: </span><a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&result=true&prevSearch=keywordsfield%3A(%22Probability forecasts/models%22)" name="">Probability forecasts/models</a>, <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&result=true&prevSearch=keywordsfield%3A(%22Climate prediction%22)" name="">Climate prediction</a>, <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&result=true&prevSearch=keywordsfield%3A(%22Anthropogenic effects%22)" name="">Anthropogenic effects</a>, <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&result=true&prevSearch=keywordsfield%3A(%22Numerical analysis/modeling%22)" name="">Numerical analysis/modeling</a>, <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&result=true&prevSearch=keywordsfield%3A(%22Feedback%22)" name="">Feedback</a></font></p>
<p class="fulltext">Received: September 29, 2008; Accepted: March 19, 2009</p>
<div class="NLM_author-notes"><a name=""></a><a name="n101"></a>
<p class="first last">* Current affiliation: Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.</p><a name="n102"></a>
<p class="first last">+ AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, Washington, D.C.</p><a name="n103"></a>
<p class="first last"># Current affiliation: Engineering Systems Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.</p><a name="n104"></a>
<p class="first last">@ Current affiliation: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.</p><a name="n105"></a>
<p class="first last"><i>Corresponding author address:</i> Andrei Sokolov, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., E40-431, Cambridge, MA 02139. Email: <a class="ref email" href="mailto:sokolov@mit.edu">sokolov@mit.edu</a></p>
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<div class="articleDivider">Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div></div>
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