Michael Tobis, editor-in-chief of Planet3.0 and site cofounder, has always been interested in the interface between science and public policy. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences where he developed a 3-D ocean model on a custom computing platform. He has been involved in sustainability conversations on the internet since 1992, has been a web software developer since 2000, and has been posting sustainability articles on the web since 2007.
Thanks, that would be great. It’s pretty much the same as my first question in my post over at Wired.BTW, it occurred to me that the timing is right for it to be caused by the war in Afghanistan. Wouldn’t that be a screamingly “politically unacceptable” model?
Nope, sorry. The short answer is that climate models don’t act like that, and we don’t know to what extent the world that we are modeling does.That is a darned fine question, though. I’ll try to ponder a better answer.
I don’t get it. I would expect any valid climate model to be full of “tipping points”. I’d visualize a vast network of them interacting in overlapping positive and negative feedback loops.Isn’t that the way the real thing operates?
Nope, that’s the point of the graph. We won’t know for sure how important this is for a couple of years. Perhaps the curve will revert to the predicted slope, or even to the predicted line. On the other hand, there is no denying that it has an ominous look. Barring an equally peculiar bounce back in the next couple of years, it’s something that people who don’t like the concept of ‘tipping points” will have to account for.This also reinforces my long held point that the consensus is more or less equally likely to understate as to overstate risks. Understated risks being more severe than overstated risks, they should have more weight in our decisions.
Sure looks like an inflection point to me. Do any of the models (IPCC or otherwise) predict an inflection point here?