Monday, June 24, 2013
ALUMNI DONATES TO OPEN CENTRE OF CORRUPTION STUDIES
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Who Take Credit For Indian Government UGC Grants to AMU?
We’ve all had that experience where we work really hard on something and instead of getting recognized for our contribution, we have to sit there and choke back bile when someone else takes credit for the work. It’s infuriating to think about how hard you worked and how much effort you put into a project only to see some other glory-hound or charlatan pass all that effort off as their own.
Heck, I got a taste of that this week. I saw a bunch of traffic going to a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/#!/syed.a.rizvi.963) a self-proclaimed “Management Thinker, HR Guru, and Educational Coach” telling his fans stories about recent additions of new Department of Pediatric Surgery, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Department of Neurosurgery to JNMC (Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College) at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, India.
The bottom line is; it sounds like Sleaze Boy (or “S.B.” for short) needs a developmental talking. If that isn’t in the cards, you’ll need to put some effort into thinking about the SB yourself. Think – AMU is an Indian Government Central University, which gets its financial budget proposed by Indian Central government and approved by the Indian Parliament. A single-handed person draft will be approved by Ministries of Indian Government for a major academic institution in India???
Don’t Put Sleaze Boy In His Place
Don’t contradict him! At best, you’ll embarrass him and he’ll work behind your back to bring you down. At worst, he’ll turn out to be an amoral psychopathic monster who will work behind your back to bring you down with a chainsaw. That would be bad.
Instead, use the comedy improvement technique called “Yes, and…” His remarks are offering you a new reality. Join him. “Congratulate him with others for getting additional academic departments approval for the AMU,” he says. Ok, pretend he’s right. And be the absolute soul of contrition while you clearly define roles and responsibilities so he gets to take full responsibility for his—and only his—contribution.
Get a calm, curious frame of mind by thinking about things that make you curious. Like why politicians all wear exactly the same suit and solid color ties. Approach Sleaze Boy--I mean, Sincere Boy--with a genuine attitude of warmth.
CYB: Cover Your Butt Behavior
You’ve probably noticed this is a lot of trouble. It’s all CYB (cover your butt) behavior. It accomplishes nothing useful except preserving Sleaze Boy’s extra-ordinary-claims behavior (a.k.a in Urdu or Hindi; ChhooRo-pan.)
Are you thinking what the heck am I talking? Oh, below is a copy from Facebook (with my comments in red)
1. 
ALIGARH September 20: The President of India, in capacity of the Visitor of the Aligarh Muslim University has approved the creation of three new departments in the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College
The newly created departments are Department of Paediatric Surgery, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Department of Neurosurgery.
AMU Registrar, Group Captain (Retd.) Shahrukh Shamshad said that on the recommendation of the Academic Council and the Executive Council, the University Court had approved for creation of these departments of studies in the Faculty of Medicine and sent the proposal to Ministry of HRD for Visitor’s approval.
(This was a news from Indian press-media and AMU Press release. What is your contribution for which you are taking “congratulations for your contributions” from people who are unaware of facts? BTW: current AMU VC, Mr. Shah initiated the approval for these department from Indian government. Where do you fit in the scene, except posting the news then accepting compliments?)
Top of Form
o Tanvir Salim and 26 others like this.
o 
Syed Imad-ud-Din Asad Congratulations!!!
o ![clip_image002[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-01dpj0igr0Y/UGb5YoiRWCI/AAAAAAAAB18/EX0U-zxfONw/clip_image002%25255B1%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800 "clip_image002[1]")
Syed Ali Rizvi Thanks
o 
Pratibha Shah Congrats!
o 
Lubna Kazim congratulations. wonderful progressive AMU
o 
Nusrat Haider awesome grt
o 
Pappu Khan Congratulations :)
September 21 at 9:10am via mobile · 1
o ![clip_image002[2]](http://lh3.ggpht.com/-ZStCQaMd_VI/UGb5az-B0kI/AAAAAAAAB2k/BoN7ENrCce8/clip_image002%25255B2%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800 "clip_image002[2]")
Syed Ali Rizvi Thanks everyone for your kind comments and appreciation.
o 
Kumkum Pareek Malik this is a landmark step for the university!
o ![clip_image002[3]](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-5rj2hlGzqPg/UGb5bh5PmfI/AAAAAAAAB20/59z2nMOKtdU/clip_image002%25255B3%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800 "clip_image002[3]")
Syed Ali Rizvi Thanks Kumkum Pareek Malik. I am particularly excited as I was a member of a global pool of alumni who wrote the report on these Centers. This report was accepted in totality by the AMU administration and implemented as such. A small step, but a long way to go.
o 
Meera Subramaniam Congratulations
o ![clip_image004[1]](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-0uCHNTLvoRw/UGb5cqE3mPI/AAAAAAAAB3E/feDHQ0F4siI/clip_image004%25255B1%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800 "clip_image004[1]")
Syed Imad-ud-Din Asad Ali Bhai, ya'ni is kaam main aap ka bhi haath tha :-) .... I first came to the States in 2006. Since then I have seen you constantly devote your time and energy to Aligarh's cause. Absolutely commendable!
o 
Manju Sheth Congrats
o ![clip_image002[4]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-VSS5zn--UXM/UGb5d8p4RcI/AAAAAAAAB3U/6SJu4MKshXU/clip_image002%25255B4%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800 "clip_image002[4]")
Syed Ali Rizvi Thanks Meera Subramaniam, Syed Imad-ud-Din AsadManju Sheth for your words of appreciation and others for "liking. I have a deep passion for my alma mater and continue to do what I think will positively reinforce its name and fame and provide benefit to the thousands of students that come each year. I dedicate this shere, that I recently heard at our Mushaira to my alma mater..JahaN Rahega waheeN roshni Lutayega, Kisi chiraag ke apna makaaan nahiN hota..(The light of knowledge illuminates all minds without ANY bias.)
(What AMU Centers had to do with Medical College new departments addition and your role?)
Author: Suhaib Siddiqi
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Top 5 Things You Need to Know Before Marriage
When I look back now, I realize that there are just so many things no one told me about what it’s really like when the honeymoon is over. This article therefore has been written with the view that for all you starry-eyed matrimony-minded hopefuls out there – you have the right to know what to expect after marriage. So here are – in no particular order – the top 5 things that I wish someone had told me before marriage…
1. It’s a Pretty Quick Shift – and it Ain’t Always Pretty
You go from a time when you’re much at your best, together on romantic dates, wooing each other – to the sudden reality of actually living together. It’s not an easy transition. The mundane chores, the sharing of a bathroom, the regular ‘normal’ stuff that you go through each day, now in close quarters with another person – brings out sides of your new spouse that you didn’t know existed. Heck, it brings out sides of YOU that you didn’t know existed. It can be a pretty disturbing whirlwind of change, but being able to see it coming may perhaps help you deal with it better. By the way – in case you believe you’re immune to this because of your kind and compromising nature, congrats! (And also, ha ha).
2. It’s a Balancing Act – and a Setting Stage For Later Years
You may be the dominant, confident type. Your tendency is therefore to try and change the other person when there’s conflict. After all, you’re kind of – let’s say – perfect, right? Mama always told you so. To ensure a speedy resolution to the issues at hand, you therefore try and show your spouse the various errors of their ways and upbringing. For a while, it looks like it’s working! But be warned – these things come and bite you in unexpected places and at unexpected times. Being the bully doesn’t work for long. (Trust me, I know). Similarly, if you’re the more ‘peace-loving’ one, it’s easy to overdo the whole sacrifice gig – but what you’re really building is a foundation of resentment that is bound to boil over at some stage. The early days of your marriage are a critical time to try and find the right balance. The closer you can get to equal footing, the better – and this comes primarily from understanding yourself and staying away from the extremes of either being dominating or dominated. But in all likelihood – it is going to happen, to some extent.
3. You May Find Yourself Going Underground For a Bit
This is not only something that I’ve gone through personally but that I’ve observed in almost all my friends who pretty much disappear from their erstwhile social circles for a year or two after they get married. Probably due to the fact that you’re adjusting to your newly married state, you may end up losing touch with some of your friends for a while. The good news here – your more solid relationships endure (with some effort of course); and again, you can probably guard against a general tendency if you’re more conscious about it. And these days, thank heavens for Facebook too, at least you’ll be reminded to wish your best friends a ‘Happy Birthday’. An important thing to remember – it’s always worth making an extra effort to maintain those close friends. It’s not only that they were there first – it’s also good for you two to have that occasional break from each other. It’s the more healthy and sane thing to do, really.
4. Suddenly, it’s Not Just The Two of You Anymore
Sounds obvious, right? But this has nothing to do with whether you’re living in a joint set-up or far, far away from the parents. You’re now entering each other’s families, at the very least on an emotional level. The degree of this of course depends upon how closely-knit the involved families are, but the fact is that there are now likely to be multiple points of view on the same things. It’s unlikely to become the Saas-Bahu-Serial-kind-of-scenario, but the fact is the two different families that you’ve grown up in – no matter how ‘similar’ the backgrounds – are different living, breathing units with different belief systems, ways of operating and communicating and functioning -and in some cases, having arrived at their own unique dysfunctional equilibrium. The two of you have to manage your newly-emerging differences as individuals, but there may also be complexities caused by the newly-combined Family with a capital F. That’s okay. The key here is to remember that they all really do love you and that’s where the ‘Hume Kab Good News De Rahe Ho?’ comes from. Another key is to try and move to Australia, if you can. (A joke, but also not a bad idea). The real good news here is that after a while, you’ll grow into the newly-acquired Family and have more souls to love. Keeping that in mind may help a great deal.
5. Finally – This, too, Shall Pass
You’re on a journey of not just discovering another person in totality, but it’s also a journey of self-discovery. This means that the initial tumult includes the uncomfortable growing pains that accompany any learning experience. But time has a way of sorting things out, and the important thing is to remember that, grit your teeth and try and go with the flow as much as possible. Even if things aren’t always pleasant – chances are they will settle down into a far more comfortable relationship later.
- Contributed by Yashodhara Lal
(Yashodhara Lal is a graduate from IIM-Bangalore, with over a decade of marketing experience. She is also the author of the new book ‘Just Married, Please Excuse’. You can read sample chapters from the book on www.justmarriedpleaseexcuse.com. To visit her blog click here and you can find her on twitter too – @yashodharalal)
Monday, July 23, 2012
Misconceptions and prejudices about arranged marriages
January 4, 2011
I was watching a video by a very talented artist from Ninjabi.com the other day. It presented me with the usual argument: very traditional parents who want their daughter who has been born and raised in a Western country to accept an arranged marriage. All they’re concerned with is whether she will be provided for adequately. She on the other hand has no such wish. What was really interesting to watch was the style in which it was presented. All hand drawings. Very similar to the video I did for a Herpes Virus awareness campaign.
She added it on frame by frame and it worked really well. The only problem was that it did not add much to the information most people already have about arranged marriages. Granted, she is from a traditional family that is orthodox in its beliefs, but the same cannot be said for every Indian and every Pakistani on the planet. It greatly surprised a few people to listen to the interviews on the front page of the website because they didn’t realize some young Indians in Australia and around the world are quite happy to let their parents choose a partner for them. They’ve been brought up in and out of Indian communities around the world, they’ve grown up in the West, they’ve been educated in the West and given the opportunity to date. Yet they still want parental involvement when it comes to choosing a partner. This is also what intrigued me.
Growing up in the seventies, in Central America, I believe in self-determination. Completely, but when it comes to choosing a suitable partner, I’ve discovered that a pesky little thing called hormones gets in the way. It seems almost irrational to other cultures that we should allow such an important decision to be taken solely on the basis of feelings. This seems to be the reason why these young people are looking to tradition for stability and guidance. They don’t want to abdicate responsibility, rather they wish to share it with others who they believe have their best interests at heart.
It is also why they see matrimonial websites such as shaadiconnections.com as viable alternatives or hybrids of dating and arranged marriages.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
It's up to us to lift the blockade
June 2, 2010
The people of Gaza don't need the West to send humanitarian aid. They need our leaders to take decisive action – after all, we have been complicit in this siege, writes Donald Macintyre
In need of intervention: a Hamas supporter at a rally to remember the 1948 Catastrophe holds a key to represent houses that were left by Palestinians AFP
In need of intervention: a Hamas supporter at a rally to remember the 1948 Catastrophe holds a key to represent houses that were left by Palestinians
The bloody events which unfolded in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean sea in the early hours of Monday morning and their diplomatic aftermath are likely to dominate news from the Middle East, perhaps for some time to come. The question is whether their true meaning will be buried in the wholly essential but narrow debate on exactly how and why the carnage unfolded when Israel's naval commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara in international waters 75 miles off its coast. For beyond the issues of whether or not the killings were perpetrated in self defence, whether the pro-Palestinian activists were right to ignore the warnings issued by the Israeli military and steam ahead, or even who was or wasn't justified in international law, is an issue about which high-level denial in the past three years has been all-too easy.
Amid all the expressions of outrage at the killings one of the most telling was that issued by the International Crisis Group in the name of Robert Malley, the director of its Middle East Programme and a member of President Bill Clinton's team at the tragically abortive peace talks at Camp David in 2000. The assault on the flotilla was "but a symptom of an approach that has been implicitly endorsed by many", Malley said in a statement which charged that it was also an "indictment of a much broader policy toward Gaza for which Israel does not bear sole responsibility". Malley did not put it quite like this, but what he clearly had in mind was that the very same Western powers now wringing their hands have been complicit in a disastrous and counter-productive policy in Gaza itself over at least the past three years.
Perhaps too much of the argument about Gaza, on both sides, has used the word "humanitarian" as if the only question for the territory's 1.5m inhabitants is whether they do or not have the essentials for bare physical survival. For while there is deep and corrosive world-class poverty in many parts of Gaza, people are not dying in the streets from hunger. There are traffic jams in Gaza City; the grocery stores are relatively full, as much thanks to smuggled – and therefore expensive – goods from Egypt through the tunnels as to the hundreds of truckloads of supplies a week which are indeed admitted from Israel. Yet the real crisis developing in Gaza beneath this veneer of semi-normality is something much less visible than famine, and much more dangerous than the mystery of why Israel's opaque regime of permitted goods puts coriander but not cinnamon on its banned list. It is the gradual but systematic dismantling of a vital, historically well-educated, and in many respects self-reliant civilisation.
It is widely accepted internationally that the blockade is hurting the civilian population much more than Hamas, whose grip has tightened in the last three years. It has destroyed a once-entrepreneurial and productive economy, ensured that 80 per cent of its population now depend on food aid, left most of its water undrinkable, and prevented reconstruction of some 75 per cent of the buildings destroyed by Israel's devastating military offensive in the winter of 2008-9, not to mention many, many thousands more destroyed since the beginning of the intifada in 2000; or the building of 100 new schools the UN refugee agency Unrwa desperately needs to meet its ever-soaring demands. It's because world leaders understand this – at least on a theoretical basis since few ever enter Gaza – that the Quartet of the US, EU, Russia and the UN has repeatedly called for the siege to be lifted.
Video: Flotilla activists deported
The results are unimpressive. Take the single example of cement. After nine months of negotiation Israel agreed to imports for a very limited number of internationally supervised infrastructure projects and to finish a derisory 150 houses in Khan Yunis that had been 85 per cent completed before the 2008-9 war. A consequence is that the UN, which is wholly dependent on Israel since it cannot patronise the "tunnels economy", looks increasingly weak compared with the de facto Hamas government, which faces no such constraints. Similarly the bona fide private sector entrepreneurs – most have long had the Israeli security clearance which gave them the freedom to travel freely across the border in better times and sometimes still does – have lost out to a tunnels-based black economy controlled by Hamas and its handpicked middlemen, the new businessmen of Gaza.
While Israel says it cannot allow more cement in case Hamas seizes it for military bunkers, its clear the de facto government already has, thanks to the tunnels, all the cement it needs. It has, for example, just announced a plan to build 1,000 new homes in Jabalya. As every Western diplomat knows, the vast majority of tunnels exist solely because of the blockade. If the blockade was lifted, the authority of the international community's institutions would increase. Yet this has done nothing to shift the paralysis of the western powers in the face of Israel's opposition to easing the blockade.
If ever there was an opportunity to reverse that dismal record it is now, at the very moment when there should be the keenest focus on whether the policy which led up to Monday's bloody climax can finally be changed. Which is why for all its messy mixture of political motives and the bloody finale in which the flotilla was halted, there may actually be lessons from this bleak story for the international community in how to close the increasingly embarrassing gap between its stated policy and the reality.
Ideally Israel would now rethink a policy which there is every reason for thinking is not only catastrophic for Gaza's people, but also not in its own long-term interests. But if not, there may be ways in which the international community can shake off its passivity in the face of this unfolding tragedy. For if broadly friendly governments – preferably within the Quartet but if not outside it – were to confront Israel with the prospect of mounting their own, much more official and internationally sanctioned official maritime relief operation, it would be exponentially more difficult for the Netanyhau government to see it off than it has, however messily and lethally, this week's flotilla.
Implausible as it may seem at first sight, the idea has been discussed at a high level in international diplomatic circles. The only senior UN figure brave enough to float the idea publicly, however, is Unrwa's Gaza director of operations, John Ging, who mentioned sea access when he argued in an interview more than a month before Monday's fiasco, that it was time for the international community "physically" to do something about "rescuing" Gaza. While the Israeli claim that an unchecked activist flotilla entering Gaza compromises its security may be understandable, it could hardly say the same about allied or UN ships.
A seaborne operation would also get round an Israeli security objection to reopening the big cargo land crossing at Karni – the perceived vulnerability of Israeli drivers and security personnel to Palestinian attack. And if Hamas seized the unloaded cargo, as it has not done in the case of limited shipments made for infrastructure projects, the operation could cease immediately. Of course it should be co-ordinated with Israel, which after all is already repeatedly making the point that it was prepared to take the goods brought by the flotilla into Gaza once they had been checked. It is a matter of conjecture whether Israel could be persuaded to offer such co-ordination without a clear threat to go ahead without it. But it is hard to imagine it would use force to stop the ships of a friendly state. And yet, up to this week, the idea was at risk of going into deep freeze, partly because of Israel's resistance.
Unless Monday marks a turning point that will see the reversal of Israel's blockade, as it certainly should, the relief idea should now be speedily revived. After all, the three dominant values which have permeated Western thinking over the last half century have been enterprise, freedom and democracy. Each one is violated on a daily basis in Gaza by the international community's failure to act on its own regular calls for a lifting of the blockade.
Enterprise? It is difficult to see how the collapse of hundreds of companies, mostly owned by people with no love for Hamas, and many enjoying close relationship with Israeli customers, helped Israeli security. Let alone the consequential drift of the unemployed into jobs with Hamas, including its armed paramilitary wings. And that's before mentioning agriculture or fishing. To take a single example, if security is the reason for the one-mile fishing limit, why were Gaza fishermen allowed to travel 12 miles offshore at the peak of the intifada in 2002?
Freedom? The trapping of civilians in Gaza was not only an outrage in the 2008-9 offensive, when it prevented them leaving the war zone as they would have done in almost any other part of the world. It is also – to take a single example – keeping thousands of young students, a generation ambitious to help their homeland, from the postgraduate education they crave in the pluralistic world of foreign, Israeli, and even West Bank universities.
Democracy? Are Gazans still being punished for voting for Hamas in 2006 in clearly free and fair elections? But in the West Bank – now favoured by a real, if still precarious, increase in economic growth – a majority also voted for Hamas. Nor can the Gazan public as a whole remotely be blamed for the armed seizure of Gaza by Hamas after the brief but bloody civil war with Fatah which broke the coalition between the factions – the very seizure which was the trigger for the blockade. Any more than it can be for the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit four years ago.
And if Gazans would now prefer the leadership of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank – as they might – there is nothing they can do about it while Hamas has the guns and control of the streets (a control which paradoxically is currently maintaining a de facto, if far-from perfect, ceasefire with Israel). The idea that that a civilian population can somehow achieve what an armed and partially US-backed Fatah failed to do in June 2007 and topple Hamas is fantasy.
This week could and should indeed mark a turning point in which Israel will be urged to ease the blockade of Gaza. What is needed is not principally more "humanitarian" goods but a real opening of borders to the commercial imports and exports that can revive Gaza's stricken economy – and hopes – once again and begin to reconstruct its war ravaged infrastructure, as the international community pledged an almost wholly unspent $5bn to do after the 2008-9 war.
And if Israel persists in the face of such urgings to maintain the blockade, it will be hard to escape the conclusion that it is comfortable with a policy which threatens to nurture groups more extreme than Hamas as no more than a useful example of what happens when it "abandons" territory (which in terms of control of its borders, airspace, and as we were painfully reminded this week, its coastal waters, it never really did when Ariel Sharon pulled the settlers out in 2005).
But blaming Israel – and Egypt, which repeatedly enforces closures on Gaza's southern border – for the blockade is too easy. For just as the international ban on talking to Hamas isolated its more pragmatic elements, so the West's tolerance of the siege has strengthened the Islamic faction's more repressive ones, turning Gaza in on itself. A lawful naval relief operation – or even a threat of it that might produce a real easing of what the UN sees as an unlawful blockade – might help to restore international influence over a territory which remains crucial to any settlement in the Middle East. And it would certainly would go a long way to redeeming the West's woeful inaction over the last three years.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Odds Of Cooking The Grandkids
By Stuart Staniford
There is a horrible paper in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (hat-tip Desdemona Despair), which looks at how the limits of human physiology interact with upper-range global warming scenarios. The bottom line conclusion is that there is a small - of order 5% - risk of global warming creating a situation in which a large fraction of the planet was uninhabitable (in the sense that if you were outside for an extended period during the hottest days of the year, even in the shade with wet clothing, you would die). To give you a feeling for the likely uninhabitable regions, it's the portions of the map above that are in the white or pink/purple color (above 35oC wet bulb temperature on the scale). As you can see, it includes most of the eastern US, much of inland Brazil and Latin America, tropical Africa, pretty much all of India, portions of northern China, and most of Australia. Plenty to qualify as a "Risk to Global Civilization", I think.
The paper itself will cost you $10 to read, unless you are already a PNAS subscriber, so let me try to summarize the main reasoning and you can decide if it's worth your $10.
The first thing we need to understand is this concept of wet bulb temperature. The basic idea is that you take a regular mercury-in-glass type thermometer, cover the bulb in wet gauze, run a fan on it, and measure the resulting temperature. Because evaporation cools things (the reason we sweat when we are hot) this temperature will tend to be lower than the normal dry bulb temperature. How much lower depends on the humidity of the air - in dry places (eg deserts) evaporative cooling does you a lot of good. But in places where the relative humidity is high - like the eastern US in summer - it does you less good and the wet bulb temperature is close to the dry bulb temperature. So the first interesting thing we can take from the paper is the following map of the distribution of web bulb temperatures currently:
More precisely, the wet bulb temperature being plotted here is the average annual high that extended for at least six hours, and the data is for 1999-2008. So the filthy-hottest parts of the planet become clear - the tropics of course, with the inland Amazon and northern India worst, but the eastern US is not far behind, as also northern China and much of Australia.
So how high a wet bulb temperature can people tolerate? The paper doesn't cite much experimental data (apparently the Nazi scientists missed this in their program) but what is known is that skin temperatures above 35oC (which is 95oF) are fatal for an extended period (your skin needs to be at least a few degrees cooler than your core temperature of 37oC/98oF so that heat can be conducted from the blood to the skin in order to shed metabolic heat). So it's reasonable that if the wet bulb temperature is above this for an extended period (they take six hours) you won't be able to survive. In fact, given that a human who needs to be outside probably won't be sitting in the shade with wet clothes and a big fan, the maximum survivable wet bulb temperature may actually be a degree or two lower.
At the moment, as the map above shows, nowhere on the planet gets up that high. The highest is in the low thirties - pretty damn unpleasant, no doubt, and no-one is going to do a whole lot outside under those conditions, but not actually fatal for all but a small minority of folks (probably with other health conditions).
The next thing to understand is that the distribution of uncertainty for the climate sensitivity has a long tail on the high side. The climate sensitivity, recall, is how much hotter the planet will get due to a doubling of CO2. It's not known terribly precisely. A 2007 paper in Science, Roe and Baker, made a pretty persuasive argument that the uncertainty is always going to tend to have a long tail to the high side (at least until after we've run the experiment). This figure from that paper shows various different ways of estimating the probability distribution, and shows they all have a similar form:
You can see that, even though the most likely climate sensitivity is around 3oC there's an appreciable amount of probability for sensitivities above 6oC (which is about 10oF). Maybe 5-10% depending on which probability distribution. Hard to be super-precise, but at any rate, noticeably higher than, say, your lifetime risk of dying in a car crash (1 in 83 for Americans, according to this article).
So, then, if we look at emissions, here's the main IPCC scenarios:
Right now, we are tracking above the red curve worst case. So, if we live in a don't-do-much-about-climate-change world (which I hope and pray we don't really live in, it just looks that way right now) then we could get to about two doublings by the end of the century (over pre-industrial levels of 280ppm of CO2). Thus that motivates looking at 12oC of warming as a sort of worst-reasonably-feasible case. Since there are lags in the climate system, that wouldn't actually be reached in 2100, but maybe a few decades after (but it would be committed by 2100). So we come back to the map at the start:
This is the paper's estimate of the annual peak six hour wet bulb temperature in a 12oC hotter world. As you can see, most of the world's major population centers will be uninhabitable outdoors during heat waves (again, you want to look at the places over about 35oC). We will have to retreat to places like Scandinavia (which will feel as hot as tropical Africa today) and northern Canada, or just skulk inside with lots of air conditioning. But in that scenario, I think all bets are off for global civilization as I expect people in the poorer countries in the developing world will basically all flee, and who knows what the effect of that would be.
About author Stuart Staniford:
I'm a scientist and innovator in the technology industry, with a broad range of interests and experiences. I have a Physics PhD, MS in CS, and have done research, lived in cohousing communities, run a business, and designed technology products. Professionally, I mainly work on computer security problems and am currently Chief Scientist at FireEye, but this is my personal blog for pro-bono research
Original article available here