Re: OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere

On Aug 17, 12:10 am, James Arthur <bogusabd...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Aug 15, 4:19 am, James Arthur <bogusabd...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Aug 14, 2:08 am, James Arthur wrote:
Predictions just after Katrina were for disaster the very next
season.  And the season after that.  Polar opposite to actual
events.
IOW, the predictions weren't reliable even one year forward.
That's weather, not climate and nobody who was serious would have made
any kind of prediction.

Ditto for climate.

Wrong. Climate is constrained by energy transfers; we don't know
exactly when the energy is going to get transferred, but we have a
pretty good idea of how much energy has to be transferred over a year.

"In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate
  research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing
  with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that
  the long-term prediction of future climate states is not
  possible."
    --IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis
      (http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm)

Frivolous attention-getters will say anything
to get on TV.
"Models project that increasing atmospheric concentrations of
  greenhouse gases result in changes in frequency, intensity,
  and duration of extreme events, such as more hot days, heat
  waves, heavy precipitation events, and fewer cold days. Many
  of these projected changes would lead to increased risks of
  floods and droughts in many regions, and predominantly adverse
  impacts on ecological systems, socio-economic sectors, and
  human health (see Table SPM-2 for details). High resolution
  modeling studies suggest that peak wind and precipitation
  intensity of tropical cyclones are likely to increase over
  some areas."
        --IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report
     (http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/vol4/english/010.htm)

The two statements are not inconsistent.  The first says
models don't work; the second confirms it.

That may be what they say to you. If you learnt a bit more about the
subject, you might be able to understand what the authors meant,which
your precis fails to capture. In particular, you can talk about the
likely incidence of adverse weather events (an estimate of probablity
without having to predict the precise climate states that produced
them.

I understand your premise.  In a test of it, exactly such a general
prediction was made re: increased tropical storm intensity, from the
modelling.

Intensity, not frequency. The prediction was that we'd have much the
same number of tropical storms, but more of them would have a higher
intensity if the oceans were warmer.The frequency of tropical storms
varies from year to year - there has been some discussion of the
weather patterns that seem to be driving that variation, but I don't
think it is all that well understood yet.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
.

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