Column: Due West by Dan Whipple
Global Warming Report: Less Winter in the West?
By Dan Whipple, 2-09-07
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The climate research community expelled a long collective breath last week as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fourth “Summary for Policymakers,” a condensation of the most recent reliable scientific research on the warming earth.
The global take-home message from this effort was that, yes, the earth is getting warmer, and it will be between 1.8 degrees C (3.25 degrees Fahrenheit) and 4.0 degrees C (7.2 degrees F) warmer on average by the end of the 21st century than it was at the end of the 20th century. The actual temperature change will depend on how much greenhouse gas is pumped into the atmosphere.
Scientists are 90 percent certain that this change is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to the global message, though, there is news for the American West tucked away in the report. As computer model simulations have gotten more sophisticated, they are able to take a closer look at regional impacts that result from the changing climate.
This message is mostly hidden, however, because the details are in the full report, which won’t be released until this spring. Linda Mearns, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is the lead author for the IPCC on these regional models. She says, “There isn’t a lot of detail in the summary for policymakers, but there are specific statements in chapter eleven of the executive summary. There are statements one can make.”
One of the things that can be said to have a strong likelihood is that there will be two to six fewer weeks of winter. “Throughout the Rockies and the lower 48 states, we would see a contraction of the snow season,” Mearns said. “Snow will come later in the season and melt off sooner.”
Changes in total precipitation are harder to nail down, Mearns said. “The strongest statement is that it’s likely that precipitation will decrease in the southwest and northern Mexico. That will affect the southern Rockies.”
She added, “In the southwest, the likelihood of more severe droughts and more areally extensive droughts is a real possibility. If I were governor of New Mexico or Arizona, I would look really hard at my twenty year plan for water resources and seriously consider these results.”
As you move northward in latitude, the prospect for rainfall improves. From a drier southwest, the rainfall patterns move through a “transition zone” between about 37 degrees and 42 degrees north latitude—roughly the borders of Colorado—where it is very difficult to predict what might happen.
But by the time you reach 50 degrees north in southern Canada, rainfall can be expected to increase. Montana and perhaps Wyoming may share in this bounty as well, a five to ten percent increase in precipitation, mostly in winter. But because of the shorter snow season and earlier melt, the demands on rivers and reservoirs for irrigation and municipal water supplies may change. “Those kinds of changes in the hydrologic cycle are usually important from a water resources point of view,” Mearns said.
Another likely result from the changes is that the snow line will occur at a higher elevation. For each two degree F. warming, you would expect to see an increase of about 150 meters (about 500 feet) higher elevation of the snow line. The snow season and snow line changes will have important implications for ski areas.
One issue that ought to be resolved by this report is whether climate change is occurring and whether its man-made. The major scientific underpinning of climate contrarians in the U.S. has been an previously unresolved discrepancy between satellite and balloon measurements of lower- and mid-tropospheric temperatures. These temperatures should have increased in synch with surface temperatures, but measurements had indicated they didn’t.
Now, however, those measurement discrepancies have been resolved, showing “warming rates similar to those of the surface temperature record and within their respective uncertainties.”
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Comments
Certainly increased temps will make for increased food production as long as we have water for crops.
It is interesting that one thing that causes increased temps in cities compared to open ground around them is lots of black top streets and highways. Maybe we need to plow out all of our highways and streets and go back to dirt, so they are not reflecting the heat.
I do think I'll hold on to my polartec and down for a while yet.
As to her comments. I certainly will hold on to my expedition weight undies for awhile as well. This in spite of the fact it's been a mild dry winter here in Helena. But I wish I could so flippantly write off the effects of the earth's populace having collectively started and left running its carbon-emitting Pinto/Tacoma/Hummer/Subaru/whatever with the doors to the huge garage closed. When I think about my kids and the generations to follow, looking out the window at the recent weather here would be a great way to not be bothered by what the effects of the carbons up there are doing. It doesn't seem to come that easily to me.
Marion, represents a point of view on a number of issues that is shared by a great many people like her. By her posting here you are presented with a great opportunity to engage that point of view, and with logic, facts, and kind pursuasion to change that outlook and make a friend. Why throw away such opportunities that you are blessed with? Try to "adapt" to the environment rather than just "mitigate" by driving someone away. Just my opinion.
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This story hasn't prevented Klaus - who currently enjoys 82% approval rate - from deconstructing the IPCC climate panel of the United Nations. In an interview with "Hospodářské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions (well, actually, the interview took place yesterday):
Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?
A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is unfair to refer to the U.N. panel. It's not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a kind of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond in such a serious way to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.
This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.
Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...
A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.
Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?
A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.
Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.
Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.
Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?
A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.
Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...
A: ...I am right...
Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?
A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.
Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?
A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying such a thing: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.
It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.
That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.
Well, it makes a lot of sense, Prof Klaus. Other parts of the interview were dedicated to the Organization of European States (and Jo Leinen), the Czech civil cold war that has already ended, the radar for the U.S. missile defense, and his relations with the current Czech government.
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Personally, I think Dr. Pielke et al. point the way forward to get beyond the polarizing and paralyzing debate.
As for me, I get a kick out of those who have their facts so well in hand that their main argument is insults and name calling. I have read a lot of the articles and I see a lot of maybe, perhaps, likely, etc. I have thought about watching the Gore Scare, an awful lot of folks have almost a cult worship of him, but never come up with any concrete suggestions.
The overt digs at progressive solutions and your, dare I say, ill informed comments are good to see. I'm glad people like yourself are out there voicing your ideological opinions about everything regardless if you know anything about it or not. I for one wait breathlessly to see your diatribes on every article that appears in the New West or the High Country News.
Some times we are lucky enough to get several of your angry derisive rants on one story. Not long ago on the Goat blog I read a fascination debate where you would've easily won if shear number of words mattered. Your comments came with machine gun repetition until your assumptions and accusations were categorically proven wrong by the other posters. Then nothing, you dropped that story flat. Best to stick to the battles you can't loose with facts or reality anyway. The safe ideological battles of left and right are where you and your wing men shine. Keeping us "enviros" and "libs" in check with your intimidating righteousness that can not be challenged.
Thank you again.
By the way sorry if you are offended by the term lib, feel free to call me right wing conservative any ol time. I am pround of that title.
Marion: I had no intention to stick the pen in the most bilious well when I wrote my comment. My insult was not intended, and my apologies for the receipt of same. I thought what I wrote was a fair and satirical note about what I percieve regarding your prevalence on the Wild Bill columns. That's all.
Take care.
The link above is to an editorial that I read this morning. It got me thinking about figure 8 car racing where the fans hope their favorite wins while the drivers hope to squeak through the intersection and let others wreck in a massive collision. Our racecars are Policy, Politics, Science, Prosperity, and Activism. There are no wrecks when the cars travel in close proximity. The crashes occur at the intersection when someone gets too far ahead or falls too far behind. Let’s look at our race. Activisim has bolted to a lead and followed by Politics, while Science, Prosperity, and Policy are far behind in that order. Politics is drafting on Activism and looking for opportunity for Science and Prosperity to take out Activism at the intersection. Policy doesn’t care and is just happy to finish in second place. Slight problem here is that only 1/5 of the fans go away happy which is not nearly enough to get the fans to support the winner.
My point is that in the climate change race there is no single winner. The cars must move in some sort of coordinated order. The wreck at the intersection wipes everybody out. Dr. Pielke et al. appear to be suggesting a summit to keep the cars moving together to sell the race to a majority of the fans and avoid the crashes at the intersection. Perhaps the rest of us should reconsider what winning means.
"Reducing emissions is a challenge well worth undertaking. But when it becomes such an overwhelming focus that nothing else is allowed, especially adaptation in mal-adapated communities, then a virtue becomes a vice. An Inconvenient Truth mislead because it suggests that we only need do one thing to respond to the threat of climate change. The reality is that we must do many things, among which we must evaluate tradeoffs, costs and benefits, risks and uncertainties. And that is a real inconvenient truth."
In my opinion, this display of calm wisdom beats any right-wing panic or left-wing emotional scaremongering any day of the week and twice on Sundays.