Climate projection roulette wheel

May 20, 2009 10:35 AM

MIT has completed the most comprehensive computer climate model to date to project how much warming will occur in the 21st century. The biggest unknown is not nature, but human actions to address the problem. To illustrate the results of 400 simulations they use a roulette wheel display - which wheel is spun and where the ball stops no one knows.

The simulation uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model.

posted by stbalbach (31 comments total)

Their inability to tell left from right is making me feel really good about the quality of the simulation...
posted by DU at 10:37 AM on May 20, 2009 [4 favorites]

I had high hopes for that graphic, but it lacks punch. They should send it over to that agency who did the new Pepsi logo.
posted by hermitosis at 10:40 AM on May 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Is this about the fucking weather too?
posted by orme at 10:40 AM on May 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

no, orme, in the 21st century, weather fucks you
posted by pyramid termite at 10:46 AM on May 20, 2009 [9 favorites]

...You know, I get what they're saying here, but their color choice is a little disingenuous. My first thought seeing these was "whoa, temperatures are likely to drop by about 2°C with the policies?" because those sections of the wheel are icy blue, which to me says "colder". Maybe a scale of green (meaning no change) to red (meaning the most change) would've been less misleading. The left wheel would've been mostly yellowish, while the right one would be all scary orange and red.
posted by wanderingmind at 10:54 AM on May 20, 2009

The caption is incorrect in the first link. Heh, stupid MIT people.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:32 AM on May 20, 2009

I'm guessing the avoided green to avoid being automatically associated with "green label" marketing and all that phaf.
posted by AmberV at 11:34 AM on May 20, 2009

So, if no policy is put in place, the average estimated rise in temperature is about 5.25 degrees? Previous models based on a 3 degree increase estimated sea levels would rise by 0.9 to 1.3 meters (And that's revised up from a 59 cm increase estimated in 2007). So what's the real number? Is it linear (1.5 - 2 m rise), or is there a tipping point in there somewhere resulting in the greenland ice sheet completely melting and raising sea levels 5 meters?
posted by ShadowCrash at 12:02 PM on May 20, 2009

If the temps are +5.5 degrees, rising oceans are really a least concern. That's the Doomsday scenario. Six degrees:

Most sea life is dead. Human refuges now confined entirely to highland areas and the polar regions. Human population is drastically reduced. Perhaps 90% of species become extinct, rivalling the worst mass extinctions in the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history.

posted by stbalbach at 12:13 PM on May 20, 2009

Why this isn't in clickable flash with whoopass simulations no one knows.
posted by rahnefan at 12:22 PM on May 20, 2009

5.5 degrees kills most sea life? There's no adaptation due to strong selection pressure? ("evolutionary time" arguments don't really apply here for Beak of the Finch reasons)
posted by DU at 12:24 PM on May 20, 2009

I usually associate roulette wheels with loss.
posted by not_on_display at 12:24 PM on May 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

stbalbach, your link conflicts with other research I've seen (mostly from the May 2009 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summit). For example, your link says a rise of 2-3 degrees in temperature would lead to the greenland ice sheet completely disappearing, raising the sea level by 7 meters or so. Yet the IPCC pretty much agrees we won't keep temperature rise below 2 degrees, but estimates only a 1 meter rise in sea level. Why is Mark Lynas' prediction so out of line with the IPCC?
posted by ShadowCrash at 12:26 PM on May 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

wait, my right or their right (looking out of the browser i guess)? that looks correct to me.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 12:34 PM on May 20, 2009

Well according to their simulation by 2100 we'll be pretty much fucked either way assuming a 6 degrees increase means mass extinction.

I think these roulette wheels might be of the Russian variety.


Someone had to say it.
posted by Sargas at 12:38 PM on May 20, 2009

GIGO
posted by Crabby Appleton at 12:54 PM on May 20, 2009

ShadowCrash, aside from the very conservative nature of the IPCC scenarios (we are already outpacing the most recent worst case scenario for emissions growth), the IPCC horizon for sea level rise is only 2100, and doesn't attempt to take into account any dynamic model of ice sheet melt (to be fair, a good model of this simply doesn't exist). 2-3ºC warming is now pretty much the consensus threshold for keeping or losing the Greenland ice sheet over the long term, but how long this takes is anyone's guess. The IPCC assumes no dynamic changes to the ice sheet and uses only a static melting model, and acknowledges that this results in what is almost certainly an underestimate of sea level rise over 100 years for any given level of warming.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 1:01 PM on May 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

DU: ("evolutionary time" arguments don't really apply here for Beak of the Finch reasons)

That's a good idea, but if calcium-based plankton have not evolved to survive in pH 6.0 and below acidic shell-dissolving sea-water in the past billion years, they probably won't do it in 100 years. BotF is a great book, but those changes were sort of like changes one might see with dogs, a species with high variability of physical traits. Or Humans, with high variability of skin color, size, weight etc.. but animals are not that quickly adaptable when it comes to things like eating (say, plankton instead of fish), surviving in environments outside of historical range (say, the tropics instead of the arctic). Humans are an exception because of our brains, which got us into this mess to begin with.
posted by stbalbach at 1:05 PM on May 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

So we'll be living underground in inverted skyscrapers with wall-sized ultraTelevisions and neuroNet implants and we'll stay calm and cool while giant greenhouse domes overhead allow hydroponic mass production of food. What's not to love?

(goes outside to listen to the birds one last time)
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:14 PM on May 20, 2009

Lastday, Capricorn 29's. Year of the City:2274. Carousel begins.
posted by edgeways at 1:22 PM on May 20, 2009

So this "roulette wheel display:" it's what we call a pie chart when we're not scaremongering, right?
posted by rusty at 1:25 PM on May 20, 2009 [3 favorites]

rusty, it's a pretty apt metaphor for pie charts that divide up likelihoods and a good tool for explaining to laymen. What don't you like about it?
posted by onalark at 1:36 PM on May 20, 2009

Humans are an exception because of our brains, which got us into this mess to begin with.

According to the Toba Catastrophe Theory the number of humans at one point 70,000 years ago dropped to just between 10,000 or as little as 1,000 pairs due to a major global volcanic eruption. There had been humans on the planet for over 100,000 years at that point but the numbers got cut way down.

So pre-technological humans were definitely capable of being wiped out. Although I guess there were other lineages which survived (like neanderthals)
posted by delmoi at 1:54 PM on May 20, 2009

Well, look at the bright side: carbon emissions are, in a sense, and in very slow motion, self-regulating. If we spew too much crap into the atmosphere, many of us die, reducing our carbon emissions. So reducing carbon emissions is really a given; it's absolutely going to happen. The only question is whether we reduce them ourselves, voluntarily, or whether we let the ecosystem do the hard work for us, by inducing a mass extinction event.
posted by jamstigator at 2:13 PM on May 20, 2009

Well, look at the bright side: carbon emissions are, in a sense, and in very slow motion, self-regulating. If we spew too much crap into the atmosphere, many of us die, reducing our carbon emissions.

Are you even paying attention? At what point do "many of us die"? We just get crammed into a smaller area, with lots of population centers being slowly turned into unlivable salt marshes and eventually sunk. Nobody actually dies here. But it will be a huge strain on resources.

Furthermore the people most effected are the poorest, who are hardly burning an oil anyway since they can't afford it (seriously, look at which countries pollute the most. It's not Bangladesh)
posted by delmoi at 3:25 PM on May 20, 2009

jamstigator, there's a third possibility. Runaway greenhouse. Natural processes take over after a tipping point in warming is reached and CO2 level can go to 2000 or 3000 ppm (compared to the 385 ppm today).
posted by stbalbach at 5:23 PM on May 20, 2009

Re: Toba.

If I recall correctly, Toba went kablooie about the same time humans had migrated down the west flank of India. It was only after Toba that (a) humans went north and west into Europe; (b) white folk started appearing.

I wonder if Toba caused a mutation.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:20 PM on May 20, 2009

> Natural processes take over after a tipping point in warming is reached and CO2 level can go to 2000 or 3000 ppm (compared to the 385 ppm today).

At what point does most current life suffocate? I imagine ppm like that would result in rather acidic oceans, too.
posted by Decimask at 6:22 PM on May 20, 2009

Nobody actually dies here. But it will be a huge strain on resources.

Today, strains on resources result in people dying. We've had our oil wars. Wait until people are fighting altitude wars and latitude wars.
posted by specialfriend at 10:09 PM on May 20, 2009

5.5 degrees kills most sea life? There's no adaptation due to strong selection pressure?

In the course of decades? You aren't reading Lamark, are you?
posted by sourwookie at 12:44 AM on May 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Reading Delmoi's link on the Toba Catastrophe. Two interesting points:

1. This released energy equivalent to about 1 gigaton of TNT, forty times greater than the largest human-made explosion, the October 30, 1961 detonation of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba thermonuclear device.

2. It is hypothesized that the Toba explosion may have reduced the average global temperature by 3-5°C for several years and triggered an ice age.

So all we need to do is explode 40 Thermonuclear Devices every few years. The US alone has thousands of these! Throw in Russia's stockpile, and we can maintain the current temperature for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Problem solved. Your grandkids can thank me.
posted by ShadowCrash at 7:12 AM on May 21, 2009 [1 favorite]