climate change dispatch logo climate change dispatch logo small

New Study Just Threw Cold Water On Worst-Case Global Warming Scenarios

A new study by a team of climatologists “all but rules out” the worst-case “doomsday” U.N. climate change scenarios, significantly narrowing the range of the possible temperature increases, while also eliminating the low-end predictions.

The study’s findings, said one leading expert, are “reassuring,” though scientists still warn that potentially “significant” changes are coming.

“Our study all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities,” University of Exeter’s Peter Cox, the study’s lead author, said.

The U.N.’s worst-case predictions of an increase of 4.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 are almost certainly too high, Cox and his colleagues found.

Rather than the widely variable range of 1.5 – 4.5 ºC (2.7 – 8.1 ºF) promoted by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the new study predicts much narrower change ranges of 2.2 – 3.4 ºC (4 – 6.1 ºF).

The study’s best estimate is that global temperatures will change by 2.8 ºC (5 ºF) by 2100.

“If accurate, it precludes the most destructive doomsday scenarios,” AFP notes. The outlet cites two experts that welcome the results of the “more accurate estimate”:

“These scientists have produced a more accurate estimate of how the planet will respond to increasing CO2 levels,” said Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds.

Gabi Hegerl, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh who, like Forster, did not take part in the research, added: “Having lower probability for very high sensitivity is reassuring.Very high sensitivity would have made it extremely hard to limit climate change according to the Paris targets.”

Scientists admit that attempting to determine the “known unknown” of “equilibrium climate sensitivity” requires accounting for a wide range of notoriously difficult-to-predict factors, including, as Cox notes, the climate “tipping points,” rapid changes in the climate that have occurred historically caused by the planet itself rather than predictable external factors.

As MIT atmospheric physician Richard Lindzen explains in the video below, all the variables, or “known unknowns,” make accurate predictions about the climate “impossible” — a reality the IPCC admitted in its 2007 report, which stated, “The long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

Here’s Lindzen discussing the science (and politics) behind climate change models:

Read more at Daily Wire

Comments (7)

  • Avatar

    Spurwing Plover

    |

    And CNN the Fake News Network is calling Trump Stupid for rejecting the Paris Accord well CNN is Stupid,Stupid,Stupid and its still owned by Red Ted Turner who brainwashed kids with crap like Captain Planet and the Planeteers as well as Network Earth and National Geographic Explorer

  • Avatar

    Barry Brill

    |

    There are two schools on the value of ECS – the modelers and the empiricists. Both finally agree that 4deg is the upper bound of probability.
    Now, they need to try to work out their differences regarding the lower bound.

  • Avatar

    Sonnyhill

    |

    I’d give credit to the oceans. The Great Lakes have a moderating effect where I live. Considering that Earth’s surface area is predominantly ocean, things can’t get too far out of hand. Evaporation absorbs huge amounts of heat and carries it to the top of the troposphere.

    • Avatar

      John

      |

      You are absolutely right. The huge amount of water and the rotation of the planet keeps the temperature almost perfectly constant at around 288 kelvin. The rotation around the Sun and the tilting of the planet creates seasons. Its amazing if you think about it.

  • Avatar

    Spurwing Plover

    |

    Someone please throw a bucket of ice cold water on Al Bore and Leonardo DiCaprio and wake up these fools

  • Avatar

    David Lewis

    |

    No one seemed to notice the trouble with the study is it assumes carbon dioxide is the main parameter controlling the earth’s temperature. That is not true. The best evidence is that the biggest controlling factor is solar activity, and carbon dioxide only has minor influence. If past solar cycles are repeated, we are in for cooling.

    Should this study have been correct, I would like to point out that the 2 degree limit was arrived at by pure politics. There is nothing to indicate that 2.8 degrees would be a problem.

  • Avatar

    Amber

    |

    Let’s see now who you going to believe a guy who claimed the earth has a fever or actual scientists ?
    Guess we don’t have to fret about Antarctica realtors selling beach front condo’s for a while . What a shame .

Comments are closed

Share via