Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Global warming is real and human-caused. It is leading to large-scale climate change. Under the guise of climate "skepticism", the public is bombarded with misinformation that casts doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming "skepticism".
Our mission is simple: debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial.
Summer 2023 was the hottest on record – yes, it’s climate change, but don’t call it ‘the new normal’
Posted on 2 October 2023 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Scott Denning, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
Summer 2023 was the hottest on record by a huge margin. Hundreds of millions of people suffered as heat waves cooked Europe, Japan, Texas and the Southwestern U.S. Phoenix hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) for a record 54 days, including a 31-day streak in July. Large parts of Canada were on fire. Lahaina, Hawaii, burned to the ground.
As an atmospheric scientist, I get asked at least once a week if the wild weather we’ve been having is “caused” by climate change. This question reflects a misunderstanding of the difference between weather and climate.
Consider this analogy from the world of sports: Suppose a baseball player is having a great season, and his batting average is twice what it was last year. If he hits a ball out of the park on Tuesday, we don’t ask whether he got that hit because his batting average has risen. His average has gone up because of the hits, not the other way around. Perhaps the Tuesday homer resulted from a fat pitch, or the wind breaking just right, or because he was well rested that day. But if his batting average has doubled since last season, we might reasonably ask if he’s on steroids.
Unprecedented heat and downpours and drought and wildfires aren’t “caused by climate change” – they are climate change.
The rise in frequency and intensity of extreme events is by definition a change in the climate, just as an increase in the frequency of base hits causes a better’s average to rise.
And as in the baseball analogy, we should ask tough questions about the underlying cause. While El Niño is a contributor to 2023’s extreme heat, that warm event has only just begun. The steroids fueling extreme weather are the heat-trapping gases from burning coal, oil and gas for energy around the world.
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #39
Posted on 30 September 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
We’re not doomed yet’: climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation
The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but there is still time to act
“We haven’t yet exceeded the bounds of viable human civilisation, but we’re getting close,” says Prof Michael Mann. “If we keep going [with carbon emissions], then all bets are off.”
The climate crisis, already bringing devastating extreme weather around the world, has delivered a “fragile moment”, says the eminent climate scientist and communicator in his latest book, titled Our Fragile Moment. Taming the climate crisis still remains possible, but faces huge political obstacles, he says.
Mann, at Penn State university in the US, has been among the most high-profile climate scientists since publishing the famous hockey stick chart in 1999, showing how global temperatures rocketed over the last century.
To understand our predicament today, Mann has trawled back through the Earth’s climate history in order to see our potential futures more clearly. “We’ve got 4 bn years to learn from,” he told the Guardian in an interview.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on The Guardian website.
We’re not doomed yet’: climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation, Interview by Damian Carrington, Environment, The Guardian, Sep 30, 2023
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39 2023
Posted on 28 September 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
"Net zero is only a distraction— we just have to end fossil fuel emissions." The latter is true but the former isn't, or not in the real world as it's likely to be in the immediate future. And "just" just doesn't enter into it; we don't have a simple problem on our hands. Net zero is afflicted by various carpetbaggers and the fossil fuel industry itself— plus plain old human nature in the form of wishful thinking. But fully eliminating hydrocarbon fuels and non-fuel CO2 emissions from key industrial processes spanning from agriculture through production of concrete and on to manufacture of steel is going to be a long process. Likely we'll never be able to eliminate GHG side-products from our culture. Quite arguably we're not going to stop eating and using concrete and steel, and equally it's arguable that if we want to keep global warming contained to survivable limits then it's better not to embrace a fantasy and instead maintain our grip on reality. Fortunately we're keeping track of that. In this week's government/NGO section, we have the IEA's fresh report on how we can juggle conflicting requirements, Net Zero Roadmap. A Global Pathway to Keep the 1.5 °C Goal in Reach. Critics of net zero will do better by understanding the topic, and this is a good place to start.
The Estimated Climate Impact of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Eruption Plume, Schoeberl et al., Geophysical Research Letters: what's it got to do with anthropogenic climate change? Nothing, and everything. This paper does what it advertises; it analyzes the climatic effects of a violent volcanic eruption. Necessarily it employs essentially all of the same fundamental physics, application of physics to general understanding and modeling of Earth's climate system as does our understanding of climate change caused by humans. This leads to a problem for climate science deniers: when one denys the science of anthropogenic climate change, one is claiming we know little or nothing in general about physics, and in turn how Earth's climate functions. So, the wretched challenge deniers create for themselves is that they must not only find traction for argument against papers investigating human influences on climate but must also (if they're attempting to be coherent) also find solid means for disagreement with such works as these authors' paper. Good luck with that.
Christopher Piecuch and Lisa Beal bring us Robust Weakening of the Gulf Stream During the Past Four Decades Observed in the Florida Straits, in Geophysical Research Letters. Climate models and other research hints that the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation may be weakening, but observational evidence of that is lacking. The impact of such weakening on human affairs would be significant, so more information sooner is better. The significance of this paper is that weakening of the Gulf Stream is consistent with what we might expect from broader decline in meridional overturning circulation, and here we see strong evidence of such a slowdown in a sizable region of the Gulf Stream. It builds and extends other related work. There is of course more important work to do, and Piecuch and Beal pull that together and discuss future plans.
Another mixed bag, maybe with treats: Overlooked Long-Term Atmospheric Chemical Feedbacks Alter the Impact of Solar Geoengineering: Implications for Tropospheric Oxidative Capacity, Moch et al., AGU Advances. The authors bother to apply an atmospheric geochemistry model to analyze knock-on effects of stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection and while they find some possible unanticipated benefits (hello, Patrick Brown!), they conclude:
Without considering long-term chemical feedbacks, estimates of the climate effects of geoengineering may embody significant errors, especially with regards to the seasonal and spatial pattern of radiative forcing. Our analysis suggests that deploying geoengineering methods designed to avoid stratospheric ozone depletion may be counterproductive for climate and public health goals. The complexity of the climate system and the possibility of unexpected “surprises” is often pointed to as a reason for caution when considering geoengineering as a means to mitigate the harms resulting from climate change (Kravitz & MacMartin, 2020; Robock, 2020). Given that the geoengineering research community has not previously identified long-term chemical feedbacks as a key uncertainty (Lee et al., 2021; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021; Patt et al., 2022), this work reveals just such a “surprise” with respect to prior studies.
Given developments with Antarctic sea ice and the trend of recent westerly winds in lower southern latidudes obediently following model projections, Warming beneath an East Antarctic ice shelf due to increased subpolar westerlies and reduced sea ice just published by Lauber et al. in Nature Geoscience is quite conspicuous.
123 articles in 56 journals by 678 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A review of ENSO teleconnections at present and under future global warming, Alizadeh, WIREs Climate Change 10.1002/wcc.861
AMOC decline and recovery in a warmer climate, Nobre et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-023-43143-5
The competition between anthropogenic aerosol and greenhouse gas climate forcing is revealed by North Pacific water-mass changes, Shi et al., Science Advances Open Access pdf 10.1126/sciadv.adh7746
California’s climate disclosure bill could have a huge impact across the U.S.
Posted on 27 September 2023 by Guest Author
This re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Andy Furillo was originally published by Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
The California Legislature took a step last week that has the potential to accelerate the fight against climate change within the state and have a transformative effect across the nation. It also marked the rise of a more forceful climate caucus in the legislature, led by new Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, bucking an intense industry lobbying push that killed a similar bill last year.
Senate Bill 253, which would force companies that generate revenues of more than $1 billion a year to fully disclose their total greenhouse gas impact, cleared the Capitol’s lower house on a 49-20 vote. The state Senate, which had already approved the measure, concurred on a few minor amendments, and the bill now goes to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has until Oct. 14 to sign it. (Editor’s note: Newsom announced Sept. 17 that he plans to sign the bill.)
‘This is really a national bill’
If he does, and Newsom’s past record suggests that he will, California will essentially establish a national policy that compels big business to be transparent about its emissions, according to at least one analyst.
“I think this is a really big deal,” said Lynn M. LoPucki, a professor at the University of Florida law school, noting that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been working on its own corporate disclosure rule for years to no avail.
LoPucki, who recently had a paper published in the UC Davis Law Review on the shortcomings of voluntary reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, said that once the California law takes effect, it won’t matter what the SEC or other states might do, because nearly every large company in the United States that does business in California will be forced to report its emissions.
“So this is really a national bill,” LoPucki said.
By requiring businesses to provide the complete picture on their greenhouse gas profile, California is betting that market forces will put pressure on companies to cut down on their emissions.
As a result, investors may be less likely to put money into companies that are warming the globe and customers may be less inclined to buy products that they know contribute to climate change.
At a glance - How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?
Posted on 26 September 2023 by John Mason, BaerbelW
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
Have you heard of Earth's carbon cycle? Not everyone has, but it's one of the most important features of our planet. It involves the movement of carbon through life, the air, the oceans, soils and rocks. The carbon cycle is constant, eternal and everywhere. It's also a vital temperature control-mechanism.
There are two key components to the carbon cycle, a fast part and a slow part. The fast carbon cycle involves the seasonal movement of carbon through the air, life and shallow waters. A significant amount of carbon dioxide is exchanged between the atmosphere and oceans every year, but the fast carbon cycle's most important participants are plants. Many plants take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis in the growing season then return the CO2 back to the atmosphere during the winter, when foliage dies and decays.
As a consequence of the role of plants, a very noticeable feature of the fast carbon cycle is that it causes carbon dioxide levels to fluctuate in a regular, seasonal pattern. It's like a heartbeat, the pulse of the Northern Hemisphere's growing season. That's where more of Earth's land surface is situated. In the Northern Hemisphere winter, many plants are either dead or dormant and carbon dioxide levels rise. The reverse happens in the spring and early summer when the growing season is at its height.
In this way, despite the vast amounts of carbon involved, a kind of seasonal balance is preserved. Those seasonal plant-based peaks and troughs and air-water exchanges cancel each other out. Well, that used to be the case. Due to that seasonal balance, annual changes in carbon dioxide levels form regular, symmetric wobbles on an upward slope. The upward slope represents our addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning.
Fossil fuels are geological carbon reservoirs. As such, they are part of the slow carbon cycle. The slow carbon cycle takes place over geological time-scales so normally it's not noticeable on a day to day basis. In the slow carbon cycle, carbon is released by geological processes such as volcanism. It is also locked up long-term in reservoirs like the oceans, limestone, coal, oil or gas. For example, the "37,400 billion tons of 'suspended' carbon" referred to in the myth at the top of this page is in fact dissolved inorganic carbon in the deep oceans.
Globally, the mixing of the deep ocean waters and those nearer the surface is a slow business. It takes place over many thousands of years. As a consequence, 75% of all carbon attributable to the emissions of the industrial age remains in the upper 1,000 m of the oceans. It has not had time to mix yet.
Fluctuations in Earth's slow carbon cycle are the regulating mechanism of the greenhouse effect. The slow carbon cycle therefore acts as a planetary thermostat, a control-knob that regulates global temperatures over millions of years.
Now, imagine the following scenario. You come across an unfamiliar item of machinery that performs a vital role, for example life support in a hospital. It has a complicated control panel of knobs and dials. Do you think it is a good idea to start randomly turning the knobs this way and that, to see what happens? No. Yet that is precisely what we are doing by burning Earth's fossil fuel reserves. We are tinkering with the controls of Earth's slow carbon cycle, mostly without knowing what the knobs do - and that is despite over a century of science informing us precisely what will happen.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above
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After a Pittsburgh coal processing plant closed, ER visits plummeted
Posted on 25 September 2023 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Katie Myers. This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Pittsburgh, in its founding, was blessed and cursed with two abundant natural resources: free-flowing rivers and a nearby coal seam. Their presence made the city’s 20th-century status as a coal-fired, steel-making powerhouse possible. It also threw so much toxic smoke in the air that the town was once described as “hell with the lid off.”
Though air quality laws strengthened over the decades, pollution in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County has remained high, ranking among the 25 worst metro areas in the United States for fine, easy-to-inhale particles known as PM2.5. Carbon pollution can often feel so big — borne on the air, causing ice caps to go black and melt. But it also causes problems much closer to home. Allegheny County’s inhabitants are among the top 1% in the nation for cancer risk, and the area is notorious for its high rates of asthma and heart issues, both of which, like the biggest emitters, are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. These kinds of health problems can often seem both mysterious in origin and inescapable for the people who live with them. However, the January 2016 closure of the Shenango Coke Works coal-processing plant provided an astonishing example of how quickly those same communities can recover from the most dire impacts of pollution.
Shenango was a coke oven — a facility that heats coal to around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce coke, which is in turn used to make steel. Such operations are famously nasty particle polluters, emitting not only carbon dioxide but also contaminants like benzene, arsenic, lead, and mercury.
The research, led by the New York University-Langone School of Medicine, used medical records from area hospitals to determine emergency room visits and hospitalizations for heart ailments in the three years preceding and following the closure of the plant. They found an astonishing 42% drop in weekly emergency cardiovascular admissions after 2016. That immediate drop was followed by a downward trend that continued for three years. The study also found corresponding steep drops in sulfur dioxide — as high as 90% near the facility and 50% at a monitoring station six miles away. Arsenic levels plummeted by two-thirds.
Study co-author George Thurston compared the sudden improvement to the benefits of quitting smoking. “Over time the body recovers,” he said. “Instead of at an individual level, you’re really looking at a community healing after the removal of that exposure.”
To Thurston, and study lead author Wuyue Yu, this research shows that cutting carbon emissions offers more than an abstract, long-term, far-ranging result. It can actually save lives, almost immediately.
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #38
Posted on 23 September 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
Opinion: Let’s free ourselves from the story of economic growth
A relentless focus on economic growth has ushered in the climate crisis. We need a better definition of well-being.
Growth rules the world. Presidents succeed or fail, companies soar and crash, and countries are invited to the table on the basis of their growth percentage.
Economic growth by the common definition is that GDP — gross domestic product — keeps getting bigger over time. GDP is an idea, and it was created to measure exports, consumption, investments, profits, wages — the total value of goods and services within a country’s borders. The current economic order uses GDP as a marker of national performance, and its growth is synonymous with a country’s financial wealth, worth, and power. For that reason, policymakers, political pundits, and economists love to propose, plan, and debate the best path for economic growth.
Nothing on Earth or in our known universe grows and lives forever. The economy and endless growth are an imagined machine-like system, unbounded by the laws that govern the rest of us. I imagine the growth-based economy beet-faced, with clenched, pounding fists, demanding more, faster, and now. A bottomless pit for a stomach, it eats with an insatiable appetite anything and everything within reach. This machine has grown so massive and powerful, I’m uncertain if it belongs to us, or if we belong to it. The machine eats and grows for the sake of its growth, with little consideration to the moral, social, or ecological costs. Though the machine and its rules are imaginary, the consequences are not: Land, resources, and life are consumed, extreme wealth and poverty, pollution, mass extinction, human death and displacement, and climate crisis are produced.
I write of growth like a story because it is: Humans imagined the growth-based economy and continue to tell a tale of its value and functions, achievements and superiority — economic growth like a God who endowed us with the power of the market, the tools of capitalism, and helped us build the modern world. Perhaps economic growth once served a rightful purpose: expanded trade networks, novel inventions, more efficient innovations, a raised standard for the quality of human life. Maybe — it depends who you ask and which story is told. Slavery and colonization are chapters in the story of economic growth too.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the Yale Climate Connections website.
Opinion: Let’s free ourselves from the story of economic growth A relentless focus on economic growth has ushered in the climate crisis. We need a better definition of well-being. by Nikayla Jefferson, Commentary by Yale Climate Connections, Sep 22, 2023
Climate Town: The Brainwashing Of America's Children
Posted on 22 September 2023 by BaerbelW
Climate Town is the YouTube channel of Rollie Williams and a ragtag team of climate communicators, creatives and comedians. They examine climate change in a way that doesn’t make you want to eat a cyanide pill. Get informed about the climate crisis before the weather does it for you.
The latest episode of Climate Town, is devoted to "The Brainwashing of America's School Children." Host Rollie Williams discusses the history of fossil-fuel-industry propaganda aimed at students, with a focus on material from the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, such as "Petro Pete" and "Lab Time with Leo." This entertaining yet disturbing video outlines the many horrific ways that the fossil fuel industry target children by getting their pro-industry/pro-fossil fuel propaganda into classrooms.
"Making the Grade?" — the 2020 study of the treatment of climate change in state science standards from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund — is discussed (at 20:30), and NCSE's Deputy Director Glenn Branch is thanked for his assistance toward the end (at 27:20).
At 23:30 Rollie Williams mentions the guide for taking action that Climate Town had Climate Changemakers developed to accompany this episode in order to require climate education. The goal is to urge local school boards and state boards of education in the U.S. to require scientifically robust climate change education at the K-12 level and to prepare teachers accordingly by providing professional development on climate change. If you live in the U.S. you might want to check it out here.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #38 2023
Posted on 21 September 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
At our roots Skeptical Science is about cognition of the results of climate science research in the minds of the entire human population. Ideally we'd be perfectly communicating understanding of Earth's climate, and perfectly understood. We can only approximate that, but hopefully converging closer to perfection. With the passage of time and a lot of effort on the part of researchers working on how our species thinks, we can inch forward— if we pay attention. With that in mind, two papers in this week's trawl land very close to our home. Each sports results important to climate science communicators but differing in paths and challenges to practical applicability.
Working the plainly visual level and offering obvious cues for better day-day information transfer reliability are Steph Courtney and Karen McNeal, reporting via the Geological Society of America's publication Geosphere. Seeing is believing: Climate change graph design and user judgments of credibility, usability, and risk seeks to better understand, demonstrate and improve how consumers absorb, process and cement information obtained from graphs. The authors hybridize "classic" cognitive survey techniques with eye-tracking data collection— a method well-suited for the medium under assessment. Courtney & McNeal firmly ground their research objective, from a launching point constructed on a review of past work— a useful feature for anybody seeking a foothold on the topic at hand. Takeaway for climate communicators: in a world of busy lives, public attention is limited. We can use everybody's time more productively by best knowing how to communicate through the uniquely powerful medium of graphs. One hopes the IPCC itself will integrate what this paper offers.
A proxy measure for the power of consensus messaging is the intense effort expended by vested interests in legacy energy supply systems on corroding public perception of scientific consensus on climate change. It's arguable that flaks working on behalf of fossilized clients started early with a gut instinct on this matter, but science has caught up; perception of scientific consensus appears to have genuine predictive effects on attitudes and beliefs about climate change. In a familiar scenario, further investigation reveals unexplained failure modes for consensus messaging. Of course, there will be reasons for that. Consensus messaging in climate change communication: Metacognition as moderator variable in the gateway belief model explores consensus messaging and where it leads to unknowns, leading to key research questions: is the efficacy of consensus messaging dependent on contextual conditions and if so, how? Publishing in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, investigators Said, Frauhammer and Huff try to answer these questions via experimentation. After their conclusions paths will diverge; for some of us reading this paper may alter communications tactics while for others the paper will lead to "further research." Application looks to need careful consideration.
Moving on: last week we featured a commentary suggesting we do a rethink on our 1.5°C "acceptable" limit on warming Earth's climate system. That reflection hinged in large part on direct air carbon capture and storage. Continuing that theme but with a different technological bent and publishing in Earth's Future now come Abbott et al., with their own commentary Accelerating the Renewable Energy Revolution to Get Back to the Holocene. The authors' goal can be summed as "wouldn't it be best if we stuck to what we know" when it comes to climate, taking us a step further than last week's Breyer et al. The team explore economic feasibility of accelerating transition to renewable (permanent) energy supplies, finding no showstoppers but the need for intense cooperation, and deep consideration of old economic habits.
This one's been making the rounds: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries, Richardson et al., Science Advances. We've seen a lot of it in the popular press, which is not a matter of chance; AAAS publications maintain an active press representation effort, this paper happens to have "pop," fixes the attention of newsdesks and so et voila, we see it everywhere. Bear in mind: no quibbles with the paper itself; we're reflecting on the delusion of Patrick Brown we covered last week and his obsession with high-profile journals. See the below routine list for "the average" weekly results in climate research— simultaneously horrific and circumspectly parsimonious. In any case, at the end of a long chain of custody not all popular literature actually connects readers to primary sources— if noticed at all by journalists— and primary souces of all stripes are our focus with New Research, even when there's no press office involved. So here you go.
The military: leaving aside all the excrescences of implementing blunt instruments at scale in a corrupt world of human nature, military force is the tool we pull from our box when geopolitical reason fails, locking pliers where we'd prefer to employ box-end wrenches— destructive, often used in haste but occasionally vitally effective. This week's exceptionally rich government/NGO section features Barriers to Force Projection: Climate Change and Aerial Forward Operability, a look at how tools of last resort will fare in a non-stationary climate. Deny all we want but the observational record and physics don't lie: the range and impact of some military hardware is being affected by warming air temperature, and specs will shrink further in the future. Authors Kaitlyn Benton and Timothy Leslie explore this using a high logistical value piece of military aviation hardware, not a weapon but a component of supply chains. They report in Air and Space Force Review, a publication of the US Air Force's Air University. Here's the fulcrum of their work:
As the most flexible transport aircraft in the US Air Force fleet, the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is an effective case study for such problems likely to be faced across the service. This study converts climate-warming projection data from 2020–2099 to measures of density altitude—“pressure altitude corrected for nonstandard temperature variations”—and assesses the impacts of increasing density altitude based on a set of mathematically approximated thresholds specific to the C-17 The density altitude thresholds provide metrics for quantifying regional performance degradation of the C-17 due to global warming.
Not a fan of the worst of human nature and inevitable mangling of people and things needed when we encounter dictators stuck up trees they chose to climb, etc.? The same problems will affect search and rescue and every other aviation ambition we may harbor. Thanks to it being founded on basic aerodynamics, this paper neatly maps to myriad contexts; it's very good value indeed.
132 articles in 55 journals by 718 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Effective climate sensitivity distributions from a 1D model of global ocean and land temperature trends, 1970–2021, Spencer & Christy, Theoretical and Applied Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00704-023-04634-7
Human activities further amplify the cooling effect of vegetation greening in Chinese drylands, Zhu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109703
The Inflation Reduction Act is reducing U.S. reliance on China
Posted on 20 September 2023 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Over a year later, its climate provisions remain a hot topic.
The law’s proponents argue that it’s created a boom in domestic manufacturing jobs within the United States while paving the way for significant climate pollution cuts. Its opponents claim that by accelerating the transition to clean technologies like electric vehicles and solar panels whose main components are predominantly made in Southeast Asia, the Inflation Reduction Act is increasing U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing.
But though China does play an outsized role in the manufacturing of clean energy technologies, the Inflation Reduction Act’s authors included provisions specifically seeking to remedy the situation by onshoring more of that supply chain within U.S. borders.
China is dominating the global clean energy transition
It’s important to first understand that the global transition to a clean energy economy is already underway. According to the International Energy Agency, 14% of new cars sold around the world in 2022 were electric vehicles, commonly called EVs. That’s up from less than 5% a mere two years earlier. The EV share is forecast to reach 18% of new car sales this year and continue rising rapidly.
In the second quarter of 2023, EVs accounted for more than one-quarter of new car sales in California. Nationwide, the Environmental Protection Agency has forecast that if its new tailpipe pollution rules go into effect, about 60% of new U.S. car sales will be EVs in 2030. But the International Energy Agency notes that China dominates global EV battery production: “China produces three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries and is home to 70% of production capacity for cathodes and 85% for anodes (both are key components of batteries). Over half of lithium, cobalt, and graphite processing and refining capacity is located in China.”
The story is similar for solar panels, which are forecast to account for a rapidly rising share of electricity production both in the United States and globally in the coming years. Though solar panels account for just about 5% of electricity generation in the United States today, that number is forecast to jump to over 25% by 2030. Much like EV batteries, China manufactures more than 80% of the world’s solar panels.
So the fear that the clean energy transition could increase U.S. reliance on Chinese manufacturing is a reasonable one. In fact, it’s a fear that the authors of the Inflation Reduction Act shared and sought to remedy through provisions in the law.
At a glance - Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?
Posted on 19 September 2023 by John Mason, BaerbelW
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
The false claim that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans keeps resurfacing every so often. This is despite debunkings from bodies like the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Such claims may be easy to make, but they fall apart once a little scientific scrutiny is applied. So, to settle this once and for all, let's venture out into the fascinating world of geology, plate tectonics and volcanism.
According to the USGS, there are 1,350 active volcanoes on Earth at the moment. An active volcano is one that can erupt, even if it's decades since it last did so. As of June 2023, 48 volcanoes were in continuous eruption, meaning activity occurs every few weeks. Out of those, around 20 will be erupting on any particular day. Several of those will have erupted by the time you have finished reading this.
People are familiar with a typical volcano, an elevated area with one or more craters or fissures from which lava periodically erupts. But there are also the submarine volcanoes such as those along the mid-oceanic ridges. These vast undersea mountain ranges are a key component of Earth's Plate Tectonics system. The basalts they continually erupt solidify into the oceanic crust making up the flooring of the deep oceans. Oceanic crust is constantly moving away from any mid-ocean ridge in the process known as 'sea-floor spreading'.
Oceanic crust is chemically reactive. It reacts with seawater, allowing the formation of huge quantities of minerals including those carrying carbon in the form of carbonate. But oceanic crust is geologically young. That is because it is also being consumed at subduction zones - the deep ocean 'trenches' where it is forced down into Earth's mantle.
When oceanic crust is forced down into the mantle at subduction zones, it heats up and begins to melt into magma. Carbonate minerals in that crust lose their carbon - it is literally cooked out of them. Magmas then transport the CO2 and other gases up through Earth's crust and if they reach the surface, volcanic eruptions occur and the CO2 and other gases leave the magma for the atmosphere.
So here you can see a long-term cycle in which carbon gets trapped in the sea-floor, subducted into the mantle, liberated into new magma and erupted again. It's a key part of Earth's Slow Carbon Cycle.
Volcanoes are also dangerous. That's why we have studied them for centuries. We have hundreds of years of observations of all sorts of eruptions, at Earth's surface and beneath the oceans. Those observations include millions of geochemical analyses of both lavas and gases.
Because of all of that data collected over so many years, we have a very good idea of the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere by volcanic activity. According to the USGS, it is between 180 and 440 million tons a year.
In 2019, according to the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (2022), human CO2 emissions were:
44.25 thousand million tons.
That's at least a hundred times the amount emitted by volcanoes. Case dismissed.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above
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Climate change is destroying reefs, but the effects are more than ecological
Posted on 18 September 2023 by Guest Author
This article by Michele Currie Navakas Professor of English, Miami University is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Aug. 30, 2023, bringing surging seas and winds over 100 mph. Meanwhile, another climate emergency has been unfolding along Florida’s coast this summer: a marine heat wave bleaching corals throughout the world’s third-largest barrier reef.
Similarly, ocean temperatures in many parts of the Atlantic and Pacific are at record highs, with reefs from Colombia to Australia showing signs of stress in recent years. Scientists warn that the world may be witnessing the start of a global coral-bleaching event, which would be the fourth on record – and while corals can survive bleaching, they won’t if the waters stay warm for too long.
Large-scale reef destruction tends to be measured in biological and economic terms. Reefs support about 25% of all marine species, protect human lives and property by buffering shorelines and bolster the worldwide economy through fishing and tourism.
But coral’s loss also takes an enormous spiritual, psychological and cultural toll – one of the main topics of my research and recent book, “Coral Lives.” Centuries of writing, painting, storytelling and rituals show that coral has given meaning to human lives for nearly as long as we’ve been around to marvel at it.
Protective powers
A detail from the 15th-century painting ‘The Senigallia Madonna,’ by Piero della Francesca, depicts Jesus with coral. Mondadori Portfolio/Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #37
Posted on 16 September 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
Humans Have Crossed 6 of 9 ‘Planetary Boundaries’
Scientists analyzed nine so-called planetary boundaries and found humans are currently transgressing six
Human activity is turning Earth into a world that may no longer adequately support the societies we’ve built, scientists warn in a new study charting whether and by how much we have surpassed nine “planetary boundaries.”
The analysis builds on a 2009 paper that first outlined nine planetary constraints that keep Earth’s environment similar to that of the world humans lived in during the preindustrial portion of the Holocene epoch. This period lasted for about the past 10,000 years, until the industrial revolution began and humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels and sending heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In the new research, published on Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers raise the alarm about what the potential consequences of this departure from humans’ baseline might be.
“It’s like blood pressure,” says Katherine Richardson, an earth systems scientist at the University of Copenhagen, who led the new research. “If your blood pressure is over 120 over 80, it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have a heart attack, but it does raise the risk, and therefore we do what we can to bring it down.”
The new study marks the second update since the 2009 paper and the first time scientists have included numerical guideposts for each boundary—a very significant development. “What is novel about this paper is: it’s the first time that all nine boundaries have been quantified,” says Rak Kim, an environmental social scientist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the Scientific American website.
Humans Have Crossed 6 of 9 ‘Planetary Boundaries’ Scientists analyzed nine so-called planetary boundaries and found humans are currently transgressing six by Meghan Bartels, Environment, Scientific American, Sep 13, 2023
Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science
Posted on 15 September 2023 by Doug Bostrom
Creating external costs
Coming off very much as a disgruntled ex-academic, the Breakthrough Institute's Patrick Brown recently blew his top over what some might interpret as frustration about failure to place enough articles on their own merit into "prestige" journals. Brown decided to deal with that by tactical expediency, leaving him feeling squeamish and seeking to explain and justify himself— by smearing his former colleagues in research. Brown vents his pent-up feelings in an op-ed which has poured like sweet music into the desperately thirsty and pathetically grateful ears of climate science deniers spanning the globe.
We'll be hearing echoes of Brown's impulsively emotional blurt for a very long time given that workable material for climate contrarians to repeat is scanty— meaning Brown has caused durable material harm to climate progress. It's to no good end. There's no silver lining here, no net gain, no legitimate cause being promoted; Brown's opinions are easily shown as factually incorrect.
Brown's screed hinges on a set of bold claims in connection with a paper recently published in Nature for which he was lead author. The underpinnings of Brown's assertions are that he's juiced his work into rare success by employing deceptive practices. He frames his argument as a mea culpa, belated regret over choices he freely made and apparently would now like to excuse by scapegoating bystanders— another risky choice. From his anecdotal self-imposed experience through creating an outlier report, Brown concludes that he "knows" things:
"I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell."
"And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society."
"The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative..."
"...we didn’t bother to study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors. Did I know that including them would make for a more realistic and useful analysis? I did. But I also knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers."
Brown is long on accusations but comes up short on evidence, in common with previous variations on a broad theme we've often heard: "climate science and academic peer review are suborned by a cabal of [globalists] [communists] [progressives] [other conspiratorial hobbyhorse]." And scientists, of course. We've already read these scripts and "scientists are corrupt" is boringly familiar— and wrong.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #37 2023
Posted on 14 September 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
In this week's government/NGO section we have a survey from IPSOS gauging experience of climate change in the day-to-day by persons in the US, One in four Americans say climate change will make it harder to live in their area. Many people struggle to separate their sensory perceptions from matters of metaphysics, with ideology strongly coloring their worldview. We live in a world that is quantitatively different than that our parents were born into, but we don't necessarily see that:
Perhaps because of the wide-reaching experience with extreme weather this summer, about one in four Americans say climate change will make it more difficult to live in their area, and most expect extreme weather to continue in the future. Notably, partisanship colors Americans’ experience with extreme weather and their views on climate change overall, with more Democrats reporting experiences with extreme weather and belief in the adverse effects of climate change than Republicans.
The IPSOS survey tapped into consciousness of what it means to live in a warming world, and with increasingly frequency that means living through heatwaves. The meaning and import of terms varies; experts on weather understand heatwaves differently than laypeople or epidemiologists. In Climatic Change Sofia Boni et al. thoroughly explore the concept and meaning of "heatwave" and how impacts of heatwaves are perceived and processed in a variety of ways, all challenged by the non-stationarity of our moderm climate. It's good to get onto the same page with such matters, and What is a heat(wave)? An interdisciplinary perspective gets that job done.
Let alone addressing main urgencies, cooperation against a common enemy might have side-benefits. Via Advances in Climate Change Research Cui et al. deliver a highly detailed assessment of respective coal generation plant inventory for two global superpowers, with an eye to coordinated retirement. A U.S.-China coal power transition and the global 1.5 °C pathway describes some low-hanging fruit that could be dragged down by two major actors working in concert, yieldingswift and deep emission reductions:
Globally, the joint U.S.-China coal transition itself can lower overall energy-related CO2 emissions by about 9% in 2030 relative to 2020, and a catalytic effect from the possibility of other country taking compatible actions would increase the emission reductions to 15% by 2030.
In their opinion piece Proposing a 1.0°C climate target for a safer future in PLOS Climate, Breyer et al. provide a brief but well-grounded and compelling argument to rethink the safety of the globally agreed 1.5°C allowable amount of planetary surface temperature rise. They go on to identify components to drop that figure by 1/3rd, and in so doing they must hypothesize DACCS (direct air capture with carbon storage) on a massive scale. DACCS is the plaything of legacy energy interests and hence buffeted by bad ink and bad optics but stripping that aside, what about the math? That can and should be handled seperately, for calm consideration:
To attain a 1.0°C climate target within acceptable certainty, about 40 GtCO2/a of CDR would be needed from the early 2060s onwards. While enormous, in that it would approximate current CO2 emissions, this amount of CDR using DACCS would require only 5–10% of global primary energy demand under two conditions: continued very rapid scaling of PV and strong energy efficiency gains of low-temperature DACCS by utilising heat pumps, while low-cost heat for DACCS may be also supplied by geothermal or solar thermal heat. Under these conditions, a 1.0°C world would become plausible in industrial, financial, and societal terms. Diverse CDR portfolios combining different natural climate solutions and sustainable technological solutions can enable the massive CDR needed for achieving a 1.0°C climate target by end-century facilitating safe climate conditions for civilisation.
Renewable energy deployment in Europe: Do politics matter?, Silva et al., Environment, Development & Sustainability. Spot the key unsupported conclusion in this arguably neoliberal-tinged analysis.
Nobody with common sense likes being boxed into further tampering with Earth's climate system, but arguing over that without full information won't close the issue or make the option magically go away. Yue et al. publishing in Nature Climate and Atmospheric Science break some new ground and find a mixed bag, in Thermosteric and dynamic sea level under solar geoengineering. The authors report that sea level wouldn't be affected equally on all coastlines with large employment of SAI (stratospheric aerosol injection), arguably complicating an already challenging decision space. Results hint at matters of equity and as well impacts on potentially important carbon feedback reservoirs.
Unprecedented Historical Erosion of US Gulf Coast: A Consequence of Accelerated Sea-Level Rise?, Anderson et al., Earth's Future. Cutting to the chase: Yes.
The ubiquitous shift toward increased shoreline erosion along the US Gulf Coast during the 20th century is most plausibly due to the historical acceleration of sea-level rise, currently about an order of magnitude faster than during the late Holocene. With the continued increase in the rate of sea-level rise, coastal populations, engineered shorelines, and use of dwindling sand resources along the US Gulf Coast, there is a critical need to adapt management practices to this new state of continuous landward retreat. Given the variable behavior of wave-dominated coasts during the late Holocene and modern times, coastal inundation models are poorly suited for predicting changes in wave-dominated coastal settings in coming decades. These models likely under-estimate the rate and magnitude of change.
149 articles in 65 journals by 952 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A strong high-temperature event in late-spring 2023 in Yunnan province, Southwest China: Characteristics and possible causes, Dong et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.107017
An asymmetric relationship between Tibetan Plateau surface temperature regimes and oceanic–atmospheric circulations, Bafitlhile & Liu, International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8179
Causes of 2022 summer marine heatwave in the East China Seas, Hong-Jian et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2023.08.010
Contrasting Deep and Shallow Winter Warming over the Barents–Kara Seas on the Intraseasonal Time Scale, Li et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0879.1
Doubling of surface oceanic meridional heat transport by non-symmetry of mesoscale eddies, Wang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-41294-7
Evaluation of multi-level upper ocean heat content and its relationship with intensity and translation speed of tropical cyclones in the North Indian Ocean, Albert & Bhaskaran, Theoretical and Applied Climatology 10.1007/s00704-023-04641-8
Climate Adam: If we stop emitting... then what..?
Posted on 13 September 2023 by Guest Author
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
Burning fossil fuels is heating the planet. But if we quit our fossil fuel habit and stop emitting greenhouse gases... what happens then? Answers seem to vary from "global warming will stop" to "we can expect more and more climate change to come". So which is right? And what would it really take to stop climate change and protect ourselves as much as possible?
Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
At a glance - Does cold weather disprove global warming?
Posted on 12 September 2023 by John Mason, BaerbelW
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Does cold weather disprove global warming?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
Late November-early December 2010 saw a memorable, bitterly cold snap in the UK that many residents will still remember. According to the UK Met Office on the night of November 27-28:
"Last night saw November minimum temperature records fall across the country. Most notably both Wales and Northern Ireland recorded the coldest November night since records began. In Wales, temperatures fell to -18 °C at Llysdinam, near Llandrindod Wells, Powys. Northern Ireland recorded -9.5 °C at Lough Fea. Scotland recorded a minimum temperature of -15.3 °C at Loch Glascarnoch, whilst England recorded -13.5 °C at Topcliffe in North Yorkshire."
Brr! But it pays to have a bit of a look around. Did you know that during the very same night, parts of Western Greenland hit plus 13 Celsius? That's more than 30 degrees Celsius warmer than Wales!
The reason for that remarkable difference in temperature was the weather. An elongated and slow-moving area of high pressure was situated in the North Atlantic, extending up into the Arctic. As a consequence, because air flows around high pressure systems in a clockwise direction, on the high's left flank warm air was being dragged up into normally chilly Western Greenland. But down its right flank there came cold Arctic air, surging southwards towards Europe, hence those unusually low temperatures.
It's easy to confuse current weather events with long-term climate trends. It's a bit like being at the beach, trying to figure out if the tide is rising or falling just by watching two or three individual waves roll in and out. The slow change of the tide is masked by the constant churning of the waves. Watch for 20-30 minutes and you should get a much better idea.
In a similar way, the normal ups and downs of local weather can often mask slow changes in global climate. To find climate trends you need to look at how weather is changing over a longer time span. Looking at high and low temperature data from recent decades shows that new record highs occur nearly twice as often as new record lows. New records for cold weather will continue to be set (although that -18C for Wales in November 2010 will take some beating), but global warming's gradual influence will make them increasingly rare.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above
Click for Further details
Hotter ocean temperatures from global warming likely increased Idalia’s destructive power by at least 40-50%
Posted on 11 September 2023 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
Hurricane Idalia charged ashore into Florida’s Big Bend coast on Wednesday morning, Aug. 30, as a powerful high-end Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds, bringing an extremely dangerous storm surge, destructive winds, and torrential rains to an area unused to major hurricanes. The story of Idalia’s devastation has yet to be written, but there is little doubt that human-caused climate change will be identified as a key contributor.
Hurricanes are heat engines that take heat energy out of the ocean and convert it to the kinetic energy of their winds. A hotter ocean will allow hurricanes to grow more powerful, assuming that the other factors that power hurricanes, including low wind shear and a moist atmosphere, are present.
As far back as 1987, MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel theorized that the wind speeds in hurricanes can be expected to increase about 5% for every one degree Celsius (1.8°F) increase in tropical ocean temperature, assuming that the average wind speed near the surface of the tropical oceans does not change. Computer modeling has found a slightly smaller magnitude (4%) for the increase.
A 4-5% increase in hurricane winds may not seem like a big deal, but damage from a hurricane increases exponentially with an increase in winds. For example, according to NOAA, a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds will do 10 times the damage of a Category 1 hurricane with 75 mph winds. This includes damage not only from winds, but also from storm surge, inland flooding, and tornadoes. Bottom line: A 4-5% increase in winds yields about a 40-50% increase in the destructive potential of a hurricane (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Damage multiplier for hurricane winds compared to a minimal Category 1 hurricane with 75 mph winds. A doubling of the wind speed from 75 mph to 150 mph increases potential damage by a factor of 256. (Image credit: NOAA)
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Posted on 9 September 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
Lee adds to a growing trend of intense hurricanes powered by warmer oceans
Source: NOAA's National Hurricane Center
Hurricane Lee rapidly intensified at a historic pace into a Category 5 storm Thursday night, adding to a spate of extremely intense hurricanes this year and in recent decades which experts say is a symptom of the climate crisis.
Lee is now the eighth Category 5 storm in the North Atlantic since 2016, which means 20% of Category 5 hurricanes on record in the basin have occurred in the last seven years, a CNN analysis of NOAA’s hurricane database shows.
This year alone, Category 5 storms have already appeared in all seven ocean basins where tropical cyclones form, including Hurricane Jova, which also rapidly strengthened into a Category 5 storm earlier this week.
“The increase in Category 4 or 5 storms, especially that we’ve seen over the last couple years due to the increase in rapid intensification, is a telltale sign of climate change, which is exactly what we expect to see in a warmer world,” Kevin Reed, a hurricane expert and professor at Stony Brook University’s school of marine and atmospheric sciences, told CNN.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the CNN website.
Lee adds to a growing trend of intense hurricanes powered by warmer oceans by Rachel Ramirez, Weather, CNN, Sep 9, 2023
Exploring the feasibility of a new feature: Bunk of the Week
Posted on 8 September 2023 by BaerbelW
We'd like to improve our agility for dealing with newly-emergent climate misinformation, revisitation of old claims by people in general, and misinformers on platforms with high potential for causing harm.
So, we're exploring publishing a weekly feature, with the working title "Bunk of the Week." We'd appreciate and value your help in shaping our direction.
If you care to help, please answer the following questions via this Google form:
- Would a "bunk of the week" be helpful?
- Yes
- No
- Don't Know
- What would you like to see debunked?
- Specific agenda-driven misinforming articles
- social media posts etc. with high profile
- Misinformation frequently repeated by many people in a variety of contexts
- News-driven topical and "trendy" misinformation
- Novel, unfamiliar climate misinformation
- Do you have current examples?
- What could such a feature be called?
Question #2 invites "other" and we'd like to know your thoughts on that as well. For question #3 we are looking for current examples of what you'd like to see debunked. For any selected category, some samples would be helpful. For now, this is just to gather information to get a better handle on how much "input" there is readily available to feed into such a weekly publication. Therefore, please don't expect any actual debunkings for your submissions right away (sorry about that!).
"Bunk of the Week" is our working title but there might be better ones. If you have a suggestion for another title please let us know in response to question #4.
Thanks for your help and filling out the short Google form!
