Study in the Journal Climate received very little press attention
Many environmentalists are rejoicing over approval in committee of the Waxman-Markey climate legislation, but a new study by MIT researchers suggests we have a much steeper mountain to climb than anyone thought. (Find the paper here; press release here.)
Using a model that takes into account both economic activity and climate processes, the researchers found that without dramatic and quick action to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, there is a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100 — more than twice what was predicted just six years ago. The model shows a 90 percent probability that the increase will range between 3.5 and 7.4 degrees.
The model did not find a significant difference in outcomes from previous projections if there is strong global action to reduce emissions.
Unless the world acts boldly, “there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated,” says study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change . (He was quoted here in an MIT press release.) “This increases the urgency for significant policy action.”
Environmentalists hope the Waxman-Markey legislation that passed yesterday will prove to be a significant step toward a global 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050. But the legislation is shot through with loopholes and give-aways to industry, and it falls far short of providing the level of funding for clean energy R&D that’s needed to avoid the terrible outcomes predicted in the roulette wheel above.
Meanwhile, the new MIT study received scant attention in the press, even though the hearings on Waxman-Markey provided a strong news peg.
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if we don’t pull out of this warming nosedive into oblivion, we won’t be rejoicing for long…
Hi, nice posts there
thank’s for the interesting information
The leaders of the family of humanity can do better and I trust all of us, leaders and followers alike, will choose necessary behavioral change rather than the profane maintenance of a morally disengaged and patently unsustainable socioeconomic status quo. Socioeconomic reasoning is feeble, fundamentally flawed reasoning, and suggests its inconsequentiality, because such “self-interested” reasoning is faulty; it has everything to do with what is economically expedient and socially suitable {as well as politically convenient, religiously tolerable and culturally prescribed} and nothing to do intellectual honesty, moral courage and an appreciation of the practical requirements of biophysical reality. What is often called socioeconomic reasonng is a kind of ‘reasoning’ that cannot lead the human community to meaningfully embrace sustainable lifestyles, to sensibly protect biodiversity and to recognize the necessity for preserving Earth and its environs.
For the past eight dark years economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the absurdly enriched talking heads in the mass media have adamantly insisted that everyone live as they have, without regard either to human limits or Earth’s limitations and in evidently unsustainable ways. Our children will learn {the hard way} from these not-so-great elders the price to be paid for the unadulterated arrogance and unbridled greed of a single generation.
The brightest and best, most powerful advocates of socioeconomic reasoning are leading the children down a “primrose path” to some sort of colossal ecologic and/or economic wreckage, I fear, the likes of which only Ozymandias has witnessed.
Greg: “if we don’t pull out of this warming nosedive into oblivion, we won’t be rejoicing for long….”
Mike: “Hi, nice posts there thank’s for the interesting information”
I am amazed at such ignorance - GIGI, anyone? - proffered as evidence. Models are not evidence.
Too often, sci journalists have extraordinarily neglected the fact that the preeminent data bases (you know the ones) are re-adjusted to comport with greater warming. Who’s da thunk they’d always be adjusted upward? Where’s the chances of that?
Furthermore, that the most ardent paleoclimatologists (you know the ones - typically associated with RealClimate.org or HadCRU) are often enough obstructing the free flow of data used to support climate science that in turn engages alarmism.
Or that expert statistician Steve MCintyre recently conveyed his disgust at these unreported stories with the slam of the major outlets in science this way:
“In other news, either Nature or Science or Reader’s Digest, I forget which, reported that the newest climate models are ‘better than we thought’….”
And a commenter asks “When the data doesn’t fit the model, change the data.”?
McIntyre responds “typical climate science article - no Supporting Information providing details or source code for exactly what they did….OK, it wasn’t Reader’s Digest. It was International Journal of Climatology.” (SEE http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6100)
Seems no odd, incongruent, otherwise story of scientifically damaging practices by the “climate science” home teams can come out reported by “journalists” to cast any measured critical light on an alarmist agenda that’s left the station in the face years of of global cooling. How amazing.
So much for basic standards of replication and falsifiability in BIG science. Not when so much is “at stake.” Pardon me for asking or doubting the above claims from MIT based on nothing more than GIGO.