“In a dramatic acceleration of forecasts for global warming, UK scientists say the global average temperature could rise by 4C (7.2F) as early as 2060.”
read more…
The worst predictions from climate modeling I’ve heard so far.
This is going far too fast, and far too bad.
I am in shock. 
I have heard this. I have also heard that a decade of sharply colder weather is on the way.
I’ll be in shock whatever the weather. Minnesota, you know.
I wouldn’t think that 4 degrees would be enough for Minnesota
were you really planning on waiting that long?
What’s a few melted ice caps?
“Melting men show global warming” art exhibition in Berlin
watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgtKbkT5NtY
Two meter sea level rise unstoppable-experts
A rise of at least two meters in the world’s sea levels is now almost unstoppable, experts told a climate conference at Oxford University on Tuesday.
“The crux of the sea level issue is that it starts very slowly but once it gets going it is practically unstoppable,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at Germany’s Potsdam Institute and a widely recognized sea level expert.
You know how Minnesota would deal with this. The average is going to be +7 °F so summers will be +14°F and winters will be the same. How did you like that change from 80°F to frost warnings in the morning in the past week?
It has finally gotten cool enough to open the windows here. Unfortunately all my neighbors are obsessed with lawns and we are surrounded by yards that have been coated with Nutri-green(composted human sewerage) and aromatic “Chemlawn” biocides. Nutri-green smells like a factory pig farm sludge pond 
There’s nothing like being hit with a brick, is there. You can almost hear the coleus whimpering as they turn to mush.
If climate change shuts down the gulf stream, as some models predict, Europe’s going to have to get used to living with the kind of climate they have in Moscow or James Bay. You will not enjoy this.
Best not to jump to conclusions. Many studies about most anything don’t survive peer review.
There have been far worse predictions from climatologists till not too long ago, mostly
concerning the inevitability of an ice age. Not that this particular study isn’t true, necessarily,
but a healthy skepticism is in order. Best to withhold judgement till the scientific
community checks this out. What may be going far too fast and too bad
is the study.
I remember repeated studies by prestigious medical institutions about the awful consequences
of smoking pot. Shrinks the brain, you know. None of them survived careful analysis. Studies about politically
charged issues are especially worth being careful about. Otherwise you’ll spend
your whole life in shock.
And many overly broad generalizations about most anything don’t survive BS review.
The peer review panels of the UKCP09 report:
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/946/670/
The “studies” that predicted another ice age were not the basis of any kind of consensus. Studies on climate change, on the other hand, have now achieved that consensus. You will find hardly any serious scientists who are still denying that warming caused by human activity is already happening and is almost certain to continue apace. Of course, you can pick and choose whom to believe. But check the credentials and read the studies of anyone still in denial. If you can find them, of course. The point is (and it’s a moral issue in my view) that we can no longer afford to sit around waiting for that “ultimate proof.” That won’t happen until the handcart has almost reached hell. It reminds me of those inveterate smokers (and the tobacco industry) who held out for decades that lung cancer wasn’t caused by smoking “because you couldn’t prove it.” It’s the sheer, overwhelming accumulation of evidence that’s the thing, and we now have it for climate change. Inconvenient, but…well, true.
It’s very true that most of the vocal naysayers have gone silent. I’m curious which, if any, have moved over to the majority position and become vocal again.
Thanks for the link. Having read it as best I can I’m not finding what it is that
supports your rejection of what I said above.
The closest I find is this, though perhaps I’m missing something:
‘The Review Group would like to emphasise that the work performed by the Met Office
Hadley Centre (MOHC) and by other Weather Generator and Marine Report contributors
was at a very high level. The methodologies used are credible, though sometimes very
complex. UKCP represents a large step beyond UKCIP02.’
But this consistent with my claim above. It’s saying that these people are operating at a high level
and their methods are believable. Probably so, but a high level of work using a credible
methodology certainly can get things wrong. A great deal of complexity creates even
greater opportunities in this direction. It isn’t as though science is easy. The best minds
using the best methods are often mistaken. That’s science.
Note that the researchers are themselves emphatic that their results may be mistaken.
‘Dr Betts and his colleagues emphasize the uncertainties inherent in the modelling, particularly the role of the carbon cycle. But he said he was confident the findings were significant and would serve as a useful guide to policymakers. ‘
You see, it’s hardly impossible that some others in the field are less confident of these findings than is Dr. Betts. That wouldn’t be a surprise. I mean entirely reputable and careful people with no axe to grind,
who believe in global warming, may believe
that the uncertainties are being discounted or misunderstood and the analysis is flawed.
Such disagreement happens all the time, it’s how science works. It’s one of the reasons why reading a paper at a
conference or publishing it in a journal is the first step in a longer process of evaluation
by the scientific community before such finding are accepted. Best then to reserve judgement, as educated
people generally do, because these findings may not survive. If they don’t, it certainly
needn’t be because the researchers are incompetent. But intelligent research by
competent people using complicated methodologies turns out to be mistaken often enough that it’s sensible to
exercise reasonable care.
The proximity of a highly charged policy debate is another reason to wait. People
feel very strongly about these issues and there have certainly have been occasions
in science where results of complex analyses were affected accordingly, sometimes
in ways the researchers themselves didn’t notice at the time.
All the more reason to see how this paper is received by the scientific
community before going for the result hook, line and sinker.
in light of the civility constraint, I’d be grateful if you would tone down your language.
Thanks again for the link
It would be nice if we could keep this topic to simply gather information about the issue, and not to divert into debates about what should or should not be done, or make it into a moral issue.
Thanks Denny for the link to the presentation about time-lap photography of glacier melt. Very impressive work.
I agree.
Done!
Oh, man, I hate that. Four of our immediate neighbors get bulk mulch spread every spring, so four times each year, our yard smells like dogsh!t for a few days. Two of those houses actually had most of their trees taken down (all of them in one case) and their entire half-acre lots sodded. (We’re not talking small trees, either, we’re talking 100-to-150-year-old oaks and poplars.) As you might expect, they also do the Chemlawn thing. Nothing like telling your kid she can’t play in the neighbor’s yard because they’ve just spread endocrine disrupters all over it.
So, we’re the little pocket of sanity. We’ve lost three trees this year, but still get no sun. We’re almost grass-free – a little strip along the road grows, but the front yard is mostly moss. We’ve finally given up on grass in the back; that’s gradually growing moss, too. We’re taking out the previous owner’s invasives – ivy, pachysandra, and hitunia cordata (sp?). We’re re-planting with native plants – two kinds of blueberries, a flowering raspberry, toad lilies, trout lilies, some kind of ginger, milkweed, jacks in the pulpits, etc. We’re getting rid of some of the more insidious stuff by moving our leaf pile every couple of years. I know that one neighbor absolutely hates that – with all our trees, we literally make a pile about 25 feet across and 6 feet deep in the fall and spring (when the white oaks and beeches drop).