Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Global warming is real and human-caused. It is leading to large-scale climate change. Under the guise of climate "skepticism", the public is bombarded with misinformation that casts doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming "skepticism".
Our mission is simple: debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial.
Suggested sessions of EGU24 to submit abstracts to
Posted on 1 December 2023 by BaerbelW
Like earlier this year, members from our team will be involved with next year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). The conference will take place on premise in Vienna as well as online from April 14 to 19, 2024. The session catalog has been available since November 1 and abstracts can be submitted until January 10, 2024 at 13:00 CET. Below, you'll find information about three sessions we think are worthwhile to get involved with.
Session EOS1.6
Session EOS1.6 looks to be right up our alley as it's about "Science vs. disinformation: recognizing, addressing and tackling fake news to foster science credibility and public awareness." This session is being organized by Arianna Acierno and Elena Maggi from the CMCC Euro-Mediterrenean Centre on Climate Change. If that organization's name rings a bell it might be due to the recent events they organized in Italy where John Cook was one of the featured speakers. So, needless to say, we'll be submitting an abstract to this session, something along the lines Bärbel Winkler and John Cook had submitted for the EGU conference in 2021, but obviously udpated and adapted to what we now have on offer.
How about submitting an abstract as well (login required)?
Session EOS4.8
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2023
Posted on 30 November 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
From this week's government/NGO section, longitudinal data is gold and Leisorowitz, Maibachi et al. continue to mine ore from the US public with Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Fall 2023:
Drawing on a representative sample of the U.S. adult population, the authors describe how registered voters view a variety of domestic climate and energy policies. The survey was fielded from October 20 – 26, 2023. For example, 57% of registered voters would prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming. This includes 95% of liberal Democrats, 86% of moderate/conservative Democrats, and 46% of liberal/moderate Republicans, but only 13% of conservative Republicans. 56% of registered voters think global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress. 64% of registered voters think developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority for the President and Congress.
Now that we've fully twigged to wet-bulb temperature vs. human survivability in a warming, moistening climate, we're already seeing refined results against first-pass gross estimations. In Nature Communications Jennifer Varos et al. subdivide populations and arrive at some grim conclusions. From the abstract of A physiological approach for assessing human survivability and liveability to heat in a changing climate:
Most studies projecting human survivability limits to extreme heat with climate change use a 35 °C wet-bulb temperature (Tw) threshold without integrating variations in human physiology. This study applies physiological and biophysical principles for young and older adults, in sun or shade, to improve current estimates of survivability and introduce liveability (maximum safe, sustained activity) under current and future climates. Our physiology-based survival limits show a vast underestimation of risks by the 35 °C Tw model in hot-dry conditions. Updated survivability limits correspond to Tw~25.8–34.1 °C (young) and ~21.9–33.7 °C (old)—0.9–13.1 °C lower than Tw = 35 °C.
There are obvious implications in the authors' findings, including that older people will be much more at risk from wet-bulb temperature extremes.
Dikes as Maginot Line? That's the picture coming to mind when reading Kiesel et al. and Raising dikes and managed realignment may be insufficient for maintaining current flood risk along the German Baltic Sea coast. Publishing in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, these investigators expose a major flaw in conventional wisdom concerning sea level rise and protection of low-lying areas of Germany's portion of the Baltic Sea coast: models consider protection as continuous but it's not, meaning that the sea can outflank defenses:
We find that upgrading existing dikes by increasing their heights or MR may be insufficient to maintain current flood risk levels. This finding is not in agreement with the findings of previous global- and continental-scale studies. Here we show that water does not overflow dikes but bypasses them or floods unprotected areas (Fig. 4b, c, d, e and Figs. S1–S3 in Supplementary Material). On the other hand, global or continental-scale studies consistently demonstrate the effectiveness of raising dike heights in reducing population exposure and expected annual damages3,4,54. However, due to their scale, these studies address adaptation in a more stylized way, for instance by assuming uniform coastal protection standards along the full length of the coastline, including areas where currentlyno dikes are present.
Further details reveal more flaws.
It's not surprising that industries with track records of a couple of centuries' delivery of social welfare might influence the mood in a room with evolution in the air. How does this influence media coverage of energy industry modernization? Publishing in Sustainability Science, Fulvio Biddau, Valentina Rizzoli & Mauro Sarrica derive quantification of likely unconscious hagiography of anachronisms, in Phasing-out ‘coal tradition’ in favour of ‘renewable colonialism’: how the press contributes to the discursive (de)legitimization of coal and renewables in a coal region in transition:
Throughout the analyzed period, newspapers have cultivated a discursive environment that weakens efforts to phase out coal and promote low-carbon energy by amplifying particular storylines endorsed by competing discourse coalitions. Media discourse consistently portrays decarbonization and coal phase-out as threatening, anticipating disruption to regional livelihoods and traditions. Over time, renewable energies are marginalized or hindered by storylines promoting regime stability (coal legitimacy), soft transformation (coal-to-gas transition), and, finally, a reconfiguration (utility-scale renewable transition) promoted by incumbents and resisted by locally based discourse coalitions perceiving it as a form of colonialism.
120 articles in 58 journals by 712 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A colorful look at climate sensitivity, Stevens & Kluft Kluft, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-23-14673-2023
Amplified Subsurface Signals of Ocean Acidification, Fassbender et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gb007843
Change and attribution of frost days and frost-free periods in China, Zhu & Yan, International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8310
Circulation dampened heat extremes intensification over the Midwest USA and amplified over Western Europe, Singh et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-023-01096-7
Grounding our Understanding of the Impacts of Boreal Forest Expansion on Shallow Cumulus Clouds with a Simple Modeling Framework, Pennypacker & Wood, Journal of Hydrometeorology 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0165.1
How changes in the circulation patterns specific to the solid precipitations can affect these meteorological events in the Alpine stations of the Mediterranean region? Use of the ERA5 reanalyses, Guerin & Viaux, Theoretical and Applied Climatology 10.1007/s00704-023-04733-5
Multi-decadal variability controls short-term stratospheric water vapor trends, Tao et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-023-01094-9
Ocean fronts as decadal thermostats modulating continental warming hiatus, Sung et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-43686-1
Observations of climate change, effects
Anthropogenic warming induced intensification of summer monsoon frontal precipitation over East Asia, Moon et al., Science Advances Open Access pdf 10.1126/sciadv.adh4195
How climate change is affecting every U.S. region
Posted on 29 November 2023 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Climate change is making the weather weird in every region of the United States.
That’s a key takeaway of the new fifth National Climate Assessment, a sweeping, U.S.-focused report in which top climate scientists summarize the latest research on climate change science, impacts, and solutions.
As the climate warms, most of the Eastern United States is becoming wetter and thus faces increased flood risks. At the same time, the Western states are mostly becoming drier, the risk of droughts and wildfires is rising.
The National Climate Assessment divides the country into 10 regions and identifies the key threats in each one.
(Image credit: the fifth National Climate Assessment)
The Northwest
The biggest climate threats in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) are heat, flooding, and wildfires. Hotter and drier conditions in recent decades have increased the risk of wildfires, smoke, and heat exposure. Warming temperatures and drought have contributed to a declining snowpack and created water supply vulnerabilities, such as the depletion of reservoirs across central and eastern Oregon and southern Idaho. And the deadly Pacific Northwest heat wave in the summer of 2021 exposed the vulnerability of a region that is not yet accustomed or adapted to dangerous triple-digit heat.
At a glance - Evidence for global warming
Posted on 28 November 2023 by John Mason, BaerbelW
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Evidence for global warming". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
It's now 14 years since Sarah Palin was on the record as having provided the above quote, at a logging conference in California. In that time, much has happened in the world of climate change. We can have a quick catch-up, by examining the 2022 State of the Climate report, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2023.
In 2022, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere rose to 417 ppm. That's 50% greater than the pre-industrial level. Global mean methane abundance was 165% higher than its pre-industrial level, Nitrous oxide was 24% higher.
Record or near-record heat was widespread in 2022 and even more so in 2023. In 2022, Europe observed its second-warmest year on record, with sixteen individual countries observing record warmth at the national scale. Records tumbled, many with huge increases as summer heatwaves plagued the region. On 18 July, 104 weather-stations in France broke their all-time temperature records in a single day. On the 19th, England recorded a temperature of 40°C for the first time. China experienced its second-warmest year and warmest summer on record. In the Southern Hemisphere, the average temperature across New Zealand reached a record high for the second year in a row. Western Australia reached 50.7°C on 13 January, equaling Australia's highest temperature on record.
Sea-surface temperature patterns in the tropical Pacific were characteristic of La Niña, a phenomenon that should have mitigated against atmospheric heat gain at the global scale. However, the annual global surface temperature across land and oceans was among the six highest in records dating as far back as the mid-1800s. 2022 was the warmest La Niña year on record.
At the time of writing, there is still about a month of 2023 to run. Yet once again we have record-breaking temperatures, with some records smashed by huge margins, so that 2023 looks as though it may well go down as the hottest on record.
'Snake oil science'? No, these are records of things actually happening, right now. Not only are they being recorded, they are being witnessed by countless people worldwide. They add to the growing mountain of scientific evidence, showing without any doubt that Earth's climate system is overheating, as predicted by the laws of physics from more than a century ago. If some politician or other insists to the contrary, just ask yourself what particular expertise entitles them to make such utterances? Are they really smarter than all the tens of thousands of scientists who work hard to collect and analyse the data?
Beware. politicians tend to be good at talking politics on most topics and they are especially adept at telling people what they want to hear. But in cases like this, we can clearly see that events have a tendency to catch up with them in the longer term. Beware.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!
Click for Further details
Giving Tuesday
Posted on 27 November 2023 by SkS-Team, BaerbelW
For the first time "in history" we decided to jump on the "Giving Tuesday" bandwagon in order to make you aware of the options you have to contribute to our work!
Projects supported by Skeptical Science Inc.
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Skeptical Science is an all-volunteer organization but our work is not without financial costs. Contributions supporting our publication mechanisms from our readers and users are a critical part of improving the general public's critical thinking skills about science and in particular climate science. Your contribution is a solid investment in making possible a better future thanks to improving our ability to think productively, leading to better decisions at all levels of our climate change challenge. Please visit our support page to contribute. |
Translations of the FLICC-poster
| The FLICC-Poster is the result of a successful collaboration between Skeptical Science and our German partner website Klimafakten. It was first published in May 2020 and has been quite popular in English, German, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish since then. The creation of additional translations of the poster requires funding for professional design and layout work. You can contribute to that effort via the form provided on this page. |
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Translations of the Cranky Uncle Game
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The Cranky Uncle game adopts an active inoculation approach, where a Cranky Uncle cartoon character mentors players to learn the techniques of science denial. Cranky Uncle is a free game available on smartphones for iPhone and Android as well as web browsers. Even though the translations of the Cranky Uncle game are done by teams of volunteers, each language incurs costs for programming activities to get a language set up in the game. If you'd like to support Cranky Uncle "teaching" his science denial techniques in other languages, please use the dedicated form provided on this page to contribute. |
Other options to contribute
Another very helpful way to support our work is to provide feedback on our rebuttals and especially the new at-a-glance sections in the basic-level rebuttals we are currently adding. And if you happen to be multi-lingual: we have a lot of content where translations could be updated or created!
Thanks for reading and any contribution you choose to make!
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #47
Posted on 25 November 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
World stands on frontline of disaster at Cop28, says UN climate chief
Exclusive: Simon Stiell says leaders must ‘stop dawdling’ and act before crucial summit in Dubai
World leaders must “stop dawdling and start doing” on carbon emission cuts, as rapidly rising temperatures this year have put everyone on the frontline of disaster, the UN’s top climate official has warned.
No country could think itself immune from catastrophe, said Simon Stiell, who will oversee the crucial Cop28 climate summit that begins next week. Scores of world leaders will arrive in Dubai for tense talks on how to tackle the crisis.
“We’re used to talking about protecting people on the far-flung frontlines. We’re now at the point where we’re all on the frontline,” said Stiell, speaking exclusively to the Guardian before the summit. “Yet most governments are still strolling when they need to be sprinting.”
Global temperatures have broken new records in recent months, making this year the hottest on record, and perilously close to the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries have agreed to hold to. Temperatures are now heading for a “hellish” 3C increase, unless urgent and drastic action is taken, but greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise.
Stiell said it was still possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay within the crucial limit, but that further delay would be dangerous.
“Every year of the baby steps we’ve been taking up to this point means that we need to be taking … bigger leaps with each following year if we are to stay in this race,” he said. “The science is absolutely clear.”
The fortnight-long Cop28 talks will start this Thursday in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a major oil and gas-producing country. Scores of world leaders, senior ministers and officials from 198 countries will be in attendance, along with an estimated 70,000 delegates, making it the biggest annual conference of the parties (Cop) yet held under the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the The Guardian website.
World stands on frontline of disaster at Cop28, says UN climate chief Exclusive: Simon Stiell says leaders must ‘stop dawdling’ and act before crucial summit in Dubai by Fiona Harvey, Environment, The Guardian, Nov 24, 2023
Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back
Posted on 24 November 2023 by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Misinformation is debated everywhere and has justifiably sparked concerns. It can polarise the public, reduce health-protective behaviours such as mask wearing and vaccination, and erode trust in science. Much of misinformation is spread not by accident but as part of organised political campaigns, in which case we refer to it as disinformation.
But there is a more fundamental, subversive damage arising from misinformation and disinformation that is discussed less often.
It undermines democracy itself. In a recent paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology, we highlight two important aspects of democracy that disinformation works to erode.
The integrity of elections
The first of the two aspects is confidence in how power is distributed – the integrity of elections in particular.
In the United States, recent polls have shown nearly 70% of Republicans question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. This is a direct result of disinformation from Donald Trump, the loser of that election.
Democracy depends on the people knowing that power will be transferred peacefully if an incumbent loses an election. The “big lie” that the 2020 US election was stolen undermines that confidence.
Depending on reliable information
The second important aspect of democracy is this – it depends on reliable information about the evidence for various policy options.
One reason we trust democracy as a system of governance is the idea that it can deliver “better” decisions and outcomes than autocracy, because the “wisdom of crowds” outperforms any one individual. But the benefits of this wisdom vanish if people are pervasively disinformed.
Disinformation about climate change is a well-documented example. The fossil fuel industry understood the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels at least as early as the 1960s. Yet they spent decades funding organisations that denied the reality of climate change. This disinformation campaign has delayed climate mitigation by several decades – a case of public policy being thwarted by false information.
We’ve seen a similar misinformation trajectory in the COVID-19 pandemic, although it happened in just a few years rather than decades. Misinformation about COVID varied from claims that 5G towers rather than a virus caused the disease, to casting doubt on the effectiveness of lockdowns or the safety of vaccines.
The viral surge of misinformation led to the World Health Organisation introducing a new term – infodemic – to describe the abundance of low-quality information and conspiracy theories.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2023
Posted on 23 November 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
How warped are we by fossil fuel dependency? Despite Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 35-40 million cubic meters per day of Russian natural gas are piped across Ukraine for European consumption every single day, right now. In order to secure European cooperation against Russian aggression, Ukraine must help to finance its own destruction at the hands of one of the world's largest petro-kleptocracies, assisting its attacker in marketing what has become a transcendently toxic geopolitical hazard. Publishing in Energy Policy, Ah-Voun, Chyong & Li describe how this tortuously ironic knot might be unraveled, in Europe's energy security: From Russian dependence to renewable reliance. People keen on self-respect may appreciate the authors' contribution to showing how to crawl from a moral and ethical cesspit.
Those of us who have investigated the costs of upgrading to an EV or perhaps switching to a heat pump for residential use already know: it's often hard or impossible to show a reasonable "profit" from making such investments. Equally, economists steer us to discount the future because we can't take the future to the bank right now. It's an argument that can be vastly extended when we myopically ignore factors other than cash gripped in our greedy fingers. If Ray Galvin's article The economic losses of energy-efficiency renovation of Germany's older dwellings: The size of the problem and the financial challenge it presents holds water, "we're gonna need a bigger reason" (with apologies to Chief Brody) than yet more money to justify modernizing aging housing stock. How about a pleasant planet? Reason enough?
Also publishing in Energy Policy and serving as a restorative antidote to Galvin's grim findings are Kantorowicz et al., with How to finance green investments? The role of public debt. We've a long history of solving hard problems with public finance including debt and revenue. Here the authors explore public preferences in that regard, and— taking that into account--how best to communicate options to those utlimately holding the reins: electorates.
Details of how Florida is sinking into a tight spot, via two journals. The role of compound climate and weather extreme events in creating socio-economic impacts in south Florida, in Weather and Climate Extremes, and Living with water: Evolving adaptation preferences under increasing sea-level rise in Miami-Dade County, FL, USA via Climate Risk Managment. The latter article offers suggestions for coping, while the former indicates an avid audience for such advice.
Putting later and now together as a bigger picture delivered through two journals: Future Global Population Exposure to Record-Breaking Climate Extremes in Earth's Future and Leaving Home: Cumulative Climate Shocks and Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa via Environmental and Resource Economics. Instead of "refugees" or "migrants," how about another term a bit less othering: "people trying to survive?" A few of us are creating a lot of real people facing real hardships not of their own making, with our helping hands only grudgingly extended if at all. We can do much better. We know how to ease this need, after all. Why not?
We may complain about insurance premiums but silver linings to the pain of paying include safety belts, smoke detectors and many other good things universally adopted at least in part by nudges from underwriter self-interest. So far, the USDA Crop Insurance Program is failing to properly advise its clients, according to EWG's report Crop insurance pays farmers billions of dollars for weather-related losses closely linked to the climate crisis, from this week's government/NGO section:
Indemnities for the five most expensive weather-related causes of loss – drought, excess moisture and precipitation, hail, heat, and freeze – totaled over $118.75 billion between 2001 and 2022, representing 73 percent of total crop insurance payouts. The extreme weather events that triggered these payments are closely associated with the climate emergency. Yet the Crop Insurance Program does not encourage farmers to adapt to the extreme weather linked to the climate crisis.
118 articles in 48 journals by 716 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Arctic Warming and Eurasian Cooling: Weakening and Reemergence, Xu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl105180
Observed and Projected Changes in North Atlantic Seasonal Temperature Reduction and Their Drivers, Grist et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023jc019837
Separating Direct Heat Flux Forcing and Freshwater Feedback on AMOC Change Under Global Warming, Wen et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl105478
The Temperature Control of Cloud Adiabatic Fraction and Coverage, Lu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl105831
Observations of climate change, effects
Acidification Of Northeastern USA Lakes From Rising Anthropogenic-Sourced Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Its Effects on Aluminum Speciation, Johannesson et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl104957
Anthropogenic Weakening of the Atmospheric Circulation During the Satellite Era, Shrestha & Soden, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl104784
How climate change is affecting every U.S. region
Posted on 22 November 2023 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Climate change is making the weather weird in every region of the United States.
That’s a key takeaway of the new fifth National Climate Assessment, a sweeping, U.S.-focused report in which top climate scientists summarize the latest research on climate change science, impacts, and solutions.
As the climate warms, most of the Eastern United States is becoming wetter and thus faces increased flood risks. At the same time, the Western states are mostly becoming drier, the risk of droughts and wildfires is rising.
The National Climate Assessment divides the country into 10 regions and identifies the key threats in each one.
(Image credit: the fifth National Climate Assessment)
The Northwest
The biggest climate threats in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) are heat, flooding, and wildfires. Hotter and drier conditions in recent decades have increased the risk of wildfires, smoke, and heat exposure. Warming temperatures and drought have contributed to a declining snowpack and created water supply vulnerabilities, such as the depletion of reservoirs across central and eastern Oregon and southern Idaho. And the deadly Pacific Northwest heat wave in the summer of 2021 exposed the vulnerability of a region that is not yet accustomed or adapted to dangerous triple-digit heat.
At a glance - How sensitive is our climate?
Posted on 21 November 2023 by John Mason, BaerbelW
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "How sensitive is our climate?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
Climate sensitivity is of the utmost importance. Why? Because it is the factor that determines how much the planet will warm up due to our greenhouse gas emissions. The first calculation of climate sensitivity was done by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1896. He worked out that a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in air would cause a warming of 4-6oC. However, CO2 emissions at the time were miniscule compared to today's. Arrhenius could not have foreseen the 44,250,000,000 tons we emitted in 2019 alone, through energy/industry plus land use change, according to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of 2022.
Our CO2 emissions build up in our atmosphere trapping more heat, but the effect is not instant. Temperatures take some time to fully respond. All natural systems always head towards physical equilibrium but that takes time. The absolute climate sensitivity value is therefore termed 'equilibrium climate sensitivity' to emphasise this.
Climate sensitivity has always been expressed as a range. The latest estimate, according to AR6, has a 'very likely' range of 2-5oC. Narrowing it down even further is difficult for a number of reasons. Let's look at some of them.
To understand the future, we need to look at what has already happened on Earth. For that, we have the observational data going back to just before Arrhenius' time and we also have the geological record, something we understand in ever more detail.
For the future, we also need to take feedbacks into account. Feedbacks are the responses of other parts of the climate system to rising temperatures. For example, as the world warms up. more water vapour enters the atmosphere due to enhanced evaporation. Since water vapour is a potent greenhouse gas, that pushes the system further in the warming direction. We know that happens, not only from basic physics but because we can see it happening. Some other feedbacks happen at a slower pace, such as CO2 and methane release as permafrost melts. We know that's happening, but we've yet to get a full handle on it.
Other factors serve to speed up or slow down the rate of warming from year to year. The El Nino-La Nina Southern Oscillation, an irregular cycle that raises or lowers global temperatures, is one well-known example. Significant volcanic activity occurs on an irregular basis but can sometimes have major impacts. A very large explosive eruption can load the atmosphere with aerosols such as tiny droplets of sulphuric acid and these have a cooling effect, albeit only for a few years.
These examples alone show why climate change is always discussed in multi-decadal terms. When you stand back from all that noise and look at the bigger picture, the trend-line is relentlessly heading upwards. Since 1880, global temperatures have already gone up by more than 1oC - almost 2oF, thus making a mockery of the 2010 Monckton quote in the orange box above.
That amount of temperature rise in just over a century suggests that the climate is highly sensitive to human CO2 emissions. So far, we have increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 50%, from 280 to 420 ppm, since 1880. Furthermore, since 1981, temperature has risen by around 0.18oC per decade. So we're bearing down on the IPCC 'very likely' range of 2-5oC with a vengeance.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!
Click for Further details
Climate Adam: Climate Negotiation Crisis - Will COP28 be a giant mess?
Posted on 20 November 2023 by Guest Author
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
It's no secret that COP climate negotiations often disappoint. But the COP28 talks in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are off to a bad start... before they've even started. From fears about the location, to frustration of the appointment of oil man Sultan al Jaber as president, COP28 is off to a bad start before it's even started.
Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
Posted on 18 November 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore.
Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every four years or so. But after four previous assessments and six United Nations reports since 1990, I was skeptical that what we needed to address climate change was yet another report.
In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods, and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didn’t seem to matter.
Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory. But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too. [My bold - JMH]
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the New York Times website.
I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore. Opinion by Kate Marevel, Climate, New York Times, Nov 18, 2023
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #46 2023
Posted on 16 November 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
From this week's government/NGO section, Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Positive Views of Science Continue to Decline:
Overall, 57% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society. This share is down 8 percentage points since November 2021 and down 16 points since before the start of the coronavirus outbreak. About a third (34%) now say the impact of science on society has been equally positive as negative. A small share (8%) think science has had a mostly negative impact on society. When it comes to the standing of scientists, 73% of U.S. adults have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. But trust in scientists is 14 points lower than it was at the early stages of the pandemic.
Despite assumptions often made about social media, user-generated media were positively correlated with an opinion on ACC that is in line with scientific consensus. The interplay between how media show and explain the issue of climate change, on what channels, and in particular how much attention is paid to communicating the scientific consensus on the existence and urgency of this problem, is an important element in converging scientists’ and public opinion on ACC and closing the consensus gap.
Could a minimalist lifestyle reduce carbon emissions and improve wellbeing? A review of minimalism and other low consumption lifestyles (literature review):
We conclude that while minimalism might offer wellbeing benefits, research on carbon emissions is inconclusive. Furthermore, even if minimalism did result in reduced emissions, the minimalist lifestyle maybe too individualistic to create social change.
Achieving universal access to electricity by 2030, as set out by the Sustainable Development Goals, presents a significant challenge given the current rate of progress. A recent promising concept is swarm electrification. Its central idea is the peer-to-peer energy sharing of surplus energy in solar home systems (SHSs) to connect additional neighbors and grow a bottom-up grid. This paper studies the surplus energy in SHSs and its underlying influencing factors as a basis for swarm electrification.
Greenland-wide accelerated retreat of peripheral glaciers in the twenty-first century:
The long-term response of Greenland’s peripheral glaciers to climate change is widely undocumented. Here we use historical aerial photographs and satellite imagery to document length fluctuations of >1,000 land-terminating peripheral glaciers in Greenland over more than a century. We find that their rate of retreat over the last two decades is double that of the twentieth century, indicating a ubiquitous transition into a new, accelerated state of downwasting.
119 articles in 59 journals by 691 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Background Pycnocline Depth Constrains Future Ocean Heat Uptake Efficiency, Newsom et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl105673
On the Physics of High CAPE, Emanuel, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1175/jas-d-23-0060.1
Observations of climate change, effects
Anthropogenic Influence on 2022 Extreme January–February Precipitation in Southern China, Hu et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-23-0136.1
Anthropogenic Influence on the Record-Breaking Compound Hot and Dry Event in Summer 2022 in the Yangtze River Basin in China, Li et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-23-0149.1
Extratropical forests increasingly at risk due to lightning fires, Janssen et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-023-01322-z
How to sell solar in coal country
Posted on 15 November 2023 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Hannah Wilson-Black. This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
When Matt McFadden came of age in southwestern Virginia in the early 2000s, he wasn’t planning on working for a clean energy outfit. He grew up playing in a high school garage band, part of his increasingly Republican county’s small punk scene. But staring out at the photovoltaic panels gleaming atop his daughter’s elementary school in July — an array his company, Secure Solar Futures, installed — he was beaming with pride. In the midst of the Inflation Reduction Act’s rollout, McFadden and coal-rich Wise County have something many politically conservative areas from Texas to Ohio are struggling to create: real, and growing, support for solar.
McFadden and his firm have not accomplished this alone. In 2016, a coalition of businesses, nonprofits, colleges, local governments, and citizens launched the Solar Workgroup of Southwest Virginia, which collaborates with Secure Solar Futures. It includes experts in every aspect of the green transition, from community organizers who tell neighbors about the benefits of solar to legal experts who propose legislation. The organization was heavily involved in the deal to install arrays on 12 schools in Lee and Wise counties and brought the idea to the attention of the Appalachian Solar Finance Fund, which, along with some state funding, financed part of the ongoing project.
Wise County is one of seven coal-producing counties in southwestern Virginia, and the rock has been pulled from the surrounding hills since 1880. In 2021, a panel that advises President Biden named the region the nation’s fourth most coal-dependent economy and said it should be prioritized when considering grants to remedy environmental damage and create union jobs. McFadden said provisions in the IRA that provide tax credits for projects in low-income and coal communities, coupled with those that reward using domestically manufactured components, allow his company to save up to 60 percent on an installation — savings that it passes on to customers.
At a glance - How the IPCC is more likely to underestimate the climate response
Posted on 14 November 2023 by John Mason, BaerbelW
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "How the IPCC is more likely to underestimate the climate response". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a United Nations body founded in 1988. Its purpose is to inform governments about the status of our scientific knowledge with regard to our changing climate. In order to accomplish this role, it gathers and summarises evidence, producing an Assessment Report (AR) every few years. Each AR is an up-to-date account of the impacts and risks of a changing climate. However, because it takes 6-7 years to bring an AR to publication, by the time one is produced, the science is already moving ahead - as is the climate. The laws of physics wait for nobody.
It is important to clear up a couple of serious misunderstandings about the IPCC that are often encountered in online discussions. Firstly, the IPCC does not conduct original scientific research. That includes modelling. But how often do we see commentators ranting about 'IPCC models'?
In fact, climate models are managed by multiple modelling groups around the world. Together, these groups form the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). In AR6, published in 2022-23, the latest generation CMIP6 output was featured. The modellers, however, did the modelling, not the IPCC.
The above example illustrates the depth of confusion that is out there. The confusion was sown by the same merchants of doubt who created and distributed all the other denialist talking-points that we deal with here at Skeptical Science.
A second frequently-cast aspersion is that the IPCC is alarmist, exaggerating the threat of climate change to cause needless worry or panic. Let us repeat: it merely collates what the science is saying. And what the science is saying is very worrying.
We have understood the heat-trapping properties of certain gases such as water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide for more than 100 years. Yet we have raised the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide from a pre-industrial level of ~280 parts per million (ppm) to 420 ppm (in 2023). That is a 50% increase.
A CO2 level of 420 ppm last occurred on Earth during the middle of the Pliocene division of geological time, some 3.5 million years ago. Back then, the Polar ice-sheets were much smaller and vegetation distribution, detailed by the fossil record, differed dramatically from that of today. As an example, mixed woodlands were able to grow in Arctic Siberia, where today there is just stunted tundra. Sea levels were metres higher than today's. In AR6, the IPCC summarises, in its typically non-dramatic language:
"While present-day warming is unusual in the context of the recent geologic past in several different ways, past warm climate states (i.e. the Pliocene) present a stark reminder that the long-term adjustment to present-day atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has only just begun. That adjustment will continue over the coming centuries to millennia."
If you're not worried about the threat of climate change, then you haven't been paying attention.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!
Click for Further details
Can we still avoid 1.5 degrees C of global warming?
Posted on 13 November 2023 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson
Strictly speaking, it’s not yet impossible to keep from heating our world more than 1.5 degrees Celsius beyond the average global air temperature of the mid-to-late 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum. In practical terms, though, the odds of keeping global warming to 1.5°C are dwindling fast — though just how fast has been a matter of sharp debate. Here are a few points to help you navigate this critical and contentious topic.
Why is the 1.5°C threshold for global warming important?
The 2015 Paris agreement called for keeping the increase “well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.” A 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described escalating risks of long-term warming above 1.5°C, such as heightened threats of extreme weather, sea level rise, crop losses, and widespread coral reef die-offs.
How will we know if we’ve hit the 1.5°C global warming threshold?
Weather varies so much from week to week, month to month, and year to year that it takes a longer period to assess what can be considered the long-term climate (and that task is even more challenging when the climate itself is changing). Local and regional climatology, such as the average high or low on a particular date in your community, is generally based on 30-year averages, updated each decade. Thirty years is considered long enough to smooth out rises and falls in temperature, such as those produced by a sequence of El Niño or La Niña events, the natural Pacific Ocean phenomena that affect weather worldwide.
As it turns out, the Paris agreement did not specify how long global temperature would need to be at or above 1.5°C for the target to be considered breached. With this in mind, scientists and policymakers generally interpret the 1.5°C target as referring to the average over multiple decades, as opposed to daily or even monthly spikes. In other words, a hot spell may briefly push the world above the 1.5°C threshold, but the long-term average is the number to watch.
Air temperatures at ground level are monitored around the clock by thousands of land-based weather stations. Satellite and buoy data help fill in the gaps over oceans. Several entities, including NOAA, NASA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the European Union, carry out monthly and yearly analyses of planet-wide surface air temperature. Minor differences in the agencies’ rankings can result from the different ways they treat data-sparse regions such as the Arctic.
Event information - Upcoming talks in Italy
Posted on 12 November 2023 by BaerbelW
Here is a quick heads-up about a series of upcoming climate events in Italy where John Cook will be involved courtesy of CMCC, the Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici. Some of the events will be live-streamed so all are welcome to watch online - or even better, attend in person. Here are the details for the public events:
Wednesday, November 15 from 16:00 - 18:00 (CET)
Public event titled "Climate, news and fake news. Navigating the climate crisis between science and information." in Rome hosted by WWF Italy which will be live-streamed in English and Italian. Details are available on the event page where you can also register for on-site or virtual participation.
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #45
Posted on 11 November 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
What the Melting of Antarctic Ice Shelves Means for the Planet
A Q&A with Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, on how melting at the South Pole could impact sea level rise.
From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Host Steve Curwood with Penn State geologist Richard Alley.
Antarctica’s ice shelves are the gatekeepers between the continent’s glaciers and the open ocean.
As the planet warms, these shelves shrink, exposing more and more ice, which leads to more melting. This frozen continent rests under a massive ice sheet averaging more than a mile thick.
But a recent study in Science Advances found that Antarctica had 68 ice shelves that shrunk significantly between 1997 and 2021, adding up to about 8.3 trillion tons lost during that time.
Richard Alley is a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, and he joined Living on Earth Host Steve Curwood to shed light on what all this melting at the south pole could mean for the planet.
What the Melting of Antarctic Ice Shelves Means for the Planet A Q&A with Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, on how melting at the South Pole could impact sea level rise. Interview by Steve Curwood, Science, Inside Climate News, Nov 11, 2023
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the Inside Climate News website.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #45 2023
Posted on 9 November 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
In AGU Advances, David Schimel and Charles Miller suggest that our economic and physical models around dealing with climate change have not kept up with evolving reality, in Do Two Climate Wrongs Make a Right?:
Climate policy has assumed that damage costs are manageable while decarbonization is expensive. Both these assumptions are wrong, potentially leading to a tipping point in human behavior: scientists need to explore options aligned with this emerging reality.
The authors take us through an arc of economic understanding of the economic challenges of global heating, starting at Nordhaus, through Stern and on up to the present, where faulty assumptions of decades ago become more obvious.
Hannah Lehmann & crew review increasingly obvious year-by-year changing conditions in Germany and go on to assess how this shifting ground may be reflected in appropriately shifting plans and practices, in Climate change-related health hazards in daycare centers in Munich, Germany: risk perception and adaptation measures The climate test: a tool to evaluate alignment of energy infrastructure decisions with climate goals, published in Regional Environmental Change. The authors find willingness to do what's best for children but even iin this context also find an undercurrent of skepticism about the possibility of climate change and hence its potential threat to youngsters.
Publishing in Climate and Development, Jennie Stephens and Martin Sokoi set the tone of Financial innovation for climate justice: central banks and transformative ‘creative disruption’ with a pithy quote in relation to banks becoming "too political" by addressing climate problems:
"If you think that this is too political for central bankers, let me strongly oppose this view: what would be too political is to deny all the evidence gathered by natural and social scientists for the past decades."
So says Deputy Director Sylvie Goulard of central bank (guess what country?) Banque de France. The authors go on to elaborate on Goulard's remark, tracing how fossilized central banking philosopy is promoting fossilized energy systems, causing societal harm and thus nakedly failing to live up to mission directives. They conclude with some unapologetically blunt recommendations:
Rather than narrowly focusing on stability of financial markets that are exacerbating other kinds of societal instability including inequality and the climate crisis, central banks can instead re-prioritize their actions with a goal of stability for people and the earth’s systems. If central banks embraced a goal of stability for people and the planet, then they would immediately disrupt any investments in fossil fuels and they would mobilize in a way similar to how they do in the occasion of a war or a pandemic.
Ice messengers from both hemispheres bearing no good news, noting ice shelves in dire straits: Rapid disintegration and weakening of ice shelves in North Greenland, Millan et al., Nature Communications, and Rebeiro et al. with Oceanic Regime Shift to a Warmer Continental Shelf Adjacent to the Shackleton Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, JGR Oceans.
109 articles in 51 journals by 585 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A Semi-Analytical Model for Water Vapor, Temperature, and Surface-Albedo Feedbacks in Comprehensive Climate Models, Feldl & Merlis, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl105796
An Explanation for the Metric Dependence of the Midlatitude Jet-Waviness Change in Response to Polar Warming, Geen et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl105132
Committed Global Warming Risks Triggering Multiple Climate Tipping Points, Abrams et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2022ef003250
Consideration of Whether a Climatic Regime Shift Has Prevented the Occurrence of a Cold Summer in Northeast Eurasia since 2010, Amano et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-23-0191.1
Continental configuration controls the base-state water vapor greenhouse effect: lessons from half-land, half-water planets, Laguë et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access 10.1007/s00382-023-06857-w
Relationships among Arctic warming, sea-ice loss, stability, lapse rate feedback, and Arctic amplification, Dai & Jenkins, Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-023-06848-x
Observations of climate change, effects
Attribution of extreme events to climate change in the Australian region – A review, Lane et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2023.100622
Attribution of the December 2013 extreme rainfall over the Pearl River Delta to anthropogenic influences, Zhao et al., Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-023-06869-6
SkS Analogy 26 - Earth's Beating Hearts
Posted on 8 November 2023 by Evan
Earth has two beating hearts, of sorts, beating not at a rate per minute, but rather beating at a steady, consistent, life-giving 2 beats per year. Where are these terrestrial hearts located? The polar regions (read here and here). Without Earth’s hearts life on this planet would be very different. Earth’s hearts pump life-giving oxygen, nutrients, and energy to the remotest parts of our world.
Earth’s hearts pump when each year the floating sea ice expands and contracts by millions of square kilometers. Ice sheets expand by salt water freezing during the cold months of the year. When this happens, salt is squeezed from the freezing water, creating a dense brine, which falls to the ocean floor. As it falls it displaces water, pushing it forward to help drive the ocean circulation. The cycle is repeated when the ice melts later in the year and then refreezes again, repeating the cycle.
A curious thought. Is there any relationship to the beating rate of Earth’s hearts and to the rate at which our own hearts beat? An absurd thought? Maybe not.
One of the smallest creatures on Earth is a rat, weighing in at less than 1 kg. One of the largest is the blue whale, weighing in at more than 100 tons! Typically, the weight of blood for such creatures is anywhere from 5 to 10% of the body weight. The weight of the Earth is about 6x1021 tons. Considering the weight of the oceans as Earth’s blood, the weight of Earth’s blood is only about 0.02% the weight of the Earth. Using the mass of blood rather than body weight, a plot of the heart rate vs blood weight suggests that a consistent relationship exists between heart rate and the weight of blood circulated, all the way from a creature as small as a rat to a planet as large as the Earth.
Why is ice important? Not just because it controls sea level, but because it keeps our planet alive.
