It's Official.

The scientific world is, finally, actually saying right out loud: "Global 'warming' is here; now; faster and worse than we thought."  James Hansen, the most visible of the mainstream scientists who have been willing to stake their careers on plain speaking, is speaking plainly again today in The Washington Post.  So; that's headline news, right?  Top feature?  Nah, you have to go dig on the Opinion page; and of course, they provide "balanced coverage", with a counter-opinion; from the Editor (idiotors) of the Post.

For those who've been reading this blog for a while; you'll remember I tried to point this out in 2007; scientific "best practices" will cause systemic underestimates for this problem.  And that's a really big problem.

If you've been dithering about changing your life to adapt; I think it's time to stop dithering.

re-pre occupied

Flooding.  Again; here.  For those not aware, last fall we lost our walking tractor in the floods (a 20 year old Mainline, worked fine).  But it wasn't on our farm; it was in town, undergoing pre-harvest maintenance; and the water came over the dikes, so that, and our other commercial mower (17 hp diesel) were totally underwater for 3 days.  Not worth fixing.

This time, the new Grillo is under a roof, on our farm; and oddly enough I didn't build anything here on flood plain; so it's perfectly safe.

Our neighbors are not, however; rain's still falling, scheduled to do so for another 24 hours.  We've had a measly 4" so far; to the south, they've had 10 so far-

We did spend an hour in the root cellar last night- tornado warning; the real thing, and tracking right towards us.  It missed, though I haven't been over the farm yet to see what-all happened. busy busy! Hey, the DSL is still working!

I'm feeling bad for the neighbors.  All their newly planted corn and beans are going to be under water or washed out, with deep gullies cut in the newly plowed fields sitting there naked in the rain.  My own fields will be unaffected; but the creek down in our valley is now running high and dark brown, carrying the neighbors' soil away.

Traditional row crop agriculture is now going to be much less tenable, as global warming proceeds, for a flock of reasons.  You hear about drought, and change, as problems; but the one I see as devastating is the great increase in torrential rainfall- the rapid runoff cuts right through those nice "conservation tillage" practices; cutting gullies, stripping soil.  

Farmers find those gullies embarrassing; a sign of poor stewardship- so mostly they tend to hide them.  Plow over, pretend it never happened.  But that soil is now gone, forever.  And the fertility.

Farm exports!  For decades, we've crowed that we feed the world!  The strength of our wonderful farm economy! 

Apart from any quibbles about that- what we actually export, when we ship soybean oil to China is- our soil.  Our children's future.

Now, faster than ever; much faster.

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So, after getting out, during a break in the rain- hey, we've got a foot of water in the "root cellar"- also the storm cellar, and our seed cellar- not good.  Got a little electric pump running on the backup generator- but it's a major pain.  The cellar is like on the top of a hill- should it be flooding?  Heck no- but the ground is so wet it's sheeting off; and it is finding its way down the entryway (which was badly designed; long story).

Other than that- it's wet, the food garden is fine; we've got a ton of frogs singing in the pond that were quiet yesterday; trees are fine except for a few showing leaf damage from high storm winds hitting soft new leaves.

never a dull.

Why it's worse than they thought-

This is important, so I'm going to repeat it; good story today from the BBC; Arctic Melting Faster Than Predicted. "This is the third time in the last few months that studies have suggested the IPCC's latest major global climate analysis, the Fourth Assessment Report, is too conservative."

You'll hear that refrain frequently now. The crux of this particular story is the heavyweight climate modelers are saying they're puzzled about why their intensely careful models are always UNDER estimating the problems.

Here; at least in part, is WHY; and this is NOT a factor they recognize, or are dealing with. And it's quite serious.
Not Refrigerators

The relevant bit starts about in the middle of the post.

For all the training our PhD's go through (and I've been through) - there are very few who are trained in genuine "oversight" of other researchers' thought processes. Very few indeed.

Not refrigerators

They tell me people have a short attention span these days- if it doesn't come in little sound bites, then they can't hear it.

Not that I believe that really - but I do think it's true that everyone hears things better if it's not hammered at them constantly. So, to take a little side trip from the refrigerator today, we just have to look at the headlines.

US & China Bully IPCC

Basically, those two old chums, the USA and China, went together to "soften" some of the language in the latest statement being released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change- you know, the one that's generated all the "billions will suffer" headlines in the last couple days.

You mean the reality is worse than they said?

Oh, yeah.

Decision making processes, individual, joint, societal- have always been a major interest of mine; I've studied them. We have a very serious problem as a planet- since we have no real planetary government, and the individual governments are generally equipped with the brains and morals of hyenas. (A hyena skull, just in case you've never held one, is made of massive dense bone; good anchors for muscles designed to crack bones for marrow; and a remarkably small brain case. It weighs like twice what a lion skull does. Yeah, yeah, I know, the Discovery Channel has discovered that hyenas are good mothers. Doesn't change much here.)

Have you heard this line recently- "Scientists expressed surprise that the climate changes they've been predicting are in fact showing up much faster, and with bigger amplitudes, than expected."?

It's a pretty easy statement to find.

IF ANYONE WERE PAYING ATTENTION to the deliberations (they're not, really) - NOBODY WOULD BE SURPRISED.

Because. Good scientists are, always, very careful not to "overstate" their findings. In the course of one calculation, what this means is they go through a process of estimating forces, quantities, etc. Do they overestimate? Never never- very bad for the reputation. You always pick a number that is "conservative." Take your best measurement - and ROUND DOWN. Ditto for the next number in the equation.

So what happens when you multiply a conservative estimate by a conservative estimate by a conservative estimate by a conservative estimate by a conservative estimate by a conservative estimate?

Mathematically speaking - YOU WILL GET AN ->UNDER<- ESTIMATE. Every time. And when you then add an underestimate from Study A, to an underestimate from Study B, to ...

Then; on top of it all - you have the bullies out there fighting to cover their own hyena behinds- forcing the language softer and softer.

You didn't want to know this; or hear this- but yeah; global warming is worse than anyone's been saying or admitting.

So go unplug your fridge now. :-)