Juan Cole's latest featured climate change piece: A critique.
Found this on Environment & Energy and I thought I might repost it here. I figured I might start doing some critiques of articles on various topics, such as climate change(as here), the Middle East, etc., some short, some long, and some in between.
Avoiding the Nightmarish “Four Degree World” of 2060: We must Act Now (Giesen)
http://www.juancole.com/2012/12/avoiding-the-nightmarish-four-degree-world-of-2060-we-must-act-now.html
Avoiding the Nightmarish “Four Degree World” of 2060: We must Act Now (Giesen)
Posted on 12/06/2012 by Juan
Global warming’s disasters once seemed far off and science-fictional. It is now becoming clear to the scientific community that, to the contrary, very bad things could happen beginning relatively soon. For Baby Boomers, from the the Cuban Missile Crisis or the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s till now does not seem like such a long period of time. But in a similar span of years, taking us to about 2060, the world could well experience an increase in global average temperatures of some 4 degrees Centigrade. If we consider the likely effects of this steep warming trend carefully, it becomes clear that the resulting “four degrees” world (as scientists call it) is far less hospitable for humans than our own, a world so inhospitable that we must avoid creating it at any cost.
This rapid change in the earth’s climate is being caused by massive dumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, mainly by industrialized societies. Cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions has to date been an abject failure. Political leaders have, in general, taken the position that cut-backs must happen, but “not during my term of office”. About half of emissions are produced by about 1% of the population. 70,000,000 people are the problem. Because you are reading this, the odds are that you are part of that 1 percent.
If every country in the world actually met its pledges to limit or cut back on emissions, it is not impossible that in 2060 the temperature increase will be only 3 degrees C. But we’d likely get to the “four degree world” by 2100. If the world’s nations do not meet their pledges, warming by 4 degrees C. may occur even earlier, by 2060. Those are not end-points in warming; they are snapshots. Warming is a continuous process, not an event.
A four degree-extra (C.) world does not sound so bad on the surface, especially to Americans used to Fahrenheit. But for them, it actually could be a 7 degree-extra (F.) world in 2060, and it won’t be nice. Remember that the extra heat is not distributed equally everywhere.....
This is a relatively decent article, but there are some questions that need to be sorely asked: Firstly, Exactly how would a 21*F increase occur over
New York, of all places, with only a 4*C average rise? That really makes no sense(12*F might not be so far-fetched, but 21*F is just too high of an estimate, partly because the city is right next to the Atlantic Ocean, and that provides a cooling effect. Even Anchorage probably wouldn't see a rise quite that high, and most models indicate that the Arctic and subarctic regions are going to see the highest temperature increases.)
Secondly, why does Tom Giesen (unknowingly, I assume) repeat the denier's belief(and yes, believe it or not, some deniers and anti-AGW skeptics like Chris Booker actually HAVE made that claim before) that significantly reducing emissions could(almost as false) supposedly bring the global economy to a halt? "That scenario is not thought realistic; it could bring economic activity to a halt, and is not thought politically feasible."
And, of course, Giesen also claims that humans cannot adapt at all.....which simply is not true, btw; some of you may wish to do some research on what happened when the Younger Dryas period ended: temperatures rose 7*C in just half a century and yet, somehow, we didn't drop off the face of the planet, even though we spent much of our post-African existence in an Ice Age.
Of course, no one is denying that we face some great challenges ahead, and I'm putting this a little lightly, TBH. But we've been thru at least one temperature rise that
required adaptation(and possibly more), so it's perfectly reasonable to assume that we'll stick around for this as well.
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