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One Planet Only Forever at 10:22 AM on 9 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
nigelj,
Though we substantially agree, I need to respond to the part of your comment @23 (on the SkS re-posting of “Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim”)
You said: “For example the Democrats proposed some truly stupid ideas like defunding the police. I guess it was an emotive reaction to police abuses but its still stupid.”
That is a commonly claimed criticism. And it is as valid as claiming that “Tax is evil and Socialist– and imposing a Carbon Price is a tax - therefore Carbon Pricing is Socialist evil” which is the product manufactured by the misleading marketing efforts of people who resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. Taxes are not evil (or Socialist). And a lack of a Carbon Price that funds full neutralization of the impacts of fossil fuel use is the reason that so much harmful activity became so popular, profitable and powerful - bad enough that many of the more informed and smarter minds are protecting their interests rather than fighting to limit the climate change harm done.
For the police issue, Defund he Police was a punchy poster statement promoting a more involved matter. The real problem was paying to have the police try to do things they did not have proper training to do – like deal with cases of homelessness, mental health, drug use, and domestic abuse. Shifting some police funding to employ specialists in those non-police realms was the objective. “Defund the Police” was the punchy poster that became the basis for unjustified misleading marketing.
See the following Brookings Institute presentation on the topic “7 myths about “defunding the police” debunked”
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:09 AM on 9 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
I have continued this discussion on the 2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:04 AM on 9 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
This week’s news includes several items in the Climate Change Impacts category about the damaging impact of human-caused global warming and climate change on developed and developing global socioeconomic systems.
- Big Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic Warming
- Global warming of more than 3°C this century may wipe 40% off the world’s economy, new analysis reveals
- Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer,
Those articles provide a basis for continuing a discussion here that started on the recent SkS reposting of “Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim”. The comment discussion had evolved away from the topic of the OP. The discussion had shifted to matters related to the development of sustainable improvements for the total global population, now and into the very far future.
The three articles listed above prompted me to expand on my semi-conspiracy theory about the development of opposition to the efforts to increase awareness and improve understanding of how people can be less harmful and more helpful to Others. (see my comment @22 and nigelj’s reply @23 on that SkS reposting linked above)
Additional considerations related to this week’s News items are:
Big Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic Warming:
Quote:
“The recent reports — from Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Institute of International Finance — show that Wall Street has determined the temperature goal is effectively dead and describe how top financial institutions plan to continue operating profitably as temperatures and damages soar.”
Related thoughts:
This suggests that some people who know better are not powerfully raising awareness and improving the understanding of the general population. They are trying to maximize their collective benefit in spite of knowing how harmful their lack of action to limit the global harm done will be. It is like the way that the 2008/9 global financial disaster turned out to be beneficial for many of them (very few of them faced a negative change of status relative to Others – many of them increased their status relative to Others). The least fortunate who got little benefit from the sub-prime mortgage scams suffered the most.
Global warming of more than 3°C this century may wipe 40% off the world’s economy, new analysis reveals
Quote:
“Any impacts from weather events elsewhere, such as how flooding in one country affects the food supply to another, are not incorporated into the models.
Our new research sought to fix this. After including the global repercussions of extreme weather into our models, the predicted harm to global GDP became far worse than previously thought – affecting the lives of people in every country on Earth.”
Related thoughts:
A group of people today have proudly watched a 10% hit happen to global economic activity in a matter of a few days. They think they will be the winners. Everyone will lose because of the unjustified tariff attacks. But the likes of Trump probably think they will suffer less harm that Others will. Some of them may even believe they will benefit from the inequitable unjustifiable actions (paying members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Cult could have an unfair advantage if they heard about what the Trump Administration would actual do before it became public knowledge). These type of people would have even less concern about actions they benefit from causing 40% harm to the future economy Others have to live with.
Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
Quote:
“The insurance sector is a canary in the coalmine when it comes to climate impacts,” said Janos Pasztor, former UN assistant secretary-general for climate change.
The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”
“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. ...
“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”
Related thoughts:
All of the resistance to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, not just resistance to efforts to limit the harm done by climate change impacts, is raising doubts about, and reducing the sustainability of, capitalism (and democracy – given the recent authoritarian ‘winning of unjustified popular beliefs and related abusive power’ in many democracies).
The following time-line of events is part of the basis for my semi-conspiracy theory about the reasons there is such a powerful resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. (note that there are many similar things along the timeline ... since the beginning of recorded human history and more recently)
- 1913 – US 16th Amendment ratified allowing Congress to impose an Income Tax. (Still resisted by many wealthy and influential people who almost certainly know that their resistance is harmfully incorrect. Also resisted by people who are less aware or misunderstand things and have unjustified doubts about the benefits of an Income Tax because they are easily tempted to be misled that way)
- 1933 – 1938 – US New Deal series of reforms (Resisted - See above)
- 1948 – UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Resisted - See above)
- 1962 - Silent Spring first published (Resisted - See above)
- 1964 - US Surgeon General report regarding smoking (Resisted - See above)
- 1965 – UN Development Programme - evolved from UN programs that started in 1949 (Resisted - See above)
- 1972 - Stockholm Conference – identified many harmful developed human impacts (Resisted - See above)
- 1990 – IPCC first report (Resisted - See above)
- 2020 – COVID19 – (Influential people opposed to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others found new ways to maximize their ability to benefit from being misleading)
Constantly improving global civilization is not a guarantee. It is very hard work to limit the harm done by people who resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. They know better, but do not care about how harmful their actions and lack of actions are.
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Jeff Cope at 01:33 AM on 9 April 2025Our MOOC Denial101x has run its course
It's sad the course will not be offered any more, though I hope some university or organization picks it up or creates something similar. (Coursera and others' aren't nearly as good.) I am glad you'll continue to make the resources available--I hope for the next thousand years, as that's how long the effects of climate catastrophe and denial of them are likely to last. At least.
I recommended the course to hundreds of climate denying delayalists; though I'm guessing very few took it, its availability was an excellent arguing point.
PS Especially enjoyable were the Middle Earth and Westeros climate lessons.
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BaerbelW at 15:02 PM on 8 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
OPOF @4
Thanks for your feedback! I'm just adding the information that the news roundup is based on items collected via the Google form linked at the bottom and in some weeks we get around to adding the New Research article and some we don't - hence it's included in some roundups but not in all of them.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:17 AM on 8 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
wilddouglascounty,
In addition to Bob’s good pointer to the weekly New Research posts, I would add that one of the categories for the weekly News Roundup is Climate Science and Research.
Also, the blue panel at the bottom of the News listing invites everyone to submit an article to be included on the listing. Note that the tagging of articles for the News Roundup categories is done by the person submitting the suggested item. And they can only tag one category. Therefore, some items that are reports about recent research publications will not be tagged for the Climate Science and Research category. Examples are:
- the article “Losing Forest Carbon Stocks Could Put Climate Goals Out Of Reach” is a news report regarding a new published research item. But I support it being tagged for the Climate Change Impacts category.
- the article “If sea levels are rising, why is the Maldives still above water?” refers to many different publications, but it is not about a specific new research publication.
Also note:
- This week, the only item in the Climate Science and Research category is the weekly New Research posting last week.
- In last week’s News Roundup (#13) there was also only one item in the Climate Science and Research category. But it was not the weekly New Research post.
- In News Roundup #12 there were three items in the Climate Science and Research category, including the weekly New Research post.
I am not sure that the weekly New Research post should be included in the News Roundup. But I am not the person volunteering to produce this amazing weekly compilation of informative items.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:46 AM on 8 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray,
In your response @213 to my ‘new questions’ @211 you state
My thermos bottle experiment didn't compare the cavity's being filled with 'CO2 vs Air (a Nitrogen Oxygen blend), or (Air with 280 ppm CO2) vs (Air with 560 ppm CO2)' because when discussing global warming those gases are seldom mentioned.
Are you seriously trying to 'use such a lame claim' to argue that in the context of the effect of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere it is more valid to compare CO2 to a vacuum than to compare ‘a greenhouse gas’ to ‘non-greenhouse gases’ (or to compare different amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere)?
You established the context for all the discussion that has followed your comment @180 where you made the following questionable declaration:
...(“the Earth's surface is warmed by-heat-trapping greenhouse gases”) is invalid because heat cannot be trapped—i.e., an adiabatic wall does not exist in nature. If heat can’t be trapped, any and all claims that rely on the existence of heat-trapping material or trapped heat constitute misinformation.
I believe the phrases "trapped heat" and "heat trapping" are used to incorrectly explain a physical process in a way that will resonate with the general public.
The discussion that has developed is in the context of whether it is ‘misleading’ to say ‘greenhouse gases trap heat’ in a public ‘plain language’ presentation of the scientific understanding of greenhouse gases.
In your response to my question @181 you conclude with the following:
If your theoretical estimate of Earth surface warming requires the existence of 'trapped heat' (i.e., your theoretical argument is that Earth surface warming will occur because some gases 'trap heat' within the lower troposphere), then your theoretical argument is nonsense because heat can't be trapped.
As I said, I'm not sure an 'easily understood term' exists for Earth surface temperature change.
In spite of being provided with a diversity of reasoned justifications for the validity of saying that “the Earth's surface is warmed by heat-trapping greenhouse gases” you persist in the belief that “...the phrases "trapped heat" and "heat trapping" are used to incorrectly explain a physical process...”
Responding to my new questions @211 the way you did @213 is just another tragic result of ‘desperately trying to maintain an invalid belief’ about the validity of saying that “the Earth's surface is warmed by heat-trapping greenhouse gases”.
In closing I will note that by comparing CO2 to a vacuum in the thermos bottle experiment you are implying that the global average surface temperature of the Earth would be warmer (more of the incoming energy would be trapped at the surface) without an atmosphere containing greenhouse gases. Claiming that a vacuum would keep more energy at the surface would appear to be a clear case of ‘incorrectly explaining an understood physical process’ (in the context that you established for this discussion).
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Bob Loblaw at 23:51 PM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed @ 216:
It is obvious that you are not even bothering to read much of what people say in response to your comments here.
To give you one hint: some of the comments include links to relevant information. Your browser will probably highlight those links by underlining the the text and/or changing the display colour where the link is buried. The displayed text will not be the link itself, but clicking on the displayed text will take you to the link. Your browser will probably pop up the details of the link when you hover over the text - most likely in the bottom left corner of your browser window. This is basic Web Browsing 101.
For example, here is a link to your most recent comment. Here is another one, but I have chosen to display the actual link as text, instead of displaying "here is a link to your most recent comment" : https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=98&p=9#143775
"I struggle putting comments on this blog in the right spot."
You were previously given instructions on navigating the comments on this web site in the green Moderator's box below this post of yours. Please follow that link, and read those instructions again.
You complain:
Could you send me the URL where the Cambridge dictionary uses greenhouse as an example usage of "trap?"
As Dikran has already pointed out, in comment 218 (note how I have created a link pointing directly to that comment), I already gave you that link in comment 205. I also quoted the definition in plain text, which Dikran has repeated. I also gave you a link to the Collins Dictionary definition in that comment, and a link to the Britannica dictionary definition in comment 206.
Instead of spending time trying to justify your preconceived notions or chasing a new squirrel, why don't you try to spend time actually reading what others are saying and spend time trying to understand it?
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:17 PM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray What you are doing is known as a "Gish Gallop" which is a rhetorical device used to prevent in depth discussion of any partiular point by constantly raising new ones while the previous points have not yet been settled. So I'll answer the first point or two and we can go badk to the other isse when those are settled.
You replied to my question about whether it is O.K. to talk of a blanket or a thermos flask trapping heat:
My response: Yes, it is reasonable when interacting at an educational level. But It is not reasonable when presenting a scientific argument for the purpose of persuading someone to change his way of life.
The explanation of the greenhouse effect trapping heat is only being used in an "educational" level here, so that people who don't understand the greenhouse effect might start to understand the very basics.
for the purpose of persuading someone to change his way of life.
I think this is what is called "motivated reasoning". It appears that you are making a special case here because you don't like the consequences of someone understanding the greenhouse effect. It is a political objection masquerading as a scientific one.
Personally, I am not asking anybody to change their way of life - I just want the public debate to be well informed. That includes the science.
My question to you: Forget global warming for a minute, if as part of an effort to get a lay person to appreciably change his way of life, is it okay to use scientifically invalid arguments?
As I have pointed out to you repeatedly, saying the greenhouse effect "traps" heat is not a scientifically invalid one. It isn't the best explanation, but as a starting point it is completely reasonable. You have already conceded that by admitting it is O.K. to talk of a blanket or a thermos flask as "trapping heat".
My response: Could you send me the URL where the Cambridge dictionary uses greenhouse as an example usage of "trap?"
You have already been given it (by Bob Loblaw), here it is againhttps://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/trap
It says:
to keep something such as heat [emphasis mine] or water in one place, especially because it is useful:
A greenhouse stays warm because the glass traps the heat of the sun.
You give the explanation of the greenhouse effect:My response: My understanding of the ‘basic mechanisms of the greenhouse effect” is as follows. (a) the absorption of IR emitted from the Earth's surface prevents some of that IR from reaching space (i.e., leaving the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system), (b) the energy in the IR that doesn’t reach space is absorbed by gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, and (c) a portion of that absorbed energy is radiated back to the Earth's surface thereby increasing the rate the Earth's surface absorbs IR, which in turn acts to increase the Earth’s surface temperature.
As I thought, there is quite a lot missing there. Firstly the outbound IR that is absorbed by GHG is distributed to the bulk atmosphere by collisions. Sometimes collisions cause the bulk atmosphere to give a molecule of a GHG enough energy to reradiate. That is quite important as it is a common source of misunderstanding. Next most of the outbound IR is absorbed by GHGs and re-rediated and some of that is absorbed further up. The key thing is not that IR is absorbed near the surface, but the properties of the layer in the atmosphere from which it *can* escape to space. Due to the lapse rate, this layer is *cold* and hence GHGs there radiate less (including into space). It is also missing the key point (and why it is called the "greenhouse effect") which is that the atmosphere is largely transparent visible and some UV light, so the surface is mostly warmed by the incoming UV & visible light from the Sun. The atmosphere is warmed from beneath. So good start, but the lapse rate is crucial."a) the absorption of IR emitted from the Earth's surface prevents some of that IR from reaching space (i.e., leaving the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system),"
"prevented from leaving" - you mean like it is trapped or something? ;o)
Now guess what, that is only an approximation to what actually happens, leaving out lots of important detail (just a first year undergrad explanation). Science is full of that sort of thing and there is no clean distinction between "science" and "not science" when it comes to levels of explanation - it depends on the audience. As an example, I just read Katie Mack's book on the ways the universe might end, and it turns out the explanation of Hawking radiation (virtual particles forming at the evnt horizon, one escapes and the other doesn't) isn't actually what happens, it is just the closest you will get for an audience that hasn't spent three years studying maths as undergraduate level.
You are being inconsistent here, apparently because you don't like the idea of someone making a well-informed decision to change their lifestyle.
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Eclectic at 14:35 PM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
@216 :
Very entertaining, Reed Coray.
It is amusing how you keep moving your goalposts. I am interested to see when you do eventually come full circle.
Regarding mechanisms, per your 14th paragraph (or 13th ~ depending on counting odd line usage) . . . you list mechanisms (a) and (b) and (c) . . . and you have gotten all three wrong substantially.
Perhaps you were meaning a joke ~ but otherwise, it demonstrates that you need to go away for many hours, and educate yourself scientifically on the physics of Earth's atmosphere. Then, when you do get to understand "Greenhouse Effect" you may (or may not) choose to split hairs about the semantic meanings of English words.
But first, please educate yourself ~ rather than flounder about as now.
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Reed Coray at 12:54 PM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
This response is to Dikran Marsupial at 02:14 AM on 7 April 2025. I struggle putting comments on this blog in the right spot.
Your statement: “My question was whether it was reasonable in a discussion with a lay-person to say that a blanket keeps you warm by ‘trapping heat’ or whether a thermos flask keeps tea warm by ‘trapping heat’”.
My response: Yes, it is reasonable when interacting at an educational level. But It is not reasonable when presenting a scientific argument for the purpose of persuading someone to change his way of life.
My question to you: Forget global warming for a minute, if as part of an effort to get a lay person to appreciably change his way of life, is it okay to use scientifically invalid arguments?
Your comments: (a) "How about a greenhouse (is the Cambridge dictionary that uses it as an example usage of "trap" incorrect?)." and (b) "The most popular dictionary and thesaurus for learners of English. Find meanings and definitions of words with pronunciations and translations in various languages."
My response: Could you send me the URL where the Cambridge dictionary uses greenhouse as an example usage of "trap?" When I Googled "Cabridge Dictionary Online" the URL that appeared was "https://www.bing.com/search?q=cambridge+dictionary+online&qs=HS&pq=cambrid&sc=10-7&cvid=69BDBA17495D45A3B8FE6E7E187CDE83&FORM=CHRDEF&sp=1&lq=0" The first entry that appeared on the screen was: "Cambridge Dictionary | English Dictionary, Translations & Thesaurus..." When I clicked on that the URL what appeared was: "https://dictionary.cambridge.org/"
When I entered "greenhouse" as the word to be defined, the word "trap" appeared nowhere on the screen. A link did appear for the phrase 'greenhouse effect." When I clicked on that link, three definitions of greenhouse effect appeared. (1) "an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere (= mixture of gases around the earth), that is believed to be the cause of a gradual warming of the surface of the earth," (2) “A reference to the American Dictionary which defined the greenhouse effect to be: ‘the gradual warming of the earth because of heat trapped by carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere’." (3) “A reference to the BUSINESS ENGLISH dictionary which defined the greenhouse effect to be: ‘an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere (= mix of gases which surround the earth), which is believed to cause the surface of the earth to become gradually warmer and to be a threat to its future’.”
At that point I quit my online search. The "American Dictionary" definition did include a reference to "trapped heat, but the Cambridge dictionary did so only as a reference to the American Dictionary. In any event, all of those dictionaries are targeted at the general public. As such, “every-day” dictionaries omit detailed scientific arguments and replace it with phraseology that is familiar to the common man. If there is a valid complex scientific explanation that shows an error in the common-man definition, that explanation will be omitted from the dictionary. Thus, when you argue that it’s okay to use terminology from an every-day dictionary to discuss a scientific matter with a lay person, you are correct.However, that doesn’t establish the scientific validity of the discussion, it only means that the same terminology is used both in both the “definition” and the “discussion.” So, when an every-day dictionary uses the phrase “trap heat,” it establishes that using the phrase in discussions with lay people is a common practice and therefore acceptable, but it does not establish the scientific validity of the phrase “trap heat.”
Your comment: "I have seen this time and time again in discussions with "contrarians", which is that I am happy to give very straight answers to direct questions, but they are not. The reason is that they know that their argument collapses if they give a straight answer."
Question to you: Are my above answers "straight answers to your direct questions?”
Your comment: "You appear not to understand the basic mechanism of the greenhouse effect if that thought experiment was intended to be relevant to that question."My response: My understanding of the ‘basic mechanisms of the greenhouse effect” is as follows. (a) the absorption of IR emitted from the Earth's surface prevents some of that IR from reaching space (i.e., leaving the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system), (b) the energy in the IR that doesn’t reach space is absorbed by gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, and (c) a portion of that absorbed energy is radiated back to the Earth's surface thereby increasing the rate the Earth's surface absorbs IR, which in turn acts to increase the Earth’s surface temperature.
If my understanding of the mechanism is wrong or incomplete, please explain why.
Responding in kind to your statement that “I (i.e., you) have seen this time and time again in discussions with "contrarians", which is that I am happy to give very straight answers to direct questions, but they are not. The reason is that they know that their argument collapses if they give a straight answer.”
I make a similar comment. "I have seen time and time again in discussions with "global warming advocates," that the use of precise scientific terminology is seldom employed. The reason being that most global warming advocates are at best minimally knowledgeable of the science, and if asked to explain the details of the underlying physics, can’t.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:00 AM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
scaddenp @ 212:
My guess is that Reed started these semantic word games because he has nothing else to present. Maybe he actually finds it convincing, but it is clear that he has not presented any substantive arguments against the science.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:57 AM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @ 208, 213:
You continue to avoid the real question. It may be that you don't understand the question - but I agree with Dikran that you probably simply don't want to answer his question.
At least you have abandoned your attempt to claim that "trap heat" is not a term that would appear in "a generic dictionary".
Let's play word games again, and look at another definition of "trap" - this time as a noun. It comes from one of the links I gave earlier.
- a dangerous or unpleasant situation which you have got into and from which it is difficult or impossible to escape:
- The undercover agents went to the rendezvous knowing that it might be a trap.
- fall into a trap She's too smart to fall into the trap of working without pay.
- Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can learn a foreign language without doing any work.
- His foot was caught in the jaws of the trap.
- We set a trap and they walked right into it.
- They put rabbit traps all over the wood.
- We set traps to try to control the mice.
Your attempts to divert attention away into more word games is obviously because of the "unpleasant situation which you have got into and from which it is difficult or impossible to escape". It is also a trap of your own making - posting poorly-thought-out arguments in a public forum, where others are free to point out your errors.
[Note that all three of the dictionaries that I referenced in comments 205 and 206 provide similar definitions.]
I agree with Dikran @ 210, when he says that your sort of behaviour is common from "contrarians". Avoid the questions. Avoid dealing with the arguments presented. Avoid admitting to the glaring errors of logic and inconsistency that are pointed out to you.
Word of advice: when you find yourself in a deep hole, stop digging.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:35 AM on 7 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
wild:
The pattern of subjects/articlesyou ask about is probably because this topic is the News Roundup. It sounds like you prefer to see what is in the New Research post that comes out on Thursdays.
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wilddouglascounty at 09:25 AM on 7 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
(Sorry for the poor alignment in the next-to-last paragraph above: apparently the comment posting window has a different width than the posted comment window!)
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wilddouglascounty at 09:23 AM on 7 April 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14
This is a request:
In light of the overwhelming amount of research and analytics being done regarding the many, many facets of the climate, your Weekly Climate Change News has in the past been very helpful for the reader to find vetted journal news to sort through the tsunami of coverage that is almost impossible to sort out. Kudos for your editorial staff to sort through this firehose of information in order to glean it down to semi-digestible quantities!
Maybe it has been there along and I have noticed it, and perhaps it is because of your system of categorization that you are now using, but I have been noticing an inflation of news articles that are inundating the research based articles published in vetted journals. While there is nothing inherently wrong with reporting the "news" in the Climate Change Impacts category, for instance, I can easily find these news articles elsewhere, whereas the journal articles are more difficult to retrieve. Given the huge volume of articles available, you could greatly turn down the "news" volume in order to make it easier to take in the research end of the category. For instance in this week's "Climate Change Impacts" section, the following represent the kind of analytic and research articles I'm interested in finding out about:
- -If sea levels are rising, why is the Maldives still above water?
- -Losing Forest Carbon Stocks Could Put Climate Goals Out Of Reach
- -Big Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic Warming
- -Global warming of more than 3°C this century may wipe 40% off the world’s economy, new analysis reveals
- -Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
- -Forecasters predict another active 2025 Atlantic hurricane season
- -On the Edge: The people and polar bears of a warming arctic
The rest of the articles in the Climate Change Impacts category are merely news headlines about unfolding weather events, and we all know that intensity and frequency of these are increasing due to increased capacities of weather systems in an atmosphere juiced by increasing carbon levels. But I'm looking more for research and analyses of those weather pattern changes, instead of reportage of the weather events themselves, which I can find elsewhere. Burying the 7 analyses/research papers amongst the 11 weather news reports makes it more, not less difficult to study Climate Change Impacts, at least for me. Perhaps this might make it easier for you as well!
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Reed Coray at 06:51 AM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Question: "Why doesn’t your thermos experiment compare the cavities being filled with CO2 vs Air (a Nitrogen Oxygen blend), or (Air with 280 ppm CO2) vs (Air with 560 ppm CO2)?"
Answer: My thermos bottle experiment didn't compare the cavity's being filled with 'CO2 vs Air (a Nitrogen Oxygen blend), or (Air with 280 ppm CO2) vs (Air with 560 ppm CO2)' because when discussing global warming those gases are seldom mentioned. I picked the gas (CO2) that most people argue is the primary cause of harmful global warming.
Question: "Do you agree that those comparisons would be more valid than CO2 vs vacuum?"
Answer: More valid for what— Earth surface warming, the behavior of thermos bottles, etc? I was responding to Dikran Marsupial's statement: "I am open to rational argument, such as a good answer to my question about blankets and thermos flasks "trapping heat", and willing to change my mind." He mentioned blankets and thermos flasks. I chose thermos flasks.
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scaddenp at 06:44 AM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
I am struggling to see what it is gained by these sematic arguments. The real language of the GHE is the hard cold language of physics and maths, especially the Radiative Transfer Equations. No matter how these are interpretated in layman's language, increasing CO2 in the atmosphere warms the earth surface. The equations predict things like the amount of radiation received at the surface or at the top of the atmosphere and the spectrum of that radiation with exquisite accuracy. Also, see this paper for direct observation of CO2 increasing the greenhouse effect at the earth surface. Suggesting this is not real based on misunderstanding greenhouse theory is futile. You are fooling only yourself.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:00 AM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @208,
New questions:
Why doesn’t your thermos experiment compare the cavities being filled with CO2 vs Air (a Nitrogen Oxygen blend), or (Air with 280 ppm CO2) vs (Air with 560 ppm CO2)?
Do you agree that those comparisons would be more valid than CO2 vs vacuum?
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Dikran Marsupial at 02:14 AM on 7 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray, you have not addressed my question, just evaded it with a thought experiment of your own. My question was whether it was reasonable in a discussion with a lay-person to say that a blanket keeps you warm by "trapping heat" or whether a thermos flask keeps tea warm by "trapping heat". How about a greenhouse (is the Cambridge dictionary that uses it as an example usage of "trap" incorrect?).
I have seen this time and time again in discussions with "contrarians", which is that I am happy to give very straight answers to direct questions, but they are not. The reason is that they know that their argument collapses if they give a straight answer.
So are you going to give a straight answer to my question, or are you going to continue with the evasion.
"In the vacuum thermos bottle, a vacuum surrounds the thermos bottle's chamber. In the CO2 thermos bottle, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas (CO2) surrounds the thermos bottle's chamber."
You appear not to understand the basic mechanism of the greenhouse effect if that thought experiment was intended to be relevant to that question.
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Eclectic at 17:22 PM on 6 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Corey @208 :
You have use multiple paragraphs of words to point to an "experiment" where a vacuum (plus silvered surfaces) does a better job of trapping heat than does silvered surfaces plus CO2 gas.
Which really does nothing to support your argument (such as it is).
Your argument being: that words are important and realities are not.
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Reed Coray at 15:15 PM on 6 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Dikran Marsupial at 19:53 PM on 3 April 2025 wrote: "I am open to rational argument, such as a good answer to my question about blankets and thermos flasks 'trapping heat', and willing to change my mind."
Okay try this. Take two vacuum thermos bottles as nearly identical as possible. The vacuum region of each thermos bottle surrounds its chamber. Punch a small hole in one of the thermos bottles (letting gas into the vacuum region of that thermos bottle), and choose for that gas CO2 (a heat-trapping, greenhouse gas). Reseal the hole so that the CO2 gas can't leave the insulation region." Call the thermos bottle without CO2 gas the vacuum thermos bottle. Call the thermos bottle with CO2 gas the CO2 thermos bottle.
In the vacuum thermos bottle, a vacuum surrounds the thermos bottle's chamber. In the CO2 thermos bottle, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas (CO2) surrounds the thermos bottle's chamber.
Place equal amounts of coffee heated to the same temperature in each thermos bottle chamber. Place both thermos bottles side-by-side in an external envirornment whose temperature is lower than the temperature of the heated coffee. Eventually the temperature of the coffee in both thermos will reach and stablize at the temperature of the external environment; but the CO2 thermos bottle will reach that temperature much more rapidly than the vacuum thermos bottle. If CO2 gas traps heat, how is this possible?
When describing to a lay person what is happening, wouldn't it be more appropriate to say "a greenhouse gas (CO2) is freeing heat" to say "a greenhouse gas (CO2) is trapping heat?"
The above experiment is a comparison of "rates of heat loss," not a comparison of temperatures. But the experiment can easily to modified to be a comparison of temperatures. Simply place equal or nearly equal constant-rate heat sources in the chambers along with the coffee. As long as the heat source is outputing heat at a constant rate, the temperatures of the coffee in both thermos bottles will reach a stable temperature higher than the environment's temperature, but the stable temperature of the vacuum thermos bottle will be higher than the stable temperature of the CO2 thermos bottle. As with the "rate of heat loss" comparison, for the temperature comparison it is more correct to say the CO2 gas "frees heat" than it is to say the CO2 gas "traps heat."
hus, in thermos bottles CO2 gas doesn't "trap heat" it "frees heat."
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nigelj at 08:12 AM on 6 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
Moderator sorry. I agree it is a bit off topic. Your comment wasn't there when I posted. I won't continue further on this thread.
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nigelj at 08:10 AM on 6 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
OPOF @21
I go along with your philosophical position on system change etc,etc.
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OPOF @22
"A reduced global total population would definitely improve the ability of all humans on this amazing planet to sustainably enjoy better lives, now and into the distant future."
Exactly. Warming projections are based on business as usual population growth so only slowing mildly. Any way we can get that growth to slow quicker, will help the climate issue.
"This recent BBC – In Depth article “The influencers who want the world to have more babies - and say the White House is on their side” is about beliefs that ignore or conflict with that common sense understanding...."
Yes and its frustrating. This is why I suggested a declining population is not guaranteed (although personally I think population will still decline). There are forces in opposition to a smaller population mostly 1) people worried about the economics of the transition period of declining numbers of young people having to support an aging population tending to live longer and 2)people driven by the bible "go forth and multiply" and 3) the natural instinct to have large families is strong in some people even although it no longer makes much economic sense in developed countries. 4) people who tend to think more people is just good economically. 5) people worried about their culture losing dominanceAnd I can acknowledge the economic arguments and at least understand the religious and cultural arguments. But I think they arent very good arguments overall, and they will all still loose the argument because even in countries where governments have tried to encourage or financially incentivise large families it hasnt worked - people continue to prefer small families. There are examples in SE Asia easily googled. And family size is decling even in Catholic and Islamic countries. So I'm not that worried about Vance backing large families.
"[JD]Vance has often spoken about the need to fix a "broken culture" that is tearing the US family apart, by undermining men."
This appears to mean men are being underminded because they can no longer exploit, abuse, control and discriminate against women. Or because society now accepts trangender people. Vance and his ilk are never able to provide any other reasons of any significance.
"My semi-conspiracy theory......"
Something like that process is definitely going on. I dont think you have quite nailed it completely, but I cant immediately improve on it.
I tend to think that what is happening at the most general level in society is theres a unfortunate conservative backlash against gobilisation, which tends to have a liberal agenda, and which I broadly support. But it does have a few downsides which has left it open to attack.
The emergent conservative camp wants a return to economic protectionism, traditional family values, fossil fuels , and attracts people with largely traditionalist leaning values like that. There is no sign of much of a compromise solution emerging. Its very much armed and angry camps.
I think we have to stand up for the values we believe in and argue why, and also be open to understanding valid criticisms of our own positions. For example the Democrats proposed some truly stupid ideas like defunding the police. I guess it was an emotive reaction to police abuses but its still stupid.
"Note: I admit to also wanting ‘more of a certain type of people’. I want more people who pursue learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others. That may be ‘divisive’. But it is arguably ‘a good divisiveness’."
Agreed. And this is an example of promoting values we believe in. I dont see what more we can do. We have to take a stand, but without being closed minded about valid criticisms either. But sometimes I think liberals are a bit too polite - most of Trumps policies look idiotic to me and we have to sometimes call a spade a spade. -
One Planet Only Forever at 03:46 AM on 6 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
nigelj,
A reduced global total population would definitely improve the ability of all humans on this amazing planet to sustainably enjoy better lives, now and into the distant future.
However, some people are opposed to, or unaware of, the fundamental benefit of fewer concurrently living people, regionally as well as globally. Fewer people would allow more sustainable negative impacts per person to meet the following common sense rule: (average impacts per person) X (number of people) < Sustainable total impacts
This recent BBC – In Depth article “The influencers who want the world to have more babies - and say the White House is on their side” is about beliefs that ignore or conflict with that common sense understanding. Those beliefs can currently be considered to be ‘of limited influence’. However, the current White House, and other institutions governed by the current version of the US Republican Party, is now significantly influenced by misunderstandings that were considered to be extreme fringe beliefs 10 years ago.
And a scary reality presented in the article is the following quotes of statements made by the ‘pronatalism promoter’:
"The easiest way to [spread the word about pronatalism] was to turn ourselves into a meme... If we take a reasonable approach to things and say things are nuanced, nobody engages. And then we go and say something outrageous and offensive and everyone's into it."
...
"We are a coalition of people who are incredibly different in our philosophies, our theological beliefs, our family structures," says Malcolm. "But the one thing we agree on is that our core enemy is the urban monoculture; the leftist unifying culture."The following parts of the article are also a concern:
[JD]Vance has often spoken about the need to fix a "broken culture" that is tearing the US family apart, by undermining men.
In a recent interview, he said: "We actually think God made male and female for a purpose and we want you guys to thrive as young men and young women and we're going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that."
This idea has been echoed in pronatalist circles.
"Vance is a vocal pronatalist," says Rachel Cohen, policy correspondent at Vox. "Trump himself campaigned on implementing a new "baby boom" and last week he declared himself the 'fertilisation president'."
...
Their [pronatalism promoters] connection to power is thanks to the so-called tech right, a reactionary movement against liberalism led by some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. Those in the tech right include Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel – who sponsored Vance's Senate race and has invested in fertility technology – and venture capitalists David Sacks and Marc Andreessen.My semi-conspiracy theory, supported to some degree by the evidence, about the current version of the US Republican Party is that the fossil fuel interests who aggressively and abusively pursue their interests could only ‘sustain’ protection of their harmful interests by winning control over governing institutions. Increased awareness and improved understanding of climate science forced them to try to appeal to other harmful misunderstandings in their desperate attempts to ‘sustain’ their understandably harmful interests. And the groups they appealed to have developed more harmful influence, while ‘sustaining’ the harmful fossil fuel interests.
People who want more people born, especially those who want more of their type than Other types, seem to be the type that the harmful fossil fuelers, and the other harmful interests they have gathered support from, would try to appeal to in order to ‘collectively sustain’ their harmful interests.
Note: I admit to also wanting ‘more of a certain type of people’. I want more people who pursue learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others. That may be ‘divisive’. But it is arguably ‘a good divisiveness’.
Moderator Response:[BL] Gentlemen: this is all getting rather off topic. Please wrap it up...
The weekly news round-up is more suitable as a general discussion area, if you want to move it.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:59 AM on 4 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray,
Indeed, some people will try to argue that this matter of increased levels of ghgs causing an increase of the surface temperature is just a matter of opinion ... meaning there are no reasons why anyone would ‘have to’ change their belief.
That is an unscientific way to think about this matter which has a well-developed evidence-based understanding that is open to well-reasoned evidence-based improvements.
In addition to the comments by Others, especially Charlie Brown @201, I will specifically address your use of: may and unsure. I will also comment regarding 'permanent trapping' of heat energy.
Increased levels of ghgs ‘will’ (not may) increase the surface temperature. The current understanding is a range of potential magnitude of warming for a doubling of CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. But the low end of that ‘range’ is a significant increase. The only thing that is ‘unsure’ is how much worse than the very bad ‘best case’ the warming due to increasing CO2 levels ‘will’ be.
Note that the understood low end of the range of warming due to a doubling of CO2 levels is increasing, being (has been) updated ‘up’, because the current 50% increase of CO2, to 420 ppm from 280 ppm, has produced significantly more than a 1.0 C increase of surface temperature.
Building on the point of my comment @186, the increased ‘amount of trapped energy’ due to increased amounts of ghgs and the resulting increased average surface temperature is ‘essentially permanent’. It will last as long as the increased level of ghgs occurs. And increased CO2 levels will last a very long time, unless humans implement actions to effectively ‘essentially permanently remove’ CO2 from the atmosphere.
Hopefully, you were being hyperbolic when you declared that your mind was ‘permanently made-up regarding this matter’. The ability to learn is a critical thinking ability that enables humans to sustainably, permanently, improve things.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:09 AM on 4 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
nigelj,
We do indeed substantially agree. The system change I advocate for is increased governing by the pursuit of learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others, which would develop systemic changes to increase the likelihood of that type of governing occurring. And that ‘improved governing of the developed system’ is what would produce the corrections and improvements of what has currently developed you mention. And all of that is aligned with, can be seen to be addressed by, the Sustainable Development Goals. (also a different presentation of the 17 SDG goals).
Continuing with the developed systems simply driven by the pursuit of ‘potential personal benefit, popularity and profitability’ without being governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others will only make things worse, in more ways than climate change impacts, while many people are misled to believe that things are getting better (or that there is no problem).
I will note one subtle difference. I try to promote ‘equitable’ not ‘equal’. In some cases ‘equal opportunity and equal treatment’ are ‘equitable’. But equitable recognizes that a diversity of interests can result in equitable, but different, degrees of recognition and reward. And, of course, harmful actions deserve ‘equitable penalty’ in spite of potentially being more popular or profitable (by equitable, I mean a higher penalty for higher status people, people who should know better and could behave less harmfully)
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Bob Loblaw at 00:26 AM on 4 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Here is another one, from the Britannica dictionary:
to stop (something) from escaping or being lost
Greenhouse gases trap heat inside the Earth's atmosphere.
Face it, Reed. Your argument is a dog that won't hunt.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:18 AM on 4 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @ 202:
Well, at least you admit that you can't change your mind.
"I think we've come to an impass. Regarding the meaning of "trapping heat," nothing I say will change your mind, and nothing you say will change mine. Stalemate. "
You have confirmed my statement, repeated in comment 199: " as I pointed out in #188, "...you create such a strict literal meaning to the words 'trap heat' that is unjustified."
FYI, we haven't changed our minds because you have not provided a convincing argument, and you keep avoiding questions that are asked.
You have presented one, and only one, definition of "trap", without citing a source. Most dictionaries provide several variations/definitions of "trap" suitable for different circumstances. Once again, you are cherry picking to suit your position.
Let's try another source for a definition of "trap": the Cambridge dictionary. It provides several definitions for "trap", one of which is:
to keep something such as heat or water in one place, especially because it is useful:
- A greenhouse stays warm because the glass traps the heat of the sun.
Let's try the Collins Dictionary. One part of their definition says:
When something traps gas, water, or energy, it prevents it from escaping.
Wool traps your body heat, keeping the chill at bay.
The volume of gas trapped on these surfaces can be considerable.Of course, you will not find that convincing, because you probably believe that the Cambridge and Collins dictionaries are part of the Grand Plot to "manipulate truth and facts" in regard to human influences on climate.
...or maybe they just understand the colloquial use of "trap" better than you do.
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Dikran Marsupial at 19:53 PM on 3 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
"So if you enter into a discussion of the geenhouse effect with the average person, he won't be aware of the subtle difference you imply. "
Specifically what "subtle difference" are you talking about? In talking about "adiabatic walls", it is you that is introducing the issue of permanence and completeness, not me, and not those explaining the greenhouse effect as "trapping heat".
I note you have not addressed the examples I gave. Is it reasonable in a discussion with a lay-person to talk of a blanket "trapping heat" or of a thermos flask "trapping heat"? Yes or no.
I have taken the time to directly answer your questions (although you have done nothing so far with those answers), so please give direct answers to mine.
"Regarding the meaning of "trapping heat," nothing I say will change your mind, and nothing you say will change mine. "
Speak for yourself. I am open to rational argument, such as a good answer to my question about blankets and thermos flasks "trapping heat", and willing to change my mind.
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Charlie_Brown at 09:17 AM on 3 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @ 202
In so doing, you would be spreading misinformation and you would be misrepresenting my explanation. I don't take kindly to that. It is not temporary, and as I have already explained, it is not inaccurate.
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Reed Coray at 08:29 AM on 3 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
What's the difference between "atmosphere permanently and completely traps" and "atmosphere traps?" The definition of "trap" used as a verb is
1. Catch (an animal) in a trap. Synonyms: confine, cut off, corner, shut in, pen in, hem in, imprison, hold captive "a rat trapped in a barn“
a) Prevent (someone) from escaping from a place. “Twenty workers were trapped by flames” Synonyms: snare, entrap, ensnare, lay a trap for
b) Have (something, typically a part of the body) held tightly by something so that it cannot move or be freed. “He had trapped his finger in a spring-loaded hinge”
None of the above implies "permanently and completely" can't leave, they simply imply "can't leave." Good luck finding a non-technical dictionary that has a word that whose definition contains the words "permenantly and completely traps."
Ask a random person on the street if there is difference between "can't leave" and "permanently and completely can't leave." I think you're going to get a puzzled look.
In discussions of the greenhouse effect, most people do use "trap" in the sense you mean. But the average person rarely enters into a greenhouse effect discussion. So if you enter into a discussion of the geenhouse effect with the average person, he won't be aware of the subtle difference you imply. For example, if you pulled a coin out of your pocket and told the average person you have encased the coin in a substance that traps heat, I believe he's going to believe that heat can't leave the coin. He's not going to ask you "Do you mean permanently and completely not leave the coin" or simply "not leave the coin?"
When discussing something with the average person, assigning a meaning to a word that is deviates from the meanings commonly found in a generic dictionary is to confuse the person. If you told some one you've wrapped a coin in a substance that "permanently and completely traps the heat in the coin," what would you say if his response was: Do you mean "permanently and completely trap" or "really permanently and really completely trap?"
In technical discussions with people knowledgeable in the field it may be okay to use words that have a subtle meaning, but to use those words in the sense of the subtle meaning in conversations with lay people is to muddle the discussion. If you're trying to convince the average person that atmospheric greenhouse gases can trap heat and you don't qualify what you mean by trap with the caveat that "I don't mean "permenantly and completely", you're not communicating, you're obfuscating.
I think we've come to an impass. Regarding the meaning of "trapping heat," nothing I say will change your mind, and nothing you say will change mine. Stalemate. I'll leave the decision as to who is right to the public, but know that every time I hear someone make the claim that greenhouse gases trap heat, I'm going add: "he/she doesn't mean the heat is permenantly and completely trapped, he/she means the heat is temporarily trapped."
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Charlie_Brown at 07:52 AM on 3 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @ 194
1. No. See Charlie Brown @ 189.
2. Not a fact. See #1.
3. Not a fact. See #1.
4. Yes.
5. No. See #1.
6. N/A. See #1.
Agreed – your arguments about trapping heat can be dismissed.For further discussion – you say @195: “Those emissions may very well lead to increased global surface temperature. One thing I'm unsure about is "how big is the increase?". I say not “may” but “will.” The magnitude of the increase by increasing GHG emissions can be calculated with high accuracy. Also @ 182 you discuss ERE and conclude “to achieve a new ERE state when gases are added to the atmosphere, the temperature distribution within the system must change. One component of that temperature distribution is the Earth's surface temperature, which may go up or down.” When GHG are added to the atmosphere, the surface temperature will go up, not down.
Re-read the Basic and Intermediate explanations, then check out this tool to help you with the calculations and your question of “how big is the increase.” Hint: the results are consistent with the science of forcings as described in IPCC WG1 AR5 Physical Science Basis Chap 8 Table 8.2.
https://skepticalscience.com/Introducing-an-Atmospheric-Radiation-Model-to-Learn-About-Global-Warming.html -
Bob Loblaw at 00:31 AM on 3 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray:
Note that I have added moderator comments (green box) regarding site navigation to your comments #194, and 195. Please scroll back to read them. Hopefully they will help with site navigation.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:02 AM on 3 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @ 194: "If ... my arguments are flat wrong and can be dismissed out of hand."
As Dikran points out explicitly, in #197: yes, your arguments are flat wrong.
As I pointed out in #190: "Reed Coray has utterly failed to explain the distinction between his undesirable 'trap heat' and his preferred 'warm the Earth's surface'."
Getting to definitions: heat = thermal energy. Average thermal energy is expressed by temperature. When thermal energy increases in an object, that object's temperature goes up - it "warms". When a system redistributes energy in a manner where some part of the system retains more thermal energy that before, it is perfectly reasonable to colloquially say "that part of the system has trapped heat".
...unless, as I pointed out in #188, "...you create such a strict literal meaning to the words 'trap heat' that is unjustified."
As for my closing paragraph in # 190, which begins with "Reed Coray's argument is a pig in a poke.": I obtained that list of roughly equivalent phrases from Wiktionary. In addition to providing the meanings of words, Wiktionary (or many other dictionaries) will also provide a list of synonyms or "see also" references. In other words, it provides some of the function of a thesaurus. It also lets you search for the meaning of common phrases, rather than just single words.
Try starting with its definition of "blow out of proportion". Follow the links under "Synonyms" and "See also". Then repeat with each of those listings to find additional similar phrases. You should be able to eventually find all the phrases I used at the end of #190.
Are all those phrases identical? No. Do they have identical meaning? No. As you read the definitions/origins/explanations, you will see that there are subtle differences.
...but any one of them can be considered a reasonable description of what you have been doing in in an attempt to tar all of climate science over some misguided idea that "trap heat" is physically impossible. You even go as far as saying (in #187) that use of 'trap heat' "...is designed to mislead others and is spread with the intent to manipulate truth and facts".
That's awfully thin ice you are skating on.
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Dikran Marsupial at 16:55 PM on 2 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Thank you for posting the source for "adiabatic wall"
"This almost ubiquitously used claim (“the Earth's surface is warmed by-heat-trapping greenhouse gases”) is invalid because heat cannot be trapped—i.e., an adiabatic wall does not exist in nature. "
Thermodynamic Black bodies don't exist in nature either, nor Gaussian distributions, both are useful theoretical models that are often applied to natural phenomena though (knowing that they do not exactly represent the objects they model). The analogy under discussion does not say that the atmosphere permanently and completely traps *all* heat, so trapping heat in the sense that an insulator "traps" some heat (or equivalently impedes it's escape) seems reasonable to me. I think your objection is unreasonable pedantry.
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Dikran Marsupial at 16:45 PM on 2 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray "In my opinion, most people who responded to my comments are missing the point I am trying to make. ... My point is that the claim: “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by trapping heat within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” is a denial of science."
Several people, including myself have directly addressed that point."(1) Does science preclude the existence of “trapped heat?” Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer."
No, as I pointed out, blankets can be reasonably said to "trap" heat; thermos flasks can reasonably said to trap heat.
"(2) Does the fact that “trapped heat” can’t exist, prohibit “trapping heat?” Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer."No, because the premise that '“trapped heat” can’t exist, prohibit' is false, see the answer to (1).
(3) If “trapping heat” can’t exist, does the use of “trapping heat” in an argument mean the argument contains a logical fallacy? Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.Again, "no" because the premise is false, see (1).
(4) Does the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by ‘trapping heat’ within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” use the phrase “trapping heat?” Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No”answer.Yes, but this is an unhelpful rhetorical question rather a truth seeking one. I am answering it mostly to point out the rhetoric. It isn't unreasonable as a very basic analogy. The enhanced greenhouse effect does cause more energy to be returned to the surface rather than being radiated out to space, so it could be viewed as being (temorarily) "trapped".
(5) Does the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by ‘trapping heat’ within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” contain a logical fallacy? Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.No - see answer to the previous question. It is a reasonable analogy - the actual physical mechansism is a bit more complex than that, but it is a O.K. as a starting point for the layperson.
(6) Does the fact that the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by ‘trapping heat’ within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” contains a logical fallacy imply a denial of science? Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
No, see answers to previous questions. (a) it is based on an incorrect premise (that heat cannot be trapped) and (b) it is a reasonable, but extremely basic, analogy that is a reasonable starting point for the layperson.
There I have given direct answers to your questions. The ball is now in your court to respond to them constructively (I would start with explaining how a thermos flask cannot be viewed as trapping heat - of course I had already made that point in an earlier comment).
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Eclectic at 14:03 PM on 2 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray @ 194 / 195 :
You have a major problem with your semantics.
And you also have a logic problem ~ partly complicated by your original semantics problem.
Possibly you have been confused by some of the faulty logic exhibited at the WUWT website. WUWT Comments Sections show the pesence of a handful of logical scientific thinkers, interspersed with a whole chaff-bagful of crackpots and angry nutters.
But the final responsibility rests on you to think clearly and logically. Please look at the Big Picture and avoid nit-picking one or two pixels of the overall picture.
Hint: get away from the loose wordy terms of 19th-Century "thermodynamics" ~ and concentrate your attention on the real physics of atoms and photons. (In other words, look at the real universe and not at the dictionary.)
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Reed Coray at 11:42 AM on 2 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Bob when I googled "Adiabatic wall" I got the following. I think the text came from Wikipedia (not that Wikipedia is a great source only that it didn't come from WUWT and/or Jo Nova. see https://www.bing.com/search?q=adiabatic+wall&qs=AS&pq=adiabatic+wall&sc=10-14&cvid=78B3DD64803943E6B6458C617BB3F7EE&FORM=CHRDEF&sp=1&lq=0
An adiabatic wall is a boundary that does not allow heat transfer between two thermodynamic systems. This means that there is no heat or mass transfer across the wall, making it a theoretical concept often considered as a perfect thermal insulator. In essence, any energy exchange occurring across an adiabatic wall is strictly in the form of work.So an Adiabatic Wall is "something that prevents the transfer of heat between two thermodynamic systems as in (1) the transfer of heat between the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system and (2) space. Isn't this precisely what is meant by the phrase "trapping heat within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system?" So the claim that the relationship between "Adiabatic" and "can't trap heat" may be garbled in Reed Coray's mind, doesn't hold water."
Your guess that "Reed Coray does not accept that human emissions of CO2 are leading to increased global surface temperatures" is wrong. Those emissions may very well lead to increased global surface temperature. One thing I'm unsure about is "how big is the increase?"
In any event, the quality of my arguments is independent of where they came from. The only thing that matters is their validity, not their source. If one technique of "denial of science" is appeal to authority, then implying that authorities are not good authorities is a form of appealing to a bad authority.
Moderator Response:[BL] The web software here does not automatically create links. You can do this when posting a comment by selecting the "insert" tab, selecting the text you want to use for the link, and clicking on the icon that looks like a chain link. Add the URL in the dialog box.
...but posting links as a search is fraught with difficulty. There is no guarantee that another user will get the same search results that you get. If you found a source using a search engine, provide the direct link to the page you found, not the search that led you there.
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nigelj at 11:09 AM on 2 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
OPOF @19
"One question I have is what would be the ways to transition from what has developed – nearly 9 billion with a very inequitable distribution of harmfulness and wealth plus total impacts that are well beyond being sustainable - to 2 billion living as you see being a sustainable future?"
Just on the population question, a global population of 2 billion is likely to happen naturally due to the demographic transition, where people have chosen to have small families because they no longer need large families. In half the world the fertility rate is already 2.1 so its below replacement levels, and some countries have shrinking populations. This is likely to spread to the other half.
Of course none of this is guaranteed to happen, and it could be a very slow process. A fertility rate of 2.1 would lead to 2 billion people by about year 2700. A fertility rate of 1.5 by about 2050 which is plausible leads to 2 billion people by about 2200. I'm going by memory of a population calculator. Governmnets could speed it all up by ensuring women have good educations and human rights and contraceptives are easily and cheaply available, and not be tempted to panic and encourage shrinking populations to grow.
"Any ‘total global population’ up to 9.5 billion can be sustainable. It is simply a matter of keeping the sum of everybody’s impacts below the sustainable limits (the planetary boundaries and regional impact limits)."
It depends on how those planetary boundaries are defined and whether they are strong enough. I dont have the time right now to read the related studies, but my gut reaction is to be meaningful it would require policies of large reductions in consumption among high income people / countries and some reduction in consumption or only very slight increases in consumption in low income people / countries and this will all be very difficult to achieve. Therefore it makes sense to also aim to decrease the size of the global population in parallel. It may be easier getting the size of the population down. I doubt it would be any harder than reducing consumption levels. But essentially I think we need to try to do both as best we can, so decrease per capita levels of consumption and the size of the population.
Financial and resource inequality is a separate issue. I cant see a solution to this other than some sort of wealth tax, and tax payer funded redistribution of financial resources and even this will have to be limited in scope, to be politically viable. But this has worked quite well in some European countries to keep poverty rates and inequality within reasonable boundaries.
These policies are under attack by the populists and nationalists like Trump and their supporters. Hes trying to solve the low wage / inequality problem with tariffs but I cant see this working very well. Its most likely going to cause chaos, bring low wage assembly line jobs back to America, and cause inflation as experts have pointed out. It looks like the main beneficiaries of these policies would be billionaires, probably by design.
We are trying to stop dangerous levels of climate change thus keeping warming under 2 degrees and preferably under 1.5 degrees. It seems a valid response and framing of the issue. I think the same should apply to other environmental problems and also social and economic problems. We need to define and stop dangerous problems and changes. Part of this environmentally is ensuring we dont cross planetary boundaries. I think this is all a better approach than utopian style socio economic system solutions. But I could be wrong about that.
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Reed Coray at 11:07 AM on 2 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Bob, I haven't gone away. I apologize for the delay. I've just struggled with the process of bringing up a window into which I can enter a comment. It's only chance I have brought up some windows. I think I've figured out how to do that, so I'll get to the questions as soon as I can.
Let's see if this comment gets inposted.
In my opinion, most people who responded to my comments are missing the point I am trying to make. My point is NOT that the greenhouse effect isn’t real. [I believe the greenhouse effect is real in the sense that gases in the Earth’s atmosphere (called greenhouse gases) will absorb the energy in the infrared radiation (IR) emitted from the Earth’s surface and radiate a portion of that absorbed energy back to the Earth’s surface.] My point is that the claim: “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by trapping heat within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” is a denial of science.
[Note: Any misunderstanding regarding the point I’m trying to make is my fault. I did, after all, post my original comment under the thread “falsifying the greenhouse effect.” I accept responsibility and apologize for any misunderstanding my choice of thread has caused.]
Bob Loblaw wrote (01:05 AM on 31 March, 2025) “Reed Coray's argument is a pig in a poke. He's making a mountain out of a molehill. He's making a federal case out of a trivial issue. He's sweating the small stuff. He's blowing things out of proportion. It's a tempest in a teapot. It's much ado about nothing. He's giving us a song and dance. He's laying it on thick. [Aren't dictionaries fun?]”
[In the spirit of Bob’s question “Aren’t dictionaries fun?” I mention that Bob left out the phrase “his arguments are mouse nuts.” Because of this oversight, I recommend someone buy Bob a new dictionary.]
If atmospheric greenhouse gases can trap heat, then not only is it likely that all of Bob’s characterizations of my argument are appropriate, it’s worse than that--my arguments are flat wrong and can be dismissed out of hand.
If, however as I believe is the case, science says that heat can’t be trapped,
(1) Then the process of “trapping heat” doesn’t and can’t exist.
(2) If the process of “trapping heat” can’t exist, then claiming that something can or will occur as a result of “trapping heat” is a logical fallacy.
(3) Since the claim says that the Earth’s surface is warmed “by trapping heat in the Earrth/Earth-atmosphere system,” the claim contains a logical fallacy.
If the above three-step logic is valid, then any global warming argument that uses the words “trapping heat” to represent a real-world phenomenon is an argument that contains a logical fallacy. No matter how closely the real-world phenomenon agrees with the meaning of “trapping heat,” the use of the phrase “trapping heat” is a logical fallacy The magnitude of the logical fallacy may play a minor role in determining the amount of temperature change the real-world process that is called “trapping heat” can cause, but no matter how small a logical fallacy is, it is still a logical fallacy.
The SkS blog (a) implies that when discussing AGW, “denying science” is bad, and (b) claims that one technique used to “deny science” is to employ arguments that contain one or more logical fallacies. Thus, anyone who employs a logical fallacy is denying science.
If the AGW community encourages people to point out skeptic arguments that deny science, shouldn’t the skeptic community encourage people to point out AGW arguments that deny science--no matter how insignificant that denial is (e.g., pig in a poke, making a mountain out of a molehill, making a federal case out of a trivial issue, sweating the small stuff, blowing things out of proportion, tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing, giving a song and dance, and worrying about mouse nut)?. The phrase I think that applies to the above is: “What’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.” Bob, would you check to see if see if that phrase is in your dictionary?
To end this comment, I pose six questions to all who are interested in this topic.
(1) Does science preclude the existence of “trapped heat?” Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
(2) Does the fact that “trapped heat” can’t exist, prohibit “trapping heat?” Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
(3) If “trapping heat” can’t exist, does the use of “trapping heat” in an argument mean the argument contains a logical fallacy? Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
(4) Does the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by ‘trapping heat’ within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” use the phrase “trapping heat?” Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
(5) Does the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by ‘trapping heat’ within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” contain a logical fallacy? Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
(6) Does the fact that the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by ‘trapping heat’ within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” contains a logical fallacy imply a denial of science? Yes or No. If “No,” I’m interested in knowing the rationale behind your “No” answer.
If you reach this point in this comment with all “Yes” answers, then we are in agreement—the claim “The presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface by trapping heat within the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system” is a denial of science.
If you reach this point with one or more “No” answers, then we have identified the issue (or issues) that are worthy of further discussion.
Thank you for your time.Moderator Response:[BL] Adding a moderators note here - not for any issues related to the Comments Policy, but for assistance in navigating the web site.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:12 AM on 2 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
nigelj,
I agree that we substantially agree. One question I have is what would be the ways to transition from what has developed – nearly 9 billion with a very inequitable distribution of harmfulness and wealth plus total impacts that are well beyond being sustainable - to 2 billion living as you see being a sustainable future?
I will also clarify my perspective. (As an engineer with an MBA this is like the way I deal with an engineering/business challenge):
- What is the desired objective? All of humanity equitably (not equally) living Sustainably (into the very far future).
- What is the starting point? Really important to understand that the current developed reality is very unsustainable, grossly inequitable, and in many ways getting worse (global warming and climate change impacts are getting worse until ghg levels, not just CO2, stop increasing)
- What are the ways to help achieve the urgently required transition from the current developed very harmful unsustainable reality to humanity collectively equitably living sustainably for the millions of years this amazing planet could be lived on? (A related understanding: Humanity should not spread beyond this planet until this is figured out).
Specifically regarding a Sustainable Global Population:
- Any ‘total global population’ up to 9.5 billion can be sustainable. It is simply a matter of keeping the sum of everybody’s impacts below the sustainable limits (the planetary boundaries and regional impact limits).
- There can be a diversity of ways to live within that total equitable sustainable population.
- People who are more fortunate should be required to set the examples of ways to live less harmfully and more helpfully (live more sustainably) for Others to aspire to develop towards. Everyone less fortunate should be able to develop to the more fortunate ways of living without compromising the sustainable total impact.
Regarding the corrections required related to global warming and climate change impacts:
- It is unacceptable for there to be significant differences of the amount of harm that people benefit from.
- Peer pressure will be required to ensure that all of the most fortunate compete to be ‘least harmful and most helpful to Others’ (having the evidence rationally prove things – Do not just accept proclamations that a person’s actions are less harmful and more helpful – No more Carbon Offset scams).
- Without effective evidence-based peer pressure it is unlikely that sustainable living will develop as rapidly as is required to responsibly limit the harm done by currently developed unsustainable activities like fossil fuel use.
That perspective allows, and should encourage, improvements through scientific investigation and development of technological improvements ‘governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others’.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:14 AM on 2 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
MAR @ 192:
Unless Reed Caray returns to the discussion to clarify his position, we can only guess as to what he really means by any of that verbiage. As it is, it is mostly word salad.
Adiabatic processes in the atmosphere relate to air rising or descending, where pressure changes lead to temperature changes without the addition or removal of heat. The temperature change is the result of doing work (rising air parcel expands in volume, pushing other air out of the way to do so), or having work done on it (descending air is surrounded by air at higher pressure, which compresses it).
"Adiabatic" and "can't trap heat" may be garbled in Reed Coray's mind.
Googling for "adiabatic wall" finds the term in use in situations of high velocity aerodynamics, but that has nothing to do with earth/atmosphere dynamics.
Googling for "adiabatic wall Reed Coray" finds hits at WUWT and JoNova's web site, including comments that resemble his comments here. (I won't provide links - if you want to see them, ask Da Google.)
My guess is that Reed Coray does not accept that human emissions of CO2 are leading to increased global surface temperatures. My guess is that his arguments only make sense to the regular denizens of places such as WUWT and JoNova.
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MA Rodger at 19:39 PM on 1 April 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Dikran Marsupial @191,
Despite all the words employed @180/182, the commenter Reed Coray does manage to avoid making clear if he/she agrees that adding GHGs will cause warming. Substantial doubt is also presented by saying "when gases are added ... Earth's surface temperature ... may go up or down" and that "your theoretical argument is nonsense ... if your theoretical estimate of Earth surface warming requires the existence of trapped heat."In my understanding, the pedantic objection to use of the term "heat" and the term "trapped heat" is entirely wrong. "Heat" is not a word which physics uses 'quantitavely' but it simply describes “the quality of being ho, of having htigh temperature.” And the greenhouse gas process does thus evidently "trap heat" in that the escape of energy (which would prevent the elevation of surface temperature) is a physical mechanism. Surface IR which would otherwise shoot off into space is "trapped" by the GHGs which itself shoots-off IR. And that GHG-emitted IR will itself be "trapped" by GHG, a "trapping" process which will exist until the emitted IR is clear of enough GHG to have a clear shot out to space.
I noted the term "adiabatic wall" used @180 (not one I recall ever being used during any thermodynamics lecture I ever attended). Pedanticly the term is misused as it would not cause a planet to "heat" as it prevents all energy flows in both directions.
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nigelj at 06:19 AM on 1 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
OPOF @17, good information. I will expand on what Im getting at. A very strict definition of sustainability - and being in perfect harmony with nature — means we would have to live like hunter gatherers or as close as possible. Ive seen an expert promote this. This means abandoning most industrial goods, huge reductions in energy use, stopping of all mining and abandoning of capitalism for some sort of shared ownership and adopting something like a strict form of organic farming. It would certainly require a global population towards the lower end of estimates of 500 million.
Such a thing would certainly be in perfect harmony with nature or very close, and would have a somewhat smaller environmental footprint, but it doesn't look practical or necessary to me and would be hard to live with and is unlikely to be adopted.
Theres a sensible compromise solution probably around a global population of around 2 billion, renewable energy, and a moderate reduction in levels of consumption, the use of walkable cities and modestly sized homes, etc. This will still have quite a large environmental footprint and resource shortages may eventually emerge but I would argue its capable of being sustained for a long time with minimum environmental damage. I think we just have to be sure we dont cause some sort of mass extinction or dangerous changes like the decline of pollinating insects. It's all still asking a lot of people. Evan made some good points on this.
In practical terms your preferred version of living sustainable living does seem roughly similar to mine anyway. So Im just sharing a perspective on the issue, not really arguing against you or your sources.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:21 AM on 1 April 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
Evan and nigelj,
Regarding a sustainable total global population.
I will try to connect my comment to the problem of misleading marketing by people who want to benefit from harmful fossil fuel use.
I agree that ‘capitalism’ is not the problem. The problem is ‘capitalism’ and other -isms not being effectively governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. However, the capitalist systems do have the ‘problematic need’ for growth from increased population.
My understanding, based on a diversity of expert evaluations, is that many more than 80 million people can live sustainably on this amazing planet. The Wikipedia item for Sustainable Population is helpful. It includes the following: “Estimates [for a sustainable human population of Earth] vary widely, with estimates based on different figures ranging from 0.65 billion people [8 x 80 million] to 9.8 billion [almost 2 x 5 billion], with 8 billion people being a typical estimate.” Admittedly, some people would enjoy compromising what is considered to be acceptable ways of living so that fewer people can enjoy being more harmful than they ‘need to be’ (as long as they are among the fewer living that way).
The massive range of results summarized in the Wikipedia presentation is understandably largely due to ‘different ways of living’ being the basis for the different evaluations – which leads to the following question:
Should developed ways of living that require a reduction of the total population for those ways of living to be sustainably aspired to, and developed towards, be considered to be ‘superior or advanced ways of living’?
Desires for ‘less sustainable, more harmful, ways of living’ being manufactured by the actions of people competing for perceptions of superiority is a serious problem. It is particularly challenging to solve that problem while justifiably respecting the freedom of each person to believe and do as they please.
That leads to understanding that ‘personal vehicle driven urban sprawl development’ would mean a ‘lower sustainable total population’ than ‘more walkable higher density urban development with effective public transportation’ (refer to the recent SkS posting “Do Americans really want urban sprawl?”). Also, ‘modern rural living’ (with significant personal vehicle use to ‘enjoy life’) means an even lower total sustainable population.
In many regions of the planet capitalism appears to have manufactured/ developed desires and aspirations that are contrary to ‘more sustainable ways of living’ (that aligns with the quote shared by prove we are smart @7). A lack of responsible governing to develop sustainable improvements of ways of living, ways that would allow a larger number of people to enjoy living that way, is the problem.
The Planetary Boundaries evaluation by the Stockholm Resiliency Centre indicates that the current developed total impacts of the total global population significantly exceed many measures of sustainability. An obvious understanding is that reducing the number of less harmful people will not solve the current developed problem. The number of ‘most harmful people’ needs to be reduced. More harmful, less sustainable, ways of living and obtaining benefit need to be corrected or be justifiably restricted to benefit only the people who ‘legitimately need to temporarily benefit from more harmful actions’.
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Dikran Marsupial at 22:32 PM on 31 March 2025Greenhouse effect has been falsified
Reed Coray You write "heat cannot be trapped". Would you complain if you heard someone claiming that "blankets trap heat, so you feel warmer under a blanket"? How about someone that says a thermos flask traps heat and keeps my tea warm for longer?
Most would regard such a complaint to be unhelpful pedantry. It is not an unreasonable way of looking at it. The air under the blanket absorbs some of the heat from your body and returns it via condiction and radiation. The blanket prevents convection - it "traps" the air, and hence "traps" the heat with it.
Note that even in physics terminology is used "incorrectly". For instance in thermodynamics, heat does not actually "flow" - that is just a metaphor (a remenant from caloric theory?). Does that cause problems for physicists? No, because they know that bidirectional transfers of energy appear to us as a "flow" of heat because we generally only observe the overall outcome.
Pedantry is rarely useful - better to look for the value in analogies and metaphors, and gradually work towards understanding the physics directly as your frame of reference exapnds.
Direct question for Reed Coray: Do you agree with the physics of the enhanced greenhouse effect, that have been well understood by physicists for over a century? "Yes" or "No" - if "no" then demonstrate excatly where the theory is incorrect.
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Evan at 20:28 PM on 31 March 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
Eric@15, agree that climate response is not constant and that we need to consider long-term effects. However, my understanding from James Hansen is that the long-term climate sensitivity is higher than the commonly accepted value of 3, not lower (read here). An ECS value of 3 is bad enough. Higher values associated with longer-term feedbacks don't improve the picture.
But my point is this. Through the effect of Milankovitch cycles, the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter trigger complex feedback processes that cause CO2 to vary about 100 ppm over 100,000-year cycles (i.e., ice-age cycles). This results in sea level changes of 400 ft. This suggests that our biosphere is in a very delicate balance. Given that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been 300 ppm or lower for 100's of thousands of years, given that CO2 is currently at 420 ppm and increasing at a rate of 2.5 ppm/year suggests we are in deep trouble. All of this discussion of proxies and whether we should use TCS or ECS seems to me to be a distraction from the central point that we are actively pushing nature way, way out of balance.
And we keep pushing.
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Eric (skeptic) at 13:26 PM on 31 March 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
Thanks Evan for #11, I see your point. However my understanding is that climate sensitivity is not constant. This paper dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/358482/1.pdf?sequence=1 shows most of the factors affecting climate sensitivity in fig 1. The pertinent ones are decade time frames since we are comparing decades of human-created CO2 to past natural rises in CO2. Also we need to consider TCR rather than ECS with all the long term feedbacks: www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog_held/3-transient-vs-equilibrium-climate-responses/ In short, variations in dust, vegetation and carbon cycle between the current time and the Eemian could result in a different transient or equilibrium climate sensivity.
That may make it difficult to compare the current rise in CO2 and Eemian (and prior) rates of rise in CO2 as proxies for rates of temperature rise. However getting back to nigelj #5, reiterated in #12, the rise from the LGM to the present (the chart linked by OPOF) that makes the present magnitude and rate unique in 24k years.
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nigelj at 07:00 AM on 31 March 2025Climate skeptics have new favorite graph; it shows the opposite of what they claim
Evan @ 9, agreed. We would have to live very simply with little technology, and with a very small global population to be truly in harmony with nature. However I dont believe we have to be in perfect harmony with nature. We just have to ensure we aren't causing massive problems like climate change, the decline of pollinating insects, toxic pollution, needless waste, extravagant consumption levels like living in exceesively large homes. Sudies suggest an optimal global population is around 2 - 5 billion. Its all a compromise, but I'm ok with the fact its a compromise solution. Utopian solutions don't work anyway.
