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nigelj at 17:12 PM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Wake @4, you appear to believe the executives in charge of oil companies need permission of the owners to determine their position on climate change science. So its all the elderly owners fault if oil companies spread climate denialism.
This is just nonsense. The people spreading climate denialism, are oil company executives, ( as discussed in various books like Merchants of Doubt,) and they don't need permission of the owners. The executives would consider it "day to day operations".
I doubt investment funds even know what the climate policy process is, and the individual elderly retired people investing in some retirement fund probably don't even know what companies those funds invest in. It's absurd to try to blame elderly retired people.
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Tom Curtis at 17:05 PM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Wake @3:
"They presently have enough solar and wind power that if they were all operating at maximum output they would have be able to supply 19% of the maximum load. 2015 was an almost perfect year for these "alternate energy sources". It was during a drought in California with little cloud cover in mid-day and wind at or near perfect speed for the wind generators. What was their yearly percentage attributable to "alternative power"? 3% and a normal year will give them 2%."
In 2015, 25.8% of power in California was from renewable sources, of which the major components were wind (9.4%), solar (5.9%) and geothermal (5.1%):
In 2016, the total renewable contribution rose to 27%.
Once again Wake's stated "facts" have no bearing on reality.
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nigelj at 16:41 PM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Wake @3,
"They presently have enough solar and wind power that if they were all operating at maximum output they would have be able to supply 19% of the maximum load. 2015 was an almost perfect year for these "alternate energy sources". It was during a drought in California with little cloud cover in mid-day and wind at or near perfect speed for the wind generators. What was their yearly percentage attributable to "alternative power"? 3% and a normal year will give them 2%."
You provide no sources for this information. Anything controversial, and I want to see sources in the form of an internet link.
And are you seriously trying to tell me California had good levels of wind and solar everyday, for the entire year? It looks utterly implausible, and you provide no sources for your claims anyway. It's a strawman argument to compare output in idealised, perfect conditions, to likely conditions.
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nigelj at 16:17 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Chriskoz @8, I mean climate science is complicated for the average person in the sense that there are several potential causes, and anyone will be interested in these, but they take a lot of working through. Few people will simply take what the IPCC says at face value. It's just an observation i'm making.
It took me a while to read up on these possible causes to determine that CO2 was the cause, and this website helped. Climate change science is just not as clear cut as some other science theories, where you can nail things with just one or two experiments or very clear observations etc. The trouble is we can't put the entire planet in a laboratory, so it becomes a case of multiple strands of evidence.
I don't think scientists can do much more than explain it all the way they generally have. I thought it was pretty obvious I meant that.
I agree it's all more of a social problem. You have a whole lot of denialist agendas and personal egos and issues in the way Although it's tough to be sure if Scott Adams is just not well informed, lazy, well intended, or a closet denislist trying to confuse things.
I would add climate change is also a political problem. It's metamorphosised into a bitter battle of conservatives and liberals, which is just unhealthy. Right now an awful lot of the nonsense is coming from Trump & associates.
However things can change quite quickly. Not only climate reaches a tipping point, so do human responses to situations, and it can be sudden and unpredictable. Humanity might suddenly wake up and demand much more action on climate change. All sorts of social phenomena incubate then reach tipping points. There is a book on this "The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell".
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chriskoz at 16:10 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Rob Honeycutt@6,
Thanks for your explanation. I've watched few interviews with Adams, both recent (in last Sept), when he explains why T-man (a true sociopath) will win with Hillary, and from 20 years ago when describing his inspiration behind his Dilbert character. In both times I see the man who does not appreciate the people's knowledge or the beauty of people's art forms. As an artist he should definitely be familiar withthe later. But nothing of substance: the only thing he can say is that he identifies himself with Dilbert in one third but does not really explain why. I see a cynical person, for whom the only important aspect of life is "the power of persuasion". It is understandable thten why he endorsed T-man, who is far better than Hillary in that aspect. Of caurse, unlike T-man, Adams is very eloquent and even a nice person. But overarching it is his overwhelming cynicism. We've seen examples of it in climate science & psychology here, I've seen it in politics, I guess we can generalise it to pretty much everything.
In summary very uninteresting personality. I'm not sure how high he would score in PCL-R test. I would say that his empathy is not impaired in the interview I've seen and he must understand social life in order to create a successful cartoon. My observations might be less complete than yours but I rest on describing him as dumb cynic rather than sociopath. His chronic cynicism explain very well his denial of climate science and his demagogery we are discussing here.
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Doug_C at 15:21 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
First post here so I'm not sure if this is considered a political comment or not.
I don't think it's a case of scientists not doing a good job in communicating the scale and likely negative impacts of climate change. Some have taken the extraordinary step of going before Congress going back decades make it clear just how serious an issue this is.
This is a question of the other "side" doing a very professional job of cancelling out the science.
With the current situation I think it's highly likely that a majority of people could be fully convinced of the reality and risks of climate change and still nothing would be done.
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stephen baines14492 at 12:48 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
I do a lecture on the history of AGW for my global ecosystems class. I've been thinking about having as an organizing principle a list of a priori predictions concerning the effect of increasing CO2, and contrasting that to predictions if other natural source terms were the cause of warming. I would slowly populate the list as I talk through the history, and then check off the predictions based on recent observations. That may be more in line with what Adams is talking about.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:43 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
I was always more of a Bloom County/Calvin & Hobbs sort, myself. :-)
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stephen baines14492 at 12:39 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
I'd say the list of communicators needs to be longer. We're barely keeping up with "skeptics" on that front. Otherwise his points are laughably naive and easy to swat down.
As for models, I just point out that there is NO physically realistic model that can describe recent warming without CO2. Period. So it doesn't matter whether the models are perfectly accurate - that is a red herring. They are far better than any model based solely on "natural" causes. The only models of the latter type that claim to be successful are correlative retrodictions projected forward, which is exactly what he poo-poos in financial models.
He seems inordinately stuck on models, as many "skeptics" who seem to have a fear of being hoodwinked, or have irrelevant and misleading experience from other fields. So maybe he dismisses all "models" out of hand. Then I go to the empirically derived input terms - global heat budget and solar, albedo and ocaen heat exchange terms. Qualitatively they say the same thing, and you can't get around the first law of thermodynamics, nor do you have to watch a TED talk to understand it.
As for whether it matters to humans, well, the question is whether he wants civilization or zombie apocalypse. Of course humans as a species survived at least one ice age. Not many individuals made it though, so I'd by life insurance. Hell, our society can barely absorb the effects of a sinngle drought in Syria! And isn't survival a rather low bar? I'd like to run for office on that slogan - "Some of you will survive!"
Finally. The scientist scam hypothesis. His whole premise is that scientists are not good at talking about this stuff to the public. Why is that? Because we generally only talk to ourselves! We're too busy doing that to scam the public. And how would we scam other scientists who do know better and have an incentive to prove you wrong?
So Adams is at once saying scientists are dimwitted at communication, and also that they are capable of pulling the biggest scam of all time. A scam that, even more amazingly, would go unnoticed among peers who know better, or peers in medicine, geology, physics, economics — virtually every major scientific body that has no stake in the issue but has issued a statement in support of the proposition that AGW is true.
Funding has been flat for a long long time by the way. You think they would see the writing on the wall and stop trying the scam. But they are dumb! And yet so smart!
Oh, by Pascal's wager, he's probably making an analogy to the precautionary principle as applied to climate sensitivity uncertainty. They are both forms of bet hedging. It's interesting because his beginning premise is a bet hedge. So apparently he can do that but we can't.
It's too bad. I used to like Adams.
Moderator Response:[JH] "All-caps" constitute shouting and are prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. You may emphasize a word or words by bolding the font.
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chriskoz at 12:37 PM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
nigelj@7,
I do not share your opinion that climate science represents "complex weight of evidence where ordinary people have to connect quite a few dots". Yes, it maybe complex, but it the pends on the recipient's choice at which level s/he wants it to understand. That applies to every discipline and every type of knowledge. While learning any stuff you have to rely on the work of others who are proven experts. Examples abound. To start with, you can understand GHE of CO2 as "like putting on a sweater that feels you warm without help of any heater", which is gros simplification but is still fine. Or you can dive into the level of quantum mechanics of energy levels in CO2 molecules plus thermodynamic interaction with other gases explaining how that energy is radiated back to the surface. And scientists do not need to communicate their work at all those and intermediate levels: it would be insane waste of their time. The website like this one should be in charge of communicating science to "ordinary people" and SkS is doing a very good job with basic, intermediate & advanced myth debunking levels. At policy levels, IPCC is also doing a tremendous job with their assesments. Do you think it could be done any better? Do you have an idea how? More impotantly, do you think scientists &science communicators in any other discipline are doing it better than climate scientists and ourselves are doing here? If you don't have answers to questions as I'm posing them, your point is at least moot, or I even dare say baseless.
AGW is not an environmental problem but social problem as I've been underscoring many times here. So sociopaths (as Rob is trying to show is the case of Scott Adams) and special interest groups as in the case of previous SkS article, are going to deny it, or even trying to manipulate science to bend them to their subjective opinions. Note, that the motives of Scott Adams scolding scintists can be very similar FF infiltrating relevant academia: the later is a clever tactic of a smart person, while the former is a primitive & dumb demagoguery. Such people will always deny the reality, subtle or gross way, and scientists who are not trained as phychologists can do nothing about it.
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nigelj at 11:09 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Ok clearly Scott Adams has got things all wrong. But one thing jumps out at me. Climate science is proven as far as I'm personally concerned, but it is by nature a complex weight of evidence argument, where ordinary people have to connect quite a few dots. But having said this, we have to work at this. It is what it is.
Denialists are lazy. Crack open a book, and stop expecting science to be easy, or black and white. Stop manipulating the complexity of the situation to score points, spread confusion, or promote unrelated ideological agendas.
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nigelj at 10:43 AM on 15 March 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #10
Wake, emissions growth over the last couple of centuries correlates rather well with population growth as below. There are some deviations, but many obvious explanations. Just because we have exponential population growth, remember the upper leg of an exponential curve is not always very curvy.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:00 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Fair comment, chriskoz. I've inferred sociopathy from previous interactions and didn't really fully explain here in this piece.
In my experiences with him, and with those who defend him, there seems to be very much a cult leader quality to it all (which I do reference, somewhat obliquely). That is what I would interpret to involve sociopathic behavior. I'm certainly not a psychologist so I don't want to over-interpret. What I see is someone who really doesn't care much about anyone else's opinions, expert or otherwise, unless it fits into his own framework of thinking. He doesn't seem to care whether he's lying or telling the truth because that's all dismissed as being somehow irrational since reality is only what's in your mind.
It's certainly my own interpretation of what I've witnessed but I don't think I'm in too shaky a position to call his behavior sociopathic.
It the past, when I've dealt with people I would consider to be sociopathic, they tend to have no sense of boundaries or propriety. I think many sociopathic people will rightly choose to surround themselves with people who have the capacity to help them interpret those boundaries. As far as I can tell, Adams chooses the opposite. He seems to shun any pretense that his cognitive framework can be challenged.
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michael sweet at 08:45 AM on 15 March 2017Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
Jim,
There are a lot of ways to store power and shift demand. These demand shifts can substantially strengthen the grid. Using car batteries or home batteries like the Tesla powerwall are one method.
Methods for predicting several days in advance when renewable energy will be plentiful and when it will be harder to come by are well developed already. I personally think that shifting charging periods from low periods, like windless nights, to high periods like windy days will be easy to implement and substantially reduce demand during the low periods.
I think the barriors to using home batteries to distribute power to the grid are substantial. This is just my opinion. Home batteries (or cars) could well result in those homes not needing any power from the grid during low supply periods which would effectively support the grid.
Wind and solar are already the cheapest power available during sunny days and windy periods. In order for the grid to go entirely renewable, storage and/or load shifting will have to be developed. There are currently a lot of methods of shifting demand or storing energy for use during low supply periods. A few of those methods will turn out to be the most economic.
All of us have our own favorites. I have no doubt that some of my favorite methods will fail while others will succeed, but I do not yet know which methods are the ones that will succeed. Your favorites are probably somewhat different from mine. Perhaps your guesses will end up better than mine. I think it is too early to decide which methods will work in several decades. Only 5 years ago I did not think that solar could be cheaper than wind but solar has made amazing cost cuts recently. Which technology will develop the most in the next ten years?
Scientific projections of future grids that generate all power used (all power, not all electricity) in the USA like Jacobson 2015 do not use demand shifting or home storage at all. This means that the final grid will be cheaper than Jacobson estimates since any demand shifting will reduce demand for more expensive storage.
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chriskoz at 08:20 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
... further compounded by his peculiar brand of sociopathy
In this final sentence, Rob, you're claiming Adams is some kind of sociopath , i.e. a person "characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits" as explained by Wiki. You provide no direct evidence of this. Certainly, the evidence in OP points that Adams does not understand psychology & conginitve science in particular and makes bogus statements about it contrary to his claims that psychological aspects of climate science denial are his interest.
However that does not look to me as implying sociopathic type of personality. If you think it does or that I missed that point in your OP, please explain it again to me.
Regardeless of the above (can be possibly my misunderstanding) I find the OP very god and enlightening.
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Tom Curtis at 08:18 AM on 15 March 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #10
Wake @6:
"[T]hese temperature records set were highly unreliable. They were strictly from satellite data and if memory serves the increases were 10% of the possible error bars. Using ground measurements showed none of these records."
In fact, you have exactly reversed the facts. The Satellite record shows records in 87, 88, 91, 98 and 2016. The surface record, which is considerably more accurate, shows the records I mentioned:
"This would indicate that ALL the growth in atmospheric CO2 is from man. But in fact while the growth in CO2 since 1960 has been linear, the growth in fossil fuel by man and the growth of the use of cement and other CO2 outgasing sources has been logarythmic."
I assume that you meant exponential growth. Logarithmic growth decelerates over time, as with the red line below. Exponential growth accelerates, as with the blue line:
In any event, again your claim reverses the actual facts. CO2 emission growth has been uneven, but approximates to linear growth:
In contrast, CO2 concentration has been increasing at a faster than linear rate:
These two facts are perfectly compatible, given that CO2 concentration is a function of cumulative CO2 emissions, and the cumulative function of a positive linear function grows at a faster than linear rate (but not as fast as a quadratic or exponential function):
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Wake at 07:31 AM on 15 March 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #10
Tom Curtis - these temperature records set were highly unreliable. They were strictly from satellite data and if memory serves the increases were 10% of the possible error bars. Using ground measurements showed none of these records.
I read a paper by Dr. Crisp who calculated the yearly amount of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere by the use of fossil fuel and the outgassing of the cement that is used in such massive quantities in today's society.
This led me to calculating the amounts of CO2 that would be necessary to raise the atmospheic levels of CO2 since 1960 since this appears to be a linear growth. My numbers and Dr. Crisp's were very close.
This would indicate that ALL the growth in atmospheric CO2 is from man. But in fact while the growth in CO2 since 1960 has been linear, the growth in fossil fuel by man and the growth of the use of cement and other CO2 outgasing sources has been logarythmic.
What this means is that these studies are entirely in their infancies and making ANY predictions with the facts so occluded as they are is betting heavily on a pair of duces while someone else is showing aces.
Moderator Response:[JH] All-caps snipped. In additon, please provide a link to the Crisp paper that you read.
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Wake at 07:16 AM on 15 March 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #10
These sorts of papers are simply bunk. We just had a 10 year study that predicted methane boiling out of the melting permafrost in the arctic. After 10 years - no methane. Their determination - not that they were wrong but "it hasn't happened yet."
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeeing snipped. Per the SkS Comments Policy:
- No sloganeering. Comments consisting of simple assertion of a myth already debunked by one of the main articles, and which contain no relevant counter argument or evidence from the peer reviewed literature constitutes trolling rather than genuine discussion. As such they will be deleted. If you think our debunking of one of those myths is in error, you are welcome to discuss that on the relevant thread, provided you give substantial reasons for believing the debunking is in error. It is asked that you do not clutter up threads by responding to comments that consist just of slogans.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:07 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Based on observations of what has been going on globally, and not just related to climate science, I offer the following "Best Explanation of what can be seen to be going on":
Competition to "Win" can only be expected to produce an "Improvement for future humanity" if "improving the future for all of humanity" is the over-riding rule regarding what is allowed to compete for popularity and profitability.
Popularity and profitability games can easily be won by the people with the largest competitive advantage. The less decently a person is willing to behave, the more harmful (less helpful) they choose to try to get away with being, the more competitive advantage they can have. And misleading marketing is a powerful weapon.
Many people are easily tempted to be greedier or more xenophobic (tribal desires to Win by comparison/competition with Others, especially by getting away with actions that are detrimental to "Others")
As a result, efforts to improve the future for all of humanity are at a serious competitive disadvantage when people can become influential and potentially be leaders without first proving they have developed into thoughtful considerate adults aware of and dedicated to their responsibility to help others. And all leaders should be expected/required to help lead the improvement of the future for all of humanity (suffering legal consequences if they act Otherwise - because Good Leaders they cannot claim they did not Know Better). Winning by people with other interests (particularly Ones wanting to Win to the detriment of Others) will not develop an improved future for humanity.
A solution: Leaders who fail to properly present matters like climate science should be legally removed from their roles because they have proven that they are "Not competent to properly perform their leadership duties". And that should apply to business leaders as well as to political leaders and to any wealthy person who acts to influence leaders as a financial/marketing supporter.
Of course misguided people like Scott Adams would still be free to present nonsense, but they would have a very different and diminished following/influence.
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Wake at 07:07 AM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Let us comment also about the idea that there is a "fossil fuel" entity. Almost ALL of the oil, gas and coal companies is publically owned. It is public information who owns and who controls these companies and they are NOT some single entity. Most of these stocks and the control of those stocks is in the hands of investment bonds. And these are in turn mostly controlled by retirement funds. YOU grandparents are making a living off of the VERY small profits that are made by these companies. And your parents either are presently living off of the returns of these funds or about to be.
It is silly and childish to present "Big Oil" as owning or controlling ANYTHING and especially the government who makes approximately 10 times more off of the taxes on oil than the oil companies make in profits.
Should we be skeptical about BATTERIES? After all a fanily just had several members killed when a hoverboard caught on fire and their home burned down.
Why do you suppose this is? After all - battery technology is 150 years old. But infact it isn't. Battery technology is dependent upon chemistry which is a FAR older science and all of the easy means of making batteries have been investigated. So the remaining ways use rare materials and dangerous chemistry. While there are claims that there are several promising battery technologies on the horizon, presently the lithum ion batteries are far and away the best workable solution and the others have very short lifespans and can be even more dangerous.
While this reference is a bit over the top it nevertheless points to what people are thinking is going to defeat "Big Oil": www.democraticunderground.com/10027822859
If we are going to be skeptical we first have to start from a position of knowledge and not that of a spoiled child trying to put one over on his elders.
Moderator Response:[JH] The use of all-caps constitutes shouting and is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
In addition you are skating on the thin ice of sloganeering when you make assertions (in this case about the fossil fuel industry) without providing substantiating documentation.
All things considered, the last sentence of your comment rings hollow.
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Wake at 06:52 AM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
PluviAL - I have to wonder what is going through your mind. Efficacy of alternate energy sources? What are these? Pacific Gas and Electricity has been working on "alternate sources" for 30 years. They presently have enough solar and wind power that if they were all operating at maximum output they would have be able to supply 19% of the maximum load. 2015 was an almost perfect year for these "alternate energy sources". It was during a drought in California with little cloud cover in mid-day and wind at or near perfect speed for the wind generators. What was their yearly percentage attributable to "alternative power"? 3% and a normal year will give them 2%.
There are few places in the US with conditions as good. And forms of alternate energy such as daming off the Golden Gate or the Bay of Fundy is massively damaging to the eco-systems.
This call for alternate energy sources has me aghast since it shows and almost complete lack of just what it would require.
Would you stop driving a car? Heating your home in the winter and air conditioning it in the summer? These three things alone would drop average age perhaps as much as 10 years. Do you really think that being able to drive to a supermarket or cool an older person in the mid-western summer isn't extremely important to health?
Do you believe for one second that people would stop flying commercial aircraft around the world or importing products and goods via ships and moving them via railroads and trucks?
A reduction in the use of energy would hit the high population countries such as China and India the hardest and they will simply refuse to do so.
I suggest before you speak of solutions you actually know of one.
Moderator Response:[JH] Ad hominem snipped. Per the SkS Comments Policy:
- No ad hominem attacks. Personally attacking other users gets us no closer to understanding the science. For example, comments containing the words 'religion' and 'conspiracy' tend to get moderated. Comments using labels like 'alarmist' and 'denier' as derogatory terms are usually skating on thin ice.
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John Mason at 06:47 AM on 15 March 2017Dear Mr President: another message from across the Pond
OK - SINK now RESERVOIR!
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John Hartz at 06:03 AM on 15 March 2017To tweet or not to tweet at Donald Trump? That was the question!
@Doug Mackie: Re the "all-caps" brouhaha — At the time I struck your all-caps words, I did not realize that your comments were meant to be mock tweets. I apologize.
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scaddenp at 06:03 AM on 15 March 2017Models are unreliable
"Rather that only in the satellite era do we have a spacially dense data set adequate for capturing most of the relevant phenomena that must be captured and calibrated in the models."
I would not doubt for a moment that satellite data is a monumental advantage for understanding climate. However, examining the error bars on pre-satellite trends, I do not agree with your assertion that these are not useful for validation/calibration of models. If you mask your model output with same coverage that was observable then, and the model output does not match observation within those error bars, then the model is wrong. This is very much approach that must be taken for paleoclimate or even post-industrial period.
With temperature in particular, the strong spatial correlation of temperature anomolies does compensate for poor coverage to some degree.
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JWRebel at 06:02 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Points such as # 6, 9, and 13 prove that his is not a quest in good faith but that he has imbibed too many perennial denier memes. People like this want a detailed weather forecast for the next 150 years, and then pretend that not knowing exactly how global warming will play out might mean it will not be wrenching. After, all didn't the temperature rise during the Permian extinction as well, oh, did we say extinction at a time when there was no fixed infrastructure mammals needed to flourish and survive?
The notion that it is brutal to call skeptics anti-science when all they want is to be spoon fed a convincing narrative/film that doesn't "remind them of a financial scam". Is that too much to ask? You cannot be more disingenuous. The truth is that most scientists have been convinced by the evidence and the facts, despite fighting desparately to hold out more hope for continuing civilization and progress, despite looking for a way to get out from under the devastating implications, despite the reluctant acceptance turning into a virtually unanimous consensus...
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Doug Cannon at 05:29 AM on 15 March 2017Of Satellites and Air – A Primer on Tropospheric temperature measurement by Satellite
Can someone point me to link explaining the cause of the leveling off of TLS cooling in past decade?
Thanks
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ubrew12 at 03:48 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Adams' list of skeptic complaints- condensed: "You didn't say it right, so I don't believe you." Ask yourself: why would anyone who confers that much power to himself ever give that power up?
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David Kirtley at 02:27 AM on 15 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Bravo, Rob and well done. I couldn't make it past Adams' first sentence. Thanks for doing this!
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John Mason at 01:40 AM on 15 March 2017To tweet or not to tweet at Donald Trump? That was the question!
** Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can
be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/
or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended
period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due
to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent
anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in
land use.
Note that UNFCCC, in its Article 1, defines “climate change” as “a
change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human
activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and
which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over
comparable time periods”. The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction
between “climate change” attributable to human activities altering
the atmospheric composition, and “climate variability” attributable
to natural causes.
From the IPCC glossary. However, the top definition is the one used widely in the literature e.g. put "climate change Cenozoic" into Scholar and see what comes up! -
John Mason at 01:27 AM on 15 March 2017To tweet or not to tweet at Donald Trump? That was the question!
Doug, I agree that with specific reference to limestone, carbon reservoir would have been better. Amazingly, it just fits! I've changed it now :)
My research background is in mineralisation (specifically metallogenesis and supergene alteration). Especially in the latter, we see various geochemical pathways from one mineral to another (e.g. from galena to cerussite) with intermediate and relatively metastable reservoir species along the way.
In the case of the weathering of Ca-bearing silicates, I can plead that I was trying to simplify things as far as I could – that was the whole idea of the exercise. Sure, not every ion of basalt-derived HCO3- ends up in limestone – any one ion might or might not see that outcome, but the whole process can be viewed as a pathway in simplistic terms.
A longer-winded version would have been to say that the weathering of Ca-silicate bearing rocks draws down 2 moles of CO2 for each mole of Ca-silicate consumed and adds it to the oceanic HCO3- reservoir. Limestone formation takes two moles of carbon from that reservoir, combining one into calcium carbonate, and releasing one as carbon dioxide. Difficult in 140 characters.Yes I absolutely agree these are parts of the slow carbon cycle. However, the slow carbon cycle is not, as you say, “utterly irrelevant to CC “, unless you only mean ongoing CC, where we've thrown a massive spanner into the works of another part of the SCC. The post does not touch upon OA – if it did it would have had to be a great deal longer.
The part of the slow carbon cycle that involves weathering is important in climate change. Not necessarily right at the moment (although some geo-engineering types are enthusiastic about it), but very much so with respect to climate change episodes in the deep past, the understanding of which is helpful to our knowledge of the climate of today.
There is a considerable slab of the literature devoted to the weathering process through geological time and especially to instances of enhanced silicate weathering which may be of sufficient extent and rate as to draw down enough atmospheric CO2 to bring about episodic cooling e.g. see the Young et al paper cited above. There is likewise a lot of debate as to the role of weathering in the Cryogenian (plenty via Google Scholar). -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:20 AM on 15 March 2017It's the sun
JohnFornaro... This would be a more appropriate topic for this thread. Please repost your question there.
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Sanjeev Ghotge at 01:09 AM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Dear Drs Franta and Supran: As an older well wisher, former academic and technologist, please be advised that you have put your future careers on the line. But don't get intimidated, the stakes are the future of humanity and possibly , life on Earth. So here's some encouragement from a far corner of the universe viz India.
Sanjeev Ghotge
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Jim Hunt at 01:08 AM on 15 March 2017Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
Michael - I have somewhat belatedly stumbled upon this article on my specialist subject! I tend to look at the subject through a UK lens, where we have particular problems due to our high latitude "maritime" climate.Why do you "doubt that cars can contribute more than a few percent of needed power at night"? Is that via an Antipodean lens?Here we don't have many air conditioners compared to the US and Australia, and although many folks don't like having it "in their backyard" there's lots more onshore wind around than solar PV.A "halfway house" to full bi-directional V2G technology is so called "smart charging":http://www.V2G.co.uk/2016/10/will-the-united-kingdom-become-an-electric-nation/Wouldn't that help in your neck of the woods too? -
PluviAL at 01:08 AM on 15 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Word selection is ironic. US had a Neurosurgeon, denier, running for president. But then, I too had wrong information when I wrote my book related to the subject and underestimated the efficacy of alternative energy in 2013, and passed on wrong info.
The objective of the industry is clear, to maximize fossil fuel profits at the expense of the planet's viability, before the poison is shut down.
The solution seems just as clear, we need to fight to accelerate development of viable technology and policy. Policy is the tough one in the US. But the US is just the head and largest emitter per capita, the rest of the world needs to act for good policy, the US is broken for the next two years.
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Rob Honeycutt at 01:03 AM on 15 March 2017Models are unreliable
Michael... I'm also old enough to remember it too. People born after the 1970's when the Clean Air Act was implemented just don't grasp what it was like. What I remember was both the thick black air and the smell of the local plastics factory, which was located right next to our neighborhood.
And I didn't grow up in NYC or LA. This was out in East Tennessee! The river that ran through town stank from the raw sewage that was being dumped there. The air was filty, especially in the winter when everyone was burning coal in basement furnaces to heat their uninsulated homes.
Ultimately, the cost of cleaning these things up is less than the costs they are imposing on the economy in the first place. I'm certain CO2 is going to be very much the same.
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cMike at 00:57 AM on 15 March 2017The albedo effect
Thanks to all of you who read my post. It had been quite a while since the previous one. I was attracted to this site because I was looking for albedo related facts, especially related to the delta effect of the loss of arctic sea ice. I have read extensively about global warming and actually do know about the role of water vapor (i.e., the water cycle), clouds as contributors to the albedo effect and the thermal heating aspects of CO2 on the atmosphere. That said, assertions that things are more complicated than what I included, while true, kind of miss the point.
Focusing on thermal warming of the atmosphere suggests that it is the atmosphere's warming that is the problem. Yet the truth about global warming is that it is ultimately about warming of the oceans and the temperature of the air is almost irrelevant compared to the solar energy impinging on the oceans and the evaporative cooling that offsets it. In other words the heat transfer from air to water is negligible. So what would warm the oceans? My first post posits a mechanism: solar warming of arctic seas no longer hidden under sea ice. What I had hoped to find was some analysis that computed the area of lost ice and calculated the difference in reflectance between ice (ok 90% isn't perfect) and water to estimate the added energy absorbed. I keep hearing comments about how much greater the effects of "global warming" are in the arctic but never a why. I'm describing the why here and hope somebody can help quantify it.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:53 AM on 15 March 2017Models are unreliable
SCE... (We have a rule here about no piling on. I see we have four against one going here, so apologies. Just say something if you'd prefer to drop this back to just one specific line from one commenter and the rest of us will oblige.)
For my part, I'd just like to point out that the discussion keeps going the same direction to focus on possible reasons for lower CS. Again, this may turn out to be the case, but there are as many (if not more) reasons to believe that CS might be higher than IPCC central estimates.
When the Montreal Protocol was implemented industry had been screaming that it would be a business killer. Entire industries were going to be decimated by this attempt to regulate SO2 emissions to address acid rain. After it was implemented, quite the opposite happened. There were costs involved but it ended up being far less economically impactful than estimates.
We have a far more critical situation with CO2. Even if CS is 2°C, that would only mean we have an additional decade (maybe) to address the problem. If CS ends up being higher... then we're really behind the 8 ball. By all estimates the most rational response is to agressively start addressing this asap. The scientific community has been saying this for a long time and politicians have failed to respond, and they've failed to respond specifically because of efforts by the fossil fuels industry to seed doubt in the minds of the general public. Curry and Lewis are very much part of that effort.
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JohnFornaro at 00:52 AM on 15 March 2017It's the sun
Hi all. I've posted hardly at all on this site due to time constraints. However, I have read the first page very carefully, particularly following BioCab's comments, partly because my predilection is that AGW is probably happening, but that mankind's affect on the climate is not catastrophic.
One of the issues that came up in Page 1, back in 2007, is the argument that warming is likely to be causing CO2 release. This argument is that mankind, while emitting a lot of CO2, is not the major CO2 emitter on the planet. I understand the argument that it is thought that the minsiscule amount of CO2 that is emitted by mankind is forcing the warming, but the apparent leverage of that warming has not yet been proven.
My question is this: Does anybody know which page on this thread presents the 'Warming is Releasing' argument? Or is it the case that the "Warming is Releasing" argument resides on it's own page?
Thx! JF -
MA Rodger at 00:45 AM on 15 March 2017Models are unreliable
SemiChemE @1012,
You disagree with opinion expressed in this thread, in that you consider that Curry's GWPF paper does have a place here in scientific discussion. Given the main thrust of Curry's GWPF paper reiterates Lewis & Curry (2014) which carries no such dispute, can you make clear what it is in Curry's GWPF paper you feel is necessary to include in this discussion but which is absent from Lewis & Curry (2014).
I should make plain my position. I have in the past examined a number of GWPF papers and found them "consistently wrong and entirely flawed." GWPF policy papers are thus entirely without scientific credibility. They actually make rather good comedy. -
Doug Mackie at 20:31 PM on 14 March 2017To tweet or not to tweet at Donald Trump? That was the question!
Tweet 23: “Leave all that limestone be & it stores that carbon. Stops it going any place else. Limestone is a carbon SINK.” Comment above: “limestone weathering is net neutral” Additional Issues: 1) Goal post shifting: This post (discussing basalt) was an egregious example of goal-post shifting. My original complaint (re tweet 23) was to say that the weathering of limestone is not a source of carbon; because in fact calcification is a source and weathering is a sink (see 2d). 2) Misdirection: Yes, you can use the equations to show basalt as a source during weathering but a) Discussion was about limestone b) See OA not OK for discussion about equilibrium constants. And see any 1st year chem text for discussion about rate constants in the context of “spontaneous” and equilibrium constants. c) Basalt (and limestone for that matter) are part of slow carbon cycle. I and others pointed this out. This means that both (but especially basalt) are utterly irrelevant to CC and OA. d) Torturing a definition is always a sign of a weak argument and has been covered at sks many times. Goal post shifting and misdirection are tactics that sks rightly excoriates deniers for. Why do it here? 3) Caps ban: Going to have to agree to disagree on this one. If you want to post tweets containing caps then you have to accept caps in responses. Let’s play the imagine game: Imagine DJT and seen and responded. I bet you would have engaged on content and would not have edited. It came across as pure pettiness. I signed my name and was not trolling. Given my authorship of the entire series of OA not OK, I am clearly a communicator and a little bit informed about the relevant chemistry. I was participating within the 140 chr rules of the game you had initiated. My $0.02 on what you should have said re original tweet 23:“Oops. Ha ha. Yes, you are right, limestone is not a sink (because to make it some CO2 was released). Anyway because it would be part of the slow carbon cycle it is irrelevant to us over the next couple of hundred years. Oh, and as for that stuff about basalt? Yeah, sorry about that.” Thanks to Phil for the chat. Tom Curtis: See OA not OK book for instructions on drawing your own speciation plot.Moderator Response: man, where did the para breaks go? -
Doug Mackie at 20:28 PM on 14 March 2017To tweet or not to tweet at Donald Trump? That was the question!
Tweet 23: “Leave all that limestone be & it stores that carbon. Stops it going any place else. Limestone is a carbon SINK.” Comment above: “limestone weathering is net neutral” Additional Issues: 1) Goal post shifting: This post (discussing basalt) was an egregious example of goal-post shifting. My original complaint (re tweet 23) was to say that the weathering of limestone is not a source of carbon; because in fact calcification is a source and weathering is a sink (see 2d). 2) Misdirection: Yes, you can use the equations to show basalt as a source during weathering but a) Discussion was about limestone b) See OA not OK for discussion about equilibrium constants. And see any 1st year chem text for discussion about rate constants in the context of “spontaneous” and equilibrium constants. c) Basalt (and limestone for that matter) are part of slow carbon cycle. I and others pointed this out. This means that both (but especially basalt) are utterly irrelevant to CC and OA. d) Torturing a definition is always a sign of a weak argument and has been covered at sks many times. Goal post shifting and misdirection are tactics that sks rightly excoriates deniers for. Why do it here? 3) Caps ban: Going to have to agree to disagree on this one. If you want to post tweets containing caps then you have to accept caps in responses. Let’s play the imagine game: Imagine DJT and seen and responded. I bet you would have engaged on content and would not have edited. It came across as pure pettiness. I signed my name and was not trolling. Given my authorship of the entire series of OA not OK, I am clearly a communicator and a little bit informed about the relevant chemistry. I was participating within the 140 chr rules of the game you had initiated. My $0.02 on what you should have said re original tweet 23: “Oops. Ha ha. Yes, you are right, limestone is not a sink (because to make it some CO2 was released). Anyway because it would be part of the slow carbon cycle it is irrelevant to us over the next couple of hundred years. Oh, and as for that stuff about basalt? Yeah, sorry about that.” Thanks to Phil for the chat. Tom Curtis: See OA not OK book for instructions on drawing your own speciation plot. -
michael sweet at 16:52 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
SCE:
Did you read the US Climate Change report I linked earlier? It is already costing us a lot dealing with the changes that have already occured. The drought that started the Syrian war was the worst drought they have had in 900 years. Does that seem like a coincidence, or was it caused by AGW?
According to Jacobson (which is peer reviewed), if we switch to renewable energy (WWS) it will save money, create more jobs, solve AGW (at least stop adding to the damage) and result in a dramatic lessening of pollution. Currently over 13,000 people in the USA die every year from air pollution from coal burning power plants. Additional combustion results in tens of thousands more premature deaths. You want to continue this for what?
Please cite a peer reviewed report that backs your claim that changing to renewable energy will be bad for the economy. You appear to be citing worries from propaganda on the internet.
You have not addressed the cost of continuing to use fossil fuels. The cost of sea level rise alone is trillions of dollars, even if we count the cost of the dead (and their health care before they die) as zero. What is the cost of treating fossil fuel caused disease like asthma and heart disease?
If we were to start to seriously start to build out WWS and it turned out to be bad for the economy we could easily just stop the build. It would cost less than the Iraq war to build out a complete WWS system for the USA so that we no longer needed to import oil forever.
What are you fearful you need to defend? Are you old enough to remember the terrible pollution problems from the 1960's and '70's? I am. It was almost as bad as China today. Air was unbreathable across the US. The fossil fuel executives currently in charge of EPA want to return to air that cannot be breathed. Is that what you want? If not, how do you propose to move forward?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 15:00 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
SCE
Another aspect that paleoclimate can tell us a bit about is sea level. The transition out from the last glacial maximum saw sea level rise by 120 meters of more. The map of the world looked different then. There is still enough ice left in Antarctica and Greenland to raise sea level andothe 65-70 meters if it were to melt - essentially a 5 C warming melted 2/3rds of the ice present at the LGM. How much warming to melt the rest?
The previous inter-glacial period the Eemian 125,000 years ago was lightly warmer than the current one (before we started raising the temperatuire) Temperatures during the Eemian were something similar to todays. And sea level was 5-9 meters higher than today. If we look for when CO2 levels were last around 400 ppm we have to go back around 3 million years, to the middle Plieocene. There were still glacial cycels but they were warmer. Theinter-glacials appear to have had CO2 levels around 400 pp or so. Temperatures were 2-3 C warmer than today, and sea level was 10-20 meters higher. So just with what we have done so far, if CO2levels don't drop, we would appear to have locked in many meters of sea level rise. It isn't just this century that this will happen, it will last for centuries.
But we are still raising CO2 levels. At current emission rates we could get to 600-700 ppm by the end of the century. To find a period like that in the past we now need to go back 30+ million years. Back to when the Antarctic ice sheet was only just starting to form. We are certainly capable of taking CO2 levels to that height. If we still haven't reigned in emissions we could almost lock in sea level rise of many 10's of meters over subsequent centuries, and possiby millenia.
Flood Myths are a common feature of many cultures, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bible. Queensland Aborigines have oral traditions telling of how their ancestors walked the hills we now call the Great Barrier Reef.
In the centuries ahead, those times of myth will be returning. The seas will rise, thats what they have done in the past. -
SemiChemE at 14:49 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
scaddenp @1019 - I'm afraid you are missing the point. I do not claim that the satellite data set is the best. Rather that only in the satellite era do we have a spacially dense data set adequate for capturing most of the relevant phenomena that must be captured and calibrated in the models.
I'm completely fine with climate scientists using a hybrid record, incorporating surface records, radiosonde data, satellite data, and Ship-based and buoy based observations to make the best data set possible. But, my point is that only in the satellite era has such a data set been possible.
Furthermore, since we are only 40 years into this era, we are barely half-way through a complete Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which appears to be one of the larger sources of natural climate variability. For these reasons, modelers must make assumptions about natural climate variability that may or may not be true. Once we have observed a complete cycle, we'll be in a much better position to verify or refine these assumptions as necessary. This will lead either to improved model verification, which will significantly increase our confidence in the existing models or development of refined models that are much more accurate.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 14:25 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
SemiChemE
Although we don't have multiple planets to run experiments on, we do have a long history of climate on this planet. Paleoclimatology is able to estimate climates going back 100's of millions of years. And one recent meta-study put all this together to estimate what climate sensitivity actually was from that history
Thus graph is adapted from the PALEOSENS study. The study looked at several dozen papers that had estimated climate forcings and sensitivities over various geological ages. It harmonised the methods they had used to produce a common method of estimating sensitivity to a radiative forcing, due to CO2 or anything else. Then John Cook applied the accepted forcing from CO2 - 3.7 W/M2 per doubling of CO2 to get ECS.
The different periods are LGM - Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago. Pleistocene/Pliocene - millions of years ago. Miocene/Eocene 10's of millions. PETM (Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum) was a period 55 million years ago where a rapid warming event occurred, The Cretaceous is the end of the age of the Dinosaurs up to 65 million years ago, and the Phanerozoic is the entire period back to 420 million years ago.
As you can see none of these studies suggest particularly low values for ECS. A few do suggest higher than 3 and there are several outlier studies that John hasn't included that do suggest even higher values.
To me the Earth has run the experiments for us and these are the results. ECS of less than 2 seems very unlikely.
A second aspect we learn from paleo studies is about speed. The LGM was probably 5 C colder than now as a global average. The warming (and retreat of the ice sheets) took around 10,000 years. so 0.05C/century. Now temps are rising at of the order of 1 C/century and that might increase. CO2 varied over the same period, rising by around 100 parts per million (ppmv) from 180 to 280. Thats 1 ppm/century. Today CO2 is rising at around 1ppm every 20 weeks.
During the PETM, temperatures spiked up by around 6 C, a small extinction event happened and an ocean acidification event. A sediment core sample from Svalbard from this period puts the rate of change of CO2 concentrations then at only 1/10th tha pace of today.
To find a geological period where CO2 concentrations rose probably faster than today we have to go back 252 million years, to the end-Permian Mass Extinction event. A vast volcanic event lasting 10's and possible 100's of 1000's of years in Siberia included periods where CO2 levels may have risen faster than today. The end-Permian event saw 75% of families of species on land go extinct, 96% in the oceans.
Where changing climate is concerned, 'Speed Kills'. -
SemiChemE at 14:22 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
Rob Honeycutt @1016 - My understanding is that one of the largest sources of natural climate variability is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I am by no means an expert, but my understanding is that this phenomenon has a period of 50-70 years (see wikipedia). As stated before, we are roughly 40 years into the satellite era, so presumably we have observed roughly 2/3's of one cycle with a relatively dense data set (eg. the satellite record). I believe that once we have observed a complete cycle (or perhaps even a bit sooner), our understanding of this major natural process will greatly improve and as a result, our ability to model it properly will also improve. Thus, I'm anticipating a significant advance in the modeling accuracy within the next two decades. Presumably, this will lead to significant improvements in the precision and accuracy of model-based ECS estimates.
Note, I'm not saying that the satellite data set is perfect or the best temperature measurement, but it is the only set with nearly complete coverage of the earth's atmosphere. Thus it is the natural data set for use in calibration and validation of models designed to cover the atmosphere.
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scaddenp at 13:54 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
"rather that only in the satellite era do we have a spacially complete dataset. Before this time, there are huge gaps in the temperature record, especially over the oceans, which constitute roughly 71 percent of the Earth's surface and in sparcely populated regions"
Still caution here. Satellite temperatures derived from MSU (UAH, RSS) are attempting (with large errors) to measure the temperature from a several kilometer thick chunk of lower troposphere. They cannot measure surface temperature. Comparing surfaceSAT records (eg GISTEMP, BEST, C&W) use ship and bouy data to cover the ocean, supplemented by satellite derived estimates. The estimates of trend from SATs have lower uncertainities that those from MSU (see here for more discussion and comment there if you want to discuss this further)
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:08 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
"...the social costs of planning for an overly pessimistic ECS would also be tremendous."
When economists look at these questions, that's not what they're telling us. They're saying, very clearly, the most economical thing to do is to invest now in mitigation. It only gets worse the longer we wait.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:06 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
SCE @1015... But no one is even close to planning for overly pessimistic scenarios. Even the scenarios that are as likely as Curry&Lewis are in the 4-6°C range. We're challenged to just get a rational carbon tax that could even start to address a 3°C scenario. We're currently trotting along almost as if CS is near zero, and we've been doing that for the past 30 years while the scientific community has been telling us that we have a critical problem.
That said, a lot is happening with renewables that people should be cautiously relieved by. But that's not progressing anywhere near fast enough to deal with just a central estimate of 3°C.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:59 PM on 14 March 2017Models are unreliable
SemiChemE... It could be much longer than decades before we have a highly accurate estimate of CS. This is a problem that's been worked on for many decades and the range has remained essentially unchanged. The satellite record is a very poor data set to use for these purposes because the uncertainty of that data is much higher than the surface temperature data.
The higher end CS uncertainties are not going to be resolved by better estimates coming from either satellite or surface station data since the higher end uncertainties revolve around (in part) things like methane releases from permafrost and clathrates.
You need to understand, we're approaching uncharted waters relative to at least the past 2-3 million years once we push past 2°C over preindustrial.
It's becoming a bit of a cliche phrase now, but uncertainty is not our friend. Uncertainty is a case for stronger action, rather than inaction.
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