Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 Next
Comments 15401 to 15450:
-
Alchemyst at 11:33 AM on 7 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
This was the headline that nigelj posted
Arctic warmer than much of Europe is a worrying sign of climate change
however we now have established that in 1962 that a similar excursion took place in which the arctic was warmer than europe. a couple of degrees lass possibly, But these temperature reversals have a long history, so how can they be sign of global warming.
The headline is therfore misleading.
The fact that the arctic is warmer than europe at times is a sign of weather.
Moderator Response:[PS] But a change in trends is a sign of climate change, and that article went on to explain not the significance of one event but the underlying changes. As did the paper that is main focus of this blog article. Noone disputes that one event by itself is insignificant and just weather. Persistant changes to jetstream variability are another thing altogether.
Quoting Nigelj article (did you read down that far)
But such "intrusion events" are happening with increasing frequency, says Adamson. And they "are linked to increased temperatures and reduced sea ice cover."Global warming may be to blame.
"There is now a large and strong body of evidence that the major changes we are seeing are linked to climate change," Adamson said. "Changes in one part of the ocean-atmosphere system can have major impacts on another."
Note the "increasing frequency"?
-
Alchemyst at 10:16 AM on 7 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
M A Roger at 5:04 am 4 March
thanks for the tables. You missed the excursion!
please read that the highest winter peak was 261.33 K on 21 Nov 1962 not 252K in February.
Moderator Response:[PS] And??? What point are you trying to make?
-
Alchemyst at 08:16 AM on 7 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
P Chantreau
hanks for the graphs, You hoverer do not compare one cold period with the other.
You need also to compare like with like.
The 62 winter freeze extended through from December to March 63.
The temp at the begining of December in Greenland according to your graphs was 262K at 2017 it was 264 K quite close!
Is it possible to see a graph of these? also is it possible to see a graph of feb 2011 to get a good comparison. The cold snap this year has lasted 6 days The 62 lasted some 70 days and the sea was frozen in UK ports.
Moderator Response:[PS] It would still help this discussion if you made it clear what you are trying to establish.
-
william5331 at 04:58 AM on 7 March 2018Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures
All these analyses are nibbling around the edges and misdirecting our attention from the basic problem. There is one overwhelming reason for climate change dinial and one reason only. It is the same reason that kept cigaretts being extoled as the best thing since sliced bread and lead added to petrol being a good thing. Pick any cause you want and any year 12 student could tell you what the solution is. The only reason that trying to sort out these problems is so hard is money in politics. Who pays the piper calls the tune and it was never so true as in human affairs. If we want our governments to do what is so blindingly obviously needed, politicians need to be financed from the public purse and anyone giving them money or favours must be jailed. Only than will we begin to sort out the mess. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/wasted-effort.html
-
nigelj at 12:34 PM on 6 March 2018Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures
In addition to an unfortunate lack of balance in the media, the media seem to be increasingly inflammatory in things they say by my observation. I suppose its competition due to the internet, so they are crying out for attention.
Unfortunately this is creating a sort of monster of lowest common denominator flawed, ridiculous information. This is market competition that has gone seriously crazy, and its seriously dumbing down the population.
People are influenced by people like Rish Limbaugh above all else, and I doubt even that the leaders of the Republican party can now do much to counter this media monster even if they wanted to. The genie is out of the bottle. The voting "base" listen to the media directly now and its all they listen to.
Attitudes to climate change will improve with young people. They get the science at school. with less of the "noise". If only their climate denialist parents would shut up on the issue. But all this takes time.
-
John Hartz at 11:14 AM on 6 March 2018Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures
Recommended supplemental reading...
Millennials’ Climate Views Could Sway 10 House Elections This November by Josh Kurtz, E&E News/Scientific American, Mar 5, 2018
-
One Planet Only Forever at 09:11 AM on 6 March 2018Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures
I transposed the date of the UN Report. It was also 1987.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 08:49 AM on 6 March 2018Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures
"In 1987, the FCC under Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required television and radio stations to be equitable and balanced. The Rush Limbaugh Show then launched in 1988, and so came the rise of right-wing radio. Fox News launched in 1996, providing conservatives a source of politically-biased news coverage. Combined with conservative news websites like Breitbart, Drudge, and Infowars, the right-wing echo chamber can envelop anyone who seeks only news spun to confirm their ideological biases."
And in 1978 the UN Report "Our Common Future" was published. THta clear-eyed look at waht was going on including the following blunt evaluation:
"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."It seems the changes the Reagan Administration over-saw in 1987 helped amplify a caustic environment that had already been understood to be developing damaging results, encouraging people to be develop damaging attitudes and actions.
Team Trump winning would appear to be a natural inevitable development in such an environment. Hopefully it is a last gasp unsustainable Win by those type of people. Hopefully, they won't make things too much worse before they Lose the ability to significantly influence things.
-
nigelj at 08:40 AM on 6 March 2018Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures
Yes the Republicans figure more strongly in climate science denialism. However I suggest they are never going to accept the science. Just look at the history of various scientific debates, and we still see a core group of non believers, typically around 20% of the population.
If the Democrats owned the climate issue more powerfully at a political and personal level, it might gain them some traction with the public, because people would take it more seriously. This may at least force the Republicans to adopt renewable energy policies and a carbon tax, as they would be worried about losing votes to the democrats. Various commentators have suggested this.
You will only ever convince rational people in the middle of debates. There's probably room to convince a few more in America. Climate scepticism is higher in America than other countries, so they just may be slower to accept things for a range of reasons. But things will only change dramatically when the Democrats take a more powerful position on the issue.
-
John Hartz at 03:05 AM on 6 March 2018Impact of climate change on health is ‘the major threat of 21st century’
Recommended supplemental reading:
Implementing climate pact would dramatically save health care costs- researchers by Sebastien Malo, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Mar 2, 2018
The article summarizes the analysis contained in the paper, Health co-benefits from air pollution and mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study by Anil Markandya et al, The Lancet Planetary Health Journal [open access], March 2018.
-
nigelj at 12:33 PM on 5 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Bob Loblow, yes flooding data doesn't show an increase overall probably because of flood mitigation effects, dredging etc. I thought they may have tried to allow for all this in the studies, but it would be very hard now I think about it. I did some physical geography at uni, so I'm interested.
However this much is more certain:
www.climatecentral.org/news/europe-floods-climate-change-21704
"Will a warming climate affect river floods? The prevailing sentiment is yes, but a consistent signal in flood magnitudes has not been found. Blöschl et al. analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past 50 years and found clear patterns of changes in flood timing that can be ascribed to climate effects (see the Perspective by Slater and Wilby). These variations include earlier spring snowmelt floods in northeastern Europe, later winter floods around the North Sea and parts of the Mediterranean coast owing to delayed winter storms, and earlier winter floods in western Europe caused by earlier soil moisture maxima.
-
nigelj at 11:27 AM on 5 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #9
Some other news: "Donald Trump’s Know-Nothing Science Budget"
www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/donald-trumps-know-nothing-science-budget
Talk about weapons grade stupid policy.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 10:45 AM on 5 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
nigelj, Section 2.6.2.2 is brief. It appears to evaluate flooding by analysis of river flow rates. The following statement is the majority of the section:
"AR5 WGII assesses floods in regional detail accounting for the fact that trends in floods are strongly influenced by changes in river management (see also Section 2.5.2). Although the most evident flood trends appear to be in northern high latitudes, where observed warming trends have been largest, in some regions no evidence of a trend in extreme flooding has been found, for example, over Russia based on daily river discharge
(Shiklomanov et al., 2007). Other studies for Europe (Hannaford and Marsh, 2008; Renard et al., 2008; Petrow and Merz, 2009; Stahl et al., 2010) and Asia (Jiang et al., 2008; Delgado et al., 2010) show evidence for upward, downward or no trend in the magnitude and frequency of floods, so that there is currently no clear and widespread evidence for observed changes in flooding except for the earlier spring flow in snow-dominated regions (Seneviratne et al., 2012)."The key seems to be a lack of a statistically significant consistent global change in flooding. Some areas have increased flooding and others have reduced flooding, as stated in the following portion of the much larger section 2.5.2 of the report:
"Recently, Stahl et al. (2010) and Stahl and Tallaksen (2012) investigated streamflow trends based on a data set of near-natural streamflow records from more than 400 small catchments in 15 countries across
Europe for 1962–2004. A regional coherent pattern of annual streamflow trends was revealed with negative trends in southern and eastern
regions, and generally positive trends elsewhere. Subtle regional differences in the subannual changes in various streamflow metrics
also can be captured in regional studies such as by Monk et al. (2011) for
Canadian rivers." -
BaerbelW at 03:50 AM on 5 March 2018Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
villabolo @98
Nice to hear from you!
To answer your question: whenever a rebuttal gets updated, the date gets changed. It is then a decision of the author who is making the update whether or not an author-change is warrented. For minor tweaks like fixing links or typos this doesn't happen but for more substantial changes it is usually done. That you were the original author of the basic version has been preserved in the archives for the rebuttal:
-
MartinJB at 02:17 AM on 5 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
MA Rodger (r.e. "Interestingly, the DMI data shows the summers over the last couple of decades with lower temperatures than in the 1960s.")
I'm going to guess that more exposed water slows the warming of the air as summer sets in because you get more heat exchange between water and air than ice and air. Whereas having ice-covered water basically insulates the air from the moderating effects of the water. Just a guess...
-
MA Rodger at 00:44 AM on 5 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
The DMI 80N daily data is exceedingly wobble-ridden. To get a sense of seasonal trends, I have plotted out decadal 31-day rolling averages. This does show significant change but only since 2000. The graphic linked here (usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment') shows the freeze season (Oct-Dec) was +3ºC warmer in the 2000s. And the 2010s have show additional warming with the height of the freeze (Jan-Mar) is on average+ 5ºC warmer. In that context, the 2018 season is probably averaging +7ºC warmer. Interestingly, the DMI data shows the summers over the last couple of decades with lower temperatures than in the 1960s.
-
Ari Jokimäki at 16:52 PM on 4 March 2018New research, February 19-25, 2018
Thank you, I corrected the link.
-
Wol at 15:19 PM on 4 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
>>I'm afraid some brits tell me that this cold spell is nothing like what happened in 1962<<
I don't have the data to hand, but I was flying training in 1962/3 and subjectively it was in the same category as this winter: days on end of cancellations and life-threatening cold.
-
Bob Loblaw at 12:02 PM on 4 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
niglej:
Without reading the chapter, is it possible that the difference is due to better flood mitigation? Or just poorer (more noisy) flood data?
-
Bob Loblaw at 11:59 AM on 4 March 2018Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
villabolo:
IIRC, the web code for SkS attributes the article to the last person that made minor edits. A known bug. Not sure how to fix it.
-
michael sweet at 09:48 AM on 4 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Philippe Chantreau and MA Rodger,
It is my understanding that while the high temperature this year in Northern Greenland was not the highest ever recorded it was above zero for much longer than had ever been recorded. (Sorry no cite, it was a newspaper article) Eyeballing the graph at 25, the temperature was above 260 for several days. That is not the same as Greenland but it does support the claim that the heat wave this year was extraordinary.
-
villabolo at 09:24 AM on 4 March 2018Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
Hey guys at SkS, this article is attributed to Dana1981 but was written by yours truly villabolo. :-)
-
Synapsid at 07:35 AM on 4 March 2018New research, February 19-25, 2018
Thank you for this weekly feature.
11. The link does not connect to the paper named.
-
nigelj at 05:54 AM on 4 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
The IPCC fifth assessment report finds no evidence that flooding has increased, yet has good confidence that extreme rainfall events have increased. This seems hard to reconcile.
www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf
-
Philippe Chantreau at 05:25 AM on 4 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Glad to see that my 252 eyeballing was that close. Thanks for the link. I looked at the entire DMI archive and did not see a year with a spike as high as 2018 in the first 55 days, although the lows may be the more remarkable story. The level of the minimum Arctic temp in this year's first 55 days is quite interesting.
-
MA Rodger at 05:04 AM on 4 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Philippe Chantreau @25,
You might be interested in the daily DMI data available in spreadsheet form courtesy of 'Tealight' at Arctic Neven's Forum. 'Tealight' runs CryosphereComputing website. The numbers (1960-2017) are very handy for comparing the inter-year DMI data. Thus in early 1962 the temperature is given as peaking at 251.72K on 14th Jan & 252.53K on 29th Feb (evidently some form of leap year handling process is in use), these being the 3rd & 4th warmest excursions of the 1960s (exceeded by one in 1960 & one in 1965).
-
Philippe Chantreau at 04:26 AM on 4 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Alchemyst brings our attention to the 1962 event that showed an apparently similar weather patern as the one we're experiencing this year.
I looked at the archives of the DMI and found the Arctic temperatures above 80 deg lattitude for that year. The highest temp for the first 55 days of the year in 1962 are arond 252 deg K. For 2018 they are approximately 264 deg K, 12 degrees warmer.
In comparison, this is 1962:
-
sidd at 10:01 AM on 3 March 2018Actions today will decide Antarctic ice sheet loss and sea level rise
That Gardner paper in Cryosphere is nice. From table 1) i see that basins 20,21,22 (include thwaites) are showing increases in net mass loss of the order of 1%. Thats reassuringly smaller than Hansen's projection, in the "doubling time" picture a time of 70 yr or so. -
nigelj at 09:47 AM on 3 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Argus @23,
The sun is shining less now than 20 years ago. Refer to "its the sun" under climate myths at the left hand side of the page. So quite obviously the warming arctic and decreasing ice can't be attributed to solar activity.
Natural fluctuations have always occured, but that obviously doesn't mean they are always particularly strong, or that humans can't have an influence.
I don't know about other people, but I try to be a "climate realist".
-
Argus at 08:52 AM on 3 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
The post was talking about winters ("Abnormal winter weather"), and I was talking about the winter sun, or lack of sun – but you and the moderator are talking about summer, with midnight sun and all that. A slight misunderstanding.
Ok, so just now the ice cover seems to get thinner, and covers a smaller area in the summer. The sun does what it's meant to do, shine. So does it shine more now than 20 years ago, or 50 years ago? If so, why? Maybe this is just a period where ices are smaller, and 20 years from now maybe they will be thicker and bigger again. What's the problem? Fluctuations have always occurred.
Everybody in this forum seems to be climate pessimists.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 07:53 AM on 3 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Argus@21,
In addition to the Moderator's correction regarding your comment, when the ice covers the arctic waters in winter it acts as insulation keeping the warmth in the water. So winter maximum extents not declining can actually lead to even smaller summer minimum extents.
The ice cover is getting thinner. More of it is only new ice rather than thicker multi-year ice. That makes it easier for the trend of minimum extent in each new summer to be significantly smaller as the 24 hour sunshine warms the larger area of uncovered waters. And that significant downward trend of summer minimum extent is indeed what is observed.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 05:40 AM on 3 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
NorrisM@183,
I try to follow all commenting in strings I participate in, as well as reading comments on items I do not have any comments to add to. So I will start by 'addressing the issue of sea level rise' then continue with the relevant related issue of your comment that was introduced into this discussion by your comments that imply the need to 'limit harm to the developed economy', not negatively affect any already very fortunate people (and you claiming that the added work required in future generations is a "Good Thing").
The maximum potential harm created by the current most fortunate beneficiaries of the burning of fossil fuels is what the current most fortunate beneficiaries of the burning of fossil fuels must correct. The more that they try to benefit, the more they need to do now to protect the future generations from the potential future challenges or negative consequence. So your 11” value, which is not the worst of the possible future impacts, is irrelevant when discussing/evaluating the actions required today. The required actions are immediate actions to sustainably deal with the worst of the potential developed outcomes. Those actions are either the immediate building of conservatively adequate height and durability sea walls (massive), or the rapid reduction of impacts to reduce the magnitude of required wall building. (refer to my comments @139 and @143)
Now onto the rest of my reply.
Thank you for bothering to read my brief presentation @98 that focuses on the globally developed and robust understanding that the Sustainable Development Goals are the collective of actions required to sustainable help the least fortunate have better lives. Feel free to provide any substantial new information you believe would change any aspect of that international leadership developed understanding.
Your lengthy reply, that offers no information that would alter the understanding of the importance of achieving all of the SDGs, reinforces my understanding that you are one of those among humanity who has developed personal interests that lead them to like to claim that their personal ability to continue to benefit from burning fossil fuels 'must be allowed for the good of the poor'.
From your comment I would expect you to be a very ardent supporter of nations like China and India being exempt from having to reduce their per-capita CO2 production while the more fortunate nations lead by example and rapidly reduce their impacts while providing assistance to help China and India transition to reduce their CO2 impacts (essentially the basis for the internationally understood Kyoto Accord and the Paris Agreement). However, I have my doubts about you arguing that way (refer to my comment @32 and @68). Of course, my understanding is that even in places like China and India there are many more fortunate people who should also be rapidly correcting how they behave. So, while I accept that places like India and China should be able to continue increasing their per-capita impacts while the supposedly more advanced nations rapidly reduce their impacts, I would push for the wealthiest in those nations to do what those other most fortunate people are all expected to responsibly do (with penalties from peers applied effectively to the recalcitrant among their kind - no Dictators required).
The burning of fossil fuels is undeniably unsustainable and undeniably creates harmful changes for the future generations while reducing the non-renewable resources available to future generations.
That understanding makes it clear that the most fortunate need to stop trying to personally benefit from the activity, and the ones that benefited most to date from the burning owe everyone else, especially the future generations. My main take-away from your comments is that you do not believe in confronting/declaring the unacceptability of those who are resistant to correcting the way they think. Correcting their attitudes and actions is the required step. The benefiting from burning fossil fuels needs to rapidly be restricted to the least fortunate, with assistance provided to most rapidly transition their ways of living away from the burning of fossil fuels. (refer to my comment @38)
John Stewart Mill in “On Liberty” said: “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.” Those unwilling to accept the awareness and better understanding of the need for all of the SDGs to be achieved are like Mill's Mere Children needing to be better educated, to correct their developed personal desires to benefit from understandably unsustainable and harmful activity, people who have developed a lack of interest in better understanding the harmful unacceptable 'externalities' created by their developed addiction to benefiting from pursuing unjustifiable Private Interests.
My primary objective is indeed helping to improve awareness and understanding of the corrections of what has developed to sustainably end poverty. Correctly understanding climate science and the corrections/changes it identifies are an important part of sustainably ending poverty, developing a sustainable better future for humanity. That includes understanding that some people will persistently resist correcting their understanding of many things, resulting in them resisting the understanding of the corrections required to sustainably help advance humanity to a better future.
Un-refereed Capitalism competition can only develop good results if Everyone is dedicated to increased awareness of what is going on and limits their actions to the proper understanding of what is acceptable, actions that fit under the very broad but still limited umbrella of the Sustainable Development Goals.
My conclusion based on all of your comments is that you hope to appeal to people who are easily impressed. Frankly, your comments are unimpressive, poorly justified. The understanding of the required corrections of what has developed is strengthening, particularly because of the continued misguided arguments against the responsible changes required by all of the most fortunate to develop improvements of human activity that are sustainable into the distant future - no more pretending that developed perceptions of winning/superiority in the developed competitions for popularity and profitability are justified or deserved.
-
John Hartz at 04:21 AM on 3 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
NorrisM wrote:
I find the Climate Report much more readable than the IPCC Fifth Assessment.
As to be expected. The Climate Report was written by a relatively small group of scientists who all spoke the same language. The IPPC Fifth Assessment Report was written by a large group who spoke different languages.
-
NorrisM at 04:06 AM on 3 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
MA Rodger and michael sweet,
Thanks for your responses. I plan to spend time reading at least Chapter 12 of the Climate Report before I get back to you on SLR. I find the Climate Report much more readable than the IPCC Fifth Assessment.
-
Argus at 03:40 AM on 3 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
The top post states: "White ice is reflective, but dark oceans aren’t. When sea ice sitting on top of the ocean melts, the Arctic surface becomes less reflective, absorbing more sunlight, which in turn melts more ice in what’s known as a “positive feedback.”
It's not that simple. That's not the whole truth. The people who wrote that must live in quite another place, where the sun is above their heads.
Here are a couple of factors that work in the other direction: 1.Ice covered by snow also acts like a blanket, and protects the relative warmth underneath it from escaping. 2.There is almost no sunshine in the winter to be absorbed in the Arctic; the angle of incidence of the few hours of sunlight available is just a couple of degrees, at which angle almost all radiation is reflected from the water surface.
Moderator Response:[DB] "there is almost no sunshine in the winter to be absorbed in the Arctic"
There is almost no darkness in Arctic summer. Winter and summer cancel out, inconveniently for you. Over the course of the year, water without ice absorbs more energy from the sun than water covered by ice. This is well-understood and not contentious in any way.
-
John Hartz at 01:09 AM on 3 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Speaking of severe weather events in the US during the current Winter season...
Once-in-a-generation flooding possible in Boston — for the second time this year by Matthew Cappucci, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, Mar 1, 2018
'Bomb cyclone' forms as flood threat sparks 'LIFE & DEATH' warning by Faith Karimi & Joe Sterling, CNN, Mar 2, 2018
Major Coastal Flooding, Hurricane-Force Wind Gusts Expected From Friday's Nor'easter by Jeff Masters, Category 6, Weather Underground, Mar 1, 2018
-
michael sweet at 23:15 PM on 2 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
NorrisM:
You object to my statement at 153 that "Your claim of 11 inches of sea level rise by 2100 is false." I am sorry. In attempting to shorten my post I misspoke. I intended to say that your claim at 152 suggesting that you supported the IPCC 1meter of rise was deliberately false and intended to short cut the discussion. Your claim has consistently been 11 inches. Please link to a statement where you supported a 1 meter claim.
This entire discussion began with your claiming that mitagating AGW would provbide employment and was good. You have not stated where you will put the millions of climate refugees that Canada will have to take in by 2100. Please address where you will house all these people in your country.
You have made the completely usupported claim that reducing CO2 emissions might harm the economy. I have provided two technical reports that claim reducing CO2 will provide millions of jobs and reduce energy cost at no danger to other sections of the economy (except fossil fuels) and the Stern Report which documented years ago that reducing CO2 would provide much more benefits than harm. Since then the cost of renewable energy has plummeted so the benefits would be much greater. I will conceed that Stern has said they underestimated the damage from AGW and the benefit would be greater than they estimated.
You must provide a reference to a peer reviewed economic report that claims reducing CO2 will harm the economy or withdraw your absurd claim.
You must say where you expect the 650 million refugeees from sea level rise to go and describe how Canada will house their share of these persons. We will leave the refugees from drought unaccounted for.
You must link a comment you made at SkS where you support the IPCC median sea level rise as 1 meter and conceed the damage it would cause. If you cannot you must withdraw your claim at 152 that you have supported that amount of damage.
In previous comments you have dodged these questions and changed the topic of discussion. We need to answer them so that the discussion can proceed on. Please do not change the topic again.
-
MA Rodger at 20:18 PM on 2 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
NorrisM @181.
I will admit that it was not clear to me that the period for which you appled that 11" SLR was 2018-2100 (rather than 2000-2100) and that your 11" was therefore not outside the limit set out in the 2017 Climate Science Special Report. It does set a linear projection of current rates to set that lower limit which is much the same method as you employed. I was wrong to state your 11" lay outside their lowest limit.
Yet your talk of "casting aspersions on the intent" rather trumps any contrition on my part. You feel content to bandy a level of SLR for the century that sits at the lowest limit.
If nothing else, this ignores all the places which, balanced by other places which will see less than the average SLR, those places which will see SLR above the global mean, places like Miami which has to contend with a sinking coast line. Note that up-thread @137 the talk that spawned your 11" was of Miami.
But it is not "nothing else." You may feel your arguments hold water but your argument require the acceptance of unbelievable inconsistencies. You tell us you disgree with "proposals that could seriously harm many of the poor in this world" which sounds all very commendable. You would therefore be arguing that the impacts from AGW-mitigation under,say, RCP2.6 would harm "the poor in this world" far more than the AGW prevented by such mitigation.
So where does your 11" SLR fit into all this? Doesn't that 2017 Report say that the 12" lower limit to 21st century SLR is very unlikely, and this even under the RPC2.6 scenario? Doesn't it say it is impossible under BAU? You are being insincere or silly with your magicing away multi-foot SLR. You argue that AGW mitigation measures are unnecessary but cite reduced AGW impacts that require those mitigation measures to have been enacted.
Do you not then see why your arguments here attract the description "false"?
-
nigelj at 15:50 PM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Sunspot cycles in recent decades barely cause a wobble in increasing global temperatures.They might affect winter weather, but aren't by definition the only factor.
Temperatures in the artic are currently 35 degrees above historical averages, and are affecting fundamental circulation patterns. This seems far more likely to be the most important factor in europes current storms, especially given that a mechanism has been explained by the experts.
-
NorrisM at 15:22 PM on 2 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
OPOF @ 182
I have just reread your comment at 98 and, again, there are so many "factual statements' in there that are unsupported that I do not know where to start. I do admit that Africa is a problem all by itself.
I have zero data to support this but my suspicion is that the poor who have benefitted from fossil fuels are largely in China and India where there are political systems that are not so corrupt as to deny the poor any chance. But we are a far way from talking climate change.
When talking about the poor, my real thought is the farmer somewhere who uses some form of locomotion powered by fossil fuels to farm his land and who relies on trucking of some sort to deliver his product to other transmission points which then allow his product to be exported to other parts of the world again relying on fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels, these tractors will sit in the fields. They will not be powered by EV tractors and then transported by railroads powered by electricity simply because the cost per product produced will be too high. The fields will return to nature. At the same time, the diesel generators needed to provide the electricity for an emergency operation to save his daughter from some life threatening event will not be there. Until we have a viable storage system for solar power we cannot rely on solar power in outlying areas. We need diesel power as a backup.
You talk about the millions of people who will be displaced by climate change but ignore the millions of people who will die from being cut off from a cheap source of energy that has for the first time allowed them (like the farmer referenced above) to produce a product that is not only for their consumption but can be sold to provide them with the resources to have a better diet or to perhaps fund an education for their children.
I will limit my comments to the above because we could go on forever on this topic. There are no "studies" that I know of that have examined how the poor of this world could survive if we cut off their access to cheap energy.
The underlying issue is that we as humans have leveraged energy beyond what our own bodies can produce to develop the society we presently live in. For the last 200 years it has been fossil fuels that have propelled us to where we are so that you are able to use a computer and the internet to communicate your thoughts on this website.
We have realized that the use of fossil fuels is complicating our future because of what it is doing to the atmosphere, our land areas and to the oceans and the organisms that live in it. So we have to do something about it. But until we have developed viable ways to replace fossil fuels, we cannot just cut humanity off from this lifeblood of our civilization. We will have to live and deal with the consequences of not being able to do so.
This website is devoted to convincing people that there is a problem. I clearly accept that there is a problem. I am not totally convinced as to how sensitive our climate is to the massive increases in CO2 but I agree that we should be "covering our bets". The real issue is what can we and what should we do about it given the present state of knowledge.
OPOF, perhaps this is why I have limited my responses to you!! You get into philosophy and that takes a lot of time and words which I am sure most do not want to read.
-
chriskoz at 11:58 AM on 2 March 2018Actions today will decide Antarctic ice sheet loss and sea level rise
Antarctica is now discharging 1.93 trillion tons of ice each year, up from about 1.89 trillion tons per year in 2008
When talking about SLR contribution, you should look at the ice mass balance, i.e. difference between accumulation and discharge. Accumulation number by itself is meaningless, esp. if warming sub-zeroC temperature results in higher snow precipitation. There is an abrupt tipping point though, when air temp reaches freezing point and snow turns to rain but Antarctica is far away from that point yet.
The only sentence about the ice balance in the article
When accounting for snow accumulation, the continent is losing about 183 billion tons of ice per year
Doesn't say how much the balance has been changing in the last decade and if the loss's been accelerating. Hansen 2012, for example claims that the loos has been doubling every 7-10 years and that's the number we should concentrate on here as we talk about SLR prediction as antarctic IS loss wil be dominant contribution to future SLR. But the number's missing in the article.
The interesting number to note though, is that ice mass exchange due to melting from below and accumulating from above is ATM 10 times bigger than the ice loss (simlarly to CO2 exchange with the ocean). I wonder if it's going to stay that way (i.e. snow precipitation steadily increases in the warming weather until an abrupt tipping point metionaed above) or we are going to see the ratio lowering as the gap in favour of melting inevitably increases. So far, the ratio is big enough so that, theoreticaly at least, we could slow down the melting by inducing more precipitation of we knew how (aerosol spraying?) before the radiation balance & climate is stabilised.
-
nigelj at 07:22 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Alchemyst @17
No offence taken. I realise comments get rushed sometimes, but I wanted it made clear I never made such a claim.
Basicially you are not reading what I say and responding directly to it. Therefore you totally fail to convince me of anything. Instead you are just repeating yourself.
You are also contradicting yourself. If you believe the sunspot thory is "just stochastic" ( I assume you meant just a random sort of correlation) why do you keep repeating it? If you go on repeating it, I will interpret this as meaning you support it.
The article I referenced took no liberties with the data. Climate scientists have apparently postulated that the current cold weather in Europe is related to current high arctic temperatures and jet stream changes thats all. Its quite a good theory. Are you saying they are not entitled to postulate a theory? Remember we have empirical evidence that the jet stream has changed.
Nobody has claimed all storms in Europe are being caused by recent climate change. The recent warming trend in the artic is probably just making them more frequent or longer lasting, as the changed jet stream lets more cold air move south than normal. This may also have happened in the 1940s and 1960's, but its pretty obvious that higher temperatures in recent decades can only make it happen more frequently now.
The article I mentioned also references Europe and the arctic as a whole, not the UK and greenland. I mean, theres a pretty significant difference.
And Dana is talking about artic warming is causing je stream changes that are affecting North Americas weather. It seems plausible that if this is the case in America, it could also be the case in Europe. Its stupid to dismiss this, just because we had one particularly cold year in 1962.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 06:54 AM on 2 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
NorrisM@181,
You claim "We all have the interests of humanity at heart. We just have different views on what is the best way to get there. When I see proposals that could seriously harm many of the poor in this world and I personally have some reluctance to some of these proposed changes and my perceived view of how these changes could impact them."
That claim appears to be based on a perceived 'better understanding of what is going on' than I presented in my comment @98. Please explain in detail which specific parts of what I presented in my comment @98 you can 'correct for my benefit' to help me better understand how to best help sustainably improve the future for all of humanity, including genuinely sustainably helping the poorest to live a better life'.
-
Alchemyst at 06:21 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
nigelj
Sorry if I caused offence, it was your reference that was taking liberties with the data. I think that the original article in this site is balanced. The problem starts when these papers are mis reported.
-
Alchemyst at 06:13 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Moderator,
now do you know the significance of 1962 weather in Britain? I find it exraordinary that
"Arctic warmer than much of Europe is a worrying sign of climate change"
is the headline in the ref niegelj posted.
The headline of the newspaper article states that the reversal of temperature between W Europe
is linked with climate change, yet this pattern of weather has been observed
(or has got proxies worked out by Mann!) for 350 years.page 17 of the Burt report shows that in 1962. Greenland was significantly warmer than normal and Britain had an extremely anomalously low temperature.
A pattern of weather that peridically hits europe and has been recorded in 26 winters in 350 years with very strong correlation with the low of sunspots activity
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta
I have never attribted a causal link, yet swampfoxh is strongly insinuating it.
I think you should moderate others.
Moderator Response:[PS] You appear to arguing a strawman. The "unprecedented" statement in the linked paper states
"We further find an unprecedented increase in NAJ variance since the 1960s, which co-occurs with enhanced late twentieth century variance in the Central and North Pacific Basin."
It does not state that jetstream events have not happened in past or that other cold/ warm events have not happened for other causes. Nothing presented so far by you contradicts the paper conclusion.
Misunderstandings with other commentators would be less likely if you took the approach I suggested further down: State what you accept. State what you disagree with and why.
-
nigelj at 06:03 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Alchemyst @8 - 10.
I didn't personally call anything 'unprecedented'. The article I referenced described how this current stormy cold weather in Europe is well explained by changes to the polar vortex and jet stream and this in turn is caused by climate change. The theory does fit the evidence pretty well.
I dont know whether the research paper linking cold weather in europe to sunspots has gained wide acceptance. However cold weather In Europe could be partly influenced by sunspot activity as well as changes to the jet stream.
The more important point is the arctic has been warming for decades here . There were some hot individual years back in the 1940s, however temperatures are clearly higher now "on average" than at any point in the last 100 years and this is the most important thing to understand. This can all potentially change weather systems a lot, because of how weather systems originate. And arctic temperaturtes are predicted to get a lot higher yet by 2100.
-
Alchemyst at 04:53 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
swampfoxh
I have never stated that there is any causal link between cold winters in W europe and sunspots.
here is the peer review report linking sunspot activity with cold weather in England,
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta
spooky
Please read the royal met office report warm air every so often slip up by Greenland, 1962 and 2017 and seemingly 2011(not checked). These pulses in cold temperature have been going on for over 300 years and the last three have had warm temperature anomalies in Greenland.
I think that the onus to link this effect to climate change is on the proponents at the moment sunspots has more credibility, but if you want my opinion it is probably stochastic.
-
Alchemyst at 04:38 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
Swampfox, there is a reference to the royal metrological office, from the Imperial College London the top science university in Britain (OK Cambs is pretty good to). Now you cannot get more authority than that. However if you wish to dispute the met office and Imperial college! The data from the met office report is all peer reviewed
Seemingly 2011 had a warmer Greenland (7.8 C) than this year, it is only a blog but it refers to a danish met office document. that was the same winter as the last big freeze in europe.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/kapMorrisJesup?src=hash
As to sunspots, there is a peer reiew out there that these events in western europe have a strong corrolation, that does not give any link though it is intriguing is it real effect or hocus pocus, I do not no, for me its a bit spooky, I do not want to believe it. but there it is
I'm not really bothered if you do not give creedance to the fact that this weather pattern occurs regularly, it does. Warm air goes up Greenland cold air comes through Europe first law of thermodynamics.
the pattern in the 1962-3 winter temperature anomalies in the imperial college match closely the current situation.
-
swampfoxh at 03:47 AM on 2 March 2018What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?
alchemyst may not notice that he raises a common issue we layperson's often deal with on a science site. Let me explain: A peer-reviewed "discovery" will present a set of facts (with or without causality). The evidence support the facts, even though there is a slight chance that another set of evidence might support the facts. To me the problem is connectivity. Let me eplain this problem: Your dog gets hit and killed by a car. The "evidence and facts" that cause the death of your dog won't change the fact that your dog is dead, but oftentimes people go on and on about the efficacy of their given set of facts and argue their set of facts against your set of facts. Meanwhile, the dog is still dead. I think Alchemyst owes us a lot more corroboration (and proofs) that his "climate events" in the 1960s are of the same "pedigree" as the climate events described by the CCL people above or that his 1960s climate events make the 2018 climate events the result of sunspots (etc) rather than increases in average planetary temp (etc).
Am I "all wet" about this point of view?
-
NorrisM at 03:02 AM on 2 March 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5
MA Rodger @ 180
Am I missing something here on simple math (not regression analysis)? If the lower limit predicted by the Climate Report is 12" for the period 2000 -2100, then that means, based upon simple math, that we have about 10" of sea level rise to go from 2020 to 2100 (you will see I am rounding). So how is my 11" SLR even outside the range?
But my basic point, which I have made in other comments on this website (that referenced Steve Koonin) is that the use of the word "false" (by michael sweet) rather than the word "incorrect" as used by you above, is inappropriate unless you truly believe that the person making that statement has some ill intent.
We all have the interests of humanity at heart. We just have different views on what is the best way to get there. When I see proposals that could seriously harm many of the poor in this world and I personally have some reluctance to some of these proposed changes and my perceived view of how these changes could impact them. This is not ill intent. We just disagree on things but our disagreement is based upon a different view of the facts utilizing our powers of reason. There is no problem with this. It is casting aspersions on the intent of people that I have a problem with.
Prev 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 Next
