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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Recent Comments

Comments 22851 to 22900:

RedBaron at 00:32 AM on 9 October 2016

Models are unreliable

Models are always wrong. What matters is if they are skillful.

Emerging patterns of climate change

As you can see, in order to be skillful you must take what you have learned apply it to the improving models, adjust them, and then run them again to see how they match up to unknown future events. Those future events once known and giving you more knowledge, then can give you the needed information to again improve your models...which will also be wrong, but hopefully better. This continues as long as you are learning because of skillful models, they will keep improving.

So this idea that you can't go back and see if the new improvements fit old data (hindcasts) is categorically false. Of course you need to go back and match it up to old data. That's how you determine if the new adjustments to the model are skillful.

In other words it's a process. It will never be perfect, but it should gradually trend towards the models becoming better over time.

Dikran Marsupial at 20:52 PM on 8 October 2016

Models are unreliable

Just to add, what Nate Silver is really talking about is "in sample" predictions and "out of sample" predictions. It is an "out of sample" prediction if the thing you were predicting is not part of the data used to calibrate the model. If I calibrate the model on the data from 1950-present and use it to predict what happened from 1900-1949, then this is still a prediction from a statistical perspective, even though it is predicting something that ocurred before the calibration data. The key point is that you can't overfit "out of sample" data.

HTH

Dikran Marsupial at 20:48 PM on 8 October 2016

Models are unreliable

FrankShann the Nate Silver article is missing an important point. If I construct a model and fix its parameters and then observe the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, the eruption is still in the future from the perspective of the model as the parameters of the model had already been fixed. This is true even if I don't generate the model runs until afterwards. In this case, the model cannot possibly be overfitting the response to pinatubo (as the parameters were already fixed), and hence Silver's criticism is not relevant. Similarly, the CMIP projects archive model projections (understanding the difference between a projection and a prediction is much more important), so if we compare what the models say about climate after they were archived, that is still a prediction.

So we could say that "the model would have predicted the response to Pinatubo had we known in advance the details of the eruption", but this is a bit verbose, and most people are happy just to view it as bing a prediction from the perspective of the model.

Essentially overfitting is only a concern if you have tuned the model in some way on the observations you are "predicting" (this does happen in statistics/machine learning, I even wrote a paper describing a common, but not widely understood, way in which it can creep in, and what to do about it).

FrankShann at 18:34 PM on 8 October 2016

Models are unreliable

" A sign that you're spending too much time in model land is if you start to use the word 'prediction' to refer to how you model past data ... It is very easy to overfit a model, thinking you have captured the signal when you've just described the noise. Sticking to the simple, commonsense definition of prediction as something that applies strictly to a future event may reduce the risk of these errors." Nate Silver. The Signal and the Noise. New York, Penguin, 2015:452.

And sticking to the simple, commonsense definition of prediction as something that applies strictly to a future event will also reduce the risk of being misunderstood by the general public.

KeenOn350 at 15:56 PM on 8 October 2016

Pew survey: Republicans are rejecting reality on climate change

Seems to me almost all politicians in the world are "rejecting reality" - everyone is still talking "economic growth" and "job creation" - and "natural gas as a bridge" to renewables. Just that Republicans are more extreme - living in la-la land instead of fantasyland like everyone else!

nigelj at 09:04 AM on 8 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

Wind intermittency is sometimes claimed to be a problem, but is less challenging than it appears.

cleantechnica.com/2013/08/12/intermittency-of-wind-and-solar-is-it-only-intermittently-a-problem/

The article says the following "The UK’s National Grid reports that only 22 GWh of fossil fuel reserve power was needed to back up the UK’s 23,700 GWh of wind electricity when there was no wind at all to harvest. This is partly because the wind is always blowing somewhere on the seascape or landscape—quite often, not far away—and thus wind power can always be sent from there to the towns and cities where there is less wind or no wind at all"

I think it's astonishing how little fossil fuel backup power is required, so the resultant emissions become a small concern, - although not ideal. Of course an alternative approach would be to have additional surplus wind energy, or other forms of backup power. Presumably the challenge would be very small countries where the entire country could be under an anticyclone with little wind, on some days. This would require specific approaches for such a country.

But remember, fossil fuel grids and nuclear have very substantial surplus capacity as well, due to maintainance requirements.

ianw01 at 08:04 AM on 8 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

michael sweet @7: Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply. I doubt we'll be able to solve Ontario's mess here. I will spend some time looking into the links you provided. Allow me to pick up on some points you raised:

The 7 day chart often nicely displays the irregularity of the wind generated portion of Ontario's electricity. When it does not contribute, other sources must make up the shortfall.
Ontario's installed wind generation capacity is ~3900 MW, and it is currently generating about 800 MW. At each day's peak demand hour in the last 7 days, wind generation has ranged from just 66MW on October 3 to 2332MW on Oct 5.
I have no particular love for nuclear and yes it is expensive. It is part of the problem here and a big part of the low-carbon profile of electricty in the province.

Finally, you ask what do I think you are missing. When you state "Ontario will probably be best served with their expensive nuclear until wind becomes so cheap it is economic to scrap the nuclear plants..." the thing that seems missing is recognition that wind is intermittant. You made that assertion devoid of any mention of storage or long range transmission capacity. I think it must have been implied, but it is non-trvial and must not be downplayed.

Similarly the whole original article here is a "wind power is getting cheaper" puff-piece by a CEO with a vested interest in selling more turbines, with no mention for how its intermittency can be handled. I'd much rather hear about all the great grid-scale storage technology that is being built and getting cheaper.

Sorry for the rant. This transition is important and we both want the same goal. I'll do my homework and see if I can allay my fears.

michael sweet at 03:07 AM on 8 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

Ianw01,

On his website Jacobson has a plan for every USA state and most of the countries in the world. How much more detailed do you want? In my opinion, it is not necessary to redo everything Jacobson has done. If a few locations are checked (as has been done in the lists of citations I have already provided) the time is better spent working on the issues Jacobson and others have identified, like power storage and hydrogen usage, rather than checking on his projections. The energy system is very large and complex. Jacobson has demonstrated many paths are available to reach the desired endpoint. The final result will not be exactly what Jacobson currently forecasts but will be completely renewable.

Checking the website you cite about Ontario, right now (12:30 pm EST), nuclear provides 11,000 MW, hydro 4,000 and wind and solar combined about 1 MW. This hardly seems like a "huge buildout" of wind. A single new nuclear power station costs $8-10 billion (if they could be built on schedule). Your issue is that nuclear (which must run 24/7, except when it closes down completely) is overbuilt, not wind. Since nuclear is the most expensive energy, that is why your energy costs are high. Do not blame wind for the wasted money on nuclear.

Nuclear requires huge fossil standby in case the reactor shuts down, which happens once or twice a year. Wind and solar do not require spinning reserve at high levels. Do not blame wind and solar for expensive reserve set aide for nuclear emergencies. I found the 7 day page hard to read. What is your point?

For storage you have already built hydro, which is the best form of renewable storage. All that is required is for the management of your hydro facilities to be adjusted to a renewable support format instead of a fossil fuel support format. This is an oversimplification, but so are your complaints of difficulty from renewables. In the new renewable energy system the grid will not function in exactly the same way as it does using fossil fuels.

Jacobson won the Cozzarelli prize, for best paper in the PNAS. In it he ran a model of the entire USA for 4 years and found that all energy is supplied all the time paper. This demonstrates renewables can supply all power on windless nights. You keep asking for work that has already been done.

In my opinion, Ontario will probably be best served with their expensive nuclear until wind becomes so cheap it is economic to scrap the nuclear plants (a few years at the current pace) or sooner if they want to switch over industries that currently use fossil heat to electricity. That change will be made in different industries as wind continues to be cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear.

I wrote the original article you linked and used that paper in my AP Chemistry class last week as a science resource. What do you think I am missing? Since that paper was published additional data has been published (like Jacobson 2015 linked above).

ianw01 at 01:28 AM on 8 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

michael sweet @4: I have read much more than one study. My concern is that we can't afford to bungle the transition. The Jacobson 2015 paper covers a remarkable range of topics, and out of necessity stays at a high level. It cannot take the place of a detailed engineering plan for each jurisdiction. That further planning work needs to be done ASAP, and on that I'm sure we agree. (The citations are impressive but I maintain that citations do not consitute independently verifying the conclusions.)

Tom Curtis @5: Agreed - the need to move that way is clear. And yes, the political dimension to the challenge we face is significant. As for "viability" my main concern is the extent to which storage and interconnections can meet power demand for extended periods of low winds in a region during long cold winter nights. Sure, with "enough" storage and overbuilding of generation it can work, but to be convinced that the Jacobson vision is viable, I think that a detailed picture by state of the worst case scenario they modeled would go a long way to de-bunking critics of the 2050 vision.

If you are both still with me, let me provide an example that perhaps explains my bias and concerns:

In Ontario the government closed coal-fired generation and embarked on a huge build-out of subsidized wind generation in the province. So far so good, but it was an energy plan devised by politicians. The province now has inflexible base-load generation, minimal storage, and a high proportion of renewables whose generation (under premium-priced incentive contracts) correlates poorly with demand. That often leads to overgeneration where they have to pay to dump power to neighboring jurisdictions. That, coupled with the need to keep substantial fossil-fuel generation capacity at the ready means that tax- and rate-payers are in an uproar, the province has cancelled the next $3.8 billion of renewable generation.

This is a good web site to explore this in real-time: see the Supply tab's 7 day chart. I bet this October's windy days are going to be quite different from a calm cold night (or even daytime) in December or January.

On the positive side, Ontario's supply is largely carbon-free, as you can see from that site. Many jurisdictions would be pleased to have such a low-carbon profile for their electcity generation.

However where do we go from here? Pulling the plug on fossil fuels and nuclear generation in Ontario seems like pure fantasy. Clearly extensive storage technology is needed before further renewables are added, and the considerable issue of residential and commercial building heating remains unaddressed.

A path that is financially, politically, and technically viable to get Ontario from the present to the 2050 Jacobson vision needs some serious detailed planning, and it won't be easy.

One last request before you respond: go back and re-read the original article here that was the context for my inital post.

Tom Curtis at 17:53 PM on 7 October 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

TonyLambert @261, the effect of irrigation on temperatures has been studied a number of times. In chronological order we have Boucher, Myhre and Myhre (2004), who find a 0.03-0.1 W/m^2 global greenhouse forcing from irrigation, but a surface cooling of 0.8 K over irrigated lands. That equates a 0.02 K increase in global temperature, assuming a Transient Climate Response of 2 K per doubling of CO2, and weighting the regional cooling by area.

In contrast, Puma and Cook (2010) find an overall cooling effect from irrigation in tropical latitudes (NH winter) and tropical and NH mid-latitudes (NH summer) once all factors are included, but for land surface only:

Boucher et al also show a slight cooling for land surface only according to Puma and Cooks' table 1.

Finally, Vresse, Hagemann and Claussen (2016), which you cite, shows a cooling effect from irrigation both in Asia and Africa, but do not give global figures.

Clearly from the tables in Puma and Cook, this listing is not exhaustive.

Digby Scorgie at 13:13 PM on 7 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

From all the comments above one can see that we have all the technologies and techniques we need to make a huge dent in our emissions. Some of these technologies are already having an effect — as the article makes clear regarding solar and wind power, LEDs and battery storage. Some techniques have yet to be implemented in any meaningful way — and here I'm thinking particularly of the agricultural sector — but they could have a dramatic effect if they were rolled out world-wide. But is it happening fast enough?

There are various shades of opinion about our winning the race. Some are pessimistic, some are not. I'm more interested in learning if any modelling community has looked into this. I bought a copy of "Limits to growth" over 40 years ago and have been dipping into it more often in recent years. Their standard run predicts a collapse in about mid-century, and as I noted above, the recent reappraisal of "Limits to growth" (with 40 years of data) has us tracking the standard run quite closely.

I have heard of only one similar study and that is by Aled Jones of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. Their model is intended for short-term projections for the insurance industry. As I understand it, just for fun (?) they ran the model to 2040 and discovered that it predicts a collapse before this date.

Are there any other modelling communities out there, and have they come up with different outcomes? The specific problem, as I see it, is comparing our rate of emissions reductions with the rate at which the climate is worsening. This was not considered in "Limits to growth". They assumed that climate effects would not be significant before we stabilized the global system, assuming of course that we actually do manage to stabilize the system.

To summarize, it's one thing to have all the building blocks to avoid disaster, it's quite another to use them.

TonyLambert at 12:54 PM on 7 October 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

This blog states: "The other factor to consider is that water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived."

S. Stanley states "Agricultural irrigation is so widespread that it accounts for about 4% of the total evapotranspiration of water from Earth’s surface." (Eos.org: Research Spotlights, August 2016). Further, De Vrese et al [1] show that Asian irrigation causes a large increase in precipitation in East Africa. And Lo et al [2] and others show that California irrigation affects precipitation in the US mid-west. Considering that irrigation is fairly continuous and constitutes a fairly large source of evapotranspiration, the resulting atmospheric water vapour flows might be fairly significant in terms of their effect on atmospheric temperature, even if a particular droplet might be short lived. My question is whether you can point to a study that has quantified the effect of irrigation water vapour flows on the temperature of the atmosphere, including over the last 100 years.

[1] de Vrese, P., S. Hagemann, and M. Claussen (2016), Asian irrigation, African rain: Remote impacts of irrigation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 3737–3745, doi:10.1002/2016GL068146.

[2] Lo, M.-H., and J. S. Famiglietti (2013), Irrigation in California's Central Valley strengthens the southwestern U.S. water cycle, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 301–306, doi:10.1002/grl.50108.

nigelj at 09:05 AM on 7 October 2016

Pew survey: Republicans are rejecting reality on climate change

We do indeed have all this evidence of substantial climate change denial among the Republicans. I accept your suggestion that their dislike of taxation and regulation leads to denial of the science.

However The Republicans appear to be strong defenders of property law, so they are not adverse to all regulation. Climate change regulations or taxes, etc, are really just a way of protecting the property of future generations, so should be acceptable to Republicans ideologically. Their opposition is very much a case of not thinking it all through.

Tom Curtis at 09:03 AM on 7 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

ianw01 @3, there is no question that some combination of renewable energy, energy storage at a number of time scales, and improved network capacity can completely supply the USA (or any other countries) energy needs. Whether or not that is 'viable' is a different matter, as "viable" is a very vague, indeed, a subjective word. I can well imagine that a commited climate change denier will find no such plan 'viable'; but that that is only an indication of their unwillingness to accept any conversion to renewable energy.

The interesting thing about Jacobsen (2015) is that, for the US, they show a pathway to achieving that end whose calculated costs show a net benefit across the full range of uncertainty (excluding the cost of stranded assets, and health and climate impact benefits). An actual attempt to impliment the scheme may well be less effective than it is on paper (most likely due to political factors), or be more effective (due to improved technology). But, as in any policy issue, it is not known on which side of that equation we will fall, so that means there is no technical reason not to make the attempt. And there is certainly a need to do so.

michael sweet at 07:00 AM on 7 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

Ianw01:

A quick search of Google Scholar shows that 42 studies have already cited Jacobson 2015. Most of those support the claims of Jacobson. That is a lot of citations considering the lead time required for a paper to get in a journal. Jacobson 2008 has over 600 citations. Many of those have similar conclusions to Jacobson 2015.

Perhaps if you read more about the subject of renewable energy you will be more supportive. When you limit your reading to a single study it appears that more work is required.

ianw01 at 05:29 AM on 7 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

@ 2-ajki: Hah - you had me going there. I thought you were going to say that we need some skepticism about renewables and the risks of relying on someone "talking their book" in that sector. :-P

Even setting aside vested interests, I think I could make the claim that some skepticism is in order about plans to deploy renewables (due to viability rather than motivations).

For example, one study claiming that overbuilding intermittant renewables (albeit with storage and better interconnections) and discontinuing nuclear is a viable plan for the USA is insufficent evidence that that is truly viable. The goal is laudable, the conclusion is appealing, but that does not mean that the authors may have overlooked something. The result needs to be independently analyzed and reproduced to be sure the construction of the investigation was not faulty.

That's probably enough said - I'm sure the slings and arrows are pointed my way already - but please know that I think we owe ourselves a deeper exploration of the engineering challenges to transition to a zero emissions society.

You are saying we should have a list of "myths" debunking criticisms of various CO2 mitigation or avoidance strategies? Perhaps we agree! :-)

ajki at 18:52 PM on 6 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

When I look at the massive commenting of the linked article [the known Guardian Blog], I'm thinking (again and again) that there is a need for a new kind of myth list here on SkS. While the "sceptics" lose more and more ground on the scientific basics of climate change, they return freshly and completely unconvinced on all fields of practical avoidance or production changes. The patterns presented in this "newer" discussions reminds me very much of the pointless discussions in the early 2000 wether there are GHG and if there are, why they are not causing any problems and if they would do, why it's not us that produce them and if it is us, then why we could never change this.

RedBaron at 16:54 PM on 6 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

You guys do know the whole cancer and nobel prize thing was rhetorical right? More specifically which is better? Improving a genome of a corn plant to obtain 10% increased yields? (and you still have to deal with all the issues associated with cropping including soil degradation and pesticide runoff and a positive carbon footprint in your cropping system etc.) Or finding a way to double yields of the final product by not growing corn at all, and making your ethanol and feeding your livestock other ways that don't use pesticides, nor degrade the soil, and have a negative carbon footprint?

This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies [1]

So why do we struggle to barely break even or maybe slightly gain a little energy with corn ethanol on a good year? Because the directive from the USDA is specifically to increase corn ethanol, not ethanol from more efficient sources. It is part of the commodity markets buffer stock scheme designed to vastly over-produce corn and other grains by "destroying" the huge surplusses.

Before anyone can make any progress on this, you must first dispell the myth that our system is efficient or required to "feed the world". It couldn't be further from the truth. It is literally designed to be efficient at inefficiency, and it is not designed to "feed the world" it is designed to make a stable price in the commodity markets by "destroying" the surpluses in the most profitable way possible; so we can continue to overproduce without crashing the price below cost to produce.

In a normal economic market, overproduction drives the price down. There is no way the entire world could possibly eat all the corn soy and wheat we produce. So to keep the price up, we must destroy it. However, that also has ethical issues involved with purposely destroying food when there are hungry people on the planet. So to avoid this a myth was created that we are "feeding the world" and all these creative ways to "destroy" the surplus are the most efficient at doing so. They are not. Making corn ethanol or corn fed animals in confinement is only efficient at destroying grain surpluses, not at actually producing final product in terms of yields per acre or energy spent per calorie returned.

chriskoz at 12:40 PM on 6 October 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #40

Nice quote from Ken. Just replace "little old ladies" with "vulnerable countries" that do not contribute to AGW but bear most of its consequences, and you've got a true picture. Or, in temporal space, replace "little old ladies" with "future generations".

AGW is firstly a social problem, and then environmental problem. The fact that w're dealing with its denial, confirms we have a social problem here. If it was environmental problem only, it'd be far easier to fix.

Paul W at 10:47 AM on 6 October 2016

The future belongs to clean energy

Well its good news that wind is on the up. Don't get me wrong I want wind to "win" very much. When I look at the worlds 2000, 2010 and 2013 total energy and renewable energy its lifeted from 13% renewables in 2000, 13.3% in 2010 to 13.8% in 2013. (Wikipedia World energy consumption)

When I look at the need to end fossil fuel at the current rate our budget runs out in some where between 5 and 15 years if we are to keep the planet to below 1.5 C average temperature increase. Even if renewables continue to grow and I hope they grow very much faster, we are still short of what we need.

An all out war footing is still called for to very greatly increase all sustainables to displace fossil fuels.

Don Miller at 10:01 AM on 6 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

@Red Baron - re: ".....but what about the the scientist that discovers a way to help avoid getting diabetes or cancer to begin with by identifying an improvement in our food systems that just so happens to sequester carbon and improve soil health too?"

Just such a system is used in a number of countries and is remarkably effective at reducing soil erosion, retaining soil moisture and improving crop production - all the while sequestering carbon. But because it is cheap it is not held in high regard. Nobel Prize? You have to be joking.

DrivingBy at 07:49 AM on 6 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

Re #5 (this is OT, so it'll be short)

" but what about the the scientist that discovers a way to avoid getting diabetes or cancer to begin with by identifying an improvement in our food systems"

There's no rainbow nor unicorn riding it.

Type I diabetes can't be fixed by 'improvement in our food systems' because one is born with it. Type II is caused by eating too much food, with sugary food having a greater effect. The system improvement to prevent type I is eugenics (ya sure ya want that?), the system to prevent type II lies between one's ears.

bjchip at 05:54 AM on 6 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

@9 RedBaron

food-per-capita:

current projections are based on current energy availability and pricing as it impacts both the farming community and the shipping of food.

current projections are based on a climate that does NOT change drastically.

With BCCS (note to moderator .NE. Bio-Carbon-Capture and Beijing-Climate-Center ??? ) things can improve markedly but have you ever tried to change a traditional farmer's mind? :-) .

Of course, if we can pay him for the Carbon he pulls down... ;-)

I remain pessimistic because we have German Greens in league with US Republicans in the unwitting effort to pitchfork children of coming generations onto bonfires of delusional thinking. In 15 years the next generation will see the results and the result will be revolt. People blocking action will be peacefully removed from power, or will be forced to flee, or hurled with great force from their obdurate positions.

Yet it will still be far-too-late. The actions required are required now.

When Mother Nature starts smacking mule-headed humans between the eyes with the 2x4 to get their attention, the time is long past for the result to be merely bad.

John Hartz at 05:40 AM on 6 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

Recommended supplememtal reading:

Q&A with Jennifer Layke: How to Transform the Global Energy Economy by Jennifer Layke and Hayden Higgins, World Resources Institute (WRI), Sep 29, 2016

RedBaron at 03:50 AM on 5 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

@3 Digby Scorgie,

Who wins? Well it depends on if it is a cooperative effort or not. Right now it isn't a cooperative effort and we are losing, everyone. Not just the fight against AGW, but soil erosion, polution, dead zones in the waterways and oceans, financial markets, human health, ecosystem loss and extinction rates, natural disaster rates and magnitudes, civil unrest etc... You name it, it's all bad and trending worse. Certain things like medicine technilogical advancement are still advancing, thankfully. But even those things are severely hampered by the rest, and could be even better. Our advancements for example in treating cancer is partly offset by an increasing rate of cancer to start with! Imagine if the basic baseline population's health was better and we had these advancements in healthcare both at the same time? So you could claim the effects are spreading far and wide into every aspect of society, even those seemingly unrelated and seemingly improving.

We give Nobel prizes to the scientists that develop a new cancer or diabetes treatment, but what about the the scientist that discovers a way to help avoid getting diabetes or cancer to begin with by identifying an improvement in our food systems that just so happens to sequester carbon and improve soil health too?

We are so compartmentalized and fractured that the cooperation is very limited.

However, the good news is that with cooperation the problem is actually relatively easy to fix IMHO. The real key is in figuring out how to communicate the need for that cooperation and then actually motivating that cooperation. That IMHO is the real "wicked" problem we probably won't solve in time. Even that we know how to fix, but ironically can't even get cooperation there either! That's why it is a "wicked" problem defying a solution.

So pretty likely who wins? Not us. Maybe a new sane generation though.

BaerbelW at 00:45 AM on 5 October 2016

Mars is warming

Updated links to Geissler 2005 and Szwast 2006.

michael sweet at 20:06 PM on 4 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

Digby @!,

You can never be sure in life that things will be great in the future. We have to work as hard as we can to achieve the goal (reduction of carbon pollution) and hope that the changes from AGW will not cause too much disruption.

The OP describes technology that might be able to help us achieve that goal. Since wind and solar are now the cheapest form of energy, we can hope that investors put enough money into those energy sources to make the difference we need. Coal is already having difficulty competing, even though most governments have not taken hard positions against it.

Digby Scorgie at 19:32 PM on 4 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

RedBaron @2

Yes, while transitioning to clean energy, we have to change the way agriculture and various aspects of industry are carried out. All of these transitions have to take place simultaneously. While we're trying to do this, climate change will be making it harder and harder for us. Who wins?

RedBaron at 14:34 PM on 4 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

In my opinion we can't be sure unless we take a multi pronged approach. Looks like the renewable energy guys are doing their part. Next will be to see if we can get the agricultural sector involved, and construction materials and government sponsored ecological restoration projects. Probably will need to get the financial sector involved as well. Too big a problem to put all your eggs in one basket.

Digby Scorgie at 14:10 PM on 4 October 2016

DOE charts show why climate doom and gloom isn't needed

This technology is all very promising, but I can't help thinking we're in a race against time. The technology has to be implemented all over the world in a very big way. While we're doing that, the effects of climate change are becoming worse and worse. How can we be sure we'll win the race before climate change knocks us flat?

RedBaron at 07:57 AM on 4 October 2016

Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 1

@15 DrivingBy,

Exactly true. This is why athiests, especially atheists that like to wear their atheism on their shirt sleeve, probably would do more harm than good entering into an AGW debate with a religious right holding a deeply held devout religious belief in God. Not all, but a pretty fair % who would listen to someone like Katharine Hayhoe, would instantly become diehard climate change deniers, if they thought believing in AGW requires them to renounce God. You have literally no chance to convince them.

On the other hand, there are literal fire and brimstone consequences for ignoring the "land sabbath". Literally drought famine floods collapse of civilization etc... if that should be ignored. Now an atheist might claim this is a natural result of AGW, and a religious person might claim it is the hand of God dealing out punishment for not being the good steward of the land, but does it really matter? What matters is cooperation between all so this doesn't happen. So an atheist that even hints he might believe AGW is real and that belief is even slightly associated with his belief there is no God, then they would be driving a wedge between instead of cooperating.

On the other hand if the ministers wife tells them

Chronicles 7:14
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

You might be amazed how much more effective that is to get support for any mitigation policies. Rather than fighting against every policy designed to remedy the problem, you would have an army fighting on your side to stop global warming. A very very comitted army that will not stop fighting AGW even until the bitter end.

Jonbo69 at 07:29 AM on 4 October 2016

Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 1

Katherine Hayhoe is a great communicator and very easy to warm to. She needs to be put out there and given as much public exposure as possible, or at least as much as she is comfortable with, in my opinion.

DrivingBy at 12:24 PM on 3 October 2016

Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 1

"They sometimes will not listen to any argument that they feel conflicts with what they think the Bible says."

Most people fundamentally dislike and oppose science, though they'll quickly grab any benefits it provides without crediting the process, much less the people which provided them.

Hmm. Electricity is not is the Bible, It's "only a theory" and therefore does not exist. Perhaps the anti-science crowd should be prohibited from using any substance, object or device which is dependent on or was made with electricity.

Unless they're Amish, they'd be both hungry and thirsty real soon.

chriskoz at 08:48 AM on 3 October 2016

Trump and the Republican Party are doing Big Oil's bidding

At the latest rally in PA(2 Oct, 2016), Trump clarified what his credo for US is about. Ignoring teleprompter, he repeatedly roared highly emmotionally loaded slogans, among others:

"You're unsuspecting," Trump said. "Right now, you say to your wife: 'Let's go to a movie after Trump.' But you won't do that because you'll be so high and so excited that no movie is going to satisfy you. OK? No movie. You know why? Honestly? Because they don't make movies like they used to - is that right?"

and finishing with:

"You have 38 days to make every dream you ever dreamed for your country come true," Trump said. "Do not let this opportunity slip away or be wasted. You will never ever have this chance again. Not going to happen again - You have one magnificent chance."

That's not just ignorance of science we're concerned about here. That's simply ignorance of the reality. A nostalgic appeal to "movies of the past" plus a narcistic "dream" and "magnificent chance" but nothing of substance. He might as wwell say to the crowd: put your head in the sand and dream on.

Pepole like to dream, that's why such speach is liked. Even if reality clearly points out the dream to be pure illusion. IMO, the same mechanism applies in a norrower sense to the problem of burning FF which puts us living closer to the dream of living with boundless energy, be able to fly accrosss the ocean, drive your SUV, etc. Even though the reality tells us very loudly now that such lifestyle is unsustainble.

John Hartz at 13:16 PM on 2 October 2016

Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 1

Katharine Hayhoe is one busy scientist...

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe to Discuss Climate Change with President and Leonardo DiCaprio on Monday by Leslie Adami, KLBK Lubbock, Sep 30, 2016

Climate Noob at 12:43 PM on 2 October 2016

Climate inertia

@Tom Curtis

Thanks for the info. That was a good explanation for a layman like me.

This community is great.

michael sweet at 11:19 AM on 2 October 2016

Sensitivity training

Here is a link to Alan Robock's work. I listened to his AGU talk from 2011. It appears that Pakistan and India would lower global climate about 1.5C. It would also lower precipitation worldwide about 10%. The effects last about 5 years. I imagine the Arctic sea ice would make some recovery but would return to the current state when the climate returned. Overall estimated effects on grain yield range from -25% in China to -15% in the USA. There are a lot of other effects besides lower temperature and less rain, some are nock on effects of lower rain.

SingletonEngineer at 10:35 AM on 2 October 2016

Sensitivity training

This article is much appreciated. It typifies those which make this site so very informative.

chriskoz at 09:19 AM on 2 October 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40

Jim Hansen is working on a new paper, where he will claim that

the temperature in 1940 - 45 is exaggerated because of data inhomogeneity in WW II

In the preview BetterGraph he shows the monthly running means smoothing annual & 11y cycles, as well as annual Jan-Dec averages. A very pretty graph indeed, showing the AGW signal at interplay with seasonal, ElNino and solar cycles. I like Jm's (likely Makiko's) pictures that are easy to read and thought me a lot.

One Planet Only Forever at 09:04 AM on 2 October 2016

Sensitivity training

Art Vandelay @1,

The amount of moisture in the atmosphere is more likely to be a function of how warm the air is than the wind speed evaporation rate.

As the atmosphere warms up there should be more moisture in the air regardless of the rate that wind evaporation creates it.

mbryson at 08:25 AM on 2 October 2016

Sensitivity training

@DrivingBy: I believe Alan Robock (at Rutgers) has worked on the potential climate impact of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. As I recall, the impact could be substantial.

nigelj at 08:23 AM on 2 October 2016

Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 1

JW Rebel @10, I agree that politics and group identity play a big part in climate change denialism, and that this apples to everyone, religious or otherwise.

I would add the costs of a transition to fossil fuels worries everyone, possibly some people more than others depending on world views and priorities and fears about government impositions. This leads them to attack the science.

However religious conviction is an issue with young earthers and Christian fundamentalists. They see climate change as a threat to some very basic religious convictions as follows. It’s not that they look at the age of the earth as such. Instead, they have a strong conviction that god created the world largely as it is quite recently and that god wouldn’t allow us to substantially change the world. This would make us as powerful as god, which doesn’t fit with the bible as a whole. There are gradations of belief in this, but it sums up a large viewpoint. This is all foreign to me as an atheist who believes in evolution and I don’t understand how they think that way, but they do very deeply.

The best approach may be to argue that humanity has clearly altered the atmosphere with particulate emissions from coal etc, so carbon dioxide is a similar issue, and steer clear of suggesting we have irrevocably altered the climate permanently or interfered with gods plan.

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