Book contents
- Climate Rationality
- Climate Rationality
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Costs of Precautionary Policy
- Part II The Other Side of the Story
- 10 But Is It True?
- 11 “Born in Politics”
- 12 Settling Science and Propagandizing for Action
- 13 Recent Observed Climate Change in Longer-Term Perspective
- 14 Beyond CO2
- 15 Projecting Future Climate from Computer Models and Far, Far Distant Earth History
- 16 The Precautionary Social Cost of Carbon
- Part III Toward Rational Climate Policy
- References
- Index
15 - Projecting Future Climate from Computer Models and Far, Far Distant Earth History
from Part II - The Other Side of the Story
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2021
- Climate Rationality
- Climate Rationality
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Costs of Precautionary Policy
- Part II The Other Side of the Story
- 10 But Is It True?
- 11 “Born in Politics”
- 12 Settling Science and Propagandizing for Action
- 13 Recent Observed Climate Change in Longer-Term Perspective
- 14 Beyond CO2
- 15 Projecting Future Climate from Computer Models and Far, Far Distant Earth History
- 16 The Precautionary Social Cost of Carbon
- Part III Toward Rational Climate Policy
- References
- Index
Summary
IPCC projections about future climate are based primarily on the computer models of the earth’s coupled oceanic and atmospheric circulation system that I discussed earlier in Chapter 14. As we have seen, these models manage to reproduce industrial era temperature change only by tuning the way they parameterize – numerically approximate – certain crucial but poorly understood physical processes, in particular how clouds respond to a CO2-induced warming. The models’ one clear testable prediction about the present-day impact of rising CO2 – that tropical tropospheric temperatures should be rising more than surface temperatures – has not been consistently confirmed. And over the course of most of our present climate ear, the Holocene, work is conflicting on whether temperature has been rising along with CO2.
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- Climate RationalityFrom Bias to Balance, pp. 442 - 467Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021