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nigelj at 07:10 AM on 8 August 2017Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year
Well said. Government (tax payer) subsising of producers doesnt make economic sense. The fossil fuel industry is not some new industry needing help to get started, its generally an established and generally strong industry so hardly needs subsidies.
This is obviously pandering to powerful lobby groups with political influence, and a gullible public scared to say enough is enough. It's certainlly not free market capitalism and self reliance, more a form of back door socialism for corporates and the well connected.
Keeping prices artifically low distorts the market and is just a complex money go round, and over encourages consumption. It would be better to just to give direct government income support to poor people for them to spend on essential basics. This is more transparent, and doesn't create awful problems like in Venezuela where cheap petrol leads to people sneaking across the border to buy the petrol in bulk.
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nigelj at 06:36 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
The whole animation timing thing raises the issue is slowing things down to highlight a particular period a clarification or potential bias or manipulation? Hard to say, and people probably will never agree especially the climate denialists.
I like Pauls suggestion. Labelling the graph as time isn't linear is a very good way of resolving the issue. Nobody can claim deceit then.
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nigelj at 06:33 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
MA Rodger @12
Yes it clearly does slow down from quite early on now that you have measured it. Interesting because I thought it might be slowing from about 1950 or before, I but wasn't sure. 1980 was when I felt certain. I suppose this is just how my visual perception works.
I felt the designer of the animation might have been trying to highlight the "modern" post 1970s warming period as Tom pointed out, and also perhaps the regional differences in rates recently, with all the red ink towards europe and asia.
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nigelj at 06:14 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Tom13 @8, yes true the article used the example of Dallas to make its point on possible future trends, just so it had some real world examples to talk about. However you miss my point. As was pointed in response to your first post, you can't take one year of 1980 and draw conclusions, as the weather that year could be very non typical, then you go and do the exact same thing and pick this year, which appears to have unusually few record setting days. So your starting point was deceptive. These things need wider data over several years to try to find the average or typical pattern for the year. Thats all I'm saying.
Regarding future temperature projections I can only completely agree with comments by M Sweet. You cannot just project the recent temperature trend forward. You have to look at IPCC predictions and how that may work out for Dallas. Therefore their expectations of 28 record setting days is not unrealistic.
In some ways the original article is frustrating by focussing in on specific cities because we cannot be so absolutely 100% certain about specific cities. I think the pertinent thing is global average temperatures are increasing, and will increase further, and are expected to accelerate. This will not have precisely uniform affects and its hard to be certain about specific locations due to regional climate factors. But its highly likely Dallas will at least see a lot more very hot days by end of century, whatever the exact number is.
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Paul D at 04:00 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Tom@11
"I am not so certain the criticism is. First, it is not the case that strictly linear scales are used on all graphs. Log or exponential scales are quite normal in scientific use."
True, but such graphs should be clearly marked. The animation should indicate that the time base isn't linear.
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michael sweet at 03:11 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Tom13,
This is not the exact graph I referenced above but section (a) has the same information (source IPCC AR5):
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michael sweet at 03:00 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Tom13,
Since CO2 pollution has dramatically increased over the past few decades why would anyone expect the rate of warming to stay the same as it was when pollution rates were much lower?
"Are either of those projected rates of warming even close to a reasonable estimate."
The rate of warming is expected to increase in the future, especially if nothing is done to reduce emissions. According to the IPCC AR5 Summary for Policy Makers the expected global warming by 2100 is 4C (page 11) for RPC 8.5 (note the high end of the projection is 5.5C). You are making an argument from incredulity because you have not read the background information. Just because you do not know what the projections are does not mean that they are not reasonable. I note that you have not cited a single link to support your argument. I have provided links to support my claims.
If you want to post calculations to a scientific blog like SkS it is your responsibility to read the background material. It is not my responsibiity to spoon feed you material that everyone knows. Arguments from incredulity are not convincing. Reading the SPM linked above would be a good start.
The projections of future warming are shocking!! Imagine living in Dallas when the temperature is 10F warmer! It was only about 2F warmer in 2011. Farmers sold off most of their herds and millions of trees died. Children born today will be alive in 2100. Action needs to be taken immediately to prevent this catastrophe.
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John Hartz at 00:06 AM on 8 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
New Zeland's Natonal Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) just releaesed the results of an analysis similar to that conducted by Climate Central as described in the OP's Story of the Week.
From the NWIS news release...
Wellington city will have warmer autumns, almost a month of days over 25°C and up to 10 per cent more winter rain by 2090, according to a new NIWA climate report.
The Climate Change Report for Wellington Region has just been released that shows specific weather changes for the capital, Kapiti Coast, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa for the first time.
One of the most startling projections shows an increase for Wellington city from six hot days (over 25°C) a year now to 26 days by 2090. In the Wairarapa, that figure goes from 24 days now, to 94 in just over 70 years.
Wellington will get significantly warmer, new climate change report shows, NWIS News Release, Aug 7, 2017
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Tom13 at 22:33 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Nigel - Tom @3, you cannot really take about 9 months of data from one city and develop conclusions. The city may have had non typical weather that year, and one city would not necessarily be typical of the entire country anyway.
You would need several years of data from a random sample of a dozen cities, then compute an average of everything. Then see how that compares with the theory.
Nigel - I used data from Dallas starting in 1899 through june 2017. Further - I used Dallas because this article highlighted Dallas and it was a good example. In summary, in order to achieve the projected number of days over 105 by the year 2050, the rate of warming would need to increase by approx 200%.
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Tom13 at 22:26 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Michael - Because Dallas is an important city you could Google the expected temperature increases online. According to a widget (from Climate Central) in this newspaper article, Dallas should expect a 10F increase by 2100. This was the first hit in my Google search.
10f = 5.55c over 83 years - I presume you noticed that rate of warming is approx 3x the current rate of warming.
temperatures are expected to rise about 5.9 F worldwide by 2100 for BAU.
5.9f = 3.278c over 83 years - that rate is approx 2.2x the current rate of warming.
Are either of those projected rates of warming even close to a reasonable estimate.
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BaerbelW at 21:19 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
I contacted Antti Lipponen who created the graphic to ask about the animation slowing down towards the end. Here is his response:
"...When I was creating the video my idea was to emphasize the most recent years so that is why I made slower in the end. This was not done in particular to emphasize the recent warming but to emphasize where we are at the moment. I thought general public would be more interested in current state of the climate than the early 1900's. ..."
"And regardless of what data would have shown as temperatures I would have done the same selection and slowed it down in the end."
Hope this clarifies things!
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MA Rodger at 20:37 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
It is interesting that our various 'thunbnail' analyses have identified wildly differing timings for points of inflection in the rate of the passing years in the video.
Ignoring the unreasoned call to "back off" @7, I note from a more thorough analysis that the sequence of years-per-second through the video as:-
5 5 5 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 5 4 3 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 2 2
This is not the smoothest of sequences but if there is an arguable inflection point it is very early, in the 1920s or 1930s. From that point, the rate of passing years per second is reducing pretty-much in a linear fashion (-0.145y/sec).
On that basis I would state (with a little more assertion) that the criticisms set out here by PaulD @2 are ill-founded as it is entirely incorrect to state "the animation slows down at the end." The animation slows down pretty-much throughtout.
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Tom Curtis at 16:44 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
With regard to the video, I started determining the number of years in each five second interval. That made it look like there were two inflection points, which I then checked with the results below:
1900-1950 (9 seconds; 0.18 sec/year)
1951-2000 (13 seconds; 0.26 sec/year)
2001-2016 (6 seconds; 0.38 sec/year)
That will not be precise, but from the evidence, the inflection point is closer to 1950 than 1980. Indeed, I initially checked a 1960 initial inflection points, which was falsified. So, Paul D's obserservation was correct.
I am not so certain the criticism is. First, it is not the case that strictly linear scales are used on all graphs. Log or exponential scales are quite normal in scientific use. They are used, among other reasons, to allow details that would otherwise be missed to be apparent. Arguably the more rapid rate of change in the second half of the 20th century, and again since 2000 (with the last few years of data) require the extra time to appreciate the changes.
Second, it is also arguable that by changing the rate, the graph gives a false impression of a reduced temperature trend at the end of the series. That is, the change of rate, down plays the rate of warming even as it increases the focus on the warmest years. IMO any effect to either direction is removed by the inclusion of the graph of Global Mean Surface Temperature which. That, I take it, is Daniel Bailey's point.
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Paul D at 15:30 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
BaerbelW@9
I have tried the The Consensus Project visualisation in Firefox and Chrome and none of the SVG graphics interaction works. The only thing that does work are the drop down menus, which are HTML.
It doesn't seem to matter where on screen the slider and other graphics are.
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BaerbelW at 13:59 PM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Paul (@8) - The Interactive History of Climate Science is still there and working AFAICT. It's also still listed on the resource menu but should also be added to the resource page where I just saw that it's not listed.
The Consensus Project visualisation works as it should - the slider just doesn't work when it's too close to the bottom of the screen but that happens with other buttons in that area as well. Scrolling the page up a bit will make it work.
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nigelj at 11:13 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Tom @3, you cannot really take about 9 months of data from one city and develop conclusions. The city may have had non typical weather that year, and one city would not necessarily be typical of the entire country anyway.
You would need several years of data from a random sample of a dozen cities, then compute an average of everything. Then see how that compares with the theory.
The last IPCC found heatwaves have already increased globally on average, with high certainty. They also predict this will increase further as a general trend, but not at the same rate in every city.
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michael sweet at 11:11 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Tom13,
According to the original link of the widget at Climate Central, temperatures are expected to rise about 5.9 F worldwide by 2100 for BAU. Since it warms less over the ocean than the land and less in the tropics than in the temperate zone, we might expect the rise to be significantly greater at DFW than the global average. This is a much faster rate of increase than you used. The distribution of higher temperatures is not always directly proportional to the increase in temperatures because the higher temperatures encourage drought which also increases temperatures.
Because Dallas is an important city you could Google the expected temperature increases online. According to a widget (from Climate Central) in this newspaper article, Dallas should expect a 10F increase by 2100. This was the first hit in my Google search.
Summary: seat of the pants calculations posted on line are not as accurate as studies by experienced scientists at Climate Central.
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Paul D at 07:08 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Re: My comment at 7.
'Interactive History of Climate Science' has been removed.
'The Consensus Project' visualisation is broken! The timeline slider doesn't work.Been a while since I last checked them out. If anyone wants me to fix the The Consensus Project visualisation please email me.
Moderator Response:[PS] Requesting someone follow up to you.
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Paul D at 07:02 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Hey back off folks.
I am the developer of three of the interactive visualisations on this site.
1. Interactive History of Climate Science
2. History of Climate Science (interactive timeline)
3. The Consensus ProjectThe history of global warming animation on Youtube does not maintain the same time interval for the years from begining to end, that would be fine if that change was clearly stated, but it is not.
We criticise skeptics continously for doctoring data and graphs to emphasise their beliefs.
We shouldn't be doing something like it ourselves. -
Tom13 at 06:45 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
My apologies for losing the link on the DFW average temps, It should be weather.gov. (again my apologies for misplacing the link)
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Tom13 at 06:43 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Michael - you make a good point regarding averages. Reviewing the averages and trends should create some doubt into the validity of the study. So far in 2017, DFW has only had a four days over 100, (100.0, 100.0, 100.9 & 104.0) Converting F to Celsius, is 5/9, 5degrees f = 2.7778c. The current warming trend is in the range of 1.5c (ish) per century. So in order to go from an average 2-3 days per year over 105 to 28 or so per year per the study, the rate of warming over the next 33 years would need to be approx 150% of the current rate of warming over a century. While the study's conclusion of 28 days a year in DFW over 105 is possible, it doesnt seem plausible, when you compare the trends or the averages.
In summary a quick cross check of the math, the trends and the averages doesnt support the conclusion of the study.
FWIW, the average July temp in DFW (Dallas) has increased approx 2.0F from 1900 to 2017, while the average aug temp since 1900 through 2017 has remained remarkably flat.
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michael sweet at 05:31 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Tom13,
Yes, the author is claiming that in 2050 the average year will have as many days over 105F as the record year with the most days that hot in the past. Some years will be higher and some wil be lower (for a little while). You are comparing a record year (one that stands out as very high in the record) to the average year in the projection. The current average looks to me to be about 3 days per year. The hot years you mention will be a substantial fraction of those days. When the average number increases that much it will seriously affect plants and animals.
In summary: there is a difference between an average and a record.
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Tom13 at 04:28 AM on 7 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
The story of the week predicts 25 days of heat over 105f by the year 2025.
Is the author of the story unaware that DFW had 28 days over 105 in 1980,. DFW also had 17 days over 105 in 2011. In summary, the author is predicting that is will take 40+ years for dfw to experience what the DFW metroplex experienced in 1980.
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Cmtg729 at 01:44 AM on 7 August 2017It's methane
The sources that explain the rise of methane in the atmosphere, its dangers, why graphs need to updated to explain escaping methane from fracking pipes:
Www.thinkprogress.org/methane-leaks-erase-climate-benefit
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ubrew12 at 23:08 PM on 6 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Paul D@2 said: "giving an (false) emphasis to the... years at the end of the sequence" You mean the present? As creatures caught in time, we view the present more emphatically than the past. The animation recognizes this, and compensates for it.
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MA Rodger at 14:19 PM on 6 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
nigelj @4,
It is perhaps best to say that the animation "stops" at the end and as you point out, that the slowing begins at about 1980 where the rate of passing decades drops from every two seconds to every three seconds. The rate further drops again from 2000 where it drops to a decade in four seconds. This post-2000 slowing could be argued, less as "an (false) emphasis to the warmer few years at the end of the sequence" and more as suggestive of a 'false slowdown' in the warming - and that is something usually getting a scientific thumbs-down when it occurs, it being not "scientifically accurate."
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nigelj at 13:22 PM on 6 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
Digby Scorgie just adding a further comment, yes we do handle large temperature fluctuations day to day, through adaptations, through necessity, but long term changes are different in substance, and its our choice whether we reduce emissions, or chance it and hope things work out. Or so it seems to me.
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nigelj at 13:13 PM on 6 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
Digbie Scorgie @9, I dont think anyone is fundamentally disagreeing with you or missing the point. Maybe just looking at other aspects of it.
I mean you are definitely right. I would put it this way. Plus or minus 4 degrees both equals very significant global scale problems. Just one example, both scenarios could drive a lot of climate refugees, the difference being that warming could be faster than a cooling period leading to an ice age, so harder for target countries to absorb, so more potential political and practical problems.
But neither scenario is great, and creates a domino effect of practical, political and social problems that will challenge a stable global order.
We have evolved during about 10,000 years of relative climate stability and it enabled development of settled farming. I dont like the way we are altering stability, too many unknowns and it's hard to see many up sides.
I have a book called Adventures in the Anthropocence which deals with some of this, but haven't read much of it yet.
Humans are adaptable creatures, but not infinitely so, and adaptation requires effort that might be better spent elsewhere.
That's my two cents worth anyway. It's an extremely interesting issue.
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nigelj at 11:06 AM on 6 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
The animation doesn't really slow down just at the end. It appears to me to start slowing down from about 1980.
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Daniel Bailey at 08:48 AM on 6 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
"giving an (false) emphasis to the warmer few years at the end of the sequence"
What, you mean the warmest years on record?
How's this, then, for scientific accuracy?
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Digby Scorgie at 08:23 AM on 6 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
I think people are missing my point. We routinely deal with quite a wide range of temperatures in our lives — a few tens of degrees. But when it comes to average global temperatures it looks as if plus or minus four degrees (or even less) is about the limit for an "organized global community". That's a remarkably narrow range.
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Paul D at 07:56 AM on 6 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Regarding the animation in the video.
It appears that the animation slows down at the end giving an (false) emphasis to the warmer few years at the end of the sequence. Not good IMO.
A visualisation shouldn't need to to that, especially if it supposed to be scientifically accurate.
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ubrew12 at 02:25 AM on 6 August 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
The link to "Earth to warm 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, studies say" by Ashley Strickland, CNN, isn't working. I found it here.
Moderator Response:[JH] Glitch fixed. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
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Tom Dayton at 00:38 AM on 6 August 2017CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming
August 2017 commentary article by J.R. Pierce in J. of Geophysical Research, Atmospheres--"Cosmic rays, aerosols, clouds, and climate: Recent findings from the CLOUD experiment." Abstract:
The Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment was created to systematically test the link between galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) and climate; specifically the connection of ions from GCRs to aerosol nucleation and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), the particles on which cloud droplets form. The CLOUD experiment subsequently unlocked many of the mysteries of nucleation and growth in our atmosphere, and it has improved our understanding of human influences on climate. Their most recent publication [Gordon et al., 2017] provides their first estimate of the GCR-CCN connection, and they show that CCN respond too weakly to changes in GCRs to yield a significant influence on clouds and climate.
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Swayseeker at 00:49 AM on 5 August 2017Study finds human influence in the Amazon's third 1-in-100 year drought since 2005
A while ago I spent a lot of time drawing graphs with land air temperatures and sea temperatures featured. Usually, when sea temperatures are higher than land air temperatures there is more rain (with my studies anyway). 1) When land air temperatures are higher than sea temperatures and the air blows to sea, the sea cools it down. This means that water may even condense, but the air becomes more near saturation point and does not readily take up moisture from the sea. 2) If the air is cooler than the sea then the sea warms it up, RH drops and the air readily takes up moisture. In case 2 the air has more moisture than it started with and when it blows back with sea breezes, etc, then it can deposit its moisture as rain.
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nigelj at 13:47 PM on 4 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
Driving by, yes glacial cycles do happen very slowly over several thousands of years, and the next one is predicted somewhere from 15,000 - 50,000 years time, triggered by a known planetary cycle. I confess I like skiing as well.
However ice sheets covered more than just the polar regions, and covered a lot of canada etc. The following includes maps of the last ice age peak around14,000 bc compared to today:
However as you say it was a slow process, and new coastal land was exposed. Its easier to adapt to that sort of scenario. Also theres a belief that the warming already locked in will reduce the worst aspects of the next ice age.
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scaddenp at 13:29 PM on 4 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
While obviously temperatures need to be range to support photosynthesis, but the real issue for extinctions etc is rate of change rather than absolute temperatures. Our civilization has an awful lot of assets that cant move quickly. Local disruptions to agriculture cause a lot of problems. Disruption on a global scale is really testing.
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nigelj at 13:27 PM on 4 August 2017Study finds human influence in the Amazon's third 1-in-100 year drought since 2005
Large areas are at the very least going to be rather inhospitable. But I suspect a lot of the wealthy classes are likely thinking they, and their children can buy their way out of climate problems, and they control the agenda on whether emissions are cut. Thats your big problem, and it's 100% a political problem.
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DrivingBy at 12:23 PM on 4 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
"Humanity doesn't have much wiggle room!"
I'm not a climatologist, but to my limited understanding glaciers advance rather slowly (thus the phrase 'glacial pace'). Further, as glaciers cover the near-polar latitudes, the sea retreats. The land exposed is sunnier and richer than the land covered, so it's a net gain in liveability, or so I'd guess.
Besides that, I like ice. The skiing, skating and ice-sailing would be awesome!
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wili at 11:52 AM on 4 August 2017Study finds human influence in the Amazon's third 1-in-100 year drought since 2005
Soooo, large parts of South America are likely to become basically uninhabitable. In other news, it looks like the same is going to be true of major parts of densely populated South Asia.
Deadly heat waves projected in the densely populated agricultural regions of South Asia
Suddenly the Wallace-Wells piece from the NYMag a while back doesn't seem that out of line...
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Digby Scorgie at 11:25 AM on 4 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
To add to my comment above, there is this statement by Dr Kevin Anderson to the effect that "four degrees is inconsistent with an organized global community". The deniers have no reason not to worry.
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Digby Scorgie at 11:20 AM on 4 August 2017Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases
So an increase of 6 or 7 degrees gets us a mass extinction, whereas a decrease of about 5 degrees gets us an Ice Age. Humanity doesn't have much wiggle room!
To put it in context, then, the 2 degrees of Paris is about a third of a mass extinction and the projected 4 degrees by the end of the century is two-thirds of a mass extinction.
Oh, and you have to note, kmoyd, that under business as usual the temperature passes through 4 degrees at the end of the century on its way to 6 degrees, which is a full mass extinction.
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scaddenp at 07:50 AM on 4 August 2017Study finds human influence in the Amazon's third 1-in-100 year drought since 2005
Hmm. I would say the effect of global warming on ENSO is unsettled science, and while current reviews (eg Huang and Xie 2015) favour more frequent El Nino and more extremes of both, I dont see support for a permanent El NIno. Given modeller concerns about how well models produce ENSO behaviour, I wouldnt jump to conclusions yet.
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Alexandre at 06:34 AM on 4 August 2017Study finds human influence in the Amazon's third 1-in-100 year drought since 2005
This paper based on climate models suggests that with further warming we should have a permanent El Nino-like weather behaviour, making the Amazon basin drier and the La Plata basin (further south) wetter.
On top of that, the forest cover is also important to bring water from the coast to the inner continent. (here, for instance)
We're inflicting damage on both fronts.
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nigelj at 06:17 AM on 4 August 2017Explainer: California’s new ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme to cut emissions
Swayseeker @3
Your idea is to plant palm oil trees in California to absorb CO2 and use this as carbon offset credits to make money.
This doesnt make much sense to me. Palm oil trees do not have special, particularly large abilities to absorb CO2.
California is currently intensively farmed, and a huge producer of fruits and crops and It wouldnt make much sense to replace this with palm oil trees. These existing crops have to be grown somewhere.
And I dont think there would be millions of acres just lying vacant just to plant palm oil trees. There may be steep, unused areas where more forests could be grown.
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MA Rodger at 06:09 AM on 4 August 2017Sea Level Isn't Level: Ocean Siphoning, Levered Continents and the Holocene Sea Level Highstand
JohnWChristensen.
You question @14 was "whether siphoning has been the only or major factor, as we have plenty of research indicating that ice sheets and glaciers have grown over the past 2-3 thousand years - until about 200 years ago. ... Therefore, it would seem reasonable to assume that growth in glacier and ice sheet volume since the holoscene high stand has caused a decline in mean sea level, and that also the ocean sea bed should have been lifting in response to the reduced ocean volume."
If we are talking "major" factors, there is but one. The highstand is the result of siphoning. The literature is still trying to nail down the timing of the final reductions in ice volumes (eg see Bradley et al 2016) which are greatly more significant than any increases in ice volume through the late holocene. Changes in sea level through recent millennia have been found to be very small. See for instance Kopp et al (2016) whose Fig1a looks like this:-
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Mike Evershed at 03:07 AM on 4 August 2017Temp record is unreliable
Sorry - should have added that I found the points about Berkley Earth starting from a sceptical position and the lower risk of confirmation bias around adjustments which are not theory breaking to be good ones.
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Mal Adapted at 03:00 AM on 4 August 2017Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
Solely for the sake of clear thinking ;^), I'm back to respond to Tom Curtis's criticism:
In your first example of the use of "the tragedy of the commons" by an ecologist, that by Berger-Tal et al, they get the use wrong even by Hardin's sense. In Hardin's sense, the 'tragedy of the commons' involves over exploitation of a resource due to common ownership.
While I cited Berger-Tal et al. merely to demonstrate that 'Tragedy of the Commons' was a current term of art in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as well as in Economics, TomC's specific criticisms may appear reasonable to non-specialists. This review article I just came across is more credible, from scientific metaliteracy if nothing else: DJ Rankin et al. 2007, The Tragedy of the Commons in Evolutionary Biology, Trends Ecol Evol 22 (12), 643-651.
I also wanted to respond to this argument of Tom's:
My point is that Hardin's use suggests that there is only one possible tragic result from use of the commons - something which is definitely false as shown by the tragic results of enclosure. In doing so it belittles the actual historical tragedy in favour of a hypothetical tragedy whose rhetorical use is to justify replicating the historical tragedy. That it has that rhetorical use does not mean it cannot, and has not been used by others in careful analysis.
I presume Tom is aware that Hardin wrote in 1998:
To judge from the critical literature, the weightiest mistake in my synthesizing paper was the omission of the modifying adjective "unmanaged."
Now, I have no personal motive to defend Garrett J. Hardin over anyone else in history, but I'm unwilling to speculate on what he was thinking in 1968. By his own words (30 years later, to be sure), he did not intend to say that the entire class of problems labeled TotCs, including global human population growth, could only have tragic endings. So why did Stephen M. Gardiner assert in 2001 that Hardin had said exactly that? (Paywalled, but this is from the first page):
In two celebrated and widely anthologized articles, as well as several books, the biologist Garrett Hardin claims (a) that the world population problem has a certain structure: it is a tragedy of the commons; and,(b) that, given this structure, the only tenable solutions involve either coercion or immense human suffering.
IMO Gardiner's argument is a straw man, illuminating his agenda more than Hardin's. Absent probative contrary evidence, we may assume even Hardin sincerely abhorred both coercion and immense human suffering. Regardless, he's not responsible for what he did not say, nor for what other people say he did. Would you have it any other way?
Summing up my position: it's evident that 'Tragedy of the Commons', as a term of disciplinary art for diverse, partially-overlapping classes of problems, is not widely considered offensive by Economists or Ecologists. Now that the term is established in both fields, efforts to replace it appear largely quixotic.
OTOH 8^D: some economists, Ostrom inter alia, have chosen 'Drama of the Commons' as equally mnemonic and more concise, by including non-tragic endings. Since April, I've been using it on appropriate bloggy threads, when I know my audience can unpack it. Ostrom's prestige may give it wings. I'll keep my eye on it 8^).
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Mike Evershed at 02:33 AM on 4 August 2017Temp record is unreliable
Thanks Guys. In view of the discussion above, I would agree that the global temperature record (sea and land) is the better measure, and because adjustments to the sea surface data rduce the long term growth trend and there are several groups working on the problem of past reconstruction, the risk of confirmation bias causing significant problems is small. That leaves the issue of "is the warming anthropogenic" (but that is for another thread and another time). Thanks especially for the courteous replies to what has been an attempt to genuinely explore the issue.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:20 AM on 4 August 2017Explainer: How data adjustments affect global temperature records
Haze@7,
A nation that has developed a large population of people eager to live a life in Denial/Delusion has no future. It can only have perceptions of temporary regional popularity and profitability.
And humanity must have a future. So, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty": The grown-ups on this amazing planet whose thoughts and actions are based on rational consideration of the best awareness and understanding of what is going on to sustainably correct/develop things for the better future of all of humanity (John Stuart Mill's "...moved by rational consideration of distant motives...") will have to act to protect the future of humanity by disappointing and angering those who have grown-up wanting to believe whatever they want to excuse what they want to get away with.
As John Stuart Mill stated in "On Liberty" (my inserted wording to apply it to a subset of humanity), “If (a) society lets a considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, (that) society has itself to blame for the consequences.”
The unacceptability of burning fossil fuels, and the likely need for leadership to act to correct incorrect damaging unsustainable development in the marketplace, was internationally established in the 1972 Stockholm Conference.
The lack of leadership to address the problem was plainly pointed out in the follow-up 1987 "Our Common Future" which includes the following blunt statement about the failure of business and government leadership (because it is driven by popularity and profitability - my suggested understanding).
"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."The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (and any future improvement of them made for Good Reason with new awareness and better understanding) clearly need to become the most popular (the highest level) measure of acceptability of the actions of leadership in business and government.
So what you are pointing out requires action by you directed at your leaders and your circle of influence. Climate scientists are continuing to expand awareness and improve the understanding of what is going on in their field. What their continued efforts have done is expose the fatal flaws of a system that is based on popularity and profitability allowing people to develop unsustainable delusions of prosperitry and opportunity.
The reality is that many of those who have tried to continue to develop on the unsustainable damaging pathways that can be regionally temporarily popular and profitable will suffer the greatest required change to their "incorrectly developed perceptions and beliefs" (easily perceived as a personal harm to be feared - but incorrect to be thought of that way).
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