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nigelj at 07:44 AM on 25 June 2020Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term
Not only has the Trump administration irresponsibly undermined the hard sciences, the administrations approach to the economy is far from science / evidence based as well:
edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/business/recession-tariffs-europe-immigration-trump/index.html
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Bob Loblaw at 07:41 AM on 25 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Nothing here makes me want to spend time gong to Slarty's web site to read it, but MA Rodger's most recent coment is - shall we say - intruiging.
Trying to follow through the process that leads to the figure MA has included, leads me to this:
- On the X-axis, N must be the number of months that are used to derive the stddev, so ln(N)=0 is N=1 is monthly data; ln(N)=1.099 is N=3, so the three-month accumulation, and onward to ln(N)=7.09 is N=1200 months, or ten years.
As we average over longer periods, the stddev of the individual periods decreases, so ln(stddev) decreases from the first point (ln(N)=0), where ln(stddev) = about 0.07, so stddev is about 1.07, until we reach the last point where ln(stddev) is about -1.25, so stddev is about 0.28.
...but of course, for random data, the longer the averaging period, the smaller the standard deviation, according to 1/sqrt(N). So, in a random system, having stddev=1 for N=1 would lead to stddev=0.03 for 1200 months. (1/sqrt(1200)).
That the observed standard deviation decreases much more slowly than this, as the averaging period increases, is an indication that the data series is not random.
Even so, any statistical technique that treats each observation (a one-month anomaly, an annual annomaly, etc.) as an independent value is doomed to failure. The values are not a collection of independent observations - they are a time series. So time-series analyisys is required. And for the longer periods you need to account for serial autocorrelation in the data to get the statistical significance right.
And lastly, if the "century" stddev is (by extraopolation) of the order of 0.167, then how does Slarty mathturbate that into saying a 1C shift is covered by that 0.167 stddev? Does he claim that a 0.167 stddev implies that monthly anomalies can be 1C, and therefor monthly anomalies of 1C compared to a century ago are just random?
If that were the case, then anomalies of 1C would appear spread across the century, not all clumped at one end. That clumping at one end tells us something - and that "something" is that climate change is causing global warming, and that temperatures have risen, and that the results are statistically significant.
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nigelj at 07:30 AM on 25 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
MAR @21, I would disagree that Slarty Bartfast is totally unintelligent. Slarty Bartfast would probably be intelligent in the sense of having an above average IQ given his technical abilities. However he applies these abilities in a very shoddy way (as you yourself imply) to construct his house of cards of AGW denial.
At the very least he lacks much wisdom or quality control of his own reasoning or there is some deliberate stupidity being applied. The question is why is he so sloppy or deliberately stupid?
Firstly it is hard to believe he is lazy, given the time he has spent constructing his elaborate house of cards.
Secondly its possible he is a crank. "Crank(person)" on wikipedia has an interesting definition and symptoms, and he fits some but not all of these symptoms. So hmmm. Although you will note there are some similarities to Victor.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person)
Thirdly Slarty mentioned that hes a socialist. Some individuals have emerged who stridently oppose the AGW consensus and climate mitigation even although they lean left and liberal politically. This is odd, given those on the left tend to be more accepting of AGW than those on the right, according to various polling studies, eg by Pew Research. But some of them have expressed concern of how climate mitigation would hurt poor people and this surely explains their scepticism of the science, especially as they are mostly educated people and not born ignoramuses.
I suspect Slarty fits this definition of being worried about how climate mitigation might impact on the poor (wrongly I think because its easy to construct things like carbon taxes so they exclude low income people or give them a rebate of some sort). He has run away and not answered the simple question I posed on the matter, which suggests I'm probably right.
Or there is a fourth possibility that he has slotted in the labels of 'environmentalist' and 'socialist', merely as a tool to help convince those on the left of the veracity of his crack pot ideas.
Or fifthly, reading Douglas Adams very entertaining series of novels has addled his mind.
I did some psychology at university, so we studied human motivations and they intrigue me, although my main degree is in architecture.
But I think the most likely possibility is Slartys unjustified concerns over the impacts of climate mitigation on poor people have lead to an attempt to find flaws in the science, and this in turn has pushed him towards the definition of a "crank".
As to Slarty's views that glaciers haven't melted much in New Zealand, and this is because we have "low population density" and so not much "waste heat" as a result. I should say something given I live in the country. NZ's glaciers have in fact lost 33% of their ice mass since the mid 1970s (when monitoring began) which is obviously very substantial, and this is close to the rate in Europe from that same time period. Related article below:
www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12269796
I would say to Slarty "so long and thanks for all the (dead) fish"
Moderator Response:[PS] I would admit that moderation has been a bit sleepy on this thread but the time has come. Speculations on commentators intelligence are breaches of comment policy. I would request any further commentary is to point and in conformance with comment policy.
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MA Rodger at 21:58 PM on 24 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Eclectic @17, 18 & 19,
I disagree with your assessment that Slarty Bartfast is "an intelligent guy". In my assessment, he has little-to-no understanding of the scientific concepts he wields, hardily a mark of intelligence. And if you dig deeper, you will find the work of Slarty Bartfast has a 'fractal' property, in that crazy assertions and error are used to support further crazy assertions and error.…
With Slarty Bartfast not appearing eager to explain that most prized of his pronouncements within his grand debunking of AGW, perhaps it is beholden on me to explain to Slarty Bartfast what he has managed to have gone and done (or at least the central blunder thereof). This concerns his grand proof that most of what is seen as AGW is but random noise. As I asserted @13, this is nought but Slarty Bartfast pressing the Infinite Improbability Drive button.
On his blogpage 'Fooled by Randomness', Slarty Bartfast takes three lengthy NZ met station records of monthly temperature anomalies and calculates the distribution of these anomalies about the mean – that is of course the Standard Deviation and that works out at roughly 1ºC.
(The exact derivation of his 'mean' is not explained. The data from Xch NZ 1864-2013 shown graphed is the raw station data but the SD graphed is not the simple SD of the 1,796 data points.)
The monthly-data exercise is then repeated for tri-monthly, half-yearly, annual, bi-annual, 5-year and 10-year averages and these seven SDs are plotted against length-of-data-point on a log-log scale and found to produce a nice straight line (shown below).
This straightness allows Slarty Bartfast to extrapolate the relationship to obtain a value for the SD of century-averaged anomalies which is found to be a sixth the SD of monthly data (thus SD≈0.167ºC). And having derived the size of the SD, the spread of the data will be also a sixth as great. This allows Slarty Bartfast to infer that the scatter/spread of a set of century-averaged data-points would be “almost 1°C,” thus a value pretty-much the same as the level of AGW over the last century. (And it will help to say that for Slarty Bartfast, this 'scatter/spread' results from random “noise”.)
The next bit is implicit within Slarty Bartfast's argument. With the spread from noise being 1ºC, what if today's century-averaged anomaly is at the top of the noise-range and last century's at the bottom? That would account for all this AGW nonsense!!
This revelation Slarty Bartfast declares @12 to be “entirely possible” although he went further on his shabby little blogsite by first saying it is “probably” so and then concluding that it actually is the case that "most of what yuo see" as AGW is just random noise.This, of course, is eye-bulgingly stupid in so many ways but in terms of the Infinite Improbability driving Slarty Bartfast's anti-AGW missiles, the probability of a particular data point sitting 3SD above the mean is roughly 600:1 and the probability of its preceding data point sitting 3SD below the mean combines to a 350,000:1 likelihood. I would suggest that is essily improbable enough for something as inert as a bowl of petunias to think “Oh, no. Not again.”
But for Slarty Bartfast, such things are real and actual because all you need to do is believe.
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Lawrie at 21:28 PM on 24 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Slarty Bartfast 11 States: But this doesn't change my overall point, that sea level rise is miniscule and unmeasurable and a long way from what most media stories would imply. It is not going to submerge major cities in the next 100 years.
According to NOAA - https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php . NOAA/NESDIS/STAR provide estimates of sea level rise based on measurements from satellite radar altimeters. Plots and time series are available for TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3, which have monitored the same ground track since 1992, and for most of the altimeters that have operated since 1991, including T/P, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, ERS-2, GFO, and Envisat.
Only altimetry measurements between 66°S and 66°N have been processed. An inverted barometer has been applied to the time series. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged.
Since 1992 Sea levels have risen by about 80 mm and there is no evidence that the rate of increase is slowing down. Why do scientists continually need to refute the kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense emanating from people like SB?
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Doug Bostrom at 07:51 AM on 24 June 2020Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term
As the piece points out the politicization of science during the current administration, it's necessarily political in nature.
Politics is where science meets policy.
William, your suggestion to "do nothing" seems axiomatically of low utility.
Perfection isn't possible but better statistics are. That's why we brush our teeth, fasten seat belts, wash our hands and perform a myriad of other actions offering no guarantee other than improved odds. It's the same with this situation.
As a statistical matter, we'd have been better off with many of the other candidates the currrent WH occupant faced.
Advocating "doing nothing" is itself a destructive act of politics.
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william5331 at 06:33 AM on 24 June 2020Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term
You better deleat this one. It is all political.
And there will be pie in the sky when we die. What great asperations, all of it gum flapping. Under Trump we have seen with crystal clarity, what he thinks of science during this C19 crisis and the results?? Thousands of his people dead who should still be alive. His attitude toward climate change is equally primitive. Do you think it will be any better under Biden. The only hope was for Bernie to be elected. Then these asperations would have born fruit. The DNC scuppered that. At least under Trump it got people united against his stupidity and cupidity.
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michael sweet at 22:36 PM on 23 June 2020Renewables can't provide baseload power
Preston Urka,
Perhaps if you read more current articles you would be less skeptical. This post from less than one month ago (Smart Energy Europe) here at Skeptical Science describes a 100% renewable energy system that delivers All Power at a comparable cost to fossil fuels. They account for all storage costs. They use only existing technology. They use the total energy use of the EU.
As for your response to Jacobson 2015, he has published a new paper, Jacobson 2018, that addresses all the issues raised about his original paper. There has been plenty of time to write a response to his 2018 paper but ctritics obviously feel he has answered their questions. I note that in his original paper he found many solutions to the problem and he only described one. In addition, the Smart Energy Europe paper uses a completely different system than Jacobson does and finds essentially the same result. That indicates that there are many paths to a completely renewable system.
Perhaps you should read the Smart Energy Europe OP and describe your complaints there. We certainly do not have a "done deal" and need to continue to worry about Climate Change. That does not mean that there are not solutions at hand, it means that politicians are not taking the needed steps to solve the problem.
A response to Burden of Proof, your reference to "refute" Jacobson is here. Burden of Proof is shown to have no basis in fact. I note that Burden of Proof is written by a group of nuclear no-hopers.
Perhaps you could tell us what you think needs to be done so different solutions can be compared. Criticizing possible solutions without offering alternates is not very helpful.
Vote Climate!
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Daniel19526 at 21:39 PM on 23 June 2020A Glimpse at Our Possible Future Climate, Best to Worst Case Scenarios
It has now been 7 years since this article was published and so we have some more data available with which we can review the most likely scenarios.
Global CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 levels seem to me to suggest, at best, a RPC 4.5 trajectory. Have I misinterpreted the latest data or do others also think that things really are that bad?
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Eclectic at 20:33 PM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
. . . . . continuation of post 18.
C** It is interesting that for someone whose blog complains that climatologists fail to appreciate the salient importance of noise in records of temperature, Slarty nevertheless seeks to disprove global warming by citing a very noisy & limited record (the historical tornado record for that section of the Earth known as the USA. )
D** Slarty makes handwavy cherry-picking of 4 glaciers in New Zealand.
[which have very dubious support for his assertions]
E** "CO2 is a greenhouse gas ... [but] this does not mean that increasing CO2 levels must lead to an increase in temperature."
[curiouser and curiouser! ]
F** Slarty gives some old chestnuttery ~ the by-proxy denying of mainstream climate science, by strawmanning with the apocalytic hyperbole coming from the ExtinctionRebellioners and suchlike non-scientists .
G** They [alarmists? scientists?] want to "get everyone to live in a cave".
[Actually a quote from upthread here : but a definite red-flagger emotionally.]
H** It is interesting that a self-described Environmentalist claims that he cannot decide on "the optimum surface temperature of Planet Earth".
I** The cognitive dissonance of holding mutually-contradictory positions (or at least, claiming to hold them). And some of the positions are quite unphysical.
[[ Note the word "unphysical", Slarty. That is the rock that sinks the ship of your statistical analyses of the climate situation. You have failed to grasp what is happening at the level of molecules / atoms / hadrons / photons. ]]
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Eclectic at 19:13 PM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
And while the Weekly Roundup iron is still hot, I will give some more points extracted from Slarty Bartfast's blog :-
Slarty, please note that you are most welcome to correct me wherever you think I have made an error. I have quoted some of your phrases verbatim , but mostly I give what I believe is an honest gist of your blog messages.
For instance, you will see (above) in post #10 Point 7. where I wrote The Arctic is not warming ~ and yes, those were not your verbatim words : but they are your exact meaning [see confirmation by MA Rodger @13 ]. Likewise with my other comments, I give the gist of your messages (and if you look closely, you will recognize some "re-cycling" of some of your own phrasings and word-choices).
Slarty , let us proceed ! You may find it uncomfortable. But all publicity for your blog is good publicity . . . as the saying goes, eh. And for convenience of style, I will refer to you in the Third Person.
A** "[the AGW] that climate scientists think they are measuring is probably all just low frequency noise resulting from the random fluctuations of a chaotic non-linear system."
[ The catchy phrase of climate being "a chaotic non-linear system" ~ was quote-mined from an IPCC report. The phrase is a half-truth, and is a misrepresentation often quoted in science-denier blogs . . . where most of the readers are clueless about its precise meaning in climate physics. ]
B** Modern global warming is largely just the result of a non-anthropogenic 150-year oscillation in global surface temperatures.
[ But then again, the warming is "not there" anyway ~ because the temperature records fail statistical significance, it seems?? ]
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Eclectic at 12:00 PM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Doug @15 , I take your "tossed salad" point that individual topics of discussion should belong in their own threads, where each can be discussed in depth (and with the historical input from comments of earlier months/years). That is the excellent SkS system, which works moderately well. The alternative is a chaotic repetitious churning of multiple topics & distractions, month after month on every page ~ which sabotages the educational purpose of the SkS website.
OTOH, the SkS Weekly News Roundup threads are somewhat to the side of the standard indexable SkS system. The Roundups are each a potential hodge-podge of comments . . . which are quickly swept away into oblivion (and this ephemeral nature allows for looseness of topic, and even permits a political tinge at times).
The commenter Slarty Bartfast has brought his blog to SkS, in effect to promote it and also (just possibly) to solicit comments & criticisms of it.
In a way, Slarty's blog is suited to a one-week Roundup. His blog contains so many errors of science and logic ~ each error being so plainly obvious, that it merely needs pointing out rather than detailed rebuttal.
Possibly that may have a salutary effect on Slarty's thinking, and he will make the effort to educate himself about climate science (unlike Ivar Giaever). Or possibly it won't ~ if he is unable/unwilling to disentangle himself from his prejudiced Denialist mindset. [ Slarty, my apologies if that comes across with a patronizing tone . . . but in the circumstances, such a tone is difficult to avoid entirely.]
IMO, Slarty is an intelligent guy: but we all know of many intelligent people who let their emotional bias override their intellect (especially with the climate science deniers ! ) Slarty, I wish you well, with your internal struggles for objectivism & insight.
# In other words, Doug, it could be desirable to corral all of Slarty's ideas into a single location [here] ~ where they can be "lightly cauterized". And then move on to weightier matters.
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nigelj at 07:34 AM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Slarty Bartfast @12
"What I did say about the Arctic is that we don't know what the temperature trend is because there are no long term weather stations within 1000 km of the North Pole, and there never have been."
History of climate monitoring in the arctic here. According to the article land based observing stations around the arctic circle were established in the 1880's, giving data on greenland and northern russia and the various islands etc. There were multiple land based and drift stations over the open ocean, including close to the north pole, established from 1960 - 1990. Since that period there have been fewer weather station, and more reliance on satellite data.
I guess it depends on how you define "long term data" but the article shows there is good data for the whole of the arctic from 1960 - 2020 a fairly long period of time.
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Doug Bostrom at 06:56 AM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Waste heat on Skeptical Science: https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm
197 back-and-forth instances there in discussion.
But why warm the air further? It's not waste heat.
[I believe it's still the policy here not to create a tossed salad in discussion threads. Every avenue Slarty is probing is already well developed in existing discussions here. Reduce, reuse, recycle.]
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nigelj at 06:47 AM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Slarty Bartfast @12
"But this doesn't change my overall point, that sea level rise is miniscule and unmeasurable and a long way from what most media stories would imply. It is not going to submerge major cities in the next 100 years."
That is a very bold assertion somewhat lacking in any evidence. And tell that to people living in Florida as discussed here. Nothing miniscule in these sea level rise numbers. People are already having to jack up their houses in some places to alleviate the problem. And yes there are multiple causes of sea level rise in Florida, but climate change is by far the main one as stated.
There are plenty of examples from earths past where sea level has risen 2 or 3 meters per century at similar warming rates to presently, eg melt water pulse 1a after the last ice age. We are at risk of triggering a similar event but in shorter time frames.I suspect Slartys rejection of anthropogenic global warming is because he is afraid that climate mitigation costs will hurt poor people. He does say hes a socialist. So tell me Slarty , are you worried about the costs of climate mitigation on poor people?
IMHO theres nothing wrong with concern for poor people per se, or some light form of socialism, just that its very wrong to think climate mitigation has to hurt poor people. For example, there are simple and obvious ways of structuring things like carbon taxes to avoid this.
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MA Rodger at 05:51 AM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Slarty Bartfast @12,
To be exact as to what you wrote on your error-filled blog site, regarding the North Pole you wrote "there is no evidence of warming at the poles ... there is no weather data within 1000 miles of the North Pole and never has been."
If you consider that to be a factual statement then you are a bigger fool that I thought.
There is directly measured evidence of warming of the North Pole as we have satellite data showing it. Additionally there is much more indirect evidence, not least the dozens of met stations which operated within 1,000 miles of the pole and which include those located within 1,000km of the pole.
And I am curious why you say that a global averaged temperature trend of +1 °C per century is "entirely possible due to natural variations resulting from chaotic behaviour within the climate system". Indeed on your blogsite you write "most of what you see in the smoothed and averaged temperature data is noise not systemic change (i.e. warming)" [my bold].
So my question, Slarty Bartfast, concerns the likelihood of temperature records not measuring what everybody else says they do. You present a crazy tale which you say proves that a random chaotic source is "entirely possible" to be what is being measured as being a global warming signal and then, a big leap here, you assert this situation "is" actual and not merely "possible". So I ask, is this actual situation dependent on you pressing the 'go' button on your Infinite Improbability Drive? I ask because your slap-dash and ridiculous thesis does stretch credulity to breaking point.
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CD at 01:57 AM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
@10 Eclectic
You claim that I said on my blog: "7. The Arctic is not warming"
I don't believe I did. I did say the South Pole is not warming. In fact the temperature record for Amundsen-Scott shows a slight cooling since 1957. Even Berkeley Earth agree on that (sort of).
What I did say about the Arctic is that we don't know what the temperature trend is because there are no long term weather stations within 1000 km of the North Pole, and there never have been.
By the way, the other thing you omitted from your precis was Post 9 - Fooled By Randomness, where I demonstrated that changes in temperature of up to 1 °C per century are entirely possible due to natural variations resulting from chaotic behaviour within the climate system.
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CD at 00:28 AM on 23 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
@7 Eclectic
"Slarty seems to calculate on the basis that any industrial (i.e. Anthropogenic) heat energy produced in [say] England, will remain within the national borders."
If that were true then the heat would never escape. It would build up day upon day, and the temperature would be rising by far more than 0.66 °C per century. If the heat was just retained in the air over the UK, then the air temperature would increase by nearly 3 °C per year. In reality this heat will slowly diffuse to the rest of the planet and then escape, but by the time it has done so it will be replaced by new heat production. Therefore there will be a steady state temperature gradient created between the heat producing areas and the colder areas. There will not be a uniform temperature rise everywhere.
By the way, thanks for pointing out the error in the thermal expansion coefficient. I used the wrong one by mistake. That blog post has been corrected. But this doesn't change my overall point, that sea level rise is miniscule and unmeasurable and a long way from what most media stories would imply. It is not going to submerge major cities in the next 100 years.
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Eclectic at 20:23 PM on 22 June 2020Sea-level rise likely to swallow many coastal mangrove forests
MA Rodger @5 . . . on the contrary (speaking for myself) ~ it ain't climatology, but it's psychologically interesting to give some inspection to these forms of intellectual pathology !
Perhaps Slarty will modify his blog self-label to :- physicist, socialist and environmentalist . . . and denialist (not necessarily in that order).
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Eclectic at 20:06 PM on 22 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Lawrie @9 , Slarty Bartfast maintains that there is no global warming of any significance at a statistical level or at a physical planetary level. So to him, albedo is irrelevant.
Being more than 24 hours since his last posting, it seems unlikely that Slarty will return to attempt rebuttal of criticisms of against his many positions. But we can hope he will return, to give a grand explication of his apparent errors and inconsistencies.
In order to save the valuable time of SkS readers, I have looked further into Slarty's blog of May / June 2020 , and I have pulled out some points of interest. Slarty's statistical/mathematical skills are (IMO) far exceeding his climate science knowledge . . . and somehow I am reminded of the very emeritus & climatically-challenged Ivar Giaever !
I have taken some care not to misrepresent or quote-mine Slarty. And please note that Slarty, in his blog, describes himself as: physicist / socialist / evironmentalist.
1. Sea level rise cannot be more than slight , because there is no CO2-AGW or CO2-led Greenhouse effect. And so our coastal cities have zero danger of submersion.
2. What little CO2-greenhouse effect is present now, is produced by CO2 reflecting IR back to the planetary surface.
3. Weather stations fail to give valid planetary data because they are far too few, and (just as importantly) they are not evenly spaced.
4. "temperature records just aren't long enough ... to discern a definite trend ... you need at least 50 years."
5. "[land ice] In Antarctica (and Greenland) this is virtually all at altitude (above 1000 m) where the mean temperature is below -20 C, and the mean monthly temperature NEVER gets above zero, even in summer. Consequently, the likelihood of any of this ice melting is negligible."
6. AGW forcing does not supply enough heat to melt ice at the poles [he seems to include the Arctic, too].
7. The Arctic is not warming. [Presumably news to those alarmist Inuit who live there.]
8. Berkeley Earth Study repeats the sins of Hadley/ NOAA / etc but in a more transparent way ~ and BEST generates a falsely-positive warming trend through its misuse of Breakpoint Adjustments (rather than using raw data).
9. Slarty's oceanic thermal expansion calculations are wrong [as pointed out by MA Rodger].
And there's more !
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MA Rodger at 20:01 PM on 22 June 2020Sea-level rise likely to swallow many coastal mangrove forests
Eclectic @4,
I fear we will be wasting out breath trying to put Slarty Bartfast straight. His grand work on SLR which he set out on a webpage in his blog and presented @2 disappeared following the criticism of it here.
But it is now reappeared with its silly errors unchanged.
Perhaps the silliest part of his blog is his own cedentials which in the circumstances he should be presenting to the world. Yet he hides behind his pseudonym and the description "Physicist, socialist and environmentalist (not necessarily in that order)." His physics has the feel of a school-book regurgitated, giving the impression of somebody who thinks he is a man-on-a-mission when, if you read his blog, he is actually a deluded fool in freefall. Despite all the words and equations, he still manages to say nothing of any interest.
Beyond him presenting himself here at SkS, I would give him and his silly misconceptions no heed.
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Lawrie at 11:34 AM on 22 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Any process that absorbs visible light decreases albedo. Photosysnthesis, the process that produced fossil fuels, would seem to be way ahead of solar power. Following on from Slarty's logic then the quickest way to reduce global warming would be to clear fell all the earth's forests and replace them with reflective concrete
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Eclectic at 11:22 AM on 22 June 2020Sea-level rise likely to swallow many coastal mangrove forests
MA Rodger @3 , there are several "profound logical errors" in Slarty Bartfast's own blog. I am not planning to go into them here, for they are mentioned (at least some of them) on another thread = 2020 News Roundup #25.
And as yet, I have seen only part of his blog.
I can say that he demonstrates admirable skills in mathematical analysis ~ but he seems not to realize that he has built his edifice on a base which is simply unphysical.
( In science, can there be any crueller word than "unphysical" ? )
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nigelj at 09:32 AM on 22 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Slartibartfast appears to think global warming is caused largely by the heat output from industry, transport and electricity generation. A simple google search shows global temperatures were exceptionally high during the first half of 2020, the period of covid 19 lockdowns and reduced heat output from transport, electricity generation and industry. Wheres the cooling trend his theory would predict?
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Preston Urka at 06:22 AM on 22 June 2020Renewables can't provide baseload power
Some 7 years later from a very contentious discussion, I hestitate to post, but here goes!
I feel the answer to the question of "Can renewables provide baseload power?" should be "No. However, renewable energy's deficiencies can be mitigated to provide baseload power using energy storage and overbuild." - which is they way the rest of the article reads.
Storage and overbuild are mitigation strategies, not an inherent part of renewable's capabilities.
Also, it is not a great service to a reader to paint a such a rosy picture. To get to 100% renewables a major amount of work has to be done (referencing the items in the description):
- for scale, https://www.iea.org/world, 23,696 TWh electricity (not total energy) in 2017
- storage is at 200 GW globally, relatively small to a baseload scenario
- https://www.iea.org/articles/will-pumped-storage-hydropower-expand-more-quickly-than-stationary-battery-storage
- note this makes a breakdown into pumped hydro/pumped thermal/batteries/caes irrelevant - altogether very small
- good news VTG, but still somewhat small - https://irena.org/newsroom/articles/2019/May/Driving-a-Smarter-Future
- https://www.iea.org/fuels-and-technologies/renewables
- Renewable electricity generation by source (non-combustible), World 1990-2017
- geothermal is an even smaller drop at 85 TWh (0.3%) globally
- solar CSP is a tiny drop at 11 TWh (0.04%)
Once we take into account overbuild of renewables, the overbuild of transmission to support previous, more storage, and demand management, it becomes a (doable) daunting task.
I also feel the point about the renewables studies are a bit too optimistic. Jacobson's paper in particular has a number of refutations with just as well-reviewed papers as his - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114 being an obvious starting point. My point isn't that 1 guy is correct and 1 guy is wrong - my point is that this is not a settled argument - and we can't bet our biosphere on optimism.
I will say that if you want to quote a source, although not as optimistic, this is a much better paper than Jacobson: https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re-futures.html
Casually reading this post I would conclude this is a done deal and we should all stop worrying about climate change. That is probably a bad message to take away.
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Eclectic at 00:42 AM on 22 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
MA Rodger @6 , I gather that the "industrial energy" converted into temperature rise ~ is calculated according to Slarty's own special system. I have been enjoying reading some of Slarty's blogsite, but I have only dipped my toe into it, so far. He displays a great number of algebraic equations, which I have (perhaps wrongly) not looked into ~ this is a failing of mine, deriving from my past experience of the reams of equations publicized by Lord Monckton (the Moncktonite mathematics suffer major revision every so many months . . . yet always lead to absurd conclusions).
Slarty seems to calculate on the basis that any industrial (i.e. Anthropogenic) heat energy produced in [say] England, will remain within the national borders. No flow of wind or water across those borders, nor any transfers per evaporation/condensation.
There are other peculiarities in his blog. He states that the Milankovitch cycle produces a 10 degreeC oscillation of global temperature. Perhaps he thinks Vostok represents the entire planet. Also, he seems to feel that the CO2 in the atmosphere produces "Greenhouse" by reflecting infrared radiation back to the Earth's surface.
There were one or two other points he made which seemed in error, at my first glance at his blog : but I've forgotten what they are, now. Perhaps I can dig them out later. Of course, his blog may not be quite as bad as I first gathered ~ I may have been mistaken in my own thoughts, and too hasty in my skimming, and some of the errors may be more a matter of him expressing himself in an odd way or through excessive abbreviation of ideas. Still, it's always a red-flag worry when the earnest blogger seems to arrive at a different conclusion than the world's scientists. There's usually some blunder at the bottom of it all.
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MA Rodger at 23:14 PM on 21 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Eclectic @4,
I fear the stiffest 'head wind' the grand theorising of Starty Bartfast on Energy Use faces is the history of these primary energy uses he employs so boldly.
He employs the 2018 Primary Energy Use of UK which is given as 177Mtoe, equivalent to 0.97Wm^-2 for the UK land area. I'm not sure of the conversion to a +0.42°C temperature rise for the UK, but taking that ratio, the UK would have been subject to a cooling of -0.02°C since 1965 (using OurWorldInData energy numbers) and a cooling of -0.11°C since Primary Energy peaked in 2003 (using the same source as Slartibartfast). The thermometers have evidently not been informed of this as, from the HadCET annual data where we should be the farthest from any outside influence, the annual CET averaged 9.5°C in 1965, rose to 10.5°C in 2003 and by 2018 was 10.7°C, thus giving no sign of any cooling associated with changing levels of UK Primary Energy Use.
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Eclectic at 22:02 PM on 21 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Post Script explanation ~ my final comments @4 are referring to icemelt.
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Eclectic at 21:59 PM on 21 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
SlartyB @3 , the combined areas of England Belgium Netherlands & Pennsylvania come to less than 0.07% of global area. ( And most nations of the world are much less densely populated.) So your hypothesis of "waste heat" being a major part of Anthropogenic Global Warming . . . is sailing itself into a very stiff headwind ! Perhaps you will be kind enough to "show your working" for your supportive arithmetic?
( Off-topic :- In another thread, MA Rodger has indicated your arithmetical blunder wrt sea level rise from thermal expansion. Your other assertion ~ that the AGW forcing of 0.6 or 0.9 watts/m2 is far too small to produce significant sea level rise in the coming 100 or 200 years ~ also seems to be in error. For myself, a rough back-of-envelope calculation shows that only about 1% of the AGW forcing is sufficient to cause 2+ mm/year of sea level rise. Which fits in with the mainstream science. And which leaves plenty of scope for an accelerating rise in that near future. )
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MA Rodger at 19:58 PM on 21 June 2020Sea-level rise likely to swallow many coastal mangrove forests
Slarty Bartfast @2,
You are evidently not the real Slartybartfast, the designer of planets from Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy because he would not make the profound mathematical error and logical error which you make on your blog post.
Firstly, in your calculations, you use the 'linear' coefft of thermal expansion which is the linear expansion of a solid, something which involves expansion in all three directions. The value for water is given in tables solely to allow the easy calculation of the differential rate of expansion when a volume of water is held in a container. Thus your 0.66mm/yr SLR (from the linear coefft of 69e-6/deg C) due to 0.9Wm^-2 global energy imbalance should be 2mm/year (from the volumetric coefft of 207e-6/deg C although note this coefft does vary with temperature, pressure and salinity). As most of the energy imbalance does end up warming the oceans, the actual thermal expansion component of SLR isn't greatly lower than that value (as the graphic in the Moderator Response shows).
Secondly, you fail to make the explicit point (although you do manage to demonstrate it) that the melting of ice is a far far more thermally efficient means of raising sea level. Thus if the 0.9Wm^-2 global energy imbalance were solely applied to melting ice, it would result in 130mm SLR pa. We are saved from this SLR as the global energy imbalance is spread over the whole world while glaciers and ice caps are concentrated in a few particular regions. As the world around the planet's ice warms, that ice does attract an increasing percentage of that imbalance, resulting in SLR far in excess of the limit you impose using solely the land area of ice fields.
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CD at 11:21 AM on 21 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
@ Tom Drayton
Yes I've read the RealClimate post and it makes the same point I made in my <a href="https://climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/06/14-surface-heating.html">recent blog post</a>, that the waste heat is only about 0.03 W/m^2, or the equivalent of a global temperature rise of about 0.013 K. This sounds trivial until you realize it isn't spread evenly across the Earth's surface. The point I made is that when examined on a country-by-country basis, this heating can become very large, e.g. 1.0 K for Belgium & the Netherlands, 0.66 K for England and 0.5 K for Pennsylvania. That is not trivial and it accounts for almost all the temperature rise seen in these states/countries in the entire 20th Century. I'm surprised that doesn't make you stop and think.
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Tom Dayton at 09:12 AM on 21 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
Slarty Bartfast, that is a very old, and long discredited, myth. See, for example, this RealClimate post.
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CD at 08:42 AM on 21 June 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
I noticed that one of the proposals of this article is more solar power. Yet solar power decreases the Earth's albedo and thereby increases local surface warming. This warming (even without CO2 greenhouse emisions) can be as high as 1 degC as I note here - climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/06/14-surface-heating.html
In thermodynamics there is no such thing as a free lunch. All human activity warms the planet. So what is the plan? Go back to prehistoric living and get everyone to live in a cave?
Moderator Response:[DB] Sloganeering snipped. Please comport further comments to comply with the Comments Policy.
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CD at 08:32 AM on 21 June 2020Sea-level rise likely to swallow many coastal mangrove forests
And what is causing this sea level rise exactly? Because it can't be "global warming" or CO2 emissions. There just isn't the energy available to do this as I have calculated here - climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/06/15-truth-about-sea-level-rise.html
Moderator Response:[DB] Please refrain from sloganeering. Human activities are the dominant contribution to SLR since 1970.
Per Slangen et al 2016,
Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970
"the anthropogenic forcing (primarily a balance between a positive sea-level contribution from GHGs and a partially offsetting component from anthropogenic aerosols) explains only 15 ± 55% of the observations before 1950, but increases to become the dominant contribution to sea-level rise after 1970 (69 ± 31%), reaching 72 ± 39% in 2000 (37 ± 38% over the period 1900–2005)"
Takeaways:
1. Although natural variations in radiative forcing affect decadal trends, they have little effect over the twentieth century as a whole
2. In 1900, sea level was not in equilibrium with the twentieth-century climate, and there is a continuing, but diminishing, contribution to sea-level change from this historic variability
3. The anthropogenic contribution increases during the twentieth century, and becomes the dominant contribution by the end of the century. Our twentieth-century number of 37 ± 38% confirms the anthropogenic lower limit of 45%
4. This would increase even further if increased ice-sheet dynamics were considered to be a consequence of increased anthropogenic forcing (to 83% in 2000) and if reservoir storage and groundwater extraction were included (to 94% in 2000)
5. Our results clearly show that the anthropogenic influence is not just present in some of the individual contributors to sea-level change, but actually dominates total sea-level change after 1970
From Cazenave et al 2018 we know that land-based ice sheet mass losses comprise the biggest component of measured SLR, with that contribution increasing:
A continuance of violating this site's Comments Policy will result in further moderation, up to and including a revocation of commenting privileges.
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Jack Middleton at 07:54 AM on 21 June 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
'veganism will solve the problem' argument' is a strawman argument. Veganim will solve as much as veganim will solve. Surely, if someone is claiming 'veganism will solve the problem' is not a credible proposition, unsceintific and not worth consideration?
A plant based diet is the smallest change that will have the biggest impact. The smallest, easiest change, esspecially for a westerner, the most easily implimentable with the least amount of life disruption, which will have the most significant impact at reducing, and in some cases eliminating, climate change causes of many kinds.
Have you considered the extent of deforestation which has occured so far in order to fascillitate the current demand for land in animal agriculture? This is land which currently cannot be rewilded to mitigate carbon emmisions.
For many reasons, this analysis seems baised, strawmans the claims made and is unfair in the analysis of the data.
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nigelj at 07:51 AM on 21 June 2020COVID-19 is the quiz, climate change the final exam
Eclectic @2, thanks for that reference and I did skim through about 50 comments before my eyes glazed over and stomach soured. And the comments are indeed the usual absurdities about government climate conspiracies and rhetorical hand waving, that becomes so tedious to read. Hence I just stopped well before the bottom of the list. I could not go on. The nausea was too much.
Yes scientific modelling is sometimes revised. But I would say to people 1)look at the overall track record of science which is clearly pretty good and 2) who else would you prefer to listen to? Somebody with qualifications in law or astrology? Some self appointed unqualified guru who sells books for millions of dollars? Somebody nashing his or her teeth and going by instinct? Some media person like Rush Limbaugh? Surely science is preferable to these people.
But sigh, you cant reason with the WUWT supporters. Which is why I just dont much bother any more. IMHO they are the libertarian fringe, haters of governments especially left leaning ones. For them government is the source of all problems, even although testing for failed drugs like Thalidomyde was carried out by the private sector that the libertarians champion. Somehow all failures are blamed on someone in government.
These WUWT supporters are unable to apply their critical thinking skills in a objective and non emotive way and apparently unable to see how the dreadful covid 19 numbers in America largely substantiate the scientists predictions. Instead they nitpick about the precise numbers.
But then, from what some other chracter said apparently nobody is really dying, that is all another conspiracy by the hospitals to exaggerate the problem for god only knows what reason, your guess is as good as mine. No matter how much we might point out there is no credible motive, and no hard evidence, the fanatical crazy people remain unconvinced. You cant tell people stuff, but you cannot make them understand.
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Eclectic at 22:29 PM on 20 June 2020COVID-19 is the quiz, climate change the final exam
Nigelj @1 , if you have a strong stomach, you might venture to skim through the comments made below an "article" [of June 19] on the egregious WUWT blogsite ~ a stub of an article, titled: Fauci: Americans "Don't Believe in Science".
The usual suspects have rushed in (by my count: 200 posts in 18 hours) to conflate COVID-19 matters with climate science matters. A not-so-unusual number, on a blogsite where almost any article about any type of science . . . triggers a great burst of outraged comments.
One particular gem is: "Science from a climate point of view is bought and paid for by a ring of vicious governments paying for a predetermined outcome." (Well I guess that lets the Bolsinaro & Muscovite governments off the hook?) Though I would love to see the listing of those vicious governments which allegedly seem keen to create extra political difficulties for themselves by promoting AGW awareness in their citizens.
Other comments are showpieces of rhetorical handwaving & self-deceiving obfuscation of the actual state of affairs. All marvellous . . . yet nothing new under the WUWT sun.
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nigelj at 07:50 AM on 20 June 2020COVID-19 is the quiz, climate change the final exam
In New Zealand active cases of covid are near zero, following a lockdown and associated television campaign of how to avoid getting the virus. Its been similar in Australia. Our political leader in NZ has repeatedly been in the media with a very clear, simple, consistent science based messaging on the dangers of the virus, and what to do like hand washing, social distancing etc, and is repeatedly shown on television doing this before attending to her duties. It looks like this has helped.
However the emphasis has been on what to do rather than too much on the virus itself, possibly in order to avoid negativity and scaring people into panic. She has a degree in communications skills, and one suspects this has been a useful influence. It's all been the polar opposite of people like Trump and Bolsonaro. That said keeping the virus out will be very difficult and its all far from over.
However I was interested in whether leading by example really has much actual influence on people. Management theory and daily life experience says it does, but that lacks a certain rigour. I found a couple of published studies that show empirical evidence that leading by example has an influence here and here.
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william5331 at 07:20 AM on 20 June 2020Michigan dam break shows how climate change strains infrastructure
So we are getting more rain and we need more rain. The problem is to control this added bonus without letting it cause damage. Get beavers back into every catchment. Look what Eric did.
https://mtkass.blogspot.com/2017/08/restoring-our-soils.html
Moderator Response:[DB] Advertising link snipped.
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MA Rodger at 18:24 PM on 19 June 2020PETM climate warming 56 million years ago strongly tied to igneous activity
DPiepgrass @7,
I'm not familiar with the term 'Fully General Counterargument' but the idea that there is some legitimate response that negates any proposed finding, even one well-supported by evidence, some catch-all that destroys all opposing view: the idea that there is such a legitimate response s is pure bunkum. Such a legitimate response would rely on ontological truth and there is and never has been an ontological truth.
By the way, the reply to the putting-lipstick-on-a-model nonsense is:-
"And you put lipstick on a pig-in-shit trying to make out like it's a model. How stupid do you think people are?"
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DPiepgrass at 02:38 AM on 19 June 2020PETM climate warming 56 million years ago strongly tied to igneous activity
"you can put lipstick on a model but it’s still a model!"
Say what? All of science is built on models, and not only that but human understanding is built upon mental models. This phrase is a Fully General Counterargument (FGCA) against science. (Being in possession of an FGCA leads to irrationality because it allows the arguer to avoid updating their beliefs in light of new evidence.)
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:41 AM on 17 June 2020How Climate Change Reinforces Racism
nigelj,
I would defend the title because I understand Racism to be a sub-set of Othering.
And Othering includes a lack of caring about people who are identified as Others by race. Humans can learn to avoid harmful unjust Othering. But they can be easily impressed to harmfully consider Others to be unworthy of consideration (making people Fear Others is also very Easy).
And climate change can be seen to strengthen the resolve of many people to "Resist reducing how harmful their actions are to Others, and resist helping Others". They call actions like pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (which include climate action), unjust names like Money Grabs and Attacks by the poor on the Wealthy.
The systemic origins of Othering can be understood to include competition to develop perceptions of Superiority relative to Others. And Colonizing Europeans can be seen to be a major source of the systems that create that harmful Othering.
What is needed is developing a sustainable global common sense that the only valid "Identification of Others deserving actions that the Others would consider to be Harmful to Them" is based on expanded awareness and improved understanding applied to help develop Sustainable Improvements for the future of humanity (like achieving all of the SDGs which, by the way, can be seen to include anti-racism actions as well as other identified anti-Othering actions). And the people identified as Others that way would be Helped to correct their beliefs and behaviours and have their potential to impact Others restricted until they learn to be Better (more helpful, less harmful people).
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Doug Bostrom at 07:16 AM on 16 June 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2020
The ECS matter is becoming very concerning.
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nigelj at 06:49 AM on 16 June 2020How Climate Change Reinforces Racism
Very good video but one nit pick. I dont think that the title "climate change reinforces racism" is accurate because its hard to see how climate change would lead to racial discrimination and racial prejudice, the normal definition of racism. Better to say climate change reinforces racial inequality.
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scaddenp at 07:10 AM on 15 June 2020No silver lining: The COVID-19 pandemic won't slow climate change
Yes, and I am taking the option to WFH 2 days a week permanently. Not that this will change my CO2 emissions at all however, since I walk to and from work. IT section though is making some big changes since WFH was both popular and productive. More of this should reduce the rate at which CO2 is building up in the atmosphere. Not a cure, but a good start.
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michael sweet at 06:25 AM on 14 June 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2020
Gavin at Realclimate posted on higher ECS today
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michael sweet at 05:39 AM on 14 June 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2020
The Guardian newspaper has had a lot of articles about climate change lately.
This article talks about the new model runs for the IPCC AR6 due next year. About 25% of the models have climate sensitivity of 5C compared to teh range of 2-4.5C (3C is commonly used) that has been found for about 40 years. 5C would be much worse change than 3C.
There were not a lot of references to original articles but I found the article to be a reasonable summary for laymen on this topic. (I do not read a lot about climate sensitivity but I have heard about these new models with higher sensitivity.) Apparently changes in cloud modeling (long known to be a weak area) have lead to this increase.
This RealClimate article from November 2019 discusses this issue with more technical detail.
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nigelj at 06:25 AM on 13 June 2020No silver lining: The COVID-19 pandemic won't slow climate change
New Zealand left covid 19 lockdown about a couple of weeks ago, but many people are still working from home. The CBD is still pretty empty during the day. It appears quite a few businesses intend to make working from home a permanent thing, for at least some of their staff, judging by general media comments.
There are no official surveys yet, but the numbers appear significant and a couple of large businesses have made official announcements. Could make some permanent difference to traffic volumes and reduced construction activity, so this is not insignificant for climate change.
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michael sweet at 19:26 PM on 12 June 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2020
The Guardian reported that new research dramatically increasing the assessment of how much economic damage extreme weather causes.
The original scientific article estimates the cost of Hurricane Harvey due to climate change was about $67 billion, about 3/4 of the total damage.
Thank you for all the hard work organizing this section Doug.
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James Charles at 17:16 PM on 12 June 2020Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 1 - the background
Is this the case?
“Michael G. O'Brien
James Charles
What has happened during the past 125K years is uplift of the ESAS clathrate deposits from their formation and safe zone 700 meters deep to 50 meters deep by mantle convection . At that depth when the ice is gone latent heat takes two years to start the chain reaction of methane runaway. They were not import last interglacial because they were safely deep enough then. “
www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/10221619560135827I emailed Prof. D. E. Archer and he was kind enough to reply.
"This doesn’t make much sense to me. Mantle convection does not move methane hydrate, because the hydrate is in the sediments on the crust, not in the mantle. There isn’t a chain reaction of melting; melting takes heat rather than giving it off, like regular ice.
hope this helps. "
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