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nigelj at 18:03 PM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
I find the video a bit short of detail and long on promoting Climate Adam. Perhaps it's because in getting old and grumpy. Perhaps the video targets young people quite well. But it's probably not going to be a hit with conservative leaning denialists.
But one way or the other, whats really needed is a more in depth discussion on tipping points because most people will want a couple of examples and an explanation. Scaddenps references look good and are valuable, but are the other extreme and very technical.
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scaddenp at 12:13 PM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Matt, try this reference for a starting point (2636 citations) and the follow up reference. I am not that fond of the term "tipping point". This article points to what I think are problematic issues with its use.
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nigelj at 12:04 PM on 18 October 2019Canada's ClimateData Web Portal: Normal Science, Not Fake
"Are Blacklock's Reporter et al. honestly confused about the difference between weather and climate, and the complexities of climate computer modelling, or are they just trying to use that complexity to confuse their readers?"
Probably the later. These people obviously aren't morons, in the main. We are talking about deliberate ignorance. When your income or ideology depends on not knowing, you will sometimes not want to know. The trouble is the deliberate ignorance mindset eventually becomes real ignorance, and maybe kills brain cells!
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markpittsusa at 08:37 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Doug - Thanks that makes a lot of sense. By the way, my own opinion is that tipping points are the "real" issue. Could you (or other readers), provide any references on this topic?
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Wol at 08:33 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Sorry, but I couldn't watch beyond the 50 second point
This infantile approach turns me off in a big way - just as does the disruption to peoples' lives that E. Rebellion is causing.
Small children might be briefly entertained by this video, but treating adults who might be persuaded of the cause like infants is counterproductive.
Those "funny" preflight videos do the same thing - they MIGHT (not, actually, in my case) have people watch them but the message is lost in the flimflam.
The stark message "If you inflate your lifejacket BEFORE exiting the aircraft, you will not be able to get to the exit and you WILL drown" may not make for pleasant listening, but has a better chance of being understood than just sitting there wondering how much the airline paid for the actors and bands.
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Doug Bostrom at 07:43 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
OK that's an arguably fair point, Mark.
Adam mentions permafrost loss and hence CH4 emissions, loss of albedo from reduced ice cover, and loss of forest productivity and the CO2 capture associated with that.
Those are three positive feedbacks which (we're told by experts) may plausibly end up being self-driving and self-cementing.
Now, it's not Adam's intention or style to inform readers by reciting facts and figures; those are available elsewhere. His intention and style is to build audience engagement, clearly with the objective of conveying a very broad-brush sense of the topics he's covering and presumably igniting some curiosity and concern about the overall problem of climate change.
But Adam might well include a list of references for the concepts he treats, as part of the content at the end of his pieces.
Why not write him and suggest that?
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markpittsusa at 07:28 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Excuse me, comment was meant for bozzz.
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markpittsusa at 07:27 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Doug - Thanks for your reply, but I don't understand your comment.
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bozzza at 07:23 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Mark, a system always wins. Now, what were you saying about science again?
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markpittsusa at 07:15 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Doug - Sorry but I didn't notice any "facts being conveyed."
Facts include discussions about probabilities, discontinuities, historical precedents, and generally, what scientists have to say about tipping points.
Endless discussions about what "could" happen are useless. We "could" all die from a meteor collision and not have to worry about climate change.
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bozzza at 07:15 AM on 18 October 2019Canada's ClimateData Web Portal: Normal Science, Not Fake
Fake news isn't new: capitalism essentially runs on it yet the higher ideal still seems to triumph!
The laws we live our lives by allow fake news by making public companies prioritise the shareholder.... It has been said that the first line of defence is a moral law: so, after all that being said, "Houston, do we or do we not have a problem?"
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markpittsusa at 07:08 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Is this what skepticalscience.com calls “science?” (No wonder there are so many science deniers - in fact, sign me up.)
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Doug Bostrom at 07:07 AM on 18 October 2019Tipping Points: Could the climate collapse?
Strip away the humor and it's a training film, Mark. We need training to deal with an emerging situation. And without that humor we find no problem with the facts being conveyed, right?
Search Youtube for "humorous training film" and you'll find scads. Humor captures and maintains attention for many folks, making things that are dull or too scary palatable.
For an excellent and fun example, see this article about Southwest Airlines and how they use humor to make cabin briefings into engaging entertaiment while conveying important information— hence being more effective. :-)
Southwest’s plan to conquer the airline industry, one joke at a time
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bozzza at 06:59 AM on 18 October 2019Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2019
Snoopy, have you got a reference for your allegation?
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bozzza at 06:58 AM on 18 October 2019Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2019
According to Danas latest article the ice loss in Antarctica has trebled over the last decade...
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bozzza at 06:21 AM on 18 October 2019Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Vacnol: volcanoes are like pimples: irrelevant...and that is exactly how the scientists in this field view the matter !
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nigelj at 05:57 AM on 18 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
The Resplandy paper was found to have some statistical errors and was retracted, to be revised and republished in another journal (I'm not sure if that's happened). The authors talk about it all here. However the errors don't invalidate the warming found, just that the level of uncertainty is higher than they first thought. A storm in a tea cup by the denialists.
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Eclectic at 05:35 AM on 18 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
Robincollins @5 ,
as far as I can make out, there's no real controversy.
There was a "Resplandy" scientific paper [Resplandy L.] published 11 months ago, about overall ocean warming. The paper showed a novel & clever method of assessing ocean changes via oxygen/CO2 alterations. Almost immediately, it was heavily criticized mathematically by statistician Nic Lewis ~ who pointed out that the warming conclusions were based on statistical figures which were much too fuzzy to be acceptably useful. The paper's authors acknowledged that criticism . . . and in the slow passage of time, the paper eventually got retracted officially . . . just now in late 2019.
Possibly, Resplandy & co-authors might be able to re-do their study using more data ~ but it may be that their new "alternative approach" (which I applaud as novel & clever) is unlikely to be as accurate as the conventional buoy-based thermometers. Thermometers which demonstrate the ongoing warming of the ocean.
As usual, the propaganda from GWPF, WUWT, etcetera, is trying to give the impression (by blaring headlines) that there is a new problem. But if you look deeper than the headlines of contrarian blogs, then you find that the mountain shrivels to a molehill.
A second minor point, was that a recent IPCC assessment had used (or at least cited) the discredited Resplandy paper as a source (alongside a hundred separate papers used). AFAIK at first glance, this was a typo by the IPCC ~ and referred to the wrong Resplandy paper (it should have been a different Resplandy paper). Either way, the IPCC's assessment still stands.
Again, that seems to be a giant beat-up by the "denialists". Who keep trying to turn a blind eye to the overall evidence.
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robincollins at 02:00 AM on 18 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
Hi, I wonder if someone can comment on the controversy over the retracted report and the "Cheng Perspective" on oceans warming. See, for instance: https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2019/10/14/retracted-ocean-warming-paper-the-ipcc/
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hedron at 03:32 AM on 17 October 2019Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
I wouldn't call it ambiguous. I'd call it lying. It's still not explained why a self-descibed scientific publication would knowingly publish a falsehood. It seems to me, given the deflection tactics used to rebut my observation, that it was intended to deceive, which is the literal definition of a lie.
Moderator Response:[DB] You are welcome to your opinions. When those opinions extend to personal attacks/ad hominems, they are unwelcome here (review the Comments Policy for details). If you are of the opinion that a particular article or point within an article is erroneous, the burden of proof is incumbent on you to cite credible sources as to why the particular points are wrong and what a more accurate text would look like.
Sloganeering/personal attacks snipped.
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Eclectic at 21:29 PM on 16 October 2019Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2019
Sorry ~ my apologies to Snoopy, but I misquoted Rignot et al.
The Antarctic ice loss is more than ten times bigger than I said.
( 2009--2017 ice loss is about 250 cubic kilometers per year. )
I was looking at the Antarctic ice loss acceleration rate !
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MA Rodger at 21:27 PM on 16 October 2019How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2019
Sequoia512 @8,
I think your numbers are a little out.
Over the last couple of decades, Greenland has been indeed losing somewhere in the order of a billion tonnes of ice a day but that is a net figure. The gross figure for ice loss (ie ignoring the gain from snowfall) is about five-times higher.
Your 100,000 years to melt half of the Greenland ice sheet at a rate of 1Gt/day would put the size of the ice sheet at 73,000,000 Gt. The ice sheet is considerably smaller at 2,850,000 Gt.
You ask why the Eemian was so hot? There is an SkS post addrssing that very subject here. The peak of the Eemian is reckoned to have had a "global mean annual surface temperatures ... warmer than pre-industrial by about 1° to 2°C." So today's global temperatures are not greatly different, and of course we are still warming. The last ice age did follow from the Eemian interglacial but that did require high-latitude Northern temperatures to drop from the peak Eemian, while we are going the other way so not any chance of an ice age arriving wiht AGW running as it does.
The thorium reactors are an interesting concept. Yet, while there are many projects around the world investigating the technology (including the Norwegian Thor project you mention), it has severe technological hurdles to clear. Note the link on that Thor webpage that says:-
Put simply, thorium-based reactors are still not economically viable for the most part. ... The result is, that at least for now, thorium reactors are unlikely to gain the upper hand over uranium oxide reactors. It’s possible that thorium reactors could become more dominant in the future, but a lot of work will have to be done to get to that point.
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Eclectic at 20:52 PM on 16 October 2019Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2019
Snoopy @2 ,
Antarctic ice loss has averaged about 13 cubic kilometers per year since 2001 , but has accelerated in the past 10 years. (Still quite small ~ under 10% of the ice loss from Greenland.)
Source: Rignot et al., 2019 (Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences)
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Snoopy at 20:03 PM on 16 October 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
I am not a scientist but would somebody explain to me how a gas that consists of 400 parts per million is going to heat the other 9600 parts per million in any significant way and why would one of the other green house gases water vapor not have a much greater effect.
Moderator Response:[TD] See "How substances in trace amounts an cause large effects."
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Snoopy at 19:59 PM on 16 October 2019Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2019
And why dont you tell us what is happening in the Antarctic where the Ice is increasing
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Sequoia512 at 15:48 PM on 16 October 2019How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2019
Nobody denies that the temperatures have increased since the Little Ice Age, thank god. However I feel you are a little overboard. Even if the Greenland ice sheet lost 1 billion tons a day everyday. Then never got snow again it would take over 100000 years to melt half the sheet. we will be back in full glaciation long before then. It was much warmer in the Emian interglacial and glaciation returned. Which brings up a point why was the Emian so hot?
Want to get climate change under control look to Thor. It is a Thorium test reactor in Norway. It uses thorium. Mox pellet rods in a conventional light water reactor. They are working on using depleted uranium as the neutron source to make Thorium fizz. This would use up most of our nuclear waste within 100 years. Quit killing birds with windmills. Also solar panels are highly toxic to decommission.
Moderator Response:[TD] See "What does past climate change tell us about global warming?"
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nigelj at 11:27 AM on 16 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
"Misleading title, there is nothing skeptical here with all that about carbon dioxide levels causing climate change."
Read the full title.
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Daniel Bailey at 09:26 AM on 16 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
"there is nothing skeptical here with all that about carbon dioxide levels causing climate change"
That the climate changed naturally before the impacts of humans became the dominant forcing of climate is uncontentious.
That the impacts of human activities are now the dominant forcing of climate is equally uncontentious, from a scientific basis.
Scientists (the actual skeptics) have evaluated all natural forcings and factors capable of driving the Earth's climate to change, including the slow, long-term changes in the Earth’s movement around the Sun (Milankovitch cycles or orbital forcings), and it is only when the anthropogenic forcing is included that the observed and ongoing warming since 1750 can be explained.
Natural vs Anthropogenic Climate Forcings, per the NCA4, Volume 2, in 2018:
Scientists have also 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.
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.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0424-x
There have been many, many scientific studies over the past 175 years examining the properties of greenhouse gases, the radiative physics of carbon dioxide and the role it plays in the Earth’s atmosphere. One of the most comprehensive, recent and openly-accessible is the US 4th National Climate Assessment (Volume 1, released in 2017 and Volume 2, released in 2018). You can download the whole thing or by chapter:
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/downloads/https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/downloads/FAQ’s:
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/appendix-5/#section-1In short, human activities (primarily via the human burning of fossil fuels) have warmed the globe, which in turn are impacting the Earth’s climate.
Please demonstrate actual skepticism by reading the furnished sources before replying. -
cobrwst12 at 08:47 AM on 16 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
Misleading title, there is nothing skeptical here with all that about carbon dioxide levels causing climate change.
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william5331 at 05:16 AM on 16 October 2019Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks
Although a little harder to understand, perhaps we should be reporting the decreased alkalinity in sea water rather than the change of pH.
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ilfark2 at 01:47 AM on 16 October 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40, 2019
At this point we don't know how much time we have before the climate disrupts the weather system to the point of crop then societal then general collapse. Some of this year’s weather suggests it could happen sooner than later.
The fastest way to re-organize societies would likely be WWII fashion mobilizations... hopefully done in a democratic (certainly more democratic than WWII were done) way.
Likely the most important part of such an effort would be to identify what is materially needed (I'd argue food, shelter, healthcare, education, community), and how to ensure everyone gets this using the least number of joules possible.
Yes this implies, especially in the USA, ceasing useless activities like moving millions of 2 — 6 ton pieces of steel on particle producing synthetic rubber in a circle everyday. If people insist on continuing their materially needless Financisphere activities, at least do them via computer and convert all those offices to housing.
Even keeping a market system, we could arrange for walking cities, more efficient buildings, cradle to grave products (make planned obsolescence illegal)… of course this would likely require banning corporations (as other societies have done in the past) and/or making a very strong referee.Easier, convert to a rational society whose goal (Graeber’s idea) is to make good people. i.e., the sort of people you’d like you and yours to be. That leads to a society that produces food, shelter, healthcare, education and community. Considering our current production capabilities, we’d end up with lots of people staying in school, doing research and having a very short occupation week. Real life examples are Mondragon, Catalonia of the 1930s, Zapatistas, Rojava (not for much longer though) and many worker owned and operated production communities throughout the world.
Either way, keeping a market system or transitioning to a rational society, discount rates wouldn’t come into it.
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Why the 97% climate consensus is important
Jay1988 - One of the major delaying tactic of the tobacco industry, copied by lobbyists for fossil fuel interests (in many cases the very same people and lobbying groups moving to the next customer) is manufactured dissent, claiming that because of varying scientific opinions (usually by quoting a very small number of dubious papers) that 'sound science' requires yet more study, and yet more study, not action.
The studies on the scientific consensus are simply an answer to that false claim and delaying tactic - showing that the vast majority of scientists who can be expected to know the subject conclude that AGW is happening, and has impacts. And since one of the most successful strategies for the non-specialist is to look at the conclusions of the experts, that has a significant impact on public opinion and policy.
For that very reason the climate denialists get very very upset by proven consensus. And spin all kinds of bovine excrement in attempts to cloud and confuse the issue...
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RedBaron at 21:57 PM on 15 October 2019Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Hedron,
I wouldn't call it false. I would call it ambiguous.
We are adding to the short carbon cycle with fossil fuels and habitat biomass losses. We have also reduced the capacity for natural biological systems to mitigate CO2 levels by those same habitat losses with their resulting loss of ecosystem function.
Yes there are some humans striving to do the opposite, but as noted above, in most countries that % is a very tiny decidedly inconsequential minority.
We could change that. I am an advocate that we change that. Humans are just as capable of habitat restoration as they are for habitat degradation. Farming in particular does indeed have methods for every crop and food type that can sequester massive carbon in the soils of the world.[1]
But the approximately <3% doing that sort of farming right now isn't enough to matter. It's like the exception that proves the rule right now.
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Cedders at 18:28 PM on 15 October 2019Antarctica is gaining ice
Comment 475 and its references are very helpful. Comment 452 is undoubtedly spam!
Zwally (2015) is still doing the rounds on social media, although there seems to have been much research reconciling it since. I also found the Scambos & Shuman comment, Martin‐Español et al (2017) (press release here), IMBIE (2018) highlighting the possible range of East Antarctica loss or gain, and then a couple for 2019 not directly linked in these comments so far:
- Shepherd, Gilbert, Muir, Konrad, McMillan, Slater, Briggs, Sundal, Hogg, Engdahl: Trends in Antarctic Ice Sheet Elevation and Mass, Geophysical Research Letters, 2019, DOI: 10.1029/2019GL082182
- data and animation here
- Eurekalert press
- Rignot, Mouginot, Scheuchl, van den Broeke, van Wessem, Morlighem: Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–2017, PNAS 2019 116 (4) 1095-1103. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1812883116
The Scientific American article "What to Believe in Antarctica’s Great Ice Debate" by Shannon Hall says 'Most scientists agree that East Antarctica—unlike its western counterpart—is gaining mass in the form of snowfall or ice'. I notice that Shepherd et al agrees with that (East Antarctica subtracting 1.1 ± 0.4mm sea level rise since 1992), but Rignot at al says E Antarctica has contributed 4.4 ± 0.9 mm in the same period. All the above agree that Antarctica as a whole is losing mass (mostly from glacier flow into the sea), but one study says three times more than the other.
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hedron at 10:08 AM on 15 October 2019Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
The point being is that it's a false statement. The average is completely irrelevant. I assume that that fact simply slipped the authors mind when he wrote that. But now that, I assume, the author is aware of that error. I don't know why a website that bases itself on science would leave a false statement up.
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zooplankton at 09:53 AM on 15 October 2019CO2 is just a trace gas
For this topic, the arguments I see from friends revolve around "it's only .04% of the atmosphere". I'd like a simplified argument for them related to how thick the troposphere is and how small the air molecules are.
I don't know how to do this, but perhaps one of you can...
If we look at the "million parts" of air as a single layer of molecules, how thick would it be on average?
Given the avaerage size of the molecules, if they are in one layer, what would be the area of that layer?
(there would have to be some assumptions on air pressue and humidity, changing air pressure with altitude, and the vacuum space between molecules I presume).
So the result I'm looking for is something like
"based on [assuptions specified], a single layer of air molecules would be on average xx nanometers thick, and cover an area of y.yy sq meters. In the ~12km of tropshere a photon would have to travel through zzz million (billion?) layers. So while the trace concentrations are low, travelling through zzz million layers over a 12km thickness drastically increases the possibility of encountering CO2 molecules."
It's kind of like the visability you experience on a clear day vrs a rainy (or smoggy, or foggy) day. Over a short distance, I can see my hand fine, over a longer distance my visibility is reduced even though the percentage of raindrops in the air is low, and I cant see islands/mountains which are only kms away.
Am I making any sense?
(another angle would be to have a single stack of air molecules 12km high... how many would there be?)
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Eclectic at 09:32 AM on 15 October 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JamesKL , I am not clear whether you are meaning average temperature for daytime, for nighttime, or for a strict average over the 24 hour day. Then there are the monthly or seasonal averages (or for "annual average" ~ which is almost a meaningless concept for temperate regions).
Speaking generally, deserts are "pale" (high albedo = high reflection of sunlight energy) . . . and rainforests are dark, low albedo regions, which absorb more sunlight energy ~ nevertheless much of their temperature difference comes from the cooling effect of evaporation from vegetation. And for deserts at night, the dryness of the land & air means more heat is lost to space.
Thermometer temperatures are one thing. But humans' sensation of regional temperature will be perceived according to the extremes of daytime highs and overnight lows, and we tend not to notice those periods when it's "comfortable". As you know, a high-humidity "hot" day (or night) will be felt as hotter.
I would imagine that the town of Adrar is quite pleasant, part of each day at least! Except when the weather produces heat wave conditions
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JamesKL at 05:05 AM on 15 October 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Eclectic - The Gobi desert is high in attitude, so will be colder.
I have found three places at similar latitudes, with average annual temperatures:
Midway Atol (Pacific Ocean): 28 °N, 22 °C
Taipei, Taiwan: 25 °N, 22 °C
Adrar, Algeria: 27 °N, 24 °C
Despite Adrar being at a slight altitude (258m), and a very dry climate compared to the other two, its the average temperature is higher! I can not think of anything related to prevaling winds cooling Taipei or Midway Atol which have humid climates.
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Tom Dayton at 04:02 AM on 15 October 2019Why the 97% climate consensus is important
Naomi Oreskes has a new book coming out next week: "Why Trust Science?" She was interviewed on Science Friday a few days ago; the audio is available for free. A major message in her interview was that science always has included consensus as a core feature.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:48 AM on 15 October 2019Why the 97% climate consensus is important
You do have this wrong Jay. The non-existing lack of agreement in the science community has been touted by deniers as an argument about the fragility of the science. Then, of course, when it is shown that there is strong agreement, they launch other arguments some similar to yours, or others about forced conformism, or any other crap they can think of, because they are dishonest. And when one attempt to do a clean-cut, obvious explanation, a storm of obfuscation ensues. There is no good way to argue against bad faith.
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Jay1988 at 22:58 PM on 14 October 2019Why the 97% climate consensus is important
I May have this wrong, because I got lost a little in the verbos nature of the article, but how is this anything other than a push for an appeal to authority fallacy? Your argument is, and again correct me if I'm wrong, that the most important part of a antiglobal warming argument is that You can tell any detractor that "the scientific community agrees with me". Shouldn't your main focus be on making the argument as clean cut and obvious as possible? Shouldn't you be focused on educating people about all of the misconceptions that they already have? isn't it more important that people understand that you can generate a greater amount of oxygen from a field of grass than you can from the same acreage of rainforest? Or maybe pushing the politicians to quit lying to the citizens and admit that a switch to nuclear would drastically lower carbon footprint a in a much more realistic fashion than any of these "green new deal" jokes?
Maybe I'm just completely on my own with this thought process, but maybe people would take climate change more seriously if you didn't have so many figure heads for your argument being self-serving individuals that have no problem ignoring the actual problems as long as it gets them more notarity?
Just some ideas
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richieb1234 at 20:20 PM on 14 October 2019It's the sun
MA Rodger, Tom Dayton and Moderator
Thanks for the thorough responses to my question about the medieval maximum. Anyone not using this website is missing out on a treasure trove of information and assistance.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:28 PM on 14 October 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
As william says, changing how money influences politics is part of the required corrections.
A more important action is limiting the ability of people to benefit from misleading marketing (and not just in politics). That would govern or limit the 'influence of money' in a helpful way regarding many issues.
The lack of correction of the direction of development through the past 30 years has made the problem worse. The required actions to achieve the 1.5 C impact limit are now major corrections of incorrectly developed perceptions of status, all because of harmful self interest not being responsibly governed and limited by caring.
Self Interest is one of many human thought and action drivers. Caring to not create negative impacts on others is another human thought and action driver.
And the ability to learn and develop new actions that will result in a better future appears to be uniquely human, and sets humanity apart from impulsive-animal-like competitive barbarism.
So, for humanity to have a sustainable improving future it appears that higher status needs to be limited to those humans who have higher degrees of Caring governing their self interest drivers. And the highest level leaders (the most influential, in business, political or story-telling), need to overwhelmingly care that their actions and the actions of those that they lead/influence do not negatively affect any others, especially the future generations.
The challenge for the future of humanity is to get every leader to strive to improve awareness and understanding and apply that learning to achieve and improve on the Sustainable Development Goals. Any higher status person who is not doing that should rapidly significantly lose perceptions of status.
Just one leader being able to maintain undeserved status can taint and corrupt a massive portion of the leaders, or at least seriously set back progress towards a sustainable improving future for humanity.
In a nut shell, the threats to the future of humanity are any region or business that is able to maintain Self Interested leadership that is opposed to the corrections required by Caring about the future of humanity. Their unethical competitive advantage over Others (and there is undeniably a competitive advantage for those who do not lead the required energy corrections), can enable those people to unethically over-power those who care.
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nigelj at 09:21 AM on 14 October 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
Regarding this concept of the fragility of modern civilisation. This is just my take: Western countries with their technology and complex societies have become very adept at dealing with natural disasters, but it's within a predictable range of extremes and cycles. The problem is climate change is changing this at a significant pace. Our societies while efficient and adaptable to short term crises, don't respond so well to negative changes that are new and longer than a couple of years (eg the great depression of the 1930's that lasted ten years, and also the dust bowl problem of that period in America). A changing climate could cause some form of breakdown to our societies that is hard to get out of.
It would then depend how fast people could learn to adapt and become self sufficient, a difficult thing for urban dwellers living in apartment dwellings so dependent on other people for all their needs.
Poor, agricultural based societies are not good at dealing with natural disasters , but would likely survive better in an extreme climate change scenario because they know how to live a simple life. But their economic development will stop in its tracks and could well go backwards.
Carbon tax seems the way to go, but will be a hard sell in the USA because taxes are ideologically toxic in this country. Perhaps government infrastructure programmes would be politically more viable.
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Daniel Bailey at 09:00 AM on 14 October 2019Greenland was warmer in 1940
It's much warmer now in Greenland than it was during the 1930's.
Let's look at that comparison graphically:
Antarctica is not part of the topic of this post.
For the interested reader, more info on Greenland historical temperatures are here.
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Daniel Bailey at 08:53 AM on 14 October 2019The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
In response to your question about the timing of the next potential glacial phase inception, here's what the AR5, WG1, Chapter 5 has to say about that:
"It is virtually certain that orbital forcing will be unable to trigger widespread glaciation during the next 1000 years. Paleoclimate records indicate that, for orbital configurations close to the present one, glacial inceptions only occurred for atmospheric CO2 concentrations significantly lower than pre-industrial levels. Climate models simulate no glacial inception during the next 50,000 years if CO2 concentrations remain above 300 ppm. {5.8.3, Box 6.2}"
Further:
"Even in the absence of human perturbations no substantial build-up of ice sheets would occur within the next several thousand years and that the current interglacial would probably last for another 50,000 years. However, moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years....under natural conditions alone the Earth system would be expected to remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time"
Looking beyond that, research has found that the ability to offset the next 5 glacial phase inceptions lies within the purview of humans:
"Our research shows why atmospheric CO2 will not return to pre-industrial levels after we stop burning fossil fuels. It shows that it if we use up all known fossil fuels it doesn't matter at what rate we burn them.
The result would be the same if we burned them at present rates or at more moderate rates; we would still get the same eventual ice-age-prevention result."
And
"Burning all recoverable fossil fuels could lead to avoidance of the next five ice ages."
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bjchip at 08:47 AM on 14 October 2019Greenland was warmer in 1940
It is now 2019. We would do well to discuss this.
How much did Greenland actually melt in the 1930's and how much of that was happening at the same time as melting/warming in the Antarctic?
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CO2 is good at 08:31 AM on 14 October 2019The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
How much CO2 will we have to keep emitting to keep glaciation at bay for the next 10k years?
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steve501 at 06:33 AM on 14 October 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
In order to rapidly replace fossil fuels we should cosider using GHG energy to power our civilization.The same energy source that heats our planet can be used to replace our existing dirty energy sources.
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william5331 at 04:53 AM on 14 October 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
Doesn't it seem a little foolish to be talking about removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when we are still subsidizing fossil fuel companies. We will continue to do so as long as the election of politicians depends on money from these same fossil fuel companies. Make this illegal and perhaps, just perhaps, the politicians could be pursuaded to stop these subsidies and we would pick up the pace of transition to renewables. Already wind and solar are more economic than fossil fuel.
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