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Evan at 22:28 PM on 17 February 2025No, renewables don't need expensive backup power on today's grids
Very informative article with lots of good talking points to use with your cranky uncle!
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michael sweet at 08:33 AM on 17 February 2025Sabin 33 #15 - Does EM radiation from wind turbines pose a threat to human health?
Wind turbines are mounted on towers hundreds of feet tall. If the field is background at 6 meters it would not be measurable on the ground.
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TWFA at 03:55 AM on 17 February 2025Fact brief - Is sea level rise exaggerated?
If we
[snip]
are the only reason sea levels are rising, please explain:
![Global mean sea level anomalies (mm; blue) and carbon emitted (millions of tonnes; red) since the early 19th century. Reproduced from Fig. 4.1 of Curry (2018). [Sea level from Jevrejeva et al. (2014), carbon from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC, 2014)].](https://oneillp.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image.png "Sea Levels vs Emissions")
Global mean sea level anomalies (mm; blue) and carbon emitted (millions of tonnes; red) since the early 19th century. Reproduced from Fig. 4.1 of Curry (2018). [Sea level from Jevrejeva et al. (2014), carbon from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC, 2014)].
Going back another century on sea levels with the same Jevrejeva data, instead of cutting it off at 1800 like most do for dramatic effect:
We see the sea levels were falling prior to the mid-18th century and came to a halt right about the time of the Boston Tea Party. Assuming the 46 tons of tea dumped overboard would make no difference in net displacement, and some other human forcing was required to overcome natural cycles and thermal inertia, what were we doing from, say, 1600 to 1750 to arrest the presumably naturally falling sea levels, bring them to a halt and then begin to raise them back up again by 1800, a century before our emissions amounted to anything?
Just curious, the engine of science is skepticism and this site encourages it, right?
Moderator Response:[BL] You were given a final warning on this thread, reminding you that until you went back to complete unfinished business on this thread you would not be allowed to post to any new threads.
Since you have not heeded that advice, we will now impose our own solution to your continued violations of the comments policy. No further posts from you will be allowed on any threads.
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Doug Bostrom at 03:45 AM on 17 February 2025Sabin 33 #15 - Does EM radiation from wind turbines pose a threat to human health?
These concerns remind me of a time when a firm I worked with was dealing with a person complaining about their "electromagnetic sensitivity" being triggered by a wireless data relay site near their home.
The complaining party was communicating with us via their cellphone. Cellphones employ a range of frequencies spanning the band employed by the data network in question. Their EMF exposure from their phone was orders of magnitude higher than exposure from our network.
We didn't bother trying to explain the implications of these facts as rationality was not part of the picture we were seeing and dealing with. As with the situation of wind turbines.
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David-acct at 11:02 AM on 16 February 2025Sabin 33 #15 - Does EM radiation from wind turbines pose a threat to human health?
Quite a few studies provide much better context of wind turbine noise than the SK rebuttal article.
[snip]
Much is made in the article of A/C's, refrigerators, etc producing higher noise levels, Two key points are omitted.A/c's and refrigerators operate at only a fraction of the time of windturbines ie 24/7/365
newer fridges operate at 32-40 dbs.
windmills dbs are inaddition to other noises, so 40-40dbs for the windmill 24/7 plus the fridge, plus the ac with run 1/3 to 1/5 the time vs all the time.
Context is important so that you are confused.
Its both the decibel level and frequency that matters, not just the decibel level.Incomplete and partial information will lead to erroneous assumptions and impresssions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122006852
todayshomeowner.com/eco-friendly/guides/how-loud-are-wind-turbines/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122006852
https://todayshomeowner.com/eco-friendly/guides/how-loud-are-wind-turbines/
Moderator Response:[BL] The article you are commenting on does not refer to noise. It refers to Electromagnetic Radiation. As a result, your comment is off-topic.
You've been participating here long enough to know that there is a Comments Policy. The first bullet point in that policy is:
- All comments must be on topic. Comments are on topic if they draw attention to possible errors of fact or interpretation in the main article, of if they discuss the immediate implications of the facts discussed in the main article. However, general discussions of Global Warming not explicitly related to the details of the main article are always off topic. Moderation complaints are always off topic and will be deleted
There are blog posts here at SkS where noise from wind turbines is discussed. You can find them if you make the effort to use the Search box.
The second bullet point in the Comments Policy states (emphasis added):
- Make comments in the most appropriate thread. Some comments, while strictly on topic, may relate to issues discussed in more detail in some other thread. Extended discussion of those points should be carried out in the more appropriate thread, with link backs to reference the discussion as needed. Moderator's directions to move discussion to a more appropriate thread should always be followed.
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John Hartz at 08:19 AM on 13 February 2025Antarctica is gaining ice
Suggested supplemental reading:
Introductory text:
"Social media posts sharing a graphic comparing sea ice levels in the Antarctic on the same date 45 years apart misrepresent the data to suggest climate change is a hoax.The graphic, opens new tab depicts two authentic maps of the continent from the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), one labelled as 'Sea Ice Extent, 24 Dec 1979' and the other 'Sea Ice Extent, 24 Dec 2024,' with white regions indicating sea ice.
'Antarctic sea ice extent is 17% higher today than it was in 1979. Ice doesn’t lie, but climate scientists do,' the text reads."
Verdict:
"Misleading. The posts cherry-pick specific dates that misrepresent Antarctic sea ice trends and ice dynamics that are influenced by multiple factors beyond global warming."by Staff, Reuters Fact Check, Feb 11, 2025
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nigelj at 16:16 PM on 12 February 2025Climate Adam: Is it Game Over for the 1.5 Degree Climate Limit?
From yale.edu: “The world is set to blow past its goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, new research shows.
“Last year was the first to measure roughly 1.5 degrees warmer than the preindustrial era, though the world has not yet officially surpassed the 1.5-degree target set forth in the Paris Agreement, which will be judged according to the average temperature over 20 years. But with emissions hitting new highs, this target is almost certainly out of reach, according to two new papers published in Nature Climate Change.
“Scientists used modeling to show that just one year at 1.5 degrees C likely heralds a future breaching of the Paris goal. The papers suggest that last year’s record temperatures mean world will probably exceed the 1.5-degree threshold over the next 20 years.”
e360.yale.edu/digest/1.5-goal-threshold-research
www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02247-8
www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02246-9
I copied and pasted all this from a comment over at RC by SA. I don't think the author would mind.
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nigelj at 07:13 AM on 12 February 2025Climate Adam: Is it Game Over for the 1.5 Degree Climate Limit?
Napalm doesnt look like a great idea for backing up renewables. Napalm is a mixture of petrol or diesel and a gelling agent and burns much hotter than petrol. But its not providing more energy than petrol would just by adding a gelling agent. I assume it burns hotter but not for as long as petrol (?) so has no advantage in power as a fuel source for generating electricity. And dealing with that high temperature and flammability would be a nightmare.
Its also higher carbon than gas fired backup power so its even worse for the climate. It looks like it would be higher cost than petrol or diesel, due to the manufacturing process.
Napalm might have more stable availability than gas, but this looks like it would be negated by the downsides. I just think its a classic example of a crank solution, where people see "higher temperatures" but fail to look at all the related issues.
Moderator Response:[BL] Please, let's drop the napalm stories. It's not really something that smells all that great in the morning...
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michael sweet at 05:38 AM on 12 February 2025Climate Adam: Is it Game Over for the 1.5 Degree Climate Limit?
Red Rose:
Do you realize you are proposing to replace fossil fuels with napalm when napalm is also a fossil fuel? It is tough to lower carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning using a more refined and energy intensive fossil fuel. Good luck!
Buy solar panels instead.
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wilddouglascounty at 01:09 AM on 12 February 2025Climate Adam: Is it Game Over for the 1.5 Degree Climate Limit?
RedRose,
Your suggestion is potentially very dangerous and risky for anyone to try, particularly in an indoor environment due to the extreme deoxygenation and carbon monoxide properties of burning napalm in an enclosed room. Why didn't you mention that in conjunction with your very dangerous experiments and when talking about it being used in warzones by people with no other alternatives? People could die playing with your fire, even if they are far enough away from the burning napalm to not get burned. For a hint of napalm's dangers, check out https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK537127/
It might be worth considering removing your comment, or at least removing your careless experimenting with it from your comment.
Moderator Response:[BL] RedRose's comment has been edited, courtesy of your local moderator...
For all readers, please do not try burning napalm at home. Or at work. Or anywhere else, for that matter,.
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RedRoseAndy at 19:08 PM on 11 February 2025Climate Adam: Is it Game Over for the 1.5 Degree Climate Limit?
I have recently written to the UK Prime Minister:
Dear Sir Keir Starmer
Enhanced Napalm EnergyWind and solar leave our power grids particularly vulnerable to surging energy bills due to spikes in the price of gas. We need a cheap steady source of energy that is not gas and I have just the thing.
Napalm burns at temperatures ranging from 800 to 1,200 °C (1,470 to 2,190 °F) whereas
Petrol burns at 280 °C (536 °F)[snip]
While the chemical structure of napalm is complicated it is easy to make, one part polystyrene to two parts petrol. I experimented as a school boy and found just one small sphere of polystyrene with a little petrol in an ash tray heated our sitting room to such a degree that clothes had to be taken off until the room gradually cooled. Each ash tray could only be used once, I did think to test this. I got a team to help a lady in Canada whose heating had failed during winter. She had to keep warm and not sleep for ten days, and we kept her talking and heated by napalm. Fortunately the lady had enough ash trays, or I would have had to find out how many times a saucepan could be used before failing. Another contact, from the Ukraine this time, again in an online newspaper asked about heating, and napalm in saucepans (ten times only) is now used all over war-torn Ukraine. Because napalm burns at much higher temperatures lower quantities of fuel could be used in converted fossil fuel power stations to create cleaner energy for times when renewable energy is in short supply, even with back up batteries. The Soviet Union added various chemicals to the napalm that each multiplied each others burning temperatures, to get up to the heat of a nuclear explosion, 100 million degrees Celsius, so this could replace the forever twenty years away dreams of fusion energy, and much more cheaply. Reports suggest that it has been used by Russia in the Ukraine war. Napalm was invented as a weapon, now we can use it for peace time energy, turning swords into ploughshares.
All the infrastructure is already in place to generate electricity in this way, we just need to convert are fossil and nuclear power stations, which is cheaper than building new.
It would not be possible for me to get the kind of security I need in order to produce Enhanced Napalm, but the government can form a team of chemists to let you know what the additives are.Moderator Response:[BL] While sending letters to your Prime Minister to urge action on climate change is a good idea, burning napalm at home does not seem like such a good idea.
And burning napalm at home is certainly off-topic for this thread. The video does not look at anything remotely related to the contents of your letter.
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Jim Hunt at 16:24 PM on 11 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
In related news the air temperature at the North Pole rose above zero degrees Celsius for several hours on February 2nd:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2025/02/facts-about-the-arctic-in-february-2025/
Huge waves north of Svalbard pushed back the sea ice edge on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean:
Sea ice extent is only just starting to recover from the shock:
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:00 AM on 11 February 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #06
The first two articles in this week’s Climate Policy and Politics category are cause for significant concern, but should not be a surprise.
A related ‘non-surprise’ is the Feb 7, 2025, NPR item 'Unprecedented': White House moves to control science funding worry researchers. This is not really ‘unprecedented’. It is just current day actions in the endless attacks on learning by anti-progress groups.
Anti-progress, anti-learning, groups have a history of opposing ‘learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others’. They attack ‘science/learning that they dislike’ because developing and maintaining support and excuses for their desired beliefs requires reduced awareness and the promotion of misunderstandings.
Learning is understandably biased towards progressive improvements that challenge many developed beliefs and interests. Prolonging the popularity of understandably harmful misunderstandings requires control over what is learned.
Efforts to limit understanding of the harm done by desired actions (and lack of actions) include dictating what is learned. That is not a new tactic. It wasn’t even new in 2017. Earlier examples of attacks on ‘increased awareness and improved understanding that challenge harmful misunderstandings’ include the Canadian Government’s War on Science. (internet search: Harper or Canadian Government War on Science). The following ‘search find’, among many, is a detailed description of the fundamentals of that pre-2017 War on Science that is still relevant today regarding wars on learning around the world, not just Canada back Then (and it is titled with an incisive protest punchline):
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nigelj at 05:45 AM on 7 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes @8
Sorry I misinterpreted your reference to global climate finance flows. IMO it does look like the world may have spent very roughly 20 trillion on climate mitigation since the 1990s. However the moderators comments on the global finance flows issue certainly is a concern I also have. And none of this validates your claim that governments response to the climate issue is not weak.
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nigelj at 05:24 AM on 7 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes @8
You claimed @ 5 that global spending on climate mitigation was $20 trillion since the 1990s. None of the information you have provided in your comment @ 8 substantiates that.
You now claim that global spending on climate mitigation is about 2 trillion per year and global military spending per year is 2 trillion. This does not demonstrate that globally government spending on climate mitigation is strong. Many people would claim that what countries spend on the military is too weak. Its all subjective.
You have to measure the strength of the government climate response against the required goals and the required spending as I outlined previously. By that measure governments response to the climate problem is weak. Sorry if you cant see that.
Your claims about EVs not being a solution to the climate problem and that hybrids are better (paraphrasing) are simply assertions with no hard evidence or links provided.
You said @7 "Cars are getting heavier, while an EU study years ago proved that the CO2 reduction goals in transport set for 2050, could be achieved TODAY, by just reducing each vehicle weight 10%. But vehicles are getting heaver and heavier. This is a trend of more than 30 years."
No link provided. I googled this information and the only reference that came up is your own comment on this website. People wont believe the study exists unless you can provide a link. And we need to see the study for full information and context of exactly what they are assuming and measuring.
Regarding your comments on the weight of ICE cars. Reducing the weight of ICE cars by 10% might help a bit but it only reduces emissions about 10% so something better is needed such as EVs. They are zero emissions (after about 50,000 kms to allow for manufacturing emissions). Hybrids are better than ICE vehicles but they are definitely not zero emissions no matter how sophisticated the technology. And sophisticated hybrid technology costs a lot of money. So your anti EV rhetoric and promotion of hybrids as a better solution is not that persuasive to me.
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Evan at 02:05 AM on 7 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes&8
Thanks for providing more supporting information.
However, I am still not sure what you are trying to say. Are you saying that you don't think there is a climate emergency? Please give a clear indication of your position and a concise reason for your position. Here is the evidence that I point to indicating that we are in a climate emergency.
Currently atmospheric CO2 concentrations are increasing, on average, about 2.5 ppm/year. There are many sites that report this, such as the NOAA site.
CO2 increasing at this rate indicates a climate emergency. You don't need to look any further than this statistic.
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PericoDelosPalotes at 00:40 AM on 7 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
Afternoon,
I shall stick to replying to your questions as an assurance of following an on-topic conversation.
Glad to provide more data regarding the global cumulative expenditure and to put it into perspective
Here links for the ball park estimation:
https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-a-decade-of-data/
https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2024/
https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2021/Sector Approx. Annual Budget
U.S. Federal Discretionary Budget ~$2 trillion
Global Energy Investments ~$2.8 trillion
Global Military Spending ~$2.2 trillion
Global R&D Spending ~$2.4 trillion
European Healthcare Spending ~$2–2.5 trillion
Global AI/IT Spending (Cloud, AI, Cybers.) ~$2 trillion (forecasted)Summary of the above and framing:
Current global Climate Change expenditure is in par with Energy investment or Military one GLOBALLY (around 2Trillion USD yearly).
Still, all the policies applied, the technologies developed and the actionables all row in the opposite direction (and I refer you to read the list of examples I provided in my previous post considered as unsupported barrage) to What I would consider aiming at the solving of an URGENT RISK.
I have been designing EV powertrains for over a decade in major Car OEMs, I know the reality of the technology from the
Horses mouth, I am not coming from watching a few denialist documentaries in YouTube.2T USD budget is big words: only met by a few global sectors, economies or entities that can operate in that scale. Any Enterprise with that budget and such poor results would need a proper investigation or enquiry.
It is not that the climate change government policies has been weak, its even worse, they have been strong but in the opposite direction.
With due respect...maybe, there is a solid reason for people to be skeptical about Climate Change and policies applied.
Moderator Response:[BL] Responding to questions that were asked as the result of an off-topic comment does not magically make the response on-topic. The topic of this blog post is recent temperature records, not climate financing.
Unfortunately, since it is still very difficult to understand what point you are trying to make, it is difficult to point you to a thread where your comments would be on-topic.
In the moderation comment on your comment #5, you were told you need to provide references when you post claims such as "20 trillion dollars". The full context of your quote was [emphasis added] " we can conservative estimate around 20trillion USD has been invested in green policies." You have now provided some links, but:
- The links point to summaries of reports, and you have not given any indication where on those web pages (or the reports) you have obtained numbers.
- By doing this, you are forcing others to try to look for something on those pages (or reports) that might coincide with the numbers you claim.
- This is unacceptable in an environment that expects genuine discussion.
- What you should be doing is giving explicit indications of which part of a web page or report you are looking at, and how you used that to derive the interpretation you are presenting. Provide information regarding the sections, figures, tables, etc. that you want people to see.
- After presenting your total in comment 5 as "investing in green policies", you are now using the term "Current global Climate Change expenditure".
- The web pages you link to use the term "Global Climate Finance".
- It is not readily apparent just exactly how that organization defines that term, and to determine this probably requires downloading the full reports and looking at their methodology.
- Using different terms at different times, without defining those terms, just adds to the confusion.
- Unless you can explain what those terms mean, quoting numbers remains meaningless.
With due respect, your closing comment that "...maybe, there is a solid reason for people to be skeptical about Climate Change and policies applied." suggests that you are not very clear in your own mind of the difference between climate science (the physics of climate and how we expect climate to change due to increasing CO2) and policy responses to that science.
Please try to do better. You need to be far more explicit with respect to what claim you are discussing, what you don't agree with, and what evidence you want people to pay attention to.
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prove we are smart at 21:37 PM on 6 February 2025The fossil fuel industry spent $219 million to elect the new U.S. government
The Corporate States Of America are in for the best of times under their quid pro quo inhuman Trumps government. The legal lobbying and dark money influence is certainly prevalent here in Australia too and do research to remain cognitive- enjoy these aussie guys, they usually make me laugh and think.www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBqVVBUdW84
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nigelj at 08:52 AM on 6 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes @6
Some of your comments seem interesting and valid, but some sound wrong and some are unsupported assertions, and some are off topic. I dont have time to address them all. I will only respond to those points that were directly in response to my previous comment:
You said "Saying governments are captured by lobbies it is a really huge implication. We are talking industry, research, universities, education, investors, enterpreneurs, doctors, engineers...are they all captured by the fossil fuel lobby?"
Investors and entrepreneurs and doctors for example are not really part of government, or at least not significantly, so they dont seem relevant to my point. The government does run a public education system and fossil fuels lobby has attempted to influence public education. One example of many:
"Miseducation”: How Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Push Climate Denialism to Kids in U.S. Schools"
www.democracynow.org/2021/11/19/katie_worth_climate_education_investigative_reporting
You said: "Saying "weak government polices" it is a bit unnacurate. Since the 90s ( although the bulk came from 2010 onwards), worldwide, we can conservative estimate around 20trillion USD has been invested in green policies. Then on top of that, Industry, in any kind of field, has invested more than that figure in developing technology of any kind..precisely in the opposite direction. That is 40 years of development in the wrong direction, and the cost of opportunity is HUGE. SMOG in many large cities can be traced already to the 80s."
I reiterate that government response to the climate problem in America and most other countries has been weak. Your figure of $20 trillion looks too high and you have provided no calculations or links to back up your assertion or numbers as a reference point. However lets assume $20 trillion correct for the sake of argument. Its estimated that mitigating climate change properly would cost 3% of global gdp each year (Stern Report for example) and global gdp has been about $85 trillion on average in recent decades which is mitigation of about $2.5 trillion per year. $20 trillion spent over the last 30 years is about 0.6 trillion per year well below what is required and is mostly driven by government policies, therefore it is weak. It is certainly weaker than is required.
We also know governments climate policies have been weak because emissions are still growing robustly and atmospheric CO2 has not slowed or levelled off or fallen. This is the ultimate and undeniable reference point.
Global gdp data:
www.statista.com/statistics/268750/global-gross-domestic-product-gdp/
You say: "Saying "weak government polices" it is a bit unnacurate (implying government has taken strong actions), " followed later by saying that "You can measure reality not by words but by actions, and after 40 years of words that doesnt match actions...maybe...just maybe... something is off" which is all completely contradictory. You cant claim government is strong on climate change, and also effectively claim that government action has been weak. But thank's for your comments.
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Evan at 21:21 PM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes@5
Your barrage of comments is now far off topic from the article. I don't have time to respond to your comments. If you want to continue the discussion, please be more focused and pick a couple of things to discuss.
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PericoDelosPalotes at 18:57 PM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
Morning,
Saying governments are captured by lobbies it is a really huge implication. We are talking industry, research, universities, education, investors, enterpreneurs, doctors, engineers...are they all captured by the fossil fuel lobby?Saying "weak government polices" it is a bit unnacurate. Since the 90s ( although the bulk came from 2010 onwards), worldwide, we can conservative estimate around 20trillion USD has been invested in green policies. Then on top of that, Industry, in any kind of field, has invested more than that figure in developing technology of any kind..precisely in the opposite direction. That is 40 years of development in the wrong direction, and the cost of opportunity is HUGE. SMOG in many large cities can be traced already to the 80s.
Stating the patient does nothing out of doctor advices, doesnt seems like a good example.Transport:
Cars are getting heavier, while an EU study years ago proved that the CO2 reduction goals in transport set for 2050, could be achieved TODAY, by just reducing each vehicle weight 10%. But vehicles are getting heaver and heavier. This is a trend of more than 30 years.
Hybrid cars should have been of the serial-hybrid architecture since the 90s, rather than:
a) pushing for EVs ( poor decision)
b) developing micro-hybrid useless (absolute trash)
c) developing parallel hybrid (even a prius who is an example of durability has level of complexities never seen, like having 3 electric motors)
A series-hybrid would have allowed for a very small combustion engine, ultra efficient, ultra easy to repair, same engine across many many cars and platforms, with way less moving parts, way easy on emmisions, fine tuned like a race car engine. An Idling engine just sitting there like a power generator. All without the need even for the coming of Lithium batteries. The implications (differences) are HUGE. This is no joke, we are talking a decission that could have changed where we are today massively.
Electricity generation: pushing for Solar, wind etc as if they could ever be just no more than marginal actors in most of the cases. While banning and jeopardizing Nuclear power development. We could have developed for the last 40 years thorium or simialr nuclear plants. Instead we have stick with old submarine technology from the 50s while at the same time promoting an agenda of closing them off. Now we have AI technology so electrical power hungry that they are now requiring mini nuclear plants. Its ridicolous. We just shoot ourselfes in the foot over and over and over.
Logistics: We trade everyithing, produce everything from Low income countries, that they use slave labour, children, concentration camps labour...the list can go on and on and on. Rather than local manufacturing. I watched a documentary about a lorry driver that has to deliver doughnouts from up in Scotland in the UK to Koln in Germany. REALLY?? nobody in Koln can make "doughnouts". We are not talking about 4nanometer microchips... just flour with suggar.
Ukraine war result? rather than cheap gas from Russia, so we can have energy in Europe, to develop new technologies, hopefully greener. Now we have the same gas from Russia but through many more intermediaries, through longer, more expensive and more polluting routes than just receiving them through a pipeline. And more expensive. Or even worse, being broguth cross Atlantic from the USA. That is SUPER GREEN.Recylcing policies? another joke, but a joke that has costed 40 years of effort. Its got its opportunity cost lost.
And I can keep listing for hours wrong decisions, policies and the likes.
None of them points out to any short of sense of urgency. Even worse, is not that the patient doesnt take doctors advice, the patient has done A LOT, A LOT. All in the wrong direction.
You cannot be wrong in all, all the time, in all aspects for that long.
You can measure reality not by words but by actions, and after 40 years of words that doesnt match actions...maybe...just maybe... something is off.Moderator Response:[BL] As is pointed out in the comment that follows yours - most of this is off topic. Your comment violates several aspects of the Comments Policy. Please read that policy before commenting again.
More specifically:
- Your comment is simply a Gish Gallop of unrelated (and unsupported) opinions.
- It is extremely difficult to actually make sense out of what you are saying. You need to make your points succinctly if you want anyone to pay attention to you.
- When you throw out numbers such as "20 trillion USD", you need to provide supporting evidence, such as a link to your sources. Otherwise, people will think you are just making stuff up.
- There are many posts here at Skeptical Science that cover a variety of topics related to misinformation, government action, policies, etc.
- Use the search tool to find appropriate posts.
- Read those posts.
- Then make comments in a clear, on-topic manner.
Again, read the Comments Policy before continuing. There is a link to it above the comment box every time you log on and begin to prepare a comment.
Off-topic comments can and will be subject to moderation - deleting portions of comments, or the entire comment.
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Evan at 06:49 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
As a shoutout to nigelj's comment
"Even losing a few votes can be significant."
Isn't it interesting that political systems are often just as delicately balanced as the biosphere. Whether in politics, personal finance, or the biosphere, success or failure is often determined by seemingly small margins.
Average annual rates of increase of CO2 are 2.5 ppm/year. That is an absolutely massive push on our delicately-balanced biosphere.
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nigelj at 06:21 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes"I dont think governments, who have access to intel data, really see any urgency:"
I wouldnt use weak governmnet climate policies as a guide to the true severity of the climate problem. Those policies are only weak because governmnets have been captured by the fossil fuels lobby, and governments are scared of losing votes by having strong carbon taxes. Even losing a few votes can be significant. Listen to what the scientists say like Evan says.
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Evan at 05:58 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes, not sure what your point is.
People have medical issues and their doctors give them advice on what to do to improve their health. Some people follow the doctor's advice, many do not. Just because people don't follow their doctor's advice does not mean the problem does not exist.
It just means there are other factors that determine how we act than the existence of a single problem, even if it is a really serious problem. Human behavior is not always logical.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:57 AM on 5 February 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05
A supplement to my comment about the misleading Cenovus ad.
When the audio asks “But what if that system suddenly stopped working?” the video makes all the food, reusable bags, and the package disappear. The misleading implication is that other harmful petrochemical developments, like plastics and agrichemical, are essential needs that cannot be obtained by less harmful alternatives.
The ‘collective petrochemical misinformation effort’ is investigated and discussed in items listed in recent SkS Weekly News and Weekly Research.
In the 2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03, the second item in the Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science category “New Study Shows How Fossil Fuel Sectors Create a Climate Denial Echo Chamber on Social Media” is about one of the ‘Open access notables’ on the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3 2025: Networks of climate obstruction: Discourses of denial and delay in US fossil energy, plastic, and agrichemical industries, Kinol et al., PLOS Climate:.
Another New Research ‘notable’ in Week #3, Compartmentalization by industry and government inhibits addressing climate denial, Hendlin & Palazzo, PLOS Climate:, also investigates the way that ‘harmful interests join forces to collectively act for their harmfully obtained collective benefit’.
There is a tragic history of the collective gathering of pursuers of benefit by promoting misunderstandings, not just in business and politics (note how social conservatives and economic conservatives support or excuse each other's misunderstandings). Everybody loses when these (Us against all Others who are not like Us) collectives succeed in their misleading pursuits of perceptions of superiority relative to Others.
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PericoDelosPalotes at 02:44 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
I make you the following question: if C. change is so relevant, how come every single political, industrial and social decision points out in the opposite direction?
I dont think governments, who have access to intel data, really see any urgency:
What is the impact of bringing all from china to europe, who pollutes a lot, rather than producing locally?
We have any short of food available in supermarkets all year anytime, rather than seasonal food.
A new car all the time, a new phone all the time, imposible or difficult to repair appliances, cars, phones, watches, gadgets.
I cannot see a single decision that points me in the direction, WAW THIS IS URGENT!!
All I can say, if the mounts are on fire, and my house is near...i will run. If I am not running..maybe its just a BBQ going on.
Worse, if the ones who shout run, are just selling BBQ supplies... maybe...just maybe something is off.
There are policies for EVs...that doesnt arrive for decades, battery EU legislations that are finally watered donw like the battery directive approved last year..in the end doesnt tackle the battery issue ( to generate a limited ammounts of battery types/packaging, like the standards AA, AAA, C, B).
I could go on for hours numbering wrong decisions being taken since the 90s.
All I can say, if the mounts are on fire, and my house is near...i will run. If I am not running..maybe its just a BBQ going on.Worse, if the ones who shout run, are just selling BBQ supplies... maybe...just maybe something is off.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:43 AM on 4 February 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05
Living in Alberta I witness more evidence of Cenovus supporting and delivering misinformation marketing than is presentation in the Weekly News item “Cenovus Funded 'Grassroots' Groups That Oppose Climate Laws, Document Reveals” by Geoff Dembicki, DeSmog, Jan 30, 2025.
Cenovus has been running a very misleading video and radio ad that it calls “Helping Canada run smoothly” (you can watch it on YouTube).
The Cenovus ad simply asks the question: What would life be like if fossil fuel production stopped? But it makes an ‘irrational step, twist, leap of faith’ to imply that anything that is imagined to be done using fossil fuels cannot be done any other way. And it implies that actions to reduce the harm done by fossil fuel use, including plastic production, will immediately shut it all down.
The video opens with images of a happy family driving home and taking in a parcel left on their sidewalk then heating a tea kettle with natural gas. And the audio begins with “You might not think much about how a strong oil and gas industry affects your daily life.” It then misleadingly calls it all ‘needs’ and uses the terms ‘essential’ and ‘relied on’ for stuff that is understandably not ‘essential to a decent life’ – if you think about it.
The ad is comically misleading by trying to imply that:
- Transportation must be fossil fuelled. Undeniably the family car could have been an EV. But also note that Cenovus is a Calgary-based company. Calgary Public Transit CTrains have been wind powered for decades – CBC 2001 article “City's LRT first in North America to be wind-driven”.
- Parcel delivery can only happen via fossil fuels. There already are EV delivery vehicles.
- Cooking ‘needs’ to be done with natural gas, likely the deadliest and most harmful modern way of cooking.
A particularly comical bit is that the delivered package has the old-style harmful and wasteful Styrofoam peanut packing that very few parcel packers use today.
An obvious misleading implication is that actions like carbon pricing and emissions caps would immediately end fossil fuel use with no possible alternative ways to do the fossil fuelled stuff.
A more important question, unasked in the Cenovus ad, is: What would life be like without governing actions that effectively limit the harm done by pursuers of profit?
Thoughtful consideration of that question would include: How horrible would life be for the less fortunate, and many of the more fortunate, if pursuers of profit were freer to be as harmful as they could be in their pursuit of maximum profit, including being more secretive, deceptive, and misleading?
- Smog and other poisons in the air, but cleaner safer air where the ‘most fortunate’ live.
- Contaminated water, but purer and safer for the ‘most fortunate’.
- Nutrition deficient and deadlier food, but safe and nutritious for the ‘most fortunate’.
- More harmful climate change, but the ‘most fortunate’ living ‘more exclusively’ where it is ‘Better and Safer’ for them.
All of that is understandably the developed reality today. The important question is: Does the future get worse or better for the less fortunate? How does the entire future of humanity become sustainably more fortunate?
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BaerbelW at 16:16 PM on 3 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
nigelj & OPOF
Thanks for your feedback - I updated the link accordingly both for the fact brief and the rebuttal. Given that the fact briefs are per definition "brief", I didn't include the quote with the link, though.
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akb at 06:45 AM on 3 February 2025How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
We can learn a lot from geological history. Supplementing info from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record), we see that the earth today is relatively cool compared the past 500 million years even though recent ice ages were cooler. From plot of temperatures and CO2 levels over history determined by a variety of means, one sees that the temperaure rise is not linear with CO2 concentrations due Beer's law (it gradually flattens but does not turnover and drop). If we have reached peak fossil-fuel use and phase it out over the same time frame (about a century) we used to reach the peak, we will reach about 550 ppm CO2, which the geologic record says corresponds to about a 3 deg C temperature increase. For comparison, dinosaurs lived at about 1500 ppm CO2 and at temperatures 5-9 deg C higher. Creation of the Devonian black shales and Carboniferous coals dropped CO2 from 4000 ppm to something close to present, with a corresponding drop of about 10-12 deg C. One does not need a supercomputer to know approximately where we are headed.
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nigelj at 04:53 AM on 3 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
BaerbelW at 5
Yes the screenshot is a good stop gap measure. And thanks for listening to my point.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:04 AM on 3 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
BaerbelW @4,
Thank you for the clarification. That makes sense.
Also, in addition to linking to a 'highlighted' version of the current linked document, it could be helpful for the write-up of the Fact Brief could be revised as follows to present the specific part of the document like the SkS Rebuttal does:
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as the following quote from this one.
[C]orals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate." (source: Hudson Institute)
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BaerbelW at 18:56 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
nigelj - @1
To address your comment, that the myth statement is admittedly buried in the long text linked to, I created a screenshot version archived via Perma.cc in which the relevant text is highlighted:
Would that do as a stop-gap measure while trying to find another quote?
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BaerbelW at 18:22 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
OPOF @3
Yes, it's not quite the same and the reason for posing a slightly different question is the requirement that a fact brief needs a clear "Yes" or "No" answer, there's no option for "It depends". The latter would have been necessary if we had stuck with the same question as there obviously are winners (few species, often the ones we don't really want to do well) and losers (many species). In addition, a fact brief can only be 150 words long, so that limits the scope of what we can explain within the text.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:33 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
BaerbelW,
The SkS Rebuttal that this Fact Brief relates to presents the Myth it responds to as follows (which is aligned with nigelj’s suggestion):
Animals and plants can adapt
[C]orals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate." (source: Hudson Institute)
That could be presented in the Fact Brief.
However, I have noticed that the SkS Rebuttal that this Fact Brief refers to is called “Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?”, which is not quite the same as “Is global warming promoting biodiversity?”
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:41 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
nigelj @10,
I have reasons to disagree regarding greed and self-interest being ‘ human nature that is unlikely to change’.
I will start by presenting an important perspective on economic development (aligned with the understanding presented in the 2012 book “Why Nations Fail”).
A competitive marketplace (of products, services, ideas, science, politics...) can develop amazing improvements. That is the positive-sum game (vs. zero-sum game) potential of marketplace competition. And the ways it happens include creative disruption or creative destruction of the developed status-quo (links are to Wikipedia. Note that “Why Nations Fail” is mentioened in the creative destruction Wikipedia item). However, competition for personal benefit and perceptions of superiority relative to others can produce negative-sum disruptive-destructive results.
When creative disruption-destruction is not responsibly governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others the collective result can be worse than it needed to be. If people in the competition can get away with winning by being more harmful and less helpful to others then ‘greed and selfishness are encouraged to develop’ rather than being ‘human nature’.
The winners in the negative-sum game may be worse off than they would have been in the positive-sum alternative. But they pursue ‘their interest’ which is ‘increasing their perceived status relative to others’. They would think that others benefiting reduces ‘their’ potential ‘relative’ superiority.
The sensitivity of the climate on this amazing planet to human impacts on seemingly minor aspects of what is going on, like the trace amount of CO2, is tragically affected by the sensitivity of people to temptations to misunderstand matters in ways that make them like being greedier and more selfish.
Today’s situation is worse than it needed to be. The fossil fuel collective has successfully misled resistance to the creative disruption of developed energy systems. As a result there is more damage done and increasing need for creative disruption-destruction. The feedback response to increased need for rapid creative disruption-destruction is ‘increased resistance to change’.
What is required is getting people to change their mind about understandably unsustainable and harmful actions they have developed a liking for and related misunderstandings that promote and excuse those actions. And the manitude and speed of the required changes is continuing to increase.
Misinformation is a serious problem, especially, but not only, regarding climate change. This NPR article “The Doomsday Clock has never been closer to metaphorical midnight. What does it mean?” includes the following:
This year, it cited continuing trends in multiple "global existential threats" including nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, infectious diseases and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. It also pointed to the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories as a "potent threat multiplier" that undermines public discourse in general and about these very issues.
While these threats are not new, the scientists said that "despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course."
They are particularly concerned about the U.S., China and Russia, countries they say have the "collective power to destroy civilization" and the "prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink."
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BaerbelW at 07:18 AM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
nigelj @1 - fair point. For the fact briefs we use the existing rebuttals as a starting point, including the link from the myth statement. If anybody finds a better and more current statement, we can update the statement and link easily enough in both the rebuttal and fact brief.
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nigelj at 05:25 AM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
Thanks for the informative and convincing commentary, however I came to this statement: "This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one." Now interested member of the public including and warmists and sceptics and fence sitters will click on this, and what they read is a lengthy denialist rant on the causes of global warming, with superficially convincing sounding claims and superfically sounding good evidence (although its all nonsense). Buried in the middle of this was one sentence on biodiversity.
So guess whats going to happen? A lot of people reading that page will forget the topic of your article (biodiversity) and will be absorbed by all the denialism, and some will find it very convincing. I just find the publishing of that denialist page astonishingly naieve. You are literally giving the denialists free publicity, and not even with a counter balancing rebuttal. It mae have been better to just extract the key parts of it relevant to biodiversity.
I dont have the time to go through all of their claims, but the key claim is that the global waming we are experiencing is just part of a 1500 year climate cycle. This is wrong because its not a true warming cycle. It is an oscillation where the arctic warms and the antarctic cools so the planet as a whole isnt warming. Its a bit like el nino - la nina cycle. Refer:
ossfoundation.org/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/1500-year-climate-cycle/
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Bob Loblaw at 03:05 AM on 1 February 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @ 34:
For feedbacks, they start as soon as any system change occurs. When CO2 rises, it take a bit of time for temperature to rise, and then once temperature rises, atmospheric water vapour will rise, which will have a greenhouse gas heating effect (after a bit of time...), etc.
...but I have left "a bit of time" undefined for the moment. There are many different factors that take varying amounts of time to respond to changes. MA Rodger's response @ 35 touches on several of these factors.
Obviously, day-to-day weather causes changes in temperature, which will cause day-to-day feedback effects, etc. When we talk in terms of climate, though, we are more interested in the persistent changes, and how factors relate over longer periods of time. We also often talk about averages over large areas, not local effects such as your back yard.
Taking MA Rodgers statement about "increased evaporation adds 7% H2O capacity for every +1ºC", we are talking about longer term effects - e.g. decades. You won't see this simple a relationship when discussing day-to-day local weather. This relationship is looking at global trends over decades.
We can't instantaneously double atmospheric CO2 in the real world (thankfully!), but we can in a climate model. Back in 1981, Hansen et al published a well-known paper on CO2 and climate that included an interesting diagram.
Hansen, J., Johnson, D., Lacis, A., Lebedeff, S., Lee, P., Rind, D., & Russell, G. (1981). Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213(4511), 957-966
They ran a computer model where they instantaneously doubled atmospheric CO2, and their figure 4 shows how energy fluxes changed over time.
This is a somewhat complex diagram, so bear with me a bit.
- The first panel shows the immediate response. We see a very slight increase in atmospheric absorption of solar radiation, a larger reduction of IR loss to space, and some changes in the radiation, thermal, and evaporation fluxes between the surface and atmosphere.
- A lot of things are now "out of balance", so changes will occur.
- Notice that the change in IR loss to space (ΔF) is -2.4 W/m2. Combined with the change in solar (ΔS = 0.1), we get a net change of +2.5. This is the "climate forcing" that MA Rodger refers to. This is what drives the overall warming of the earth-atmosphere system.
- The atmosphere is the fastest to respond to these energy changes, because it does not require a lot of heat to warm up air. Land will heat up more slowly, and oceans even slower than land.
- In the middle panel, we see what is happening "a few months later". The atmosphere has restored its local balance, but the surface has not - so the whole system is still out of balance. Surface temperature (Ts) is still the same as it was at the start.
- The net climate forcing is now +3.9 (similar to the 3.7 number MA Rodger states in comment 35. Different models will vary slightly on what this number should be.)
- The atmosphere has now had a chance to warm - and get more humid. So now, we see the effects that include the feedback.
- With water vapour feedback now active, the net global imbalance has increased from +2.5 to +3.9. Roughly 50% larger than if there was no feedback.
- The last panel is "many years later". The entire system has balanced again.
- The atmosphere has a net balance of zero.
- The surface has a net balance of zero.
- The whole system has a net balance of zero.
- ...but note that many of the internal energy fluxes are different from what they were before CO2 was doubled.
- Absorbed solar has change for both the atmosphere and surface. Total net solar (ΔS) has only increased by 0.1, but where it is absorbed is different - more in the atmosphere and less at the surface.
- IR loss rates to space have changed. Net change (ΔF) is only 0.1 (to balance the change in ΔS), but again we see that contributions from the surface and atmosphere have changed.
- IR exchanges between the surface and atmosphere have changed. The climate is warmer, so IR fluxes have increased in both directions.
- Convective fluxes (thermal and evaporation) between the surface and atmosphere have changed slightly.
- ...and surface temperature is now 2.8C warmer... (Global warming!)
- ...so we are living in a different climate, with many changes. A new equilibrium, but one that looks quite different from what we are used to.
Hopefully this is not too hard to follow. As stated before, climate is a complex system. It gets quite difficult to to isolate changes in one part from another. Looking at one part can help understanding - but you do need to be careful about over-emphasizing what you see in that one part (and missing another important part). Much of what you can call "contrarian" positions involves over-simplifying the system, to the peril of leaving out parts that do matter. You're doing the right thing by asking questions.
Moderator Response:[BL] Adding a note to my own post. I have given the reference to Hansen et al (1981) more or less in full, but you can get more information about the paper using Skeptical Science's Glossary (in the resources menu). The paper is listed there - but you can get instant access to the details by hovering your mouse over the title in my reference. Unless you have turned the Glossary feature off, you'll see a pop-up with the full listing - plus a link to a PDF of the paper and the DOI leading to the journal/paper.
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MA Rodger at 19:47 PM on 31 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @34,
So if there were a doubling of CO2, this would imposed a climate forcing of +3.7Wm^-2 on the planet. And this would begin to warm the planet with some +1.25ºC warming arriving in a decade (and the remainder taking far longer having to warm up deep oceans and melt ice caps).
This warming will act to restore the planet's temperature equilibrium but the warming is being amplified due to the water content of the atmosphere. Physics tells us that increased evaporation adds 7% H2O capacity for every +1ºC and measurement shows this is happening.
Being itself a greenhouse gas and with the altitude of cloud formation in a warmer atmosphere, this extra H2O adds to the required warming to reach equilibrium. It's roughly three steps forward, two steps back.
So after that decade, assuming constant CO2 since the doubling, the remaining imbalance would be about +2.3Wm^-2. The warming so far will have seen the imbalance drop, +1.4Wm-2 due to CO2 and +2.8Wm^-2 from the H2O.
Note that the H2O feedback works very quickly. As soon as there is a temperature rise, the water will be evapourating from the oceans with the march towards equilibrium being thus that three steps forward, two back.
Thats the basic version. It gets much more complicated in the detail. -
sychodefender at 11:50 AM on 31 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Hi MA Rodger, thanks for your reply.
Please can you just clarify one thing from your paragraph below, are you saying that the temperature rise attributable to anthropological co2 at 800ppm would be insufficient to trigger a significant H2O feedback, or am I misinterpreting?
"As you say, the climate forcing from mankind's CO2 emissions does cause feedbacks, these most evident in the water cycle, humidity, cloud cover, cloud height (this last the least understood). But there is no "self-sustaining loop" or even any significant CO2 emissions consequent from mankind's emissions as a feedback. There is thus no need for a natural mechanism to prevent run-away global warming"
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Lawrie at 15:33 PM on 30 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Trace is a flexile concept. For climate change deniers 400 parts per million is a trace. What then is 200 parts in 100 million million? 200 nanograms is the weight of purified botulinus toxin required to kill a 100 kilogram or 100 million million nanogram human. That is 400 parts per 200 million million. In the natural world of climate change science and biology unimaginably tiny amounts of substances have profound effects that are readily observed by the intelligent. Climate change denial, though, relies on widespread ignorance. Unfortunately, in my country, Australia, and Trump’s America it’s been an incredibly successful strategy.
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nigelj at 06:03 AM on 29 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Evan @8, and OPOF @9
Interesting. I agree with OPOFs views on the climate issue, in a theoretical sense. For example, it is obvious to me high income people can mostly cut their consumption significantly and still have a decent enough life, and that leaders of society should set an example. However I share Evans concern that greed and self interest get in the way, and human nature is unlikely to change.
But the situation is quite nuanced because most people are not hugely greedy. They clearly make personal sacrifices for a good cause, up to a limit, on average over the population. For example they donate to charity and help others. The majority of people have accepted things like carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes up to a certain extent, knowing this is ultimately a personal sacrifice. This has helped build renewable energy.
I think our job is to persuade people to make as much sacrifice as possible in terms of things like accepting carbon taxes or government subsidy schemes. But it seems unlikely we would get people to make huge personal sacrifices of the type where they stop flying, or turn thermostats down low in the middle of winter and cycle everywhere. These things can become very uncomfortable and have various downsides. This is all why I tend to promote the renewables and electric cars side of the equation. I dont fly much myself , but for many people travel is viewed almost as an essential of life.
The energy consumption issue has another dimension as well. If we cut our levels of energy use too much and too fast it could cause a severe recession and unemployment, as demand is sucked out of the economy. And this means its unlikely such a policy would gain traction. This is why I tend to think we are mostly or almost completely reliant on an energy substitiution process of building renewables and EV's. Im not saying this is the ideal perfect solution - just that is likely the only workable solution in the real world.
I think the misinformation thing is a different issue, although it is used to make greed sound acceptable.
OPOF: "My more global concern is that we could be witnessing the early days of a powerful resurgence leading to many decades, possibly centuries, of global humanity being dominated by extremely harmful misunderstandings."
It has shocked me how 50% of people could support a leader who spreads huge volumes of misinformation. Its really a bit depressing and shows how thin the veneer of civilisation is. However its hard to say how long harmful misunderstandings would last. If a harmful misunderstanding causes a global trajedy like a nuclear war the pendulum might quickly swing back to the need to truth and accuracy. Or maybe people will just tire of all the misinformation and normality will be restored quite quickly. But in the medieval period of human history, the middle ages, people believed in complete nonsense and it was a dark time that lasted over 1000 years. It kind of self corrected as people slowly realised their lack of accurate information was holding them back and science emerged to promote accurate information. But that was a slow process. Maybe a centuries long period of misinformation could happen again especially if there is a huge drop in trust in science. We must do all we can to counter that.
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michael sweet at 04:19 AM on 29 January 2025Sabin 33 #13 - Is solar energy unreliable?
Dr. Andrew Dressler posted today on how any amount of renewable energy in your utility bill saves you money. His post is easy to read. It would be a good OP here at Skeptical Science.
At the end of the post he discusses why you hear all the time that renewable energy is expensive. He claims the fossil fuel industry is lying to try to protect their market share.
Moderator Response: -
michael sweet at 03:42 AM on 29 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Sychodefender:
It would be helpful if we know how old your daughter is. The answers appropriate for a 10 year old are different from an 18 year old.
The Earth currently cannot reach equilibrium because humans continue to release CO2. When we stop polluting most effects will reach equilibrium in 50 years or so. Some slow effects like melting Greenland and Antarctia might take several thousand years to reach equilibrium. Actions we take today will affect peoples lives in 5,000 years!
It is not clear when the sea and land sinks will reach saturation. Each has multiple components which will react differently to CO2 pollution. For example increased atmospheric CO2 increases the concentration of CO2 in cold water but increased temperature decreases the concentration in warm water. Pray that the sinks keep working in the future.
I don't think diminishing CO2 absorbtion of IR will help us much but another negative feedback might.
The most important thing is to reduce CO2 pollution as much as possible as fast as possible to limit the damage done. Hopng for good luck is not as good a strategy as reducing the damage done.
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MA Rodger at 02:42 AM on 29 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @30,
Another take on answering you questioning....
As you say, the climate forcing from mankind's CO2 emissions does cause feedbacks, these most evident in the water cycle, humidity, cloud cover, cloud height (this last the least understood). But there is no "self-sustaining loop" or even any significant CO2 emissions consequent from mankind's emissions as a feedback. There is thus no need for a natural mechanism to prevent run-away global warming.
You mention CO2 in this "natural mechanism" and CO2 has operated naturally as the major control knob for the climate through the eons. (Calling CO2 the 'control knob' should not be in any way controiversial.) The ancient Earth's climate is a bit of a mystery as the sun was less energetic in the early solar system (and from its weak beginning will continue to strengthen) and with no means of knowing the ancient atmospheric composition the 'faint sun paradox' remains unexplained. More recently, over the last 500 million years the temperature record is reasonably well known. (Through that time the sun has brightened by about 5% which is a climate forcing equivalent to roughly a quadrupling of CO2.)
There are a few very-long-term mechanisms at work altering the carbon available for the carbon cycle (in the atmosphere, bliosphere and ocean waters, these being in equilibrium for multi-millenial periods).
Taking CO2 from the atmosphere into rocks as coal was a major process in warm climates for early parts of this 500My period as back then fungi were not well developed enough to decompose plants which could thus be buried and turned to coal. Modern fungi prevents such significant coal formation.
A second mechanism is the water-weathering of mountain rocks which allows the formation of carboniferous rock in sea water. When the 700Gt(C) humanity has emitted so far has reachen equilibrium between biosphere, ocean and atmosphere (which takes abut a millenium), the remaining 25% of our emissions in the atmosphere (assuming only natural processes) will require rock-weathering to be extracted, this taking tens of millenia to complete. At a similar rate of action, the formation of the Himalayas and associated increase in rock-weathering has seen the atmospheric CO2 content drop over the last 50 million years and with it the cooling of the planet.
Once this deposit of carbon into the geology occurs, it is volcanism that works to return it to the carbon cycle. Thus when the planet is so cold that there is no rain to weather rocks and no significant biosphere at work, the volcanic activity will slowly pump CO2 back into the atmosphere restoring the level of greenhouse effect. The emissions are very small relative to mankind's emissions (perhaps about 1%).You mention Milankovitch cycles which have been waggling the planet's temperature for the past 3 million years (initially as a 40ky cycle, then 100ky).
The Milankovitch cycles are not so strong in themselves but are amplified by positive feedbacks. Within these cycles, CO2 is part of that positive feedback (increasing the size of the wobbles) with carbon being locked away under frozen land and in cooling oceans under increased sea ice. However the big driver of recent ice ages is albedo not CO2.You mention the logarithmic relationship between CO2 levels and climate forcing. This is an empirical relationship for concentrations in the range 150ppm to 1300ppm. As Zhong & Haig (2013) fig 6 shows, beyond 1300ppm the forcings increase faster than logarithmic. By then, of course, an increase in the CO2 consentrations would need to be four-times an increase to add the same extra forcing. But we don't want to be creating a world with 1300ppm. It would have already been under a forcing of 8.4Wm^-2 from the extra CO2, perhaps global warming of +7ºC.
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Bob Loblaw at 01:39 AM on 29 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @ 30:
The ultimate limiting factor for warming induced by greenhouse gas increases is the infrared radiation emitted to space from the upper part of the atmosphere. As the earth-atmosphere system heats up (primary a surface effect in the case of greenhouse gases) more IR is emitted to space, and (hopefully) eventually balances again. Think of it in stages:
- Earth is in a stable climate, with a stable (over years or decades) temperature. Energy absorbed from the sun is balanced by IR losses to space.
- Something causes that equilibrium to go out of balance. In the case of greenhouse gases, the direct factor is a reduction in the IR loss to space.
- Now, absorbed solar exceeds IR losses, so we are adding energy to the earth-atmosphere system.
- The net energy increases causes some part of the system to warm up. That energy cascades through the system in a variety of forms (radiation, thermal energy, evaporation/condensation).
- After a while (many years), the system evolves to a point where IR losses to space increase enough so that we reach a new balance with absorbed solar.
- Once a new balance is achieved, we have a (new) stable climate again. In the case of doubling CO2, this new stable climate will be a surface temperature that is a few degrees warmer than it was before.
So, ultimately, the ability to regain equilibrium requires that the system respond to a point where IR loss to space - from the upper part of the atmosphere (you'll often see "TOA" to indicate "Top of Atmosphere") can rebalance the energy absorbed from the sun. In a stable climate, you can have short-term shifts away from equilibrium, but this "energy balance with space" will keep pulling the climate back to its stable position - kind of like a marble rolling around in the bottom of a round bowl.
So, next let's think about feedbacks, such as the "CO2 warming increases water vapour, increases warming, increases water vapour" go-on-forever loop. SkS does have a lengthy discussion of that topic, on this thread here, but let's take a quick look at it now.
- In climate science terms, the water vapour effect you describe is called a positive feedback. A system change in one factor causes a change in another factor that adds to the initial change.
- If the initial change is an increase, a positive feedback will cause more increase.
- ...but if the initial change is a decrease, a positive feeback will cause more decrease.
- Positive feedbacks do not necessarily lead to values that increase forever. As long as the feedback multiplier is small enough, a new equilibrium will still be reached.
- "Small enough" is anything less than 1.
- If the initial change is 1, and the feedback adds another 0.5, then the next time through the sycle we'll only add 0.5*0.5 = 0.25, and the next time will only add 0.25*0.5 = 0.125, etc.
- This will stop increasing once it reaches a total change of 2.
Let's look at this graphically. The following image shows 10 time steps with eight different feedback multipliers.
- For all curves the initial change from time 0 to time 1 is a system change of 1 (you can think of it as temperature, but the math doesn't care what it represents.)
- For time 1 to time 2, we add another change of 1*feedback multiplier.
- an increase of 0.1 for a multiplier of 0.1.
- an increase of 0.2 for a multiplier of 0.2.
- etc.
- The figure shows feedback multipliers ranging from -0.5 to 2.
Note some key features in the figure:
- For a multiplier of 0, there are no further changes after time step 1. The system change has already reached a new equilibrium and remains constant forever.
- For a multiplier of 1, we see a continuous linear increase. We add another 1 at each time step.
- For a multiplier of 2, we see an accelerating, exponential increase over time. Not a good place to live.
- For all multipliers between 0 and 1, we can see that the rate of increase tapers off and a new equilibrium is reached after 10 time steps.
- ...but that new equilibrium is higher for higher feedback multipliers.
- For multiplier 0.5, note that the final result is an increase of 2.
- This one is closest to our known climate system feedbacks - the direct effect of CO2 is roughly doubled by feedbacks such as water vapour and snow/ice.
Note that I threw in a multiplier of -0.5, too. This is a negative feedback, opposing the initial change. The final change is 0.67, not 1.0.
- In a real world, the negative feedback would not wait until the initial change of 1.0 happens - all feedbacks kick in as soon as any change occurs. You'd see smooth curves, not the jumps we see in the figure. The -0.5 curve would just gradually increase from 0 to 0.67 in the first few time steps.
Also, note that you can find out more about these issues by using the search box on the SkS web page (upper left), or by looking at the Most Used Myths list (linked below the search box and social media emblems).
Moderator Response:[BL] To add a note to this: if you follow the link I gave to the SkS runaway feedback rebuttal, you'll note that the discussion of feedback "gain" in that post (Intermediate tab) used a gain of 1 to indicate "no feedback", whereas I use "multiplier of 0" to indicate "no feedback". Either one works, as long as you do the math appropriately within each system of equations.
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sychodefender at 15:16 PM on 28 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Thanks Bob I'm learning a lot, here's one more question.
We know that increased temperature evaporates more H2O from seas and lakes, this water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas being responsible for over 50% of warming. Co2 is also emitted, both impede rising infrared and the surface gets warmer, causing even more evaporation in a self sustaining loop.
Thankfully the earth possesses a natural mechanism to stop this run away heating so we don't burn up.
This process has been in operation for millennia, keeping the planets energy equilibrium whenever temperature began to rise. The reasons for it rising might be volcanic emissions including co2, tectonic, milankovitch cycles, higher sun radiance etc all raising temperature in a completely natural way and as a consequence more co2 was emitted, loop begins.
My question is if the planet could adjust and regain it equilibrium in the past, why can't it do it now?
The seas and land sinks will not reach co2 saturation for another century.
Is it possible that the limited remaining and slowly diminishing ability of co2 to absorb infrared acts as a natural safety valve preventing excessive warming?
All these enquiries originate from my daughter who is working on a project for school.
Thanks again for your patience.????
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:21 AM on 28 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Evan @8,
I understand that I am ‘not the norm’. I am a retired professional engineer with an MBA who, decades ago, ‘took to heart’ the ethical obligation to learn to ‘protect the public interests from the potential harms of interests that are opposed to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others’.There is a reason I concluded my comment @7 the way I did.
I agree that the future is likely to continue to get worse while ‘potentially appearing to be getting better’. Global interests can indeed be harmfully influenced by ‘Us (me) vs Others’-ism (not just nationalism). There needs to be a systemic change of the ‘developed dominance of misleading marketing in the competitions for perceptions of superiority’.
The ‘popularity of beliefs’ needs to be governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Developed socioeconomic systems have been significantly influenced by misunderstandings that keep people from learning how to be less harmful and more helpful to others.
The problem has always been the many ways that popularity of instinctive, first-impression, emotion-triggered, gut-reaction misunderstandings can ‘be more popular’ than rational unemotional thoughtful considerate (critical thinking) pursuits of learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Note that changing this fundamental dynamic is an uphill battle. The science (knowledge) of how to win by being misleading is very advanced and continues to quickly advance.
It is important for people to learn where the blame lies (intentionally chosen term):
- People who struggle to obtain the basic needs of a decent life can be excused for not trying to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others (however, many such people still try to be less harmful and help others).
- Many more fortunate people have little excuse – other than how easy it is to be impressed by misinformation marketing that triggers passionate belief of harmful misunderstandings.
- Leaders and other big winners have no excuse for failing to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others and failing to help others free themselves from the vicious grip of harmful misunderstandings.
I also hope that the future of humanity will be sustainably improved. However, I share your concern that climate change impact mitigation is not happening as rapidly as is need to responsibly limit the harm done. Responsible considerate leadership could have accomplished significantly more mitigation by now.
My more global concern is that we could be witnessing the early days of a powerful resurgence leading to many decades, possibly centuries, of global humanity being dominated by extremely harmful misunderstandings.
The success of misleaders can be sensitive to small changes of awareness and understanding. Every vote and consumer choice matters.
The more 'common sense, or normal, understanding' needs to be that anyone aware of misleading messages regarding climate science has no excuse for supporting the misleaders (as customers or voters) regardless of other interests. ‘Pursuers of popularity’ who are misleading about climate science are likely harmfully misleading about many other things.
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Evan at 01:12 AM on 28 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
OPOF@7, whereas you make good points that I think most of agree with, they represent a global perspective with the benefit of a broad scientific overview, shared by a relatively small percentage of our planet. The bulk of humans operate within a very narrow sphere of understanding, more concerned about meeting their daily needs than planning for long-term effects.
And then, of course, there are the complications of greed and self interest. I don't see any of these conditions changing. So whereas I agree conceptually with your analysis, I don't see enough of the world adopting viewpoints such as you present to really slow down the steady buildup of GHGs in the atmosphere.
As always, I hope I'm wrong, and I hope more people adopt your well-stated viewpoints.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:29 AM on 27 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender:
It's an MDPI journal - strike 1
The author is Koutsoyiannis - strike 2.
It looks like the same crap he's previously published, which has been previously debunked - strike 3.
Also read the comments to that SkS post, and the comments include links to a post at AndTheTheresPhysics, and a discussion at PubPeer). In fact, there are several links in my comment #3 on the SkS post that are worth reading.
Shorter version, it's a waste of time.
