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Alan Russell at 23:09 PM on 14 December 2019Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
Another thing that's important to note is the short life of methane in the atmosphere which tends to be misrepresented when GWP100 is used to represent its effects. If cattle herd sizes remain the same over the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere, they will maintain the same amount of additional methane in the atmosphere year on year (the amount of cattle in Europe and North America is lower than it was in the 1960's whilst India has fewer cattle than it did in the 1980s). In terms of their contribution to warming, this, in a very simplistic sense, is equivalent to a closed power station.
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takamura_senpai at 22:06 PM on 14 December 2019In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement
sorry for english
1. We need 1000 000 000 000 trees to ...... delay global warming on some years. What about realism?
2. We had several climat international agreements befor Paris, all positive result = ZERO. The same will be with Paris. For many reasons. (For example: how many % of authors here use a car? ...... And what we want from ........ ? ........)
3. Humans are absolutely egoistic. All this meetings, agreements useless. Even more. It looks like....some people spent many thousands tonnes of paper on appeals to save forests..... Did anybody calculate, how many CO2 was produced by ALL this climat fuss/rush? I think millions of tonnes.
4. Most and extraordinary efforts MUST be on solar, wind electricity and storage. We must spend hundreds of billions dollars every year on scientific developments. Now it looks like... this is the only real possibility/opportunity/chance to solve a problem.
5. Idea of "carbon markets" and "carbon credits" and ... is excellent. But reality..... enough USA China India Africa.
6. We have to speak NOT about sea level, but about forest fires, droughts, health, economic....locusts.... Forest fires produce smoke, enough to destroy health, even kill millions. -
richieb1234 at 19:10 PM on 14 December 2019Measuring Earth's energy imbalance
John Cook
Mesuring Earth's energy imbalance, 20 September 2009
This paper on Earth's energy balance is very interesting from a physicist's perspective. The paper and summary are from 2009, and the most recent comment is from 2015. Is there an up-to-date version of the Murphy et al paper?
Thanks in advance
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nigelj at 16:11 PM on 14 December 2019In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement
bozzza, sequestering carbon with trees is sure not as simple as it seems. There is however an interesting proposal to sequester carbon by growing trees in the Sahara desert and other deserts, using irrigation and desalinisation and nuclear power. It could obvious also be solar power. But given the increasing demands for timber, its hard for me to see enough discipline being found to make these the truly long growing forests needed to sequester carbon properly.
Cities don't need nuclear power as such. A 100% renewable power grid is possible, but the storage costs are horrendous right now and may not ever drop enough to be really good. But an 80% renewables grid plus some storage plus something like nuclear power or geothermal power is economically feasible and zero carbon. Some backgroundhere.
I don't know if Trumps believes his own words on climate change or not. Don't care, he will be gone next election or 4 years after that.
Free markets won't solve climate change. After 30 years free markets have achieved virtually nothing to fix the problem. The only significant progress has come from market interventions like wind power subsidies, government energy efficieny rules, cap and trade schemes ( notwithstanding their failings as mentioned) and carbon taxes, etc. History is not on Reagons side.
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John ONeill at 15:47 PM on 14 December 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
'Boiling water reactors with a full core of fuel rods will contain about 44 tonnes of zirconium.Pressurised water reactors will contain about 29.5 tonnes of zirconium...zirconium is the 20th most abundant element in the earth’s crust...There are good reserves of zircon sand in many countries including South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Australia, Ukraine, Peru, India, China and the United States.' World reserves are over a billion tons, and non-nuclear uses are about 15 percent.
https://www.reuters.com/article/zirconium-nuclear/factbox-nuclear-industry-and-zirconium-idUSLN78747920090423
With about forty tons per reactor every four years, and about 450 reactors making 4% of the world's energy, multiply by 25 to cover total world energy use, and the industry has about eight thousand years before it is forced to consider recycling, or using alternatives. ( Silicon carbide is considered a good option, but I'm not going to calculate when we'd run out of silicon and carbon.) As shown above, hafnium supply is included with zirconium - in fact, other users of hafnium rely on the nuclear industry for the difficult separation process, and would have much greater costs without it. Alternative materials for control rods include boron. 'Global proven boron mineral mining reserves exceed one billion metric tonnes, against a yearly production of about four million tonnes.' Rare earth elements such as europium are also used. They're not actually that rare, but they are difficult to separate from each other ( like zirconium and hafnium ), and they're often present in thorium ores. Thorium is classed as radioactive, which it is slightly, and therefore is difficult to get mining permits for. If it is eventually used as fuel - it's about five hundred times more abundant than uranium 235, with about the same energy content of 19,000 kwh per gram - more rare earths would be available as a by-product.
Zirconium is actually produced in reactors - it makes up about ten percent of fission products - but not in quantities worth processing. Other, much rarer, elements are also present, though. India is already looking at palladium, rhodium and ruthenium recovery. Some of these metals, which are very useful catalysts and alloying agents, are worth thousands of dollars a kilo. Reserves of rhodium in spent fuel will soon be greater than in ores, and some of those ores are in conflict zones in Zaire, where they are exploited by child labour to finance civil war. 'After 5 years cooling the specific activity of Rh obtained from nuclear fuels is less than a millicurie a gram, and after a few decades, irrelevant.' Technetium is an unstable element not found in nature, but its radioactivity is low - the half life is over 200,000 years, with emission of a low energy beta particle, an electron. Technetium is chemically almost identical to rhenium, which is essential for high-temperature alloys in turbine blades and the like, but Tc is about half as heavy.
Beryllium is not used in any current reactor, or in any presently being assessed for licensing in the USA or Canada, including proposed molten salt designs.
Abbot sees all sorts of problems in expanding an industry which already makes ten percent of the world's electricity - over fifty percent in some countries - but none of significance in moving from fossil fuels (85% of our energy) to his preferred option, concentrating solar ( about 0.01% ). The technology for CSP has been around for as long as nuclear, but the people who actually install power systems have ignored it.
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Mal Adapted at 14:29 PM on 14 December 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #48, 2019
nigelj @14:
Yeah maybe the intent in the name sceptical science was to fishook in a few climate sceptics. No big deal. Clever move.
That's part of the rationale for the name, and it has worked well for the purpose. OTOH, science is a centuries-long, worldwide collective enterprise by trained, disciplined, competitively skeptical individuals, who adopt Nullius in verba as a guiding principle. As nigelj well knows, soi disant "skeptics" of anthropogenic global warming are actually pseudo-skeptical, and are appropriately called AGW-deniers. For the most part, volunteer AGW-deniers are neither trained nor disciplined, and readily succumb to the Dunning-Kruger effect. They scorn the lopsided consensus of genuine experts, namely the international peer community of climate specialists; but gladly take the word of professional disinformers who obfuscate reality for hire, with or without scientific credentials. It's no surprise that a robust public deception industry has flourished, under savvy long-time reinvestment of a tiny fraction of annual fossil fuel profits. The persistent failure of the US to enact effective decarbonization policy is a positive ROI.
Many non-Americans find both our long history of truculent anti-intellectualism, and the vast power of fossil-carbon wealth over our politics, hard to fathom. Alas, they are realities confronting the world 8^(. FWIW, I apologize for my country, and I cling to hope we can somehow blunder our way to a carbon-neutral economy before it's too late for any economy at all!
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bozzza at 13:48 PM on 14 December 2019In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement
I love Trump aswell, btw- if you couldn't tell already, lol- but he is a liar about climate change. He knows perfectly well it's on like donkey kong as all the government agencies put it and if you're in the loop you know that is what they say.
His modus op. is that he doesn't have to be the guy.... FULL STOP MATE! He's pushing market forces and in the final event it IS what Reagan said!
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bozzza at 13:45 PM on 14 December 2019In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement
NijelJ, well said: planting trees is snoopy-loopy-land... he'll probably right a song about it and make money, lol,... it's that pathetic!
It's well acknowledged the big metropolises of the world need nuclear power to survive... none of this is news to anybody....
When the policy change thing looks to ripen things will get nasty and the boris johnson thing has pissed a lot of people off but I love boris... the trump 2020 election is coming and it's all a soft core burn really: the world will meet these challenges via the pathetic carping of necessary things we all knew twenty years ago. We have the know-how; all we need is the can-do attitude.
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michael sweet at 05:21 AM on 14 December 2019Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming
Ritchieb,
Strong hurricanes are not very common events. The USA is only about 3% of world surface area. You expect a lot of year to year variation in rare occurances measured over a small area. That includes periods of lower activity. The global trend is more very strong hurricanes (along with more weak hurricanes and less moderate hurricanes).
From your reference:
"The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has been extremely active both in terms of the strength of the tropical cyclones that have developed and the amount of storm activity that has occurred near the United States. This is even more notable as it comes at the end of an extended period of below normal U.S. hurricane activity, as no major (category 3 or higher) hurricanes made landfall from 2006 through 2016."
If the deniers are claiming that there are less strong hurricanes hitting the USA because of AGW (or whatever reason they propose) they have to also note the large damages in the past three years. I note that Hurricane Sandy was not a major hurricane when it hit New York and occured during the "Hurricane drought", along with other very damaging storms. I doubt that New Yorkers consider 2012 a "major hurricane free" year. In addition, hurricane forward speed has decreased worldwide causing much greater flooding (like Harvy, Barry and TS Imelda). That appears to be AGW linked.
Scientifically it is interesting to seek explainations for unusual events. Random chance is the best explaination for this issue.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:14 AM on 14 December 2019In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement
Building on nigelj's thoughts, which are relevant and accurate considerations of what is happening regarding Section 6.
Powerful people who try to unjustifiably benefit in harmful unsustainable ways will focus their efforts on the development of a few specific aspects of the rules skewed in their favour, worded the way they want.
If they fail to get the rule wording to be what they want, they shift their efforts to weakening the enforcement of the rules (like Trump just caused the end of the WTO court).
The unjustified wealthy and powerful who want to benefit more from delaying or diminishing the global efforts to rapidly end harmful, and ultimately unsustainable, fossil fuel use are likely very focused on crippling COP efforts to achieve that undeniably required objective for the future of humanity to be sustainable and improvable.
Examples of the unhelpful rules desired by people like those who want to benefit more from Alberta Oil Sands are:
- Making the reduction of emissions intensity a 'carbon credit that counts towards a nation's GHG reduction actions'. In that scam the total emissions of a developed nation can go up as long as they are a smaller ratio of GDP or there is a reduction per unit of Oil Sands produced.
- Allow existing forested areas to count as carbon credits against emissions. That scam allows fossil fuel emissions to continue as long as there are no changes to the amount of forests.
- A new one from the Canadian fossil fuel profiteers is getting carbon credits for increasing the export of natural gas. The claim is that it is better for people to burn natural gas than coal or oil so Canada should get the differential between coal or oil and natural gas for every unit of natural gas exported from Canada. It takes a very "Free Market Economic Mind" to come up with a claim and scam like that one.
The simple basis for anything in Section 6 has to be 'Certainty' that actions based on Section 6 effectively rapidly reduce the existing global rate of increase of ghg's. Economists are very slippery regarding proving that the system they support will actually do what they claim it will do. Their biggest fault is failing to accurately account for powerful wealthy people being willing to benefit from a harmful unsustainable activity, and being able to regionally temporarily harmfully powerfully resist being monitored and corrected.
Science will never be certain. But the need to rapidly end fossil fuel use has been a certainty for decades. And economic rules can be set up to be 'very close to certain' regarding the result. An extreme example would be rigorous global monitoring and swift severe penalties imposed regardless of claims of national sovereignty or personal freedom to believe and do as one wishes.
The main reason economic rules are not set up that way is the powerful resistance to correction of the powerful incorrect Status Quo winners (and the unjustified popularity of claims about Freedom to defend unjustified harmful actions).
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Daniel Bailey at 01:11 AM on 14 December 2019Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming
"a statistically significant downward trend since 1950, with the percentage of total Atlantic Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) expended over the continental U.S. at a series minimum during the recent drought period."
Current global ACE is 103% of normal.
Whats Up With That???
https://policlimate.com/tropical/
Denier blogs lie. Do not trust them.
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richieb1234 at 21:28 PM on 13 December 2019Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming
GPWayne
Thank you for the rebuttal regarding frequency of tropical storms. Could you please comment on this 2017 article [Truchelut, R.E. and Staehling, E.M. 2017. An energetic perspective on United States tropical cyclone landfall droughts. Geophysical Research Letters 44: 12,013-12,019.] which is cited by climate skeptic websites? It claims there was a drought of energetic hurricanes; i.e. hurricanes above a Cyclone Energy of 100 kt, from 2006 to 2015. It also claims "a statistically significant downward trend since 1950, with the percentage of total Atlantic Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) expended over the continental U.S. at a series minimum during the recent drought period." On the face of it, ACE sounds like a good measure of hurricane activity.
Thanks in advance for your response
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Joris Geelen at 19:08 PM on 13 December 2019Glaciers are growing
New data on glaciers:
Global glacier mass changes and their contributions to sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1071-0
"Present mass-loss rates indicate that glaciers could almost disappear in some mountain ranges in this century" -
Philippe Chantreau at 15:35 PM on 13 December 2019It's magnetic poles
Coal contains innumerable fossilized plant remains, such as this fern:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-fossil-fern-in-coal-shale-27765040.html
There is no question that all forms of coal are essentially fossilized plant material.
Hydrocarbons are chemical mixes of carbon and hydrogen.
Oil comes from fossilized algae, diatoms and zooplancton. Fossil fuels are named that for good reason. Brp 7312 nitpicking has no value.
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Eclectic at 11:48 AM on 13 December 2019It's magnetic poles
Brp7312 @6 ,
you seem to have restricted yourself to the first definition of "fossil" that you found by googling.
And just below that, on the same page, is the word's French & Latin origin, where "fossil" translates as something dug up. Which sounds a pretty good term for a hydrocarbon fuel which is dug up out of the ground. This also fits with the OED definition number 1.
Of course, even more futile nitpicking will indicate that the alcohol in vodka made from potatoes . . . must be a form of fossil fuel !!
And please don't make a pseudo-semantic attack on the "greenhouse effect" of GreenHouse Gasses [GHG's] . . . or why electric current does/doesn't flow from Positive to Negative.
Brp7312 , if you really wish to complain about the travesties of inappropriate word usage, then please go to the WUWT website and complain about their science-deniers calling themselves "skeptics" and "realists". Watt a Larf ! ;-)
Science-deniers and real skeptics are "magnetic poles apart" (which is the only phrase I could use, to link these past two posts to being on-topic ).
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Brp7312 at 10:14 AM on 13 December 2019It's magnetic poles
Daniel, hydrocarbons do not come from fossils. The definition of a fossil is
"the remains or impression of a prehistoric plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved in petrified form"
I am not disagreeing with the rest of your post, just the incorrect term fossil fuels. Hydrocarbons are neither an impression, petrified nor preserved. They are the degraded remains of organics.
Moderator Response:[DB] The term has been long accepted for use in communications to the public (here, here and here; many other references exist).
"Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons, primarily coal, fuel oil or natural gas, formed from the remains of dead plants and animals.
In common dialogue, the term fossil fuel also includes hydrocarbon-containing natural resources that are not derived from animal or plant sources."
[PS] Fossils fuels are however the remains of prehistoric plants and animals. The "fossil" bit is useful in distinquishing hydrocarbons from organic versus inorganic sources (eg mantle methane).
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thejean at 09:42 AM on 13 December 2019CO2 lags temperature
Hi Folks! Great site, learning Kt of CO2 info!
On this particular topic, I do have some questions regarding CO2 solubility. CO2 solubility decreases with increasing temperature, we all know that. We also know it's in equlibrium with the ocean and atmosphere. However, I can't find any solid data indicating the actual soluble CO2 levels in the ocean.
However, CO2 solubility is quite high and is above 300 ppm even at elevated temperatures. So, shouldn't our oceans be constantly absorbing CO2 and never truly be releasing it? I mean, a small temp rise would only release CO2 if we were at saturation (and I don't believe we are otherwise the pH of the ocean would be much lower). Also, once CO2 enters the ocean, it converts to carbonic acid and then bicarbonate (alkalinity). So, My understanding is that in order to release CO2 below saturation you decrease pH to convert bicarbonate to CO2 per the carbonate equilibrium.
I guess what I am trying to figure out is why the ocean would release CO2 when it's aqueous concentration is well below it's solubility limits for the temperatures we are looking at? I have modelled it and it seems I can easily get seawater to accept CO2 concentrations up to 1000 mg/L at ocean temps
This brings me to my next question which is why the oceans would offgas when the concentrations never exceed 300 ppm historically (within the timeframe that is being considered in the graphic at the top of this topic) and the delta T never increased more than 4degC?
Does anyone have a link to any good papers describing this in more detail with actual CO2 solubility charts and references to ocean pH and such? I have scoured the web and haven't found anything that I would be willing to take to the bank. I really want to understand better how this small temp rise would have been capable of releasing this much CO2 into the atmosphere) when most of this CO2 is almost immediately converted to bicarbonate and would require a substantial pH shift to drive it out of solution. I'm not syaing for a minute that this is not the case but clearly I am missing something and just want to learn...
Moderator Response:[PS] on short time frames (less than 800-1000 years), ocean/atmosphere chemistry is complicated. The OA is not OK series, starting here, takes you through the gritty detail. You are correct that oceans are currently absorbing CO2 (getting more acidic) and will continue to do so for hundreds of years.
Should also say that "The warming causes the oceans to release CO2" in article is simplistic. There are multiple CO2 reservoirs involved in ice-age cycle, especially asian wetlands and maybe clathrates. Determining the precise sources/sinks of CO2 is still an unconstrained problem as far as I am aware.
As always, the IPCC reports are a good summary and index into the literature. See Chp 6 of AR5 WG1, esp 6.2 forward
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Doug Bostrom at 07:55 AM on 13 December 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49, 2019
Thanks Jeff. Sadly due to mental fragmentation I twice found what I thought were author-supplied copies of the paper. Drawing a blank— have contacted IMBIE to see if they can cough an accepted submission version or whatever.
Moderator Response:Check your email
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BaerbelW at 07:12 AM on 13 December 2019Cranky Uncle crowdfunding campaign launches!
Just a little heads-up that the iPhone/iPad app will become a reality as the first goal of $15.000 was reached within a week! Here is John Cook's cartoon for the occasion:
Want to make the Android version available as well? Click here!
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Jeff T at 23:44 PM on 12 December 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49, 2019
The link below the Greenland headline leads to a paper about the Antarctic, not about Greenland.
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Eclectic at 20:24 PM on 12 December 2019It's cooling
Rtc1956 @313,
thank you for the reference to website "temperature.global"
. . . where a very strange global temperature chart is shown !
Whatever data processing/ manipulating/ cherry-picking they've done, they have somehow produced a chart which is divorced from reality.
Have a look at 2016 figures ~ global temperature (presumably some sort of average) is shown as varying by over 3 degreesC in the course of that year !!! How on earth that could happen, requires a Harry Potter explanation.
They claim they are using "unadjusted" METARS (weather stations at airports) collated by NOAA/NCDC . . . which would be very heavily weighted to Northern Hemisphere landmasses of course. Which would not represent an honest global picture. Yet they also claim to use buoy data (presumably oceanic) which might add some sort of Southern Hemisphere weighting . . . but that sounds funny too, in view of the colossal 3 degree fluctuation in 2016. None of it seems to make sense.
Rtc1950, it is IMO just someone playing silly burgers with selected data.
There are two other commonsense filters that can be applied :-
(A) If world temperature has been cooling (and recent years being persistently cool, according to that website's temp chart) . . . then we would be seeing an increase in world ice, and a lowering of global sea level. Which ain't in evidence.
(B) There would be massive headlines & news reports around the world . . . cheering millions celebrating in the streets . . . and Miss Greta Thunberg would be promptly demoted from her (just announced) front cover of Times Magazine as "Person of the Year for 2019" ;-)
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Rtc1956 at 18:07 PM on 12 December 2019It's cooling
I would be grateful for any information on a site called www.temperature.global.org which supposedly shows consistent cooling. Is their methodology flawed? Any thing I can use to counter what they publish would be appreciated.
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nigelj at 17:53 PM on 12 December 2019In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement
“As you go forward, the role of forests, soils, blue carbon, technological solutions [to removing CO2 from the atmosphere], those all come into play. But in the early stages this is about squeezing as much carbon as possible out of the global energy system.”
It's happening in reverse. In addition to the criticisms of emissions trading schemes in the article, all emissions trading schemes have done in New Zealand and probably elsewhere is mostly encourage tree planting because this is just easier than reducing emissions.
This is even worse because its of mostly plantation forests which are of very limited use to the climate problem.The pressure to cut down trees are far too large to ever put much reliance on forestry sinks. It should be the lowest priority thing. For gods sake, we have a population heading to ten billion people!
There is more potential in using regenerative agriculture to enhance soil sinks because the land is just sitting there, and probably high tech negative emissions solutions. But they are all mopping up solutions, and not as high priority as reducing emissions.
While in theory it souldn't matter which comes first, planting trees or reducing emissions, it does matter in the good old real world, because by delaying reducing emissions the task has now been made very hard politically requiring a faster ramping up of emissions reductions by a higher price on carbon, and its the one that hits the public hardest and is most visible.
IMHO the whole emissions trading concept deserves a great deal of scepticism. It sounds like a free market economists dream to me. NZ bought a whole lot of international carbon credits that turned out to be worthless and caused a scandal. Anything as bureaucratically complicated as an ETS doesn't inspire confidence. It's worse than a tax code.
Fortunately article 6 is voluntary.
It's all about electricity grids really. It always has been. Get this right and transport and industry is half solved. If electricity generation is not solved everything else is a fantasy dream. Any carbon sinks or the like will always be chasing emissions.
We have to have zero carbon electricity grids as the number one priority, using renewables or nuclear power or both, probably both. Government's have to bite the bullet and fund this directly or force it to happen or perhaps use a carbon tax. It's too late for messing around with emissions trading schemes, especially at global scale. That's my two cents worth.
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Daniel Bailey at 07:55 AM on 12 December 2019There is no consensus
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.522Further, 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.
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michael sweet at 05:35 AM on 12 December 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
Hefaistos and Eclectic,
Realclimate often reviews articles on the AMOC. The author's list of Hefaistos link was very long and of competent people.
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John Hartz at 05:01 AM on 12 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
OPOF@66: Way to go!
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:00 AM on 12 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz @57,
I tried to reduce my comment to the 250 word maximum recommended for Letters to the Editor of the NYTs. But the results end up being too incomplete, too open to misinterpretation, and too easy to unjustifiable counter-argue against.
In comment sections there is the ability to engage in a back and forth to clarify points made. There is no similar opportunity with Letters to the Editor.
So I sent a revision of my full comment to the Editorial Board as a concern regarding a couple of serious inaccuracies and omissions in the otherwise brilliant Opinion “The World Solved the Ozone Problem. It Can Solve Climate Change” produced by the Editorial Board of the NYT, for their consideration.
As I am not a paying subscriber to the NYTs, just one of the many free subscriptions based on giving them my email, so my comments may not get a lot of attention. But maybe.
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ERRATA at 01:52 AM on 12 December 2019There is no consensus
@Postkey
Are those peer-reviewed articles publicly available maybe?
And I also wonder if there is any conclusion (concensus) about how significant actually is AGW (what percentage of "global warming" is contributed to humans)?
Thanks!
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Eclectic at 18:10 PM on 11 December 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
Hefaistos, thank you for pointing out the Frajka-Williams et al. 2019 Review Article.
As a layman, I had last encountered the subject of AMOC speed, in the Bryden et al. 2005 (and later) paper . . . suggesting a 30% slowing over the period 1957~2004 (but they emphasized the uncertainties).
It is reassuring to see more extensive data, showing a high level of natural variability, with little or no trend over the past 24 years.
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Hefaistos at 15:23 PM on 11 December 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
The AMOC is slowing is disputed by new research. Seems that the AMOC slowdown has reversed, and that it has incredibly large variability.
Reported in paper "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: Observed Transport and Variability"
Eleanor Frajka-Williams, et al. 2019. Open source, link below."From first transbasin measurements retrieved at 26◦N by the RAPID array, a number of startling results have emerged (summarized in Srokosz and Bryden, 2015): that the AMOC ranged from 4 to 35 Sv over a single year, had a seasonal cycle with amplitude over 5 Sv, and that the dip in 2009/10 of 30% exceeded the range of interannual variability found in climate models. The international efforts to measure the AMOC in the Atlantic at a range of latitudes have delivered new understanding of AMOC variability, its structure and meridional coherence. In situ mooring arrays form the primary measurements of the large-scale meridional circulation,[/b]."
AMOC has been above its historic mean for the last 5 years or so, see attached graph.
Figure caption: FIGURE 6 | A time series of AMOC transport (MOCρ ) at the OVIDE section (eastern subpolar gyre: Portugal to Cape Farewell) for 1993–2017, constructed from altimetry and hydrography. The gray line is from altimetry combined with a time-mean of Argo velocities; the green curve is low-pass filtered using a 2-year running mean. The black curve is from altimetry and Argo. Red circles are estimates from OVIDE hydrography with associated errors given by the red lines. The mean of the gray curve is given by the black dashed line (Updated from Mercier et al., 2015).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00260/full
Moderator Response:[DB] Please limit image widths to 450 to avoid breaking the formatting of the page. Hyperlinked URL.
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michael sweet at 08:18 AM on 11 December 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
John ONeill,
Thank you for the information on how hafnium is obtained.
Unfortunately, that was not what we were discussing. Abbott 2012 (also linked in the OP), states that there are many rare elements used in the construction of nuclear plants that do not exist in enough quantity to build a lot of nuclear plants. The lack of these materials means that nuclear can never produce more than a very small (<5%) fraction of world power. Hafnium is one of several materials mentioned by Abbott (others list additional materials).
Unfortunately, zirconium is also one of the materials that cannot be obtained in quantity. Obviously you cannot purify hafnium from zirconium if not enough zirconium exists. (Alternately it does not matter if you have enough hafnium if you do not have enough zirconium).
In about 2005, nuclear supporters claimed that renewable energy could not be used to power the world because there was not enough concrete and steel to build the wind turbines. Renewable advocates responded with a peer reviewed paper (Jacobson 2009) which showed all the materials needed to build a renewable system existed except for rare earth metals for the turbines. The turbines have now been designed so that they do not use rare earth metals.
Abbott challanged the nuclear industry with13 problems building out a large amount of nuclear that he felt cannot be solved, The nuclear world has responded with answers like yours. No data and hand-waving suggestions to produce required materials from mines that do not exist.
If you want to answer the question: "Does enough hafnium exist to build out (amount of nuclear you want to build)" you need first to find out how much hafnium is in each reactor. Then you need to find out world hafnium production and consumption. Then you can determine if there is enoug hafnium left over from other uses to build out the nuclear plants.
Then you can do the same for zirconium and beryllium. Since there is only enough uranium in known economic reserves to provide all power to the world for 5 years you should probably only build out a small amount of nuclear or you will run out of uranium.
Nuclear supporters' constant use of the amount of materials in the Earth's crust indicates to me that they do not want to seriously answer the question. There is a gigantic amount of nickle in the Earth's core, a virtually unlimited amunt of helium in the Sun and billions of tons of uranium in the ocean. The problem is that it is not possible to economically obtain any of these materials.
In the Earth's crust some materials have formed economic deposits and are economically available. Others have not concentrated and are not economic to mine in quantity. You must provide information on proven reserves of materials like hafnium, zirconium and uranium to support the claim that enough of these materials exists. So far the nuclear industry, and nuclear supporters on line, have made no attempt to answer Abbott's questions.
Good luck.
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nigelj at 05:36 AM on 11 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz, apology accepted and appreciated. Not many people apologise these days so thanks. Not need to discuss the specific issue further. Were good.
I would just add that 'generally' in my experience half the problems and friction people have on the internet seem to be a result of misinterpretations. I know I misinterpret people sometimes, and sometimes its my fault for not reading carefully enough, and sometimes its their fault for lack of clarity, and sometimes it's a bit of both.
It's probably because we are dealing with complicated issues, but theres never enough time to really write with crystal calrity, and its harder to clarify things than in a verbal face to face conversation. Although that's no excuse really. It's important to define exactly what we mean and sometimes seek clarification before ploughing ahead.
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John Hartz at 02:19 AM on 11 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
nigelj@63: My apology. I misinterpreted what your wrote in your comment #50.
We're good.
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John ONeill at 21:11 PM on 10 December 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Regarding previous discussion on the scarcity of hafnium limiting nuclear power - hafnium is invariably present in zirconium ore, at about 1-3%. The two metals are so similar chemically that for most purposes this does not matter. However, the behaviour at the nuclear level is very different - while zirconium has a low neutron cross-section of 0.185 barns, that of hafnium is 104. So for nuclear uses, the hafnium must be separated out, or a 2% hafnium component would cause the zirconium fuel cladding to absorb over ten times as many valuable neutrons. Once separated, the hafnium is available for control rods, where its neutron appetite is a virtue, and it has the same strength and corrosion resistance as zirconium. There are thousands of fuel rods to only scores of control rods, so the real question should be, would a much larger nuclear industry run out of zirconium ? Since the elemental abundance of zirconium in the Earth's crust is about two orders of magnitude greater than that of uranium, and the mass of uranium in a fuel loading is much greater than the mass of the cladding, that is not credible. Further, if uranium supplies ran low, the industry would have to move to reprocessing spent fuel for plutonium. Since that involves cutting up and melting the used full rods, the zirconium would also become available for re-use. In any case, fast reactors, which get much better fuel mileage on plutonium, are more likely to have stainless steel cladding. Fast neutrons are less prone to parasitic absorption, and there are more of them per fission.
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Simple QED at 20:54 PM on 10 December 2019500 scientists refute the consensus
Carbon emissions as the cause of global warming claimed to explain the recent severe weather on the Earth may be misleading. Small Earth temperature increases, say 1 K per year, caused by carbon emissions are thought the cause of recent severe weather. Since 1 K temperature changes in a small room over a year are impossible to verify, yet the entire world seems to believe preposterous claim of temperature increases of 1 K over the entire Earth. Solar irradiation received by the Earth provides a scientific argument if solar heat is causing global warming. But solar irradiance data over the past century is relatively constant, and therefore variations in Sun temperature have been dismissed as the cause of global warming. Hence, carbon emissions producing the preposterous 1 K per year are by default considered the cause of global warming.
In this regard, it is more likely the sun temperature is changing by a small amount to cause the 1 K temperature - if in fact, the temperature increase per year is 1 K. Today, the sun temperature is 5800 K. Based on Black Body relations, the figure below shows the change in Earth temperature T above that for the Sun at 5800 K when the the sun temperature is higher or lower than 5800K. For example, if the sun temperature is 5820 K or 20 K higher than 5800 K, the Earth temperature is 1 degree K higher. Since it highly likely the sun temperature fluctuates more than 20 K during a year, global warming is more likely caused by the Sun than carbon emissions and is much greater than the 1 degree K per year claimed by scientists.
www.nanoqed.org/resources/2019/Warming.jpg
By the Black Body argument, a higher rise than 1 K in Earth temperature is occurring, but although more realistic than the small 1 K estimate also can never be verified. Regardless, the constancy of solar irradiance at the top of the upper atmosphere over time challenges the foregoing black body argument. It therefore appears the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere is thinning [1] to allow more solar UV and EUV radiation to reach and heat the lower atmosphere, the lower atmosphere actually controlling the weather on Earth. If so, the ozone layer may be of far greater importance than carbon emissions, but data to support this argument is lacking.
Time will tell if global warming by carbon emission or loss of ozone is correct. More research on thinning of the ozone layer is recommended.
[1] C. Jackman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “The Impact of Energetic Particle Precipitation on the Atmosphere,” presentation to the Workshop on the Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate, September 9, 2011.
Moderator Response:[PS] This little gish gallop is offtopic. Use this the search function (or the Arguments menu item) and comment on the relevant article after reading the article. On the measurability of a temperature change of 1K, please revise Law of Large Numbers and acquaint yourself of how temperature change is actually measured. Especially why anomalies rather than absolute temperature is used. This paper is a good place to start. Dont try complaining about measurability till you have reviewed this. Arguments about the sun go to "its the sun". Arguments that is ozone (really!) go here. Take a moment to think about what experiment would differentiate warming from change in CO2 versus that from some change in O3.
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nigelj at 11:34 AM on 10 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz @60 and 61, the quote you posted clearly implied junk science and industry obfustication posted in the media was at least "a reason" for the failure to make legislative progress, even although it was clearly not the only reason. Hence the rest of my comments. Or maybe we have crossed communication on it. Not a big issue anyway.
And yes the NYT article does vindicate my position. I have to crow about that a bit. "I told you so comes to mind!"
I agree probably only a small number of people read comments, and Im sure I read a study finding this somewhere, but I suspect sometimes those people can be influential. I prefer to apply the precautionary principle of applying pushback because we can't ever be certain about who reads what, plus I confess I quite enjoy the verbal fencing, plus what OPOF says about it. We dont all need to be doing it.
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One Planet Only Forever at 11:05 AM on 10 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz,
I am revising my comment @55 to be a Letter to the Editor at the NYT.
Regarding comments on News Sites. My own reason for reading and posting comments is to expand awareness and understanding to help better argue against the claims made-up by the people who are trying to excuse harmful unsustainable beliefs and actions.
I learn by reading comments from others. And I hope others learn from what I share.
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John Hartz at 09:19 AM on 10 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
nigelj & OFOP:
Score one for your side...
Comment threads can influence climate change attitudes by altering perceived consensus by Eric W Dolan, PsyPost, Dec 8, 2019
With the following caveats...
Over the decade, many MSM websites have eliminated comment threads from the materials posted on them.
I have yet to see any statisitcs about the number of people who actually read what is posted on commnt threads to climate-related articles other than those people who are posting comments. I personally belive there aren't that many.
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John Hartz at 09:08 AM on 10 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
nigelj@59: I am baffled by what you meant when you wrote:
John Hartz @54 thank's for the pertinent, sensible and interesting quote. But it said in part "This cascade of phony (climate) science was not the only reason legislation aimed at reducing carbon pollution foundered in Congress. " This is the exact sort of junk science and myths posted by denialists all over the internet, and yet you seem to think pushback is a waste of time, so I'm a bit baffled by that.
The sentnce that you have quoted in the above has a context. It is followed by these two sentnces...
As Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore discovered after signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, there was little enthusiasm in either party for a treaty that essentially required America and other industrial nations to do most of the heavy lifting while giving other big emitters, among them China and India, a far easier path. Still, industry’s relentless obfuscation played a big role, especially among Tea Party Republicans.
Do you take issue with them?
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Doug Bostrom at 12:51 PM on 9 December 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #48, 2019
Analogies don't function in the mind of folks bent on not understanding even as analogies are a very useful way of giving people a leg up on unfamiliar topics. Nor will this web site penetrate diamond-hard dogma.
Fortunately research tells us that the intractably intransigent are distinctly in the minority. :-)
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Doug Bostrom at 12:47 PM on 9 December 2019What would Bill Ruckelshaus do?
I had the privilege of speaking w/Bill Ruckelshaus earlier this year. Still sharp as a tack, perhaps even sharper— advancing age takes away a little of our patience for fools. Ruckelshaus had to deal with a lot of those in his time.
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scaddenp at 06:54 AM on 9 December 2019It's the sun
Deucarra, sailingfree - remember that outgoing must match incoming for conservation of energy. Perhaps need to look at how the Stephan-Bolzmann law is derived?
As it is, temperature is function of power. (T4 ~ to incoming energy flux), so the comparison is entirely valid. If energy flux changes, then surface temperature must change to maintain conservation of energy.
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nigelj at 05:52 AM on 9 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz @54 thank's for the pertinent, sensible and interesting quote. But it said in part "This cascade of phony (climate) science was not the only reason legislation aimed at reducing carbon pollution foundered in Congress. " This is the exact sort of junk science and myths posted by denialists all over the internet, and yet you seem to think pushback is a waste of time, so I'm a bit baffled by that.
Anyway, I think its its worth spending some limited time pushing back against climate denialists and debating with them, providing its done right. The "facts dont convince anyone" claim is a bit simplistic for me, and only really applies to hard core denialists, and its hard to know if someone is a hard core denialist. I would rather apply the precautionary principle, and apply some push back.
What matters is how we push back, because a lot of people do it badly and get lost in detail, and they get bad tempered. Often its best to be short and to the point with some key information of use to ordinary people, always with one internet link to a key document.
Many websites are unmoderated and denialists will just spam so you have to be careful not to get into long converstations that give them a platform to go on and on. You aren't ever going to get them to say "maybe you are right" so what you post is more for the general interest of everyone. Bear that in mind.
I engage in more length with denialists on this website sometimes, because the moderated format at least leads to vaguely useful and interesting discussion and they aren't allowed to sloganeer and spam.
But yes I agree with you that most of our efforts should go into promoting positive change and "doing stuff" and raising awareness, rather than worrying too much about the denialists.
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John Hartz at 05:48 AM on 9 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
As documented in this article, the fossil fuel industry continues its quest to shape the international response to man-made climate change. It's happening in real-time at the ongoing COP 25 conference in Madrid.
COP25 summit: fossil fuel groups accused of trying to influence climate talks, AFP/South China Morning Post, Dec 7, 2019
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John Hartz at 04:56 AM on 9 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
OPOF@55:
Thank you for challenging certain statements made in the New York Time's editorial. Suggest that you forward your commentary to the newspaper's Editorial Board — perhaps in the form of a Letter-the-Editor.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:37 AM on 9 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz @54,
A better story to tell regarding helpful leadership actions would be the Good Leadership actions by Responsible Conservatives in Australia to temporarily sacrifice their popularity by enacting undeniably helpful and sustainable gun control legislation.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:22 AM on 9 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz @54,
Your links continue to be enlightening. The NYTs Editorial is generally helpful. But it includes ways of telling the story that exposes a sinister reality about the storytelling in the USA (and many other supposedly more advanced nations).
One of those things is in the quote you chose to share from the article.
"As Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore discovered after signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, there was little enthusiasm in either party for a treaty that essentially required America and other industrial nations to do most of the heavy lifting while giving other big emitters, among them China and India, a far easier path."
That is an accurate presentation of the claims that were being made, and continue to be made. But it is an incomplete presentation and misrepresentation of what the Kyoto Protocol required and why it required it.
Everyone should seek out the original development documents, or at least read the final document. The details missed and misstated include:
- There is a debt owed by each nation for its history of contribution to the current day problem.
- Every human has equal right to be as harmful as every other human, a presentation of 'all people are equal' that leads to understanding that every nation has the right to increase its impacts to the same per-capita levels as other nations.
- The highest per-capita impacting nations need to lead the correction of ways of living by reducing their per-capita impacts, to set the upper limits for the less developed nations to develop up to.
- Since the end requirement is the ending of fossil fuel use it will be beneficial for the more developed nations to help the less developed nations develop more directly to sustainable activity, not follow the path of increased fossil fuel use followed by a need to undo or correct that development.
- The nations with the highest current day debt (due to total impacts to date) also owe the less impacting and less developed nations assistance in 'adapting' to climate change impacts already created.
- That means that the Sustainably Corrected future would have less perceptions of superiority and dominance by the current day "Winners of perceptions of Superiority".
That fuller understanding has been 'removed from discussion, maybe never introduced in the first place' by leadership in some of the supposedly more advanced nations, making them undeserving of being considered 'more advanced nations'. It makes them nations deserving ridicule for having developed misleading storytelling propaganda systems, and apparently not realizing that it has happened, all in pursuit of 'harmfully selfishly tribally trying to maintain and increase unsustainable perceptions of superiority relative to others'.
This is something that has been able to be understood for decades. Edward S. Herman (with Noam Chomsky) produced Manufacturing Consent in 1988 as a presentation of Herman's Propaganda Model (Movie of the same name made in 1992). And Alan MacLeod produced an update on Manufacturing Consent in the 2019 book Propaganda in the Information Age.
How stories get told and what stories get told matters (even News Reports and Science Publications are stories). And the harmfully correction resistant among the powerful understand that very well.
I appreciate that that is 'not a solution'. But any claimed solution that is not based on understanding the problem 'is not a sustainable solution'.
Another quote that exposes a sinister aspect of the way climate change stories get told is "Climate change, by contrast, has for a long time been seen as remote, something for future generations to worry about, and in polls has appeared far down on the list of voters’ concerns."
That misrepresents the unacceptability of acting to benefit today in a way that future generations cannot continue to enjoy (fossil fuels are non-renewable). And it dismissively brushes away any sense of guilt about causing harmful challenges that Others (the future generations) will end up having to deal with. It also highlights the grotesque unacceptability of basing Leadership action on Popularity and Profitability, especially in a socioeconomic-political system that is undeniably perverted by propaganda pressures to defend unsustainable developed perceptions of Superiority.
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John Hartz at 01:45 AM on 9 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
nigelj @50:
I encourage you and everyone following this comment thread to read:
The World Solved the Ozone Problem. It Can Solve Climate Change., Opinion by the Editorial Board, Sunday Review, New York Times, Dec 8, 2019
Particularly germane to our discussion is this paragraph:
Finally, despite predictable industry warnings of economic ruin, the efforts to protect the ozone layer and clean up the nation’s waters and air faced nowhere near the campaign of denial and disinformation mounted by Exxon Mobil and other big fossil fuel companies — companies that knew perfectly well what their products were doing to the atmosphere — to confuse the public about climate change and to derail serious attempts to address them. This cascade of phony science was not the only reason legislation aimed at reducing carbon pollution foundered in Congress. As Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore discovered after signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, there was little enthusiasm in either party for a treaty that essentially required America and other industrial nations to do most of the heavy lifting while giving other big emitters, among them China and India, a far easier path. Still, industry’s relentless obfuscation played a big role, especially among Tea Party Republicans.
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sailingfree at 13:45 PM on 8 December 2019It's the sun
deucarra @ 1278: You are quite correct.
I assume that others, as I do, "eyeball" the average incoming irradiation and compare it to the slope of the temperature curve.
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nigelj at 11:46 AM on 8 December 2019Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?
John Hartz @51
"The climate denier ranting and raving in the blogosphere have had very little impact on the real world."
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Plenty of ordinary people I know are sceptical about AGW climate science ,and they repeat the sort of slogans posted by denialists all over the internet, particlurly on blogs, so its fairly obvious where they get their information. It then spreads by word of mouth like an infection.
And some of these ordinary people are in positions of power to make changes, but they are being infected by the denialists.
Of course I dont think the impact of blogs is huge. Media articles by denialists probably have a bit more impact.
"The lobbyists employed by the fossil fuel industry and their allies and the campaign donations made by the fossil fuel industry and their allies have effectively prevented any worthwhile political action on climate change for decades."
This is a big part of it. The book Dark Money is relevant although I sus pect you have read it.
"BTW, I vigorously engaged climate deniers on the comment threads of media outlets and elsewhere for a few years before I realized that doing so was a waste of my time and energy."
I engage people with sceptical climate views for various reasons. Firstly there's always a chance some of them will change their minds. Even a few hard core denialists like Richard Mueller change their minds, although they are exceptions to the rule.
Do remember just because someone fights with you and never gives in on the internet, doesn't mean they aren't listening to what you say. People are reluctant to admit error, and change their minds openly in public, or admit you have a point, because its human nature.
However I have no illusions. Many denialists will be denialists for life even if sea level rose 20 metres.
Secondly I'm currently living alone, and I enjoy debates, and I get very bored with television. Thirdly debates here with denialists often raise some interesting issues. But its not for everyone. I totally respect people who don't wish to engage with denialists.
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