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.
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
Click for Further details
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!
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #36 2023
Posted on 7 September 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Included in this week's government/NGO section the World Meteorological Organization has released its annual retrospective of our previous year's climate situation, State of the Climate in 2022 (pdf):
“While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events. For example, in 2022, continuous drought in East Africa, record breaking rainfall in Pakistan and record-breaking heatwaves in China and Europe affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage.” — WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
Also in this week's government/NGO roundup, Wildfire Misinformation: Arson Claims Set the Climate Debate Ablaze (pdf), from Climate Action Against Disinformation.
Via Geophysical Research Letters, a concerning report suggesting that our climate models are likely undershooting what we may well see in the not-so-distant future in Antarctica. In The Largest Ever Recorded Heatwave—Characteristics and Attribution of the Antarctic Heatwave of March 2022, Blanchard-Wigglesworth et al. report:
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The March 2022 Antarctic heatwave registered the warmest temperature anomaly on record, and resulted from extreme atmospheric heat fluxes
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A widely used climate model cannot simulate equivalent events in a large ensemble, a bias that is improved after nudging its winds to observations
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The thermodynamic amplification of the heatwave by climate change was 2°C, and equivalent heatwaves may warm a further 5–6°C by 2100
The latter finding means that the interior East Antarctica icecap may see near-melting temperatures toward the end of this century. The authors report success with helping models at least approximate what reality has already delivered, but much needs to be done to gain confidence.
To a jaded eye steeped in a thick soup of rubbishy climate propaganda, it seems as though there's something important missing in Why don’t Americans trust university researchers and why it matters for climate change, just published in PLOS Climate. Authors Alvarez, Debnath & Ebanks report results and analysis of a sizeable (N=2,096) representative sample of residents of the United States, seeking to determine what shapes public perceptions of the reliability of the academic community in the minds of the public when we think about climate science. Specifically, the survey elicits:
i) How is trust in science associated with belief in the importance of climate change as a problem? ii) How is trust in science associated with beliefs about whether climate change is caused by humans or nature? iii) Who trusts university research centers?
Findings are familiar, broadly replicating previous associations between trust in science and ideological alignments. With these results in hand, the authors offer suggestions:
First, more research must be done to understand who trusts or distrusts university research on climate change and who is persuadable. Second, more research is needed on climate communication framing and messaging. Third, additional research on appropriate messaging is necessary. Finally, we need to develop a culture of trust in climate research and how it is communicated across society.
What's missing? Accounting for widely broadcast and consumed synthetic climate bunk. Investigation and resultant suggestions of this kind are disordered in the same sense that attempting to inflate a leaking tire without seeing the puncture causing the leak will lead to enduring puzzlement over the tire's failure to obediently inflate and stay that way.
The beliefs of Americans about climate science and climate scientists are buffeted and battered by a concerted, multi-decade industrialized (and industrial) misinformation and disinformation campaign (Treen et al. 2020, see numerous others in cites therein). It's principally for this reason that Skeptical Science and our colleagues exist. Sampling without "why do you believe this" and/or "who told you so" arguably leads to a myopic, impoverished perspective of the public mental landscape.
It seems reasonable to suppose that attempts to understand and foster trust in researchers involved in matters to do with climate must take into account active measures engaged in destroying that trust, or risk mysterious failure. The information in the authors' study is of course useful, but it leads to an all-too familiar conclusion, akin to a victim of a battering relationship chronically stuck at the stage of "what can -I- do to please the person beating me so they'll stop," even when cause is not personal to the victim. This itself is a framing of belief the climate science community might do well to keep in frame, lest communications become needlessly distorted in pursuit of impossible goals.
The Journal of Enivronmental Psychology brings us Conspiracy theories and climate change: A systematic review, by Tam and Chan. As advertised, the authors collate previous research on the connection between conspiracy ideation and conspiratorial beliefs about climate change. Some studies take unfamiliar directions, such as finding penetration of typical partisan/ideological boundaries. With what's been accomplished gathered together, omissions become easier to see and Tam and Chan produce a list of promising avenues for gap-filling and further understanding. Some of their questions are in fact germane to our remarks above about Alvarez et al. The paper is not least a great way to get a holistic grip on this weird feature of climate cognition.
139 articles in 63 journals by 861 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A Regime Shift on Weddell Sea Continental Shelves with Local and Remote Physical and Biogeochemical Implications is Avoidable in a 2°C Scenario, Nissen et al., Journal of Climate Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0926.1
Atmospheric Latent Energy Transport Pathways into the Arctic and Their Connections to Sea Ice Loss during Winter over the Observational Period, Liang et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0789.1
Atmospheric Response to a Collapse of the North Atlantic Circulation under a Mid-Range Future Climate Scenario: A Regime Shift in Northern Hemisphere Dynamics, Orbe et al., Journal of Climate Open Access 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0841.1
The Teachers' Guide to Cranky Uncle: Downloads and Translations
Posted on 6 September 2023 by BaerbelW
Published in January 2021, The Teachers' Guide to Cranky Uncle offers background information and classroom activity ideas for educators interested in using the Cranky Uncle game to teach critical thinking in their classes.
The Cranky Uncle game builds resilience against misinformation and strengthens players’ critical thinking. It achieves this through inoculation—explaining the rhetorical techniques used to mislead. The denial techniques in the game are built on the five techniques of science denial outlined in the FLICC framework.
One of the activities in the Teachers’ Guide is the Please Don’t Fail Me assignment, designed by Melanie Trecek-King from Thinking is Power. Melanie has also written a blog post going into greater detail into this assignment and how students responded.
Other suggested activities include
- Introduction to FLICC
- Walk-through game
- Roleplaying
- Have students create misinformation
- Debunking misinformation
- ... and more
Translations
At a glance - Is CO2 a pollutant?
Posted on 5 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 "Is CO2 a pollutant?". 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
If you look up the definition of pollution in a dictionary, you will soon realise it's rather subjective. There are many substances out there that are harmless at certain levels but harmful at others.
Carbon dioxide is well-mixed in our atmosphere. That's because when it is emitted, by any mechanism from a vehicle exhaust to a volcanic eruption, it stays in the air for many years. Unlike water, it does not condense and fall back out as rain. Turbulence does a splendid job of mixing it evenly into the air. But there are places on - and in - Earth where much higher concentrations of CO2 may be encountered.
The trouble with CO2 is that it cannot be seen and neither can it be smelt. In other words we cannot detect it from a safe distance.
In caves and mines, high concentrations of CO2 are a well-known hazard. They can result from things like rotting timber, oxidising coal and particularly by poor ventilation, where that mixing into the air fails to occur. Because CO2 is heavier than air, in poorly ventilated areas underground it may collect into pockets waiting for the unwary.
Miners or underground explorers breathing a higher than normal concentration of CO2 will experience gradually increasing ill effects. It depends on the concentration of the gas. For example the UK Health and Safety Executive has defined safe CO2 limits for the workplace. The limit for long-term exposure is 0.5% (5,000 ppm) but for shorter encounters it is 2%. Anything over that figure is regarded as a risk to human health. There have been many accidents and fatalities over the years caused by high concentrations of CO2 in underground workings and to a lesser extent in caves. Coal-miners refer to CO2 as black- or choke-damp in recognition of the hazard.
Possibly the worst CO2-related disaster was that of 21 August 1986 at Lake Nyos, in northwestern Cameroon in western Central Africa. The lake, only some 2 x 1 km in size but more than 200 m deep, is one of a number of flooded volcanic vents in a sporadically-active volcanic belt. Carbon dioxide-bearing springs are common in this area and some are present in the lake-bed.
Lake Nyos is typically stratified, meaning that normally its waters occur in distinct layers with different chemistry that do not normally mix. In something of a loaded gun scenario, the bottom layer used to become saturated with CO2 from those lake-bed springs. On 21st August 1986, something caused an overturning of the lake, meaning the deep CO2-saturated water headed for the surface. Like taking the top off a shaken-up pop bottle, a vast cloud of CO2 was instantly released and travelled out from the lake along the ground. At least 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock died instantly from asphyxiation.
Modern technology and international cooperation have since been successful in controlling the build-up of CO2 in lakes like Nyos. But clearly, in specific circumstances, CO2 is as deadly a pollutant as any other.
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
John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Posted on 4 September 2023 by dana1981
It’s a familiar story – the physicist who draws attention for declaring that climate scientists have got climate science all wrong. He (it’s always a ‘he’) was born before color television was invented, usually retired, perhaps having won a Nobel Prize, but with zero climate science research or expertise. William Happer. Ivar Giaever. Roger Cohen. Freeman Dyson. Steven Koonin. Robert Laughlin. The latest example from this mould is John F. Clauser.
Although Clauser has never published any peer-reviewed climate science research, he has made several climate-related claims whose veracity we will examine below.
Yes, humans are responsible for the increase in CO2
In a July 2023 interview with the Epoch Times, Clauser claimed that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) “may or may not be made by human beings. It doesn't really matter where it comes from.”
That's a bit like saying, "I don't know what atoms are made of, but it doesn't really matter. Let me tell you why particle physics is all wrong."
In reality, several lines of evidence have proven the incontrovertible fact that the human combustion of fossil fuels – which today releases nearly 40 billion tons of CO2 per year – is entirely responsible for the 50% increase in Earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentrations since the Industrial Revolution. For example, there’s basic accounting: those 40 billion tons of CO2 have to go somewhere, and Earth’s natural sinks like the oceans and biosphere only absorb about half of those emissions. The other half ends up in the atmosphere, as explained in the Denial101x video below. And atmospheric carbon isotope ratio measurements also demonstrate that the CO2 increase is coming from ancient plant matter, a.k.a. fossil fuels.
Anyone who understands even the most basic aspects of climate science should not question such a simple and thoroughly-established fact.
2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35
Posted on 2 September 2023 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
Falsehoods Follow Close Behind This Summer’s Natural Disasters
Misattributed videos, recycled lies and warped fears are fueling unfounded claims about the recent record-breaking heat, floods and wildfires.
As natural disasters and extreme environmental conditions became more commonplace around the world this summer, scientists pointed repeatedly to a shared driver: climate change.
Conspiracy theorists pointed to anything but.
Some claimed falsely that the record-smashing heat waves blistering parts of North America, Europe and Asia were normal, and that they had been sensationalized as part of a globalist hoax. Others made up tales that cloud-seeding airplanes or a nearby dam, rather than torrential rains, had caused the unusually intense flooding in northern Italy (and in places like Vermont and Rwanda).
The devastating wildfire on Maui this month produced especially ludicrous claims. Social media that racked up millions of views blamed the blaze on a “directed energy weapon” (the evidence: years-old footage not recorded in Hawaii). And as Florida braced this week for Hurricane Idalia, some people claimed incorrectly online that such storms are not affected by fossil fuel emissions.
The unfounded claims that now regularly follow natural disasters and dangerous weather, contradicting a preponderance of scientific evidence, can often seem frivolous and fantastical. They persist, however — attracting large audiences and frustrating climate experts, who say the world has little time to evade a global warming catastrophe.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on The New York Times website.
Falsehoods Follow Close Behind This Summer’s Natural Disasters Misattributed videos, recycled lies and warped fears are fueling unfounded claims about the recent record-breaking heat, floods and wildfires. by Tiffany Hsu, Media, New York Times, Aug 30, 2023
From Knowledge to Power - an interview with John Perona: scientist, author, and blogger
Posted on 1 September 2023 by BaerbelW
A short while ago John Perona got in touch to make us aware of his weekly newsletter „Earthward“ and his website „From Knowledge to Power“. We found it to be another resource with some mission similarities to Skeptical Science but with a strong identity of its own, and powerful content with a more policy-centric approach. As we were excited to learn about John’s website, we collaborated with him for this interview-style blog post to learn more about his background and how his site came to be.
Could you please tell us a bit about your science background?
I’m an academic research scientist by profession, originally trained as a quantitative biochemist specializing in enzyme structure-function relationships and especially the interactions of protein enzymes with DNA and RNA. However, I also had the good fortune to spend childhood summers in the Italian Alps with my extended family, and this is probably what catalyzed my lifelong passion for the outdoors that is now expressed in my climate work.
It took me a long time, but after I earned tenure I started shifting my emphasis toward environmental problems. On the research side, my students and I began studying some unusual enzymes from methanogens, the microorganisms that generate all the biologically derived methane on Earth. After moving from California to Portland, Oregon, we learned how to culture methanogens in our lab and eventually discovered a metabolic pathway that allows these cells to assimilate reduced forms of sulfur in anaerobic environments lacking oxygen.
Are you involved with volunteer organizations active in the climate space?
Outside the lab, I got very interested in the efforts of a small nonprofit law firm, the Environmental Defense Center, to hold the oil industry to account for damages caused by offshore oil and gas drilling in the Santa Barbara channel. Later, in Portland, my interests in this and other environmental issues led me into the formal study of environmental law and eventually also to work as a citizen advocate for a healthy climate. I volunteered for many years with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), advocating for an economy-wide carbon tax, and more recently have engaged with other advocates in Oregon to help influence the state legislature to pass laws promoting renewable energy.
What is the main focus of your book “From Knowledge to Power”?
From Knowledge to Power (K2P), was published in November 2021 and is a comprehensive handbook covering climate science, policy, politics and citizen advocacy in the US. It’s written for laypersons who want to get involved in healthy climate advocacy and is also suitable as a text for adult education and university audiences. The book is much more detailed than other works on climate science for a general audience - but I became convinced, through my advocacy, that there is demand for a more rigorous treatment that helps advocates build a secure knowledge base, which they can use to be more effective in their work to influence government and business leaders.
K2P starts with a heavy emphasis on climate science and covers all the key issues on the energy balance, carbon cycle, models and projections, and impacts. Readers of Skeptical Science will be familiar with the main denialist arguments, and these are integrated (together with rebuttals) into the early science chapters. The book then moves into a short interlude describing energy transition roadmaps and a chapter on fossil fuels, which includes the politics of disinformation campaigns by fossil fuel companies. The last four chapters are on renewable energy technology and policy, interspersed with opportunities for advocacy. There’s also a dedicated chapter on advocacy with a nonpartisan focus, explaining how progressives and conservatives alike can find a home in the advocacy movement.
