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michael sweet at 22:05 PM on 3 April 20193 clean energy myths that can lead to a productive climate conversation
Thinking Man,
I note that you show no math or citations to support your wild claims.
I have seen several attempts by wind opponents to calculate very high costs of wind using absurd assumptions like you describe. About 5 years ago one was published in a journal. No-one refers to that article now because everyone informed knows that it was BS from the start.
In spite of these calculations, in Texas and New England wind energy underbids all fossil fuels including gas. Real world experience indicates that wind is cheaper than all fossil fuels.
ps: I thought that the 6 day in advance estimates of wind energy were pretty good. Since utilities use these for routine planning if a fossil plant that is on standby is forecast to be needed 6 days in advance they have sufficient time to get the fossil plant online. The one day (or one hur) forecasts are the ones that control what is done in the end. Everyone knows that forecasts are not as accurate beyond 4 days. Claiming a 6 day forecast is important is a strawman argument.
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JohnSeers at 19:45 PM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
@SirCharles 12
"... numerous attempts to derive E=mc² from first principles have failed"
That is hilarious. I think Einstein is famous for most of his work being thought experiments and deriving his equations from "first principles". Including E=mc² . -
AnnieLaurieBurke at 16:20 PM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
August 25, 2046? Oh, cr^p! That's just 2 months after my 100th birthday! ;-(
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sarokarekpahal at 15:30 PM on 3 April 2019Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow ouNon Government Organizations are actually the backbone of society. These NGO help the Society before any government help. Thousands of helping hands works together in any disasters before the happening of such crisis. Thanks for sharing such a valuable post according to new ways of social NGO. SAROKAR NGO is different than othersr comments policy. Thank You!
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:04 PM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
I will add an important point to my comment @7.
Perceptions of prosperity or reduction of poverty that are the result of unsustainable and harmful pursuits cannot be expected to continue as benefits into the future.
That is an inescapable reality. Unsustainable harmful pursuits have a competitive advantage when the measures of 'value' are popularity or profitability. Once valid ethics is introduced (not claims about morality that are just poor excuses for harmful unsustainable pursuits) everything changes.
The current developed world has become highly morally corrupted. Misleading marketing is a major reason. Politics being a free-for-all regarding misleading marketing has only made things Progressively (and Conservatively) Worse.
Progressive development of sustainable improvements, and related corrections of what has developed based on constantly improving understanding, is compromised by the easy popularity of resistance to correction, the resistance to learning, the resistance to changing an incorrectly made-up mind.
The resistance to correction has made many problems worse. The result is the development of requirements for more traumatic corrections. The required corrections today are larger and more urgent that they were 30 years ago.
The key to improving the future is to make the corrections earlier, and ensure that the reduced trauma of the correction (reduced because it was started earlier) is experienced by the people who benefited most from the creation of the problem before the corrections started to be implemented.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:48 PM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Talk of the limitations of electric cars is interesting. But the reality is that electric rapid transit was effectively implemented about 100 years ago.
And debating technical details regarding climate change and responsible actions is interesting, but can be a damaging distraction.
And claiming that the choice is 'reduce the harm done to future generations' or 'help the poor today by doing more harm to the future generations' is clearly a false choice. Poverty and reduction of future climate impacts can been achieved simultaneously, at the expense of people who gained status in ways that are not sustainable, ways that create poverty and climate impacts.
The reason there is still poverty in a nation as collectively wealthy as the USA has a similar cause as the reason such a wealthy nation has such powerful resistance to behaving better regarding climate change. And it is similar to the reason there is poverty in any nation (almost every nation has wealthy people and deep poverty).
And that brings me to the point of referring to a book I highly recommend to people who want to better understand what is going on, regarding more than climate change, but with climate change as a powerful case study.
"A Perfect Moral Storm: the Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change.", by Stephen Gardiner published in 2011, is a comprehensive and hard to argue against presentation of the ethical issue (the moral corruption of leadership) that climate science has exposed in a big way.
The 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #3 included the following presentation by Gardiner:
Why climate change is an ethical problem by Stephen Gardiner, In Theory, Washington Post, Jan 9, 2016
It is an updated summary of the thinking he presented in his book. But some here may remember that back in 2012 his book played a key part in the following SkS item posted by Andy Skuce in 2012: "Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Great Stink of London"
In that item a series of points regarding climate change impacts are presented and followed by the following:
"In his recent book A Perfect Moral Storm, The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, Stephen Gardiner identified three “storms” that come together in a wicked synergy to make the climate crisis an especially intractable problem.
- The Global Storm. The unequal dispersion of cause and effect across the planet. See b), c) and d) above.
- The Intergenerational Storm. The effects of our emissions are deferred and will persist essentially for ever on historical timescales. See e) and f) above.
- The Theoretical Storm. We currently lack the institutions, conventions and tools—political, moral and economic—needed to tackle the exceptional problems posed by climate change and we are going to have to invent them as we go along. See g) above.
"After this analysis it shouldn’t be difficult to appreciate why we’re not doing any better than the Londoners were in 1855. Actually, to quote climate scientist Ray Pierrehumbert (pdf):
So far, we’re not doing any better than cyanobacteria."
The Green New Deal is proof that some people are trying to do better than cyanobacteria. But they still face massive resistance from morally corrupted wealthy people and the type of leadership the morally corrupted want.
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SirCharles at 12:15 PM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
BTW. Ever seen that, folks?
Conservapedia: "E=mc² is liberal claptrap"
=> https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=E=mc%C2%B2
That's for real.
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scaddenp at 11:37 AM on 3 April 2019Climate's changed before
TVC - you are wasting your time with this idiot. Your graphic is based on some fundimental physical assumptions, especially the conservation of energy. From this we deduce that changing the radiative balance will change climate. Measuring individual contributions to the radiative balance does indeed yield that diagram. It is possible to construe a possible downward trend in solar, but he thinks a change of 0.1W/m2 is significant then why isnt change of 3.7W/m2 (GHG) even more significant. The claim "that we "know" that the only thing that really matters is CO2?" is strawman. Reading any of the references associated with the diagram shows that all the causes contribute and are accounted for - but that CO2 is the most important for current climate change. He is not interested in examining the evidence. He needs to supply evidence that refutes the methodology or finding of those papers. I doubt you get him to read any of them.
His comments present not one shred of evidence in reply. It is scoffs from personal incredulity based on wilful ignorance. You will not make any impact on someone who chooses not to understand.
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SirCharles at 10:30 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
@10. nigelj
Just build more wind turbines... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w_eSVGSl8Q
Trump has always been an extreme hypocrite. So he might actually fall for this 'idea'
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TVC15 at 08:59 AM on 3 April 2019Climate's changed before
My the denialist is trying to debunk this link I posted.
"You actually believe that one can parse individual contributions to "climate" change so precisely and then assign (with similar precision) relative contributions from man and "natural" causes?"
"That is priceless. So I guess the fact that we are in a 50-75 year solar minimum cooling phase is lost to you then? Should we not be concerned about that large burning gas ball in the sky, now that we "know" that the only thing that really matters is CO2?"
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nigelj at 07:46 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
It could be hollow. Donald Trump could always hire Bruce Willis, experiended asteroid hunter, to blow the asteroid out of the sky, provided of course poor countries pay as much to help as rich countries, or the "deal is off".
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nigelj at 06:49 AM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Sometimes governments have "picked winners" and so backed things that have failed, but so has the private sector, with numerous examples in the technology area. Picking winners is an inescapable part of life.
The private sector has backed fossil fuels just as much as governments.
Governments can minimise picking winners by treating all forms of renewable electricity generation the same.
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nigelj at 06:22 AM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Dana's article is really good, but it unfortunately it looks to me like a carbon tax and dividend isn't gaining much traction in America. Perhaps there is just too much ideological paranoia about taxes for it to ever work.
The government infrastructure spend in the GND might be the only thing thats viable. The senate have voted down the GND but a government spend at realistic levels might be viable. Subsidies around the world for wind power etc have yielded results. The GOP is quite happy to subsidise things when it suits and run deficit financing.
It's troubling though because without a price on carbon things become complicated.
America's climate policy is a train wreck.
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nigelj at 06:14 AM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
"Nevertheless, for all the competition and technical input to electric car design, the weight to range ratio of lithium-ion batteries places practical limits on the utility of electric cars when compared to ICE cars."
Yes and no. The 2019 nissan leaf electric car is moderately priced, and can go 150 miles on a full charge and a new model available shortly will do 200 miles. This is quite sufficient for work and travel for the vast majority of people, assuming some recharging stations. The venerable toyota corolla can go 500 miles on a full tank of gas, but this is largely superfluous unless you do very long trips somewhere with few petrol stations, and not many people do this. So the difference between the two cars is psychological rather than real.
In addition 10 disruptive battery technologies are under development and some will no doubt extend range for those needing 500 miles. Even if some of these fail, and being careful of getting carried away technological hype, it still looks very promising. So consciousnessof sheep is too pessimistic for me as well. But the article on Britain as Venezuela is interesting. Just chose it at random.
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william5331 at 06:04 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Worth keeping an eye on thought. Each future observation refines the probable orbit of this piece of rock (or is it a snow ball?) . More likely that we will have destroyed our civilization by then and won't have the capacity remaining to do anything about it.
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SirCharles at 03:11 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
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SirCharles at 02:55 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
LMAO!
Desperately needed these times.
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ThinkingMan at 00:33 AM on 3 April 20193 clean energy myths that can lead to a productive climate conversation
LEVELIZED cost estimates can be used as a starting point for estimating the cost of electricity service which society currently expects. Electricity users expect reliable service. In TX, the full cost (capital related charges + operating costs) of reliable electricity structured around wind turbines is at least 1.75x the full cost of reliable electricity generated by natural gas fired combined cycle combustion turbines. In New England, the multiplier is 2x.
The multipliers were estimated using EIA levelized cost estimates, wind turbine capacity factors for both regions, hourly wind power data for both regions plus a simple financial model. The wind turbine package was designed to generate a constant amount of electricity, for simplicity's sake. "Package" means the mix of thermal generators backing up wind turbines. The multipliers are intended to be ball park estimates.
PREDICTABILITY of wind turbine output: Day ahead and longer wind power forecasts leave much to be desired across North America. Your attention is directed to https://www.aeso.ca/grid/forecasting/wind-power-forecasting/ . Go to the "Monthly Wind Power Forecast vs Actual Comparison". "aeso" is the Alberta System Operator. Results are similar for Electric Reliability Council of Texas and ISO New England.
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Eclectic at 19:13 PM on 2 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Postkey @2 ,
I am not sure it was worth your while quoting from blogger "consciousnessofsheep".
His ovine opine [scuze the Inglish] seems to be that what was impossible 20 years ago, will consequently & necessarily be impossible 20 years in the future, or 50 years in the future. And furthermore, that modern industrial society will collapse when diesel fuel (petroleum-based) runs out.
Are the other articles on his blog any the better?
Or were you quoting him ironically, as an example of uncritical thinking?
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Postkey at 18:18 PM on 2 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
"Electric cars – powered from on-board batteries – have been around since 1859. However, they were quickly eclipsed by internal combustion engine (ICE) cars which even then offered far greater speeds and ranges. The early electric cars drew their limited power from lead-acid batteries of the kind found in most ICE cars. And while improvements continued to be made to electric motors, it was battery storage that proved to be the limiting factor for electric cars. The development of modern lithium-ion batteries – coinciding with the global drive to curb greenhouse gas emissions – helped propel Elon Musk’s high performance (and once again massively subsidised from the public purse) Tesla electric cars to prominence. Following the release of the Roadster and the development of new longer range Tesla cars, we have seen several other companies including Nissan, Daimler and BMW bring electric cars to market. Nevertheless, for all the competition and technical input to electric car design, the weight to range ratio of lithium-ion batteries places practical limits on the utility of electric cars when compared to ICE cars."
From http://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/
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bozzza at 17:33 PM on 2 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
It's year 11 economics: the more the government injection the harder it is to get rid of--> they picked fosssil fuels as 'the winner' a century ago... the great war propbably had something to do with that! And we all know science is polticial! That's why batteries never got the cold shoulder for the bulk of the last century!
I mean, they were dreaming of going to the moon in the 20s and they'd well figured out batteries couldn't do it, ever......... that fact will never be disproven so it's almost all understandable infact!
Go propaganda ay!!!!
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JavaTom at 10:46 AM on 2 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Brilliant!
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mrkt at 09:17 AM on 2 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Love it. Well done.
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nigelj at 05:11 AM on 2 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Amusing, and very on point.
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jphsd at 04:36 AM on 2 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Well played sir, well played!
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Forrest at 15:13 PM on 1 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Obviously another example of elitist scientists trying to destroy the American way of life. Why does the fake news media buy into all this nonsense? We need to stop funding fake science, and make sure that only real scientists are supported with our tax dollars. We should create a new government department to review all science proposals and reject anything based on elitist hoaxes like evolution, global warming, fluoridation, vaccines, and relativity.
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Chad Boudreau at 15:09 PM on 1 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Bravo!
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scaddenp at 06:18 AM on 1 April 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Looks like various blogger fear a "blue water" event in the arctic and are preparing their public for idea that it isnt bad, could be natural, no need to support any climate action.
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scaddenp at 12:43 PM on 31 March 2019Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change
Michael, I dont believe you are correct about grey literature. Eg see here.
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michael sweet at 09:32 AM on 31 March 2019Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change
From Red Barons's Scientific American report: "As with all of Johnson’s work to date, this result has appeared only in the form of reports and other “grey literature.”
Grey literature is not allowed in the IPCC report because it is considered unreliable. Johnson needs to replicate his work and publish the results in a peer reviewed report. Hardly part of the scientific consensus.
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RedBaron at 13:56 PM on 30 March 2019Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change
@20 liberator,
That study does not include Methanotroph activity in their CH4 analysis. So their methane analysis was flawed compared to feedlot. But they did report soil sequestration of CO2e resulting as a net negative. So they got that part right at least, even using imported alfalfa hay, which is not needed in HPG, unlike certain other AMPs. Important to note too that the rang of soil sequestration they found was within the 5-20 tonnes CO2e / ha/ yr found elsewhere. Once they finally get the methane cycle right too, the differences will be even more profound.
@Kevin C,
Thanks for the time and effort. Here is more fuel for the fire.
Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?
" Johnson reported a net annual increase of almost 11 metric tons of soil carbon per hectare on his cropland."
Converted to CO2e that is ~ 40 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr. About double the average reported by Jones and 4x what was reported by Teague, but nearly the same as the high outliers. Jones also took the raw results and measured that only 78% was stable humic polymers and I don't see where or if Johnson did that.
It's not HPG, but it does show the biophysical capacity of microorganisms in the soil to sequester high rates of carbon.
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bjchip at 09:28 AM on 30 March 2019New measurements confirm extra heating from our carbon dioxide
Link to Tjemkes et.al 2004 is broken.
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Eclectic at 07:44 AM on 30 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Gsmakin @117 ,
thank you for the link to "the blogger's presentation" [ = WUWT blog ] of 22 February 2018.
If you scroll down about halfway on the comments section there, you see an interchange between Nick Stokes and the guy who calls himself "Kenneth Richard" (who is a major propagandist at "No Tricks Zone"). Quite informative. Continue through to the final post, which is by Kristi Silber (who is also one of the handful of commenters worth reading on WUWT).
Gsmakin, I am unsure of your degree of familiarity with WUWT. My take on that blog, is that the usual articles are worth a quick glance (but are typically puerile propaganda spin) and the comments columns are mostly filled by posters who are (A) political extremists somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and/or (B) crackpots who maintain that CO2 has negligible effect on terrestrial climate, and/or (C) tinfoil-hat conspiracists.
~ So, please do not waste too much of your valuable time in detailed reading of the articles at WUWT . . . and as for the comments columns, best just to scroll down at high speed, but pausing to read anything by Nick Stokes, Steven Mosher, and Kristi Silber. (NB: up until recent times, the WUWT site allowed commenters to give each other a vote of thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It was highly noticeable, how the above three persons always received a heavy downvote ~ but with that system gone, the other commenters simply express their vitriol verbally . . . when they can spare time from berating the general science community.)
As for Kenneth Richard ~ oh what a blackened conscience he must have, from the persistent way his output is brimful of mendacities, doctorings, and misrepresentations. A propagandist, in the most pejorative sense. (To quote from Nick Stokes on 22 Feb 2019 there : "There is no truth in Kenneth Richard's misrepresentations" )
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nigelj at 07:10 AM on 30 March 2019New research, March 18-24, 2019
Regarding "The growth of climate change misinformation in US philanthropy: evidence from natural language processing (open access)"
This certainly demonstrates the power of lobby groups and campaign financing over politicians. I was a little bit interested in some of the research referred to in the article, so I tracked it down, so here are some links to open access articles:
Trust, tribalism and tweets: has political polarization made science a “wedge issue”?
The spreading of misinformation online
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gsmakin at 03:57 AM on 30 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
MA Rodger: Yeah, the first bit you quote is a summary of the locations from which the data across all three of the referenced papers was derived (Stein, Yamamoto and Moffa-Sanchez). Maybe I was overly broad.
As to the "opposing arguments" section I'm not here referring to the studies themselves but rather to the blogger's presentation and the manner in which he intends his audience to imbibe it. To quote from said blog:
"Further to NOAA’s claim that Arctic sea ice extent is at its lowest for at least 1500 years, Kenneth Richard highlighted three studies last year that show the claim to be bunkum."
The clear intention is to erode confidence in the NOAA findings by presenting a series of graphs which depict a "present" with much more arctic sea ice than at multiple points in the past (not just the Holocene Thermal Maximum). Presented in that way the author clearly seeks to reverse the alarm that the NOAA graph must surely cause by depicting its cliff face as a little kink in otherwise wildly undulating trend lines.
At least that's the way I saw it.
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MA Rodger at 02:34 AM on 30 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
gsmakin @111,
You say:-
"In total these findings appear to cover the Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea and Eastern Labrador Sea and to be fair do seem to detail periods of the last 10k years when these areas had far less ice than today."
The graph set out data from a single location in the Chukchi Sea (73N,166W), the ARA2B-1A bore hole (labelled A1 on the maps set out in the paper). This is a location that was marked in Atlases as being permanently frozen, but not any more.
But note that the paper (Stein et al 2017) does set out that their findings of increased ice in the Chukchi Sea over the last 2ky are reflected by results from elsewhere in the Arctic.
But the assertion @115 which you attribute to "opposing arguments", that "although current ice loss looks huge to us it is actually a mere nothing when looked at over centuries and millenia", such an assertion seems to be saying that the Arctic had entirely ice-free summers during the Holocene Thermal Maximum. This was not so. Arctic summer ice was not greatly different to the situation of the early 21st century and probably more icy that we will be seeing in coming decades.
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gsmakin at 00:29 AM on 30 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Daniel Bailey - Those were indeed the findings i was familiar with and i do not doubt them but it's always worth examining the arguments of others to see if they hold any credence and if not, understand their weakness so others don't fall prey to them.
In this case the opposing arguments seem to be that although current ice loss looks huge to us it is actually a mere nothing when looked at over centuries and millenia. There are then displayed a variety of graphs depicting great hillocks from the past to little bumps in the present with a little arrow saying "you are here."
All this can get a bit confusing to a layman such as myself and although I try to educate myself I'm very grateful i can come to a site like this and be able to have my questions answered.
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gsmakin at 00:07 AM on 30 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Eclectic: Sure. Basically you have the NOAA graph posted in response to 103 which quite clearly depicts the terrific drop in the amount of Arctic sea iice over the past century and then you have Lowisss13's blogger pointing to various regional studies he claims contradict that finding. Since I figured some sort of sleight of hand was afoot i nosied around the studies themselves, found the original figures and found not one of them displayed the great cliff shown at the end of the NOAA graph. I then wondered why this should be the case.
I guess you've sufficiently answered my query by pointing out what the blogger didn't - that these studies end in 1950, thus missing the great bulk of the current warming trend.
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Daniel Bailey at 00:05 AM on 30 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
For perspective, Arctic sea ice extent, from NOAA's 2017 Arctic Report Card, shows recent extents to be the lowest in the past 1,500 years. Not a surprise, as it also shows recent temperatures there to be the wamest in the past 1,500 years:
Interestingly, it also shows that the development of sea ice in the Arctic over 40 million years ago to be closely coupled with the fall in global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures (unsurprising, given that both are tightly intercorrelated over geologic time):
Given that actually reading Stein 2017 shows it to be in support of the anthropogenic nature of the current warming and the ongoing losses from the Cryosphere, especially WRT the Arctic and its diminishing sea ice, it's hard to give any credence to skeptics that misquote it.
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Eclectic at 21:34 PM on 29 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Gsmakin @111 , readers such as myself would be grateful if you clarified the point that you are interested in.
The graph you posted ( of Holocene Sea-Ice Cover Variations ) is very broad-brush indeed. It runs up to 1950 A.D. [the paleo definition of "the Present" or Time Zero ] . . . and the last 500 years have such minimal detail, that it seems close to useless for assessing what is happening in modern times.
I am completely unsure of what the validity of its proxy estimate of sea-ice cover would be ~ but, assuming it is of some value, I do think it is interesting in that it demonstrates a lower level of cover during the warm period of the Holocene Maximum (roughly 5-10 thousand years Before Present). And that the known gradual global cooling since then (i.e. over the most recent 5 thousand years) is also reflected in a gradual increase in sea-ice cover. But that is entirely as might be expected. However, the relevant question (for this thread) is ~ what is the cover doing during the last 50-100 years, and especially in recent decades, during which the global surface temperature has soared upwards enormously [and is now higher than the Holocene Maximum].
It would be "passing strange" if the modern high temperatures were not causing more ice-melt, as a definite strong trend. (Doubtless you will also be aware that the arctic ice summer volume has decreased by about 70% in the past 40 years.)
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gsmakin at 20:05 PM on 29 March 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Philippe Chantreau: The graph in the blogpost Lowisss13 linked to:
seems to be derived from this graph from the Stein study (figure 6, rightmost):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jqs.2929
That blog also references two other studies which it claims contradict the NOAA finding: Yamamoto et al (2017) and Moffa-Sanchez & Hall(2017). The graphs the blogger uses are derived from Yamamoto (figure 8, pg 1121) and Moffa-Sanchez (figure 2) respectively.
In total these findings appear to cover the Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea and Eastern Labrador Sea and to be fair do seem to detail periods of the last 10k years when these areas had far less ice than today.
My question is rather simple: do these studies contradict the NOAA findings or are they easily explainable as regional variations consumed by a much greater overall trend?
I ask not as a skeptic but as someone who lacks the necessary expertise to interpret such studies with any degree of confidence.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please limit image widths to 450.
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TVC15 at 03:06 AM on 29 March 2019Climate's changed before
@680 & @681
Thank you both and all points well taken and understood by me.I greatly appreciate the feedback of how I handled this denier and the angle I took.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:58 AM on 29 March 2019Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt
micheal sweet @10,
From "The New Lexicon - Webster's Encycopedic Dictionary of the English Language - Canadian Edition, 1988"
Velocity: Rate of motion.
From "The Concise Oxford Dictionary - 1985"
Velocity: Quickness or rate of motion or action usu. of inanimate things.
I do understand that velocity can be speed in a given direction. But if that was the intent then there is no need to include speed as one of the measurements being collected.
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David Kirtley at 23:06 PM on 28 March 2019Climate's changed before
MA Rodger @677: I stand corrected. I went too far back in time.
TVC15, the reason I am belaboring this is because if I were one of your friends watching this conversation from the sidelines and I saw you merely declare: "False" in response to the denier's statement which contains at least a nugget of factual information, I would not have been impressed. Most people have a basic understanding that the material in their body comes from the food they eat and that this ultimately comes from plants which get their material from CO2 and water. So most people would have recognized that the denier had made some true statements when he said: "Did you know that ALL of the carbon atoms in your body (as you are an organic organism) was once CO2? That is the carbon cycle; CO2 is as important to life on earth as water and oxygen". Your denier then makes a false conclusion from these basic facts that CO2 can't be a pollutant: "yet the left has labeled it a 'pollutant'." You should have shown that this conclusion is false, and doesn't follow from the previous factual information. Instead you attacked the other end of his argument, spinning out irrelevant information about the ultimate origin of elements, or the fact that not ALL (every single atom of carbon) in lifeforms comes from CO2.
Does any of that information about the origins of carbon or other sources of carbon in lifeforms say anything about the denier's false conclusion about CO2 as a pollutant? No.
I'm sorry if all of this seems like I'm attacking you. I'm sure you mean well and want to communicate the science well. But too often these online conversations with deniers devolve into shouting matches which don't do any good for the ones listening in on the sidelines.
All I'm really saying is, ignore the denier and aim past him to get the correct information to those on the sidelines.
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michael sweet at 21:58 PM on 28 March 2019Climate's changed before
TVC:
All carbon in life is fixed by plants via photosynthesis. A miniscule amount of methane might be incoporated into life but the methane came from carbon dioxide fixed by plants. This is well known.
I suggest you hang your arguments on another point. There are many clear points where your denier is incorrect.
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michael sweet at 21:54 PM on 28 March 2019Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt
OPOF:
From Google:
ve·loc·i·ty
/vəˈläsədē/Submit
noun
the speed of something in a given direction. -
Bob Loblaw at 11:39 AM on 28 March 2019Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt
William @ 7:
You do kow that you can google these things, don't you?
e.g., for "Sea ice brine exclusion", About 621,000 results (0.52 seconds)
Second hit on my results is to wikipedia, which I think answers your question:
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John Hartz at 08:59 AM on 28 March 2019The Green New Deal debate is in part about the absence of details
Suggested supplemental readings:
How the Green New Deal Is Forcing Politicians to Finally Address Climate Change by Justin Worland, Time Magazine, Mar 21, 2019
Mitch McConnell wants a Green New Deal vote. Democrats should take him up on it. by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Mar 25, 2019
Senate's Green New Deal Vote: 4 Things You Need to Know by Marianne Lavelle, InsideClimate News, Mar 26, 2019
Senate defeats Green New Deal, as Democrats call vote a ‘sham’ by Dino Grandoni & Felicia Sonmez, PowerPost, Washington Post, Mar 26, 2019
The Green New Deal vote shows Republicans would rather mock climate change than challenge big lobbying groups, Opinion by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse & Rep. Jared Huffman, Think, NBC News, Mar 26, 2019
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nigelj at 07:53 AM on 28 March 2019The Green New Deal debate is in part about the absence of details
The GND has certainly gained some attention and caused a stir. This suggests it might be broadly on the right track, or is at least it is forcing people to confront the issues. It's a shame the article had to start on such a negative note about it.
There's been much discussion about whether the GND should have included socioeconomic policies, and my initial impression was it was unhelpful to include those. However on second thoughts I'm changing my mind. Perhaps it's not of huge concern whether they are in or out of the GND. They will be attacked by some quarters whether they are in or out of the GND. The democrats stand for various things environmentally and socially, and should obviously promote them.
What is likely to be more important is to consider 1) do the GND policies make sense? and 2) are they likely to get enough public support and 3) Are they likely to get enough support from elected politicians? Because we obviouslly all want polices that are good legislation, and work to solve problems, and which are sustainable, and the policies also have to get enough votes or they are pointless.
A couple of things stand out. The environmental provisions in the GND make sense on the whole and so do the social provisions. None of the social provisions are particularly revolutionary. The fact that some in America think anything that is even remotely like universal healthcare or publicly provided is bad is beyond my comprehension. The rest of the developed world has grasped the need to have the sorts of socio economic provisions in the GND. Watering such policies down to nothing is pointless.
Polling shows the majority of the public in America broadly want more done about climate change, and support the social goals in the GND. Although some tweaking of the provisions is probably required.
The GND plan is for a government infrastructure spend based on deficit financing or creation of additional credit or some such. I think carbon fee and dividend is preferable technically, however a government infrastructure spend might actually be more attractive to the public and politicians for obvious reasons, because people just don't love taxes. The GOP have no problem with deficit financing when it suits. But if there was no carbon tax, the GND would lack an obvious price on carbon so this is a problem.
The sticking point is probably politicians rather than the public. Politicians are generally well intended, I don't think criticism of them is always that helpful, but it's a fact they sometimes become captured by various ideologies, lobby groups, marketing and so on. We all are at times. A lot is dependent on politicans (and everyone else) finding some courage and doing what is right (and helpful to others) rather than being overly influenced by such groups.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:36 AM on 28 March 2019The Green New Deal debate is in part about the absence of details
Pushing for the separate/isolated pursuit of climate action is unlikely to be effective. It's promotion needs to be paired with related corrective actions. And the ultimate result will be a significant correction of the developed socioeconomic-political systems (and related corrections of perceptions of status, prosperity and opportunity).
In Canada, climate action has been pursued as a stand-alone issue. The Federal proposed action is Carbon Fee and Rebate. It is imposed on any Province that has not implemented a comparably effective action. And the playbook of those trying to win power by resisting the 'actions that can be understood to help correct what has incorrectly become popular and profitable' is on display. They oppose the climate action by making-up poor excuses that actually are popular.
The successful misleading marketing attacks on Carbon Fee and Rebate in Canada (and in each Province) include claims that the actions to reduce the burning of fossil fuels are:
- Job-killing (in spite of the larger amount of job-creation)
- Harming the Poor (even though the rebate more than covers the fees for a poorer person)
- Reducing public funding for health care and education (a claim successfully made by a party that openly declares they will reduce tax collection from the richest, their fans do not see the inconsistency. They also do not get challenged on what future generations will have to do when the non-renewable resource can no longer be benefited from).
- Not going to change anything (that gem poor excuse that people who want to believe it can claim cannot be dis-proven to their satisfaction)
- Pointless. Others are required to behave better (like the 1997 “Byrd-Hagel” resolution that demands that the largest contributors to the current problem, and biggest beneficiaries of the harmful unsustainable development, are not to be required to 'do anything' unless all others who are trying to improve their circumstances 'have to behave better than the already harmfully over-developed in the incorrect direction did'.
Those claims can be made-up to attack any effective climate action policy proposal. Having those easy criticisms addressed up-front in the Green New Deal should not be criticized by proponents of climate action. That is complaining about the unpopularity of having climate action associated with the issues that it will be associated with by the misleading critics of climate action.
Many people who may be inclined to support climate action, including elected representatives, will unfortunately allow the popularity of those misleading marketing efforts to lead them to support the political tribe that is actually resisting the correction. They will allow poor excuses to motivate them to vote United in support of each other's understandably harmful developed beliefs and activities (you cannot remain part of the group if you vote against part of the group).
Recent news is the pronouncement by VP Pence that NASA must put people on the Moon within 5 years. That will likely mean a refocusing of NASA funding, likely away from anything climate related. But it also highlights the 'pursuit of perception of status problem' that is fatally affecting thoughts and actions in the USA. The mission to the moon 'will be popular' because it will unjustifiably, yet undeniably, boost perceptions of status of many people in the USA who desire perceptions/impressions of superior status relative to Others.
Improving awareness and understanding and application of that improving knowledge to develop sustainable improvements for the future of humanity 'on this planet which is the only place we are certain that humanity can have a future on' (pursuit of local helpful actions that are not harmful to Others, especially not harmful to future generations), must govern the thoughts and actions of everyone, especially leaders. Leaders should not be pushing for the harmful or distracting development of unjustified perceptions of superiority relative to Others.
The best summary of what is helpful that has been developed to date is the Sustainable Development Goals (along with a few other related helpful UN developed understandings like the requirement for nuclear disarmament).
Achieving and improving on all of the Sustainable Development Goals (and the other helpful UN developed understandings), is undeniably required to govern the thoughts and actions of everyone, especially leaders. And based on that understanding, the USA landing astronauts on the Moon cannot be a priority over climate action and the other Sustainable Development Goals (sending people to Mars, which is a very challenging and interesting pursuit, is also not a current day urgent priority). And those types of pursuits should not re-direct funding away from climate science related activity by NASA/NOAA.
A developed lack of interest in that improving awareness and understanding, and the development of resistance to it, is a fundamental part of the incorrect development that has occurred in the USA. And it also can be seen to be happening in many other supposedly more-advanced developed nations. And it is the root of the following statement in the OP:
"In addressing a wide and critically important range of social and economic issues – higher education for all Americans, pay inequities, job guarantees, secure retirements, housing – the sweeping GND (remember it’s only an RFP) likely is written to enlist some supporters whose motivations aren’t primarily the sustainability of a livable planet."
The fundamental problem is the promotion of the following unhelpful characteristics in people: One-ism, Me-ism, My Tribe-ism, anti-All Others-ism.
People who grow up heavily immersed in the competition for perceptions of status relative to Others in 'environments flooded with misleading marketing promoting beliefs and actions that are understandably harmful to Others and are able to be gotten away with' can be expected to over-develop harmful unhelpful Self-Interest.
An attempt to pursue something like climate action in isolation from the other understood goals to be achieved for development to be sustainable is unlikely to be successful. The SDGs are what is required for humanity to have a sustainable future. Climate Action is a key Goal, but it is harmful to pursue it to the detriment of achieving the other required corrections. The implementation of a Carbon Tax in France without related measures to correct developed inequities in France produced a damaging result.
The real problem is a serious developed flaw in the system of competition for popularity and profit that has naturally developed. The current day developed reality clearly indicates that without addressing that serious developed flaw, the resistance to correction will further delay effective correction of the harmful unsustainable things that have developed. Those opposed to climate action are indeed partnering with anyone else who is opposed to any other understandably required correction of what has developed in the USA in order to develop sustainable improvements within the USA. But that is not a Good Reason to fracture the collective of people pursuing the diversity of corrections required to achieve the SDGs.
Developing a sustainable solution to the developed problem requires open and frequent public admission of what the real problem is, especially by all leaders and wanna-be-leaders. The 1997 “Byrd-Hagel” resolution is a clear example of the results of harmful over-developed "Self-Interest". And its unanimous support is evidence of how incorrectly over-developed in a harmful direction the the leadership of the USA was in 1997. It seems clear that that problem is not being effectively addressed in the USA. In fact, the evidence indicates that misleading marketing appeals to resist admitting and addressing the real problem have developed even further in the USA.
What is required is the correction of governance to ensure improving awareness and understanding is valued and that only helpful actions are rewarded (and harmful actions, including misleading political marketing, are penalized). Every person needs to be held accountable to be helpful rather than harmful, to improve awareness and understanding and the application of that improved knowledge to develop sustainable improvements locally that do no harm to any Others. And leaders need to be seen to be setting the highest examples rather than pandering to a united diversity of harmful self-interest motivated popularity and profitability promoted by misleading marketing as was clearly done in 1997 and continues to be done today.
The cycle of development of harmful attitudes and actions and the development of resistance to correction of those developed popular and profitable things needs to be broken. Pursuing 'All of the Sustainable Development Goals', including the pursuit of improvement of those goals, is clearly what is required.
The Green New Deal is a step in the right direction for new development, and for the correct correction of what has developed. A One-ism driven focus on climate action that dismisses the importance of the other required corrections is not helpful. Climate action is unlikely to be sustainably supported without all of the other sustainable development goals being connected to it.
There is a fundamental resistance to admission of what the real problem is because it is understood that the required corrections will likely result in a reduction of developed perception of status for many people. The resistance to any action that would 'negatively affect developed perceptions of superiority, prosperity and opportunity no matter how unacceptably and ultimately unsustainably those perceptions were developed' continues to be loudly, proudly, harmfully successful. That is what needs to be changed/corrected, because the future of humanity cannot benefit from (is actually harmed by), people who are able to continue 'living and winning like that'.
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