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Comments 14051 to 14100:

14051. Dcrickett at 07:56 AM on 7 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       #9 John S ― Your points are all well taken. In particular, regarding embedded carbon emissions.

       nigelj ― Like others, I value your thoughts, how you express them, and the regularity of your offerings. This time I disagree heartily… but respectful disagreement and debate are famously effective.

       Separately, there is another (and major) advantage to a wisely implemented US carbon tax (I prefer to call it a "tax" instead of some euphemism). It has to do with worldwide CO₂ emissions. Refund the carbon tax embedded in US exports. Apply this to imports, in proportion to what the foreign exporter's country has NOT  CO₂-taxed and hence is NOT embedded in the cost of his product. In view of the massive imports entering the US, foreign countries would certainly find themselves loath to see money they could collect as revenue ending up in the US Treasury and not in their own.

       Thus (shades of Iosev Jughashvili!), we could have "Control of Global Warming in One Country!"

14052. nigelj at 07:04 AM on 7 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       John S @9, ok I accept adding subsidies for electric cars wasn't a great idea. I'm planning on purchasing one fairly soon, and perhaps this was subconsciously colouring my view.

       Just to be clear on my position: I completely 100% support carbon 'fee' and dividend, and have done for some considerable time, more or less for the reasons you have outlined, and it was just the details of how it is implemented that concerned me on whether all or some of the levy should go into the dividend.

       But I would add these points to think about:

       Theres also the psychological issue with electric cars. Carbon fee and 100% dividend makes them pretty viable if you do the maths, but who does the maths? I suspect electric cars will need to be more competitively priced to really take off.

       Maybe its best to keep the carbon fee and dividend scheme simple and with a 100% dividend for practical and political viability purposes. But it could also be a decision for individual countries, and in America a purist scheme would probably be the only politically acceptable thing, but Alberta in Canada appears to have a scheme that uses part of the levy to fund a range of projects, and perhaps this is what the population wanted?

       And heres a problem for you. Electric cars rely on a network of recharging stations, and the economics of recharging stations rely on a significant volume of electric cars, so implementation of recharging stations has sometimes been slow. A carbon levy would resolve this over time, but I suggest it would be a slow process. It still seems it would need some form of subsidy, perhaps funded in another way other than from the carbon levy?

       I'm aware of the danger of governments subsidising things and picking winners, however there's a pretty obvious economic case sometimes, provided the decisions are kept out of the hands of politicians as such, and are made by some state agency, and are based on recognised market failures. We subsidise science research for example, and the film industry to attract projects to our country, and it has worked well. I confess I'm a bit of an "economic pragmatist".

       Much of the wind power in the UK and Europe has been funded with subsidies. I doubt it would have been built without something like this. However the base prices of wind and solar power have dropped so much I suppose subsidies are not as necessary now, and a carbon levy and dividend could possibly replace this. It would however need to be carefully analysed.

14053. aemilius89 at 04:48 AM on 7 July 2018
       10th run of Denial101x starts on July 10!
       

       What are the amount of students that actually have completed the course? I have done the course and completed it and I noticed that the people starting the course where a lot more than those completing it. Which is a whole lot more important than the people who started it. 
       
       The course btw was awesome and I learned what I wanted to learn from it.

14054. sauerj at 23:18 PM on 6 July 2018
       Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
       

       @ wideEyedPupil #4: Your points remain unchallenged. I read thru the ZCA report (linked HERE), and I was unable to find any statement that substantiates your text from #4: "The Zero Carbon Australia Land Use Report found that a proper and full accounting of GHG emissions pegs Land Use at 55% of emissions using 20 year GWP". In fact, when I read the summary to this report in the 1st paragraph of the site linked above, I read the following text: "The UNFCCC National Inventory Report suggests that sources of land use emissions, such as land clearing for agriculture and enteric (intestinal) fermentation from digestive processes in livestock, contribute 15% of national emissions." If I am reading this correctly, this seems to disagree with your statement. In addition, I glossed over the body of the whole ZCA report, and was not able to find any text indicating that land-use & agriculture accounts for "55% of emissions". The ZCA report link you provided in #5 no longer works. Could you provide an updated link with location of page to back up your "55% of emissions" text. Thank you very much!

14055. John S at 23:13 PM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       Nigelj: I usually enjoy your (admirably frequent) comments and find myself in agreement with you 90% of the time. On this occasion, Vector@2 was justified in saying you are missing the point about carbon fee and dividend. I’ll try to explain it. You noted people could spend the dividend on petrol and that would cancel the point of the scheme and that problem could be resolved by using part of the revenue to subsidize electric cars (EV’s).
       But the point of the scheme goes way beyond end consumers buying petrol. It would affect every nook and cranny of the economy. And not returning all the revenue to citizens would undermine long-term political viability. As an illustration of the latter problem, here in Ontario we have a new government that says the first thing it will do is scrap the Cap-and-Trade scheme that was brought in by the previous government. Alberta, in fact the whole country, may soon face the same as there are opposition leaders who say they will “axe-the-tax” (their words). I believe a carbon tax in Australia was rescinded.
       Do I even have to ask why a carbon tax is almost universally unpopular? (Hint: it includes the word “tax”). To further make this point, let me give you my perspective. Like many city dwellers, I don’t even own a car and rent an apartment. These are my preferences; but, in any case, I can’t afford to buy a house, or run a car, on my meagre retirement income. So how do you think I would feel about my tax dollars subsidizing much more affluent individuals who can afford EV’s or put solar panels on their lovely big houses? It’s a reverse Robin Hood. Plus, EV’s don’t necessarily help in areas where the grid is high carbon and solar panels don’t in areas where the grid is low carbon (like here in Ontario).
       In the words of George Shultz, “it’s not a tax, if the government doesn’t keep the money”. You’re wrong to suggest that ear-marking the funds for specified green projects will satisfy a lot of people. It doesn’t alter the fact that the government is still making the decision about what to spend the money on and a lot of us simply don’t trust it to make sensible decisions (in this area), and with good reasons, which are obvious from a review of the Ontario Auditor General’s critique of Ontario’s Climate Action Plan to be funded from the proceeds of selling allowances under Cap-and-Trade.
       Let investment decision be made by those who know their industries, who have (figurately speaking) dirt beneath the finger-nails type experience of actually making physical things work, who have skin in the game. These are those who will be encouraged to invest in making available low carbon products and services when they see how high the carbon fee is going to go because they’ll see they have a chance of competing with fossil fuels when the carbon fee is high. And it can’t, politically, go high enough if it is a tax.
       It’s a truism that, initially, motorists will continue buying more or less the same volume of petrol, especially if they use the car mostly for commuting to work. They’ve just got to get there and in the early years the carbon fee doesn’t increase the pump price to an extent that will overly bother many people. But a large part of the point is the affect of increasing prices not so much on the short-term purchasing decisions of end-consumers but rather on the long-term planning decisions of the commercial interests planning what type of cars to manufacture. As a case in point, Sweden has a carbon tax of about $200/tonne. Can it be totally unrelated that Volvo will not manufacture any more petrol driven cars?
       A broader point I’m glad you’ve given me the opening to express is that reductions in greenhouse gases will be to a large extent the result of commercial, not consumer, decisions. For example, what type of car to manufacture, how to make steel, how to make cement, how to make fertilizers, whether to develop a district heating system, how to design a major commercial building complex. These include public-sector decisions like whether to expand transit, how to handle solid waste etc. Long-lead time, capital intensive decisions will be affected not only by the contemporaneous carbon fee, but much more so by the carbon fee expected in future years.
       Hence the value of continually increasing the fee every year. For example, currently, in Canada the fee increases 10$ per tonne each year. But there is so far no commitment to continue increasing past $50/tonne. That’s a crucial mistake. $50/tonne will still not get the gas (petrol) guzzlers off the road (although it will shut-down coal fired power stations). The fee should continue to increase until the goal of near zero emissions is achieved. And such future increases can be virtually carved in concrete politically by way of the popularity of the dividends. Once those Electronic Funds Transfer amounts start appearing every month in everybody’s bank accounts or debit cards, people will build their household budgets on them and no future politician will dare to mess with them. We will enjoy policy stability. That, above all, is what is craved by business, to get on with the transformation. That’s the point.

14056. sophiewilson0191 at 22:04 PM on 6 July 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #26
       

       Some people consider climate change a big threat .

       Do you think it is better to fix Earth than exploring space and using billions of cash just to have a picture of some planets. It is not like we can easily build an empire of than planet.

       We still lack technology to explore more of that planet.

       Climate Change May Have Claimed A Significant Victim – The Barents Sea

14057. Tristan at 17:08 PM on 6 July 2018
       Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
       

       (Thanks to anyone with the time to respond)

14058. Tristan at 17:08 PM on 6 July 2018
       Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
       

       One of my friends conducted this backyard experiment.
       
       Could anyone explain what the error was with her approach, and whether or not there is a backyard-style experiment that she could do to observe the reradiating properties of CO2.
       
       "So, what I did was take two clear 6L ziplock bags, two cheap thermometers, 2 CO2 cartridges, and a seltzer bottle.

       The first bag, I taped the thermometer to the upside of the bag, then filled with normal air using a balloon pump, then measured the temperature (19.4 deg).

       The second bag, I taped the thermometer to the upside of the bag, then measured (19.8 deg - remember, they're shit $2 thermometers - note slightly warmer than "control"), then I filled it by releasing two CO2 chargers into it. I then measured the temperature again (19.0 deg) and again a few minutes later (18.7 deg).

       I then took them outside and placed them in the sun and measured each over a ten or so minute period. The bag containing CO2 was always colder - between 0.4 to 1.0 degree (it measured 1.4 colder, but I reject that because I was blocking the sun just before I measured).

       Each of the two CO2 cannisters has 7.8 g. The density of CO2 at STP is 1.98 kg/m3. For the 2 x 7.8 = 15.6 g, this equates to a volume of 7.88 L. The seltzer bottle holds 1.25 L. So total 7.88 + 2 x 1.25 = 10.38 L Total. The proportion of CO2 in that mix is 7.88/10.38 = approx 76%.

       So as you can see, I significantly increased the CO2 content of the air, and the results came back slightly negative re. its effect on temperature."

14059. scaddenp at 14:44 PM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       OPOF, I approve of Alberta's plan on whole and long term I would think more effective than subsidies on buying electric cars. I think the rich are more of problem than poor, because while they can afford to buy electric cars and poor cant, they can also afford SUVs, diesal central heating, regular air travel etc. The old I=PAT formula.  When carbon pricing bites, its the low-carbon version of anything that should be the cheap affordable option.

       The other way I like making the expensive capital items associated with property affordable (solar heating, PV, insulation etc), is loans paid back through rates.

14060. One Planet Only Forever at 14:28 PM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       scaddenp,

       Review the Alberta plan in the link I included in my comment. It indicates what the non-dividend levy is directed towards, including spending on transit and the reconfiguring of roads to reduce car lanes to include safer bike lanes. It is not trying to 'pick winners'. It is supporting the transition to alternatives to burning fossil fuels and improving energy efficiency.

       However, I would support a version closer to what you are indicating. A larger portion of the collected levy rebated, but still only given to the lower income portion of the population.

       The richer people can afford to behave better. They always have been able to behave better. Many of them just choose not to, because doing so would reduce their ability to be richer (they would still be richer, just not as richer as they could be). Their lack of interest in leading the transition to better behaviour needs to be corrected. They need to be encouraged to change their minds.

14061. scaddenp at 13:47 PM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       Well I have close to ideological objection to subsidy. Picking winners when several horses in the field. Carbon tax and dividend gives wins to all competitors against carbon including public transport, cyclists and who knows what tech down track.

14062. nigelj at 13:03 PM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       OPOF, yes thats exactly the sort of thing I mean. A carbon tax, but with some of the levy as targeted encouragement.  

14063. One Planet Only Forever at 12:28 PM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       nigelj,

       I share your understanding that making fossil fuels more expensive through a 'levy that is fully rebated to the entire population' would not bring about the required rapid end of their use, particularly among the wealthier portion of the population. The already more fortunate humans, the ones who can afford to just keep on buying fossil fuels (and can actually afford to most responsibly transition away from benefiting from burning fossil fuels - can afford a Tesla), know they would get some of the extra cost back in a rebate.

       What was done in Alberta (Alberta Carbon Levy and Rebate) is more effective. About half of the total collected Carbon Levy (a more appropriate term to use when the collected money does not go into General Revenue) is rebated to everyone earning less than a middle income (household earning less than $95,000, individuals earning less than $47,500.

       The remainder of the collected levy is used to do targeted encouragement and support of the type of changes that need to be developed (what you indicate also needs to happen).

       That program makes the wealthier people more wary of just carrying on the way they want 'because they can afford it'. As the levy increases they would appreciate they would get significant personal benefits from behaving more responsibly (dumping the Hummer).

14064. nigelj at 12:20 PM on 6 July 2018
       10th run of Denial101x starts on July 10!
       

       Breaking news: Scott Pruitt resigns from EPA. One less denialist in a position of power.

14065. nigelj at 10:19 AM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       Vector @2, yes I appreciate all that, and  I didn't say a carbon tax and dividend idea was a bad thing. I was simply making the point that we could resolve the problem I mentioned  by making electric cars more attractive with a subsidy. Currently they aren't "cheaper" than the alternatives. Do you have any ideological objection to a subsidy, or something? 

14066. Johnny Vector at 08:36 AM on 6 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       nigelj: You're rather missing the point. The important bit is that the petrol will cost more than it does now.  Yes, people can just spend the dividend on the petrol, but this means people who can't afford the capital expenditure currently needed to buy solar panels or whatever other type of clean energy are not penalized. Those of us who can, will. And with a reasonable sized carbon tax, renewable energy will be cheaper than fossil energy in all cases, without further incentives. Thus anyone who has the ability to make the choice will choose renewable. 

       Sure, you can just go about as you were, getting money back and using that to offset the higher cost of petrol. Or you can switch to renewable energy, which is now cheaper than fossil, and spend the rest of your rebate on whiskey and chaw (or however you prefer to spend your extra cash).

       The idea is this will drive investment in renewable energy, which of course it will, and that will accelerate the continuing drop in cost of renewables. It may or may not be sufficient, but given how fast the costs have dropped recently, I'm willing to believe it would be.

14067. nigelj at 07:06 AM on 6 July 2018
       10th run of Denial101x starts on July 10!
       

       "Occam's razor (also Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: lex parsimoniae "law of parsimony") is the problem-solving principle that the simplest solution tends to be the right one. When presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions. The idea is attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, and theologian."

       Let's apply this to understanding climate denialism. Many things are correctly "implicated" in climate denialism:

       1) Everyone has at least some healthy scepticism of new scientific findings, but with some people the scepticism becomes absurd and stubborn, they don't learn or won't learn, and the end point is they resort to  conspiracy theory ideation.

       2) People who have vested interests in fossil fuel companies or other businesses who could be impacted by reduced use of fossil fuels, so they perhaps deny the science as a strategy.

       3) You have political, ideological and tribal influences who resent carbon taxes and similar  government solutions,  so they attack the science.

       4) Dunning Kruger, confirmation bias.

       Yet if you look at the common factor here, its stupidity, and often deliberate stupidity, because its educated people who are often in denial.

       So the fundamental cause of climate denialism is stupidity.

14068. nigelj at 06:38 AM on 6 July 2018
       Future projections of Antarctic ice shelf melting
       

       Riduna, I think what they are saying is in the past we typically had lot of sea ice so a very salty top layer of water, but with less sea ice typically forming now the surface is less salty compared to the previous historical pattern, so the circulation pattern has changed for part of the year at least. I could be wrong, its complicated to get ones head around.

       I think Hansen is talking about something different about ice shelves around the base of glaciers and glacier flow, so a different mechanism that is also ultimately producing a fresh surface water layer.

       Fwiw I think there is a substantial risk of this glacier discharge producing accelerated melting in the Antarctic with multi metre sea level rise this century, maybe 2 metres is my pick. The paleo climate record shows its happened before at similar warming to what we expect this century, so I ask people, why wouldn't it happen now?

14069. Riduna at 04:21 AM on 6 July 2018
       Future projections of Antarctic ice shelf melting
       

       The author, Dr Naughten, states that: ‘In our simulations, warming winters caused a decrease in sea ice formation. So there was less brine rejection, causing fresher surface waters, causing less vertical mixing, and the warmth of Circumpolar Deep Water was no longer lost to the atmosphere. As a result, ocean temperatures near the bottom of the Amundsen Sea increased.’ If there is less brine rejection how can this produce fresher surface water? Surely the converse would be true.

       I am inclined to the view held by Dr Hansen et al 2016, that a combination of ice-shelf disintegration producing faster glacier discharge and increasing ice sheet surface temperature at its margins produces a fresh water lens on the sea surface, inhibiting overturning circulation, as the cause of warming bottom water formation.

14070. Cedders at 08:41 AM on 5 July 2018
       Climate's changed before
       

       In my comment 594, I suggested that 'the climate's changed before' or 'climate always changes' is really only half an argument, with two possible misleading inferences, and only one of these is really covered in depth here (although they are both enumerated in the blob points of the intermediate article). I'm hoping this comment might be useful if revising, clarifying or expanding these pages.

       Dr Richard Milne, University of Edinburgh biologist, makes exactly this point and puts these fallacies more clearly and entertainingly than I can in his lecture 'Critical Thinking on Climate Change: Separating Skepticism from Denial', covering both in two minutes, before employing the Scotese graph of temperature over geological time(!), and moving on to his next myth, http://sks.to/chaos.

       The first implication is 'the climate's changed before... therefore it must be natural', is covered a bit in the intermediate article, and the logical fallacy is deconstructed in very similar terms by John Cook, Peter Ellerton and David Kinkead in their fun video. (By the way, does the assertion that there's no lag actually run counter to the usual explanation of lag but feedback? Probably mentioned elsewhere in these comments.)

       Their paper on critical thinking could equally be applied to the second  implication: 'the climate's changed before ... so it's nothing to worry about'. Milne characterises this as 'A didn't harm B, when B was not present, therefore A cannot harm B'. I'm suggesting that as some people move from 'phase 1' dismissal (it's not happening), through 'phase 2' (it's not us), most dismissives are moving to 'phase 3' (it's not bad), so this second implication is worth clarifying.

       So I think having articles from knowledgeable people on the following would be great, and then they could be hold the findings and be linked from a general page about the fallacies:

       • Previous warming during the Holocene hasn't adversely affected civilisation (in some cases it did, warming was smaller and slower and local, the Optimum was before settlements, we caused some of it through deforestation, the pattern of warming was different, larger future warming is projected to adversely affect ecosystems, food supplies etc.)
       • Previous hyperthermal events like the PETM (or P-T boundary) didn't necessarly lead to mass extinctions or runaway climate change and the Earth was 'resilient'. (Sometimes it does lead to mass extinction, depending on rate of change as well as absolute temperature, weathering will reduce CO₂ only over millennia, most extinctions involved climate change, solar radiation has increased, and our perturbations are on the scale of these extinctions, tended to wipe out megafauna, we have some idea of the extinction and range shift rates, this is a long-term change; much as in the basic article here)

       Tangentially related because I can't think where else to suggest it, probably under 'it's not bad' or 'it's too hard':

       • The projections are imprecise and there are lots of uncertainties about impacts, therefore we shouldn't act until these are resolved, or it might turn out OK (risk management principles; uncertainty means range, not doubt; some range is inevitable; we know more than might be thought; climate change is non-linear and affects some regions more severely than others)

       Finally, I note there's nothing under the 'it's too late' heading in the taxonomy, which is related to the opposite idea, that size of warming is completely unprecedented in the Cenozoic. I occasionally meet overstatements of the kind 'boreal forest will collapse; there will be a permanent El Niño', although these seem individual and not as repetitive as the climate dismissives. Climate Feedback deals with these when they happen, and if there's time, it may be worth seeing how a sceptical analysis looks at those.

14071. nigelj at 07:46 AM on 5 July 2018
       Declare energy independence with carbon dividends
       

       A carbon tax and dividend scheme clearly has huge merits. But what's to stop people spending the dividend cheque on petrol, cancelling the point of the scheme? I think you have to use part of the tax revenue to subsidise electric cars and renewable electricity generation, to make this as attractive as possible, and this should be acceptable to conservatives, as it keeps the money away from general state spending.

       It's rather hard to see how a carbon tax would deal with creating agricultural carbon sinks or new forests. So no sorry I dont see a carbon tax as a "stand alone solution",  but at the same time you would not need many additional measures, possibly just a few limited subsidies. If fossil fuel subsidies were cancelled, this would pay for part of electric car subsidies anyway.

       But subsidies should be spread equally over all forms of clean energy, and generating companies should make the choice on the best form of generation rather than government. This would presumably resolve conservatives worries about government over reach.

14072. nigelj at 06:39 AM on 5 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       OPOF @8, yes I hear you. Legal documents often use long sentences as its the only way of being precise. By nature I have used very long sentences in the past, but have been criticised for this, and hence I have adopted a slightly more "clipped" style.

       As with many things its probably about the right 'balance'. Long sentences are sometimes absolutely essential, but using too many, or if they are too long make things a little hard to read.

       I think your choice of sophisticated words is about right actually,because you use them appropriately and you dont go overboard. Some people use less common words to sound impressive. And too much 'jargon' can be confusing but I definitely dont see this with you.

       If anything its your use of simple words like troublemakers that  seems unusual, -  although to be honest, I cant think of a better one in the context!

       The reason I'm ranting about this is more that so much trouble in internet discussions comes from bad writing, and people missinterpreting what each other say and this applies to so many different people. So I'm talking to everyone not really just you. One of the main problems is lack of clarity, but you don't have that problem. 

       The other suggestion is  when analysis becomes long, it's best to take a historical approach, so define the problem, analyse it and its history, suggest solutions, etc. A summary at the start helps.

       I'm thinking of writing a book on climate denialism, so I'm speaking partly to myself, and if people think my comments on communications are wrong tear them apart.

14073. One Planet Only Forever at 01:19 AM on 5 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       nigelj,

       I appreciate the feedback.

       Condensing statements is a little tricky for me. I have seen many cases where a briefer statement was more ambiguous,more open to interpretation. That is usually the result of using a 'term' instead of using more words to say what is intended.

       Taking extra time to create a longer message using shorter sentences, still being careful to not use terms that result in the statement being more open to interpretation, is part of what I will do. John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" opens with a 45 word sentence. And Noam Chomski's writing is full of long statements. However, my long statements are not as well crafted as theirs are (and 70 word strings can easily be divided into a pair of statements).

       What is more relevant is that writers like Naomi Klein effectively use shorter statements with more common words. So, I will also work towards using more basic language (but I will continue to sprinkle in relevant less common, and not more open to interpretation, terms in the hopes that people will take the time understand how to expand their vocabulary).

       Unfortunately many people struggle to comprehend statements made using less familiar words. I have read that news writers try to use Grade 4 level English (That was years ago. It may be down to Grade 3 Level by now). So I will be working on using a diversity of writing styles, with the more basic styles used for writing that is intended for broader public consumption.

14074. michael sweet at 21:09 PM on 4 July 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
       

       Sorry, I mispelled Maximiliano Herrera's name (I need my glaswses in the morning).

       His web site is here.

14075. michael sweet at 21:06 PM on 4 July 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
       

       MarkD:

       Official records of highest minimum temperature are not kept.  Maximiliano Hermano is a private weather researcher who everyone cites.  Jeff Masters has a post here about this record.

14076. Mark D at 15:47 PM on 4 July 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
       

       Could you tell me what data you have used to conclude: "most likely the highest minimum temperature ever observed on Earth."?

14077. nigelj at 09:55 AM on 4 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       OPOF @6, I'm semi retired myself.  I lack clarity at times, and I'm too dry, and I'm working to improve this.

       Some hopefully constructive advice: I wouldn't say that you should use more basic language! Sophisticated, elegant writing is fantastic and you have an element of this.

       But one of your sentences above was about 70 words long (!) so too cumbersome, and  I'm not sure "troublemakers " is the right sort of term, and is if anything too basic. However your style is also what makes your posts rather compelling and interesting, so I'm suggesting a  "trimming up" rather than a different basic approach. 

       Yes libertarians are like that. They reluctantly accept having a government at all, and only to the extent of criminal and very basic property law to protect their interests while they do what they like and walk over everyone else.  I think libertarianism probably has some sort of genetic basis, or at the very least they are at the extreme end of the spectrum of human behaviour.

       Unfortunatlely these people are cunning and influence politics sometimes behind the scenes, and are diametrically opposed to the very things that can make a difference on the climate issue in terms of state policies eg carbon taxes, and subsidies. Their ideology is one of deep resentment of any rules, impositions, taxes, or constraints. I'm more in the middle on the issue, as it appears you are. 

14078. One Planet Only Forever at 08:09 AM on 4 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       nigelj,

       My thoughts and how to best express them are definitely a work in progress.

       I have recently retired from my career as an ethics-guided Professional Engineer. I plan to work on improving my writing, learning to present things in more basic language.

       And I also owe SkS an article, or series, about the required correction of economic evaluations that currently ignore the unacceptability of a portion of humanity benefiting from activity that is unsustainable and that develops/creates negative consequences that others, especially future generations, will have to try to live/deal with. Those evaluations compare 'the benefit that has to be given up by some of humanity today to reduce the negative consequences faced by others, especially by future generations' with the negative consequences for others and argue that as long as the 'negative future consequences' are figured out to be less than the 'opportunity that has to be given up today' then it is OK to enjoy today's opportunity. Which is like claiming it is OK to hurt my neighbour as long as I think I get more benefit than the harm I think I am doing to my neighbour.

       I learned about the concept of abductive reasoning from Sean Carroll's book "The Big Picture" (which is a non-political-ism biased book - it promotes naturalism - I highly recommend to anyone wanting to be as understanding as possible about what is going on).

       If we could get people competing to be 'more ethical' and be rewarded for being more ethical, more helpful to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, there would be less need for laws or means to enforce laws to protect desired interests.

       Regarding the libertarian-right dislike of taxes: My understanding is that they believe the only value of taxes is to protect 'their' developed private interests. They support taxes for military offensive/defence capabilities (the ability to threaten external parties more than those external others can be a threat), and support taxes for policing (but not for keeping the peace in their region, more for threatening and acting to protect private interests with military-style policing for their benefit being something they are OK with).

14079. Bob Loblaw at 06:58 AM on 4 July 2018
       Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
       

       davidbennetlaing:

       You are thinking in terms of "CO2 changes, but nothing affecting emission else does". This is not correct.

       Temperature is also a factor. As the temperature profile changes, cooler temperatures tend to cause less IR emission. Also, as the increase in CO2 increasing emissivity, you can get the same emission with a cooler temperature.

       At any point in the atmosphere, the upward flux of IR is a combination of what is emitted locally, plus whatever was emitted upwards from lower layers that has not yet been absorbed.

       What is seen from space is a rather complex integration of emission from all atmospheric layers, less any absorption by overlying layers. You cannot think of it as a single "emit half up, half down" event. In mathematical terms, it is not a single equation, but a rather large system of equations.

       Doing the full math indicates that the lower atmosphere will warm, and the stratosphere will cool, and the view from space will be affected as indicated by the observations michael sweet has indicated.

14080. nigelj at 06:33 AM on 4 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       OPOF I meant abductive reasoning!

14081. nigelj at 06:31 AM on 4 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       OPOF, thank's for the tip on inductive reasoning. I confess it's a new concept I haven't come across, although I did the other forms of reasoning in maths at university. It seems a little like Occams Razor. 

       And your analysis of society is very convicing. It is difficult for humanity, because we are 'hardwired' to be somewhat competitive and status seeking, which needs acknowledging,  and this can have both positive and negative implications. I don't have a problem with business competition between firms, but when individuals turn this into something self aggrandising this can become toxic for humanity as a whole. This is what D Trump does.

       On a personal level, I  think we have to push our competitiveness into areas that are less materialistic in nature, and less harmful to others, and  disrespectful of the welfare of others and more helpful to others. Its a challenge, but I doubt humanity has any other real choice in the long run. Humanity is capable of greatness, and needs a stable ethical platform and agreed rules if it is to achieve this.

       You have an individualistic interpretation of matters and of expressing them that is probably your strength. Yet I would avoid being "too" idiosyncratic in terminology.

       I must pick up more on the themes you explore, and write something on it on this website when appropriate as a fully stated analysis / philosophy. I tend to be more a person who is reactive to what other people say, and just pick up on points they make. But I feel if they have taken the trouble to write them, its polite to acknowledge them.

14082. One Planet Only Forever at 05:13 AM on 4 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       nigelj,

       Applying abductive reasoning (using inference to come up with the best explanation of everything that you observe or are aware of - not Deductive or Inductive reasoning), I consider the following to be what is happening:

       • Competition to appear to be superior to others, with popularity and profitability as measures of success, is unjustifiable being won by people who choose to behave less ethically than Others.
       • The unjustified winners use false advertising in the form of political claim-making and published political Opinion pieces because there are no rules requiring honest efforts to educate (to more fully inform or to help correctly understand) when it comes to political matters.
       • That winning by less ethical people, and the associated bad law making and bad law enforcement, create an environment where more people develop similar desires to win by being less ethical.

       And that is what John Stuart Mill warned about in "On Liberty" with the statement “If society lets a considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences.”

       But the reality is that the damage done by too many people in a nation like the USA 'growing up mere children' is that the rest of humanity, in particular the future of humanity, suffers the consequences while the undeserving Winners temporarily enjoy their unjustified damaging spoils (feeling superior by getting away with harming others, ruining things for everyone else).

       And that was explained in the 1987 UN Report "Our Common Future" stating that "... We act as we do because we can get away with it: future generations do not vote; they have no political or financial power; they cannot challenge our decisions." The reality is even worse than that. The undeserving winners act the way they do because they do not believe that the people they harm can effectively get even with them, and they strive to be as threatening as possible to All Others (those they do not care about and are willing to harm).

       That group of trouble-makers have figured out ways to create false advertising triggering primitive reactionary instinctive responses that over-power a person's innate human ability to use their frontal lobes to considerately thoughtfully evaluate and understand what is actually going on. They promote Egoism to the detriment of Altruism.

       And that is what has happened to Ethics, it is being Trumped by Selfishness, and not just in the USA, and not just recently.

       And that is a major reason why climate science has not been more broadly accepted, why it is so aggressively irrationally successfully opposed. Undeserving winners do not like the corrections of what has developed that have been identified and justified by climate science. The burning of fossil fuels is not the only undeserved unsustainable harmful way of winning that has developed popularity and profitability (and those Uniting greedier and less tolerant people and claiming they are Right and hoping to be believed to be Conservative understand all of that, and how to unjustifiably win).

14083. michael sweet at 04:25 AM on 4 July 2018
       Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
       

       davidbennettlaing,

       Your argument is an argument from increduility.  You need to provide data to support your claim.  Since experienced atmospheric chemists and physicists agree that increasing CO2 results in lowered emissions at the CO2 emission bands, it seems more likely that you are incorrect than they are.

       The Earth emits black body radiation upward.  CO2 absorbs in the same bands that it emits.  Energy is re-emitted upward and downward (as you state).  The energy emitted upward is reabsorbed at a higher altitude.  Energy is re-emitted up and down.  Eventually the energy emitted upward escapes to space.   This is called the escape altitude.  The satalite measures the energy that escapes.

       The energy that escapes is emitted from much higher in the atmosphere  that the original energy that was emitted from the surface of the Earth.  Since as you increase in altitude in the atmosphere it is colder, the energy is emitted from molecules that are colder than the surface molecules.  When molecules are colder less energy is emitted.  This difference in energy is what the satalite measures.  It relates to the difference in temperature between the surface and the atmosphere at the escape altitude.

       Increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere causes the escape altitude to increase.  That results in lower emissions of energy since it is colder at higher altitudes.  The change in temperature with altitude is called the lapse rate.  The lapse rate is about 6C per kilometer of altitude.  Thus an increase of 100 meters in altitude results in a shift of about 0.6C in emission temperature.

       Since this decrease in energy has been measured, it makes no sense for you to object to measured data.  An explaination for the change is required.

14084. davidbennettlaing at 03:53 AM on 4 July 2018
       Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
       

       It makes no sense that satellites should record a lessened flux of radiation to space within the emission band of CO2 when the concentration of CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. If half of all emissions from CO2 go upward to space, then a higher atmospheric CO2 concentration should result in a greater, not a lesser, flux of radiation to space. The latter should not be at all affected by the storage of IR within Earth's atmospheric system. That only involves the half of radiation that is directed downward. A decrease in flux recorded by satellites is most likely due to an error in recording outward flux. I'd welcome some comments on this. Tx.

14085. Bob Loblaw at 00:09 AM on 4 July 2018
       There's no empirical evidence
       

       Indeed. Billev's non-scientific "draw a line where I want to" approach does not replace proper statistical analysis. Tamino has recently posted yet another examination of the zombie "pause" meme.

       https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/weak-sauce-from-climate-deniers/

14086. Philippe Chantreau at 23:28 PM on 3 July 2018
       There's no empirical evidence
       

       Drawing a line between any arbitrarily chosen points will likely show exactly wat you want to see and is useless for figuring out what is happening in reality. Flat lines can be drawn at multiple time periods in the record, yet the overall trend is painfully obvious. There is not and there never was a pause, only variations around a trend that is resolutely up. Temperatures after the 1998 El Nino did not settle back to the pre-Nino level, the same thing is happening now following the 2016 El-Nino. The current US heat wave is showing us what the new normal is, as have all the extreme weather events accumulating everywhere in the world. The radiative properties of CO2 are very well known and the measured values for all altitudes match MODTRAN as well as one could wish for. Look it up.

14087. MA Rodger at 23:24 PM on 3 July 2018
       There's no empirical evidence
       

       billev @360.

       I think you need to explain what you mean by "If a horizontal line is drawn forward from the mean temperature for 2002 it can be seen that there is about as much temperature activity below that line as above it to the present."

       If a horizontal line is drawn from 2002 through the NOAA data, only three of the fifteen following years lie below the 2002 average. So the "activity" is surely pretty-much all above that line. Of course, you may have a different definition for what you mean by "activity", or you could have drawn your line less than accurately.

       Your other point about CO2 "heat retention capability", the radiative forcing of CO2 is well understood and evidentially based, experiments including atmospheric measurement (eg Feldman et al 2015).

14088. billev at 22:36 PM on 3 July 2018
       There's no empirical evidence
       

       The NOAA published record of global temperature change since 1880 shows two thirty year periods where global mean temperature did not rise beginning in around 1880 and around 1945.  The recent record shows that another period of probable pause in global warming began shortly after 2000.  There has been argument over the existence of a current pause, however, if a horizontal line is drawn forward from the mean temperature for 2002 it can be seen that there is about as much temperature activity below that line as above it to the present.  The obvious question is why a pause in temperature rise during the continual rise in atmospheric CO2 level?  Another point: have there been any experiments that measure the heat retention capability of the atmospheric level of CO2 rather than CO2 at a 100 percent level?  

14089. Postkey at 17:44 PM on 3 July 2018
       CO2 was higher in the past
       

       Poholer54 discusses this from about 3:32.

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg&t=966s

14090. nigelj at 14:04 PM on 3 July 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #26
       

       Some interesting news relating to Scott Pruitt:

       "Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt was confronted while eating at the Teaism restaurant Monday. Teacher Kristin Mink, who was with her son, 2, said: 'I urge you to resign, because of what you're doing to the environment in our country'. Pruitt said nothing during the showdown and left shortly."

       Love it. Exactly what he deserves. Some push back. But keep it civil.

14091. rogerfjellstadolsen at 10:38 AM on 3 July 2018
       CO2 was higher in the past
       

       LETS DEBUNK THE GRAPH:

       What sceptics think it shows:

       There is no correlation between temperatures and C02 and that c02 levels was higher in the past, like hundreds of millions of years ago (thus arguing that todays c02 level is nothing to worry about).

       ____________________________________

       But why is there no correlation between c02 and temperature on the graph? Are there another major driver of temperature than C02? And this is so ironic; Deniers favorite mantra is "Its the sun", but what do they do? LOL..

       They use a graph which do not include the sun.

       The assertion that only CO2 drives temperature it's as much a logical falacy as the sun being the only driver of temperature though science considers both. Its amusing that deniers, who say it's the sun which drives the climate, do not consider the sun when they try to demonstrate there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature.

       (The effects of today's global warming are felt by societies and existing ecosystems adapted to the Holocene climate in OUR TIME - NOT the climate and CO2 levels that existed hundreds of millions of years ago.)

       But anyway, can you see the name in the bottom left corner?

       It says C02 after Robert A Berner 2001. Hmm...OK..it refers to a study.

       Lets check this study and see what it says about c02 and temperatures:

       GEOCARB III: A REVISED MODEL OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 OVER PHANEROZOIC TIME - ROBERT A. BERNER and ZAVARETH KOTHAVALA 2001

       citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.393.582&rep=rep1&type=pdf

       On page 201:

       "Thus, exact values of CO2, as shown by the standard curve, should not be taken literally and are always susceptible to modification. Nevertheless, the overall trend remains. This means that over the long term there is indeed a correlation between CO2 and paleotemperature, as manifested by the atmospheric greenhouse effect"

       

       WOW. The man behind the C02 graph says there IS a correlation between temps and c02, which is the opposite of what Patrick Moore claims and what deniers thinks of the graph. Berner also confirms the greenhouse effect, which is basic physics many deniers refuse to believe in.

       Full debunk of the graph:

       www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/can-we-make-better-graphs-of-global-temperature-history/

       Can we make better graphs of global temperature history?

       YES, THERE IS A CORRELATION BETWEEN C02, THE SUN AND TEMPERATURES:

       

       stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/shaviv-veizer-03.pdf

       

        

14092. nigelj at 10:36 AM on 3 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       A perfect example of how useless Fox are: Maria Bartiromo’s embarrassing Trump interview.

14093. nigelj at 07:12 AM on 3 July 2018
       Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax
       

       What an accurate article, complete with an attention grabbing summary (ha ha).

       Carbon tax and dividend makes sense environmentally, ethically, politically and in terms of the constitution. The Constitution allows the government to tax: (Section 8. Clause 1) .The GOP is always talking about the value of the constitition, and its various amendments so why do they have blinkers over their eyes when they read this part?

       Climate change is a consumption problem and a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem, where markets don't automatically recognise and correct the problem, thus requiring a push from something like a carbon tax. The tax and dividend scheme overcomes the potential for the money to disappear into general government spending, by giving it directly to the citizens, and when the climate problem is resolved the tax obviously self extinguishes, so this should ameliorate concerns that taxes become embedded and permanent, potentially increasing government over reach.

       The racism, or perhaps xenophobia about immigration is probably partly a result of exaggeration and deceit coming from the media. The impression is created that America is being buried with vast numbers of immigrants, terrorists, and criminals, when this is all nonsense.

       The facts are that on a "per capita" basis dozens of countries take in more immigrants than America. Numbers of illegal immigrants coming into America have been falling for years. 

       In addition immigrant communities tend to have low rates of crime, add value to the economy, and tend to be motivated and hard working.

       Americans are such gullable people. They take the utter drivel coming from people like Fox and various conspiracy theory websites at face value, and can't even be bothered to fact check it.

14094. nigelj at 06:01 AM on 3 July 2018
       New research, June 18-24, 2018
       

       D Crickett, hmmm the link works ok on my computer. The paper is as follows. Perhaps try using google search or google scholar.

       "Why We Resist the Truth About Climate ChangeA paper to the Climate Controversies: Science and politics conference
       Museum of Natural Sciences,Brussels, 28 October 2010
       Clive Hamilton1"

       It has a lot of detail on aryan physics, and draws comparisons with how climate denial is currently attacking scientists. I think it is pretty much what you are looking for.

14095. Dcrickett at 05:09 AM on 3 July 2018
       New research, June 18-24, 2018
       

       #3 nigelj ― thanks for your efforts! (By the way, I was unable to reach the research paper thru your link.) So far, my search for serious scholarly study of similarities and differences among different episodes of denial of yet-unfalsified but falsifiable theories (not hypotheses!) concerning objective reality (whatever “reality” is!) has been a dead-end street. Such episodes, some more significant than others, have arisen amazingly often (amazing to me, at least) in the past few centuries.

       So I will try to concoct some home brew on my own. Bearing in mind that he who drinks his own fixin’s is at elevated risk of being struck blind.

       And again, thank you DB! It’s been a while since I read that Scientific American article, which led me to wonder about the matter, which has moved from back-of-the-stove to front-burner in my aging brain.

14096. scaddenp at 09:00 AM on 2 July 2018
       The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
       

       I cant speak for Sks on this, but in my experience, graphics and figures dont do well on ereaders and Sks handbook makes heavy use of them.

14097. jessehouwing at 23:46 PM on 1 July 2018
       The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
       

       Any chance these could also be released in an e-book format like mobi or epub? The PDF is hard to read on an e-reader.

14098. sauerj at 14:24 PM on 1 July 2018
       Trump should inspire us all, but not in the way you might guess
       

       @ villabolo #20 and nigelj #21:
       Thanks for the feedback! ... The part I like about the atom bomb analogy is that it 1) scales the rate of warming with respect to how much energy man consumes (a type of yard stick they can relate to) and 2) that it puts the warming into units that may help people better relate on the sheer magnitude of it. ... You are probably very right that it is not nearly as effective on most people compared to what it was on me when I first derived the numbers on my own. But, certainly for some people that have read it on-line & that I have verbally explained or emailed it to, it has shown to be helpful & effective in giving them a perspective of scale to how much the globe is warming.  ... And, yes, it would only be effective (like any sort of climate change apologetics) on people with open minds, that is a given across the board. ... Thanks for the feedback!

14099. william5331 at 08:36 AM on 1 July 2018
       What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?
       

       We should be going into the next glacial period of this 2.75m (so far) ice age but have put it off.  For the far future, it is sad that we are wasting our ability to put off another glacier advance so prfligately.  Our far distant decendants will need this carbon to hold off a slide into glaciation until the Milankovitch cycle puts us natually into the next interglacial.  Now we have no choice but to prepare by retreating from flood areas both by the sea and by rivers, working hard on developing new agriculture for areas that are continually warming and so forth.  We seem to do best under pressure and this will certainly test us out.  We would have a much better chance if vested interests didn't finance our politicians.  Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune.

14100. nigelj at 07:28 AM on 1 July 2018
       2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
       

       High night time temperatures are horribly uncomfortable, and will become more prevalent with climate change. People in Oman can afford air conditioning, but other countries may not afford it so easily. I find anything above 23 degrees celsius at night makes sleeping very difficult, so Omans temperatures are almost unimaginable for me.  

       In addition, when tempertures becomes very high combined with moderate to high humidity, it can be lethal. Climate change will expose large areas of the planet to potentially lethal temperature and humidity combinations. So not only is air conditioning going to become more and more essential, people will live in constant fear of power cuts. Some areas may become uninhabitable, creating more migrants to deal with, and we already know how difficult that becomes. Ask Europe.

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