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Comments 5351 to 5400:

  1. Fighting back against climate misinformation and the damage being done

    I've been commenting on climate-related articles on NYTimes.com for a few years now. I've noticed a change in the science-denying participants, as public opinion has tilted in favor of the scientific consensus, perhaps shocked by widely-reported new weather extremes. Denialism is ever more automatic and reactive. Some regular pseudonyms appear to be software agents, deployed to spout denialism on triggering. OTOH, the overwhelming consensus of commenters in these articles is science-respecting. Every once in a while, a comment of mine will get enough 'recommends' to make me think I'm not just talking to myself. I'll probably keep  commenting for awhile, at least.

  2. Fighting back against climate misinformation and the damage being done

    Wol @1, I'm not too clear on what you are saying. I assume you must mean media websites that don't have a reply button. You can still post a comment quoting what the denialist said and discuss why its incorrect. Even if it appears detached from the original comment,  some people will read it. 

    That said I find responding  to denialists in any fashion is troublesome. In my experience they often use it to create a lengthy two way conversation where they spread yet more denialist points like a machine gun. They rarely engage in truly open truth seeking conversation. They stick to their claims and use every rhetorical trick in the book. So you inadvertently  give them a platform which is excatly what they want. They can then spam the website claiming they are only responding to someone, thus getting around website moderation rules forbidding repetition or spamming. 

    On general media websites with lots of readers I have been trapped in these ways. These days I just post a short fact based response with a single link to the key information and leave it there. I mostly avoid conversataions with denialists.

  3. Fighting back against climate misinformation and the damage being done

    Interestingly, I was just this morning looking up some information on the CDC website about negative effects from the COVID vaccines. Their web page is very well structured to not reinforce any misinformation, and presented in a manner that focuses on effectively presenting correct information. It's almost as if they've been reading your materials, John.

  4. An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature

    plincoln24 @18,
    I think you appreciate that this SkS OP is attempting to address the perception of "exponential growth" and thus the idea that the log relationship between atmospheric CO2 cncentrations and forcing makes such "exponential growth" linear and thus arguably entirely acceptable. I would suggest it is not the easiest of messages.

    There are also some real-world considerations with the Log(Exp)=Linear relationship. ♣ There is the impact of any change in the exponential factor driving the CO2 increase (with the OP pointing to that exponent increasing & NOAA AGGI showing CO2 forcing which post-2000 exhibit a doubling-time of 43 years & a decade longer for all-GHG forcing). ♣ There is the transcient effect of the sudden tripling of the GHG forcing back in the 1960s (which all else being equal should provide an accelerating temperature for some decades following). ♣ There is (thus) the impact of non-CO2 forcings as well as natural forcings. ♣ There are the natural feedbacks and their impact on very-long-term warming resulting from an initial forcing, these timescales which are generally considered the factors that will define whether ECS is high or low.

  5. Fighting back against climate misinformation and the damage being done

    I think the worst thing that can be done - and I am guilty of it on a daily basis - is attempting to argue the case on forums such as newspaper comments columns.

    The problem here is that it isn't one-to-one in the sense that a denier says one thing and you can counter the misinformation a few seconds later as if in a conversation. The misinformation is there in "print" and often never gets replied to: it is often requoted by others as if it's established fact (no-one has countered it, so it must be true.)

    I frankly don't see any way around this.

  6. Estimates of the economic damages from climate change

    If economic damage accrues, then change your policy.  If you can't change your policy, then you are 'up the creek without a paddle'.  Thus, it is your ability to change your policy that must figure heavily when adding up economic damages.  Each policy option has a 'permanence risk' that may be the most significant factor in its evaluation; far more important than knowing in fine detail what economic damages will acrue from that option.  It bears repeating that while solar and wind farms can be taken down, nobody is trivially taking down an excess of atmospheric carbon dioxide.  Hence, the carbon option has a large 'permanence risk', while the renewable option does not.  If we admit we have a limited ability to see what these options hold for the economy, then the desireability of the renewable option becomes plain.

  7. An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature

    I just realized that I forgot some words in the sentence that reads "I can understand the public..."  The sentence should read "I can understand the public misreading the claim to think it means no need to be alarmed, but the fact is that given a finite interval, you can always find a linear function that grows faster than any exponential function on that interval. So the only way to know whether we have a problem or not is to crunch the numbers from the data with appropriate modelling.

  8. An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature

    I really don't understand this article. I don't doubt that the climate crisis is serious and that we have to do something about it, however, I am a mathematician and the lograithmic relationship between the equilibrium temperature and the increase in CO2, implies that if the CO2 increases exponentially that the expected equilibrium temperature will increase linearly. So I don't understand why the claim "An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature" is posted as a myth in this article. I can understand the public misreading the claim to think it means no need, but the fact is that given a finite interval, you can always find a linear function that grows faster than any exponential function on that interval. So the only way to know whether we have a problem or not is to crunch the numbers from the data with appropriate modelling. The evidence is in, we should be alarmed. But I am puzzled by this post.

  9. Estimates of the economic damages from climate change

    Seems to me that meaningful action to mitigate adverse climate change does not include considerations of economics. Some of the climate problems are already upon us...yet, the greater public and their government's decision-makers are paralyzed. The economic cost of adverse climate change seems directly (and largely) related to the presence on Earth of a biomass composed of (going on) 8 billion humans and billions of domestic livestock who's numbers nearly no one is able or willing to reduce. As long as that footprint upon the planet exists, matters of economic cost or benefits will never find a meaningful place in the discourse...certainly not in any action plan. Jared Diamond might offer that a "collapse" will have to finish out its typical process, after which "what's left" will have to begin again...albeit differently.

  10. Estimates of the economic damages from climate change

    Here's a late-breaking item: Do climate dynamics matter for economics?

    The author arguably suffers from  what might charitably be termed "chronic irrational exuberance," so this article will need careful scrutiny, complete fact-checking; to an unusual degree full containment and isolation of various impulses cannot be taken for granted. 

    Unfortunately the piece is paywalled and even US$ 9.99 is big gamble against odds of utility.

  11. Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39, 2021

    David thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the format is very difficult / burdansome to navigate . I also did not see any conversion to temps from each proxy. Do you have a link to where the individual proxy data is converted into temperature graphs somewhat similar to the graphs the HS despicts. thanks

  12. Estimates of the economic damages from climate change

    Sounds like a good meeting. There seems to have been a touch of optimism present, in their seeking economic models that matter. From the outside it seems much more optimistic than an NSF seminar I organized at New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1986. It was for international economists that had an interest in environmental deterioration impacting infrastucture. My climate change research from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1977 was the rational behind the meeting. Models of social and physical infrastructure, including governing systems, were discussed relative to deterioration of their essential context. 

    Those in attendance were quite pessimistic about chances for avoiding economic and societal turbulence from consequences of relying on short-term economic valuation as the motivator of humans. They thought 2035 looked like a bad time. Many lecturers were there and recorded. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was the most emphatic about the urgent need for a different kind of concern.  In his response to questions from a Swiss economist, about the value of ecological economics modeling and thinking, Nicholas responded:

    "Ecology will eat economics." 

    Thereafter he and I wrote a paper on "Second Law Economics," that joined the stack of the unpublishable, due to reviewers calling it "pointless pessimism."   Based on events of the 35 years it seems the reviewers were right. It was pointless.  One reviewer called climate change "ad hominem."  

    NSF reviewers avoided such labels and set up a National Academy of Science Commission in 2001 based on the earlier seminar. It was called "Committee on Business Strategies for Public Capital Investment," Published by NRC. The Committee's draft report of 2003 had much potential but was edited in the White House before release. A Presidential Aid managed the re-review saying our earlier draft report contined too much "ad hominem" material? Probably that term needs to be avoided as humans keep moring towards the fateful. Its use is mostly as policies of the political, not a means to empower the scientific.

  13. What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

    Doing a little background reading on modular reactors I found this:

    "The Guardian reported in October 2018:22

    "Backers of mini nuclear power stations have asked for billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to build their first UK projects, according to an official document. … But the nuclear industry's claims that the mini plants would be a cheap option for producing low-carbon power appear to be undermined by the significant sums it has been asking of ministers.

    "Some firms have been calling for as much as £3.6bn to fund construction costs, according to a government-commissioned report, released under freedom of information rules. Companies also wanted up to £480m of public money to help steer their reactor designs through the regulatory approval process, which is a cost usually paid by nuclear companies. ...

    "David Lowry, a nuclear policy consultant who obtained the document, said: "SMRs are either old, discredited designs repackaged when companies see governments prepared to throw taxpayers' subsidies to support them, or are exotic new technologies, with decades of research needed before they reach commercial maturity.""

    The so-called Expert Finance Working Group on Small Nuclear Reactors in the UK laments "the financing sectors potential misunderstanding of nuclear specific risks and how such risks can be mitigated, and that nuclear specific risks aside, nuclear energy projects are no different to any other energy project."23 The finance sector might be in need of education on nuclear-specific risks, but its disinterest in SMRs suggests a clear understanding of the likelihood that they would be uneconomic."my emphasis source

    Nuclear reactors are not economic.  Baseload power will be of very low value is a renewable energy world.  Peak power on windless nights will be most valuable.  They do not address the lack of rare materials, like uranium, needed to produce a significant amount of nuclear power.  Most of the remaining problems in Abbott 2012 are also not addressed.  Without enormous government subsidies they cannot compete with renewables.

  14. What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

    Something on the alleged advantages of small modular reactors:

    www.energy.gov/ne/benefits-small-modular-reactors-smrs

     

    There do seem to be some moderate safety advantages in these reactors and they supposedly can't melt down. This is a big plus if it's correct, but I agree that with so many of these reactors you might end up with a proliferation of smaller but still troubling problems. It might be one step forwards and one step backwards.

  15. Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39, 2021

    David @1

    Not sure if this is what you are suggesting but Carbon Brief has a neat interactive, and a good article, about proxies: Mapped: How ‘proxy’ data reveals the climate of the Earth’s distant past

  16. Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39, 2021

    its great to see Mann fighting back agains the skeptics.  As the article notes above, there are now 70+ studies validating his findings.  It would be great to have all the individual proxies published in a format so that everyone could easily see the underlying data that supports the findings.  Everyone could easily see the long term proxies and the short term proxies used on the studies such as Pages2k, et al.   While such a display would not dispel the hard core skeptics, it would certainly inspire confidence in those that are agnostic and relegate the hard core skeptics to the fringe.  

  17. What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

    All nukes at any scale suffer from:

    1) solvable in principle but unsolved waste disposal in the US, 2) operational hazards due to operator error, 3) leakage of radioactives into the water supply due to maintenance failure, 4) the possibility of radioactive spills in transit, 5) the possibility of theft of fissionables to make a dirty bomb, 6) the possibility of theft of fissionables to make a nuclear bomb.

    All these issues will get much worse if we start to distribute lots of small reactors over the landscape. The resources of the companies involved will not be adequate to secure them, their operations or waste disposal.

    Waste disposal can be solved for a time by the right reprocessing and burial, as is going on in Sweden, Norway and France, but we have repeatedly failed to do this in the US for political reasons. Also we should be spending money to put together a reprocess that converts the fissionables and radioactives to safer isotopes using accelerators or nukes, powered by waste fuel and renewables, lowering required times of storage integrity.

    We should convert cooling from water to air. The technology exists and should be used as it is less prone to catastrophic failure. It would also free siting to be almost anywhere, not limited to vulnerable coastlines.

    Lots of mini-nukes is a bad idea. Put effort into improving what we have on a larger scale. If we build new large ones set the size to 500mwe or so and make them all to the same design to gain feature standardization, operating reliability and load following flexibility. Don't build mini-nukes.

  18. How Skepticism Can Protect You From Being Fooled

    The second diagram, covering "gullible", "skeptical", and "denial" reminds me of a saying one of my T.A.'s had posted over his desk when I was an undergrad.

    "To accept everything, or reject everything, is an equally-convenient solution: it disposes of the necessity of thinking about the situation."

  19. Book Review: Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

    Sorry BL. More haste less speed!

    See also my Arctic alter ego's recent missive:

    https://twitter.com/GreatWhiteCon/status/1442492089300881413

  20. Book Review: Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

    See also Katharine's recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

    https://youtu.be/LVjmGVufADk

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  21. One Planet Only Forever at 07:21 AM on 27 September 2021
    To meet America’s Paris pledge, climate policy Avengers must assemble

    Conservatively limiting harm done requires more, and more aggressive, actions than may be considered to be necessary to limit harm done. It especially requires more helpful, less harmful, leadership actions by the wealthiest and most powerful.

    Framing a problem to ensure it is well understood is essential to effectively solve the problem. The climate change problem raises an important “framing” question. What is now required because of the lack of responsible leadership by “All of the wealthiest and most powerful” through the past 30 years?

    The failure of leadership action on climate change impacts, and other harm reduction issues, by winners of competition for superiority relative to others is understandable. Allowing and excusing harmful actions that offer a competitive advantage in the competition for perceptions of superiority creates an environment that will motivate the development of harmful behaviour. It is also easy to understand that it is difficult to develop solutions that effectively address and correct for those social-political-economic market competition failures because of the powerful resistance to learning about things that would lead to more rapid corrections of harmful unsustainable developments. Especially challenging is the ability of political misleading marketing to:

    • Support leaders who resist the actions that are understandably required to limit harm done and make amends, or assign penalties, for harm done
    • Attack and discredit anyone who would try to raise awareness and improve understanding of what is harmful and required changes of harmful unsustainable developments, especially when those developments are popular and profitable for the more fortunate, more influential, portion of the population.

    It is important to remember the harmful reality of the popular dogmatic Belief that “increased Freedom for people to believe whatever they want to believe and do whatever they desire to do” is the best way for things to be, and that it will produce lasting improvements for each person, each group, and all of humanity. That is a version of the “wide-open to interpretation” call for Liberty to pursue Happiness. (see footnote 1: A Bit on Ethics).

    It may appear nonsensical to argue against Freedom or to argue that Winners are undeserving. But the evidence and improving understanding of what is harmful and what is fair and just is increasingly biased against the dogma of “Freedom” and “All Winners are Deserving” and any of its many ideological incarnations.

    The measure of improvement is “leaving things better than they were found”. Lasting improvements only develop when the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful (like accumulating climate change impacts) and what is unsustainable (like burning up non-renewable buried ancient hydrocarbons) governs, limits, and corrects actions and developed results.

    Everybody’s choices about learning, what they will learn and what they will not, and their resulting actions and inaction, add up to become the future. It is important to avoid the “tragedy of the commons” that can develop when individual or group pursuits of benefit add up to produce harmful unsustainable results. The rich and powerful cannot be excused for failing to learn to be less harmful. But the less fortunate who aspire to develop to live like the richer people can be excused for being tempted to aspire to the harmful examples set by Winners.

    The lack of that understanding governing and limiting past developments has created harmfully over-developed beliefs and activity that are popular and profitable. There is now an undeniable need to un-develop many things that have become popular and profitable. That includes correcting developed perceptions of superiority between people or groups. That understanding is required to develop a sustainable future for humanity. (see footnote 2: A Bit on Politics)

    The Sustainable Development Goals are robust, constantly improving and open to improvement, evidence-based understandings, like the climate change impact understanding presented in the IPCC Reports. And the 2020 Human Development Report is a detailed robust presentation of understanding that includes the understanding that developed measures of superiority, like GDP per-capita, are not legitimate indications of sustainable superiority. Increased GDP per-capita, or number of billionaires in a culture, are not measures of success or improvement. When the measures of success are harmfully incorrect then developed perceptions of status will need to be corrected.

    The richest portion of the global population have had 30 years to show leadership on the required changes of ways of living and profiting. The failure of the games, that the rich and powerful made the rules for, to get all of the rich and powerful to be more helpful, less harmful, leaders indicates the need for the system to change. The currently rich and powerful cannot be allowed to compromise the awareness and understanding of what is harmful and the required actions to correct incorrect perceptions of superiority relative to others.

    Possible actions to motivate all of the wealthier and more powerful individuals would be:

    • giving credit for verifiable carbon reduction actions taken since 2015.
    • penalties for the current wealthier people who have tried to increase how much benefit they get from harmful unsustainable activity
    • severe penalties for wealthier people who have a history, especially a recent history, of trying to delay or discredit the development of increased awareness and improved understanding of the required corrections of what has developed.

    Helping the less fortunate through the rapid transition to less harmful ways of living is also required. Lower income people face more of a burden from a carbon fee, even with an equal rebate to everyone. An improved way to rebate would be having the carbon fee fully rebated equally, but only to middle income and poorer people (like families with reported income below $120,000 or individuals with reported income below $60,000). Also, there should be funding for Charities and NGOs to help all the less fortunate, especially the homeless, submit income tax statements with the rebate system set up to ensure they receive their rebates, perhaps getting the rebate at the time that their “zero or near-zero income statements” are submitted.

    Footnote 1: A Bit on Ethics: A common thought process for ethical considerations is to recognize that everybody’s actions add up and everyone has the right to behave the way any other person does. That develops the understanding that examples set by leading, higher valued, people are what other people can be expected to try to develop to match, and be excused for trying to do that.

    The examples set by “all of the Winners” is the key. Allowing any Winner to Win by setting a more harmful, less helpful, example will produce increasingly unethical results. It would be great if the competitive advantages of getting away with benefiting from injustice or being more harmful failed to win. But that is likely a fantasy. Injustice and harmful behaviour likely need to be externally refereed or governed out of the game. A system that does not do that is ethically compromised would need to be changed in order to achieve ethical reductions of harm being done and ethical corrections for harm done.

    Footnote 2: A Bit on Politics: Understandings like the 2020 Human Development Report, the IPCC Reports and recommendations, and the Sustainable Development Goals are not political. And I have tried to also be apolitical in my presentation.

    What is being presented is apolitical evidence-based understanding, not political ideology. But there are developed social and economic ideologies that oppose learning it. And the proponents of those social and economic ideologies can be harmfully resistant to the learning and resulting understandably required changes, especially being resistant to changes of the system that would reduce developed perceptions of superiority. They will even argue against the undeniable understanding that GDP does not properly measure what is important (refer to the 2020 Human Development Report for a presentation of that improving understanding).

    The opponents to learning about the required system changes use political misleading marketing to delay the learning and corrections. They often resort to accusations that “The Left” (or some other term that is hoped to trigger a emotional response rather than a rational consideration) are trying to turn things into “taking money away from rich people” even though there is plenty of evidence to support a common sense understanding that many wealthy powerful people got their wealth and power by pursuing competitive advantages available to those who are willing to try to benefit at the expense of Others or by harming the environment.

  22. Can the economy afford NOT to fight climate change?

    plincoln24, thanx for that En-ROADS tool. Most useful and interesting!

  23. Can the economy afford NOT to fight climate change?

    This is a correction in a response to sfkeppler: I in error wrote "The only alternative is not to reduce energy". That risks being misunderstood. I should have wrote "Reducing our energy consumption is no the only way to fight climate change".

  24. Can the economy afford NOT to fight climate change?

    This is a response to sfkeppler: The only alternative is not to reduce energy. Try your hand at a variety of policies in the world economy and climate model En-ROADS (link provided here https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=21.9.0 ) 

    En-ROADS has passed through a rigorous peer reviewed process and is a free online tool available to the masses. Here is a link to a video walk through of how to use the program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Muh-eoPd3g&t=520s

    Please note that there have been some changes in the program since the walkthrough video was made.

     

     

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  25. To meet America’s Paris pledge, climate policy Avengers must assemble

    The world also needs the USA to enact the “SEC. 9908. Carbon border fee adjustment.” aspects of
    “H.R.2307 - Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2021”

    - so Australia & other Climate Laggards are forced start to act responsibly.

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  26. Skeptical about a defense of science?

    Good piece, I hope it's widely circulated. As much as I take umbrage at Rep. Lucas's hypocrisy, however, he clearly has no qualms about saying baldly contradictory things in public. He is presumably doing as his constituents wish, which is to take the offensive in the culture war against climate science and other excrescences of 'liberalism'. The rest of Oklahoma's seven-member congressional delegation are all Republicans, with predictable voting records.  That is, Oklahoma is firmly Trumpist. The best hope, for those of us who defend science, is that by raising yet more awareness of outrages like Lucas's in this country's slim majority of Biden voters, we harden our resolve to turn out for coming presidential elections.

  27. To meet America’s Paris pledge, climate policy Avengers must assemble

    The point of a fee and dividend system is NOT to raise any revenues, but to make products and processes which produce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions more expensive to buy than the cleaner greener alternatives. That is what the fee should be set to achieve - nothing else. The dividend part is what would make the fee acceptable to the voting millions.

    The concept can get corrupted by left wingers who want to see it as a 'back door' way of taxing the rich, but dividend'ing ALL revenues back to the public, equally divided up per capita, has numerous advantages, not least that it would require virtually no complex administration, but primarily that it would cushion the less well off against the initial price rises that would follow the introduction of such a fee. Low income people and the 'poor', at least those who are not high producers of greenhouse gases, would receive the equivalent of a 'citizen's income' thus welfare expenditure could be reined back a little.

    The amount going back to 'the rich' as a percentage of the total revenue raised would, in actuality, be quite small because - duhhr - there are far fewer 'rich' than poor. With no discrimination based political ideology it would make the fee and dividend far more likely to be voted for by everybody, not just the left. It would also doubly reward those rich who already endeavour to live a low carbon lifestyle - yes! they do exist and so do the poor who choose a high carbon lifestyle too...
    Everybody getting back the same dividend should blunt any political objections based on the idea that government just wants to tax people to raise revenues, and the insinuations that the reasons given for raises are just fig leaves covering up the real intent.

    The fee should put 'the market' back on track, after 200 years+ of derailment, by acting as what economists call a price signal protecting 'the commons'. Humankind's treatment of 'the commons' as a 'free' resource to be used and abused is just about the sole reason for pollution, over exploitation of natural resources, bio-diversity loss etc. Price in the cost of using the commons and get the accountants to put those costs onto the financial bottom line of corporations and the world would transform itself at lightning speed without any need for heavy handed government or no need to restrict peoples' 'freedoms with authoritarian regulations.

    Get the great mass of the public willingly 'voting with their wallets' for the newly cheaper (and more profitable) green products and services and, more importantly, rejecting the newly more expensive 'carbon heavy' alternatives, and the job will get done by the 'invisible hand' of the market astonishingly quickly, effectively and efficiently whilst also partially addressing excessive income inequality and providing a 'food, shelter and warmth' safety net for the very poorest and most deprived.

    This would set off an extraordinarily powerful change in consumer behaviour almost overnight and would render quite a lot, possibly all, of the 'trillion dollar green initiatives' unnecessary.

  28. Thinking is Power: Don't be fooled... fact check!

    @JH1961

    The article is about how to check facts. Therefore, I think the message is: be a fact checker yourself.

  29. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    PaulDent @1503 ,

    You seem to be trying to make two opposite arguments at once:

    That: [A] fossil fuels will be exhausted in 50-100 years, and so we should simply keep using them until they're all gone (and without us developing Renewable Energy systems in the meantime).

    And that: [B] we should quickly phase out the burning of fossil fuels, because they should be saved for using to counteract the next scheduled "ice-age" glaciation . . . (which is due in about 16,000 years).

    Either way, you could probably better argue one case (or the opposite case) on a more appropriate thread than this one ~ 'cos this thread is for those people who have rather wacko ideas about Greenhouse and Thermodynamics.

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  30. Skeptical about a defense of science?

    I smell a smell.  The smell started about 1948.

    After the first Arab-Israeli war, I believe a group of unnamed people concocted a long term plot ot deny the Arabs oil money, which they were using mainly to arm themselves to the teeth with Russian, American, British and French weapons which those countries were falling over themselves to supply in order to get some of their oil money back.  The plot I believe originated in Sweden, which I deduced from absorbing the sentiment through living there. Sweden is a very pacifist country and this would be an in-character idea of how to keep the peace-   cutting off the oil  money should cool things down!

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  31. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    Even we accept that buringin fossil fuels is warming the planet, the estimates are a few degrees per century. Now that might be catastrophic given enough cebtturies, but there is another doomsday scenario with which gloabl warming is mutually exclusive: Namely, Oil is nprdicted to last another 50 years, natural gas 53 years and coal 110 years - all running in parallel at the current rate of consumption. So after 50-53 years our fossil feul consumtpino is down to coal alone, and boy will we be scrambling to turn that into gasoline efficiently! So after 50 years, the rate of warming may fall or cease completely, and after 110 year (or less, as we will coal fater when the oil is gone) there will no more fossil fuels to burn and there will be nothing to stop the next ice age- although is rather a long way off !

    Summary: If we do nothing there will be no catastrophe.

  32. Reviewing the horrid global 2020 wildfire season

    Mike:

    Yes, "tonnes" would be the same as "metric tons" - 1000 kg.

    This Skeptical Science post on the carbon cycle gives numbers of 29 gigatons/yr of CO2 from fossil fuel and land use activities. I assume it is U.S. tons (2000 lb), so not quite so many tonnes (about 2,200 lbs). 1.26 billion tonnes is a small amount, but not negligible.Also keep in mind that CO2 from forest fuels is relatively-recently-fix carbon - taken out of the atmosphere in (probably) the last 100 years or so.

    Between Europe and the U.S., we need to make sure we are using the same "billions" - 1,000 million ( = "giga"). When comparing carbon numbers, you also have to make sure that you don't mix between tonnes carbon, and tonnes CO2 (which includes the weight of the O2).

  33. Reviewing the horrid global 2020 wildfire season

    LINK

    This is the story that I meant to link.  It says "Wildfires released 1.26bn tonnes of CO2 in July, according to the data, with more than half of these emissions attributed to fires in North America and Siberia. In August, fires caused 1.38bn tonnes of CO2 to be released."

    a billion tonnes of CO2 seems like a lot.   But this where scaling becomes problematic.  Is a billon tonnes of CO2 a lot?   How does it compare to other sources, like private vehicle emissions for the US in a month, etc.  I read a source that said the US emission level for 2019 was abt 5.1 billion metric tons.  are metric tons and "the Independent" tonnes the same thing?  If yes, then a billion tons of emissions in a month is really quite large at about twice the monthly US emission level.  Am I understanding this correctly? 

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Shortened link.

  34. Reviewing the horrid global 2020 wildfire season

    Mike: the latest IPCC report, in the SPM, states:

    "The magnitude of feedbacks between climate change and the carbon cycle becomes larger but also more uncertain in high CO2 emissions scenarios (very high confidence).  However, climate model projections show that the uncertainties in atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 2100 are  dominated by the differences between emissions scenarios (high confidence). Additional ecosystem  responses to warming not yet fully included in climate models, such as CO2 and CH4 fluxes from wetlands,  permafrost thaw and wildfires, would further increase concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere (high  confidence).

    So, it is on the radar of climate scientists. In the IPCC report, section 5.4.3.2 mentions it specifically, but only some models include these emissions as a dynamic feedback. Here is how that section closes (emphasis added):

    Overall, climate change will force widespread increases in fire weather throughout the world (Section 12.3.2.8). Because of incomplete inclusion of fire in ESMs, a separate compilation of fire- driven carbon-climate feedback estimates (Eliseev et al., 2014a; Harrison et al., 2018) (section 5.4.8). There is low agreement in magnitude and medium agreement in sign, which alongside other literature (Jones et al., 2020), leads to an assessment of medium confidence that fire represents a positive carbon- climate feedback, but very low confidence in the magnitude of that feedback. Other disturbances such as tree mortality will increase across several ecosystems (medium agreement) with decreased vegetation carbon (medium confidence). However, the lack of model agreement and lack of key process representation in ESMs lead to a low confidence assessment in the projected magnitude of this feedback.

     

  35. Reviewing the horrid global 2020 wildfire season

    LINK

    I have trouble getting a handle on the scale of emissions from forest fires.  I assume these emissions are dwarfed by human emissions, but I am would like to have a clue about the scale.  So, if 2021 summer was the worst on record for forest fire emissions, how bad is that? 

    Is this a significant feedback or journalistic clickbait? 

    Cheers

    Mike

     

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] Link activated. (It is the same link as the one in the following comment from Mike.)

  36. Book Review: Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

    Very nicely presented "Wilddouglascounty."  I hope many read it. You are more optimistic than I can be; thus thank you for your sign of hope. I need such. I'll make it through the day.

    My take tends to be with the flaws in being human, and the laws of a natural order that human fight with. Yes, I'm a bit skeptical about "scientific method," as was one of my mentors who authored the 1962 book of that title. He moved on to systems sciences, as did I, thus I encountered climate change in 1975 via reading the 1856 work of Eunice Foote.

    In my courses, whatever they might have been titled, I covered two subjects. 1) Ethics: Fastian Negotiations always selling the soul, thus leading to end-state tragedy, and 2) Human economics and business always avoiding laws of thermodynamics, especially that funny 2nd one. 

    For the first I usually rely on Marlowe, Goethe, and Mann. For the second I rely on Einstein, Hawking and Sagan, where I considered Carl a friend.  In 2007 in this regard a debate was held with China's leadership council, prior to their selection of Xi as President. I recommended they give up on Confucian thought (too similar to Plato) and return to Lao Tzu wisdom (similar to Socrates).  They seems to really understand what such could mean to managing climate change, before they didn't a few years later.  A similar debate would not have been held in Washington, unless about a dozen lobbiest approved the script. (I can give you a list, ha..ha.. )

    I have a book coming out in Europe this winter on the above..."Short-term Gain, Long-term Pain."  Its about Faust, Industrialization, and life during the human end state.  Therein I cover 2,500 years of the idea of management as the problem, including the management of science. My focus ends with the inherent limitation in the first three letters of management. If so, we might try femagement for a bit? Their science is very promising. For politics they listen to their husbands, but are now moving on from that limitation.  See you on the other side, I hope. 

    In 2015, when is was obvious that America was moving to a Trump version of leadership, I began a foundation in China to prepare girls for managing humans during masculine created climate change.  An English version of its site is at EternalFeminine.org. 

  37. Can the economy afford NOT to fight climate change?

    Economy cannot afford NOT to fight climate change, that’s right! – But how can we effectively fight global warming, if the only alternative given is to reduce energy, the human’s economies vital input? At what extent economy can afford climate action without mutilation of survival?
    Yes, we can! – It’s not necessary to stop energy consumption, when fighting global warming by boosting global water cycle. Everybody studying about the carbon impact and its sophisticated relation in the biosphere, with diagnostic results. Utopic thoughts about geo-engineering with unimaginable global impacts. Science should really put the feet on earth!
    The global water cycle is the natural way to intervene against global warming! “GAIA”, the auto-regulating hyper-organism, asserts temperature by water circulation. And we should learn more about the different instruments we have to enhance or reduce the fluxes. We know that evapotranspiration in the tropics by solar radiation and direct warming distributes water in the southern and northern hemispheres. We also know that evaporating water cools surfaces and returns as refreshing water. Vapor at the equator produces convection and drafts up to higher regions, where we observe ice-clouds in the uppermost layers of the troposphere. These drift to the poles and bring snow to the higher latitudes by “scratching” the stratosphere with freezing temperatures of -50°C.
    It might be quite easy to booster tropical evapotranspiration, by installing artificial evaporators at the eastern coast around the Equator-line. Look at Somalia, were the mangroves have been removed for firewood from our human ancestrals. At the horn of Africa, I am sure we make the Somalian desert disappear!

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] This assertion of cooling the globe by enhancing evaporation is nonsense - unsupported by anything you post, and refuted in recent discussions in other threads here.

    Unless you can actually provide scientific evidence and links, your posts constitute sloganeering and will be subject to deletion. You have been warned before. From the Comments Policy:

    No sloganeering.  Comments consisting of simple assertion of a myth already debunked by one of the main articles, and which contain no relevant counter argument or evidence from the peer reviewed literature constitutes trolling rather than genuine discussion. As such they will be deleted.

  38. wilddouglascounty at 00:12 AM on 23 September 2021
    Book Review: Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

    Time-Life put out a wonderful "coffee table book" in 1955 called The World We Live In. This popularization of the best we knew from science about our planet and universe was shown in beautiful, striking photographs, illustrations and clear language, at least for me as a child and my parents, for that matter.  On page 86, they wrote:

    "for the last cetury temperatures have shown an upward trend. This has been particularly true in the last four decades, during which glaciers have been in retreat all around the world. The reasons for this gradual warming of the earth cannot be defined with certainty. One suggested explanation is an increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Along with water vapor and ozone, carbon dioxide helps to trap the earth's heat within the greenhouse of the atmosphere and prevents it from radiating away into space. In the last century the carbon dioxide ratio in the atmosphere has increased by 10%, a phenomenon which some attribute to expanding industry, pointing out that six billion tons of CO2 pour from factory chimneys every year. Other authorities believe that a more important factor may be the decimation of forests, which concume great quantitites of CO2, and the disturbance of the soil which exhales it."

    There have been popularized explanations from scientists explaining greenhouse gases and their impact on the climate my entire life.  I'm sorry folks ignored your efforts, just as I'm sorry that folks ignored the warnings put out by scientists in 1955 and at many, many other points before and since. What has become clear over those years is that it is not the job of our governments to discern the truth, rather they have the job of setting the rules for our economies to follow.  This is not the first time that those rules were set with other priorities than the truth in mind, since it almost never has been in the first place. 

    Science has a process to whittle away at alternative explanatory hypotheses, and, as fraught with messiness as it is, the curve bends toward better, more accurate algorithms. Politics has a process to choose society's governing rules, but there are many, many examples when the curve goes away from the truths about functional societies and sustainable relationships with the rest of the planet. Therein lies the issue, and why telling the truth is always insufficient in the political realm.

  39. Book Review: Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

    The Hayhoe book if fine but a bit late. By some standards it could be seen as an "ad hominem" exercise to cheer up human failures. I carried out a major Swedish-based research effort in the nineteen seventies, that  was widely labelled "ad hominem" in 1979. Even the director of EPA at the time used that label in a furious letter. From that time I never respected those using that title to pretend they were more scientific. 

    My project included many corporations and six governments, as well as researchers like James Black. It was presented to OECD by Sweden's Prime Minister. The three volume research report ended with a threat of climate change if humans didn't improve on their reductistic science without context and legal-order regulations via threats that become humor. A negotiated order approach was proposed to manage environmental deterioration.

    A key finding, as presented in a keynote to the annual Liebnitz Conference, was that the glass is neither half full nor half empty. It is clearly empty with urine stains on it. A dissertation came out from the Swedish project where the Dean of the Wharton School, U of Penn, came out strongly against the research conclusions. He called it "ad hominem." It was not allowed in the library so a group of students, not including me, publlished it. They were upset with the Wharton dean's comments on the future relative to climate change.

    It was republished after 40 years as "Too Early, Too Late," Now what?"  An outline of the book was in a May, 2019 Science Magazine issue. More then 800 scientists responded with 2,100 pages of comments, where the majority were more pessimistic than the book. A Science community chat site director called it "ad hominen," and thankfully was let go.

    Now its even later. The book is being republished this winter under a much clearer title.  This was became the 2019 version was seen as having a "funny" title by Amazon. They moved if from acadmic science to their human section.  Sadly, its not all that funny, but humans and their counter productive attempts at rules of irrelevance are funny.

    Just now I'm managing my 1,500 acre Iowa farm to demonstrate the ravages of climate change to those who see it as a hoax, and say its "ad hominem."  The farm is winning, but humans are still losing.  Sorry for being too clear.

  40. prove we are smart at 22:47 PM on 21 September 2021
    Can the economy afford NOT to fight climate change?

    Maybe our govts will see the value of reducing carbon emissions if not from a moral perspective but a bottom line view. I don't know if here in Aust this issue is as relevant but here is an important consideration when changing to renewals.. www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ScJ_FwaZk

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] You seem to be getting in the habit of posting links with little or no explanation as to why they are relevant. A reminder that the Comments Policy includes the following:

    No link or picture only. Any link or picture should be accompanied by text summarizing both the content of the link or picture, and showing how it is relevant to the topic of discussion. Failure to do both of these things will result in the comment being considered off topic.

  41. prove we are smart at 22:12 PM on 21 September 2021
    Can we afford (not) to stop Climate Change?

    3. Mike at 21:38 PM on 16 September, 2021.

    These are some of my thoughts too, of course the biggest drop in global carbon emissions was caused by a pandemic civilization reset/collapse however short lived though! I can't see the future-maybe a fixallforever vaccine will be developed to finally free us all from novel viruses or maybe we will paint those damn subs yellow and live happily ever after ha. What we alI can see is a more hotter earth,a worse guarantee of disastrous events.

    With all I've seen being born in the mid fifties,to watch how clever we have become but how comfortably numb to what is really important is a depressing indictment of modern society. I have my favourite climate fix science review blog sites which give me some hope but leaving my small village to the big smoke,really shows me the true scope of consumer driven society. More lately with our window of reduction closing I am wondering about a real change/shakeup is even possible?

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eljw9qoNAo&t=115s

  42. Thinking is Power: How to do your own research

    Yes: who you trust is the key. In science, we often stress peer-reviewed literature, but very few people understand the review process and how it works (or not). For climate change, the anti-science crowd usually claims that the peer review system is corrupt, even though it is more often the "contrarians" that abuse it.

    Skeptical Science has a couple of rebuttals on those subjects:

    https://skepticalscience.com/Peer-review-process.htm

    https://skepticalscience.com/pal-review.htm

    and we are trying to prepare more.

    The person that cries "they are lying to you" the loudest is often the one that is doing the most lying.

     

  43. Thinking Is Power at 04:08 AM on 21 September 2021
    Thinking is Power: How to do your own research

    Thank you for the kind and thoughtful comment.

    The thing I keep coming back to is: who do you choose to trust and why? Often it seems like those who are "doing their research" are doing so because they distrust - and therefore don't accept the conclusions of - scientists, etc. Therefore they're going to google, typing in what they want (or don't want) to believe, and going to the sources that tell them they're right. Unfortunately, those sources haven't used reliable and trustworthy methods of gaining knowledge...they have biases and existing beliefs they're attempting to justify.

    We all use trust as a heuristic for what to believe, but when an issue becomes politicized and/or part of people's identity, trusting the wrong sources can lead us astray.

  44. It's albedo

    I have no idea why the "hot link" problem occurs. When a simple click didn't get me to the graph, I tried copying the URL. When that worked, I thought I'd let others know.

    The sum of the trends isn't that far off 0:The balance is ET = Pr - Q - dS/dt, or 2.30 = 1.00 + 1.01 + 0.75 ==> 2.30 = 2.76, so only off by 0.46.

    (Pr, Q, and dS/dt are defined in the figure in MAR's comment.)

    I was able to download the Pascolini-Campbell et al paper through work. They do discuss the uncertainty in trends. On p 544, they say:

    "Propagated uncertainty in the trend is greatest for Pr (±0.41 mm yr−1 ), followed by Q (±0.32 mm yr −1), and smallest for dS/dt (±0.05 mm yr −1). This leads to a bounded ET trend estimate of 2.30 ± 0.52 mm yr−1 (determined by summing the square of the error in the trend of each component). The fractional uncertainty from Pr is 61%, 38% from Q and 1% from dS/dt. From this analysis it follows that the ET trend is positive and significant in light of the propagated error, and ranges from 1.78 mm yr−1 to 2.82 mm yr−1."

    This is getting off-topic for albedo, though.

  45. It's albedo

    Bob Loblaw @99,
    I did note when tapping out #98 that the CarbonBrief item written about Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021) objected to the hot-linking of their image of the paper's Fig3 into this thread so I provided the direct link to the image (which I wouldn't have considered to be 'hot-linking') and that works fine for me, but apparently me alone.
    The image of the paper's Fig 3 is perhaps a bit too fuzzy to display in-thread here but I see there the clearer version is on-web at Nature where 'hot-linking' works.

    Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021) Fig 3
    'Timeseries for evapotranspiration (top), precipitation (second from top), discharge (second from bottom) and change in ground water storage (bottom) over 2003-19. The black line shows the average trend and the shading shows the confidence range, where red regions indicate a high confidence.'

    One further oddity is that the four trends are a long way from adding up to zero, probably due to all the very wobbly data. (The paywall prevents my access to the full paper & I couldn't immediately see any obvious explanation within the 'Extended data figures and tables'.)

  46. It's albedo

    Just a note on the last link in MA Rodger's comment (the one to Fig3).

    If you click on the link, you get a message that includes "The owner of this website (www.carbonbrief.org) does not allow hotlinking to that resource..."

    If your right click the link, copy the link, and paste that into your browser's address bar, you can view the figure.

  47. Thinking is Power: How to do your own research

    I have been enjoying reading these posts. In this one, the phrase that struck me was "What you’re actually doing is looking for the results of someone else’s research."

    This is a really key factor in terms of what people think "research" is. In common usage, someone might say "I am going to the library to research this topic" (or, today, "I am going to Google to research this topic")1. This is not really "research" in terms of creating original work, though.

    In scientific terms "research" usually involves either the collection of new data, or at least a novel analysis or combination of existing data. "Research" requires that somone provide innovative thinking, analysis, and interpretation - supported by evidence, of course.

    An important stage in scientific research is to go to the library and learn what others have already learned before you ("Learn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself"). But then you need to be able to say the following:

    • What questions remain unanswered?
    • What sort of data or evidence is needed to answer that question?
    • Can I find existing data that fits my needs?
    • How would I go about collecting new data to answer my question?
    • What does this data tell me?
    • Do I now know more about my question?

    Doing this well requires knowledge and skill.

    1. [Someone over at RC once said something along the lines of "between a library and Google, one of them wants to make you smarter, while the other wants to sell  you stuff. Choose carefully."]

  48. It's albedo

    The commenter @97 is no-longer a participant here but as this response to his comment @97 is albedo-stuff, I hope the moderators will allow it.

    ☻ Concerning the spectrum of reflected light in earthshine:- @97, the objection was to Woolf et al (2004) using an arbitrary ordinate scale on their Fig 1 (shown @96) rather than Wm^-2. Addressing this objection (although Woolf et al Fig 2 should have sufficed as it shows a roughly constant % albedo with wavelength), below is a graph of spectrum for wavelengths 0.25 to 6.5 microns (so into the UV) with a Wm^-2 ordinate scale. (Woolf et al above shows the spectrum 0.48 to 0.92 microns, so into the IR.)

    albedo spectrum

    ☻ Concerning Wild et al's -19Wm^-2 clear-sky radiation:- Indeed, as commented @97, it is "visa versa"  @96 as "cooling" was written in error and should have been "warming" from clear-sky relative to all-sky.

    Do note that the cooling from an AGW-induced decrease in albedo is greatly due to the reduction of tropical marine cloud. AR6 provides a better assessment of such cloud today that allows AR6 to state that "A net negative cloud feedback is very unlikely" with a potential range of -10Wm^-2ºC^-1 to +9.4Wm^-2ºC^-1 ['very likely' =1.67sd]. (Although half the range given in AR5, these remain broad confidence intervals.)

    Yet the -19Wm^-2 result from Wild et al (2019) was not misunderstood. The value is saying that the net energy balance under clear skys is -19Wm^-2 relative to the global average. (Note a coincidental -19Wm^-2 is also given by Wild et al for Land relative to Global.)
    It doesn't follow that a reduction of clear-sky conditions would result in a comenserate cooling of the planet (just as an increase in the land area of the planet would not be expected to increase planetary cooling). It is not so simple.
    Note what Wild et al consider their finding would be useful for:- "To better constrain (global climate models from CMIP5), we established new clear-sky reference climatologies." There is no mention of geo-engineering. (And note that if it were, the net planetary cooling would be -19Wm^-2 for the extra cloud and a further -19Wm^-2 for the loss of clear sky - this assuming a 50% global cloud fraction.) However, the impact of altering the global level of clear-sky conditions would depend entirely on the particulars of the alteration.
    Indeed, consider the cloud-effect in its totality. If the models take all the clouds out but keep everything the same, the GH-effect is diminished by about 15%. This would suggest increased cloud warms (and so does not cool,) a warming with a back-of-fag-packet global value of [33ºC GH-effect x 3.7Wm^-2/ºC x 15% =] +18Wm^-2. So +ve and not -ve. An interesting result.

    ☻ Finally, the mistake within the annotations of Fig3 of Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021) - It a trivial mistake (that the value of 2.3mm/yr in Fig3a should be 2.3mm/yr/yr and likewise elsewhere) as the mistake is quite evident. Simply look at the regression line. The graphed regression line rises from an anomaly of -18mm/yr in 2003.0 to +21mm/yr in 2020.0, so a rise of 39mm/yr over the 17-year period graphed = 2.3mm/yr/yr.

  49. It's albedo

    @96

    MA Rodger: you state that "albedo is ... depends primarily on the wavelength of the light that hits the body/molecule." This is not correct. The reflected light is pretty-much independent of wavelength being no more than "bluish". The spectrum of reflected light is thus not significantly different from the spectrum of sunlight.

    coolmaster: I'm not sure if you know that e.g. plants are green (wavelength = ~ 550nm), a tomato red (~ 650nm) and blueberries (~ 450nm) blue when illuminated by sunlight with a full spectrum.

    Illuminated by a full spectrum (white), the objects appear to your eyes & brain in more or less monochrome light. So - many of the incident wavelengths are absorbed and only single colors are reflected.
    A snow surface is white and has a high albedo because all wavelengths are reflected in the range that is visible - nevertheless, snow absorbs very strongly in the long-wave range of IR radiation.

    What you describe as "bluish" is the Raleigh scatter.
    This has absolutely nothing to do with absorption, relative reflection and albedo.

    Your posted graph shows the spectral properties of the light emanating from the earth - and not the energy content of sunlight, that matters in an energy balance.
    Without having read the article - I guess you will hardly find the unit W / m², which is the important one for the radiation budget of the earth. So please don't mix it all up here. (MOD)

    MA Rodger: The TOA radiation balance under clear sky conditions averaged globally by Wild (2019) shows 19Wm^-2 more cooling than his all-sky average.
    coolmaster: No you are utterly wrong - it is vice versa.

    Or do you feel yourself cooler in sun under clear sky - and feel heat when a cloud covers the sun ????

    The radiation net effect of clouds and water vapor (CRE = -19W / m²) You still seem to confuse CRE with the atmospheric feedback of the clouds, which consists in the fact that with increasing temperature less cloud cover, changed lapse rate and optical depth are determined (+ 0.42Wm-2 ° C-1).    Earth - is - loosing - the clouds !

    MA Rodger: ☻ And to correct your bold assertions @94 / Your own derivation of a greatly different value of 344km^3/yr uses solely Fig 3a of the former paper which gives an annual rate of increase as 2.3mm/yr (it should actually be 2.3mm/yr/yr)???? and for the 16-year period the increase would be thus 5,500km^3/yr, in the circumstance not a significant difference from 7,000km^3/yr.

    coolmaster: 1500km³/yr is more than I suggested to retain.

    www.carbonbrief.org/satellite-data-reveals-impact-of-warming-on-global-water-cycle

    Can you give us just a reference or a page in the www. quote where the unit mm / yr / yr is used ???? You should then definitely get in touch with Ms. Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell and explain to her that she was mistaken by a factor of ~20.

    After all, her work and GRACE-FO are regarded worldwide as one of the most important findings of the last few years. So if you know better - go ahead ... Your pocket calculator with the built-in joker must have been very expensive.

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] More sloganeering removed. You continue with an aggressive tone, unsupported assertions, and repeated violations of the Comments Policy.

    [DB] This user has recused themselves from further participation here.

  50. Can we afford (not) to stop Climate Change?

    When I consider this problem I don't think so much about whether we can afford or not afford to address global warming, the question that arises for me is whether our species is capable of stopping the processes that we have created and now rely on.  The other issue that arises for when I consider this matter is that a significant level of civilization collapse may be the most likely way that human activity can be altered to finally allow for something like a net zero status.

    I think we can point to some successes with acid rain and atmospheric ozone depletion, but I am not sure the scale of those problems were close to the scale of the ghg emission problem. 

    Cheers

    Mike

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