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One Planet Only Forever at 02:37 AM on 31 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30
The proper description of the concern is this sustainability of how humans are living and whether sustainable improvements are being developed.
And the undeniable understanding based on abductive reasoning in pursuit of the best explanation of what is going on is that competition for perceptions of superiority relative to others with popularity and profit as measures of merit has developed unsustainable human activity that is detrimental to the future of humanity and has developed powerful resistance to correction.
Growth of the total population is a concern. But the real concern is the total impacts of the total population. And everyone should be expected to aspire to being deserving of merit and living like the perceived leaders/winners.
With that understanding it is clear that the problem is the example being set by the perceived winners. The developed competitions are rewarding unsustainable and harmful behavior.
What is required is for the winners to be required to be proven to be deserving based on the helpfulness and sustainability of that helpfulness to the future if humanity. What is currently developed as methods of evaluating the merit of actions, and the people doing the actions, is failing to properly determine what is deserving of merit (popularity or profit).
The growth of consumption and harmful results of human actions is what needs to be curtailed, not just the growth of the population. And the highest consuming and highest impacting people are what needs to be targeted for correction. Reducing total population while allowing total consumption and impact to continue to grow is No Solution.
The developed ways of living of the highest impacting and consuming among the more fortunate today can only be understood as harmfully unsustainable. Significant incorrect overdevelopment has occurred. Correcting it is challenging. It requires people to accept a sacrifice of their developed perceptions of merit and ways of living.
It would be nice if sustainable alternatives existed that were as easy and cheap for those benefiting from them as the currently developed activity is. But that is not likely a reality. That is likely a tragic fantasy.
As for what I do. I drive as little as possible and drive a hybrid (because the power generation in Alberta is so bad that there is more impact from an all electric than there is from a hybrid, lots of coal burning to produce the electricity). I also consume very little that is not food or water. I also seek out Fair Trade goods or sustainably produced goods.
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MA Rodger at 01:18 AM on 31 July 2019Greenland is gaining ice
Molsen @40,
You say that "it seems that a little more than 99.99 per cent of it does not melt in even a bad year." That is actually wrong. It is about 99.93% that annually "does not melt." The ice sheet averages something like 1,500m in depth and the melt is about 1m of that. What you appear to ignore is the annual +800mm precipitation of snowfall which must be added to the net Ice Mass figures to give the total annual melt.
However, I will assume you are interested in net Ice Mass as that has been your interest up-thread and that would be roughly equal annually to 0.01% of the total ice mass. The statistical significance of the net ice loss is not in any way dependent on the total mass of ice suffering the loss. Rather it is a matter of whether the measurement of Ice Mass is noisy enough that the negative trend could be purely a product of the noise. This can be determined statistically.
In the case of the GRACE data of total Greenland Ice Mass graphed repeatedly on this web-page, the negative trend is a long long way from being statistically insignificance. A quick linear regression through the data with the annaul cycle removed (2003-2015, the data which was readily available) gave a trend of -273.4Gt/yr +/-7.3Gt/yr(2sd). So the Confidence interval would be -266 to -281, all a long way from zero.
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Rob Honeycutt at 23:46 PM on 30 July 2019'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts
Kuidaskassikaeb... This would just be yet another hockey stick. The first hockey stick was done by Mann, Bradley and Hughes back in 1998/99. It was merely a collection of local and regional temperature data series all combined that stretched back over the past 1000 years to show the changes in global temperature. Since then there have been lots of newer studies with refinements and the same answer comes back: human activities are rapidly warming the planet. And all that is merely a confirmation for what scientists already expected going back through 100+ years of science.
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SirCharles at 23:32 PM on 30 July 2019'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467617707079?journalCode=bsta
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Kuidaskassikaeb at 23:26 PM on 30 July 2019'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts
This is just a question. How is this different from the famous hocky stick?
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richieb1234 at 23:18 PM on 30 July 2019How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
MA Rodger: Great stuff! Thanks
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Evan at 23:01 PM on 30 July 2019'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts
"This paper should finally stop climate change deniers claiming that the recent observed coherent global warming is part of a natural climate cycle."
I doubt this will silence the critics. When have credible facts ever guided POTUS? I expect the only thing that will move the deniers is evidence outside their windows.
But hopefully it will move some of the fence sitters into greener pastures.
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MA Rodger at 22:56 PM on 30 July 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 @770,
Well, let that be a lesson for you!!
Denialism isn't logical. It turns folk into swivel-eyed loons.To correct his nonsense-
♣ It was 3 million years ago (not 2) that North & South America collided and joined up, a process that did kick off the Arctic glaciation which then resulted in c3 million years of ice ages. And over tha last 1 million years the ice ages were significantly bigger. Presumably the present warming that is bringing this 3-million-year-period to an end can be blamed on the collision of the USSR and the Republic of China with the United States of America, these all constituting significantly large land masses.
♣ You probaly could argue the Arctic was ice-free 100,000 years ago but only through the peak of the summer melt season (as in the Arctic Ocean having the levels of summer ice we would declare today to be ice-free).
♣ 15,000 years ago we were still coming out of the last ice age. We were out nearer 10,000 years ago (as the graphed ice core data clearly shows).
♣ The extreme global temperature changes since the Last Glacial Maximum were nothing like "10-15 degrees C" except at a regional level (ie Greenland). And the period over which these increases occurred (the data graphed shows two large sudden Greenland increases in the last 20,000 years - +12ºC at 14.5kybp & +9ºC at 11.5kypb - which were not 10-year periods of increase but 200-year periods. I don't think the ice cap volumes exist in the northern hemisphere to achieve a repeat performance today.
♣ The relative temperature of different interglacials has been discussed in this thread before and so we know the swivel-eyed loon is having difficulty hearing this particular message. So, yes, we do think he is "just being crazy" and that craziness is why he has such difficulty accepting the science and its implications.
♣ With regard to emisions controls, we can, of course, treat all people on Earth equally as the denialist wishes. The science says that anthropogenic CO2 emissions of more than 700Gt(C) will be bad and with 7.7 billion folk living on the planet, that would be an allowance of 91t(C) per head(historical) ('historical' as your allowance-use is handed down from previous generations).
So let's calculate that allowance using Global Carbon Project figures and present-day population. Note these GCP territorial emission data only go back to 1959. Getting full historical figures would be possible (& correcting for increasing population could be factored in) but the general result will not change. That would mean that China still had an outstanding carbon allowance of 54t(C) per head, India 82t(C)/head while the good old USA has exceded its allowance and so has to pay back 238t(C)/head into the collective kitty. If full historical emissions were included, the US pay-back would be greater still, not qute as great as the UK pay-back if taken to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. (From 1959 the UK pay-back is a trifling 47t(C)/head). Luxembourg from 1959 has a pay-bacl 0f 199t(C)/head but would be the country facing the biggest carbon-emissions pay-back with full historic figures.Denial is a sad thing to behold. Denialist folk become happy to dismiss the evidence witout any assessment of what they are ignoring. It is simply done. "The IPCC assessment reports? A complete pack of lies!!"
More telling is the misuse of the remiaining information that you do accept. As you are ignoring whole swathes of actual data, your sources tend to be limited and adjusting the findings beyond that limited evidence becomes a necessity. So some, no all previous ice ages were warmer, golly, 10 degrees warmer, 20, 100 degrees warmer. We should be grateful we live now and not then!!!!
And how does the following rate on the scale of untruthfulness given it comes from a real climatologist, abet a retired one. It's from Lindzen's seminar at the UK House of Commons in 2012. (@ 32.20mins in the first videoed part of his talk linked here. (You-tube link here)"Does it [20th century temperature increase] matter?"
"Okay so some points to take away from the global mean temperature anomaly record. Changes are small. They are in the order of several tenths of a degree. Changes are not causal but rather the residue of regional changes. Changes in the order of several tenths of a degree are always present at virtually all time-scales. And obsessing on the details of this record is more akin to a spectator sport or tea-leaf reading than a serious contributor to scientific efforts."
"Say, at least so far. I mean if some day I shoud see the changes are twenty times what I've seen so far, that would be certainly remarkable but nothing so far looks that way."
The implication is that we have here a retired climatologist who considers a gobal average temperature increase of less than (0.7 x 20=) 14ºC to be unremarkable. Are we then supposed to take such a retired climatologist as a serious authority on climate?
What perhaps we cannot judge is how much a denier knows he is misrepresenting the data he presents, that he is effectively lying. I suppose gross exageration can be justified because the denialist message is to them the correct message and, and denialists don't have the resources to counter all the lies that you climate alarmists generate with all your fake IPCC science.
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Molsen at 22:27 PM on 30 July 2019Greenland is gaining ice
To clarify: is the percentage that melts (i.e., the 0.01 per cent - at worst -statistically different from zero?
Moderator Response:[DB] Annual losses from the Greenland Ice Sheet are 286 Gt/year. Pretty statistically significant, even relative to the Empire State Building:
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Molsen at 21:56 PM on 30 July 2019Greenland is gaining ice
Given the total volume of ice in the Greenland ice sheet, it seems that a little more than 99.99 per cent of it does not melt in even a bad year. Is that statistically significant from zero?
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Eclectic at 20:39 PM on 30 July 2019In 1982, Exxon accurately predicted global warming
MsG @15 ,
If you seek some audiovisual presentations, then you may like the Youtube videos by Potholer54 (a science journalist by the name of Hadfield). Excerpts permissible, I'm sure !
Informative & often amusing & encouraging of critical thinking. The videos now number 50 (fifty!) but are mostly short (though some over 20 minutes).
Potholer54 avoids political partisanship, and is careful to give facts based on the scientific papers published in reputable peer-reviewed journals i.e. based on the actual science. Many of his videos are given with a humorous facet or two ~ which is (IMO) bound to appeal to you and your students.
Always , always , he emphasizes the importance of careful critical thinking wherever one encounters "facts" / information / hysteria / blogs / newspaper articles . . . and the need always to check the sources, find the original sources and evaluate their reliability, and be skeptical of the headlines.
# Be careful with the numerical label of each video ~ Youtube nowadays numbers the videos 1 - 50 , but the main video screen prominently displays an older numerical notation.
All are worth seeing (as fresh info for the climate science novice, and as humorous chuckles for the climate Old Hands . . . especially the five videos under the Monckton Bunkum heading ! )
If I may suggest a few :-
the 1st : "1- Climate Change - the scientific debate" [ 10 minutes]
the 23rd : "21- "Earth facing a mini-ice age!" [ 6 minutes]
the 25th : "23- Medieval Warm Period - fact vs. fiction" [ 20 minutes]
the 28th : "26- Science vs. the Feelies" [ 16 minutes]
the 29th : "27- The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models" [ 16 minutes]
the 31st : "28- The consequences of climate change (in our lifetimes)" [ 18 minutes]
the 40th : "A conservative solution to climate change - part 2" [ 21 min]
(The videos range in date from about 2009 'til 2019. None obsolete ! )
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michael sweet at 19:34 PM on 30 July 2019In 1982, Exxon accurately predicted global warming
MsG,
You should have a section on Greta Thunberg. She is the same age as your students. She is the most successful climate campainer in the world. Perhaps your students will want to start a group to support her or school strike on Fridays.
When I taught AP Chemistry I used several data sites to introduce AGW. If you want to use denier information you will only confuse your students, they cannot evaluate data very well. Most are familiar with the denier side since Exxxon's propaganda arm is so strong. If you choose to use denier data I think you should view this sketch from John Oliver first:
I find that students like to see the data themselves and did not care about what I thought. I used the NSIDC web site for the retreat of Arctic Sea Ice. The minimum is around September 15 and the NSIDC October report around October 5 will cover sea ice in detail. It is written at a level AP students can read. This year is very low. If you look at the NSIDC site the first week of school you can follow to see what the final result will be.
The NOAA annual climate report (2018 linked) describes the global temperature. They have a USA only report and have monthly reports also. I only used the annual reports. The annual report comes out around January 15. I like this graph linked at the start of their global report: There is a similar US only graph.
It is possible to find data for the city you live in but that data is often very noisy and hard to interpret.
My students did not like the IPCC reports because they wanted to only see US data. The Fourth National Climate Report, issued by the Trump Admministration, has many sections that describe most of the expected affects already measured and expected in the USA. I recommend you focus on this report since it is so authorative and is USA based. Since this report is so long you could make your unit as long or short as you like by reading more of it. I had students choose a section and write a report on the affects expected for the area they were most interested in.
All of these data sets are accepted by everyone. There is no need to offer the "other side" since only one set of data exists. If you view the Michals video you will only be indoctrinating vunerable students with false propaganda. Perhaps at the very end of your unit you could view it and point out his mistakes. Time how long you view it and only give 1% of your time to it (the scientific consensus is now 99% and not 97% so more than 1% for deniers means you are pushing their points). There is not really a denier position, they all disagree with each other and change their arguments every sentence to suit the wind.
Ask here for more information. If you describe in more detail what you want we can be more specific in reply.
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MA Rodger at 18:46 PM on 30 July 2019How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
richieb1234 @13,
It's an interesting thought. Although for me the answer below doesn't really need calculating, let's do it.The forcing from a doubling of CO2 is 3.7Wm*-2, enough to raise a body at a theoretical temperature of 255K by 1K. This then kicks off feedbacks that raise the temperatures by something like a further 2K. For sake of argument, let us assume this ECS=1K+2K = 3K.
We know that a further doubling of CO2 will require twice as much CO2 as the first doubling and that will raise that theoretical body from the double-CO2's 258K, but by a little less than 1K due to the S-B fourth-power relationship. So theoretically it would be 0.966K or 3.4% less than the first doubling.
And if we went for a third doubling to raise that theoretical body from the quadruple-CO2's 261K, the CO2 would provide a further 3.7Wm^-2 of forcing** and raise temperatures by a theoretical 0.933K or 6.7% less than the first doubling. And compounded with the reduced second doubling, that would amount to 10% less warming over the third doubling or an average reduction of 4.5% over all three doublings. But with global temperatures now +9ºC and the uncertainty with ECS=3K (It could well be significantly higher through three doublings), I would be surprised if a 10% discount for being such a loyal customer of CO2-powered AGW is going to feature in anybody's decision making.[** With a third doubling, CO2 atmospheric levels would be reaching 2,200ppm so now well above the 1,300ppm that my memory tells me is the top of the range over which the logarithmic relationship should be used. The forcing relationship then increases somewhat due to the compound CO2 absorption band at 10 microns starting to kick in.]
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MsGteacher at 17:06 PM on 30 July 2019In 1982, Exxon accurately predicted global warming
Hi fellow posters :)
I wonder if you might help me find respected resources on the topic of global warming. I know this is a huge ask and I know I can Google, but I have collected a plethora of resources and want to make sure I'm not missing something obvious/recent.
My dilemma is that I teach an AP English course to 17-year-old students. I want my opening unit to be focused on whether or not global warming is happening in 2019. My goal is to always give students both sides (I have NASA data to compare with a Fox News interview with Patrick Michals from the Koch-funded Cato Institute). I try, hard as it is, to step aside and have students think critically and ask Socratic-type questions of one another during class to provote "out of the box" thinking while remaining open to changing their opinion (which is often related to what their parents have fed them).
I truly appreciate any help in advance in terms of guidance toward resoures, videos, documentaries, etc. that show BOTH sides of this issue and are easily digestable by young minds and not scientists with PhDs.
Fun fact: I wrote an 80-page research paper in 1997 about the effects of global warming on our world's forests. I went to university in San Francisco, so it was a topic that was heavily discussed back then in our college classes. Crazy to think, 20+ years later, I am a lot like Exxon...we both knew decades ago.
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tjarlz at 15:29 PM on 30 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30
Yes, I have been wondering about this too. If people in the global north decided to reduce their consumption to meet planetary boundaries, then how much expenditure would that represent per annum (based on a notional basket of goods/services)? What would people do with the(ir) surplus "unspendable" income? Would we all work less? Would the economy be able to adapt?
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emmawilliam11 at 15:17 PM on 30 July 2019Models are unreliable
the climate is changing very fast, so these models can not be 100% accurate.
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richieb1234 at 11:06 AM on 30 July 2019How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
scaddenp - Thank you. I think your response to my comment would be a good addition to the article, because I am probably not the only reader who wondered about how Stephan-Boltzmann fits into the picture.
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TVC15 at 09:12 AM on 30 July 2019Climate's changed before
Thank you, scaddenp, Daniel Bailey and MA Rodger!
I'm with scaddeep's statement: "If someone isnt prepared to let data inform their opinion, then it isnt worth arguing".
I realize how utterly useless my efforts are in trying to help the "deniers" understand the science that supports human caused climate change.
I have learned so much from you all when I post the denier claims. I thoroughly appreciate the responses as you provide me with insights that I would not have been able to discover myself.
However I've grown tired of dealing with the deniers. If they can't understand what they are seeing all over the globe right now as I type this there is no amount of science that will open up their minds.
Here is just another sample of the type of denier minds out there.
i have looked at a lot of evidence from both sides of the argument, and i dont need someone to tell me what my conclusions should be. and there is PLENTY of geological evidence that this round of warming is nothing more than a natural event, one that had been going on for the last 2 million years, ever since the north and south american continents collided. 100,000 years ago the arctic was ice free. and as has been noted many times by many people in many ways, here are a few truths you need to take into account;
1: we are out of the last period of glaciation by only 15,000 years roughly
2: the AGW crowd is complaining about an increase of 1 degree C over 150 years, but there is geological evidence that 15,000 years ago the temperature went up by something more like 10-15 degrees C in TEN years.(i didnt know there are that many SUVs back then, who knew?)
3: we are still ten degrees COOLER than at this same time during the last intergalciation period, and the one before that, and the one before that for the last 2 million years. and its funny how the AGW crowd FAILS to take into account previous interglaciation periods, and what was NATURAL warming.
and if you think that i am just being crazy, then why is the IPCC scientists solution always more regulations and more taxes and redistributing the wealth of the developed nations to those nations that are still developing? and why is it that all the so called climate change protocols penalize the developed nations, mostly western europe and the US, and ignore the rest of the world? why is china given a pass, along with india? two of the highest CO2 emitters in the world?
if the AGW message was more consistent, and required ALL countries to stick to the climate change protocols, then perhaps their message might be more acceptable, and more people might actually listen to them.
in the end these protocols are nothing more than a way for the UN to control the worlds population, and to work to usher in one world government with the UN running things, and no national sovereignty of any kind.now you claim i am a science denier, but that isnt the truth here. i suppose you also consider the science settled, and that is NEVER the case. the science is NEVER settled, except in the case of the closed minded, non scientific lemmings.
I see no point in spinning my wheels on a mind such this.
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scaddenp at 08:31 AM on 30 July 2019How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
richieb1234 - while the Stephan-Boltzmann law gives you relation between radiative power to 4 power of temperate (so the doubling CO2 would raise temp by 1.1C), it is less useful than you might think for estimating actual surface temperature. You cannot raise (or lower) temperature without other feedbacks coming in. These operate on very wide timescales from very fast (water vapour increase), through decadal scale of albedo change from less ice, to century/millenia feedbacks in carbon cycle. Add in the complexity of cloud feedbacks (both +ve and -ve), and you get the wide range of estimates on climate sensitivity.
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richieb1234 at 05:56 AM on 30 July 2019How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
This is such a good article. I keep coming back to it. If there is one thing that might improve it, I might suggest a discussion of the mathematical relationship between forcing function and temperature. If I remember my Physics correctly, radiative energy goes as the fourth power of temperature. So a small temperature change can make up for a relatively large deficit in radiative energy. Whether or not I am right about that, it would be interesting to see a discussion of that relationship.
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knaugle at 03:55 AM on 30 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30
This may interest you. It's a story of the effect of "Dzud winters" on the nomadic lives of people in the Mongolian Steppes. Climate change appears to have hit them hard.
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Daniel Bailey at 03:36 AM on 30 July 2019Wind energy is a key climate change solution
Wind turbines kill orders of magnitudes fewer birds than do fossil fuel energy generation sources. Where's the outcry against those?
In reality, cars kill 2,800 birds for every 1 killed by a wind turbine.
And cars kill more pedestrians than windmills kill birds. Is it time to ban cars yet?
The leading causes of Raptor deaths in the Altamont study:
1. Shooting
2. Poison
3. CarsBut pretend-skeptics aren't interested in facts that disagree with their desired outcome.
Per Erickson 2005:
Table 2–Summary of predicted annual avian mortality.
Buildings_______________ 550 million
Power lines_____________ 130 million
Cats___________________ 100 million
Automobiles_____________ 80 million
Pesticides_______________ 67 million
Communications towers___ 4.5 million
Wind turbines___________ 28.5 thousand
Airplanes________________ 25 thousand
Cat's out of the proverbial bag. Per Loss et al 2013, feral cats kill most of the 87,000 times as many birds (in the US alone) than do all of the wind turbines in the world do, combined. That's 3.7 BILLION bird deaths per year, by cats alone...in the US. Or about 10 MILLION per day, as compared to about 2 per day per wind turbine.
Seems the bird holocaust is getting out of...paw. Meow. :)
"Why have these people forsaken nature's physical grandeur for an often ineffective power source?"
Grandeur like this?
As for the environmental impacts of wind power:
And
And
Both utility solar and wind are cheaper than gas:
Unsubsidised wind and solar are now the cheapest form of bulk energy:
"The unsubsidised cost of wind and solar now beats coal as the cheapest form of bulk generation in all major economies except Japan, according to the latest levellised cost of electricity analysis by leading energy analyst BloombergNEF.
The latest report says the biggest news comes in the two fastest growing energy markets, China and India, where it notes that “not so long ago coal was king”. Not any more.
“In India, best-in-class solar and wind plants are now half the cost of new coal plants,” the report says, and this is despite the recent imposition of import tariffs on solar cells and modules.
The China experience is also significant. While local authorities have put a brake on local installations, causing the domestic market to slump by one third in 2018, this has created a “global wave of cheap equipment” that has more than compensated for increased financing costs caused by rising interest rates.
The cost of battery storage is also falling – so much so that in countries like Australia and India, pairing unsubsidised wind and solar with four hours of battery storage can be cost competitive with new coal or gas plants."
Fancy that, renewables are already cheaper than 75% of the US coal fleet of power generation facilities.
Whodathunkit, the carbon benefits of wind and solar far outweigh their carbon footprints.
Harking back to that picture of that lovely tableau of the open pit coal mine:
To wrap this up and stick a wooden stake through the undead heart of this meme, fossil fuels are less efficient than earlier estimates and are essentially uneconomical, now.
This means that the levelized cost of electricity estimates put fossil fuels at even more of a disadvantage vs renewables than previously demonstrated.
Yes, without subisidies.
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Eclectic at 00:34 AM on 30 July 2019Models are unreliable
MA Rodger @1121 ,
thank you for the link to McKitrick & Christy 2018. The paper suffers from major logical non-sequitur in arguing from the status of the high altitude Upper Troposphere (which he elsewhere misrepresents as the lower troposphere "TLT" ) instead of examining the planetary surface temperature and (even more important) the ocean heat content. Severe cherry-picking . . . as well as poor logic.
Thank you also for the link to Dr Christy's talk at the GWPF (actually given in May 2019, not in June). Much of the earlier part, as well as the middle part, must have been as clear as mud to most of the audience !
The talk contained the same logical fault as the McK & C 2018 paper . . . and then expanded into a great deal of waffle. And then finalized with poor analysis of storms and Californian wildfires . . . and with much irrelevant but emotion-charged rhetoric (including how Christy's Californian land-holder neighbour had dishonestly moved Christy's property-boundary marker peg ~ ??possibly a metaphor for all those dishonest mainstream scientists at the IPCC?? )
Irrelevancies, poor science, and demagogic rhetoric ~ just another ordinary day at the GWPF.
Considering that Dr Christy makes similar misleading presentations at senate/congressional committee hearings . . . it comes as no surprise that he was "uninvited" to return to contributing to the IPCC.
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knaugle at 00:17 AM on 30 July 2019'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts
Wow! I occasionally peruse Roy Spencer's blog, and he definitely is not on board with the consensus. His latest post is still beating the "urban heat island" and "it's always cold somewhere else" drums. I wonder if he and John Christy are all that remains of the "3%"? It's no surprise the political think tanks like CEI are pushing to not even mention this topic. As I recall it was one of their key talking points 20 years ago, that scientists are all over the map on AGW.
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MA Rodger at 22:05 PM on 29 July 2019Models are unreliable
rupisnark @1120,
We discuss the serious error in John Christy's June 2019 GWPF talk. I could start running through the points @1120 and setting the record straight but as #1120 was the outcome of a previous record-straightening exercise @1119, I don't think a further round of record-straightening would achieve anything more than add to the length of this comment thread.Perhaps then, rather than demonstrate the utter incomeptence engendered within the grand denialist presentation set out in John Christy's June 2019 GWPF talk (my original idea), perhaps it would be best to describe the nub of his theorising and why it is failing to establish itself. Note that this will be a little more technical than simple identification of gross error within his talk (error which was not of itself fundamental to Chrisity's argument).
Happily, this will be on-topic for this thread as Christy does attempt to refute the reliability of climate models.
Climate models have developed in complexity through the dacades. They all (simple and complex) show the same basic result from AGW. This result is disputed by Christy using a rather narrow argument. Christy first dismisses the performance of these various models at reproducing the global average surface temperature (GAST) increase. He insists "models are often adjusted to broadly match its (GAST's) evolution over time." GAST is thus, according to Christy, not an independent measure and thus should not be used to test the models (McKitrick & Christy 2018).
This argument is repeated by Christy in his June 2019 GWPF talk:-"We cannot use the surface temperature, because the surface temperature record was used in the development of the model. That’s just as if I gave all the answers out to my students on Monday, I gave them the final on Friday, and they all did spectacularly well. Well, because I gave them the answers ahead of time! You cannot use surface temperature as a metric to test your model because that was used to tune the model, and you are not doing a legitimate scientific test."
(The actual abilities through the decades of the various models at projecting GAST is briefly reviewed by CarbonBrief.)
Instead of GAST, Christy uses specifically "the temperature of the atmosphere between 30,000 and 40,000 feet in the tropics, 20oN to 20oS." Given his insistence on not testing on 'Friday' what had been shown on 'Monday', Christy's choice is particulalry poor. His choice coincides with the long contentious "tropical hotspot" which has been argued over for decades. (So Christy is effectively testing on 'Friday' what had been shown on 'Monday'). And the "tropical hotspot" isn't a marker of AGW but of warming generally. I don't think Christy disputes that is happening. And as for measuring it to check whether it is there and to what extent, that introduces yet another layer of great uncertainty. (See this SkS post of 2009. And Christy in not addressing uncertainty plus other failings is considered by this 2016 post at RealClimate.)
So it is true that our present measurements suggest the "tropical hotspot" isn't as vigourous as expected, at its upper altitudes (although present at its lower altitudes).
Christy attempts to use the uncooperative "tropical hotspot" as some sort of essential failing of CMIP5 models and by implication as an essential failing of all models. As set out above, such attempts are poorly contrived and to-date even a corrected argument is far from unconvincing. -
nigelj at 15:55 PM on 29 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30
"Earth Overshoot Day falling on July 29th means that humanity is currently using nature 1.75 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate."
To solve this very real problem would require quite large cuts to consumption of everything really. If you own a television, even an average sized home in a western country, a car, eat large meals, etc you are part of the problem but how many of us would give those things up? Hoping people will reduce their consumption significantly is a fantasy dream.
Recycling and better farming systems would help, but much of the solution will have to come from smaller global population. If anyone disagrees with me, I would be interested in how much you have cut your personal levels of consumption.
This is not an attempt to blame problems on high population countries like Africa. The consumption problem is mainly a western problem, but poor countries are also getting richer as well. Neither am I a huge consumer by western world standards. It is looking at the big picture, and facing reality, and making hard choices.
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Rob Honeycutt at 14:31 PM on 29 July 2019Wind energy is a key climate change solution
False Progress... Clearly, from your website, it seems you strongly object to the look of wind turbines, but what's your alternative? Personally, it seems to me wind turbines are infinitely more preferable to things like mountain top removal to get at coal seams.
Or tar sands extraction...
Or oil spills...
But if you have some alternative that beats all of these, by all means, everyone is very interested to hear about it.
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John Hartz at 14:10 PM on 29 July 2019Wind energy is a key climate change solution
Suggested supplemental reading:
Texas Now Gets More Power From Wind Than Coal by Joe McCarthy, Environment, Global Citizen, July 26, 2019
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Eclectic at 13:03 PM on 29 July 2019Wind energy is a key climate change solution
FalseProgress @16 , your assessment is false.
Smoucha et al., 2016 show that the "carbon" payback time for windturbines is around 2 - 12 months (for the larger to smaller turbines). SaskatchewanWind (saskwind.ca) corporation claims their large windturbines have a CO2 payback time around 6 months.
Even allowing for some disputation on the exact figures, it sounds like windturbines are very much a bargain !
Turbines as scenically unsightly . . . or (mentally reframed) as elegant technological decorations? Like you, I incline (at least partly ) to the "unsightly" . . . though definitely less unsightly than most houses/apartments. However, how much more unsightly will be the scenic visuals of landscape that will be degraded by the effects of global warming by a further 1 or 2 or 4 degrees Celsius? The turbines and occasional solar farms may well be a fair price to pay for preserving much of the natural environment, eh?
Turbines killing birds and bats? Best if you supply some reliable estimate of the figures. Then compare with birds dying from impact with ordinary buildings. Then compare with (presumably much larger) numbers of birds and bats that will die from the effects of unrestricted worldwide habitat damage from future global warming. Not pretty !
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FalseProgress at 11:15 AM on 29 July 2019Wind energy is a key climate change solution
Many people are alarmed that "environmentalists" view the huge landscape (and seascape) blight of wind energy as something other than industrial sprawl. Why have these people forsaken nature's physical grandeur for an often ineffective power source? And what about all the bird and bat deaths it's causing?
There's no mention of that in this article. Just the usual dry commentary on cost effectiveness, as if open space is now useless without machines all over it.
Even if none of the physical intrusions were occurring, there's scant evidence that wind turbines can replace the very fossil fuels they're built with, or reduce net CO2 emissions. Germany is proof of that, with over 30,000 very large machines desecrating their countryside and north coast while their CO2 emissions continue to rise. Do some digging and you'll see that they've covered up a massive blunder. The density in Germany is the U.S. equivalent over over 800,000 wind turbines, and too much American scenery has been tarnished with around 58,000 so far.
To not mention any of that in an "environmental" article is a glaring oversight.
https://falseprogress.home.blog/2016/08/29/windturbineslandscapes/
Moderator Response:[PS] Welcome to Skeptical Science. Please note the comments policy on sloganeering. If you are going to make an assertion (eg. about bird deaths, lack of effectiveness etc), then must provide supporting evidence, preferrably from peer-reviewed sources. While I get that not everyone likes looking at wind turbines, you seem to be otherwise repeating long-debunked myths (eg put wind power myths into google).
eg Germany emissions. Pretty good when at same time they are shuttering nuclear power.
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JohnSeers at 07:10 AM on 28 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
Whoops, O3. Not a small screen - just bad eyesight!
Thanks for the explanations Eclectic, MA Rodger and Rob Honeycutt.
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nigelj at 06:45 AM on 28 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30
The Brave or Naieve article links to the Australian refugees article.
Correct link to Brave of Naieve article here.
Moderator Response:[JH] Correct url has been inserted into the OP. Thank you for bringing this glitch to our attention.
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rupisnark at 05:51 AM on 28 July 2019Models are unreliable
MA Rodgers @1119
Re response to @1117
♣ ….You bat the"~750 Million Units" into the long grass but there is also the "6 trillion" which is part of the talk transcript While the 750M quantity could be considered as the rough total (that's total as in down to absolute zero) heat content of the atmosphere per sq metre of the planet, the 6T quantity would be 80 times more than the equivalent for the oceans (which are usually considered the largest thermal pool the climate has to cope with). So what the 6T quantity is supposed to be, I know not. I assume it is just meant to appear very very big.
->6trillion. As a guess, could the heat content of the Earth might be the figure he is referring to? The mass of the earth is more than 4*10^6 times bigger than the mass of the water on earth, so it is within a few orders of magnitude! I have no idea how much heat transfer is going on between the oceans and the rest of the Earth, there would obviously be different speed of change issues compared to atmosphere/ocean and atmosphere/Earth’s surface. Happy to be shot done on this one if my guess is unreasonable.♣ Slide 1 of Christy (2019) says it takes the values from AR5 Fig 2.11. It is Christy's comparison, not mine.
->I was not sure whether you did or didn’t agree with my previous summary of the point:-
The imbalance of 0.6W/m2 (0.18 units?), the statement that at the surface it is in balance, and the claim that 0.5 units is caused by extra CO2 whereas 100 units is caused by H20, clouds and aerosols (and not mentioned but presumably also existing CO2).
I understand you do disagree with the 6tr figure (and 750 units).
[I may appear to be slowly going through certain points, but I have learned from experience in many different fields, that this is an effective method of reaching a proper understanding, clarifying where difference of opinion lie and exposing falsehoods (which I believe is also one of the aims of this website).]Re response to @1118
♣ The non-denialist distortions would be a more interesting subject, if you know of any.
->I am making a list of them. I will then contact the people who appear to have distorted matters to enable them to respond (and if I have misunderstood, to enable me to correct my misunderstandings). I want to see who is distorting matters, not to add to the many distortions already floating around.
♣ Whether you have the time to cope with all the nonsense served up by Christy, or not. We haven't got very far with the content of this Christy talk in more than one iteration. And there is the question of whether I (or others) could be fussed to continue untangling the garbage of you into chunks you will understand.->We have not got far because your initial response only discussed one of the many points raised in the lecture. The more points you can answer the quicker I will understand. I have come to this forum with the aim of checking for myself some claims which have extraordinary consequences and if the claims made by your side of the debate were wrong could reduce GDP in 50 years time by well in excess of current world GDP. If true it could have the widely discussed consequences.
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/06/cutting-uk-emissions-net-zero-cost-1tn-philip-hammond…. I am taking a 1% reduction in global GDP pa to combat global warming… again estimates vary widely.]
If you do not wish to respond fully, I can understand that; but don’t then complain that the public are not willing to reduce their own and their children’s standard of living for a cause that have less than complete faith in.
♣ Note these Sea Surface temperatures (which C&M 2017 appears to say it uses to subtract ENSO from its TLT record) are not de-trended (as for instance the AMO is) so they do still have an AGW signal. Subtracting the NINO signals will thus also subtract some AGW signal
->I need to read further on this point. References welcome.
♣ Does C&M(1994) repeat the method of C&M(2017)? The implication is that it does (note that I have not access to C&M1994) but one difference is the UAH TLT v5.6 record was not used in 1994 as it didn't exist. The corrections to the UAH data set (mainly not the result of work by the UAH team) would have made significant changes to the 1994 result. So it is strange that C&M(2017) only finds a very small difference
->You seem to have a good point here… I will try to get hold of Christy at some point and challenge him on this and other matters. ( I have no idea if he will respond).
♣ Christy was one of six lead authors of Chapter 2 of IPOCC WG1 TAR (1990). Note the prmary finding of that chapter "The warming rate since 1976, 0.17°C/decade." This contradicts the primary finding of both C&M(1994) and C&M(2017).->He could agree with that conclusion and his 1994 and 2017 papers could still be valid, given for example that he is adjusting for Volcanic and El Nino effects and there may be other caveats in the paper; so I am not sure that it does contradict those findings.
♣ If Christy is happy to give the GWPF the time of day, he will get no respect from me!!!
->I have no idea what Christy’s views of the GWPF are. I don’t think Christy gets any respect from you anyway, given your previous comments. Again, I would rather that we just discuss issues, adding this type of comment is not helpful.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:33 AM on 28 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
When you look at an O3 molecule you can see how it's going to have vibrational modes. I'm assuming that's what is necessary for absorption in IR frequencies.
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MA Rodger at 22:45 PM on 27 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
John Seers @39,
As Eclectic @40 says, the annotated IR absorption at 9 µm in the graphic @38 is ozone (O3) but there are still O2 absorption lines in the IR just short of the visible and so should be represented on that graphic. They are at 1.27 µm and 1.06 µm. However these would not make O2 an Earthly GHG as the IR emissions from planet Earth only span 70 µm to 5 µm.
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Eclectic at 22:21 PM on 27 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
JohnSeers @39 , perhaps you are looking at the diagram via a small screen.
Mine shows the Oxygen as O3 .
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JohnSeers at 21:35 PM on 27 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
@Rob Honeycutt 38
"A greenhouse gas is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range."
"Oxygen and nitrogen are not greenhouse gases, because they are transparent to infrared light. "
Your diagram is indeed worth a thousand words.
I notice that O2 absorbs IR which was a bit of a surprise to me. Yet it is not a greenhouse gas. Can you, or anybody, explain? Thanks.
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icowrich at 17:40 PM on 27 July 2019Analysis: How Trump’s rollback of vehicle fuel standards would increase US emissions
California standards are critical, because no company will build a car that can't sell in California. Unless the White House can figure out a way to invalidate California emissions standards, these EPA regs won't matter.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:23 AM on 27 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
A picture is worth a thousand words. The reason IR detection can pick up a single human from an aircraft is, specifically, because they know what frequency NOT to tune the device.
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JohnSeers at 20:04 PM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
36
Good answer MA Rodger. Thank you.
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MA Rodger at 19:08 PM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
billev @30 &33,
I would agree with fellow commenters that you are demonstrating ignorance but perhaps we can rectify that situation.
Your assertion @30 that you see "no correlation between the periods of pause in temperature rise and EL Nino activity" would be reasonable if you could find your way to making clear which "periods of pause in temperature rise" you are referring to. We know you will be using NOAA data (although that is not of any significance) and will be considering only post-1959 data. And pretty-much all of that period sees global temperature "pauses" resulting from ENSO or volcanic activity, as per the Foster & Rahmstorf (2011) adjustments described @32.
The remainder of you comment @30 and the entirety of that @33 concerns IR transmission through the atmosphere. Your questions @30 are rather poorly framed. The amount of IR emitted by the surface that is absorbed within five feet will depend on the wavelength. In the 15 µm band absorbed by CO2 (which is a significant portion of the whole) 100% would be absorbed but then quickly re-emitted. Again it would be re-absorbed after a short distance. This in itself would make no significant difference to the temperature measurements or indeed the temperature as the energy does not hang about, it being very quickly re-emitted another small distance (up, down or sideways) where it will again be absorbed/re-emitted and on and on. The impact on temperature is trivial. (You will perhaps note that this is not the nub of the AGW mechanism.)
@33 you reference the "U.S. weather service." @26 you also mentioned this was a source of data you were referring to but I fear you are probably mis-citing the US Standard Atmopsphere (presumably the 1976 version) which is the work of NOAA, NASA & USAF. Can you provide your reference as in the circumstance it is good to be clear exactly what you are talking about.
Your major point @33 is that the abilities of "aircraft equipped with IR detection equipment" somehow is not compatable with the existence of a a greenhouse effect. You may find the responses @34 &35 a bit too involved. Very simply put, IR 'thermography' uses shorter IR wavelengths than the 15 micron band that is absorbed by CO2 and gives us AGW, shorter wavelengths where the atmosphere is less opaque. (These wave bands are often called 'windows'.)
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Bob Loblaw at 13:18 PM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
scadednp has it right: billev's "questions" are getting tiresome.
Gases all absorb at very specific wavelengths. It's a fundamental aspect of spectroscopy. In comment 30, I pointed to a vendor's page on gas analyzers. By choosing the appropraite wavelength, different gases can be measured because they absorb at different wavelengths. Gases emit at different wavelengths, too - and this is how looking at distant planets can tell us their atmospheric composition.
Whaever billev thinks his "questions" apply to, it's not reality.
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scaddenp at 12:16 PM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
This is getting tiresome. I find it astonishing that you continue to assert that you know more than scientists while at same time demonstrating your ignorance.
IR detection of mammals from planes etc is hugely limited by the atmosphere. This is basic. Windows of IR that dont interact with GHGs are fundamental to such detectors. Try here for the basics. Does it occur to you that attenuation of IR by atmosphere is easy to measure and we have been doing so for over 100 years? The codes used by climate science to calcualate the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere were developed by USAF. Surely you would suspect that they keen for result to be accurate?
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billev at 11:23 AM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
But it is a soup comprised of miniatures that doesn't appear to have a significant effect on air temperature if you consider the air temperature measurements of the U.S. weather service. As far as atmospheric CO2's effect on the passage of IR I point to the fact that aircraft equipped with IR detection equipment are able to pinpoint the location of even single humans based on their IR signature. That doesn't argue well for the the capability of atmospheric CO2 to significantly hinder the passage of IR. This applies to my earlier question about atmospheric CO2's capability to effect IR passage between the Earth's surface and the level of standardized air temperature measuring devices around the World.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:17 AM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
billev:
You can't see something you refuse to look at. For the effects of El Nino on global temperatures, look no further than this paper. Once effects of El Nino volcanic aerosols, and solar variability are removed, very little year-to-year variation is left.
For a readable summary of the Foster and Rahmstorf paper, try here. The key graphic is the following:
As for chasing the squirrel of IR radiation affecting near-surface air temperature measurements, you really are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Air temperature in the lower tens of metres is vastly controlled by ground (or ocean) surface temperature, which is heated by the sun. Air temperature measurements are taken inside radiation shields, such as the Stevenson Screen. This not only eliminates IR effects, it pretty much removes errors related to solar radiation heating, which is a far more important issue. We've only known about these sort of issues since the mid-1800s.
You're not catching up - you're falling even farther behind. Yesterday, it was 1964 information you were missing. Now it's 1864 information. As one of my colleagues says "he's so far behind he thinks he's in the lead".
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Eclectic at 10:00 AM on 26 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #29, 2019
Garb @2 ,
it would be good if you could check the paper in "opinione.it" [which does not sound much like a peer-reviewed scientific journal ~ where serious scientific is published!] and pull out for us, one or two or three scientifically-valid points of evidence negating the mainstream climate science the last 150 years or so.
A decade or two ago, a petition was raised by 31,000 American scientists [or at least, people having some sort of science degree] who asserted that the climate science was wrong. The petitioners ranged from "A" a biologist, to "Z" a wood engineer. Hardly any had specialist climate experience or did research in the climate field.
More importantly, the petitioners did never then, or up to today's date, produce any genuine evidence to back up their assertion. We can only think that their statement was an expression of crackpot ideation (sorry, I don't know the correct Italian translation of crackpot) or was an expression of their extremist political beliefs. [By definition, political beliefs must be extremist, if they disregard the scientific reality.]
It will be interesting to discover whether these 90 Italian scientists have anything to show. Unlikely, I would have thought ~ since there has been nothing published in the scientific literature to negate the "anthropogenic impact".
( Also interesting, that these 90 Italian scientists would be going against the Pope's own well-informed opinion on climate science . . . and against the Pope's council of senior scientists . . . and against all the leading august scientific bodies, worldwide. Perhaps they are 90 Galileos, who have been hiding themselves in a secret chamber for 30 years !!! ]
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Philippe Chantreau at 09:33 AM on 26 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #29, 2019
Meanwhile, there is this serious research coming up:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6451/369
It is Science Magazine, so under subscription, here is an excerpt from the abstract:
"The observed melt rates are up to two orders of magnitude greater than predicted by theory, challenging current simulations of ice loss from tidewater glaciers."
2 orders of magnitude. Will be interesting to see what further research shows...
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Philippe Chantreau at 09:27 AM on 26 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #29, 2019
It would probably not be interesting at all to take a look at it and there is usually little variation as to why these types of operations are launched.
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Garb at 09:17 AM on 26 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #29, 2019
Hi !
I was recently made aware about a petition that supposedly 90 italian scientists are supposed to have signed and sent to the Italian government to make them reject the "hysterical" claims that are made about climate change, and that they question the science behind the anthropogenic impact on the climate:
http://www.opinione.it/cultura/2019/06/19/redazione_riscaldamento-globale-antropico-clima-inquinamento-uberto-crescenti-antonino-zichichi/?altTemplate=Stampa&fbclid=IwAR1YAoqulAKKXJTY-uzRfSEaX-G6NRpVOckp3nVE7iiTAgOQu8DMHGUxRnE
Here it is in the paper:
http://www.opinione.it/cultura/2019/06/19/redazione_riscaldamento-globale-antropico-clima-inquinamento-uberto-crescenti-antonino-zichichi/
And are mentioned in some other kind of press:
https://www.policymakermag.it/italia/clima-petizione-controcorrente-firmata-dagli-scienziati-italiani/
It would be interesting if you would take a look at it, as I have seen multiple blogs copy and paste it (often direct from google translate). If a large number of Italian scientists are questioning the science in IPCC's reports, it would be nice to understand why.
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Eclectic at 09:10 AM on 26 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
Billev @30 ,
the whole lower troposphere is a soup of continually absorbed/radiated IR photonic energy. Doesn't matter if you are talking about five feet, five thousand feet, or five inches altitude.
Is there a point behind your question? As a reader, I find it hard to distinguish whether you are trying to make some (obscure) point, or whether you are just completely failing to understand the the physics of the Greenhouse Effect. Please, please explain what you are on about !
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