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Climate change experts warned this week that the phenomenon is occurring at a faster rate than the worst-case scenario envisaged by scientists just six years ago.
Tim Flannery, named the 2007 Australian of the Year for his work in alerting the public to the dangers of global warming, said the issue was the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century.
Flannery said predictions in a 2001 UN report, warning the atmosphere was likely to warm by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100 now appeared conservative.
"In the six years since then, we've collected enough data to (check) whether those projections are valid or not," he said. "It turns out they're not valid, but in the most horrible way – because for the key performance indicators about climate, change is occurring far in advance of the worst-case scenario."
Here, we bring you a timeline on global warming and climate change:
1827
• French scientist Jean-Baptiste Fourier is the first to consider the greenhouse effect: the phenomenon whereby atmospheric gases trap solar energy, increasing Earth's surface temperature, rather than let the heat radiate back into space.
1896
• Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius blames the burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) for producing carbon dioxide (CO2).
1958
• U.S. scientist Charles David Keeling detects a yearly rise in atmospheric CO2.
1979
• A landmark report by U.S. National Academy of Sciences pins the greenhouse effect to global warming and warns "a wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late."
1988
• U.N. sets up a scientific authority to vet the evidence on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
1990
• First IPCC report says levels of man-made greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere and predicts these will cause global warming.
1992
• Creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Summit, which also calls for voluntary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
1997
• UNFCCC countries sign the Kyoto Protocol. Under its first commitment period, industrialised countries are required to reduce emissions of six key greenhouse gases to 5.2 per cent below their 1990 levels by the end of 2012. Fleshing out its complex and legally binding rulebook is left to further negotiations.
2000
• 1990s are named as the hottest decade on record.
2001
• IPCC's third report declares the evidence for man-made global warming to be incontrovertible although the effects on the climate are hard to pin down.
• The United States, the biggest single greenhouse-gas polluter, abandons the Kyoto Protocol. President George W. Bush questions scientific consensus on global warming, says the treaty is too expensive for the U.S. economy and unfair as big developing countries escape binding emissions pledges.
• Kyoto signatories minus the U.S. agree on the treaty's rulebook, opening the way to ratification process.
2004
• The International Energy Agency (IEA) says China is now the world's second biggest carbon emitter, due to rising use of fossil fuels.
2005
• Kyoto Protocol takes effect on February 16.
• Global warming takes centre stage at G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, where leaders acknowledge climate change to be "a serious and long-term challenge."
• Awareness, and concern, of global warming surges in U.S. after an exceptional season for tropical storms, punctuated by Hurricane Katrina.
2006
• Former U.S. vice president Al Gore's docu-movie "An Inconvenient Truth" drives global warming up the U.S. political agenda.
• California unveils plans for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and files lawsuits against six vehicle manufacturers for their contribution to global warming.
• Report by former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern says global warming will cost up to 20 per cent of worldwide gross domestic product if nothing is done.
2007
• The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hand of the Doomsday clock forward by two minutes, making it five minutes to midnight, citing global warming and nuclear proliferation.
• IPCC's fourth assessment says glacial shrinkage, ice loss and permafrost retreat are signs that climate change is already underway. Predicts higher risk of drought, floods and more powerful storms this century, increasing the probability of hunger, homelessness and water-borne disease. Forecasts likely warming of 1.8 to 4.0°C and raised sea levels of 18 to 59 cm by 2100.
• September: Meetings are held at the UN in New York and among major emitters in Washington, ahead of talks in December on the issue of deepening cuts after 2012, when the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Climate Change is a civilisation threatening event
As a climate change educator since 1988 and now lecturing on social and ecological sustainability at an Australian university, there are a number of factors that are fairly constant about climate change science and prediction.
1) The time between predictions has consistently come down.
The first paper on climate change was in the 1868(?) by Sir John Tyndall to the Royal Society in London. Tyndall studied the radiative properties of different gases and even referred to the City of London as a Heat Island. see NASA's On the Shoulders of Giants.
Predictions and measurements confirming the speeding up of global warming are now coming out on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
2) The time to the predicted event is coming down.
Some events, such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic icesheets were originally talked about not happening for thousands of years. The latest modelling on the collapse of the Greenland icesheet by the UK Met Office is now talking about 300 years, and a tipping point of just 1degC.
Meltwater on the top of glaciers was supposed to take hundreds of years to get to the bottom. We now know that it can be as fast as hours and the water can then have a lubrication effect and contribute to the speeding up of glacial movement.
3) The range of effects/impacts of global and local climate change has moved from low risk events to an increasing liklihood of high risk, high impact events.
A 2005 conference in Britain intended to bypass the political censorship of the IPCC process, set out to define dangerous climate change and look at the potential scale change. See the conference Stabilisation 2005
4) the number of tipping points, or amplifying feedback loops in the global climate system has increased to 22,
If you visit or the National Snow and Ice Data Center at Colorado and look at the current rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice there are 4-5 local interactions speeding up the melting which could turn out to be self-reinforcing (amplifying) feedback loops.
5) the long term changes to the global climate system continue to extend out with some scientists talking the changes we are making now continuing to have an impact in 200,000+ years
6) What was first regarded as acceptable changes of 1-2degC over the average of the last century are now seen to be having a far greater impact on climate stability, such as forcing other tipping points over the edge, or having an impact on species, habitat and the viability of entire ecosystems.
What is very evident is that what we are doing to warming the planet we can stop, but not without a lot more effort and commitment than currently shown.
We have the technology to do the job, but it is up to individuals to make changes in their personal choices at every point in their lives.
We need an urgency in our personal lives, in the community, corporate, and government sectors at local and global levels as it takes a very short time to lose ice from melting glaciers, icecaps and icesheets, but it required many millenia to build those icy deposits containing so much water.
Many current climate change and sea level rise sceptics do not realise the clear scientific evidence that the oceans rose around 130 metres as the planet warmed and the ice sheets covering the higher latitudes of the continents melted as we moved to the current warm period, nor the fact that some of those sea level rises were in relatively short periods of time.
As noted in an earlier post, there are many other environmental crises, the growing human population and how to feed 9-10 billion people, increasing loss of wild and domesticated species, disruption of the global Nitrogen and Phosphorus cycles, collapse of the ocean food chains, acidification of the ocean with Carbonic Acid; all of which will be complicated and in most cases made worse with global warming.
We need to challenge all our taken-for-granted belief systems as the thinking that caused the problems will not solve them.
Time is short and the water rises ! How far will it rise, and how many thousands of species go extinct and millions of people will die before we can stabilise climate change and the other interrelated social and ecological problems depends on all our actions - now.
Warming is good
The Gardener said, quoting opinions,
As a climate change educator since 1988... [You need to go back to school.]
1. "Predictions and measurements confirming the speeding up of global warming are now coming out on a daily, weekly and monthly basis."
Each different. They'll get it right one day in the distant future.
2. "300 years."
I predict everyone will be a millionaire in 300 years.
3. Feather waving opinion.
4. There is no tipping point. It is a PC operator's contrivance. Prove me wrong.
5. 200,000 years. Gosh, computers are that good?
6. You've swallowed it whole.
Oceans rising 1-2mm pa as in the past, so in the future. Artic? I'm happy for Greenland. Polar bears? Ship'em to Antarctica.
"What is very evident is that what we are doing to warming the planet we can stop, but not without a lot more effort and commitment than currently shown."
/quote
How? It isn't co2. Likely isn't anything to do with us just like the ozone cavity is proving.
The veracity of co2 driving warming is based on the availability of IR around the 15 micron
range. There is virtually zero heat in this range. The IR that is available to co2, continuously inflated by modelers, is fractional and mopped up by much less than 100 ppm co2. Co2 contributes around 26% to the heat retentionability of the climate. After it has contributed this (in less than 100 ppm) the ability to react dwindles to close to zero.This is because of lack of sufficient IR. Increasing the density of co2 means the IR is fully intercepted at a lower height. Modelers talk about side bands of IR passing through the GHG block to reach the upper atmosphere where different conditions permit co2 to react. This is only significant at the edge of space where this IR's departure is interrupted, and we are talking less than 1% of atmospheric co2 of which anthropogenic is much less than a third, and a tiny amount of IR that in the fist place barely makes into the tangible heat arena. Enter super co2, a modelers' contrivance, where co2 miraculously reacts with water molecules to produce 3 times more heat. Then equally miraculously stops at 3. As well as going beyond common sense, modelers go beyond reason. Energy can't pass from a lower state to a higher state, how does it get back to the ground? And all this happens at night. Co2 increasing in the atmosphere will continue until pressure between the air-held and water-held co2 balances. Waving feathers can't change this fact. Temperature increases and decreases irrespective of co2. Co2 varies regardless of humans.
Physical scientists know all the above but the PC operators hold sway with invented reactions, modified laws and inflated numbers. Carbon trading is a con. Anthropogenic global warming by co2 is a con. If any warming is attributable, it is due to land use change.
A warming atmosphere means tens of thousands will survive winter that wouldn't otherwise, contrasted with a small increase in heat deaths.
Water (vapor) by the same standards used for co2 is an even greater pollutant.
Summary. This is a media driven event fed propaganda by people who ought to know better and swallowed by people too lazy to find the facts on Internet and elsewhere. We don't even know the average surface air temperature, nor the correct height to measure it. We can't affect temperature by tinkering with trace gases.
If the findings of the last report were those of the first there would be no Kyoto. No carbon Trading. No spin-off business. No political profit.
Laws on sex, laws on the air you breathe, laws on the water you drink. Tax bum burps, equally offensive.
Greenies want you back in stoneage conditions. And to avoid the third world developing.
You want to do good? cleaning real pollution (not co2 fertilizer) from the air is a good idea. Soot is slightly melting the surface ice which is irrelevant as water is demolishing it. The glaciers are thickening up top which is causing the faster flow.
Gardener, if you are teaching, how about teaching facts, not propaganda?
Facile challenges to evidence...
Gardner (G): As a climate change educator since 1988...
Visitor (V): You need to go back to school
--> Ad homium insult: needless, counteractive to debate and severely undermines the weight of objective evidence put forward later in the response
G: 1) "Predictions and measurements confirming the speeding up of global warming are now coming out on a daily, weekly and monthly basis."
V: Each different. They'll get it right one day in the distant future.
--> Criticism of the significance of scientific reports based on contradictions between them is more akin to arguments put forward by a religious fundamentalist (e.g. there are many accounts of evolution, but only one account of creation - the bible - thus we should trust the bible account). That studies contradict and develop from each other is the basis of their reliability, not a challenge. Furthermore the IPCC 4th report has unprecedented backing from the scientific community.
G: 2) "...300 years."
V: I predict everyone will be a millionaire in 300 years.
--> To compare the reporting of a prediction based upon research to a prediction that has just been made out of the air is somewhere between reductio ad absurdum and making a straw man - either way, a logical fallacy.
G: 3) "The range of effects/impacts of global and local climate change has moved from low risk events to an increasing liklihood of high risk, high impact events."
V: Feather waving opinion.
--> Not the case. Evidential basis is offered for the argument - without engaging with the methodology/results of this base it's not a legitimate challenge to the argument
G: 4) the number of tipping points, or amplifying feedback loops in the global climate system has increased to 22...
V: There are no tipping points... Prove me wrong.
--> Tipping points are a created term by reseachers, this much is true. However they correspond to calcuable worldly activity. To argue tipping points are constructed - which they are - without asking whether or not they correspond to calcuable events is a false criticism.
G: 5) the long term changes to the global climate system continue to extend out with some scientists talking the changes we are making now continuing to have an impact in 200,000+ years
V: Gosh, computers are that good?
--> In a word, yes. Whether or not you agree that the models are accurate must be substantiated by argument rather than simple cynicism.
G: 6) What was first regarded as acceptable changes of 1-2degC over the average of the last century are now seen to be having a far greater impact on climate stability, such as forcing other tipping points over the edge, or having an impact on species, habitat and the viability of entire ecosystems.
V: You've swallowed it whole
--> That there is no personal opinion in the point (only reported opinion) undermines the challenge.
V: Scientific evidence (see above).
--> It is difficult to agree or disagree with this without more clear explanation: it could even be seen that this is a barrage of facts without any real argument in order to establish authority over the reader.
V: "Summary. This is a media driven event fed propaganda by people who ought to know better and swallowed by people too lazy to find the facts on Internet and elsewhere. We don't even know the average surface air temperature, nor the correct height to measure it. We can't affect temperature by tinkering with trace gases.
If the findings of the last report were those of the first there would be no Kyoto. No carbon Trading. No spin-off business. No political profit.
Laws on sex, laws on the air you breathe, laws on the water you drink. Tax bum burps, equally offensive.
Greenies want you back in stoneage conditions. And to avoid the third world developing.
You want to do good? cleaning real pollution (not co2 fertilizer) from the air is a good idea. Soot is slightly melting the surface ice which is irrelevant as water is demolishing it. The glaciers are thickening up top which is causing the faster flow.
Gardener, if you are teaching, how about teaching facts, not propaganda?"
--> In terms of crass oversimplification of political positions, and the combination of normative political statement and factual scientific evidence, surely this conclusion is more closely related to propaganda than G's writing?
Overall it appears that the arguments here do not successfully contradict Gardener's points.
a future enviromentalist
i really consider the timeline as a means of help
A vegan in an suv leaves less an impact on global warming LOL
Ok that comment was the funniest idea I have heard Yet, If we are going there we would have to go back to 5th grade science and discuss photosynthesis, I know big words VEGANS lol.... however this is the process of CO2 to Oxygen... in which plantlife plays a very vital role... keep eating and killing our plants you keep killing off the new oxygen that is produced and there for more CO2 will remain. Did anyone take into consideration the amount of forestry we have left in comparison to now, or the amount of consumption of natural plants, for herbs and food source increasing and the rise of economy, population, and stupidity...
HA HA... I love this place I almost can't wait till the its destroyed so the good souls can move over to project Heaven.
People in whole, pollute, pick apart, and destroy all good things on earth, we breed stupidy not care and concern, and the government makes it so damn hard for the lower classes to gain the knowledge they need to aware, and inspire. I mean the last time anyone discovered anything worth a s**t was albert einstien. If he would have been ridiculed for being a geek or nerd, perhaps he wouldn't have been so great.
Also I love the CApTcHa.. a math problem ha.. I wonder how many people miss that.
haee
id like 2 saii hiii 2 all my fwndzzz jess amy ryan umm brendon jason wade angela bree ummmm mel steph umm sam sam umm timmy amy sarah caitlin haee guyzzz ilyzzz so much nd miss thaa ppl frm qldd xoxoxoxox
It turns out they're not
It turns out they're not valid, but in the most horrible way – because for the key performance indicators about climate, change is occurring far in advance of the worst-case scenario.
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Global warming
Global warming is a real thing........