Sunday, February 11, 2007

The Nexus 6 global warming adaption plan

Adaption to climate change will be much simpler if the frequency of extreme weather events does not increase in the future. Thanks to the thoughtful reporting at news.com.au I now have a fail-safe plan.

According to News, the IPCC summary forcasts:
... a rise in average global temperatures of between 1.1 per cent and 6.4 per cent by 2100.
Percentage temperature increase! Now there's a new concept!

Not only does the IPCC use percentage increase, so does Australia's CSIRO:
The CSIRO report looked at the impact of a range of temperatures, from a small decline to a rise of more than 5 per cent.
The potential of a 5 % rise. Oh no! And if the 5 % rise comes to be:
It examined the impact of rising temperatures in five key areas: ecosystems; crops, forestry and livestock; water resources; public health; and human life.

A senior CSIRO scientist said: "For the higher levels of warming, it's pretty serious for Australia."
Not good. Not good.

But fear not, here is the cunning plan.

The solution is simple really, we just switch our temperature units to kelvin instead of centigrade. An increase of, say, 291 kelvin (~18C) to 300 kelvin (~27C) might sound like a lot, but it's actually only around 3 %, so it's fine!

The only hole in my theory could be that news.com.au is full of it and you can't measure an increase or decrease in temperature by percentage, and that neither the IPCC or CSIRO have ever actually mentioned any percentage change figures.