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?
Studies shed new light on Antarctica’s future contribution to sea level rise
Posted on 19 February 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney
A widely reported study in 2016 that suggested Antarctica could add more than a metre to sea levels by 2100 was likely an “overestimate”, new research says.
The original study, published in Nature, grabbed headlines with the finding that Antarctic ice was at risk from “marine ice-cliff instability”, which would see towering cliffs of glacier ice collapse into the ocean under their own weight.
A new Nature study revisits the theory, finding that the “jury’s definitely still out” on ice-cliff instability coming into play this century, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.
A second paper, also in Nature, says that melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could have dramatic knock-on impacts for the climate. These include the potential weakening of the Atlantic current that brings warm water up to Europe from the tropics, and a positive feedback loop that reinforces melting of Antarctic ice.
The papers together suggest a likely contribution of around 15cm from melting Antarctic ice by the end of this century, with a 5% likelihood that it will exceed 39cm under a high-emissions scenario.
Rising seas
Global sea level rise is simultaneously one of the most certain and uncertain impacts of climate change.
On one hand, scientists know that sea levels will rise as the climate warms and then continue for centuries, even after global temperatures have stabilised.
On the other, however, there are sizeable question marks over the likely size and rate of sea level rise contributions from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which together hold enough ice to raise sea levels by tens of metres.
A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
Posted on 18 February 2019 by greenman3610
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swede, makes a moving plea for climate action, and scientists explain the rationale for it.
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #7
Posted on 17 February 2019 by John Hartz
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Story of the Week...
16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Cheers 'Beginning of Great Changes' as Climate Strike Goes Global
Because "present and future on this planet are at stake," say teen climate activists, "we won't be silent any longer"
Students in Melbourne take part in a school strike for climate on November 30, 2018. (Photo: julian meehan/flickr/cc)
The world may be edging toward "environmental breakdown"—but 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg sees signs for hope.
Pointing to global walkouts planned for March 15, Thunberg—whose "school strikes for climate" helped galvanized similar actions worldwide—said, "I think what we are seeing is the beginning of great changes and that is very hopeful."
"I think enough people have realized just how absurd the situation is," she told the Guardian. "We are in the middle of the biggest crisis in human history and basically nothing is being done to prevent it."
In a sign of that realization, thousands of students from dozens of communities across the United Kingdom skipped class on Friday to join the ranks taking part in the weekly climate actions.
In fact, it's "incredible" that the movement "has spread so far, so fast," she told "Good Morning Britain."
16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Cheers 'Beginning of Great Changes' as Climate Strike Goes Global by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams, Feb 15, 2019
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Posted on 16 February 2019 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
What we can learn about climate change from the Titanic
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the 1997 film Titanic. Credit: Paramount Pictures
I recently shared the latest news about climate change with my Facebook friends, writing this: “The five warmest years in recorded history have been the last five, and 18 of the 19 warmest years have occurred since 2001.” One of my friends commented that it reminded him of those people who were rearranging the deck chairs as the Titanicsank. Are climate deniers their modern equivalent?
The climate ship has definitely sailed: Even if we could eliminate all carbon emissions overnight, the planet’s average temperature and sea level would not decrease in the coming decades, because of the inertia built into the climate system. As with a massive ship, you can’t wait until the last minute to start steering away from disaster. But even on the doomed Titanic, there would have been many more survivors if the right actions had been promptly taken, and the same is true today for global warming.
As a matter of historical fact, the Titanic’s 614 wood-and-wicker chairs were probably tied up for the night when the ship began sinking. The first reference to “rearranging the deck chairs” did not appear in print until the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the expression has since come to describe futile actions taken in the face of impending catastrophe. Like, say, President Trump calling for “forest clearing” to address wildfire risks in California—where the deadliest recent fires, made worse by climate change, did not happen in forests. The phrase remains an all-too-accurate description of the little that is being done to stabilize our planet’s climate.
What we can learn about climate change from the Titanic by Dawn Stover, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb 15, 2019
New research, February 4-10, 2019
Posted on 14 February 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change mitigation
Climate change communication
An assessment of public perceptions of climate change risk in three western US cities
Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis
The gateway belief model: A large-scale replication
Improving climate change literacy and promoting outreach in an undergraduate atmospheric sciences program (open access)
Climate Policy
Unveiling the heterogeneous effect of energy taxes and income on residential energy consumption
Growth potential for CO2 emissions transfer by tariff reduction (open access)
Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton?
Posted on 13 February 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Triple Crisis by Frank Ackerman. Second in a series of posts on climate policy. Find Part 1 here.
According to scientists, climate damages are deeply uncertain, but could be ominously large (see the previous post). Alternatively, according to the best-known economic calculation, lifetime damages caused by emissions in 2020 will be worth $51 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, in 2018 prices.
These two views can’t both be right. This post explains where the $51 estimate comes from, why it’s not reliable, and the meaning for climate policy of the deep uncertainty about the value of damages.
A tale of three models
The “social cost of carbon” (SCC) is the value of present and future climate damages caused by a ton of carbon dioxide emissions. The Obama administration assembled an Interagency Working Group to estimate the SCC. In its final (August 2016) revision of the numbers, the most widely used variant of the SCC was $42 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted in 2020, expressed in 2007 dollars – equivalent to $51 in 2018 dollars. Numbers like this were used in Obama-era cost-benefit analyses of new regulations, placing a dollar value on the reduction in carbon emissions from, say, vehicle fuel efficiency standards.
To create these numbers, the Working Group averaged the results from three well-known models. These do not provide more detailed or in-depth analysis than other models. On the contrary, two of them stand out for being simpler and easier to use than other models. They are, however, the most frequently cited models in climate economics. They are famous for being famous, the Kardashians of climate models.
DICE, developed by William Nordhaus at Yale University, offers a skeletal simplicity: it represents the dynamics of the world economy, the climate, and the interactions between the two with only 19 equations. This (plus Nordhaus’ free distribution of the software) has made it by far the most widely used model, valuable for classroom teaching, for initial high-level sketches of climate impacts, and for researchers (at times including myself) who lack the funding to acquire and use more complicated models. Yet no one thinks that DICE represents the frontier of knowledge about the world economy or the environment. DICE estimates aggregate global climate damages as a quadratic function of temperature increases, rising only gradually as the world warms.
PAGE, developed by Chris Hope at Cambridge University, resembles DICE in level of complexity, and has been used in many European analyses. It is the only one of the three models to include any explicit treatment of uncertain climate risks, assuming the threat of an abrupt, mid-size economic loss (beyond the “predictable” damages) that becomes both more likely and more severe as temperatures rise. Perhaps for this reason, PAGE consistently produces the highest SCC estimates among the three models.
FUND, developed by Richard Tol and David Anthoff, is more detailed than DICE or PAGE, with separate treatment of more than a dozen damage categories. Yet the development of these damages estimates has been idiosyncratic, in some cases (such as agriculture) relying on relatively optimistic research from 20 years ago rather than more troubling, recent findings on climate impacts. Even in later versions, after many small updates, FUND still estimates that many of its damage categories are too small to matter; in some FUND scenarios, the largest cost of warming is the increased expenditure on air conditioning.
Much has been written about what’s wrong with relying on these three models. The definitive critique is the National Academy of Sciences study, which reviews the shortcomings of the three models in detail and suggests ways to build a better model for estimating the SCC. (Released just days before the Trump inauguration, the study was doomed to be ignored.)
A Duplicitous Minister?
Posted on 12 February 2019 by Riduna
In a ‘Breakfast’ interview with Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National, the Australian Minister for Energy, Angus Taylor, made a number of statements which are either wrong or misleading. A record of the interview is available here.
1. The Minister claims that a ‘significant investment of $15 billion is being made in renewables’.
This is an understatement of over $11 billion. Fig. 1., shows that as at 1 January, 2019 State Governments and end-users had approved investment in 126 clean energy projects at an estimated cost of $26.1 billion, with new capacity to generate 20,516 MW of electricity.
Fig. 1. New Projects approved by Governments for construction. Most projects were under construction or are likely to commence in 2019. Source: Internet scans, Proponents advice and Clean Energy Council data.
2. The Minister asserts that Government target to reduce emissions by 26% (below 2005 levels) is a ‘strong target’ and one which will be met by 2022, a claim supported by the fact that we now have the lowest per capita emissions in 28 years.
Fran Kelly asked how could this be when data published by Government showed emissions in 2018 were rising. The Minister evaded the question with a misleading comment on per capita emissions.
The Minister knows (or should do) that both the Paris Accord and emissions causing global warming are measured in terms of ‘absolute’ not ‘per capita’ emissions and in absolute terms, Australia’s emissions are rising.
On Buying Insurance, and Ignoring Cost-Benefit Analysis
Posted on 10 February 2019 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from TripleCrisis by economist Frank Ackerman
First in a series of posts on climate policy.
The damages expected from climate change seem to get worse with each new study. Reports from the IPCC and the U.S. Global Change Research Project, and a multi-author review articlein Science, all published in late 2018, are among the recent bearers of bad news. Even more continues to arrive in a swarm of research articles, too numerous to list here. And most of these reports are talking about not-so-long-term damages. Dramatic climate disruption and massive economic losses are coming in just a few decades, not centuries, if we continue along our present path of inaction. It’s almost enough to make you support an emergency program to reduce emissions and switch to a path of rapid decarbonization.
But wait: isn’t there something about economics we need to figure out first? Would drastic emission reductions pass a cost-benefit test? How do we know that we wouldn’t be spending too much on climate policy?
In fact, a crash program to decarbonize the economy is obviously the right answer. There are just a few things you need to know about the economics of climate policy, in order to confirm that Adam Smith and his intellectual heirs have not overturned common sense on this issue. Three key points are worth remembering.
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #6
Posted on 10 February 2019 by John Hartz
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Assessing the Global Climate in 2018
For the globe, 2018 becomes fourth warmest year on record
Courtesy of Pixabay.com
December’s combined global land and ocean average surface temperature departure from average was the second warmest December in the 139-year record. With 11 of 12 monthly global land and ocean temperature departures from average ranking among the five warmest for their respective months, 2018 became the fourth warmest year in NOAA's 139-year record.
This summary from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to government, business, academia and the public to support informed decision-making.
In a separate analysis of global temperature data, released today, NASA scientists also determined 2018 to be the fourth warmest year on record. Analyses from the United Kingdom Met Office and the World Meteorological Organization ranked 2018 among the top four warmest years on record.
Assessing the Global Climate in 2018, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, Feb 6, 2019
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
Posted on 9 February 2019 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Seven take-aways from the Green New Deal launch
Sweeping in scope, an agenda to transform the US into a green leader has been launched in Washington DC, here are the key points
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Ed Markey present their Green New Deal resolution to reporters on Thursday (Photo: 350.org)
On Thursday, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Ed Markey presented an outline of a sweeping federal programme aiming at decarbonising the US economy.
The text makes for the most earnest attempt yet to define a concept that has been backed by many a Democratic presidential candidate, often with little detail.
The agenda would touch every aspect of the US economy and calls for carbon emissions and inequality to be tackled as one.
“Today is the day we truly embark on a comprehensive agenda of economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a press conference launching the resolution.
There are many legislative hurdles for the deal to leap if it is ever to become US policy – not least the Republican-controlled senate and White House.
The plan was the beginning of a phase of “political education”, said Markey, that would eventually lead to the adoption of the package. The pair said the document had attracted 60 Democrats as cosponsors, from across the party.
Seven take-aways from the Green New Deal launch by Natalie Sauer, Climate Home News, July 2, 2019
New research, January 28 - February 3, 2019
Posted on 8 February 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change impacts
Mankind
Historical Analysis of U.S. Tornado Fatalities (1808-2017): Population, Science and Technology (open access)
Climate Change and Psychology: Effects of Rapid Global Warming on Violence and Aggression
Climate, conflict and forced migration (open access)
The Nexus of Climate Change, Land Use, and Conflicts (open access)
Assessment of climate change impacts on buildings, structures and infrastructure in the Russian regions on permafrost (open access)
Prediction of annual dengue incidence by hydro-climatic extremes for southern Taiwan
Differences in the impact of heat waves according to urban and peri-urban factors in Madrid
EV’s: Crucial to Reducing CO2 Emissions
Posted on 6 February 2019 by Riduna
In June 1988 a leading climate scientist, Dr James Hansen, presented the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with data showing that by burning fossil fuels humans had created a greenhouse effect, evidenced by global warming. Unless carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were reduced he predicted that record breaking global warming would increase further, producing increasingly severe climate events and that these would be most marked in higher latitudes.
The Senate noted his submission and Congress took some action but none that would result in CO2emissions reduction in the short term. In December 1988 the concentration of CO2in the atmosphere was 351.4 ppm. At the end of 2018 it stood at 409.23 ppm., the highest in 3 million years. As a result global climate and temperature have developed as Dr Hansen predicted over thirty years ago.
Dr Hansen subsequently urged reduction of rising emissions so as to avoid a mean global temperature rise of more than 1°C above preindustrial levels. He warned that an increase of 1.5°C above preindustrial times would result in dangerous climate and multi metre sea level rise and that an increase of 2°C could be catastrophic, producing a violent, destructive climate. Most governments and emitters continued to ignore him.
As a result we now find ourselves living in a world where mean global temperature has risen 1°C above the preindustrial, the climate is characterised by more violent, destructive and frequent climate events. Human greenhouse gas emissions are now increasing at an unprecedented rate and it is probably no longer possible to avoid the consequences of a 1.5°C increase above the preindustrial and a destructive climate accompanied by multi-metre sea level rise in coming decades, not coming centuries.
If we are to avoid catastrophic climate events which could threaten our survival as a species on this planet, it is imperative that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions be rapidly and immediately reduced. Efforts to achieve this are being taken by reducing use of fossil fuels (1) for electricity generation, (2) for transport propulsion and (3) by adopting mitigating practices such as reduction of energy consumption and protection of carbon sinks.
These measures will not avert dangers posed by global warming unless both developed and emerging economies are decarbonised by mid-century. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity accounts for ~30% of present-day global emissions and that percentage is declining as more economies transition to cheaper renewable energy, mostly wind and solar. Market forces demand cheaper electricity 24/7 and this requires improved ability to store it.
The Methane 'Time Bomb': How big a concern?
Posted on 5 February 2019 by greenman3610
Earth’s oceans are routinely breaking heat records
Posted on 4 February 2019 by dana1981
Two recently published peer-reviewed studies make clear that the planet’s oceans are continuing to set hottest-yet temperature records nearly every year and, secondly, that the rate of ocean warming is in virtual lockstep with what modern climate models have projected.
Taken together, the findings, from studies led by Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute for Atmospheric Physics, demonstrate that climate scientists have developed an increasingly clear picture of the rapid warming of Earth’s oceans and its consequences.
One study, led by Cheng and colleagues and published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, concludes that 2018 was the hottest year ever recorded in the oceans. In fact, since the turn of the century, all but three years – 2007, 2010, and 2016 – have set a new ocean heat record.
Those three exceptions shared a key trait: Each was characterized by significant El Niño events, which transfer heat from the ocean to the air. As a result, for heat at Earth’s surface (in the air above both the land and oceans), 2007 was the second-hottest year up to that time, and 2010 and 2016 both subsequently broke the surface temperature record. 2018 was the fourth-hottest on record at the surface as a result of a La Niña event that year that kept more heat in the oceans than was the case in 2015 through 2017.
About 93 percent of global warming goes into heating the oceans, compared to about 2 percent warming the atmosphere. As the hottest year in the oceans, 2018 therefore was the hottest year ever recorded for the planet as a whole. And the amount of heat currently building up on Earth is equivalent to the amount of energy released by more than five atomic bomb detonations per second, every second.
What’s it all mean?
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
Posted on 3 February 2019 by John Hartz
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Story of the Week...
The devastation of human life is in view’: what a burning world tells us about climate change
I was wilfully deluded until I began covering global warming, says David Wallace-Wells. But extreme heat could transform the planet by 2100
A forest fire burns on a hill in Monchique, Portugal, August 2018. Photograph: Filipe Farinha/EPA
I have never been an environmentalist. I don’t even think of myself as a nature person. I’ve lived my whole life in cities, enjoying gadgets built by industrial supply chains I hardly think twice about. I’ve never gone camping, not willingly anyway, and while I always thought it was basically a good idea to keep streams clean and air clear, I also accepted the proposition that there was a trade-off between economic growth and cost to nature – and figured, well, in most cases I’d go for growth. I’m not about to personally slaughter a cow to eat a hamburger, but I’m also not about to go vegan. In these ways – many of them, at least – I am like every other American who has spent their life fatally complacent, and wilfully deluded, about climate change, which is not just the biggest threat human life on the planet has ever faced, but a threat of an entirely different category and scale. That is, the scale of human life itself.
‘The devastation of human life is in view’: what a burning world tells us about climate change, Edited extract from "The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story Of The Future" by David Wallace-Wells, Environment, Guardian, Feb 2, 2019
2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5
Posted on 2 February 2019 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
A surprising new picture of ocean circulation could have major consequences for climate science
Some experts say the Atlantic Ocean circulation is already slowing down — but we’re just beginning to learn how it really works.
The ocean near the southern tip of Greenland during a cruise to deploy the initial OSNAP array. (Photo Credit: C. Nobre/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.)
It may be the biggest wild card in the climate system. Scientists have long feared that the so-called “overturning” circulation in the Atlantic Ocean could slow down or even halt due to climate change — a change that would have enormous planetary consequences.
But at the same time, researchers have a limited understanding of how the circulation actually works, since taking measurements of its vast and remote currents is exceedingly difficult. And now, a major new research endeavor aimed at doing just that has suggested a dramatic revision of our understanding of the circulation itself.
A new 21-month series of observations in the frigid waters off Greenland has led to the discovery that most of the overturning — in which water not only sinks but returns southward again in the ocean depths — occurs to the east, rather than to the west, of the enormous ice island. If that’s correct, then climate models that suggest the circulation will slow as the climate warms may have to be revised to take this into account.
A surprising new picture of ocean circulation could have major consequences for climate science by Chris Mooney, Washington Post, Jan 31, 2019
New research, January 21-27, 2019
Posted on 1 February 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change
Temperature, precipitation, wind
Addressing the relocation bias in a long temperature record by means of land cover assessment
Interannual Variability of Summer Surface Air Temperature over Central India: Implications for Monsoon Onset (open access)
Skilful seasonal prediction of Korean winter temperature (open access)
Assessment of temperature and rainfall changes in the Karoun River basin
Effects of Arctic stratospheric ozone changes on spring precipitation in the northwestern United States (open access)
Evaluation and Future Projection of Chinese Precipitation Extremes using Large Ensemble High-Resolution Climate Simulations (open access)
Atmospheric moisture measurements explain increases in tropical rainfall extremes
Analysis of near-surface wind speed change in China during 1958–2015
A Green New Deal must not sabotage climate goals
Posted on 31 January 2019 by dana1981
Recently, 626 organizations—mostly environmental groups, including 350.org and Greenpeace USA—sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to consider a number of principles when crafting climate legislation like a Green New Deal “to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).” Broadly, there were six major principles in the letter: Halt all fossil fuel leasing, phase out all fossil fuel extraction, end fossil fuel and other dirty energy subsidies; transition power generation to 100 percent renewable energy; expand public transportation and phase out fossil-fuel vehicles; harness the full power of the Clean Air Act; ensure a just transition led by impacted communities and workers; and uphold indigenous rights.
These are generally wise goals, but some concerns about the details caused eight major environmental groups—including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund—to decline to sign the letter. As one national environmental group spokesperson put it, “the details matter… There is some language that gave us some concern.”
To meet climate targets, we need every tool in the chest. Meeting the Paris climate agreement targets of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial temperatures—or even a more dangerous but more feasible 2 degrees Celsius—would require massive and immediate global action to reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon pollution. Simply put, we’ve already burned through so much of our carbon budget that meeting those targets would take everything we’ve got. (We’ve already locked ourselves in to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, just based on greenhouse gas emissions to date.)
But the letter includes language that rules out some zero-carbon technologies. For example, it states, “in addition to excluding fossil fuels, any definition of renewable energy must also exclude all combustion-based power generation, nuclear, biomass energy, large scale hydro and waste-to-energy technologies. To achieve this, the United States must shift to 100 percent renewable power generation by 2035 or earlier.”
SkS Analogy 18 - Cliff jumping and temperature changes
Posted on 30 January 2019 by Evan, jg
Tag Line
Regardless the height of the cliff, jumping from cliffs is deadly.
Elevator Statement
Regardless of the height of a cliff, jumping from cliffs is deadly. Hang-gliding from cliffs thrills. Jumping from cliffs kills. Jumping 10 m from a cliff that is 1000 m above sea level hurts just as much as jumping 10 m from a cliff that is 900 m above sea level.
Increasing or decreasing the global average temperature causes sea level to rise or fall. Rapidly increasing or decreasing the global average temperature will likely cause sea level to rapidly rise or fall. It does not matter what the current global average temperature is. Causing the global average temperature to jump, as we are, causes sea level to jump. A snail can outrun sea level change, but houses, sky scrapers, buildings, subways, and roads move slower than snails. They sit where they are and drown. Are your children and grand children prepared for this coming future? Is there anything we can do to slow down the ongoing global temperature jump?
