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Comments 12501 to 12550:
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michael sweet at 14:33 PM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO,
I thought I could chime in since the original question was about my post.
I think you want a lot of detail and Science of DOom and And Then Theres Physics are good sources of detailed information.
For your questions:
1) The number of collisions is so great that the temperature and pressure do not make much difference. (I found an on line calculator once and was amazed at how many collisions there were and how small the temperature and pressure affected the colision rate).
It is probably too difficult to specify the temperature and pressure since it varies so much in different places. The ppm of CO2 is relatively constant through most of the atmosphere.
2) 10 km is commonly used as the escape altitude. This is a simplification for a basic explaination. The actual escape altitude would be different for different wavelengths, different in the tropics and the Arctic, different in deserts than over water and different over storms versus calm weather. Think of how much warmer it is at night when it is cloudy. Only the temperatures in the troposphere matter to the surface temperature. Increasing CO2 causes the stratosphere and the mesosphere to cool at the same time the troposphere warms! source
3) I think the altitude of escape is the key figure but you should check at Science of Doom. Come back here and post if you find out exactly what the explaination is.
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Tom Dayton at 14:22 PM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO: Oh, so no one should ever believe or act on any science in any field unless one completely understands everything about it? I’m sorry I wasted the time to answer your questions, because I strongly suspect that you never had any genuine interest in the answers.
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LTO at 13:45 PM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Thanks Tom - that site looks good, but will take some time to work through before can divine anawrrs to those questions. This is clearly very complicated physics - complicated to the extent that I'm wondering how many people really understand it well enough to be completely confident they have taken account of all complexities given the unknowns in the system, as opposed to just taking someone else's word for it. MA may have the answers!
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Tom Dayton at 13:00 PM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO: ScienceOfDoom has excellent explanations of the greenhouse gas effect.
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Philippe Chantreau at 12:49 PM on 4 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00552-1 is where the acutal Stein paper is located.
I'll elaborate on the Stein et al (2017) paper since it is relevant to Arctic sea ice. Lowisss13 did not refer to the paper itself but to a blog post about the paper. A few things are surpsising in the blog post. There is a graph of sea ice that I could not locate anywhere in the paper. The blog post mentions solar activity but the paper has very little about that, only a mention of obliquity in the conclusion section. It uses a fairly novel proxy analysis and ther eare inconsitencies with already existing work. The authors are very careful to qualify the scope of the results. They point to summer sea ice coverage in conditions significantly warmer than today and ascribe it to major differences in the AMOC, not solar activity.
Here is part of their conclusion:
"Finally, we have compared the Arctic sea ice conditions of the LIG and simulated future climate projections for 2100 and 2300, based on two different IPCC scenarios2, the RCP4.5 (583 ppm CO2eq) and the RCP6 (808 ppm CO2eq) (Fig. 8). Both scenarios show a severe reduction in sea ice coverage in the late summer, i.e., summer sea ice concentrations are significantly lower than those of the LIG. With increasing atmospheric CO2, however, the reduction of sea ice in the central Arctic Ocean is more rapid and disproportionately high in comparison to its margin. Whereas the mid-LIG summer sea ice concentrations were still around 60 to 75% in the central Arctic Ocean, but only around 20% or less along the Atlantic-Water influenced Barents Sea continental margin, nearly ice-free conditions might be reached in the entire Arctic Ocean in 2300. The number of ice-free summer months is increasing with higher atmospheric CO2. Under these high CO2 concentrations, the winter sea ice may start to melt as well (Fig. 8). Furthermore, the higher obliquity during the LIG (Supplementary Table 6) may suggest an insolation forcing during the LIG, whereas for the climate scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP6 the additional heat fluxes are induced by increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere."
Not much ground for optimism there.
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Tom Dayton at 12:21 PM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO: Sorry, i’m Not knowledgeable enough to answer those questions.
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LTO at 11:35 AM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Graph of temperature and pressure by atmospheric height here: https://imgur.com/a/juS7yVf
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LTO at 11:29 AM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
MA, Tom: really appreciate your replies, explains some points but also raise a few things I don't quite follow.
1. How significant is the effect of temperature on the likelihood of excited CO2 photon release? At higher altitude the atmospheric pressure is also decreased, which means that the length of time between molecule collisions is also increased. Similarly lower temperatures will decrease the rates of collision. Part of the issue here is the reporting of CO2 in ppm only - given the changes in pressure and temperature I'd have thought you needed accompanying concentration /pressure / temp data to really makes sense of how the competing phenomena interact.
2. Do you know what altitude range the CO2 photon to space release currently happens, how its changed and how sensitive this is to CO2 concentration? As I understand it the temperature actually increases between the tropopause (~11 km) and stratopause (~50 km). It decreases again to the mesopause (~85 km) and then stays pretty constant. The pressure by contrast drops 10 fold every 15 km or so. (see attached)
3. Is it only the altitude of escape atmospheric layer that is the relevant metric here in determining warming, or is it the depth of the envelope from ground to the altitude throughout which warming occurs. I'm trying to understand where exactly in the atmosphere the warming actually happens, and how this is then reflected back at ground level.
Thanks!
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:23 AM on 4 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
My remarks are entirely warranted. What's in your eyes is irrelevant, and most likely what you want to see. Proper statistical analysis is what allows to determine whether there is a stabilization, a recovery or a continued trend. There is no stabilization in the PIOMAS data, the period you are considering is too short to yield any trend without a margin of error so large that no information can be extracted. There are multiple periods in the data where there appears to be a stabilization, and even increases, but the trend remains, as it does in the temperature escalator. There is no sign of stabilization in the sea ice extent either. Having an open mind does not equate to fooling oneself with wishful thinking.
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Lowisss13 at 04:40 AM on 4 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
WOW! You're all so agressive!!!
Please keep your mind open.
-Recovery is maybe not the right term to use at these point. In my eyes, the last decade is more a stabilisation on term of arctic sea ice extend. There is always an stabilisation before a change of slope in an oscillation.
You all seem to see a strait line in the graphic of ''Arctic sea ice volume anomaly from PIOMAS''. For me it's a curve or rather the 1/4 of an oscillation.
Here's one source of reflection:
-Yes, 30 is the ''magic'' number in term of statistic. But considering the long climatic history of earth, we should consider a sample of 30 years, 30 centuries, 30 milleniums, etc. If you study the climat of the last century, 30 years is effectively more than sufficient. But the point is to determine what's the best gap of time to consider for climate variability.
-Solar activity is slowing and sunspot # 24 was smaller than expected. Now they have made a prediction for the next sunspot:
www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07690-0
Small Solar Activity variation can have huge effect on earth climate.
To me it's sound logical considering the size of the sun vs the size of the earth.
arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0706/0706.3621.pdf
Co2 is certainly part of the climate change. But at what level?
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic and baiting snipped. Note that Stein et al 2017 supports that the recent loss of Arctic sea ice extent is unusual in the context of the Holocene, and does not detract from the anthropogenic nature of the current warming and the ongoing losses from the Cryosphere.
If you wish to discuss other aspects of climate change, such as solar levels and/or CO2, numerous other, more appropriate threads exist here. Use the Search function to find a more appropriate thread to discuss those. Also, please review the Comments Policy and ensure that comments adhere to it. Thanks!
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MA Rodger at 02:17 AM on 4 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO @462,
Regarding the altitude issue, I think the explanations you see as being at variance is due to them being part-explanations.
To explain:- if atmospheric CO2 levels increase, the altitude at which CO2 can emit photons dirctly into space increases. This results in the temperature of the space-emitting CO2 being lower and this lower temperature reduces the number of photons emitted and thus the global energy being lost to space.
These CO2-emitted photons are all in a small part of the IR spectrum with ~15 microns wavelength.
As the global energy is now out-of-balance, global temperature will rise, this temperature rise increasing the photons lost to space over all of the IR spectrum. When the energy balance is restored through this warming, the CO2 emission altitude will still be cooler than the emissions altitude prior to the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels.And I feel your "other query" hasn't been fully addressed.
A photon at the right energy (ie wavelength) can be absorbed by a CO2 molecule and set it into a bendy wobble. In almost all these occurances, the CO2 molecule will then be involved in a collision with another air molecule and the photon's energy will be absorbed within the gas, it being transferred to other modes of gas energy. You ask what then happens to this energy. It will be passed around the gas, this constituting a temperature increase. But a temperature increase will also mean more CO2 molecules are being walloped by the air molecules about them and this will result in more of them being in that bendy wobble which allows them to emit a photon. So more temperature also means more photons emitted by CO2, this cooling the gas, this providing an energy balncing mechanism. And note that if the number of absorbed photons increases because of more CO2, there is also more CO2 to go into a bendy wobble and then to emit photons, which also balances out the energy equation.Of course, those are still much-simplified descriptions.
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MA Rodger at 21:57 PM on 3 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Eclectic @465,
I think your response to the trolling is appropriate. I would perhaps add that the fool cannot even provide the numbers in his first point correctly. The date since which peak monthly surface temperature anomalies exceeded later lower anomalies in duration and in temperature difference was 2008 not 1995. This should be no surprise given the 2010 El Nino wasn't as big as the 2016 or 1998 versoins.
Moderator Response:[DB] Inflammatory snipped.
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Eclectic at 21:26 PM on 3 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Geologist-for-a-change [of pseudonym? ] @464 ,
Attention !
# You have posted on the wrong date. It is not yet April 1st.
# You have posted in the wrong thread. This thread is for "CO2 Saturated"-related comments.
# You have posted on the wrong website. You should be on WattsUpWithThat ~ the home website for commenters who have the deluded belief that the scientists are all wrong about everything.
# And you appear to have posted 27 years prematurely. If you have (as you say) studied climate science full-time for 3 years, and have not yet disentangled yourself from (almost) every piece of climate crackpottery known to man . . . then it sounds like you have stepped out no more than 10% of your journey from ignorance to knowledge.
Please return in 2046, and let us know how your education succeeded.
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Geologist for a change at 20:43 PM on 3 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Goodbye man-made global warming? As an independent (i.e. impartial) consulting geologist (doctorate in sedimentary geology) with 35 years of experience, having conducted an unpaid (impartial) full-time 3-year (since Nov 2015; continuing) review of the literature from ALL scientific disciplines relevant to climate- and sea-level change (geology, archaeology, physics, astrophysics, oceanography, meterorology, etc, etc), here are my main conclusions:
(1) There's obviously no doubt that Earth has warmed since thermometer measurements began in the 1800s (HadCRUT data; and online NASA/GISS online charts [yearly, monthly, and others], updated every few weeks). However, Earth began COOLING in February 2016 (NASA/GISS monthly chart). This cooling already exceeds all other measured coolings since 1995, in both duration (nearly 3 years so far) and magnitude (0.5 degrees C, fully one-third of IPCCs dreaded '1.5 degrees C by 2100', but in the wrong direction) ...
(2) Warming was driven by increasing solar-MAGNETIC output (controlling cosmic rays, therefore cloudiness; Svensmark's breathtakingly elegant theory), nothing to do with mankind's CO2 emissions which just happened, by pure (bad) luck, to grow during a solar upswing (rather than downswing), a ghastly coincidence; the reverse was about equally likely, 50:50.
(3) Changes in temperature are lagging about 25 years behind changes in solar-magnetic output, due to ocean thermal inertia (google it), dismissed by IPCC.
(4) Sea level is about to rise about 3 metres (sic), before 2100, driven by the increase in solar-magnetic output (up until its 1996 peak), its effect on sea level delayed a further 20 years (approx.; i.e. total sea-level lag is about 45 years) due to ocean 'conveyor-belt' circulation (also ignored by IPCC) delaying the arrival at Antarctica of 'solar-overwarmed' Atlantic surface water, via downwelling and southward mid-depth flow (AMOC). The floating ice shelves buttressing Antarctic on-land glaciers are NOW disintegrating at an accelerating rate (led by Pine Island, Thwaites and Totten), so catastrophic glacier failure by MISI and/or MICI is likely to begin within a decade, raising sea level by at least 3m within about 50 years. It's unstoppable.
Am I right? We'll know very soon. Regarding solar control of global temperature, the next two years will tell: I predict continued cooling, so keep a close eye on that NASA temperature chart. Regarding sea level, we'll know within 10 years, possibly much sooner: I predict the rate of sea-level rise, currently a trivial 3mm/year, but already increasing exponentially, will be at least ten times higher (3cm/year) by 2030, if not 2025. Watch NASA's online sea-level chart, updated every few months.
See my 20 ResearchGate contributions, mostly one-page items or single figures, fully self explanatory ... https://www.researchgate.net/project/Imminent-metre-scale-non-anthropogenic-sea-level-rise
Moderator Response:[DB] "Earth began COOLING in February 2016"
Statistical significance testing shows that, for climate related changes, 17 years (Santer et al) are the bare minimum, with 30 years or more being typically used.
For ANY of the instrumental series, over ANY time span ending in the present:
• There is NO period where warming is invalidated, against a null hypothesis of no warming. NONE.
• Against a null hypothesis of the long term warming trend, there is NO period where a "no warming" hypothesis is validated. NONE.
• Over ANY period with enough data to show statistical significance, that data shows a statistically significant warming trend. ALWAYSErgo, the warming continues, unabated.
Note that commenting here at Skeptical Science adheres to the nature of the OP of the thread upon which you comment. Please follow that rule. Thousands of comment threads exist here upon virtually every topic related to climate change and the denial of it. Use the search function to find the most appropriate thread for your expansion of your knowledge of the science.
Off-topic snipped.
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:12 PM on 3 January 20192018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
It has been almost 20 years since Mark Hertsgaard explained that a Global Green Deal would be required to achieve the corrections that climate science has exposed are required for humanity to develop a sustainable and improving future on this planet (more info in WP Opinion piece by Katrina vanden Heuvel "Why the time has come for a Green New Deal")
A recent update of that understanding is the USA Green New Deal. And the WP Opinion piece ends by stating that Green New Deals are required in every nation (it needs to be global).
I reviewed the Green Party's detailed presentation of their Green New Deal. The GP Green New Deal has many similarities to the Leap Manifesto that was developed in the spring of 2015 in Canada. So Global action is happening.
A significant problem is how easy it is for misleading marketing to convince people that the system corrections identified in the Leap Manifesto or Green New Deal would not be personally advantageous (compared to their incorrectly developed perceptions of prosperity and opportunity).
Through the past 30 years most of the supposedly more advanced nations, and supposedly most rapidly advancing nations, have developed in the incorrect direction. They have developed an increased requirement for correction (and more future climate change harm).
Too many people are easily tempted to try to get away with more incorrect activity while avoiding suffering negative consequences. And their exposure to potential negative consequences from the required correction has increased as they prolonged or increased their development in the wrong direction.
That is the insidious damaging result of the deliberate misleading marketing efforts of undeserving wealthy people. An increasing number of people incorrectly develop larger required corrections that they will have to suffer the consequences of. And their increased resistance to being corrected (to avoid those consequences), just makes things worse (except for a few craftier rich people who manage to evade suffering significant negative consequences for their incorrect harmful actions)
Correcting popular and profitable activities is very difficult. It is more difficult the more popular and profitable they have been allowed to become.
The Leap Manifesto and Green New Deal contain many elements that would substantially correct the systems that so incorrectly developed unsustainable and harmful activity.
But to get to that corrected system, the undeserving winners in the existing systems need to be exposed as being the harmful people they actually are with real potential negative consequences for how they have behaved (the threats of law suits by young people are a good start).
As Naomi Klein titled her book that was associated with the development of the Leap Manifesto "No is not Enough". It is necessary to do whatever is required to correct or limit the behaviour of the undeserving rich (and wanna be rich) likes of Trump, not just tell them No. Don't just explain that they are incorrect and hope they will behave better (because they won't change their mind unless they sense that they really need to behave better to avoid personally suffering a worse consequence as a result of stubbornly refusing to correct their thinking and actions).
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Tom Dayton at 14:59 PM on 3 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO: Contrary to your second sentence, the temperature at the altitude of escape decreases, not increases. That is not because the temperature at a given altitude (of the troposphere) decreases. Instead, it is because the altitude of escape increases, and higher altitudes have lower temperatures. Increase in temperature of a given altitude due to greater CO2 absorbing IR from below, is insufficient to counteract the lower temperature due to the higher altitude of escape. The altitude of escape increases because of the larger number of CO2 molecules between a given altitude and outer space.
Regarding your second query: A CO2 molecule collides with other molecules--CO2 or other--about 100,000 times more often than that CO2 molecule emits a photon. So the vast majority of the time, the energy a CO2 molecule acquires from absorbing a photon is transferred to other molecules. That is part of the reason why Mars is so cold despite having so much more CO2 than the Earth does. Mars has so few molecules of anything in its atmosphere, there are few transfers of energy to other molecules, so much more of the energy remains in the CO2 molecule until it is emitted as a photon.
Yes, photons are emitted from CO2 molecules in random directions.
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LTO at 13:20 PM on 3 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Hi all, i'd like to follow on from Arf @459 above. It doesn't seem his query on why the temperature of the upper atmosphere matters when we're talking about discrete emission of a photon has been adequately addressed. The comment at 461 seems contradictory, as if there is an increase in temperature at the altitude of escape then this will increase black body radiation to space...
My other query relates to how the co2-absorbed photons actually contribute to warming, if the re-emitted photons are of the same energy as the absorbed ones. Is it that through a kinetic effect where a proportion of high energy absorbed co2 molecules vibrate surrounding air molecules, losing the absorbed energy and therefore never re-emitting the photon? Or is it because a proportion of the re-emitted photons are absorbed by something else (water, the ground etc). Or both?
I assume the photons we're talking about make their way out pf the atmosphere through a random walk type process
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Philippe Chantreau at 12:43 PM on 3 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
To substantiate my previous post, the trend for September Arctic sea ice, when the minimum extent takes place, is -12.8% per decade, plus/minus 2.3%. 2017 and 2018 were above the trend line but within, or very close to the margin, not significant. Not a single month has 5 or more consecutive years above the trend line, within the margin or not. The trends for summer months are the higest. There is no way to interpret any of this data as even a beginning recovery.
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:59 AM on 3 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Lowisss13 "Arctic sea ice should continue to recover." In order to continue, it would have to start. There is absolutely no sign of a recovery on the NSIDC data. The trend over the satellite record is down for every month of the year. No recognizable sign of a reversal is visble in the data. The trend in ice volume in PIOMAS is even more pronounced. See applicable sites for reference.
Right now, NSIDC is showing over 500,000 sq.km below median, far below the interdecile range and below 2012 levels; interestingly, Antarctic sea ice is also quite low, close to a million square kilometers below median, with enormous missing chunks in the Weddell, Amundsen and Ross seas. Someone facetious could use a typical denier method and draw a line between the beginning of the record and the latest data point to show a tremendous decrease in Antarctic sea ice.
Perhaps Lowisss13 wants to use only a few years of Arctic data following the 2012 record low summer Arctic ice, which would be ironic following his remark that 70 years is a blink of an eye. A funny variation on the defunct "no warming since 1998" nonsense.
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michael sweet at 10:34 AM on 3 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Lowiss13,
If you read my post you will see that I spported my claims with actual data and links to scientific studies. Please provide links to data and scientific studies to support your ridiculous claims.
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Eclectic at 09:44 AM on 3 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
Lowisss13 @103 ,
you seem to be trying to pull Michael Sweet's leg.
You offer some vague fluffy rhetorical comments, but you offer nothing based on factual evidence & scientific understanding.
Perhaps you could start by showing the (alleged) significant reduction in solar activity [ TSI ] which you claim has caused a reduction in arctic temperatures and hence a long term "sea ice recovery".
Then demonstrate all the other factors which you say are proving all the scientists wrong. Or will you retreat into another dose of empty rhetoric?
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Lowisss13 at 05:04 AM on 3 January 2019Arctic sea ice has recovered
To Michael Sweet
Excuse me Michael but I have a little problem with your logic. You said that a decade of relative stability is not enough to contredict the mathematical models. But you refer to the 70 years as a ''long term decline''. Excuse me, but 70 years, it's a blink of an eye compare to the climatologic history of the planet. It's a very short term. With all the datas on climatologic history of the earth, how can you be so convinced about the accuracy of the models? All in nature is related to cycle, oscillation, pulsation and variation. Linearity is pretty rare in nature and climatology is not an exception!
I was a believer (10 years ago), but now I have to admit that I'm Skeptical. Mainly because of the cyclic behavior of the earth. For me, the question is not to determine if climat change exhist, it does. The question is; What part the human activity is responsible of. In my point of view, just a few.
And with the actual low solar activities cycles, Arctic sea ice should continue to recover. But it's just my point of view!!!
Moderator Response:[DB] "You said that a decade of relative stability is not enough to contredict the mathematical models"
Statistical significance testing shows that, for climate related changes, 17 years (Santer et al) are the bare minimum, with 30 years or more being typically used.
"70 years, it's a blink of an eye compare to the climatologic history of the planet. It's a very short term"
Here's over 1,450 years of Arctic Sea Ice Extent:
"the cyclic behavior of the earth"
The Earth's climate only changes in response to warming or cooling forcings. No known natural forcing fits the fingerprints of observed warming except anthropogenic greenhouse gases. See here for more.
"What part the human activity is responsible of"
All of the observed warming since 1950 is due to human activities. See here for more discussion.
Please keep your comments constructed to adhere to the topic of the post on which you place them. Thousands of posts exist. Use the Search function to find the best post on which to place your concerns. Thanks!
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citizenschallenge at 02:11 AM on 3 January 2019Portuguese Translation of The Debunking Handbook
Now all you need is figuring out how to get people interested in digesting the information you've gathered for our edification.
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Doug_C at 08:34 AM on 2 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
"However, drawing conclusions on short-term trends is ill-advised because what matters to climate change is the decade-to-decade increase in temperatures rather than fluctuations in warming rate over a few years. Indeed, if short periods were suitable for drawing strong conclusions, climate scientists should perhaps now be talking about a “surge” in global warming since 2011, as shown in this figure:"
Which makes sense seeing as how climate is weather averaged over time.
And to understand climate does in fact require looking at decadal and centuries of change. And the trend is clearly towards a warming Earth as most of the warmest years on record are in this century which is now 19 years old.
An entirely consistent with the fact that carbon dioxide has been recognized as a heat trapping gas for a century and a half.
As is explained by the evidence over and over, there is no pause in warming, just misrepresented short term variability in weather that when included in a longer term graph of temperature is cancelled out by a greater presence of above average points.
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Doug_C at 05:56 AM on 2 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Climate change issues clearly have a huge impact on subjective politics, the opposite cannot be said of politics influencing in the slighest the physical mechanisms of warming the entire globe by steadily increasing the atmospheric concentration of the most important persistent GHG.
But that is exactly how this issue has been treated for decades, as if slick political games for short term gains have somehow "solved" this growing catastrophe. There have been multiple international summits over the last 30 years with a progressively clearer political consensus that climate change must be mitigated to avoid unsustainable costs and impacts. And non-binding agreements to do this. There is the UN IPCC which although it deals with many scientific issues is still part of a political body and there is no question that climate change is highly political in many places as we experience every day here in Canada.
But as I've already said, none of that changes in the slightest the physical nature of fossil fuels driven climate change. Something that still is not being addressed as human CO2 emissions are still massive and most of the main contributors are still engaging in functional denial as they claim to be working for solutions.
And the main reason this is the case is the continued use of politics and religion to cause as much confusion and resistance to change as possible.
Belief and adamantly defended ideology aren't going to get us through this rapidly accelerating nightmare. Acceptance of reality is.
And being led down ideological and spiritual alleys where the destinations are always highly subjective and open to a vast range of interpretations is a luxury we no longer have.
We have no time left to trade for space.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please, please, please move this to an appropriate topic - see comment to sunspot below.
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nigelj at 05:08 AM on 2 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
I think there is a huge intersection between the climate issue and politics, and some level of intersection with religion as well. We cannot escape this, and ignoring it doesn't make sense to me.
Yes politics and religion can become divisive shouty subjects. Generally discouraged at dinner parties! But this is an analytical website and Im a bit wary of putting any subject out of bounds because where would you stop?.
We just dont want politics and religion getting out of control and dominating all discussion and becoming shouty. Isn't that the key thing?
I suggest maybe keep such discussion on appropriate threads, so articles that refer to political issues, or the weekly news roundup thread which is general. And keep discussion on it restrained, and not finger pointing. Discussion above was restrained.
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Doug_C at 20:09 PM on 1 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Sunspot @42
The internet has been around for decades and was used by academics long before it went universal in the early 1990s with the introduction of the WWW.
Internet History Timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web
When it comes to science there are guidelines that date back centuries and allow an exchange of empirical evidence and agreed means to test it and place it in a meaningful context. You seem to be creating obstacles where none really exist.
The line is clear, if you lack the data and what you have doesn't fit in with already very well established theories then the burden of proof is on your shoulders, not someone else's. That's what scientific skepticism means, an open mind in an informed context always testing new data in the context of what we have already assimilated into the overall body of evidence.
The is no "problem" with the science of fossil fuels forced global warming and associated climate change. We don't need to understand how humans feel about it and what their beliefs are to understand the physical dimnersions of global warming. We just need data and a consistent structure to place it in.
And we have that going back centuries all consistent with the theory of global warming and the real world evidence we are seeing as it unfolds.
In your last paragraph you are entering into almost entirely hypothesis not theory. Geostatic rebound takes place over thousands of years, North America is still in the process of rebound from the melting of the massive ice sheets over 10,000 years ago.
There are other much more immediate concerns with global warming and climate change and it is important to place all these factors into a context based on the best evidence in the clearest context.
Which is why it is essential to leave politics and religion out of this discussion. These are based far more on internal subjective reality than objective testable data.
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Sunspot at 18:35 PM on 1 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Ok one more:
I don't have a complaint with this site or the way comments are moderated. The problem is a combination of the nature of the internet and how humans are interacting with it. This is a new form of communication we are trying to cope with. On sites with few rules - Yahoo Comments, for example - it's frequently just ridiculous, with people putting up all sorts of garbage. So some form of moderation is needed. I heartily agree.
Of course the problem becomes where to "draw the line". The problem with a subject like Global Warming, and any other big existential subject. is that it is intimately connected with all forms of human thought and activity. I find it impossible to have an honest discussion about human reactions to anything scientific without discussing the role of religion in society. And I can't have an honest discussion about Global Warming without discussing the science presented at the Arctic Blogspot. But this site has been dismissed here I assume because of a few "predictions" that haven't panned out.
But carry on. I'll be reading. I won't stir up any more "controversy". When the Arctic belches up a huge gasball of methane from a massive glacial rebound earthquake and the resulting tsunami washes over half of the cities in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be a big surprise to most. Or maybe that won't happen and it will just get hotter - EXPONENTIALLY - until it is too hot to grow food anymore. But I do know the heat can't be linear. Not with over 70 feedbacks adding to it. But this site doesn't yet acknowledge that reality. And if you don't understand the role of Global Warming feedbacks on our atmosphere, then you simply don't understand Global Warming.
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic snipped.
[PS] Let me try to explain. SkepticalScience is setup to respond to climate misinformation by reporting what the science says instead. It is organized into topics, and someone interested say the Global warming "hiatus" can explore that topic, preferably without encountering a lot of offtopic comments. If you want to comment about AGW, find the appropriate topic and comment there. All topics are live - the community uses the "Recent comments" menu item to see where new comments are made.
Climate politics and religion can be discussed on this site here for instance.
If you cant find an appropriate topic, the Weekly digest is a place for more general discussion.
People interested in discussing science and religion are hardly going to look at SkpSci as an appropriate forum. When a discussion veers totally offtopic, it is best to find a more appropriate forum (on or off this site), make a comment there and then post a link on this comment thread to where interested parties can continue the discussion. The Search function and the "arguments" item in the menu are good resources for finding appropriate topics on this site.
The comments policy is not optional and not up for discussion. Can I ask all commentators to please stick to topic.
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Doug_C at 16:57 PM on 1 January 2019Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die
Sunspot @38
It was a great book and Carl Sagan was making an appeal to reason, not belief and emotion.
@39
In my long experience in discussing science and empirical evidence based topics on anonymous formats such as this, the moment that religion and politics are introduced a rational discussion ends.
People stop sharing their common views and start defending their personal belief systems.
Skeptical Science has been such an important resource on this most important of issues because of the guidelines that allow rational facts based discussion. Not primal chest beating with the "win" going to the most aggressive and persistent, not the best informed and coherent.
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ancient_nerd at 14:12 PM on 1 January 2019CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused
Eclectic
Thank-you. It has been a few years. I was confusing the area and volume formulas.
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Eclectic at 13:26 PM on 1 January 2019CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused
@26
Area wrong. Should be pi times 4 , not pi times 4/3 .
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:38 PM on 1 January 2019Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk
Nick Palmer @16,
I agree with the ability of increasing the cost of a harmful activity to terminate it. But it is important to understand that this is not just a matter of competing alternatives. And the objective is not reducing the harmful activity. The objective is rapidly terminating the activity to reduce the harm done.
The harmful ultimately unsustainable burning of fossil fuels has to be terminated, but not just be 'replaced'. Part of the problem is the increasing energy demand, and other resource consumption, of 'supposedly more advanced people'.
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires more than a conversion of energy sources from harmful non-renewables to renewables. Every energy system and its consumption/use requires other resources/materials. To achieve the SDGs the more advanced people need to require less energy for their pursuit of profit or lifestyle and use less resources, with all of the non-renewable resources they use being fully recycled. And the more advanced also need to help all others develop to be more like them.
Getting a reduction of energy use (or reduction of any resource use) by the wealthiest is not accomplished by pricing the harm done by an activity. The richest can choose to afford it. The correction requires the richest to not want to do it. Pricing also does not get the richest to help others.
A rebate of the collected fee would sort of discourage the richest, but it would not develop the requirement for the richest to truly act as leaders to a better future for humanity.
A related problem is the way that Pricing Carbon has already become a game to be gamed.
People have evaluated their perceptions of the future costs of climate change (incorrectly discounting the future costs to make them appear to be smaller). And they use those evaluations to argue what the Carbon Price should be (or even claim that there should be no effort made to tweak the free market).
That game is simply incorrect. What is required is for the Carbon Price to be as high as is needed to terminate the activity.
And the game has been gamed even more by already more fortunate, and supposedly more advanced, people who tried to incorrectly develop economic activity since the 1980s when it was undeniable that the burning of fossil fuels had to be terminated, not prolonged or expanded.
So now we face the reality that Greta has bluntly pointed out. The failure of leaders in business and politics to responsibly respond to the understanding that the burning of fossil fuels needs to be rapidly curtailed has developed a more harmful required correction to limit the harm done to future generations. Popularity and profitability of an understandably harmful activity is no excuse for allowing it to continue. Continued failure to choose to personally suffer the pain of the required correction will result in painful future consequences.
Greta's observations put today's current leaders on notice that they may be the ones to suffer consequences in the near future (she was speaking to political leaders, but the same message applies to business leaders). And the young Green New Deal people in the USA are pointing out something very similar.
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ancient_nerd at 09:59 AM on 1 January 2019CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused
I'm having a little trouble getting some math to come out right. CO2 concentration is rising by 2 ppmv/year. The net flux is given as 15 gigatons/year.
For the surface area of the earth I take a radius of 6.4e6 meters to get an area of 171e12 m2. I convert 14.7 lb/in2 atmospheric pressure at sea level to a metric value of 10.35e3 kg/m2 or 10.35 ton/m2. When I multiply those together, it comes out to 1.771e15 tons for the total weight of the atmosphere. One ppm of that would weigh 1.771e9 tons or 1.771 gigatons.
The atmosphere is primarily molecular nitrogen. Each molecule has a weight of 28. The weight for CO2 is 44. This brings the weight of one ppm by volume up to 2.78 gigatons. The increase of concentration given in the article, 2ppmv/year would represent a weight of 5.56 gigatons. This is low by a factor of almost three from the value of 15 given in the article.
What am I missing?
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Daniel Bailey at 09:21 AM on 1 January 2019Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
One can also look at the ice core CO2 data and isolate the rate of change per unit time, as a method to isolate slug inputs to the atmosphere from carbon reservoirs.
Here's a personal try:
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ancient_nerd at 07:15 AM on 1 January 2019Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
michael sweet@299
so, the Santa Barbare study does put the end of the glacial about 10,000 years after the eruption. If there was any change in CO2 levels, it would be a tiny blip that may or may not barely stick out of the noise.
I am not sure if I can link to a specific yahoo comment of mine, but here is a paste from this article Anak Krakatau Volcano Erupts in Indonesia.
Measurements from ice core samples show no significant change in CO2 levels after either the Krakatoa or the Tambora eruptions. Volcanoes do inject sulfur into the stratosphere that cools the climate for a few years until it drops out. CO2 has a much longer lifetime in the atmosphere. It takes geological processes thousands of years to stabilize carbon levels.
I could now add to that something like:
There was a massive eruption at Yellowstone 630,000 years ago. It caused massive destruction as it left ash deposits up to 600 feet thick over much of North America. If there was a change in CO2 levels from that, it is barely visible, if at all, in the ice cores.
Thank-you
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michael sweet at 05:09 AM on 1 January 2019Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Ancient Nerd:
In fact I did read the graph incorrectly.
The increase in CO2 is still about 10,000 years after the eruption date.
Reading more background information, I found several articles (BBC Forbes GOOGLE search) that mentioned volcanic winters caused by supervolcanoes but none that mentioned CO2 effects. Several mentioned the Santa Barbara study referenced up thread. The Forbes article suggested that the supervolcano might have delayed the interglacial that was beginning around that time.
I see no supporting information for the idea that CO2 from the volcano caused an increasse in global temperatures.
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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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