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nigelj at 06:15 AM on 8 January 2021Covid-19 and Climate Change Will Remain Inextricably Linked, Thanks to the Parallels (and the Denial)
Yes there is clearly considerable denial about both the climate science issue and the covid 19 issue. The denial looks almost about equal and equally depressing. I guess the only way is up. Polling by pew research does suggest climate science denial is slowly reducing.
I think one of the big drivers of denial about the problems of both issues is just lack of intellectual horsepower, but another driver relates to personal liberty. Those on the right and conservative end of politics in America seem very strong on personal liberty and for example many clearly resent being made to wear masks and socially distance and avoid crowds. Those on the left / liberal (ironically) end of the spectrum seem happy enough to compromise and wear masks, seemingly more concerned about safety. It just seems to be quite a different mindset to me.
Obviously its not a black and white issue because we all have some desire for both liberty and safety, but its clearly become very tribal, polarised and non compromising where any imposition on liberty is seen as the work of the devil, which is of course crazy.
And perhaps as a result those that favour liberty attack the science behind both the climate issue and covid 19 issue to try to create the impression there is no reason to restrict liberty.
I have to admit I dont want this covid thing as an older guy and I'm happy to compromise a little bit on liberty, knowing its temporary, and it mystifies me why people would see mask wearing as some sort of stalinist imposition tearing at the heart of our reason for existence. I value liberty rather a lot, but the way some people view the liberty issue and resent temporary, moderate, commonsense, and effective restrictions looks strange to me.
There is resistance to mitigation of both climate change and covid 19, but it is clearly greater with climate mitigation, while covid 19 has at least resulted in some pretty tough measures. It looks to me like people have a much stronger more urgent response to the covid 19 issue echoing commentary by pscychologists that suggest our brains are wired up to react more strongly to immediate and huge threats, rather than slow moving train wrecks like climate change. Its hard to see how we change this, but with climate change becoming more and more obvious this could motivate change, and perhaps more focus could go on the wider benefits of climate mitigation solutions as a motivational tool.
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Fred Torssander at 04:25 AM on 7 January 2021CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
Thanks for your encouragement. I wrote to NOAA and got their table for the diagram on LINK.
It goes back to 1751 and is unbroken series. I will try to fix the change back and forth at the oil crisis by moving the time lag. The reason for my scepticism towards emission data is that there is a trade war on, and statistics is a rather cheap and efficient way to confuse the enemy. LINK
Moderator Response:[DB] Shortened and hyperlinked URLS breaking Recent Comments thread formatting. Inserted image.
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MA Rodger at 03:13 AM on 7 January 2021CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
Fred Torssander @10,
Unless looking at the latitudinal trends (so looking at the annual wobble is disappeared at the south pole or the year-plus time lag between northern and southern hemisphere CO2 values), I haven't found the identification of time-lags possible due to the effect of ENSO and volcanic erruptions. So identifying levels of stored FF through a less-than vigorous rise in CO2 does sound a step too far. So best of luck with that.
If you are asking for annual data back to 1900, you evidently aren't yet using the Global Carbon Project data. The GCP's 'historic' data sheet gives values for FF emissions and atmospheric 'growth' back to1750 and Land Use net emissions back to 1850.
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Fred Torssander at 22:11 PM on 6 January 2021CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
I have tried comparing ghg emissions and atmospheric CO2 (yearly figures) in an x-y diagram to get a picture of the degree of coupling, time lag between emission and atmospheric concentration and the effects of economic- politic- and distributioncrises. But the data I have used is not the same as you. And I also find interesting differences between the period before the oil-crisis in the 1970-ies and aftewards. I think the storing and later use of oil and coal can have an impact. As well as strategic planning. Can you recommend any continous sources of data for lets say the period from 1900 up until today, for (anthropogenic) GHG emissions and atmospheric CO2?
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nigelj at 07:21 AM on 6 January 2021Is Climate Action... Winning..?
Good video climate adam. I think the climate 'pledges' countries have made are about as convincing as a new years resolution. So not very convincing. Yes its a step fowards to have made a big pledge, but like with new years resolutions its going to require a lot more actual action and we are almost running out of time.
This years temperatures are very high. Hansen thinks the last 10 years show warming is accelerating here.
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edevans at 02:23 AM on 5 January 2021Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact - a MOOC presented by Michael Mann
This sounds like really important learning opportunities. I'm going to pass on the $40, though, considering the pandemic, work, and such. Still, I'm pleased to have this opportunity to sign my name to this important exercise to learn about climate science.
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bjchip at 04:07 AM on 4 January 2021It's not bad
You could add a link to this one -
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1807856
An economist's takedown of an economist's view of climate. Highly recommend.
Moderator Response:[BL] Link activated.
The web software here does not automatically create links. You can do this when posting a comment by selecting the "insert" tab, selecting the text you want to use for the link, and clicking on the icon that looks like a chain link. Add the URL in the dialog box.
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michael sweet at 22:34 PM on 2 January 2021All Renewable Energy Plan for Europe
This news article from Politico (a USA news web site) states that the renewable energy sector has expanded under President Trump even though his administration has done as much as possible to support fossil fuels. At the same time fossil fuel companies are going bankrupt or shrinking operations. Fossil fuel operations have always been boom and bust so that is not really a surprise.
Biden has stated that his administration will support renewable energy to help the environment.
The expansion of renewable energy seems to be because renewable energy is now the cheapest energy. Companies also see the writing on the wall that renewable energy will be the energy source of the future so most companies are increasing investments in renewable and reducing investments in fossil fuels.
10 years ago we all hoped this type of change would occur but it seemed unlikely because renewable energy was too expensive. Hopefully the shift in cost of renewable energy will be in time to limit the damage from climate change.
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One Planet Only Forever at 10:00 AM on 2 January 2021The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Rinuda @11,
Though even a temporary increase of global warming over 1.5 C would create serious weather problems, there is an important difference between CO2 released by grass, brush or forest fires and ghgs released by melting permafrost.
The CO2 released by fires could be removed from the atmosphere by future regrowth of what was burned, making it only a temporary increase. And if some of that CO2 gets absorbed by the oceans before the regrowth grabs it then, after significant regrowth, there could be a small net reduction of CO2 levels. However, there is the harm of increased CO2 absorbed by the oceans.
Refreezing the permafrost will not draw the released ghgs back onto the frozen ground. That released ghg would remain as excess in the environment.
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Eclectic at 21:57 PM on 1 January 20212020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #52
As it is the New Year today, perhaps there is room for some lighter revue.
Yes, the Covid-19 situation is dire, but at least we have hopes that some moral and intellectual sanity will be gaining strength from later this month in the District of Columbia.
And even in the darkest times of 2020, there was always the Bedlam entertainment regularly found on the WattsUpWithThat blogsite.
I am a reader of WUWT (a blog which, to avoid nausea, is best digested in tiny amounts per day . . . or, alternatively, should be skimmed through at high speed). But for the end of 2020, I noted there was one recent article by a guest author whom I shall call "W".
W was vexed to learn that Wikipedia described WUWT as "a blog promoting climate change denial" [and] ... accommodating "beliefs that are in opposition to the scientific consensus".
W was appalled at Wikipedia's failure to understand the real nature of [modern] science, and at Wikipedia's failure to appreciate how WUWT is valuable as a place [one of the few places in the world] "where scientific ideas of all kinds can be most critically examined and publicly peer-reviewed in a modern efficient manner".
Now I like W ~ he is clever and at times humorous, though rather deficient in insight. He also tends to digress off the topic. And in this case, he digressed so far that he forgot to actually debunk Wikipedia's assertion.
Equally entertaining, were many of the subsequent responding comments ~ as typical displaying the assertions that the formal peer-review in journals was a nefarious & malign influence on true science. And that anything within the modern scientific consensus must automatically be wrong. And that "the scientific societies have betrayed science".
(These attitudes are almost universal at WUWT. Along with the frequent assertion that AGW is not only incorrect, but is a conspiracy & hoax & stalking horse ~ for the imposition of a Communist World Government dedicated to the destruction of mankind's freedoms.)
WUWT is a treasure-box of beliefs that the modern rapid (yet simultaneously non-existent) global warming is unconnected with CO2 , and is actually caused by Natural Cycles / or Cosmic Rays / or the Solar Wind / or other yet-undiscovered or unappreciated factors. One commenter repeatedly asserts the sole influence of geothermal heat. Another, the sole influence of tidal heat energy deriving from the presence of super-dense materials in the Earth's core, being fragmentary remnants of an ancient neutron star.
The Wikipedia statement certainly stirred up the WUWT denizens. W's article brought on some 250+ comments, of which 26 were made on the first 60 minutes. But evidently the function of WUWT is a healthful outlet for all this denialist steam pressure. Though it would be less tiresome if it wasn't always the flood of Usual Suspects repeating the usual intellectual insanity.
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amhartley at 09:00 AM on 1 January 2021More CO2 in the atmosphere hurts key plants and crops more than it helps
Glad this topic came up so recently. Today I was reading a piece in the Washington Examiner ("2020 wasn't All Bad: There's Good News About Climate Change") that concluded climate change will probably be manageable, at least in the 21st Century. It cited 2 main reasons: That the worst-case, hi-emissions scenario is now "off the table," & that the earth is greening due to increased CO2 fertilization. The "greening" claim was justified by citing a 2016 paper by Zaichun Zhu of Peking University, et al., published in Nature.
Do you think the Wash. Examin. article is reading too much into the Zhu paper?
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michael sweet at 03:31 AM on 1 January 2021It's satellite microwave transmissions
OPOF:
Waste heat does add to AGW. There is a waste heat thread that deals with this issue. In the title of the waste heat thread it says greenhouse warming is 100 times waste heat. The key issue is that greenhouse gasses accumulate every year while waste heat dissipates into space every year. Since the waste heat does not accumulate, the amount of temperature increase from waste heat is negligable. The heat accumulation from a single year of carbon emissions is not that much but since it accumulates over time after a while it becomes problematic.
The energy released from burning fossil fuels adds to the energy coming in from the sun. The sun provides so much energy that the waste heat is very small by comparison.
If you have many nuclear reactors near each other the waste heat can cause problems in the heat sink (usually the ocean but also big lakes and rivers). This is especially a problem in rivers during droughts. Sometimes traditional power plants have to be shut down during heat waves in summer because they cause too much heating in rivers. (Wind and solar do not have this problem).
Solar panels and wind generators also have small issues with local heat accumulation from changing albeido and wind patterns. These are sometimes hyped by deniers. They are not significant compared to the effects of carbon pollution.
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MA Rodger at 07:28 AM on 31 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Riduna @11,
The numbers in fig 2 are from the IEA and are just fossil fuel emissions, so no land-use-change emissions (whatever the cause) and no cement emissions.
The Global Carbon Project are showing provisional numbers for 2020 with the ~30Gt(CO2) IEA number for FF alone in the GCP assessment becoming [10.9Gt(C) =] ~40Gt(CO2).
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Riduna at 11:57 AM on 30 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Does the 6-7% contraction of CO2 emissions indicated at Figure 2 take into account Earth-system feedbacks such as increased release of CO2 from the burning of over 18 million hectares of forest and scrubland during the last Australian bushfire season or rising CO2/CH4 emissions from accelerating permafrost loss due to rising temperature in 2020?
Net reduction of CO2 release in 2020 due to Covid-19 constraints on the global economy are to be expected, but there appears to be no compelling reasons for believing that rapid recovery will not occur – and in some countries already has – eg. China.
As noted @ 9 above, even a temporary rise in surface temperature of 1.5°C above preindustrial produces a dangerous climate and its onset globally, possibly in less than a decade, could be particularly destructive and disruptive of human activity.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:24 AM on 30 December 2020It's satellite microwave transmissions
Scrupple's @33,
Global warming is the result of the way that increased levels of ghg in the atmosphere produce a higher surface temperature to balance the energy coming in to the surface from the Sun.
So, added heat produced by human activity would not be expected to change the global average surface temperature required to balance the energy out of the planet system with the energy coming in.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:15 AM on 30 December 2020It's satellite microwave transmissions
Scrupples @33,
Water vapour's role in global warming is well understood. Explanations include the SkS item "Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works" and the NASA item "Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change".
The understanding is that water vapour levels in the atmosphere can increase as temperature increases. But some long lasting change of global average temperature, like the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is required to produce a lasting global water vapor feedback change.
There are many other reasons that nuclear is not a sustainable energy system, a system that can continue to be used by humans far into the future without running out of materials or without accumulating harmful consequences or increased risks of harm, but the water vapor aspect of nuclear power generation is not one of those reasons.
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Scrupples at 12:51 PM on 29 December 2020It's satellite microwave transmissions
Would love to see someone crunch the numbers on the effects of nuclear energy and all of the excess h2o vapor and heat those towers are pumping out into the atmosphere...
Moderator Response:[TD] In addition to the links that One Planet posted for you, see the post Greenhouse Warming 100 Times Greater Than Waste Heat. Please put further comments on those topics in the threads of those posts rather than in this thread where it is off topic.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:43 AM on 29 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
nigelj @7,
I would like to clarify two items:
You stated: “While breathing is carbon neutral, all those people will be consumers with carbon footprints, and many want to become wealthy consumers (OPOF take note of this).”
Note that I already take note of this in my comment @4 (the start and end of section to read are below – an important point is to Read the HDR 2020 report – I provided a link in my comment @2.):
“And an important understanding is that poorer people have an ethical and moral Right to increase their impacts, aspiring to levels matching 'supposedly more advanced people', ...
A changed perception that requires the richer people to be less harmful and more helpful individuals, rather than people being impressed by wealth and power regardless of how it is acquired, is clearly a significant helpful change required in the population.”In addition to the lower status people being justified in wanting to live like the higher status people, the climate change problem requires a very rapid ‘ending’ (not just a reduction) of Carbon-Footprints. An ending of unsustainable consumption Material-Footprints is also required to stop additional irreparable harm being done to future generations. That is partially addressed in the HDR 2020 by the proposed adjustment of the HDI as I mentioned in my comment @6 “... The Human Development Report 2020 includes an adjustment of the Human Development Index to reduce the evaluated 'measure of human progress' by accounting for CO2 Emissions per capita and Material Footprint per capita ...”
There are many actions that can help bring about the required correction of the harmful unsustainable ways of living that have incorrectly been developed by the ‘richest highest-consuming highest-impacting’ portion of the population. And they all require admitting that the ways that many of the higher status people live are unacceptable. And those higher status harmful people who resist correcting their ways of living need to not be able to compromise the required corrective efforts.
Too often the claim is made that ‘everyone needs to get along so there has to be a harmful compromise because some people will insist on being Freer to be more harmful (the harmful compromise can be claimed to be Pragmatism or some other misleading claim making it sound like it needs to be done that way)’. It is seldom stated that way but that is what happens when ‘everyone’s interests have to be accommodated by compromise – with the wealthiest being the more influential regarding the compromise’. It is similar to the nonsense claims by antiscience people who demand a debate of ‘nonsense opinion misleading marketing’ with the constantly improving common sense evidence based understanding of what is going on. Of course a proper debate requires all participants to share the same high level objective (the Sustainable Development Goals and any future improvement of them) and full set of evidence. A debate cannot include Nonsense, especially not harmful nonsense made-up by wealthier people trying to protect their inequitably harmfully obtained undeserved status. The wealthy have a harmful history of influencing things ‘in their interest to the detriment of others – to maintain and increase their Status relative to Others’.
The Global Norm needs to become a ‘deserved lack of respect’ for people who have higher status but are not setting the better example of being less harmful, more helpful to Others. It is harder work and more expensive to be less harmful, therefore the richer or more influential a person is, the higher their status, the higher the expectation needs to be that they will set the example of being less harmful and help Others live better and also be less harmful. And if necessary the system should be revised to penalize the people who are wealthier and resist being less harmful. That could be helped to be achieved by a very high Carbon Fee with most of the collected Fee rebated progressively (No Rebate to high wealth people, and increasing amounts Rebated to the lower income, lower wealth, people).
That means the Norm needs to become a Common Sense dislike of anyone striving for impressions of higher status by getting away with being more harmful and less helpful then their Peers or than anyone of lower status. The poorer a person is the more they can be excused for living more harmfully, less sustainably as they aspire to live better, to live more like the diversity of examples set by the higher status people. A lower status person is excused for following the harmful development path of a higher status person unless the higher status people are setting a corrective example and helping the lower status people improve their lives in a better less harmful more sustainable way.
I also wish to respond to your comment @7: “To make population growth fall faster you can only really pull these levers and I would say its hard to speed them up.”
Note that I already commented on this at the end of my comment @4:
“As for concerns about increased global total population a recent Report in The Lancet, "Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study" (Study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), establishes the following understandings:
- "In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100."
- "Our alternative scenarios suggest that meeting the Sustainable Development Goals targets for education and contraceptive met need would result in a global population of 6·29 billion (4·82–8·73) in 2100 and a population of 6·88 billion (5·27–9·51) when assuming 99th percentile rates of change in these drivers.”"
A sustainable and constantly improving future is possible for humanity. And the Sustainable Development Goals and related understanding like the Human Development Reports present the constantly improving understanding of what is required for that to happen.
It is becoming more apparent that many of the ways of living that the highest consuming and impacting portion of the global population have developed a liking for will have to undergo significant correction that likely will require many of the current ‘supposedly more advanced higher status people’ to transition to sustainable harmless helpful ways of living meaning that relative to Others they will ‘suffer a loss of level of comfort, convenience, and capital ownership (material) impressiveness’ – they will have to suffer a loss of status. They can still be the higher status people, but not to the degree and not in the ways they have developed a liking to be ‘Higher Status People’.
I understand that many people will not like those limits being imposed on them. And I understand that many of them will not accept being told they are acting unacceptably harmfully. But they don't have to agree to the changes. Compromising for 'their interests' will just cause more harm to be done to the future of humanity (like compromising climate science points does not need to happen just to appease an elected representative or their supporters). Common Sense Understanding is that the future of humanity requires a clear global governance acceptance that Harm Done is not justified by Benefits Obtained, and there is nothing to debate about that.
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Riduna at 15:50 PM on 28 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Nigel @ 7
The problem is that population is continuing to grow and is responsible for growth in greenhouse gas emissions at a rate which could see global mean temperature exceed 1.5°C above the preindustrial before 2030 – despite a Covid-19 induced temporary reduction in 2020 emissions. So, the only practical way of reducing emissions is commercialisation of appropriate technology which either exists or is evolving.
It has been widely assumed that dangerous climate conditions would be realised when mean global temperature reached 2.0°C above preindustrial, hence the Paris Accord target. The problem is that an average temperature 1.5°C, even for a short period, produces the dangerous conditions expected at 2.0°C.
If we are to avoid an average global temperature 1.5°C by 2030 and world-wide dangerous climate conditions accompanying it, we must start reducing greenhouse emissions now so as to delay, or better avoid, other effects of a 1.5°C temperature rise. Other effects include uncontrollable release of CH4/CO2 from permafrost, accelerated loss of land-based ice with more rapid sea level rise and coastal erosion.
Time is of the essence and we do not have enough of it – certainly not enough to reduce population on a scale sufficient to avoid the dangers posed by a mean global temperature 1.5°C above preindustrial.
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Riduna at 12:08 PM on 28 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
OPOF @ 6
Thank you for your comments.
My references to technology are specifically in relation to what is necessary to cessation of fossil fuel burning.
You are correct in pointing out that coal exports have for too long been of benefit to the Australian economy. In my opinion, the sooner coal mining and exports cease, the better. Greenhouse gas emissions can not be significantly reduced until major exporters (eg. Indonesia, Australia) cease coal mining – and domestic use of coal.
You are also correct in drawing attention to Australian government policies which favour ongoing domestic use of coal and its export. My comments refer to performance of Australian State Government actions which strongly support replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. However it is worth noting that two of those State, QLD and NSW, are strong supporters of coal exports.
I do not make a comparison between Australia and China, though I have no hesitation in calling out both countries for their policies where these promote use of fossil fuels. You may share my view that the policies and practices of the Chinese Government are particularly egregious in this regard.
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nigelj at 05:51 AM on 28 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Riduna and OPOF
I think population growth trends is ultimately an important component of the climate issue, but its not a simple answer or big answer to the problem either. There are many conditions attached as follows. Firstly obviously the more people there are the worse the climate problem is. While breathing is carbon neutral, all those people will be consumers with carbon footprints, and many want to become wealthy consumers (OPOF take note of this).
That said, bear in mind population growth has been slowing in most countries, apart from parts of Africa, and there might not be a great deal we can do to make it slow faster. Some countries are actually below replacement rate, like Japan and I think Sweden. The slowing trends have been driven by people having smaller familes as people feel more economically secure such that they dont need large families to look after them in old age, health care has improved, womens rights have improved and the use of contraception has spread. To make population growth fall faster you can only really pull these levers and I would say its hard to speed them up. Nobody is going to seriously contemplate forcing people to have smaller families or any more "one child" policies like China had.
Governments could pay people to have small families but money is limited. And in places where the absolute size of population is falling there are worries about too many elderly people and not enough young people so this acts against a desire for population growth to slow. My point is population growth is slowing anyway, but it may not be feasible to get it to slow too much faster than it is.
And even if fertility rates dropped very dramatically this very decade (unlikely) its not going to make much difference to keeping warming under 2 degrees if you mentally do the maths. It would help stop warming getting to very high levels if we were to miss the 2 degree threshold.
What OPOF says about the top 5% or so of people being the big emitters is true, and much of it is just over consumption, but Im not sure shaming them will work and neither will lecturing them too much on proper ethics, although its worth discussing such issues here. It might be more useful to point out the virtues of lower consumption, how it can improve their lives in a general sense. Less work, less stuff, more time with the kids etc.
But I would say virtually nobody is going to cut their consumption to the bone, or willingly settle for low incomes. Money might not buy happiness but it certainly gets close. So we may have to work with the fact that we are probably going to remain a 'moderately' high consuming society. I think we will shift it down one gear, but probably not three gears. This means its critically important to reduce waste, improve energy efficiency, develop better electric transport options, develop better batteries and so on.
And lobby your local politicians directly with emails and face to face meetings. This can make a difference from some study I read somewhere, plus my own personal experience.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:51 AM on 28 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Riduna @5,
I offer a slightly different perspective for consideration regarding the unnatural nature of the problem that needs to be corrected, based on the understanding presented in the Human Development Report 2020.
Technological development is not necessarily improvement of sustainability for humanity. Development that does not reduce negative impacts or other unsustainable aspects of developed ways of living is not advancement. And the current developed ways of living are very harmful and unsustainable. Reduced harm and reduced waste are not Advancement, they are reduction of harmfully incorrect development. Climate impacts need to be ended, and the same applies to biodiversity loss and artificial technological unnatural waste. Reducing those impacts is not Good Enough. Those impacts need to be ended.
Though nations like Australia have begun the transition to a lower impact way of living, the harmfully unsustainable over-developed nations are still the major problem on the planet with a significant portion of their population being in the 10% of the global population causing negative impacts. The Human Development Report 2020 includes an adjustment of the Human Development Index to reduce the evaluated 'measure of human progress' by accounting for CO2 Emissions per capita and Material Footprint per capita (counting imported impacts of production that happen in another nation). That Common Sense adjustment results in many of the 'supposedly most advanced nations' dropping many levels down the ranks of advancement (Canada drops from 16th to 56th, USA drops from 17th to 62nd, Australia drops from 8th to 80th, New Zealand rises from 14th to 8th as an example that not all of the more advanced nations do poorer by this measure).
The examples of ‘how to develop to live better’ set by the wealthier portion of the population are not very helpful. And it is not ethical or moral to claim that poorer people are the problem when they follow the development path of the 'supposedly more advanced' portion of the population.
That understanding leads to recognizing that a major part of the global problem is the belief that 'technological development' is an indication of advancement. True advancement is limited to technological development that everyone can develop to enjoy sustainably, if they choose to develop that way, with total global impacts kept within planetary limits and a truly circular economy with no accumulating waste (As described in HDR 2020 all materials would be fully recycled after very long periods of use - not throwing away new technology after 5 years and believing it will magically be properly dealt with by someone else somewhere at sometime).
Regarding 'The Good Australian actions' vs. 'The Bad Chinese actions' related to coal. The Australian economy benefits significantly from exporting coal that is burned in places like China. A truly helpful nation would be helping the poorer people in China more directly advance to renewable energy rather than try to maximize profit obtained from exporting coal that will have no value after the end of fossil fuel use is finally achieved by humanity.
Note that Australian leadership has been very harmful on the climate impact issue, like other leadership in other supposedly more advanced nations, by deliberately trying to impede the achievement of the collective global objective of rapidly ending the harmful use of fossil fuels while continuing to help the less fortunate develop to live better lives. Many current day Politicians continue to argue that less should be done in their nation to reduce the benefits people in their nation obtain from global fossil fuel use, and that their nations should do less to help the less fortunate outside, as well as inside, their nation or region within a nation (like Alberta in Canada).
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Riduna at 18:25 PM on 27 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Our immediate problem is not population growth but the imperative of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, largely the product of electricity generation, transport and industrial processes.
Many countries have made a start by replacing coal-burning power stations, with energy generated from renewable sources, mostly wind and solar. Intermittency problems associated with these sources is largely overcome by pumped hydro and battery storage - the latter likely to become cheaper and more widely used as a result of advances in battery technology now in progress.
In Australia, the transition to renewable energy is well advanced. Over $10 billion has already been invested in solar, wind and storage, with future projects estimated to cost $45 billion approved for construction. It is likely that domestic use of fossil fuels to generate electricity will become a thing of the past well before 2040, giving Australian industry the cheapest electricity in the world.
By comparison some countries, notably China, either support domestic use of coal to generate electricity or promote its use by funding construction of coal fired power stations in less developed countries by providing soft-loans through government-owned companies and lending agencies.
An obstacle to global decarbonisation is the transport sector. It continues to rely on use of oil-based fuels for propulsion and will continue doing so until technology produces solid-state batteries with significantly greater storage capacity at lower cost. Fortunately these developments are possible within the next 3-5 years and are likely to increase range and reduce cost of passenger and haulage vehicles. However electric vehicles must be priced at, or below, the cost of vehicles now in use.
Technological solutions to reduce industrial emissions have been or are being developed with a view to reducing emissions from processes such as cement production and smelting, while advances in battery technology will make it possible for plant and equipment to operate without emissions.
There is hope for the future but that hope is dependent on rapid implementation of these measures and their effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If this is not achieved, an increasingly hostile environment will contribute to radical reduction of the human population - and its polluting ways.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:27 AM on 27 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Riduna @3,
I share your concerns, but would encourage you to consider an important clarification regarding the 'population problem' - the need to focus on the more harmful, less sustainable, portion of the population.
The Human Development Report 2020 I refer to in my comment @2 includes information about the relative impacts of different portions of the global population, including the following: "Figure S7.2.3: The wealthiest 1 percent of individuals worldwide emit 100 times as much carbon dioxide each year as the poorest 50 percent". In that same figure (S7.2.3) the Carbon Emissions (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita per year) of the average member of the 78 million in the top 1% is 146.2 tonnes.
A break down of the global total impacts is:
- The Carbon Emissions of the average member of the 780 million in the top 10% is 37.4 tonnes = 29.2 billion tonnes per year (the top 1% are 11.4 billion tonnes - 40% of the top 10%).
- The Carbon Emissions of the average member of the 3.1 billion in the middle 40% is 7.1 tonnes = 22.0 billion tonnes per year.
- The Carbon Emissions of the average member of the 3.9 billion in the bottom 50% is 1.4 tonnes = 5.5 billion tonnes per year.
- The top 10% cause 29.2 of the global total 56.7 impact > 50%.
And the HDR 2020 addresses the larger scope of human impacts, more than just climate change, striving to get global leadership to pursue improvements of human life circumstances while staying within planetary boundaries. And an important understanding is that poorer people have an ethical and moral Right to increase their impacts, aspiring to levels matching 'supposedly more advanced people', as they pursue living a better life. A part of the HDR 2020 Summary Statement (last page) is:
"The Report calls for a just transformation that expands human freedoms while easing planetary pressures. For people to thrive in the Anthropocene, new development trajectories must do three things: enhance equity, foster innovation and instil a sense of stewardship of the planet. These outcomes matter in their own right, and they matter for our shared future on our planet. All countries have a stake in them"
So the real 'population problem' is the highest impacting portion of the population that Others 'aspire to develop to be like'.
A changed perception that requires the richer people to be less harmful and more helpful individuals, rather than people being impressed by wealth and power regardless of how it is acquired, is clearly a significant helpful change required in the population.
As for concerns about increased global total population a recent Report in The Lancet, "Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study" (Study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), establishes the following understandings:
- "In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100."
- "Our alternative scenarios suggest that meeting the Sustainable Development Goals targets for education and contraceptive met need would result in a global population of 6·29 billion (4·82–8·73) in 2100 and a population of 6·88 billion (5·27–9·51) when assuming 99th percentile rates of change in these drivers.
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Nick Palmer at 01:00 AM on 27 December 2020More CO2 in the atmosphere hurts key plants and crops more than it helps
Worth considering is that when the denialist lobby drag up periods of Earth's pre-history when things were warmer than today and life was far more abundant pole to pole that was because Earth had no cold ice caps and maybe that explains why the AVERAGE global temperature was higher - but that doesn't, mean that equatorial and temerate zone temps were higher too. Any paleo climatologists around who could confirm this?
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Riduna at 12:11 PM on 26 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Increase in a number of indicators affecting climate should be of major concern to those who naïvely expect to live and prosper on this planet for the next 80 years or so.
It looks as though human ingenuity may thwart the best efforts of Covid-19 to significantly reduce a burgeoning human population which steadfastly refuses to curb its growth in number, its greenhouse gas emissions and its other polluting activities. If Coivid-19 doesn’t get us, climate change will by reducing our ability to sustain ourselves in an increasingly hostile environment.
An indication of this was experienced during the Australian 2019-20 fire season which claimed the lives of around of around 500 people, killed an estimated 3 billion other animals, destroyed 2,779 houses and burned over 18 million hectares. Interestingly, mean temperature was recorded across the continent at 1.5°C+ above the pre-industrial.
Much has been written about the dangers of a mean temperature 2.0°C above the pre-industrial mean, yet Australian experience is that a global increase of 1.5°C would be very destructive and very dangerous indeed. Yet we know how to effectively avoid the catastrophe of 2.0°C or the 3.0°C+ increase we are presently heading for. Curb population growth and reduce emissions to net zero – and do it rapidly!
We appear intent on doing neither, even though we know how to achieve both.
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Joel_Huberman at 01:11 AM on 26 December 2020Skeptical Science Housekeeping - December 2020
I like the paragraph you wrote on the Skeptical Science page at MeWe:
How to break an irony loop: has anybody else noticed that even as we read yet another op-ed or news article detailing how messed up and anti-social Facebook is that the only way of sharing such articles on social media is via the usual suspects, including Facebook? Obviously, if nobody knows there are alternatives then we're stuck circling that drain in perpetuity. Among other improvements to Skeptical Science we're happy to break that pattern and hope others will "follow" (hah-hah) by adding a "share" button for MeWe.
I should add that I also like the way articles are displayed on the MeWe site. The Skeptical Science team has obviously put a lot of thought into your MeWe page. Thanks!
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Doug Bostrom at 05:57 AM on 25 December 2020Skeptical Science Housekeeping - December 2020
Yay Collin!
It's a little hard to fully describe how transformative Collin has been for our site code. In any case we wouldn't be able to use Collin's preferred adjectives to faithfully echo his reactions, as he was scraping away at layers of hasty additions glued on by various cowboys over the years.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:26 AM on 25 December 2020More CO2 in the atmosphere hurts key plants and crops more than it helps
ubrew12,
Tragically many people only look for a 'personal positive' to allow them to dismiss or out-weigh any other information about the negatives of something they want to benefit from. That happens regarding lots of issues. It is self-interest encouraged to become harmful selfishness by competition for status, especially when harmful misleading cheaters can get away with winning.
The latest Human Development Report (2020) presents the improved understanding of the need to consider the value of the natural environment (non-renewable resources as well as renewable biodiversity) when evaluating 'development progress'. The majority of HDR 2020 is regarding climate change impacts, including impacts on biodiversity due to climate change. Understanding that evaluation of human development sustainability needs to consider 'these externalities to human-centric considerations' is only now potentially becoming more of 'the Norm'. That more holistic evaluation on starting to be 'more of the norm' shows how harmfully biased the 'norms of the richest people and the supposedly most advanced nations with the most influence on how things are investigated and perceived' have developed to be.
An important addition to understanding in HDR 2020 is the modification of the Human Development Index to reduce the evaluated level of 'measures of human progress' by accounting for CO2 Emissions per capita and Material Footprint per capita (including counting impacts that happen in other nations but are imported - imported impacts of production that happen in another nation). That simple Common Sense adjustment punts many of the 'supposedly most advanced nations many levels down the ranks (Canada drops from 16th to 56th, USA drops from 17th to 67th, Australia drops from 8th to 80th, New Zealand rises from 14th to 8th).
It is important to understand the fuller story like the presentation in the HDR 2020. That can help argue against many possible claims of 'positive results from climate change (or any other harmful activity)'.
I try to make the point that it is incorrect to believe that a 'positive benefit' can be justified by comparing the 'positive' with any 'negatives' and deciding that the 'positives' out-weight the 'negatives' (that evaluation is really only valid for things like medical interventions where the person 'potentially harmed' is the person 'potentially helped'. Much more consideration is involved to justify comparing 'positives for Some People' with 'negatives for Others' - positives for desperately poor have to out-weigh concerns for reduced wealth of the wealthiest that still has the wealthiest as the wealthiest).
I also try to point out that a 'positives for some' vs. 'negatives for Others' comparison is hard to make 'fairly' because current day people, especially higher status people, are likely to have biased perceptions of "Their Positives" vs. "Future Negatives". And there is the constant problem in current day populations of people being biased about "Their Group's Benefits" vs. "Harm Done to Others" (which is the same problem as the current day vs. future when future people are considered to be Others).
Also, the restriction of the evaluations to what currently counts in Human Economic Activity is also a very harmful way to evaluate things. What is not yet know about the harm being done by human activities 'argued to be progress' can be very tragic for the future of humanity.
An example of how a biased person could interpret the HDR 2020 content would be focusing on the bits of 'positives'. One of those 'bits of positive' in the report is the reference to evaluations that indicate that global warming by 2100 will likely reduce the number of extreme temperature days in the Rich Northern nations. The measure is simply the expected yearly change of number of extremely hot or cold days without any consideration of the magnitude of the temperature change (if there are fewer extra extreme hot days than the reduction of the number of extreme cold days the measure is a 'drop in extreme days'). That 'Positive' perception misses the fact that the same report indicates the number of extreme days in a year will be increasing in most of the rest of the nations. And it dismisses any consideration of all the other harmful consequences of unsustainable development pursuing 'improvements' that erroneously can consider harmful over-development of conditions for the richest today to be 'worth it' because the evaluated improvements by and for the richest exceed the perceptions by the richest of the 'lack of improvement' for the future generations or for the less-rich portions of the population (those Others).
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:10 AM on 24 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
JWRebel,
I agree about the flaws of measuring damages in dollar values, from a more holistic perspective.
The latest Human Development Report (2020) includes detailed presentations of the developing understanding of the need for the 'value' of the natural environment to be part of the evaluation of 'human development progress'.
There are many elements of the environment such as potential economic resources and other environmental factors that potentially have, but may not yet have developed, an understanding of their importance to economic activity like:
- Bee Pollination
- Sea Grass habitat
- Molecular or biological compounds that exist in biodiversity but are not yet discovered or realized to have value (or tragically that have disappeared because of biodiversity loss before being discovered)
From a holistic perspective the existing natural environment and resources are Invaluable. Human activity that ruins by over-harvesting, or consumes in a non-renewable way, is unimaginably harmful - no dollar value can represent it.
And the negative impacts of climate change on biodiversity and other environmental considerations get ignored - all the time - because they are not part of the calculated 'Worth of human development' in the economic games humans have Made-up.
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JWRebel at 18:19 PM on 22 December 2020The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Expressing damages in dollar values has always struck me as a somewhat tenuous exercise, though seemingly exact and professional. To begin with, damages go up and down with currency crosses. Damages in China will have increased exponentially with the economic juggernaut of the past 35 years. In the US properties have appreciated tremendously with low interest policies since 2000. As an area is more intensely populated with more infrastructure, the damages increase commensurately, although affected areas are of course randomly targeted, making the damage amount random as well. In third world countries such as Mozambique or India where a lettuce costs 2¢, a hotel swept away is worth only 1% of what the same structure would cost in the USA.
In short, dollar price forms a somewhat inadequate measure to express impacts and damage; and as such a relatively inappropriate yardstick for assessing the increasing impact of weather catastophes with a climate-change backdrop. -
ubrew12 at 12:33 PM on 22 December 2020More CO2 in the atmosphere hurts key plants and crops more than it helps
Concern: "We're going to lose New Orleans, Houston, Charleston, New York, Atlantic City, Boston, Virginia Beach, Shanghai, Jakarta, Osaka, Hong Kong, Alexandria, Rio, Miami, Bangkok, Venice, Ho Chi Minh, Mumbai, Dhaka, Basra, Tokyo, Rotterdam, and Lagos."
Counter: "But the Corn will be loving it!"
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BaerbelW at 20:25 PM on 20 December 2020The Little Ape That Could
The new article Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass published in Nature on Dec. 9 is related to this blog post. Here is the link to the write-up in Scientific American from where the complete article can be accessed:
Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass
Humanity has become a dominant force in shaping the face of Earth. An emerging question is how the overall material output of human activities compares to the overall natural biomass. Here we quantify the human-made mass, referred to as ‘anthropogenic mass’, and compare it to the overall living biomass on Earth, which currently equals approximately 1.1 teratonnes. We find that Earth is exactly at the crossover point; in the year 2020 (±6), the anthropogenic mass, which has recently doubled roughly every 20 years, will surpass all global living biomass. On average, for each person on the globe, anthropogenic mass equal to more than his or her bodyweight is produced every week. This quantification of the human enterprise gives a mass-based quantitative and symbolic characterization of the human-induced epoch of the Anthropocene.
Authors: Emily Elhacham, Liad Ben-Uri, Jonathan Grozovski, Yinon M. Bar-On & Ron Milo
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nigelj at 07:32 AM on 19 December 2020Analysis: When might the world exceed 1.5C and 2C of global warming?
Just some related information. Hadcrut have apparently changed how they evaluate things and their temperature record now looks much more like NASA GISS:
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/12/an-ever-more-perfect-dataset/
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Doug Bostrom at 04:32 AM on 19 December 2020Analysis: When might the world exceed 1.5C and 2C of global warming?
In trade for dealing with awkward Highchart graphs we get to view datapoints.
A scrolling graph automatically means we can't see the big picture.
Tables are for viewing datapoints. Graphs are for seeing the big picture.
Combining tables and graphs leads to "doesn't do either thing very well."
As well, there are severe portability problems with these graphs.
Sorry, I know this is "circumstances beyond our control" but if the wheel never squeaks, it'll never be oiled. :-)
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Doug Bostrom at 08:50 AM on 18 December 2020Emphasizing 'opportunity' to help bridge divide on climate action
"The supporting materials forming the basis of an opportunities-oriented climate change communications strategy are there for the asking. Now it’s up to effective communicators to champion those messages."
Yes.
Excellent synopsis.
It's only modernization. Handled correctly, modernization is good.
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John Hartz at 12:15 PM on 17 December 2020A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up
Doug: Bob Loblaw's answer to the question I posed to him was more than adequate for my needs. He told me more than searching Hansen's references would have revealed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:45 AM on 17 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
As Bob Loblaw points out the debate about "exact causes - Certainty" can be a Misleading Game.
The comments I provided @5, and 6 are part of a more fundamental understanding - Understanding that every human interaction is a Game. Game Theory is an established field of improving understanding for a reason.
Getting drawn into a debate about “direct or indirect human induced climate change causes of harmful results” can be a misleading distraction from the development of a Common Sense Understanding of what is going on and what needs to change.
It is important to not let a potential Harmful Cheater Frame the Game. A selfish person will try to set “Rules or Terms” based on Beliefs that are “evidence-free” misleading appealing Nonsense. A harmful selfish cheater will not be able to base their position on all of the evidence regarding what is required for humanity to develop a lasting and improving future. That improving Common Sense Understanding of what is going on and what needs to happen is well presented in the UN Human Development Report 2020 “The next frontier: Human development and the Anthropocene” (the UNDP HDRs have been written annually since 1990). Any Game Play that involves misleading Nonsense interferes with the ability of humanity to achieve a Common Sense evidence-based understanding of how to reduce harm being done and improve helpfulness to Others (especially helping, not harming, the future generations).
Keep the axiom “Cheaters Never Prosper” in mind at all times. It is a bit misleading, and exposes the risks of trying to be brief. Language is the basis for understanding. And some people try to claim that the potential diversity of interpretation of language makes everything ever communicated a misunderstanding. They claim everyone’s developed understanding is equally valid – essentially claiming there can be no such thing as Common Sense Understanding. That is Nonsense except for the Understanding that Harmful Selfish Believers of Nonsense will have a hard time acquiring a Common Sense Understanding of what is going on. They have to give up their developed (indoctrinated) passionately held Nonsense Beliefs in order to get to Common Sense Understanding of what is really going on.
Back to “Cheaters Never Prosper”. It states a Certainty that does not accurately represent reality (and some people really like Certainty – even if it is Nonsense). Cheaters actually can and do Prosper to the detriment of Others. The declaration uses brevity and appeals to emotion in its incorrect claim making. It sounds Right – somehow Harmful Cheaters are always stopped (nothing for the average person to try to do anything about – an Invisible Hand will take care of it – or some helpful Others will try to clean up the mess). And an incorrect extension of that belief is that “Good Results will develop if People are Freer to compete for status doing as they please based on what they choose to believe, with less external interference (Less External Governing, less effort to “educate”). The HDR 2020 clarifies that Free Agency of all humans to pursue their interests in helpful harmless ways is the responsible freedom that is required. And it requires that “Harmful Cheaters do not Prosper”, which is an effort that everyone everywhere has a responsibility and ability to participate in at all times into the future.
Back again to “Cheaters Never Prosper”. It is harmful because it is a potential distraction from the truer statement which is “Harmful Cheaters Should Not Be Allowed Proper”. That statement represents the reality that harmful cheaters can and do prosper, but should not be allowed to. The clarified longer statement also aligns with “improving the ability of humanity to achieve a Common Sense evidence-based understanding of how to end harm being done and improve helpfulness”.
A lasting and improving future for humanity can be developed. But it requires that harmful selfish people not be allowed to Frame The Game of Discussing what is important. Language can be messy. Take the extra time to reflect on whether the discussion being entered into is Framed in a Helpful way. Discussions of the minutia of a global issue like the future of humanity need to always keep the over-all objective of reducing harm and increasing helpfulness in mind – to help achieve the ideal of “Cheaters Never Prosper”.
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Doug Bostrom at 15:26 PM on 16 December 2020A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up
John, not exactly "off hand" but maybe worth checking references in Hansen's work?
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Bob Loblaw at 12:27 PM on 16 December 2020A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up
John: interesting question. The Budyko-Sellers type models were one-dimensional, looking only at total horizontal energy transport between the equator and poles. (Well, essentialy from pole to pole - the northern and southern hemispheres are not exactly symmetrical.) They considered four energy fluxes:
- Vertical radiation balance (absorbed solar - emitted IR) as a function of latitude. This is essentially top-of-atmosphere, but the models had no vertical dimension or resolution, so IR emissions were a function of surface temperature. (Horizontal radiation transfer can be ignored.)
- North-south transport of atmospheric sensible heat: the energy transfer associated with atmospheric circulation and the temperature of the air.
- North-south transport of atmospheric latent heat: energy associated with atmospheric circulation of water vapour, evaporating water at one latitude and condensing at another.
- North-south transport of ocean sensible heat: ocean circulation and temperatures.
The Budyko-Sellers models used empirical equations that related energy transport to temperature, and did not explicitly have any atmospheric motion or weather. The output provides a latitude-averaged state: you can see the differences in flux and temperature as a function of latitude, but there is no east-west information.The idea is that the equator/pole differences in radiation balance (item 1) are what drives atmospheric circulation and climate differnces - energy needs to get from the equator to the poles to balance (items 2-4).
Hansen's early work, IIRC, used either one-dimensional radiative-convective models (RCM) or full three-dimensional atmospheric general circulation models (GCM).
The RCMs have only a vertical component and do full radiative transfer calculations - but for a globally-averaged state. They have no equator or pole or anything in between.The radiation transfer calculations can be very sophisticated, though.
The 3-D GCM models are like weather models (but very coarse resolution in the early days), so they include N-S changes, E-W differences, and the vertical structure of the atmosphere - and actually calculate atmospheric circulation over time. The model "climate" is the time-averaged model output, just like real climate is time-averaged weather.
So, no Hansen would not have been basing his work directly on Budyko. The modelling approach are quite different - but they all give interesting information about different aspects of climate. The earliest published work that I know of for RCMs was that of Manabe and Strickler (1964) and Manabe and Wetherald (1967), Manabe also moved from RCMs to GCMs. GCMs are loosely based on weather models.
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John Hartz at 10:05 AM on 16 December 2020A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up
Bob Loblaw: Do you know off-hand whether James Hansen incorporated any of Budyko's work into his initial modeling efforts?
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Bob Loblaw at 05:48 AM on 15 December 2020A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up
Budyko was definitely one of the early people that contributed a lot to modern climatology. I was exposed to his work as an undergrad in the late 1970s.
His 1969 paper, listed above, introduced a particular class of one-dimensional climate models that ended up being described as a Budyko-Sellers type energy balance model. Sellers developed a similar approach in a paper also published in 1969:
"A Global Climatic Model Based on the Energy Balance of the Earth-Atmosphere System", Journal of Applied Meteorology, 8, 392-400.
https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1969)008%3C0392:AGCMBO%3E2.0.CO;2
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Bob Loblaw at 12:21 PM on 14 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
The "primary" vs. "secondary" or "direct" vs "indirect" cause thing is a bit of a red herring, but people in denial will use it as an excuse to pretend that climate change is not causing Bad Things (tm). "Show me how climate change is the direct cause of (X)."
Forest fires require three things:
- A source of ignition (lightning, cigarette butts, electrical sparks, etc.)
- A source of small, easily-ignited material (dry twigs, vegetation, duff layer on soil surface, etc.)
- A large source of dry material to grow the fire - trees, etc.
The initial spark might be the "direct" cause of the fire, but changing items 2 or 3 will change the forest's fire regime.
Although analogies are always limited, an analogy is criminal trial for arson. Two people, one of whom spread gasoline around the building, and a second that lit the match - which one is the "direct" cause of the fire?
- "I only lit a match. That's not enough to cause a fire."
- "I only spilled some gasoline. That wasn't the direct cause of the fire."
I'll bet both are convicted.
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Synapsid at 07:11 AM on 14 December 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49, 2020
Two journals to add:
Nature (a weekly)
Nature Geoscience (a monthly)
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nigelj at 05:41 AM on 14 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
John, MS Sweet
I recall reading some years ago that there is evidence that climate change is already leading to more lightening strikes in some places, and so essentially more forest fires. I did a quick google and found these studies here and here. So I agree you could argue climate change is a direct cause of at least some forest fires.
Of course it might be impossible to say that a specific forest fire was started by a lightening strike that happened because of climate change, but you could say its was xyz probability more likely to have happened due to climate change. And that climate change is causing more forest fires to occur.
That said, most forest fires would be stared by arson or "business as usual" lightning strikes, and climate change is basically making them worse in terms of areas burned. Although warmer conditions might mean dry timber is more likely to catch fire, so I guess you could say climate change is an "indirect cause" of those fires.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:40 AM on 14 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
There is an important understanding related to my comment @5.
Regional perceptions of benefits from the rapid human induced climate change should not be allowed to be used to regionally promote rapid human induced climate change as a Good Thing.
The Utilitarian thinking of accounting for Overall Harm and Benefits is dangerous. It can lead to harmful justifications based on perceptions that "Personal benefits, or regional benefits, or benefits for a sub-set of humanity" out-weigh and justify the "Perceptions of harm done by the actions".
People "wanting something" can be very biased in their evaluation of the acceptability of their actions in pursuit of what they want. Like most scientists, as a professional engineer I had to learn to be constantly aware of the danger of "wanting a result" or the harmful threat of ignoring or understating the potential harm of a design result. Very few people actually have that degree of 'training'. Many people are easily impressed to believe that Their Perception of Benefit out-weighs Their Perception of Harm Done when they like or want something.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:02 AM on 14 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
The evaluation of direct or indirect 'cause' may not matter.
The real issue is "Harm Done by human activity".
The research appears to support the understanding that "The rapid climate change due to human actions is Increasing Harmful Results in many ways".
And the focus on "Harm Done" can be extended to all the other "Harm Done" by fossil fuel use, especially the harm done by pursuits of wealth from fossil fuel use because, like all other business activity, "It is cheaper to get away with harmful actions. And cheaper and more profitable is more likely to be popular, increasing popular support to resist ending the profitable and popular activity"
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michael sweet at 00:08 AM on 14 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
John:
I think you have a good point. How do we decide what is a "cause" and what is an inderect cause.
What if a lightning strike ignites a fire in Siberia. 50 years ago that fire might burn out after 10 acres were burned. Today the fires in Siberia are gigantic. Was the gigantic fire caused by climate change since before the change it would not have happened at all? The same is true in Australia, California and other locations worldwide. The gigantic fires have no precedent.
It seems to me that the claim that gigantic fires are caused by climate change stands even though the initial fire was ignited by lightning (or more often ignited by humans).
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John Hartz at 07:12 AM on 13 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
Doug: A lot hinges on how one defines the word, "cause" and whether one has used the adjectives "direct" and "indirect" to motify the word "cause."
For example, I believe a fairly good argument could be made that a California wildfire started by a bolt of lightening from a massive T-storm could have been indirectly cused by dlimate change. (All weather occurs in the ambient climate sysem.) It would be much more dificult to argue that the wildfire was directly caused by climate change. This dinstinction is, in my mind, similar to the distinction made between "primary" and "secondary" environmnetal impacts as determined in an Environmental Impact Statement say for the construciton of a new highway.
On the other hand, I may be "over thinking" this issue. :)
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Doug Bostrom at 05:22 AM on 13 December 2020Climate Change's Cause Confusion
Per Nigel's remark, a sampling of our imperfect tracking of research output on this, from this year alone:
- Vegetation response to wildfire and climate forcing in a Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine forest over the past 2500 years
- Climate change significantly alters future wildfire mitigation opportunities in southeastern Australia
- Past variance and future projections of the environmental conditions driving western U.S. summertime wildfire burn area
- Wildfire risk science facilitates adaptation of fire-prone social-ecological systems to the new fire reality
- Large wildfires in the western US exacerbated by tropospheric drying linked to a multi‐decadal trend in the expansion of the Hadley circulation
- Climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme autumn wildfire conditions across California
- Increasing concurrence of wildfire drivers tripled megafire critical danger days in Southern California between1982 and 2018
- Applying intersectionality to climate hazards
- Projected Changes in Reference Evapotranspiration in California and Nevada
- Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Live Fuel Moisture and Wildfire Risk Using a Hydrodynamic Vegetation Model
- The Australian wildfires from a systems dependency perspective
So yeah, climate affects wildfires. And it does seem true: if all the signals from science are "wildfire is affected by climate" yet it's a common misunderstanding that climate isn't related, there must be a reason for that.
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