Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says

NPR
January 26, 2009
by Richard Harris

Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study.

As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world's top climate scientists.

"We're used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix," Solomon says. "Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze, you know, it'll go away pretty quickly."

That's the case for some of the gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane and nitrous oxide. But as Solomon and colleagues suggest in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is not true for the most abundant greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide. Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won't stop global warming.

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," Solomon says.

This is because the oceans are currently soaking up a lot of the planet's excess heat — and a lot of the carbon dioxide put into the air. The carbon dioxide and heat will eventually start coming out of the ocean. And that will take place for many hundreds of years.

Solomon is a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her new study looked at the consequences of this long-term effect in terms of sea level rise and drought.

If we continue with business as usual for even a few more decades, she says, those emissions could be enough to create permanent dust-bowl conditions in the U.S. Southwest and around the Mediterranean.

"The sea level rise is a much slower thing, so it will take a long time to happen, but we will lock into it, based on the peak level of [carbon dioxide] we reach in this century," Solomon says.

The idea that changes will be irreversible has consequences for how we should deal with climate change. The global thermostat can't be turned down quickly once it's been turned up, so scientists say we need to proceed with more caution right now.

"These are all ... changes that are starting to happen in at least a minor way already," says Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University. "So the question becomes, where do we stop it, when does all of this become dangerous?"

The answer, he says, is sooner rather than later. Scientists have been trying to advise politicians about finding an acceptable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The new study suggests that it's even more important to aim low. If we overshoot, the damage can't be easily undone. Oppenheimer feels more urgency than ever to deal with climate change, but he says that in the end, setting acceptable limits for carbon dioxide is a judgment call.

"That's really a political decision because there's more at issue than just the science. It's the issue of what the science says, plus what's feasible politically, plus what's reasonable economically to do," Oppenheimer says.

But despite this grim prognosis, Solomon says this is not time to declare the problem hopeless and give up.

"I guess if it's irreversible, to me it seems all the more reason you might want to do something about it," she says. "Because committing to something that you can't back out of seems to me like a step that you'd want to take even more carefully than something you thought you could reverse."

Now, I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

God the fucking MMGW cult is as annoying as Obamanaitonalists.

Junk Science.

Isn't the world going to end anyway in 2012?

Yeah, I don't' see the need to worry about whats going to happen in a couple hundred years when we will all be dead in 4.

So is stupidity

So.....in summary.......what we do in the next 10 years will have an effect on the planet for the next thousand years........so we need to change quickly......and scientists are looking for the magic number so they can advise politicians.....uh huh.....ok then.

Just never forget, 'a study' means government grant money, so its big business to find things wrong over and over and over again with no conclusions or solutions.  I am sure more study is needed.

Isn't yellowstone gonna blow up soon anyways? Thus sending us into an ice age?

agreed

Working in the climatology field I wouldn't entirely say its junk science. Just a blooming science that needs more stone cold facts. We have influenced the climate, to what degree is currently not known, but in the future I believe our supercomputers and weather gurus will figure out to what extent we've truly messed things up. To say that we haven't at all influenced the climate with our pumping unnatural amounts of particulates and chemicals in to the atmosphere is naive or ignorant at best.

Lots of snow and ice here....

Al Gore can blow a snowball.

I love it when the people who have no clue about how thermodynamics works on a macro scale make asinine comments like this.

It was 10 degrees Fahrenheit today. I want all the fucking global warming I can get.

Good. Drill here, drill now.  Coal and nukes since it all over anyway.

Nukes don't emit any greenhouse gases. They're actually the most eco-friendly power source we have.

Gotta love 'computer models', particularly when they all share the same data, omit the same disparaging information, ignore the same variables, and manipulate the results together to all come up with the same model.  Some science. Our weather 'gurus' can't get it right 4 hours from now.  Weather trends don't agree going back 1500 years?  well only go back 1499...Carbon dioxide levels over 10 times as high as now in both ice ages and incredibly warm periods in history?  blah who cares about that-were at the incredibly high level right now that is barely double the minimum required to sustain plant life.  Antarctic polar ice at record levels now that they put accurate equipment there when they thought it was melting away? bah, lets look at that north pole going to hell!  It's all SHIT.  

Fucking computer models 'predicting' the future of the 'climate' and its supposed to be an indication of accuracy because its a COMPUTER MODEL,  woo hoo. Although the computer models for the Boomer in Left4Dead when you squat and look up and down really fast does crack me up  to no end.  

I'll take a little here as well.

And they were hoping, DYING to have a record warm year this year like they were DYING to have incredibly deadly hurricanes over the past 2 seasons.  Over the past 9 years it keeps getting colder and colder, and with the new equipment the data gets harder and harder to dispute.  Get ready for 'ice age' scares in the next couple years.  More studies to follow.

Till the reactor goes all Chernobyl on you

Heh, since all Liberals wish they were French, they may wish to change that thought process about nuclear power.  Newer reactors are impossible to have melt-downs by design.  And our 35 year old stuff is pretty darn safe as it is.

Being that the 'green' movement never makes sense, the only way to produce Hydrogen on a scale that is cost-effective requires Nuclear power plants.  Eliminating coal power plants requires nuclear power plants.  We can turn our vast supplies of coal to oil with 0 pollution emitted(let alone eliminating oil spills from oceanic shipping) through liquefaction, requires nuclear power plants.  Half the pollution in the air can be eliminated completely with, you guessed it, nuclear power plants.

How fucking embarrassing is it that the fucking French have a better energy policy than us?

MMGW is all but a complete farce. It is however a lucrative business.  A little bit of government legislation and Al Gore becomes a billionaire overnight(as milking MMGW for $120 million over the last 8 years isn't enough). Everyone smells free money and jumps on the bandwagon.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should pollute/contaminate anything on this planet through gross negligence if it can be avoided.  But its not changing the climate on this planet in the ways in which it's claimed, not even close.

The green movement is all about control. Their leaders are all hipocrites, ie Al Gore. It's just a way to dictate how everyone should live. Most of their data is so flawed as to be laughable. If they really want to save the planet maybe they should start offing themselves. That would cut down on carbon emmissions quite a bit.

No. That will counteract global warming and then we will be stuck in global mediocraty. EVEN WORSE.

Global warming has always happened in the past and has always been followed by global cooling.  The time intervals are variable.

If it comes from NPR it can't be trusted because their judgement is so incredibly bad and because they lie like crazy.  Sometimes they don't even realize they are lying because they are so delusional they believe their own lies.


PS, Ski, thanks for posting that.

Let me see, first car emission, then industrial, and finally population control, since all of us breath in air and exhaust CO2.

It is so crystal clear, it is not even funny.

What about intervention of a different sort than simply reducing emissions?


Couldn't we, through the wonders of modern chemistry, devise a way to correct the situation by deliberately pumping another chemical into the atmo?

Assuming, of course, that it isn't all bullshit.

Iron.  All we need is iron in the seawater to cause a photosynthetic bloom which will convert CO2 into carbohydrates and oxygen.

But not just any iron, it must be iron sulfate, any other iron cannot be used.

And there is already enough iron dust, only it is iron oxide.

All we need is a volcano spewing H2SO4 high up.

So, I guess that means we dodged that Ice Age, huh?

Just another reason for the .gov to place more controls on your freedoms for the sake of the future of the planet.

Envirowackos hate geoengineering schemes because they involve fixing the problem without destroying modern civilization.


We must renounce all modern technology and be at peace with nature for them to be happy...

There you go, fixed it for you.

yawn...





Oh... and fuck NPR

I fucking hope so!

I'M FREEZING!!!!!!!!!

What 39 degrees F is cold.  

We needed two cans of de-icer to get into our cars this morning after sheet ice formed on them overnight and froze up all the doors and locks.

I hate it when that happens.  I imagine 39 degrees is pretty cold for Portsmouth, so much for the Gulf Stream.

I am NOT in Portsmouth, I live out in the country and it's usually about 4 degrees centigrade colder than Pompey.

That would explain the ice, add the moisture from your close proximity to the Channel and frigid air = frozen doors/locks/windows.  I do NOT miss living in the North.

Watermelons.  Green on the outside, red on the inside...


Jane

My solution to Global Warming?......Global Air Conditioning

I'd get in my car and drive to beat some sense into these people, but seeing as we ran out of crude oil in 2000 as it was most assuredly predicted I really don't feel like walking.

On the bright side, this is a solution to the global cooling problem we had going on back then as well. At least we dodged that ice age, I guess!

Gee, I wonder what the folks that CAUSED the last ice age did to fix it?

Oh, that's right, no one caused it, it was just a normal cycle....

Oh well.

Humans can effect climate on a local scale right now my house is 70 degrees will outside it is 9 degrees, cities are warmer then the surrounding countryside. But on a planet wide scale, I have my doubts. Nuclear winter was suppose to last 5 to 10 years but drive my car around will impact the planet for the next 1000 years? The ice caps in Antarctica are shrinking today! (No shit it’s summer in the southern hemisphere) Polar bears are dying, there going to go extinct! (No polar bear populations are rising, we need to control them with hunting)
I have my own personnel theory on global climate its way far fetched for the global warming scientist, but here it goes. There is this big yellow thing in the sky, that is in the east every morning and the west every evening, I’ll call it the sun. I’ve notice I feel very warm when I’m in the light it puts out (will call this sun light) and cooler when it goes down or I’m shaded from it. Now for the really wild part maybe it causes the planet to warm and cool just like it warms and cools me! I also think the sun effect the climate on other planets in our system.
Now here is another theory there are these spots on the sun called sun spots. They go through a cycle when they are at there peak the sun puts out more radiation. The planet warms more, and HAM radio operators can bounce signals off of the ionosphere. We are supposed to be at a peak in the sun spot cycle right now and it is dead. This has occurred before right before a global cooling.  I know some really wild theory supported by 1000’s of years of research and supported by most climatologist does not hold a candle up to the vast knowledge of the supper genius Al Gore who received D’s in science in collage.

This.

What? I've never heard of the Little Climatic Optimum!

This belongs in the religion forum.

New Study - Still Don't Give A Fuck.