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The reality is that we don’t yet know everything there is to know about climate change, and we don’t know its full potential impact.
www.washingtonpost.com...
The reality is that we don’t yet know everything there is to know about climate change, and we don’t know its full potential impact. That’s exactly why we need to assess the risks. What will changes in temperature and precipitation mean for farmers and livestock producers? How will higher sea levels affect the value of coastal property? What might stronger and more frequent storms mean for the infrastructure that is the bedrock of our national economy?
jdub297
Given that the U.S, and others have blatantly tried to influence AR5
pasiphae
reply to post by Cobaltic1978
that makes no sense. we have a pretty good idea of what can and likely will happen as the climate changes. a risk assessment is just giving a heads up of what the possibilities are. it's like trying to figure out what might happen if a cat 5 hurricane hits a certain area that it hasn't hit before. we can still assess the possible damage and prepare for it in case it does happen.
r
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of human induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for mitigation and adaptation.
www.ipcc-wg2.gov...
The carbon economy is the fastest growing industry globally with US$84 billion of carbon trading conducted in 2007, doubling to $116 billion in 2008, and expected to reach over $200 billion by 2012 and over $2,000 billion by 2020
....Within many countries the dramatic divergence between the top 1 percent and the rest is a new reality. The increased share of the top 1 percent is clear in the United States and in some English-speaking countries and, to a lesser degree, in China and India....
This new divergence in income distribution may not always imply greater national inequality in all parts of a national distribution. It does, however, represent a concentration of income and, through income, of potential political influence at the very top, which may spur ever greater concentration of income. The factors—technological, fiscal, financial, and political—that led to this dynamic are still at work. ...And the euro area crisis and its accompanying austerity policies will likely lead to further inequality in Europe as budget constraints curtail social expenditures while the mobility of capital...
The reality is that we don’t yet know everything there is to know about climate change, and we don’t know its full potential impact.
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present... As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean diminished. Late Holocene cooling reached its nadir during the Little Ice Age (about 1250-1850 AD), [lowest point -cv] when sun-blocking volcanic eruptions and perhaps other causes added to the orbital cooling, allowing most Arctic glaciers to reach their maximum Holocene extent...
ABSTRACT:
We explore the possibility of building a continuous glacier reconstruction by analyzing the integrated sedimentary response of a large (440 km2) glacierized catchment in western Norway... A multi-proxy numerical analysis demonstrates that it is possible to distinguish a glacier component in the ~8000-yr-long record, based on distinct changes in grain size, geochemistry, and magnetic composition... This signal is interpreted to reflect glacier activity in the upstream catchment, an interpretation that is independently tested through a mineral magnetic provenance analysis of catchment samples.
Minimum glacier input is indicated between 6700-5700 cal yr BP, probably reflecting a situation when most glaciers in the catchment had melted away, whereas the highest glacier activity [most glacier growth - cv] is observed around 600 and 200 cal yr BP. ....
Dansgaard-Oeschger events are a prominent mode of variability in the records of the last glacial cycle. ... no agreement has emerged on which may be the more correct for describing the paleoclimatic signal...we assess the bimodality of the system reconstructing the topology of the multi--dimensional attractor over which the climate system evolves... We find that the statistics are consistent with the switches between two different climate equilibrium states in response to a changing external forcing... We find that the statistics are consistent with the switches between two different climate equilibrium states in response to a changing external forcing...
This behavior is consistent with the prediction by Kukla and Matthews (1972) that the Holocene interglacial will terminate suddenly with a jump to another of the climate system's modes of operation. This is what happened at the end of the last period of peak interglaciation.
Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started....
Predictable orbital variations led to insolation changes, which triggered less frequent but very intense oscillations. Accordingly, the last glacial inception (substage 5d) has been attributed to a connection between orbital forcing and thermohaline circulation beyond a freshwater threshold within the ocean-atmosphere-sea-ice system...
Comparison [of the Holocene] with MIS 19c, a close astronomical analogue characterized by an equally weak summer insolation minimum (474Wm−2) and a smaller overall decrease from maximum summer solstice insolation values, suggests that glacial inception is possible despite the subdued insolation forcing, if CO2 concentrations were 240±5 ppmv (Tzedakis et al., 2012)
....the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence....
web.pdx.edu... (NOTE: pdf has been removed from internet)
Abstract
The sensitivity of the last glacial-inception (around 115 kyr BP, 115,000 years before present) to different feedback mechanisms has been analysed by using the Earth system model of intermediate complexity...
In our model, glacial inception, as a bifurcation in the climate system, appears in nearly all sensitivity runs including a run with constant atmospheric CO2 concentration of 280 ppmv, a typical interglacial value, and simulations with prescribed present-day sea-surface temperatures or vegetation cover—although the rate of the growth of ice-sheets growth is smaller than in the case of the fully interactive model. Only if we run the fully interactive model with constant present-day insolation and apply present-day CO2 forcing does no glacial inception appear at all. This implies that, within our model, the orbital forcing alone is sufficient to trigger the interglacial–glacial transition, while vegetation, ocean and atmospheric CO2 concentration only provide additional, although important, positive feedbacks. In addition, we found that possible reorganisations of the thermohaline circulation influence the distribution of inland ice....
Abstract
The Arctic Ocean is a substantial energy sink for the northern hemisphere. Fluctuations...
A lunar nodal cycle in all time-series indicates that there is a forced Arctic oscillating system controlled by the pull of gravity from the moon, a system that influences long-term fluctuations in the extent of Arctic ice. The phase relation between the identified cycles indicates a possible chain of events from lunar nodal gravity cycles, to long-term tides, polar motions, Arctic ice extent, the NAO winter index, weather, and climate.
Climate Dynamics
Coupled oscillators:
In this analysis we may understand the forced gravitation oscillation between the earth, sun and the moon as a forced coupled oscillation system to the earth. The tide and the earth rotation responds as a non-linear coupled oscillation to the forced gravity periods from the moon and the sun. This is a complex oscillation in periods between hours and thousands of years...
[Includes a listing of several more papers at bottom of article]
ABSTRACT ...Results suggest that interannual variations in surface heat fluxes explain ∼5 to 10% of the variance in upper-ocean heat content. Anomalous surface heat fluxes are linked to meridional wind anomalies upstream of Drake Passage, which in turn are linked to forcing by El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). ENSO and SAM are correlated with upper-ocean heat content at near-zero lags, and statistically significant correlations occur at longer time lags as well. The impact of mesoscale eddies and meanders on upper-ocean heat content is explored with the use of a tracked eddy database. An empirical relationship is constructed relating upper-ocean heat content anomalies to eddy length scales and amplitudes. Eddies and meanders are estimated to account for more than one third of the nonannual cycle variance in Drake Passage upper-ocean heat content.
Abstract
The Ekman divergence around Antarctica raises a large amount of deep water to the ocean’ surface. The regional Ekman transport moves the up-welled deep water northward out of the circumpolar zone. The divergence and northward surface drift combine, in effect, to remove deep water from the interior of the ocean. This wind-driven removal process is facilitated by a unique dynamic constraint operating in the latitude band containing Drake Passage. Through a simple model sensitivity experiment WC show that the upwelling and removal of deep water in the circumpolar belt may be quantitatively related to the formation of new deep water in the northern North Atlantic. These results show that stronger winds in the south can induct more deep water formation in the north and more deep outflow through the South Atlantic. The fact that winds in the southern hemisphere might influence the formation of deep water in the North Atlantic brings into question long-standing notions about the forces that drive the ocean’ thermohaline s circulation.
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS THE IPCC DOING IN STOCKHOLM?
Delegates from member countries are meeting behind closed doors with authors of the physical science report to hammer out the summary for policy-makers. They are going through a draft line by line, which can be a frustratingly slow process because the text needs to be approved by consensus. Governments may have problems with the text being either too complex or too vague, or they may have non-scientific concerns about grammar or word choice. Commenting on a June draft, the U.S. wanted it to read more like a narrative. Underscoring the politics involved, China wanted to remove national borders from a world map used in the draft to "avoid unnecessary disputes."
A key scientific report on climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to be officially launched here Friday, after four days of debate.
The agreement was reached by over 120 countries' delegates... started from April 30 in Bangkok, at the last minute with the last- day meeting ended at over 4 a.m. Friday (2100 GMT Thursday)....
...The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of human induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for mitigation and adaptation....
www.ipcc-wg2.gov...
...climate change negotiations are not just about the global environment but global economics as well — the way that technology, costs and growth are to be distributed and shared....
Can we balance the need for a sustainable planet with the need to provide billions with decent living standards? Can we do that without questioning radically the Western way of life? ....
How to provide global leadership? Mobilizing collective purpose is more difficult when we no longer face one common enemy, but thousands of complex problems.
The Cold War was about the clash, not just of geopolitical interests, but of big ideas... But the Cold War "glue" has disappeared....
The reality is that, so far, we have largely failed to articulate a clear and compelling vision of why a new global order matters — and where the world should be headed....
All had lived through the chaos of the 1930s — when turning inwards led to economic depression, nationalism and war. All, including the defeated powers, agreed that the road to peace lay with building a new international order — and an approach to international relations that questioned the Westphalian, sacrosanct principle of sovereignty [TRANSLATION: Get rid of the US Constitution supremacy over United Nation bureaucratic rules. All nations to become vassal states.]— rooted in freedom, openness, prosperity and interdependence....
www.theglobalist.com...
D. Extremist Ideologies
1. Introduction
• As noted, an ideology is a set of political beliefs about the nature of people and society. People who are committed to an ideology seek not only to persuade but to recruit others to their belief. In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.....
2. Ideologies
a. Nationalism – The policy of asserting that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations....
d. Anarchism – A political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or undesirable. ....They act the part of stereotypical anarchists as envisioned by most Americans outside of far-left circles: black-clad protesters wreaking havoc at political conventions and anti-globalization rallies....