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Darryl Fears reports in the Washington Post that according to the government's newest national assessment of climate change, Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming. "For a long time we have perceived climate change as an issue that's distant, affecting just polar bears or something that matters to our kids," says Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and lead co-author of the changing climate chapter of the assessment. "This shows it's not just in the future; it matters today. Many people are feeling the effects." The assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts: More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest. "Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Insurance rates are rising in some vulnerable locations, and insurance is no longer available in others. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the spring, last later into the fall, and burn more acreage. In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and autumn storms now cause more erosion, threatening many communities with relocation."
The report concludes that over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly and that increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change. "What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now. While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from burning coal, oil, and gas, with additional contributions from forest clearing and some agricultural practices."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday May 07 2014, @02:29PM
We're at a point where climate change has demonstrably happened in the recent past. While it's true climate models can't accurately predict the future, that's like saying you can't predict the results of Russian roulette. Maybe you can pull the trigger once, twice, even four times and be fine. Maybe not. That's what "unpredictable" means.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 07 2014, @02:51PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday May 07 2014, @03:39PM
I fully agree with you that a lot of what we now call science is not science in the sense of making falsifiable theoretical predictions.
That is not to say that genetics (for example) is without value. On the contrary, applying systematic measurements and analysis in unpredictable fields like economics and medicine have paid vast dividends in both knowledge and technology.
It's tricky because unless and until you have a scientific law you can express in mathematical terms, it's all hand-waving and heuristics. Yet even those laws are usually approximations. For fun, one time, I tried writing out the equation for a simple pendulum while relaxing the small-angle approximation. Filled up three pages with trigonometric functions and went off to cry into my beer. There is complexity lurking just below the surface, everywhere. Even quantum physics is a statistical model. I mean, WTF, can there be absolute truth in a universe with laws like that?
I guess I'm both concurring with and refuting your point. Yes, unpredictable models are less desirable than precise ones and they can lead you straight off a cliff. Yet to rely only science where we can write down and solve the equations would leave us stuck at the end of the nineteenth century.
So there's a continuum, really, with classical physics at one end and cargo cult [lhup.edu] nonsense at the other. And you're right, climate science is somewhere in that uncomfortable space between.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 07 2014, @04:13PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.