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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

More on this specific subject:

=> Global spike in methane emissions over last decade likely due to US shale
=> Research shows that natural gas no better than coal for mitigating climate change
=> US oil and gas methane emissions equivalent to 14 coal-fired power plants
=> Oil and gas is sector top source of US methane emissions, ahead of agriculture

A gas well remains a gas well, even when production is long ceased, the well is just being plugged. As shale gas exploration needs an ever growing amount of wells being drilled just to keep production flat, we will see an ever growing amount of gas wells. 5% of gas wells leak from day one. After 14 years, 50% of the wells are leaking. So it’s only a matter of time when methane will be released into the atmosphere.
=> Why gas wells leak

Robert Howarth, PhD, concludes that the global increase in methane over the last 10 years is largely driven by the oil/gas industry. His updated estimate for average, full-cycle methane leakage rate from natural gas operations is 4.1%. Leakage rates above 2% means natural gas is worse than coal for the climate!
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NPuYr1LGMI

The same applies to the methane called "by-product" at shale oil fields.

=> Methane emissions from oil production up to twice as high as estimated
=> Methane from gas and oil wells found to travel farther than expected underground
=> Studies reveal extent of methane emissions from Canadian oil and gas operations

There are some 1.7 milion active oil and gas wells in the US. One well per 200 capita. Doesn't that sound insane?

nigelj at 14:18 PM on 9 May 2019

Fox News made the US a hotbed of climate denial. Kids are the cure.

The following article seems relevant and convincing to me: How Republicans came to embrace anti-environmentalism. The deep roots of conservative opposition to the environmental state, explained.

Art Vandelay at 14:16 PM on 9 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

Michael Sweet@6, the Greens are not travelling too well, due to leadership issues as well as a few poor candidates who have managed to damage the Green's brand. However, they will likely still attract 9% of the primary vote, in spite of the fact that the Labor party has alos moved into their space and vowed to move aggressively on climate change, with a pledge to decarbonise 50% of the economy by 2030, which is double the rate committed by the current Liberal / National coalition government.

A Labor government appears a fait accompli, however it's the makeup of the senate that will ultimately determine climate policy, and that's likely to be problematic for the incoming Labor party. Labor's higher taxing / higher spending / wealth distribution policies are likely to create a voter backlash on the basis of risk, and noting too that none of Labor's climate action policies have been costed or subjected to a cost benefit analysis.

nigelj at 07:21 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

And while some minerals are scarce, this article is based on proper research and suggests to me we have more than enough mineral resources for renewable energy infrastructure, (imho provided population growth slows and ultimately falls and we don't over consume). Reality is a complex thing.

nigelj at 06:29 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

Libertador @8

I think you are basically right, more or less. Hunter gatheres lived more or less sustainably. People used to live (and many still do) very simply and primitively on farms, without modern technology, transport, and industry, and farmed organically all with negligible environmental impacts. I believe 10 billion could live that way on farms with no or minimal negative environmental impact, in theory.

Once humanity developed industry and technology that is when environmental impacts increase inexorably. In fact its inevitable we will eventually completely run out of some resources. Even the invention of farming set in motion a sequence of events leading to high consumption and the industrial revolution.

But the key thing is it just doesn't seem realstic that humanity will willingly revert to a very primitive farming culture. At the very least we want some technology. We can mitigate all these environmental impact problems by trying to reduce our use of technology, energy and materials,but I think there are limits on how much people will do, so most of the solution is going to have to come from smaller global population using the mechanisms you and others describe with family planning better access to contraception, better woments rights and social security. This is why I promote it constantly as an urgent priority. It will also help the climate problem longer term. But ideally the climate problem will be solved by then with wide adoption of renewable energy. But if it isnt smaller global population will help.

And please note I'm saying smaller population not just slowing growth rates.

If the world adopted a fertility rate of 1.5 this decade population would fall to around 6 billion by 2100 and 2 billion by 2300 according to simple population calculators. Do we really need 10 billion people, or 5 billion?

Some countries are already at a fertility rate of 1.5. Of course the problem is the bulge of dependent elderly people, so we have to find ways to mitigate this and population cannot be allowed to fall too fast. So the solution to environmental disaster is going to have to be a combination of smaller population and reducing waste, and less use of resources, and zero economic growth in terms of industrial production.

One Planet Only Forever at 04:43 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

nigelj @6,

A briefer comment would have been that GDP is clearly an irrelevant measure of progress. But that would have been wide open to interpretation.

My longer comment was a more general preentation that would lead to the understanding that achieving and improving on the Sustainable Development Goals is what matters, and helpfulness towards that objective needs to be the measure of value and success. And there is no upper limit to that value and success.

One Planet Only Forever at 04:33 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

libertador @8,

My attention to Sustainable Development has led me to be curious about, and investigate, 'population' concerns.

In addition to the points you have picked-up on and presented, another factor pushing population growth is the lack of socioeconomic safety nets to ensure that everyone lives at least a basic decent life.

Systems without decent public social safety-nets, particularly but not exclusively for the elderly, develop pressure to have lots of children as a safety-net. And conditions leading to early death of children and young adults can increase that unhelpful pressure to have more children.

Of course, anti-abortion sentiments are also a problem, especially if they lead governments to harmfully refuse to support international assistance efforts that would include abortion as a potential method of best helping a woman in a developing nation.

One Planet Only Forever at 02:38 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

nigelj @6,

Thank you for clarifying that you are referring to humanity eventually getting to a point, possibly soon, where Zero-Growth of 'Quantity of Consumption and related Harm and Waste (QCHW)' is required.

I do not agree with the thought that humanity will eventually need to limit what is developed to a Zero-Growth economy.

And I substantially agree with the understanding presented by Mentor @7. However, I am more of an optimist.

As a proponent of Sustainable Development, I refer to Growth of 'Quality of Helpful Life Circumstances (QHLC)' which is a completely different thing (even though both are Growth and the acronyms look similar - and these are just my acronyms in this comment, they are not public domain acronyms).

It should be common sense that QCHW and QHLC are very different matters. Improving QHLC (IQHLC), particularly for the poorest everywhere, is a worthy objective of Sustainable Development. And everyone should be aspiring to be as Helpful as they can be in that regard, which entails honouring the correlated objective of 'Do No Harm'.
It is then common sense that 'Reduction of QCHW (RQCHW)' is the related objective. RQCHW can be used along with IQHLC to measure the merit of allowing an innovation to compete for popularity and profit. An initial screening to determine the acceptability of a new activity in competition for profit and popularity should not be the end of IQHLC and RQCHW efforts. Constant monitoring and investigation of the impacts of what has been allowed to compete will be needed to enable early detection and correction as required by improving awareness and understanding.

The competitions for popularity and profit, magnified by marketing, have now been conclusively proven to need careful monitoring and external correction of what can develop (no matter what Neo-Liberals claim).

QCHW and QHLC are incorrectly connected by many people. They incorrectly perceive IQCHW as the measure of QHLC. And to do that they develop a preference for ignoring the HW parts. Even you have commented that many people perceive their QHLC as directly proportional to their QCHW. And those people also do not consider how harmful and unsustainable their developed perceptions, desires and preferences are.

The lack of awareness and its related misunderstanding is powered by 'allowing misleading marketing' rather than requiring any promotion to be a presentation of a fuller awareness and understanding (like the weak, but improving, requirements imposed on pharmaceutical marketing), or limiting marketing (as is done regarding tobacco and alcohol).

Current developed institutions in many supposedly more advanced and advancing nations incorrectly promote the misunderstanding about QCW and QLC (the applicable concepts of H are dropped because including them would lead to ethical considerations which would be contrary to their unethical interests). The result is an Over-Growth of powerful harmful misunderstanding among the population that is hard to correct.

That Over-Growth of misunderstanding and the related Over-Growth of QCHW have already occurred. There is no 'increased room for Growth of consumption'. Humanity's total impacts are already far past levels of Consumption that would be Sustainable, especially if the objective is to ensure that every human, now and far into the future, enjoys at least a basic decent life.

Humanity has developed many harmful activities with accumulating impacts. Population growth is part of the problem. But the highest consuming and impacting portions of the population are by far the major problem to be corrected.

So it is common sense that Sustainable Development requires significant UN-development and a related correction of incorrectly developed perceptions of status and prosperity.

There is no doubt that a significant portion of the developed population will 'not like that change and correction'. But they also have no Good Helpful Reason for attempting to maintain their incorrectly acquired perceptions of status and prosperity (their status-quo).

That portion of the population can be seen to have been continuing to harmfully pursue their interests, contrary to developing sustainable improvements for humanity, in spite of the improved awareness and understanding that was established at the end of WWII. The IPCC and IPBES identified needs for correction are just two of the many identified required corrections of what has been developing. The 1972 Stockholm Conference established international awareness of the unacceptability of many things that competition for power, profit and popularity (status) had been developing.

The unethical backlashes by Neo-Liberal Economic Fundamentalists and their Uniting with Social Fundamentalists is an expected 'anti-correction' result of that constantly improving of awareness and understanding. Their interests and pursuits are undeniably unsustainable and harmful to the improvement of the future for humanity. That improved awareness and understanding needs to Grow to the point where there are enough Altruistically motivated helpful people to effectively govern and limit the actions of the minority that Egoistically prefers not to be helpful, prefers to be harmful.

There are No Good People opposed to Achieving, and Improving on, the Sustainable Development Goals. And once the harmful correction resistant people have their influence significantly limited, humanity will be able to more rapidly continuously IQHLC. And there maybe no upper limit on IQHLC. The only limits are due to the QCHW by the less ethical, less responsible, less deserving than the Status they have in the Status-Quo.

libertador at 02:25 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

I read about population growth in many climate discussion. The discussion always seems to be a bit misplaced for me. The population growth issue seems to be more an issue of poverty and justice for the poor, than a direct environmental issue.

1. Consumption (with wrong technic) drives emissions not pure population.

2. Where there is population growth, the consumption is low.

3. Globally the population is basically growing because of inertia. People are getting older, but the number of children is probably not growing.

4. In order to keep this stable population development the best practices are fighting extreme poverty (this does not need lot of emissions) and strength the role of women.

See e. g. gapminder.org and some of the information there.

One caveat. The bigger population can become an environmental issue in case of the old model of growth adapted from the industrialized and newly industrialized countries.

Mentor at 00:59 AM on 9 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

As long as mankind continues to overpopulate the world and adhores money and greed, nature will further go down at an ever increasing speed. There seems to be no escape from disaster because the artificial system today survives on the wrong principles.

nigelj at 17:23 PM on 8 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

OPOF @5, I think a zero growth economy is absolutely inevitable sooner or later, and I'm not alone. There is a huge literature and this is thought provoking.

It's very hard to see how we can keep on increasing rates of output of industrial goods every year on a finite planet. There is also a case to deliberately embrace zero growth to conserve resources for the future. Japan has had close to zero growth for years and it hasn't hurt them.

Having said that, there could be growth in the services sector as this is separate from the planets resource base. Recycling can also prolong some level of growth but this has limits. And I believe the earth has enough resources for everyone to lead a comfortable life, assuming we get population growth down and minority groups are not permitted to monopolise resources too much. And obviously third world countries are entitled to growing their economies.

And your other points make sense, but are not specifically related to gdp growth as such.

I was really pointing out to Dan that I don't believe we can continue business as usual rates of resource use and have never suggested we can, just that we have to be realistic about what is possible in terms of expecting people to adjust their lifestyles.

One Planet Only Forever at 14:00 PM on 8 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

nigelj,

I do not agree with a Zero-Growth economy. There is no reason to expect that humans will be unable to continue to develop truly sustainable better ways to live. Sustainable Development does not mean No More Improvements.

As noted in the report, technological innovations have been helpful and harmful. Improved awareness and understanding an be expected to allow more improved ways of living to be developed, and shut down unsustainable harmful activity before it becomes too popular or profitable to be easily corrected.

What is required is the development of institutions that will rigorously ensure that only the sustainable helpful innovations are allowed to compete for popularity and profit.

Those improved institutions will also need to effectively correct the many harmful unsustainable things that have unfortunately already developed popularity and profitability. And that is where the resistance to correction by undeserving winners in the status-quo will fight hardest. But the correction of what has developed is the most important required step. Relying on technical innovation to produce all the required corrections is a Fool's Game.

Humanity currently has the ability to reduce over-consumption, waste, and pollution. Many of the corrections are as simple as ending unnecessary things like powered recreation impacts and over-air-conditioning, over-heating, over-powered vehicles. And those corrections can be done while maintaining and improving the assistance to the poorest.

All that will be needed is the corrections of attitudes of those who want to be good helpful people but have been misguided. Enough good helpful people will also result in the minority who remain in 'the resistance to helpful correction' being effectively governed and limited, much to their disappointment.

A very important aspect of the new and improved institutions will be rooting out the 'status-quo resistance to the required corrections'. Those institutions will need to develop effective mechanisms for governing and limiting marketing, particularly political marketing, to be helpful efforts to improve awareness and understanding in the general population. No more slick emotionally appealing misleading marketing drumming up unjustified support for the resistance to the required corrections.

The correction resistant will probably declare such 'marketing governing institutions' as 'tyrannical oppression of freedom' (like they now cry about the worst of their heroes not being allowed on social media platforms). But their disappointment is deserved and deserves to be ignored. Freedom that is not governed by Altruism can be very harmful to Others. Their developed harmful Egoist desires cannot be allowed to compromise what needs to be done. Many other aspects of marketing are understood to need to be governed and limited externally to keep them from being harmful. Political marketing clearly needs to be included in the 'altruistically governed and limited activities'.

A lot of harmful older people, and those younger people hoping to win like those harmful older people did, will be rattled by the changes. But the need for more rapid and more significant correction really is mainly their fault. The bigger problem with less time to correct is the result of their harmful resistance to correction. So there is no need for sympathy regarding their inability to understand why they deserve to be so disappointed (much of it is due to made-up misleading political marketing).

The poor, on the other hand, need to continue to be helped sustainably, meaning even more disappointment for many of the harmful people who perceive themselves to be richer, or potentially richer, than they deserve to be.

One Planet Only Forever at 08:34 AM on 8 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

nigelj@5,

As you know, I am a proponent of the achievement and improvement of Sustainable Development Goals, all of them, no in-fighting over which one is 'more important to achieve' that distracts from or impedes efforts to achieve Other SDG goals. I appreciate that Climate Action is a key goal because more aggressively achieving it can make many other goals easier to achieve. But understanding the importance of more aggressively achieving climate action does not diminish the importance of achieving all of the other goals, the sooner the better for the future of humanity.

Achieving and improving on all of the SDGs undeniably requires developing improved awareness and understanding in the population regarding what is required, corrections and the direction of new developments. That is indeed easier to do in the new generation.

In Alberta the newly elected United Right (UCP) opposes helpful correction of many things that have developed. It is attacking updates of decades old school curriculum, particularly Social Studies that were being worked on during the term of the previous NDP government. The Trump administration in the USA is meddling in school curriculum content. And the related New United Right group in Alberta, the UCP, claim that the updated program is Politically Ideological. What they object to is things like the Social Studies program guiding objective stated as follows “Social studies provides opportunities for students to develop the attitudes, skills and knowledge that will enable them to become engaged, active, informed and responsible citizens. Recognition and respect for individual and collective identity is essential in a pluralistic and democratic society.” That statement is being scrubbed from the Alberta Government websites as the UCP take over power in Alberta - keeping people less aware helps keep people from developing better understanding.

That Social Studies objective would lead to a curriculum content that is indeed effectively politically. It would properly educate the future generations to oppose most of the change resistance actions desired and promoted by the New United Right parties. It would develop acceptance of a broad diversity of Others and it challenges the acceptability of Greed. Along with the obvious economic promotion of greed, the New United Right appeal for support from people who have developed distrust, dislike and disrespect for Others and the associate fears of ethical corrections. But the important point is that the updated curriculum would be Ethically Correct. What the Alberta New United Right, and other New United Right groups around the world fight against is 'being corrected' in any way.

Resisting understandably ethical corrections of behaviour is what leads to the application of, and more importantly ethical updates of, the Rule of Law. The New United Right political leadership can be seen to be trying to mislead or impede the improvement of awareness and understanding of what is required to develop sustainable improvements and corrections for the benefit of the future of humanity. Their efforts, especially the types of Laws or application of Laws they try to create, can be understood to be versions of Obstruction of Justice (if justice is correctly understood to be protecting Others from harm and the pursuit of improvements of the future for humanity). Their claims that they make-up their rules following the rules, or that there is “No conclusive proof, to the satisfaction of a person who wants to benefit from harmful unsustainable less ethical actions, that an Existing Law was broken” in not an “ethical Justification”. What it proves is that the developed institutions require correction.

Adults can learn to correctly understand the harmful unacceptability of what has developed. But, indeed, many adults have developed a powerful Egoism because of the competitions for status based on perceptions of popularity and profit that they have been living in. That Egoist Anti-Ethical drive is powerfully boosted by the ability of harmful 'competitors for leadership and status' to get an advantage thorough deliberately misleading marketing (which SkS is clearly aware of and fighting against).

What is ultimately required is ways to get the potentially caring and considerate people who have unwittingly allowed themselves to be enticed into supporting the New United Right to realize all of the unethical harmful things they end up supporting because of the few select things that have tempted them to support the New United Right. People who wish to be seen to be caring ethical people can learn that the reason(s) they support the New United Right are actually unethical and fool them into supporting opposition to things that they genuinely want to support (but will not vote for because they vote based on the unethical temptations luring them into the New United Right).

Divisive in-fighting over which 'corrective action' is 'more important' can potentially become a learning opportunity for Liberals and Conservatives. It is an opportunity to learn that almost every 'main motivation' for people to support the New United Right political groups, or to myopically fight for the focus to only be on one of the SDG actions, is unacceptable and anti-ethical.

What is important for Liberals to understand is the need to support the full diversity of the SDGs (through things like the New Green Deal). And what is important for everyone to understand is that the New United Right collectively resist required corrections that will sustainably benefit the future of humanity. They resist corrections that are 'detrimental to undeserved developed perceptions of status'. That last part is a critical understanding. People cannot be allowed to continue to believe that the required changes can be made in ways that maintain undeserved unethically obtained perceptions of status. And that is indeed a very hard thing to get many people to Understand, especially the more fundamentally Conservative ones, but also the rabidly myopic Liberal ones.

scaddenp at 07:30 AM on 8 May 2019

Former climate 'denier' regrets 'how wrongheaded but certain I was'

You can rely on capitalism to leave the carbon in the ground if there is a competing technology that provides energy cheaper. However, it might need something like a carbon tax to ensure that this is true for the market to operate well. Even right-wing economists believe that there is a place for government to regulate when there are externalities unacconted for in the price of good (in this case, the cost of a changing climate). Unfortunately, right-wing voters and thus right-wing politicians are rather slow to acknowledge this.

nigelj at 06:24 AM on 8 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

Jef @3

"See this is exactly why I have a big problem with nigelj's comments, and he makes tons of them here and elswhere. His message is always "we can never do enough to reverse the collapse of the biosphere so lets just do a bunch of feel good stuff and call that the best we can do."

In what way specifically is a steady state economy, (zero growth) wasting less, renewable energy and smaller global popultion "a bunch of feel good stuff" ?

"He premissis it with some strawman comment like "...hair shirt lifestyle, and to revert to horses and carts...". Nobody is saying that"

Actually some people have promoted this, claiming it's inevitable. Some people already live like this such as the Amish. Other people claim we should abandon urban living and the capitalist system entirely.

I'm simply making the point a bit graphically that its unlikely people will give up on things like cars, and all the technology we generally take for granted, or go without adequate home heating, or abandon the capitalist system, so we are in a challenging position of striking a balance and just being realistic on whats possible and making things work more sustainably within this.

"We can do 80% and all live a decent lifestyle, just no second or third house and trips around the world. My son and his friends, mid 20s, life a great life in portland oregon and have a carbon footprint one tenth of the average."

Agreed. I have argued exactly the same sort of thing even on this website and elsewhere. In addition I have argued most people could viably reduce their consumption of resources by 25%, and that we don't need such large houses as have become commonplace in suburbia.

I did a quick google search of my own comments on this website as examples.

skepticalscience.com/2019-SkS-Weekly-Digest_17.html

skepticalscience.com/structural-vs-individual-action.html

So I don't really understand where you are coming from. I think you obviously haven't read things fully.

jef12506 at 02:43 AM on 8 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

See this is exactly why I have a big problem with nigelj's comments, and he makes tons of them here and elswhere. His message is always "we can never do enough to reverse the collapse of the biosphere so lets just do a bunch of feel good stuff and call that the best we can do.

He premissis it with some strawman comment like "...hair shirt lifestyle, and to revert to horses and carts...". Nobody is saying that.

We can do 80% and all live a decent lifestyle, just no second or third house and trips around the world. My son and his friends, mid 20s, life a great life in portland oregon and have a carbon footprint one tenth of the average.

mbryson at 02:11 AM on 8 May 2019

Former climate 'denier' regrets 'how wrongheaded but certain I was'

The basic problem here is the tragedy of the commons: no individual has a motive to stop doing something that is profitable to them but contributes to the destruction of important public assets, without assurance that others will do the same. The only way to solve such problems is by collective action— that that has to include interventions that stop/ deter individuals from taking advantage of the situation by continuing their damaging but individually profitable activities. The deliberate demonization of government's role in the economy is a ploy to defend special interests who profit from exactly this kind of activity, which is too often easy to hide from most people. We need honest scientists and environmental groups to call them out, and honest politicians who will listen to them. We're doing well so far on the first of these, but the second have been hard to find.

John Hartz at 01:56 AM on 8 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

As it should, the release of the IPBES report has generated mucho news articles throughout the world. Here are the ones I have posted links to on the SkS Facebook page as of this comment. I wll post more links to similar articles laer today and in the days to come.

Civilization Is Accelerating Extinction and Altering the Natural World at a Pace ‘Unprecedented in Human History’ by Brad Plumer, Climate, New York Times, May 6, 2019

One million species threatened with extinction because of humans by Isabelle Gerretsen, CNN, May 6, 2019

John Hartz at 01:42 AM on 8 May 2019

It's Urban Heat Island effect

Recommended supplemetal reading:

Urban Heat Islands Don't Explain Climate Change - Here's The Bigger Problem by Marshall Shepherd, Science, Forbes, May 6, 2019

The lead paragraphs of Sheperd's essay:

A recent flurry of activity on social media last week centered around a new study published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. According to the abstract, it found that "temperature observations (in an experiment with four observation sites) were warmest for the site closest to the built environment." This finding is not "News." We have known about the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect for many decades, and I have previously described it in Forbes.
I suppose the novel caution in this new paper is that urban "creep" is possible at some temperature stations used for overall climate change assessment like the U.S. Climate Reference Network. My colleague Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has a deep body of work on land changes and climate impacts so I suspect he is very pleased to see studies like this as am I. However, this essay is written as an antidote to wild claims spouting the "cliche" or "zombie theory" that climate warming is caused by urban heat bias. Not only is that flawed, there is a greater danger that many have overlooked.
One of my favorite climate scientists to follow on social media is Zeke Hausfather. A 2013 study published in Geophysical Research Letters by Hausfather and colleagues examined the urban bias on the U.S. Historical Climate Reference Network (USHCN). According to the NOAA website,
The U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data are used to quantify national- and regional-scale temperature changes in the contiguous United States (CONUS). The USHCN is a designated subset of the NOAA Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Network with sites selected according to their spatial coverage, record length, data completeness, and historical stability.

SirCharles at 22:31 PM on 7 May 2019

Former climate 'denier' regrets 'how wrongheaded but certain I was'

nigelj: "John Kaiser is to be applauded for changing his position, something that does take courage, however if he thinks the solution to climate change is the free market plus private sector acting alone he is mistaken, because by the time the free market solves the problem the Earth will be getting like Venus. Free markets have an absolutely awful record of fixing environmental problems."

I can only second that. Well said. I think it started with Reagan who said, government would be a bad thing. But in a democracy, government is the elected representation of the people, corporations aren't. So if one values the "free" market more than government regulation then s/he doesn't value democracy.

cpske at 22:19 PM on 7 May 2019

Former climate 'denier' regrets 'how wrongheaded but certain I was'

Is the US ready to address climate change? To do so, we need to realize that we need to leave Carbon in the ground. You can't rely on capitalism at all if you intend to put the complete fossil fuel industry out of business.

michael sweet at 21:22 PM on 7 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

The Guardian has an article that says Climate Change is a key issue in current Australian elections. Apparently polls are close but advocates of action about AGW are currently ahead 52-48%.

I am interested in comments from Oz. (I lived in Brisbane for three years). How do the Greens look?

nigelj at 19:10 PM on 7 May 2019

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

Environmental degradation and species decline is deadly serious, and is caused by high consuming culture and population growth, but this is a dilemma because people are unlikely to willingly embrace some hair shirt lifestyle, and to revert to horses and carts, and poor people must have a chance to improve their circumstances, and most of us want decent healthcare. The best we can work towards is asteady state economy, less waste, renewable energy and smaller population. So harm minimisation.

nigelj at 17:55 PM on 7 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

Adding a bit on this question of status seeking.

Human beings are materialists, who always want better things and we are status seekers, and we use material goods as a status symbol. It's probably in our dna to seek status. While the top 1% of modern humans take this to extremes and are causing a big problem almost everyone wants more things and seeks status. (Although huter gatherer culture minimised this).

However for modern humans the impacts of all this on the environment have become very damaging.

Conservatives resist acknowledging this because it means they have to embrace change in levels of consumption, and change is not in conservatives dna, but if they don't change, even worse environmental change will be the result so its a catch 22. But liberals are also status seekers as well, so also need to confront this and its wider implications.

It's going to be hard work changing attitudes in my generation, the so called baby boomers. Of course we should try, but I have an ominous feeling our best hope is educating young people to try to be less materialistic and to express staus is other ways. At the same time we have to recognise people are entitled to fulfill basic needs and top grade healthcare.

I feel there are no ideal answers. The principle to apply is harm minimisation. Get consumption levels down, waste less, try to minimise inequality, and get population size down. Stop listening to people who deny environmental problems, and problems of over consumption, and who demonise the UN and new ideas. If not, future generations will face a bleak future. The evidence for this is mounting fast.

One Planet Only Forever at 14:18 PM on 7 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

Correcting the ways of living of the least sustainable, highest consuming, highest impacting portion of the global population would produce more benefit for the future of humanity than 'more' attempts to limit population growth (though both are important for the sustainability of humanity). The end of this comment is a point connected to limiting population.

Biodiversity loss and climate change are both harmful results of a higher level Crisis facing humanity.

That crisis is the developed diversity of ways that the developed institutions of supposedly more advanced nations tend to promote a lack of interest in the future of humanity. Harmful results include claiming that correcting one sub-problem is more important than correcting a different sub-problem. That is an attempted divisiveness hoping to distract attention from the higher-level root-cause of many problems that requires correction. Many of the developed institutions can be seen to resist the required corrections of developed preferred beliefs and behaviour.

Powerful proof of how damaging many of the supposedly more advanced nations have become is the response of leadership and popular belief in those nations to the improving awareness and understanding of climate science and diversity of life through the past 30 years. An associated proof is the actions (or lack of helpful corrective action) by many of the wealthiest people in all nations. The harmful results include active denial or making up poor excuses like the need to compromise the future of humanity because of current economic interests (the so-called 'need' to balance economic and environmental interests that fatally fails to acknowledge that unsustainable economic activity has no future).

Every improvement of awareness and understanding can be seen to reinforce the following Theory: The only viable future for humanity is a robust diversity of humans living in ways that sustainably fit into the robust diversity of life on this or any other amazing planet.

There are many alternative claims about possible futures for humans. But those claims lack convincing presentations of sustainability. The lack of attention to sustainability is a fatal flaw. As examples:

Many technological innovation promoters claim that constant improvement will occur. To do that they must presume a 'sustainable?' development of fixes or repairs or replacements to correct the problems created by unsustainable and harmful technological developments being allowed to compete for popularity or profitability, unless harmful unsustainable developments are not allowed.
Many enlightenment promoters make similar unsustainable. They fail to acknowledge that any claimed improvement of circumstances for the poorest is not sustainable if the systems and actions that provided those 'perceived improvements' have not been proven to be sustainable. It is especially flawed thinking to claim that perceived improvements for the poorest due to the undeniably harmful and unsustainable use of fossil fuel is 'sustainable' because it 'Feels Good to think of it that way'.

Governing and limiting actions to achieve sustainable improvements for the future for humanity is required. And that required Altruism to govern over Egoism. And the developed institutions and systems are not effective are not effective at producing that result. Those systems develop powerful Regional and Tribal resistance to the required increase of altruism and the associated corrections of what has developed. Global institutions will probably need to be developed to help achieve the altruistic improvement of the future for humanity.

Many people have been writing about this, and for a very long time. It is not a recent or novel understanding. It is improved understanding that has been very powerfully resisted by many in the developed status-quo. A very good presentation of the problem is made by Stephen M. Gardiner in “A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change”.

Competition for status in games where success is measured by wealth or popularity encourages the development of Egoism and its related harmful attitudes that ignore, dismiss or discount concerns about Others or the future of humanity.

Competing for popularity and profit needs to be restricted to sustainable and helpful (or at least long lasting and harmless) options. It is now undeniable that competitions for status based on perceptions of popularity and profit are not ethically self-governing systems. Popularity or profitability can clearly develop powerful resistance to correction. For the benefit of future generations, the resistance to correction among any portion of any current generation cannot be allowed to get “too big to be corrected”.

Tragically, many people, especially the Conservative ones, are easily tempted to be fearful about corrections of developed beliefs and preferences. They struggle to accept understanding that contradicts things they developed a liking for. And they will support leadership that harmfully resists a broad diversity of incorrect beliefs that need to be corrected. The result can be a tragic divisive push away from sustainability. And the further that the resistance to correction takes a society away from sustainability the worse the ultimate end correction will be (more harm done and a more jarring correction).

The real problem is, and always will be, the ethical challenge from the tendency for people to be easily impressed into passionately and even fearfully caring about “maintaining Their Current developed perceptions of status and opportunity for status” more than they care about “how their actions affect the Future of all of humanity”. Everyone's chosen actions do add up. Claiming that 'one person's actions' are of little consequence is a very poor reason for a person to not learn to correct how they live.

The future of humanity requires increased awareness and acceptance of the understanding that all of humanity needs to be governed and limited by the objective of developing “a robust diversity of humans living in ways that sustainably fit into the robust diversity of life on this or any other amazing planet.”

New global institutions that people like Stephen M. Gardiner are working towards the development of are clearly needed to support Regional and Tribal efforts to effectively identify and correct harmfully Egoist people who have been winning popularity and profit competitions to the detriment of the future of humanity. The people leading the resistance to correction have understood that for a long time. That is likely a major reason they have been trying to discredit or impede UN initiatives. They do not want any UN success that would be detrimental to their developed interests. The anti-abortion division of the correction resistance team have recently attacked a UN women's rights conference with a disruptive text-barrage on the vice chair of the conference (see the CBC Report "U.S. investigates spam barrage on UN diplomat at women's rights conference")

Doug Bostrom at 11:37 AM on 7 May 2019

Former climate 'denier' regrets 'how wrongheaded but certain I was'

It needs a well-integrated, self-confident personality to change one's mind and do so in a public way, regardless of what o'clock on the political dial one occupies.

Let's hope that Kaiser is not too exceptional, or at least that his fresh perspective is infectious.

Pretty sure there's --something— I'm wrong about. I'll work on that. :-)

scaddenp at 08:25 AM on 7 May 2019

Heatwaves have happened before

There is another element to this. The WMO defines a heatwave as 5 or more consecutive days of maximum temperatures 5C above average. The common way to set this up is a blocking anti-cyclone (which is also the setup for a coldwave). For temperate regions, this is controlled by the jet stream. There is evidence that the decreasing temperature gradient poleward is resulting in more "loopy" jetstream and more blocking highs. See here for more discussion.

nigelj at 06:04 AM on 7 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

Sir Charles @2, I have already heard climate denialists saying we have our priorities wrong, because they claim insect decline is more serious than climate change! I was just putting it in perspective.

However I think you are generally right these problems all go hand in hand and have some similar causes. And our rates of growth are clearly unsustainable. Worse still our current population of around 7 billion if all living middle class lifestyles would be unsustainable. A lot of things have to change, starting with doing more gently promoting lower fertility rates.

michael sweet at 02:51 AM on 7 May 2019

Heatwaves have happened before

Andy,

Climate change changes the distribution of the temperature. This causes there to be more heat waves and less cold waves. Tamino (an on line statistician) posted this graph to illustrate heat waves:

tamino graph

The blue line is the temperature from the 20 th century for Zagrab, Croatia. The black line is expected temperature n 2040. The change is global warming. Tamino has colored in the increased heat waves. You can see that the cold waves have decreased proportionately.

You can look at the NCDC record temperature data. There are two hot records and two cold records for every day. For the USA daily records there are about 51,000 hot and 30,000 cold records set in the past year. For monthly records (harder to achieve) there were 2205 hot records and 1184 cold records in the past year. For all time records there were 181 hot records and 104 cold records (there were more than normal cold records last winter, the previous winter there were only 9 records set).

For global all time records there were 613 hot and 146 cold records. Larger areas have less noise in the data.

Does this data answer your question?

andy-bamford at 22:41 PM on 6 May 2019

Heatwaves have happened before

Can someone please show me how global warming predicts more and hotter heat waves, and less cold waves? Simplistic common sense says that more and hotter heat waves and less cold waves measured will result in higher average global temperatures, and therefore global warming.

SirCharles at 22:40 PM on 6 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

Climate change and mass extinction are going hand in hand, Nigel. Both are caused by unsustainable growth.

One out of the estimated eight million species are already in jeopardy. Including worms we need for a healthy soil, 75% of insects which are also food for birds, and 25% of all kinds of mamals. Not to forget that species are dying out BECAUSE of climate change. But we also need to stop poisonning our planet with chemicals like the total herbicide Glyphosate.

nigelj at 17:45 PM on 6 May 2019

Former climate 'denier' regrets 'how wrongheaded but certain I was'

John Kaiser is to be applauded for changing his position, something that does take courage, however if he thinks the solution to climate change is the free market plus private sector acting alone he is mistaken, because by the time the free market solves the problem the Earth will be getting like Venus. Free markets have an absolutely awful record of fixing environmental problems.

Most of the existing renewable energy achievements have been driven by government subsidies or carbon tax schemes etcetera.

People need to appreciate that government is by definition about intervention and rule setting, starting with the criminal law codes. The environment is just another issue that falls in the category of needing something from government. Not everything does, but some things do. So given most people accept the need for criminal law, its not inconsistent for the government to play some role of some sort in the climate problem with environmental laws and / or carbon fees etcetera.

The tragedy of the commonse problem means free markets and the private sector are not good at resolving environmental problems. That's just the reality.

Mitigating climate change is just going to have to be turbocharged with some level of government intervention, designed to be light handed, so perhaps carbon fee and dividend. Write a clause into the law that requires the fee to terminate when the problem is solved or reaches some appropriate level. This should alleviate worries about government excesses.

I'm not going to get down on our knees and beg people to see sense. It's time for everyone on both sides of politics to acknowledge basic realities of what works in terms of promoting change, and it has to be a blend of government and private sector and free markets.

nigelj at 13:27 PM on 6 May 2019

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #18

Regarding the biodiversity crisis, specifically the decline of pollinating insects. This is of course serious, but some have hyped it to the same level as the climate crisis which doesn't look justified. Basically I have read a lot of claims that decline in insects would literally wipe out agriculture, and to satisfy my curiosity a quick google search shows a more nuanced picture.

Approx. 30% of food crops depend on pollinators mostly bees, and this is typically fruits etc not staple food products. General article here. Research article discussed in Nature Journal here.Hand pollination is also possible. This is not to downplay the problem but it looks like climate change is the more pressing concern to me.

scaddenp at 07:01 AM on 6 May 2019

10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change

Published in "Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics", home of Scarfetta's astrological mathturbations. That should have been a red flag. Thanks MAR.

Eclectic at 09:57 AM on 5 May 2019

10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change

MA Rodger @101 ,

Quite so. The Varatsos paper is a fine lot of nonsense !

MA Rodger at 02:56 AM on 5 May 2019

10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change

Wilmer_T @100,

The paper you refer to is Varotsos & Efstathiou (2019) 'Has global warming already arrived?', the latest serving from a pair of nonsense-writers. Concerning increased height of the tropopause (fingerprint #9), this is found occurring in climate models and within atmispheric measurements, as shown by Santer et al (2001) cited by the OP above and this finding continues to be observed (eg Xian & Homeyer 2018).

Varotsos & Efstathiou ignore this serious work entirely and instead use UAH TP satellite data to assert there is no increase in tropopause height because there is no increasing trend in UAH TP. The use of such data is mind-blowingly stupid, as worthless as using a twelve inch ruler to measure the width of a human hair. UAH TP does not measure tropopause temperature. It measures a wide range of temperatures from the surface up to 24 km. Thus it is measuring the cooling stratosphere as well as the warming troposphere, two strong signals which will overwhelm entirely any tropopause tempoerature trend. The figure below is sourced from Spencer at UAH.

UAH altitude ranges

Eclectic at 12:33 PM on 4 May 2019

There is no consensus

Philippe Chantreau is quite correct that the question of the Consensus has become trivial and largely irrelevant. The science (of AGW) is settled enough for practical purposes [the practical purposes being the political policies for dealing with the climate situation]. And the "numerical consensus" is well over 99% and climbing ever closer to 100%.

Nevertheless, this thread here stays open for those who wish to split hairs about what are nowadays irrelevant trivialities. ;-)

Pl , you are correct in stating that AGW is "a thing" in the sense of a reality. But the "A Thing" phrase is so widely applied to all sorts of abstract concepts & ephemeral fashions, that it becomes quite ambiguous and unhelpful in our discussion here.

The surveys assessing the state of the (climate) science show that the (scientific) consensus, as measured by the published scientific papers in recent years, is in effect 100%. Over the years, there's been a tiny (and reducing) number of "contrarian" papers ~ and these papers have been mutually contradictory in their expressed concepts, and have utterly failed to present any valid evidence to support themselves.

In the far looser terminology of the Consensus in the form of an opinion poll of scientists . . . surely the only worthwhile poll can be made of scientists who are well-informed on climate science and who have definite expertise in this field.

Even rather old studies [such as the Cook 2013 study] show that the greater the climate expertise of the scientists, the closer to 100% is their "consensus of opinion".

And surely the whole concept of numerical consensus loses any useful meaning if the assessments include more and more of the ill-informed and the deliberately ignorant. Surely there can be no real value in a consensus that includes the opinions of blowpipe-toting hunters in the upper Orinoco River or iPhone-toting hipsters in the upper Missouri River.

Pl , the "non-binary" question you mention, is one that has been much discussed in years past. This, and your "original points", are all examples of imprecision of expression; and I must yet again beg you to clarify what you are driving at.

william5331 at 05:58 AM on 4 May 2019

What's Earth's ideal temperature?

The ideal temperature is the one in which we have built our cities, to a large extent where the sea meets the ocean, the temperature in which we have developed our crops and the infrastructure to grow them. If the world had been three degrees warmer as we developed into a modern society, that would be the ideal temperature. Our cities would now be further upsteam from where they are today (on the higher sea shore) and our agriculture would have been developed over the years to fit this higher temperature and different climate zones. Read Plows Plagues and Petroleum by Ruddiman for a pretty convincing argument why this present interglacial period has been so much more stable than past ones.

One Planet Only Forever at 02:47 AM on 4 May 2019

What's Earth's ideal temperature?

nigelj,

"The backfire effect seems to happen mostly when people are challenged over ideas that define their worldview and sense of self..."

Improved awareness and understanding of climate science leads to awareness and understanding of the required corrections of developed human activity, which cannot be isolated from the realization of the related corrections of perceptions of status that are required.

Trying to improve understanding of climate science can directly challenge people's ideas that define their worldview and sense of self. People willing to improve/expand their worldview and correct their sense of selfworth are not the problem. The socioeconomic-political systems encouraging people to be more Egoist are undeniably developing people who want to be as big a part of the problem (benefiting as much as possible from harmful unsustainable actions) as they can get away with.

pl at 01:06 AM on 4 May 2019

There is no consensus

Philippe Chantreau @795,

assuming you are commenting my "nitpicking" here. I believe I already stated I don't consider these considerations critical to the actual topic of AGW and I don't claim it has high priority on any related to-do list. However, I also consider the question how a consensus in measured and how the resulting "numerical level" is adjusted for apparent systemic biases to be relevant - both in general (as some kind of methodological best practice, regardless of the field) and also in the field of climate science, if not for anything else, at least to prevent possible attacks from deniers. I'm afraid people waste time on many less useful things than that.

pl at 00:54 AM on 4 May 2019

There is no consensus

Eclectic @794,

first, you must excuse some inaccuracy in my text, English is not my strongest skill. By "AGW is a thing" as a simplified statement of the consensus proposition I simply mean "GW is happening and human influence on it is significant" - or similar statement where I don't expect any disagreement.

You did not address my original points though - you expressed your view and opinions - which BTW I don't have many reasons to disagree with - but what I was looking for was to see, how these variables (and maybe I added another one in later comments) were controlled for in studies establishing the level of consensus - I haven't seen that in the study I linked to, nor in the comments.

Also, I wouldn't call it "objections" - I'm simply interested in some details of the "consensus measurement" methodology.

Regarding the "non-binary nature", it's rather trivial, see final paragraph of @793. No true scientist can claim something with absolute 100% confidence, despite human brains have tendency to use such heuristic. It's not an off-topic here, because - let me quote myself: We would probably agree that it's something completely different to claim "90+% of scientists agree, that the probability of AGW is above x" when the x is 50% compared to say x=99%.

greyowl at 23:32 PM on 3 May 2019

Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry

Thanks very much, Rodger, your explanation exactly answers myquestions.

nigelj at 08:09 AM on 3 May 2019

What's Earth's ideal temperature?

And of course I recognise that vested interests and political ideology lead to denial of science, but the research seems to suggest convincing at least some of these people to reconsider may not be impossible.

nigelj at 07:39 AM on 3 May 2019

What's Earth's ideal temperature?

Well said. Something related: It's often been said that facts don't convince doubters , (like pointing out the ideal temperature is what we have right now and relatively rapid change is what causes problems).

According to my paper copy of Scientific American dated march 2019, in an article called "why we believe in conspiracy theories" (paraphrasing) research has traditionally suggested facts, logic and evidence don't convince doubters, and just causes doubters to "dig their heels in deeper", the so called "backfire effect", but more recent research suggests this effect is rare.

New research finds pointing out logical inconsistencies in conspiracy theories, and facts about political issues does have persuasive effects on people. The research concludes backfire effect is more tenuous than previously thought. The backfire effect seems to happen mostly when people are challenged over ideas that define their their worldview and sense of self, so this is something to avoid doing.

The article also showed how encouraging analytical thinking helps.

So perhaps countering climate denialists with facts is not such a waste of time afterall. I have always had a strong instinct this is the case. Imho there will of course be a few people that will never change their minds on climate change (there is an actual flat earth society, and these guys are serious) but I would suggest this is a pretty small minority of people.

And personally I think pointing out logical falacies is important as well, and sadly something that was not well executed by media in general and the science community in the earlier days of the debate, but is better now thank's to things like John Cooks work.

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