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skywatcher at 09:11 AM on 11 July 2012New research special - cloud papers 2010-2011
Curiousd: I'd also maybe recommend Lowe and Walker's "Reconstructing Quaternary Environments", thought it's a little older now. It's an undergraduate textbook so may not go into the detail you'd like, but it has some basic material on oxygen isotopes, as applied to ice core and marine sediments (amongst a wealth of material about all manner of palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and chronology). No more than a few pages, but may have pointers to more detailed material? -
Tom Curtis at 08:07 AM on 11 July 2012Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
dana1981 @2 not to forget Australia, which is middle of the road:
The issue of fuel taxes is somewhat vexed because they only applies to a limited portion of CO2 emissions.
They do not apply to fuel used in stationary energy generation, for example. In Australia, it does not apply to fuel used on farms or in mines. Because of that you need to have a measure of the emissions of CO2 by combustion of fuel on roads as a portion of all CO2 emissions to determine the value of fuel taxes as a counter subsidy.
What is more, fuel taxes, or a portion of fuel taxes when the tax is very high, can be considered a "user pays" method of funding the road system.
Therefore, to the extent that revenue received is less than the cost of maintaining and upgrading the national highway network, the fuel tax is not a counter subsidy on Carbon. China's fuel tax, for example, is explicitly earmarked for this purpose.
In a similar vane, given the high death an injury rate from road transport, fuel taxes could be in part considered a user pays funding of health care for injuries received from road accidents in nations with social health systems (Europe, Australia, Canada).
Arguably, however, all or most of these costs would exist with a fully electric transport system, in which case the revenue for these services would need to be raised in some other way. On that basis it could still be argued the full fuel tax revenue should be counted as a counter subsidy. Which approach is correct is a matter of convention. It is important to keep these conventions consistent, but it cannot be categorically asserted that one is right and the other wrong.
In any event, the information needed to calculate the level of the "counter subsidy" is not readily available AFAIK. Therefore it would be difficult, and beyond SkS's resources to included them as a counter subsidy. For that reason Dana noted that the definition of a "subsidy" is vague, and that "these are rough estimate". I am glad that you raised the issue so that a more explicit discussion could be made as a caveat on the post.
Having said that, this issue does not detract from the primary point of the post, ie, that the largest "subsidy" on fossil fuels is the hidden subsidy of uncompensated negative externalities.
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dana1981 at 06:27 AM on 11 July 2012Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
Thanks BillV. See the Cost Comparison section here for some discussion of adjusted energy costs. -
Composer99 at 06:17 AM on 11 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Clyde: You appear to be ignoring shifting baselines in your objections to other posters' comments. Variable natural phenomena (such as blocking events) as well as variable temperature oscillations are occuring simultaneously with a rising temperature trend. But the rising trend is still there and still counts for something. In addition you appear have misunderstood Hansen's paper. It quite clearly shows that increased extreme heat events are happening now. Several maps in the paper, for example, quantify global June-July-August temperature anomalies (expressed as temperature anomalies and as standard deviation anomalies) for the last few years (I believe the latest year is 2011) relative to a 1951-1980 baseline. In fact, I do not see any essential conflict between your links & Hansen's paper. Global warming doesn't cause heat waves to magically happen on their own. The other proximal causes are still required. The Schneidereit et al paper from Monthly Weather Review links the Moscow heatwave to a blocking high event. Fair enough. One wonders, though, just what the heatwave would have been like in 1951 or 1980 given the information provided by Hansen. The NOAA press release notes "Knowledge of prior regional climate trends and current levels of greenhouse gas concentrations would not have helped us anticipate the 2010 summer heat wave in Russia". Again, this is entirely reasonable. Even knowing the powerful relationship between chronic cigarette smoking and various illnesses (lung cancer, emphysema, &c.) at the population level, we cannot anticipate which individual smokers will be so affected and which will not. But that does not invalidate the relationship. Taking your claim that the recent heatwave in the eastern US is not "as bad as the one's in 1930 & 1950" at face value, one wonders just what the heatwave would have been like in the absence of a long-term temperature trend since then. -
scaddenp at 06:16 AM on 11 July 2012New research special - cloud papers 2010-2011
Curiousd - the primary differentiation of the oxygen isotopes is due to preferential evaporation of O16 from sea surface, followed by preferential condensation of O18. Plants/animals can only use the atoms in their immediate neighbourhood, so they reflect the seawater. A good starting resource would be here. Useful papers linked as well as the Bradley textbook. -
BillV at 06:12 AM on 11 July 2012Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
Great post. I like to see these unaccounted externalities put into numbers. Would love to see a post comparing these adjusted fossil fuel costs vs. forms of renewable energy to understand the true economics of energy generation. -
Rob Painting at 06:04 AM on 11 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Clyde - please explain how the papers you cited earlier disentangle the effects of global warming from natural variability. You see I've read the NOAA paper in detail and it does no such thing. Global warming has been affecting weather patterns in some way for well over a century - the Dole paper compares weather patterns in a narrow region in 2010 influenced by global warming with weather patterns from an earlier periods also influenced by global warming. Hardly the basis for distinguishing natural variability from global warming. Insofar as singular events vs. increased record-breaking warm extremes - this concept is explained in the SkS links provided to you earlier - global warming increases the probability of record-breaking warm extremes. Note the analogy I provided in the basic version of the blog post on the 2010 freak Russian heatwave. If the average temperature increases, as in a warming climate, then it is only logical that the chaotic weather fluctuations will lead to increased record-breaking warm extremes. Accordingly, you are unlikely to find climate scientists attributing singular heatwave events to global warming, but likewise they should not attempt to attribute them to natural variability - there is always an element of both involved. Rather, what can be said is that global warming dramatically raises the odds of heatwaves & record-breaking heat. The analysis by NASA scientists Hansen, Sato & Ruedy shows that this is now a historical fact. -
curiousd at 05:56 AM on 11 July 2012New research special - cloud papers 2010-2011
On a different topic, can someone recommend the best place to really learn about the magic Oxygen 18 proxy? It is probably in a text book and if so I would gladly buy the text book no matter the cost. I do dig two things: 1. Since Oxygen 18 is heavier than Oxygen 16, the Oxygen 18 will tend to precipitate out faster from arctic air that blows toward warmer climes. Right?? 2. One can think of the oxygen 18 as a mass on a spring within ice, and since the mass of the 18 exceeds that of the 16, the classical omega = sqrt k/m is less for 18, which means the zero point energy, as you cool down so that the equipartition theorem no longer works, will be smaller so that 18 will evaporate somewhat less readily. But if important, this effect might depend on the ice temperature,right? But given my broad brush stroke understanding, this topic looks really complex. Why does O 18 work for plants/animals growing underneath the ocean, for instance? Book or URL, anyone recommend, to learn more?? -
curiousd at 05:40 AM on 11 July 2012New research special - cloud papers 2010-2011
Since the latest Hanson and Sato (the one this forum received as a pre print) does an experimental fit to past ice age data and gets a tremendous agreement between past temperatures and predictions based on best fit to short term climate sewnsitivity fitting only two parameters (CO2/methane), and short term includes clouds, why does this result not lay all the cloud uncertainty to rest right there? H@S get 3.0 plus or minus 0.5 degrees for CO2 short term sensitivity which is close to the most common value for the simulations. To me, that latest H@S fit is kind of a game changer. It is as good as one gets for fitting an unknown structure to extended x-ray absorption edge fine structure (EXAFS), by fitting, say, a deBye Waller term and one bond length. The garden variety physicist would believe this latest H@S more than any simulation. -
Clyde at 04:41 AM on 11 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
skywatcher 44 What is causing that increase? As of today the peer reviewed papers say it's mother nature. I got hammered on another subject here for not providing peer reviewed papers to back up my point. You & others are not using peer reviewed papers to make your case. You are speculating & making assumptions. The Hansen paper & NOAA say (taking your word on what Hansen's paper says) extreme heat waves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the region in coming decades. Neither paper is 10 years old, so their not saying the recent heatwave in America or the 2010 Russian heatwave were caused by GW. Are you still confident that Texas and Russian heatwaves have nothing to do with climate change? I never said nothing. See reply to skywatcher. For the media & weather folks on TV to say the recent heatwave (which wasn't as bad as the one's in 1930 & 1950) in America was caused by GW is misleading the public. -
Clyde at 04:37 AM on 11 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Rob Painting 40 Clyde - it is doubtful science is sufficiently advanced to attribute specific heat events solely to natural variability. I never said soley. I said not much & very little. I was disputing that GW is the main cause. I'm guessing if you think science isn't sufficiently advanced to attribute specific heat events to natural variability, its also not advanced enough to say GW is the sole cause? You simply need to read, absorb and understand the links that were provided to you earlier. I could say the same for you as to the links i provided. You admit the science of attributing specific events to global warming/natural variability is in its infancy. Then say it's well-founded that one can say GW is expected to cause such extreme events. Can't have it both ways. -
dana1981 at 04:06 AM on 11 July 2012Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
Interesting point, OPatrick. I don't think fuel taxes are accounted for in those numbers. They also don't tend to be very large though, outside of a few places like Europe. -
OPatrick at 03:15 AM on 11 July 2012Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
Should we not also include fuel taxes in the calculations, a sort of anti-subsidy? Or is that already accounted for in the values in figure 1? -
dana1981 at 01:44 AM on 11 July 2012Michaels and Cato Unwittingly Accept the Climate Threat
Jomamax @ 14 you are incorrect on many points in your comment. For starters, carbon cap and trade systems and taxes have been implemented without the skyrocketing costs. For example, see Europe, British Columbia, and RGGI. Note that the latter two are in North America. Additionally, solar is already economical. I've got a leased solar system on my roof right now that's not costing me any more than standard electricity rates. Solar PV prices are dropping rapidly, and wind is already cheap. And I'm well aware of the "skeptic" climate arguments, thanks. -
Composer99 at 22:54 PM on 10 July 2012Michaels and Cato Unwittingly Accept the Climate Threat
jomamax: I'm sure you can provide some specifics, such as: (a) citations from economic and political science literature backing up your claims regarding the alleged 'devastating effects' of reducing fossil fuel emissions. Ideally on a thread where it is more on topic. (b) citations from the scientific literature backing up your so-called skepticism on the science. Again, preferably on topical threads. Contrarians and pseudoskeptics alike continually make sweeping, grandiose claims in a vein similar to yours and then continually neglect backing them up with substantial evidence. One wonders why this is.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Please can we all try to keep the discussion as civil as possible. Jomamax has now been tasked to provide support for the assertions he has made (on appropriate threads), lets see what he/she provides, and discuss the science behind it. -
lennartvdl at 22:28 PM on 10 July 2012Hansen and Sato Estimate Climate Sensitivity from Earth's History
On p.14 HS12 says: "[T]he mean sensitivity over the entire range from the Holocene to a climate just warm enough to lose the Antarctic ice sheet is almost 6°C for doubled CO2, but most of the surface albedo feedback in that range is caused by loss of the Antarctic ice sheet [...] [T]he sensitivity is smaller as climate warms from the Holocene toward a Pliocene-like climate. Thus the estimate of Lunt et al. (2010), that slow feedbacks (reduced ice and increased vegetation cover) increase the sensitivity by a factor of 1.3-1.5 is not inconsistent with the Hansen et al. (2008) estimated sensitivity." On p.15 they say: "If non-CO2 trace gases are counted as a fast feedback, the fast-feedback sensitivity becomes 4°C for doubled CO2, and the Earth system sensitivity becomes 8°C for doubled CO2 with the surface albedo feedback included [...] These sensitivities apply for today's initial climate state and negative climate forcings; they are reduced for positive forcings [...] The ultimate Earth system sensitivity includes all fast and slow feedbacks, i.e., surface feedbacks and all GHG feedbacks including CO2. Apparently Sff+sf is remarkably large in the Pleistocene for a negative forcing. No doubt that accounts for the substantial cooling of Earth in the past few million years in response to only small changes of CO2., as well as the increasingly violent glacial-to-interglacial oscillations of the late Pleistocene (Fig. 4). The Earth system sensitivity relevant to humanity now is the sensitivity of the present climate state to a positive (warming) forcing. That sensitivity is not as great as for a negative forcing, but it is much larger than the 3°C fast-feedback climate sensitivity." So do I understand correctly (from these quotes and their figure 7) that H&S think ESS for doubled CO2 over the past million years was more than 8 deg C and more than 6 deg for the current climate until all the ice has melted, after which it is reduced to somewhere between 4.5 and around 5 deg and rising again for even warmer climates? It seems I'm confusing sensitivities with and without CO2- and non-CO2 GHG-feedbacks. And H&S don't seem to give an estimate of the magnitude of the possible CO2-feedback. Does anyone have a clearer picture on this? How much more warming can we expect in the longer term when the CO2-feedback starts working? And how long would that term be: centuries or more like millennia? -
jomamax at 22:10 PM on 10 July 2012Michaels and Cato Unwittingly Accept the Climate Threat
It's not a good idea to compare 'acid rain' to CO2. Combating acid rain and smog meant higher emissions standards for cars, and adding some pollutant sequestering to factories etc. expensive - but doable - with roughly predictable outcomes. There is no such thing as CO2 sequestration that works within economic thresholds. CO2 sequestration uses enormous amounts of energy. Otherwise, capping CO2 would radically increase the price of energy, making it's way into everything you consume. The changes would be drastic and overwhelming - in Europe, where energy prices are high for a variety of reasons - transportation is a problem. Fortunately, they live close to one another, and they can travel by train, or small car. Trains in America would be uneconomical. We live in suburbs, extraburbs, not city centers. We have more extreme weather (in Germany, few people have air-conditioning, though that might be possible in Cali, certainly not in the east). Cap and Trade in any significant fashion would utterly devastate the Economies in North America and many other places. Finally, two things: - First, If you really want to help, instead of [inflamatory snipped] - perhaps you could be working on actual methods for alleviating the problem. As it stands solar, wind and other renewables - do not work in an economical fashion. (I have a friend who works at GE financing the projects) - they don't add up - and never will. After 40 years of R&D and investment, solar is still a mess. If it were economical, Wallmart would be happy to sell panels and they would be on every roof in America. Nuclear Energy could otherwise be relatively clean and safe, if we could determine a means to operate these engines in an alternative matter, our CO2 woes would evaporate. - Second - I must say I appreciate this site very much, however it has done little to debunk my mild skepticism of climate change. In fact - it has only added to my skepticism. In the comment sections of each of the supposed debunking points you'll find some intelligent rebuttal to each of the points. I'm not a climatologist, therefore I can't integrate any new arguments, but I have a strong grasp of logic and I can assure you there is as much bias on this site as any other. There's some classical rhetorical problems on this site, arguments chasing their tails. The 'CO2 trails Temperature' over the 400K period explanations are particularly entertaining in that, however plausible the theory, it is woefully incomplete, and does not match the current rhetoric of climate change within the last 40 years. As an intellectual exercise, I would urge the author to take the position of the devil's advocate, and spend a few weeks debunking climate change as passionately as he is promoting the concept - because your eyes will open to the rather large gaping 'blind spots' in so many of the arguments.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Inflamatory snipped. Note it is somewhat ironic that you talk of rhetorical problems and then describe explanations as "entertaining" (which comes accross as a rhetorical dismissal of those arguments, without a solid counter-argument). There are many websites where rhetorical argument is allowed, this isn't one of them. Please stick to the science, and please read the comments policy. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:05 PM on 10 July 2012It's not us
jomamax The mass balance argument is correct regardless of how large natural emissions are. It is easy to show why this is true using the savings analogy. Say I share a savings jar with my wife (who represent the natural environment), that is guarded by loyal ninja to make sure only she and I can make deposits and withdrawals. If I put in $16 a month and notice that our savings rise by only $8 a month, then I know that my wife is spending $8 more a month than she is saving. This is true whether she saves $1 a month and spends $9, or if she saves $10 a month and spends $18, or if she saves $100 a month and spends $108, ..., or if she save $1,000,000,000 and spends $1,000,000,008. As it happens, we do know that natural emissions are much larger than anthropogenic emissions. We know this because the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 4-5 years, which means there must be a very large exchange flux that swaps about 20% of atmospheric CO2 each year with CO2 from the oceans and terrestrial biota. However this exhange is just that, a straight swap of CO2 between reservoirs, and has no effect whatsoever on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. As Murray Salby says, it is only the difference between total emissions and total uptake that matters, and the mass balance equation shows that even if natural emissions are much bigger than anthropogenic emissions, natural uptake is bigger still. This means the natural environment is actively opposing the rise. If you think Julian is right and the absolute magnitude of natural emissions matters (rather than the difference between natural emissions and natural uptake), then it should be possible for you or Julian to come up with a counter example, in the form of values for natural emissions, natural uptake, anthropogenic emissions and the annual rise in CO2, where the natural environment is a net carbon source and the observed rise is less than anthropogenic emissions, and doesn't violate conservation of mass. You will find that you can't. Note I challenged Julian to do so, and he ducked the challenge, and did not reply to my post pointing out that he had ducked the challenge. -
Dikran Marsupial at 19:49 PM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
@MMM I can see what you are getting at, but the problem is that the analogy is not appropriate because CO2 is not a condensing gas, so there is no limit to the concentration of CO2 that the atmosphere can support (it isn't the temperature of the pool that matters, but the temperature of the air above it). The mass balance argument does not apply to water vapour because there is a limiting factor to the size of the atmospheric reservoir, which is independent of emissions, and much of the atmosphere is pretty near that limit most of the time. It is true that the fluxes between the oceans and atmosphere depend on temperature, so all things being equal, one would expect atmospheric CO2 to rise in a warming world. However, the thing the skeptics normally ignore is that CO2 solubility increases with increasing difference in the partial pressures of CO2 between atmosphere and surface waters. In the real world, all things are not equal, our emissions have caused a difference in partial pressures, which is increasing the oceanic uptake, which more than compensates for the temperature driven change in fluxes. Essentally the mass balance argument establishes that the rise is anthropogenic, but physics is needed to explain why it isn't a temperature driven natural phenomenon. -
Mighty Drunken at 18:53 PM on 10 July 2012Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic--and Antarctic--Climate Change
The sentence from the article is ambiguous. "Cores from Lake E go far back in time, almost 30 times farther than Greenland ice cores covering the past 110,000 years." It seems to suggest to me that the Lake E cores go back 110,000 years but I guess what it is actually trying to say is that Greenland ice cores go back 110,000 years and therefore Lake E cores go back up to 3 million years. -
Ari Jokimäki at 15:45 PM on 10 July 2012New research special - cloud papers 2010-2011
Thanks for the comments. Note that I only included links to abstracts of these papers. Some of them might have full texts available online, so it might be good idea to do Internet search on the papers you find interesting. #3 jmorpuss: Above list of papers is from 2010 and 2011 only, so I have made no effort to include earlier papers here (as a sidenote, above list also represents only a small fraction of cloud related papers published in 2010-2011). Some of the earlier papers can be found from some cloud related paperlists in my blog: Papers on global cloud cover trends Papers on cloud feedback observations Papers on the non-significant role of cosmic rays in climate -
scaddenp at 15:02 PM on 10 July 2012Climate's changed before
Also, look at Fig 3 here. Temperature compared to forcing from albedo and GHG alone. Also, look up PETM. The cause of the CO2 spike is debated but the effect on climate is remarkable. -
jmorpuss at 14:53 PM on 10 July 2012New research special - cloud papers 2010-2011
I thought this would fit into cosmic ray section It's a paper accepted back in 2000 http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Tin_rev.pdf -
Bernard J. at 14:33 PM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
KR.We seem to be avoiding the r/K choice 'r' style reproduction crash.
The fly in the ointment is the human propensity to switch from K to r (and vice versa) when life history determinants change. I was 'raised' in my undergraduate work on MacArthur and Wilson's paradigm, and whilst it's instructive as far as it goes, my PhD and subsequent work underscored for me the importance of overall life history. I sincerely hope that your impression is correct though, and that the underlying factors remain firmly in place. If not, the toe-curling fact is that human numbers will still eventually drop, but with the causative agent being mortality changes rather than fertility limitations. Under such a scenario we're also likely to swing back further into 'r' territory, which will make the resultant decline even more of a tragedy. Again, the fiasco a few weeks ago in Rio, and the essential failure of Copenhagen, do not bode well for our abilities in anything resembling appropriate global management of the farm. One important litmus test for indicating eleventh-hour consciousness-shifting will be whether Australia manages to keep its price on carbon beyond the life of the current government. If not, anything that humans do achieve afterward will be little more than the closing of the barn door... -
Bob Loblaw at 14:27 PM on 10 July 2012It's not us
This debate is also going on in the Murray Salby thread. jomamax: you have several "ifs" that are "aren'ts". 1) "black-box may be inserting/removing 1000's every month - you don't know.". Yes, we do know, with a fair degree of accuracy (but not perfectly). The known fluxes in the carbon cycle don't have error bars that large. 2) "If the plus/minus CO2 contributions via sinks/sources from 'non man made sources' (I'n not going to use the proper scientific term since I'm not sure of it's meaning) is rather large, and it varies quite a lot over time". It is large, but it's not varying that much over time - at least, not in amounts that we don't know about (point 1). CO2 was fairly steady (with a seasonal cycle) for a long time before people started burning fossil fuels, and we know a lot about the cycles. 3) "If those net contributions can be definitely characterized as stable and small,". They don't need to be small, and they don't need to be stable for us to have reasonable estimates of them. You'd need to have large, variable errors in the measurements of those fluxes, and that's not the case (point 1). 4) "I'm guessing however, that we don't really understand the size and magnitude of these other heat-sinks". You'd be guessing wrong. (I presume you meant CO2 sinks.) In addition, you have to remember that in the bank balance scenario, you are also using marked bills. Unless the other sources/sinks are marking the bills exactly the same way, the source is obvious. CO2 from fossil fuels is depleted in C14, and has a C12/C13 mix that does not match other sources of CO2 that are depleted in C14. -
skywatcher at 14:26 PM on 10 July 2012Climate's changed before
#312: henanlkf, you'll find a lot of great information and good examples of CO2's role in palaeoclimate (geological, Quaternary and more recent) in a presentation given by the great Richard Alley at AGU in 2009: "The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon dioxide in Earth's climate history" He's a really engaging speaker too, so this is well worth your time to watch and listen! -
Bob Loblaw at 14:08 PM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
Hmmm. Looks like Sphaerica and I are pooling responses... (pun intended). -
Bob Loblaw at 14:06 PM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
Another pool analogy. I was going to post this in response to marco, but it may also address MMM's points. Suppose you have a large swimming pool. It has a pump/filter system that sucks 100 gallons per minute out of the pool, runs it through a filter, and dumps it back in the pool. It has run for months, and the level of the pool is essentially unchanged. There might have been a bit of evaporative loss, but let's ignore that for now. You then get a garden hose and start adding water to the pool (from the city water supply) at 1 gallon per minute. You say to yourself "it's only a fraction of the amount the filter system is cycling". You walk away, and come back two days later to find that the pool has overflowed. Do you think it is a serious argument that the garden hose can't possibly affect the level of the pool, because it is so much smaller a flow that the filter system? If so, what caused the pool to overflow? That's the argument put forth by the "skeptic" side, when they say the fossil fuel input is insignificant compared to the natural fluxes. -
Bob Lacatena at 14:04 PM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
MMM, I don't think the analogy works, though, because water vapor is so sensitive to temperature, and will easily condense into the oceans as the temperature drops. CO2 is far more "long lived." Yes, for any individual molecule, it will drop out, but another will take its place. There are only three real places for CO2 to go in the short term, the air, the ocean, and biomatter. Biomatter can only grow so much, and is limited by other factors. The oceans can absorb a lot (and that's a huge problem, too), but not all of it. A better analogy would be two pools, one representing the atmosphere, the other the ocean, and a lot of people lounging around the pool, periodically scooping water out of each in tall glasses to drink it. Then some moron drives up with a huge tanker truck full of water, dumps it all at once and drowns everyone. Now there's an analogy for you. -
KR at 13:54 PM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Bernard J. - It is my guess that education and birth control are making their inroads. That is strongly dependent on any number of factors, not the least of which are stability of civil society and the permeation/influence of various cultures by first world TV shows (which show the possibilities of education). However, I have some small hope that the 60 year trend in TFR and the 45 year trend in net reproduction rate (peaked at 1.869 in 1965-1970, now at 1.082) are sustainable directions. It will not be sufficient on it's own to avoid a huge AGW impact, but it's at least one positive note. We seem to be avoiding the r/K choice 'r' style reproduction crash. -
Chris McGrath at 13:41 PM on 10 July 2012Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic--and Antarctic--Climate Change
What an amazing paper! The data in figure 3 going back 2.8 million years is mind blowing. By the way, the citation for it is: Melles M, et al (2012) "2.8 Million Years of Arctic Climate Change from Lake El’gygytgyn, NE Russia" Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1222135 The abstract is available at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/06/20/science.1222135.abstract?sid=040f10e5-d150-415f-b2de-e92d5db0a635 (subscription required for full article) -
KR at 13:40 PM on 10 July 2012It's not us
jomamax - I would have to forcefully disagree. If we know: * We are contributing X to the bank balance * We know the total balance to be increasing at X/2 Then: * Other contributions and deductions from that balance are such that other contributions are X/2 less than deductions; that the other influences on the balance are a net sink. It doesn't matter how much those other contributions/deductions vary in toto - the difference between them is established to be negative X/2 by observing our contributions and the total balance. By knowing how much CO2 we put out and how much the atmospheric levels increase - we know two of the four values, and hence we really do know the difference between the other two. Stable, varying, whatever; it just doesn't matter. We know what the difference is between the natural sinks and sources, and it adds up to about half of our emissions - nature is a net sink. There's just no other way possible to work the math, barring Little Green Men (LGM's) adding or subtracting carbon from the biosphere. And if you make that kind of causal assertion, well, I'm going to feel completely justified at laughing... -
Bernard J. at 13:09 PM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
On thinking about it, I realise that my post about the energy policies of the Australian political parties might stray too close to (and overstep) the boundaries of Skeptical Science's own policies. If so, I'm happy for it (and this post) to be removed. -
Bernard J. at 13:02 PM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
KRMuch of that prediction is based on changes in the total fertility rate (TFR) (number of children born per woman over their lifespan, as a statistical average) which is dropping in much of the world. Currently it's at roughly 2.52 globallyo, dropping through 2.36 in the next 5-10 years, down from just under 5 in the 50's.
Indeed, and the TFRs are one of the parameters that I frequently wonder about. They are (inversely) correlated with education and with energy use, and given the very high probability of the supply of both latter parameters being compromised in the future, it begs the question about whether TFRs will rebound as a consequence. It will be a complicated dance with the degree to which we are able to introduce renewable energy, both in response to climate change and to peaking fossil fuels. Of course, superimposed will be inevitable future shocks to societies, and what the net effects of such shocks are on subsequent population trajectories. -
Tom Curtis at 12:42 PM on 10 July 2012Nil Illegitimi Carborundum
david.apell @325, ask and you shall receive. -
Bernard J. at 12:42 PM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
I have no doubt that in the long term investment in renewables is good for the economy, and in particularly if compared to the difference of the effect of AGW on the economy if we do not invest in renewables. In the short term, however it is a cost.
If only the two major political parties (and most of the economists) in Australia could be pursuaded to consider the long term in this context, rather than to see no further than the ends of their electoral/annual-bottom-line noses. Yesterday a Labor politician called the Greens the party of the protest vote. It's more likely that the Greens are the only party with clear vision, and the only party with policies that could operate sustainably into the far future. -
jomamax at 12:27 PM on 10 July 2012It's not us
Dikran, KR + Julian. I have no background in climate, I'm a computer scientists; loving your debate. KR is correct in saying that since we did add 'xyz' amount of CO2, then it is humans who can be attributed to that amount - but KR/Dikram - Julian is correct to point out that it could be entirely meaningless. KR you are throwing straws on the camel's back, maybe you broke the camels back, Julian is pointing out that your straws - though technically 'added' are irrelevant given that others were adding and removing straws from the camels back by an unknown amount. KR - Julian is not proposing a 'Green Little Man' argument - he's indicating that the other sources/sinks for CO2 could indeed be quite vast. If they are - and they are highly variable - then his assertions are not only correct, but meaningful. You are sharing a bank account with a 'black box'. You know the black box withdraws and adds X amount every month. You know that you add $16 every month. The bank account seems to be rising by ~$16 every month. You know for sure that the 'black box' NET contributions monthly are 0 - but you have no idea why, or what the net attributions are. To KR's point, it is reasonable to conclude that since you are adding $16 every month - well - you are adding $16 every month - no doubt about it. KR is technically correct - but his point may be mute. Julian's point is that the black-box may be inserting/removing 1000's every month - you don't know. If this is the case - then KR your point is mute - it doesn't matter if we are adding $16 a month. Dikram, your analysis would be off. The Dikram/KR/Julian debate boils down to this: If the plus/minus CO2 contributions via sinks/sources from 'non man made sources' (I'n not going to use the proper scientific term since I'm not sure of it's meaning) is rather large, and it varies quite a lot over time - then Julian's position is not only technically correct, but it is very valid. If those net contributions can be definitely characterized as stable and small, then we can safely follow Dirkam's points on the matter and KR's point that 'we are adding X amount every year' matters - because our contributions are meaningful. I'm guessing however, that we don't really understand the size and magnitude of these other heat-sinks, and that they may be highly variable. If this is the case then Julian's point should be considered. KR is technically correct but his point is mute - and Dikram's analysis must be flawed. -
david.appell at 12:03 PM on 10 July 2012Nil Illegitimi Carborundum
Excuse me, but how do we know these emails are legitimate? The site they come from is poorly written with no names attached.... Why doesn't the FOI have a cover letter? Every FOI I've ever received has a cover letter showing where the information came from, and from whom.... -
Tom Curtis at 10:59 AM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Tony O @41, I have no doubt that in the long term investment in renewables is good for the economy, and in particularly if compared to the difference of the effect of AGW on the economy if we do not invest in renewables. In the short term, however it is a cost. It is a cost because in the sort term it requires more workers for the same level of power production. (I believe in the long term that will reverse.) The economy is a means of allocated limited resources, and the crucial limiting resources are human work, and energy. If we have more people working to generate the same amount of electricity, that means we must pay more for the same amount of electricity - or pay the workers less than they would otherwise have been payed. In either event that is a cost on the economy. In the simplest terms, because those extra workers are producing electricity, it means they are not producing other goods or services that we might otherwise have desired. You may argue that the extra wages come from the money saved by not needing to pay for fuel. That is a fair point, but the cost of the fuel comes from wages paid to extract and transport the fuel (including the costs of building the equipment used for that purpose). So if revenue neutral, ie, the saving in fuel exactly match the increased wages, we are merely substituting wages paid in our nation for wages paid overseas. This is not exact, because there are variations in returns on investment, and variations in wages paid. But the principle is essentially correct and means the equation of more jobs ergo good for the economy does not hold. This issue is different from the question of full employment, which is good for the economy but can be accomplished independently of investment in renewables. Effectively the choice with appropriate economic policy is full employment with renewables and without; and if renewables require more employment for the same electricity supply, full employment without renewables results in more goods and services being produced, and hence is better for the economy. -
MMM at 10:57 AM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
Hi Tom: What I'm trying to do is put myself in the mindset of the closest-to-sane of the contrarians. It is possibly useful to understand their mindset if we have any chance of convincing them, and possibly also to convince the fence-setters. I agree that the Law Dome is a strong argument - I think it has a better chance of standing alone than does the mass balance - you'll see I brought it up in #37. Of course, in combination, the law dome plus mass balance becomes nigh-indisputable. Hmm. The acidity argument might actually work too. At first, I was going to dismiss it based on the "pool" analogy - the pool having more water doesn't change the vapor pressure of the water - but yes, an ocean with higher total-dissolved-carbon does change the "vapor" pressure for CO2 in the atmosphere. -MMM ps. Sphaerica; The analogy is meant to be: pool water = CO2 in the ocean. Humidifier water = fossil fuels. Not a perfect analogy, but pretty close to what I think the Roy's & Salby's and other "sophisticated" contrarians must be thinking... -
henanlkf at 10:45 AM on 10 July 2012Climate's changed before
"Greenhouse gas increases have caused climate change many times in Earth’s history", in the article it is amazing to me to listen this news, could you tell me what are the cases of climate change caused by greenhouse gas increasing? what is the status of the greenhouse gas incrasing caused? -
Tom Curtis at 10:33 AM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
MMM @36 the atmosphere and ocean maintain an equilibrium with regard to the vapour pressure of CO2. Therefore, if you increase the concentration, and hence vapour pressure', of CO2 is the atmosphere, the ocean will absorb more CO2. But if you increase the temperature of the ocean the equilibrium ratio will shift, raising the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere In the former case, the acidity of the ocean will increase, in the later the acidity of the ocean will decrease. So, unlike the case in your analogy, we have a simple means to check whether the increase in CO2 is due to increasing emissions or from warming of the ocean. It is the former. Further, we have a simple check of the theory that the rise in CO2 is due to increased temperature. The following is the CO2 record from Law Dome:
(Source: Wikipedia)
Multiple reconstructions of past temperatures have shown MWP warmth to be comparable to that in the 1950s, with an error range which does not exclude it being as cool as the 1910s or the 2000s. Fake Skeptics are convinced that those reconstructions underestimate MWP temperatures. If follows that if ocean warming is driving CO2 rise, the CO2 levels in the MWP should match current CO2 levels.
So while I agree that unique scenarios can be constructed that void the mass balance argument, they do not show that the mass balance argument is faulty. The merely show that it is an inductive rather than a deductive argument, which has arrive at the correct conclusion (as sound inductive arguments typically do).
-
John Hartz at 10:32 AM on 10 July 2012Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic--and Antarctic--Climate Change
Phillipe: Lake E lies in about the center of Beringia, the largest contiguous landscape in the Arctic to have escaped continental-scale glaciation. -
skywatcher at 10:14 AM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Clyde, you did not answer my question. It is an observed fact that there has ben an observed progressive increase in extreme heat events across the globe over the past 50 years. What is causing that increase? An analogy: Striker V Natural always scores about 20 goals a season for his football club. They are distributed at random through the season, and the club win about half their games in the season, finishing mid-table. The club then sign another striker to play alongside V Natural, called Ant Ropogenic, who starts slowly, scoring only a few goals in his first few seasons, but gradually increasing his scoring rate to more than 20 goals a season. Eventually Earth United are winning more games and ultimately win the league. You are looking at the final scores in the league-winning season, and don't know who scored each goal in each game (just as we can't tease out every specific storm, low presure or blocking high that is caused by AGW). Maybe V Natural scored all the goals? Yet before Ant Ropogenic started playing, the team were mid-table and mediocre. Not so many wins! [ie extreme events] How confident are you that V Natural scored all the goals in the league-winning season? How confident are you, for any one game [any one extreme event], that Ant Ropogenic didn't contribute to the victory? The analogy is far from perfect, but you have to ask yourself, in a world that is warming rapidly, why the observed increase in extremes of high temperature (commonly called heatwaves) would have nothing to do with the forced warming that is going on? From SREX:"In many (but not all) regions over the globe with sufficient data, there is medium confidence that the length or number of warm spells or heat waves[3] has increased." "It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale."
Your first link is paywalled and the abstract does not contradict Hansen; NOAA in your second link say this, entirely consistent with Hansen:"And while the scientists could not attribute the intensity of this particular heat wave to climate change, they found that extreme heat waves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the region in coming decades."
So NOAA are entirely consistent with Hansen et al. Trying to attribute individual weather events to climate change is a mugs game, but observing the global change in trends is actually quite straightforward. AGW plays a role in determining the pattern of weather events - a pattern that sees episodes of increased heatwaves (e.g. USA now), and increased floods and rain (e.g. UK just now), but patterns that are not static. Maybe next year the UK will suffer a heatwave (it just had a drought too before the spring/summer rains), maybe Washington will be flooded next year. Who knows where the extremes will happen? But I'd bet on the global patterns continuing and intensifying. All consistent with the intesifying water cycle in a warming world. Are you still confident that Texas and Russian heatwaves have nothing to do with climate change? -
Bob Lacatena at 10:03 AM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
16, Clyde, During the first week after a physical has shown that you have cancer you feel fine. So you figure you don't need to do anything about it, and you can let the cancer take its course until it becomes a problem? We've only gotten to 0.8˚C of the 1.4˚C temperature change to which we have already committed, and of the 2˚C to 2.5˚C that we are very, very unlikely (at our current pace of action) to avoid. You really believe that just because current extremes can't be definitively, statistically and un-categorically tied to climate change, that that means that climate change is harmless? Is that really your position? [Please don't bother to answer. The question is rhetorical. I really don't care to hear your response.] -
scaddenp at 10:03 AM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Interesting to perhaps consider that the heatwaves in Russia and US have happened while ENSO ONI index is negative. How ugly would summer be when coinciding with an El Nino event of 1.5 or greater? -
Tony O at 09:54 AM on 10 July 2012Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed
Tom Curtis @25 Dealing effectively with global warming will not be bad for the economy, on the contrary it will be beneficial. Investment in energy efficiency would be a huge employment creator, hugely beneficial and with a surprising quick payback period. Renewables will also be an employment creator, more than the equivalent investment in coal or nuclear. The required investments can be small scale, local and will increase resilience. They will also give greater independence from the huge global financial companies. There will be no need for the multi level financialization of financialization. One reason renewables are so opposed by people not in the oil and gas industry. What I was saying is that our current economic soccial system is very much more fragile than people understand. Even if the effects of climate change are not that serious it will still be a too big a shock for the system. But the effects of climate change are already guaranteed to be serious. -
Bob Lacatena at 09:48 AM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
MMM, Your analogy thoroughly confuses me. What are your sources of water? In the case of CO2, it's pretty straightforward. The only viable sources and sinks are fossil fuels, biomatter, the oceans and the atmosphere. There's nothing else (there is carbon stored in the deep ocean and such, but it is in stable storage -- just like fossil fuels). There just aren't a lot of places to get the carbon from, or to hide it once it's been sucked from the ground. To violate the mass balance argument, one must show (a) where the 346 Gt of human, fossil-fuel-generated carbon went, (b) where the extra carbon in the atmosphere came from, and (c) why the mass balance, without that extra source of natural carbon, would have been zero otherwise (i.e. why the magical natural carbon increased atmospheric levels while non-magical anthro-carbon would have been sucked into whatever magical carbon sink is holding it). A whole lot has to happen, with a whole lot of carbon, to make any sort of argument that confounds the mass-balance argument. The core of the magical natural carbon source argument comes from the idea that there is so much carbon floating around in the ether that we can't possibly account for it... that volcanoes, oceans, coal fairies, carbon kobolds, petrol pixies and the like can all spread their magical carbon dust wherever they please without us silly, ignorant humans ever noticing. -
Philippe Chantreau at 09:24 AM on 10 July 2012Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic--and Antarctic--Climate Change
Interesting article John. Even though it is not the point of the paper, I am curious to know how an Arctic lake could never be covered by glaciers even through the peak glacial times, when an ice cap grip a good part of the Northern hemisphere to lattitudes below 40 degrees. -
MMM at 08:54 AM on 10 July 2012Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
(er: to clarify 36: the world that "sophisticated" contrarians live in - eg, the ones that can get published in E&E - is this short residence time world - many contrarians are in the less sophisticated territory of "natural big, anthropogenic small")
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