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wili at 04:42 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I generally agree here...and with pretty much everything our wonderful JA has ever said or published '-). But the problem with dismissing political ideology or religion as a major factor here is the high correlation of those who deny GW with those who identify as politically conservative and religiously fundamentalist. Are those ideologies just more likely to have very fearful people in them? That's what you would seem to have to claim, as far as I can see. I'm not sure how one would independently test such a hypothesis, but it might be interesting to try.
And if John's hypothesis is true, what does that mean about Climate Communication? You can't really talk honestly for very long about the certain or even likely consequences of CC with out bringing up stuff that is going to make rational people somewhat or very afraid. Right?
Connected to the whole issue of the role of fear and CC communications:
Eric Holthaus writes, in part:
"My advice for climate journalists going forward:
1. Don't hold back. Readers can take it. (As long as it's rigorously grounded in the science, of course.)
2. The weird shit that climate change could cause—the tail risks, the megastorms, the blinking out of entire ecosystems—is compelling.
3. Climate journalists should find those stories—things scientists wouldn't bother with b/c they're unlikely—& report the hell out of them.
4. AND THEN (this is the most important part) you plant the seed of possibility at the end & invite the reader to become part of the story.Because that's the reality: We are all part of this story. This is our story, we are shaping it every day."
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Doug_C at 02:32 AM on 18 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
nigelj
I know Australia has been hit hard by wildfires in recent years with mass evacuations and loss of life as well as property. We haven't seen the loss of life yet, just hundreds of homes burned and many more to come.
Some of the fires have been caused by people, but the majority have been lightening strikes on very dry forests. An eyewitness account from someone driving south through the Cariboo District where most of these fires are said it a surreal experience as he saw lightening strike after strike that was followed by an immediate fire.
I'm just frustrated, I'm also semi-retired and have spent the last decade informing myself of the true dimensions of this subject learning as much as I could in a bunch of different subject including some quantum mechanics, atmospheric circulation, lots of biology, ocean currents and more. There's no question I find what is going on deeply distrubing, reading up on the Permian and other climate change related extinction events is sobering, now we're starting to connect them to what we doing on both scale and timeline is frightening.
I'm all for making changes in a way that doesn't turn society and the economy on its head creating its own form of disaster, the thing that really concerns me as a Canadian is that we're not even making any real attempt. Our PM went to the Paris climate conference - which James Hansen has called a fraud because it doesn't create the conditions to make all fossil fuels uneconomical - and because we were part of a political agreement to deal with issue acts as if the problem is solved. While having exactly the same emissions as the last federal government here which openly denied climate change, refused to be part of any international agreement, censored science and even went as far as to burn scientific libraries with data that went back over a century and were priceless in scientific terms.
Meanwhile much of this province burns and we're already being told here this is the new normal. Which is only going to get worse, James Hansen has stated explicitly that if the billions of barrels of tar sands crude is sent to market and burned then climate change will be unmanagable. But that is still the central policy of the Canadian government, the Alberta government and until the last election here this spring the BC government was in full compliance with allowing pipelines and tanker trains to carry over 1,000,000 barrels of bitumen through BC a day.
I don't know what the answer is, I've been coming to this site for years and truly believing that if people were presenting the science in such a clear and effective manner not just here but many other places then it must take effect soon.
But that isn't happening and now I'm watching much of what I've grown up calling home being burned up, climate change is very real here at this moment, it's not something abstract that will happen in a couple of decades.
BC is also highly dependent on the water provided by major rivers that originate with glacial melt in the Rookies. Not only will massive wildfires become a frequent summer event, in coming years we have water scarcity to look forward to as those too disappear.
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HK at 23:07 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28
This may be off-topic, but it may also be related to global warming.
Last night I saw the brightest and most extensive noctilucent clouds I have seen so far this summer. Here in south-eastern Norway the sun is only about 8-9° below the horizon at midnight right now, so these very thin ice crystal clouds in the upper mesosphere (75-85 km altitude) remain illuminated by the sun throughout the night. It appears that these clouds, which were unknown to the science before 1885, have become more common during the 20th century (I have seen them several times in recent years), so they may be linked to global warming.
One possible link is that the increased greenhouse effect cools the stratosphere and mesosphere, making one of the necessary conditions (temperatures below -120°C) more common than before. Another possible link is increased amount of water vapour formed by the oxidation of methane, since methane can easily reach that altitude because it doesn’t condense anywhere in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Wikipedia article has several nice pictures of noctilucent clouds, but the ones I saw last night were most similar to these from Estonia in July 2009:
BTW, this last night was also the first after summer solstice that I was able to barely see Polaris and several of the stars in the Big Dipper ("Karlsvogna" in Norwegian).
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carn at 19:16 PM on 17 July 2017It's too hard
@Eclectic 68
I have nothing in principle against subsidies; but too early and too much subsidy to have a technology on the market, that is too far away from cost efficiency, is a mistake.
For such technologies one only needs subsidies too such extent, that development continues.
Regarding hydro potential, i maybe have not specified enough, what i mean with chenging "ecological protection laws"; for example, i would want to have that thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Canyon_Dam
in operation within 15 years. Forget about "The lower dam would have flooded a number of natural features, including Redwall Cavern and Vasey's Paradise." Human lives are at stake due to global warming, so nobody should care about that stuff.
Just look at all conservation areas; there is some potential for a hydro increase.
"the OECD and World Nuclear Association expect that they would achieve a "too little, too late" result by 2050 (in reducing world CO2 emissions)"
"Private company investors are running for cover, when it comes to the suggestion of financing nuclear power plants."
Based on current rules and handling, yes. Therefore they would have to change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Development
"Installed nuclear capacity initially rose relatively quickly, rising from less than 1 gigawatt (GW) in 1960 to 100 GW in the late 1970s, and 300 GW in the late 1980s. Since the late 1980s worldwide capacity has risen much more slowly, reaching 366 GW in 2005."
Get the speed of the 60s and you have 150 GW per decade. Nuclear power was throttled late 70s onwards with superflous burden; of course with that superflous burden still mostly in place, OECD is correct to estimate, that nuclear cannot do much. Therfore, one needs to change things so that build up can again be done with the speed of the 60s.
"And similarly with large-scale solar plants. And solar power is cheap enough now for private individuals to install their own roof panels — again without subsidy."
From the calculations i know, no, not yet. Especially comparing generating electricity for one's own household to buying electricity with taxes, regulations and power grid costs, is an error. Solar is not more cost efficient than coal or nuclear. Its more cost efficient than taxes; not a useful criteria for technical efficiency.
"One guy I know says (only half-jokingly) that the entire costs of the USN Fifth Fleet over past decades should have been added to the per-gallon price of gasoline."
Fine, but do not forget to also calculate the cost increases caused by superflous envirmental regulations and activities. It is just completely crazy to pay billions and billions to backward regimes for oil and another billions and billions for military equipment to keep them in check, but leave a single drop of oil at home unused cause some birds or fish might die.
Effectively, US politics in part sacrificed human lives - mostly in the middle east - so ecos could be pleased at home and some animals saved. Despicable.
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nigelj at 16:53 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Doug_C @20, numbers of forest fires certainly have increased in recent decades, in America and Canada as below:
www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-is-increasing-forest-fires-around-the-world/a-19465490
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161012141702.htm
So your suspicions are not just anecdotal or locally based. Somehow I doubt numbers of arsons have inceased, and anyway there are also changes in area and intensity. Looks mostly like global warming.
I'm not sure if this has happened in NZ, but we have seen increased levels of rainfall, in recent decades, according to our climate minotoring agency NIWA, and this has been mostly on the west coast, which is already very wet. It's not happening where it would be useful to agriculture or hydo power.
You ask why people can't see all this or are complacent? It's probably hard for people to get their heads around the full scale, or even keep up with it. I'm semi retired, so have a bit of time to read.
Maybe people also feel overwhelmed. I feel torn in two directions, one direction that we should actually be a bit alarmist about it, the other that too much alarmism, catastrophising, and despondency won't help.
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Doug_C at 16:21 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Here's what a realy hot summer can look like where I live.
The town of 11,000 where I grew up has been evacuated and there are major fires all around it. That is just one small area of central BC which is covered in fires.
I stopped thinking that climate change was an academic issues years ago, watching this happen is like being in a disaster movie as a participant not a spectator. Talking on the phone with my elderly mother, she suddenly began weeping for all that is being lost.
It's insane that we're all basically sitting back and watching this happen... and keep in mind this is the opening stages in a process that will become increasingly catastrophic taking out entire ecosystems. Coral reefs are already well on their way to being mostly gone, likely by mid century.
How is it more people don't get that at some point this wave will wash right over them. In Florida it was an unspoken rule created by the governor that public employees not mention climate change because of the implications of a rising sea level for a state much of which is barely above sea level now.
Warmer summers is just the tip of this "iceberg"...
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anticorncob6 at 15:05 PM on 17 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
Can someone explain why the blue line in the first graph (with reconstruction) does not show warming?
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nigelj at 14:12 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
I would just add the lakes issue, and other permafrost issues, sinkholes, etc all do definitely look like troubling developments.
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nigelj at 14:06 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Wili @17, yes fair enough. To add to your research link, here's an interesting very recent article and photo on holes and mounds in the sub arctic releasing methane etc.
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4335386/7-000-underground-methane-gas-bubbles-Russia.html
However I was really wondering the following if anyone knows. We have these very recent lake issues, sinkholes and methane bubbles in the subarctic releasing methane, and is this more than the slow / limited release the research done over the last ten years was predicting?
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wili at 13:20 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
nigel wrote: "not massive or catastrophic"
well...pretty massive, at least in terms of actual carbon, equivalent to more than all the carbon in all of life on earth. But we don't know how much of that will emerge as methane. And yes, most recent studies conclude it won't come out suddenly (which word Wells-Wallace never actually used).
But here's a somewhat troubling development: High methane emissions from thermokarst lakes in subarctic peatlands
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nigelj at 12:42 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
My understanding is the research says arctic and siberian methane is a problem, but not massive or catastrophic. However this research appears to be based on theory and projections.
However over the last couple of years various holes have appeared in siberia and northern regions, belching methane, as the permafrost melts and things collapse. Question: Does this mean the research is too conservative?
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Doug_C at 12:20 PM on 17 July 2017Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Daniel Bailey
Thanks for responding.
I wasn't really thinking in terms of a massive pulse of Arctic methane from destalization in the next few years or decades. I was thinking in terms of the next century or longer and how records from past rapid warming events as a result of quickly increasing atmospheric CO2 levels indicate there were pulses of methane that kicked warming from CO2 into a much more powerful forcing.
In recent geological time the conditions have favoured the creation of more methane hydrates as the planet has in general been cooler with ice ages and the gradual drawdown of CO2 levels. This would seem to pose an even greater possibility of methane release on shorter time scales than earlier events when the base "stable" state was from a much warmer planet with little or no permanent ice cover.
I also seriously question trying to project anything this complex and poorly understood decades into the future. As we saw with something that should have been relatively simple to project in the Larsen B iceshelf breakdown, dynamic forces quickly turned a massive sheet of very thick ice into a highly unstable formation that broke apart.
One paper from Hansen et. al. from a number of years ago - sorry I can't find it now - seemed to indicate that as a Earth warmed, deep water submergence transitioned from the polar regions to much lower latitudes, smething of that nature would completely reorder how heat is distributed and could possibly introduce much warmer water into the deep ocean.
It's the scale of this we should always consider and the potential for feedback and impacts that are going to be next to impossible to fully predict or model because we simply don't have the information.
And I realize that being in an environment where much of what I've called home for over 50 years is on fire and some of my family are now short term climate change refugees makes this a much more immediate issue for me.
The methane is there, the conditions are chaotic to say the least and the deep geological record says beware.
At a time when this country - Canada - is still fully committed to burning billions of tons of the least sustainable fossil fuel for decades.
As I said, thanks for the response and I'll dig deeper into this, but I am viewing climate change and our certainty of how it is going to unfold with less and less confidence all the time. At a time when the impacts are becoming the most serious most of society will be in emergency mode just as this entire province is at the moment meaning even monitoring changes effectively could be compromised.
Forget any hope of mitigation at that point.
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wili at 09:02 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
DB, in your links you write: "...the bad news is that the already difficult task of keeping warming under 2°C becomes much harder once we face up to the consequences of Arctic permafrost feedbacks."
I think we can all agree on that, and I will point out, contrary to what some might have concluded if they only read reviews of it and not the article itself, that Wells-Wallace, whatever else his faults may be, never uses the words 'bomb' or 'sudden' with regards to permafrost or methane. -
Daniel Bailey at 08:42 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
@Doug_C:
I have responded to you on this post. Please read the post in full, and the comments underneath it, before then proceeding to my updated material on it. If you have any questions, please place them there, and not here. Thanks!
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Daniel Bailey at 08:39 AM on 17 July 2017Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
User Doug_C asks:
"Do you know something we don't because trillions of tons of methane in unstable frozen deposits in a rapidly warming world seems like the definition of catastrophic to me"
Please read the OP of this post and the comments above this one in full. Here's some updated material:
"Climate change and permafrost thaw have been suggested to increase high latitude methane emissions that could potentially represent a strong feedback to the climate system. Using an integrated earth-system model framework, we examine the degradation of near-surface permafrost, temporal dynamics of inundation (lakes and wetlands) induced by hydro-climatic change, subsequent methane emission, and potential climate feedback.
We find that increases in atmospheric CH4 and its radiative forcing, which result from the thawed, inundated emission sources, are small, particularly when weighed against human emissions. The additional warming, across the range of climate policy and uncertainties in the climate-system response, would be no greater than 0.1° C by 2100.
Further, for this temperature feedback to be doubled (to approximately 0.2° C) by 2100, at least a 25-fold increase in the methane emission that results from the estimated permafrost degradation would be required.
Overall, this biogeochemical global climate-warming feedback is relatively small whether or not humans choose to constrain global emissions."
And, as the Gao et al paper I linked to notes, CH4 from permafrost will drive an expected temperature increase by 2100 of about 0.1 C. Schaefer et al 2014 now calculates a total temperature rise contribution from ALL permafrost carbon stocks (CO2 AND CH4) by 2100 of about 0.29 ± 0.21 (0.08-0.5 C).
Per Berndt et al 2014 - Temporal Constraints on Hydrate-Controlled Methane Seepage off Svalbard
"Strong emissions of methane have recently been observed from shallow sediments in Arctic seas...such emissions have been present for at least 3000 years, the result of normal seasonal fluctuations of bottom waters"
Per Schuur et al 2015, an abrupt permafrost climate feedback is unlikely, according to the experts, but the bad news is that the already difficult task of keeping warming under 2°C becomes much harder once we face up to the consequences of Arctic permafrost feedbacks.
This just in, per Myhre et al 2016: METHANE NOT ESCAPING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE FROM ARCTIC OCEAN
"Methane gas released from the Arctic seabed during the summer months leads to an increased methane concentration in the ocean. But surprisingly, very little of the climate gas rising up through the sea reaches the atmosphere.
As of today, three independent models employing the marine and atmospheric measurements show that the methane emissions from the sea bed in the area did not significantly affect the atmosphere."Shocker.
And there ensued much gnashing of teeth and hissing in frustration from AMEG, Arctic-News (dot) blogspot, the Scribbler-of-fiction, Paul Beckwith and Guy McPherson.
"Data show no sign of methane boost from thawing permafrost"
And
"Decades of atmospheric measurements from a site in northern Alaska show that rapidly rising temperatures there have not significantly increased methane emissions from the neighboring permafrost-covered landscape"
Also on that paper
And even more on it"We find that, at present, fluxes of dissolved methane are significantly moderated by anaerobic and aerobic oxidation of methane"
And
"Our review reveals that increased observations around especially the anaerobic and aerobic oxidation of methane, bubble transport, and the effects of ice cover, are required to fully understand the linkages and feedback pathways between climate warming and release of methane from marine sediments"
And
"a recent study (Dmitrenko et al. 2011) suggests that degradation of subsea permafrost is primarily related to warming initiated by permafrost submergence about 8000 yr ago, rather than recent Arctic warming"
[here's the relevant info from Dmitrenko et al 2011, below]
"the observed increase in temperature does not lead to a destabilization of methane-bearing subsea permafrost or to an increase in methane emission. The CH4 supersaturation, recently reported from the eastern Siberian shelf, is believed to be the result of the degradation of subsea permafrost that is due to the long-lasting warming initiated by permafrost submergence about 8000 years ago rather than from those triggered by recent Arctic climate changes"
And
"A significant degradation of subsea permafrost is expected to be detectable at the beginning of the next millennium. Until that time, the simulated permafrost table shows a deepening down to ∼70 m below the seafloor that is considered to be important for the stability of the subsea permafrost and the permafrost-related gas hydrate stability zone"
"The breakdown of methane hydrates due to warming climate is unlikely to lead to massive amounts of methane being released to the atmosphere"
And
"not only are the annual emissions of methane to the ocean from degrading gas hydrates far smaller than greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere from human activities, but most of the methane released by gas hydrates never reaches the atmosphere"
More on that paper, here.
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JeffDylan at 08:07 AM on 17 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Mal Adapted @294
Please just can the sarcasm! Scientific theories come and go all of the time. If some "illuminati" is using Svante Arrhenius' work now, it is probably because they dug it up recently and is not part of some conspiracy spanning two centuries. BTW, I thought there were rules against conspiracy theories on these postings, or at least that's what I get held to.
Moderator Response:[DB] This user, yet another sock puppet of spammer cosmoswarrior, has outlived its usefulness and will no longer participate in this forum, where genuine people genuinely seek to promote actual and active dialogue and learning.
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scaddenp at 08:01 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Consensus appears to be that methane risks are being overstated by some commentators. See here and perhaps look at recent cites for more context; and also the FAQ 6.1 of latest IPCC WG1 report.
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Doug_C at 07:21 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Danial Bailey @ 11
Do you know something we don't because trillions of tons of methane in unstable frozen deposits in a rapidly warming world seems like the definition of catastrophic to me.
Just a small fraction of that has to be released into the atmosphere to have a significant impact on the current positive forcings, which would in turn create further positive feedbacks.
It would seem any critical analysis would indicate we are in fact creating a situation that at some point will rapidly run away from the current conditions.
Leaving us in a true doomsday scenario where few species will be left due to conditions so hostile that only the most robust species with the lowest nutrional and oxygen requirements survive.
Keep in mind that climate change is just one of a host of impacts that are rapidly alterning the entire planet in a way that leaves fewer and fewer species in habitats that are being designed to meet short term economic needs not long term biological imperatives.
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nigelj at 07:12 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28
This is an interesting eye opener, related to the coal issue:
www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/new-zealand-listener/20170714/textview
The relevant article in the link is "The new war on carbon". It starts with the views of Mark Carney, (governer bank of england), it discusses how much carbon can be burned / needs to be left in the ground, the known reserves on fossil fuel companies balance sheets, the risks of this with stranded assets.
This is slightly old material, but whats more interesting is the recent response of the corporate, financial and investment community, and how they are already starting to pull investments out of fossil fuel companies. Shareholders are starting to exert pressure on boards, and where they put investments.
And related / similar articles:
www.ft.com/content/622de3da-66e6-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5
www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/2015/844.aspx
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Daniel Bailey at 06:24 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
"see the more evenhanded treatment of the back and forth here"
Given the Scribbler-of-Fiction's own propensity towards methane doomporn, that's hardly a credible source.
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Mal Adapted at 05:07 AM on 17 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
By extension: see how absurd it is to suspect a hoax launched at least 190 years ago by wholly self-interested yet superhumanly far-sighted illuminati, who then enlisted thousands of scientists illustrious and obscure from around the world, all with the superhuman discipline to keep the secret to the present day?
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Doug_C at 05:00 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
I find this easy to believe based on recent summers here. I live in southern BC with family just across the border in Washington state.
In 2015 my relatives in Washington were on evacution notice for two months as there were massive wildfires surrounding the town where they lived. The largest just to the south of them was over 200,000 acres. The smoke from those fires blew up into Canada and was so dense at times it was like fog. It made life very difficult and most people spent as little time outdoors as possible.
I spent most of my youth in central BC and now watch as much of that territory is on fire. I can go on the BC Forest Service wildfire maps and check homes where I used to live which may not be there much longer. My brother and his family along with 17,000 other people in BC have been evacuated and may not have a home to go back to.
This is the new "normal" and the very scary thing is that it will keep getting worse as we continue to burn even more fossil fuels and force the climate into an even more hostile state.
At the same time all this is happening the federal Trudeau government has approved the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline from Alberta to Burrard inlet in Vancouver which will be able to carry 800,000 barrels of dilbit a day. Allowing almost 300,000,000 barrels a year of tar sands crude to be sent to market and burned by this one route alone. This being allowed by a national leader who claims to understand the science and risk of climate change and agrees that we need mitigation.
The power of carbon dioxide to alter a planets surface conditions is incredible, our twin planet just a few tens of millions of miles closer to the Sun has the hottest planetary surface in the solar system almost certainly due to its 97% CO2 atmosphere.
But we don't need to get anywhere close to that to make the Earth unihabitable for most of the life here. Just change the climate faster than most species can adapt or migrate and trigger the kind of changes in the oceans that have led to massive dieoffs both in the sea and on land.
Massive forest fires on land will be the least of our worries if in the future the oceans go anoxic and begin producing the kind of poison gases that likely occurred during the Permian and possibly other extinction level events.
For an existential emergency, so many appear to be incredibly complacent.
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wili at 03:56 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
And see the more evenhanded treatment of the back and forth here:
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Mal Adapted at 03:53 AM on 17 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Glenn Tamblyn, for JeffDylan:
The starting point in considering this is the observed fact that water vapour content in the atmosphere is governed by temperature. This is simply an everyday meteorological observation.
And via the aforementioned Clausius-Clapeyron relation that formalized this everyday meteorological observation, established by 1850, Arrhenius was able to derive the first CO2 'greenhouse' climate model, which he laboriously worked through on paper and published in 1896. His estimate of ECS after CO2 forcing and H20 feedback (among other feedbacks) is no more than a factor of 2 higher than current estimates.
With all due respect to Swedish chemist and Nobelist Svante Arrhenius: do you see how easy this is?
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wili at 03:50 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Thanks for including the M. Mann piece about the NYMagazine article. J. Mitchell takes it pretty thoroughly apart here: forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2101.msg121078.html#msg121078
(Lots of other good discussion there from various non-denialist perspectives, too.)
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Mal Adapted at 03:19 AM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
chriskoz:
Read about Coral Reef expert Charlie Veron dire-environmental-prognosis unnecessary gloom but a good description how earth scientists do feel when faced with silly denial.
Aldo Leopold famously said:
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
Ecology can be said to be a synthesis of the earth and biological sciences. Ecologists can see wounds that even other trained scientists can't 8^(. Regardless, in these times as none before, scientists who study the Earth and its life must feel their shells inexorably hardening, when the only apparent alternative is to surrender to grief.
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chriskoz at 19:53 PM on 16 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Thank you John for posting Brian Kahn's article from Climate Central about GHG latest evolution. It's worth noting that in 2016, human forcing since 1750 exceeded 3W/sqm. IPCC AR5 not so long ago put that number at 2.2
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chriskoz at 19:36 PM on 16 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Chief denier in Congress has visited Arctic to experiance global warming:
Interestingly, it was almost s "top sercet" visit in May, and we're learning about it now, about 2 months later. What do you think of that?
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chriskoz at 18:25 PM on 16 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Read about Coral Reef expert Charlie Veron dire-environmental-prognosis unnecessary gloom but a good description how earth scientists do feel when faced with silly denial.
He's probably the best living marine expert (he changed his first name from John because he's perceived to be contemporary Darwin), author of reticulate evolution, among other works. I find it interesting to learn Charlie's personality quite resembles mine. I too, hate stupidity and hypocrysy. Although I don't share Charlie's opinion that we are "f..d" because of climate change I'm as angry as he's at politicians who do everything to delay mitigation action when alarm bells are already ringing loud. The final funniest thing is that I'm not a biologist, but a computer scientist - one of those people Charlie hates.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 16:26 PM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JeffDylan
From your earlier comment.
"It is the greenhouse heating from water vapor driving the water vapor feedback that actually dominates the greenhouse effect."
The starting point in considering this is the observed fact that water vapour content in the atmosphere is governed by temperature. This is simply an everyday meteorological observation.
So imagine the atmosphere in a particular state, at some sort of equilibrium. So certain amounts of CO2 and H2O contributing to the GHE in this equilibrium state.
Now perturb this by adding some CO2. Temperature rises due to the CO2.
So water content now rises. The rapid turn-over time for water in the atmosphere is what ensures that a strong, quick response occurs.
Then a further temperature rise occurs. Lets call this the initial feedback response of water to the initial CO2 perturbation.
But this water response has raised temperature by some further amount, resulting in a further increase in water content. Now this additional water is acting as a feedback to the initial water feedback raising temperatures further. Feedbacks on feedbacks. And this will continue, like a number series, feedbacks on feedbacks on feedbacks...So what would happen, eventually? If the gain of the water feedback were greater than 1, then each increment of warming would produce greater warming and this would be a runaway positive feedback leading to runaway warming. So too any initial cooling would produce runaway cooling.
In short the weather system (because the short residence time of water in the atmosphere ensures rapid responses so we are talking about weather timescales) would be totally unstable. Even a gain = 1 would still diverge rapidly.
Which doesn't happen - we would notice that I think.
So our daily experience shows that the gain on the water feedback is <1. And any such feedback converges on a final value, like a number series that converges to a value.
So although some part of the water feedback is in response to prior water feedbacks, ultimately the total of the water vapor response to a perturbation is finite. And this water feedback cannot occur without the initial perturbation.
Although the total response to a perturbation is more than a simple single feedback, ultimately the total water feedback to a perturbation , including feedbacks on feedbacks etc, is finite. To me this says that water acts only as a feedback to exernal perturbations, even though the magnitude of the feedback is more than just the simpleinitial response.
If we consider the frozen world scenario. Progressively remove CO2. This lowers temperatures and water content in the atmosphere.
The approximate change, from the Clausius-Clapyeron eqn is that a 1 C change changes water content by 7%. Taking Tom Curtis's earlier figure of -8.9C temperature drop just from removal of CO2,that would result in a decline in water in the atmosphere of 0.93^8.9 or down to 52% of current water values. Add in removal of the other minor GH gases, the decline in cloud contribution to the GH effect as well and you will have an even larger decline.
Will there be some residual amount of water in the atmosphere after all the other GH gases are removed? Yes. But the temperatures will be sufficiently lower that ice is vastly more extensive, temperatures are much lower still and water much loweragain. So in an ice world water vapor levels would be very, very low.
In essence, 2 factors force water to only have a feedback role.- The gain on the water feedback must be <1 otherwise we would observe that the system is totally unstable. So water cannot indefinitely drive the response to any perturbation, even from changes in water.
- Water content in the atmosphere is totally temperature dependent. It cannot rise or fall without a prior temperature change. Therefore the GH effect of water depends on temperature.
The conclusion is that water cannot initiate a change by itself, be a forcing. Because for that to occur there needs to be an initial temperature change to trigger a change of water vapor content. Nothing can change water content without an initial temperature change. And any temperature change must force a water content change. Water can't itself perturb the system. And it must respond if there is a perturbation. Even if random variations, local weather events, El Ninos etc introduce small perturbations, triggering small water responses, when those perturbations reverse, the water response reverses.
A pure feedback-only mechanism. Water can only be a forcing, an initiator of a perturbation, if its atmospheric concentration can be changed by something other than temperature change. If it could accumulate like CO2 does for example. But it can't.
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JeffDylan at 15:24 PM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Eclectic @290
I have so grasped the concept of "forcings" and "feedbacks". It doesn't mean, however, that I always agree with how they are used. It is important to realize that they are not scientific terms, but only inventions to help keep cause and effect consistent in our thinking and models. Also, there is no rule saying that the presumed cause and effect (or forcing and feedback) will always be correct.
I looked up the ACS website and found nothing new about condensible greenhouse gases. Apparently, these molecules shut down their absorption/re-emission systems as they enter the gas phase.
Moderator Response:[PS] You are straying into straight sloganeering. People are responding with evidence and references. You are so far providing nothing in support. All words are inventions, and are useful to communication when everyone uses them the same way. And you need extraordinary evidence, not speculation if you want to contradict laws of physics. So far evidence is missing from your comments, and you dont appear to be bothering to study resources people have provided - especially given your egregious final statement which no one and no resource has asserted.
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kkraft7 at 14:42 PM on 16 July 2017There is no consensus
Unfortunately many of the links have aged out in your "Scientific organizations endorsing the consensus" section. You might want to try updating them. Although good luck with the EPA these days...
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scaddenp at 13:26 PM on 16 July 2017Models are unreliable
Also, I wonder that put so much emphasis on prediction. Models beat reading entrails hands done, but they are not best way to test climate theory, especially such a noisy variable as surface temperature. The normal physics verifications are much better but funnily enough, not skeptic talking points.
Closer to my speciality, I am glad people can take the necessary expensive reforms required from taking earthquake science seriously without demanding prediction models match observations exactly first. Good thing ideological biases havent got in the way there.
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Eclectic at 12:47 PM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JeffDylan @288 , you say you have studied climate matters for over ten years — and yet you fail to grasp the concept of "forcings"??
As an exercise, I have just googled "condensable greenhouse gases", and the very first entry gave an explanation in that regard. (See the website of the ACS : the American Chemistry Society.) Not to mention subsequent entries — including the famous R. Pierrehumbert, physicist, who publishes on such planetary matters.
Jeff, were I more cynical, I would suspect you of being disingenuous.
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Tom Curtis at 12:17 PM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JeffDylan @288, if that was what you were after, perhaps you should have asked for it?
A Radiative Forcing is "...the change in the net, downward minus upward, radiative flux (expressed in W m–2) at the tropopause or top of atmosphere due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide or the output of the Sun". (My emphasis.) That is the technical definition of the term. In contrast, a climate feedback is:
"An interaction in which a perturbation in one climate quantity causes a change in a second, and the change in the second quantity ultimately leads to an additional change in the first. A negative feedback is one in which the initial perturbation is weakened by the changes it causes; a positive feedback is one in which the initial perturbation is enhanced. In this Assessment Report, a somewhat narrower definition is often used in which the climate quantity that is perturbed is the global mean surface temperature, which in turn causes changes in the global radiation budget. In either case, the initial perturbation can either be externally forced or arise as part of internal variability."
Both definitions from here.
It is very obvious that because total column water vapour (and specific humidity), and therefore the effect of water vapour on radiative forcing, vary with temperature, it is an internal driver of the net radiative flux. Consequently it is a climate feedback. The relationship between specific humidity and temperature shown in the second image in my preceding post shows conclusively that the effect of water vapour on radiative flux is a feedback, in that it depends on an internal climate state - namely, the global temperature field.
Of course, I have not been the first person to make this point. Indeed, it has been repeatedly made, and repeatedly ignored by you. Your argument, therefore, gives every appearance of a Humpty Dumpty argument, ie, you insist that water vapour is a radiative forcing, not because its concentration is not temperature dependent, but because you insist that words be used your way rather than according to the definition and usage of the community who defined and use those words.
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JeffDylan at 11:41 AM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Well, I was hoping that with the climate expertise and reverence to science claimed on this site, someone here would be able to give me a clear, valid explanation as to why condensible greenhouse gases can't be a radiative forcing while they are in the gas state. Obviously, I was mistaken.
Moderator Response:[DB] You've been given explanations and citations to credible sources. You've simply ignored them and not read them.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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scaddenp at 11:18 AM on 16 July 2017Models are unreliable
NorrisM,
To me the issue of how close the models match observations over whatever necessary period (20 years?) is critical.
as a lawyer then, perhaps I could ask you whether a person should be judged on the basis of what they have clearly stated (and is recorded), or on the basis of what someone else has reinterpretated them to say?
What climate science expects, is that surface temperature will evolve as a very wiggly line that mostly lies within the range of the multiple model runs ( the grey area in the model projection maps).
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Tom Curtis at 10:20 AM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JeffDylan @283, first, even absent any water vapour feedback (but including the albedo feedback), my analysis shows a drop on GMST from the removal of all CO2 in the order of 17oC, ie, a drop to a GMST of -3oC. That in itself shows your claim of a drop of "a few degrees C" to be nonsense. Indeed, even the no feedback drop of 13oC demonstrates that.
Second, my analysis does not assume water vapour is a feedback on CO2, but on temperature, as formalized by the Clausius-Claperyon relation, which is basic laboratory physics. It is also demonstrated in the atmosphere by the relation of the total column water vapour to latitude:
Or the change in relative humidity over land over time in recent decades, plotted as a scatterplot against global land surface temperature:
(Black is observations (HadISDh), pink a reanalysis product (ERA-40), with the other three being model ensembles for historical greenhouse gas forcings (yellow), historical natural forcings (green), and all historical forcings (purple).)
You may want to assume total column water vapour is constant regardless of GMST, but when you do you render your views no more interesting, or realistic, than those of flat earthers.
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factotum at 10:20 AM on 16 July 2017Study: On climate change and elsewhere, politicians more conservative than citizens
Skeptical Science asks that you review the comments policy. Thank you.
It occurs to me that given the degree to which our current political system is messed up / disconnected from "reality"
1.) the degree to which our current political system is messed up / disconnected from "reality"
2. That scientists are still among the most prestegious / respected groups in the country,
3. Many, if not most of our founding fathers had a scientific mind set. This objective mindset in dealing with the real physical world being necessary to be successful when you are in intimate contact with the physical world
then I would like to propose that a new political party be created. Viz. the party of science. One of its first goals would be a constitutional amendment that any candidate for public office be required to take and pass an upper division science course, and a year of calculus.
And that science course would be hard science as in biology, physics, or chemestry. Maybe a few others. But not psychology, or other "soft" sciences that have little, if any, mathematical foundations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science
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Eclectic at 09:49 AM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Tom Dayton @285 ,
I hope you are not intending a disparagement of Trump University.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:14 AM on 16 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
nigelj@2,
SInce the baseline global average is warming due to increasing GHG (primarily CO2) and strong El Nino events are typically the most significant temporary warming bumps above the average it is to be expected that many of the "warmest" years are the "Warmer than average" El Nino years.
Jan Nul's Webpage of ENSO events is a helpful presentation of the magnitude of the NOAA ENSO evaluations. The big El Nino events do appear to be getting bigger in that presentation.
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Tom Dayton at 07:36 AM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JeffDylan, which university gave you your doctorate in physics, along the way teaching you atmospheric physics while claiming the very concept of relative humidity is a fraud invented by the United Nations and the IPCC in the 1700s through early 1800s, and promulgated ever since by everyone including your local meteorologist?
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nigelj at 07:35 AM on 16 July 2017Models are unreliable
Regarding modelling. Even if you forget models, just for one minute, and just project the last 30 years trends forward as a linear trend to end of century, you get very significant warming.
However it will then only take a quite small acceleration to this recent trend, due to constant ramping up of emissions combined with proven positive feedbacks, to cause more warming of about roughly 4 degrees. (Sort of like compound interest). This is what people need to get their heads around.
The Red Blue team court room concept is not the appropriate mechanism to decide science. Courts are already having huge problems making sense of complex financial cases, that are beyond judges, juries and lawyers. Repeating this exercise for science is verging on insanity.
You would be deciding the fate of the planet on who is the best dressed most articulate, and possibly devious speaker and gut reactions of people to all this. Its better to leave such decisions to the people at the IPCC and their more measured processes.
The Europeans grasp this problem and have more of an "Inquisitorial" legal system for complex cases. The IPCC system that we already use is essentially an inquisitorial system!
Honestly I cannot believe the absurd lenths the Republican Party are going to try to deny the climate problem. If only they could see themselves from the outside looking in, and how absurd and desperate they look.
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nigelj at 06:23 AM on 16 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
The "Ten Hottest Years" graph in the first article shows a bit of an ominous looking curve / acceleration. Quite a few of those years look like el nino years, so does this mean el ninos are becoming more powerful over time, possibly due to agw influences?
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nigelj at 06:04 AM on 16 July 2017Study: On climate change and elsewhere, politicians more conservative than citizens
Chriskoz @6
Yes political donations from industry should be banned or capped. But ironically this will probably only happen if the voting public "lobby politicians" more effectively to try to get them to amend the relevant law. So we are back to what I was saying. Politiicans wont do it willingly, they will have to be pushed hard by the public.
There's another problem in America. The Democrats already tried to limit / cap election donations, but it was struck down by the courts as "unconstitutional" as below.
Regarding other countries, I would ideally like to see election campaigns funded out of taxation. That way private money and influence is removed. It won't be easy of course, because people react negatively to taxes spent on politicians in any way, but I think we would all be better off for it.
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KR at 06:03 AM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
JeffDylan - I'm afraid that your personal incredulity is not a argument; CO2 as the control knob of global temperature is quite frankly as well established as the existence of gravity. Non-condensible gases set the thermal equilibrium, condensible gases (water vapor) can only act as feedback because they respond so quickly to a temperature change, even if their overall effect is quite large.
Again, your claim of disbelief in the science carries no weight by itself - try the peer-reviewed science, such as Lacis et al 2010, for actual discussions of the evidence.
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JeffDylan at 05:39 AM on 16 July 2017Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Tom Curtis @281
Your analysis presumes the concept of H2O as only a feedback to the CO2 forcing, which no one has proven (even though climate "experts" use it all of the time), and I believe is false. Also, nothing coming from the IPCC or the United Nations in general carries any credibility with me. I'm afraid that unless you can come up with no arm-waving proof that CO2 is the "control knob" for the greenhouse effect (even though the greenhouse contribution from H2O vapor is mathematically much larger), there is really nothing further to discuss. You are only building castles on quicksand in your postings.
Moderator Response:[JH] Antagonisitic and baseless sloganeering snipped.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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ubrew12 at 04:30 AM on 16 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
The reason Scott Pruitt wants a televised red team/blue team debate on Climate Change is because the blue team will be composed of actual climate scientists, uncomfortable in the spotlight and unpracticed at debate. They will be right but will look wrong: and television is all about appearances.
Meanwhile, the fossil-funded red team will be composed of good-looking lawyers trained in winning debates, and having memorized their talking points. They also will have a distinct advantage: to win the debate they only have to spread doubt. They don't have to provide climate answers, just paint the answers the other side gives with cynicism. Keep in mind: these will be trained experts in planting doubt and cynicism in the public's mind.
A few years ago, Bill Nye (the Science guy) debated climate change with GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn on 'Meet the Press'. She easily held her own, because she's trained in debate and had memorized her talking points, and because Nye is a 'science communicator' who, as scientists rarely do, doesn't react well to hearing someone speak with a forked tongue with such apparent ease. It's difficult but instructive to watch Blackburn toss off climate myths one after another with such cheery authority. No wonder Scott Pruitt wants to 'go there'.
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Doug_C at 02:10 AM on 16 July 2017Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming
nigelj, I hadn't thought of the addiction aspects of fossil fuels but that does seem to fit. George W. Bush in a rare moment of honesty and clarity a decade ago talked of Americans being addicted oil, but that probably applies to many places and is spreading as the growth of person autmobiles in the most populated nations rapidly increases.
Billions of Chinese and Indians may also eventually share this addiction.
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Eclectic at 01:49 AM on 16 July 2017It's too hard
Carn @67 ,
you seem to be very enthusiastic for a big increase in nuclear generation of electricity, but at the same time strongly opposed to government subsidies (i.e. the hand in the taxpayer pocket).
Yet nuclear power dies without subsidy.
And even with a big building program, the OECD and World Nuclear Association expect that they would achieve a "too little, too late" result by 2050 (in reducing world CO2 emissions). And it all needs government money, anyway.
There is the problem of up-front costs (and slow build rates, despite cutting regulations) plus de-commissioning costs. And many other aspects, of course. And after the severe financial embarrassments of the latest Finnish power plant (at Olkiluoto-3), it has come down to a reliance on government money (some from Finland, some from the Russian government) to get things done.
Private company investors are running for cover, when it comes to the suggestion of financing nuclear power plants. (And even with government money, it "just ain't gonna happen" in most of the tropical and near-tropic countries of the world.)
My own money, for instance, is invested in a spread of things giving a good return — not in the low-return / very-high-risk area of nuclear plants. And fund managers everywhere have much the same idea.
# Big new hydro schemes are mostly just not on : because there's really not much scope for expansion there nowadays. Even recent ones such as the Three Gorges scheme, come from [Chinese] government money — and may be embarrassed, some decades in the future, by water-flow alterations consequent on effects from the ongoing global warming. However, as you say, there is room for numerous tiny pumped-hydro plants, to supply electricity overnight where originally generated from solar & wind. And some of these could draw on seawater as their fluid.
Wind power is cheap enough nowadays for private companies to be willing to invest in, even without subsidy. And similarly with large-scale solar plants. And solar power is cheap enough now for private individuals to install their own roof panels — again without subsidy. So I don't know why you are so "down" on solar.
# If you are ideologically opposed to any subsidies, then you should be strongly opposed to the direct & indirect subsidies given to coal-fired plants and indeed also to most other fossil-fuel usage [not only because of CO2 emissions] where there are large taxpayer subsidies — some open and obvious, some hidden or indirect/external.
One guy I know says (only half-jokingly) that the entire costs of the USN Fifth Fleet over past decades should have been added to the per-gallon price of gasoline.
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