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Comments 8051 to 8100:

  1. On climate misinformation and accountability

    NoctambulantJoycean @11 - indeed, at one point Pielke described me as "some blogger without a PhD & never having worked in a university". The only accurate part of that description is 'without a PhD' (I have a Master's degree).  I'm an environmental scientist and climate journalist, and I worked for many years at UC Davis prior to graduating, including doing cosmology and astrochemistry research.  But I'm not going to get  in a pissing contest with Roger.  Whose PhD is in political science, for the record.

    There was another Tweet in which he belittled the whole SkS team in a rather inaccurate way, but I didn't find it in a quick search.

  2. On climate misinformation and accountability

    sailrick @ 8: while one would hope that would be a typo, it's not.  It's a quote from Judith Curry using a double-negative to suggest global warming had stopped.

  3. Why coal use must plummet this decade to keep global warming below 1.5C

    Coal doesn't have a chance.  The only question is whether or not it will decline in time.  With new solar and wind generation coming in cheeper than new coal generation the writing is on the wall.  The only remaining question was how do we store the energy to use it when it is needed.  The mega battery in Aus has answered that problem.  It is on track to return almost a third of it's capital cost in revenue in the first year of operation.  Economics is vastly more powerful than all of our articles and demonstrations.  What CEO would have the stupidity to advocate the installation of a coal powered power generation station now.  In fact in some places, it is less expensive to install wind and solar than to continue to use old coal power stations.

  4. On climate misinformation and accountability

    ajki... There is a very long list of tasks that those with coding skills have to do to keep up this site. I believe this one has been on the list for a long time but it's been a lower priority. Being that we were previously hacked there's a lot of effort that goes into ensuring that can't happen again.

    Roger is an interesting case on a lot of levels. He definitely agrees with all the existing science. He believes we need to be cutting emissions much faster than we currently are. But, he seems to continually present materials that minimizes climate impacts. 

    An example was a piece he did in a short stint he had work with the political website 538, where he claimed there was no correlation between climate and severe storm damage, kind of implying "so, what are we worried about?" 

    Lots of people hit the roof over that and eventually 538 asked leading expert Kerry Emanual to write up a piece explaining how Roger got it wrong.

    My point here is, he hasn't changed since 2013. If anything he's only become more angry. Similar with Judith Curry.

  5. Why coal use must plummet this decade to keep global warming below 1.5C

    Australia is world's biggest exporter of coal. The country is just preparing a new mammoth project.

    Take action! Stop Adani’s Carmichael coal and rail project!

    => https://www.marketforces.org.au/info/key-issues/theadanilist/

  6. CO2 effect is saturated

    dlen @582,

    The difficulty I have with this discussion is that it is attempting to provide an analogy for the GHG mechanism, something which can never be exact because if it were, it would be too complex when its puropse is to be simple to understand.

    You say "So the heat energy has to propagate via multiple absorptions to the top layer" with CO2 acting to "hamper this propagation process."
    This is not the best of wording. It is true that the planet sheds energy solely by radiation, something like 240Wm^-2 to be in equilibrium. Yet within the planet's energy flows, very little of this outward energy is 'propagated' from the net radiative energy flux from the surface. The surface is only radiating a net 60Wm^-2, of which 40Wm^-2 is the radiation passing through the "the transmission window" (so plays no part in the GHG mechanism) leaving just 20Wm^-2 which "has to propagate via multiple absorptions to the top layer."  Joining this surface radiative energy flux as it 'propagates' upward is 100Wm^-2 of convective and insensible heat transport from the surface as well as 80Wm^-2 from direct solar heating of the atmosphere to yield the full 200Wm^-2 being radiated from the atmosphere out into space. And in being able to radiate at atmospheric temperatures, CO2 does not "hamper" the process but instead assists it.

    Your fouth-last paragraph is entirely wrong. It is not the CO2 which warms the atmosphere (ie the troposphere) and determines its temperature profile. The temperature profile (lapse rate) is well balanced so as to hold convection back from running amok. (We would live in an interesting surface environment without this balance!!) The temperature profile (as opposed to the temperature) is certainly not determined by radiation.

    The planet surface and atmosphere does of course have to warm because an increase in CO2 results in it emitting into space from higher cooler parts of the atmosphere. While CO2 is well mixed up to perhaps 50km, the effective emission altitude for CO2 is nothing like that high - more like 10km. And while the whole climate system (up to the tropopause) will warm as a result of increased CO2 to allow the radiative balance to be restored, the flux within the CO2 waveband will still remain smaller than previously, while the flux elsewhere (where the effective emission altitude remains unaffected) will be greater.

  7. On climate misinformation and accountability

    #1: "... section ... looks very out of date ..."

    #1 has a point in that regard. It is true that a voluntary (free-time) approach can't keep the data up to date - but it appears to be an abandoned section.

    I've noticed this myself recently in a kind of "discussion" where a "pro nuclear" guy defended Mr. Pielke, Jr., against any sort of dis-/misinformation regarding "Climate Change". When I cited some items of the Pielke, Jr., section I noticed that everything there was dated far back. That itself isn't problematic - what has been said should be noted. But the question is if (e.g.) Mr. Pielke, Jr., did something in the mean time, what Nuccitelli/Cook said above could be done by someone who made erroneous claims in the past: s/he could have corrected her-/himself in the time since then. This may be unlikely or even absurd, but it can happen.

    So, when all db entries stopped after about 2013, how could I know if (e.g.) Mr. Pielke, Jr., distanced himself from public claims he made in the past? (In a way I can answer that myself: on SkS I would use the "search" for all contents regarding R. Pielke, Jr., and that way I could see more recent blog posts where the name is found - but blog posts on SkS don't have the scope of watching "denialists" correcting their false claims und so there may be no such posts)

  8. NoctambulantJoycean at 19:06 PM on 11 February 2020
    On climate misinformation and accountability

    Thanks for the compliment, Eclectic. I forgot to mention something else.

    Roger Pielke Jr. and Judith Curry also used another tactic: saying that SkepticalScience's writers have worse academic qualifications/credentials that the people they were criticizing. To that end, Curry wrote the following to Pielke Jr. about one of the misinformers SkepticalScience criticized:

    "It gets better . . . Kary Mullis is a Nobel Laureate
    https://skepticalscience.com/misinformers.php "
    [ https://twitter.com/curryja/status/1226225080092413952 ]

    For those of you who don't know: before he passed away, Kary Mullis was one of the best-known AIDS denialists, in addition to his spreading misinformation on climate science. Feel free to look up his views other topics as well.

    Curry mentioned Mullis in order to criticize SkepticalScience, but she inadvertently illustrated my point from my previous post: SkepticalScience justifiably debunks the views of misinformers, even misinformers who may have some credentials. In that respect, it's like other science communication groups that debunk AIDS denialists, young Earth creationists, anti-vaxxers / vaccine denialists, etc. I suspect David Gorski, Paul Offit, and Peter Hadfield would be proud.

  9. On climate misinformation and accountability

    Thanks, NoctambulantJ @9 ,

    it's always a pleasure to read your well-researched "broadsides" , whatever the forum.  Long may HMS Atomsk  keep firing !

    Master "Junior" is certainly in full whine, at present.  And one of his routine echo-chambers is recently re-cycling the Pause ~ in the form of "No sea level rise for 2 years".   Marvellous !

  10. NoctambulantJoycean at 16:38 PM on 11 February 2020
    On climate misinformation and accountability

    FYI, Roger Pielke Jr. misrepresents your post below:
    https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1226987527468240896

    This reminds me of the debates on "free speech" vs. "freeze peach", where various conservatives would act as if free speech / academic freedom entailed:

    - freedom from criticism (including harsh criticism),
    - no consequences for what one says,
    - the ability to say whatever nonsense they wanted in any forum and under the employment of any institution,
    etc.

    Of course, freedom of speech entails none of that.

    And by the flawed logic Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Jr. have been recently using, it's bullying when:

    - virologists make websites correcting Peter Duesberg's distortions,
    - doctors make websites correcting Andrew Wakefield's distortions,
    - biologists + astronomers make websites correcting Duane Gish's distortions

    These aren't just hypotheticals; they actually happened, and I've pointed them out to Pielke Jr. He, unsurprisingly, has no cogent response. For instance, the great website TalkOrigins has a list of creationists, and numerous pages debunking creationists' claims, including creationists with science degrees:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html
    http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

    By Pielke Jr.'s implausible logic, that makes TalkOrigins a malicious attempt to blacklist scientists, make them unhirable, chill academic freedom, and make TalkOrigins "arbiters of all science". That makes no sense; that's not the point of TalkOrigins. TalkOrigins is meant to correct creationist distortions for the purpose of educating the public.

    It might turn out that a young Earth creationist is unable to get hired to teach biology or astronomy, because prospective employers see the creationist's publicly-stated position being debunked on TalkOrigins. But that's fine, since one should be held accountable for what one says, when what one says is relevant to the position one is applying for. That's compatible with freedom of speech. Parallel point for people being unhirable based on their position being debunked on SkepticalScience, and their being listed on SkepticalScience misinformer's pages.

    And in case folks want another example: AIDSTruth + others have lists of AIDS denialists, and numerous pages debunking AIDS denialists' claims, including AIDS denialists with science/medical degrees. Is Pielke Jr. going to object to that to? Does he really not understand the important role websites like AIDSTruth, TalkOrigins, and SkepticalScience play in correcting denialist misinformation/disinformation?:

    https://www.aidstruth.org/new/denialism/denialists/
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1949841/
    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2015.00193/full

  11. On climate misinformation and accountability

    John Cook
    There seems to be a typo here  - "no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped" 
    I think you ment has stopped

  12. On climate misinformation and accountability

    @3

    "an accurate quote ... removed from the context of what he's saying" is merely Propagada 101. All the best deniers use that technique constantly. In particular, McKittrick uses that method almost exclusively and thinks he's fooling people. He may be right in a few cases.

  13. On climate misinformation and accountability

    BillWalker @5 ,

    there's likely some simple explanation for Watts and Morano being missing from the list.

    Probably they've exceeded their quota for falsehoods & disinformation . . . and the counter needs a manual reset.

    We could ask the Washington Post  to keep tab on them ~ but I suspect the WaPo is much too busy keeping a tab on Someone Else's falsehoods [currently showing over 15,000].   How does the WaPo keep up?!    ;-)

  14. On climate misinformation and accountability

    I hadn't seen the "Misinformation by Source" page before.  Nice!  I'm surprised to find Anthony Watts and Marc Morano missing from the list, though.

  15. On climate misinformation and accountability

    Welp... I should have finished reading your entire comment before I commented. :-)

  16. On climate misinformation and accountability

    BillyJoe... Actually, I believe that is an accurate quote from Gavin, but it's removed from the context of what he's saying. The quote, as I know it, comes from this TED Talk. You'll get what he means if you watch the talk.

  17. On climate misinformation and accountability

    Talk about Gavin Schmidt and cherry-pickin' climate deniers, I recently had a exchange with a cherry-pickin' climate denier who cherry-picked the following Gavin Schmidt quote:

    "Models are not right or wrong; they're always wrong"

    Of course, Gavin Schmidt did say that, but the climate denier misunderstood, either deliberately or out of ignorance, the meaning of that quote:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong

    And, of course, Gavin Schmidt is an expert on climate models and a trustworthy source of information on climate change, despite the implication of that cherry-picked quote that was taken out of thecontext of his TED Talk which was in support of climate models:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrJJxn-gCdo

  18. On climate misinformation and accountability

    The section "Climate Misinformation by Source" looks very out of date with the most recent entries being from 2013, and some not updated since 2009. Perhaps the misinformers just recycle all their old arguments endlessly and haven't come up with any new arguments since 2013? A couple of the entries are actually blank. Also, have there been no new misinformers since 2013? Just asking because I don't know, although, off-hand, I can't think of any not included in the existing list.

  19. CO2 effect is saturated

    Dlen @582 , I am puzzled by what you say in your fourth-to-last paragraph.

    Surely, regardless of the number of "frosted glass panes", the power arriving (upwards) at the top must always be the same*  and equal to the solar heat entering the system (the system being the sub-TOA system i.e. the planet minus the stratosphere).

    Of course, the same*  will be very slightly more - or less - according to whether the planet is cooling or warming in transition to a new equilibrium surface temperature.

  20. CO2 effect is saturated

    @ 580 and 581.

    First thx for investing thought about it, which may make things clearer.

    I would like to refer to the reference to Angströms experiment in the first part of the "advanced debunking". Not all outgoing IR is absorbed, there is this absorption window (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174548/) . But a certain IR band is absorbed by CO2, and for this band, the absorption lenght is in the order of magnitude of some meters at sea level. This is what I meant with "saturated". 

    BTW, this is the first point of the myth, which is actually not true, as stated above, because only the IR outside the transmission window will be absorbed.

    So the heat energy has to propagate via multiple absorptions to the top layer. You are right, insofar having more CO2 molecules will already hamper this propagation process. My image for this is a stack of frosted glass, each representing one absorption length. The IR will be absorbed and re-emitted in all directions by each pane. To add CO2 means then to add a lot more of those panes. And those will increase the ratio between input and output power. 

    I have my difficulties with the statement, that the increase of the CO2 concentration pushes the emission layer up, where it is colder, where therefore less heat will be emitted. For me it's the other way around: because more "frosted glass panes" alias absorption lengths are stacked within the atmosphere, we have less power arriving at the top and therefore its temperature will be lower.

    This - the lower top atmosphere temperature - is only the case as long as the earth is still warming up. In a new equilibrium, a couple of years after we hopefully managed to keep the CO2-level steady, the top atmosphere will be as warm as before, because it will emit exactly all incoming power. Only of course the surface temperature will be much higher than before. 

    With the word "complex", I tried to express a certain diffuse discontent with the explanation above. It has actually not explained, how in earth the heat, having been absorbed in the first meter or so, manages to reach the top layer in 50 km or so height nonetheless. Only if we give this explanation, we can make the effect of the additional absorption plausible. 

    The water metaphor is not bad, but it is a boundary - and conservation-of-energy argument. To use the actual propagation mechanism between the boundaries  would imho more enlightening.

  21. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Thanks, Moderator @13 , for the sockpuppet notification.

    I won't ask which rather puerile puppeteer it was.   Being an optimist at heart, when I see a comment containing undertones of passive-aggression & deliberate fatuousness . . . I nevertheless think there's a 20% chance the comment comes from a clumsily laconic innocent.  In this case, perhaps closer to a 10% chance, though !

  22. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    I've been keeping an eye on the increasing rise in global tempature, and decided to do a bit of investigating after Antartica's new record of 65 degrees. Little did I expect to stumble upon such researched conversation, and better yet, the intellectual slamming nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes. Reading through this banter made my day, and has left me more educated about our collective crisis. You may see my contribution to this thread as a waste, and I don't care, but for your average Joe the comparison to Atomic bombs helps put things into perspective. In case your were curious about the opinion of a "lesser" mind. 

  23. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Franklefkin @11 , to add to MA Rodger's comment :-

    the moderator was not referring to the ocean temperature rise, but to the heating (from global warming) of the ocean.

    You were incorrect ~ in stating that the instruments could not determine a small temperature change (such as the 0.09 figure you yourself nominated).  Was this the point you wish to dispute?

    The ocean covers 70% of the planetary surface, and has an average depth of around 4,000 meters.  The ocean is warming, but not uniformly from 0.1 meter down to 4,000 meters of depth.  Therefore there is little point in trying to specify an average oceanic temperature rise in degrees per year or per decade.  OHC (ocean heat content) is the logical measurement.  Was this another point you wish to dispute?  

    "Metrology" arguments would belong in a different thread than this one.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] You make sage points, but the user to which you are responding is a sock puppet and has thus recused itself from further participation here.

  24. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    franklefkin @11,

    You ask for "the actual temp rise of the oceans per decade" having been told-off for suggesting @5 that some unspecified "it" was warming at "~0.09 C/decade" adding that this rate was "less than the capability of the instruments to differentiate." Note that your definition of ocean temperature here is still not complete.

    According to NOAA data, global SST has been rising at +0.13ºC/decade, a value evidently within "the capability of the instruments to differentiate."

    Mind, the usual quantity which those suffering denial over AGW seem to enjoy bandying-about is the average increase in temperature for the entirety of the ocean's waters. That is a simple calculation. By taking the 0-2000m dOHC as representative of the entire ocean (again a value evidently within "the capability of the instruments to differentiate."), over the last 5 years we get +107 ZJperDecade /(1.4e21kg x 4200J/ºC) = +0.02ºC/decade.

  25. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Mod response @# 5

    You say I am incorrect, yet fail to state what you feel (or what you determine credible sources state) the actual temp rise of the oceans per decade is!

    What is it?

  26. It's cooling

    Recommended supplermental rearding:

    Claims of a coming 30-year “mini ice age” are not supported by science, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Feb 6, 2020

  27. 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6

    I hope this is on topic. The news roundup seems to refer to (amoung other topics) the fossil fuel industry. Otherwise, please point me to an approriate thread.

    I would like to share this link to an article (in German) on undercover journalism. They talked to EIKE, a German outfit and in particular the Heartland Institute. The journalists claimed to be representatives of a German car copmany, wanting to donate € 500 000 anomously to influence public opinion. James Taylor, head of HI, explained in detail, how this would work, how you could buy statements and complete studies from experts and scientists, push buzz words on youtube, etc. He also pointed out that it would be much better to donate the money to them rather than EIKE. Even though EIKE and HI cooperate a lot. Not above stiffing their partner!

    Link Correctiv

    I might have suspected such obnoxious behavior. But knowing it, is something different.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Thank you for your post. The comment threads of both the Weekly News Roundup and of the Weekly digest effectively function as open threads. 

  28. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    eschwarzbach @9,

    Yes, although I think it is "would be" rather than "could be".

    The definitions of Climate Forcing tend not to help in respect of AGW as they describe a Forcing as the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere. So this NOAA webpage says "The difference between incoming and outgoing radiation is known as a planet’s radiative forcing (RF)." Such a definition is fine if it concerns a one-off event. But when it is an on-going process like AGW, it becomes confusing as the TOA energy imbalance will never match the total applied Forcing as the climate will be reacting to the imbalance before it is fully applied.

  29. IPCC global warming projections were wrong

    My spell checker keeps changing your handle bjchip.  Sorry.

  30. IPCC global warming projections were wrong

    I am very sorry I misspelled your handle Virgil.

  31. IPCC global warming projections were wrong

    Bishop,

    Thank you for your insightful comment.  All the OP's on SkS are written by volunteers.  You could write an updated OP and submit it.  Be sure to cite where you get the updated data from.

  32. IPCC global warming projections were wrong

    I understand that the graph from the IPCC "is what it was" but it does not reflect the current temperature record and it is NOW being used to claim that the model projections were wrong.  

    Yes I know that anyone who believes that is being foolish but for those "skeptics" who actually refer to this site,  such things can be weaponized.   I suggest we keep the original and then show it with the current added in. 

  33. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Sorry for the terrible typo Hohnson/Johnson. Thanks MA Rodger @4 for the explanation and providing the pdf of Cheng´s et al 2020 paper, describing the accelerating Earths heating from 0.38 W m^-2 over the last 60 years to 1.2 W m^-2 in the last 5 years and the large hike in 2019 (table 1). Am I right, that the total forcing is just a "could be" in absence of extra energy leaking out into space due to a hotter globe?

  34. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Ed Leaver @6 ,

    I am appalled at your suggestion.

    Surely you were meaning to say <FestivusTreeLights>   [for Seinfeld fans]

  35. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Franklefkin @5 ,

    Yay !    0.09 C/decade sounds good.  Or even 0.14 C/decade . . . or maybe 0.20 C/decade  (depending on which decade you wish to ignore).

    Trouble is, the pesky ole planet - a.k.a. the real physical world - keeps on responding to the increasing heat, rather than to the kitchen-thermometer figure showing on the cupboard door.   World ice keeps melting, world sea level keeps rising . . . gosh, it's almost enough to make ordinary folks think we got ourselves a real problem!

    Easier to go with the parable of the frog in the warming pot of water ~  just hang around, eyes closed, saying nothing . . . until we croak    ;-)

  36. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Color me old, but I prefer units of <ChristmasTreeLights>/<square meter>. Easier to visualize. 1.2W/m^2 is roughly 10 mini incandesent lights per square meter of land — UL won't let us string them over water — or nearly one of the older 5 W bulbs we so fondly remember. Countinuous, 24/7, throughout the year.

    The problem with Hiros/second is they're so effervescent. That, and they are used by many of the No Nukes! contigent to simultaneously whip up anti-nuclear power sentiment, and consquent excuse to frack more gas and burn more coal.

    So I stick with ChistmasTrees/m^2. They're a constant reminder and are carbon neutral.   

  37. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    "...compares to the energy in Hurricane Sandy, or 6.0 magnitude earthquakes, or Big Bens full of dynamite, or millions of lightning bolts."

     

    Why not keep it simple, in degrees C.  So it is ~0.09 C/decade, less than the capability of the instruments to differentiate.

     

    Moderator Response:

    [DB]  "So it is ~0.09 C/decade, less than the capability of the instruments to differentiate"

    Incorrect.  Couple with the power of large numbers and using mathematical averaging, Scientists have quantified the warming caused by human activities since preindustrial times and compared that to natural temperature forcings.

    Changes in the sun's output falling on the Earth from 1750-2011 are about 0.05 Watts/meter squared.

    By comparison, human activities from 1750-2011 warm the Earth by about 2.83 Watts/meter squared (AR5, WG1, Chapter 8, section 8.3.2, p. 676).

    What this means is that the warming driven by the GHGs coming from the human burning of fossil fuels since 1750 is over 50 times greater than the slight extra warming coming from the Sun itself over that same time interval.

    https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/#fig-2-3

    In the early 20th century human activities caused about one-third of the observed warming and most of the rest was due to low volcanic activity. Since about 1950 it's all humans and their activities.

    https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0555.1
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.522

    Further, the detection of the human fingerprint in the observed tropospheric warming caused by the increase in atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases like CO2 has reached 6-sigma levels of accuracy.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0424-x

    Please cite credible for sources for claims running counter to the published science.  Thanks!

  38. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    eschwarzbach @2,

    Like Eclectoic @3, I presuime you meant to cite Johnson, Lyman & Loeb (2016) 'Improving estimates of Earth's energy imbalance' [full text] who do estimate the global energy imbalance 2005-15 as being "0.71±0.10 W m^-2" (which I calculate as 4 Hiroshima's/second). The OP cites Cheng et al (2020) which puts the annual increase in ocean heat content (the bulk of global warming due to the imbalance is ocean warming) for 2015-19 at 19ZJ = 1.2 Wm^-2.

    The net global forcing is a different number of which the energy imbalance is but a part. Additional to the imbalance is the extra energy leaking out into space because the globe is now hotter than it was pre-industrial. If the warming-so-far is 1ºC, and ECS=3ºC for a doubling of CO2 (3.7Wm^-2), the climate forcing required to support that 1ºC warming would be 0.8Wm^-2. From this, using Cheng et al, we can infer a net global forcing of roughly 2Wm^-2.

    Of course, the difficulty with directly assessing the value of net forcing is the negative component. The positive component is relatively exact with NOAA's AGGI standing at 3Wm^-2 (2015-18) suggesting a negative forcing of roughly 1Wm^-2.

  39. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    Eschwarzbach @2 ,

    Please please please be careful to avoid typo errors in critical information ~ such as the scientific author's name.  From your own moniker, I assumed the author might be German or Scandinavian but I eventually circled back to the common English name Johnson.  And a great host of papers.

    I did find a  Johnson et al, 2016 ~ with planetary energy connection.  But no Extract.  Can you supply the paper's Extract for the readers here?  Thanks.

  40. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    No doubt, the Earth is warming. But the number of Hiroshima bombs per second is uncertain. Most recent estimates of Earths energy imbalance is approx. 0.7 W/m2 (Hohnson et al. 2016), while the sum of all positive and negative forcings is in most papers, even Wikipedia, somewhere at 2 W/m2 or more. I have no idea, which figure is right or more reliable. Can anybody help me?

  41. Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5, 2020

    Thanks for that link, Nigel. 

  42. Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second

    You could always change it to xyz tons of gun powder exploding per second. This would be an impressively huge number.

  43. One Planet Only Forever at 14:34 PM on 6 February 2020
    Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5, 2020

    Here is news coverage of a study report prepared for the UK Government.

    Climate change: Clean tech 'won't solve warming in time', by Roger Harrabin, BBC News, February 6, 2020.

    The basic point is that a thoughtful evaluation has concluded that technological developments are unlikely to develop in time for the UK to meet its legal requirement to be Carbon-Neutral by 2050.

    My understanding has been that a while ago global leadership in the 'supposedly most advanced nations' negligently passed the point in time where their aggressive encouragement of development of the required alternatives to fossil fuels had a chance of meeting the long established 'understood to be harmful but reasonably safe impact limit of 1.5 C'.

    That irresponsible leadership has tried to declare that 2.0 C would be OK and that technological developments would 'be the solution'. They likely did it because the alternative was 'less popular' and certainly 'less profitable for the status quo'.

    Reality Bites:

    • !.5 C impacts remains understood to be harmful to the future of humanity, but a reasonably safe limit of impacts.
    • Even if all of the 'supposedly most advanced nations' matched the UK commitment to be carbon-neutral by 2050, and all the developing nations committed to rapidly transition their development so that their carbon-neutral moments were shortly after 2050, and collectively the responsible advancement of prosperity of the poor effectively reduced birth rates, the total global impact could still exceed the 1.5 C impact limit (and potentially exceed the much more harmful 2.0 C level of impacts), especially if the higher impacting portion of the current generation was allowed to resist rapidly reducing their elective enjoyment consumption - continuing unnecessary CO2 impacting consumption that they enjoy, actions claimed to be 'so essential to the happier and easier living of the population that enjoys it that it is justified to be continued to the detriment of all future generations of humanity until a cheaper and easier less harmful way of getting that Joy is developed.
  44. One Planet Only Forever at 03:21 AM on 6 February 2020
    With the En-ROADS climate simulator, you can build your own solutions to global warming

    ilfark2 @15,

    The required correction of what has developed includes 'ending all burning of fossil fuels', not just transitioning the major fossil fuel uses to alternatives. That requires changing the behaviours of 'everyone'.

    You still provide no basis for claiming that Carbon Taxes cannot be a helpful part of the actions taken to rapidly eliminate the production of excess CO2. As a disruptive challenge to dispute your claim, an immediate imposition of a $2000 per tonne carbon tax would cause incredibly significant and rapid disruptions of the developed status quo. It appears you are not discussing the effectiveness of an action. You are discussing the 'Popular support for what can be done'.

    Backing down from the 'very disruptive' immediate $2000 per tonne tax, a high and steadily increasing carbon tax that is rebated to the middle income earning and poorer portion of the population is likely to be a very effective 'disruption' of the status quo that motivates changes of 'everyone's behaviour'. And all of the economic evaluations of the expected results of 'only using a carbon tax' prove that a Price on Carbon would be helpful.

    What can be claimed is that a portion of humanity have incorrectly developed the belief that taxes are bad. And those people are also likely to believe that government motivation and restriction of activity is as bad or worse. Therefore, those opposed to the benefit of taxes would also likely oppose the idea that government intervention could be Good.

    I personally believe that the competitive marketplace can be a very effective mechanism for encouraging the development of new ideas and sorting the effectiveness, incorporating regional differences. The following are harmfully missing from the developed systems:

    • screening to effectively keep harmful unsustainable alternatives from being allowed to compete (they are cheaper and easier to do which gives them a competitive advantage), including screening of activity that has already developed popularity and profitability.
    • effective efforts to ensure that misleading marketing fails to impress people. Expanded awareness and improved understanding applied to help develop sustainable improvements needs to govern all actions.

    The corrective actions I see being required to be used along with helpful evaluation tools like En-ROADS include Government Restrictions on harmful unsustainable activities, including actions to terminate developed but unsustainable activity and actions to make misleading marketing undesirable and unsuccessful. And Government can implement generic incentives for helpful corrections and new sustainable developments. That governing to encourage helpful sustainable developments and limiting of what is allowed, including tax penalties as a method of correction, should be the limit of government in the marketplace but also be required actions of government in the marketplace.

    Government should not be 'the mechanism for identifying the better choices among potential helpful new developments'. Government action towards specific alternatives should only be the expansion of awareness and understanding required to determine what to disqualify because it is a harmful unsustainable alternative.

    Carbon taxes will undeniably be helpful regardless of what type of leadership is in power. Government efforts to direct economic changes could fail to be helpful, and with the wrong type of people in the positions of leadership it can be very harmful.

  45. Why is the Keeling curve so curvy?

    The maxim I learned is "Spring comes in May in Siberia" to explain the shapes of the wiggles.  Because yes, the two hemispheres have opposite cycles, but the land masses in the northern hemisphere dominate, and the bulk of Siberia dominates the whole.

  46. Why is the Keeling curve so curvy?

    Very nice explanation of the Keeling Curve John and why our seemingly insignificant CO2 emissions matter.

  47. 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5

    Yes good on Mann. Its about time the scientific community was just a little bit more, whats the word, pointedly critical of the denialists, but in a humorous way.

    What intrigued me is when he said "Im not relying on evidence". Bet he didn't mean for that to slip out. Bit of a freudian slip perhaps.

    Someone should have asked him what he was relying on. Fairy dust perhaps.

  48. Startups aim to pay farmers to bury carbon pollution in soil

    Indigo's goal is to sequester all the legacy carbon in the atmosphere in a matter of a few decades. They have gone through serval fundraising rounds and last I heard the two biggest investors were the Dubai sovereign fund and the Alaska permanent fund, both are outlets for oil money.

  49. Startups aim to pay farmers to bury carbon pollution in soil

    So Indigo agriculture subsidises farmers to use regnerative farming. Does anyone know who funds indigo agriculture? 

    20% of yearly emissions sequestered sounds good.

  50. With the En-ROADS climate simulator, you can build your own solutions to global warming

    not sure where i got the 60% from,

    but IEA, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from.php,

    notes 45% of US CO2 emission is from petroleum (which would include lots of trucks that should be trains, i imagine)

    In the past all large transformations occurred from either massive government or popular (or both) intervention.

    Taxes and subsidies sometimes played a role, but only a very minimal, marginal role. Best e.g. I know of is the centrally planned US WWII mobilization. Taxes and subsidies played a part, but they were not used in conjunction with a market.

    If you plan to use taxes and subsidies in conjunction with markets, it will take 50 to 100 years.

    A large part of this is capitalist systems become captured by first movers. Rail, coal, steel, autos, financials, media, web, software have all demonstrated this repeatedly. That's why we still have 19th century technology heat engines for transport.

    At this point to get to 0 emissions in a timely fashion, we will have to have planned resource allocation.

    Ideally we'd do it democratically. More likely it would be sort of representatively democratic or even more likely done the way whoever ends up in charge of it thinks it should go (like the US WWII mobilization).

    In any case, taxes and subsidies will play a small, if any part.

    Otherwise we'll bumble along as we are for a while until things get bad enough for somebody to block enough sun with SO2 to trigger snowball earth...

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Link activated.

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