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the Inspector at 09:00 AM on 8 July 2021CO2 is not increasing
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
Thank you for the membership, i have followed the mauna loa curve for years and wondered what the yearly dip in co2 increase is caused by.
This year the curve is straight up for the first time ever and i found a correlation; China.
Since 2020 i have taken dayly screenshots of the "windy" website which monitors the co2 levels globally and focussed on china's dayly output, in short it showed increased activity just before the chinese new year celebration ( 12 feb to 26 feb ) and continues during the celebrations because of the pandemic demand for products.
Mauna loa is directly downwind of china by some days and is in effect monitoring China's co2 output.
You can check this out for yourselves on the "windy.com" and the noaa mauna loa co2 graph websites.
Here is a link to my 3 youtube video's titled; "co2 levels explained"on youtube, it has all the info combined to show the relationship in detail on a day by day basis;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbjnbw_npY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IYQZu-XwOc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7szFJD9nAFM
Another significant indicator is the dip in 2008 which stopped China's output for two months in the mauna loa graph.
Thank you; the Inspector.
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Daniel Bailey at 04:10 AM on 8 July 2021Deciphering the rise and fall of Antarctic sea ice extent
Global sea ice, showing both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent changes over time in the satellite observational record:
Arctic sea ice extent continues its multidecadal decline and Antarctic sea ice extent is currently at normal, average values.
Source: NSIDC
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MA Rodger at 23:07 PM on 7 July 2021Deciphering the rise and fall of Antarctic sea ice extent
gerontocrat @1/2,
For clarity, I have snatched your 'graphic of JAXA's VISHOP Antarctic SIE 1980-to-date' from Neven's Forum and installed it below.
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gerontocrat at 21:16 PM on 7 July 2021Deciphering the rise and fall of Antarctic sea ice extent
Whoops - address is
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1759.msg314913.html#msg314913
Moderator Response:[BL] Link activated.
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gerontocrat at 21:15 PM on 7 July 2021Deciphering the rise and fall of Antarctic sea ice extent
As of now, 365 day trailing average of sea ice extent is now above the (meaningless) linear trend by 60k km2. You can see the image here...
Arctic Sea Ice Forum - Antarctic Sea Ice
Moderator Response:[BL] Link edited per following comment.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:54 AM on 7 July 2021Models are unreliable
MAR:
This all hinges on what is meant by "calibration", and whether or not the parameters in a model are arbitrary.
Wiktionary defines "calibrate" as "To check or adjust by comparison with a standard." When discussing climate models, this implies that there is some adjustable parameter (or seven) or input that can be varied at will to create a desired output.
There are many problems with this argument [that climate models are "calibrated" to create a result]:
- What are we calibrating for? A global 3-d climate model has thousands (if not millions) of outputs. Global mean surface temperature is one simple statistical summary of model output, but the model has temperatures that vary spatially (in 3-d) and temporally. It also has precipitation, humidity, wind speed, pressure, cloud cover, surface evaporation rates, etc. There are seasonal patterns, and patterns over longer periods of time such as El Nino. All of these are inter-related, and they cannot be "calibrated" independently. Analyzing the output of a GCM is as complex as analyzing weather observations to determine climate.
- How many input parameters are devoid of physical meaning and can be changed arbitrariiy? The more physcially-based the model is, the fewer arbitrary parameters there are. You can't simply decide that fresh snow will have an albedo of 0.4, or open water will evaporate at 30% of the potential evapotranspiration rate, just because it makes one output look better. So much of the input information is highly constrained by the need to use realistic values. All these have uncertainties, and part of the modelling process is to look at the effect of those uncertainties, but the value to use can be determined independently through measurement. It is not a case of choosing whatever you want.
So, robnyc987's claim that you can achieve 100% accuracy by "calibrating" a small set of parameters is bunkum. If climate models are so easy to "calibrate", then why do they show variations depending on who's model it is? Or depending on what the initial conditions are? That variability amongst models and model runs indicates uncertainty in the parameters, physics, and independent measurements of input variables - not "calibration".
Perhaps robnyc987 will return to provide more explanation of his claim, but I somehow doubt it.
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MA Rodger at 21:00 PM on 6 July 2021Models are unreliable
Bob Loblaw @1289,
The paper that fuelled the 2011 Scientific American item linked @1288 is presumably Carter et al (2005) 'Our calibrated model has poor predictive value: An example from the petroleum industry' [ABSTRACT] which may provide the argument for "6 or 7 in interdependant variables" preventing model calibration although likely this is no more than a different version of the famous Fermi quote:-
“I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
However, this Fermi quote concerns "arbitrary parameters" and what Carter had in mind when he says "As far as I can tell, you'd have exactly the same situation with any model that has to be calibrated," isn't defined. But this 2011 Scientific American quote of Carter (I don't see an earlier statement of it) has occasionally been used by denialists to suggest the same calibration situation affects climate models. Of course GCMs do have a big challenge with calibration but I don't think it is down to the number of independent variables. There are many physical measures that can be used to callibrate the processes within GCMs, which is probably why they can (collectively) demonstrate useful predictive qualities. (The graphic is from this 2021 RealClimate post.)
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Bob Loblaw at 22:36 PM on 5 July 2021Models are unreliable
robnyc987:
You have made several empty assertions without evidence.
All models require some level examination between model outputs and observations, and all models undergo modification to improve their ability to match observations. That is good science.
You will need to provide some sort of definition for what you call "calibration" before anyone will take your criticism seriously.
Where do you get "6 or 7" from, and what is the basis for your claim that 6 or 7 variables is enough for "100% correlation"? It sounds like you think all models are purely statistical fits to data. If this is what you think, you are wrong. If you think that hind-casting models can be 100% accurate with only a few variables, you are wrong.
Your assertions of nonsense, working without calbration, bias and "no idea" are all just rhetorical waffling.
Of what relevance is a link to economic models to a discussion about climate models? The link refers to one case of a geophysical oil field model. Over-fitting a model - even one that is physically-based - is poor science, but that does not mean that every model is over-fitted and suffers the same problems. You will need to come up with an example of a climate model that is over-fitted if you want to be taken seriously.
If you do not understand the difference between statistical models and physically-based models, then you are woefully uninformed.
By the way, we know all models are "wrong" in that they are incomplete - but they can be useful.
You may have no idea, but the science of climatology does. Try reading and learning. Start with the blog post you are supposedly commenting on. If you continue to comment, I suggest that you actually respond to specifics in the blog post at hand. Comments need to be on topic, not just meaningless rants.
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robnyc987 at 21:17 PM on 5 July 2021Models are unreliable
Any model that requires calibration is wrong; there are an infinite number of models for a system with more than 6 or 7 in interdependant variables can be backtested with 100% coorelation yet differ in future predictions. So, all the models show is the bias of the modeler. It's non-sense to claim any model of the climate is accurate. Basically, the model must work without any calibration or the results simply reflect the bias of the modeler. Humanity may have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmoshere; but, humanity has simply no idea what the impact will be.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/finance-why-economic-models-are-always-wrong/
Moderator Response:[BL] Link activated.
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. -
amhartley at 11:19 AM on 5 July 2021Human Fingerprints on Climate Change Rule Out Natural Cycles
I wonder whether the "nights warming faster than days" fingerprint should be more nuanced? This page
https://news.yahoo.com/summer-swelter-trend-west-gets-134723813.html
says days, in the American west, are warming faster than nights.
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John Hartz at 02:01 AM on 5 July 2021Antarctica is gaining ice
Suggested supplemental reading:
Deciphering the rise and fall of Antarctic sea ice extent, Guest Post by Clare Eayrs & David Holland, Carbon Brief, June 29, 2021
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MA Rodger at 08:55 AM on 3 July 2021‘Tis the season’? Learn how change is in the air
MNESTHEUS,
???? Hanami (as the cherry blossom festival is called) is of course celebrated to coincide with the cherry blossom and, as the upside-down hockey stick graph below shows, the blossom has on average not been arriving later in the year since about July 4th 1776, although inscrutably the 1777 Hanami did indeed come later than the 1776 Hanami (by about a year).
Moderator Response:[BL] If you follow the link that MNESTHESUS has provided, I suspect that you will recognize the sardonic humor of Russel Seitz.
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MNESTHEUS at 08:02 AM on 3 July 2021‘Tis the season’? Learn how change is in the air
Japan's cherry blossom festivals are coming later each year, but its temple fireworks have suffered as much from rising fire risks as America's celebratiion of the 4th of July
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/07/year-fireworks-died.html
Moderator Response:[BL] Link activated.
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.I am guessing that you are indeed Russell Seitz? I think you may already have an active account (or two) here at SkS. If you are having problems logging on to a previous account, you can use the Contact form to ask for help. It is a bit hard to find - scroll to the very bottom of the web page and look at the end of the row of text/links.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:37 AM on 3 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
I just found this nice little video on the Lytton fire and weaher conditions on CBC's web page:
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Bob Loblaw at 04:14 AM on 3 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
Looking even more closely at the Lytton data, I see that the few very hot days when records were set had light winds (1 to 2 m/s) from the south (but variable). Ideal to help concentrate the heat close to the ground, instead of mixing it up into the upper boundary layer.
The day of the fire, winds were still from the south but increased to 10 m/s with gusts much higher (20 m/s or more). Ideal conditions to fan flames into a major fire.
The south winds would have helped keep any fire in town away from the weather station.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:48 AM on 3 July 2021Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago
Well it looks like these bad, no good, terrible Greenpeace activists got the real thinking out of some of Exxon's top level people. One could say that was the real McCoy...
Interestingly, the individual in question seemed more peeved about falling for it than anything else: "deeply embarrassed by my comments and that I allowed myself to fall for Greenpeace’s deception."
The theory that Exxon is merely trying to defend itself against extremists is looking less and less plausible.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:23 AM on 3 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
The sad thing is that even such symbolic and powerful events still won't sway the masses. 50 degrees Celsius (close enough, in aviation we round to the next higher for anything .5 or more) at 50 degrees latitude North, then the place goes up in flame. It's almost as if some power was trying to rub our noses in our mess, saying: "do you understand now?"
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Bob Loblaw at 02:23 AM on 3 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
Lookig a bit more closely at the Lytton data, I notice that during the hottest period the relative humidity was dropping to about 10% during the hot part of the day. That is obscenely dry.
No wonder there is dry fuel available for fires.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:13 AM on 3 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
This morning's Globe and Mail has a picture of the town of Lytton, showing the remains of downtown:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The picture is currently visible on their main page, but the link to the main story is paywalled. (Same picture in paywalled story.)
The print version is less zoomed in, and from what I see there it looks like the trees to the south of town (surrounding where I'm pretty sure the weather station is located) have not burned.
However if the power is out, then the ventiatlion of the Stevenson Screen at the weather station is likely not working, so temperature readings will be unreliable until the power is back on. (Data is still not flowing at the moment.) The area has cooled since the extreme heat at the start of the week, though.
Let's just say that this particular aspect of the MSC observation network is something I have an "inside baseball" knowledge of.
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michael sweet at 22:48 PM on 2 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
Bob,
I am always amazed by how much data and backup data scientists collect. Thank you for the description of how the Lytton temperature works.
I used to teach High School and very few students had any idea of how much data scientists collect about the climate. I think the general public has little idea of the volume of information scientists know.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:34 AM on 2 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
Michael:
The Lytton weather station is an automatic one - part of the Meteorological Service of Canada's "Reference Climate Station" (RCS) network. It is located on the south side of town, between the highway and the river, and appears to be in a large clearing directly east of the train bridge (50.2244N, 121.5819W). The map in the story that Ian linked to suggests that there is a small area near the river south of town that has not burned, so the station may be intact.
Data stopped coming in to MSC as of 00 GMT on July 1, which would be at 5pm local daylight time on June 30. The station likely feeds data into the system via the cell network, and Ian's link says cell service is down in the area. The logger system has an internal battery, so even if the power is off it will collect data for a while and send it through when communications are restored.
Instrumentation at RCS stations undergoes regular maintenance, and data goes through automatic and manual QA processes, but there is little reason to expect it needs any special validation. Most of the stations probably still use the YSI 44212 temperature probe, which is accurate to +/-0.1C up to 50C - but temperatures are getting awfully close to that upper limit! There are three sensors installed at that station, and throughout the day on June 29 they were all agreeing to within 0.1C.
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michael sweet at 03:11 AM on 2 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
Will they be able to validate the record temepratures in Lytton now that the recording station has burned down? What a nightmare.
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Ian Forrester at 02:40 AM on 2 July 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
Lytton just devasted by wild fire.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:04 PM on 30 June 2021The cool, lush Pacific Northwest roasts in Death Valley-like temperatures
An update regarding record setting Lytton, BC, Canada. When the story was written it was able to say:
"• Canada broke its all-time national temperature record with a preliminary high of 46.6°C (116°F) in Lytton on Sunday, June 27, then beat the record again with a preliminary 47.9°C (118.2°F) on Monday. The old record was 45.0°C (113°F) from July 5, 1937. The high at Lytton is also the world’s highest temperature ever recorded north of latitude 50°N, according to international weather records expert Maximiliano Herrera."
SInce then the high in Lytton on Tuesday was 49.5 C which is hotter than the Las Vegas record of 47.2 C.
And the previous Camadian record set in 1932 was set in Saskatchewan, not BC.
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prove we are smart at 20:43 PM on 29 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
Thanks Nigelj, I read this somewhere " sometimes the leader you get, is not the leader you need". Education is the key, but a lot of people don't/can't be unlocked...
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nigelj at 16:44 PM on 29 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
Prove we are smart @3&4
I forgot. Thank's for the links. I enjoy reading that sort of thing.
Just read a book on the ugly finanical banking sector called
"Other Peoples Money" by John Kay.I have nothing really against nuclear power in principle. Closing these things down because of the Fukushima scare seems like an overreaction. But building nuclear power stations is a very slow process. I don't see how it can be of much use in meeting the Paris Climate Accord goals of 2050. And nuclear power is not really our decision. Ultimately it comes down to generating companies and they seem to prefer wind and solar power for various reasons including lower costs than nuclear power. In reality I suspect the world will end up with a mixture of both power sources.
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AussiejB at 16:38 PM on 29 June 2021SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw: Part III
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
Ok I will follow respectful guidlines.
To my mind having these temperatures just past when the sun was at its norther most travel across the earth is disturbing.
The temperatures once the Northern Hemisphere moves into July and the land has heated up the heat excursions one would have to assume will be once again new records.
Thank you for accepting me for comments I have followed this site for well on 10 years.
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nigelj at 16:36 PM on 29 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
"Perhaps a more sensible solution is that capitalism has to change to have more goals than just the profit motive."
"Capitalism with a conscience, good luck with that."
Why do you say good luck with that? I didn't say it would be a voluntary thing. Such environmental goals could be legislated for.
" Some countries incorporate both the private sector system of capitalism and the public sector enterprise of socialism to overcome the disadvantages of both systems."
Yes this can be good. I did mention that governments typically own various public assets like infrastructure. Some own and provide health services. The scandinavian countries do this.
"Your link to Adam Barretts novel mathmatical macroeconomic model is a theoretical hope and the comments after the article were good reading-thanks But we need something very substantive to wake our sleep-walking populous and soon. The increasing suffering maybe unequal but all will feel the cumulative effects from climate change.
We do need something substantive, but nobody has articulated a fundamentally different system to capitalism that actually looks like it would work. All the alternatives I see are just forms of socialism which has been tried at scale and failed as previously stated. Even small scale experiments in common ownership have a history of mostly failing after a decade or so (google it). So if anyone wants to try that yet again I would say "good luck with that".
I'm not a huge fan of capitalism. Its harsh and avaricious and at times it angers me, but I just doubt theres a fundamentally better system overall. The best approach may be the combination of capitalism and socialism embraced by the Scandinavian countries (as you alluded to). And I think it should be possible to modify details of how capitalism operates. It is never static anyway. This may all be as good as it gets. There is no guarantee that there is a better system. Things like the circular economy and donout economy are not incompatible with capitalism, or at least not incompatible with private ownership. All these things add together to form quite substantive change. They will face a lot of resistance, but another try at socialism looks like a bad idea to me, and will probably face even more resistance. As will other totally crazy ideas.
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prove we are smart at 15:32 PM on 29 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
Sorry mate, ha,forgot the last link, theconversation.com/the-perils-of-the-last-human-flaws-in-modern-economics-29783
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prove we are smart at 15:29 PM on 29 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
"Perhaps a more sensible solution is that capitalism has to change to have more goals than just the profit motive." Capitalism with a conscience, good luck with that.
" Some countries incorporate both the private sector system of capitalism and the public sector enterprise of socialism to overcome the disadvantages of both systems. In these economies, the government intervenes to prevent any individual or company from having a monopolistic stance and undue concentration of economic power. Resources in these systems may be owned by both the state and by individuals." I think the quality of govt has declined here in Aust, so many examples of govt policy being their lobbyists policies, climate change inaction being just one.
Your link to Adam Barretts novel mathmatical macroeconomic model is a theoretical hope and the comments after the article were good reading-thanks But we need something very substantive to wake our sleep-walking populous and soon. The increasing suffering maybe unequal but all will feel the cumulative effects from climate change.
I will re-share that ugly financial banking sector link here, www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8 you really believe THAT could change soon, I wish too.
I really don't want to "go nuclear", but the reality is we have squandered so much time, a % of our energy production is maybe inevitable? We are all human beings with associated complexities. This link from the comments section from your link explains much and asks me, can we change?
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nigelj at 11:30 AM on 29 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
Regarding the link on capitalism:
armyofall.wordpress.com/no-future-under-capitalism/
The link says "Capitalism demands a global avg growth rate of 3%"
A quick google search shows several economists think that capitalism would work just fine with zero economic growth. This is one example, and it includes a reference to the writers own peer reviewed study:
theconversation.com/how-capitalism-without-growth-could-build-a-more-stable-economy-91779
The original link on capitalism also pretty much suggests the answers to environmental problems and the alleged need to get rid of capitalism is socialism (the common ownership of the means of production). Good luck with that. Experiments in socialism at scale have been abject failures, eg the Soviet Union, N Korea, Cuba etc. Unless you like living in dreadful conditions and near starvation. Common ownership is sometimes used where you have public ownership of some types of infrastructure, but this doesn't mean it would necessarily work for everything.
Perhaps a more sensible solution is that capitalism has to change to have more goals than just the profit motive.
The link also says that renewables will be a disaster mainly because of high levels of resource use and various negative environmental impacts, and that nuclear power is therefore preferable. Its an interesting point about resource use because I've seen calculations showing renewables do use the greater volume of resources than nuclear power, and its intuitively obvious, however it tends to be in materials like concrete and fibreglass where the components aren't particularly scarce, and copper which can be easily recycled. Nuclear power uses less total volume of materials, but some of them are very scarce and the uranium essentially gets used up. You also have environmental disasters when reactors explode and there is the nuclear proliferation problem. So its certainly not clear that nuclear power should be the complete answer. It might form a small part of the answer.
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nigelj at 07:17 AM on 29 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
I definitely think ideas like the doughnut economy and the circular economy have considerable merit. But building new economic systems like this is probably going to take time. Its like turning around The Titanic!
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:11 AM on 29 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
There are plenty of possibilities for solutions. We just have to get out of the dogma that the current frantic capitalism placing the maximization of profit ahead of any and every other consideration is the only way. It's not. That does not mean that a revolution is necessary. Just doing things differently. By the same token, it does not have to be top down, from centralized government.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:12 AM on 29 June 2021SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw: Part III
Agree with moderator ... delete my resposne as well.
Moderator Response:[BL] Done.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:06 AM on 29 June 2021SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw: Part III
The developing nations following the horrible development examples set by the supposedly more advanced nations will indeed be a disaster.
Moderator Response:[BL] Response to deleted comment removed at user's request.
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takamura_senpai at 18:17 PM on 28 June 2021SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw: Part III
Coal Prices Hit Decade High Despite Efforts to Wean the World Off Carbon
This is the REAL result of Kyoto protocol and Paris agreement
So fairy tales from politics and others...
How many times Paris agreement was mansion here? Fairy tales and reality
Moderator Response:[BL] Off-topic deleted.
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prove we are smart at 17:53 PM on 28 June 2021Study: Extreme weather may not lead to increased support for climate action
Many people want to stay wilfully ignorant and keep happily consuming on our finite world resources. Capitalism and its inherent growth needs and " controlled" by its numerous lobbying/bribing corporations in conjunction with fake news media is guaranteeing the rise of co2 and green growth is false hope,truthout.org/articles/from-green-growth-to-post-growth/ It seems to me more than ever, even if the wealthy and privileged will finally believe in GW, "they" will still not want to change things-after all, their wealth is still increasing. When the shit increasing hits the fan, we all know who will suffer the worst. An ugly truth here www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8 One meteorologist on a tv station explaining away is just another nothing changes. When I talk to the guys at work and ask if anyone would like to understand better how this heating up is happening-I get..." what are talking about, they can't even make their mind up if it's GW or climate change!" or "It's only one degree, big deal". How to get people to even understand the simplist concepts of our predicament is ******. AND then to show them this is possibly our only solution armyofall.wordpress.com/no-future-under-capitalism/ I really hope all those links are wrong..
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:54 AM on 28 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
nigelj,
If you are hesitant to read the fully study report that is the basis for the article "Is the Controlled Shrinking of Economies a Better Bet to Slow Climate Change Than Unproven Technologies?", a quick read that includes the political question you express concern about would be: the Abstract, Introduction, the last part of the Results: "Political and economic feasibility", and the Discussion. But there are inter-relatonships between all of the information that is presented in the study report, so a fuller reading is better.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:26 AM on 27 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
nigelj,
Indeed, New Zealand is not "the norm" among the more advanced countries. But GDP can be adjusted and corrected rather than being "ditched". The reading I suggested are indeed far longer reads than a magazine article (as is reading the study that is the basis for the article "Is the Controlled Shrinking of Economies a Better Bet to Slow Climate Change Than Unproven Technologies?"). But deeper understanding is better obtained from reading more extensive presentations.
It is important to understand that things like GDP, democracy, capitalism, and freedom can be Good if harmful activity is effectively kept from being able to compete for popularity and profit. A particular problem is all forms of misleading marketing that distract or delude easily impressed people, including systemic problems like the Propaganda Model influence on profit pursuing presenters of information that was developed by Edward S. Herman and presented in Manufacturing Consent, with an updated evaluation by Alan MacLeod in "Propaganda in the Information Age". That systemic misleading is often observed to be promoting Nationalist Pride to distract from and excuse harmful realities of the harm that the leaders of a country are actually doing (examples are the ways it can become popular to excuse attacking Others, including the related misled anger at people who expose the injustice or question the merit of the popularized attacks on Others).
Effectively limiting climate change harm requires the systemic norm to shift. Without that correction of the systemic norm it is unlikely that the required corrections of developed behaviour will be pursued.
Tragically the resistance to the systemic shift of the norm in countries like the USA, Canada and Australia has set bad examples (showing that harmful cheaters can win) and delayed helpful action (making it less popular to take the actions required because the problem is now bigger and more has to be given up to limit the harm done). A big tragedy was the multitude of harmful things that occurred because of Trump-style Republicans still being able to win power in the USA by appealing to many more harmful interests than the interest in benefiting from fossil fuel use. And a related tragedy is the reluctance of the Democrats to act helpfully because of the misleading popularity of harmful actions in that culture.
More cultures are making the systemic change to recognise that harmful activity is not Good, even if it is connected to things like employment, investor benefit, government revenue. But more of that cultural systemic change is required for humanity to develop a sustainable improving future.
The most glaring cases of harmful leadership are actually not fossil fuel activity. The most harmful activity that is excused by leaders is military spending, and military actions, and clandestine operations trying to Win dominance over Others (something that New Zealand is not powerfully trying to achieve).
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nigelj at 19:35 PM on 26 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
OPOF @9, New Zealand is already trying some potentially useful things as alternatives to the traditional economic growth measure:
I don't normally read Forbes. It was just a covenient description.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:42 PM on 26 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
nigelj,
We are generally agreeing. But your first comment implied some things about the nature of the presentation of information in the article "Is the Controlled Shrinking of Economies a Better Bet to Slow Climate Change Than Unproven Technologies?" that were incorrect which prompted my responses.
The study that the article is based upon opens with the following abstract:
"1.5 °C scenarios reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rely on combinations of controversial negative emissions and unprecedented technological change, while assuming continued growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Thus far, the integrated assessment modelling community and the IPCC have neglected to consider degrowth scenarios, where economic output declines due to stringent climate mitigation. Hence, their potential to avoid reliance on negative emissions and speculative rates of technological change remains unexplored. As a first step to address this gap, this paper compares 1.5 °C degrowth scenarios with IPCC archetype scenarios, using a simplified quantitative representation of the fuel-energy-emissions nexus. Here we find that the degrowth scenarios minimize many key risks for feasibility and sustainability compared to technology-driven pathways, such as the reliance on high energy-GDP decoupling, large-scale carbon dioxide removal and large-scale and high-speed renewable energy transformation. However, substantial challenges remain regarding political feasibility. Nevertheless, degrowth pathways should be thoroughly considered."
And there is ample presentation of information to indicate that the degrowth perceptions are based on the use of GDP as the measure of "growth" rather than the more correct measures presented in HDR 2020.
Indeed when an incorrect measure like GDP is used the development of "sustainable growth" activity can appear to result in zero-growth or degrowth, especially because the highest-consuming highest-status portion of the population really does have to reduce their consumption starting now. That proof of deserving higher status by setting the better behaviour example should have been required of the highest status people starting 30 years ago. But it is never too late to demand and get better behaviour from supposedly superior people rather than just believe that it is OK for higher status people to be deliberately harmful if that is the way they choose to be.
I support increased building of renewable energy and shutting down existing fossil fuel generation even before its "investment end of life", even if that is more expensive than fossil fuel alternatives. And that earlier shutting down of existing fossil fuel operations should be further expedited by pressure on the highest energy consumers to reduce their energy consumption. That also means ending the belief that GDP is a valid measure of progress or success (and ending the very flawed belief that popularity and profit are inherently good indications of the relative merit of alternatives.
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nigelj at 12:27 PM on 26 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
OPOF @7
I don't disagree in the main. I think you are probably reading too much into what I'm saying. My point is quite narrow, and is related purely to these degrowth people that rubbish renewable energy and electric cars etc,etc, and who think that most of the climate solution is cuts to economic growth (as conventionally measured) to zero or less, and to be achieved in the next 10 - 20 years so as to keep warming under 2 degrees. For example M Moore in his movie Planet of the Humans pretty much implied this. I think its delusional, and I've explaned why. For example the urgent needs to build solar and wind power would probably cancel out most cuts in consumption to things like flying. And truly huge short term cuts in consumption would probably cause a massive economic depression. And it would require quite draconian cuts to consumption, and not just by rich people.
I didnt say 'I' was reluctant to give up things I like. I'm not particularly materialistic. I said a lot of people might be reluctant to do this too much, and motivating people might be quite hard so looks like being a longer term project.
I still mostly promote cuts in consumption when posting comments on various websites, but I focus on realistic goals. Some things are easy of course, for example flying is mostly not an essential sort of thing. Tiny homes might also catch on but I think it will take time. But getting very substantial reductions in consumption gets harder, because it starts to become uncomfortable or painful, like turning heaters down on low, doing a lot of cycling or walking etc. I doubt many people would do that and theres certainly no sign of such things taking off widely. Instead it's going to also require adoption of more fuel efficient systems, more use of public transport etc. Of course its all place specific depending on conditions and geography. In some places you could have genuine walkable communities.
Levels of consumption have to fall sooner or later. And obviously more so with rich people. The SDG's are laudible but they are basically a wish list. But theres no magic bullet about how to do all this. We have a very challenging and complicated situation on our hands.
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Daniel Bailey at 06:51 AM on 26 June 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25, 2021
Reading the research paper and the Nature commentary on it, they are pretty much in-line with the recent 2019 SROCC (Chapter 4 is most relevant). Table 4.4 gives these numbers:
Don't take my word on it, though. There's a number of discussions out there already (like here and here) saying pretty much the same thing.For me, the main thing is that they look at the recent research, both the early research by DeConto and the later stuff, which shows that some of the early concerns about marine ice cliff instability were not as bad as originally feared.
“What we found is that over long timescales, ice behaves like a viscous fluid, sort of like a pancake spreading out in a frying pan. So the ice spreads out and thins faster than it can fail and this can stabilize collapse. But if the ice can’t thin fast enough, that’s when you have the possibility of rapid glacier collapse.
There’s no doubt that sea levels are rising, and that it’s going to continue in the coming decades. But I think this study offers hope that we’re not approaching a complete collapse – that there are measures that can mitigate and stabilize things. And we still can change things by making decisions about things like energy emissions, methane and CO2.”
Does this mean that the land-based ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland may not hold some SLR surprises in store for us? Of course they might. But without a magic crystal ball or a time machine to know with certainty what emissions pathways society will follow in the future, we have to go with what they physics of ice sheets informs us. This research does not rule out worse results this century than the SROCC delineates.
As scientists Joelle Gergis and Richard Alley told a group of us at a recent AGU meeting, the current models (CMIP3 and CMIP5) treat the land-based ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica as "like rocks, but painted white". Meaning that they were not coupled or interactive with their surroundings in any climate-related way. The CMIP6 models, however, look to more fully couple those ice sheets with their surrounding ocean regimes.
Society will have an enormous difficulty in dealing with the first meter of SLR, due at some point this century. If it gets a second meter this century (perhaps not globally, but possibly in some regions), that will be catastrophic.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:46 PM on 25 June 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
nigelj,
Here is a supplement to the back-and-forth that has already occurred.
We are indeed pursuing a common understanding. But I sense that you have not yet read the Human Development Report 2020. It has a significant focus on Climate Change but covers so much more. And it provides alternative measures of “progress” that indicate that what is perceived as growth has not actually been sustainable improvement.
It is important to share a framing/perspective, basis for understanding, in order to develop a common understanding.
The framing/perspective that is likely to be a good basis for achieving a common sense understanding, reinforced by and aligned with the HDR 2020, is the knowledge that it is important for everyone’s thoughts and actions to be governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding applied to reduce harm done and to help others. Admittedly that is an ideal that will never be fully achieved. And it requires more effort, and requires limiting or giving up some modern conveniences than the more harmful unsustainable ways of thinking and living. But pursuing “less than an ideal” will not produce the best possible results.
The problem is “all” of the harmful unsustainable things that have developed as a result of the successes of “failures to govern that way”. Climate change impacts are indeed a significant problem. But biodiversity loss is probably more serious. And all of the Sustainable Development Goals are an integrated understanding. They all need to be pursued in parallel. It would be unacceptable to pursue climate impact reduction in ways that result in higher final impacts than could have been achieved and have it done in ways that are also unsustainable and harmful. And it would be unacceptable to excuse that “more harmful than possible result” because the efforts are compromised by people who want to benefit more from harmful activity.
A key point is “what is the measure of growth or progress”? Everybody’s actions add up to become the future. And the higher status people have more ability to impact things. So an important understanding is that the higher a person’s status is the more they should be leading by example, being less harmful and more helpful than those who have lower status. Any measures of status or advancement that do not accurately relate “status” to that understanding are an incorrect measure of status or advancement.
What is meant by de-growth can be misunderstood if the measures of success are incorrect. More important is understanding that reducing harm done is not de-growth. It is “What is required, the quicker the better”. The key becomes changing the system to actually make it work to end harm done, and make the system improve the lives of the less fortunate while the harmful activity is rapidly ended ... meaning less concern about reducing the incorrectly over-developed perceptions of status of many among the more fortunate.
People can only have the influence they are able to have. But it is important for everyone to be pulling the levers available to them in the same direction – towards achieving all of the Sustainable Development Goals and more rapid reduction of climate change harm everywhere, putting pressure on those who have higher status to prove they deserve to have their higher status by leading by example.
More to the point of the current developed climate change challenge. Countries like China, Indian, Brazil and Russia are justified to say that they plan to develop their activity up to the peak level of per-capita impact example provided by the USA 10 years ago then reduce their per-capita impacts at the same rate as the USA from that point.
However, to achieve the actions now required due to the lack of responsible systemic cultural change leadership by the more fortunate, the failure to set better examples through the past 30 years, the level of harm done and the challenge of responsibly limiting the harm to 1.5 C impact are now monumental. Countries like China, India, Brazil or Russia behaving the way the USA have behaved, following that leadership example, would be disastrous. And the wealthy and powerful, especially in the supposedly more advanced countries like the USA, Australia and Canada must be made responsible for achieving the dramatic systemic changes needed to set responsible examples for others to develop towards. And the fact that harmfully selfish people made the problem worse today because of their lack of responsible leadership through the past 30 years means they do not deserve protection from significant loss of status as the required corrections are achieved. Some over-grown aspects of the developed economy need to be un-grown.
So, by all means proper leadership would focus on building sustainable renewable energy systems. But it would also make efforts to reduce energy demand to most rapidly end the use of fossil fuels. And at the same time it would improve the lives of the less fortunate. And it would do all of that even if the incorrect measures of progress seem to indicate that the result will be negative for some higher status people.
As for your expressed reluctance to ‘give up things that you like’, the less fortunate have more excuse for behaving more harmfully. The most fortunate have No Excuse. Everyone of higher status than you needs to become less harmful than you before you should be obliged to reduce how harmful you are. And someone in New Zealand probably already has a very low level of impact, so not much more needs to be given up any time soon even if the higher status people in the global population get the message and lead the push for others to be as low impact as they rapidly become.
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Daniel Bailey at 07:56 AM on 24 June 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25, 2021
@citizenschallenge, I've downloaded those and will read them in more depth tomorrow. Surficially, they appear pretty straightforward and anyone using them to deny the understood science of AGW, land-based ice sheet losses and SLR is being disingenuous and misrepresenting those 2 papers. They appear to be good news, in that future losses from the ice sheets will more closely follow existing modeled pathways and not something far more extreme.
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citizenschallenge at 07:37 AM on 24 June 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25, 2021
I've noticed the following starting to circulate through the internet: "Is the marine ice cliff hypothesis collapsing?" By N.R. Golledge, D.P. Lowry.
The gratuitously melodramatically titled commentary on,
"Transition to marine ice cliff instability controlled by ice thickness gradients and velocity."
Bassis JN, Berg B, Crawford AJ, Benn DI.
Science. 2021 Jun 18;372(6548):1342-1344. doi: 10.1126/science.abf6271.Hopefully SkS will look at that paper and dedicate an article to looking at the details.
It's behind the paywall and the SN article left some tidbits unexamined: "The researchers also found that in relatively warm ambient temperatures, ice flow upstream of the cliff thins the glacier and reduces the height of the cliff, thus reducing the likelihood of runaway collapses."
Since the article addresses sea level rise - why is this elastic thinning of glacier height a reason for comfort? Doesn't it simply mean the flow into the sea follows a different regime/tempo? The bottomline being that the thinning is plenty significant of a situation that's starting to run away, in the wrong direction.
Also I found it curious that the news reports/reviews don't say anything about the study factoring in the warming ocean currents. Considering it's impact on eating away at glaciers, seem a rather important detail.
Did they include that? If not, why not?
I for one sure hope that someone from the SkepticalScience team takes the time to give this paper and Golledge & Lowry piece an informed closer look and writes a critical review.
One that helps us better appreciate any omissions in that study.
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BaerbelW at 02:17 AM on 24 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
As one of the authors of the OP, I'd like to point out that this comment thread seems to have run its course (not to mention that it wandered off-topic quite a bit as well). Thoughts and standpoints have been exchanged and we'll just have to politely agree to disagree.
Can we please leave it at that? Thanks!
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MA Rodger at 21:26 PM on 23 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Nick Palmer @88,
Delingpole? I don't see Delingpole as somebody who has any grip on anything that is worth my consideration. He is an absurd right-wing commentator, a wind-up merchant.
You are wrong to say the 2019 Katharine Hayhoe coverage"touches on the 'watermelon' aspect." It does not. It is saying some explain their denilaism by saying they see reds-under-the-AGW-bed, not that there are any there. All Hayhoe is saying is that the solutions to AGW have not been made as toxic as the science within the minds of those captured by denialism. That perhaps brings us back on-topic as the Mann book is saying that denialists are now laying claim to solutions such as CCS & nuclear to undermine the development of renewables. (I noted just yesterday on the BBC's Politics Live programme Steve Baker MP, one of the Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy, happily arguing for CCS & nuclear and bad-mouthing solar.)
Your other two links both discuss the same paper - Campbell & Kay (2014) 'Solution aversion: On the relation between ideology and motivated disbelief'.
I would suggest these citations simply makes the case against your assertion that Mann is pushing some deep-green agenda insinuated into the world by the evil GreenPeace. Rather, it suggests Mann has spotted this denialist shift in tactic....
You then turn to addressing us pidgeons which doesn't last long before we get another dead cat lobbed at us. "I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but...."
You expend 1,700 words trying to convince us that Exxon are being unfairly stitched up by Greenpeace/Oreskes. (I would suggest this is now appearing as something you care rather too much about for you not to have a dog in the race.)You insist GreenPeace cherrypick from ancient Exxon documents to create their case against Exxon. I would suggest that an accusation of fundamental cherrypicking by GreenPeace could be (indeed should be) backed up by some evidence (maybe show us some false allegstions of Rochefeller funding work to undermine Arrhenius). You tell us these cherrypicks are "relatively few in number" but it seem presenting them is too complicated for you even though you later tell us it "is actually very quick and easy to do"!!.
What we do see is within you ability is to present some of the cherrypicks from Climategate (something that tick Delingpole tries to lay claim to exposing). Perhaps you feel this has more need of exposure than the case you are trying to make against GreenPeace.
...
All in all, Nick Palmer, you do not present your argument or yourself well here. Rather than the cocktail of argument you attempt to present, we pidgeons get a pile of dead cats. Perhaps your arguments need presenting for you.
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nigelj at 12:30 PM on 23 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Nick Palmer @88, could you firstly please clarify whether you broadly agree or disagree with my comments @85, particularly the following:
"His (Nicks) basic idea appears to be that oil companies launched a campaign to spread climate disinformation because of left leaning environmentalist policies including potentially shutting off fossil fuels, carbon taxes, and regulations and if only they had focused on CCS and regenerative farming the oil companies would have desisted from their odious campaign. Maybe Nick has a point that the oil companies were reacting against left leaning policies, but my reaction is so what? Those are still the only realistic options we have! CCS and direct air capture are still in their infancy and are expensive technologies."
If you disagree could you state your position please, and preferably briefly.
Your comments about the polarisation between far left and far right sound fair enough, but its not clear what your real point or solution is.
You express a concern that facts won't convince the denialists. This would be true. We only ever debate with denialists to educate more sensible people lurking, or for entertainment to mock the denialists. There are some denialists you should not debate.
You argue Exxon didn't know in the early days how bad the climate problem was, yet @18 you appear to suggest Exxon's scientists exaggerated the climate problem to get the attention of the Exxon executives. If so, then the executives thought there was a big problem but hid this from the public by telling another story, so your attempts to make excuses for Exxon fall rather flat.
You mention that Greenpeace exaggerate and cherry pick. I would suggest 99.9% of people, including politicians neither know nor care what Greenpeace say about things, so why do you keep suggesting they are somehow pivotal to the climate issue?
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Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 23 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Just in case you lot are still resisting the idea that the politics relating to climate science have become extremely polarised - in my view to the point where ideologues of both the left and right think it justified to exaggerate/minimise the scientific truths/uncertainties to sway the democratically voting public one way or the other - here's a video blog by alt-right hero and part of the original Climategate team who publicised the emails, James Delingpole basically saying that 'the left' have infiltrated and corrupted the science for the purpose of using political deception to seize power for themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=866yHuh1RYM
Deconstruct or follow up Delingpoles' rhetoric elsewhere and you will find a helluva lot of intelligent articulate people who believe that the public's environmental consciences are being exploited by closet socialist forces to deceive them, using 'fear porn', into voting for policies which they otherwise wouldn't consider voting for, in a dark strategy to bring in some form of latter day Marxism. They insinuate this has got its tentacles into climate science which they assert has led to the reality of the science, as presented to the public, being twisted by them for political ends. It's absolutely not just Greenpeace, as I already said, who've 'gone red' to the point where it has 'noble cause' corrupted their presentations of environmental matters and, crucially, the narrow choice of solutions they favour - those which would enable and bring on that 'great reset' of civilisation that they want to see. It's much, much bigger than that.
I think we are seeing a resurgence and a recrystallisation of those who got convinced by Utopianist politics of the left and free market thinkers of the right taught at University - Marxist-Leninism, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith etc. Most of those students eventually 'grew up' and mellowed in time, leaving only a small cadre of incorrigible extremists but who are now, as the situation is becoming increasingly polarised politically, revisiting their former ideologies. In essence 'woking' up. I submit that the real battle we are seeing played out in the arena of climate matters is not between science and denialism of science - those are only the proxies used to manipulate the public. The true battle is between the increasingly polarised and increasingly extreme and deceitful proponents of the various far left and right ideologies and their re-energised followers.
It is now almost an article of faith, so accepted has it become, amongst many top climate scientists and commentators, that 'denialism' is really NOT motivated by stupidity or a greedy desire to keep on making as much money as possible but is rather a strong resistance to the solutions that they fear are just 'chess moves' to bring about the great Red 'reset' they think the 'opposition' are secretly motivated by.
Here's an excellent article by famous climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe identifying those who are 'solutions averse' as being a major factor in denialism. It touches on the 'watermelon' aspect. You can turn a blind eye to what I am saying if you want, but in that case you should also attack Hayhoe too - but don't expect many to applaud you...
https://theecologist.org/2019/may/20/moving-past-climate-denial
Also try this: https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/solution-aversion-can-explain-climate-skeptics.html
https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion
I think some people who fight climate science denialism still have the naive idea that just enlessly quoting the science to them, and Skepticalscience's F.L.I.C.C logical fallacies, will make denialists fall apart. I too used to think that if one would just keep hammering away, eventually they would give up. Anyone who tries this will find that it actually does not work well at all. Take on some of the smarter ones and you will rapidly find that you are, at least in the eyes of the watching/reading/listening public, who are the only audience it's worthwhile spending any time trying to correct, outgunned scientifically and rhetorically. That's why I don't these days much use the actual nitty-gritty science as a club with which to demolish them because the smarter ones will always have a superficially plausible, to the audience at least, comeback which looks convincing TO THE AUDIENCE. Arguing the science accurately can often lose the argument, as many scientists found when they attempted to debate such notorious, yet rhetorically brilliant sceptic/deniers such as Lord Monckton.
I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but right back at the beginning, in post#18, I fairly covered what I was trying to suggest is a more realistic interpretation of the truth than the activist's simplistic 'Evil Exxon Knew' propaganda one. In short, most of you seem to believe, and are arguing as if, the science was rock solid back then and that it said any global warming would certainly lead to bad things. This is utterly wrong, and to argue as if it was true is just deceitful. As I have said, and many significant figures in the field will confirm, I've been fighting denialism for a very long time so when denialists present some paper or piece of text extracted from a longer document as 'proof' of something, I always try and read the original, usually finding out that they have twisted the meaning, cherry picked inappropriate sentences or failed to understand it and thereby jumped to fallacious conclusions - similarly I read the letters and extracts that Greenpeace used and, frankly, either they were trying deliberately to mislead or they didn't understand the language properly and jumped to their prejudiced conclusions and then made all the insinuations that we are familiar with and that nobody else seems be questioning much, if at all. The idea that Exxon always knew that anthropogenic climate change was real (which they, of course, did) AND that they always knew that the results of that would be really bad and so they conspired to cover that bad future up is false and is the basis of the wilful misreading and deceitful interpretation of the cherry picked phrases, excerpts and documents that has created a vastly worse than deserved public perception of how the fossil fuel corporations acted. Always remember that, at least ideally, people (and corporations) should be presumed innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty. Greenpeace/Oreskes polemics are not such proof. Their insinuations of the guilt of Big Oil is just a mirror image of how the Climategate hackers insinuated guilt into the words of the top climate scientists.
Here's a clip from my post#18
NAP: "When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science, as if today's relatively strong climate science existed back when the documents highlighted in 'Exxon knew' were created. Let me explain what I think is another interpretation other than Greenpeace/Oreskes'/Supran's narratives suggesting 'Exxon knew' that climate change was going to be bad because their scientists told them so as far back as the 70s and 80s. Let me first present Stephen Schneider's famous quote from 1988 (the whole quote, not the edited one used by denialists).
S.S. "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.""
Stephen Schneider, as a climate scientist, was about 'as good as it gets' and he said that in 1988. Bear in mind that a lot of the initial framing to prejudice readers that 'Exxon knew' used was based on documents from considerably longer ago, so what are the activists who eagerly allowed themselves to be swept up in it until no-one questioned it turning a blind eye to? It's that the computer models of the time were extremely crude because computer technology back then was just not powerful enough to divide Earth up into enough finite element 'blocks' of small enough size to make model projections of much validity, in particular projections of how much, how fast and how bad or how good... Our ideas of the feedback effects of clouds and aerosols back then was extremely rudimentary and there were widely differing scientific opinions as to the magnitude or even the direction of the feedback. The scientific voices we see in Exxon Knew tend to be those who were suggesting there was lot more certainty of outcome than there actually was. That their version has been eventually shown to be mostly correct by a further 40 years of science in no way means they were right to espouse such certainty back then - just lucky. As I pointed out before, even as late as the very recent CMIP6 models, we are still refining this aspect - and still finding surprises. To insinuate that the science has always been as fairly rock solid as it today is just a wilful rewriting of history. Try reading Spencer Weart's comprehensive history of the development of climate science for a more objective view of the way things developed...
ExxonMobil spokesperson Allan Jeffers told Scientific American in 2015. “The thing that shocks me the most is that we’ve been saying this for years, that we have been involved in climate research. These guys (Inside Climate News) go down and pull some documents that we made available publicly in the archives and portray them as some kind of bombshell whistle-blower exposé because of the loaded language and the selective use of materials.”
Look at the phrases and excerpts that were used in both Greenpeace's 'Exxon Knew' and 'Inside Climate News's' exposés. You will find they actually are very cherry picked and relatively few in number considering the huge volumes of company documents that were analysed. Does that remind you of anything else? Because it should. The Climategate hackers trawled through mountains of emails - over ten years worth - to cherry pick apparently juicy phrases and ended up with just a few headline phrases, a sample of which follow. Now, like most of us now know, there are almost certainly innocent and valid explanations of each of these phrases, and independent investigations in due course vindicated the scientists. Reading them, and some of the other somewhat less apparently salacious extracts that got less publicity, and comparing them with the 'presented as a smoking gun' extracts from Greenpeace/Oreskes/Supran etc I have to say, on the face of it, the Climategate cherry picks look more evidential of serious misdeeds than the 'Exxon Knew' excerpts. Except we are confident that the Climategate hackers badly misrepresented the emails by insinuating shady motives where none were. Why should we not consider that those nominally on the side of the science did not do the same? Surely readers here are not so naive aas to believe that everyone on 'our side' is pure as the driven snow and all those on the 'other side' are evil black hats?
Here's a 'top eight'
1) Phil Jones "“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”
2) “Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…. The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” [Kevin Trenberth, 2009]
3) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple." Keth Briffa
4) Mike [Mann], can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] re AR4? Keith will do likewise…. Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Phil Jones, May 29, 2008]
5) “Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were….” [Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, December 20, 2006]
6) “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” [Phil Jones, July 8, 2004]
7) “You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report] would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember it.” [Phil Jones, May 12, 2009]
8) “If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip….” [Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, to Phil Jones, September 28, 2008]
Please at least consider the possibility that Greenpeace, who have been deceiving the public about the toxicity and carcinogenicity of this, that and the other for decades (ask me how if you want to see how blatant their deceit or delusion is... showing this is actually very quick and easy to do) were, in a very similar way, and motivated by their underlying ideology, deliberately (or delusionally) misrepresenting innocent phrases to blacken names excessively too.
Moderator Response:[DB] This line of reasoning has exhausted itself and now violates several injunctions from this site's Comments Policy (Excessive Repetition, Sloganeering and Accusations of Deception, to name but a few). The topic of this post is Michael Mann's "New Climate War" book, the SkS reviews of it and the audio recording. Comments should constrain themselves to that and refrain from baiting other contributors. Please construct any subsequent comments to comport with this site's Comments Policy.
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