The IPCC (InterGOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change) cops a lot of stick for allegedly being radical, part of the great climate-science-greenie-leftie-jewish-commo conspiracy, etc. But in fact it is too slow and conservative, witness the world is tracking on the high side of its projections.
One IPCC habit that annoys me is running projections only to the year 2100. We know warming and its consequences won’t stop there, so the choice is pure bureaucratic nonsense.
Here is a rare example of a more useful graph, showing warming continuing for more than a century beyond 2100. God knows what sort of world our great- … – grandchildren would be contending with.
The 2100 cutoff makes even less sense for sea level rise. Current estimates are, from memory, 30-100 cm, but the rise will continue for many centuries and would level off at 7 m, 15 m, who knows?
In our monumentally selfish and myopic civilisation, our distant descendants count for nothing.
The graph is from an article by Stephan Lewandowsky here. He challenges the US denialist Matt Ridley, who interpreted this graph to mean that there would be “minimal warming that is beneficial for us”.
This claim was run by those well known clarions of free speech The Wall Street Jounal, The Australian, and Forbes.
The graph is originally from a paper by Professor Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois.
BetterNatureBooks 
The possible irreversible evolution of global warming should always be taken into consideration. The graph is based on the existing situation without many other concerns. However the graph after 2100 is just a guess and nothing more.
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This is a pretty standard denialist trivialisation/dismissal/denial of climate science with a good foundation and some uncertainty that is always acknowledged. No further discussion will be entertained, I no longer tolerate disinformation. If you think it’s not disinformation you should check your sources, and theirs.
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Reblogged this on Standard Climate.
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“The world is tracking on the high side of their predictions”? Not according to their OWN fifth report (http://informthepundits.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/ipcc-climate-data-defies-all-models/), and hardly according to the fact that 2012 was no warmer globally than 1996.
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Four points –
Apologies for my loose phrasing: CO2 emissions are tracking high.
The “data” on the linked graph appear to be the HadCruT data, which is deficient (and criticised by the denial industry as faked, but they still use it when convenient) – see http://betternature.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/cherry-picking-2/ . GISS data that allow for strong Arctic warming (indisputable) show 2005 and 2010 as hottest years. If IPCC is still using HadCruT numbers then I criticise that too.
I don’t assume that anything leaked from a draft report and then filtered by denialists is accurate or representative. The denial industry routinely cherry picks. For example, are there other graphs with other data sets?
No, atmospheric temperature is not the be-all and end-all of global warming. What counts more fundamentally is the total accumulation of heat energy (from the measured imbalance), and that can go into oceans and water vapour as well as into atmospheric T. La Niña pulls the global T down, it’s clear, and we’ve had several years of strong La Niña, a fact conveniently ignored by the denial industry. The result – more water vapour and big storms and floods.
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But doesn’t the fact that CO2 emissions are tracking high, while temperature change is tracking low, make you want to re-examine their relationship?
Actually, the AR5 shows no trend in water vapor:
Click to access mims_ipcc_ar5_sod_review.pdf
or extreme weather:
http://climatedepot.com/a/18800/Prof-Pielke-Jr-Analysis-of-UN-IPCC-Draft-report–IPCC-shows-almost-complete-reversal-from-AR4-on-trends-in-drought-hurricanes-floods
If you are worried about bias from the web sources, here is the complete draft, leaked by one of the expert reviewers:
http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/
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No, the relationship is long-term. See the link I provided for classic short-term disinformation by Bob Carter.
And I don’t intend to chase every distraction you denialists throw out, it’s one of your main tactics.
No more on this thanks. My general approach is outlined under the AGW tab at the top.
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Removed for abusive language.
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“Here is a rare example of a more useful graph, showing warming continuing for more than a century beyond 2100. God knows what sort of world our great- … – grandchildren would be contending with.”
A very cold world. If we go with the science, and refuse to ever contemplate using suspect data.
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Removed for ethnic slur.
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