{"id":6464,"date":"2015-10-05T06:29:28","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T06:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6464"},"modified":"2015-10-05T06:29:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T06:29:28","slug":"living-in-an-uncertain-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/10\/05\/living-in-an-uncertain-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in an Uncertain World"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was the title of last Tuesday\u00a0night's I-SEE<\/a> lecture by<\/i> Richard Pancost, Director of the University of Bristol's\u00a0Cabot Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His seminar abstract was that:<\/p>\n

\"Our future Uncertain World (sic)\u00a0is not one of which we have no knowledge \u2013 we have high confidence that temperatures and sea level will rise \u2013 but there is uncertainty in the magnitude and speed of change. \u00a0Nor should we view The Uncertain World with existential fear \u2013 we know that warm worlds have existed in the past. \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

However, crucial details remain difficult to predict: we do not know whether many regions of the world will become wetter or dryer. Moreover, the consequences of these rapid changes on the wider and complex biological and chemical systems, and the people dependent upon them, are poorly understood. How do we better understand such issues?\u00a0 What are their implications in terms of policy decisions being made today?\u00a0 And how do we become a resilient city \u2013 both to the changes that are likely to come but also those that are difficult to forecast?\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pancost conducts research on how organisms adapt to environmental conditions, how they mediate our planet\u2019s chemical environment and how their molecular signatures can be used to reconstruct the history of our planet\u2019s climate and environment. \u00a0Three major themes have emerged from his research:<\/p>\n

1) the past record of climate broadly confirms our first order understanding of the climate system: a doubling of CO2 will bring about 2-4C of warming;<\/p>\n

2) current rates of environmental change are essentially without precedent in geological history creating deep uncertainty in predicting biotic responses to rapid global warming; and<\/p>\n

3) it is very difficult to predict how complex biogeochemical systems respond to rapid global warming, revealing the deep uncertainty associated with climate change, especially with respect to the sustainability of ecosystems on which we depend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was an enjoyable event: an engaging speaker with lots of data (some of it from rocks so\u00a0old it was almost venerable), uncertainties galore, and good graphs. \u00a0I learned a lot, but one thing remained fixed: my conviction that we have no hope of restricting Earth temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. \u00a0But yet we pretend that we can, although\u00a0COP21 is not even trying to do that.<\/p>\n

Here are a few highlights:<\/p>\n