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Comments 52301 to 52350:

  1. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    sorry - Taylor's "piece" is on Forbes, not WSJ.
  2. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    John Brookes@2 - I think that in the future, only a small percentage of those in the general public (call them "genral public skeptics")that held onto their "skepticism" will be embarrassed at how they had naively accepted the arguments that supported what they wanted to believe. Most future former-"skeptics" in the general public probably won't ever do any soul searching or even feel resentment for those that sold them a lie. Humans seem to be expert at rationalizing things like this. True, the "professional skeptics" that feed the "general public skeptics" will fade away at some point, but I think they will never do it in shame because they don't actually believe the vast majority of what they say IMO. I think they know climate change will be bad, but they themselves, and there societal peers, are situated to grow old and pass on without having to deal with the consequences. If my opinion is right, then the emotion to feel any real remorse is absent from these people. James Taylor, interviewed in "Climate of Doubt", today in the Wall Street Journal writes about how science supports his contention that global warming will actually be good for Africa. There are links in Taylor's peice to the supporting science. One is a USGS study on water cycle intensification - it takes only 10 minutes to read it and see that Taylor is wrong that it supports his contention that global warming will be good for Africa: the "general public skeptic" will never do that, he/ she will just trust the "professional skeptic", after all he linked a USGS paper ...Better stop, starting to ramble and just getting depressed about it.
  3. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    No. Ceramic membranes have been investigated for years. Their problem is that they require 700-900C to operate. MIT only moved the heat source to attain that temperature from the back end (exhaust heat) to the front end (incoming fuel heat). This new technology uses air at ambient temperature and pressure and relies on the fact that O2 is electro negative and N2 is not. This means that O2 will absorb electrons to become negative ions and N2 will give up electrons to become positive ions. Powerful forces can be generated on each molecule to separate them. Carbon sequestration is moving CO2 to long term storage reservoirs. The reservoirs can be underground caverns or it can be rocks (check how limestone is formed), or it can be sodium bicarbonate to feed alge, which produce fuel. This could also apply to cars. You go to a gas station to fill up and to recycle the captured carbon from the engine designed to run on pure oxygen and produce only H2O & CO2 (loose the pollution control equipment- not needed).
  4. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    @John Brookes At some point the "skeptics" will simply fade away, embarrassed to talk about their previous beliefs. While I would really love to believe that, one look at the Creationist Museum in Kentucky leads me to believe they will always be there. No matter the evidence, personal belief just trumps rational thought in a lot of cases. I haven't seen the program yet, I intend to this weekend. If it is as good as is being claimed here, I'll be sharing it far and wide here in Canada. Tragically, our proximity to the US has really helped in allowing the misinformation campaign to spread north. A discouragingly large portion of the Canadian public is now skeptical or denying climate science, and while there is mounting opposition to the country's black eye, the tar sands, and its associated pipelines, this more commonly stems from wishing to protect the regional evironment rather than the global climate @shoyemore, I'd currently say that the Harper government is worse than the G.W. Bush administration on the climate front. Bush at least acknowledged the threat of global warming and climate change, whereas Harper - to the best of my knowledge - has never done so. Worse yet, Canada is now actively engaged in disrupting attempts at climate action and we have the pathetic point of being the only country to withdraw from Kyoto.
  5. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    "Although some have criticized the program for not going into greater depth about the major consequences of climate change that we face as a result of our climate inaction," I strongly disagree. To talk about consequence or dabble in the potential of prediction plays into the hands of contrarians who are already heavily invested in conflating the science of what is happening with the fears of what will happen. One of the biggest and often used talking points involves linking model predictors that have failed and use those to suggest that current metrics should be discounted. I think we need to keep the horse before the cart and concentrate on the evidence that indicates. Once that is well established and the outliers of denial are squashed it will be easier and more fruitful to get the public and the policy makers on board the amelioration express.
  6. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    Chevron has come out swinging! $2.5 Million donated to House GOP superpac in the single largest corporate post-citizens united donation. And do these tactics ever appear to be working; Climate Progress reports that Congress has voted 109 times in the last 18 months to enrich Big Oil. But there's good news yet;
  7. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    One wonders whether P.B.S will ever get to re-visit the issue of Climate Change, given Mitt Romney's threat to cut its funding if he were to become President.From the perspective of the political right, who needs a pesky public broadcaster when you have Fox News ? @ Bernard J. When looking at whose ahead in policy terms, vis-a-vis Australia or the US, I would have to say Australia. Simply because Australia's national parliament has managed to pass laws taxing CO2 emissions. The laws have been in place for some time, and the sky has not fallen in, as predicted by the opposition. If the opposition were to become the government, they would certainly try to overturn those laws, but may find unscrambling the egg no easy task. In the US though, congress looks as far away as ever from getting up a carbon tax or an emission trading scheme. A state of affairs not helped by the slow recovery from the GFC. Whatever the imperfections of the Australian scheme, at least the national government has taken the first tentative steps, to de-carbonise Australia's economy.
  8. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    I find that most of my friends, educated people in their 50's, and interested in public affairs, are not well informed on climate change. They mostly accept the climate science, and are not in any way "skeptics". But I'm not sure they would sit through that show. I did, and it was quite clear that the "skeptics" came out of it badly, although their supporters might not think so. Their sliminess, the association with tobacco, the way the play the man, all of this would turn off a large chunk of the public. I really liked the show, and though the interviewer did a masterful job.
  9. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    OPatrick #4, I live in Ireland, so am not that well versed in the sales of UK newspapers.:) At least the TV stations in these here islands are mostly free from deep denialism. The UKIP clearly did not lighten it's attacks on climate science since Monckton jumped ship, or was pushed. Denialism seems to be strongest in the English-speaking countries. Is is because that there wealth has such a big say in politics? Or is it just because that is what we focus on? In Canada, the Harper government seems to be a continuation of George W. Bush - paying lip service to science, but in practice ignoring it. That may be even worse than the public denial that can be openly called to account.
  10. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    @sincam If this is the low cost pure oxygen production technology you're referring to: Oxygen-separation membranes could aid in CO2 reduction ...then you still have the problem of what to do with the pure stream of CO2 that is emitted by the process. They suggest it could be sequestered in the ground, but that comes with its own set of problems, as you are well aware. And how could it possibly apply to cars? Not the panacea you make it out to be.
  11. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    We need politicians who can lead and inspire people not to follow them. Overall they are afraid to explain something to people which can not be explained in 1 minute. And because of the media it is not getting better, they should do more to expose the "sceptics" Videos from potholer & Greenman explain the basics in a way most educated people can understand, they should be shown on public television every week, maybe with a discussion between "sceptics" and scientists afterwards for 25 minutes on that subject alone. Of course Teaparty & co. (in Netherlands PVV) will tell this is the MSM and there is no room for debate and the videos are biased....
  12. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    Powerful and scary - but to what extent does the programme fall into the rhetorical trap of repeating the myths? The majority of the programme was given over to 'sceptics' voicing their opinions and whilst anyone listening with even the slightest degree of reflection would realise how weak their positions are I wonder if that's enough. My instincts say it is, but what we are being told by experts in communication seems to say otherwise - or am I misapplying those arguments to a longer and more detailed broadcast like this? shoyemore #2 - saying 'except from...' and then naming probably the three most influential newsapapers in the UK is not so comforting. UKIP (roughly equivalent to the Tea Party, at least in levels of lunacy) are having a corrosive effect on the quality of politics here. Mainstream Conservatives are genuinely scared of losing votes to this extreme and there looks to be an increasing move to keep those voters in the fold. What's depressing to see is how willing politicians, who previously worked within a consensus on climate change, are to abandon their principles for cheap votes.
  13. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    From a European point of view, the situation is different. Governments, publicly at least, do pay attention to climate change, even in much more austere circumstances than obtain in either Australia or the US. The behaviour of the Tea Party is just bizarre by any standard - I thought the few minutes devoted to ex-Rep Bob Inglis were among the most powerful of the show - a solid, intelligent Conservative public representative summarily thrown out of office for accepting science! Clearly, there was more than a reaction to climate change going on there. I think the emotional shock of losing to a Northern Democrat, and a black one at that, galvanised all sorts of toxic reactions among the Republican base, and the climate contrarians were able to climb on that band-wagon, powered also by the effects of the recession. God knows what will happen if (hopefully, when) they lose again. In the UK, there are climate contrarians in the Conservative Party, which leads the Government in coalition with the Liberals. But the battle is mainly being fought behind closed doors, and the battlefield is more over renewable energy subsidies and carbon caps than the science, which attracts little in the way of negative comment - except from the Daily Mail, the Conservative Daily Telegraph, or (sometimes) Murdoch's Sunday Times. I only half agree with John Brookes #2 - I think the contrarians have won on public policy because the politicians are weak, and too willing to take the line of least resistance in a period of economic hardship. But I think public opinion is broadly coming round to the idea that global warming action cannot be postponed for much longer - mainly because the signs of climate change are becoming too obvious to be suppressed.
  14. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    I agree that contrarians have won the policy/public opinion battle. But it will be a short term victory. Reality will bite, and the science will become more and more solid. At some point the "skeptics" will simply fade away, embarrassed to talk about their previous beliefs.
  15. Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
    James Hansen has an excellent debunking of Michael's claims here Comments on Assertions of Pat Michaels at Grover Norquist's "Wednesday" Meeting, 5 September 2012
  16. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    Chriskoz - "Hansen has recently asserted that the current radiative imbalance was +0.5W/m2" Actually, closer to +0.6W/m2. Perhaps the simplest way to appreciate this is that the ocean warming demonstrated, most recently in Levitus & Nuccitelli (2012), is actually a proxy for the Earth's energy imbalance. 93% of global warming has gone into the oceans over the last 50-60 years because they are the planet's largest reservoir of heat. That the oceans continue to warm shows that an imbalance still exists - as we would expect it to given the long atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide, and the mechanism of greenhouse gas-induced warming of the oceans. Estimates of the Earth's energy imbalance cover the 2001-2006 global dimming period shown in Hatzianastassiou (2011), and despite the slowdown in ocean heating (between 2004-2008 in particular), the oceans continue to accumulate heat. So no, this study result does not mean the Earth's energy imbalance should have been negative over this time period. Indeed, a slowdown in ocean heating during the latter part of the 2001-2006 period is highly suggestive that this global dimming did in fact occur. I'm working on the follow up - the primary purpose of this post is to show that global dimming occurred during the "noughties" - a period where global surface temperatures barely increased, but ocean warming continued. BTW, I've also seen bloggers naively link to the data from satellite products which measure the transparency of the atmosphere, as if that somehow invalidates peer-reviewed research - a recent example being here. There are a number of reasons why this cannot be relied upon, much of which is detailed in previous work by these authors. That will be covered in a general post on aerosols in the near-future.
  17. Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement
    Perhaps the one flaw in the program was that it created the impression that the climate contrarians have won the policy battle.
    In terms of the Australian political landscape over the last five years, which is of course not the same as the US situation, I'd say that climate contrarians have won the battle. Oh, we managed to get a price put on carbon, but only after the original scheme was kiboshed by a negative publicity campaign, and only after the federal government overthrew its prime minister. Worse is the fact that the eventual carbon price has endured withering unwarranted criticism, and the promise of elimination by the Coalition whose entire platform is based on the notion that a carbon price is not necessary, and that it is government policy that determines whether or not refugees and asylum searchers decide to come the the country by boat. On the conservative side of Australian politics there is, in addition to a Federal Opposition peopled with rabid human-caused climate change deniers promising to rescind the carbon price, the Queensland State Government that has abolished its Climate Office, and the NSW State Government which has removed the need for reference to IPCC sea level projections when planning coastal developments. To say nothing of the governments across the country falling A over T in an effort to flog as much coal as can be dug out of the ground as quickly as possible. Scrape beneath the surface of the decision-making that has led to these outcomes, and there is a swath of denialist campaigning. And as things stand, the lobbying has been sufficiently successful that we will likely see the most aggressively denialist parties ever win federal government next year, setting both Australia and the world up for more delay at a time when action is perhaps the most cricial that it will ever be.
  18. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    John Mashey is following the Heartland money trail here Fakery 2: More Funny Finances, Free Of Tax
  19. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    @ Cornelius Concerning the UKIP policy document, The graph they reproduce showing the various warm and cold periods since the last ice age ends at 0BP, which is 1950, so it misses out the last 62 years of warming and thus gives the impression that the preceding warm periods were warmer than today.
  20. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    The early stages of the PBS video, featuring snippets of speeches & interviews by CEI, Heartland, Republican contrarians, Monckton & the like crowing about their PR successes is making me feel ill.
  21. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    Well, this will be a political comment, and as such, it possibly contravenes the comments policy, and you may certainly delete it. But it's a political post, and, I think, one of the most telling posts that I have ever seen on SkS... So, reading from your table above, Monckton, Watts, Delingpole etc are actually arguing for the interests of Iran (Ahminejad), Saudi Arabia (the ibn Saud and bin Laden clans), Venezuela (Chavez), Kuwait, Gazprom (Putin),etc., etc. etc., until, in 11th place we get to them good old boys from Texas, Exxon. As I am not American, I am unwilling to expand too much on American politics, but I really can't see how this works with the conservative base... "Vote for me! I'm against all advice from the US military (eg. NASA, eg. US Navy), but I stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against the "global warming hoax" with my good old buddies, Ahminajad, Ibn Saud + bin Laden, Chavez, Putin and, in 11th place, Dubya."
  22. NASA Climate 'Skeptics' Respond with Science! Just Kidding.
    LaughinChance appears to be asserting that an open letter written by a tiny handful of administrators, engineers, and non-climate scientists is intellectually equivalent to the consilient, interlocking lines of evidence from physics theory, laboratory & model experiment, and empirical observation as collected and analysed by thousands of scientists and endorsed by virtually every major scientific organization in the world. Suffice to say, LaughinChance is unequivocally incorrect in such a case. Having just skimmed through this post (never fear, I did read it in detail upon its publication) again I don't recall that it touched on the point I am about to make, but since it was in the "highlights" highlighted by LaughinChance, I feel it is worth noting. The 49 letter-writers state:
    We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated [Emphasis mine.]
    While dana does take the letter-writers to task for failing to show that NASA is being unnecessarily alarmist, I would like to take the letter-writers, and hence LaughinChance, for pretending that belief, in science, is the equivalent of evidence. It's not, and no amount of wishful thinking will change that. Evidence is what the IPCC, NASA GISS, and advocates for action against climate change have backing them up. Belief is the empty shell supporting denial and inactivism.
  23. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    “…they then stick to these beliefs, partly as a matter of solidarity with their cultural group, regardless of how much more they learn about the science." I think it would be more accurate to say, “regardless of how much more they hear from science.” They are not interested in learning. That requires an open mind and a willingness to learn. They are determined to defend their emotional and intuitive beliefs. Please do not be too disappointed if the anti-science echo chamber only becomes louder. Likewise I hope you will not be too disappointed if the oil companies do nothing to actually help reduce GHG emissions and continue to develop ever more oil fields. Soon the demand to open ANWR, the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, to oil exploration will overwhelm the resistance to it; especially if Romney wins. If you haven’t seen it yet the Frontline Climate of Doubt site is an excellent resource. If you are interested in learning about how the climate change countermovement is now secretly funded you should see what Robert Brulle has to say. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/robert-brulle-inside-the-climate-change-countermovement/ For the oil companies it is all about appearance. It is no longer about active opposition because the secret opposition and secret funding is more than sufficient. Of course they will do nothing to actually put an end to their enormously profitable industry. Sure they will no longer obviously fund denier organizations but they will fund the politicians who will vote against any attempt to reduce CO2 emissions. Sure they might try to reduce methane leaks but they will still open up more crude and natural gas plays. The two big petroleum industry news stories for this week: The US may soon become the world’s top oil producer, and due to a deal with BP the Russian oil company Rosneft will now rival Exxon Mobil in oil and gas production. More production out of Africa, more production from the Arctic, more pipelines for the tar sands, more, more, more. It is just too early in the fight to be optimistic.
  24. NASA Climate 'Skeptics' Respond with Science! Just Kidding.
    LaughinChance, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to show why you're off the deep end on this one. Can you defend the claims made in the letter? Or are you just blindly accepting the views of 49 non-experts? (and, further, suggesting that everyone reading your comment do the same)
  25. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    "I read your loaded adjectives & pointed hyperbole & wonder how it's possible you overlooked the 49 NASA Scientists... Do a google: 49 NASA Scientist's letter, read it yourself!" Do a check on this website and read the SkS response yourself: http://www.skepticalscience.com/NASA-climate-denialist-letter.html
    Moderator Response: [DB] Any wishing to respond to LaughinChance, please do so on the most appropriate thread.
  26. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    Chriskoz - there was some missing text with the annually averaged rate of change - now fixed. "This can be seen in Figure 1, where the Northern Hemisphere experienced a brightening of 0.17 W/m2 (0.028 W/m2 per year), and the Southern Hemisphere a dimming of -2.88 W/m2 (0.-48W/m2 per year)" Thanks.
  27. The Future We All Want
    Doug@9: When I was a kid, my brainiac Dad and I would sit and have 'techy sessions,' looong before they were known as such! He had a design for a solar-heated house, dug into the north-facing side of a hill (south-facing, for you australopithecenes!), using these things he'd imagined; building "modules' of plywood and foam; now, we call'em SIPS. He envisaged using wind turbines, large batteries, and the use of propane appliances, in order to live 'off-the-grid,' another term that had not yet been invented. He told me how he would design a centalized column, (hollow) which would contain ALL the mechanicals (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) and with easy access on any floor. He had built some crude solar water panels back in the mid 30s, building his parent's a cabin in Foxpark, WY. He said they worked well...so long as the sun shone! They were a single-loop one and unfortunaely, froze. He was way ahaead of his time, and though I dimly was awae how out-in-front he was, he didn't take the ideads much further, and now that I fully realize his genius, it's all gotten really costly! As I can, I'll slowly do a lot of this conversion to my home; just up the road from me is a very reliable and near-constant wind resource....it's called Wyoming!
  28. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    I read your loaded adjectives & pointed hyperbole & wonder how it's possible you overlooked the 49 NASA Scientists & Astronauts that deplore the "agency's activist stance" toward AGW & use the term "neglecting empirical evidence" that calls CO2's role in GW into question. Select excerpts from the letter: “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.” Do a google: 49 NASA Scientist's letter, read it yourself!
    Moderator Response: [DB] Your comment is off-topic on this thread. As Robert Murphy notes, this was covered on this SkS thread, here. Please post any further comments on that subject there, after acquainting yourself with this site's Comments Policy.
  29. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    #1 mike roddy, I think that the fact we warmed from 1980-2000 whilst SSR increased shows that either the long term cloud feedback is positive, and/or there are other effects such as aerosol direct and indirect effects which can overpower it. add in #6 martin and #8 Eric, there appear to be a number of reasons. Amazonia is a big regions of change, and that's ascribed to aerosol. I also suspect the weather has something to do with it. They say the Australian change is because over that short period it went from dry and clear to wet and cloudy. Over such a short time period the effects of El Nino etc are likely to be quite important as it strongly affects the regional cloudiness distribution. Combine that with aerosol changes and that could perhaps explain the funny patterns even in the presence of a positive cloud feedback. I'm aware of papers detecting positive cloud feedback to temperatures in the short term, but not any that explain these more recent global data.
  30. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    The reason the manipulators can use the latest proaganda tools to influencs their followers is that the followers (voters) and the manipulators have the same short term goals. The followers do not want to pay more for electricity (cap & trade), change their lifestyle (sacrifice anything), feel they are in control of their usually frustraiting lives (no more goverment). The manipulators want to continue to please their "handlers" (Exxon, Koch, ect.) and reap their benefits ($). The long term solution is renewable energy. Short term, fossil fuels must be used until we get to the long term. What if ther was a way to use fossil fuels with zero emissions AND cheaper cost? There is a way. Low cost pure oxygen production being developed right now, to increase efficiency and eliminate pollution and CO2 emissions. Coal & gas & oil burning units (including cars) would have the incentive economically, without gov intervention, to deploy the new technology. The followers would vote with their pocketbooks (also known as the capatalist free market system). It can be done quickly to turn things around.
  31. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    So the Escalator did make the final cut of the program. Congrats to the SkS team!
  32. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    DMCarey @17 - I wouldn't call that a new Monckton Myth. We've debunked economics myths from Monckton many times, here and here for example. If he can get a paper on the subject published by a peer-reviewed journal, we'll have a look at it. The article claims "The paper will be published by the World Federation of Scientists". I hadn't previously heard of that organization, and as far as I know they don't have a peer-reviewed journal, but their climatology panel chariman is Christopher Essex, who is a climate denier, so I guess they would probably be open to publishing Monckton's economic ignorance, if they have a journal to publish it in.
  33. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    Thanks, Andy S: This is a process that, for those who follow the behind-the-scenes, not-oft-reported-in-the-MSM news, shows how Big Oil, in no particular fealty to the IPCC, couldn't, and can no longer. reject out of hand the data showing that climate change is real, it's beyond likely we've caused it, and what the 'maths' are, as to its consequences. Better late than never, I suppose; however, the "fun" part is to watch what happens to Big Oil's biggest cheerleaders, e.g. the 'denialosphere.' It's long been among BO's loudest and most raucous supporters, and as such, BO's seeming reversal (really just an acknowledgement of the science we all ahve been trying ti illuminate) will cause the fake skeptics heads to ~detonate~ as BO continues on towards their next goal, to corporatize and populaize alternative energy. It could be argued this is a bad or good thing but that's not my point: Mine is to see what happens to the Watts. the Moncktons, the Christys, and the Spencers, as BO begins to actually operate in *precisely* the way the denialists' would least like, i.e., to do SOMETHING towards decarbonising civilisation. Film in 3.... 2.... 1......
  34. Big Oil and the Demise of Crude Climate Change Denial
    As a good example saying one thing yet buying the other, ConocoPhillips has donated ~$500,000 this election cycle, with >90% of which going to Republicans. Similarly, Senator "God won't let climate change happen" Inhofe has received >$500,000 over his career from oil & gas companies, with another ~$200,000 from electric utilities, according to Open Secrets
  35. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    Wili @37: My main point was just to counter the red herring that Al Gore et al. do not "walk the walk" because they fly places. The argument distracts from discussing the essential point that we need to strive for flying (and other activities) that are low-carbon or ideally carbon-neutral, as opposed to eliminating the activity altogether. Jimmy Carter didn't inspire many people when he turned down the thermostat in the White House and put on a sweater, because unfortunately many people aren't willing to undergo what they perceive as sacrifice, and yet the need to reduce energy consumption and GHGs remains. That said, I fully agree with you that there is a large role for individual action, partly for its actual contribution to reducing GHGs and partly just for consciousness-raising about the moral principle that pointless waste is inherently wrong/bad and it endangers the future. Personally, I very rarely fly these days (once in the past decade), and like Jimmy Carter I actually *do* keep my thermostat at 66F in the winter and put on a flannel shirt if I'm chilly, and I have a very energy efficient house with solar panels on the roof, and I've had the same small car since 1992 that gets 33 mpg. In December, thousands of scientists (including some SkS people) will attend the annual AGU (American Geophysical Union) meeting in San Francisco. I wouldn't begrudge most of them for making the trip and benefitting from the exchange of information and networking, as this is how ideas and collaborations are born. But wouldn't it be great if their planes were fueled by carbon-neutral algae-based biofuel?
  36. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    I notice in figure 2 that the area with the highest rate of dimming globally is in Brazil, in the vicinity of Rio, Sao Paulo and Brasillia. I'm wondering if Part 2 of this series will explore why this region of the world is so particularly affected? To the northwest of the area is the region of the Amazon that is being the most deforested, but I'm disinclined to think that is the cause as the tradewinds typically blow to the northwest Also, off topic, I think we've got a new Monckton Myth on our hands
  37. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    I take it that: It is reasonable to say, that the earth's albedo has increased slightly over the noughties, despite the polar amplifications . ?
  38. Rose and Curry Double Down on Global Warming Denial
    Kevin It's a fool's game anyway. The only reason we're having to explain a 'lack of warming' is because the 'skeptics' are fixated on a short, contextless range of data. Once all is accounted for, it seems like the atmosphere is being pushed along at 1.8-2C/century. In 10-20 years when sulfates start to dip, we'll learn what a hot year is.
  39. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    wili, there are several problems with your 'each person adds one Hiroshima every ten years' conclusion. I don't know exactly what Hansen said, but you paraphrased it as, 'our ghg emissions are adding the equivalent energy to the atmosphere of 400,000 Hiroshima bombs every day'. Assuming that is accurate I would take it to mean that the accumulated emissions of the human race over the past two hundred years (i.e. increasing atmospheric content from ~280 to ~400 ppm) have had that effect. You then say that the top 1 billion emitters are responsible for 80% of emissions and apparently extrapolate that to their also being responsible for 80% of the 400k hiroshimas... which isn't going to be accurate because humans do not live for 200 years and thus there are huge temporal/demographic factors which you are glossing over. However, if we ignore that and apply your numbers I get; 400,000 Hiroshimas * 80% = 320,000 Hiroshimas 320,000 Hiroshimas / 1,000,000,000 emitters = 0.00032 Hiroshimas per emitter That is a daily factor... for 200 years worth of emissions. To get your '10 years' I assume you are using; 0.00032 * 10 years * 365 days = 1.168 Hiroshima However, that is 10 years worth of heat accumulation caused by 200 years worth of emissions... not 10 years worth of emissions. You can't assign all the 'blame' for heat caused by 200 years worth of accumulated emissions to people living now. The current rate of atmospheric CO2 increase is about 2 ppm per year. Taking myself as an example, 2 ppm * 40 years old * 80% / 1,000,000,0000 other people = 0.000000064 ppm. If we then ignore the logarithmic nature of CO2 forcings (which mean that the warming impact for each increase by a fixed amount decreases as the total value rises) and take the increase from 280 to 400 ppm to be responsible for the 400,000 Hiroshimas we get; 400,000 / (400 - 280) = 3333 Hiroshimas per ppm 3333 * 0.000000064 = 0.0002 Hiroshimas So, by this math, I'd have to live to be 200,000 years old to cause 1 Hiroshima worth of warming.
  40. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    Wili, I'm not against people taking individual action. Only against thinking that anything other than collective action will work.
  41. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    I have hard time understanding the numbers in Fig1, relative to GHG forcings. Firstly, I think the explanation of those numbers in the text is incorrect. For example, while the text sais: "Southern Hemisphere [experienced] a dimming of -2.88 W/m2 per year", the eyeballing of the black trendline on Figure 1b reveals that it cannot be so. It looks more like dSSR=-2.88 is shown for the entire period of the study (2001-2007). If it was -2.88, then it must have been -17.28 over 6 years, which is clearly not the case. Secondly, -2.88W/m2 (or -2.71W/m2 over both NH+SH) is a large forcing. It does overwhelm the net anthropogenic forcing since preindustrial 1750AD (estimated by IPCC in AR4 to be 1.6W/m2), assuming Earth was in rediative equilibrium in 1750AD. Hansen has recently asserted that the current radiative imbalance was +0.5W/m2, because we did warm since 1750AD enough to compensate for just about 1.1W/m2. Now, a new "forcing of the noughties" -2.71W/m2 discussed here, overwhelms the current +0.5W/m2 imbalance, resulting in a substantial negative forcing and cooling, as some commenters (e.g. @2) suggested. What am I missing here? Or maybe the number in question (-2.71W/m2) is not comparable to other climate forcings, and why so?
  42. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    Hello all, this is my first post here. Sorry for my poor english. If there is a decrease in downward solar radiation that must be due either to increase atmospheric absorption or refelction or both . If this is due to reflection there should be a corresponding albedo increase. Is there the case? I have the feeling that CRES results do net show a consistent amlbedo increase but I may be wrong. Anyone to confirm or not? Considering the methods to derive surface solar radiation fron satellite observations et albedo derivations from CERES, I Think the accuracy of CERES measurements is far much better. Without consistant trends in CERES derived albedoes isn't there a sreious doubdt as for the reality of the reported trends?
  43. Rose and Curry Double Down on Global Warming Denial
    Tristan: Absolutely correct. However... The trend uncertainty is valid only under the assumption than the underlying model - linear increase plus autocorrelated noise - is valid. Now that's probably not a bad assumption for greenhouse-forced warming over a short period with no volcanoes. However, if we take into account that there has been a transition in where the warming occurs from somewhere which is covered by HadCRUT4 to somewhere that isn't, it becomes problematic. Because GISTEMP largely remediates the coverage issue, the results from GISTEMP are a bit more robust (assuming you start after the end of the Pinatubo dip).
  44. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    John B at #36 said "what I do as an individual has very little effect" So adding the energy equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb to the atmosphere is what you would quantify as "very little"?? (See my post above at #11.) Note that I have not said that no one arguing against emissions should fly. I agree with doug b when he says that some flights to, for example scientific meetings may be worth the added CO2, and certainly flights to do actual studies in, for example, Antarctica may be crucial. But I also agree when he says we should always look for opportunities to do things in other ways. As ranyl points out, there are lots of more energy efficient ways to communicate information across distances than ferrying our bulky bodies in metal birds. Words and images travel much more lightly on the internet or telephone wires. And no, larry, this is not sending us back to the dark ages (which weren't quite as dark as advertised anyway '-). It gets tiresome to have to counter "we might as well live in caves" cliches after every suggestion to modify our behavior so as to be even marginally less ecocidal. We have at this point locked our kids (and pretty much every other living thing) in a flammable, gasoline-soaked house with now windows, doors or other means of escape. The flame has been lit and horrible death and suffering is inescapable for most of them. Is it so much to ask that we each try to think of ways to dump a little less additional gas to the fire tomorrow than we did yesterday? Do we all really hate the future that much?
  45. Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
    I never see attempts to lower carbon emissions as an individual responsibility. Because what I may do as an individual has very little effect. Any realistic attempt to lower carbon emissions must be collective. And a price on emissions is probably the simplest and most effective collective method to achieve this. It will make flying more expensive, and that means people will do a different cost-benefit analysis before they fly. So some trips that would have been made, will not be made. And some aeroplane modifications that were not cost effective, will become cost effective. Saying that those arguing against emissions should not fly is self defeating. The CEI and Heartland won't feel constrained and will have their conferences and publicity, and get their message out more effectively.
  46. Doug Hutcheson at 18:09 PM on 25 October 2012
    Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    If only the dimming totally compensated for the GHG forcing, then we would only have to deal with less glamorous problems, such as Ocean Acidification and the survival of polar bears. I can just imagine the denialisti crowing about our miraculous self-balancing atmosphere ...
  47. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    A very well written post. I'm thinking that a good deal more time is needed before any trend can be declared, but its great to see this study.
  48. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    Eric (skeptic) - an emerging area of research is that the dimming effect can saturate in highly polluted regions - such as over much of China and India. In heavily polluted areas, once a certain threshold is exceeded, the high concentration of dark-coloured aerosols (such as black carbon) begins to dominate the reflective particles. This darkening absorbs more solar radiation, heats up and evaporates the cloud layers, and therefore reduces cloud lifetime. So one would observe a brightening, or little change, over such regions when concentrations of aerosols increase, and large changes in areas where the atmosphere is far less polluted - such as the Southern Hemisphere. It's a very new area of research, so we'll have to wait and see how it develops. What I'm suggesting is that the dimming of the pristine Southern Hemisphere atmosphere might seem counter-intuitive, but there may be a logical reason for this. Especially if the transfer of the main pollution source to China enables aerosols to reach the Southern Hemisphere via the large-scale atmospheric circulation. Remember the discussion in this SkS article for example?: Why Wasn't The Hottest Decade Hotter?"
  49. Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
    Martin - global dimming over the period examined was almost entirely due to aerosol and cloud increases in the Southern Hemisphere. See the text in the boxed areas of Figure 1. This paper does not look at what may have caused the dimming.

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