Actually, that construction on impacts is not quite right. These days dynamic equilibrium is out, and metastable, oscillating and chaotic are better descriptions of various states in complex systems. You’re right about high variability but this does not mean that large shifts in such systems are required to produce mass extinctions etc. It depends on how close that system is to a critical threshold or change of state. The rapidity of a shift is also important. Under global warming, many of the extremes will be shifted with the mean (the whole envelope of variability shifts) meaning that new extremes can result in signficant vulnerability.

You’re right to observe that some systems are resilient, but others aren’t. The “this has always happened to natural systems so they’re not vulnerable” is very close to one of the arguments that Plimer, for one, is running. The IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report (www.ipcc.ch and follow the links) contains many reasons as to why this is not a sound assumption. Many human systems are also not resilient to even small shifts. The European heat wave in 2003, recent extreme fires in SE Australia, and communities vulnerable to glacier instability are good examples.

What I think you’re seeing in the media is a conservative view that all observed changes are bad. Often a better ecological and environmental understanding can help interpret whether this is true or not – and sometimes we just don’t know.

Humans are one of the most adaptable pests on the planet, but many of our systems that exist in large variability today appear to be quite vulnerable to even small shifts. Water infrastructure in south-eastern Australia is a further example (I’m not attributing these shifts – just using them as illustrations).

I don’t think you’ll find too many assumptions of static equilibrium in the serious refereed literature. Surviving examples should be dwindling and should be rejected unless a transparent assumption is made because dynamic methods are not available.

I, too, get the dead tree version but I can’t resist browsing the website too since once I read the magazine the news is generally 2 weeks old anyway.

BTW: I think it bears emphasising that natural systems are in dynamic equilibrium; a state which copes with variations; often quite wide and/ or quite large and/or quite sudden. (As an example) Some European migrants to Australia had to cope with a very rapid shift from very cold to very hot climates: earlier settlers who moved from “Little Ice Age” UK, striking tropical heat usually within a month of leaving England, and Sydney’s blazing “Foundation Drought” summers within 10 months; German Kulturkampf migrants who came from mountainous German states to live in Brisbane’s Turkish Bath summers (Nundah). Horror stories about the fatal effects of rising global temperatures, therefore, ignore the fact that many of our own migrant’s stories show that humans adapt to much greater & more sudden climate change. Animals they brought with them – horses, sheep, cattle, dogs, cats, rabbits, foxes, deer, birds, fish etc – also rapidly adapted to the same hotter climate (too bl*ody well, in many cases).

One of the flaws I find in much CC “research” (and almost all hysterical beat-ups) is a false assumption that natural systems are in static equilibrium and that comparatively small and slow global warming will lead to mass extinctions; when all around them in Australia is overwhelming evidence that this is not so.

BilB, my stuff isn’t that good. And I have a day job, kind of.

Andos, I usually leave the antics of the Oz to Deltoid and others. But this one seemed relevant to other stuff I was interested in.

Thanks for the link. I get the dead tree version of the new Scientist. I swear there is more on the internet site than they print.

DeeCee, I looked at the Hansen article last year in relation to sea level change.

Thanks for the link to the Antarctic sea ice growth and the ozone hole. I’ve added an image of the September 2008 maximum at the end of the post above from the NSIDC in Colorado. I’m not sure what the controversy is. The overall sea ice growth isn’t much and it is reducing around West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, which are the areas of concern. And where the land ice is losing mass. What the Andrill research is telling us, it seems to me, is that the WAIS can collapse completely while the EAIS is relatively intact.

See also my Wilkins ice bridge post Figures 8a and 9.

I’d like to do a post on corals when I get time to research it more. From memory Ken Caldeira said that after each major extinction event corals took 4 million years to grow back into substantial reefs. So they are both fragile and adaptable and must have existed or at least survived in seas more acidic than the present.

Here is what I said to Philip Sutton in an email about the Andrill work:

I haven’t been so exercised about 120 ky because it’s one example (when sea level was perhaps 4-6m higher). I am exercised about this long record because it describes the rule rather than a potential exception. I’ve been telling people I usually don’t get scared by research but staring at the possibility of losing both Greenland and the WAIS this century is not good.

To add a further note – the lot would not go this century but both could be far enough advanced that to stop it would be like trying to stop a bus with a tennis racquet.

The 400-450 ppm ice free scenario for the West Antarctic shelf (if we stabilised there) would, I think, be a slow process compared to a much warmer scenario because of the lag in feedback and warming processes. Melting may be avoidable in an overshoot scenario that hits 480-500 then drops substantially because of this lag. The 480-500 is the best we could do at the moment, without a global shift in a decade effort. However, none of this has been tested with good scientific models. The climate models are up to testing this, but not the ice sheet models (yet) with any confidence.

Anything we do from here (including nothing) is a massive gamble. Our policymakers should wake up to this fact.

Black carbon (‘black soot’) has a high global warming potential (approx. 2000, 500 and 200 for 20, 100 and 500 years, respectively) and deserves greater attention.

Appended is an excellent bibliography.

There is also a series of “for Joe Public” (but still good) reviews of Antarctic ice & Climate Change on the ABC’s website (my link through Antarctic ice growth linked to ozone hole )

A quick review of current theories at every level from “top Class A international” to “for Joe Public” indicates that to say there are multiple, well-substantiated viewpoints on both “ice growing” and “ice melting” theories is a gross understatement! The jury is still out is the most accurate assessment, unless one is a disciple of a specific point of view.

Since 2004, there has also been a growing volume of research on coral re-growth (new & ancient) as temperatures rise (including rapid temperature rises), especially in Qld’s and the Caribbean’s tropical reefs. Like the Antarctic Ice debate, there are rigorous studies to show how resiliently coral adapts, even in rapid temperature rises; as there are equally serious studies of “doomed” coral. Far more than the Antarctic ice debate, this is descending into abusive, especially from “true believers” in the latter. The former has been supported by studies published this year, eg

Science Show – 28-February-2009

An excerpt from Jeremy Jackson’s presentation at the AAAS meeting in Chicago. He explains that coral reefs that are protected from fishing and pollution runoff are more resilient to environmental stress. They still are bleached by warm water, but they bou[nce back}
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2009/2503500.htm – 28 Feb 2009

Then there’s ‘Lucky escape’ for Barrier Reef coral

Some badly-damaged corals have repaired themselves and the recovery has happened almost 10 times faster than usual.

I read a similar one re research into cores of ancient Caribbean reefs with similar findings (?Huffington Post), but forgot to bookmark it & can’t find it.

As with the Antarctic ice controversy, the jury is still out on coral reefs, and whether global warming will see them adapt & regrow as the climate warms, or bleached & destroyed.

I was waiting for this post, after reading this article the other week. It is comforting… in a kind of “wow, sea levels will rise twice as fast as forecast over the next 100 years, but at least we shouldn’t end up in Waterworld(tm)” way.

On a completely OT topic, did you also see this article about solar storm predictions (following up on another of your recent ‘Doom’ threads). Now all we need is some kind of globally organised response protocol to protect our fragile power grids with less than 24 hours notice…