Climate change and risk

I don't know what's gone wrong in the last couple of months, but the Guardian has started seeming more balanced to me than ever before, at least if you ignore its columnists. The Australian, on the other hand, seems to have decided to play up the Wheat Board Scandal in its headlines as much as possible, and even had an editorial go at John Howard for comments on the old "children overboard" affair. (Incidentally, I share Slattsnews take on this.) Odd times indeed.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to note a Guardian article on global warning which notes the recent dispute over some scientists warning that global warming could be worse than previously expected:

The three previous reports assumed that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase average global temperature by between 1.5 and 4.5C. Since then, computer models have foreseen increases as high as 11C, and some scientists wanted the naturally conservative IPCC to raise the upper end of the range. Others said such a move would be increase would be misleading and alarmist.

According to sources who have seen it, the draft now assumes a doubling of carbon dioxide would cause a likely temperature rise of between 2 and 4.5C, but says higher increases are possible.

Look on the bright side: with an 11 degree increase, Australians are particularly well placed to take advantage of the new beach side estates to be sold in Antartica.

But, how likely such massive increases may occur is more to the point, and there is some scepticism about this:

James Annan, a British climate scientist who works on the Japanese Earth simulator supercomputer in Yokohama, says the risks of extreme climate sensitivity and catastrophic consequences have been overstated. He is about to publish a study showing that the chance of climate sensitivity exceeding 4.5C is less than 5%. He said: "It seems to me that some people seem to be talking up the possibility of disaster in order to scare people into doing something."

But, for large possible disasters, there is this to consider:

Dave Stainforth, a climate modeller at Oxford University, said: "This is something of a hot topic but it comes down to what you think is a small chance - even if there's just a half per cent chance of destruction of society, I would class that as a very big risk."

Well, this is exactly the point that James Bodgett makes in his criticisms of the risk assessment CERN has done about how they may soon be creating mini black holes that could, if Hawking Radiation does not work, sink into the core of the earth. No one (meaning no physicist) seems to have done any detailed work on this a risk assessment issue. Yet, why can't Blodgett convince anyone to take this issue seriously? For those who may be new to this site due to Tim Blair's mention of it - please have a look at my long post on the CERN issue here.