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Comments 13151 to 13200:

13151. TTauriStellarBody at 06:37 AM on 4 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       So this

       "B5.3. Limiting warming to 1.5°C, compared with 2ºC, is projected to result in smaller net reductions in yields of maize, rice, wheat, and potentially other cereal crops, particularly in subSaharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America"

       Is your justification for this:

       "If agriculture were to collapse that would not mean the GDP would drop 2%"

       You are saying a drop in yeilds is a collapse in agriculture. 

       We know the low latitudes will be disproportionately hit. But we also know that the mid lattiudes are where the bulk of the worlds GDP is generated. 

       The opening post asks why is it that GDP seems to be so slightly affected by 1.5C and 2C. Once we get beyond the sloganeering and rhetoric few seem to have built cases on data.

13152. michael sweet at 04:14 AM on 4 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       TTauri,

       From your link to IPCC-SR15:

       "B5.3. Limiting warming to 1.5°C, compared with 2ºC, is projected to result in smaller net reductions in yields of maize, rice, wheat, and potentially other cereal crops, particularly in subSaharan
       Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America; and in the CO2 dependent, nutritional quality of rice and wheat (high confidence). Reductions in projected food availability are
       larger at 2ºC than at 1.5°C of global warming in the Sahel, southern Africa, the Mediterranean, central Europe, and the Amazon (medium confidence). Livestock are projected to be adversely
       affected with rising temperatures, depending on the extent of changes in feed quality, spread of diseases, and water resource availability (high confidence). {3.4.6, 3.5.4, 3.5.5, Box 3.1, CrossChapter Box 6 in Chapter 3, Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapter 4}" my emphasis.

       I already mentioned revolutions partly caused by failure of the wheat harvest in Russa.  The Syrian war was caused by agricultural failure due to unprecented AGW linked drought.  In locations like Egypt where many people live on $2 per day and buy all their food, a small increase in the price of food results in severe problems.

       Your post seemed to suggest a maximum decline in GDP from severe agricultural effects of a few percent.  I wanted to point out that agricultural effects can be much larger than the current percent of GDP.  People require food.  Currently in developed countries food is cheap.  If agriculture strains cause food shortages the price will rapidly increase.  AGW related drought in Texas a few years ago killed 20% of cattle.  Several years of that would cause an increase in food costs.

       I am not sure what you want from me with respect to the OP.  Your question is not clear to me. 

       I have seen economic forecasts that sugest minor changes from AGW when climate forecasts include large land areas being rendered too hot for humans to live there any longer.  The economic forecasts cannot consider the climate forecasts in detail.

13153. Xulonn at 02:05 AM on 4 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Predicting a "sea change" in complex, chaotic systems like climate and economics is extremely difficult, and disastrous change can occur much more quickly than most people realize.  I do, however, agree with others in this conversation that the science of climate research is on much more solid footing than that of modern economics. 

       I remember reading many years ago about someone who challenged an American meteorologist (weatherman?) on next-day forecasting.  By simply predicting every next day to have the same weather as the current day, he won - because the meteorological predictions of change in the day were so inaccurate.  That matches my feelinga about our current global capitalist system - as long as governments cater to the ultra wealthy and corporate sectors, they believe that the good times and exponential growth can go on forever. 

       Another factor in overly rosy economic predictions is that people don't want to hear bad news about the future. Often, any predicted change in a negative direction that does not come to fruition leads to people no longer believing the source -unless you are Donald Trump.  The U.S. president is a master at telling his fans just what they want to hear - and it is almost always based on falsehoods and inaccuracies. Even when his words are immediately debunked, his fans refuse to accept the truth.  Following this surrealistic  phenomenon leads me to believe that a similar psychology leads to the stubborn denialism that refuses to accept the reality of the looming disasters that will be precipitated by AGW/CC. 

       Economists do the same thing as Trump without overtly lying, but simply refuse to consider and include all of the obvious possibilities and their liklihoods in their calculations.   Their theories, hyphtheses, and calculations may be mathematical marvels, but the "garbage in garbage out" maxim applies here. 

       Reading this post and its replies prompted me to go to Google to look for "economic prediction failures" - and I was a bit surprised at how the first page of results was filled with exactly what I was looking for.  It looks like I've found some very interesting information to peruse over the next few days. 

       I see two possibilities for the next few decades - either modern civilization and its global economy will hit a wall - or drive over a cliff. And either one will likely be at full speed with "the pedal to the metal."

       At age 76, I probably will not be around to see it. Many of my contemporaries are already gone, and unlike me, did not live long enough to see even the real beginning of the global "tragedy of the commons" surfacing so obviously.  The current path of modern technological civilization will likely lead to its end.  The focus on "saving the earth" was completely wrong. The earth will survive and life will continue to evolve - just not in the way we humans with out collective monumental hubris expected.

13154. Eclectic at 19:24 PM on 3 November 2018
       Climate's changed before
       

       Waterguy13 @ #614 ,

       What source do you base your comment on?   The earlier mainstream climate models have done a fairly good job with their projections during the past 30 years or so.   They can be criticized for minor inaccuracy, in that they A) somewhat overestimated the tropical mid-trospheric "hot spot" , and B) underestimated arctic warming,  and C) underestimated sealevel rise.

       But on the whole, they have done quite well.   In comparison, Dr Lindzen's model has done appallingly badly [he predicted cooling!] . . . and Lindzen still has difficulty acknowledging the reality of the actual ongoing global warming.

       Waterguy13 , you very much need to explain your strange comment.

13155. TTauriStellarBody at 17:28 PM on 3 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       michael sweet

       "If agriculture were to collapse that would not mean the GDP would drop 2%"

       Can you please cite from either IPCC Special Report on 1.5C or from IPCC 5th Assessment Report where you have gotten "agricultural collapse" and precisely what that means espcially with respect too the topic, the lack of loss of global GDP from climate related incidents as referred too in the article above. 

13156. nigelj at 15:53 PM on 3 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       TTauriStellarBody

       I think you have broken things into useful components,  but your view is too narrow, as MS implies. Heres another:

       "The biggest cost to the developed world economy is going to be insurance and increasing premiums."

       This is assuming you can even get insurance. Who is going to continue to insure against things like sea level rise ? Its probably not going to happen. This in turn could lead to a collapse in coastal property values, another cost. Housing collapses cause recessions. Have economists considered all this? Their record in general does not inspire confidence.

13157. michael sweet at 14:09 PM on 3 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       TTauri:

       While only 2% of the GDP is agriculture, most people spend much more of their budget on food.  

       If agriculture were to collapse that would not mean the GDP would drop 2%.   It means everyone would starve to death.  Much of the Arab Spring was caused by a 10% increase in the price of wheat.  That increase was caused by drought in Russia related to climate change.

       The USA has a very large food excess.  We make some food into gasoline for our cars.  That is not the case in many areas of the world.  Many of the refugees coming from Central America are fleeing climate change that caused their farms to fail.  Trump says they are invading our country.

       Think your statements through.  If agriculture yield went down so that the USA had enough food but none to export it would cause world wide starvation.  The effect is far beyond 2% of GDP.

13158. waterguy13 at 11:31 AM on 3 November 2018
       Climate's changed before
       

       We are told at the end of the video that climate is understood.  If that is the case, then why are climate models not capable of reproducing climate history over the past 35 years?

13159. One Planet Only Forever at 08:34 AM on 3 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Discussing economic predictions is a rather pointless distraction. As nigelj has mentioned, economic forecasting is poor because the forecasting is based on rather erroneous presumptions about the behaviour of the participants in the system.

       What is needed is sustainable actions that eliminate poverty and actions that do no harm to future generations (do not reduce non-renewable resources, do not create challenges that future generations will have to attempt to deal with). The systems that have developed to date have failed to do that, because that was never their intended objective (it is not why they were developed). And the damage done to the natural resources and ecosystems of the planet are plenty of proof that all of the systems have been failures (not just capitalism), even the supposedly more advanced ones that proudly declare that their 'partial correction' of the damage done is brilliant testimony for the greatness of their way of developing wealth.

       The best understanding of what has developed, and the required corrections, are the Sustainable Development Goals. And the Climate Action Goal has been an understood required correction of what has developed for a long time. In one form or another, the need to curtail the creation of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels has been understood by global leaders since the early 1970s (when it was part of the many identified damaging developments addressed in the Stockholm Conference).

       The economists who like to claim that free market capitalism is "The Greatest" fail to explain how that claim fits with the way things have gone related to fossil fuel burning (and all the other damaging economic developments) since the early 1970s. Only a few of those have been reluctantly sort of mitigated, and not because of the 'responsible' actions of people in the economic games (certainly not by the actions of the bigger winners). Responsible leaders have struggled to implement corrective actions, and have even lost power by attempting to do so.

       The economic systems, including the ways a majority of the evaluators evaluate it, are badly broken. The only legitimate economic activities are the ones that future generations could continue to benefit from almost indefinitely on this amazing perpetual motion machine we live on. The SDGs make that clear. Correcting what has developed is the challenge.

       Calling what has developed what it actually is "systems containing very unacceptable and unsustainable activity, systems needing lots of help to be corrected" is the first step (just like the first step of any damaging addiction correction program - admit the real problem, and admit that help is needed to learn how to correct and limit the harmful behaviour).

       Expecting the corrections to occur from the actions of the biggest winners in the systems, without correcting the systems and how people can win in the systems, is the folly of many economists.

       The SDGs are open to input for improvement. Any attempt to claim something that is contrary to the SDGs without providing a justification for it "improving" the SDGs needs to be corrected.

       Economic growth can continue into the future. But the required first step is correcting the unsustainable developments that have occurred, removing them from the system, while changing the system to only allowing new activity that is almost certain to be sustainable to enter the economic competition. And even 'almost certain to be sustainable activity' will need to be monitored to ensure it is actually sustainable, with corrections made as required as soon as possible.

       That will not 'please everyone', but 'pleasing everyone' is not the point. Compromises attempting to 'please everyone' have seriously compromised the development of a sustainable future for humanity.

13160. nigelj at 05:54 AM on 3 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       William @5 exactly. Infinite growth is not possible in a finite world and growth has to slow, - at least growth based on basic resources. Services could possibly expand. Economists are obsessed with growth, but some are starting to acknowledge the resource issue.

       GDP growth has been slowing in recent decades in America and western countries anyway, and this might partly reflect increasing extraction costs of materials. Just look at trends on any economics data base like tradingeconomics.com.

       The following is maybe of interest to people: World 3 model interactive simulator. You can input data on resources, industrial growth, population growth etcetera and generate trends. Crude but interesting and useful model.

       Sorry I did a couple of years of maths at varsity, but much has been forgotten, so I won't add much on the maths.

       I will just make this point. We are using resources too fast. It will leave future generations with shortages and painful choices, and will ultimately force gdp growth down anyway.

       If we wish to consider the well being of future generations, the solutions are a combination of proactive policies to get population growth to slow asap, recycling, conservation of resources, less profligate use of resources, and deliberately accepting a steady state growth model at least in rich countries. 

13161. william5331 at 04:23 AM on 3 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Here is a little puzzle for you.  You have a test tube.  It is full of food for a particular micro-organism.  This little beast doubles once each minute.  In exactly one hour, 60 minutes, the tube will be full of this organism and all the food will be gone.  Question.  At which minute will there be half food and half micro-organism.  Answer at the bottom of the page.

       Once again, an economist talking about economic growth and how bad it would be if it didn't continue.  How many times has it been stated that we live on a finite world.  Economic growth is what is goint to  kill us.  If you double the size of an economy, to a first approximation you use twice the water wood and metal, produce twice the garbage and pollution and push nature, which we depend on for our continuous survival into an ever smaller corner.  If we are to survive, we must learn how to live well without an ever expanding economy.  Here is a table of how many years it takes to double an economy at various annual percent increases.  You can calculate it yourself, using your kid's calculator.  For 1%, put log2 divided by log 1.01.

       1%   70 years

       2%   35 years

       3%    23 years

       4%    18 years

       5%    14 years

       How many countries do you know that can find twice the resources they use today and cope with twice the garbage and pollution.

       Answer Minute 59 (work backwards if the answer seems strange)

13162. MA Rodger at 21:01 PM on 2 November 2018
       Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
       

       Josbert Lonnee @128,

       You present a hypothesis that relies on how a low pressure GHG gas radiates energy rather than how an increase in the GHG concentration impacts the net radiation. Here I will restrict the comment to low pressure, rather than low pressure with increased GHG.

       Perhaps the hypothesis can be stood on its head and used to argue that the low pressure gas would be warmer and unable to radiate energy away as efficiently as a high pressure gas. Your argument rests on the idea that an excited CO2 molecule has more opportunity to radiate a photon as there is more time between the collisions that put it into that excited state. Conversely, once the wicked deed is done, the CO2 molecule is no longer in this excited state and thus unable to radiate a photon and that period of unexcited time is far longer at 10mbar than it is at 200mbar. Thus the frequency of (E), the A-or-B situation will be lower and the excited CO2 photons radiated by the gas would be less even if the probability A is relatively higher than B in a lower pressure gas.

       Or just perhaps, these two effects cancel each other out.

13163. TTauriStellarBody at 20:49 PM on 2 November 2018
       A eulogy to Guardian's Climate Consensus - the 97%
       

       There was an instance where a comment by a user ended up being a Daily Mail story over there joke about Matt Riddley. I'd not bother linking unless someone asks. So there was an inherent potential liability, however that is the same as with any comments open story.

       I know the science blogs were lightly trafficked.

       The articles themselves were of an unusually high standard for the dead tree press. That said the newspaper is undergoing (yet another) radical make over to be more of a tabloid and they are closing articles to comments far more frequently than only two years ago.

       Perhaps another outlet would take up a proven group of low cost contributors with their own prebuilt readership.

13164. TTauriStellarBody at 19:10 PM on 2 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Well how much of an impact do people expect from 1.5C or 2C?

       A developed world economy like the UK or Canada will often see agriculture, the sector most at risk as only 2%ish of GDP. Areas like service sector will be closer to 60%. How many days shopping do they expect to see lost nationally from extreme weather at 1.5C?

       What is the realistic expectation of infrastructure damage at perhaps 2C? The UKs annual infrastructure spend by the government is projectd to be about £110 billion a year. Are we really expecting £110 billion a year in damage to road, rail, schools and hospitals? That would require something on the sclae of hurricane Harvey\Sandy hitting the UK every year.

       Now developing world economies have a far higher % of gdp in agriculture, are often in regions more at risk from smaller changes (due to the tropics being generally more stable) and have far smaller spends on infrastrcuture so much smaller scale events will chew up their entire annual budget then see them going backwards. 

       The biggest cost to the developed world economy is going to be insurance and increasing premiums.

       I am not an economist and fully support radical action to cut CO2. I am just trying to be realistic about the financial side of 1.5 and 2C on the GDP of the big economies.

13165. nigelj at 11:20 AM on 2 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Problems with economics and its ability to make good predictions here and here. and here. 

       Climate change and the refugee problem here. Ultimately it risks driving up inflation at this sort of scale. Something not always considered in cost analysis.

13166. nigelj at 11:04 AM on 2 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       Art Vandelay @20

       "The tax did impact negatively on a large proportion of the middle class, and coming out of the GFC was not the most optimum timing either, so its demise was not entirely unexpected. "

       How much negatively? If they were getting income tax cuts, this must have reduced the impacts.

       "Having said all that, is a CT really necessary if the government is already subsidising renewables and imposing reasonably ambitious targets for emissions - as is the case in Australia? "

       The trouble is subsidies only work for a few things like electricity generation. You also have to deal with a range of other things like transport fuels, industrial emissions, agriculture that don't ideally suit subsidies. Some do, some don't. You really need a price on carbon that is universal, and then a universal mechanism like a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme. Economists favour the former, although either can work in theory and its not a lot between them. Then subsides can really be used as well, for the small number of things that aren't dealt with well by the tax. Rather than the other way around.

       The bottom line is this. During the period when Australia had a carbon tax, emissions did fall for several years, and since that period they have increased despite much hand waving and goal setting and some subsidies related to the electric grid. I'm a person driven by evidence and results. This all points strongly in favour of a carbon tax. It's been the same in the UK.

       "Maybe this means that people actually want a carbon tax now, but perhaps an alternative would be to allow citizens to donate to a climate fund with conditions similar to charitable donations, empowering those who wish to do more, to do more. "

       It's hard to see how such a climate fund and donation scheme  would work well. It would certainly be administratively complex, a criticism you make of a carbon tax (somewhat unfairly because its a simple enough tax). In addition it would presumably be subsidising various things, but thus runs into the problems I mentioned above, that it will be hard to target everything and it lacks a price on carbon. The tax rebate erodes the tax base. Income could fluctuate unpredictably. It's not a bad idea, but its far from a particularly good or practical idea.

13167. Art Vandelay at 09:02 AM on 2 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       Thanks @nijelj for the points summary. The tax did impact negatively on a large proportion of the middle class, and coming out of the GFC was not the most optimum timing either, so its demise was not entirely unexpected. 

       Having said all that, is a CT really necessary if the government is already subsidising renewables and imposing reasonably ambitious targets for emissions - as is the case in Australia? When the tax was introduced it also created a new level of gov't to administer it, and inevitably money was wasted in the process. Interestingly, in Australia, Labor in opposition is well ahead in the polls at the moment and a big part of their platform is far more ambitious emissions reductions targets in the energy and transport sectors. Maybe this means that people actually want a carbon tax now, but perhaps an alternative would be to allow citizens to donate to a climate fund with conditions similar to charitable donations, empowering those who wish to do more, to do more.     

13168. Dcrickett at 08:41 AM on 2 November 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #43
       

       nigelj #4… about the coming migrations of climate refugees, you are unfortunately correct.

       My wife is from Honduras, a refugee of a different type. When she was coming up to high school graduation, a military officer (Tiburcio Carías Andino dictatorship) took a fancy to her. Her dad spirited her out of the country to Beloit College; she's a long-time American now. But we have special insights into Honduras, of course: And we struggle to convince young relatives to stay put and not come to the US; it's not a place for them these days.

       Climate change is one of several factors devastating people's lives in Honduras (along with the rest of Central America and Mexico) these days. However, it exacerbates the effects of others, which makes it hard for people to separate the climate effect from the others. Indeed, these Latins themselves have a hard time figuring it out.

       What scares me does not include the caravans of poor refugees headed our way. What really scares me is the latest IPCC report.

13169. scaddenp at 07:04 AM on 2 November 2018
       There is no consensus
       

       A scientific consensus does not make a theory correct and it certainly does not rule out the existance of an alternative theory which better explains observations. More importantly, no scientist has made such a claim - it is a deniers favourite straw man arguement.

       The important thing about a scientific consensus it that it is the only rational basis for policy decisions, especially when it is strong. Betting on say a 20% chance of scientists being wrong is a bad bet especially when consequences for getting it wrong are terrible. The research into the consensus was to determine the strength of consensus and lay to rest the unsupported assertion by deniers that there was no consensus.

13170. nigelj at 07:01 AM on 2 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Sorry I meant the IPCC predicted a worse case scenario of approx, 5 degrees celsius by 2100 and 10 - 12 degrees celsius by 2300. 

13171. nigelj at 06:50 AM on 2 November 2018
       Climate impacts
       

       Economics does not have the tools to make reliable long term predictions. Its history of prediction is poor, gdp estimates even a couple of years ahead lack accuracy, they never predicted the 2008 financial crash, or any crash really. This is because economics assumes people behave in simplistic ways when they don't, and because they take a narrow view of climate costs. This is not to say their work is useless of course, but it suggests a risk that climate costs will more likely be underestimates, and that we need to be wary.

       Economics measures things in terms of profits and gdp growth. Very little attention is given to measuring happiness or human well being. The mines will keep extracting minerals even in a heatwave, to an extent and  at a cost,  so gdp output might march on, but its a miserable thing to live with heatwaves especially  in countries that are already hot. Evidence suggests heatwaves may make parts of the world uninhabitable.

       What projections are the economic models based on? The IPCC predict a worst case scenario of 10 degrees by 2100 if we go on burning fossil fuels. Economics has to consider worst case scenarios. Have they considered this, because my reading is they don't.

       You don't even need an economic analysis to know worst case scenarios of 10 degrees will cost significantly.

       How do you price climate tipping points? Its hard to even evaluate climate outcomes from those other than to say all the evidence suggests they will be mostly negative.

       You have species loss potentially on a huge scale in worst case scenarios. How do you price this? A study I saw threw a rather arbitrary and small sum of money at this issue, but clearly many people consider loss of species a serious issue. Perhaps its an emotional thing, but this is not unimportant, and the natural world supplies approximately 50% of our pharmaceutical drugs.

       Have they considered the costs of climate refugees? Causation would include heatwaves, crop losses, and loss of coastline just for starters. Look at the problem we have right now with political refugees, and you can triple that. It's not just the economic cost either, its the anxiety and tension.

       Then theres the potential of refugeess leading to global conflict. Of course economists aren't bothered by wars, because gdp typically increases, but the rest of us might be bothered.

       Economics is a useful tool, but a very crude too in evaluating the climate problem, and imho almost certainly underestimates the impacts.

13172. nigelj at 05:54 AM on 2 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       Art Vandelay @17,  fair point that Australia's Carbon tax had some problems, and political policies were a big part of this, but its worth digging a little more on just why it failed. Most of these failings were unique to Australian politics and personalities,  and can be avoided in other countries and appears they are. So don't read too much into Australias scheme. The principles were largely not wrong, it was more mistakes in execution.

       It was also not a carbon tax and dividend scheme. Instead there was an income tax cut, -  but perhaps people didn't believe they were even getting a cut. A dividend is much more visible and should work better.

       I'm not seeing any obvious evidence that it was intended to be socially redistributive as such but perhaps this was in the way they structured the income tax bands. I don't have a problem with some income redistribution as an ideology, but I think it should be kept separate from the climate tax issue if its going to be politically contentious and could stall passing the legislation.

       Quick history of the key points cobbled together:

       The Australian government introduced a carbon pricing scheme or "carbon tax" through the Clean Energy Act 2011. The initiative was intended to control emissions in the country, as well as support the growth of the economy through the development of clean energy technologies. It was supervised by the newly-created Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Regulator. However, although it did achieve a reduction in the country's carbon emissions, the initiative faced significant challenges from the opposition and the public, as it resulted in increased energy prices for both households and industry and was finally repealed in 2014.

       When Julia Gillard took over as leader of the Labor Party in 2010, she solemnly swore not to impose a carbon tax. Then she formed a coalition with the Greens and promptly broke her promise. The carbon tax was introduced two years ago, and people hated it from the start. They threw the Labor Party out of office and elected Mr. Abbott, who promised to "axe the tax."

       A carbon pricing scheme in Australia..... As a result of being in place for such a short time, and because the then Opposition leader Tony Abbott indicated he intended to repeal "the carbon tax", regulated organisations responded in a rather tepid and informal manner, with very few investments in emissions reductions being made.[2] The scheme was repealed on 17 July 2014, backdated to 1 July 2014. In its place the Abbott Government set up the Emission Reduction Fund in December 2014.

       As part of the scheme, personal income tax was reduced for those earning less than $80,000 per year and the tax-free threshold was increased from $6,000 to $18,200.

       So its a lesson in how to not introduce a carbon tax. Im sure other countries can learn and do it better.

13173. nigelj at 05:13 AM on 2 November 2018
       A eulogy to Guardian's Climate Consensus - the 97%
       

       This decision on climate reporting seems irrational because it doesn't make a lot of economic sense to get rid of volunteer contributors payed a limited amount. It looks like a power trip by people wanting to change things for the sake of change, to put theirpersonal stamp on things. Have another think about it Guardian.

       Having said that the Guardian is generally a good newspaper.

13174. mitchmaitree at 03:56 AM on 2 November 2018
       There is no consensus
       

       I agree with the consensus research. But I want to address something to those who don't believe it. That is: is there NO CHANCE that these scientists are correct? As in zero? It's hard for me to accept that a thinking person could rule out the possibility unilaterally.

       So let's assume for argument's sake that there is some chance these scientists are right, and that climate change is as real and dangerous as they say. Maybe not even a 50% chance. Maybe just a 20% chance.

       Now put a single bullet in your 5-chamber revolver, spin the cylinder, point it at your child's head, and pull the trigger. Why not? There's only a 20% chance it will go off, and an 80% chance it won't. But of course no reeasonable person would do that because the consequences of being wrong are unthinkable.

       I would argue that climate change isn't that different. Already, low-lying countries like the Maldives and Bangladesh are losing real estate. Already ski areas in the U.S. are going out of business because winters are warmer. Some lakes have dried up completely. Thousands of square miles of ponderosa pine are dead in the southwest because winters are no longer cold enough to kill the bark beetle. Hundreds of American kids are getting sick because the Lone Star tick is no longer confined to the deep south, but has been found as far north as the Canadian border, bringing with it five diseases and an allergy to mammal meat. And this is just the beginning. Are we ready for NYC to be under water in 40 years? For our farmland to become desert? For wars over drinking water? (Those crazy liberals at the Pentagon are preparing for climate change, check ut their published studies. Maybe we should be preparing, or better yet preventing, too.)

       I happen to believe the scientists are right. But even if you don't, can you reasonably argue that there's no possibility you're wrong?

13175. Doug Bostrom at 02:23 AM on 2 November 2018
       A eulogy to Guardian's Climate Consensus - the 97%
       

       The Guardian is not alone in publishing articles by hapless general purpose reporters who reveal that they cannot even discern work from power, let alone handle the job of teasing a useful message from often seemingly conflicted scientific narratives. 

       This is basically a situation of a street light being allowed to burn out and nobody being in charge of noticing or replacing it. The street goes dark and people have to blunder through as best they can. 

       This non-decision was worse than stupid: it was thoughtless. 

13176. michael sweet at 01:51 AM on 2 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       Art,

       We want to install renewables as rapidly as possible.  With a carbon fee that incentivizes people that much more.

       Because so many big companies have sunk assets in fossil fuels they are resistant to investing in renewables even when renewables are cheaper.  That is why they fund denial.  A carbon fee will make it easier to overcome that institutional resistance.

       In any case, why should fossil fuels be allowed to pollute the atmosphere for everyone for free??  They should have to pay for the damage they do. 

       Fossil fuel companies are currently trying to get the Republicans to pass laws so that they cannot be sued for the damage they have caused with their pollution.  People who lose their homes to climate change should be able to sue Exxon and BP for their losses.  Why should fossil fuel companies get to keep the profits and make us pay all the damage?

13177. One Planet Only Forever at 01:14 AM on 2 November 2018
       China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
       

       These actions happening inside China and other parts of Asia (and many other actions in developing parts of the world - often due to developed desires in the supposedly more advanced parts of the world - as pointed out by people like Naomi Klein) are a clear indication of what free market capitalism can be expected to produce. It proves rather conclusively that for progress to occur most effectively, least harmfully, human activity needs to be governed altruistically (do no harm to others, strive to help others especially the future generations). And people need 'help to learn how to behave better'. Compromising with people who have developed a liking for getting away with harmful unsustainable behaviour, developed a resistance to changing their mind because they like what developed, is not helpful. It can be very harmful.

       Strictly monitored and enforced regulations are clearly required to keep harmful and unsustainable activity from developing the popularity and profitability that will make it even more difficult to correct. And that needs to include global imposition of corrections on nations that fail to behave responsibly. And the wealthier and more powerful they are the more responsibly they should be required to be (nations, states, corporations, individuals).

       The USA is the poster child for how bad things can be when wealthy powerful people are not altruistically governed (and have become wealthy and powerful by getting away with failing to altruistically self-govern their behaviour). The history of the USA and all of its tag-alongs, is a steady stream of damaging developments becoming popular and profitable, that get so bad that they prompt a partial correction of the bad behaviour (which prompts angry reactions by people who divisively polarize themselves away from the corrections required by improved awareness and understanding - which can unfortunately lead to angry responses to the resistance to correction). And that partial correction and partial clean-up is often unjustifiably declared to be a brilliant improvement - evidence of progress.

       Even a very well informed person like Steven Pinker makes the erroneous claim in "Enlightenment Now" that the partial correction and clean-up of incorrect harmful developments (and the partial elimination of poverty) by the wealthier nations is 'proof that wealth developed that way is the only way to make things better'. That is logically incorrect since any reduction of non-renewable resources and any amount of legacy harm that future generations have to deal with is a deterioration of reality for future generations (a worse future), no matter how much faith a person has that future generations will develop brilliant technological solutions to the challenges imposed on them by the callous anti-altruistic actions some people got away with in previous generations.

       "The Enlightenment" is not the pursuit of perceptions of technological advancement in pursuit of increased personal enjoyment and perceptions of superiority relative to others that results in the development of the understanding of what needs to be corrected.

       The History of UN developments of improved awareness and understanding regarding the corrections of what has developed is "The Enlightenment", starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and including all the steps along the way to the current Sustainable Development Goals that includes Climate Action.

       The fact that the USA leadership in the 1970s understood the future harm of burning fossil fuels, and the USA has developed to the leadership it has today speaks volumes about the 'damaging power of the freedom to pursue popularity and profitability' which is amplified by systems such as free market capitalism that gives competitive advantages to people who get away with behaviong less acceptably, which is further amplified by the ability to get away with misleading marketing.

       Attempts to blame less wealthy and less powerful people for emulating that undeniable behaviour of the Global Winners, without admitting the root of the problem being the undeserving nature of the Global Winners and the need to correct the systems that create such undeserving Winners, is So Unjustifiably Rich (and powerful).

13178. Art Vandelay at 00:14 AM on 2 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       I can foresee many people asking the obvious question; If renewables are cheaper, why is it necessary to have a carbon tax or levy etc ?

       The tax being proposed in canada appears to be similar to the one implemented in Australia in 2010, which was employed as a means of redistributing wealth as much as it was to mitigate emissions. It looked good on paper and should have wooed voters of the working and lower-middle classes, but ultimately it was a political disaster and hasn't been revisited. 

13179. John Hartz at 00:14 AM on 2 November 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #43
       

       Jonas: Thank you for the positive feedback.

13180. Art Vandelay at 23:57 PM on 1 November 2018
       China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
       

       CFC-11 is also a very powerful greenhouse gas, so that trend is very troubling, as is the suggestion that China is paying mere lip service to climate change and environmental stewardship.

13181. Riduna at 16:03 PM on 1 November 2018
       China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
       

       In an excellent article on building coal-fired power stations, Peter Sinclair suggests that China’s transgressions are administrative. He notes that ‘The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away’, suggesting that Beijing has simply lost control – or is not monitoring – what Provincial governments are doing.

       I find it difficult to imagine how wide manufacture of CFC-11, in at least 10 Provinces, could have gone unnoticed by Beijing for 5 years or more. It is even more difficult to explain how Chinese Government owned companies, financed by the Central Government to build coal fired power stations in China and abroad could not be acting in accordance with Government Policy.

13182. Riduna at 15:34 PM on 1 November 2018
       China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
       

       Jonas - thanks.  Correction made.

13183. One Planet Only Forever at 11:23 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       "Making Polluters Pay" is a punchy and defensible selling point regarding actions to curtail the creation of more CO2 from fossil fuels (technically and politically correct).

       Some people will not like it, but it is undeniably harmful to try to please those type of people.

13184. One Planet Only Forever at 11:17 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       Scientists can technically refer to the CO2 from burning fossil fuels as emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

       Leaders should call things what they are to be clearer about their acceptability, while still being technically correct. The term Pollution applied to CO2 from burning fossil fuels is well suited for that purpose. And a political discussion where someone tries to politically say it isn't pollution is a perfect opportunity to make it clear that they are politically and technically incorrect.

       Paraphrasing what Steven Pinker says in "Enlightenment Now", some people will not be pleased to have the reasons that their beliefs are incorrect pointed out, but correcting incorrect beliefs is human progress, and human progress is the future of humanity.

13185. One Planet Only Forever at 10:50 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       nigelj and Wol,

       I do not share your optimism that people who are 'upset' about CO2 being called 'pollution' will accept it being called 'emissions' and agree to correct their incorrectly developed preferences for benefiting from the burning of fossil fuels.

       The term 'emissions' does not carry a clear implication of unacceptability the way pollution does. Therefore, it does not relate as effectively to the need to correct what has developed. Therefore, calling it emissions makes it easier to dismiss the need to do anything about it (and The Enigma of Reason makes it pretty clear that people can be very easily impressed into 'not changing their mind')

       But I agree, rather than getting into a discussion about terms, we should all be able to agree that what has developed, the popularity and consequences of burning fossil fuels, is unacceptable and needs to be corrected and cleaned up 'by the current generation', particularly by the ones who got the most benefit from making the mess that has been made and is continuing to be made worse. (hopefully no objectionable terms have been included in that statement)

13186. Jonas at 10:11 AM on 1 November 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #43
       

       Many grateful thanks @John Hartz for continuously providing the list of weekly news posts: every saturday I .. well .. do not .. look forward to it (i.e. I look forward to the list, but not to the often sad things reported in it). Some of it I share with other people (also not on FB) and I regularly promote the weekly list as an invaluable source of information, just as the whole of SkS.

13187. Jonas at 10:02 AM on 1 November 2018
       China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
       

       >"possibly until 2160"

       2060 was meant?

13188. nigelj at 09:23 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       OPOF @11

       OPOF, I have to agree with Wol @8. Carbon pollution is not the best term to try to use, and emissions is fine. Its an issue that really bugs me as well.

       I personally think you are of course essentially right in theory that its pollution, and about people not liking the truth, but trying to convice everyone to label carbon emissions as carbon pollution might a battle not worth fighting. You have to loose a few battles to win the war.

       There are so many downsides to promoting the term pollution for so little gain.The counter arguments like CO2 is plantfood are endless and will take up a lot of time. It soaks up energy that is better put into discuusing the general fatcs, motivating change and reducing emissions. It will put huge attention back onto the denialists, and will never convince the right wing, who probably don't believe noise is pollution either in many cases.

       It's a giant can of worms better not opened. Its rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

       Definitions are important things, but we can end up going around in circles as well. Whats important is underlying cause and effect and talking about that.

13189. Wol at 09:14 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       One Planet Only Forever @ 9:

       In a logical and technical sense I agree fully with what you say. But I am talking about the psychology of deniers' arguments (such as they are.)

       As nigelj says intimates above, is it worth US agreeing about the strict meaning of a word if the use of one word against another allows anyone to divert a logical argument towards semantics?

       Enough.

13190. One Planet Only Forever at 08:40 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       People objecting to the pollution of CO2 from burning fossil fuels being called "Pollution" could also be asked if they have also disagreed with (acted in the past to express dislike for) the terms "Noise Pollution" and "Light Pollution (that damaging effect on Dark Sky regions)".

       The "Enigma of Reason" by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber presents a good case that everyone is capable of understanding what is justified by Reason, but will be tempted to allow a personal interest to keep them from being reasonable.

       A very powerful motivation for people to disagree with climate science is the fact that actually accepting or understanding it lays bare the indefensible claim that 'people being freer to believe what they want and do as the please in competition for appearances of superiority relative to others will develop Better Results'. The responsibility to develop sustainable improvements for future generations and not harm others justifiably limits freedom, even if a person can claim that 'The previous generation did not treat them fairly, so why should they care about the future?'.

       The cycle of inflicting harm on future generations has to end, the sooner the better for the future of humanity.

       Some people simply do not like the idea of being corrected, especially if their developed perception of enjoyment of life would be severely compromised by being corrected. And the ones profiting from the incorrectly developed enjoyments of life are more powerfully motivated against being corrected. But none of that changes the understanding of the required corrections.

13191. nigelj at 08:12 AM on 1 November 2018
       China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
       

       Countries are simply virtue signalling by making some reductions in their emissions while exporting the climate problem, eg China, Norway, Canada, Russia and others. Looks like the Paris Accord has a huge loophole if it permits this. Depressing but not surprising. :(

13192. nigelj at 08:01 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       I think pollution is the correct term for CO2 emissions in a technical sense, but the public equate pollution with toxic substances like smog, and explaining why CO2 can be defined as pollution is a lengthy exercise attacked all along the way by the denialists. Is that all worth it to change a name from emissions to pollution? I'm not so sure.

       But clearly its still important to discuss the processes of why fossil fuels are a problem, because its too much CO2 for natural sinks to absorb. Even if the hard core denialists are not receptive to this,  it helps persuade the middle ground, and there's fulfillment in simply understanding whats going on in the world.

13193. scaddenp at 06:57 AM on 1 November 2018
       Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
       

       Josbert, when you have model for how something works, then science works by making predictions from the model and comparing them to observations. Cooling of the stratosphere while warming of the troposphere falls straight out the radiative transfer equations (RTE). The RTE are widely used (think about why US Air Force are people that developed the MODTRAN codes) and their predictions about observed radiation whether observed from earth or satellite are matched in equisite detail. However, this is a "shut up and calculate" approach to science and doing an explanation without the math for non-specialists is challenging. I dont like them. However, I can assure you that you are in for an uphill battle convincing anyone that the RTEs are wrong without doing the math and showing that somehow your model produces even better match to observations.

13194. John Hartz at 06:18 AM on 1 November 2018
       Republican lawmakers react to the IPCC report – ‘we have scientists’ too!
       

       citizenschallenge: You wrote:

       The entire climate science denial campaign is based on misrepresenting people's scientific work, and demonizing scientists. There is not one leading climate science communicator who hasn't suffered juvenil attacks on their character.

       Riddle me this: Why are we (the children of the intellectual revolution) so impotent against that?

        "We" do not have the money and power that "they" have. The unequal distribution of wealth throughout the world could very well lead to the destruction of civilization as we know it. 

13195. One Planet Only Forever at 05:57 AM on 1 November 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       Wol,

       Do not allow people who deliberately evade detailed discussions that would lead to a common-sense agreement, to evade discussing the details of the issues because of their sensitivity to 'Terms'.

       Try the following with anyone who questions CO2 from burning fossil fuels being pollution.

       Pollution is anything produced by human activity that accumulates, changing the environment it is released into, rather than being rapidly neutralized by the recycling environment. And the more serious the consquences of the pollution the more aggressively the cause of the pollution and the clean-up of the accumulation to date needs to be.

       That can be understood to apply to a very broad range of items from oil spills to silt flows into streams from deforested hillsides.

       By that definition, human body wastes released gradually into an ecological system that processes it is only pollution if the rate of release exceeds the ability of the ecosystem to process it without accumulation. And human CO2 respiration releases are clearly not the same as the CO2 from burning ancient buried hydrocarbons. Human exhaled CO2 was in the recycling environment before. It is part of the developed natural recycling system.

       Therefore, any increase in atmospheric CO2 due to human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, and excluding human breathing because it does not increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, is "Pollution".

       As for 'plant food' claims, point out that CO2 is still accumulating (a pollution) regardless of the 'term' they want to use for CO2 in the atmosphere.

       Anyone who is not interested in being corrected does not deserve to be compromised with. In fact, the climate science issue has proven how damaging it can be to compromise with people whose private interests make them uninterested in being corrected. Those few scientists making up questionable claims raising doubts about climate science as a personal compromise of what they potentially better understand have been extremely damaging.

13196. citizenschallenge at 01:02 AM on 1 November 2018
       A eulogy to Guardian's Climate Consensus - the 97%
       

       Dana, sorry to hear that the Guardian lost interest in continuing their Science and Environment blog networks, which were dedicated to discussing our home planet, the one we depend on for everything.

       It’s sad, this was a nice eulogy, more cake.  What makes me profoundly  sad is the placid acceptance that your write up displayed.  Que Será, Será.

       Seems to me the Guardian’s cancelation deserves a deeper post mortem, one that take a hard look at why the failure . . .   (wish I had the time, but the workingman's whip is cracking hard these days)

13197. citizenschallenge at 00:11 AM on 1 November 2018
       Republican lawmakers react to the IPCC report – ‘we have scientists’ too!
       

       nigelj: "I think its probably also not good to demonise conservatives, because they will just become entrenched in their views, and ditto liberals."

       I wonder, can you explain why the extreme right (which has morphed into the Republican Party) has been so successfull with their over-the-top explicit demonizing of Democrats using transparent lies and emotionalism. (ever listen to FOX news, or heartland radio talk programs?)

       The entire climate science denial campaign is based on misrepresenting people's scientific work, and demonizing scientists.  There is not one leading climate science communicator who hasn't suffered juvenil attacks on their character.

       Riddle me this: Why are we (the children of the intellectual revolution) so impotent against that?  

13198. Evan at 00:07 AM on 1 November 2018
       A eulogy to Guardian's Climate Consensus - the 97%
       

       Great post Dana. Thanks for your persistence and great reporting.

13199. Wol at 19:54 PM on 31 October 2018
       Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
       

       A small point, but IMHO an important if seemingly trivial one, but I think the use of "pollution" in relation to articles on carbon emissions is counterproductive.

       It raises the hackles of the denial brigade, who leap into print with irrelevancies such as "plant food" etc, steering any conversations away from the point.

       "Emissions" is a much more neutral moniker

13200. Josbert Lonnee at 15:55 PM on 31 October 2018
       Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
       

       I'm not satisfied by this story. See also how it is debunked in the comments. Let me propose a new theory here and see how people here think it adds up. The theory is somewhat similar to the story here. Maybe I am just explaining the same, but differently. My Theory:

       1) About CO2:
       - When a molecule collides with any other molecule, it either keeps its kinetic energy (KE) or gets in excited state (E).
       - When in (E): When it collides, the excitement might get converted to KE. Or, after a while, it turns to normal state by radiating some IR.

       2) About the atmosphere, for simplicity there just are:
       - An upper part, Stratosphere (S), low pressure.
       - A lower part, Troposphere (T), high pressure.

       3) About what changes:
       - The concentration of CO2 increases in both layers of the atmosphere.
       - All IR still travels in all directions through both layers, but the chance of hitting CO2 is increased.

       4) The explanation why S cools down and T warms up:
       - In S the CO2 molecules have less frequent collisions than in T, just by the lower pressure.
       - We have chance A: The chance that an excited (E) CO2 molecule radiates IR (chance A).
       - We have chance B: The chance that an excited (E) CO2 molecule turns back to normal state by the next collision radiates IR (chance A).
       - In S chance A is much higher than B.
       - In T chance B is slightly higher than A.

       Reactions are appreciated.

       Moderator Response:

       [DB] "See also how it is debunked in the comments"

       It is not debunked in the comments.

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