What is the biggest constraint on reducing climate uncertainties?

Question

Many uncertainties about how the planet will react to a future anthropogenic warming still exist. It is of critical importance that we reduce these uncertainties as much as possible and as fast as possible. So what do you believe is holding us back the most?

Is it lack of sufficient computing power? Lack of observational data? Lack of brain power (e.g. fundamental theory)? Something else?

Phrased differently: If you had $50 million to put towards the sole goal of reducing the uncertainty of one specific climate variable, how would you spend it? And which specific uncertainty would your investment aim to tackle?

Answer 1

The biggest uncertainties is does anthropogenic warming actually exist to start with. So far the evidence says no. It only exists in fudged temperature numbers.

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/thermometer-magic/

http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Summary.htm

Answer 2

I think that the most certain aspect is the globe is warming - we have observational evidence of that and can't think of one scientist that doesn't recognize this.



Less certain is what climate changes will result from the warming, but that is more certain than the biological response. The response of the ocean is especially important because of the influence the ocean has on climate, and the reliance of human welfare on ocean health. Lots of links from food to oxygen to storms.



Economic impact is also very uncertain and also affects human welfare. If natural resources become strained, this will have a huge economic impact and impact human welfare.



I'm going to say spend 30 million to reduce uncertainty about ecosystem reaction (specifically oceans) to climate changes, and spend $20 to determine exactly how climates will change. I split it because it is a chicken-egg problem - we have to know about one before we can understand the other. The split in favor of ecosystem research is because ecosystems and their relationship to climate seems more complex than the physics of climate change is some aspects. After these uncertainties are addressed, the economic uncertainty will be reduced. I think he major problem with ecosystem impacts is good observational data that we understand well enough to form some fundamental theories.



You realize that you are only talking about as much money as BP spent of cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico. It is a quarter of 2 worth of profits from Exxon. That much money can make a huge difference in research, but is very little in the scheme of things. However, you will hear a lot of complaining if governments actually spent $50 million over a couple of years to understand and reduce a threat to humanity. Think about how sad that is!

Answer 3

There are at least 3 things I can think of right away (and these are economic and social constraints, not scientific), and not necessarily in this order:



1) The disconnect.



Too many of us do not realize that the way we are living is unsustainable in many ways. Even if this is because we fear the loss of our earth shattering livelehoods, we should not disregard the intelligence that is telling us that we need to change the path we are on and we need to do it now...

A geologist can look at maps of ancient seabeds and land masses radically different than today's world and say, "My goodness, it is very possible that we really are heading in this direction a lot faster than we thought if we don't do something now- nothing alarmist about, these are just facts.", while the rest of us think this is "normal" and we should just blindly accept it...not ! We all really need look at the bizarre things happening these days (deadly and unprecedented heatwaves, forest fires, permafrost melt, river flooding, coastal flooding, glacier disappearance, ice cap recession, desertification, etc...) and know that these things really aren't natural. There are things we can do to halt and reverse these deadly and unprecedented global events and trends and we need to do these things now...



2 )The lack of resources and lack of ability to change entrenched habits



Most probably a vast majority of people are "stuck" in their current way of life and lack the resources to fully embrace moving over to a "green" way a living, and are limited to taking baby steps, like changing over to more efficient light bulbs, and buying alternative, hybrid and electric modes of transportation. If many more people could discover the numerous benefits of sustainable living and that sustainable living can be equally and more comfortable that their current way of living and even profitable, I think many more people would embrace it.



3) The lack of size of projects being done now...



There are a lot of things being done now to at least reduce any man made global warming, however, it appears that these things may not be enough, or are not being done on a grand enough scale. Imagine if just one or two very large metropolitan areas (suburbs included) discovered a way to eliminate the heat island that they create, implemented this discovery and proved to the rest of the world that it is possible to solve the problem of global warming, regardless of whether it is man made, natural or some combination. I can see the ad now: "Wanted: One or two very large metropolitan areas to reach the goal of heat island elimination. Cost: $50million (grant provided), Revenue: in the billions



Imagine that. The implications of the benefits that would result are enormous - worth many times more that the $50 million used to solve these problems...





The idea here is that you could have all the scientific data disproving any uncertainties, but unless you show people on their level, a socio-economic level, and in the things they deal with on a daily basis, all the science in the world isn't going to convince them...

Answer 4

I think it is all of the above. We lack sufficient computing power. We lack sufficient observational data. We lack sufficient understanding of how all the different factors interact. We probably haven't even figured out what some of the factors are. We don't know if many factors are positive or negative. I would spend my money on looking at how ancient climates behaved with different conditions. We need more and better proxies that are more precise. We need to understand the effects of all ranges of solar radiation and magnetism. We need to understand the role of water and how it redistributes heat. We need a better understanding of the ocean and currents. You suggest there is an uncertainty to how the planet will react. There is an extreme uncertainty to how much warming is due to people. If you can't even define that with any degree of certainty, than trying to figure out the effects is a fool's errand.

Answer 5

Putting aside the collection of data and research to refine our understanding of climate changes for the moment-which is the main physical constraint-I think it is the deliberate blocking of education and dialogue on the topic by organizations and individuals with agendas both economic and political. You can see it day in and day out here at Y/A, and it seems more and more to me that this place is a microcosm of a microcosm in society, that social microcosm being the idealogical extremes that think they have all the answers while really having none.



Pretty much everyone that I talk to and know in real life has a much more balanced outlook and rather than having their minds made up are seeking more information so they can make informed decisions on their own behavior-and when they cast their votes, which is really and for the most part the only influence we as individuals have on how we respond to the information we have available to us.



We need to educate ourselves and each other, and to me that is the biggest constraint on how we reduce climate uncertainties. The people who claim to know all the answers here and elsewhere don't and in my opinion are a bigger problem than climate change itself.



EDIT: You can see the social microcosm I'm talking about in action from the responses to this very question: there are a lot of people who believe that we have a serious environmental problem, there are a lot of other people who believe we have a serious political problem, and nobody really knows what to do about either one-but either one has the potential to do mankind harm. Nobody really knows how MUCH harm, but we aren't really talking about it. What we have instead are people blocking the dialogue which will help us decide on a reasonable course of action, and the people who are obstructing resolution of the problem-whether one considers it environmental or political-don't really have enough information about the consequences of either environmental or political action. We have to educate people-ourselves included even if we think we have all the answers-because nobody really knows what to do. You know, it's NOT a joke, even if the science is flawed-there are policies being set and planned that will affect us all long term. And we have people who are deliberately disrupting the process, claiming that they KNOW the truth, and even making inane jokes in their ignorance. Nice.

Answer 6

yes even Stephen Hawking thing so. Climate change is a bigger threat to life on this planet. go watch "The 11th Hour" or read "Save the Planet by Voting."

Answer 7

The Human life span - it's the boiling frog syndrome. The warming happens too slowly for the frog to notice, it goes to sleep and boils to death. Climate change happens over geologic spans of time. Humans are simply to ephemeral to be able to notice climate change in our short life-spans. So we descend into argument over whether the average temperature increased by 0.6 degrees over the last century or whether that is within the statistical error margin of zero. So lets spend the $50 million on collecting and preserving the data for the next 1000 years, by which time any trend, or lack thereof will be clear. There will almost certainly be nothing we could honestly call proof of climate change in our life-times.

Answer 8

I was going to say clouds and water vapour but Dana beat me to it!



As for a time machine, yeah great, but better to just go forwards and see what happened, then if it was wrong, not do it!



... er, except that we couldn't alter the future as our time machine would be part of the past that the future was built on. First rule of time travel; you can't change what's happened! Still, at least we would know what we were in for. We could pick up a paper with a good sports section while we were there!



... now where did I put that paracetamol?

Answer 9

While I won't claim it to be one of the biggest uncertainties, I think projections of global carbon flux (as scaled up from ecosystem and regional models) are subject to an enormous amount of error for several reasons.



1. Many global carbon models assign a single leaf area index (m^2 leaf area per m^2 ground area) to all ecosystems. Obviously the wet-lowland rain forest differs dramatically from the Sonoran desert.



2. Long term studies on ecosystem responses to changes in CO2 concentration are lacking in numbers and the ones that are out there show conflicting results that are even further skewed by an abundance of confounding factors in the experimental design.



3. Photosynthetic capacity is not currently assumed to fluctuate throughout the growing season. However new evidence shows this isn't true. These findings will have serious implications in global carbon models as lower carbon fixation at the beginning and end of the growing season will dramatically alter model feedback responses.



The fact of the matter is, at vegetative levels, far too many assumptions are made in an attempt to unify plant and atmosphere interactions. While unification may be acceptable in physical systems with little natural variation, this is obviously not the case with living systems.



If I was in charge of $50 million in grant money to address these uncertainties I would focus more strongly remote sensing technology in an effort to bypass the errors achieved in scaling up from individual organism to ecosystem, regional and global scales.

Answer 10

Simple, it doesn't work because global warming doctrine is simply a lie, that's why they have huge budget for propaganda to keep it alive.



If i have 50 million$ i surely buy gold, we all know global warming issue is hocus pocus.

Answer 11

I'm going to say observational data. It seems to me that it's hard to identify, hard to collect, hard to adjust and hard to interpret. And if I had $50M to help out, I'm not even sure how to improve the situation. The timescales involved and the precision needed seems daunting.



So I can't see how certainty can be improved until we have a firm grasp of good observational data which would allow us to hypothesize more accurately.



It may also turn out that long range climate forecasting is as chaotic as short term weather forecasting so there might not be anything we could about predicting it even if we poured all the money in the world into studying it.

Answer 12

The shear number of those uncertainties, for one. As variables are loaded into models, the uncertainties compound causing divergence.



Regarding the variables, we don't even know all of them yet. The ones we do know about are not all that well quantified.



Regarding the models, we don't know how a shift in certain variables affects the other variables.



All this uncertainty yields a useless predictor.



“Give me four parameters, and I can fit an elephant. Give me five, and I can wiggle its trunk"---John Von Neumann.



Also, think of the "Butterfly Effect". A very small shift in a single parameter (variable) can yield big results over time.

Answer 13

This is one of the best questions I have seen from an AGW supporter but with all due respect we would be easier and better investing the money trying to invent a time machine as this way we could zip back and forth in time to collect actual data otherwise it will always be crystal ball stuff as there are an unlimited amount of variables that can interact in almost unlimited ways.

Answer 14

I'd use the 50 million to open up a prison, to put all the deniers and sufferers from know-nothingism. Ignore the uncertainties, The Science, is settled, burn the infadels. 50 million just might get them all in one spot then we'll push them off the edge of the flat earth, hahaha! I mean muahhahhahhaha!

Answer 15

Time

Answer 16

What is the biggest constraint on reducing climate uncertainties?

right wing climate denial ideology leading to a shortage of money.



we need observational data. in particular satellite data of black carbon and ice mass.

sadly, it's mostly down to nasa to collect it (although the e.u.'s envisat has some briliant kit) and they are dependant on u.s. politicians for money, so we are a few vehicles short of ideal.





wow, talking of data collection, check this out; using diving narwhals to collect deep ocean temperature readings in the arctic. what fun!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19658-arctic-narwhals-reveal-climatemodel-errors.html

Answer 17

Spending money on agw is a waste of money. So I guess I'd take the 50 million and buy a really nice coal-burning yacht.



The biggest constraint is the thickness of skulls of people who have decided their agenda and run around looking for evidence to support it.

Answer 18

Two of the largest uncertainties are in the forcing from aerosols and the feedbacks from clouds and water vapor. These also play a role in our uncertainty regarding climate sensitivity, which is one of the more important parameters for us to understand.



One problem is that we don't have very good cloud cover data, so I'd put some money into that. And I'd put some other money toward studying the effects of aerosols, both direct and indirect.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century-advanced.htm



*edit* the denier answers are quite revealing. They either answer "nothing", meaning that they're completely closed-minded and nothing will convince them that the AGW theory is correct, or "everything", meaning they basically think we know nothing about the climate. Two deniers want us to use the money collecting data to demonstrate that humans are causing global warming - a fact for which an immense amount of evidence has already been collected.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm



If you're not convinced by that evidence, no amount of evidence will convince you, so you're just wasting the $50 million.



I like Richie's answer best - let's just invest the money in inventing a time machine. That's perhaps the best exemplification of the denier Bizarro fantasyworld I've seen in a while.

Answer 19

I would put my money into studies concerning aerosols and their association with a warming atmosphere, what effect they would have, etc... I think this uncertainty deals with a lack of observational data. I mean sure we can do tests on a small or regional scale or make observations on limited time scales as to the effect more aerosols has in the atmosphere but the climate is a large area full of, as you stated, uncertainties. While every year brings us closer and closer to understanding the effects of aerosols in a warming atmosphere I'm sure it will be many more before we understand them completely.