Originally Posted by Odin

The Central US and all of SoCal becomes desert. the West Coast Mediterranean zone will shift northwards into the Pacific SW. The Boreal Forest will shift to the Arctic coast while the Temperate Broadleaf Forest will shift to where the Boreal Forest was. The SE will become like Southern China today, Semitropical Monsoon Forest.

Can you give me a cite for this? I am not calling you on it, but I have been looking for this kind of analysis and could not find it.

James50

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I like your goal. You might elaborate on how you might strive to achieve it.

As a proud member of the VHEMT, I have already done more to address the issue than most will in their lifetime.

http://www.vhemt.org/

Originally Posted by James50

Can you give me a cite for this? I am not calling you on it, but I have been looking for this kind of analysis and could not find it.

James50

Not at the moment, It was something I read a while ago, cannot remember the source. Probably the last big IPCC report.

Prof. James 'Gaia' Lovelock on climate change
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today...00/8594561.stm

and a 2006 blog of his, which is a little odd
http://www.jameslovelock.org/page10.html

East Antarctica is melting a little faster
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8371773.stm

Originally Posted by Odin

The Central US and all of SoCal becomes desert. the West Coast Mediterranean zone will shift northwards into the Pacific SW. The Boreal Forest will shift to the Arctic coast while the Temperate Broadleaf Forest will shift to where the Boreal Forest was. The SE will become like Southern China today, Semitropical Monsoon Forest.

But doesn't "Monsoon Forest" denote a precipitation deficit in the winter, as "Mediterranean" denotes a precipitation deficit in the summer?

Is there any evidence that winters have in fact been getting drier in the South Atlantic region?

Here is a link to a lengthy, but interesting, article in Der Spiegel on global warming:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...686697,00.html


Pax,

Dave Krein '42

Originally Posted by David Krein

Here is a link to a lengthy, but interesting, article in Der Spiegel on global warming:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...686697,00.html

Here is RealClimate's rebuttal. Most of it is science, showing much of Speigel's article to be Big Lie propaganda. The final paragraph...

It is obvious that DER SPIEGEL does not care about science. This really is about politics. This year will decide about the future of the German climate policy: in the fall the government will announce its new energy strategy. This will decide whether the energy transformation towards a sustainable electricity supply, increasingly based on renewables, will be pushed forward or thwarted. In a global context the issue is whether global warming can be limited to a maximum of 2 ºC, as the Copenhagen Accord calls for, or whether this opportunity will be lost. The power struggle on this issue is in full gear. The energy transformation can best be prevented by creating doubts about its urgency. The fact that scandal stories about climate science have to be invented to this end just proves one thing: good, honest arguments against a forceful climate policy apparently do not exist.

I'm reading a lot about how the eruption of the volcano in Iceland has shut down aviation in much of Europe. What I haven't heard is what impact this will likely have on climate. Is there any chance of another "year without a summer", similar to 1815?

A big volcanic eruption does produce global cooling. It's possible this will buy us a little more time.

I was thinking the same thing.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

A big volcanic eruption does produce global cooling. It's possible this will buy us a little more time.

It seems some have already looked into this and are predicting that Iceland's volcanic eruption is too small to provide much change.

According to what I read, Mt. Pinataubo's '91 eruption was much larger than the current eruptions and, though it did provide some cooling, that change was short-lived.

Originally Posted by BookishXer

It seems some have already looked into this and are predicting that Iceland's volcanic eruption is too small to provide much change.

According to what I read, Mt. Pinataubo's '91 eruption was much larger than the current eruptions and, though it did provide some cooling, that change was short-lived.

Now if Yellowstone exploded...

~Chas'88

Here's a climate change model involving California. Sure, it's one state, but California has perhaps the greatest biodiversity for any region of similar size in America (more than, for example Texas, which is larger) -- and a wrmer world means that California loses much of that biodiversity .-

http://data.prbo.org/cadc2/index.php...e-distribution

Current climate data were based on monthly climate means for the years 1971-2000 taken from the PRISM dataset (Daly et al. 1994) and transformed into standard bioclimatic variables (Nix 1986). Future climate scenarios were based on projections from 30-km and 40-km resolution regional climate models (Snyder and Sloan 2005, Pal et al. 2007) driven by one of three global climate models: 1) NCAR CCSM3.0: National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate System Model, averaged for the years 2038-2069 (478-610 ppm CO2); 2) GFDL CM2.1: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Coupled Climate Model, averaged for the years 2038-2070 (478-615 ppm CO2); 3) NCAR CSM1.2: National Center for Atmospheric Research Climate System Model, averaged for the years 2080-2099 (635-686 ppm CO2).

NCAR CCSM3.0 is the "ugliest" prediction. In it, the redwood and Douglas fir forests almost completely vanish, and desert shrub vegetation now largely confined to the east of the Sierra Nevada and north of the San Gabriel Mountains and the lowlands of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, intrudes into the so-called Inland Empire and overpowers the grasslands of the southern San Joaquin Valley. What is left of the great real estate fraud in southern California in the Double-Zero decade will likely have burned down by then without the aid of "human" arsonists. (I question the humanity of arsonists, by the way). Although the focus is on birds which depend upon local conditions, one can look at agricultural potential. A hint: the area that now produces a large percentage of America's table grapes (the Fresno area) becomes suitable for the growth of creosote bush characteristic of the Mojave.

Another hint: the magnificent redwoods that appear in hills as far south as San Jose disappear south of roughly Point Arena and are restricted to areas around the coast -- with chapparal and grassland typical of greater Los Angeles replacing it. The magnificent Douglas fir also practically disappear, too.

The Economist, April 3, 2010

Story about conference at Asimolar, California, regarding global warming.

Geoengineering was discussed. Two general methods were considered. Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is considered the least risky, and no new regulatory regime is deemed necessary.

"Reducing incoming sunlight, by contrast, is fraught with danger. While it is possible to imaginine doing so in a way than cancels out the change in average temperature caused by an increase in carbon dioxide, such a reduction would not simply restore the status quo. Local temperatures would still change in some places, as would oceam currents, rainfall patterns, soil moisture and photosynthesis. Sunshine reduction, then, clearly needs to be regulated. (It also needs to be renamed: these techniques are currently referred to as 'Solar Radiation Management', a term invented half in jest that has somehow stuck.)"

The Economist talks about The clouds of unknowing. It is an overview of the state of the debate with more talk about the science, less about stolen e-mail, than usual.

Global warmingis just the latest in a grand tradition of malthusian panic attacks.

Originally Posted by Texas Curl

Global warmingis just the latest in a grand tradition of malthusian panic attacks.

This is the first malthusian panic attack to be sounded by the community of climate scientists.

Here's the thing. Out of a population of billions, you can, at any time, always find someone saying that we're in big trouble, provided that you don't pay any attention to credentials, evidence, or whether the person knows what he's talking about. It's wrong, however, to lump an incoherent Jeremiad voiced by some sign-carrying street-corner prophet with a well-considered, well-attested, heavily-documented reality presented by a large number of scientists operating in their field, or to judge the latter as not being credible merely because the former wasn't.

And that's what you were doing with the above-quoted throwaway line.

population explosion, global cooling, worldwide starvation, all were conventional wisdom and postulated by our best scientific minds at the time. you can look it up in the old issues of time magazine.

Originally Posted by Texas Curl

population explosion, global cooling, worldwide starvation, all were conventional wisdom and postulated by our best scientific minds at the time. you can look it up in the old issues of time magazine.

Not so long ago the great danger in international relations was the spread of Communist rule, something at best braked and pent in, and at worst awaiting the opportunity to erupt into new places -- but never to be turned back because it always had adequate means of repression wherever entrenched and unlimited willingness to use military force against any ideological challenger.

That too is over. So is any proximate threat of global cooling.

If the cooling schemes should work well enough, would the world as a whole come to resemble India? There are different climates, and different seasons to be found in the country, but also microclimates.

Climatic zones

The question is, would it be possible to retain the general pattern of old climatic zones - but with the addition of new (novel?) microclimates and submicroclimates?

Originally Posted by Texas Curl

population explosion, global cooling, worldwide starvation, all were conventional wisdom and postulated by our best scientific minds at the time. you can look it up in the old issues of time magazine.

Unfortunately for your argument, I've already done rather more than that.

Population explosion and the danger of worldwide starvation are still in front of us; advances in food production have however potentially changed the necessity in shortest supply from food to fresh water. Maybe. IF we can find a way to maintain high food production in the face of global warming and looming oil shortages. In any case, that there is a limit to the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth is still true. If you're referring to one individual's prediction of massive famines breaking out in the 1970s or 1980s or whenever that was, that prediction was made by one person and never had the support of the scientific community as a whole. And it was wrong only as to date.

Global cooling was never more than speculation. The danger of it (which arose from particulates and sulfur dioxide in pollution) may have been real; however, as environmental regulations successfully addressed the problem, we may never know. In any case, again, it never had the endorsement of the scientific community. It was valid speculation as far as it went, but still speculation. Global warming, at this stage of research, is not.

If you want to understand this subject, you need to read a bit more than Time, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

If the cooling schemes should work well enough, would the world as a whole come to resemble India? There are different climates, and different seasons to be found in the country, but also microclimates.

The climatic regime of India is shaped in part by the Himalayas. Except for the Hindu Kush, the Caucasus (small but locally significant), and the highest mountains of the Andes, no large mountain range is high enough form so stark a border between cold and warm climates. The highest Andes are typically in the tropics, so they can "only" divide dry and wet climates. Not even the Alps and Pyrenees have such an effect.

As it is, northern India is somewhat comparable to the southern US except that the southeastern United States gets severe cold snaps and more winter rains. Should those cold snaps (and the rains that go with them) vanish, then the US from Oklahoma to North Carolina become better analogues of northern India, with all of Florida and the Gulf Coast becoming truly tropical. Monsoon conditions would become the norm in the southeastern United States. Pine forests might disappear in favor of what look like the deciduous forests of New England. Changing leaf colors would indicate the advent of winter -- but winter not so much as a time of cold as of drought.

So how would Dallas differ? Winter would be warm in the absence of the infamous "blue northers" that can drop temperatures from 85F to 25F within a day. 85F on a January day would be more the norm than the exception, and an occasional cold snap might give an occasional chilly day with a high around 55F. Because Pacific storms would be shunted farther north, Mediterranean-style rains characteristic of southern California would completely disappear. Winter would be dry. As it is, temperatures closely follow the path of the sun in northeastern Texas -- and so it would still be. February would be unpleasantly warm, March simply hot, and April -- brutal. I have seen travel brochures from the Indian government, and they discourage people from traveling to India in the spring -- the hottest time there. Winter is OK -- it's about like Spain, Italy, or California's Central Valley in the summer... "it's a dry heat".

Some time in May the winds start shifting, and temperatures decrease a bit while humidity increases. Around the middle of June, the monsoons start. Rains push people inside. In September the rains subside. October warms up a little, November and December getting chillier by the standards of a warmer world, but still decidedly warm.

One of the scenarios that I looked at shows an expansion of severe desert into areas that now have borderline Mediterranean climates. If that one holds for southern California (Fresno and San Bernardino getting genuine desert vegetation) then just think of what happens in Spain, Italy, and Greece. West-coast areas still get enough rain to become steppe, but I could easily imagine climate change doing to the "Zionist entity" what Arab military efforts could never do: drive the "Zionists" into the sea (or to places where Jews used to live in large numbers, like Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania). Of course terrain that resembles northwestern Saudi Arabia wouldn't be much of an 'inheritance'.

I recalled a book - The Real Future - which suggested that the real future of the "Zionists" is in New York.

Discussion of novel climates seem mainly about the tropics and the polar regions.

What if cooling schemes should manage to preserve these climates by keeping the average global temperature down? Cooling efforts may concentrate in non-polar, non-tropical latitudes. For example, the continental interior of the USA, over the western states. Or ocean sprays to cool southeastern Australia, southern South Africa, etc. Would these efforts have strange side effects, resulting in novel climates, or novel microclimates, in these countries?