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nigelj at 06:23 AM on 14 September 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #36, 2019
Grid reliability with renewables is a non issue that can be easily resolved. More and more renewables will push the system to the limits, which means storage will be required, such as battery storage or pumped hydro, and if the economics of this are problematic at scale, nuclear power can provide some of the storage function by providing stable baseload at moderate cost (not that I'm much of a nuclear power fan, but its an option) or limited use of gas fired for emergency shortages like DC says. The point is we have options going forwards.
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Doug Bostrom at 02:06 AM on 14 September 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #36, 2019
"...our species will survive but never again at todays advanced level."
In the developed world we sit at the apex of a very fragile pyramid, our tap-and-swipe Eloi indolence supported by a spindly web of free market optimization. Earlier this year a 13 minute unscheduled power outage in Japan caused multi-month stoppage of some 1/3 of the world's NAND flash memory production, this manufacturing being highly concentrated, lacking redudancy but also extremely sensitive to disruptions.
One way to pitch fossil fuel preservation to folks who can't or won't understand its other problems might be to pitch it as a robust and easily exploited backup energy source for the case of another "Carrington Event." Ideally combustion of fossil fuels would be an exceptional activity, reserved for cases of emergency need.
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prove we are smart at 17:38 PM on 13 September 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #36, 2019
I often wonder what have we got to lose? If we reduce our reliance on fossil fuel use,everyone and the environment will benefit..if we continue with fossil fuel use and catastrophic postive feedback loops develop with no way to stop them getting worse, why take that chance? The status quo has to change or were dooming ourselves along with our currently rapidly accelerating 6th extinction event. I think our species will survive but never again at todays advanced level..
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prove we are smart at 17:19 PM on 13 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
The bogus claims from these hundred+ climate denier scientists ..Is it too simplistic/harmful to name and shame in a BIG way these 2% ...
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prove we are smart at 17:05 PM on 13 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Mal Adapted @ 8 & 10, an interesting discussion accompanying those 2 charts and how best to understand them , thanks for the links. A quote from Mark Twain i use on my signature from another forum seems applicable here.." Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness ".
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:02 PM on 13 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
nigelj@11,
One of the most grossly inaccurate assumptions made by the likes of Nordhaus is the belief that perceptions of prosperity and success that are based on unsustainable actions harmful to the future of humanity (not just fossil fuels), can continue and improve.
GDP per-capita has increased significantly yet desperate-poverty still exists. And one of the twisted stories about poverty is that a self-sufficient farm family is counted as being in poverty, but a city slum-exister earning $3 a day is not in poverty. And any perceptions of poverty reduction that are the result of fossil fuel use are likely not sustainable.
Humanity's economic history cannot be continued. Resource depletion and accumulating negative impacts require corrective constraints on economic activity. What has been developed is already recognized as unsustainable. It is like a Stock Market or Housing Market bubble. It is destined toward a Pop and Correction.
And if it is dealt with like past bubbles (just letting things get sorted out in the business and political marketplaces of popularity and profit), the expected result is a bigger more harmful boom than necessary and massive resistance to the corrections required to minimize how harmful the system is in(to) the future.
How many less fortunate people will suffer horribly, and how many undeserving more fortunate people will become even more fortunate, is all a matter of the objectives of the developed socioeconomic-political systems. Currently those systems are not governed by the objective of improving awareness and understanding to achieve a sustainable improving future for humanity. And any evaluation based on the fairy-tale that the Developed Systems are Good (like the Nordhaus evaluation) is destined to be unsustainable, no matter how precise or complete they are regarding the 'cost considerations' in the evaluation.
The expectation of continued economic success from a starting point of a massive amount of unsustainable and harmful economic activity is very unrealistic.
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nigelj at 08:20 AM on 13 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #36
Something predictable: Trump suggests 'nuking hurricanes' to stop them hitting America – report
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scaddenp at 07:54 AM on 13 September 2019CO2 has a short residence time
RDG - yes. The most well known efforts would be the Geocarb models, but that builds on decades of research.
Large scale release of CO2 from carbonates was one of the hypotheses studied for PETM. There is a large literature here. Perhaps a overview here.
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nigelj at 07:05 AM on 13 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
One thing that stands out in the denialists letter is they hammer their 'claim' that natural cycles are behind the recent warming trend, and the letter does it in several different ways, for exampe in the first two points they make. Imho this is their key lever for creating doubt used throughout the denialosphere because if they can convince the public "something else is responsible" (or could be responsible), they dont need other arguments too much. It's using a scapegoat just as certain politicians do on various other matters. Therefore its really important to shoot down this argument and make it the number one priority.
In that respect the response made in the article is good, but rather wordy and rhetorical. If we challenge the denialists, its important to get the message across very succinctly and clearly that scientists have looked in extreme depth at all the natural cimate cycles, such as sunspots and ocean cycles and they have been in neutral or cooling phases for the past 50 years so cannot adequately explain the warming trend, while the increasing greenhouse effect does.
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nigelj at 06:42 AM on 13 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
markpittsusa @8
"Nordhaus, who just won the Nobel Prize for his work on the economics of climate change, advocates a target of 3C of warming."
And plenty of nobel prize winners have got things wrong over the years. You are engaging in the fallacy of the Argument from authority. "An argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of defeasible argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion."
Many robust and well informed accurate criticisms have been made of Nordhaus views on the economics of climate change, for example here.
Briefly stated, there are many things Nordaus simply omits form his calculations and he makes over optimstic assumptions about economic growth, just for starters.
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CO2 has a short residence time
Has anyone looked at/studied the affects natural CO2 sequestration within the various forms of carbonate deposition over time, and if it has any correlation to temperature swings? -
One Planet Only Forever at 04:44 AM on 13 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
markpittsusa,
I hope you do not continue to believe that your claims about Nordhaus are 'unchallengeable'.
It appears you have not read, or maybe did not understand, the responses I have presented to your earlier presentations of Nordhaus as 'The correct evaluator of the acceptability of current day humans benefiting through actions that are unsustainable and are also detrimental to future generations'.
As a minimum, please develop a more nuanced understanding of the differences between the evaluations performed by the likes of Stern and Nordhaus.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:00 AM on 13 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
A serious consideration related to misleading divisive story presentations is the way that pursuit of a 'personal better life' can divisively bias a person away from wanting to increase their awareness and understanding to help achieve the SDGs.
'Pursuit of a personal better life' can not only bias a person towards harmful Greed. It can bias them towards unjust dislike of Others who are 'Different'.
Competition for perceptions of superiority relative to others can lead a lot of people to allow Selfish Tribalism (Harmful reactive instinctive human behaviour like Greed and Intolerance) to overpower improving awareness and understanding that would help achieve a sustainable improving future for humanity (Helpful thoughtful and considerate human behaviour).
Thoughtful consideration regarding the future is a significant part of what distinguishes Humanity from Barbarism.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:45 AM on 13 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Mal Adapted,
Thanks for the links to the evaluations of media 'positions'.
Evaluating L-R political bias is not really helpful. It is more important to be aware of how Helpful or Harmful a media provider is to improving awareness and understanding of the actions required to achieve and improve on the Sustainable Development Goals. For an evaluation of political L-R bias to be helpful the political L-R would need to be understood to be:
- L Helps achieve and improve on the Sustainable Development Goals, helps develop a sustainable improving future for humanity, helps achieve and improve on the SDGs.
- R resists improved awareness and understanding and the related corrections required to achieve and improve on the SDGs.
Though there is generally a correlation of L-R in those directions, a L-R evaluation does not accurately do what needs to be done (distinguish how Helpful or Harmful a media is to the future of humanity).
In the required evaluation, misleading presentations of any type are poorer than more accurate and more complete presentations. However, misleading or less complete presentations that help achieve the SDGs, breaking the correction/learning resistance of harmful developed popular and profitable attitudes and actions, are far better than misleading presentations that are detrimental to achieving the SDGs.
Understanding how misleading a media source is being in its pursuit of promotion of its political bias is more important, including the type of things they allow in their presented "Opinions" (perceptions of balance can be very misleading). That can best be determined by people applying critical thinking while reading the ways that a diversity of media 'present their versions of a story'.
Of course, personal 'preferences' for news sources bias people away from a diversity of story presentations that they could apply critical thinking to evaluate. A good book on that topic is "The News" by Alain de Botton. It includes and good presentation of how social media driven news feeds can divisively isolate people from a diversity of story presentations, allowing them to be ignorant of (less aware) or misled regarding important issues.
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SirCharles at 23:47 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
Looking like the same old army of "scientists" touting the same old shyte...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZzwRwFDXw0
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markpittsusa at 23:39 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
No informed person would consider your comments on cost of adaptation as “science.” Your source of info is a 2015 article in The Guardian (journalists), who in turn rely on bankers who do not reveal their methods.
Nordhaus, who just won the Nobel Prize for his work on the economics of climate change, advocates a target of 3C of warming.
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AdamAb at 22:02 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
BillyJoe, there is the link and more info about end of fossil fuels
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MA Rodger at 22:02 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
The OP suggests this silly denialist letter to the EU "represents the best case that climate deniers can make against the existence of a climate crisis." I feel that needs some qualification as it is a small set of denialists who came up with the silly five point 'oh-no-it's-not' rebuttal.
At the end of January we hear of a large number of academics writing to the Belgian "federal and regional governments." I cannot see the actual letter sent but it did result in swivel-eyed denialists from the Netherlands responding with a point-by-point counter-argument which was quickly translated for the English-speaking deniosphere.
(The authorship of the denial is given as the Climate Intelligence Foundation which is described as "a new Foundation that is funded by worried wealthy citizens. The Foundation focuses on independent public information. She does that by telling the entire climate story." somewhat similar to the nonsense spouted by the UK's GWPF who make out they are an educational charity (& thus trouser taxpayers money to fund their lies). The odd thing with this authorship for an OP posted 1st Feb 2019 is the Climate Intelligence Foundation (soon gaining the name CLINTEL) was not started until the end of March 2019, according to one of its co-founders. who says in this video that it will be set up "tomorrow" with the launch seemingly a couple of days later.)
The point-by-point counter-argument of early Feb runs to seven points. The first five of these present identical argument to the silly denialist letter, although the letter has hardened the message a bit. The first five Feb points were - (1) Climate has always changed with warming from 1850, (2) Calling recent warming 100% anthropogenic is unscientific, (3) There is no discernable trends in floods & droughts & plagues of frogs, (4) Models are hypersensitive to CO2 so any warming CO2 causes will be mild and nature can cool as well as warm. (5) The cost to Belgium & Holland of AGW mitigation is massive for "negligible and immeasurable" gain.
(These five from February are pretty-much the same as the five in the silly denialist letter of August. The February version adds (6) AGW mitigation is not more cost-effective than doing nothing, (7) They mix up a clean environment, which all agree with, with AGW mitigation.)
So the grand denialist message is no more than a knee-jerk response to a letter from Belgian academics supporting stronger action on AGW. That it has folk like Richard Lindzen signing-up to it when he disagrees with parts of it is presumably more a mark of solidarity than a mark of wholehearted agreement.
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abostrom at 19:14 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
You would think the authors of this letter might feel foolish regurgitating these stale , long debunked myths. But then, I suppose it's difficult to understand what they're paid not to.
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MA Rodger at 18:59 PM on 12 September 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
Human 2932847 @27,
We have been going round & round on this for some time now.
The idea of a "debunk" being delivered by Seager et al (2002) suggests there is no disagreement today, yet that is surely not correct. The results of Seager et al (2002) are at variance with other more recent work, for instance Lui et al (2017).Consider the quantative results of Seager et al (2002). These were that the removal of the AMOC shows (his Fig 12) would drop "at most 2 degC ... south of 60ºN and about 3–6 degC ... between 60ºN and 70ºN." The major AMOC warming is seemingly pushed north to impact only Scandanavia. And if that is compared with the graphic from the Lui et al research up-thread @14, the UK is presented as 2ºC cooler and Scandanavia 3ºC cooler.
This however is not Lui et al concuring with Seager et al. Far from it.The difference is that the values in the graphic @14 are in a 2xCO2 world on top of being without the AMOC. The northern hemisphere should therefore have warmed perhaps 3ºC and exhibit even more warming at the poles due to Arctic Amplification. Further, the temperature difference between the eastern coasts of the Pacific & the Atlantic are not "maintained" as in Seager eta al Table 1, but vastly increased.
And do note that both these works Seager et al (2002) & Lui et al (2017) pre-date Lozier et al (2019) 'A sea change in our view of overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic'. (There is coverage of the paper by CarbonBrief.) If the AMOC shutdown were shifted eastward as the measurements set out by Lozier et al (2019) suggest, it would surely make a bit of a difference to the resulting change in European winter temperature. But this is all an area of active research so definitive results should not be expected right away.
Finally, do note when proclaiming that an AMOC shutdown would "not be as catastrophic as once thought, but still problematic" - its impacts extend beyond a cooler Europe. The 1 metre SLR along the eastern US coast would be a bit more than "problematic" as would the drying of the Sahel.
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nigelj at 18:57 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
Billy Joe @1, yeah fair comment and I know that. I was just paraphrasing the general situation, and I threw in a relevant link I came across recently. Didn't have time to really do much more.
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nigelj at 18:56 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
My link @1 doesn't work, it goes back to this page so its a problem with this website. The full link is:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/peak-coal-will-the-us-run-out-of-coal-in-200-years-or-20-years#gs.38xwbx
It's quite a good article. Probably not what the American Administration wants to hear.
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BillyJoe at 12:44 PM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
nigelj @ #1
You link doesn't work.
But the quoted headline says something different to what you said. I'm pretty sure that what they are saying is that the recovery of fossil fuels will become un-economical long before the world runs out of fossil fuels. In fact, the world will never run out of fossil fuel because some of it is not actually recoverable.
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Philippe Chantreau at 08:50 AM on 12 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
No harm done :-)
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nigelj at 08:23 AM on 12 September 2019Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders
The same old people making the same old mistakes, probably deliberately. The world will run out of fossil fuels soon enough anyway, leaving no choice but to find other sources of energy. "The U.S. is rapidly approaching the end of economically recoverable coal".
Moderator Response:[BW] Updated the link
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nigelj at 08:01 AM on 12 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Mal Adapted, thanks for that chart and it coincides with my own views. I've seen several attempts to rank media bias, and they all look pretty similar, so whatever methods they use one might almost say there is a 'consensus'.
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Mal Adapted at 02:34 AM on 12 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Philippe with one 'l', sorry 8^(.
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Mal Adapted at 02:33 AM on 12 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Thank you, Phillippe.
Here's a somewhat different chart of the same phenomenon. IMHO, a degree of subjectivity in such a project is ineradicable, although it may still be reducible.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:19 AM on 12 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
At first glance, the chart corresponds very exactly to my experience with the organizations that figure in it, so I'm tempted to say it is a sincere and effective effort. However, I agree with Mal Adapted that more needs to be done to verify and corroborate, and I'd like to know more about the methods.
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Mal Adapted at 00:50 AM on 12 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
On the highly salient topic of media credibility: I recently became aware of patent attorney Vanessa Otero's media bias chart. Some of you may also be intrigued. The current version 4.0 is the product of a well-documented team effort. I'm still skeptical (i.e. not yet convinced, but willing to be) of the chart's intersubjective verifiability, so I'll study the documentation some more.
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nigelj at 10:18 AM on 11 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
prove we are smart @4
Fair comments. The thing to do is understand how the mainstream media are biased and when they are unreliable, and use that as a filter when you read it.
Most mainstream media is owned by corporate leaning interests and investment funds, with the sort of bias that brings. Mass media also exaggerates some problems to get attention, but probably not so much the climate issue. The media wont want to annoy their advertisers many of whom have vested interests in fossil fuels. So the mainstream media does have some fake news, but not of the sort Donald Trump alleges.
Of course alternative sources of information all have their own biases, mostly. But you know that. So have the critical thinking skills switched on!
Non partisan, non aligned think tanks can be useful.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:07 AM on 11 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
"Manufacturing Consent" is actually a 1988 book.
And a movie with the same name was made 1992.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:04 AM on 11 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
prove we are smart@4,
A good explanation of a significant part of the problem of the 'stories that get told and incorrectly become popularly believed' is provided by Edward S. Herman's Propaganda Model presented in the 1987 book "Manufacturing Consent" (written with input from Noam Chomsky), and reviewed and updated in the 2019 book "Propaganda in the Information Age" by Alan MacLeod.
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JWRebel at 06:59 AM on 11 September 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #36, 2019
We cannot quantify the effects of climate change and all possible feedback loops and tipping points to unstable chaotic systems. The correct analogy (as the author points out) is not a discount rate that quantifies the damage, but an insurance policy, like fire insurance. You don't invest in insurance to discount the damage, you do it to mitigate and hedge the risk. That's why with airplanes and nuclear plants, you go for 100% safety — you don't discount the likely damages. Think Boeing 737.
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Jesse Baker at 04:10 AM on 11 September 2019SkS Analogy 20 - The Tides of Earth
SkS’s ditty on Milankovitch cycles is better than most at explaining the mechanics involved given the difficult subject, yet I did notice a possible rough spot there: the Earth’s orbital plane, or ecliptic (Fig. 5 on that page). Shouldn’t this remain nearly fixed in space over as short a time as 41000 years, so that changes in its orientation can be ignored when discussing changes in the obliquity of Earth’s axis? The Earth possesses much more angular momentum about the sun in its orbit than it does about its axis in rotating daily, and any out-of-plane component of Jupiter’s torques on Earth (measured with sun at pivot point) should be quite small because Jupiter’s always close to the ecliptic and pulling on us from a direction nearly in-plane.
My suspicion is reinforced by Figs. 4 and 5 in Souami & Souchay below, who show that the inclination and North node of the solar system’s invariable plane, with respect to the International Celestial Reference Frame (based on the stars), vary by a mere ~0.01 arcsecond over 6000 years, a time lapse comparable to that of the nodding obliquity cycle, yet an amplitude quite tiny compared to 2½˚, the arc through which the axial obliquity swings. Therefore, it shouldn’t matter in Fig. 5 of SkS’s Milankovitch page, and if so, then SkS can omit the diagram altogether. (The other orbital oscillations discussed on the page, advance of apsides and change of eccentricity, remain the same as before since they’re confined to the ecliptic itself.)
As I lack a degree in this stuff, you may wish to run it by someone in the field who contributes to your site.
Souami & Souchay (2012), “The solar system’s invariable plane,” Astronomy & Astrophysics 543
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201219011 -
MA Rodger at 21:40 PM on 10 September 2019They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
Yaeger @36,
If it is the Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs (as per the 3rd grahic in the OP), the link here (also linked within #34) takes you there. Enter the variables you desire and voilà.
If it is the Google Scholar data (as per the 4th graphic in the OP), it isn't clear to me how exactly that graphic was created but if you search Google Scholar for a particular term and a particular period, it does return how many 'results' it found, although I wouldn't be sure how accurate or reliable that 'returns' value is. (I see GWPF blogs listed which are not scientific documents and are dated as 1912 instead of 2012.) Yet it does support 'Global Warming' being a less used phrase than 'Climate Change' in scientific articles although the "the term 'climate change' was in use before the term 'global warming'" assertion in the OP isn't as strongly evident as that graph suggests.
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prove we are smart at 20:02 PM on 10 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
One Planet Only Forever , @3
It seems to me there are many issues that are being falsely misrepresented. At least two are the looming debt crises in America ( and worldwide ? ) , and the much more worrisome climate change. We all can be a role model for thoughtful discussion. " Ordinary people" believing their biased media reports, need to become aware of other sources of information , i'm sometimes worried, under some phoney excuse our govts may even control the internet news..afterall , our thoughts on issues are controlled by what we have read/seen. When the powerful control most media, education is the best defence to stop it /getting worse..Maybe its really our flawed and lazy human faults ?, because with just a little effort, you can find most viewpoints on many subjects.
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Doug Bostrom at 12:33 PM on 10 September 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35, 2019
Wili: yeah, I get it. :-)
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Yaeger at 12:09 PM on 10 September 2019They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
Hi,
How did you obtain the graphic comparing climate change and global warming in Google Scholar? I could not replicate it and it has no source so I can't really use it in arguments I have been having on this specific point.
Thanks.
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Key facts about the new EPA plan to reverse the Obama-era methane leaks rule
Thanks for the article, Dana. I would like to add that scientists have never put much stake into the EPA emissions inventory. EPA's methodology uses input data from the 80s and early 90s, which are hardly representative any more. I think the EDF tried to get the EPA to update this, but that went nowhere in the new admin since 2017.
A classic paper from 2003 in PNAS carefully summarized:
"This result [of high methane emisisons] suggests that total U.S. natural gas emissions may have been underestimated."
In addition to the two papers you cited, there are several others making this point; e.g. this paper using ethane and propane data, or this paper estimating national methane emissions (2.3x EPA estimates), or this paper demonstrating global ethane on the rise downwind of North America.
So for Administrator Wheeler to say that methane emissions are dropping, citing the EPA database as evidence, is boldly ignorant in the face of the science, the thing that is supposed to inform decision making at EPA.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:48 AM on 10 September 2019Sea level rise is exaggerated
Very nice Daniel, thanks for doing that research legwork.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:46 AM on 10 September 2019Skeptical Science takes the Pro-Truth-Pledge
IdPnSD,
I am not quite convinced by your argument. Some of it is confusing: "Somebody killed somebody – is always a fact, because somebody observed it." Does that allude to the act being witnessed by another party than the 2 participants? If yes, it is false, the act does not require a witness to be real, and the participants are witnesses themselves. Furthermore, it implies that events that do not have witnesses are not real, which is nonsense.
You may not always see a demonstration of every truth. It took the immense power of the LHC to "see" the Higgs Boson, there may never be any experimental setup able to show superstrings.
Who cares what Ayn Rand said?
The internet does not have all the truths because no source is entirely exhaustive and even if it was, that could be the case only for a fleeting moment in time.
That being said, there is indeed a lot of information to be had on the internet, some of it useless, much of it valuable. The problem is a severe lack of critical thinking in the general population and an emotional attachement to ideology that effectively disables judgment. Seeking truth carefully implies that one must be ready to accept being wrong, or seeing their prefered ideology whoefully inadequate. It also requires to accept that certainty is nowhere to be had, only varying levels of probability, and constant revision as knowledge is refined.
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Daniel Bailey at 00:43 AM on 10 September 2019Sea level rise is exaggerated
As MA sagely notes, Chen 2014 is dated and newer studies with later data show an acceleration in SLR and with the mass component also increasing.
Per Yi et al 2017 - Acceleration in the Global Mean Sea Level Rise: 2005–2015:
"Global mean sea level rise has been accelerating for more than 100 years, and the acceleration in the last two decades seems to further increase"
And
"Our results show that the acceleration during the last decade (0.27 ± 0.17 mm/yr2 ) is about 3 times faster than its value during 1993–2014. The acceleration comes from three factors, that is, 0.04 ± 0.01 mm/yr2 (~15%) by land ice melting, 0.12 ± 0.06 mm/yr2 (~44%) by thermal expansion of the seawater, and 0.11 ± 0.02 mm/yr2 (~41%) by declining land water storage."
And
"we demonstrate that current advances in satellite gravimetry, and marine in situ measurements enable us to detect the acceleration in global sea level rise from 2005 to 2015, 11 years in total"
Other studies:
Cazenave et al 2018 - Global Sea Level Budget 1993–Present
"Ocean thermal expansion, glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica contribute by 42%, 21%, 15% and 8% to the global mean sea level over the 1993-present. We also study the sea level budget over 2005-present, using GRACE-based ocean mass estimates instead of sum of individual mass components. Results show closure of the sea level budget within 0.3 mm/yr. Substantial uncertainty remains for the land water storage component, as shown in examining individual mass contributions to sea level."
"Most recent studies (e.g., Dieng et al., 2017a, Ablain and Jugier, 2017b, Chen et al., 2017a, Chen et al., 2017b, Nerem et al., 2018b, WCRP, 2018) show that the GMSL is accelerating, and that this acceleration mostly arises from accelerated Greenland and Antarctica ice mass loss."
SLR Components, p. 1645, Figure 3:
Other salient studies:
- Dieng et al 2017 - New estimate of the current rate of sea level rise from a sea level budget approach
- Ablain and Jugier 2017
- Chen et al 2017a - The increasing rate of global mean sea-level rise during 1993–2014
- Chen et al 2017b - Groundwater Storage Changes: Present Status from GRACE Observations
On 2018 sea level rise acceleration:
"Global sea level rise is not cruising along at a steady 3 mm per year, it's accelerating a little every year, like a driver merging onto a highway, according to a powerful new assessment led by CIRES Fellow Steve Nerem. He and his colleagues harnessed 25 years of satellite data to calculate that the rate is increasing by about 0.08 mm/year every year—which could mean an annual rate of sea level rise of 10 mm/year, or even more, by 2100.
"This acceleration, driven mainly by accelerated melting in Greenland and Antarctica, has the potential to double the total sea level rise by 2100 as compared to projections that assume a constant rate—to more than 60 cm instead of about 30." said Nerem, who is also a professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. "And this is almost certainly a conservative estimate," he added. "Our extrapolation assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that's not likely."
Also per Nerem et al 2018:
"the observed acceleration will more than double the amount of sea-level rise by 2100 compared with the current rate of sea-level rise continuing unchanged. This projection of future sea-level rise is based only on the satellite-observed changes over the last 25 y, assuming that sea level changes similarly in the future. If sea level begins changing more rapidly, for example due to rapid changes in ice sheet dynamics, then this simple extrapolation will likely represent a conservative lower bound on future sea-level change."
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MA Rodger at 20:10 PM on 9 September 2019Sea level rise is exaggerated
Ossyrial @305,
You appear to have spotted some of the reasons Chen et al (20140 'Global sea level trend during 1993–2012' have given for their 'deceleration 2004-12' result. They do also see a significant level of uncertainty in their result although this is not so well handled when presenting their result.
In a broader context, Visser et al (2015) reviews various methods being used to derive acceleration/deceleration in SLR, methods which do yield contradictory results.
And the lead author X Chen has published since with Chen et al (2017) 'The increasing rate of global mean sea-level riseduring 1993–2014' which provides a result that supersedes the contradictory result of Chen et al (2014) in that it corrects satellite data and better accounts for other variable factors.
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Ossyrial at 18:02 PM on 9 September 2019Sea level rise is exaggerated
Hey, I recently came across a paper from 2014, "Global sea level trend during 1993–2012", by Chen (2014). (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818113002397)
It finds that since 2004, the sea level rise has been decelerating. I have a couple of questions about it since I am not very knowledgeable in this field.
I think this is the main conclusion of the paper: "GMSL started decelerated rising since 2004 with rising rate 1.8 ± 0.9 mm/yr in 2012."
However, it does make say the following things in the discussion:
"Comparison between the GMSL, the global mean steric sea level, and the global mean ocean mass indicates that the decreasing of the rising trend is mainly due to the stalled ocean heat content which started in the early 2000s, when the PDO switched from the warm polarity to cold polarity."
"Although the stalled upper ocean heat content during the last decade has reduced the rising trend of the GMSL, the global sea level kept rising because of the contribution of the accelerated melting of land ice in the warming climate. This means that if the land ice keeps melting at the same or faster pace due to anthropogenic warming, the world ocean will experience a significant accelerated total sea level rise when the steric sea level transitions to a stage similar to the period during 1993–2003."
In short, I am not sure what to think of this study. Is the increase in global sea level decelerating? Or is this part of a trend (perhaps the PDO? I don't understand that fully either), and irrelevant if one would look at long-term?
Thanks
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IdPnSD at 13:45 PM on 9 September 2019Skeptical Science takes the Pro-Truth-Pledge
“… has been established in order to reclaim the fuzzy concept of "truth," which different people may interpret differently.” It is very unfortunate that our society does not have a definition of truth. Most people like to think that the following is the correct definition – You have your own truth and I have my own truth. But this cannot be correct. If this were correct then Galileo would still be in jail today. Truth must be unique, universal, and eternal.
The following definition of truth can be found embedded in many books of all religions, like in Bible and Vedas. (1) The laws of nature are the only truths. (2) The objects of nature and their characteristics create these laws. (3) The nature always demonstrates its all truths.
Item (3) is the most important part of the definition. If you search carefully, like Galileo did, you will always be able to see a demonstration of every truth, given by nature. Thus a fact can be defined as something that can be observed in nature. Somebody killed somebody – is always a fact, because somebody observed it. Ayn Rand said, “Truth is not for all men, it is only for those who seek it.” The internet has all the truths, but you must seek it carefully.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:07 AM on 9 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
The following articles show the type of response to improved awareness and understanding that the likes of Boris and Trump encourage with their misleading appeals for support of Their powerfully passionately desired harmful beliefs and actions.
"Threats, abuse move from online to real world, McKenna now requires security, CBC News"
"Why is billionaire George Soros a bogeyman for the hard right?, BBC News"
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:32 AM on 9 September 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
Improving awareness and understanding of climate science has exposed the requirement for corrections of activities that have developed power, popularity and profitability.
And the other Sustainable Development Goals threaten developed power, popularity and profitability.
The pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of requirements for sustainability, and sustainable improvement, of humanity started before the 1972 Stockholm Conference. That meeting of global leadership (power) formally established a consensus understanding among global leadership that many corrections of what had developed are required. And it established an awareness and understanding that revised ways of governing what was developing would be required to block harmful actions before they became popular or profitable, and encourage helpful actions.
Since then it has been clear that a portion of powerful people have been fighting to maintain their undeserved status by any means they can get away with. They have had success with appeals for people to be 'freer to believe whatever They want' to justify pursuing harmful and unsustainable actions that 'They perceive they personally benefit from'.
Their leaders appear to claim that 'If Their Type of People (their portion of the population) were freer to believe and do as they please, they would behave less harmfully, more helpfully, more beneficially to others'. Their leaders appear to claim that efforts to force them to increase their awareness and understanding of how harmful their actions are to Others,(including the future of humanity), and related efforts to limit how much harm They can do, makes them be harmful rather than helpful.
I will agree that efforts to improve awareness and understanding can make them react more harmfully. However, it is unlikely that attempting to please them will get them to agree to the corrections required for Them to behave less harmfully. And it appears even less likely that They will agree to the larger corrections required for them to become helpful to Others, especially to the future of humanity.
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Evan at 23:51 PM on 8 September 2019SkS Analogy 20 - The Tides of Earth
swampfoxh@7, pull on a branch and it bends a certain amount. Now pull on it 40 times as hard. Will it bend 40 times the distance, or will it simply break?
Fast cars can acclerate from 0 to 60 in about 2 seconds. Some people might feel a little sick under those high acceleration. Acclerate 40 times that fast an you may die.
Natural systems have limits of how much they can absorb before they no longer react, but simply break. I know you know this, so just making a point about the dangers of extrapolating by a factor of 40.
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MA Rodger at 21:01 PM on 8 September 2019There are genuine climate alarmists, but they're not in the same league as deniers
sailrick @43/44,
Those quotes get a bit strong. The source of the quotes is this blog by McPherson which may help put them in context, but what is also required is the science lying behind these strong assertions.
The link to the OP provided by Postkey @46 is part of this, but the underlying paper is Rosenfeld et al (2019) 'Aerosol-driven droplet concentrations dominate coverage and water of oceanic low level clouds'. Also cited in your quote @43 is Levy et al (2013) 'The Collection 6 MODIS aerosol products over land and ocean'.
The basis for the strong message presented @43/44 is that coal-use emits both CO2 and SO2. The CO2 is raising climate forcing at a rate of ~0.02Wm^-2/yr. SO2 acts as a seed for aerosols and thus more shiny clouds which cool the planet. SO2 is very short-lived but provides a negative forcing which is not well defined (IPCC AR5 put it at -0.9Wm^-2(+0.8,-1.0) although note the recent work cited by Postkey @45 derives from Haustein et al (2019) 'A Limited Role for Unforced Internal Variability in Twentieth-Century Warming' (described in the CarbonBrief article & the RealClimate article). Haustein reconstruct the global temperature record using known forcings and conclude that the SO2 effect would be roughly -0.4Wm^/2.
So simplistically, we have what is seen by some as a dilemma facing humanity. If we cut coal-use we will be faced by a net increase in climate forcing boosting AGW. But if we maintain coal-use to prevent such a boost, the CO2 would provide the exact same boost over coming decades (perhaps as few as 20 years) and the dilemma would still be in place.
Yet it isn't quite as difficult as that. The coal-use will not cease overnight and there is a reduction in CO2 forcing (and also more quickly CH4 forcing which totals so-far 0.5Wm^-2 and of which a significant proportion is down to coal) once we stop CO2 emissions (or the reduction in a past contribution of a particular source once it is shut down).
As for the strong message, a quick peek at the blog by McPherson shows some serious misrepresentation of cited material, serious enough to suggest the blog is entirely without merit. So I would be surprised if there is any actual support for the bold claim that there will be 2-3 degrees C warming over the period 2019-30.
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