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SunBurst at 11:36 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Bob Loblaw @22
Your claim involving https://skepticalscience.com/co2-warming-35-percent.htm is a strawman since I never claimed that the Climate Myth in this link was true. I thought it was already known that about 20% of the greenhouse effect was due to CO2 while the remaining 80% was due primarily to water vapor.
In the other link https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm , some bold assertions are made without any error bars either on the data or the conclusions. Since the human released amounts of CO2 and other GHGs are so much smaller than the naturally released amounts of these gases, it is highly likely that the amount of human released gases would fit within the uncertainty of the naturally released gases. In other words, one could not distinguish between the human released gases and uncertainties in the naturally released gases. In this case, you haven't debunked anything.
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SunBurst at 11:01 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Rob Honeycutt @29
All right, Smarty! Then answer my question from @27. Keep in mind, however, the quote from https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
... atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009).
Let's see how well informed you are!
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:37 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst would likely benefit from reading Royer et al 2004.
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MA Rodger at 08:30 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Rob Honeycutt @29,
Let's assume he is ignorant and isn't just playing with his troll-head on.
SunBurst @27,
CO2 levels were momentarily (thus for a 100k years perhaps) approaching today's levels back 3 million years ago. This was a time when the Panama Isthmus had just formed between N & S America, an event that would make a big impact on global climate. The levels of CO2 we see today were have not been seen for 13 million years and prior to that on scales of 100s of millions of years, CO2 was multiple-times higher than today although estimates of how many multiples are not well defined.
But do bear in mind that the sun has been getting warmer with time. Roughly this equates to a forcing equal to a doubling of CO2 every 150 million years. So to balance a weaker sun back 450 million years ago, CO2 would have to be perhaps at 2,000ppm, 8-times higher than pre-industrial.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:10 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @27.... Oh, come on! Surely you're not that uninformed on this issue. Are you?
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Bob Loblaw at 07:13 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBUrst @ 25.
What Rob said @ 26. I guessed that you would probably try to claim that your statement of a "prediction he made in 2006 that New York City would be flooded within ten years due to sea level rise from the melting of the Arctic ice cap." was from the movie.
So, your score on this issue is (so far):
- You got the year of the movie right (2006),
- Gore said nothing about "within 10 years",
- It was not about melting "the Arctic ice cap".
Pretty pathetic, really. The only thing right is pretty trivial. On any item of substance, you got it badly wrong.
Where are you getting this crap? You really need to find yourself some better sources of information. There is lots here at this site if you take the time to look.
...but at comment #27, you are just running off on a different quest. To avoid admitting your error, you are trying to distract everyone. It won't work - we've seen all this sort of behaviour time after time after time.
If you actually have something accurate and new to contribute, please do so.
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SunBurst at 06:57 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Rob Honeycutt @26
When have we had CO2 levels as high as they are today? The story I keep hearing from the AGW folks is that current CO2 levels are unprecidented.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:33 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst... It's clearly stated in the movie what's being demonstrated is what would happen if all the ice on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melted. An ice-free planet, which we had the last time CO2 levels were as high as today, would have sea levels that are 70 meters higher than today. These are facts.
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gerontocrat at 06:05 AM on 15 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Elon Musk like Bill Gates is a true believer in that technology can solve all the problems - a behavioural change away from the economy of things is regarded as unnecessary.
In the next few decades we will find out the reality.
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SunBurst at 05:56 AM on 15 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Bob Loblaw @21
Al Gore showed scenes in his movie An Inconvenient Truth that depicted a bunch of cities, including NYC, underwater from the melting Arctic ice caps. He later backpedaled in this point in his sequel. In his new movie, he depicts Hurricane Sandy as the causing NYC flooding, including the flooding of the WTC Memorial which was then under construction. By changing the cause of NYC flooding from rising sea-level to a storm (brought on by AGW, of course), recovers some of his credibility.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:33 AM on 15 March 20212010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Crystal Wolf, you need to up your game, pay attention, and do some work of your own.
The posts you are attempting to respond to are 10 years old; every post bears a time stamp that shows the date and time. Tom Curtis has not contributed to this site for a number of years. His analysis of Norman's weaknesses was accurate, as Norman was called out repeatedly for picking more favorable US statisitcs than the ones considered by Jeff Masters, which were global and therefore much more representative of a global phenomenon.
The original post is about extreme weather events and their correlation with the extra energy accumulated in the climate system. Since the post was written, global temperatures have gone up steadily, and set records five times. You read that right, the 5 warmest years on the record have all occurred since 2015, years after this post was written, and after the comments you responded to. If you had done even the most basic reading about the problem, you would have already been aware of that fact. Extreme events have also increased.
If you want to slam SKS, do so for failing to update the OP and show how much worse the situation is today than 10 years ago.
As for the correlation with extreme events, it has become only stronger, as shown by this excellent summary from NOAA. Unfortunately it is limited to the US, but nonetheless shows an unmistakable trend.
Moderator Response:[TD] Crystal Wolf, you can find more recent posts about extreme weather by entering the term "extreme weather" in the Search field at the top left of the page.
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Crystal_Wolf at 03:38 AM on 15 March 20212010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Btw i hink you should make it more simple to understand because of my daughter trying to use this site for a project and it makes no sense to her. I ngive it a 2 star rating if i could because i want everything in here to be true, not just jumble up opinions.
Moderator Response:[TD] How old is your daughter? There are many sources tailored to many different ages, so if you tell us what age and which topics are appropriate, we can point your daughter to more appropriate resources.
This site is extremely well organized in multiple dimensions. You need to start by going to the Home page, and clicking the "Newcomers, start here" button. Once you are in that page, scroll down to the section "Good starting points for newbies." Click the links in that section. Also note in the left margin of every page, near the top, "Most Used Climate Myths." At the bottom of that thermometer, click the "View all arguments..." link. Also at the top of every page is a "Resources" menu; click it.
You are completely wrong about this site being just opinions. This site is famous for backing up all contentions with references to peer reviewed science. Many posts are divided into multiple tabbed pages--Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced--that are progressively more detailed, more technical, and have more references to the underlying science.
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Crystal_Wolf at 03:21 AM on 15 March 20212010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman has done nothing wrong he is proving facts.
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MA Rodger at 19:51 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @20,
When you ask about "New Research" (a term used in these SkS pages to denote research new this week), I asume you are simply trying to coin a perjorative term to troll onto this thread. So I assume you are actually asking about all what Rob Honeycutt @23 terms the "old research" which has been rattling round for yeras if not decades. Note this week's 'new research' is fresh-off-the-boat and needs a bit of time to be checked out, a checking process achieved with 'old research'.
You take a giant leap in conceding at least that there is reason to consider the possibility that you are entirely wrong about temperature trends. Well done you!!
However, I struggle to see the connection between, on the one hand, the contribution of CO2 to the "total greenhouse effect" and the percentage change wrought by AGW on that "total greenhouse effect" which you ask respondents to "remember", and on the other hand, attribution of the causes of the global warming you now see as worth assuming?
The"total greenhouse effect" contributes roughly +33ºC to planetary temperature and, while assessments of the direct mechanism of the GH-effect (eg Schmidt et al (2010) - note the date = 'old research') shows CO2 contributing 20% to "total greenhouse effect" , note also that CO2 is an esential requirement for the other main contributor to the GH-effect H2O making CO2 the principle control knob governing Earth's temperature (Lacis et al 2010 - note the date ='old research').
The actual question you ask is addressed by Bob Loblaw @22 but note that assessing the contribution of CO2 to AGW is not straightforward as the various gases have differing residence times and CO2 is particularly long-lived. But perhaps contributions cab be best simplistically measured using the NOAA AGGI which shows CO2 alone contributing a little under 60% of today's AGW (positive) forcing. Do note that all the other contributions are like CO2 anthropogenic in origin.
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Rob Honeycutt at 14:45 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @20... "...does any of your 'New Research' turned up a plausible explanation as to how we know that human carbon dioxide emissions are the cause?"
That doesn't really require new research since the old research has demonstrated that more than sufficiently. Just look at the change in radiative forcing for CO2 over the past century.
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Bob Loblaw at 13:11 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Sunburst @ 20
"CO2 accounts for only about 20% of the total greenhouse effect"
Wrong.
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-warming-35-percent.htm
"...less that 10% of that is caused by humans."
Wrong.
https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
You really need to come up with something that is not a long-debunked talking point.
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Bob Loblaw at 13:06 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Sunburst @ 18: "...he made in 2006 that New York City would be flooded within ten years..."
He didn't. Unless you can provide a reliable reference of where he did.
https://skepticalscience.com/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-errors.htm
Sunburst @ 19 "...then changed to global warming in by the middle 1980s"
It didn't.
https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
Unless you are just looking at observed temperatures and trying claim that nothing byut CO2 is affecting temperature trends. In that case, you are applying the phrase "global warming" to two different phenomena. The early 20th century rise, the mid-20th century cooling, and the current rapid warming since the 1980s are not caused by the same thing.
https://skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century.htm
You need to find some better sources of information.
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SunBurst at 12:37 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Question: Assuming you all are 100 percent correct in the temperature trends you are stating, does any of your "New Research" turned up a plausible explanation as to how we know that human carbon dioxide emissions are the cause? Remember that CO2 accounts for only about 20% of the total greenhouse effect, and less that 10% of that is caused by humans.
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SunBurst at 12:14 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
nigelj @17
And 10 years does not constitute a climate change trend. Its generally accepted we need 30 years of data to be certain the climate has changed in a fundamental way and its not just short term natural cyclical variability.
Then howcome the threat was global cooling from the early 1940s up to about 1975, and then changed to global warming in by the middle 1980s?
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SunBurst at 12:03 PM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
John Seers @9
However I would like SunBurst to list one prediction by Al Gore that "failed" because I do not think SunBurst will be able to list one.
All right. How about the prediction he made in 2006 that New York City would be flooded within ten years due to sea level rise from the melting of the Arctic ice cap. Well, the year 2016 has come and gone but NYC is still on dry land.
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Crystal_Wolf at 08:39 AM on 14 March 20212010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Tom Curtis @30 "It turns out that you are just another denier who poses as a neutral questioner, but whose real agenda is to raise doubt - any doubt regardless of rationality - with relation to any evidence for AGW." Actually Tom I think the physics to AGW is valid. People are burning lots of carbon based fuel and are most likely increasing the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. It will cause some warming of the Globe. As this website states, a denier is one who will not change based upon valid evidence. I am a skeptic in this issue (Weather extermes due to Global warming). I will change my view when valid evidence is presented to prove this conclusion. What I have been requesting is balance with historical data as well as wanting some mechanisms to explain why warming is causing the extremes. If it be flooding, drought etc. what is the warming atmophere doing to cause these events to take place at a greater frequency or intensity. Jeff Masters lists a lot of bad events that happened in 2010 but provides very little linking mechanisms to explain how global warming was responsible. He is a PhD meterologist and would have the knowledge to provide links and mechanisms. If I am given this type of information and would still deny it, then your label of "denier" would be most correct. (-Snip-). I agree with Norman.
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nigelj at 07:26 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Sunburst @12
"You must, however, consider the Big Picture in that "global warming" really isn't global unless the upward temperature trends are happening everywhere, and I have pointed out several regions where exactly the opposite is happening."
No. The world doesn't have to be warming at every place for the world to be warming as a whole. All that has to happen is the planets average temperature goes up. This is self evidently possible even if some small areas are cooling. By analogy a simple traditional wood fire could be getting hotter and hotter measured with temperatures in the chimney even if you spilt your iced drink on a small part of the fire causing one corner of the fire to cool for a little bit. I've already explained all this @7 and you havent disproven it with any data. You have pointed out a couple of regions where you allege without hard evidence theres cooling but you neglect the many more regions that show warming. You provide no proof that areas of your alleged cooling are greater than areas of warming. And as people point out you confuse a warming trend with weather so you havent demonstrated any actual cooling trend anywhere at all on the planet.
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Sunburst @13
"Well, you are free to believe whatever you want. But I'm sure that most Americans who have seen skyrocketing heating bills and frozen water mains for the past 5-10 winters would tend to say it's a cooling trend and not just cold weather. "
Or is it because electric companies are simply charging more money for other reasons? Maybe they are building new infrastructure. Maybe they are getting greedy. Maybe there is maineinance work. Again you provide no reliable evidence of why prices are skyrocketing or even "if" they are sky rocketing.
And 10 years does not constitute a climate change trend. Its generally accepted we need 30 years of data to be certain the climate has changed in a fundamental way and its not just short term natural cyclical variability. This is why it was only decided in about the 2000s that burning fossil fuels was definitely causing climate change. So even if the global climate WAS cooling for 5 -10 years (it isn't) this doesnt prove very much.
" At any rate, it would simply be wrong to deprive those people (including myself) of the fuels they need in order to get them through the winter seasons despite all of the "global warming" we are experiencing."
Strawman. Nobody is depriving anyone of fuel.
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:11 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @12...
The term "global warming" refers to the rise in global mean temperature. There is nothing dictating that every single point on the planet must be warming for it to be global warming.
You also failed to address the point that your original statement said the cooling was "equally as strong" as the warming, when it clearly in fact is not.
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SunBurst at 07:01 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
nigeli @ 7
I sympathise with the challenges people face, but these comments about what they can afford are just empty assertions. On what basis with what facts? What expert study says this? Even if they had difficulties affording this you can have carbon tax and dividend schemes which are financially gentle on people (google it).
Don't trouble me with "expert studies". These studies say only what the paymasters want them to say. First try living in one of those cooling regions I describe and see what it's like to try to make ends meet on reduced crops and whatever government assistance they can get. And the more government handout we have, the more inflation we get. Either way we are stuck with less, and things are bad enough even under the present circumstances.
Moderator Response:[DB] Sloganeering snipped.
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SunBurst at 06:51 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Philippe Chantreau @ 13
Well, you are free to believe whatever you want. But I'm sure that most Americans who have seen skyrocketing heating bills and frozen water mains for the past 5-10 winters would tend to say it's a cooling trend and not just cold weather. At any rate, it would simply be wrong to deprive those people (including myself) of the fuels they need in order to get them through the winter seasons despite all of the "global warming" we are experiencing.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:49 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Sunburst, you seem to be the one stuck with not understanding the very words you yourself use to argue.
You have pointed to several regions where cold events have happened recently (weather) but failed to produce data that would show that there is a long term cooling trend in these locations. In post 8 above, MA Rodger did not mention gobal averages at all but instead linked data that clearly show an upward trend for the 2 locations you mentioned with enough precision that they could be checked.
So, not only these locations fail to show "a downward trend equally strong as the upward trend in other regions," they actually show an upward trend, consistent with the global trend. How did you get the impression that these locations were experiencing a long term cooling trend?
Repeating stuff does not make it become real. If you want to be taken seriously, you must now produce local data that shows a long term cooling trend of approximately 0.18 deg C per decade. Considering how your original argument went, you should produce a great quantity of them too.
You must also show data showing a decreasing growing season. That will likely not be in the 48 contiguous US, where the length of the growing season has gone up steadily. I'll add that, if you want to go into the growing season argument, in order to keep it honest you must steer away from research showing that the overall warming could cause a decrease in the number of days suitable for plant growth due to soil moisture and other factors adversely affected by rising temperatures.
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SunBurst at 04:55 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
MA Rodger, nigelj, John Seers, David Kirtley, Rob Honeycutt
You all seem to be stuck on using global averages as your only way of characterizing global temperature trends. You must, however, consider the Big Picture in that "global warming" really isn't global unless the upward temperature trends are happening everywhere, and I have pointed out several regions where exactly the opposite is happening. This is especially true in the case where the warming is caused by the CO2 greenhouse effect since CO2 is non-condensing and therefore stays in the atmosphere long enough to become more or less evenly spread. In this case, would it not be much more logical that the greenhouse warming would also be evenly spread instead of some regions showing great warming and other regions showing great cooling? You miss this sort of thing by relying only on global average temperatures.
Moderator Response:[DB] Does "global warming" mean it’s warming everywhere?
"No, “global warming” means Earth's average annual air temperature is rising, but not necessarily in every single location during all seasons across the globe. It’s like your grades. If one semester you get all Bs and Cs, and the next you get all As and Cs, your grade point average rises, even though you didn’t improve in every class.
That’s the way it is with Earth’s near-surface temperature as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels climb. Temperature trends across the entire globe aren’t uniform because of the diverse geography on our planet—oceans versus continents, lowlands versus mountains, forests versus deserts versus ice sheets—as well as natural climate variability. When you’re zoomed in on a particular place, you may not be able to see the overall trend.
It is only when scientists calculate the average of temperature changes from every place on Earth over the course of a year to produce a single number, and then look at how that number has changed over time that a very clear, global warming trend emerges. In other words, it’s only when we “zoom out” to the planet-wide scale that the trend is obvious: despite a few, rare areas experiencing an overall cooling trend, the vast majority of places across the globe are warming."
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:52 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
I'm very curious where SunBurst finds cooling "that is equally as strong as the upward trend" because I'm just not seeing it.
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Stephen Mettler at 02:42 AM on 14 March 2021'Freedom from Fossil Fuels' - a climate science framework for non-scientists
Thank you Joel, I really appreciate the kind feedback and I'm so glad this can be an easy on-ramp to welcome more people in!
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David Kirtley at 23:29 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst, you are confusing weather for climate. Take a look here: Does cold weather disprove global warming?
As MA Rodger pointed out @8, one year's cold temperatures (weather) need to be looked at in the larger context (climate) to see if there is any trend. Deke Arndt, in this tweet, summed this up well for the continental US, for Feb:
Now compare this year's Feb to Febs from earlier in the 20th century:
Do you see the trend? That is global warming.
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JohnSeers at 20:20 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
nigelj @ 7
SunBurst
As you rightly point out Al Gore's expertise is not the issue as suggested by SunBurst. However I would like SunBurst to list one prediction by Al Gore that "failed" because I do not think SunBurst will be able to list one.
Al Gore may have had a tendency to frame his narrative in rather doom laden terms and his desire to dramatise for effect gave ammunition for criticism. But he was fairly accurate.
The only prediction SunBurst is likely to come up with is Arctic ice. An accurate understanding of exactly what Gore said on this does not add up to a prediction. (Though you could criticise the words for dramatising a worst case scenario.)
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MA Rodger at 18:50 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
StarBurst @6,
You tell me:-
"I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming."
Then you describe cold weather in Niagra Falls & Chicago, But do does that indicate locations showing a downward trend?
February 2015 was a cold month in both these locations, in Chicago the 4th coldest on record and in Buffalo the 2nd. But cold months way below the average are seen in the records at both locations. Such events are surely to be expected. They are not part of a downward trend. The trend at both locations is upward!!
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nigelj at 13:21 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Starburst @6
"I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming. As I stated in my first posting, global warming means warming over the entire global, which certainly isn't happening."
My understanding is most regions of the world show warming. The few regions showing cooling or no change do not have enough cooling to offset the warming in the regions with warming. This means the world as a whole is warming. This is commonsense. Scientists measure all these things and take it all into account because they are basic things. The heat energy content of the entire planetary system has also increased in the last several decades. Again scientists look into these things because its what they are trained to do.
If you still dont understand or agree, please provide a list of all countries in the world and its oceans as well, and their warming rates and cooling rates (if there are any) over the last 50 years and we shall see which dominates, - warming or cooling. Until you do this in detail, with links to all your data, and making sure you are comparing like with like, you have got nothing worth me considering.
"For people in these regions, global warming is not the problem and fossil fuels are necessary for making a living, or even just surviving. These people simply cannot afford governments imposing additional taxes (or "cap and trade") for their use of fossil fuels. "
I sympathise with the challenges people face, but these comments about what they can afford are just empty assertions. On what basis with what facts? What expert study says this? Even if they had difficulties affording this you can have carbon tax and dividend schemes which are financially gentle on people (google it).
Many expert reports like the Stern Report find we can mitigate the worst of climate change at a cost of approximately 2% of global gdp per year. This is very roughly equivalent to 2% of peoples incomes. I suggest all but very poor people can afford that, and poor people can be given finanical assistance by governmnet so they can cope or could be excluded from carbon tax schemes. At least some countries do this sort of thing. I dont have time to list them all but this sort of thing is eassily googled.
"Finally, with the failed prediction track records of Al Gore and other pro-AGW politicians,..."
You provide no evidence of these alleged failed predictions. But its not relevant anyway , because the IPCC reports about climate change are not based on anything Al Gore said. The IPCC and climate scientists make their predictions based on science, and so far warming trends are very close to predictions made decades ago. Refer:
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/01/update-day-2020/
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SunBurst at 10:32 AM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
MA Rodger @5
We would thus expect regional variations in the rate of AGW.
I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming. As I stated in my first posting, global warming means warming over the entire global, which certainly isn't happening. Also, many pro-AGW articles focus on the thawing permafrost in Alaska and the summer-like temperatures in London or Paris during the December-January months, but neglect the frozen-over Niagra Falls and ports on the Great Lakes, massive numbers of burst water mains in Chicago, shorter growing seasons in agricultural areas, and dozens of hypothermic deaths in cities throughout the midwestern and northeastern states. For people in these regions, global warming is not the problem and fossil fuels are necessary for making a living, or even just surviving. These people simply cannot afford governments imposing additional taxes (or "cap and trade") for their use of fossil fuels. Also, they can't afford governments shutting down pipelines or making "national monuments" of regions rich in methane.
Finally, with the failed prediction track records of Al Gore and other pro-AGW politicians, it cannot reasonably be expected that Americans would be more concerned about global warming than fixing the economy and getting back to work.
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Joel_Huberman at 01:22 AM on 13 March 2021'Freedom from Fossil Fuels' - a climate science framework for non-scientists
Thanks, Stephen! I'm a retired biochemist/molecular biologist, who was rigorously trained in physics, chemistry, and biology--but never in climate science. Like you, I am a climate science auto-didact. The fact that I had previous scientific training certainly gave me a leg up. Nevertheless, gaining a full understanding of the greenhouse effect, of the current climate crisis, and of possible solutions was not easy for me. So I congratulate you on your intelligent persistence, your willingness to share what you learned with others, and your creativity in generating a clear, scientifically based presentation!
I intend to share your presentation with many friends who have asked me to help them understand climate science. I would like to be able to respond quickly and fully to each such friend, but I would have to develop a presentation like yours before I could get started, and I haven't found the time to do so. Your presentation comes as a great time-saving gift to me and as a wish-come-true for my friends!
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MA Rodger at 21:20 PM on 12 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @4,
Your detailed account of US temperature sits within a wider annual trend. The GISS mapping tool mapping warming 1980-to-date shows individual years averaged over a month can be cold in certain regions and even a decade of a single month can show cold. Thus October in the northern mid-west US shows a bit of cooling when averaged over a decade (and a similar area shows no warming through April/May), but these are some of the few exceptions in a global-wide warming evident over the full year mapped out below.
I would suggest, contrary to your assertion, that this does indicate that "AGW is global."
You also argue that, if CO2 is spread evenly in the atmosphere (which it is, global rises are measured up to 50km with perhaps a two-year lag between the hemespheres), the warming should be also seen uniformly across the globe.
Yet the climate is a far more complex thing. While the sun provides a uniform warming by latitude, the map below (from here) shows some significant variations within latitude, this seen even on a temperature scale perhaps 10x wider than the anomaly map above.
It is these variations that define the detailed average temperature of a latitude and these variations do not simply get warmer uniformly in a warming world.
We would thus expect regional variations in the rate of AGW.
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SunBurst at 13:55 PM on 12 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
You climate change people talk about anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but is this AGW really "global"? Well, warming has certainly happened in some parts of the world, but in other regions such as the midwestern and northeastern continental US, temperatures have dropped by about 25 degrees F during the winter months from years before 2015. In Colorado, we have seen relatively mild winters during the past 5-6 years due to drought conditions, but the summers have also been "milder" (ie. cooler). This results in much shorter growing seasons even though annual average temperatures may or may not have changed much. The ground in many places remains frozen and therefore not suitable for tilling until mid-June. Then killer frosts occur in the late August to early September time frame — not much time for growing. One might argue that our problems are related to cooling, and not warming.
Therefore, it seems that your AGW isn't as "global" as we were led to believe. Furthermore, we would expect that warming caused by the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect would be more or less uniform since CO2 tends to spread evenly in the atmosphere over long time intervals.
In view of these simple facts, we must ask if the CO2 greenhouse effect is the best explanation of any warming we are experiencing. Also, AGW believers ultimately base their claims on an increasing global mean surface temperature (GMST). But is this actually a meaningful figure of merit for assessing planetary warming?
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David-acct at 11:57 AM on 11 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Sorry - gotta correct a few typo's should read -
for reference purposes, the total electric generation for the ERCOT grid was hitting a high of appprox 65-66 GW per hour in the ERCOT system (sorry if i lost the link to this site ). The peak summer hits in the area of 75gw-78GW per hour (based on my recollection).
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David-acct at 11:54 AM on 11 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
In response to Eric's comment
There is no question that the natural gas source electric generation dropped during the critical period from late in the day February 14th until early morning on the February 15th.
I have attached the link to Eia.gov grid monitor which details the electric generation by source (its the 4th chart on the site and you will need to select a custom date range)
From February 12th natural gas electric generation went from approx 35-37GW per hour to a max of 44gw per hour at 9pm Feb 14. Then at approx 1.30 am was the percipatice drop down to 33GW, then a further drop to approx 28GW per hour by 3pm on the 15th. A total drop of approx 16GW of natural gas generated electricity or approx 36% drop.
At the same time wind source electric generation typically runs between 12GW to 20GW per hour. During the period Feb 10th though Feb 14th, Wind source generation ranged in the 2GW to 8GW per hour. Wind reached a max during that period of 9gw per hour midday Feb 14th and dropped to approx 0.9GW per hour by mid day Feb 15th . Electric generation from solar generally ranges in the 4GW -5GW per hour during the day. During the period from Feb 10through Feb 14th, solar reached a high of 1.9GW per hour and did not produce more than 1GW per hour until the mid day on the 15th producing a high of 2.7GW and quickly dropping back down. Electric generation from Both solar and wind were expected to drop to approx 20-25% of normal generation.
for reference purposes, the total electric generation was hitting a high of appprox 65-66 GW per hour in the ERCOT system (sorry if i lost the link to this state ). The peak summer hits in the area of 750-78GW per hour.
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nigelj at 06:59 AM on 11 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfoxh @24, Savorys claims about how much carbon grasslands soil can be made to sequester by certain types of rotational grazing are probably exaggerated. This website did an article on his work a year or two ago, that demonstrated this exaggeration with reference to published studies.
That said, there is published evidence grasslands can be made to sequester at least some additional carbon with the right rotational grazing eg Nordberg. The worlds grasslands grazed by cattle are often metres deep in carbon rich soil, which suggests something is going on. I suspect the truth of how much carbon can be sequestered by rotational grazing is probably somewhere in the middle between the various claims. However open grasslands grazing like this has low cattle density to work properly, so it likely means fewer total cattle numbers globally than presently.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please take this discussion to the appropriate thread. https://skepticalscience.com/holistic-management-rebuttal.html
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:34 AM on 11 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
There is more to be addressed regarding agriculture than the impacts it has on climate change or the potential for agricultural practices to be changed in ways that help reduce the climate change harm that has already been caused.
A more holistic view regarding the issues is presented in the University of Stockholm led development of the "Planetary Boundaries" evaluation. Key points from that evaluation related to agriculture are the ways that developed agricultural activity can be seen to be significant reasons that global human activity has already exceeded Planetary Capacity regarding Biochemical Flows (specifically the Nitrogen Cycle) and Biodiversity.
That understanding of planetary boundaries is understandably a major aspect of the basis for the Sustainable Development Goals. The latest annual report regarding the Sustainable Development Goals effort, Human Development Report 2020, discusses the details of the Planetary Boundaries (Note: Although climate change Planetary Boundary impacts are not as significant as other boundary impacts at this time, it is understood that the developed systems need significant change to keep climate change impacts from doing more harm to the future. The HDR 2020 focuses a lot of attention on Climate Change impacts because more climate change makes it more difficult to achieve the other SDGs).
The most important understanding is that the challenges to the development of a sustainable improving future for humanity are mainly getting the "highest negative impacting people" to be less harmful, and to get the "Supposedly Superior People" to be more Helpful, especially helping the less fortunate.
That understanding leads to the awareness that the behaviours of richer people as leaders are key considerations. The people who are wealthier have the ability to be the least harmful and most helpful. Those among the richer in the global population, which is the majority of people in the "supposedly more advanced nations", who are not acting that way, including the leadership they vote for politically and what they encourage economically (how they spend their money), is a detriment to the future of humanity. And anyone using their wealth to influence popular support contrary to achieving the corrections required to develop sustainable improvements for the benefit of the future is behaving most harmfully, even if it isn't "illegal" (which exposes the reality that Law and Order and Regulation can be harmfully inadequate or incorrect when powerful interests influence and get to compromise that type of stuff).
10 to 12 billion people can be decently sustainably fed with current technology. The ways that the systems that have developed fail to do that is "The Problem". And over-consumption and food waste by the "Supposed more Advanced, the Supposed Leaders, are serious aspects of the systemic problem).
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michael sweet at 21:31 PM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Swampfox:
I read a lot about Arctic Ice, sea level rise and renewable energy. I do not have time to also keep up to date on agriculture. Therefor I do not read the literature you read on agriculture. It seems you do not read much since you have cited no references in your rants.
If you want to make a scientific argument you must cite your references for everyone else. You are simply claiming you alone know what should be done. Your claim of authority seems pretty slim to me. Try finding some references so we can check your claims.
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swampfoxh at 21:16 PM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
We have all read the same literature, it doesn't need constant citing. The F&AO numbers don't include many items needed in determining animal ag's footprint, like the footprint of refrigeration. I'm not a ranter, I'm a climate science writer and a faculty member of ccl.org. the F&AO has a vested interest in keeping the numbers low, they are a "cow" interest group. I'm an omnivore, so I don't have a bias about cows, but bovines pose two major problems: 1.445 billion of them, nose to tail, would circle the earth at the equator about 100 times, along with the human race, shoulder to shoulder, another hundred times. That is an impact that needs to be reckoned with, but is an attention that is being ignored.
Regen Ag has its own intractability, along with the Savory "bovines forever" solution. We all know the last ten ice ages created the twenty (now less) feet of the "Great American Desert", not the Buffalo. The buffalo theory is invalidated by that animal's need to stay near water while avoiding wolf packs in the tall grass prairie. Also, antique inventories of the buffalo hide industry of the 19th century show less than 3 million carcasses, so Savory's estimates of herd strength are highly inflated. The very idea of a bovine eating grass, taking materials from that grass for its own development, invalidates the returning value theory of soil Regen, unless, of course, the animal died and rotted on the prairie, returning its store of leached nutrients to the ground. This is a much longer story, so I won't take up anymore of your time, its apparent that some of you don't want to be reminded that most every solution posed to fix the climate problem has caveats, although the science of the "what" and "why" we have about the climate problem is pretty solid.
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nigelj at 08:44 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Typical systems available to stop icing on wind turbine blades:
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened link.
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Yes the basic reason for the Texas blackout was failure with gas and nuclear power. Basically Texas had failed to insulate supply pipe etc despite having similar problems in the past. They just didn't want to spend the money although other states have. Texas grid is also independent so they couldnt import power and this is because of further cost saving and ideological reasons. I found this commentary about a week ago:
yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/the-climate-lesson-from-texas-frozen-power-outages/
As the commentary proved, the actual problem with wind power in the Texas power outage was not its electrical performance per se. In fact I recall seeing some information elsewhere that it was producing higher than expected output. The real problem is some of the blades iced up. However technolgy exists to stop this happening. Its possible to fit this to both new and existing turbines. The underlying problem was again ERCOT not spending the money.
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michael sweet at 04:16 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Eric,
The amount of power from wind and solar is predicted 24 hours in advance. The remainder of power is supposed to be produced by thermal sources (fossil fuel and nuclear). Wind performed as expected. Solar outproduced forecasts. Thermal power collapsed. You want to keep all your bets on thermal?? In the future there will be storage that provides energy on windless nights like happened in Texas. Some proposed energy systems use electromethane as storage to power existng gas plants (Connelly el al 2016, Williams et al 2021). Keep in mind that an identical problem occured in Texas in 2011 (before wind and solar were installed) and the Texans decided not to do anything to prevent reoccurance. Are you blaming the 2011 failure on wind?
Poorly designed thermal power plants caused the failures in Texas. Blaming wind and solar for improperly designed thermal plants does not make sense.
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jhnwlk at 02:32 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Watch the video Eric and listen carefully.
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Nick Palmer at 01:48 AM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfox wrote that animal agriculture is "the major contributor to GGEs". No, it's not. I suspect they have watched the highly deceptive (and wrong/dishonest) film 'Cowpocalypse'. swampfox asserts that they have have followed skepticalscience.com for 8 years so they should have seen the article about the subject which states that the actual figure is around 11%.
skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm
The F.A.O. estimate that the actual figure is about 14.5%
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ -
swampfoxh at 00:29 AM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Moderator. I'm not trying to disrupt the orderliness of this conversation. I have been following SkepSci for eight years. I use it for my lectures on Climate Change: Impact of an Outlaw Species" which I have delivered to thousands of people over the last 7 years. It's not outrageous, as some assert, that industrial animal agriculture or current plant agriculture is the major contributor to GGEs, nor it is outrageous to tag the emissions footprint of 8 billion humans as the principle cause of the climate problem. Really, the climate scientists are their own problem. We find the evidence, present it to the politicians, they distort it to fit their own narratives and the human race ends up fiddling while Rome burns. The climate scientists need to put their foot down and start demanding policy changes instead of meekly slipping away into their labs and relocking the door. Scientists need to run the climate mitigation show...if they don't start running it, it will never get done...it's not getting done now.
The main reaction to my lecture is, "Gosh, I didn't know all this was going on."
That should tell contributors to SkepSci how ineffective their research has been, how little influence they have. What good is their science if it never reaches the public, if it never frightens anyone into action?
Moderator Response:[DB] Moderation complaints and off-topic snipped. Others have pointed you to a post better-suited for your conjectures about animal agriculture.
Time to move on.
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Eric (skeptic) at 00:16 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
The video downplays the failure of wind. Click on Wind Integration Report: http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation/windandsolar Table below has date, avg wind (weather), peak wind (weather), wind power at max load and max wind power on 4 days in Feb..
15 18.4 30 5,350 5,461
16 6.8 16 4,415 4,732
17 9 15 3,556 3,882
18 14.5 21 6,634 7,080The peak power numbers are all below the average (2019) Feb wind power of 9,000 MW. The wind dropped, but the wind power produced dropped even more. Peak wind production dropped too so storage would not help. The bottom line is in the report: 30 GW of wind capacity and about 4GW of wind production when power was most needed. The low production to capacity ratio shows wind cannot be relied upon.
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