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Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformationGlobal 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. Skeptical Science New Research for Week #13 2024Posted on 28 March 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen access notablesA survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:
Accounting for albedo change to identify climate-positive tree cover restoration, Hasler et al., Nature Communications:
Powering aircraft with 100 % sustainable aviation fuel reduces ice crystals in contrails, Märkl et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics:
Sustainable Flying? The Effects of Greenwashed Claims in Airline Advertising on Perceived Greenwashing, Brand Outcomes, and Attitudes Toward Flying, Neureiter et al., Environmental Communication:
Major Role of Marine Heatwave and Anthropogenic Climate Change on a Giant Hail Event in Spain, Martín et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
Policies, projections, and the social cost of carbon: Results from the DICE-2023 model, Barrage & Nordhaus Nordhaus Nordhaus, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
From this week's government/NGO section: Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Next-Generation Geothermal Power, Blankenship et al., US Department of Energy Geothermal power technology has shown compelling advances that can enable it to become a key contributor to secure, domestic, decarbonized power generation for the U.S. as a source of clean firm power. Economywide decarbonization modeling suggests that the U.S. will need an additional 700-900 GW of clean firm capacity to build a decarbonized grid system capable of supporting increased demand. Next-generation geothermal has a unique value proposition, including minimal workforce and supply chain risk, low land use, and flexible generating capability. Next-generation technologies can expand geothermal power by more than a factor of 20, providing 90 GW or more of clean firm power to the grid by 2050 across the U.S. Over Half of Homeowners Fear Effects of Climate Change, Including Impact on Home Insurance Costs, Maggie Davis and Dan Shepard, Lending Tree: Most homeowners fear climate change effects — and the youngest are most concerned. Over half (51%) of homeowners are worried climate change-related hazards will affect their homes, with that figure rising to 63% among millennial homeowners. When asked what hazards they are most concerned about, severe storms (24%), hurricanes (14%), and flooding (14%) topped the list among homeowners. Some are planning to move away from places at high risk of climate change hazards, and many believe those risks should be disclosed. A quarter (25%) of homeowners worry climate change will impact their property values in the next 10 years. Among those in at-risk locations, 34% are considering moving, while 13% have already relocated. Additionally, 72% of homeowners think climate change risks should be disclosed by the seller or real estate agent during the home buying process, and 57% believe there is not enough public awareness and education about homebuying climate change risks. 157 articles in 66 journals by 907 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Enhanced spring warming of the Tibetan Plateau amplifies summer heat stress in Eastern Europe, Yang et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-024-07197-z Multistability and intermediate tipping of the Atlantic Ocean circulation, Lohmann et al., Science Advances Open Access pdf 10.1126/sciadv.adi4253 Rising geopotential height under global warming, He et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-024-07175-5 You can start applying for the American Climate Corps next monthPosted on 27 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis story published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. was originallyThe long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively with Grist. The program is modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, launched in 1933 to help the country make it through the Great Depression. The positions with the new corps could range across a number of fields including energy-efficiency installations, disaster response preparedness, recycling, and wildfire mitigation. The White House plans to officially launch an online platform in April. At first, only a couple of hundred jobs will be posted, but eventually up to 20,000 young people are expected to be hired in the program’s first year. Interested candidates can apply to the positions through the portal, and the majority of the positions are not expected to require experience. “The American Climate Corps is a story of hope and possibilities,” said Maggie Thomas, a special assistant to the president for climate change. “There’s an incredible demand signal from young people who we see as being put on a pathway to good-paying careers.” That path could include work such as installing wind and solar projects, conserving energy in homes, and restoring ecosystems, such as wetlands, to protect towns from flooding. Thomas announced a logo for the program at the Aspen Ideas climate conference in Miami on Wednesday. The American Climate Corps has wide support, meaning that those few hundred open spots available next month might fill up quickly. Some 71 percent of voters approve of the idea, including well over half of Republicans, according to polling Data for Progress conducted last October. And previous polling has shown that half of likely voters under 45 would consider joining the program, given the chance. “We’re absolutely confident that there are millions of young people who are interested in these programs,” said Saul Levin, the legislative and political director at the Green New Deal Network. At a glance - Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cyclesPosted on 26 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn 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 "Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cycles". 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 glanceThe passage of time reveals many things. Consider for a moment the myth in the box above. It is dated 2008 and says, "Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over." Fifteen years on from that date and we can say, with complete confidence, "utter rubbish" (or words to that effect). In a temperature record stretching back into the late 19th Century, the ten hottest years have all occurred since 2010. The hottest by a large margin (at the time of writing - early 2024) was 2023, with 2016 in second place. In both cases manmade global warming augmented by El Nino nudged these years into pole position. The opposite to El Nino, La Nina, is a phenomenon that cools the planet. One of the top ten, 2022, was also the warmest La Nina year on record. Starting to see a pattern here? There are many natural cycles out there that do affect the climate. Consider the Milankovitch orbital cycles that are strong enough to trigger the switches between glacials and interglacials. These cycles operate over tens of thousands of years so their year-to-year effects are barely discernible.Yet they can cause ice-sheets to wax and wane over vast areas of the planet, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where the vast majority of landmasses currently reside. At the other end of the spectrum is the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) that most folk have heard of because it causes newsworthy weather events. Climate scientists know all about these cycles and their effects. It's part of the job description. Those of you who click on the myth's link will find a lot about a cycle known as the 'Pacific Decadal Oscillation' (PDO). That's not a regular cycle that turns up on time, as buses and trains ought to. But yes, it does influence climate as it has warm and cool phases, just like ENSO but in a different part of the Pacific Ocean and over longer periods. And yes, climate scientists monitor the PDO, just like everything else. The PDO is expressed as an Index: values above 0 are positive (warm) and those below 0 are negative (cool). And here's the rub. Since autumn 2019, the PDO Index has been negative, often strongly so. Yet the planet's temperature continues to rise unchecked. The problem is that in climate more than one thing can happen at once. And since 1950, our CO2 emissions have surged ever-upwards and the climate is responding to that, too. In other words, human-caused global warming is now overdubbing the effects of such cycles. They used to count for a lot more than they do now. The carbon cycle describes the way in which carbon moves around the planetary system comprising the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere and the solid Earth. The first and last components are where the problem lies. In burning fossil fuels, we have accessed carbon that by rights should have stayed in the solid Earth for untold millions of years. In doing so, that carbon has been dumped into the atmosphere. It represents a disturbance to the carbon cycle rarely seen in the geological record. And the planet is responding to that by heating up. There's only one cycle we need to worry about and that's the carbon cycle. 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 detailsWant clean electricity? These are the overlooked elected officials who get to decide.Posted on 25 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising electricity bills to developing renewable energy. On a Tuesday morning in January, college student Aurora Gray stepped up to the podium in a windowless room in Atlanta, around the corner from the state capitol building. In front of her sat a five-member panel of elected officials that oversees how and where nearly every Georgia resident gets their power. “The generation of energy … using fossil fuels has become an existential threat to our safety due to the undisputed impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on our planet,” Gray told the commission. “We must act now, as later is way too late.” More than a dozen other students sat behind her, awaiting their allotted three minutes in front of the Georgia Public Service Commission, or PSC. One after another, they called on the commission to reject a request from Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, to add new natural gas capacity to the grid. Instead, they repeated at the podium, the company needs to expand renewable energy and take other steps to combat climate change. “You can help get Georgia Power to take the right actions in the essential time frame,” said high school senior Evelyn Ford, the last of the students to speak across two days. “Actually, you’re the only five people in Georgia who can.” Ford is substantially correct. Though Georgia’s state legislature can pass laws on clean energy and the governor can issue executive orders on climate action, the Public Service Commission is the only government body with direct authority to regulate whatever Georgia Power does. The panel sets the rates people pay for electricity and approves the utility’s plans to make or buy that power and deliver it to customers. According to the commission’s own website, “Very few governmental agencies have as much impact on people’s lives as the PSC.” There is a small panel of regulators in every state that holds a similar power over electricity generation and, by extension, an enormous segment of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. By setting electricity prices, they also have a substantial impact on most people’s lives and pocketbooks. Yet, in Georgia and elsewhere, these groups — known as public service or public utility commissions — get little attention or scrutiny outside of energy wonk circles. Their hearings and documents tend to be long and jargon-heavy, covered in the media by a small group of specialized reporters, making it hard to engage with the process. This year, Grist and WABE will try to demystify energy regulation in Georgia and beyond. We’ll bring you stories on not only how your power gets made, but how those decisions happen — and how residents who vote and pay electricity bills can get involved. 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #12Posted on 24 March 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John HartzA listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024.
Story of the weekThanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" and jotting down several pages worth of notes on Friday morning, we were able to quickly put together a blog post debunking the many false and misleading claims made in the film. The first 42-odd minutes of this 80 minute long festival of misinformation are dedicated to "The Science". But instead of that, what one is exposed to is a veritable Gish-gallop of climate myths, with the phrase, "we are told" liberally scattered among them. In addition to a list of the 25 myths identified by John, we also checked them off on our myth rebuttal chart, available for occasions like this. It makes for a neat sharable graphic driving home the point of how much is wrong with the item debunked. After publishing the blog post on Saturday, we shared it on social media where it was the post generating the most interest by far during the week. Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before March 17
March 17
Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!Posted on 23 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWThe Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In Martin Durkin's recently released film, entitled, 'Climate - the Movie', 17 academics, retired academics and bloggers were interviewed. How big a proportion of them have their own page in the DeSmog database? Go on, have a guess. It's 76%. More than 2 dozen long-debunked mythsThe first 42-odd minutes of this 80 minute long festival of misinformation, once the initial 'elevator-pitch' is done with, are dedicated to "The Science". But instead of that, what one is exposed to is a veritable Gish-gallop of climate myths, with the phrase, "we are told" liberally scattered among them. In order of appearance, with the myth's fixed number in our database, here they are: Skeptical Science New Research for Week #12 2024Posted on 21 March 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen access notablesClimate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory, Schmidt, Nature [perspective]:
Why the lower stratosphere cools when the troposphere warms, Lin & Emanuel, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Seawater Intrusion at the Grounding Line of Jakobshavn Isbræ, Greenland, From Terrestrial Radar Interferometry, Kim et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
Nonlinear Interactions of Sea-Level Rise and Storm Tide Alter Extreme Coastal Water Levels: How and Why?, Moftakhari et al., AGU Advances:
Shrinking Alpine chamois: higher spring temperatures over the last 27 years in Switzerland are linked to a 3 kg reduction in body mass of yearlings, Masoero et al., Royal Society Open Science:
People today who plant trees successfully do it for livelihoods and income not for biodiversity or climate mitigation, MS Ashton et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change:
From this week's government/NGO section: State of the Global Climate 2023, Anzellini et al., World Meteorological Organization:
For Our Future. Indigenous Resilience Report, Reed et al., Government of Canada:
189 articles in 75 journals by 1109 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Linking Future Tropical Precipitation Changes to Zonally-Asymmetric Large-Scale Meridional Circulation, Raiter et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl106072 Regime Shifts in Lake Oxygen and Temperature in the Rapidly Warming High Arctic, Klanten et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl106985 Climate Adam: Could the Amazon Rainforest Collapse?Posted on 20 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis 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). The Amazon Rainforest is a unique ecosystem on our planet - providing home to incredible wildlife and hundreds of indigenous native communities. But the rainforest is under threat - whether from the catastrophe of climate change or the devastation of deforestation. And as the climate continues to change, scientists are increasingly concerned that the rainforest could pass a tipping point. Now, breakthrough research shows us not only how at risk the Amazon is, but how fighting to save the rainforest would also boost the local economy. So, which future will we choose for the Amazon Rainforest? Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam At a glance - Does CO2 always correlate with temperature?Posted on 19 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn 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 CO2 always correlate with temperature (and if not, why not)?". 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 glanceIf you happen to be reading something about climate change in the popular media, be sure to keep an eye out for certain words. The one in this case is 'deceitful'. Why? Because it's an emotive word. It's a good sign that the writer is not a scientist but someone with a political axe to grind. The heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, water vapour and other greenhouse gases were identified over 160 years ago. After that, climate research continued unhindered for many decades. However, by the second half of the 20th century the seriousness of the threat of climate change was well-understood. That led in due course to the involvement of bodies such as the United Nations. Treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 followed. In response, the fossil fuels sector and their political and media associates, perceiving threats to profitability, turned climate science into a political football. With climate science thus politicised, the arena within which research and outreach were conducted had changed. This was no longer a quiet backwater. That's the historical context. Now we can get to the meat of the myth. The quote above this piece dates from September 2009. Apart from anything else, it's 14 years out of date now. Globally, the ten warmest years since 1880 have all occurred since the statement was made. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the average global temperature has increased by 1.4° Celsius (2.5° Fahrenheit) since 1880. However, global temperature does not correlate exactly with CO2 emissions on a year in, year out basis.There are other well-understood factors that can warm or cool the climate over such short-term periods. You may have heard of El Nino and La Nina. These phenomena involve above- or below-average sea surface temperatures respectively, in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Their effects are global. A strong El Nino can produce a massive global temperature-spike. Such very warm years once led to people making the claim of, "no warming since 1998". Briefly sounding plausible for a few years, it soon became self-evidently incorrect. Instead, the correct way to look at temperature trends is to examine them over multiple decades - 30 years is standard in climate science. So to answer the question, "where are we now?", one would look at the temperature record from 1992-2022. Doing so takes out the noise, the ups and downs due to El Nino, La Nina and other factors. And the trend is most certainly upwards. To the newcomer to climate science, it can be difficult to spot misinformation. However, opinion-pieces that accuse bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of intentions like deceit should instantly ring alarm-bells. It is important to point out that the motive for such political misinformation is to spread confusion and doubt. The organisations behind it simply seek delaying any meaningful action. In kicking the can down the road, they try to deflect the pressure to get their own houses in order, and to hell with the consequences. 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 detailsThe U.S. has never produced more energy than it does todayPosted on 18 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk U.S. energy production is going gangbusters. Despite persistent false claims that the Biden administration is waging an “unprecedented assault” on American energy, the U.S. is producing energy at a pace never seen before and from a broad mix of sources and locations throughout the country. In fact, the data illustrates that we’re experiencing an unprecedented renaissance of American energy production and innovation. The chart below is interactive – hover over the lines to see the details. This graph shows primary energy production data from the Energy Information Administration. For fossil fuels, "primary energy production" is the energy content in the coal, oil, or gas that’s extracted. For nuclear and renewables, it’s the amount of electricity generated. Note that this is not the same as energy consumed; it’s simply the energy produced. The production of oil, methane gas (commonly called “natural” gas), and renewables is growing. Nuclear power is holding fairly steady, and the only source of energy that has declined significantly is coal. The largest sources of energy production in the U.S. are oil and gas. Extraction of these fuels began to surge around 2007 when the development of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, gave rise to the shale oil boom. Oil and gas production continues to set records, even while U.S. consumption of oil is declining and methane gas consumption is not increasing at anywhere near the rate of production. The end result is that the U.S. is exporting more of these fuels than ever. 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #11Posted on 17 March 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John HartzA listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024.
Story of the weekThis week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and eventually wrap them up into this weekly compilation. This all started as a manual process where members from our team - especially John Hartz - scoured the internet looking for worthwhile articles to share on our Facebook page. To share that load, we also created a Google form via which articles could be submitted for the publication queue. As the submissions end up in a Google sheet, it is easy enough to use some sheet functions to build the post content for Facebook and elsewhere. It is also possible to build the underlying HTML-code needed for bullet lists items. Scouring the internet for articles and building this blog post was however still a more or less manual and somewhat time-consuming process. This is when Doug Bostrom had a few very good ideas:
Each of these steps leverages some aspect of the Google sheet, making everything fall into place nicely so that we can more efficiently identify and share articles we deem interesting. Obviously, there's also still the option to manually add items missed by the already wide-ranging RSS feeds! Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before March 10
March 10
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #11 2024Posted on 14 March 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen access notablesA Glimpse into the Future: The 2023 Ocean Temperature and Sea Ice Extremes in the Context of Longer-Term Climate Change, Kuhlbrodt et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:
Mapping of sea ice concentration using the NASA NIMBUS 5 Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer data from 1972–1977, Kolbe et al., Earth System Science Data:
How far can low emission retrofit of terraced housing in Northern Ireland go?, James et al., Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability:
Living in the ‘Blue Zone’ of a sea-level rise inundation map: Community perceptions of coastal flooding in King Salmon, California, Richmond & Kunkel Kunkel, Climate Risk Management:
From this week's government/NGO section: Climate change opinion and recent presidential elections, Burgess et al., Center for Social and Environmental Futures, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder: The authors review patterns of climate change opinion and polarization and estimate the effect of climate change opinion on recent U.S. presidential elections. They found that climate change opinion has had a significant and growing effect on voting that favors the Democrats and is large enough to be pivotal to the outcomes of close elections. They project that climate change opinion probably cost Republicans the 2020 presidential election, all else being equal. The AI Threats to Climate Change, Climate Action Against Disinformation, Check My Adds, Friends of the Earth, Global Action Plan, Greenpeace, and Kairos: Silicon Valley and Wall Street love to hype artificial intelligence (AI). The more it’s used, they say, the more diseases we’ll cure, the fewer errors we’ll make—and the lower emissions will go. But there are two significant and immediate dangers posed by AI that are much less discussed: 1) the vast increase in energy and water consumption required by AI systems like ChatGPT; and 2) the threat of AI turbocharging disinformation—on a topic already rife with anti-science lies and funded by fossil fuel companies and their networks. 128 articles in 62 journals by 767 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Albedo-Induced Global Warming Potential Following Disturbances in Global Temperate and Boreal Forests, Zhu et al., 10.2139/ssrn.4435283 The role of interdecadal climate oscillations in driving Arctic atmospheric river trends, Ma et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-024-45159-5 Cartoons: ‘At least I didn’t make things awkward’Posted on 13 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers from around the world say about their cars
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At a glance - The albedo effect and global warmingPosted on 12 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn 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 "The albedo effect and 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 glanceWhat is albedo? It is an expression of how much sunshine is reflected by a surface. The word stems from the Latin for 'whiteness'. Albedo is expressed on a scale from 0 to 1, zero being a surface that absorbs everything and 1 being a surface that reflects everything. Most everyday surfaces lie somewhere in between. An easy way to think about albedo is the difference between wearing a white or a black shirt on a cloudless summer's day. The white shirt makes you feel more comfortable, whereas in the black one you'll cook. That difference is because paler surfaces reflect more sunshine whereas darker ones absorb a lot of it, heating you up. Solar energy reaching the top of our atmosphere hardly varies at all. How that energy interacts with the planet, though, does vary. This is because the reflectivity of surfaces can change. Arctic sea-ice provides an example of albedo-change. A late spring snowstorm covers the ice with a sparkly carpet of new snow. That pristine snow can reflect up to 90% of inbound sunshine. But during the summer it warms up and the new snow melts away. The remaining sea-ice has a tired, mucky look to it and can only reflect some 50% of incoming sunshine. It absorbs the rest and that absorbed energy helps the sea-ice to melt even more. If it melts totally, you are left with the dark surface of the ocean. That can only reflect around 6% of the incoming sunshine. That example shows that albedo-change is not a forcing. That's the first big mistake in this myth. Instead it is a very good example of a climate feedback process. It is occurring in response to an external climate forcing - the increased greenhouse effect caused by our carbon emissions. Due to that forcing, the Arctic is warming quickly and snow/ice coverage shows a long-term decrease. Less reflective surfaces become uncovered, leading to more absorption of sunshine and more energy goes into the system. It's a self-reinforcing process. If you look at satellite images of the planet, you will notice the clouds in weather-systems appear bright. Cloud-tops have a high albedo but it varies depending on the type of cloud. Wispy high clouds do not reflect as much incoming sunshine as do dense low-level cloud-decks. Since the early 2000s we have been able to measure the amount of energy reflected back to space through sophisticated instruments aboard satellites. Recently published data (2021) indicate planetary albedo, although highly variable, is showing an overall slow decrease. The main cause is thought to be warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean leading to less coverage of those reflective low-level cloud-decks, but it's early days yet. Albedo is an important cog in the climate gearbox. It appears to be in a long-term slow decline but varies a lot over shorter periods. That 'noise' makes it unscientific to cite shorter observation-periods. Conclusive climatological trend-statements are generally based on at least 30 years of observations, not the last half-decade. 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 detailsTrump election win could add 4bn tonnes to US emissions by 2030Posted on 11 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Carbon Brief A victory for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election could lead to an additional 4bn tonnes of US emissions by 2030 compared with Joe Biden’s plans, Carbon Brief analysis reveals. This extra 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 would cause global climate damages worth more than $900bn, based on the latest US government valuations. For context, 4GtCO2e is equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries. Put another way, the extra 4GtCO2e from a second Trump term would negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years. If Trump secures a second term, the US would also very likely miss its global climate pledge by a wide margin, with emissions only falling to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. The US’s current target under the Paris Agreement is to achieve a 50-52% reduction by 2030. Carbon Brief’s analysis is based on an aggregation of modelling by various US research groups. It highlights the significant impact of the Biden administration’s climate policies. This includes the Inflation Reduction Act – which Trump has pledged to reverse – along with several other policies. The findings are subject to uncertainty around economic growth, fuel and technology prices, the market response to incentives and the extent to which Trump is able to roll back Biden’s policies. The analysis might overstate the impact Trump could have on US emissions, if some of Biden’s policies prove hard to unpick – or if subnational climate action accelerates. Equally, it might understate Trump’s impact. For example, his pledge to “drill, baby, drill” is not included within the analysis and would likely raise US and global emissions further through the increased extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal. Also not included are the potential for Biden to add new climate policies if he wins a second term, nor the risk that some of his policies will be weakened, delayed or hit by legal challenges. Regardless of the precise impact, a second Trump term that successfully dismantles Biden’s climate legacy would likely end any global hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5C.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #10Posted on 10 March 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug BostromA listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 3, 2024 thru Sat, March 9, 2024.
Story(s) of the weekTwo stories on one topic inexorably lead to a third story. Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures in The Guardian provides straight journalistic coverage of Exxon CEO Darren Woods' remarkable implication that consumers are too stupid to understand or want sustainable energy supplies, and that anyway permanent, modernized energy is not profitable enough for Exxon or its shareholders. Backlash ensued. Bill McKibben's The most epic (and literal) gaslighting of all time is exemplary of critical analysis catalyzed by the Exxon top dog's clumsy speech, a surgical dissection of Woods' anachronistic and strikingly antisocial thinking and expression. Where's this fracas going to end? Ultimately the whole travesty of industry procrastination, deceit and naked unheeding self-interest is headed to courts of law, of course— as always happens in cases of reckless endangerment. A tidal wave of accountability for fossil fuel industry intransigence is beginning to pile up in the shoaling waters of our and the fossil fuel industry's immediate future, as described in Grist and Big Oil faces a flood of climate lawsuits - and they`re moving closer to trial. Meanwhile, Darren Woods seems to be helping set the mood in the room when it comes to judgment of a track record of industry alienation from broader human society and its interests. It's a puzzling posture. Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before March 3
March 3
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #10 2024Posted on 7 March 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen acccess notablesProjections of an ice-free Arctic Ocean, Jahn et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment:
Sustained growth of sulfur hexafluoride emissions in China inferred from atmospheric observations, An et al., Nature Communications:
The rise, fall and rebirth of ocean carbon sequestration as a climate 'solution', De Pryck & Boettcher, Global Environmental Change:
“In the end, the story of climate change was one of hope and redemption”: ChatGPT’s narrative on global warming, Sommer & von Querfurth, Ambio:
Increasing Flood Hazard Posed by Tropical Cyclone Rapid Intensification in a Changing Climate, Lockwood et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
Past and Projected Future Droughts in the Upper Colorado River Basin, McCabe et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
From this week's government/NGO section: Many newly labeled USDA climate-smart conservation practices lack climate benefits, Anne Schechinger, Environmental Working Group:
Rooftop solar on the rise. Small solar projects are delivering 10 times as much power as a decade ago, Dutzik et al, Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group:
150 articles in 74 journals by 907 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Decoding low-frequency climate variations: A case study on ENSO and ocean surface warming, Kallummal, Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans 10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2024.101453 Robust Polar Amplification in Ice-Free Climates Relies on Ocean Heat Transport and Cloud Radiative Effects, England & Feldl, Journal of Climate Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-23-0151.1 Spatiotemporal heterogeneity in global urban surface warming, Ge et al., Remote Sensing of Environment 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114081 All this climate data is wildPosted on 6 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Kristen Pope An elephant seal dives deeper than 1,000 meters below Antarctic waters with a tiny tag affixed to its fur, helping scientists collect valuable data about climate change. In Mongolia, pigeons fly around the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, with sensors on their bodies that help gauge air pollution. A recent Nature Climate Change article notes that more than 1,000 animal species have worn sensors to gather data in places where measurement has always been difficult. In this way, elephants, wildebeests, caribou, pigeons, seals, and other animals have helped fill gaps in knowledge of our changing climate. Millions of observations have been collected using these methods, according to the paper by Diego Ellis-Soto, Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, and his co-authors. It’s a much-needed supplement to data collected from sensors connected to objects such as ocean buoys, Earth-orbiting satellites, and terrestrial weather stations. These sensors provide valuable data but there are too few of them to gather sufficient data points to reflect microclimates and short-term patterns associated with climate change. Meanwhile, satellites have limited resolution and can be thwarted by clouds. “Animals overall can go to places that are very hard to reach, such as polar regions on the ocean, tropical rainforests, tops of mountains, remote Pacific islands,” Ellis-Soto says. “So they can fill important gaps in our meteorological weather forecasting system. For example, there are few weather stations at elevations above 2,000 meters, but mountains are some of the most complex regions for predicting weather and are experiencing rapid changes under climate change.” Animals have collected millions of observations about everything from air and water temperature to wind speed and direction to sea salinity. They have helped scientists learn about turbulence, air pollution, species movement and locations, and more. Animals can also be present for extreme events like heat waves, which Ellis-Soto notes are difficult to design experiments around. A white stork (Ciconia ciconia) fitted with a transmitter carrying piece of plastic. (Photo credit: Charles J. Sharp / CC BY-NC 4.0) Credit: Charles J Sharp.+44 7917562756.+ At a glance - Human activity is driving retreat of arctic sea icePosted on 5 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn 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 "Human activity is driving retreat of Arctic sea ice". 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 glanceThe Northwest Passage is the sea route around the waters off northern Canada and Alaska. Its discovery and eventual navigation involves a fascinating tale of endeavour, adventure and tragedy, too, for some expeditions ended in disaster. Of the many mishaps, by far the worst was that which befell Sir John Franklin and the 128-strong crews of his two ships: they were last heard of in 1845. It took many expeditions and almost ten years before their fate was finally pieced together. One thing became clear by then: the Northwest Passage does not take prisoners. Yet at the same time, those searches for Franklin and his crew generated lots of new chart cover of the waters between the islands making up the Canadian Archipelago. Complete navigation of the Northwest Passage was finally accomplished by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen between 1903 and 1906. Amundsen's boat was relatively small at 47 tons and 70 feet long but usefully it had a very shallow draft. That meant it was able to pass through areas where a bigger boat would have fouled the bottom, thus offering a wider choice of courses to take. Amundsen's route was criticised in some circles because of that factor - what was the point of making the crossing if bigger freight ships could not? But Amundsen was motivated not by money but by science. With his experienced crew of six, they spent two winters off the eastern side of King William Island, about halfway through the archipelago, collecting data on Earth's magnetic pole and local meteorology, traded with the Inuit and developed hunting and fishing skills. Leaving there in August 1905, they reached Nome, Alaska twelve months later. The ice had pinned them in for a third winter. There was not to be a single-season crossing for another 38 years, when Sergeant Henry Larsen of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police managed it in a schooner. So yes, while the Northwest Passage was successfully navigated before 2007, the current state of the sea ice means that the picture is now quite different. Part of the reason for that is down to the age of much of the Arctic sea ice today. Sea ice that has yet to experience a summer melting season is known as first-year ice. It's relatively thin, fragile and more vulnerable to melting compared to the ice that has withstood one or more melting-seasons, known as multiyear ice. Multiyear ice can even give a good ice-breaker a run for its money. But now there's a lot less of it. During many recent summers the Northwest Passage has become open: freight ships and even cruise liners have steamed through. That doesn't mean it's risk-free of course - there are still icebergs to watch out for. Nevertheless, it's getting to the point where there are various concerns being voiced about the number of ships passing through the area, on both ecological and political grounds. For the Northwest Passage, global warming really is a mixed blessing. 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 detailsGreat Lakes ice coverage hits a record lowPosted on 4 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Ice extent on the Great Lakes hit a record low February 8 and has remained at record low levels as of February 16 as a result of the warmest winter on record over much of the region. For the U.S. portion of the Great Lakes region, the November 30-February 14 period was mostly between the first- and third-warmest on record (Figure 1). The Canadian portion of the Great Lakes was also record-warm to near record-warm. In Chicago, 87% of the days from December 1-February 14 had average- to above-average temperatures. Figure 1. Ranking of Midwest U.S. average temperatures for November 30, 2023-February 14, 2024, for the period beginning in 1893. The region surrounding the Great Lakes was mostly between the first- and third-warmest on record. (Image credit: Iowa Environmental Mesonet) A 10-day cold snap in mid-January in the region was not intense enough to allow much ice to grow on the Great Lakes, and January ice extent was just 6% of the lake surface, compared to the 50-year average of 18%. This was the ninth-lowest January ice level on record. If the peak ice coverage of 18% on January 22 winds up being the winter maximum, 2024 will end up with the fourth-lowest maximum extent on record, behind 2002 (12%), 2012 (13%), and 1998 (14%). As of February 15, the Great Lakes Ice Tracker reported that ice coverage on the lakes was just 4% — about 10 times lower than average. The barest ice cupboard was being kept in Lake Erie, which had zero ice cover, compared to the average of over 65% expected for the date. With the forecast for the remainder of February calling for mostly above-average temperatures, ice cover on the Great Lakes is likely to be at record- to near-record low levels for the rest of the ice season. |
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