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?
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #20
Posted on 20 May 2018 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
Water shortages to be key environmental challenge of the century, Nasa warns
Freshwater supplies have already seriously declined in 19 global hotspots – from China to the Caspian Sea – due to overuse, groundbreaking study shows
The Theewaterskloof Dam, a key source of water supply to Cape Town, South Africa ahead of the current water crisis. Photograph: Halden Krog/AP
Water shortages are likely to be the key environmental challenge of this century, scientists from Nasa have warned, as new data has revealed a drying-out of swaths of the globe between the tropics and the high latitudes, with 19 hotspots where water depletion has been dramatic.
Areas in northern and eastern India, the Middle East, California and Australia are among the hotspots where overuse of water resources has caused a serious decline in the availability of freshwater that is already causing problems. Without strong action by governments to preserve water the situation in these areas is likely to worsen.
Some of these hotspots were previously undocumented or poorly understood: a region in north-western China, in Xinjiang province, has suffered dramatic declines despite receiving normal amounts of rainfall, owing to groundwater depletion from industry and irrigation.
Water shortages to be key environmental challenge of the century, Nasa warns by Fiona Harvey, Environment, Guardian, May 16, 2018
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #20
Posted on 19 May 2018 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Urgent Climate Action Required to Protect Tens of Thousands of Species Worldwide, New Research Shows
Limiting global warming to 2 degrees and not the more ambitious 1.5 degrees would put far more species at risk of extinction. Insects are especially vulnerable.
A mere half degree of extra global warming could mean profound risks for tens of thousands of the planet's species, scientists have found. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Humanity can powerfully improve the survival odds of tens of thousands of species, but only if nations dramatically raise their ambitions in the fight against climate change, according to new research published on Thursday in the journal Science.
One key to salvaging plant and vertebrate habitat and protecting the world's biodiversity is to limit warming to the most challenging benchmark established under the 2015 Paris treaty—1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—not to the treaty's less stringent 2 degree guardrail, the study found.
The study assessed, in more detail than ever before, a key measure of extinction risk: the shrinking size of each species' current geographical range, or natural habitat. It projected that for an alarming number of species, their range size would shrink by at least half as temperatures rise past the Paris goals.
If nations do no more than they have pledged so far to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions—and warming consequently shoots past 3 degrees by the end of this century—6 percent of all vertebrates would be at risk. So would 44 percent of plants and a whopping 49 percent of insects.
But the dangers would be greatly reduced if warming can be limited to 1.5 degrees. That might protect the overwhelming majority of the 115,000 species assessed by the researchers. Just 4 percent of vertebrates would lose more than half of their current range. Only 8 percent of plants and 6 percent of insects would face that risk.
Keeping warming to 2 degrees is not nearly as effective, they found. The additional half degree of warming would double the impact on plants and vertebrate species, and triple the impact on insects.
Urgent Climate Action Required to Protect Tens of Thousands of Species Worldwide, New Research Shows by John H Cushman Jr & Neela Banerjee, InsideClimate News, May 17, 2018
New research, May 7-13, 2018
Posted on 18 May 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change
Temperature, precipitation, wind
Projected change in characteristics of near surface temperature inversions for southeast Australia
Unidirectional trends in annual and seasonal climate and extremes in Egypt
An asymmetric rainfall response to ENSO in East Asia
Extreme events
Global solar capacity grew faster than fossil fuels in 2017, says report
Posted on 17 May 2018 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Simon Evans
For the first time, in 2017, global solar capacity grew faster than all fossil fuels combined, including coal, oil and gas-fired power stations.
That’s one finding of the latest annual report on global trends in renewable energy finance, from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
It shows renewables, excluding large hydro, made up three-fifths of net power capacity growth in 2017 and supplied a record 12% share of global electricity generation.
Global renewable investment held steady, with falling costs ensuring the same money bought record levels of new capacity. Within that, developing nations, led by China, claimed an ever-larger share of the total as investment fell steeply in several European countries.
Solar record
One of the most striking findings in today’s report is that global solar capacity grew faster in 2017 than the combined total for all fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – as the chart below shows.
Note that this chart shows net capacity growth, after accounting for power plants that have retired. This is particularly significant for coal, where 32 gigawatts (GW) closed in 2017 and for gas, which lost 16GW.
Global growth in net electricity generating capacity, gigawatts, after subtracting retirements from new additions. Global net nuclear capacity shrank during 2010-2012. Fossil fuels includes coal, oil and gas. Other renewables includes biomass, geothermal, waste-to-energy and small hydro below 50 megawatts capacity. Source: UNEP/BNEF Global Trends in Renewable Energy Finance reports 2010-2018, International Atomic Energy Agency PRIS database and Carbon Brief analysis. Note that the figures reported in each year’s ‘Global Trends’ report are preliminary. Carbon Brief will update this chart if final figures become available. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.
The milestone reflects rising investment and falling costs for solar (see below for more on this). Significantly, it also reflects the decline in the growth of new coal and gas capacity, as well as an increase in retirements.
Video: The Myth of the Mini Ice Age
Posted on 16 May 2018 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Not the first time I’ve had to shoot down this nonsense, probably not the last.
The internet’s perverse algorithms select for “man bites dog” stories, which explains why every yahoo with a “global cooling”, “imminent ice age” video gets pushed to the front of the queue.
This includes a spate of stories after a recent study of solar cycles. Naturally, I talked to the author.
SkS Analogy 12 - A Sinking ship reaches new heights
Posted on 15 May 2018 by Evan, jg
Tag Line
A sinking ship reaches new heights.
Elevator Statement
For a sinking ship the stern may be unusually low, the bow unusually high, and on average, the whole thing is going down. We cannot infer what is happening to the ship just by what is happening to one part. We must look at the entire ship.
It seems that at least one US Senator did not understand this relationship between the environment’s local extremes and global means when he found snow in front of the US capital, in February, and thought it meant that Global Warming had stopped.1 If he had watched the news that night, he might have realized that just a few hundred miles to the south it was unusually hot in Florida.
If we wait to take action on Climate Change until it is obvious to everyone that the ship is sinking, we may all be swimming.
Climate Science
As the Earth warms, some parts will still be cold. Let’s face it, the North and South Poles are just cold places. Some parts may experience colder temperatures for a while in response to a modified jet stream that draws cold, Arctic air further south than in the past. Cold days still happen, just less frequently.
California, battered by global warming’s weather whiplash, is fighting to stop it
Posted on 14 May 2018 by dana1981
In 1988 – the same year Nasa’s James Hansen warned Congress about the threats posed by human-caused global warming – water expert Peter Gleick wrote about the wet and dry extremes that it would create for California:
California will get the worst of all possible worlds – more flooding in the winter, less available water in the summer.
Three decades later, California has been ravaged by just this sort of weather whiplash. The state experienced its worst drought in over a millennium from 2012 to 2016, followed immediately by its wettest year on record in 2017. The consequences have been similarly extreme, including hellish record wildfires, narrowly-avoided catastrophic flooding at Oroville Dam, and deadly mudslides.
A study published last month in Nature Climate Change found that these wet and dry extremes will only worsen in California as temperatures continue to rise. As lead author Daniel Swain wrote:
most of California will likely experience a 100 – 200% increase in the frequency of very wet November-March “rainy seasons” … California will likely experience an increase of anywhere from 50% to 150% (highest in the south) in the frequency of very dry November-March periods … Since California is so dependent on precipitation during its relatively brief winter rainy season, even a single dry winter can quickly lead to adverse drought impacts upon agriculture and the environment.
Relative change (in percent) in extremely wet seasons and extremely dry seasons by 2070-2100 in Southern California. Illustration: Swain et al. 2018, Nature Climate Change
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #19
Posted on 13 May 2018 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
2016 Arctic heat would have been virtually impossible without global warming
In the fall of 2016, the Arctic experienced heat that was so extreme that one expert called it a black swan event. That warmth helped set a new annual temperature record that was double the magnitude of the record set the year before. New NOAA-led research confirms that the event could not have happened without human-caused global warming and sea ice loss.
These maps compare the observed differences from average temperature in 2016 (left) to two computer simulations of 2016 (right). The top right map shows results from models that included only natural climate influences, using estimated conditions from the late nineteenth century. The bottom right map shows results from models in which things like greenhouse gases, sea surface temperatures, and sea ice were allowed to change as they have in the real world due to human activities.
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19
Posted on 12 May 2018 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Methane, Climate Change, and Our Uncertain Future
Methane is generally considered secondary to carbon dioxide in its importance to climate change, but what role might methane play in the future if global temperatures continue to rise?
Flooded permafrost tundra in northeast Siberia. Hydrology is a key control on methane emissions in wetland and permafrost ecosystems. Credit: Joshua Dean
The greenhouse gas, methane, is produced by both natural processes and human activities. While there has been much attention paid to curbing anthropogenic emissions, a changing climate will likely increase the production of natural methane. In an open access article recently published in Reviews of Geophysics, Dean et al. [2018] describe the ways in which biological, geochemical, and physical systems influence methane concentrations and explore how methane levels in natural systems may alter in a warming climate. Here the authors answer some questions about the sources and significance of methane, and indicate some future research directions.
Methane, Climate Change, and Our Uncertain Future by Joshua Dean, Editors' Vox, Eos, May 11, 2018
New research, April 30 - May 6, 2018
Posted on 11 May 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change mitigation
Climate change communication
Bringing the Heat Home: Television Spots about Local Impacts Reduce Global Warming Denialism
"Respondents exposed to the campaign were more likely to believe that global warming is happening, to accept the scientific consensus, to be more concerned about impacts and more supportive of policy solutions."
Teaching environmental policy in an era of polarization and misrepresentation
Climate Change and Energy Technologies in Undergraduate Introductory Science Textbooks
Climate-related Community Knowledge Networks as a Tool to Increase Learning in the Context of Environmental Change (open access)
"Respondents’ perceptions are sensitive to observed differences in both temperature and precipitation, but respondents are more likely to accurately perceive local precipitation than local temperature. Controlling for observed conditions, beliefs about global climate change had a large effect on perceptions of seasonal temperature, and smaller effects on perceptions of seasonal precipitation."
Analysis: How much ‘carbon budget’ is left to limit global warming to 1.5C?
Posted on 10 May 2018 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief
In 2015, by signing up to the Paris Agreement on climate change, nearly every country pledged to keep global temperatures “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C”.
Limiting warming to 1.5C requires strictly limiting the total amount of carbon emissions between now and the end of the century. However, there is more than one way to calculate this allowable amount of additional emissions, known as the “carbon budget”.
While calculations based on Earth System Models (ESMs, see below) used in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report suggest that we have only a few years left at our current rate of emissions before we blow the 1.5C carbon budget, some recent studies have suggested that the remaining carbon budget is much larger.
In this article, Carbon Brief assesses nine new carbon budget estimates released by different groups over the past two years. Most show larger allowable emissions than were featured in the last IPCC report. A number of studies suggest that carbon budgets estimates based on ESMs may be on the low side as a result of limitations with how some models represent the carbon cycle.
However, there is still a wide range of variation in these new carbon budgets, arising from differences in approaches, timeframes, estimates of warming to-date and other factors. Recent studies suggest the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to “well below” 1.5C might have already been exceeded by emissions to-date, or might be as large as 15 more years of emissions at our current rate.
Global warming is melting Antarctic ice from below
Posted on 9 May 2018 by John Abraham
We all know intuitively that in a warmer world there will be less ice. And, since the North and South Pole regions contain lots of ice, anyone who wants to see evidence of climate change can look there.
But beyond this simplistic view, things can get pretty complex. First, it’s important to recognize that the Arctic and the Antarctic are very different places. In the Arctic, almost all the ice is floating on water – there is very little land. So, we talk about ‘sea ice’ in the north, formed from frozen sea water. On the other hand, Antarctica is a massive land mass that is covered by ice formed from snowfall (called an ‘ice sheet’). There is some floating ice around the perimeter of the land, but the vast majority of Antarctic ice is on land.
This difference not only affects how these regions response to climate change, but it also impacts their importance. We know that when floating ice melts, the ocean levels will not rise, because the ice was already floating in the water. But, when land ice melts, the liquid water flows into the ocean and causes the water levels to rise. So, at least from a sea-level perspective, land ice is more important than floating ice.
There are other differences between the north and south. One feature of the south is that there is a strong current that travels around Antarctica and partially shields it from waters elsewhere in the ocean. The Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides a good summary of some of the differences between the poles.
The 1970s Global Cooling Zombie Myth and the Tricks Some People Use to Keep it Alive, Part II
Posted on 8 May 2018 by David Kirtley
In Part I of this look back at 1970s climate science I reviewed the findings of Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck's seminal 2008 survey of 1970s peer-reviewed literature (hereafter referred to as PCF08) which found no 1970s "consensus" about a future global cooling/ice age. I also looked at a "skeptic" critique of this paper from the blogsite No Tricks Zone, penned by Kenneth Richard (hereafter referred to as NTZ), and showed some of the errors and fallacies he used to distort 1970s science. In this post I'll take a closer look at some of the papers used by NTZ to claim that there was a global cooling "consensus" in the 1970s.
The primary critique by NTZ is given in a blog post which highlights 35 "sample global cooling/low CO2 climate influence papers" from his full list of 285 papers. Like the full list of 285 papers, these samples are not given in any apparent order, not by date or by author. I rearranged these by date of publication in order to see the progression of the science as the various threads of climate research (see Part I) developed throughout the period. Below is a screenshot of the first page of a spreadsheet (click on image for pdf) of the 35 sample papers.
The first thing to notice is that not all of these samples are peer-reviewed scientific papers. Two of these are RAND Corporation documents (Fletcher, 1969 and Libby, 1970), one is a book review (Post, 1979), and one is from a popular science magazine (Douglas, 1975). This article was mentioned in PCF08 in their "Popular Literature of the Era" sidebar but not included in their survey. Two other sample papers are perhaps "borderline" between grey and peer-reviewed literature: two Master's thesis papers (Cimorelli & House, 1974 and Magill, 1980). And there are a few others I'm not sure about.
Contrast this with PCF08's survey which excluded anything from the "grey literature" and focused exclusively on the peer-reviewed literature.1 The best place to find out what the scientists of the time were saying about the future climate trajectory is in the peer-reviewed literature. Things can get muddy once you include documents from the popular press. Yes, these other sources may offer insight into what the "sense of the times" were, but they can also misrepresent or distort what scientists thought at the time. NTZ expands the goal posts to include some of this grey literature and thus gathers more "papers" for his "global cooling consensus".
Global warming will depress economic growth in Trump country
Posted on 7 May 2018 by dana1981
A working paper recently published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond concludes that global warming could significantly slow economic growth in the US.
Specifically, rising summertime temperatures in the hottest states will curb economic growth. And the states with the hottest summertime temperatures are all located in the South: Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Arizona. All of these states voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
This paper is consistent with a 2015 Nature study that found an optimal temperature range for economic activity. Economies thrive in regions with an average temperature of around 14°C (57°F). Developed countries like the US, Japan, and much of Europe happen to be near that ideal temperature, but continued global warming will shift their climates away from the sweet spot and slow economic growth. The question is, by how much?
The new working paper concludes that if we meet the Paris target of staying below 2°C global warming, US economic growth will only slow by about 5 to 10%. On our current path, including climate policies implemented to date (which would lead to 3–3.5°C global warming by 2100), US economic growth would slow by about 10 to 20%. In a higher carbon pollution scenario (4°C global warming by 2100), US economic growth would slow by about 12 to 25% due to hotter temperatures alone.
Republicans have this totally wrong
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who represents Louisiana (the second-hottest state), recently introduced a new anti-carbon tax House Resolution. Scalise introduced similar Resolutions in 2013 with 155 co-sponsors (154 Republicans and 1 Democrat) and in 2015 with 82 co-sponsors (all Republicans). The latest version currently only has one co-sponsor, but more will undoubtedly sign on. All three versions of the Resolution include text claiming, “a carbon tax will lead to less economic growth.”
As the economics research shows, failing to curb global warming will certainly lead to less economic growth. Climate policies could hamper economic growth, but legislation can be crafted to address that concern.
For example, as Citizens’ Climate Lobby notes in its point-by-point response to the Scalise Resolution, an economic analysis of the group’s proposed revenue-neutral carbon tax policy found that it would modestly spur economic growth(increasing national GDP by $80 to 90bn per year). With this particular policy, 100% of the carbon tax revenue is returned equally to households, and for a majority of Americans, this more than offsets their increased costs. As a result, real disposable income rises, and Americans spend that money, spurring economic growth.
Modeled change in real disposable personal income in the US resulting from the CCL rising revenue-neutral carbon tax. Illustration: Regional Economic Models, Inc.
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18
Posted on 6 May 2018 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... SkS in the News... Photo of the Week... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Reports of Note... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
Pruitt's EPA Is on the Verge of 'Regulatory Capture', Study Says
A new study based on EPA documents and interviews found industry influence over the EPA today is stronger than it was during the early Reagan years. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has veered so far from its foundational mission of protecting human health and the environment that it faces the highest risk in its 47-year history of being reshaped to serve industry rather than the American public, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.
The EPA routinely faces criticism from environmental and public health advocates for allegedly quashing science and softening rules to help industry. During the early years of the Reagan presidency in particular, EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch worked to scale back the agency's activities.
But the new study, based on interviews with current and former EPA staff and reviews of White House and EPA initiatives, concluded that the agency is now on the edge of "regulatory capture," when industry priorities determine policy rather than the public interest and impartial research.
"New EPA leadership has thus far aimed at deconstructing, rather than reconstructing, the agency by comprehensively undermining many of the agency's rules, programs, and policies while also severely undercutting its budget, work capacity, internal operations and morale," concluded the study, titled "The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration: Prelude to Regulatory Capture."
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #18
Posted on 5 May 2018 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Earth’s atmosphere just crossed another troubling climate change threshold
Recent CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
For the first time since humans have been monitoring, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have exceeded 410 parts per million averaged across an entire month, a threshold that pushes the planet ever closer to warming beyond levels that scientists and the international community have deemed “safe.”
The reading from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii finds that concentrations of the climate-warming gas averaged above 410 parts per million throughout April. The first time readings crossed 410 at all occurred on April 18, 2017, or just about a year ago.
Carbon dioxide concentrations — whose “greenhouse gas effect” traps heat and drives climate change — were around 280 parts per million circa 1880, at the dawn of the industrial revolution. They’re now 46 percent higher.
As you can see in the famed “saw-toothed curve” graph above, more formally known as the Keeling Curve, concentrations have ticked upward in an unbroken progression for many decades. But they also go up and down on an annual cycle that’s controlled by the patterns and seasonality of plant growth around the planet.
Earth’s atmosphere just crossed another troubling climate change threshold by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, May 3, 2018
New research, April 23-29, 2018
Posted on 4 May 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change impacts
"We examined a future change of Köppen–Geiger climate classification zones in central Europe in the 21st century using the high‐resolution (10 km) bias‐corrected simulations of two regional climate models following the IPCC SRES A1B emission scenario. Temperate oceanic climate (Cfb) will remain the dominant climate type in central Europe but it will extent into higher altitudes and replace boreal or colder climate types that will practically vanish by the end of the 21st century. There is a risk of large‐scale expansion of humid subtropical (Cfa) climate in lower altitudes where 20–50% of population lives nowadays. In the end of the century the majority of arable land and permanent crops areas will be in the Cfa zone. A growing occurrence of Cfa‐like or Mediterranean climate‐like (Csa) years will reach up to 50% at some locations where 1.4 million people live today. Almost all agriculturally important areas and two thirds of the current population will be exposed to the occurrence of Cfa‐ and Csa‐like years at least once in 10 years which may result into a lower production of rain‐fed crops as it was the case of of Cfa‐ and Csa‐like years of 2000, 2012 and 2015."
2. Ground thermal and geomechanical conditions in a permafrost-affected high-latitude rock avalanche site (Polvartinden, northern Norway) (open access)
"It is likely that permafrost in and near the failure zone is presently subject to degradation. This degradation, in combination with the extreme warm year antecedent to the rock failure, is seen to have played an important role in the detaching of the Signaldalen rock avalanche."
Mankind
3. When do Indians feel hot? Internet searches indicate seasonality suppresses adaptation to heat (open access)
"State-level heat thresholds ranged from 25.9 °C in Madhya Pradesh to 31.0 °C in Orissa. Local adaptation was found to occur at state level: the higher the average temperature in a state, the higher the heat threshold; and the higher the intra-annual temperature range (warmest minus coldest month) the lower the heat threshold."
4. Planning for climigration: a framework for effective action
5. Integrated urban water management applied to adaptation to climate change
6. CoastAdapt: an adaptation decision support framework for Australia’s coastal managers (open access)
7. Moving toward 1.5°C of warming: implications for climate adaptation strategies
The 1970s Global Cooling Zombie Myth and the Tricks Some People Use to Keep it Alive, Part I
Posted on 3 May 2018 by David Kirtley
Ten years ago, Thomas Peterson, William Connolley and John Fleck published a paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society which looked back at the climate science of the 1970s: "The Myth of the Global Cooling Scientific Consensus" (hereafter called PCF08). The goal of the paper was to look at the peer-reviewed literature of the time to see what scientists were saying about the future projections of climate. In the decades since the 1970s, some "skeptics" of global warming/climate change have made claims that "all the scientists" in the 1970s were predicting "global cooling" or an "imminent ice age". But, the PCF08 survey of papers from 1965 to 1979 showed that while there were some concerns about future "cooling", especially at the beginning of the time period, there were many more concerns about future warming caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide.
Figure 1. The number of papers classified as predicting, implying, or providing supporting evidence for future global cooling, warming, and neutral categories. During the period from 1965 through 1979, the PCF08 literature survey found 7 cooling, 20 neutral, and 44 warming papers. (Peterson 2008)
Many of today's "skeptics" of AGW remain unconvinced. A few years ago, Kenneth Richard, at the blog site NoTricksZone, penned a critique of PCF08, claiming to find hundreds of papers in support of a 1970's "cooling consensus": "Massive Cover-up Exposed: 285 Papers From 1960s-’80s Reveal Robust Global Cooling Scientific ‘Consensus’" (hereafter called NTZ). PCF08 only found seven peer-reviewed papers supporting a future cooling consensus. Did NTZ really stumble upon a "massive cover-up": a treasure trove of 285 more peer-reviewed papers foretelling a future cooling trend leading to the next ice age?
The short answer, of course, is "no". But, I thought it would be good to take a close look at PCF08 and NTZ to see "what's going on". What were scientists in the 1970s saying about the possible future trajectory of the climate? What facts were well-known and what questions were scientists still trying to answer? How could PCF08 and NTZ come to different conclusions about 1970s climate science from looking at the period's many peer-reviewed papers?
SkS Analogy 11 - Cabinets, airplanes, and frame of reference
Posted on 2 May 2018 by Evan, jg
Tag Line
The elevation of an airplane landing on a runway is only useful if measured relative to the ground (i.e., height), and not to sea level (i.e., altitude).
Elevator Statement
While determining the optimum height for kitchen cabinets, an industrious husband in Minnesota asks his wife
“Should we move the kitchen cabinets up by 0.1% from the position we originally discussed?”
“Why on earth are you bothering me about such a trivial amount?” came the reply. “Now if you were considering something ridiculous like raising them 1 ft. I would complain.”
In fact, the husband was considering raising the kitchen cabinets by 1 ft. His reference to 0.1% used the height above sea level of 1000 ft. as the reference point for making his measurements. A ridiculous analogy you say? Climate-change deniers and not-so-well-informed skeptics make similar errors, but they are not as obvious. Read on if you want to learn the error that a Nobel Laureate made by miscommunicating in a similar manner as this industrious husband.
Climate Science
Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever stated the following in a talk he gave on climate science,1
“From ~1880 to 2013 temperature increased from ~288K to 288.8K (0.3%). If this is true, to me it means that the temperature has been amazingly stable.”
A 0.3% increase is kind of like the 0.1% the husband raised the kitchen cabinets. Dr. Giaever was using an absolute temperature scale for his comparison. Unlike the Celsius temperature scale where 0°C is the point where ice melts, 0K on the absolute temperature scale is the point where atoms “melt” and start moving. For comparison, on the temperature scale that Dr. Giaever was using, ice melts at a blisteringly hot 273K. If you live in a coastal city prone to flooding, do you care more about the temperature at which atoms “melt” and start moving (i.e., 0K), or do you care more about the temperature at which ice melts (i.e., 273K = 0°C) and continues moving ever closer to your home?
TV Meteorologists Seen Warming to Climate Science
Posted on 1 May 2018 by greenman3610
This month’s “This is Not Cool” Yale Climate Connections video reports several leading TV weathercasters’ views on discussing climate in the context of weather forecasting.
Through their own words in a series of in-person and Skype interviews, plus clips from some recent broadcasts on extreme weather events, independent videographer Peter Sinclair’s video describes the rapidly evolving perspectives: prominent national and local broadcast meteorologists saying they now see it as their responsibility to keep certain weather events in the context of the changing climate.
The TV weathercasters featured in the video relate how their views on the science of climate change have evolved in recent years. “I think you’re seeing more and more TV meteorologists understand that responsibility,” says Washington Post meteorologist Jason Samenow.
Raleigh, N.C., WRAL-TV meteorologist Greg Fishel points to TV weathercasters being a principal link between the science community and the public, placing a “tremendous responsibility to make sure that we are not letting any ideology into our science reporting, that we are dealing with facts and relaying them as accurately as we can to the public.”
Phoenix ABC 15 chief meteorologist Amber Sullins points to “a definite increase in the amount of extreme heat just in my life time there in the City of Phoenix.”
