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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (1920)9/14/2011 11:48:45 PM
From: Wharf Rat  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 85487
 
Short version... things are worse than they appear to be.
Long version... the projections are too, uh, conservative, cuz they underestimate feedbacks and it's even worse than it appears, the dog has not been fed in years, .

It's nothing new; IPPC 4 originally had an upper limit on sea level rise this century , but work by Hansen's group showing it could be much higher led them to remove it.
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MT: And I know you’ve also studied other feedback dilemmas?

JH: Yes. There are many of us in the scientific community who believe that any number of important feedback processes are not being accounted for in the current IPCC projections. For example, from ice core data informing us about temperatures and atmospheric greenhouse gas levels over the past million years, we know that when the planet warms a little from any cause, it responds by releasing from the land and sea to the atmosphere huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. These greenhouse gases contribute to further warming. Because this process is not reflected in current climate projections, we can expect that there will be further emissions from our soils and our oceans. These will create additional warming beyond what IPCC currently projects.

MT: The evidence is solid?

JH: Yes. The evidence for these additional feedback effects is starting to pour in. Rising methane emissions from warming tundra soils and waters are being observed, and field research shows that warmed temperate ecosystems release additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.