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nigelj at 05:00 AM on 1 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Sunspot @39, thanks for the tip on the book. I admire Sagen as well. But come on you know religion is getting off topic, especially on an article about the Pause. I hope you comment further on other matters.
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Sunspot at 23:22 PM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Clearly your commenting rules, and, frankly, your views of Global Warming are too restrictive for me. I won't attempt to comment on this site anymore.
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Sunspot at 19:21 PM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Just one more quick point - for the best discussion I know of on the perspective of the non-believer, you can't beat Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World". It was the last book he wrote, his last message to humanity. He sent James Randi an early draft, and when the final version was published Randi noted that much of the language had been strengthened even more. During the final edit, at least, Sagan knew he was dying. He had things he needed to explain to us. For want of a better word, this book is my "bible". If I was going to start a humanistic "religion", I think I'd call it "Saganism". Carl would be appalled, lol...
Moderator Response:[PS] While I heartily admire Sagan's book too, enough please of offtopic comments.
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Doug_C at 17:45 PM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #52
nigelj @3
Also large stands of timber that can be utilized for lumber and other products. Unfortunately much of that will be destroyed by pine bettle infestations that are no longer controlled by very cold Canadian winters that no longer exist.
And the tar sands themselves contain large amounts of thorium and uranium, Alberta would be far better off investing in Gen IV molten salt reactors in the slow and fast spectrum which would provide centuries of energy at current demand from the tar sands alone.
It's not the lack of options that prevents real change in Alberta, it is the total lack of willingness of private and public sector policymakers who lack any independence from the oil and gas sector.
Rachel Notley only got elected to office after decades of Conservative rule because of how arrogant they had become. It was revealed that billions of dollars in royalties had been lost due to Conservative government mismanagement over years in Alberta.
Royalty Miscalculation Cost Alberta Billions, Expert Says
And as a response to this huge boondoggle the Conservative running for Premier told the people of Alberta that they should blame themselves for this loss.
Prentice says Albertans must 'look in the mirror' for the province's financial crunch
The way the oil and gas sector perpetually screws Albertans which will eventually leave the entire province broke and likely a wasteland you'd think there would be a revolution there. But the opposite is happening, people getting behind the oil and gas lobby like it offers some kind of salvation.
Totally irrational.
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scaddenp at 16:58 PM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
The Gerlach 2010 calculation still stands. The amount of CO2 an eruption can produce is constrained by the solubility of CO2 in magma. This is a hard limit.
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scaddenp at 16:54 PM on 31 December 2018Models are unreliable
AFT - based on a comment izen in this discussion, I believe this has been attempted but it is anything but straightforward because of changes to compilers, hardware and the state of the data files. There is more about the veracity of the model in this article here and perhaps further comments about Hansen 1988 belong there. In short, the model produces a climate sensitivity that is on the high side compared to modern models for a variety of interesting reasons. However, the article also points out a number of ways in which the model has been misrepresented by deniers. Continued work on reproducing the model is unlikely to help with those who determined to deceive.
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nigelj at 16:25 PM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #52
Alberta appear to rely on fossil fuel exports, but they have vast metals based mineral wealth, mostly unexploited, so its not as if they have to rely on fossil fuels. I would have more sympathy for countries whos only natural resource is fossil fuels.
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nigelj at 16:13 PM on 31 December 2018Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk
Something relevant: The book Dark Money, on the influence of money from people like the Koch brothers in the politics of climate change. This is 20 pages from the book.
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Doug_C at 15:45 PM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #52
Alberta is an oil and gas company store, even if it wasn't for climate change the cost to Albertans from this one sector is massive.
Albertans are already responsible for billions of dollars in costs for abandoned oil wells.
Albertans may face $8B bill for orphan wells unless rules change, lawyer says
And the overall cost of cleaning up the oil and gas sector there is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Cleaning up Alberta’s oilpatch could cost $260 billion, internal documents warn
But that pales to the potential costs of catastrophic climate change which have already been massive.
In 2013 Alberta experienced record floods in the south that claimed lives and cost and estimate $5 billion.
An April, 2016 heat wave and drought in north central Alberta created the perfect conditions for May firestorms that burned down Fort McMurray and cost an estimated $9 billion.
There is no prosperity from oil and gas in Alberta even before we look at climate change who's costs are already becoming incredible. And yet far too many Albertans demand the worst not best course to take rallying for more pipelines to keep the bitumen flowing and some threatening the life of the new Premier who seemed poised to challenge the death grip oil and gas has on Alberta.
Pro-pipeline rally draws 1,000 attendees in Alberta town of about 6,600
A wake-up call': Documents detail litany of threats against Premier Rachel Notley
The fact that Rachel Notley is doing nothing to address this existential issue may be down to the violence threatened against her by those who clearly lack any sense of responsibilty and collective interests.
Energy or social policy as expressed now in Alberta at the highest level has no place in a sane or civil society.
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ancient_nerd at 15:43 PM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
michael@295
Maybe you should look at the graph again. 650k years ago, the CO2 is at 200 ppm. 35,000 years later, at 615k, the CO2 has increased to 240 ppm. That is a big increase at 625k.
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ancient_nerd at 15:08 PM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
I am not denying the science. I am just wondering if what we have here is really conclusive. Thank-you for taking the time for a curious amateur.
So that big rise from 200 to 240 ppm really is at 620 or 625. Is the time calibration really so good that we can be sure the Yellowstone eruption happened earlier? It seems possible that the little wiggle we might expect is getting blasted away by a much bigger signal.
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Doug_C at 13:34 PM on 31 December 2018Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk
I seriously doubt we are getting out of this death spiral by tweaking a political and economic system that is inseparable from its almost total fossil fuels base.
Greta is bang on, we've been talking for decades about change and touting "green" technology and practices and yet emissions are still going up and many places like Canada are still demanding at an institutional level that fossil fuel exploitation be the main driver of economics and society for decades more.
We need a paradigm shift that is very hard to achieve because most vested interests still lie firmly in the fossil fuels sector. We get "leaders" like the Canadian PM who went to Paris in 2015 and played the game of claiming to respect the evidence and wanting real change. Who then a few months later went to Houston Texas to an oil and gas symposium and was given an award by the industry for openly stating that Canada under his policy control would in fact not leave the bulk of 173 billion barrels of oil sands bitumen in the ground.
These two things are not compatible at all and have not been for decades. And yet we all do sit back and allow politicians and business leaders get away with what is essentially the greatest fraud in history, which itself is well documented.
No one profits if we crash the planet and yet that is exactly where we are headed. What will the oceans be like in just few decades without almost any coral reef systems and that is just the tip of this issue.
I think nigelj is accurate in saying that most people are simply not built to assimilate the threat that is unfolding on a decadal scale and are able to go with the flow which is still dominated by the amount of money that is used by one sector to both buy political power and distort public perception so that many are deeply confused about what to believe.
Australia is an excellent example of this, most people there understand that climate change is real and driven by human activity. But almost half think scientists are evenly divided on the evidence and likely outcome of this. When almost all peer-reviewed science is clear about the nature of this threat and its likely outcome if not mitgated and now.
The psychology of climate change denial
It is the same political and economic games that have been played for decades that enable what I truly do see as a fraud in the interests of just a few to enrich themselves no matter the truly frightening impacts we all face already nevermind what is coming in just a few years.
Think of everyone you have ever known including you gone and no generations of people to carry on our culture, history and the wealth that is in our genes.
That is what we do now face without radical change and right now, not 30 years from which is in fact what will happen if we allow the same fraud to play out that has been going on for that long at least.
There is already a very real revolution underway as we are collectively acting to turn what is the only planet we know can sustain this kind of biosphere into one that will only be able to support a fraction of the species here now.
And yet we are collectively being controlled so only a few rebel against this devastating change. People in Alberta hold rallies to demand more and more pipelines are built and people in BC are jailed for protesting this mindless process of "progress" at any cost with no thought to externalized costs which are heading towards everything.
Maybe Greta is right and most of the rest of us are truly the irrational ones.
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nigelj at 13:07 PM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
Regarding the Democrats Green New Deal, their huge, somewhat jaw dropping infrastructure plan to combat climate change. The idea appears to be essentially for the reserve bank to create credit to finance construction of a clean electricity grid, and fund incentives for various projects, somewhat akin to the New Deal of the 1930's.
The public would obviously be sympathetic because it doesn't involve taxes or levies. That is a significant plus in the scheme.
I have to confess I'm personally attracted to such things in principle, but I have a big internal sceptic as well. The thing is the risk of inflation. The New Deal of the 1930's worked because the economy was deflating, so printing money was never going to be an issue. The situation is different now in that the economy is not really deflating, and so theres a risk such massive credit creation could be inflationary, and if it emerged the federal reserve would be forced to push up interest rates quite significantly.
I'm not ruling the scheme out, just raising an issue that would need some analysis.
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David Kirtley at 12:37 PM on 31 December 2018Climate Carbon Bookkeeping
Dan @4:
1) "had to be...", "I'm sorry it's just too conveniently flat". Perhaps your expectations are unrealistic. Consider that human yearly emissions of CO2 are roughly 100 times greater than the avg. total of yearly volcanic emissions. Volcanic activity would have to increase over 100 times to be comparable to human emissions, which "only" move CO2 up about 2 ppm per year. There just aren't any natural sources which move fast enough to increase or decrease the amount of atmospheric CO2. What the "flat" levels of CO2 over most of the last millennium tell us is that the sources and sinks of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere were mostly in balance.
2) If you click on the source link below the graph you will see this graph:
This shows the CO2 reading for each sample taken from three ice cores on Law Dome in Antarctica. The data in this graph is used to form the smoothed curve in the graph you are asking about. Note that the most recent readings are right in line with the direct atmospheric readings we have of the recent spike in CO2, as in the Keeling Curve. More info on Law Dome, Data.
Unfortunately, there aren't ice cores from "multiple locations around the globe". Thick sheets of ice only form in certain areas so we have to do with what we can get. We have many cores from Greenland and Antarctica and some from alpine glacier regions. The cores from Greenland can't be used for CO2 measurements because of high levels of contamination. So we have to do with the Antarctic cores. Here is a map of those:
I'm not sure if there are any other cores besides the Law Dome cores which give CO2 readings over the last millennium which we can compare. But the Law Dome cores alone are "adequate proof" of atmospheric CO2 concentrations simply because they track the known concentrations measured by the Keeling Curve. The Law Dome cores may be only one "tool" for measuring CO2, but we know the tool works.
3) Indeed, we have cores that reach back 800,000 years into the past. (And some even further, past the 1 million years mark.) (Now I see that michael sweet has also answered your questions!) I'll just point out that over this 800,000 year period CO2 rose and fell naturally by about ~100 ppm as we went from ice ages to warm interglacial periods, and back again.
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michael sweet at 11:53 AM on 31 December 2018Climate Carbon Bookkeeping
Dan Joppich,
Just yesterday I posted this graph which shows CO2 variations going back over 800,000 years.
Most posters at this site follow the comments link at the top of the page so they can see everything that is posted as it comes on.
To answer your other questions
1) We do not see spikes because volcanos and fires in Indonesia produce too little CO2 to be detected. Massive CO2 emissions like present time fossil fuels are required. (Although farmers have caused CO2 to increase for the past 8,000 years).
2) Obviously there was data from many cores collected to produce this graph. Follow the link on the graph in the OP to find out how the graph was made. Thousands of cores have been drilled.
3) The data I linked is from the core that goes furthest back in time (a single core). Data back to at least 400,000 years can be cross-checked with other cores but Dome C is believed to have the oldest ice on the planet so the best you could do to check the oldest data would be to drill another core at the same location. For cores going back only 1000 years even relatively small glaciers would go back that far.
Data beyond 800,000 years is available from other sources. These sources are not as accurate as ice cores.
4) Here is the correlation for the past 400,000 years.
source As you can see, temperature and CO2 concentration correlate very closely. There is no need for statistical analysis.
":Skeptics" provide a number of hare-brained excuses for the increase besides fossil fuel burning. They have all been shown to be incorrect. It is also not the sun. See the arguments in the upper left if you have questions.
Natural changes in CO2 concentrations are very slow. Current changes in CO2 are faster than any known for at least 50 million years (and probably much longer, perhaps the fastest ever in the history of the Earth). Looking at only 1000 years they are usually fairly flat, even during periods of glacial change. Note that the greatest change in the 800,000 year graph is only about 80 ppm in 10,000 years. The recent graph in the OP shows about 200 ppm in 200 years, approximately two orders of magnitude faster than any natural change. The Mauna Loa record shows 100 ppm change since 1960 or 58 years.
CO2 change is not localized. While CO2 is often higher in cities, scientists measure CO2 in remote locations so that only global chnges are measured. Your opinion is incorrect.
Read more background material before you challenge established science.
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michael sweet at 11:06 AM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Ancient Nerd,
I know the graph reads earlier on the left. There is a very large drop in CO2 at about 625ky. The bottom of the graph is lower CO2. There is no significant increase of CO2 anywhere near 630. Look at the graph again.
The dates are well established. You must cite a reference if you wish to challenge accepted science. There were 13 eruptions in the southern hemisphere in the last 200,000 years to date the ice. It appears that you are just making things up to suit your preconceived notions.
This data shows that CO2 from the Yellowstone volcano did not affect world wide CO2 concentrations.
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WayneK at 10:00 AM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #51
2nd try at doing the link correctly: <a href="https://issuu.com/unipcc/docs/syr_ar5_final_full_wcover/24"> 2014 Synthesis, pp 7-8</a>
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:51 AM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #52
Regarding the Editorial of the Week: "Opinion: Our house is on fire, and many Albertans want more lighters".
In addition to the obvious points made in the article about natural disaster consequences of climate change impacting Alberta, the fresh water supply from glaciers immediately west of Alberta is also threatened. This CBC News item is one of many on a recent report. "80% of mountain glaciers in Alberta, B.C. and Yukon will disappear within 50 years: report".
As a long time resident of Alberta I can confirm that the authors of the Opinion piece are correct about the potential level of dislike they may face for presenting this understanding.
In Alberta, politicians who support LGBTQ rights have received death threats. Exposing the way that climate science has proven the unacceptability of the way people try to get rich or enjoy their life is even more threatening in Alberta than standing up for the acceptance of, and fair and decent treatment of, LGBTQ people.
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WayneK at 09:49 AM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #51
I think I succeeded in creating a direct link to pages in a report (bear with me since this is my first try to link properly): <a href="https://issuu.com/unipcc/docs/syr_ar5_final_full_wcover/24"> 2014 Synthesis, pp 7-8</a>
Click on "full screen" in the lower right, then use the zoom bar in the same area to enlarge the view as needed. To link to another page, click on "share" in the upper right and copy the link that comes up.
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nigelj at 08:51 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
OPOF @36
Yes. Neoliberalism is problematic I think. It is clearly funamentally embedded in the climate problem, so not off topic I hope.
I don't know that neoliberalism is a religion, but its adherents sure can be dogmatic. It's a belief system, or prescriptive system, and is not science. It says that the economy will work best if we do a,b, and c and I think that the evidence now says neoliberalism is not a fully resolved system.
Normally neoliberalism is defined as promoting free trade, open immigration, largest private sector possible, austerity, deregulation, flat taxes and minimising influence of trade unions. Neoliberals believe inequality doesn't matter. But definitions differ and that is half the problem.
The real world evidence suggests free trade (which I like) optimises outputs globally but is very harsh on blue collar workers in western countries, something the neoliberals did not forsee. So much for the theory. But you can mitigate all this with some income redistribution.
Completely open immigration is nuts. There have to be some limitations.
Inequality does matter and even the neoliberal IMF now admits this.
The evidence suggests financial deregulation hasn't worked very well. Liberal economists do not actually oppose environmental, health and safety regulations. It's polticians who falsely promote this as "good economics". Liberal economics does not mean go to the extreme and deregulate everything, it just means avoid arbitrary regulations and those that protect special interests.
The evidence suggests privatisation works well for manufacturing but is problematic for key resources like healthcare and the water supply.
I could go on. You get the picture. So how do we rate neoliberalism? Maybe 5 / 10?
We should get sustainable development goals front and centre of any economic ideology.
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AFT17170 at 07:38 AM on 31 December 2018Models are unreliable
As I've stated in other posts, I am a non-scientist layman. I've gone through thousands of comments on this site and several articles on RealClimate. I just got done reading the article and comments over there on "30 years after Hansen’s testimony" here
Based on everything I've read so far, this is what I've internalized (please correct me as needed) — all climate models are obviously dependent upon the assumed inputs of both man-driven forcings and natural forcings, which the models use in physics-based simulations of the resulting outputs. Such models do not pretend to have intradecadal accuracy, rather the target is skill in projecting 30 year trends. Hansen was obviously required to guess those forcings, which he incorporated into 3 different scenarios. His man-driven forcings included not only CO2, but also N2O, CH4 and CFC. His CO2 forcings, in retrospect, were "pretty close" for Scenario B but he overshot on the others because humans actually tackled those other emissions. Gavin at RealClimate took a stab at adjusting Hansen's Scenario B and concluded that the adjusted results indicated a quite skillful model.
So my (perhaps dumb) question is — why not re-run the actual models with the actual man-made forcings that happened in those 3 decades, to see exactly how close the projections got for Scenario B? It seems like they might be "pretty darn close" and bolster the cause?
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Dan Joppich at 07:20 AM on 31 December 2018Climate Carbon Bookkeeping
Hard to believe that in all that I missed an obvious question -
4. If you superimposed a graph of global temperature data over the same period on top of this CO2 data, why don't they track? And related, does this graph prove that CO2 and global average temperatures are not related?
Moderator Response:[JH] Global temperature and CO2 do indeed correlate...
Source: Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Climate Central, Nov 20, 2018
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:15 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
My comment @35 is a little unfair to NeoLiberalism.
NeoLiberalism could help develop sustainable improvements for humanity:
- if absolutely everyone is dedicated to honestly improving their awareness and understanding and applying that learning to altruistically help sustainably improve the future for all of humanity.
- if everyone is willing to quickly correct incorrect harmful developments no matter how popular or profitable they may have become.
But of course everyone being unswervingly Altruistic is a Fantasyland - which makes the dream of Good Results being developed by NeoLiberalism a Fantasy.
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Dan Joppich at 07:11 AM on 31 December 2018Climate Carbon Bookkeeping
I'm not a scientist but I am an accountant and I look at and prepare a lot of graphs. My focus is not so much on the article as a whole (because it's way over my head) but on the graph included that is based on ice core samples. So, as I tell my college age children, always think of three questions the author or journalist didn't ask. Here are mine:
1. The graph is virtually flat for much of the thousand years. It seems to me that there had to be a few naturally occuring events that would create even a small blip (i.e. a major volcanic event even under the oceans or maybe unusually massive fires in Indonesia). Why don't we see a spike somewhere? I'm sorry it's just too conveniently flat.
2. I would like to think that the authors of the graph compared graphs from core samples in multiple locations around the globe and found that they all showed the same results. How many locations are necessary to confirm the results and how many did they use from what sources? If the answer is that there was only one, I would think that scientific skepticism would say that it's a pretty graph but not good science the same way that my auditor skepticism would not accept such a result as adequate proof.
3. In geological time this graph represents a blink of the eye. The core samples had to provide samples that go back many thousands of years. What would the graph show if it went back 5,000 years? 10,000 years?
Again, I'm not a scientist, but has anybody come up with an alternate explantion for the jump over the last couple centuries. After all, from 1800 to 1900 there were very few people on the earth to the point that no matter how many fires they made or, later in the 1800's, trains that spewed carbon and soot. Certainly not enough to explain the early rise. And even where that occurred it was localized (New York, London, etc.) and would not have caused Antarctic changes on this level, in my opinion.
Maybe the graph flatlines for extended periods for some other reason. I'll leave the answer to smarter people than me but this site is called "Skeptical Science", not "I got the answer I was looking for so I can move on Science". I'm not saying that there isn't more CO2 now, I'm just looking at the flat line and wondering why?
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ancient_nerd at 07:08 AM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
michael sweet@290
The time scale on this chart seems to run backward from what we would expect intuitively. The left edge is the present, the right edge is 800k years ago. So, that large step around 625 or so is an increase in CO2 levels and temperature right about the time of the eruption.
As David pointed out earlier in post 287, there is no ash layer to provide accurate correlation since these cores come from antarctica in the southern hemisphere and the eruption was in the northern hemisphere. So we do not really know the exact timing.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:04 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
A further follow-on to my comment @31 about Flat-Earthers.
I have yet to encounter a Flat-Earther. But I expect a Flat-Earther to be far more likely to understand and accept climate science and the required corrections of developed human activity that it has exposed than a NeoLiberal.
NeoLiberalism is a far more harmful Religiously believed made-up human faith system.
And NeoLiberals Uniting with Religious Law adherents (the United Right likes of the GOP and similar groups in other nations), are potentially the most serious threat to the future of humanity that humanity has ever developed (even a more serious threat than nuclear weapons).
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Jonbo69 at 06:53 AM on 31 December 2018Explainer: Why some US Democrats want a ‘Green New Deal’ to tackle climate change
"Some Democrats want to focus more on searching for bipartisan solutions that can be passed by the current Congress, rather than gambling on a hypothetical future Democratic takeover of both congress and the presidency."
Exactly how would that work when the other side doesn't accept there is a problem that requires a solution? To me this is just the corporate democrats beholden to their donors in the fossil fuel industry trying to delay and avoid real action - making them just as culpable as the GOP.
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Evan at 05:58 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
I like the discussions here (including those about religion), because everybody here is trying to discern the truth, and not just hold on to a self-interested view point. It is an honest discussion from honest truth seekers.
Moderator Response:[PS] However, at this point the discussion is very far from the topic of this article. Interesting as discussions of religion are, this is not the forum for them. Commentary and particularly studies on religion with respect to climate denialism could be discussed on an appropriate topic - not this one.
If you want a more appropriate forum, this search seems to offer plenty of alternatives. No more here please.
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nigelj at 05:35 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Sunspot @32, I have to be honest I do identify pretty closely with your views there. For me there is a singular lack of evidence for some form of religious creation, and the stories events, and miracles in the bible and there are many contradictions, and I cannot seem to get passed that, although I hear what Evan is saying.
I'm reduced to believing that if god exists such an entity takes an imaginable form of a power, not a creator as such, and our only hope of understanding such a thing would be science itself.
However there is evidence of a god gene that programmes us to at least believe in a god (doesn't mean god exists). Religion was a unifying influence in the past I think by placing faith in a higher power. For me we should be taking the best ethical teachings of religions of all types and distilling them into something really good and logical.
Discussion above is good because its non aggressive. I think its also important to remain open minded, and I cannot be 100% sure of my own beliefs, but I'm ok with them at this stage.
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WayneK at 05:07 AM on 31 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #51
MA Rodger@30,
1) I've seen that page before when I was trying to figure out how to link to pages inside my own PDF's. Couldn't get it to work. In any case, you have to have an online PDF to link to, which we don't have (as far as I know).
2) Your link doesn't take you to a page online. It's a download link for the whole Introduction.
I'm still working on this and will post again if I find something helpful. I've found one report displayed online in .php, which is a start, but still there's no way to link to a particular page.
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nigelj at 04:56 AM on 31 December 2018Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk
The climate problem is a classic tragedy of the commons problem, just on a grand scale. Lets not complicate it beyond this. Everything OPOF says is true but is a subset of the essential problem.
Such problems happen in freemarket economies and even centrally planned economies. Markets are very clumsy and slow at fixing such problems if they fix them at all, so solutions have to be imposed on market participants by participants agreeing on an appropriate solution. You can call this tweaking the market if you want.
Solutions can involve court actions (costly and only the lawyers really win), government regulations, cap and trade schemes, taxes, or government infrastructure projects. All these leave markets free to make decisions so free markets are preserved, with the exception of government infrastructure projects are more of an imposition.
The difficulty with the climate problem has clearly been identifying the best solution. The next difficulty is people who dont believe in any solution, other than court action (and even that only reluctantly).
Nick palmers idea sounds ok. Cap and trade and carbon taxes hit manufacturers with dirty products dont they? The problem is mostly political, how to convince libertarians and conservatives to get on board. The $64,000 question.
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Sunspot at 04:40 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Interesting discussion. But, for me, religion is totally devoid of evidence. I understand that many people have had personal experiences that lead them to religious beliefs, but are any of these experiences objectively verifiable? I think about the commonality of near-death experiences, but is this something more than a dying brain trying to make sense of the situation? I need a scientific examination of religion, but I don't think such a thing is possible. Beliefs are simply not available for objective examination. I guess this means to some that belief is just somehow special, but to my way of thinking it simply makes belief irrelevant.
Maybe the world would be a better place if we all agreed on the same set of religious beliefs. But what I see is that differing religious beliefs just establish a chasm between people that can seldom be breached, there are no objective facts to agree on. And now we are faced with seemingly intelligent people who somehow dismiss science altogether, which is of course ridiculous unless you live in a cave. What I see is people replacing evidence with belief. It simply doesn't work. Science is what built our civilization. Dismissing science can destroy it.
If we had a few worlds to experiment with, I'd like to try one without any form of religion, or "spirituality", at all. Just the facts. People working together to make life better for us all. Not just for those who agree with a particular view of some invisible man in the sky who watches everything we do (Carlin).
I absolutely agree that there should be freedon of religion. Believe whatever you want. But I want freedom FROM religion. Because that is true freedom, to choose to believe or not. Religion is getting too involved in how we run our society, and there are too many who would force their views on others. I do take "The Handmaid's Tale" seriously.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:02 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
A fun follow-on about Flat-Earthers. A Flat-Earher may actually be very supportive of correcting the harmful developed burning of fossil fuels. The shape of the planet does not affect the understanding of the link between the massive burning of fossil fuels and harmful climate change impacts.
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Evan at 02:55 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
OPOF, I think there is more common ground in our views than different.
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a brilliant title for the following reason. If AGW is not occurring, then the people being afflicted by AGW are being afflicted by an act of god over which we have no control, and all that we are required to do is to pray for them and to send some money to help. If, however, people accept AGW as originating from our lifestyle, then instead of just praying for these afflicted people (an activity that can co-exist with an otherwise wasteful western existence), we have the inconvenient reality that we need to change our lifestyle. I think this is at the heart of the Christian resistance to accepting AGW, as much as it is about not wanting to be under a set of UN-mandated policies (whether or not it would come to that).
By the way, for those reading, I am not selling myself as a theologian nor as a philosopher. But this dialogue does help me understand how others view the problem and helps develop talking points. I don't mean to be argumentative, and I do appreciate all of the great comments.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:38 AM on 31 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Evan @27 and 28,
You appear to be unnecessarily conflating Religion with Spirituality. I separate the two for very Good Helpful Altruistic Reason. I have presented some of them in my earlier comments.
People can be harmfully Religious about things that have nothing to do with Spirituality. And people can be Helpfully Religious related to Spirituality.
People can also abuse the potential human desire to be part of a Tribe and become harmful Religious followers of a set of unjustified beliefs.
The real focus needs to be understanding that the most important actions for anyone are to help by improving awareness and understanding and applying that improved correct learning to actually sustainably develop a better future for humanity, achieve and improve the Sustainabel Development Goals, especially the Climate Action Goal.
That focus identifies the harmful people in politics, businesses, and religions. It also divides/polarizes the actions of people in politics, business and religion into helpful and harmful people.
That division/polarization is important. It is critical to improve the awareness and understanding of who needs to be corrected. And it helps understand that the socioeconomic-political system that people develop their beliefs in may be what needs to be corrected to reduce the number of harmful people that get developed.
And the major motivation I see for resistance to accepting climate science is a powerful self-interest to keep undeserved developed perceptions of prosperity and superiority relative to others. Easily amplified by misleading marketing, that drives resistance to global efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
System corrections are undeniably required. The systems have continued to develop inequities leaving many people destitute and starving even though the total perceived wealth of humanity has grown far faster than the total population.
Those Religiously defended systems need to be significantly corrected regardless of their power and regional tribal popularity and profitability. And the most harmful people (in politics, business and religions) need to be the focus for most urgent correction.
Raising awareness that way, identifying the harmful who need correction, should reduce the popular support for the most harmful people.
p.s. Another way to say it is that any beliefs that are not harmful to efforts to achieve and improve on the SDGs are benign or helpful and do not require a focus on correction. As an example, Flat-earthers can be left alone if they do not want to use that belief to excuse a harmful action. And they can be helpful even if they maintain that now understood to be incorrect belief.
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michael sweet at 00:28 AM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
MARodger,
You cite an interesting paper. It appears to me that volcanic dust and gas caused a winter effect. This is known from recent eruptions. Apparently the effect was longer than might be expected from a volcano.
In any case, the cooling effect is not caused by CO2 release. I think Ancient Nerd was asking if the volcano could have contributed to an increase in global temperatures from release of CO2. It appears to me that an increase in temperature from the CO2 did not occur. The amount of CO2 released was not measurable in the ice record. This demonstrates that release of CO2 from volcanoes, even extraordinarily large ones, does not affect climate.
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MA Rodger at 00:19 AM on 31 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
michael sweet @290,
I see there was a paper presented a couple of years ago attributing the Yellowstone events of 630ky bp with dropping SSTs by 3ºCa couple of times for "at least ~80 yrs" which is longer than expected for a volcanic event (they speculate that feedbacks lengthened it) but it is not very long on a graph of 800ky of climate (about a tenth the width of a pixel in your diagrm).
There is media reports of the paper on-line but they don't say much more than the paper's abstract. The full text is available but on request.
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michael sweet at 00:17 AM on 31 December 2018Sea level rise due to floating ice?
I realized that the figure I copied does not make much sense without the caption. Here it is:
Fig. 1. Sea-level change in response to the collapse of the
WAIS computed by using (A) a standard sea-level theory (5),
which assumes a nonrotating Earth, no marine-based ice, and
shorelines that remain fixed to the present-day geometry with
time, as well as (B) a prediction based on a theory (6) that
overcomes these limitations. Both predictions are normalized by
the EEV associated with the ice collapse. In (B), the total volume
of the WAIS is used in the calculation, whereas in (A) only an
amount of ice with a volume that matches the EEV is removed
(because the latter cannot take into account the inundation of
marine-based sectors). (C) The difference between predictions
generated by using the two sea-level theories [(B) minus (A)].B is the part of the figure that relates to this discussion. source
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michael sweet at 23:55 PM on 30 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Ancient Nerd: Sorry I mispelled your handle.
The source of the graph was Beretier et al linked by David Kirtley above.
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michael sweet at 23:48 PM on 30 December 2018Sea level rise due to floating ice?
Savantking,
Please provide a reference for your claim that US sea level will not increase from ice sheet melt.
Antarctic melt causes increased sea level rise in the US:
This NASA article on sea level rise describes Greenland ice melt raising US sea level. It appears that the US rise will be about average for the world. Northern Europe will get a little less from Greenland, perhaps that is what you meant.
Both areas will get more than average from the Antarctic. I do not think that any area where people live except Greenland itself will see sea level decrease although Iceland might.
Certainly the claim that the US will luck out is deliberately false. I suggest you screen your sources better. Denier sites spread false information.
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Evan at 23:38 PM on 30 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
One additional comment for the die-hards still reading. Christians get beat up pretty bad for their blind faith and rejection of science. In my opinion much of this is deserved, for many Christians do show a blind allegiance to dogma. But let's not forget that this site spends a lot of its effort debunking myths put forward by ... scientists. So the ability to reject what Climate Scientists are saying is shared by Christians, athesists, agnostics, and just plain scientists.
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michael sweet at 23:20 PM on 30 December 2018Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Ancient Nrd,
I don't see a change in CO2 at 630 kyr.
It appears to me to be the start of a glacial period.
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Evan at 22:35 PM on 30 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
OPOF@23, understanding does not destroy religion. For me it strengthens it.
I understand your perspective, I think, but I offer the following twist. If we understood scientifically all that we see, this would not remove my faith, awe, and wonder at the creator anymore than it would if I understood everything about a smart phone. I feel that part of the problem with many people is that they have no understanding or awe of the scientific advancement that the smart phone represents. When I look at a smart phone I have respect for the creator, just as when I look at everything around us it inspires awe and admiration at the creator of the natural world. No amount of scientific explanation of the what I see around me will ever remove that awe and admiration, anymore than any amount of scientific understanding will remove the awe and admiration behind the creation of the science and technology in a smart phone.
But for some reason, as soon as someone can assign a scientific explanation to something we previously did not understand they then conclude that that understanding proves it was not created. I don't get this link. I am not defending creationists who insist the world was created in xxxx thousand years. Just saying that scientific understanding does not invalidate the concept of creation.
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Evan at 22:12 PM on 30 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Sunspot, there is a way to talk to God, but it is different than the methods used in science. At least respect that people like myself, Katharine Hayhoe, John Cook, and so many other Christians are not just chasing fantasy. Nor am I trying to "convert" you. I just ask that we find common ground. I believe as you do that one of the major problems preventing significant action on climate change is the impenetrable beliefs of many Christians and other religious people, who will not consider objective facts. But that does not invalidate the experiences many religious people have had.
I find it interesting that there are scientific people who cannot understand true religion (everything must be objective), just as I find it interesting that there are religious people who cannot understand science (everything is based on belief).
I don't think we'll solve the problem in front of us unless we can find common dialogue and understanding between religion and science.
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Sunspot at 21:19 PM on 30 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
My bottom line just occurred to me: I came to the same conclusions Carl Sagan did when he wrote "Demon-Haunted World", so when I read it I was nodding my head so much I need a pillow. Not surprisingly, Carl got it right. So while I should maybe investigate these people who have supposedly integrated science and religion - I doubt there will be anything there that will satisfy me. No evidence. Not without having to "believe" in it. And I simply don't do belief.
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Nick Palmer at 21:11 PM on 30 December 2018Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk
And, of course, shareholders would put immense pressure on the management to clean up their act so they could get better returns.
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Nick Palmer at 21:10 PM on 30 December 2018Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk
OPOF
I don't think the problem is as intractable as everyone thinks. 'Tweaking' the bottom line of a company, which uses materials wastefully, discharges pollution to the environment and sources non-clean/renewable energy sources, so that its costs are higher than a responsible manufacturer, is not that hard and the products of the 'dirty' manufacturer would end up either being more expensive to buy or the manufacturer and their shareholders would make less profit. The use of peoples' tendency to want a 'bargain' would send a tsunami of change through the free market. -
Sunspot at 21:06 PM on 30 December 2018Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
"If you want to know if god exists, go talk to him".
I'm sorry, but all I hear is my own thoughts. Because that's all there is. That's what I mean by the difference between fantasy and reality. Feel free to choose your own reality. I stay with objective evidence. That is what truly changes the world. Once you are capable of believing in god, you are capable of believing anything. Powerful people and governments understand this all too well.
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savantKing at 19:34 PM on 30 December 2018Sea level rise due to floating ice?
Oh my god. You can't say in absolute sentence that the sea level arises everywhere on earth because of melting ice! Once and for all: it depends where on earth you are.
A second thing is that ice will attract to water. So at the east coast of America there the sea level will decrease, because of the melting ice. Why? Because of the mass of ice will be significantly less because of the melting ice. so it attract less water!
Happy science
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MA Rodger at 18:17 PM on 30 December 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #51
WayneK@27,
This page gives good advice on linking to a specific PDF page. Thus this link should take you to the final page of IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 1 'Introduction'.
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