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Comments 14451 to 14500:

  1. 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #22

    New Zealand has just implemented a ban on issuing any new permits for offshore oil and gas exploration. This supply side policy has had the predictable push back form business interests and their apologists in the media, but not hugely so, and it has not reduced the governments standing in public opinion polls. (I admit this is all a shameless promotion of my country).

    A combination of supply and demand side measures does seem the best approach to me. This is often used to resolve housing market inflation by increasing the supply of housing while dampening demand until things meet in the middle at stable prices. It also seems better strategically to use several tools, in case one tool doesn't work as well as predicted.

    Turning off the supply side of fossil fuels would intuitively seem the the simplest and best solution, but do it too fast and it would be too hard for the economy to adjust, and do it at a more managed pace and it will lead to more fuel efficient and smaller cars, and ditto more efficient electricity generation, thus prolonging emissions. Therefore you have to have demand side measures that make electric cars and renewable energy attractive, such as subsidies or tax exemptions. The UK have subsidised renewable energy with good results.

    To fund the subsidies a carbon tax makes sense, whether this is on oil companies, or more at the petrol pump as a demand side measure. I personally favour a carbon tax that gives some dividends back to the public, but also pays for renewable energy subsidies.

    I suppose its also about the art of the possible, and very heavy supply side measures would get huge push back from industry, but this is so frustrating and shows the grip fossil fuel lobbies have over politicians.

    Emissions trading is pure demand side management, and it doesn't really impress me much. It does have the virtue of simply setting a price and letting industy innovate the best solutions and in theory could be a stand alone climate solution, but it inevitably seems to lead to closed door bargaining with industry interests, and multiple industry exemptions, and is a very opaque process. I have a gut feeling that even with a high carbon price, it is just a very slow mechanism for the various price signals to trickle down into actual results, and time is a factor in the climate problem. But it could be part of a range of measures.

    I also don't like the idea of relying on just one mechanism, and emissions trading is a very complex mechanism. Commonsense tends to suggest its best to  have a range of supply and demand side measures.

  2. Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming

    The issue is clearly what type of animal husbandry we are talking about. Managed properly Beef production can be the most effect sink, or improperly managed a very significant emissions source.

    All depends if the CAFO feedlot model is used or not.

    “The number one public enemy is the cow. But the number one tool that can save mankind is the cow. We need every cow we can get back out on the range. It is almost criminal to have them in feedlots which are inhumane, antisocial, and environmentally and economically unsound.” Allan Savory

  3. New research, May 21-27, 2018

    2 jef + mod,

    I think it is fair to at least comment on the junk science found on this list here: Impact of cutting meat intake on hidden greenhouse gas emissions in an import-reliant city

    The paper tries to make a case for consumption based accounting where production based accounting is far more appropriate. Primarily because management changes alone can change animal husbandry from a net emissions source to a net sink. It is the production that matters in this case for mitigation potential. You have posted this under the heading of Emission savings and the is no greater emissions savings than changing production from a net source to a net sink. 

    Ironically another paper on this same list Carbon footprints of grain-, forage-, and energy-based cropping systems in the North China plain

    Shows the smallest footprint for grass!

    Clearly both papers are at least partly in conflict with each other.

    I agree though that further discussion besides mentioning those papers are on the weeks list and are at least partly in conflict would be better done on the animal husbandry threads because more solid science has been posted there already.

  4. New research, May 21-27, 2018

    I am so tired of the simple minded thinking on meat consumption. It is not meat/dairy consumption that is the problem it is the CAFO standard that has been fourced on the industry so a small number of corporations can rake in massive profits.

    We need to go back to grazing livestock. Instead of growing millions of acres of grain, with all the connected FFs involved in that, then cramming it into animals we need to put the animals directly on the land. This has the effect of healthy animals and healthy meat/dairy, it also means healthy pasture lands from natural spread of manure so better CO2 up take. It could also provide millions of jobs.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Your comment is off-topic on this thread.  Please place a version on this thread, if you wish to continue this line of discussion.  Same to respondents.  Thanks!

  5. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    In America about half of scientists believe in some form of god or higher power. And they are telling you we are altering the climate.

  6. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    I read you say president Donald Trumps gvt does not acknowledge 97% of what scientists say

    have you also considered that secular people are spiritually dead and do not aknowledge the glaring facts of a created hand that brought this world you see into existence 

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Please comport your comments to the topic of the thread you place them on and in compliance with the Comments Policy here.  Comments addressing religion fall under the category of ideology.  This venue deals with matters surrounding the scientific evidence for climate change.  Thanks!

  7. New research, May 21-27, 2018

    "Climate change as a polarizing cue: Framing effects on public support for low-carbon energy policies"

    This appears to suggest that Republicans don't accept anthropogenic climate change and regard it almost like a swear word not be said in polite company, and prefer nuclear energy over wind and solar for some mysterious reason. (I confess, I have just scanned the abstract). The common factor might be a desire to understand the world by over simplifying the issues. For example regarding the science the most common myth is "climate has changed before so we arent responsible" which has the virtue of both being simple but wrong.

    Nuclear energy has the one advantage of being continuous baseload power, and the magical appeal of being something wonderful that creates energy out of a few tonnes of uranium. What could be a simpler solution? We were all impressed with nuclear when we were children.

    And wind and solar might be perceived as associated with Greenies and greenies are allegedly "watermelons" and bad, communist  people, so therefore we don't have to listen to anything they say no matter how constructive it is. This is another simplification, and I guess we are all susceptible to such mental biases on various issues.

    But these are all massive simplifications and hide multiple problems with nuclear power and climate denialist myths. It's literally an inability to deal with complexity and nuance, and hard realities about problems. There is a basic lack of intellectual rigour in the Republicans response to the issues at times. You see it with their economic policies as well, all based on massive simplifications that are so far detached from reality as to cause massive problems.

    "This nuclear expansion should be accompanied by effective international safety assurances, including a mandate to stop construction of unsafe nuclear power plants"

    Good luck with that. Another piece of wishful thinking. I don't see this as likely to happen, given countries self interest and cost pressures, especially when you have  America attacking international agreements, if not indeed the entire international order. Wind and solar seems the best idea until genuinely safe nuclear power becomes a reality which I would welcome (but dont hold your breath, its been promised for a considerable time now).

  8. Global warming made Hurricane Harvey more destructive

    Areas of high and low air pressure will continue to be the major determinant of hurricane direction and speed.   

  9. Restricting global warming to 1.5C could ‘halve’ risk of biodiversity loss

    Scratching the 1.5°C Jazz
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6JeqX1BHI

  10. Global warming made Hurricane Harvey more destructive

    Recommended supplemental reading:

    Stronger, Wetter, Slower: How Hurricanes Will Change by Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, May 30, 2018

    Does global warming make tropical cyclones stronger? by Stefan Rahmstorf, Kerry Emanuel, Mike Mann & Jim Kossin, Real Climate, May 30, 2018

  11. It hasn't warmed since 1998

    Correction to #402.

    Para 3 should read "... instead of 1998-2012."

  12. It hasn't warmed since 1998

    guym @400,

    I have long  pondered the "hiatus" nonsense from contrarians. My take on it is perhaps more clinical than Eclectic @401, and a smidgen shorter.

    One of the difficulties we face addessing the "hiatus" is that contrarians define the "hiatus" to mean vastly different things, from silly nonsense from Rose of the Daily Rail (Temp(Jan1996)=Temp(Aug2012) => global warming stopped 16 years ago) to more allegedly-grown-up versions comparing modeled & measured temperatures. Which ever version is used, their take-away is "Global Warming has stopped" or "Models are badly wrong". And any attempt to sensibly address the issue like in the AR5 Box 9.2 or for instance Hansen et al discussing the 'Global Warming Standstill' in 2012 results in a contrarian 'we told you so!!' response which is then grafted onto nonsense by even the more respected of contrarians to beat the "Global Warming Has Stopped!!!" drum (eg ex-clomatologist Judith Curry).

    So you really do have to be careful when addressing the issue of the "hiatus" and that means more than using a title that calls it the "Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years" as per AR5 Box9.2.

    I think the AR5 Box9.2 use of OLS analysis over the period 1998-2012 was poorly contrived. (For the record, the resulting SAT trend roughly doubles if you use 1999-2012, to +0.09ºC/decade, instead of  1975-1996.) What was poor was firstly comparison of 1998-2012 with 1951-2012. The start period should have been roughly 1975, the start of the recent strong AGW. Contrarians who exaggerate the significance of the "hiatus" would be surprised to hear that if you compare 1975-1996 with 1975-2012 you get almost identical trends. The reason for 1998-2012 being so different from the longer-term SAT trend is because the 1998-2012 SAT trend relies on one of those reality-busting steps as in the SKS Escalator. So a second criticism of AR5 Box9.2 is giving credance to the 1998-2012 reality-busting OLS analysis.

    SKS Escalator

    Simply-put, anybody who (a) supports a "hiatus" 16-years long or (b) uses the "flatness" in surface temperature record to create a 16-year long "hiatus" by for instance saying "I predict we will see continuation of the ‘standstill’ in global average temperature for the next decade" (and good old Judy Curry manages both a & b) show they have departed from truthful analysis of AGW.

    I myself feel the way to take command of the "hiatus" is by setting its true length. This analysis of HadCRUT data (usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment') finds it was just 32 months long. And a message that must always be included in "hiatus" talk - thoroughout these years, AGW did not show any signs of faltering as the Ocean Heat Content data surely demonstrates.

  13. It hasn't warmed since 1998

    Guym @400 , [and my apologies for the long post]

    the "hiatus" still lives on — at least in the minds of the climate denialists.  (The less-educated denialists often refer to it as "the Pause" . . . and seem to wish to genuflect at its mention.)   Although the hiatus disappeared 4 years ago, many denialists feel that the recent record-hot years [2014/2015/2016/2017] are a transient aberration; and that within a very few years, planet Earth will return to another prolonged halt in warming (and thus all the scientists will conclusively be proven wrong).   And moreover, the Earth will probably cool down, back to its rightful & divinely ordained un-warmed condition.   That is their faith.   But they have zero mechanism to point to, which could produce such a change (they sometimes point to the future possibility of a Grand Solar Minimum . . . but they refuse to acknowledge that such an event, if it would occur at all, could only produce a feeble/ineffectual counter to the ongoing rapid warming caused by the Greenhouse Effect — an Effect which many denialists still refuse to believe CO2 has any place in).

    I am fairly sure I am not telling anything you aren't already aware of.

    Denialists will only look at planetary surface temperatures: and even there, they have an extreme preference for the satellite record of temperatures limited to to the upper troposphere, rather than the actual planetary surface temperatures down here at ground level.   They have a blind spot for other surface changes such as ice melting and sea levels rising — or at least, they will consider such changes only in isolation (and will quibble about those changes individually, rather than putting it all together in the big picture).

    Where denialists do pay attention to real surface conditions, they usually restrict their mental focus to the region around Latitude 40 North and Longitude 80 West.   Other regions receive attenuated or non-existent concern.

    Denialists mentally refuse to look at the ongoing continuous warming of the ocean, and they have a massive blind spot for the 90+% of global warming energy which goes into the ocean.   For them to acknowledge that fact, would mean acknowledging it is impossible for a genuine hiatus to exist (short of the Earth reaching thermal equilibrium as a new higher plateau of GH Effect).

    Consequently, they still agonize over the so-called Hiatus/Pause; they discuss it as though it never terminated, and they still put enormous effort into statistical analysis "proving" that the Hiatus was/is real.   They denounce the scientific view that there never was a real post-1998 hiatus . . . and they are still buoyed by the way that some real scientists were embarrassed (and insecure) enough to name a "hiatus" (as well devoting some discussion & research time to it.   Surely there can be no smoke without fire !!  Nor can there be any ocean warming, or even Greenhouse Effect !!  The existence of an unpredicted Hiatus must mean that the scientists' models from the 80's and 90's . . . are false & invalid.  Likewise all the rest of the Warmist/Alarmist blather & propaganda).

     

    Guym, for my sins (and for my entertainment) I sometimes look at the WhatsUpWithThat website.   The actual articles are a complete waste of time — being either crazy stuff, or semi-real stuff which has received ferocious "spin".   But in the comments column under each article, you find a 100 or so "comments".    95% of them, you should slide straight past — they are the usual deluded/toxic/extremist nonsense spouted by angry denialists who are using the WUWT site as an echo-chamber to bolster their strange/bizarre beliefs.   But there are a few gems.

    Keep your eye alert for (A) posts by Nick Stokes — a real scientist, with saintly patience, who infuriates the denialists by his cool corrections of their nonsense (they just can't win a trick against him)

    . . . and (B) a couple of denialists [I won't name them] who have enough science & math to produce umpteen paragraphs of equations & analyses — all of it ultimately fruitless in reality; yet they lack the insight to see that they are willing victims of severe Motivated Reasoning.  If they were sane, then they could achieve a considerable amount if they turned their talents to actual real science, I'm sure.  Ah, what a waste.   One of them asserts that the CO2 / Greenhouse Effect does not exist, and that "AGW" is truly just a result of long-cycle ocean oscillations.   Quite crazy.

    The other [and here I finally address the main point of your post] goes in for lengthy statistical analyses to demonstrate that the recent "hiatus" must have been genuine because he can find "no statistically significant" upward trend in (surface) temperature.   He does sometimes admit that there seems to be a very slight positive trend during the hiatus — but since it is statistically not significant in its difference from zero trend, then he concludes that there was no actual warming during that period (and therefore the scientific climate consensus is wrong in its entirety).

    Not only does he ignore the ongoing melting and sea level rise, but he seemingly cannot conceive that the real purpose of statistical analysis is to reflect reality, rather than conceal it.  He prefers to look at his figuring, rather than look at the reality of the physical processes affecting climate.

  14. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

    Billev #6, Greenland has been farmed for centuries and still is now. 

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greenland#Agriculture_and_forestry

    "We appear to be experiencing the same sort of climate change that humans have previously experienced;"

    Climate change is quite different now. Reconstructions show temperatures over the last decade are higher than during the medieval warm period and in fact higher than the last 10,000 years. The recent warming is driven primarily by greenhouse gases, solar activity has been falling slightly for the last 50 years, and the specific  way the earth is heating can only be explained by the greenhouse effect. 

    I think you know this, and this is why your comments are so lame. You obviously have no real enthusiasm for your own beliefs, and certainly have no evidence to back them up.

  15. Global warming made Hurricane Harvey more destructive

    One or more  areas of high pressure caused Hurricane Harvey to stall then track the way it did along the Texas coast.  High pressure areas are not a recent occurrence caused by global warming.

  16. Global warming made Hurricane Harvey more destructive

    Hurricane Harvey's forward progress stalled as it made landfall in Texas and it meandered along the coast toward Houston.  Thus its rainfall was concentrated in a relatively small area for an extended period and thus caused more severe flooding.

  17. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

    Scientists have unearthed remnants  that indicate that the Vikings farmed on the Southern tip of Greenland for a few hundred years beginning in the latter part of the 1200's.  This is evidence that the Earth has warmed previously as claimed in current climate theory.  We appear to be experiencing the same sort of climate change that humans have previously experienced;  repeatedly experienced if the climatologists are correct in their theory. 

  18. It hasn't warmed since 1998

    I often find myself in discussions with contrarians about the supposed "hiatus" of AGW from 1998. I'm happy to have these discussions as it appears to me to be a dishonest statistical trick to claim the hiatus i.e. the random picking of 1998 as the starting point. If they pick any other year it doesn't seem like they can get the desired result, from their perspective. 

    One of the claims that is made is that the IPCC acknowledge that the hiatus occurred and they point to things like box 9.2 in the AR5 report that is titled "Climate Models and the Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years". Although, again, I don't have an issue in what is written there, my question is, why do the IPCC reports refer to this period at all and why use the term hiatus when this doesn't really fit with what is said? It just seems strange that they should talk about a period starting with such an anomolous year. Is it just to address the hiatus claims?

  19. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

    A program I wish every American would watch was a 2-hour presentation on NOVA this spring, titled "Decoding the Weather Machine". From the origins of climate science 200 years ago through to today's science modeling and issues, potential future outcomes and very interesting information on adapting, mitigating and even prospering to avoid the suffering that will come with inaction.

    Found it encouraging that one of the Koch brothers, being a principle sponsor of NOVA, would not block this sort of programming. It's available now on Amazon video, for 3 bucks.

  20. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

    The stories about climate change in Siberia are important, and there are important stories in other countries as well. Our local media don't report them, perhaps because they are unaware, or see them as local issues, but when they are put together they become very important.

    It's the sort of thing large media organisations like the Wall Street Journal could investigate as a totality, but the Wall Street journal  is biased and writes poor quality articles on climate issues. Here are a collection of reviews of the Wall Street climate change articles, and they are not flattering reviews. 

  21. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

    Study Finds 5,000 May Have Died From Hurricane Maria, Yet Cable News Covered Roseanne Instead

  22. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

    How do we get these kind of stories (and so many others) to the general public? Just read a Discover magazine article on the subject, including reports on hundreds of cracking and destableizing buildings in Siberia, crumbling roads, surfacing of Mammoth bones (people sell the tusks as substitutes for elephant ivory), reemergence of virus spores, etc., etc.

    This information  needs to be seen on the evening news and in national publications. The Wall Street Journal gave Dr. Singer a megaphone with his easily refutable science on sea level rise. More on the realities of climate change need that kind of coverage.

  23. Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way
    ‘Melting Arctic send a message’ is the title – but the message is barely explored. Only in the penultimate paragraph do the threats posed by CH4/CO2 emissions and sea level rise get a cursory mention. Nowhere is there an attempt to quantify and state their effects or those of ever thinning sea ice and coastal erosion on the future of the Arctic and global warming. Well illustrated but otherwise not very informative.
  24. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    Regarding the  supposed 99.94% consensus study. The related article makes the claim that the public realise that sometimes eccentric dissenting voices in science turn out to be correct, so its important to have a "complete consensus" and they believe the climate change consensus is actually very close to complete at 99.94% (something it appears may or may not be the case)

    I suppose this is all true "in an ideal world". However with complex science  its unlikely to me that absolutely all scientists would agree, and you also get a few cranks. With contentious science you would get a few  people with hidden agendas and funding. The public probably realise this, and would if anything be suspicious if the consensus was actually 100%. It would look too much like a stitch up job.

    I think anything above 90% would be generally seen as a powerful consensus by the public, although nothing will persuade the hard core denialists. The important thing is to publicise the consensus studies to raise public awareness, regardless of the precise figure. We know its over 90% and the Cook study finding 97% is a rigorous and wide sort of study.

    Of course if it really is 99.4% great. Right now many people I know think scientific opinion on the climate issue is about equally divided 50 / 50, and that is the problem because it suggests considerable disagreement.

  25. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    Sir Charles @10

    The paper you link to is "just" a response to our teams's response to Powell's comment on Cook et al. 2013. As outlined in our paper (Skuce et al. 2017) - which Andy Skuce wrote about here - we don't agree with Powell's approach to determine the consensus. His final rejoinder doesn't change that.

  26. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    Jim Powel's new peer-reviewed study puts the scientific consensus on human made global warming at 99.94%

    => The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Matters

  27. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    I might point out that the 97% seems to include several once active scientists on the 3% side who are now retired, or no longer with us.  It's not a case where any new information has emerged that would sway the majority to reconsider the minority argument.

  28. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    The sad truth is that climate change is not about the science anymore. It is about politics.
    And this is how it should also be adressed by the people advocating to do things to stop it.

    Just pointing out the numbers or coming up with scientists is not enough, one needs to play the game that the "anti- camp" is playing.

    They do not care about the data or the 97% scientists that agree with the global warming issues. They see and take care of it as a political point.

    (and sadly this is the case with many other things as well)

  29. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    “ Moreover, as I show, the consensus among publishing scientists is demonstrably not 97%. Instead, five surveys of the peer-reviewed literature from 1991 to 2015 combine to 54,195 articles with an average consensus of 99.94%. “
    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467617707079

  30. Yes, EVs are green and global warming is raising sea levels

    @nigelj

    I wouldn't call Singer a conservative; he is not advocating for any traditional viepoint or program. In my humble opinion, he's just a) shilling for dollars and b) is an old crank. 

  31. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    The EPA has now become the environmental destruction agency. It's like something out of George Orwells novel '1984', for example The Ministry of Truth is really the ministry of propoganda. List of the ministries in 1984 here. 

  32. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    Suggested supplemental reading: 

    In an internal memo, the White House considered whether to simply ‘ignore’ federal climate research by Chris Mooney & Juliet Eilperin, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, May 23, 2018

    Emails show cooperation among EPA, climate-change deniers by Ellen Knickmeyer, AP/Washington Post, May 25, 2018

    Emails show climate change skeptics tout ‘winning’ under Trump by John Bowden, The Hill, May 29, 2018

  33. Climate Science websites around the world

    Scratching the 1.5°C Jazz
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6JeqX1BH

  34. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    Oh heck, what's the point of talking about Trump and the useless republican congress. That's all anyone does these days, and its what he wants.  

  35. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    With Trump you have a guy who is clearly very dismissive of mainstream scientific views, and consensus positions, and a guy who tends to believe in conspiracies and pseudoscience as below:

    www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/trumps-dangerous-support-for-conspiracies-about-autism-and-vaccines

    www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-2016-5/?r=AU&IR=T/#questions-about-a-former-bill-clinton-aides-suicide-3

    The problem is it looks like he is prepared to take huge gambles over policy, including totally dismissing majority scientific opinion,  to score points over opponents he despises, or people that he has vendettas against. Look at the absurd Obama birther thing and the way he is trashing Obamas policies, even when at lest some of them obviously make practical sense. 

    I don't know where this will all end, but I would bet serious money none of it will end well.

  36. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    Human activity is warming the climate. Get the debate back to basics:

    CO2 absorbs IR energy, we are burning fossil fuels, CO2 is increasing, the world is warming, and solar activity is stable. Like Ubrew says the probability of warming being natural is almost infinitely remote.

    The rest is confusion, detail, and noise.

    America might also think of its southern border. Climate change is very probably going to increase illegal border crossings. Latin America and Mexico are considered at moderately high risk from climate change.

    Because of the huge influence of the fossil fuel and business as usual lobby, the science will always be infested with dissenting voices. Despite this, the IPCC has had a pretty consistent message, because its so strong and well researched even the doubters can't silence it.

  37. 2018 Hurricane Season: A Preview

    And when pacific typhoons wipe out entire countries like Tonga who cares, they are small, poor, countries..... not news worthy or geopolitically "significant".

    Related bits and pieces: Some evidence that pacific typhoons affecting China and Japan have already increased in intensity

  38. Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

    "There’s a 97% expert consensus... betting... humanity... on a... 3% long shot is a bad idea... Prudent risk management dictates that we should be taking serious steps...That’s why Americans buy... insurance"  There is another way of illustrating the 'long shot' Republicans are taking:  I downloaded (from here & here) the Vostok ice core temperature record and calculated the century-by-century temperature change in Antarctica going back 400,000 years.  This meant throwing out some data and duplicating others to get time intervals of between 80 and 140 years, i.e. around a century.  The result was 3,670 data points representing temperature change/100 years, for each century going from ~1800AD to ~400,000BC.  The average was 0.0C, as you might expect.  The standard deviation was 0.34C, and its a normal distribution, not skewed in any way.  The 20th century temperature change was 0.8C, so the probability that change was 'natural' is 2% (=1- erf[{0.8/0.34}/2] ). 

    But Vostok is just one place on Earth.  It likely is much more variable than the Earth overall.  I looked at the last 27 centuries of Vostok, and the 20 centuries of the Pages_2k tree ring database, to evaluated how much more variable Vostok is.  I got a standard deviation of 0.9C for Vostok station and 0.08C for Earth overall. If you use half the standard deviation I got for Vostok as a conservative value for Earth, or 0.17C, then the likelihood that the 20th century temperature rise was natural, based on the last 400,000 years of natural climate-change data, is 0.0003% (=1- erf[{0.8/0.17}/2] ).  Clint Eastwood said something in 'Dirty Harry' that should be said to Trump and the GOP: "Do ya feel lucky, punk?  Well, do ya?"

  39. 2018 Hurricane Season: A Preview

    knaugle @1,

    The other basins do have their predictions (eg in the N Pacific ) but it is the N Atlantic tropical cyclone season that gets all the coverage. This is because news-wise N Atlantic storms often dramatically hit the US and science-wise because records for the N Atlantic are significantly longer than elsewhere.

    And for the record, the 2018 N Atlantic season opened with Tropical Storm Alberto which formed off the Yucatán Peninsula four days back and made landfall in W Florida this morning, all this since the OP was originally posted at Climate Denial the N Atlantic.

  40. 2018 Hurricane Season: A Preview

    What puzzles me is that we get this heavily publicized hurricane season forcast, but I never read anything about the Pacific Ocean hurricane and typhoon season projections.  Not to mention Cyclones in the Indian Ocean...

  41. Climate Science websites around the world

    Here's a strategic suggestion. Wikipedia has this list of many of the worlds meteorological institutes, with links direct to their pages and websites. They will know about local climate change websites and are probably going to have an email contact box. Yeah I know its an hour or twos boring work, so an excuse for a coffee or three.

  42. 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #21

    Of course,, the "it's volcanoes" argument was also used for stratospheric ozone damage, too. The volcanoes put out more chlorine, etc., than come from CFCs.. (No, they don't.) It's as if they just did a search-and-replace on the ozone anti-science articles.

  43. Climate Science websites around the world

    VictorVenema @5

    Thanks, Victor! I already have a snippet about Klimaatverandering from Bart for the planned (and started) post.

  44. Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans

    Suggested supplemental reading:

    What Is Kilauea’s Impact on the Climate? by Emily Atkin, The New Republic, May 26, 2018

  45. 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #21

    Volcanoes just don't emit enough CO2 to explain global warming over the last several decades. The magma from volcanoes does have a lot of dissolved gases including CO2, however emissions from fossil fuels are approximately 100 times greater, and emissions from volcanoes have been measured in multiple ways. The keeling curve is also smooth, rather than punctuated by peaks when volcanoes explode.

    www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/

    Its also a question of what explains the increased atmospheric levels of CO2 in the keeling curve . I was as curious as anyone, so last year I did some digging. Volcanic activity has just not increased over the period when CO2 levels have significantly increased, so volcanoes cannot be the source of the growth of CO2. Look up "list of large volcanic eruptions of the 19th century on wikipedia" and ditto for the 20th century. There are no clear differences between the two centuries overall, although if anything the 19th century had a couple more really large eruptions. I'm not aware of any evidence of significant changes in undersea volcanic activity.

    Generally volcanic activity is reasonably regular on these time scales which is not surprising given its a release of pressure from a regular sort of process beneath the crust.

    Unfortunately people listen to other people on talk back radio or websites that spread climate denial ignorance, but who sound plausible and confident. I'm a strong freedom of speech advocate, but this ignorance is now on a huge scale.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Also see the SkS rebuttal article, Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

  46. VictorVenema at 12:49 PM on 28 May 2018
    Climate Science websites around the world

    For the counterpart article on climate blogs in other languages: In Dutch there is the climate blog of Bart Verheggen: Klimaatverandering.

  47. New research, May 7-13, 2018

    Military leaders, corporate CEOs, fiancial investors, and decision makers at many other levels also deal with uncertainty when making decisions. It is not unique to science and uncertainty is usually not a good reason for inaction. It is simply being overstated in the context of science as an excuse for doing nothing.

  48. Climate Science websites around the world

    SirCharles - thanks for the links but I'm actually looking for full-fledged non-English websites for this particular article, not just climate-related content in other languages.

    As I'm getting other suggestions for non-English blogs, I'll start a collection of those for a counterpart article about "Climate science blogs around the world".

  49. Climate Science websites around the world

    Two music graphs (CC). Feel free to use them:

    Jan 1880 - Dec 2017 Monthly Global Temperature Jazz
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amXQMGdWWwo

    Global Sea Level Jazz | Jan 1993 - Mar 2018
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3se9FR6EoMU

  50. Climate Science websites around the world

    You want sites in English too?

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