{"id":15289,"date":"2015-12-15T08:38:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T13:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15289"},"modified":"2015-12-15T08:39:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T13:39:08","slug":"some-long-term-climate-scenarios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15289","title":{"rendered":"Some long term climate scenarios"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some long term climate scenarios<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Scenarios are not predictions, just ways of describing possible futures; useful in order to be prepared for unexpected events. The only rule in scenario building is that the assumptions should not be too improbable; such as involving time machines. And, yet, it seems that in some cases involving climate projections,\u00a0time machines are a built-in assumption<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
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The COP21 conference in Paris has brought again climate to the attention of the public and, from now on, there starts the real challenge: what can we really expect for the future of the earth’s climate? As always, predictions are difficult, especially when there are many variables involved. Nevertheless, climate change is the result of physical factors that we can understand and we know that the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – if it continues – is going to lead us to a very unpleasant future.<\/p>\n

If we look at the long-term future, the whole question rotates on whether we manage to stay below an increase in temperature that is believed to be “safe” (it might be 2 degrees C, but we don’t know for sure), or we pass the limit and we find ourselves above the\u00a0“climate tipping point”<\/a>\u00a0after which the system starts moving by itself toward more and more warming with all the associated disasters.<\/p>\n

So, I thought I might engage in a little exercise of qualitative “scenario building” with a special focus on climate. Here are some scenarios; listed in no particular order. Some you could see as horrible, some as unlikely, others as overoptimistic. But they are just that: scenarios. The COP21 was a step in the right direction. Avoiding the worst outcomes will not be easy, but it is up to us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some long term climate scenarios Scenarios are not predictions, just ways of describing possible futures; useful in order to be prepared for unexpected events. The only rule in scenario building is that the assumptions should not be too improbable; such as involving time machines. And, yet, it seems that in some cases involving climate projections,\u00a0time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5328,10777,141,11045,10451,2725,11046,2692],"class_list":["post-15289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-assumptions","tag-cassandras-legacy","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-scenarios","tag-cop21","tag-predictions","tag-scenario-building","tag-ugo-bardi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15291,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15289\/revisions\/15291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}