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MA Rodger at 22:43 PM on 1 June 2018It hasn't warmed since 1998
Correction to #402.
Para 3 should read "... instead of 1998-2012."
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MA Rodger at 22:38 PM on 1 June 2018It 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.
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.
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Eclectic at 21:01 PM on 1 June 2018It 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.
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nigelj at 18:48 PM on 1 June 2018Melting 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.
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billev at 16:50 PM on 1 June 2018Global 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.
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billev at 16:39 PM on 1 June 2018Global 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.
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billev at 16:16 PM on 1 June 2018Melting 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.
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guym at 13:38 PM on 1 June 2018It 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?
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Johnboy at 08:29 AM on 1 June 2018Melting 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.
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nigelj at 06:36 AM on 1 June 2018Melting 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.
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SirCharles at 06:17 AM on 1 June 2018Melting 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
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Johnboy at 01:10 AM on 1 June 2018Melting 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.
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Riduna at 15:35 PM on 31 May 2018Melting 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. -
nigelj at 08:25 AM on 31 May 2018Trump 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.
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BaerbelW at 06:51 AM on 31 May 2018Trump 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.
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SirCharles at 06:00 AM on 31 May 2018Trump 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%
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knaugle at 02:18 AM on 31 May 2018Trump 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.
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lucike at 22:34 PM on 30 May 2018Trump 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)
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Postkey at 18:40 PM on 30 May 2018Trump 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 -
DrivingBy at 15:34 PM on 30 May 2018Yes, 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.
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nigelj at 13:31 PM on 30 May 2018Trump 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.
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John Hartz at 10:49 AM on 30 May 2018Trump 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
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SirCharles at 09:47 AM on 30 May 2018Climate Science websites around the world
Scratching the 1.5°C Jazz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6JeqX1BH -
nigelj at 09:16 AM on 30 May 2018Trump 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.
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nigelj at 08:03 AM on 30 May 2018Trump 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
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.
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nigelj at 07:04 AM on 30 May 2018Trump 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.
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nigelj at 06:25 AM on 30 May 20182018 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
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ubrew12 at 06:20 AM on 30 May 2018Trump 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?"
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MA Rodger at 05:15 AM on 30 May 20182018 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.
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knaugle at 02:33 AM on 30 May 20182018 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...
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nigelj at 12:10 PM on 29 May 2018Climate 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:32 AM on 29 May 20182018 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.
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BaerbelW at 06:12 AM on 29 May 2018Climate Science websites around the world
VictorVenema @5
Thanks, Victor! I already have a snippet about Klimaatverandering from Bart for the planned (and started) post.
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John Hartz at 00:48 AM on 29 May 2018Volcanoes 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
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nigelj at 14:12 PM on 28 May 20182018 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?
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VictorVenema at 12:49 PM on 28 May 2018Climate 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.
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Evan at 07:05 AM on 27 May 2018New 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.
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BaerbelW at 16:56 PM on 26 May 2018Climate 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".
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SirCharles at 07:26 AM on 26 May 2018Climate 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=amXQMGdWWwoGlobal Sea Level Jazz | Jan 1993 - Mar 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3se9FR6EoMU -
SirCharles at 06:30 AM on 26 May 2018Climate Science websites around the world
You want sites in English too?
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SirCharles at 06:28 AM on 26 May 2018Climate Science websites around the world
German Alpenverein => https://www.alpenverein.de/Natur/Klimaschutz/
More German sites => https://www.alpenverein.de/natur/klimaschutz/klimawandel-klimaschutz-nachhaltigkeit-weblinks-wo-steht-was_aid_15504.html
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rojerfred at 16:53 PM on 25 May 2018New research, April 16-22, 2018
In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists have combined an array of NASA satellite observations of Earth with data on human activities to map locations where freshwater is changing around the globe and why.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:41 AM on 25 May 2018Yes, EVs are green and global warming is raising sea levels
My understanding has always been along the lines of the Kevin Anderson quote in Evan's comment @19. And I own a hybrid because where I live it is better than running an all-electric off of the power from the crappy Alberta regional electrical grid that still includes coal burning as a part of the base-load (meaning that even though there are renewable generating options built, the use of coal burning is maximized and the renewables are minimized (even a grid fully powered by burning natural gas produces about 0.6 kg of CO2/kWh which means 1.2 kg of CO2 per 100 km driven based on an electric vehicle efficiency of 20 kWh/100 km. My hybrid annual efficiency is 4.5 l/100 km (closer to 4.0 in the summer and closer to 5.0 in the winter). And burning gasoline is about 3 kg CO2/l when allowance is made for the CO2 associated with extraction, refining and transportation. So in the future my hybrid at 13.5 kg CO2/100 km will only be marginally poorer than an all electric that is powered from Alberta's future grid, after Alberta stops burning coal in 2030, which may not happen if the new United Conservative Party wins the next election).
The only advancements that are true advancements are the ones that reduce consumption of materials or energy to achieve an objective. Kevin states that because of the lack of responsible action in the past to shift to more sustainable ways of getting energy dramatic reduction of energy consumption is now required while the required corrections of energy production are implemented. My understanding has always been that reduction of energy consumption is the proper objective of efforts to develop new things. And I add that 'All of the richest' need to be required to lead the way to sustainable ways of living (not just the richer ones who care to behave better), because the richer ones are the ones who can afford to behave better.
Cheaper quicker flashier 'New'ier ways to do things will always be around and get created. But to sustainably advance humanity any unsustainable or harmful way of doing things ultimately needs to be excluded from competing for popularity and profitability.
Significant effort is undeniably required to overcome the damaging developed popularity and profitability of unsustainable developed ways of doing things. Sustainable ways of doing things cannot compete with the unsustainable alternatives, especially when more people get used to benefiting form the unsustainable or harmful activity. That reality is a Truly Inconvenient Truth.
The best any of us can do is pursue better understanding of what is going on and determining how our actions can best help achieve a sustainable improved future for humanity. That requires constant skeptical investigation of things, with a critical eye always looking for truly sustainable developments and identifying unsustainable things that have developed that need to be corrected or curtailed.
A Good first step is recognising/admitting that self-interest can severely cripple skeptical critical thinking, leading to damaging developments of popular and profitable activity that can develop tremendous resistance to being corrected. A self-interested person will skeptically and critically understand that they have less potential for personal benefit if the accept a true better understanding in pursuit of sustainably improving things for the future of humanity.
Another good step is understanding that the understanding of how to get away with misrepresentations and other misleading marketing is potentially the most destructive thing that humanity has ever developed. And promoting a belief that people should be freer to believe whatever they like and do as they please in pursuit of 'their personal interest' will likely create a massively destructive society, because many people will be tempted to like unjustified damaging and ultimately unsustainable beliefs.
The result of promoting self-interest and people having more freedom to believe and do as they please, will be a society that John Stuart Mill warned about in the following quote from "On Liberty" - “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 damage is done to future generations who can blame their predecessors, but as stated in the following quote from the 1987 UN Report "Our Common Future", the future generations have no ability to actually get even with the ones who caused their problems.
"25. Many present efforts to guard and maintain human progress, to meet human needs, and to realize human ambitions are simply unsustainable - in both the rich and poor nations. They draw too heavily, too quickly, on already overdrawn environmental resource accounts to be affordable far into the future without bankrupting those accounts. They may show profit on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses. We borrow environmental capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. They may damn us for our spendthrift ways, but they can never collect on our debt to them. 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.
26. But the results of the present profligacy are rapidly closing the options for future generations. Most of today's decision makers will be dead before the planet feels; the heavier effects of acid precipitation, global warming, ozone depletion, or widespread desertification and species loss. Most of the young voters of today will still be alive. In the Commission's hearings it was the young, those who have the most to lose, who were the harshest critics of the planet's present management." -
MA Rodger at 00:22 AM on 24 May 2018Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
ab,
With you remaining oblivious to everything said to you and your continued spouting of the same nonsense, I would suggest your time here draws short. Perhaps you should think about returning wence you came. (I note you spent a week fulling up the borehole at RealClimate prior to arriving here at SkS.)
Moderator Response:[DB] User ab has recused themselves from further participation here.
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Eclectic at 23:55 PM on 23 May 2018Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
Ab @51 ,
if your proposed 1m x 1m square "black body thermometer" is absorbing 890 watts in total, and is emitting 890 watts upwards . . . then its lower surface (facing the ground) must be emitting no watts at all. In other words, the lower surface must have a temperature of absolute zero.
Do you not find that to be a peculiarly interesting situation?
Could be a source of energy for a perpetual motion machine . . . or a wonderful new way of generating unlimited electric power !
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ab at 23:07 PM on 23 May 2018Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
MA Rodger @48, Philippe Chantreau @49, Glenn Tamblyn@50,
It seems to one that you are clearly confounding the amount of energy reaching a unit of surface (the fluxes in the IPCC's diagram that we are talking about here) with the amount of energy emitted per unit of surface of the source of the flux itself. Those are totally different concepts.
In the IPCC's diagram, the solar flux coming in is not based on the unit of surface of the sun, it is based on the unit of surface of the Earth, that is, it is based not on the unit of surface of the source, but on the unit of surface of the target: it is directional, as all fluxes are.
Many people have difficulties with fluxes, and from what you are writing, I understand that you are not familiar with them, but in the Earth's Energy Budget, we have to use them, because it is based on them, and we are reasonning with them, as all calculations here are done with fluxes.
A flux in the Earth's Energy Budget is measured as a surface power density in time (W m-² for a given period), so there is no need to look at areas, geometries, and energy, as the surface power density is independent of the surface or geometry that is reached: it radiates some amount of energy per unit of surface in time.
So the unit of surface of a flux is "per se": it is not the unit of surface of the object reached by the flux, it is independent of any particular geometry. Moreover, we are not dealing with the energy exchanged by a particular object per unit of its own surface: we are dealing with "outward", "directional" vectors of energy only here, transmitted by a blackbody.
A blackbody receives input fluxes and emits output fluxes, such as the total input flux is equal to the total output flux by definition. Why ? Because for 1 unit of surface "per se", there has to be the same amount of energy emitted or received for a given period in order that as much energy comes in than goes out of the blackbody. Therefore the total input and total output have the same value.
In other words, there is the same surface power density going in than going out per unit of time, and the total flux value is independent from the blackbody surface, only the number of fluxes, their value and their direction being regulated by the surface, but not their total value, in conformity with the definition of a blackbody radiation.
In other words, each m2 reached by the total input flux will have the same amount of energy than each m2 reached by the total output flux, because a blackbody emits as much as it receives, independently of its own surface or geometry, which is another issue.
So, in fluxes, the total input flux is equal to the total output flux for a blackbody, and it is quite different than the amount of energy emitted per unit of surface of the object itself.
Therefore, coming back to the IPCC's Energy Budget, we add all inputs fluxes together for a blackbody on Earth's surface and we get 890 W m-² coming in.
Because it is a blackbody, there has also to be an output flux of 890 W m-²: it is the same flux going out than going in, only the direction and the quantity and value of individual fluxes are changing, not its total value per m².
Now, if that is clear, at thermal equilibrium, let's apply the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. We get for a blackbody emitting/receiving a flux of 890 W m-² a temperature of 80,8°C.
What would be the input flux for the normal temperature of Earth, 15°C, as experimentally measured on Earth's surface ? Let's apply again Stefan-Boltzmann Law: we get a 390,9 W m-².
Conclusion:
IPCC's radiative model has a 65,8°C difference in temperature, and a 499,1 W m-² difference in radiative fluxes with experimental measures.
IPCC's uncertainties concerning previsional temperatures are just a distraction compared to the huge difference existing between the radiative model and the experimental measures, the radiative model being at the basis of all prevision models.
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Loki at 22:31 PM on 23 May 2018Climate change is already making droughts worse
Anomalous Synergies
Stratosphere = 10-50 km
Troposphere = 0-10 km
Lower stratospheric ozone declines are biggest between 60° South and 60° North. I will refer to this area as mid latitude which includes the tropics. The tropics are 50% of human habitat.
Lower stratospheric ozone is much more abundant than the high stratospheric ozone at the poles, where ozone depletion has somewhat ceased. This abundance makes mid latitude ozone more important to us than high altitude polar ozone.
Mid latitude/lower stratospheric ozone depletion causes more damage to DNA in plants, animals and humans because radiation is more intense in these regions and more people live there. I believe that stronger winds are sending more ozone killing gas into lower stratospheric mid latitude areas.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206090709.htm
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wait-the-ozone-layer-is-still-declining1/
Ground ozone (tropospheric) ozone is a pollutant that is harmful to breathe and toxic to plants. It is also the 3rd most abundant greenhouse gas, not including water vapor I believe. Ground-level ozone pollution is already decreasing global crop yields from 2–6% for maize to 4–15%, and 9–14% for wheat and soybeans. Ground ozone visibly harms foliage and reduces their ability to suck carbon out of the air. North American emissions can affect ozone-induced yield losses in Europe. I believe increased winds are destroying stratospheric ozone. This is complicated by the fact that Asia may be cheating on the Montreal Ozone Protocol.
How is ozone pollution reducing our food supply? - Scary stuff.
https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/63/2/527/504895Emissions of banned ozone-destroying chemical on the rise
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/emissions-of-banned-ozone-destroying-chemical-on-the-rise/article/522644Oceans currently suck up boatloads of ozone, but as Asia increases nitrous oxide emissions from farms and cars, these ocean ozone sinks will turn into ozone sources.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14211-tropical-ocean-sucks-up-vast-amounts-of-ozone/Earth's magnetic field has a big hole below the equator that stretches from Chile to Zimbabwe Africa. I imagine chunks of Cratons (huge upside-down mountains) break off and swirl around enough to upset steady magnetic field generation, which may or not be temporary. This area between South America and Africa is the same area affected by ozone depletion. The combination of ozone depletion and a weakening magnetic field will be doubly deleterious to plants and humans in those areas from space radiation because it takes both tropospheric ozone and a strong magnetic field to protect mid latitudes from the sun and space radiation threats.
Water from the tundra and polar ice is moving to the equator, so much so that it lowers polar gravity and slows down earth's crust relative to its core. The rebounding and slowing crust has a double whammy effect on earth quakes and volcanoes. Volcanoes are extremely sensitive to nearby water and ice pressures.
A Mysterious Anomaly Under Africa Is Radically Weakening Earth's Magnetic Field
https://www.sciencealert.com/something-mysterious-under-southern-africa-dramatically-weakening-earth-s-magnetic-field-south-atlantic-anomaly
More volcanoes and quakes are expected this year. When volcanoes go off, they emit sulphur which destroys ozone.
2018 may be the year the earth slows and the world panics
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/100345652/2018-may-be-the-year-the-earth-slows-and-the-world-panicsHow future volcanic eruptions will impact Earth's ozone layer
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-future-volcanic-eruptions-impact-earth.htmlWhat's important to the ozone are volcanic halogens. Scientists are just starting to figure out how important halogens are to their models. A good burst of volcanic halogens means you can kiss that ozone goodbye. Dire indeed.
The 2 top causes of civil collapse are drought and volcanic ash. We got lots of both this year. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic snipped. Please comport your comments with the OP of the thread you post them on and the Comments Policy.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 17:41 PM on 23 May 2018Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
"and the area of the object is of no importance at all".
Um, sorry ab, wrong. Area is absolutely important.
You aren't clearly enough distinguising between flux per unit area, and flux.
In your simple plate example, the plate absorbs 890 watts, from where-ever. It then needs to radiate 890. Since it has a total surface area of 2 m^2 it thus has to radiate 445 per square meter. And the SB equation calculates flux per square meter. So feed 445 into the SB calculator and you get around 14.
The mistake you seem to be making, at least implied, is assuming the SB calculator gives you flux (in watts) when it is actually flux per square meter.
If the plate had a surface area of 10 m^2 and absorbed 890 watts from where ever, it would need to radiate at 89 watts/m^2 to be in balance and the SB calculator would give a much lower temperature than 14 C.
Area matters totally unless you keep all your calculations on a per square meter basis. -
Art Vandelay at 16:20 PM on 23 May 2018Video: The Myth of the Mini Ice Age
There are quite a few solar physicists who no longer subscribe to the Maunder climate theory. Some of the reasons include methodology changes that have altered SSN's since SSN's were observed and documented, and when SSN is homogenised the Maunder minimum doesn't actually exist. And there's little observational evidence that cosmic radiation affects climate as a consquence of cloud feedback changes, as proposed by Svensmark and Christensen. The only metric of value is TSI (irradiance), and as the is spelled out in the video, is a minute modulation.
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:01 AM on 23 May 2018Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
ab is trying to pull a G&T type of argument. Not interesting. Just trying to play games.
Moderator Response:[PS] Looks more like skydragon to me.
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