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michael sweet at 03:46 AM on 13 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO:
Regarding your question about how BEST justifies averaging anomalies over large areas I will point out that the BEST study was financed by the Koch brothers (fossil fuel deniers) for the specific purpose of finding errors in the surface temperature record. No errors were found. I presume that their data analysis would withstand rigorous examination since it was designed by deniers.
I am interested to find out that you are so expert at temperature records that you can dismiss the work of multiple scientific groups for the past 50 years without even reading their papers. Arguing that you do not believe scientists can average anomalies over 1200 km is simply an argument from ignorance. Arguments from ignorance do not carry any weight on this web site, you must provide evidence to support your wild claims.
Your tone changed so I changed my tone.
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David Kirtley at 01:44 AM on 13 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO, it seems to me that you are focused on absolute temps, whereas the global avg. temp. reconstructions are given in anomalies. The distinction is important, and this series of posts explains it all very well: Of Averages and Anomalies, especially Parts 1B and 2A, for your other hang-up on "coverage".
scaddenp, up thread, pointed you to this post at AndThenTheresPhysics which is the most recent look at the amazing fact that you don't need thermometers covering every sq. meter of the globe to get a good sense of how the temps are increasing. One of the first to do this analysis is Nick Stokes here: Just 60 stations.
You can do so yourself using Kevin Cowtan's "temp tool".
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LTO at 01:32 AM on 13 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
Michael: That video isn't what it purports to be. The percentages appear to be of mathematically sampled land area, not land area that actually had a weather station on it. Further, the analysis of past data has a pretty major assumption:
"Our calculation assumes that the regional fluctuations in the Earth’s climate system during the entire study interval have been similar in scale to those observed in the reference period 1960 to 2010'
Ummm... How can that be justified, if ihe period from 1960-2010 is apparently one of unprecedented climate change?
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Tom Dayton at 01:11 AM on 13 January 2019Sea level rise is exaggerated
Hank: Sea level is a population parameter that is estimated by combining multiple sample measurements of it. The Law of Large Numbers explains that the precision of the combined estimate increases with the number of sample measurements. Look up Law of Large Numbers in a textbook or in Wikipedia, then prove it yourself using a spreadsheet. There is a tutorial on satellite measurement of sea level linked right above the image at the bottom of This NOAA page, though currently it does not work, probably due to the government shutdown.
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LTO at 01:09 AM on 13 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
Hmmm. Intriguing change in tone. I don't yet have a viewpoint; what I'm trying to do is evaluate the evidence being presented.
First, thank you for putting in the time to try and find an answer - I really appreciate it, even if it's made you grumpy in the process. Having done some fuether research myself, I have some answers.
First, I see that the 1200 km figure is actually a 'smoothing radius', which assumes that a climate measuring station within 1200 km 'influences regional temperature'. Again, that is the length of Britain, and only a radius, so the diameter is twice this. A bit odd on its face, but depends how the smoothing is done I suppose. Note: it appears to come from a 1987 paper discussed below. Dodgy, but not necessary to go into now.
I also had success on the gridding, and it looks like GISS breaks the globe down into 16,200 grids, (each presumably ~31,500 sq km - ie size of belgium) which are used to build the charts above. I base this on the data you can export from their site. So my question can be reformulated as:
1. What % of all the 16,200 grids used to create the charts above had daily temperature readings from at least 10 different locations, split out by north/southern hemispheres percentage, in 1880, 1920, 1934, 1960 and 2000 respectively?
Michael, an aside: That you can't find the information could be a sign that the question isn't important. However, given that the question is in essence one of how good the coverage of actual measurement data is and therefore what inferences can be drawn from it, the question seems to me to be of primary importance. You may well take the view that if this Hansen fellow says something then it must be true, but as I said earlier appeals to authority are not science. It's not very reassuring if you can't answer basic questions about the quality of the data set you're relying on and using to draw trend lines,
The discussion in the Hansen paper you cite is trivial and adds nothing. It does however link to a 1987 paper that was perhaps the foundational work for this data set. Link is here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3106/d76f96f30c55f2fa1d7c4e09b2f0f11c3140.pdf
To my pleasant surprise Fig 1 goes some way to answering the question, which you can see here: https://imgur.com/a/HKxf6G3
Each circle has a diameter of 2,400 km (two Britains!) and within it a single meteorological station. Figure 2 shows the globe divided into just 80 grids(6 million sq ft each!), and you can see that for many grids continuous coverage didnt even start until well after 1934, and further the number of stations in many is tiny (far fewer than 10) despite covering enormous areas that will have variances in temperature of many degrees C.
The paper is an absolute must read, if you can do so skeptically. Hansen's done a good job with a very limited data set. The problem is thst that data now appears to be being massively overinterpreted.For fun, I overlaid the 1930 station coverage from Hansen's 1987 paper against the 1936 chart on this page here: https://imgur.com/a/E8mtlqf You can see the chart is just making up data showing a dramatic 4F decrease in temperature across much of the globe despite there not being a meteorological station within many thousands of kilometers. Remember each circle is two Britains wide, and contains just one meteorological station.
So can I answer my own question? Unfortunately not, but I can answer a similar questions using Hansen's 1987 paper:
Q: if the globe was divided into just 80 grids of roughly 6 million sq km each, how many contained at least 10 meteorological stations in 1987? For reference Australia is just 7.6 million sq km.
A: Roughly 65%
Given the explosion of stations in 1960 comapred to 1930, the answer for 1934, even at such a low resolution, would have been much smaller.
My conclusion from all of this is unchanged: that to try and pretend that you can show a chart of global temperatures in 1934 with certainty of within a few degrees F is totally misleading. It doesn't pass the sniff test.
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michael sweet at 00:20 AM on 13 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO,
According to this video (https://youtu.be/ts0OVXLY5yE), the BEST record covers 80% of the Earth's land area from about 1900 to 1950. Only the Antarctic continent is not covered. From about 1950 over 95% of Earth is covered.
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michael sweet at 23:21 PM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO,
You demonstrate again a deep knowledge of denier literature, contrary to your claimed recent introduction to AGW. You have chosen a particularly obscure issue to hang your hat on. I cannot find a reference with 30 minutes of GOOGLE time. This demonstrates that the issue is not important even to deniers. Please link the denier site (and the post about global coverage) you are getting your information from.
Hansen 2006 discusses the problems with the HADCRU data set. That is the one referred to in your PhD thesis. As you can see, Hansen beat McLean in finding this issue. Hansen discusses how GISS resolved the issue so that they are not affected. BEST is also not affected. I note that the HADCRU issue results in HADCRU underestimating global warming because they do not include the Arctic and Antarctic.
Cowtan and Way web site discuss the issue in more detail and show how they correct the HADCRU issue.
Your attitude has changed from someone who claimed actual questions to someone demanding answers to obscure denier garbage. I am not your GOOGLE boy. Unless you make particularly wild claims I will no longer respond.
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Eclectic at 23:18 PM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
Calm down please, LTO. We were discussing Dr McLean's work.
And I am sorry you are not cynical enough to realize that there are PhD's . . . . and there are PhD's. To put it politely ;-)
Dr McLean is criticized because he puts forward idiotic ideas ~ and more than one idiotic idea and on more than one occasion. He is a repeat offender (and therefore deserves no presumption of innocence). The likely explanation is that his emotional bias provides Motivated Reasoning for his intellect to deny the "bleeding obvious". This is very typical of denialists (of all levels of intelligence).
Even you yourself, LTO, should try some introspection to identify the underlying causes of your apparent determination to oppose the scientific evidence by means of rhetoric & sophistry. Look at the overall picture please. Melting ice, rising seas, alteration of weather patterns, migration of plant & animal species in response to global warming [global warming at a time in this interglacial when the world had been on a natural multi-millennial cooling trend]. All "bleeding obvious" ~ and irrelevant as to whether you classify Year 1936 as a this or a that.
LTO, if you are a true skeptic, then you will present some reasonable evidence to support your "viewpoint". But so far, you have only made handwave rhetorical comments. There is a reason why (over recent decades) the number of climate scientists disagreeing with the mainstream consensus . . . has steadily dwindled to a minuscule minority. Quite simply: they have no valid evidence to support their (often mutually contradictory) assertions.
LTO, please get your act together, and present something substantive. And good luck with that! Indeed, I suspect you will need Divine intervention more than good luck ;-)
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Hank11198 at 23:12 PM on 12 January 2019Sea level rise is exaggerated
The deniers are saying the satellite equipment that can only measure distances in centimeters cannot produce sea level measurements in millimeters. Can someone address this or provide a link where this is addressed. I can’t find anything on this. Thanks.
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LTO at 21:23 PM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
Hi everyone
Sounds like there's some history with this McLean fellow, but let's set it aside for now, as whether or not he's said silly things about other topics is neither here nor there. A phd thesis is absolutely peer reviewed, and thoroughly challenged. Mine certainly was, admittedly at a far more renowned university, but snobbery on such matters is uncalled for. Your comments on peer review and Science/Nature are a bit naive generally, but particularly so in the wake of this debacle https://phys.org/news/2018-11-climate-contrarian-uncovers-scientific-error.html
Appeal to (lack of) authority is not science. Nor are we bound by what some now-dead scientists thought 50 years ago (notably when they thought a new ice age was upon us). I've learnt a lot from this site, but the 'ignore that person because he's an idiot' line of argument is not persuasive. Play the ball, not the man.
Michael: Arhennius was hardly the last word, as you presumably know. I'm not really aware of much of the past GW politics (or interested in it), having previously taken it at face value. I recently became interested when someone I respect - Scott Adams - started looking at it. Do follow Scott's discussion on twitter / periscope, I'm sure he'd find your contributions useful.
Back to the topic at hand. Nobody has yet answered my questions, so I'll formalise it. So NASA GISS averages out temperatures over 1200 km? That's almost the length of the UK, which in itself raises an eyebrow from someone who lives in London and is familiar with the weather in scotland. You probably mean 1200 sq km(?), but this still covers many degrees C of gradation in the UK and probably most places in the world. Nevertheless, let's go with that for now, which equates to ablut 42,000 grids globally, 21k in each hemisphere. Please correct if wrong.
1. What % of all the ~42k (or however many therr are) grids had daily temperature readings from at least 10 different locations, split out by north/southern hemispheres percentage, in 1880, 1920, 1934, 1960 and 2000 respectively?
If the answer for 1936 is >80% I'll withdraw my criticism of the chart.
2. As above, but the % that had at least one daily max/min temperature reading within each grid for those years.
Thanks!
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bArt17240 at 18:14 PM on 12 January 2019Sea level is not rising
Hi,
Having grown up metres from a beach in the South Island of New Zealand, I would like to offer my observations, thoughts and a question. I personally have not observed any sea-level rises over 50 years (I'm a 63 year old) and have this link to an article on New Zealand's most read news website who btw recently published their policy that the science around climate change is "settled". <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/109478710/media-council-finds-no-grounds-to-proceed-for-climate-change-complaint">News website to publish only climate change friendly opinions and not skeptical viewpoints</a>
Below is a link to an article on where New Zealand's coastline is rising or falling.
<a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/86784810/where-nz-rises-and-falls--and-how-it-complicates-the-rise-of-sea-levels"> Is it the land that rises and falls, not the sea?</a>
I find it difficult to imagine that any amount of erosion is causing a displacement effect mainly because the sea covers four fifths of the earths surface and the deepest point in the ocean is 10.9 kilometers while the highesthe point Mount Everest, is 8.9 km high.
I would like to be convinced that sea levels are indeed rising (as I have been convinced about increasing levels of residual CO2, explained clearly elsewhere on this site). Is anyone willing to try? Thank-you.
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michael sweet at 13:51 PM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO:
Your citation is to an obscure PhD thesis. Here is a discussion of the thesis from And then There's Physics. The thesis states "The audit covers a broad range of issues but leaves the quantifying of the impact of such errors to others". That means the writer has not checked to determine if the supposed "errors" affect the result. All this data was reviewed and argued about in the 1970's. Scientists agreed that the data was properly collected and analyzed. You are 50 years too late. An unreviewed PhD thesis cannot be compared to papers published in Nature and AScience.
Please provide a peer reviewed citation to support your wild claims.
NASA GISS averages their data over 1200 km. They have good coverage over the globe since 1880. You can check their errror bars at their web site here. Scientist have determined that the data since 1880 are sufficient. It is well known in the scientific community that the HADCRU4 record does not have very good coverage of the globe. That is why their estimate of warming is too low. Other records like GISS and BEST have better coverage.
Common sense tells me that the data is sufficient since the IPCC report, accepted by every nation on the globe, accepts the data.
In 1850 there were no deniers. Everyone agreed that CO2 would casue an increase in global temperatures. By 1896 Arhennius had estimated the increase from doubling CO2 and got a number that is still in the range of sensitivities. Here is his peer reviewed paper.
For someone who is just starting to learn about AGW you are very well informed about obscure denier papers. You are aware that most of the deniers have given up arguing because the evidence of warming is so obvious that it is not necessary to even measure the temperature any more. Rising seas, disappearing ice, fire storms and unprecedented hurricanes all tell a story.
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Eclectic at 13:38 PM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO @61 ,
your link is to the work of Dr John McLean.
To add to Scaddenp's comment: The short story is : McLean has made a fool of himself. And not for the first time.
Please, LTO, try to be logical and scientific in assessing important issues, such as AGW. Everywhere you look on science-denier websites, you find deluded crackpots who continue to tie themselves in knots . . . cherrypicking and/or doctoring data . . . doing all sorts of crazy stuff in trying to deny the "bleeding obvious". LTO, you owe it to yourself to dig deeper and really look into the rubbishy propaganda (which you seem so attracted to).
Check out Andthentheresphysics on Dr McLean's ideas. Plenty of other respectable sources critiquing his nonsense. ( In particular, the McLean paper is an exercise in triviality. )
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scaddenp at 13:34 PM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
Sigh, if you want to rely on John McLean, then you will never want for moonshine. See here. A pretty simple check is construct a temperature series from the GHCN stations that have been around since 1934 and see if you can spot the difference. See here for time series with just 60 stations for comparison and also a proper discussion of coverage bias.
The chart does not pretend any such accuracy - go to the appropriate papers for each of the temperature records to see what the error bars are.
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LTO at 11:47 AM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
Michael: See here: https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/52041/
I find your response disingenuous. What % of the globe do think was being sampled at least once a day in 1934, or indeed 1880? Common sense would tell you it's relatively low, with the southern hemisphere exceptionslly low. What were the 'deniers' in 1850 denying, pray tell?
The 1934 chart pretends to have accuracy to a few degrees Fahrenheit. Independent of whether you believe in AGW, this is fanciful thinking.
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John S at 11:23 AM on 12 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
Evan@2 absolutely it is time for individuals as well as governments to take action, but I’m glad you said “as well as governments” because individual action is not enough. I don’t own a car and live in a small apartment downtown; but if I needed a car, I couldn’t afford an electric one. That’s an example of a government policy we need to “pull” (as Dana said) the market so that ordinary folks who must drive can afford to do so cleanly. In this case, it’s the capital cost not the fuelling cost that is a barrier, so it is the prime example, often quoted by Marc Jaccard, where we need a policy in addition to carbon pricing, e.g. to incent, nudge, coax, coerce or whatever is needed to get the auto makers to put more affordable EV’s on the market (including for non-personal transportation, i.e. buses, trucks, trains, ships and mobile equipment for mining, construction, forestry and agriculture). Some might also say subsidize them; but that becomes a reverse Robin Hood, which the previous government in Ontario learned to regret.
At the same time, still give carbon pricing some credit for providing part of that incentive if it is designed well, by which I mean increasing every year transparently, predictably and significantly until the problem is solved. This gives all planners firm, forward numbers for business plans. (Yes, the social cost of carbon is a straw-man, often quoted by those opposed to carbon pricing. It’s an academic red herring – what we really want to get to is the price that nobody will pay – we don’t know what it is, but know we’ll reach it if we keep increasing sufficiently every year). And, yes, the price will (should) get quite high, which is another reason all the revenue must be distributed to citizens, otherwise politics will prevent the price rising sufficiently high.
nigelj@3 quite right the issue is not innovation or regulation; the issue is how to incent both deployment of existing alternatives (as Dana said) and innovative development and deployment of new. There are 3 basic methods: regulations, subsidies and carbon pricing. I prefer the latter and could doubtless annoy the moderator with the number of words by which I could describe the inevitable pitfalls of the other two, which is not to say some may never be needed and I gave what I believe is the prime example of one we need above, i.e. some type of mandated quota for producing and selling zero-emission EV’s.
OPOF@7 paragraph 4, an example of the social cost of carbon straw-man fallacy to criticize carbon pricing in the first sentence, then the rationale of what is actually the carbon fee and dividend strategy in the second. As James Hansen said ”As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will continue to be burned”.
RedBaron@9 distribution of dividend is not a flaw but essential to secure political future proofing. It’s also ethically sound (check out “Who owns the sky – our common asset” by Peter Barnes (2001), which is where the idea came from).
Even supposing that siphoning off revenue to fund the green illusions of the government of the day would prove to be politically secure (which it wouldn’t so I am over-arguing here) the effective, efficient use of such “apparently free money” is highly questionable. As the old saying goes “governments can’t pick winners, but losers can pick government’s pockets”.
OPOF@10 paragraph 1, in agreeing with RedBaron@9 you are (both) totally missing the point that rising costs of fossil fuels (due to carbon pricing) puts a bull’s eye, so to speak, on every product and service that relies on fossil fuels (and not just in the energy sector) for entrepreneurs/intrapreneurs to target with better and cleaner alternatives and the rising carbon pricing schedule gives them invaluable competitive information to develop and deploy those alternatives.
But then the balance of your comments seems to agree with the ideas I expressed above with the additional twist that you seem to suggest diverting dividends that would go to the wealthy to other actions. And I don’t have a big problem with that; in fact, I’d suggest the “just transition”, e.g. re-training if necessary, those fossil workers not ready to retire. I’d leave the development and deployment of products and services, especially products, to those who know what they are doing and are honestly incented by the higher prices available, driven by carbon pricing.
nigelj@11 I generally find myself in agreement with most of your (very frequent) comments but here’s one I’d challenge (partly); that carbon pricing can do nothing about draw-down. Sure, it may be a government subsidy, but the prevailing carbon pricing schedule provides a good bench-mark e.g. alerting potential proponents to the value of certain possibilities. There may also be a role for off-sets.
OPOF@17 paragraph 3, “rich people can pay … investors still profit”; I’d like to, again, stress the impact of carbon pricing is not only on consumers but also, and more importantly, in my view, on the producers or providers of goods and services; e.g. rich people may still be willing to pay top $ to fly around, but the airlines will have invented clean ways to enable them to do that; e.g. non-fossil derived jet fuel from biomass via methanol.
nigelj@18, notwithstanding how I introduced my comment on nigelj11, here is another one – the big failing of cap and trade is that it does not provide a clear, transparent, long-term forward price, which is invaluable for planners and investors in all types of alternatives to fossil fuels.
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michael sweet at 09:09 AM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
LTO:
Please provide a reference to support your wild claim that Global temperature in 1934 was inadaquate. BEST (financed by deniers) starts global coverage in 1850 and GISS (more conservative) starts at 1880. Both are way before 1934.
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LTO at 06:04 AM on 12 January 20191934 - hottest year on record
The chart of global temperature on this page in 1934 appears to be exceptionally misleading. As I understand it we have nothing like so clear a picture of global temperatures in 1934, with significantly less than 50% global coverage and many areas having only a handful of readings. Such charts do not appear to be justifiable.
Moderator Response:[DB] Not counting 2018 (which is almost ready for inclusion), 1934 is the 7th-warmest year in the US. You can look this up yourself.
Globally 1934 is nowhere near the warmest year, coming in at the 86th-warmest.
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David Kirtley at 03:34 AM on 12 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO @501: "i thought it might be useful to go back and look at past predictions to see how they measure up against present day."
You can easily do that right here on SkS. Scroll up to the "thermometer" in the left-side banner. Under that are some rectangular "buttons". Click on the "Lessons from Predictions" button. That will take you to a page listing blog posts dealing with past predictions/projections and how they have measured up.
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Evan at 23:34 PM on 11 January 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
For anybody interested and reading this post, I suggest Googling James Hansen, Richard Alley, and Eric Rignot together with "sea level rise" and read the reports and watch the videos that come up. All of these respected scientists regularly talk about multi-meter sea-level rise this century.
Scientists routinely say that Earth is responding faster than anyone thought possible and faster than the models predicred. A good example is melt in the Arctic, which is occurring faster than the models have predicted.
We only have one chance to prepare before rapid sea-level rise really kicks in. That time is now.
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michael sweet at 22:24 PM on 11 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO:
A scientific discussion of Hansen's 1988 paper is here Realclimate discussion . Note that this is the website the denier site "realclimatescience" is attempting to hijack.
Hansen's projections were skillful but the release of greenhouse gasses was not what he forecast. While he forecast lower CO2 emissions, he forecast higher cloroflurocarbon emissions. Simplistic evaluations of only CO2, like the one at realclimatescience, ignore these important greenhouse gasses.
The writers at realclimatescience have had the opportunity to read the correct science at Realclimate and continue to push their incorrect ideas. In my book that is a deliberate lie. I recommend you stop wasting your time (and ours looking up the correct analysis) reading denier web sites.
There is an easy way to find out how increasing CO2 affects temperature: read the IPCC summary and figure they are correct!! It is a waste of time to attempt to calcualte or completely understand the atmosphere yourself, it is too complex.
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nigelj at 17:57 PM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
Easy to get the two things confused. Done it myself.
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nigelj at 17:53 PM on 11 January 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
Riduna, I think multi metre sea level rise this century is possible, but somewhat unlikely, because it would require more than just melting ice, it would require physical destabilisation and destruction of ice sheets which requires strong local warming right around the antarctic and greenland oceans, considerably more than presently, and all over the next couple of decades surely. How would that happen? Seems unlikely to me by 2100, but very possible by 2200 as warming accelerates, if we do nothing.
I'm not minimising the problem, just thinking how would it happen? It is pretty much just as bad if its by 2200 anyway. Hell, 1 metre is very serious. I think its important to talk about dangerous but realistic, evidence based defensible scenarios or the public will dismiss climate science as inflated scaremongering.
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nigelj at 17:39 PM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
Riduna @5, you are looking at atmospheric concentrations of CO2! CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels levelled off from about 2014 - 2017:
Atmospheric concentrations didn't follow suit, probably because of the big el nino of 2015 - 2016 boosting CO2 from natural sinks like forests.
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Eclectic at 17:34 PM on 11 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Erp . . . I have committed an unfortunate ambiguity, in the second post above this one. "the temperature reduces with height" should read "the temperature reduces with increased height" ~ which is much clearer ! My apologies for that initial statement, which might well pass in colloquial conversation, but which was very open to misinterpretation (in written form).
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Eclectic at 17:19 PM on 11 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO , you have mentioned the "realclimatescience" website.
Perhaps you are not yet aware ~ but that is not a science website, it is a propaganda website. "Fake News". As a pointer, one should always be on the alert for disinformation, on any site prominently quoting Feynman, Popper, or Galileo. [ Feynman, Popper and Galileo are of course very worthy gentlemen in their own right ~ but their philosophies are seriously abused by propagandists hoping to drape themselves with reflected glory . . . propagandists hoping to mislead the uninformed/unthinking reader. ]
As to your question on Hansen etcetera ~ the propagandists are diverting your attention onto some old predictions/projections of 30+ years ago, in the early days of such assessments. Worse by far, they are deceiving you by comparing to more recent high-altitude data, not the planetary surface temperatures. That is classic bait-and-switch deception.
Also, note that site's reference to "the 52% consensus" ~ based on some very unrigorous survey of members of some meteorological society. No detailed explanation. Quite shameless propaganda.
LTO , please get your information from an honest scientific website. For instance : RealClimate. (You can see how the anti-science propagandists are trying to piggy-back, by using a similar sounding name such as realclimatescience, to mislead the careless into their own site.)
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Riduna at 17:12 PM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
I understand the speakers frustration at the preoccupation of COP24 attendees with discussion of minutiae while anthropogenic global warming propels the planet down catastrophe street at increasing speed.
Nigelj – you write: ‘(CO2) emissions levelled off over approximately 2014-2017’
Did they? This NOAA Graphic does not indicate any CO2 emissions levelling off during this period.
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Eclectic at 16:48 PM on 11 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
LTO @501 ,
A/ Please note that you have duplicated your post #501as #502 and #503. Do not be too embarrassed ~ a Moderator will correct that reduplication. Likewise with your other duplication !
B/ On #504 [soon to be #502, I expect] , you will need to explain what you mean by your first and second sentences. What is the case? What is the misunderstood point? There seems to be considerable confusion of communication here.
Take a look at the atmospheric temperature versus altitude graphs. For most of the troposphere, the temperature reduces with height. Above that, the temperature holds steady for a short distance ~ and above that, temperature increases with altitude through the stratosphere. You need to integrate that information with the decreasing air density ~ because both factors are important in comprehending the (15um) radiative loss to space. The low density in stratosphere is the reason the tropospheric (15um) loss is vastly more important (and why the weighted average "emission height" is generally in the troposphere, affected by the lapse rate there).
Things get more complex, if we consider other radiative output from CO2 ~ and also other radiative properties of H2O and all molecules of 3 or more atoms. But for our mutual purposes, it is enough to consider the 15um band, here in this thread.
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LTO at 16:17 PM on 11 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
@eclectic: it appears that is the case. the point wasn't about a single altitide; rather it's about where the altitude of emission is in an area where increasing altitude no longer leads to decreasing temperatures
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LTO at 15:47 PM on 11 January 2019CO2 effect is saturated
Thanks all. Continues to be really informative, and I think I now have a good handle on the different possible ways in which increasing co2 could increase troposphere temperatures. What isn't so clear is how significant those effects are at marginal increases from 400 ppmv, but to br honest I could probsbly spend the next 6 months studying the topic in detail and not be that much more certain given the myriad complexities.
MA: The Zhong and Haigh paper is really interesting, but I'm not quote following figures 5a and b, top row, which seem to show minimal change in radiative flux (when averaged across the spectrum) even up to 32x co2. I'm not convinced they have taken into account all those phenomena when working out thr logarithmic relationship - they say
"our calculations assume no change in the surface or atmosphere, do not consider the climate response to the RF, or any issues related to climate sensitivity"
But perhaps there's something intrinsic to the models that goes without saying. My point was more that it be *more* of a factor going forward, as the proportion of time when thr altitude of emission is in a scenario where increasing altitude does not mean decreasing temperatures is presumably increasing with increasing co2.
Given the point has been made to me repeatedly that the science is apparently so settled no one's even really looking at it anymore, i thought it might be useful to go back and look at past predictions to see how they measure up against present day. This might not be the right page to discuss such matters, but I came across this analysis of a Hansen 1988 paper, in which apparently actual temperatures are matching up in line with his 'zero co2 increase after 2000' scenario https://realclimatescience.com/2019/01/temperatures-following-hansens-zero-emissions-scenario/ Thoughts?
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Riduna at 15:34 PM on 11 January 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
It is wishful thinking to assume that multi metre sea level rise will not occur this century and equally unrealistic to believe that if only 10% of a city is inundated by sea level rise (SLR), the rest of it will remain habitable. Further, the only thing which can be inferred from Pulse 1A is that SLR of ~5m/y can be sustained for centuries by rapid melting of an ice sheet.
There is growing evidence that ocean surface (0 – 6,000m) heat absorption has been significantly underestimated. The most likely effects of ocean temperature rise are thermal expansion of seawater and more rapid degradation of Antarctic and Greenlandcvoastal ice reasting on the seabe. Both will result in more rapid SLR and increased instability of the ice sheets, potentially leading to further SLR acceleration.
If the inundated 10% of a city (why only 10%?) contains major infrastructure (port facilities) and industrial facilities (factories) the other 90% may be habitable but offer little or no employment to the inhabitants. Moreover, adjacent coastal flooding may destroy transport infrastructure making it impossible to produce goods and services or support inhabitants with goods produced elsewhere.
Even with SLR of only 2m., it should be expected that an effective SLR of >4m. could be created by storm surges – and it should be expected that with rising sea surface temperature and atmospheric moisture, the severity and incidence of storms will increase significantly, as will the destruction they cause. It is also likely that flooding of coastal lands this century is no longer avoidable.
Retreat may be possible. Clinging on is not.
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nigelj at 11:21 AM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
Michael Sweet @3, it was another article I read somewhere that stated that current projects under construction had been cancelled, however it is clear that article was wrong and you are right. Shows you can never rely on the mass media.
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michael sweet at 09:29 AM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
Nigelj,
All the nuclear plants cancelled in the post you linked were for future construction, not currently started plants. Siince it takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant, none of the increase in India's CO2 this year can possibly be due to these cancellations. The effects on CO2 would not be evident for 10 years.
According to this article, India is putting its money on renewable energy while cancelling nuclear plants originally considered 10 years ago. Since renewable energy plants only take 2-5 years to build we can hope that in a few years India will start to reverse its CO2 trend.
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Richard Lawson at 08:14 AM on 11 January 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
The link to Puckrin 2004 is broken
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scaddenp at 06:07 AM on 11 January 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Sounds like another "gone emeritus" conservative. His "it follows" is patently false - it treats CO2 and water vapour as independent variables.
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nigelj at 05:20 AM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
Oops I meant to add that given the jump in emissions in 2018 largely reflects events in India and China, perhaps it is a one off, an anomoly, and coming years will see a better reduction in emissions globally.
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nigelj at 05:17 AM on 11 January 2019Climate negotiations made me terrified for our future
One thing related to the increased C02 emissions for 2018. Firstly this was after a period where emissions levelled off over approximately 2014-2017. Anyway my understandting is one of the main reasons for a jump in global emissions in 2018 was the cancellation of nuclear projects in India, and the resumption of building coal fired power stations as below. However the resumption of building coal fired power stations does appear at limited scale.
As to the climate conference. A typical 'talkfest' with much noise, plenty of cocktails, and pre prepared speeches. Maybe not much else. However getting 200 countries to agree on anything is near impossible.
We are instead very reliant on leadership from the large emitters like America and China, as this will motivate other countries. But we all know politicians are all talk no action. The only way to change this is for us the ordinary citizenry to put pressure on them every way we know how.
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MA Rodger at 05:04 AM on 11 January 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
indagar @331,
Jehne's paper (your link to this paper has picked up an extra SkS URL) isn't at all clear what it means by "net heat balance" and that this is the same as "total heat balance" suggests a poor piece of writing. The references Jehne cites are rather long and old (10) = Budyco (1958) 'The Heat Balance of the Earth;s Surface'. (11) = Schneider (1989) 'Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century?'. Some concept "heat balance" that would have the 18% of it comprising the GH-effect doesn't leap out at me from either.
The numbers for CO2's contribution to the GHG (and also the water vapour contribution) is roughly correct but in CO2 contributing some 20% to the ~33ºC GH-effect. By such a count, AGW from CO2 rising from 280ppm to 382ppm would provide 1.3% to the GH-effect through direct CO2 forcing and 4% with feedbacks. Jehne is back-of-fag-packet calculating the 280-382ppm rise as 35% of CO2's pre-industrial GHG contribution with 20% of all the pre-industrial GH-effect which would yield 7%, a value that is a ong way high.
It would be a puzzle for somebody with some time to spare to sort what Jehne is actually on about.
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nigelj at 04:47 AM on 11 January 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
Lachlan @16, you are possibly right about the title. But the first half of the article dealt with the findings that the terrifying prediction was unlikely this century, and we only found out it was merely postponed half way down the article. Many people only read titles or the first couple of paragraphs of articles. A summary would have helped.
Evan @17
I think there is something in your theory of a pulse and a long tail. It looks like it could happen. If we knew that the period of multi metre sea level rise was confined to for example 2200 - 2500 we could plan for this and build behind the danger zone. Then adapting to a long tail at perhaps 1 metre per century would be feasible, although ugly. The trouble is can we be sure rapid sea level rise would be confined to a specific time period? Im not sure enough is known about how ice sheets will respond. Nevertheless, if a pulse was to eventuate we would be very motivated to find out.
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nigelj at 04:33 AM on 11 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
OPOF @16, true, however a carbon fee could in theory be set quite high, so targeting rich people, but with a higher rebate for poor people. Of course its political, the challenge of getting this sort of thing passed.
I actually think there is much to be said for cap and trade if done correctly and strongly, but I believe the Democrats tried this and it was defeated.
The net result of all this is unfortunate compromises because of politics and we end up with something like a very simple version of carbon fee and dividend. But its not a bad scheme. I think its usually better to do something than nothing, and the carbon fee idea allows space for subsidies and other mechanisms to operate alongside.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:24 AM on 11 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
The Top-Line in my mind is the understanding that 'innovation' to 'correct' the incorrect things that have been developed has to include 'innovations correcting the developed socioeconomic-political systems so that future developed innovations are more helpful, not harmful, to the future of humanity'.
In fact, the correction of the socioeconomic-political systems in ways like the Green New Deal may be required to achieve the economic corrections that climate science has identified (objective of 1.5 C total impact, with a hard upper limit of 2.0 C impact).
Another way to say what is required, without detailed explanations, is:
'Motivating innovation of sustainable improvements for humanity is best done by making it harder and more expensive for people to benefit from a harmful unsustainable activity.'
Without making it harder and more expensive for unsustainable and harmful activity to be gotten away with, the system can be expected to 'innovate' new harmful and unsustainable activity.
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PeterV at 04:11 AM on 11 January 2019Discussing climate change on the net
There is one way to talk to climate "sceptics" I find effective to silence them. It works particularly well, if it is possible to communicate about the deniers in a way that they perceive it but are not addressed directly, as is sometimes possible, e.g. in comments on Facebook.
Often, when they flood social media content, it is nearly impossible to argue with the "sceptics" and be convincing. The deniers hardly ever give in. Consequently they end up having the last word, the last comment in any thread, which is not a desirable outcome for climate communicators.
To try and prevent this outcome it may be explained that climate denial serves to avoid a feeling of guilt. But the results of this strategy are mixed at best —my experience. The deniers then may explain that they don't feel particularly guilty. (Of course you don't feel guilty. That is what your denial is meant to achieve! You should not feel guilty at all when you claim there is no problem at all. Or do you, nevertheless, acknowledge that there is a problem?) And there we go, the debate continues.
However, I repeatedly made the experience that deniers almost always discontinue the debate if they are told that their ultimate reason to deny climate change is to be free riders, that they want to let others solve a problem and that their stance is an immoral one.
For example, an article (in German) about the discovery of the atmospheric greenhouse effect triggered a debate on Facebook. Nearly half the comments (39 of 94) written over two days originated from 19 climate deniers. Some commentators patiently tried to counter the deniers by explaining the science of climate change, others tried with sarcasm —all in vain, as usual. There was the usual aggression and contempt on both sides. However, a series of three posts in the main thread (not as a reply to one specific denier's comment) pointed out that the ultimate goal of climate denial, including the psychology at work, was free riding and that deniers necessarily believe in a conspiracy but that they are mislead by the fossil fuel special interests, not the climate scientists. These simultaneous explanations stalled the debate effectively.
The positive results I received in several experiments may be coincidental. I don't have any statistics. But I believe the outcome is not accidental.
It may be explained: By denying the problem, the deniers seek excuse and psychological relief from acting immorally. By telling them that their position is nevertheless an immoral one, their stance becomes less tenable. The deniers also seek to avoid criticism or even retribution for their immoral stance, their denial and free riding. By talking not to them, but about them (if possible), they are signaled that their intention to prevent criticism should be exposed. Actually in any specific case, their intention is thwarted. In combination with the accusation to ultimately act immorally, their denial becomes unproductive and they tend to give up.
This communications strategy —if it is a strategy at all— probably doesn't convince the deniers. It might even rather have the opposite effect. (If you want to be convincing, there is advice.) But experience shows that it quiets them. In light of the deniers' influence in the public sphere and ultimately politics, that may be more important than most people think.
This comment is an adapted excerpt from the article: Learning from Ignaz Semmelweis for Climate Communication
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indagar at 03:28 AM on 11 January 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
I'm active in the regenerative agriculture community and keep coming across the following assertion:
"Do you know how much of the global heat dynamics on earth are regulated by carbon? You might be surprised to learn that it's just 4%. How much is regulated by water? 95%."
As this tends to be an obfuscating claim put forward by cc deniers I was surprised to find that in this instance it comes not from a climate change denier but from a retired Australian CSIRO soil microbiologist called Walter Jehne who holds some interesting albeit controversial ideas about how to address climate change. This paper, for example, sets out his thinking and how he came up with those numbers.
"[water] and its unique capacity to absorb, retain, transfer
and dissipate heat, via absorption, evaporation,
clouds, condensation and precipitation, plus some
60-80% of the natural greenhouse effect, that
governs over 90% of the earth’s natural heat
dynamics and heat balance (10). Can these water
and heat processes help us in mitigating global
warming?By contrast CO2 influences less than 4% of the
earth’s total heat balance as it provides some 20%
of the natural greenhouse effect which contributes
some 18% of the earth’s net heat balance (11). It
follows that the 35% increase in CO2 levels from 280
to 382 ppm over the past 250 years may have increased the
global heat balance by perhaps 1%. This 1% change in the
global heat balance has been assumed in conventional
climate models to be the cause of global warming."Regardless of the merits of his proposals for mitigation, can such a percentage attribution even be made (95% / 4% of earth's heat dynamics governed by H20 and CO2 respectively)? After doing a lot of reading here and going through the marvellous geophysics course on cc by Bob Trenwith (U of Chicago) <incorrectly attributed name removed> I'm having my doubts but it would be great if someone more 'steeped' in this subject matter could take a look. THX
Moderator Response:[DB] Fixed link
[PS] Removed incorrect attribution as request by uploader.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:17 AM on 11 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
nigelj@15,
Wol's airline seat analogy is not far off.
A Carbon Fee is helpful, but is inadequate because richer people should 'all' be notivated to lead the correction of the incorrect activities that have developed.
A Carbon Fee does not really do that. Richer people can choose to pay it rather than be leaders in behaving better. And the investors in the industry still get to profit from creating more harm.
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nigelj at 17:35 PM on 10 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
Wol, @14 yes true the cleanest solution would be government restrictions on carbon, but like you say it's politically untenable. This is why we resort to something like carbon tax and dividend.
I don't think your seating analogy is great, because consumption taxes do reduce rates of use (eg tobacco taxes). A price on carbon can also be a constantly ramped up quantity. So carbon taxes are not so bad.
Whatever we do has to be phased up. If the fossil fuel tap was turned off completely tomorrow you would have chaos. But because of all the denialist delay from certain political quarters, time is running out to phase things up gradually.
I think OPOF has an economically sound plan, but again farming lobbies are rather powerful in America and wont give up their subsidies without a fight. But if it could be switched from a monetary handout to just encourage regenerative types of farming there might be buy in.
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Evan at 16:04 PM on 10 January 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
Lachian@16 Yes, I agree with your analysis/comments and those of nigelj noting that the non-smoothness of the rise will also be a big problem. My point is to add perspective: slow does not mean "no problem". However slow sea-level rise will be long term, it will likely start with a big pulse and then slow down. Note that Meltwater Pulse 1A occurred rather early in the sea-level rise associated with the last deglaciation.
I am sure that together with "orderly" rebuilding of the 10% to which you refer, there will be many genuine disasters and cities where people just leave after a major storm which, on top of sea level rise, becomes too much to cope with. There will no doubt be a smorgasbord of damage and adaptation scenarios. The main point is that it is already time to start an orderly retreat from areas already being impacted.
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Wol at 15:30 PM on 10 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
OPOF @7:>>And that understanding exposes that trying to calculate a 'cost for carbon' is incorrect.<<
Correct. An analogy is the problem of the obese fellow passenger in economy (coach).
You often hear that fatties should be charged more for their seats - but that does nothing for the person alongside them: it's exactly the same person taking up their space as before. All that's happened is that the airline takes in more revenue. In effect, it's an externality.
The nub of the problem is that even millions of individuals making a small contribution will not have anything but a small effect: governments have to impose restrictions on carbon, and I don't see that happening in the US, where the constitutional rights to freedom are so rigidly entrenched that civil unrest would probably follow.
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ubrew12 at 14:58 PM on 10 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
Innovation has been the obvious solution to the climate threat, since that threat was first identified 120 years ago. This is simply because 'innovation' is the solution to any threat, climate or otherwise. Ask yourself why Dr Porsche's second car he ever developed was a hybrid vehicle, with a battery capable of driving the car for 30 miles after the internal combustion engine had died (this is in 1898). The answer has always been innovation... to any problem.
The GOP crime has been, on behalf of Big Fossils, to deny there was a problem... for 120 years.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:51 PM on 10 January 2019Republicans call for 'innovation' to tackle climate change, but it's not magic
There is a potential solution in the USA that addresses nigelj's@11 observation about their 'tax problem' while providing specific funding for climate action, especially the agriculture related actions mentioned by RedBaron@9.
The USA tax problem is partly due to 'horse-trading to get votes for bills'. The horse-trading produces add-ons to a Bill that have nothing to do with the Bill, but get the extra votes needed to pass it. The add-ons are often subsidies on things. And those commitments may each be small, but they all add up.
Many of the add-ons have been agriculture related subsidies, with some of them having been on the books for decades, well past their original time of need (needed to get a vote). And there have been other agriculture subsidy programs created that also remain on the books decades after they were created. An example is presented in this 2006 Washington Post article "Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm". And another discussion of the problem is presented in the 2011 Reason.com item "Ending Farm Welfare As We Know It".
One way to get money for agriculture related climate action activities, like the ones RedBaron mentions, without increasing taxes would be to turn a portion of the existing farm subsidies into subsidies for farmers to do things that help address the climate change challenge. This would be in addition to shifting fossil fuel subsidies to renewable programs, as william @8 mentions.
WIth the above actions, taxes do not increase and farm subsidies remain farm subsidies and energy subsidies remain energy subsidies. And those would be in addition to the correction of wealth distribution that a Carbon Fee and Rebate program would accomplish, without increasing taxes.
However, this has probably already been investigated. The real problem is that Politics can get in the way of effective solutions to real problems, especially when benficiaries of incorrectly popular and profitable activities get to incorrectly influence political actions and voters - the need to get that type of money influence out of politics.
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Lachlan at 12:35 PM on 10 January 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
Evan @11,
I agree that it would be nice to be able to "get it over with" and rebuild, but I think that having slow increase is far, far better. If 90% of a city is intact, then it can relocate the other 10% to higher ground. If 10% of a city is intact, it is really hard to rebuild the other 90%.
If a change happens over a millenium, think how many cities have the same borders a they did 1000 years ago.
The only drawback I see in gradual seal level rise is the "boiling frog" problem, where people don't accept the rise and keep rebuilding on the same sites after damage.
As nigelj says, the worst case is to have rapid bursts on a long-lived underlying trend, and that the greatest technical problem is unpredictability. (The greatest actual problem is denialism.)
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