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?
Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
Posted on 24 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jennifer Marlon
For some Americans, the signs of global warming are everywhere. In 2020 alone, wildfires broke records across the West, hurricanes fueled by abnormally warm ocean temperatures battered the Southeast, and a Death Valley weather station recorded a temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit — possibly the hottest daily high ever reliably documented on Earth. Now, drought has taken hold in much of the West, teeing up what is expected to be an extremely active fire season.
Climate scientists have been warning for decades that global warming will lead to more extreme weather. And so as more Americans start to personally experience disastrous weather events, it’s reasonable to ask whether they will support aggressive climate action.
The short answer is already clear: not necessarily.
The signal of climate change is difficult for people to notice against the noisy background of day-to-day and seasonal changes in weather.
But even when a neighborhood, city, or region experiences truly unusual weather, some will see it as clearly connected to global warming while for others, the connection won’t even occur to them. Just as two people can respond completely differently to political events, current fashions, or to a football game, two individuals can share what seems to be an identical experience and yet come away with completely different conclusions about what happened, what caused it, and what to do about it.
We do not simply use our senses to record information about our surroundings and daily events – we interpret those events
“Experience” is much more slippery than most of us realize. We do not simply use our senses to record information about our surroundings and daily events — we interpret those events and filter them through our emotions, memories, culture, and in the case of weather and climate, our politics. We then combine our beliefs, attitudes, and evaluations of our past experiences to form new opinions, construct new cause-and-effect models in our minds, and to ultimately build narratives about events that allow us to make sense of the world and how we fit into it.
Figure 1. Percentage of Republicans and Democrats who say they have personally experienced the effects of global warming, by state, 2008-2018. Data from Mildenberger et al. 2017. For Democrats, estimates range from 53% in Wyoming to 66% in Oregon. For Republicans, estimates range from 14% in West Virginia and Wyoming to 48% in Hawaii and New York. (Source: Marlon et al. 2021)
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25, 2021
Posted on 23 June 2021 by doug_bostrom
Avoiding unintended consequences of mitigation
For the layperson it's not very difficult to imagine scenarios where effective mitigation of CO2 (and some other GHGs) will involve economic dislocation or at least rearrangements that may reverberate with other stressors to drive vulnerable societies farther in the the direction of unrest. An easy example would be a developing nation with a fragile system of governance and an incomplete export economy relying heavily on fossil fuels finding itself suddenly without a market for its only significant export. Or, an older and more mature political economy may find itself with a vast pool of workers previously employed with maintenance-hungry internal combustion powered automobiles and idled over a period of a decade. In each case the positive of mitigation produces a potential liability— if that hazard is overlooked. It isn't, and we have only to listen in order to have an inkling of how to do better. In a vastly more subtle (and better informed, more informative) exploration than our examples here, Gilmore & Buhaug first review what's known about positive or negative ripple effects of mitigation into general civic life and then suggest research pathways to further illumination of this important topic. Climate mitigation policies and the potential pathways to conflict: Outlining a research agenda is written in admirably accessible fashion and in keeping with its thrust is drenched with interesting references ot prior work.
127 Articles
Observations of climate change, effects
Anthropogenic and climatic contributions to observed carbon system trends in the Northeast Pacific
Franco et al Global Biogeochemical Cycles
DOI: 10.1029/2020gb006829
Emergence of seasonal delay of tropical rainfall during 1979–2019
Song et al Nature Climate Change
DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01066-x
Dwindling Relevance of Large Volcanic Eruptions for Global Glacier Changes in the Anthropocene
Zemp & Marzeion Geophysical Research Letters
DOI: 10.1029/2021gl092964
Observed increasing water constraint on vegetation growth over the last three decades
Jiao et al Nature Communications
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24016-9
Persistent freshening of the Arctic Ocean and changes in the North Atlantic salinity caused by Arctic sea ice decline
Li & Fedorov Fedorov Climate Dynamics
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s00382-021-05850-5 10.21203/rs.3.rs-584527/v1
Climatological Analysis of Freezing Level Height over China and its Implications using Homogenised In?Situ Data
Guo et al International Journal of Climatology
DOI: 10.1002/joc.7260
Changes in the diurnal temperature range over East Asia from 1901 to 2018 and its relationship with precipitation
Sun et al Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-411321/v1 10.1007/s10584-021-03120-1
A persistent and intense marine heatwave in the Northeast Pacific during 2019–2020
Chen et al Geophysical Research Letters
DOI: 10.1029/2021gl093239
What 50 years of data from a backyard weather station can teach us about climate change
Posted on 22 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington
On the first leg of their climate documentary road-trip, Local Motives duo Nate Murray and Cody Pfister traveled to the mountains of Virginia to meet a man who has been collecting weather data for over 50 years. Julian Kesterson, who has lived in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains since he was a child, began collecting weather data as a hobby, and now the data he collects is used by the National Weather Service. Find out what he has learned, and what it says about the future of Virginia’s climate in this Local Motives short film.
Every few weeks, Yale Climate Connections will share a new video from Local Motives. Local Motives is a video web series that showcases local perspectives on the challenges and solutions associated with climate change. It is the production of two friends, Nate Murray and Cody Pfister, traveling across the 50 states seeking to establish an authentic conversation about the impacts of climate change.
Making climate impact science more accessible to the public: ISIpedia launch
Posted on 21 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research based on their press release about the new Inter-Sectoral Impacts Encyclopedia - ISIpedia for short.
Decision-makers on all levels are provided with a new tool to tackle the climate challenge. Data and explanations on global warming impacts – from floods to droughts - are made more accessible to the public by a team of 12 international research institutes. They recently launched the online portal ISIpedia which features science explained by the scientists, breaking down global studies to the country-level, for both adaptation and mitigation planning.
“Understanding the problem can be a powerful tool to help build a safe climate future for all,” says Katja Frieler, the ISIpedia project leader from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We are all decision-makers on this topic and our decisions should ideally be based on an understanding of the problem and latest scientific findings. That is why on ISIpedia climate impact scientists not only provide easily accessible data, condensed in maps and graphs, and crucial country-level information derived from dissecting global studies but also an insight into the analyses themselves. On ISIpedia they tell about the research process, the methods they apply, what we do not know and what we know for sure.”
“ISIpedia will grow and mature,” says Frieler. “It is our aim to put the evidence on the table that citizens as well as businesses and policy-makers, can take best-informed decisions when it comes to acting on the climate crisis.”
2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Posted on 20 June 2021 by BaerbelW
The following articles sparked above average interest during the week: Earth is now trapping an ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, NASA says, Fake news: a simple nudge isn’t enough to tackle it – here’s what to do instead, and Nobel winner’s evolution from ‘dark realist’ to just plain realist on climate change.
Articles Linked to on Facebook
CSLDF and the Government Accountability Project Launch New Scientific Integrity Reporting Project
Posted on 17 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a guest post by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
Today, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund and Government Accountability Project launched the Scientific Integrity Reporting Project: a confidential, anonymous way for scientists and others in science-adjacent roles to detail their experiences involving past and ongoing threats to scientific norms and scientific integrity.
We plan to draw upon the stories participants share with us to produce a report to inform policymakers about how to better protect science in the future. Expert attorneys from both organizations will also be available to provide legal advice and potential representation to those who contact us. This may involve offering advice to scientists about their rights and options in specific scenarios or helping scientists file a formal whistleblower complaint or take other legal action as appropriate.
We are joined by a select group of partners who are also committed to protecting and improving scientific integrity in a variety of disciplines: the American Geophysical Union, Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health, and Union of Concerned Scientists.
The politicization of science undermines public trust in critical scientific institutions, and has devastating consequences for public health and safety. The tragic fallout from the Trump administration’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic vividly illustrates this, but unfortunately there have been numerous other examples, ranging from political interference with the release of scientific studies related to renewable energy to diverting hundreds of millions of dollars intended to fund scientific research.
This kind of interference with the conduct of sound and objective science also contributes to poor morale and makes it more difficult for affected institutions to recruit and retain talented scientists. Nor, importantly, are these issues limited to one presidential administration or one political party. They have occurred under Democratic administrations as well as Republican.
The Biden administration is taking laudable steps to assess the weaknesses of agency scientific integrity policies via the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and there are also efforts underway at individual agencies to assess scientific integrity violations that occurred under Trump.
We believe this Scientific Integrity Reporting Project will provide a necessary and important complement to these processes. In addition to providing scientists with additional confidentiality safeguards, we hope our efforts will produce a broader range of responses. Current initiatives appear to focus on the Trump and Obama administrations; we are interested in examples extending both further back and further forward in time to better understand long-term and current issues. We are also explicitly seeking to include grantees, contractors, and others employed outside the federal government who may be aware of a wider range of scientific integrity violations.
Only by fully understanding the scope of the violations of scientific integrity that have occurred in the past, and the mechanisms by which they were effectuated, can we hope to truly make federal science resilient to these kinds of threats in the future. We hope that many of those who have witnessed or experienced such wrongdoing will bravely come forward and share their stories with us.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #24, 2021
Posted on 16 June 2021 by doug_bostrom
A hot budget problem
This week's standout article for highlighting is Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth's Heating Rate (open access). From the two very different perspectives of above the atmosphere and below it, a team of authors led by Norman Loeb (head of NASA's CERES program) and including Gregory Johnson (head of NOAA/PMEL's Argo program) combine information and skills to confidently identify a surge in our globe's rate of warming. We can't improve on the plain language summary of this important paper:
Climate is determined by how much of the sun's energy the Earth absorbs and how much energy Earth sheds through emission of thermal infrared radiation. Their sum determines whether Earth heats up or cools down. Continued increases in concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and the long time-scales time required for the ocean, cryosphere, and land to come to thermal equilibrium with those increases result in a net gain of energy, hence warming, on Earth. Most of this excess energy (about 90%) warms the ocean, with the remainder heating the land, melting snow and ice, and warming the atmosphere. Here we compare satellite observations of the net radiant energy absorbed by Earth with a global array of measurements used to determine heating within the ocean, land and atmosphere, and melting of snow and ice. We show that these two independent approaches yield a decadal increase in the rate of energy uptake by Earth from mid-2005 through mid-2019, which we attribute to decreased reflection of energy back into space by clouds and sea-ice and increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases and water vapor.
The paper's abstract includes a concerning kicker indicating that this increased rate of rise is an indicator for a growing impedance problem with shedding warmth from the top of our atmosphere (bold ours):
We show that independent satellite and in situ observations each yield statistically indistinguishable decadal increases in EEI from mid-2005 to mid-2019 of 0.50±0.47 W m-2 decade-1 (5%-95% confidence interval). This trend is primarily due to an increase in absorbed solar radiation associated with decreased reflection by clouds and sea-ice and a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) due to increases in trace gases and water vapor. These changes combined exceed a positive trend in OLR due to increasing global mean temperatures.
The authors conclude on a sobering note, leaving a ray of hope in the form of the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation). Unfortunately the PDO itself is not bedrock safety, it being an oscillation per its name.
Because EEI is such a fundamental property of the climate system, the implications of an increasing EEI trend are far reaching. A positive EEI is manifested as 'symptoms' such as global temperature rise, increased ocean warming, sea level rise, and intensification of the hydrological cycle (von Schuckmann et al., 2016). We can therefore expect even greater changes in climate in the coming decades if internal variability associated with the PDO remains the same. If the PDO were to reverse in the future, that reversal would likely act to decrease the rate of heat uptake.
Are we even talking about the same thing?
In the world of biology, "adaptation" mostly involves death at scale. We humans prefer to adapt in less drastic ways, such as relocating our homes to safety as opposing to waiting to drown in our beds when the local creek explodes outside of its previous boundaries thanks to changes in something called the Clausius-Clapeyron relation in our atmosphere. There is a concerted, huge effort among sensible policy makers to equip us to adapt to inexorable changes we've triggered in the behavior of Earth systems affected by climate change. But when policy makers talk about "adaptation," are those who implement adaptation policy hearing the same concept? Perhaps not, and this is important. In Adaptation Confusion? A Longitudinal Examination of the Concept “Climate Change Adaptation” in Norwegian Municipal Surveys, (open access) Torbjørn Selseng et al take a look at how ideas are crossing the gulf of understanding and find room for improvement:
Using a combination of directed and conventional content analysis of the questions and answers, we summarize and map the progress of adaptation work over the 14 years and assess the consistency and the scope of the surveys in light of the current research on climate adaptation. We find diverging views on what adaptation entails, both from the researchers, in the phrasing of questions, and from the respondents. The empirical evidence suggests an overall imbalanced interpretation of CCA, in terms of the risks and consequences we may face, the climate to which adapting is needed, and adequate adaptation strategies. We go on to discuss the implications of these findings, highlighting the need for a shared and well-communicated framework for local CCA and a closer monitoring of the actual efforts of the municipalities. If instead left unchecked, this confusion might lead to unsustainable maladaptation at the local government level throughout Norway and beyond.
With seas rising, stalled research budgets must also rise
Posted on 15 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe and Eric Rignot
From 1900 to 2000, the ocean along the U.S. East Coast rose at twice the annual rate of the pace in the previous 19 centuries, according to a recent study from Rutgers University.
From Miami to New York to the Maldives to Venice, Italy, coastal cities worldwide know they have a lot of work to do to prepare for further sea-level rise and the flooding, erosion, and other problems it will bring. As they plan and implement coastal adaptation options like planned retreat from the sea, researchers in the Antarctic can help them make wiser choices – if governments provide a sharp boost in resources, and quickly.
For instance, the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the UK Natural Environment Research Council, is already providing key scientific in-situ observations in critical, previously unexplored areas. But right now it is studying only one glacier for five years with overall funding of about $50 million. The program needs much more funding to expand and intensify its work if it is to make timely progress on learning how the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is adding to global sea-level rise.
Meanwhile, other glaciers in East Antarctica, for instance the Totten and Denman glaciers, have started to melt away, with an even larger potential for sea-level rise than that from West Antarctica. But there is not enough funding and logistics support to investigate their local environments and determine their potential impact on future sea level.
Silent calamity: The health impacts of wildfire smoke
Posted on 14 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson
Articles on U.S. wildfires don’t often show a photo of someone gasping in a hospital bed or felled by a heart attack. Yet an increasing body of evidence suggests that the biggest societal impacts of increasing wildland fire are happening in our own bodies, the result of tiny particulates spewed in vast amounts.
Millions of people across the western U.S. coughed and hacked their way through the summer and autumn of 2020, when some of the region’s worst fires on record ripped across the landscape. It’s too soon to know the full range of health consequences from that summer’s blazes, but there’s already evidence now in peer review that more than 100 deaths may be attributable to 2020’s late-summer smoke in Washington state alone. If another early estimate is on target, the smoke may have contributed to between 1,200 and 3,000 premature deaths in California among people 65 and older.
Research on wildfire smoke and health is advancing hand in hand with the threat itself. The western fires of 2020 came soon after several disastrously hot, fiery years in California, which spawned a grim bumper crop of case studies. Meanwhile, an expanding array of satellite imagery is helping pinpoint where and when smoke is being emitted and transported. That’s helping scientists determine the number of people hospitalized or killed in a given area as a consequence of smoke.
“I think one of the biggest developments of the last three years has been the intense interest on the part of government, health organizations, media, and the public on the whole topic of fire smoke and health,” says Wayne Cascio, who directs EPA’s Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment. “It’s been raised to such a high level nationally and even globally that it’s motivating a lot of action to support science and to answer key questions.”
Among other relevant issues, smoke appears more likely than the fires themselves to affect communities already struggling with socioeconomic and race-based health disparities.
2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #24
Posted on 13 June 2021 by BaerbelW
This week it was somewhat tricky to identify suitable articles for sharing which is why the list ended up shorter than it usually is.
Articles Linked to on Facebook
- A slowing current system in the Atlantic Ocean spells trouble for Earth by Matthew Rozsa, Salon, June 5, 2021
- Cooling effect of clouds ‘underestimated’ by climate models, says new study by Ayesha Tandon, CarbonBrief, June 3, 2021
- Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Hits Record High Despite Pandemic Dip by Brad Plumer, The Washington Post, June 7, 2021
- Geoengineering: A worst-case Plan B? Or a fuse not to be lit? by Daniel Grossman, Yale Climate Connection, Jun 8, 2021
- California, ‘America’s garden,’ is drying out by Dana Nuccitelli, Yale Climate Connections, June 8, 2021
- What the Ottoman Empire can teach us about the consequences of climate change – and how drought can uproot peoples and fuel warfare by Andrea Duffy, The Conversation, June 7, 2021
- Plug In or Gas Up? Why Driving on Electricity is Better than Gasoline by David Reichmuth, The Union of Concerned Scientists, June 7, 2021
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2021 by Doug Bostrom, Skeptical Science, June 9, 2021
- Talking Better about Climate Change by Dr. Adam Levy, ClimateAdam on YouTube, June 10, 2021
- 12 books to get your summer reading started by Michael Svoboda, Yale Climate Connections, June 10, 2020
- Peak Internal Combustion Engine May Already Be Years Behind Us by Nathaniel Bullard, Bloomberg, June 10, 2021
- How ‘prebunking’ can fight fast-moving vaccine lies by Laura Santhanam, PBS, June 11, 2021
Spanish and Ukranian translations of The Debunking Handbook 2020
Posted on 11 June 2021 by BaerbelW
Since its publication last October, The Debunking Handbook 2020 has already been translated into 11 languages. Some of the translations have been created by volunteers who also help with Skeptical Science translations while others have been provided by outside or mixed teams.
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The Spanish translation was created by Claudia Edith Álvarez Domínguez, Irene Méndez Sánchez, Laura Ramos Aranda, Manuel Alcántara Plá and Sandra Mora López. It was published on May 27, 2021. |
| The Ukranian translation was created by Anna Schamko. It was published on June 2, 2021. |  |
Thanks to all the translation teams who created these and earlier translations!
If you'd like to translate The Debunking Handbook 2020 into another language or help with a translation currently in progress, please contact us by selecting "Enquiry about translations" from the contact form's dropdown menu. We'll then get in touch with additional information.
California, ‘America’s garden,’ is drying out
Posted on 10 June 2021 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
California, along with much of the rest of the western United States, is once again mired in drought. In fact, California has experienced significant drought conditions in 13 of the 22 years (60%) since the turn of the century.
A 2020 study in the journal Science concluded that 2000 through 2018 was the second-driest 19-year period in the U.S. Southwest in at least the past 1,200 years, and a 2014 paper in Geophysical Research Letters found that 2012 through 2014 was the driest three-year period in California over that same timeframe.
Nearly the entire state is currently in the ‘severe’ drought category or worse, and three-quarters is experiencing ‘extreme’ to ‘exceptional’ drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2021
Posted on 9 June 2021 by doug_bostrom
LIfe cycle analysis of "Dirk"
Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a method used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product through its life cycle encompassing extraction and processing of the raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, use, recycling, and final disposal. From: Journal of Environmental Management, 2010. -- Science Direct
Continuing with getting our terms straight, by "product" in this case we're speaking of "Dirk," a person living in Germany and enjoying a decent lifestyle accoridng to accepted current standards. Using established methods repurposed to a prevously untried application, David Bossek et al evaluate Dirk's major environmental impact features. It's a new means of looking at ourselves, a form of quantification that could certainly be helpful in establishing goals as well as comparing relative levels of responsibility for remedying our climate mess. In Life-LCA: the first case study of the life cycle impacts of a human being (open access) the authors find room for improvement in a typical human environmental footprint, and identify how to complete their analysis in future research:
Dirk emitted 1,140 t CO2-eq., 4.48 t SO2-eq., 1.69 t PO4-eq., and 0.537 t C2H4-eq. emissions over his current life. Transportation dominated all considered impact categories (40 up to 55%). Energy and water consumption is the second dominant product category for GWP (39%). Food products are with 10% the third biggest contributor to GWP, but rather contribute significantly to the impact categories AP (34%), EP (42%), and POCP (20%). The optimized scenario analysis revealed significant reductions for all studied impacts in the range of 60–65%. CO2-eq. emissions were reduced from 28 to 10 t/a. The remaining challenges include data collection from childhood, gaps and inconsistencies of existing data for consumer goods, the allocation between product users, and depreciation of long-living products.
This paper is remarkable not least for its "radical transparency," given that the Dirk in question is a named, individual person. Dirk's personal footprint size and shape is not the least bit speculative.
Don't look left, don't look right, look in the mirror
Continuing with new applications of reliable means of assessment, Lépissier and Mildenberger employ the "synthetic control method" (SCM) to look at unilateral policy efforts to mitigate national carbon footprints, thereby helping us to answer seductively excusing objections to mitigation along the lines of "if they won't, why should we?" From Unilateral climate policies can substantially reduce national carbon pollution (open access):
Existing efforts to evaluate the overall impact of climate policies on national carbon emissions rely on Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenarios to project what carbon emissions would have been without a climate policy. We instead use synthetic control methods to undertake an ex post national-level assessment of the UK’s CCP without relying on parametric BAU assumptions and demonstrate the potential of synthetic control methods for climate policy impact evaluation. Despite setting lax carbon targets and making substantial concessions to producers, we show that, in 2005, the UK’s CO2 emissions per capita were 9.8% lower relative to what they would have been if the CCP had not been passed. Our findings offer empirical confirmation that unilateral climate policies can still reduce carbon emissions, even in the absence of a binding global climate agreement and in the presence of regulatory capture by industry.
A prosaic analogy to "why should I try to clean up alone?" might be that if there's a pile of smelly rotting garbage in the house, we could be very stubborn and refuse to move it unless everybody else lends an equal hand. We'd "win" even as we continued to reside in stench worse than if we moved what we alone could cope with. Lépissier and Mildenberger help to remind us what winning looks like, in numbers.
The day Oil Giants lost the Climate Fight
Posted on 8 June 2021 by Guest Author
Oil companies have long been one of the biggest blocks to action on climate change. But yesterday (26 May 2021) saw huge news, that could see Exxon, Shell & Chevron forced to ramp up their efforts against global warming.
Support ClimateAdam on patreon: http://patreon.com/climateadam
Cooling effect of clouds ‘underestimated’ by climate models, says new study
Posted on 7 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Ayesha Tandon
Clouds could have a greater cooling effect on the planet than climate models currently suggest, according to new research.
The paper, published in Nature Climate Change, aims to correct a “long-standing” and “unaddressed” problem in climate modelling – namely, that existing models simulate too much rainfall from clouds and, therefore, underestimate their lifespan and cooling effect.
The authors have updated an existing climate model with a more realistic simulation of rainfall from “warm” clouds – those that contain water only, rather than a combination of water and ice. They find that this update makes the “cloud lifetime feedback” – a process in which warmer temperatures increase the lifespan of clouds – almost three times bigger.
The authors note that the newest generation of global climate models – the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) – predicts faster future warming than its predecessors. This is largely because the new models simulate a smaller cooling effect from clouds.
However, the lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief that fixing the “problem” in rainfall simulations “reduces the amount of warming predicted by the model, by about the same amount as the warming increase between CMIP5 and CMIP6”.
Due to this, he says that the key takeaway from the study is to “take the extra warming in CMIP6 with a grain of salt until some of the other known cloud problems are also fixed in the models”.
2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Update #23
Posted on 6 June 2021 by BaerbelW
This week we included links to some older videos which we think are still valuable because they provide some good basic information about climate science, like Kerry Emanuel‘s What we know about climate change from 2014, Kevin Anderson‘s Delivering on 2°C: evolution or revolution? from 2015 or Eric Rignot, Glaciologist studying ice-sheet dynamics from 2019.
Articles Linked to on Facebook
The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Posted on 4 June 2021 by BaerbelW , timo, jg
Since its publication in January 2021, several members from our team have read Michael E. Mann's latest book "The New Climate War". This blog post contains our reviews as well as the recording of a book reading from a side event at the Leipzig Book Fair.
Forewarned is forearmed - Bärbel Winkler
Michael Mann‘s book is essential reading for anybody who doesn‘t accidentally want to fall for the latest tricks utilized by the fossil fuel industry and other groups heavily invested in the status quo. He shines the spotlight on the various underhanded tactics with which these vested interests and inactivists try to drive a wedge into the climate movement or try to shift the blame for the climate crisis from them to us as consumers. Once you know what to be on the lookout for, you‘ll no longer fall prey to these methods and can also call them out when you see others falling for them, who haven‘t been made aware of the tactics yet. Forewarned is forearmed as the saying goes!
Michael Mann also offers hope as he sees outright climate science denial on the way out, basically fighting rearguard skirmishes as the evidence for human-caused global warming is more and more in front of everybodys eyes, making it ever harder to deny. Even though there‘s obviously urgency needed to tackle the climate crisis he‘s nonetheless hopeful that we can do it because we also have the agency to act, meaning that we already have most of the needed options in our toolbox with which we can set ourselves on a path to wean ourselves from fossil fuels.
What we have to make sure to not lose sight of that task however, is to all be aware of the tactics applied by the various breeds of inactivists like the downplayers, deflectors, delayers, dividers, and doomers. Michael Mann‘s book is a great help with that!
Ambitious action on climate change could be Biden’s ‘moon shot’
Posted on 3 June 2021 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Some cable TV personalities, talking heads, and plain old historians and historian wannabes have taken to finding connections between President Joe Biden and former Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson. A common rationale: The historic eras in which both FDR and LBJ, and now Biden, first took office. And the scope of public policy initiatives all three initiated virtually from the day they were sworn in.
Like most sweeping generalizations, there are strains of truth and fact and lots to quibble about in these comparisons. One analogy not having gotten much attention, however, is that involving Biden’s ambitious climate change action items and how they compare with President John F. Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, commitment to land Americans on the moon and bring them safely back to terra firma.
In this month’s original “This Is Not Cool” video by Yale Climate Connections independent videographer Peter Sinclair, the link between the historic “moon shot” goal and the Biden hoped-for climate objectives is front and center (and posted here, coincidentally, on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s pronouncement to Congress). Moon shot? Wishful thinking? How can such sweeping changes occur in the tight time frames often assigned to them? The video explores those questions and more. Take a look.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #22, 2021
Posted on 2 June 2021 by doug_bostrom
CO2 and staple crop nutritional quality
Dr. Kristi Ebi leads a diversely skilled author team to lend us a thought-provoking tap on the shoulder concerning our lack of full understanding of how increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will affect primary sources of food, particularly grains, and how we intend to maintain key nutritional qualities in the face of adverse effects as a result of more CO2 suddenly being available for plant metabolism. As indicated by supporting work in the article, early signs are that with increasing carbon dioxide in the air staple crops comprising substantial dietary components for billions of people (we're all included, more or less) will show significant declines in nutrients mandatory for good health. Nutritional quality of crops in a high CO2 world: an agenda for research and technology development (open access) provides a very useful synopsis of concerns and then a welcomely unsubtle appeal to put more noses to the grindstone of research, so that we can anticipate these effects and understand how to cope with them. This seems reasonable; it's not as though we're all over-nourished even at this juncture and with so many people living on the edge of their metabolic requirements we don't have any slack as it stands now. From the abstract, a prescription as concise as it is challenging:
Transdisciplinary research involving at least ecologists, plant physiologists, economists, and experts in human nutrition is essential for developing a systems-based understanding of the potential impacts of rising CO2 concentrations for human nutrition and the attendant consequences for achieving the sustainable development goal on food security.
Let alone the main point of the work, Ebi 2021 reiminds us that when we hear somebody cheerfully chirping "but CO2 is plant food!" they're navigating onto a reef of complications. Follow references in the paper to learn about the complexities.
Drive EVs faster?
In common with all human artifacts, mass production and employment of electric vehicles undeniably creates an environmental footprint, including CO2 emissions. Leaving aside spurious "solutions denier" arguments against electrification of road transport, the more we account for our impacts the better our future will be. Unlike 110 years ago when fossil-fuel powered vehicles exploded into use with barely a second thought we're now a bit sadder and a lot wiser about willy-nilly behavior involving millions of copies of bulky objects made from raw materials and needing copious energy to function. In modern times, we do do the math on the messes we make— in advance. Hence we're assiduously trying to account for cradle-to-grave external effects of EV deployment at scale. In Global perspective on CO2 emissions of electric vehicles (open access) Märtz et al take a detailed look at how electrified road transport will fit into our overall remaining carbon budget (actually an enormous red figure on our balance sheet, it might be argued). Previous studies on this topic miss important details concerning expected transitions of our energy supplies to more modern sources. Factoring in ongoing updating and modernization away from primitive combustion-centered energy manipulation techniques, the authors find mashing the throttle pedal on electrification will more rapidly take us closer to where we need to be on our carbon budget. Here is a case where inclinations to overweening perfection are the enemy of "good enough to start." From the abstract:
The rapid uptake of renewable electricity generation worldwide implies an unprecedented change that affects the carbon content of electricity for battery production as well as charging and thus the GHG mitigation potential of PEV. However, most studies assume fixed carbon content of the electricity in the environmental assessment of PEV and the fast change of the generation mix has not been studied on a global scale yet. Furthermore, the inclusion of up-stream emissions remains an open policy problem. Here, we apply a reduced life cycle assessment approach including the well-to-wheel emissions of PEV and taking into account future changes in the electricity mix. We compare future global energy scenarios and combine them with PEV diffusion scenarios. Our results show that the remaining carbon budget is best used with a very early PEV market diffusion; waiting for cleaner PEV battery production cannot compensate for the lost carbon budget in combustion vehicle usage.
"Deploy, deploy, deploy."
89 Articles
Physical science of climate change, effects
Natural Variability and Warming Signals in Global Ocean Wave Climates
Odériz et al Geophysical Research Letters
DOI: 10.1029/2021gl093622
Observations of climate change, effects
More than a nuisance: measuring how sea level rise delays commuters in Miami, FL
Hauer et al Environmental Research Letters
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abfd5c
A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’
Posted on 1 June 2021 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Mark Boslough
I would normally ignore a book by a non-climate scientist promising “the truth about climate science that you aren’t getting elsewhere.” Such language is a red flag. But I’ve known the author of “Unsettled” since I took his quantum mechanics course as a Ph.D. student at Caltech in the 1970s. He’s smart and I like him, so I’m inclined to give his book a chance.
But smart scientists aren’t always right, and nice guys are still prone to biases – especially if they listen to the wrong people. In an apparent quest for fairness when he led a committee of the American Physical Society (one of my professional organizations) to assess its statement on climate change, he recruited three scientists to represent the 97% consensus, and three contrarians, presumably to speak for the other 3%. The lack of proportionate representation amplified the contrary opinions that he heard, and only in one direction. He completely ignored another, equally unfounded, contrary view. The position sometimes referred to as “doomism” (the belief that the worst-case is inevitable and it is too late to prevent it) was not represented.
The three contrarians had a long and well-documented history of engaging in ad hominem attacks on mainstream climate scientists and misrepresenting their work. Most of the technical mistakes and misrepresentations in “Unsettled” may simply be attributable to Koonin’s trust of those advisors and lack of rigorous independent verification.
Some books CAN be told by their cover. This is one of them.
Unfortunately, “Unsettled” is a book you can accurately judge by its cover. Koonin’s title hints at a logical fallacy called the “strawman” argument. The blurb on the flap confirms this with its opening sentence: “When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that ‘the science is settled.’”
A bit of fact checking by the author or publisher would have shown that this claim is not true. In fact, Koonin makes use of an old strawman concocted by opponents of climate science in the 1990s to create an illusion of arrogant scientists, biased media, and lying politicians – making them easier to attack.
The phrase “science is settled” is repeated as Koonin’s target throughout the book, even though it has never been in common use by climate scientists and their supporters. If it were, then Google and LexisNexis searches would surely turn up instances, but the opposite is true. All the examples I found were from critics claiming that advocates of the consensus had said it.
