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Bob Loblaw at 10:44 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM: I have also posted a comment over on the models thread.
As for your statement "I think you are saying that the observational information is not good enough to explain the increase in temperature."
No, that is not a proper interpretation. The observational information is good enough to explain the increase in temperature, for the most part, within the uncertainty limits of the observations. It's just that the uncertainty is larger the further back in time you go, and thus the power of explanation is weaker (and may always be limited).
The error in logic that is often made is to think that a larger difference means the models have failed. They have not, because we cannot know if the larger difference is due to model error or poor measurement. We also have difficulty in using that difference to improve the model, because we may be chasing an observational error, not reality.
A lot of effort is made to try to find additonal sources of information on the past. We can't go back and measure temperature at weather stations again, but we can find more lake sediments, more tree rings,, more ice cores, etc. and improve the methods of deriving temperature information from them, though.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:33 AM on 12 July 2017Models are unreliable
Also following from NorrisM's comment on the thread Tom Dayton refers to:
The model spread is also not an ideal representation of the uncertainty in the prediction, because the number of models is very limited and the type of things they include is different.
RealClimate has set up a page that discusses such things in more detail.
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bjchip at 09:50 AM on 12 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
Can "the scientists" sue these people for defamation ? Is there perhaps a class action that can be taken ordering them to cease lying or pay the penalty for it?
Yet lying in public is "protected free speech" and the only answer to it is more speech.
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Tom Curtis at 08:35 AM on 12 July 2017It's too hard
Carn @62, in recent history 4.3 to 5.3 billion bushels of corn have been used for animal feed (2011/12 to 2014/15, see table 1 here). Over the same interval, 4.6 to 5.2 billion bushels have been used for fuel alcohol, a fairly consistent 140 million bushels have been used for alcohol for manufacturing use, and human consumption, a fairly consistent 490 million bushels have been used for high fructose corn syrup, and a fairly consistent 200 million bushels have been used for cereals (ie, direct human consumption).
Now, if the 5 billion bushels used for biofuels creats a threat to human life by using essential foods, so also does the equivalent amount used for animal feed (which provides only a tenth of the human food quantity in animal protein). Likewise the much smaller amounts used for corn syrup or bourbon. Yet the people who think the amount used for biofuels leads to starvation never draw the same conclusion about those other usages, and certainly never suggest regulations restricting that use of corn so as to maximize the corn available for human consumption.
That leads me to conclude that those people do not believe their own argument; or that to the extent that they do, they do not care about people starving due to lack of corn. If they did, they would be equally concerned about the other inefficient (in terms of food content) uses of corn.
I agree that much of the biofuel industry is a boondoggle driven by a political desire to subsidize the profits of corn farmers. It is not, however, a threat to human life.
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nigelj at 08:07 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM @57
You still like this red team blue team approach, and appear to want it run as a court process etc. I just think you are very wrong on both issues.
I note you appear to be a lawyer, so do have vested interests or a probable bias. I can appreciate this, and I would maybe do the same in your shoes and want a court approach, but it's still a bias.
I think courts or similar processes are no place to decide matters of science. With respect neither judges, lawyers or lay people on juries are in any position to analyse such complex science and pass reasonable judgement.
Not even expert witnesses could resolve the issue. Climate science runs to over 12,000 research papers and all are important, and its hard to see your process dealing adequately with that.
We are seeing similar huge difficulties in complex financial fraud cases, which are beyond the expertise of judges and juries etc, but in those cases it's hard to do anything other than a court process.
With climate science its both feasible and far more appropriate and sensible to have large review bodies like the IPCC. This was designed specifically because of the problems with court style processes and even inquisitorial processes as in the european legal system.
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nigelj at 07:55 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Norris M @56
You say "I do not know if you are able to do this but if you were to elimate both the 1998 El Nino and the 2015-2016 El Nino from the data, how would the models stack up to actual observations excluding those events?"
Look at figure 3 in this graph below. And also the article in general.
skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmstorf-measure-global-warming-signal.html
It removes all el nino and la nina events from the trend. It's from work by Foster and Rhamstorf. You can plainly see what is left is a roughly linear trend of clearly increasing temperatures, and quite steep. It's therefore clear el nino is not the reason for increasing temperatures.
A picture paints a thousand words, and when there are arguments and disputes its best to go back to the basic data as in a graph or table.
Unfortuantely it doesnt have model predictions grafted on, but you will find the models run in the early 1990s have predicted this trend pretty well, but are still slightly under in the last few years as I have said. They are not sufficiently under to be some huge concern, imho. It's certainly false and at least a huge exaggeration to say the models failed to predict the pause and / or dont predict temperature trends adequately.
It's believed models are slightly under, as oceans are absorbing more heat than first thought, and this is delaying warming slightly. But a delay is only a delay.
Regarding Santer and Held not talking up over discrepencies. I dont know why, and we may never know why and there could be many reasons, some people are a little shy by nature for a start, or just get side tracked by other issues they feel are more important. Dont read things into things.
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nigelj at 07:18 AM on 12 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
More very unreliable, unrepresentative 80 studies research, with giant cherrypicks and manipulations and time frame problems.
The following link is a list of published research studies on past climate histories as at 2014. I did a rough count and there appear to be about 500 studies! They also say its far from a complete list.
So 80 studies proves nothing, and they have not demonstrated it is representative. Plenty of studies show a hockey stick eg Briffa, Esper, and they are proper, relevant studies
www.c3headlines.com/list-climate-history-studies-research-peer-reviewed.html
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Tom Dayton at 05:32 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM, I have replied to your comment here on the original, appropriate thread.
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Tom Dayton at 05:28 AM on 12 July 2017Models are unreliable
Response to NorrisM's comment on another thread: Norris wrote "If I understand your first example, this would suggest that it is appropriate to "average" the various model results and compare them with the actual observations."
No. There is only one observation run, so you cannot average it with other observation runs to obtain the observations mean, so you cannot compare the models mean to the observations mean. Instead, you compare the observations run to the statistics of the model runs, including not just the model runs mean but the model runs spread.
Likewise, we have only one observations run of Earth's temperature because we have only one Earth. You continue to ignore my explanation from weeks ago. As MA Rodger noted, in that comments thread you have merely reiterated your claims from this thread without responding here to the people who gave you information you asked for.
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NorrisM at 05:24 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Eclectic @ 53 and MA Rodger at 54
My reply to MA Rodger is that I started that process of reading the thread starting in 2008 and was prepared to slog through it all, knowing after a very short while that I would hardly understand most of the technical information.
That was until I heard that Perry may very well undertake a Red Team Blue Team investigation which, for a lawyer, is the way to go because it forces both sides to mount their evidence and bring their experts.
In fact, Eclectic, although I fully agree with your comments on the APS Panel regarding preparation ahead of time, we should have what is the equivalent of a Supreme Court hearing on this. It still troubles me that Santer and Held did not speak up more strongly on the discrepancies (and I note no one has yet commented on that). But the problem I had with both the APS enquiry and the Berkeley Red Team Blue Team project is that they did not follow through with what we have come to expect in a common law justice system. An independent judge (or judges) listening to both sides of the argument and their experts, that panel of judges coming to a decision, and then providing their reasons. Any dissenting judges would also provide their reasons.
In the case of the APS Panel, the Board of Directors one year later came out with a revised statement that basically was the same as the previous one (after backing off of the word "incontrovertible") but without providing any reasons.
In the case of the Berkeley project, Mueller (sp) really acted like a judge in the European system where the judges get actively involved in searching out for evidence on their own. This system may or may not be better than our adversarial system but I like our adversarial system because it is open. Basically, Mueller hired his own guy and came up with his own reasons and ignored the evidence of both sides or certainly did not use it.
What we will be relying on as Trump takes a run at our institutions, is an independent judiciary with no axe to grind. That I am sure is why Judith Curry does not want the NAS to conduct the review. I fully understand that some scientific bodies felt that they had to make a stand on the question of climate change but it does then hit their independence when later asked to preside over any adversarial process to consider the very issue upon which they have come out with a policy.
When the APS came out with their statement after the Koonin chaired APS Panel, I am sure that one of the discussions amongst the Board was how much they could "modify" their statement now that they had taken a stand without causing a major issue not just in the press but in the world.
So if there is to be a Red Team Blue Team organized by the Department of Energy, it would probably be better to place the responsibility in some agency that has not come out one way or the other on this issue. I still have some misgivings with this rather than the NAS but it might be that the NAS itself would pass on it.
For those that say this is a "waste of time" I can only repeat myself. It is called RealPolitik. As lawyers, we used to refer to the "Golden Rule". He who has the gold makes the rules. I hate to say it but you know who makes the rules in the US at this time and for the foreseeable future. That is why I think the climate science community should sign on to this process and be a part of it.
Perhaps this website should set up a separate section to consider the issues that should be considered by such a Red Team Blue Team.
Who knows, perhaps Trump will only sign on to this process if he has some assurances that 'he will win". If the panel is "weighted' one way or the other it would destroy its credibility. From what I have seen of Koonin, I do think that he would ensure that the panel had representation from both sides but that the majority of the panel were truly independent.
I truly think that the Red Team Blue Team structure should be modified to require the panel to provide its recommendation and reasons for its decisions. As with judgments of any appellate body, there could be dissenting opinions.
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NorrisM at 04:48 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
nigelj @ 52 and scaddenp @ 50.
I certainly get the message that models cannot predict 10 year cycles. I guess what I should have asked Bob Loblaw are the model predictions and their variance based upon: 1. Period 1900 to present; and 2. 1975 to present.
Thanks nigelj for your explanations of the periods of temperature increase and decrease (or levelling off) during the 20th century. I know that one of the pet peeves of Lindzen (from one essay by him) has been the use of aerosols to "adjust" models. All very confusing for the layman. See my comments to Eclectic and MA Rodger below.
But if the models are within one SD over 20 years then this is certainly material information. Reading Christy's chart you would not think so.
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NorrisM at 04:30 AM on 12 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Bob Loblaw @51.
If I understand your first example, this would suggest that it is appropriate to "average" the various model results and compare them with the actual observations. In your example, the model of 50:50 chance is correct because the average of the models is bang on with the theory.
Although statistics is not my strong suit (I have to admit I did take one course in my undergrad degree (BA Economics), do I understand that a bell curve of the GCM results are within one standard deviation. If so, what percentage of one SD?
I do not know if you are able to do this but if you were to elimate both the 1998 El Nino and the 2015-2016 El Nino from the data, how would the models stack up to actual observations excluding those events?
As to the second example, I think you are saying that the observational information is not good enough to explain the increase in temperature.
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rugbyguy59 at 04:19 AM on 12 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
Thanks, Tom. I greatly appreciate the effort, quick reply, and the hints about how to check these things. If one positive thing has come from the hours spent confronting these people it's that my own knowledge of science, climate, and the Internet continue to grow.
scaddenp @6 He's a lukewarmer and somehow the idea that small increases in temp "exaggerated by homogenization" can cause these big changes in the real world makes sense to him... without making him think; Wow, these are some big changes.....! -
michael sweet at 03:07 AM on 12 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
Chriskoz,
The US Navy has already made jet fuel from CO2 recovered from sea water. They estimate the cost at about US$3-6 per gallon. It is not clear from the article if they have to pay for the electricity they use to run the process. If renewable energy was cheap enough you could make jet (or automobile) fuel but the efficiency of the process is low (internal combustion engines are only about 30% efficient while electric motors are over 90% efficient). In addition, internal combustion motors are high polluting compared to electric if you ike clean air to breathe.
This is modern technology, not a miracle.
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Eclectic at 02:00 AM on 12 July 2017It's too hard
Carn @62 ,
you are too pessimistic by far. The major problems (caused by AGW) won't be solved by fear & paralysis.
2050 is 33 years away. A third of a century. Look back in history and see what great changes have been achieved in the past 33 years — from the internet/computerization and GPS satellites, to lithium batteries and cheap solar panels. Or the 33 years earlier still [i.e. back to 1950 ..... almost the Fred Flintstone Age ;-) ..... except for the H-bomb, that is! ] .
Now look forward 33 years into the likely future : and at the much faster technological rate of change occurring now and increasingly during that third of a century. And we can do a damn fine job eliminating two-thirds of (present day) CO2 emission rate, using the technology available today. All it needs is some good old-fashioned Can-Do attitude ! (Surely the Can-Do attitude didn't die out in year 2000, did it? )
The remaining one-third of emissions will need more effort and R&D — especially the liquid hydrocarbon fuels for planes and ships. You know it yourself, that the current "biofuels" are a complete scam [carried out for county/state political reasons : not for genuine scientific reasons] as well as being detrimental to actual food-growing (as you well point out).
No, Carn, let's face it — jetfuel and diesel fuel from renewable sources will require advanced catalysis-based chemistry in yet-to-be-built factories (using recycled organic "waste" feedstock) and/or vat-fermentation with algal enzymes (also using "waste" feedstock). The latter is already commencing in a tiny way with small pilot plants — but is still $200 or more per barrel of "oil". But give it another 20 years!
No need for "the piles of bodies" which will happen with even worse floods, wildfires, droughts and forced migrations, that occur if we fail to act in a sensible intelligent way (to slow down & halt the global warming).
Rock and a hard spot. But sitting on our bums will be the worst choice.
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MA Rodger at 00:53 AM on 12 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
John S @8.
Bar one instance, the talk of "ocean" data in this OP/comment-thread refers to SST (sea surface temperature). (Note, there is one statement in the OP saying "oceans are warming" which would sensibly refer to Ocean Heat Content.) The surface air temperature (SAT) above the ocean and also the skin temperature of the ocean will vary greatly with time of day. But unlike on land, it is impractical to monitor SAT at sea to obtain max/min daily values. SST is not greatly affected by time of day, averaging less than ½ºC (as per fig 2 of Kennedy et al 2007) although in still conditions this can be far greater.
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John S at 23:51 PM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
waht does ocean temperature mean exactly? ... e.g. the whole ocean, the surface waters of the ocean or the air 1 metre or so above the ocean
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carn at 22:59 PM on 11 July 2017It's too hard
Wow, fast responses.
@59 Tom Curtis:
"One problem with such an approach is that it cannot generate very rapid change."
I agree.
"The longer we take no, or little, effective action, the more rapidly we will have to respond later - and the more rapidly we respond, the higher the economic cost of the response. If we delay long enough, then only direct regulation, and/or direct government capital investment will be rapid enough a response. Delay too much longer after that, and the cost of action will be more than the potentially catastrophic costs of AGW."
That might be the case; but there are some who seem to think we are already past the point of anything but direct action; and others who seem to think that such direct action would in any case outweigh the negative consequences of what the former try to prevent by direct action.
But all this seems to be in my eyes "guesswork"; so it seems we have no way to determine e.g. "till 2025 non-direct mild action is sufficient and its negative consequences would be likely acceptable", "till 2035 non-direct but not so mild action would be sufficient", "till 2040 direct action still less severe than doing nothin would help", "beyond 2040 only drastic direct action would help, but likely would do more damage than what it prevents"; anybody filling such numbers would probably be guessing.
Or is there any reliable study in that direction?
"You may have noted how the president M. Macron has indicated that France should be able to achieve something close to zero nett CO2 emission by 2050 (but you will also have noted that France already has the advantage of much nuclear power). Still, other advanced countries should be able to achieve the same goal — if led by long-sighted statesman-like politicians (rather than the present batch of short-sighted politicians)."
The later being close to my point; we have the politicans we have; they must politically do the job. Does Macron base his goal on a realy factual well thought basis and with already the concept of a plan in mind? And can we therefore expect, that when he and his successors carry out such plans do it with minimized otherwise damage?
Or is Macron just an empty babbler, who just thinks it scores some points to say such things with no actual plan or concept and ending up that somewhere in 2030-35 some hasty stupid things will be done, so enviros can be pleased for the next election?
Pretty hard to tell from the distance.
And my question is:
"Whether and how this risk [of incompetent politicians pursuing ecological goals doing more harm than good] compares to the risk of doing nothing [so to the effect of a 5-6°C warming, which doing nothing might lead to] or only what hurts little about CO2 emissions [so to the effect of a 2-4°C warming, which doing what doesn't hurt might lead to]"
"Carn @59 , I must also ask you to clarify how fitting a billion solar roof-panels will cause "a body pile numbering millions"."
I'll first do it with this one:
"Biofuels:"
Incentives by governments to use biofuels -> higher prices for respective "biofuel" plants -> more area devoted to "biofuel" plants -> higher food prices -> as governments happen to be non-competent they do not do enough about this issue -> some poor people starve due to governments pursuing biofuels.
"solar"
Incentives by goverment to use solar power & government incompetence leads to insufficient funding of grid structure, backup powerplants, storage -> in a period of long but not unexpected low solar output, grid brakes down for several days -> civil unrest -> dead bodies
Doing this for the 13 other points i think is irrelevant, because sometimes governments mess up things so glaringly simple (e.g. building an airport; thats child play compared to decarbonizing economies), that governments if it happen to be at its worst certainly can mess up any of these points
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Eclectic at 20:57 PM on 11 July 2017It's too hard
Thank you, Tom Curtis. The situation is straightforward.
Carn @59 , you really need to clarify the line of argument you are wishing to make [or perhaps I am wrong in assuming you were trying to make any such thing].
Surely it is difficult to find any historical lesson that can be applied generally to the rest of the world, from the unique event of the "Great Leap Forward" (and the unique situation of then-Communist China, around 60 years ago). And even more difficult to find relevant parallels between the "GLF" and the modern world with respect to the need to de-carbonise the national economies of the world.
You may have noted how the president M. Macron has indicated that France should be able to achieve something close to zero nett CO2 emission by 2050 (but you will also have noted that France already has the advantage of much nuclear power). Still, other advanced countries should be able to achieve the same goal — if led by long-sighted statesman-like politicians (rather than the present batch of short-sighted politicians).
Venezuela is currently a sociological basket case. IMO, no useful lessons are to be learnt there, about solar power / wind power / etcetera.
Carn @59 , I must also ask you to clarify how fitting a billion solar roof-panels will cause "a body pile numbering millions".
Clarity, Carn. Clarity, please!
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Tom Curtis at 20:19 PM on 11 July 2017It's too hard
carn @59, the preferred option for many policy advisors is to simply place a price on well mixed GHG emissions based on their CO2-eq contribution to warming. Different policy advisors have different preferences as to how to do that, with perhaps the most popular current option being the fee and dividend model were a carbon tax is imposed on emissions, and reimbursed to citizens on an equal per capita basis. The advantage of such mechanisms is that the majority of decisions are made by private actors, with the consequent market efficiency that often entails.
One problem with such an approach is that it cannot generate very rapid change. The longer we take no, or little, effective action, the more rapidly we will have to respond later - and the more rapidly we respond, the higher the economic cost of the response. If we delay long enough, then only direct regulation, and/or direct government capital investment will be rapid enough a response. Delay too much longer after that, and the cost of action will be more than the potentially catastrophic costs of AGW. That point is the AGW "skeptics" end game.
So, in response to your question, currently minimal government action of a type already proven to not "stack up the bodies" by responses to other issues is sufficient to effectively solve the problem. But not taking that minimal action will cost us. Indeed, not taking it in 1990 when the isue was sufficiently resolved that it should have been taken, has already cost us.
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carn at 19:16 PM on 11 July 2017It's too hard
Sorry if there is already another article for this question, but this is the most fitting a found:
"The bottom line is that while achieving the necessary GHG emissions reductions and stabilization wedges will be difficult, it is possible. And there are many solutions and combinations of wedges to choose from."
I understand this to mean that the only thing proven or at least made plausible is that technically sufficient reductions would be possible.
But that the exact choice and the concrete implementation would require political activity; e.g. choosing the most preferred "wedges" and implementing policies; e.g. deciding to pursue the nuclear wedge and implementing the necessary policy choices (which could be many from selecting the optimal safety requirements - too high and costs are too high and building speed is too low, too low and risk of serious accident is too high - to sufficiently training, equipping and politically supporting riot police, so that anti-nuclear protests are subdued quickly enough).
Is it somewhere/somehow studied if politics is actually capable of doing that?
Is it somewhere/somehow shown that the risks of having politically such far reaching issues decided and implementet by politicians, courts and agencies of "average" competence are lower than the risks from doing nothing or only very limited action about CO2 emissions?
Please understand as background for that question, that in my view it is undeniable that when government does large restructering of economy there is a certain risk - could be well in 1- 10% region - that government just messes things up and little of what is intended is achieved, while some or even many dead bodies pile up.
Most extreme examples would be the great leap forward with a body pile of maybe 30 millions and the holdomor of maybe 7 to 10 millions. A less severe example would be today Venezuela, where "fortunately" the body pile currently numbers maybe only in the hundreds or thousands.
Based on this, i think one should at least consider the issue, that a severe but messed up CO2 reduction effort being enacted upon 2+ billion people (depending upon which nations one considers to have too high per capita emissions) could also end up with a body pile numbering millions or tens of millions.
Whether and how this risk compares to the risk of doing nothing or only what hurts little about CO2 emissions, is my question and what hard scientific evidence exist in this direction (by which i mean something different than economist X produced one study supposedly showing that the economic benefit would outweigh the disadvantages in year 2070; because economics is simply not a science suitable for reliable predictions on such time scales)
Thanks for answers
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MA Rodger at 17:05 PM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
The comment NorrisM @49 has turned full circle to address what NorrisM described in an earlier interchange as "what also troubles me in everything that I have read so far on climate change." That interchange ended with NorrisM withdrawing to read up on SkS comment threads and for some reason "the Nigel Lawson GWPF site." It would be good to nail this discussion rather than have yet another run round the houses.
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Tom Curtis at 16:47 PM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
I made an inadvertent error when I wrote @5, "...the changes from 2000 to 2016 was to reduce the trend from 1950 to 2000". In fact the reverse is the case, with the trend increasing from 0.11 C/decade to 0.15 C/decade. The reasons for the change, however, remain fully justified as detailed above. Sorry for the error.
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chriskoz at 16:08 PM on 11 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Not only that, but the improved analysis shows that the atmospheric (lower troposphere) temperatures are warming faster than the Earth’s surface.
Shouldn't it be as actually expected, given tropospheric tropical hotspot predicted by models at ~10km, which is right about TLT/TMT channels (Microwave Sounding Unit channel 2, and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit channel 5) Carl Mears is talking about in the study herein?
Maybe it's time to update this article based on the study herein?
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scaddenp at 14:51 PM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
Just wondering if your pseudo-skeptic also believes:
1/ glaciers cant be melting because somewhere there is one advancing
2/ Sealevel rise is caused by coastal subsidence
3/ NASA, JAXA, ESA are conspiring to doctor photos of the poles to make it look like ice is melting.
After all, if GW is just due to adjustments to the temperature record then it follows that ice cant be melting and the sea isnt rising.
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Tom Curtis at 14:21 PM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
rugbyguy59 @4, if your pseudo-skeptic informant could navigate to those pages (linked from here), he could also navigate to the history page on the same site, where an explanation of the differences is given. Between 2000 and 2016 the major changes are:
- The change from the GHCNv2 (with data from 7200 stations) to GHCNv4 (with data from 26,000 stations).
- The change from Hadley Centre’s HadISST1 (1880-1981) and OISST data Sea Surface Temperature data to ERSST v4 Sea Surface Temperature data, the later embodying a far better knowledge of, and therefore adjustments for differences between methods of measuring temperatures from ships.
In addition, NASA GISS switched to using satellite night light data to identify areas of increased urbanization for the urban heat island adjustment, and areas above sea ice had temperatures determined by air temperature rather than by underlying water temperatures (which in winter can be 10s of degrees warmer).
The effect of the changes from 2000 to 2016 was to reduce the trend from 1950 to 2000, ie, the end of the period of overlap, as can be seen in this graph:
As can also be seen, the effect of the changes over the years have been minor, except for that between 1987 and more recent versions. Of course, the 1987 version relied on just 2,200 stations (8.5% of the current number), and had no Sea Surface Temperature data.
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chriskoz at 13:51 PM on 11 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
CBDunkerson@3, ubrew12@5,
With my imagination, I think the cost (~energy input required) of reducing oxydated compounds to their elements - Si or Al or C in CO2! - depends on the amount of oxidation that you have to reduce.
The first example you give: cost of re-reducing recycled (=slightly contaminated) Al cans, involves just removing paint contaminant. Compared to bauxite processing, which involves large amounts of electricity for electrolysis to separate Al from Al2O3, the energy input is almost nothing and the benefit recycling an abvious no-brainer.
The second example: Si re-reducing from used solar panels - I'm not sure how much oxydation is there and if the process would be much different to melting down sand. I welcome material engineers to shed some light here.
The third example - scraping carbon out of the CO2 in atmosphere - is a pure fantasy: so much oxidation, needless to say CO2 dillution down to 0.04%, is to overcome. On top of that we're talking about convincing science deniers to use precious energy for nothing but influence some "invisible trace gas", while they want all available energy for themselves and don't care about said gas. Very hard, next to impossible, unless future technology miraculously delivers unlimitted free clean energy (nuke fusion proponents tried to market it as such but failed).
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rugbyguy59 at 13:45 PM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
In a discussion with a pseudo-skeptic there was only one point that he made that I couldn't understand. It related to temperature adjustments and so I will ask about it here. He produced two global temp records from NASA that were quite different:
This one he says is from 2001
FigA.txt 2001 from GISS
And this one is from 2016
FigA.txt 2016 from GISSI've not been able to find anything that would explain why there is such a difference. I'm assuming both data sets are from NASA. I also know there are more than enough reasons to know adjustments are doing the right thing but is there anyone here who has run across this one and knows what the reasons are?
Moderator Response:[BW] Replaced link text to make it shorter
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Eclectic at 13:38 PM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Thank you for that explanation, Bob Loblaw @51, though I am not sure that is at the heart of NorrisM's line of inquiry. I suspect he wants black-and-white certainty — without regard to questions of probabilties & the consequent need for prudent risk-management of planet Earth.
Nigelj @52, some of those graphs have not been updated with the latest real-world temperatures (which show a better match to the old "predictions").
NorrisM @49 , you are making a mountain out of the molehill that was the Koonin-chaired panel of scientists back in early 2014.
Metaphorically speaking : in a scientific ocean rivalling the Pacific in size, the Koonin/APS review was a momentary ripple in a lagoon. And a ripple that was stillborn. [ er, sorry about the mangled metaphor ;-) ]
NorrisM, you have made the mistake of equating the Koonin/APS review with something like a major case before the Supreme Court. But the situation was quite different. Doubtless the scientist-participants would have done a bit of "brushing up" before the panel met — but there would have been nothing like the lawyers' preliminaries where weeks of careful polishing of comprehensive presentations (prepared by teams of high-powered lawyers/barristers) before battle commenced.
Furthermore, the matters discussed were only a tiny section of climate science. And from my reading of the transcript, nothing much came forward that was substantive or in any way conclusive. Really, the result was stillborn. So I don't see how you can justify cherry-picking such a "non-event" and drawing any lessons from it.
(B) You do well, to put a "tick mark" of suspicion against some of the denialists (such as Lindzen). Not only does their case not hold water, but you can see how their underlying thinking is severely tainted/motivated by non-logical emotional bias. Lindzen, for instance, holds that our planet was created by Jehovah [i.e. the pre-Christian deity] as a self-correcting mechanism, and so it cannot deviate from the ideal narrow condition suited to humanity. Or so Lindzen seems to believe. Such is the power of emotion-driven illogical thinking, that it results in Lindzen being quite unfazed that (repeatedly!!) the physical evidence keeps showing him to be severely wrong.
Self-deception and delusion are the essence of climate denialism.
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nigelj at 12:19 PM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM @49
You might find this helpful. I'm exploring it myself, to try to make sense of it all.
This link is a graph of models versus reality up to 2015. The first two graphs are the most relevant and clearest
www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
You can see temperatures are generally following models reasonably well, but as I said before slightly under, but not by much. Last years temperatures, 2016, means they are even less under.
Please note, like the comment above says models cannot ever exactly predict year to year temperatures, wiggles, or decadal temperatures. They predict longer term trends approximately, over 20 years, and the general track, and predict end point temperatures which is what concerns us most.
The pause originally appeared large, and outside of what models predicted as expected natural variation (wiggles). You can see in the graphs in the link above it isnt actually so large. Recent temperatures and better data on the pause has changed things.
The warming from 1900 - 1940 has been attributed in almost all reseach to a combination of CO2 and increased solar activity. It should be pointed out solar activity sunspot cycles only has a limited impact over short periods 1 degree maximum for short periods.
The flat period from 1940 - 1970 (approx) has been attributed to high particulate emissions from the post war industrial boom.
The warming from 1970 - currently has been almost 100% attribted to CO2.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:20 AM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM:
In your fourth paragraph, you pose two questions that indicate you still are not recognizing what global climate models can and cannot do. Let me try to provide some sort of explanation.
The first question is If the models are capable of predicting the future then they should have had an answer for the supposed "hiatus"
But the models are not capable of predicting short term variability, such as El Nino events. They do have El Nino events, but the timing is more or less random and does not match the exact sequence of a particular set of years. Different model runs with slightly different starting conditions will place El Nino events at different times.
Thus, you can't use the timing of El Ninos and related temperatures to test model skill. If El Ninos are simulated with a similar frequency and magnitude as the real world, then the model has skill even though the timing isn't exact.
Let us take a non-climate model of a familar concept as an analogy: tossing a coin. With a fair coin, there is a 50:50 chance of heads or tails with each toss, and I will model a sequence of ten tosses using a spreadsheet with a random number generator. I will repeat the model simulation 9 times. Here are the sequences, with the counts of heads and tails:
- HHTTTTHHTT 4 6
- TTHHTHTTTT 3 7
- TTHHHHHTHH 7 3
- HHHHHHTTTT 6 4
- THHTTTTHTT 3 7
- THHTTTHHTT 4 6
- TTTTHTTHTH 3 7
- HHHTTHTHTT 5 5
- HTHTHTTTTH 4 6
- TTHHTTTHTH 4 6
Now, you may notice that there are 10 sequences, not nine. I also did one real coin toss sequence, and generated one more random number to decide where to place it in the order. One of the above ten sequences is real; the other nine are modelled.
Note that none of the sequences are the same - therefore none of the model sequences exactly matches the real sequence. You cannot conclude from this that the model is wrong, however. It may be, but you can't tell that from this data.
Can you identify the real sequence? If not, then the nine modelled sequences are realistic enough to pass this sniff test. And with the global temperature record, we can have many model runs but only one real sequence, just as I have done with the coin tosses.
On to question 2: "If the physics explain this 25 year increase in temperatures (1975-1998), how do you explain the temperature increases and decreases that I had referenced earlier, especially the .3C rise from 1900 - 1940 or so."
The earlier period is more difficult to deal with because we do not have sufficient data to force the models - measurements of essential variables such as radiation, atmospheric dust, etc. were fewer and less accurate.
Again, I will use simple analogy with a simple model.
- My model says that A + B = C.
- Today, I know that A = 3.03 and B = 7.64, and that C = 10.71, with all values uncertain to +/-0.05.
- My model predicts that C = 10.67 today, with an uncertainty of +/-0.07 (because of the uncertainty in A and B). My model is 0.04 off the known value of C, but within the error bars of both my estimate and the measurement.
- In the past, A was 4.1 and B was 3.7, both with uncertainties of +/-0.5. The model says C would be 7.8+/-0.7.
- The known value of C was 8.5+/-0.05. The model error of 0.7 is not necessarily due to a poor measurement of C or a poor model, however - it could be due to the lack of knowledge of the input values A and B. The error is larger, but the uncertainty bounds are also larger.
- I could play with the values of A and B to get better agreement, but there is little point. Without a time machine to go back and get better measurements, I would not know if the better agreement is because I got a better value with a good model, or whether I just managed to get the errors in A and B to offset the errors in the model.
Does this clarify what can and cannot be done with a (climate) model?
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scaddenp at 10:50 AM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM - " If the models are capable of predicting the future then they should have had an answer for the supposed "hiatus" "
You are still not grasping the point I already stated that the models have limitations on what they predict and in particular have a/ no skill at decadal prediction and b/ dont pretend too. Model evaluation is subject of chp9 of the IPCC report. If you want to know the answers to your questions, then try reading it. Insisting model predict what they catagorically state they cannot is denier rhetorical ploy.
Mid-century cooling is discussed on this site here.
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NorrisM at 09:16 AM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Thanks for the comments on my last post. My apologies to Tom Curtis for attributing the comment re Koonin to him. Eclectic your comment was not vicious in any sense but I do think we should stick to what people say and not who they are (although I have to admit if anyone has some "strong fundamentalist religious leanings" I cannot help but put a tick mark against anything else they say even though it may be completely rational).
This morning at home when I opened this website, the reply of Andy Laicy (sp) to Koonin opened in front of me magically. It was a detailed answer to the short questions I had posed relating to the "hard physics" which had been answered in short fashion by Tom Curtis (I had only asked for yes no answers at the time). Laicy's reply is pretty understandable even for a layman. So this explains the solid science based upon physics.
So there is a rational explanation that makes sense to most scientists whether they be climate scientists or other scientists.
So the question comes down to whether, using this science incorporated into a GCM, you can then actually predict the future. As a layman, the two things that puzzled me after being initially convinced by the Dessler book was: 1. If the models are capable of predicting the future then they should have had an answer for the supposed "hiatus" and 2. If the physics explain this 25 year increase in temperatures (1975-1998), how do you explain the temperature increases and decreases that I had referenced earlier, especially the .3C rise from 1900 - 1940 or so.
But for now, I would like to concentrate on what I believe is the "discrepancy" that Christy has proposed based upon his diagram. What surprises was the passive reaction of Santer and Held when questioned by Koonin about Christy's diagram. They made references to some studies that had examined this discrepancy in the past but did not comment on their conclusions nor did they strongly object to what Christy was alleging. Surely, if the difference was only marginal that they would have said so at that time. It was absolutely basic to their case.
I guess this "basic to their case" is another question. What has really troubled me is if you cannot reconcile major differences with the models and observations (if that is the case) then how can you still believe that we are still in the 3C range rather than 1-1.5C by 2100? Is this where Hawking and other non-climate scientists are? To them, is it irrelevant that the models are not sophisticated enough to predict the future? Or does it all come down to position that the models are predicting things?
In other words, does the case for anthropogenic warming of 3C stand or fall on the models? If not, then why?
But, I have to say, even if we are so sure that this period of warming was caused by humans, then surely there still has to be a full answer for why the temperature went up from 1900 to 1940. For me, notwithstanding Michael Mann's hockey stick, I would also like to have some explanation for the MWP (even his most recent graph seems to acknowledge this warming). But it would go a long way to at least have a rational explanation for the warming in the first 40 years of the 20th century.
I suspect that the answer to the model discrepancy is that it is a small discrepancy. But if this is the case, then why did Santer and Held not say so when they had the golden opportunity, knowing that the transcript of the APS hearing would effectively be read by the world.
To SkepticalScience Editor: I saw one attempt to "reconstruct" the Christy diagram but it was very confusing continually flashing from one thing to another. Could you not do a "simple" reconstruction showing where the "red line" should be and where the "blue dots" should be. Leave out the "ranges" just as Christy did or perhaps have three lines, High, Medium and Low Case. It would be very helpful.
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Riduna at 07:53 AM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
The above cmments say it all, as does:
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link. Please create them with link tool in the comments editor rather than wasting moderators time.
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nigelj at 07:21 AM on 11 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
Ubrew @10, I agree I think the Clinton email issue was a little "overblown". Obviously she did wrong, but there's no evidence harm was done (although as TC points out the potential was there) and no evidence of malicious intent.
However just to clarify my point, in my view the email thing made her virtually unelectable. It created huge and understandable suspicions in the publics perception (rightly or wrongly) right through the campaign and finally exploded again the the final week. It probably lost her the election more than anything else. Trump used the issue to the maximum.
We should not conclude that she lost due predominantly to her policies, so called elitism, lies (and there were a couple) or alleged hypocisy. These are probaly negative factors and some contributed, but not the main reason she lost which was the email issue. In fact I think her policies were largely sensible for what its worth.
I agree with the rest of what you say about Fox news, Trump, appearances, personalities, trying to personally discredit people. I'm no fan of any of this.
Unfortunately though many people make their political decisions based on little more than personality and gut instinct rather than policy, but the very last thing we need is to encourage yet more of this. Shame on Fox News.
The Russia thing is all just speculation. Innocent until proven guilty. But there an awful lot of smoke, etc, etc. However it's not really relevant to my comments.
Moderator Response:[PS] Russia/Email scandals are a long way from climate science. Enough please.
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nigelj at 06:46 AM on 11 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Norris M @43, this is just my two cents on climate models. This is the simplified explanation.
First just google the nasa giss global temperature record (the long term one since around 1900) or hadcrut if you prefer. Notice it generally tracks up but with many wiggles along the way. The fact is climate modelling can predict the track, but not the wiggles, because they are erratic natural variation.
Climate models have predicted the track reasonably well over the last 25 years, but temperatures are still slightly under. It's believed oceans are absorbing more heat than expected, delaying warmring slightly, but this is only a delay.
Notice in the same graph that the pause since 1998 is very small. Notice there are many small pauses along the way. The claim by people like Koonan etc that the pause was not predicted is somewhat out of date, based on old data. It was not as big as first thought, so is within expectations. It is more of a wiggle, obvious in the graph.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:28 AM on 11 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
SingletonEngineer@4,
I share your concern that the current economic games driven by popularity and profitability without restrictions that ensure that only truly sustainable activity is allowed to compete to win will fail to care to recycle lithium-ion batteries.
There are many information sources but the following pair seem to be fairly comprehensive:
- "The future of automotive lithium-ion battery recycling: Charting a sustainable course"
- "The Lithium Battery Recycling Challenge"
Lithium can be recovered from the slag for reuse. It is just that because full recycling of non-renewable resources is not required the cost of extracting the lithium for reuse is about 5 times the cost of new lithium.
The problem is not the technology. The problem is it the lack of leadership (by all of the wealthy and powerful leaders/winners of the games) to ensure that only truly sustainable activity gets to compete for popularity and profitability.
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nigelj at 06:26 AM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
It's certainly false to claim everything or most things are adjusted up. The following link is a good explanation of why temperature adjustments (corrections) are made. I tracked this down to figure out whats going on.
theconversation.com/why-scientists-adjust-temperature-records-and-how-you-can-too-36825
It's the raw data thats "unreliable" to some extent (although not hugely). Urban heat islands bias things up, stations are moved, often biasing things down, thermometers sometimes break, or are old and less reliable, etc. These are corrected, and are easy enough to quantify. It would be crazy not to correct for these issues.
The following link shows raw and adjusted data for global land, ocean and land ocean combined temperatures.
variable-variability.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/homogenization-adjustments-reduce-global-warming.html
Land temperatures are adjusted up slightly, but ocean temperatures are adjusted down, and combined land ocean temperatures are adjusted down! This is the most important and complete data set. This seems lost on the denialists.
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wili at 05:33 AM on 11 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
Noam Chomsky - "The Most Dangerous Organization in Human History"
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ubrew12 at 01:47 AM on 11 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
I'm no expert, but you can melt down sand, reduce it (take out the oxygen) and crystallize it into Silicon solar cells. Eventually, those fail as their contacts short out and from re-oxidation. It doesn't seem a stretch to imagine re-reducing the cell, separating out the contacts from the Silicon, and recrystallizing the Silicon, but again, I'm no expert. It's like recycling Aluminum cans. You can make the cans from bauxite, but its easier to remelt the cans themselves and recast them.
These things aren't nonrenewable the way burning gasoline is nonrenewable.
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ubrew12 at 01:40 AM on 11 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
I don't want to argue Clinton's culpability here at skeptical science. I would note that if you are sent a classified email from an unclassified system (as the FBI found of all such Clinton emails), it doesn't seem proper that you alone should be prosecuted for it.
My broader point was that there seems to have been, or still is, an effort among rightwing media to train their viewers to 'spot the hypocrit'. If people are being trained into thinking of motive first, and evidence second, then it's that much easier to turn them to cynicism, which I agree with Runciman is epidemic in the US today. As a society we are obsessed with motive to the exclusion of evidence. Media has gone from print to television. But on TV its much easier to encourage the viewer to use 'visual shortcuts', shortcuts that may have been useful when we were all swinging in the trees, but today are used to herd us into tribes. In effect, the signal is being lost to the noise.
One thing I didn't see on this weeks selection of reading material was this article in New York Magazine by David Wallace-Wells: "The Uninhabitable Earth... What climate change could wreak- sooner than you think". It's possibly a bit alarmist, but he paints a very sobering picture of what the future holds if we don't get a handle on this problem soon.
Moderator Response:[JH] The David Wallace-Wells article that you have flagged was posted on July 9 (US). The most recent Weekly News Roundup was posted on July 8 (US). A link to the Wallace-Well article will be posted on the SkS Facebook page later today. The article will therefore be included in the next edition of the Weekly News Roundup.
Based on Michael Mann's reaction to the Wallace-Wells article, I have elected not to post a link to it on the SkS Facebook page. See:
Fear Won't Save Us: Putting a Check on Climate Doom by Michael Mann, Common Dreams, July 10, 2017
Also see:
Are We as Doomed as That New York Magazine Article Says? by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, July 10, 2017
Stop scaring people about climate change. It doesn’t work. by Eric Holthaus, Grist, July 10, 2017
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Tom Curtis at 00:46 AM on 11 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
ubrew12 @10, from former Director Comey's statement on the Clinton Emails:
"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."
"With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”
"With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account."
From the combination of these three quotes, it is clear that Clinton made confidential (and indeed, top secret) information vulnerable, and it is not known that that vulnerability was not exploited by hostile powers. Nor is it known that it was.
Further, the evidence that Trump or his campaign knowingly colluded with Russia in its attempts subvert the US Presidential election are, to date, circumstantial. It is consistent with that evidence that no knowing collusion took place. Therefore, so far as the evidence currently goes, Clinton was guilty of a worse offense than Trump has been shown to have committed. Of course, the investigation into Trump and his associates is not yet finished, and it is entirely possible that he or his campaign will be shown to have knowingly colluded, which would be a much worse offence than Clinton's.
In the meantime we should neither understate the case against Clinton, nor overstate the case against Trump.
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SingletonEngineer at 23:54 PM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
I'm surprised to read some of the comments about lithium recycling.
"ubrew" mentions melting down old batteries, presumably to reclaim lithium. I have only been able to find references to furnacves for reclamation of cobalt, coupled with mention of waste slag that contains a mixture of elements, not all of them pleasant. So far I have only been able to locate one such commercial operation, in Belgium. I have seen mention of another, unnamed, operation in the States.
CBDunkerson refers to a "robust lithium battery recycling industry" which I would like to know more about. It seems that even the EU has no firm plans along these lines.
Of course there are a number of bench prototypes and proposals floating around, but there are also many types of lithium battery, each with differing design, many of which are particularly fiddly and each needing a degree of disassembly before recycling (or partial recyclong). I have read that recycling of lithium from batteries is a very difficult proposition and is thus at least a decade away at practical scale.
That leaves three questions:
1. Where is there evidence of a robust lithium recycling industry?
2. Is recycling of lithium currently energy-competitive with sourcing lithium from minerals? Restraints? Pre-conditions?
3. Is recycling lithium from batteries currently economic? If so, where and under what circumstances?
These are not trivial considerations. Any person who proposes a reliance on lithium based batteries must be prepared to ensure that the necessary lithium and other raw materials are or will be realistically available and affordable. Proposals are for future billions of motor vehicles plus super-batteries providing stability to networks. Our current mobile phones and power tools are meerly scratching the surface.
IMHO, lithium batteries and solar PV panels are destined to become landfill, unwelcome in recyclers' waste streams, for some time to come.
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CBDunkerson at 22:30 PM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
There is actually a fairly robust lithium battery recycling industry despite the low cost of new supplies. Thus, if stocks ever ran low that would drive up prices and lead to more recycling. The same is true for many key materials that people worry about 'running out' of.
In theory we could even pull carbon out of the atmosphere to create new hydrocarbon fuels... there just isn't any currently cost effective way to do so.
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Eclectic at 22:24 PM on 10 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM @43 , if I may add several points to the posts from TC, MAR and DB :-
(A) The claim (by Koonin?) of climate model projections having been much "hotter" than the observed rise in global surface temperature — is nowadays a claim which is severely out of date, since the development of record high temperatures in years 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / and YTD 2017.
In other words, the claim (of model "failure") is wrong. And consequently it is invalid to say mainstream climate science must be wrong because of "model deficiencies".
(B) Certainly Koonin "is no dummy". Yet there are many smarter people than Koonin : but AFAIK hardly any of them are climate change deniers (in the way that Koonin is a denier i.e. a denier in the sense of someone who minimizes AGW and claims it is of negligible size & importance). Of course, here I refer to intelligent people who understand the science.
In no way do I wish to suggest that there cannot be brilliant 200+ IQ artistic minds / mathematical minds / business minds / or legal minds [ especially ;-) ] who are nevertheless deniers of climate change ..... but it is simply that those types of brilliant minds fail to understand the issue and therefore their opinions (and intelligence) are inadmissible in the case.
(C) # As a matter of interesting comparison : work by Professor Lindzen (in the late 1980's) projected only a very slight temperature rise for the past 3 decades. Currently, his modelling has run approximately 1.05 degreesC below reality. That full degreeC is hugely, hugely, hugely off target. Several other denialist-type scientists have made projections that also turned out to fall embarrassingly short of reality (though not as severely poorly as Lindzen's).
Overall, it is quite laughable how badly wrong the denialists get things!!!
(D) Unlike with Lindzen and Curry, there is AFAIK no apparent evidence that Koonin is in the pocket of Fossil Fuel Industry. Nor does he seem to be a political extremist, nor AFAIK a religious extremist. And he is too young to be likely suffering from subtle forms of mental senility.
So, what is the explanation for Koonin as an intelligent guy with a (non-climate) science background, holding opinions which are roughly equivalent to "Flat Earth" ??
To comprehend this puzzle, we must work upwards from our knowledge of human nature. "Motivated Reasoning" (particularly so, in the intelligent) is an extremely powerful force, owing to the way that our human emotions usually overrule the human intellect (unless we take stern measures to remain coolly objective i.e. scientific, through developing insight into our own motivations).
Somehow, somewhere in his mind, Koonin has allowed himself to bend & twist & contort himself into overlooking/ignoring the obvious (the obviously "Round Earth", so to speak!! ). His "motivated reasoning" is pushing him into a failure to understand the general scientific picture involved in the Greenhouse process & its consequences — he chooses to lose himself in a maze of minutiae, and chooses to fail to comprehend the basic process : a process which is so basic that it is easily comprehensible by even a moderately intelligent high school science student.
But such is the perversity of the human mind — and all too often!
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Daniel Bailey at 20:43 PM on 10 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
In the discussions around global warming and its anthropogenic causation, there are those who focus on the science using the scientific method and logic, seeking reproducible evidence that best explains what we can empirically measure.
Then there is everyone in the extreme minority, those who ignore the above in favor of slander, innuendo, unsupported assertion and character assassination in favor of promulgating false equivalence to support the ephemeral facade of "debate" and "sides".
But it is not about the science, the bulk of the science was settled, decades ago. Deniers posing as skeptics set up a charade tableau of false equivalence to poison the well of public acceptance of that science.
A parsimonious harping at the font of stolen, out-of-context and context-less emails proven not germane to the science is continuing on in the prosecution of the agenda of denial.
Truth, science and reputable journalism all sacrificed to the unholy alter of false equivalence under the guise of promulgating a fallacious "debate".
There is no debate. All that remains is the informed and the uninformed.
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ubrew12 at 20:36 PM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
I also thought the 'Clinton hyprocrisy' argument was the weakest of Runciman's otherwise excellent essay. After all the heat and noise over Clinton's email server, how much classified material made it into the hands of our enemies? None. And arguably this was because of her use of a private server. This might not be notable except, at the same time, the Trump campaign was in conversation with those same enemies in common cause to win the election, with no media interest until after Nov.
"it's...of little use to impugn... motives" Turning skeptics into cynics is how money can influence elections and public decisions, like inaction on climate change. For years, Fox News directed its viewers to look at how people talk, when they talk, and not what they are actually saying. You'll never see a Trump or a Hannity slouching, looking askance, and fiddling his fingers. He'll always sit ram-rod straight, look you right in the eye, and in full military-bearing... lie to you. By training their viewers to focus on how people look when they're talking, rather than judge what is coming out of their mouths, Fox News is training people to be cynics. And the way to combat this, I think, is to draw people back into the conversation: What is actually being said, and how reasonable does it appear to be? Almost everything that comes out of Trump's mouth is 'word garbage', but you can't deny the straightforwardness with which he said it.
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ubrew12 at 19:58 PM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27
I'm pretty sure the Lithium in batteries is not 'used up' from the charge/discharge cycle. Old batteries, filled with micro-shorts and other forms of oxidation stress, can be melted down and reduced again into new batteries. Likewise old Silicon in solar cells.
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MA Rodger at 19:22 PM on 10 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM @43.
You set out your position saying "If the only way to criticize the legitimate questions that Koonin has raised is to attack Koonin without addressing his reasons, then I will be very disappointed with the replies to this comment."
The reply @44 can be forgiven for criticising Koonin without perhaps "addressing his reasons" for his "legitimate questions" as it is surely beholden on you to set out clearly what you think Koonin's "legitimate questions" actually are.
Regarding the branding of Koonin as a "science-denier" @9, this does appear to be justified. The Koonin NYJ article linked @44 is paywalled but an account of it elsewhere sets out quotes from the article which show the man is well away with the fairies. I would say the third excerpt is the real clincher.
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Tom Curtis at 14:49 PM on 10 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
NorrisM @43 states:
"Tom Curtis on a reply to my reference to Koonin, questioned Koonin's independence. At that time, I had no idea who Koonin was other than that he was a physicist who had been appointed by the APS to head the Climate Policy Panel."
The claim is incorrect. I have not specifically discussed Koonin in this thread, and certainly not in reply to NorrisM. My only specific reply to him in this thread prior to this one(@8) pointed out that a causal claim he made @6 was invalid. Granted that Eclectic applied some of my more general comments about motivated reasoning to Koonin @10, but even that does not call into question Koonin's independence.
Given, however, that NorrisM has explicitly raised the issue of Koonin, I note that mere credentials do not grant wisdom. There are even better qualified people than Koonin who fall into the climate "skeptic" camp, but the proportion of similarly qualified people who disagree with, or unconvinced of the hypothesis of AGW is very small relative to the proportion who accept the science. Nor are that small proportion able to give cogent reasons for their disagreement.
An example of this is Koonin's nonsense claim that "...human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%." Koonin defended this claim at Climate Etc, by comparing what he calls the greenhouse effect, ie, the downward IR flux at the surface of 342 W/m^2 to the 2.3 W/m^2 anthropogenic forcing since 1750 (both figures taken from IPCC AR5).
The immediate problems with this claim are that the greenhouse effect is the difference between the upwelling IR radiation at the surface and the IR radiation to space (ie, 159 W/m^2 based in the AR5 figures); and that that total includes not just the forcing but the feedback responses from water vapour and the IR effect of clouds. The proper comparison is therefore between either the forcing of 2.3 W/m^2 and the 40 W/m^2 of the Total Greenhouse Effect which is due to well mixed Green House Gases, or possibly between the forcing plus its equilibrium feedback response and the total greenhouse effect. The former gives a 5.8% change to date, while the later gives at least a 2.9% response (based on the water vapour and lapse rate feedbacks at least doubling the effect of the forced response).
In short, Koonin's article and his defence of it shows he lacks understanding of the physics of the greenhouse effect at a fundamental level. His article is comparable to somebody trying to explain what is wrong with specal relativity without understanding what is meant by a "reference frame". Given that he wrote and submitted his article after the APS symposium where he obtained the views of six climate scientists, that lack of understanding is very disturbing. (For more on the article, see here.)
No amount of qualifications can justify a scientist pontificating on a subject on which he makes such fundamental errors. Indeed, that he does so shows that despite his qualifications, he has researched the topic at an entirely superficial level; or taken his information almost entirely from anti-science sites (such as WUWT, where that faulty argument gets a regular replay).
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