On Jul 2, 4:49 pm, Gareth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] > I suspect that a dramatic climate change event* is probably the only > way we'll ever get aggressive action on emissions reductions. The > irony, of course, is that the built-in lag in the system virtually > guarantees that when we get one it'll be too late to avoid much, much > more. > > * What could that be? I don't agree with your characterisation of the > US, Europe and Japan as being more likely to benefit with modest > warming. Repeated 2003-style summer heatwaves in Europe, a marked > intensification in rainfall leading to damaging flooding (anywhere), > (even more) rapid reductions in summer sea ice in the Arctic or more > ice-shelf disintegration in the Antarctic, another bad hurricane > season, or a typhoon scoring a direct hit on Shanghai - all of these > things could be enough to stiffen the geopolitical sinews enough to > get serious action. Gradual change might be better for us all in the > short term, but dramatic change might be necessary to get action that > prevents the worst long term impacts. It remains to be seen what that > might mean in human terms. [snip]
You describe weather extremes. The ability of science to attribute weather extremes is quite limited. This is particularly true of tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes). See for example RC on the attribution of hurricanes to global warming: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=181 (If you haven't read it already.) With each extreme event, the confidence that a higher frequency of extreme events increases only by a tiny amount. There is no support for a clear demarcation beyond which global warming is clearly the cause of a disaster or a group disasters. We're slowly boiling a pot of water, and waiting for frogs to jump out. In real life (outside of analogies), frogs do jump out, but they don't have to cope with a 100 year delay between the jump, and actually getting out of the pot. We're left hoping for a good decision driven by a misunderstanding of the relationship between climate change and extreme weather. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
