Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
Ynyslas, western Wales – a place made by climate change
Posted on 31 October 2019 by John Mason
Ynyslas, on the Cardigan Bay coast of Wales, is a place well-known for its extensive, shingle spit-fronted sand-dunes, its hinterland of estuarine saltmarsh-flats and, seaward, its golden sandy beach, complete with a several thousand year-old submerged forest. The place gets some 250,000 visitors a year. Taking all of those factors into account, and that Ynyslas is also a direct product of actual climatic changes that occurred in the geologically-recent past, its tale was ripe for the telling, so that's just what I did. I wrote a book about it.
The Making of Ynyslas is a climate science book with a difference. It is an account of how climate change brought one well-loved modern landscape into existence, but in doing so, destroyed another. Covering the last 25,000 years, since around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, the story involves the details of deglaciation as the world's great ice-caps retreated polewards and seas rose, sometimes gradually and sometimes rapidly, by some 125 metres. In doing so, large areas of land were drowned: on a human time-scale, the changes would be permanent. On a geological time-scale, over hundreds of millions of years, the area now occupied by Cardigan Bay has variously been dry land or underwater on several occasions. In addition to climate change we have to consider the area's tectonic evolution over such lengthy time-frames, which are outside of the scope of the book, covering as it does the latest Pleistocene and the Holocene Stages of geological time.
Lumped together, these two stages make up the latter part of the Quaternary System, which began, following the Pliocene, 2.58 million years ago. The Quaternary represents a diversion away from the norm of the previous tens of millions of years, in that it featured regular and cyclic advances of ice-sheets, equatorwards from the Polar regions. For long stretches of geological time prior to the mid-Cenozoic, say from before some 35 million years ago, Polar ice was not a regular feature on the menu at all. So the changes from that climate state to the alternating glacials and interglacials of the Quaternary were, by definition, profound. But in order to understand how such changes came about, it is first necessary to look at past times when Earth has had an Icehouse climate. It's not a particularly common climate state over geological time and perturbations to the Slow Carbon Cycle have had a hand in every such switch.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #43, 2019
Posted on 29 October 2019 by doug_bostrom
62 articles, 11 open access
[Late breaking]
A few hours after "finishing" this edition of New Research, Nature Communications published a reassessment of SLR-driven coastal flooding hazards, New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding by Kulp & Strauss. The authors identify systematic problems with Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) DEM (digital elevation model) data and DEM products based on the SRTM data product. This family of DEM products support key inputs into estimates of human populations and cultural features at risk from increased coastal flooding due to SLR. Given that Kulp & Strauss are proposing a substantial difference in affected population, we can be sure that this work will be closely attended not only in the popular press but by other researchers studying the same subject.
Close to home
In their article The truth is not in the middle”: Journalistic norms of climate change bloggers, Christel W. van Eck and coauthors examine practices of climate change bloggers, comparing climate blogosphere journalism to more traditional news media. From the article introduction in Global Environmental Change:
The results show that climate change bloggers support the traditional journalistic norms of personalization, dramatization, novelty, authority and order, but not balance. Beyond the traditional journalistic norms, climate change bloggers identify contextualization, clarity, decency, and particularly truth as important journalistic norms. Truth is understood as a multi-dimensional norm comprising objectivity, transparency, and honesty. No differences are identified between norms supported by climate sceptical and climate mainstream bloggers, but each group operationalizes the norms differently.
The paper features many ships, crew and cargo familiar to those plying the climate blogging ocean. Beyond the immediate research results, the paper's backgrounding discussion is a fascinating look into a feature of human culture created almost entirely as a incidental effect of policy friction introduced by entrenched industrial interests. We're reminded by this article of how climate blogging has traditionally been most centrally concerned with arguing over the equivalent validity of "2+2=4," with a tiny but dedicated group of variously motivated self-described iconoclasts dissipating energy, patience and time otherwise better employed elsewhere.
A difference between traditional journalism and what we read in blogs emerges in van Eck et al: blog authors are less attached to the notion of "balance" as an overriding objective. In particular, we read that for bloggers not trading in science fiction, defying the laws of physics by attempting to synthesize "balance" where it cannot be found is subordinated to slavish devotion to reality.
We can also see that there's certainly more than a little dark absurdity woven into the fabric of the climate blogging world; quoted in the paper, Peter Sinclair is barely attaining hyperbole when he remarks “If one side of the issue is that the sky is blue and the other side of the issue is the sky is purple with pink polka dots, those are not two sides that deserve equal weight.” To be having the discussion implied by Sinclair's analogy is tragicomic but he's not really exaggerating the weird parameters of the conversation. There's no turning down the responsibility to counter comically silly arguments when those arguments pose a serious threat to obviously necessary changes and hence more or less we're all made fools, unavoidably.
60 Years of Satellite Earth Radiation Budget Observations
Posted on 28 October 2019 by doug_bostrom
[Per remarks in comments below, a couple of corrections have been made to this article, to do with human employment of energy and Earth energy imbalance. It's always appreciated when readers with sharp eyes improve our work— thank you.]
60 years ago this month the first direct observation "Earth Radiation Budget" experiment (ERB) was successfully lofted into orbit on Explorer VII, after a string of disappointing launch failures. This deployment was only the start of an increasingly sophisticated series of experiments intended to quantify and eventually monitor the ERB. In light of subsequent development it's an event worth commemorating.
"The primary purpose of the experiment is to measure the solar, reflected, and terrestrial radiation currents to obtain the radiant heat flow to and from the earth, and ultimately to obtain a clearer understanding of the driving force behind the circulation of the atmosphere." — Weinstein & Suomi, 1961"
But first: what's the "Earth Radiation Budget," or "ERB?" This describes the net gain or loss of solar energy to or from the Earth and its various surface systems. With a balanced radiation budget, Earth on average reradiates 100% of incoming solar radiation. Tiny changes in this budget (deficit or surplus) will necessarily exert profound effects on virtually every dynamic system on the planetary surface, including our cultural activities.
Indeed— as accepted physics predicts— adding CO2 to the atmosphere as a side-effect of our cultural activities on Earth has introduced a slight imbalance in the radiation budget, somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.5-0.8 watts/square meter retained as a "surplus" and needing to be spent. This doesn't sound impressive in comparison with the 340 watts/square meter arriving from the Sun, but the surface of the Earth exposed to solar radiation is very large. Hence a lot of a little equals a whole bunch, several hundred terawatts of excess power being absorbed in warming the Earth's surface systems. By comparison, human manipulation of energy from all sources is about 18 terawatts.
Once the Earth's collection of systems has warmed sufficiently to radiate at the top of the atmosphere a little bit more powerfully— equal to the initial imbalance of concern— the ERB will again be in average equilibrium ("balanced" in accounting terms). It's the warming required to balance the radiation budget by stimulating increased radiation that is the root of our concern with anthropogenic climate change. That warming is dictated by increased net power delivery to Earth's surface systems, as reflected in the ERB at any given time.
Video: Dorian’s Deadly Stall – How Climate Change is Weaponizing Hurricanes
Posted on 24 October 2019 by greenman3610
In a warming climate, hurricanes could linger longer, causing extreme rainfall and wind damage.
Talking about climate science at SAP TechEd in Barcelona
Posted on 23 October 2019 by BaerbelW
I work in the IT-department of a German manufacturing company where I help maintain the company's installation of the SAP business software. SAP is a global IT-company headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. Each fall, SAP organizes a large technical conference - the TechEd - in Las Vegas, Barcelona and Bangalore. These events are comparable to scientific conferences, offering keynote speeches, lectures, hands-on sessions and vendor exhibitions all happening at the same time in different tracks. Several thousand participants come together each year at each of the three locations for three days to learn about many aspects of the SAP system we deal with on a day to day basis, or stuff we need to know for things to come.
In addition to working as a developer, I've also been active in the online SAP Community for several years, asking and answering questions and writing blog posts every once in a while. Therefore I was happy to be able to join SAP TechEd in Barcelona this year, which I could combine with a two weeks vacation at Spain's Costa del Sol. And while my husband and I flew to and from Malaga for our vacation (not having realized that it would have been possible - if timeconsuming - to get there by train), I decided to take the train from Malaga to Barcelona and back to at least not add another flight to my itinerary.
By now, I'm sure you are wondering why I'm writing about attending this conference as it doesn't really have anything to do with climate, right? Well, there are a couple of reasons to write about it. For one, SAP is trying to make the conference as sustainable as possible, by offsetting its CO2-emissions, including those incurred by the participants' travels (we were asked to fill out a questionnaire for that). For another, in Barcelona, they handed out reusable water-bottles which we could then refill everywhere at the venue and by doing so, contribute to the "Fill-it-forward" project. I also heard, that SAP decided to not have some of the large convention area laid out with carpet as that would have been thrown away after the 3-day event, causing a massive amount of waste which now was avoided.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #42, 2019
Posted on 22 October 2019 by doug_bostrom
54 articles, 18 open access
When positives are a negative
Nature Climate Change highlights Susan Natali's Large loss of CO2 in winter observed across the northern permafrost region, observing:
Warming in the Arctic is causing soils to decompose more rapidly, even during winter. Now, estimates of winter carbon dioxide loss indicate that it can offset carbon gains during the growing season, meaning that the region is a source of carbon.
We need another positive feedback like we need a hole in the head. Outcomes like this increase the weight of mitigation lifts we are currently failing to perform.
Speedier equilibrium opens a horizon of opportunity?
Geophysical Research Letters notes an article by D. Saint‐Martin, Fast‐Forward to Perturbed Equilibrium Climate, remarking:
The Earth system responds on a range of timescales to a change in radiative forcing, and full equilibration takes centuries to millennia in many models. In their recent paper, [D.Saint-Martin et al] propose a technique for reaching a faster equilibrium temperature response to alternative CO2 concentration levels by briefly overshooting the desired concentration level to warm the deep ocean faster than a conventional step‐change experiment. Understanding how these timescales interact is essential for better representing the relationship between transient climate change and the warming which should be expected as greenhouse gas concentrations stabilize. But, the technique also raises new possibilities about how Earth System Models could be developed, and whether we could gain the capacity to spin up alternative model configurations such as perturbed parameter simulations or alternative control states to explore historical forcing uncertainty.
Cow tuning for a better tomorrow
Adjusting input variables to dairy cattle so as to optimize for maximized milk output and minimized CO2 hoofprint is explored by Brandt et al with their Intensification of dairy production can increase the GHG mitigation potential of the land use sector in East Africa. The authors find that— according to their results— there is potential to significantly expand dairy production while distinctly shrinking both CO2 intensity and (less dramatically) overall emissions from this sector, while also reducing loss of forest productivity. The devil may be in the details and the need to attend to those; the authors note the potential for problems if inputs are not scrupulously sourced.
Articles:
Physical science of anthropogenic global warming
Rapid CO2 release from eroding permafrost in seawater
Water vapour adjustments and responses differ between climate drivers (open access)
A small electric plane demonstrates promise, obstacles of climate-friendly air travel
Posted on 21 October 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Lindsay Fendt
When the pilot guides the electric airplane from its hangar, there is only a light whirring of propellers instead of the roar of an engine. And it leaves no exhaust in its wake as it takes off from a small air strip south of Denver. The small plane, the eFlyer, is the first all-electric plane to seek FAA certification and its builders hope it will revolutionize the aviation industry as the first commercial electric airplane.
“Electric motors are not new,” said George Bye, President of Bye Aerospace and the airplane’s creator. “But the application to airplanes is remarkable, and until recently most people thought it was impossible.”
Bye, who started working to develop the plane 12 years ago, said it took a transformation in battery and engine technology to make the eFlyer possible. While cars have long been able to carry heavy batteries and engines, airplanes must be aerodynamic and light. Bye completed his design once batteries and electric engines became small enough. The eFlyer is the first all-electric airplane to enter an FAA certification program, and the first eFlyers could take to the skies as early as 2021.
Training pilots, draining carbon
Bye initially designed the electric plane after learning of a growing commercial airline pilot shortage. He thought the eFlyer could cut down on expensive fuel costs for flight school training. But in addition to breaking down barriers to entry for new pilots, electric planes could one day make the aviation industry much friendlier to the environment.
Electric airplanes ‘not only possible, but it’s revolutionary.’ – Bye Aerospace creator
Canada's ClimateData Web Portal: Normal Science, Not Fake
Posted on 17 October 2019 by David Kirtley
In August, the Canadian government launched a new website called ClimateData.ca which "provides engineers, public health professionals, urban planners, mayors, and anyone else doing long-term planning with user-friendly climate change information, data, resources and tools" (press release). The website uses past weather data from 1950-2011 along with computer modelling to project the possible future impacts of climate change in Canada. Françoys Labonté, the Executive Director of Computer Research Insititue of Montréal (CRIM), one of the developers of the new web portal, said the website's purpose is "to provide Canadian leaders and managers with easy access to useful, actual and future climate data and information to assist them in anticipating and managing climate change-related issues over the medium and long term."
Figure 1. The home page of Canada's new website: ClimateData.ca. Click for larger image.
It didn't take long for climate science denialists to notice the lack of weather data before 1950 and assume that Canadian government scientists must be up to something nefarious. Blacklock's Reporter was the first to claim, "Canada omitted 100 years’ worth of weather data from a federal website intended to illustrate climate change." Their story is behind a rather expensive paywall (even for us AGW alarmists who are "rolling in grant money"). But the story was picked up by Toronto Sun journalist, Lorrie Goldstein, claiming that Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) "omitted a century’s worth of observed weather data in developing its computer models on the impacts of climate change." James Delingpole blared from Breitbart that the ECCC "has erased a century’s worth of observed temperature data, claiming its modelled computer projections are more accurate." Delingpole goes further in his conclusion:
Others less committed to green activism might find it somewhat sinister that the international agencies charged with maintaining the world’s temperature records are destroying them because the factual evidence doesn’t support the global warming scare narrative.
These wild claims about omitted, scrapped, erased, or destroyed historical weather data are completely false, and they are a total misrepresentation of the types of computer modelling used for ClimateData.
Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Posted on 16 October 2019 by Guest Author
If we stop emitting greenhouse gases is that the end of global warming? Not if we've passed a point of no return - a planetary tipping point. And if we're not careful, things could end up even more messy than my skateboarding.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #41, 2019
Posted on 15 October 2019 by doug_bostrom
38 articles, 9 open access
Known unknowns become known
3 months of SkS research news exposes a persistent feature of the weekly harvest: reports of investigations of expected climate outcomes in particular geographical sectors of Earth. This is made possible by regional climate modeling, a capacity that has matured and almost equally importantly become less expensive and hence more widely available in recent years. Earlier this year Filippo Giorgi's Thirty Years of Regional Climate Modeling: Where Are We and Where Are We Going next? (open access) comprehensively described how we've arrived at the point that we may project our likely experience decades into the future.This ability allows us to tackle both mitigation of and adaptation to global warming in a plethora of modes, not least in agriculture, engineering and health sciences. We have a lot of planning to do if we're to optimize the dilemma we've created but happily we've developed the skill and resources to drive this planning with numbers.
We knew something was going to happen but now increasingly we can say how much and where. That tells us what we need to do.
More generally, it's one thing to hear that the world's temperature will increase by 2 degrees centigrade if we play our remaining cards exactly right, but our imaginations may light up a little more brightly when "2 degrees" is replaced by "these things will happen" and "world" is replaced by "on my continent," or "in my country's borders" or "in my province" or "in my county." This information invites comparisons and comparisons can lead to resentment. The Earth being spherical and hence a closed space, as a pragmatic matter we're all in this together despite regional disparities; each local choice counts to a whole that we must each wish to be successful. Hopefully regional climate modeling will translate into public awareness and motivation that finds a sink in wise formulation of public policy connecting dots in a bigger picture.
Articles:
Physical science of anthropogenic global warming
Effects of ocean slow response under low warming targets
Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
Posted on 14 October 2019 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
On the heels of its August special report on climate and land, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in late September published another special report, this one focused on oceans and ice.
This latest report was authored by 104 climate scientists from 36 countries and reflecting findings in 6,981 studies. It contains a wealth of information – its Summary for Policymakers alone runs 45 pages – but some of the key points can be summarized as follows:
- Sea-level rise is accelerating because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at an increasing rate;
- The oceans, while still basic, are becoming more acidic, which will have serious consequences for coral reefs and shell-building marine species;
- The oceans are warming rapidly, leading to more frequent marine heatwaves, which also damage coral reefs;
- Researchers are beginning to see more of the most intense hurricanes, those in Category 4 and 5, which in combination with higher sea levels and increased precipitation pose increasing risks and damages to coastlines;
- Melting of permafrost could become a major feedback, adding carbon emissions and global warming in energy scenarios with significant continued fossil fuel burning;
- Ocean oxygen levels are declining, which in combination with rising temperatures drives marine species away from the equator toward the poles, and, in concert with algal blooms, could lead to reduced seafood catches at fisheries.
Sea-level rise is accelerating
The claim that sea-level rise is not accelerating has long been a popular myth among those challenging climate science. Measurement data indeed are noisy, making it difficult to detect a change in the rate at which the oceans are rising, but some recent studies have been able to detect an acceleration. The IPCC report confirms this conclusion, noting with high confidence that “Areas of concern in earlier IPCC reports, such as the expected acceleration of sea-level rise, are now observed.”
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
Posted on 12 October 2019 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
The world needs a massive carbon tax in just 10 years to limit climate change, IMF says
The international organization suggests a cost of $75 per ton by 2030.
An aerial view of large icebergs floating as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16. (Felipe Dana/AP)
A global agreement to make fossil fuel burning more expensive is urgent and the most efficient way of fighting climate change, an International Monetary Fund study found on Thursday.
The group found that a global tax of $75 per ton by the year 2030 could limit the planet’s warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), or roughly double what it is now. That would greatly increase the price of fossil-fuel-based energy — especially from the burning of coal — but the economic disruption could be offset by routing the money raised straight back to citizens.
“If you compare the average level of the carbon tax today, which is $2 [a ton], to where we need to be, it’s a quantum leap,” said Paolo Mauro, deputy director of the fiscal affairs department at the IMF.
The world needs a massive carbon tax in just 10 years to limit climate change, IMF says by Chris Mooney & Andrew Freedman, Climate & Environment, Washington Post, Oct 10, 2019
Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2019
Posted on 10 October 2019 by andylee
Andy Lee Robinson has updated his Arctic sea ice minimum volume video through 2019.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40, 2019
Posted on 8 October 2019 by doug_bostrom
44 articles, 12 open access
Long levers
Economists and macroeconomics must necessarily deal with a grand experiment wherein none of the variables feeding the show can be adjusted or fixed; economists face worse problems than do researchers pursuing cutting-edge experimental physics. Our experience with and expectations of economic phenomena as factors of predictable results are necessarily shaped by history and cultural memory. Operational, empirical economics— investment choices— heavily depend on expert opinion in shaping decisions having a massive impact on human commercial activity; abstract hypothesis on future behavior of the economy is not only inevitable but also critical in terms of its plausibility and validity— as a day-to-day practical matter.
Given the urgency we face with slewing certain parts of our economy so as to improve our trajectory, "getting it right" with regard to the discount rate is arguably of paramount importance. In a nutshell and in the language of an ignorant layperson (the author), the discount rate is a number expressing the time value of money, so it follows that— In the simplest terms— the communally acceptable, conventionally-derived discount rate in a given economic context significantly determines the viability of any proposed investment in that context. Given our culture, the money required for scaled climate mitigation work will not be forthcoming without the seemingly tiny number of the discount rate being "right," with "right"judged in 1/100ths.
In The role of the discount rate for emission pathways and negative emissions Emmerling et al plow directly into the discount rate, their paper serving nicely to illustrate exactly how important is an accurate target rate:
The importance of the discount rate in cost-benefit analysis of long term problems— such as climate change— has been widely acknowledged. However, the choice of the discount rate is hardly discussed when translating policy targets—such as 1.5 °C and 2 °C–into emission reduction strategies with the possibility of overshoot. Integrated assessment models (IAMs) have quantified the sensitivity of low carbon pathways to a series of factors, including economic and population growth, national and international climate policies, and the availability of low carbon technologies, including negative emissions. In this paper we show how and to what extent emission pathways are also influenced by the discount rate. Using both an analytical and a numerical IAM, we demonstrate how discounting affects key mitigation indicators, such as the time when net global emissions reach zero, the amount of carbon budget overshoot, and the carbon price profile. To ensure inter-generational equity and be coherent with cost-benefit analysis normative choices, we suggest that IAMs should use lower discount rates than the ones currently adopted. For a 1000 GtCO2 carbon budget, reducing the discount rate from 5% to 2% would more than double today's carbon price (from 21 to 55 $/tCO2) and more than halve the carbon budget overshoot (from 46% to 16%), corresponding to a reduction of about 300 GtCO2 of net negative emissions over the century.
The discount rate is widely acknowledged as a key factor in our success with fixing our climate problem, even as it is famously controversial in this application. To an untrained eye the variances we still see— decades into discussion-- in proposed acceptable discount rates as they apply to investment in a functional climate capable of sustaining our culture are not an inspiration to confidence in our outcome. To a person making an investment decision determining how many centimeters of sea level rise we see in 200 years, it's paralytic.
How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2019
Posted on 7 October 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief
Dr Ruth Mottram, Dr Martin Stendel and Dr Peter Langen are climate scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in Copenhagen, which is part of the Polar Portal. Dr Andreas Ahlstrøm and Dr Kenneth D. Mankoff are chief research consultant and senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, respectively.
As the end of August sees summer shift into autumn for the northern hemisphere, it also marks the end of the melt season for the Greenland ice sheet.
The advent of a new season is the traditional time for our annual look back at the year gone by and what it tells us about the state ice sheet.
Our estimates show that the surface of the ice sheet gained 169bn tonnes of ice over 2018-19 – this is the seventh smallest gain on record.
And using new satellite data, we show that – once all ice sheet processes are factored in for the past year – the Greenland ice sheet saw a net decline of 329bn tonnes in ice.
Surface processes
While western calendars show another four months before a new year, scientists generally consider the beginning of September as the start of a new annual cycle for the Greenland ice sheet.
This yearly pattern sees the ice sheet largely gain snow from September, accumulating ice through autumn, winter and into spring. Then, as the year warms up into late spring, the ice sheet begins to lose more ice through surface melt than it gains from fresh snowfall. This melt season generally continues until the end of August.
The contrast between snow gains and ice losses at the surface over the whole year is known as the “surface mass balance” (SMB). The chart below shows the SMB for 2018-19 on individual days (top) and cumulatively across the year (bottom). The blue lines show 2018-19 data and the grey line shows the long-term average. The lower chart also shows the record low year in 2011-12 (red line) for comparison.
Daily (upper chart) and cumulative (lower) surface mass budget of the Greenland ice sheet, in billion tonnes per day, and billion tonnes, respectively. Blue lines show 2018-19 SMB year; the grey lines show the 1981-2010 average; and the red line in lower chart shows the record low SMB year of 2011-12. Credit: DMI Polar Portal.
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40
Posted on 5 October 2019 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Greta Thunberg is right: It’s time to haul ass on climate change
Economically and politically, early ambition is better.
New York, NY - August 28, 2019: 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg arrives into New York City after crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat and attend press conference at North Cove Marina - Shutterstock
When Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the elites assembled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, she concluded with a simple message: “I want you to act as if our house is on fire.”
For those elites, it was unfamiliar language. They are accustomed to talking about climate change, but typically such talk amounts to ritual invocations of “urgency” coupled with promises about what might be achieved in 2030 or 2050.
When your house is on fire, though, you don’t promise results in a decade or a year or a week. You grab a bucket and find some water. Immediately.
When it comes to climate policy, Thunberg has it right. We are in a unique historical moment; we understand the danger of climate change and, for now, still have the resources and political space necessary to address it. But every second of delay makes the challenge more expensive, more difficult, and more dangerous.
It’s not just climate activists saying that. The policy community is moving in that direction as well, with similar arguments coming into clearer view from economists and political scientists. The common theme is risk, and what it means to take the mounting risks of the climate crisis seriously.
Greta Thunberg is right: It’s time to haul ass on climate change by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Oct 4, 2019
Landmark United in Science report informs Climate Action Summit
Posted on 2 October 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the WMO
The world’s leading climate science organizations have joined forces to produce a landmark new report for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, underlining the glaring – and growing – gap between agreed targets to tackle global warming and the actual reality.
The report, United in Science, includes details on the state of the climate and presents trends in the emissions and atmospheric concentrations of the main greenhouse gases. It highlights the urgency of fundamental socio-economic transformation in key sectors such as land use and energy in order to avert dangerous global temperature increase with potentially irreversible impacts. It also examines tools to support both mitigation and adaptation.
“The Report provides a unified assessment of the state of our Earth system under the increasing influence of anthropogenic climate change, of humanity’s response thus far and of the far-reaching changes that science projects for our global climate in the future. The scientific data and findings presented in the report represent the very latest authoritative information on these topics,” said the Science Advisory Group to the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit.
“It highlights the urgent need for the development of concrete actions that halt the worst effects of climate change.”
The Science Advisory Group is co-chaired by WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas and Leena Srivastava, former Vice Chancellor of TERI School of Advanced Studies. It comprises highly recognized and respected natural and social scientists, with expertise in different aspects of climate change, including on mitigation and adaptation.
The report, which was coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, aims to present a “transparent envelope” of authoritative and actionable cutting-edge science.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39, 2019
Posted on 1 October 2019 by doug_bostrom
51 articles, 20 open access
Situational awareness: "That ship has sailed."
In a meeting of oil and gas executives this past summer, Mark Barron suggested energy companies accept that as a functional matter of politics anthropogenic climate change is fact and that their industry must deal with the reality of an under-40 US population seeing climate change as “an existential crisis that we need to address.”
A brief glance at this week's proportionality of published climate change research illustrates how— let alone its being a political reality and fait accompli-- acceptance of our influence on the climate in the broad scientific community is a ship that has sailed and sunk beneath the horizon, is well along its necessary course.
There are still interesting results to be found in the basic physical science of how our climate responds to a massive injection of CO2, but research activity increasingly lies in quantifying our future climate and Earth systems behavior based on what we already know from prior more basic results. Exploring and creating economic scenarios from which citizens may forge informed and functional policy,and understanding how the biome will cope with upcoming changes we're imposing on the planet are areas of intense focus. As well, a substantial (alarmingly?) component of current climate-related research concerns how we will feed and house a population projected to increase by some 35% even as food production and livable space are more or less negatively impacted by heating. Most immediately, now that we know something is happening our eyes are opened; observations of changes already taking place are a substantial part of this week's roster, a notably persistent feature of Skeptical Science research news.
Researchers can explore scenarios, offer quantification of what we may expect to see but of course it's up to us to be improved by all of this work, to help shape useful policy responses. Not all of us can be credentialed scientists or citizen scientists, yet we all of us together share responsibility for making better luck.
Ice sheet melting: it’s not just about sea level rise
Posted on 30 September 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from The Science Breaker by Kaitlin Naughten
Climate change is causing the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to melt, which releases cold, fresh meltwater into the nearby ocean. This meltwater causes sea level rise, but a lesser-known side effect is the disruption of deep ocean currents and climate patterns worldwide. Our modelling study investigated these processes.
You’ve probably heard that climate change is melting the polar ice caps – but what does this actually mean? It refers to the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, which are large systems of interconnected glaciers, kilometres thick. They are formed by snow falling on land, which compacts into ice and slowly flows downhill towards the ocean. When the ice sheets come into contact with a warming atmosphere or ocean, they begin to melt faster than new ice can form. This releases cold, fresh meltwater into the surrounding ocean. The most well-known consequence of this process is sea-level rise, as the volume of the ocean increases. Unfortunately, there are other side effects beyond sea level rise.
The oceans around Greenland and Antarctica are unusual because they are the only regions of the world’s oceans with significant vertical mixing. Everywhere else, the ocean is stratified, forming layers of water organised by density, with the lightest water at the surface and the heaviest water at the seafloor. The layers don’t interact with each other very much. But in a few locations around the coast of Antarctica, as well as in the North Atlantic Ocean near Greenland, surface water becomes cold and salty enough to sink into the deep ocean. Then it slowly travels around the world for about a thousand years, like a deep-ocean conveyor belt, before resurfacing. This process of “deep water formation”, occurring in just a few regions, affects deep ocean currents which transport heat around the world and influence climate patterns worldwide. But what happens when ice sheet meltwater is released into these deep water formation regions? How are the ocean currents and climate patterns affected?
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #39
Posted on 28 September 2019 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Are we finally at a tipping point on climate action?
Climate change protesters are seen crossing the Victoria Bridge in Brisbane during the Global Strike 4 Climate rally in Brisbane, Australia on Sept. 20, 2019
It’s climate action week, and I’ve been asked this one question many times: Are we at a tipping point?
Are we finally at a tipping point on climate action? by Akshat Rathi, Quartz, Sep 26, 2019
Click here to access the entire article as posted on the Quartz website.
