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?
Can the Florida Keys be saved?
Posted on 1 June 2020 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Projections point to more than three feet of sea-level rise by 2100, posing deep challenges for one of the U.S.’s most iconic tourist sites – the Florida Keys, where in many places residences, highways, and infrastructure are at less than three feet.
Moreover, those 2100 projections “almost give you a false sense of complacency,” cautions scientist and 2019 MacArthur “genius” fellowship winner Andrea Dutton. She says in this month’s Yale Climate Connections “This Is Not Cool” video that extreme storms affecting the Keys will occur “with increasing frequency as you approach 2100,” and well before that three-foot average rise takes hold.
‘I can see what’s coming, and it’s miserable.’
Dutton expresses concerns that the public may not be “in the right mindset” concerning time projections for rising sea levels. “You can’t just pick up cities and move them,” she says. “There’s going to be some amount of adaptation, there’s going to be some amount of retreat” leading up to the period when that overall three-foot average is, as they say, “the new normal.”
Dutton, for eight years with the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida, now continues her research with the University of Wisconsin’s Geoscience Department. “Snow is fun,” she said in a fall 2019 U.W. announcement of her move from sunny Gainesville to often frosty Madison. Explaining to those curious about her move from the Atlantic coast to the Midwest, she said “I look at these sea-level projections all the time. I can see what’s coming, and it’s miserable.”
Dutton is far from alone in expressing concerns about the impacts of sea-level rise for the Florida Keys. For instance, another scientist, Maya Becker, now with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla California, recalls growing up on Key Biscayne barrier island, just south of Miami Beach. She says she worries that parts could be “completely submerged” in the next 50 or so years.
A local CBS affiliate TV station has reported that “some roads there will be surrendered to the sea,” and that it may not be economically feasible to save some homes in Monroe County. A county administrator weighs the pros and cons of publicly buying-out some private residences doomed by rising seas, or letting landowners know “that we’re just not going to provide services.” Local planners also are reportedly discussing perhaps having to substitute boats for roads in some areas. They are considering issues like increased taxes (resiliency taxes) and seeking legal counsel advice on whether counties are required by law to try to raise roadways to protect specific neighborhoods, and legally authorized “to let a neighborhood go under water.” The video features a local county executive worried that saving some of the 300 miles of vulnerable roads in the Keys will cost “a billion, possibly even billions, of dollars.”
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #22
Posted on 31 May 2020 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...
Story of the Week...
Climate concerns as Siberia experiences record-breaking heat
Satellite imagery of a wildfire in Siberia, Russia above the arctic circle on May 19, 2020. Copernicus Sentinel/Sentinel Hub/Pierre Markuse
One of the coldest regions on Earth has been experiencing a record-breaking heat wave in recent weeks amid growing fears about devastating wildfires and melting permafrost.
Khatanga, a town in Siberia’s Arctic Circle, registered highs of over 80 degrees Fahrenheit this week, according to Accuweather, far above the 59 degrees F historical average, as the whole of western Siberia basked in unseasonable warmth.
While locals flocked to popular spots to sunbathe, experts sounded alarms about the possible implications for the region’s wildfire season this summer, with some blazes already breaking out in recent months.
Climate concerns as Siberia experiences record-breaking heat by Luke Denne and Olivia Sumrie, Climate in Crisis, NBC News, May 29, 2020
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #22
Posted on 30 May 2020 by John Hartz
Editor's Choice
Antarctic Ocean Reveals New Signs of Rapid Melt of Ancient Ice, Clues About Future Sea Level Rise
A study of seafloor ripples suggests that ice shelves can retreat six miles per year, a quantum increase over today’s rates.
A new study in the journal Science found that floating ice shelves can melt much more rapidly than previously thought—at a rate of about six miles per year. Credit: Massimo Rumi/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Climate researchers racing to calculate how fast and how high the sea level will rise found new clues on the seafloor around Antarctica. A study released today suggests that some of the continent's floating ice shelves can, during eras of rapid warming, melt back by six miles per year, far faster than any ice retreat observed by satellites.
As global warming speeds up the Antarctic meltdown, the findings "set a new upper limit for what the worst-case might be," said lead author Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.
The estimate of ice shelf retreat is based on a pattern of ridges discovered on the seafloor near the Larsen Ice Shelf. The spacing and size of the ridges suggest they were created as the floating ice shelves rose and fell with the tides while rapidly shrinking back from the ocean. In findings published today in Science, the researchers estimate that to corrugate the seafloor in this way, the ice would have retreated by more than 150 feet per day for at least 90 days.
Antarctic Ocean Reveals New Signs of Rapid Melt of Ancient Ice, Clues About Future Sea Level Rise by Bob Berwyn, InsideClimate News, May 28, 2020
Click here to access the entire article as originally published on the InsideClimate News website.
Coronavirus pandemic leads to profound cutbacks in fossil fuel use
Posted on 29 May 2020 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk
A banner on the International Energy Agency website spells it out in bold font: “The global oil industry is experiencing a shock like no other in its history.”
As the response to the coronavirus pandemic upends the lives of billions of people, the world’s thirst for oil is undergoing an uncharacteristic lull. The IEA analysis describes ripple effects through the entire industry: “As demand plummets, the entire supply chain of oil refining, freight, and storage is starting to seize up.”
Not even the most wildly optimistic climate activist could have imagined the way fossil fuel use has fallen off a cliff in recent weeks. But profound human suffering, widespread economic hardship, and amplified inequity and injustice underlie the ebb in energy use. This is far removed from a situation that merits celebration. However, there are questions to examine in light of an unanticipated, unintentional, and likely temporary lapse in carbon emissions.
For example, how does the current downturn in fossil fuel use compare to what’s needed to put the world on track to avoid the most severe effects of climate change? As we proceed down a decades-long path to a fossil fuel phase-out, at what point would emissions have to be limited to right where they are currently – but permanently rather than temporarily?
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation that breaks down those questions, but with the caveat that this is entirely based on projections and estimates, many of which are changing daily. This is not an emissions inventory or a prediction of the future. That said, the profound and near-instant dropoff of fossil fuel consumption allows for an unusual opportunity to examine carbon emissions in a new light.
All Renewable Energy Plan for Europe
Posted on 28 May 2020 by michael sweet
Smart Energy Europe: A Plan to provide 100% of ALL ENERGY using Renewable Energy to Europe
Introduction
All Energy renewable energy systems are often commented on here at Skeptical Science. Many comments suggest that it will be difficult, expensive or impossible to use renewable energy to power the world. To bring everyone up to date, here is a review of an All Energy plan for renewable energy in Europe.
Summary
Smart Energy Europe Connelly et al 2016 (300 citations, peer reviewed; free similar paper) details a map of the transition from the current energy system to one using 100% renewable energy for All Energy (All Energy is all energy used in the economy: electricity, transportation, heat and industry). They find that using renewable energy for All Energy will cost about the same (within 10%) as using fossil fuels in Europe. In addition, there will be about 10 million new jobs created and no money exported to other regions for fuel so the economy will expand. Their plan includes the expense of building out all the renewable generators, all storage required and the expense of additional infrastructure like district heating.
Background
There exists a large amount of peer reviewed literature (Jacobson 2018, Aghahosseani et al 2017, Hansen et al 2019 ) on the topic of converting to a completely renewable energy system. This post details one proposed pathway to get to 100% non-carbon energy in Europe. For other parts of the world similar paths would work. Examining the pathway for Europe allows us to see key points for a 100% non-carbon world.
It has been shown ( Aghahosseini et al 2017) that it is cheaper to build out a bigger system than a smaller system. For example, it is cheaper to build out a system for all the USA than one for each state. This is logical since some states like Florida have large solar resources while the Mid-West has a large wind resource. It is cheaper for Florida to import wind energy at night than to generate all its own energy. Many plans now cover large grids.It has also been shown (Lund et al 2017) that it is much cheaper to build out a complete energy system (electricity, transportation, industry and heat) than to build out separate systems for each energy need. Plans that focus on electricity only are not as useful for long range system planning because they are not efficient.
In Smart Energy they point out three key characteristics of the fossil energy system:
- Fossil fuels have provided very large and cheap energy storage over the past 150 years
- The energy system consists of very segregated energy branches (transportation, heat, electricity, industry)
- There is currently no direct replacement for the fossil fuels in today’s energy system
Because storage is so cheap using fossil fuels the system has developed to be very inflexible. Using intermittent renewable sources (primarily wind and solar), a more flexible energy system is required.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #21, 2020
Posted on 27 May 2020 by doug_bostrom
67 Articles
Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects
Dramatic decline of Arctic sea ice linked to global warming
Long-Term Global Ground Heat Flux and Continental Heat Storage from Geothermal Data (open access)
2020 Larsen C Ice Shelf surface melt is a 40-year record high (open access)
Amazonian Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds under Global Change
Escalating global exposure to compound heat-humidity extremes with warming
Did Michael Moore's Film Bash Renewable Energy?
Posted on 25 May 2020 by dana1981
The film Planet of the Humans with Micheal Moore’s name on it says that wind power and renewables are no better than fossil fuels. How honest is the film?
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #21
Posted on 24 May 2020 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...
Story of the Week...
What a Week’s Disasters Tell Us About Climate and the Pandemic
Extreme weather presents an even bigger threat when economies are crashing and ordinary people are stretched to their limits.
Locusts swarmed crops on a farm in Katitika, a village in Kenya, in January. Credit: Ben Curtis, AP
The hits came this week in rapid succession: A cyclone slammed into the Indian megacity of Kolkata, pounding rains breached two dams in the Midwestern United States, and on Thursday came warning that the Atlantic hurricane season could be severe.
It all served as a reminder that the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 325,000 people so far, is colliding with another global menace: a fast-heating planet that acutely threatens millions of people, especially the world’s poor.
Climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and more intense. Now, because of the pandemic, they come at a time when national economies are crashing and ordinary people are stretched to their limits.
What a Week’s Disasters Tell Us About Climate and the Pandemic by Somini Sengupta, Climate, New York Times, May 23, 2020
Click here to access the entire article as originally published on the New York Times website.
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #21
Posted on 23 May 2020 by John Hartz
Editor's Choice
More than 80 killed in India and Bangladesh as Cyclone Amphan heaps misery on coronavirus-hit areas
A man salvages items from his house damaged by Cyclone Amphan in Midnapore, West Bengal, on May 21, 2020.
More than 80 people have been killed and thousands more left homeless after Cyclone Amphan slammed into coastal towns and cities in India and Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities are now racing to provide relief efforts in communities already stricken by the coronavirus, hampered in many areas by heavy rains and fallen debris that has made roads impassible.
Large-scale evacuation efforts appear to have saved many lives, but it could take days to realize the full extent of the deaths, injuries and damage from the cyclone.
Amphan — which was the most powerful cyclone ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal before it weakened — ripped apart homes, tore down trees, washed away bridges and left large predominately rural areas without power or communications.
"I have never seen such disaster," Banerjee told reporters. "All areas have faced destruction. Nothing is left."
In neighboring Bangladesh, 10 people have been confirmed dead, according to the governmental Health Emergency Operations Center. Among those killed was a 57-year-old Red Crescent volunteer in Barisal who drowned when attempting to help others to safety, the Red Crescent Society of Bangladesh said.
More than 80 killed in India and Bangladesh as Cyclone Amphan heaps misery on coronavirus-hit areas by Prema Rajaram, Manveena Suri, Esha Mitra, Helen Regan and Vedika Sud, CNN, May 21, 2020
The Underground Solution To Climate Change
Posted on 22 May 2020 by Guest Author
Geothermal is the renewable source of heating, cooling, and power that no one is talking about.
Learn more about The Geothermal Exchange Organization and their Geothermal For All Campaign here: https://www.geothermalforall.com/
Michael Moore's Movie is Garbage
Posted on 21 May 2020 by Guest Author
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #20, 2020
Posted on 20 May 2020 by doug_bostrom
68 Articles
Physical science of global warming & effects
Empirical models for predicting water and heat flow properties of permafrost soils
Circulation and tides in a cooler upper atmosphere: dynamical effects of CO2‐doubling
Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects
Unprecedented Europe heat in June‐July 2019: Risk in the historical and future context
Continued Increases in the Intensity of Strong Tropical Cyclones (open access)
Climate change and the aridification of North America (open access)
Reduced efficiency of the Barents Sea cooling machine
Snow Moving to Higher Elevations: Analyzing Three Decades of Snowline Dynamics in the Alps
Physical Diagnosis of the 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching Event
Present Temperature, Precipitation and Rain‐on‐Snow Climate in Svalbard
Spatiotemporal trends in the frequency of daily rainfall in Bangladesh during 1975–2017
COVID-19 Shows that Research Institutions Need Stronger Scientific Integrity Policies
Posted on 19 May 2020 by Guest Author
This is a repost from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund blog, by CSLDF Executive Director Lauren Kurtz
The COVID-19 pandemic illuminates the crucial role scientists at university, state, and local laboratories in the United States and abroad play in protecting public health and safety—and shows that global research must be done without undue interference.
With this in mind, today we published a free resource for scientists: A Quick Guide to the Scientific Integrity Policies of Universities, State Agencies, and International Institutions.
The guide describes how these institutions generally structure their scientific integrity policies, what the policies cover, and the processes for enforcing them.
COVID-19 demonstrates that research facilities must foster sound research practices and a strong culture of scientific integrity—especially with university researchers playing critical roles in this crisis.
These scientists are developing potential drug treatments for COVID-19, addressing the pressing need for more equipment to treat those affected, and modeling scenarios for reopening the economy, among other notable contributions. Proposals to ease shelter-in-place orders rely heavily on university researchers doing even more to help increase the nation’s testing capacity.
But university labs feel the impact of politics carrying more weight than science and public well-being, and federal pressures appear to hinder the lab’s efforts.
For example, in January, the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention Control (CDC) declined to adopt the test for COVID-19 developed by the World Health Organization. Instead, the CDC created its own, more complicated test, which turned out to be faulty, leading to a catastrophic testing delay. As this unfolded, labs at universities around the country worked swiftly to develop tests.
PETM climate warming 56 million years ago strongly tied to igneous activity
Posted on 18 May 2020 by howardlee
Part 3: It’s a match!
This is the 3rd part in a 3-part series on the PETM expanded from an article I originally wrote for Quanta Magazine and features quotes from interviews that appeared in that piece. Click here for Part 2.
Animation of igneous sills progressively intruding sediments during the onset of the PETM. Red: sills emitting carbon. Blue ellipses: location of hot mantle blob. From Jones et al Nat Commun 2019 CC BY 4.0
In 2017 Marcus Gutjahr of the University of Southampton, UK, with colleagues, published a new estimate of the carbon that drove the PETM. Their conclusion was that a “very large release of mostly volcanic carbon” drove the event. Their estimate of around 10 trillion tons of carbon (as methane and CO2) was about two to three times the amount of prior estimates. Gutjahr et al based their estimate on boron isotopes as a proxy for ocean pH. They showed that ocean pH stayed low (more acidic) for around 50,000 years, which is very hard to achieve because ocean carbonate chemistry works to neutralize ocean acidification on timescales of around 10,000 years. To overcome that negative feedback and keep oceans acidic for 50,000 years you need sustained high carbon emissions.
The volcanic portion of that carbon - as distinct from the carbon baked from sediments by sills - had very little carbon-12, and so it does not show-up in the shift of carbon isotopes recorded in sediments, even as it suppresses ocean pH. It was emitted in addition to the organic carbon baked from the sediments. This also allows for the possibility that warming from volcanic carbon began before the sill-baked organic carbon isotope signal.
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #20
Posted on 17 May 2020 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Graphic of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...
Story of the Week...
The Largest Arctic Science Expedition in History Finds Itself on Increasingly Thin Ice
Covid-19 is just one of many setbacks for hundreds of scientists pursuing critical climate questions in the world’s most remote and inhospitable environment.
In March 2019, at a crowded happy hour in Boulder, Colorado, I sat listening to Matt Shupe, an atmospheric scientist, describing his decades-long dream that was about to come true.
He was sprinting to finish the years of planning and preparations required to freeze an icebreaker into the Arctic Ocean ice as close to the North Pole as it could get. The vessel would drift with the ice for a year as a rotating cast of nearly 600 experts from 20 nations representing dozens of scientific disciplines spread out in research camps around the ship.
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #20
Posted on 16 May 2020 by John Hartz
Editor's Choice
These 6 books explore climate change science and solutions
Recent books about climate change tackle science and offer visions of the future.
Climate change is increasingly becoming part of everyday conversations. For those who want to join the discussions, there is no shortage of books that give detailed background and context on the subject. The question is, which to read?
Science News staff members have reviewed several books published this year to guide you to which ones you might like. Many of these offerings address perhaps the most pressing question: With limited time to act, what’s the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avert the most dire impacts of climate change?
These 6 books explore climate change science and solutions by Staff, Science News, May 16, 2020
PETM climate warming 56 million years ago strongly tied to igneous activity
Posted on 14 May 2020 by howardlee
Part 2 – Earth’s “Internal Bleeding”
This is the 2nd part in a 3-part series on the PETM expanded from an article I originally wrote for Quanta Magazine and features quotes from interviews that appeared in that piece. Click here for Part 1.
The connection between volcanic activity and the release of organic carbon was first spotted in 2004 by Henrik Svensen of the University of Oslo, and colleagues. Examining seismic scans through the layers of sediments offshore Norway, they saw vents that led upwards from sheet-like bodies of solidified magma (“sills”) to craters that formed at about the time of the PETM. The vents resembled similar structures in the Siberian Traps and in South Africa (Karoo Volcanics), which have been linked to climate changes at the end-Permian and in the Jurassic respectively. Svenson et al reasoned that the Norwegian vents resulted from the hot magma in the sills baking organic-rich sediments to generate methane and CO2 that erupted through the seabed to drive the PETM.
Crucially, that carbon would have been rich in carbon-12.
“The interesting thing about sills is that they are emplaced really, really fast, and even a thick sill can be fully emplaced within a timescale of a hundred years,” Svensen told me in 2016. “A timescale of a few thousand years includes emplacement, metamorphism, and also gas generation… we know that some of the sills … intruded into organic-rich sediments and so carbon gases must have been generated, and that’s a fact.”
Artist’s impression of methane and CO2 erupting from the Atlantic seabed during the PETM Modified with permission from original by J.M. Millett in Reynolds et al, EPSL 2017
"you can’t drill them all"
But these structures lay deep beneath the seabed, under hundreds of meters of Atlantic Ocean, so getting samples to date and analyze was near impossible. In 2016 Frieling et al published data from a 1986 oil exploration borehole that had been drilled through 390 meters (1,280 feet) of ocean and 3,521 meters (11,552 feet) into the seabed. It is the only published borehole to date that samples one of those vents identified by Svensen and colleagues in 2004. Dating of samples showed that the vent formed in the middle of the PETM, not at the start, so it wasn’t quite a ‘smoking gun,’ but the carbon isotopes confirmed that the vent had emitted carbon rich in carbon-12.
“You drill one crater and its outside the PETM, then what can you conclude when this particularly crater postdates [the onset of the PETM]? But what about the 2,000 others? You can’t drill them all!” Svensen told me.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #19, 2020
Posted on 13 May 2020 by doug_bostrom
65 Articles
Physical science of global warming & effects
Carbon Thaw Rate Doubles when Accounting for Subsidence in a Permafrost Warming Experiment
Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects
Increased drought severity tracks warming in the United States’ largest river basin (open access)
Mechanism study of the 2010–2016 rapid rise of the Caribbean Sea Level
Reconstruction of snow days based on monthly climate indicators in the Swiss pre-alpine region
A new evaluation of the influence of climate change on Zagros oak forest dieback in Iran
FLICC-Poster - a successful collaboration between klimafakten and SkS
Posted on 12 May 2020 by BaerbelW
We already have the FLICC-taxonomy and its history, but now we also have the FLICC-Poster!
This poster is the result of a successful collaboration between us and our German language partnersite klimafakten.de. Our partnership goes back to 2011 when Klimafakten started out with German translations of several of our rebuttals and this short announcement tells the story: Klimafakten.de - Leveraging Skeptical Science content. Since then, Klimafakten has added many more fact checks to their site and we have leveraged this by simply cross-linking from many of our translated rebuttal "stubs" to their German versions.
EGU2020 - Sharing Geoscience Online - Live-streamed and Recorded Sessions
Posted on 11 May 2020 by BaerbelW
By far the most sessions throughout Sharing Geoscience Online 2020 were held as live chats, like the one on Monday featuring many citizens science projects I already wrote about. But, the organizers also added some live-streamed and pre-recorded sessions to the schedule and this post features the ones I watched and liked.
Welcome to Sharing Geoscience Online
Monday
The Great Debate GDB3 titled Cutting carbon in the geosciences: conference participation versus online streaming and fieldwork versus remote observations had been planned well in advance of the Corona pandemic but now couldn't have been more topical!
