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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.

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Comments 23401 to 23450:

SteveAplin at 23:30 PM on 21 August 2016

Richard Milne separates skepticism from denial

I'm late late late to this, but what can you do. Better late (I watched this last night, August 20 2016) than never.

I really enjoyed the video, and echo Dr Milne's recommendation of this website (skepticalscience.com).

But am I the only one who noticed the pot calling the kettle black? Rick Perry was one Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential race. Rudy Giuliani was another. Milne chose Perry as representative of — I guess — "right wing" views. Giuliani is a "right wing" guy and his take on climate change is the opposite of Perry's. Giuliani ran for the nomination of the very same party. Milne wanted to portray that party, which happened to be contending the upcomping presidential election, as retrograde. He picked the best caricature of that view. Giuliani would have made a poor choice for that purpose.

That, in Milne's own definition, is, um, uh... cherrypicking.

Another example of PCKB (pot calling the kettle black), and hugely important in the context of exactly how mankind can flourish without continuing to dump obscene amounts of carbon into our air: Milne's example of a logical fallacy "I wasn't at Chernobyl, so radiation isn't dangerous."

Yes, that's a logical fallacy. And so is Milne's implication that radiation IS dangerous.

It was a throwaway line, I know. But it was a pretty breathtaking thing for a scientist, lecturing about skepticism, to imply.

I, you, and Dr Milne are under constant radiation bombardment, from natural terrestrial and cosmic sources.

Are we dead?

And Dr. Milne's example of how he momentarily fell for Tony Blair's case for invading Iraq, before coming to his senses and realizing how wrong it was.

How wrong "what" was? Blair did not make, and did not pretend to make, a scientific case for the invasion. He made a polticial case, and framed his case in EXACTLY the way Milne says political cases should be made.

So how could Dr. Milne have figured out it was wrong? Unless he had some inside knowledge of the state of Saddam's uranium isotope separation program, which I am certain he did not, he could only have evaluated Blair's case on the political merits that Blair himself laid out.

I don't mind a scientist venturing into poltics — he's a citizen just like everybody else. I do believe however that public scientists do their own cause a disservice when they buy into a particular partisan frame and insert that frame into their speeches.

The climate change "community" (i.e. those who believe man-made CO2 is a problem worthy of huge effort and action) are making a major mistake if they think that politicians who have glommed onto this issue and say the right buzz words are worthy of support.

German politicians utter the right buzz words, in spades. Germany's electric power generation sector dumped more than 330 million tons of CO2 into the air last year. France, right next door, made a comparable amount of electricity and dumped only 43 million tons.

I do not see, on this web site or any of the other excellent ones that deal with the issue of climate change, any inquiry into the reasons for the remarkable fact I laid out in the previous paragraph.

I do see a lot of rhetorical support for the route Germany has chosen to cut carbon. This amazes and disappoints me. A glance at the publicly available data instantly tells you the German approach is a failure.

Scientists are supposed to work from evidence, not politically motivated fairy tales.

RedBaron at 23:23 PM on 21 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

@saileshrao,

The thread title is, "Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize".

I have contended there is a mitigation option that allows us to avoid being locked into this greater AGW. I have provided case studies for all the major staples; rice, small grains and large grains, meat and dairy being produced at commercial scale in a way that significantly reduces atmospheric CO2 by sequestering C into the soil, restoring soil health to agricultural land, if they were adopted world wide. (My own work is in various vegetable crop regenerative models of production but I haven't posted that here because it is original research) I have shown evidence for both correlation and causation. I have even proposed a way to potentially break the current political deadlock and avoid economic disruption both to the many producers and larger commodity markets, international trade markets etc... by proposing how we might do this at a profit at all economic trophic levels. (pardon the pun)

Now you said, "Even if we need a few domestic animals to sustain it (many veganic farmers disagree), a Vegan food system, which reduces the human biomass demand on Nature by a factor of 6, would be easier to manage into the future."

Where are your numbers? Where are the case studies? How do you scale it? Where is the socio-economic political plan? How will this prevent us from being locked into more global warming than people realize? How will we pay for it? Who are the economic winners and losers and why?

I ask all this because I don't want a sloganeering reply based solely on your attempt to convert acolytes to your religious dogma, rather I am actually interested in this so called "veganic" agriculture and how it might fill some of the more minor gaps in my plan. There are various local ordinances and zoning issues surrounding animal husbandry in and near large population areas. It is not the major agricultural land, but it is one small gap in my proposed plan I need to work through.

So if you could please leave the conversion of the world's population to Veganism aside for a moment, and instead answer some of these questions, maybe I could integrate some of your ideas into my proposed plan of action?

Thanks in advance.

Tom Curtis at 21:58 PM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag @87:

"A great many skeptics are in fact climate scientists..."

Passing over the assumption that "skeptics" are in fact skeptical, rather dogmatically oppositional, surely you have mistated your position. First, and this should be very clear from any excursion to WUWT, the vast majority of "skeptics" have neither qualifications in, nor understanding of climate science. Saying that a "great many skeptics are in fact climate scientists", ie, that a large proportion of the class "AGW skeptic" are also members of the class "climate scientist" is absurd.

I assume you merely mispoke, and intended to say that "a great many climate scientists are 'skeptics'". Even there you are on very shaky ground. Based on surveys of climate scientists, at most 15% and more likely << 10% of climate scientists hold a "skeptical" position on AGW. Among publishing climate scientists, by self assessment only 2.4% of climate scientists thought there published work rejected AGW (see Table 4). So, at best, a very small minority of climates scientists are "skeptics" - sufficiently small that their views cannot be taken as representative of climate science.

And even among the small number of climate scientists who are "skeptics", in most cases there exist clear evidence that suggests they are biased, ie, that they hold their "scientific" opinions for reasons that are primarilly political or religious. A significant proportion of them, for instance, are employed by right wing political think tanks, or have published for or spoken at conferences for such think tanks. Indeed, one of the most noteworthy "skeptical" climate scientists has declared that, "I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government", a declaration tantamount to saying that as a matter of principle he will distort the science for political ends.

"However, we must recognize that, as far as science is concerned, there is an asymmetric relation between someone who offers an hypothesis and someone who critiques it. The burden of proof is on the person offering the theory, not the critic."

My criticism of the "skeptic's" discussion of the "pause" was that they incorrectly stated the predictions of AGW, and that the responses that you considered to be akin to cherry picking merely established what AGW actually predicted over the relevant interval, and thereby showed that the actual temperature records followed what was expected from the theory. Given that I am flabberghasted by your response. Do you really intend to assert that critics of a theory may assert any phenomenon to be contrary to the predictions of the theory they criticize with no burden of intellectual rigour placed on them to establish that fact? Seriously? If so, your use of a "burden of proof" argument amounts to intellectual legerdemain - a piece of rhetorical prestidigitation that allows you to declare circles are squares and darkness to be light. Even if the " ...burden of proof is on the person offering the theory", that would be completely irrelevant to the case under discussion.

As it happens, even in more general contexts, your principle is useless. That is because, logically, the claim that "GMST did not follow the predicted path given AGW" is also a theory. If a burden of proof applies to those proposing theories, than a proponent of this view has a burden of proof to demonstrate to things, ie, the predicted GMST temperature trend given AGW; and that GMST did not follow that path.

You attempt to support your dictum with a quote @90 from comuter scientist, Stephen Minhinnick. Event there, however, you go awry. Stephin Minhinnick's argume (which I do not accept in any event) specifically relates to the proposition of entities, and the ontologies of climate scientists and (at least well informed) "skeptics" is the same, at least as regards the climate. Neither proposes a distinct set of entities, be it form of radiation, or unusual subatomic particles, or whatever. The only way that you can take Minhinnick's argument to be relevant is if we count abstractions such as trends as being entities. But if we do that, it is the AGW "skeptics" who are proposing an additional entitity. Specifically, AGW proponents propose an underlying linear trend over the period 1975-1997 which continues thereafter, while the "skeptics" propose the existence of a new trend from 1998 onwards. And on that basis, they have singularly failed the burden of proof of showing a new underlyng trend.

"To be perfectly clear: the theory in question is the theory that CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels have been warming the earth steadily over a long time period and as a result placing the world in grave danger. The so-called "hiatus" is an attempt to refute this theory by calling attention to a certain body of data that seems inconsistent with it. Promoters of the hiatus need not offer a counter-theory. All they need to do is demonstrate a serious inconsistency in the "climate change" theory."
(My emphasis)

And now, apparently, we are in aggreement, except you exempt the "skeptics" from actually having to make the demonstration of inconsistency, which requires not only demonstrating the post 1998 temperature record, but also demonstrating the actual prediction of AGW (not just the projections). And once again, demonstrating that the "skeptics" have not undertaken their task with any intellectual rigour is not akin to cherry picking.

"The most recent "pause buster," by Karl et al., adjusted the data in such a way as to render literally all these studies superfluous, which should have been a huge embarrassment to the mainstream climate science world, but has on the contraty been accepted with enthusiasm simply because it appears to do the job more convincingly."

First, and most obviously, Karl et al discusses just one temperature data set, and therefore cannot render analyses of other datasets superfluos. Second, you are not entitled to assume that a reworking of (for example), Foster and Rahmstorf using the latest temperature products would not show an accelerating temperature trend. All you can say from the update of the temperature series is that the former studies are not dated, not that they are superfluos (ie, that repeating the studies would not impact our understanding, or demonstrate any underlying trend greater than the revised temperature trends from Karl et al). Again your argument suggest to me rhetorical legerdemain. You appear to imply that because the "skeptic" rhetoric regarding the purported "pause" has been refuted multiple times, and in several different ways, that of itself refutes the multiple refutations. It is only conspiracy theorests and pseudoscientists who think there theory is confirmed by the mounting of evidence against it.

Eclectic at 21:53 PM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor @ 93 and prior :

The argumentation you present, is becoming increasingly silly. Your mentioning of the disproving of the existence of leprechauns - is ridiculous.

Your search for recent "Pause" in global surface temperature rise, has (so far) been unsuccessful. If you have evidence of a claimed Pause, then it seems you have not yet presented it. Please do not withhold such evidence - if it exists, then please present it now.

Earlier, the analogy was made that global surface temperature was the tail on the dog body [ body = ocean ]. Victor, you have made a major Logical Fail, by ignoring the dog and instead concentrating on whether the dog has a tail [ a tail, a cropped tail, or never any tail in the first place ! ].

Your "criticism" needs to: not only point to the absence of a tail - but also point to the absence of a dog.

Since, for well-known physical reasons, the ocean has been warming without Pause - then it becomes not only plausible but highly probable that the "tail" would have no Pause. And the evidence indeed shows no Pause - yes, it shows minor fluctuations as the tail wags a little : but no real Pause.

Your desired "Pause" has become the leprechaun that you must demonstrate.

Jonbo69 at 20:41 PM on 21 August 2016

Temp record is unreliable

I have a question I would like to ask; I'm not sure if this is the best thread to ask it, for which I appologise, but it's somethimg I've always wondered and would really appreciate an answer to. I know that the Had Cru surface temp data is biased low because they do not have coverage in the arctic. My question is, why is this the case? Why have Had Cru never used data from the arctic stations when the greater coverage will clearly lead to more accurate estimates?

victorag@verizon.net at 13:35 PM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

It's getting very tiresome to present perfectly logical objections to climate change dogma, only to be greeted by ad hominems, nit picks (thank you, Mr. Rodger), intimidation, misreadings and condescension. Admittedly, this site is run in a far more even handed and decent manner than RealClimate, which is, for the most part, populated by rude imbeciles, encouraged to rave on with little to no supervision.

For the information of all concerned, I am not easily intimidated and I do not suffer fools (you know who you are) gladly. But I am also happy to engage in even handed dialogue with anyone challenging my views, provided they do so with intelligence and respect. And if my attitude is a problem for the moderators then my advice to you is very simple: ban me from the site.

If, on the other hand, you are interested in meaningful, no-holds-barred dialogue on one of the most important topics of the day, then freely open the gate to those like me who have ideas of their own and are not afraid to express them.

Moderator Response:

[JH] Your comment is a blend of agumentative and off-topic statements, moderation complaint, and sloganeering — all of which are prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.

If you cannot abide by the SkS Comments Policy, you will relinquish your privilege of posting on this site.

Tom Dayton at 13:29 PM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Congratulations, Victor. Your understanding of science has advanced from grade school to high school. Look up "naive falsificationism."

victorag@verizon.net at 13:08 PM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

#89 Michael Sweet:

"Your characterization of Karl's paper is false, the paper adjusted the sea surface temperatures as required by science to remove measured biases. The old ship data is obviously biased compared to the new bouy data. You often make false assertions about scientists motives and data. Once several of your assertions are shown to be false, your arguments become not very convincing."

My characterization of Karl's paper had nothing to do with his claims regarding the validity of his adjustments. So you are the one making the false assertion. What I claimed is that his adjustments made the earlier studies irrelevant, another thing entirely.

victorag@verizon.net at 13:00 PM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

First, in response to the accusation that I'm repeating myself: whatever I said that might be construed as repetition was presented in a different context (a discussion of bias, in response to Tom's assertions that the notion of a hiatus is due to bias — not sure how I could respond to that without repeating some things I'd said earlier.)

Tom Dayton: "victorag claimed "there is no burden of proof associated with evaluating someone else's work, nor any need to establish one's lack of bias." The falsehood of that claim goes beyond even the other grade school caricatures of science that victor has put forward."

An excellent discussion of this issue appears here: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~edmin/Pamphlets/Pamphlet%2003%20-%20Scientific%20Method%20and%20the%20Burden%20of%20Proof.pdf

Some excerpts:

Filtering out delusions and wishful thinking
It is easy to deliberately, or through mental illness,
imagine things that do not exist. Examples that
immediately come to mind are time-machines,
leprechauns, hairy blue frogs, elephants that fly.
Anyone could make up such things all day with no
real effort. And there are an infinite number of these
non-existent things that could potentially be
imagined.
But it is nearly impossible to prove that these
things do not actually exist, or have never existed. (my emphasis-V)
You would have to show you had looked
everywhere the object could be and still not found
one. Even then it could be said that the thing was
hidden, or moved while you were looking for it, or
you looked at the wrong time. . .
The same principle applies in general science. For
this reason the onus is always on the believer to
provide convincing evidence that the object
believed in is not merely a laughable fantasy but
actually exists. This is called the ‘Burden of Proof’. . .
As we have seen, the proof on an object's nonexistence
is actually impossible in practice. . .
Default Axioms
There is an important consequence to this - if an
object cannot be shown to exist, the default position
is that it does not exist. It is axiomic that something
does not exist unless shown otherwise.

With respect to bias: if I can demonstrate that a claim is unsubstantiated, then it doesn't matter whether I'm biased or not. On the other hand, if I'm attempting to establish the truth or relevance of a theory, a hidden bias might be at work in my methodology or my selection of data that makes my theory seem more convincing than it actually is.

Moderator Response:

[JH] My cautionary note about escessive repetition was prospective.

I also activated the link you provided. Please learn how to use the editing function to activate links.

michael sweet at 09:41 AM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor,

Please link your references so they can be checked. Tom Curtis and MA Rodger have shown that your previous papers do not support your claims.

You are getting very repetitive. Consider following the moderators suggestion and stop repeating the same failed assertions. Simply repeating an assertion that has been previously shown to be incorrect will not convince anyone at this site that your arguments have merit. Most of the regular readers have seen your posts at RealClimate and do not need to see them again, especially three or four times.

Your characterization of Karl's paper is false, the paper adjusted the sea surface temperatures as required by science to remove measured biases. The old ship data is obviously biased compared to the new bouy data. You often make false assertions about scientists motives and data. Once several of your assertions are shown to be false, your arguments become not very convincing.

Tom Dayton at 09:32 AM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag claimed "there is no burden of proof associated with evaluating someone else's work, nor any need to establish one's lack of bias." The falsehood of that claim goes beyond even the other grade school caricatures of science that victor has put forward.

victorag@verizon.net at 08:31 AM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

#83 Tom Curtis: "while the potential for bias is real, I find it extraordinary that you consider it to be a feature of climate science rather than of the "skeptics"."
OK, before we get any further, I must object to the opposition "climate science" vs. "skeptics." A great many skeptics are in fact climate scientists so that phrase is misleading in this context. As I mentioned earlier, I find it difficult to find a term characterizing those who see CO2 emissions as both a significant cause of global warming, and a clear and present danger to the future of life as we know it. I've used the term "warmist" and I've used "alarmist," but neither seems fair. "Believers" maybe? As oppposed to skeptics? Or "accepters" as opposed to "deniers"? That doesn't sound right either. If anyone has a suggestion I'd love to hear it. Meanwhile, I'll just try to avoid the issue.

Tom: "There are several, objective measures showing that claims of a "pause" (literally a brief cessation) or "hiatus" (literally a gap) in global warming after 1998 represent (at best) a massive disconfirmation bias by the "skeptics" (as in, they are biased towards accepting any disconfirmation of global warming, no matter how spurious)."

There's no question that many climate change skeptics are heavily biased. I cringe when I read some of the nonsense stemming from right-wing ideologues convinced that "climate change" is a communist conspiracy designed to promote world government and the sharing of wealth — or something promoted by greedy climate scientists interested only in government grants. That is bias writ large and there is no place for it in a civil discussion. It's true also that there are more subtle forms of bias that are far more difficult to discern, and I admit that I could be a victim of such bias myself. Why not? And I have no doubt that a great many fellow skeptics, if not all, are biased against the climate change mainstream (is that the phrase I'm looking for?) for one reason or another.

However, we must recognize that, as far as science is concerned, there is an asymmetric relation between someone who offers an hypothesis and someone who critiques it. The burden of proof is on the person offering the theory, not the critic. And since there is always a strong likelihood of any scientist being biased in favor of either his own theory or a theory promoted by the group with which he's associated, special precautions should be be taken to counteract that tendency. Which is why the controlled double-blind experiment is recommended wherever possible.

While a critic may also be biased, there is no burden of proof associated with evaluating someone else's work, nor any need to establish one's lack of bias. The person reviewing someone else's paper, for example, is not normally required to do his own research, conduct his own experiments, double-blind or not, etc. Nor is a critic required to offer an alternative theory. This might seem unfair, but this is the long established convention when a theory is considered in the scientific (or scholarly) world.

To be perfectly clear: the theory in question is the theory that CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels have been warming the earth steadily over a long time period and as a result placing the world in grave danger. The so-called "hiatus" is an attempt to refute this theory by calling attention to a certain body of data that seems inconsistent with it. Promoters of the hiatus need not offer a counter-theory. All they need to do is demonstrate a serious inconsistency in the "climate change" theory.

With respect to this "hiatus", there's a long long list of studies designed with the intention of disproving it, and I see no reason to uncritically accept any of them — especially when they seem designed specifically to produce a foregone conclusion. The most recent "pause buster," by Karl et al., adjusted the data in such a way as to render literally all these studies superfluous, which should have been a huge embarrassment to the mainstream climate science world, but has on the contraty been accepted with enthusiasm simply because it appears to do the job more convincingly.

The real problem has been swept under the rug. For example, in the light of the data adjustments reported by Karl et al, it would seem that many of the numbers contributing to the results reported in the Foster/Rahmstorf paper are no longer valid, thus the formula leading to the hiatus-breaking result would have to be recalculated and would most likely come out wrong.

The latest turn of the screw is the paper by Fyfe et al., which I'm sure you're aware of, which is critical of all such attempts, insisting that the so-called "pause" is real and needs to be taken seriously. Bias is very likely absent here, especially when we note that Michael Mann himself contributed to this research.

Moderator Response:

[JH] You have made several points in this post. Please note that excessive repetition is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy, i.e,

Comments should avoid excessive repetition. Discussions which circle back on themselves and involve endless repetition of points already discussed do not help clarify relevant points. They are merely tiresome to participants and a barrier to readers. If moderators believe you are being excessively repetitive, they will advise you as such, and any further repetition will be treated as being off topic.

MA Rodger at 04:07 AM on 21 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor Grauer @82.
Trawling the literature to find useful-sounding quotes to add weight to an argument is all very fine but in doing so you do introduce the references you cite into the discussion. And as you fail to indicate why you introduce these four refences @82 I will have to assume that you are defending your bold assertion @78 - "researchers do not see CO2 emissions as a significant contributor to the warmup during this period."I have to say that I see these references actually doing the exact opposite and pulling the rug from under your bold assertion.

Your first reference is to an SkS page but you stick with the 'basic' version when there is also an 'advanced' version that states:-

"Although humans were not burning very large amounts of fossil fuels or emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the early 20th Century, relative to the late century, CO2 emissions were non-negligible and did play a role in the early century warming. ... As you can see, the best estimate of the anthropogenic contribution to the 1910-1940 warming is approximately 0.1 to 0.15°C."

This seems to be quite definite in saying that AGW (of which CO2 is the largest contributor) is indeed a "significant contributor" but not a dominant one. (Victor - Nil points.)

Your second reference, Thompson et al (2005) 'Early twentieth-century warming linked to tropical Pacific wind strength' says a lot more than 'the early warming was almost 30% of the total when AGW was relatively weak.' (Note this 30% figure chimes well with my rough calculation presented @77 while "relatively weak" is not what you would call an exact evaluation and without context says diddly-squat.) For instance, the paper also says:-

"Between 1910 and 1940, global temperature warmed by 0.4 °C (Fig. 1) under an increase in anthropogenic forcing of only 0.3Wm^2, compared with 0.75 °C of warming under a 1.5Wm^2 increase since 1970 (refs 1,9,10; Fig. 1). Detection/attribution studies with three generations of global coupled climate models have indicated that at least some of this early century warming was probably due to natural factors, such as very few volcanic eruptions and an increase in solar output (Fig. 1). However, the magnitude of observed warming is greater than that simulated by climate models with forcing from external sources alone (0.20-0.25 °C; ref. 10), suggesting that internal variability played an important role in the early twentieth-century warming."

Fig 1 confirms that AGW was a "significant contributor" to early 20th century warming and it would be a strange reading of the paper that concluded that these "researchers do not see CO2 emissions as a significant contributor to the warmup during this period." (Victor - Nil points.)

Your third reference, Nozawa et al (2005), 'Detecting natural influence on surface air temperature change in the early twentieth century', presents somewhat different findings. It tells us that their initial modelling shows a large impact from GHGs throughout the 20th century, early & late, but when the net contribution of AGW is considered "the warming due to WMGHGs is offset by a cooling due to increases in anthropogenic aerosols, resulting in no significant warming until 1950s."
Yet here the size of the GHG contribution is large enough for them to say "The trend of the global annual mean SAT in GHG is nearly equal to that in NTRL; therefore, without further investigation, we cannot conclude which factors are the main contributors to the observed early warming."
The paper's eventual finding revolves around attribution rather than the power of the various forcings.

"The natural forcing causes a warming trend of ~0.6K/century, which is about one half of the observed trend. This is consistent with the global annual mean SAT anomalies simulated in NTRL (Figure 1). The residual of the observed trend (~0.4K/century) may be caused by the combined anthropogenic forcings, primarily by the WMGHGs. However, the two anthropogenic signals are highly uncertain and are not detected. Therefore the cause of the residual trend is not obvious."

This is a better account than your quote @82 from the paper's abstract. It is plain that the message from the paper is that GHG forcing (of which CO2 is the dominant contributor) are a "significant contributor". (Victor - nil points.)

Your final reference is Meehl (2003) 'Solar and Greenhouse Gas Forcing and Climate Response in the Twentieth Century'. This is packed full of interesting stuff but again it would be a very strange reading of it which concluded that these "researchers do not see CO2 emissions as a significant contributor to the warmup during this period." You only have to note Figure 1 which shows the AGW (GHG +sulfate) contribution to the early 20th century warming to be as large as solar's (with volcanic missing). (Victor - Nil points.)

So Victor, that is a pretty impressive score you have achieved @82. Well done you.

saileshrao at 01:32 AM on 21 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

Nigelj,

"We have nothing to lose, provided we don't over fish, and no obvious impacts on climate change."

We have already overfished to the point where modern fishing operations depend on a network of high tech sensors to track and trap fish up to 2km below sea level. Most seafood contain higher toxic pollutants than any other food source. In fact, Jeremy Jackson of Scripps says that by as early as 2030, eating a morsel of fish would be equivalent to playing gastronomic Russian roulette:
www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson

But as you can imagine, my sympathies are entirely with the fish.

MA Rodger at 20:11 PM on 20 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Something strange happened uploading #84. I think it was probably an extranious control character hiding in a cut&paste but will wait and see if it (or our gallant moderators) can sort(s) out the mess before trying a second upload.

Moderator Response:

[TD] Fixed.

MA Rodger at 20:04 PM on 20 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor Grauer @82.

Trawling the literature to find useful-sounding quotes to add weight to an argument is all very fine but in doing so you do introduce the references you cite into the discussion. And as you fail to indicate why you introduce these four refences @82 I will have to assume that you are defending your bold assertion @78 - "researchers do not see CO2 emissions as a significant contributor to the warmup during this period." I have to say that I see these references actually doing the exact opposite and pulling the rug from under your bold assertion.

Your first reference is to an SkS page but you stick with the 'basic' version when there is also an 'advanced' version that states:-

"Although humans were not burning very large amounts of fossil fuels or emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the early 20th Century, relative to the late century, CO2 emissions were non-negligible and did play a role in the early century warming. ... As you can see, the best estimate of the anthropogenic contribution to the 1910-1940 warming is approximately 0.1 to 0.15°C."

This seems to be quite definite in saying that AGW (of which CO2 is the largest contributor) is indeed a "significant contributor" but not a dominant one. (Victor - Nil points.)

Your second reference, Thompson et al (2015) 'Early twentieth-century warming linked to tropical Pacific wind strength' says a lot more than 'the early warming was almost 30% of the total when AGW was relatively weak.' (Note this 30% figure chimes well with my rough calculation presented @77 while "relatively weak" is not what you would call an exact evaluation and without context says diddly-squat.) For instance, the paper also says:-

"Between 1910 and 1940, global temperature warmed by 0.4 C (Fig. 1) under an increase in anthropogenic forcing of only 0.3Wm

Tom Curtis at 14:27 PM on 20 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victor, you have made a few comments since I last responded, so I shall split my response between two comments. This first one will discuss general issues, while the second will respond explicitly on questions of science.

@71, "sloganeering" is implicitly defined in the comments policy, which you are presumed to have read (on the basis that you are commenting):

"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."
(My emphasis)

The point of the term "sloganeering" is that "discussion" which consists merely of restatements of your position without in fact advancing cogent arguments and/or observational evidence in favour of the position serve no greater intellectual position than to stake out your position as either a "skeptic" or a "warmist". Intellectually, they are no more substantial than the slogans shouted at political rallies. As such, they do nothing to advance discussion.

@73 while the potential for bias is real, I find it extraordinary that you consider it to be a feature of climate science rather than of the "skeptics". There are several, objective measures showing that claims of a "pause" (literally a brief cessation) or "hiatus" (literally a gap) in global warming after 1998 represent (at best) a massive disconfirmation bias by the "skeptics" (as in, they are biased towards accepting any disconfirmation of global warming, no matter how spurious). Not least of these was the choice of the term "pause" for what was at most a reduction in the still positive trend rates. Further objective criteria include the insistence on the use of periods starting with or very near the near record breaking 1997/1998 ENSO and terminating with or just after the 2008, and later the 2011/2012 La Ninas (both unusually strong); and the treatment of the lack of a statistically significant trend as being the lack of a trend simpliciter.

A consequence of this bias is that "skeptics" argue against and "refute" complete misrepresentations of what is actually predicted by the theory AGW. In some cases I have seen, they have "refuted" mischaracterizations of AGW by arguing for what AGW actually predicts. This is certainly the case with regard to the purported 21st century "pause".

What AGW predicts is that, to a reasonable approximation, Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) is a linear function of change in forcing plus the effects of short term natural variability such as ENSO. Climate scientists do not pretend to be solar physicists who can predict solar activity in advance. Nor to they pretend to be geophysicists who can predict the timing and intensity of volcanic erruptions. They do not even predent to be economists who can predict the future evolution of anthropogenic emissions. When "predicting" the future, they use a broad range of plausible scenarios for potential future forcings (ie, projections) so that they can predict the plausible range of outcomes rather than the specific outcome. To determine what AGW actually predicts for a specific forcing history you need to run the models (or a crude 2 box model such as Kevin Cowtan's) with the actual forcing history. Further, as short term fluctuations of GMST are influenced by ENSO, you need to further contrain the model to match the actual ENSO fluctuations (as even those models that produce such fluctuations will not match the specific timing and intensity of ENSO events on any given run). Alternatively you need to predict the influence of the divergence from projected values (of forcings and ENSO) and reverse engineer what the observed values would have been had those predicted values actually occured. The later is effectively what Foster and Rahmstorf do.

The upshot is that the features of Foster and Rahmstorf that you consider to be akin to cherry picking are just the features used to determine the mismatch between projected forcing and ENSO values (that climate scientists do not pretend to be able to predict) and the actual historical values so that a comparison can be made between that which climate scientists do purport to predict and observations can be made. That is, they are doing what should have been done by the "skeptics" in the first place, and which is only necessary because the "skeptics" chose rhetorically advantageous misrepresentation (or at best, gross stupidity) over a proper test of the theory they want to criticize.

The problem with your meta-argument then becomes that in any instant where you have a critic of science unprincipled enough, or uneducated enough to completely misrepresent the predictions of the theory, and thereby assert it refuted - any attempt to correct the record by the scientists will be taken by you as proof of the scientist's bias. You have in fact speciously argued for a massive disconfirmation bias that does not even require you to look at the evidence.

victorag@verizon.net at 14:15 PM on 20 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

#81

Before 1940, the increase in temperature is believed to have been caused mainly by two factors:
Increasing solar activity; and
Low volcanic activity (as eruptions can have a cooling effect by blocking out the sun).
Other factors, including greenhouse gases, also contributed to the warming and regional factors played a significant role in increasing temperatures in some regions, most notably changes in ocean currents which led to warmer-than-average sea temperatures in the North Atlantic. (https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-early-20th-century.htm)

From http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n2/full/ngeo2321.html :

Of the rise in global atmospheric temperature over the past century, nearly 30% occurred between 1910 and 1940 when anthropogenic forcings were relatively weak.

From http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL023540/abstract :

We analyze surface air temperature datasets simulated by a coupled climate model forced with different external forcings, to diagnose the relative importance of these forcings to the observed warming in the early 20th century. The geographical distribution of linear temperature trends in the simulations forced only by natural contributions (volcanic eruptions and solar variability) shows better agreement with observed trends than that does the simulations forced only by well-mixed greenhouse gases. Using an optimal fingerprinting technique we robustly detect a significant natural contribution to the early 20th century warming. In addition, the amplitude of our simulated natural signal is consistent with the observations. Over the same period, however, we could not detect a greenhouse gas signal in the observed surface temperature in the presence of the external natural forcings. Hence our analysis suggests that external natural factors caused more warming in the early 20th century than anthropogenic factors.

From http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0442%282003%29016%3C0426%3ASAGGFA%3E2.0.CO%3B2

It has been observed that globally averaged warming of surface air temperature in the twentieth century occurred in two stages, early in the century from about the early 1900s to the 1940s, and late in the century from about the late 1960s to 2000 (Fig. 1b). Previous work suggests that it is likely that the early century warming was caused mostly by solar and volcanic forcing, and the late century warming mostly by the increase of greenhouse gases (partially offset by aerosol cooling). These results are confirmed here.

nigelj at 08:49 AM on 20 August 2016

Climate-related disasters raise conflict risk, study says

Scientific American had a good article on how drought in Syria may be linked to climate change, and was one causal factor in their civil war by increasing social unrest, as below:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the-syrian-war/

I think its easy enough to see that droughts and heat waves can exacerbate tensions and become a factor in conflicts. Of course in times of trouble like large floods, humans sometimes do indeed pull together, but you do also sometimes get looting, and the army sometimes has to maintain order. Containing the conflict becomes expensive.

I seem to recall Hurricane Katrina had looting and violence. Climate change could mean more events on the scale of this hurricane.

And as the article says, instability within a country caused by climate change or other events, means even smaller weather events become a problem. It's these hidden or less obvious costs of climate change that add up, and this is being missed by the media in their search for simple sound bites.

saileshrao at 06:38 AM on 20 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

RedBaron,

Even if we need a few domestic animals to sustain it (many veganic farmers disagree), a Vegan food system, which reduces the human biomass demand on Nature by a factor of 6, would be easier to manage into the future.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, but just as climate change, ecosystem degradation and toxic pollution are systemic issues, the fear of Veganism is also a systemic issue. Veganism is based on a nurturant ethic towards Nature (80% of vegans are women), which runs counter to the domination ethic underlying our current system.

I also don't expect the necessary system change to happen overnight. Vegans have the critical mass now for the Buckminster Fuller approach: "You don't change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

What would a socioeconomic system based on compassion as an organizing value and cooperation as an organizing principle look like? We are planning sandbox implementations in cooperation with academic institutions and NGOs in the US and India.

MA Rodger at 04:45 AM on 20 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor Grauer @78.

You seek correction if you are wrong.

You infer that you would like to 'dispute my numbers' but say you are unable because 'you're not a climate scientist'. You are incorrect. The data I use is readily available for use by any layman armed with a spreadsheet, both HadCRUT4 and IPCC historic ERF. I didn't see the point of providing web links @77 as use of these datasets here @SkS is so run-of-the-mill.

Even without a spreadsheet, a pre-industrial global temperature could be readily estimated from a graph of HadCRUT4 and the IPCC forcings totted up. With a 1940 total anthropogenic ERF of 0.613Wm^-2, a climate sensitivity (TCR) of 2ºC, a warming of something like +0.33ºC could be inferred which is pretty-much what HadCRUT4 shows for 1940.

These numbers may be subject to correction; poor eyesight or fat finger syndrome always makes error possible. But you are incorrect inferring that these numbers can be "disputed".

Of course, this represents a trivially simple assessment but shows quite well that the these ERF (of which CO2 is the largest contributor) indeed "are capable of accounting for the dramatic temperature rise we see from 1910 to 1940" and thus your assertion @75 is incorrect.

You are correct @78 to consider that the task of attributing the warming of the early 20th century does rattle round the literature. Serious climate models do not deliver the levels of anthropogenic warming suggested by the simple calculations above. But while literature may debate the role of internal variability & natural forcings, you assert @78 that "researchers do not see CO2 emissions as a significant contributor to the warmup during this period." Anthropogenic forcings (of which CO2 is the largest contributor) remain "significant contributor" within such studies although they are probably not the overwhelming factor in that period. As the IPCC AR5 (this the "review" DSL @74 was likely alluding to) concludes on the matter:-

"...the early 20th century warming is very unlikely to be due to internal variability alone. It remains difficult to quantify the contribution to this warming from internal variability, natural forcing and anthropogenic forcing, due to forcing and response uncertainties and incomplete observational coverage." (My bold)

Thus your assertion @78 is also incorrect.

victorag@verizon.net at 22:43 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Sorry about missing the earlier reference to Cawley et al. I printed it out last night, and read it this morning. Judging from the discussion on p. 5, and the very intesting graphs presented in their Figure 3, it does look like they've carried out more or less the same sort of program I suggested back in post 55. Figure 3b does indeed seem to display a correlation of precisely the type on which I was insisting, in which all forcings other than CO2 have been subtracted, so we could get a clearer look at whether a correlation with temperature actually exists — and it looks very much as though it does. Of course, as I indicated earlier, the residue presented in such a graph doesn't necessary represent CO2, as some other, unknown, forcing could be at work.

Regardless of such considerations, however, their model is hedged with some serious caveats:

. . . both models are potentially susceptible to omitted variable
bias. . .
The model presented here has the opposite bias, in that it attributes to internal climate variability what cannot be explained by the forcings (or ENSO in this case). As a result, a model of this type should not be
used to uncritically argue that climate sensitivity is high . . .
Attributing climate change to natural and anthropogenic causes cannot be performed reliably using such a naıve correlative model, as the conclusions are so heavily dependent on the modelling assumptions.

One wonders whether this last sentence might have been a requirement stemming from peer review. In any case, the honesty is very much appreciated. And the difficulty in producing the desired result is made clear, since so much depends on the existence of prior assumptions, of which the investigators may or may not be fully aware.

RedBaron at 22:18 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

@Victor,

You said, "correct me if I am wrong". You have been corrected multiple times, and even stated flatly, "since I'm not a climate scientist I am not in a position to dispute your numbers"

If you can't dispute the numbers from the climate scientists trying to correct you from being wrong, then I see no reason for you to keep cluttering this forum with your unsupported denialism.

Maybe come back when you do have some supporting evidence?

victorag@verizon.net at 22:06 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

#76 Glenn Tamblyn

Since I'm not a climate scientist I can't properly evaluate your analysis, but I see no reason to doubt it. However, an explanaton, based on uncertainties as to what might have produced the early 20th century runup is hardly evidence supporting the notion that a correlation between CO2 emissions and global warming has been identified.

#77 MA Rodger

Again, since I'm not a climate scientist I am not in a position to dispute your numbers. However, from what I read in the literature it seems as though most researchers do not see CO2 emissions as a significant contributor to the warmup during this period. Correct me if I'm wrong.

MA Rodger at 19:54 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor Grauer @75.

You say "I cannot agree that any known forcings, including CO2, are capable of accounting for the dramatic temperature rise we see from 1910 to 1940."

As calculated by IPCC AR5, the "known forcings" of human origin for 1940 total 32% of the "known forcings" of human origin for 2011 (the final data in the IPCC assessment). These forcings rise over the 40 years preceeding 1940 roughly proportionately to the 40 year rise preceeding 2011 suggesting a comparison with the resulting global temperature rise above 'pre-industrial' would not be ill-advised. The result of the "dramatic temperature rise,"the 1938-42 temperature (using HadCRUT4) relative to 1850-1900, is 38% of the 2009-13 temperature relative to 1850-1900.

Why do you consider this less-than-dramatic difference between 32% of forcing and 38% of ΔTemp to be the subject of such controversy? Do you assess "the dramatic temperature rise" in some other way?

Glenn Tamblyn at 19:36 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victor

Just some things to consider, re the 1910-40 period.

This is just atmospheric changes. We don't know what was happening in the oceans - no meaningful data. So we can't rule out an atmosphere/ocean heat transfer producing that change. Not a change to the total system but a small movement of energy from the dog to it's tail. In contrast, we know what is happening in the oceans as well today. This isn't just a transfer between the dog and the tail. They are all warming.
1910-1940 included some important other changes. Temperature station coverage in the high northern hemisphere was only developing during this period, particularly in the Soviet Union. We don't know whether some of this was an artefact of sensor coverage. The 1940's included some important changes in how sea surface temperatures were measured during the war years. What was the impact of this?

victorag@verizon.net at 15:02 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

"Instead of the handwaving, once again, please state to commentators where you agree and where you disagree."

I agree that the attribution of "global warming" to a variety of different forcings makes sense. I agree that such attributions involve all sorts of complexities. And I agree that climate scientists are uniquely qualified to research these complexities.

I do not agree that the picture is sufficiently clear for anyone to claim that any single forcing is a decisive factor influencing world climate. And I do not agree that simply by attempting to account for certain discrepancies by estimating the influence of specific forcings is in itself sufficient to produce a correlation between any one forcing (such as CO2) and temperature. Nor do I agree that selecting one set of forcings to account for a discrepancy during one historical period and another set when dealing with another period (as we find when we compare Grant/Rahmstorf's paper with Cook's blog post) is a valid procedure.

I also do not agree that the long list of papers intended to "account for" what looks on the surface like a lack of correlation is sufficient to produce such a correlation nevertheless. It's an open question whether each paper reinforces the previous ones or can better be seen as an attempt to correct their inadequacies. The recent paper by Karl et al. would appear to render all these older studies obsolete in any case.

More specifically, I cannot agree that any known forcings, including CO2, are capable of accounting for the dramatic temperature rise we see from 1910 to 1940. I find it difficult to accept that a rise of this magnitude could have been caused largely by the absence of volcanic activity. That strikes me as absurd. Nor can I accept that the grab bag of forcings offered by Cook can account for the cooling and leveling off we see from 1940 through the late Seventies. If CO2 emissions are a major factor in global warming then it's reasonable to assume that the signal of a steady rise in CO2 emissions during that period would be apparent in the temperature data — but no such signal is apparent, during a period of roughly 40 years.

All I can think of for now.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Thank you

DSL at 15:02 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Hrmmm . . . yes, Victor. I have an idea. How about we get roughly 300 of the leading climate scientists together and have them work over the basic science. They'll end up creating a summary based on the existing research. Then, they can open up their summary to a series of peer reviews. Maybe two of them should be open reviews. I expect several thousand scientists would want to get involved in review. If the basic science made it out of that process still established as the overwhelmingly consensus-of-evidence strongest theory, would you elevate your level of probability for it?

victorag@verizon.net at 14:31 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Speaking very generally:

I've done a fair amount of research in the social sciences, especially in the areas of semiotics, ethnology, and cultural evolution, and have read extensively in the fields of psychology, archaeology, population genetics and cognitive science. And one issue that keeps coming up whenever data is being evaluated, is the issue of bias. As is well recognized in all the sciences, researchers tend to see what they expect to see, or what they want to see, and as a result many studies are tinged by confirmation bias, regardless of the intentions of the researcher, which are usually honorable.

As a result, in many fields the gold standard for any sort of testing is the controlled, double-blind experiment, where no one involved in the process has any knowledge of what's involved or any interest in the result. I realize, of course, that double-blind research is usually not possible in a field such as climate science, but that does not mean that the possibility of bias should be ignored. There is a very good reason why double-blind testing is considered so important.

I've read a great many papers by obviously qualified climate scientists that deal with the issue I've raised here, i.e., the correlation or lack of it between CO2 and warming, and while there is certainly much that I'm incapable of understanding, the impression I get is that the goal of the research in almost every case is to find some way to justify a predordained result. Thus if it's a question, say, of "accounting for" something like the so-called "hiatus," then the entire research effort is directed toward that goal, and if the goal cannot be reached then the research would be deemed pointless and would remain unpublished.

This is the impression I got from the Grant/Rahmstorf paper especially, but I get similar "vibes" from many of the others as well. While this feeling might in fact be unjustified, I do believe it goes a long way toward explaining the skepticism of so many when encountering this research, because in the absense of something like a controlled double-blind experiment it's very difficult to completely remove the suspicion of confirmation bias, even if it isn't there. It would be helpful, I think, if someone were to lobby for a different approach, where the interpretation of the data could be done by people from some other field, with no skin in the game and no preconceptions — or at least double checked by such people on a completely independent basis, so there is no possibility of influence from the primary researcher to what we could call the "control group."

When we see result after result that appears to confirm the same hypothesis, then many climate scientists see that as proof positive that "climate change is real." But a skeptic such as myself can get a very different impression, for the reasons summarized above. Rather than continually harping on the "mounds of evidence" supporting your position, which only arouse suspicions, you might do better to find some way to convince the world that your findings are the result of truly impartial and objective research rather than simply a set of foregone conclusions.

Forgive me if my remarks seem offensive, but imo these are issues you need to consider if you expect the entire world to bend to your demands.

Moderator Response:

[JH] Argumentative & hyperbolic sloganeering snipped.

nigelj at 14:10 PM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

Interesting discussion. I'm not a vegetarian, but I concede meat eating is pretty inefficient use of resources. We need a lot of plant matter to generate a small quantity of meat. Maybe the answer is to keep meat eating pretty moderate.

But then we look at the oceans where a lot of plankton is presumably needed to support a small number of fish. We can't eat plankton so we might as well eat the fish. We have nothing to lose, provided we don't over fish, and no obvious impacts on climate change.

victorag@verizon.net at 13:46 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Speaking very generally:

Forgive me if my remarks seem offensive, but imo these are issues you need to consider if you expect the entire world to bend to your demands.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Claims of "bending to demands" is incendary. Repeat similar and post will be deleted. It is not deleted so that other commentators are able to judge your so called serious enquiry.

If you cant fault the science demonstating the correlation when done properly, you cannot dismiss it with hand-wavy comments about how you believe science should be done. If this is wrong, then where are the alternative skeptic theories that provide better explanation?

Instead of the handwaving, once again, please state to commentators where you agree and where you disagree.

victorag@verizon.net at 13:08 PM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Once again I want to thank everyone who responded for being so patient, so thorough and so civil. I hadn't noticed that I'd shifted the goalposts, but if that's the case I apologize. I find this dialogue extremely interesting and useful but I hope no one will mind if I persist a bit with some further questions. What I hope you will all consider is not simply the issues I've raised per se, but how questions such as these might help you to understand why some of us have remained skeptical for so long. It's not so much that I claim to understand what climate scientists are doing and reject it, as that I do not understand completely and that certain disturbing questions persist, probably because the matter at hand is so complex, but also because certain technical issues go over the heads of laymen struggling to understand. I won't attempt to deal with all the issues that have been raised, but I do have a few more questions/comments:

1. I did click on the Benestad and Schmidt paper and read much of it. I realize that many forcings were considered but what got my attention was the graph illustrating, in part, the affects of solar forcings during the early 20th century, and it looks to me as though the slope is too narrow to account for the steep temperature rise. Tom C. has claimed, above, that the response to volcanic forcings is the major factor, based on Cowtan's graphs. This is a perfect example of the sort of thing skeptics such as myself have problems with, because it's hard to see how the lack of a forcing could produce a significant warming. It seems more logical to posit some unknown forcing that could have produced this effect. And if you want to insist that there is no evidence of such a thing, my answer would be that this very dramatic runup in warming seems to be the evidence.

Secondly, I don't see how a set of graphs can in itself demonstrate anything in the absence of some sort of report explaining what they represent and how they were arrived at. Has Cowtan published on this and if so could you provide a link.

2. "The claim "The cooling from 1940 onward, followed by a long levelling off until 1979 is also difficult to explain as the result of natural forcings, despite Cook's effort to do so." verges on sloganeering if you do not provide evidence to support that, and aerosols are an anthropogenic forcing."

Where is this term "sloganeering" coming from? I don't recall offering a slogan. Have you consulted a dictionary? And yes, I can provide such evidence, in the form of a paper by James Hansen et al., published in the journal Climate Dynamics, in 2007: "Climate simulations for 1880–2003 with GISS modelE." (This was available on the Internet but as I just discovered, it no longer seems to be. Perhaps you already have a copy.) The data in this paper was the basis for the data used by Cook in his aforementioned blog post. Here is an excerpt from the abstract:

We carry out climate simulations for 1880–2003 with GISS modelE driven by ten measured or estimated climate forcings. . . Discrepancies between observations and simulations with all forcings are due to model deficiencies, inaccurate or incomplete forcings, and imperfect observations. Although there are notable discrepancies between model and observations, the fidelity is sufficient to encourage use of the model for simulations of future climate change. . . Principal model deficiencies include unrealistically weak tropical El Nino-like variability and a poor distribution of sea ice, with too much sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere and too little in the Southern Hemisphere. . .

The paper, written with the assistance of 38 associates, is incredibly complex and, as the author himself acknowledges, filled with "notable discrepancies" and "deficiences," and, judging from the content generally, many uncertainties. Yet Cook picks up on data and graphs from this paper and refers to them as though they constituted reliable evidence that CO2 is "the dominant forcing" and that this data is sufficient to establish the correlation in question, i.e. the correlation between CO2 emissions and global warming. Sorry, but after skimming through the complexities of the Hansen paper, I find this pat conclusion difficult to accept.

I have one other point to make but I'll do that in a separate post.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Just to be clear: Sloganeering in my interpretation is making an assertion (the slogan) without providing supporting evidence.

When Tom answered your criticism on F&R, you suddenly jumped to another objection which is suspiciously like shifting the goal posts. A published to reference to Cowtan's works has already been given (Crawley et al).

RedBaron at 12:33 PM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

@saileshrao,

I have been thinking about your post all day. I have a quandry. In all honesty I do not want to discourage you from Veganism. See if you can follow my train of thought. I honestly think that veganism is really only possible in developed countries. In developed countries like the USA where I am developing one small niche to add to the regenerative models I posted about above, as much as 95% -97% or more of the animal products available to consumers have used the destructive agricultural production models. So a Vegan boycott of those products is actually in my view a big help.

There are fundamental flaws in your grand vision of a world completely transformed to veganism. But I really don't think it is productive to alienate a potential ally with arguments over that 3%. Nor do I think any Vegan movement has any chance at all to convert the entire world to your dietary restrictions anyway. So I believe the point is moot anyway.

What I will say is this. Your grand vision of rewilding vast areas would actually remove them from food production too. The remaining land could feed our population, but without using biomimicry on that remaining land (which by necessity requires carefully managed animal impact) It would be impossible to produce enough food without agrichemicals at our current technology. So the remaining land would eventually degrade in the boom and bust cycle I referenced above. We would need to continually go back to those newly rewilded areas and bring them back into agricultural production, and rewild the degraded land, in sort of a huge rotational fallow plan. Beyond being unrealistic, it is also only delaying the inevitable, because you really haven't converted to a regenerative agricultural model. All you are really doing is destructive agriculture, but on less land temporarily. It can't solve AGW, only slow it. It would be the best we could do, if we didn't have regenerative production models. From a systems science POV it is not much different than what we have now, just without animals. Still a cause of AGW, but cut by 1/2. And that's assuming you could even make it work at all.

So no I don't fear Veganism. I encourage it. It helps pressure a change. But taken to the extreme of the whole world going Vegan, likely not workable, and certainly not a plan to eliminate AGW. Again, less damaging to the soils is not the same as regenerating the soils.

Tom Curtis at 08:50 AM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag @67 & 68:

"one still can't help but wonder whether these same three forcings were all that were needed to correct for other discrepancies in the temperature data over a much longer time period, such as the 1940-1979 "hiatus""

Except that if you look at Kevin Cowtan's model on the default settings, you can see that those same factors account for the 1940-1979 hiatus (Fig 1). You can also see that the response to volcanic forcings is the major natural player in the temperature increase from 1910-1940 (Fig 4), and that ENSO is a major player in flattening the temperature response in the 1940-1979 hiatus (Fig 5).

It should be noted that Cowtan's model uses the same two natural forcings, plus the same mode of natural variability as is used in Foster and Rahmstorf. Further, instead of a default assumption that any temperature response not due to those three factors is due to the sum of anthropogenic forcings, it explicitly includes those anthropogenic forcings. If a Foster and Rahmstorf's methodology would not reproduce the anthropogenic temperature response if applied over the full 1880-2010 interval, then neither should Kevin Cowtan's model produce such a good fit over that interval using the same modes of natural influence plus the explicit anthropogenic forcings.

"I am also wondering whether there has been any followup to the FR paper, and whether the three criteria they chose in 2010 still do the same job as convincingly when we consider the intervening years from then to now?"

Here is are the results of the Foster and Rahmstorf adjustment updated to 2012:

For what it is worth, 2011 and 2012 saw the two strongest La Nina years since 1974/75. Since then we have had two neutral years (2014 and 2015) each of which set temperature records unadjusted, and an El Nino year which has seen unprecedented montly temperatures in the first half of the year, and is very likely to set a third annual, global record temperature in a row. Given that, it is likely that the Foster and Rahmstorf methodolog would indeed do the same job as convincingly, although I can find no update to 2015. I can, however, find an ENSO only adjustment to 2015 which supports that contention:

"I was thinking of the presentation offered on this blog by John Cook back in 2009, titled The CO2/Temperature correlation over the 20th Century ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html ), in which he lists 10 such forcings. It seems to me that if you are going to systematically analyze the effects of natural forcings you need to settle on the exact number of all forcings that have been identified and then apply them across the board."

Of the ten forcings identified by John Cook, only two are natural - solar and volcanic. The ten forcings are the same forcings as used in Kevin Cowtan's model, and if you set the model to the GISS 2011 forcings, you can even use the same dataset (extended by two years) as is used in John Cook's article. So, again "The resulting adjusted temperature [in the Foster and Rahmstorf model] therefore reflects not the temperature influence of CO2, but of the sum of all anthropogenic forcings" (see my comment @65); and again Foster and Rahmstorf use the same natural causes of variability as those used in Kevin Cowtan's model (with all 10 explicit forcings) with essentially the same result over the 1979-2010 interval (see Fig 6 of model results).

As to any unknown forcings, first in science a principle of economy is applied where we do not postulate causes without reason do do so. Foster and Rahmstorf (and Kevin Cowtan's) model show that the temperature data do not require us to postulate additional causes for the global temperature variation. Therefore if you want to postulate an additional natural source of variability, you need to show why it is necessary. You also need to provide (or find where somebody has provided) an annual index of that purported cause of variability without which the effect of the purported cause of variability cannot be tested (ie, the claim that it is a cause of variability has not been put in a falsifiable form). It is not incumbent on working scientists to chase every 'fairy at the bottom of the garden theory', but rather of the proponents of those theories to bring them into sufficiently rigorous a form that they can be tested by scientists.

Further, given the efficacy of the explanation of global temperature from 1880 onwards using the two natural, eight anthropogenic forcings plus ENSO, any postulated additional natural cause of variability must be highly correlated with one of the two natural forcing, the anthropogenic forcing, or ENSO. That would be astonishing if coincidental, and if not coincidental then the purported additional natural cause of variability has already been included de facto in the analysis. Further, if its correlation was with an anthropogenic forcing and the correlation was not coincidental, the purported additional cause would also be anthropogenic.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Thanks Tom for your considered and civil response. Victor, in the interests of maintaining civil and focused dialogue, it would be could if you could indicate where you agree or disagree with response made to you. It would especially be appreciated if you refraimed from shifting the goalposts.

Tom Dayton at 08:43 AM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag wrote:

It seems to me that if you are going to systematically analyze the effects of natural forcings you need to settle on the exact number of all forcings that have been identified and then apply them across the board. If certain ones have no appreciable effect during a certain period that's no excuse for excluding them — unless you want to open yourself to the perception of cherry picking.

victorag is sloganeering, because he has failed to respond or even acknowledge my previous response in which I pointed out that "cherrypicking" is logically impossible as a label for removing only a subset of factors, when the goal of those authors was to eliminate the influence of that particular subset of factors in order to better reveal the influences of all the remaining factors. VictorAG continues to baselessly and totally irrationally claim that by eliminating only some factors it is possible to hide the influence of the remaining factors.

victorag@verizon.net at 05:59 AM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

[PS] "Tom does not accuse you of cherry-picking. He disputes your logic by pointing out what the study sought to achieve and as such used the data available for that purpose. To continue, please state which forcings you think are missing."

I was thinking of the presentation offered on this blog by John Cook back in 2009, titled The CO2/Temperature correlation over the 20th Century ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html ), in which he lists 10 such forcings. It seems to me that if you are going to systematically analyze the effects of natural forcings you need to settle on the exact number of all forcings that have been identified and then apply them across the board. If certain ones have no appreciable effect during a certain period that's no excuse for excluding them — unless you want to open yourself to the perception of cherry picking. I'll add, by the way, that after all natural forcings have been identified and removed, that does not necessarily leave you with CO2, because the remainder might well be some as yet unidentified forcing, combined with CO2.

The paper by Benestad and Schmidt to which you refer is about solar forcings and, as I recall, the effect they found of solar forcings during the sharp warmup of1910-1940 is only slight. I've seen others claim that this warming period could be explained by solar forcing, but this study would seem to have refuted that theory. If in fact there is still no natural explanation for the early 20 century warmup, and CO2 levels were too low to have much effect, then it looks as though there is some as yet unidentified natural forcing that produced the warming during that period — and the same natural effect could have caused the similar extreme warmup during the period 1979-1998.

The cooling from 1940 onward, followed by a long levelling off until 1979 is also difficult to explain as the result of natural forcings, despite Cook's effort to do so. After reading through the paper by Hansen et al, on which he bases his data, the many complexities and uncertainties in the assessment of these various forcings become all too evident.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Was it that hard to just click on the Benestad and Schmidt ref? It uses all the forcings. Also note in the your Cook link that forcing are not equal and most are very minor.

The claim "The cooling from 1940 onward, followed by a long levelling off until 1979 is also difficult to explain as the result of natural forcings, despite Cook's effort to do so." verges on sloganeering if you do not provide evidence to support that, and aerosols are an anthropogenic forcing.

old sage at 05:59 AM on 19 August 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

Your request for references and data for what is basic text book physics is rather like asking for a reference when I say the sun will rise tomorrow. Do you seriously require a reference for the water cycle and the way clouds form? As for the work of Ramanathan, it starts using the radiative convective model - one which could hardly be better designed to exclude the constant hunting for equilibrium in the contest between sunshine and cloud cover. Take it from me, his findings - and he admitted not considering clouds or aerosols in the paper I read - is just an exercise in mathematical sophistry. There is only one way CO2 can raise earth's energy content - and I've tried to find justification for the GHG theory - is that by increasing the atmosphere's opacity, it increases the cross-section presented to the sun. I haven't bothered to calculate how much difference it would make, but it is at least a thermodynamically sound possibility. Energy neutral transfers within one thermodynamic system being able to raise the system's energy content is not sound.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Hand-wavy dismissal of observation/model match and of papers you continue to misconstrue is more sloganeering.

Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

Consider a thin plate on earth's surface. You can isolate it in glass box with near-vacuum if preferred to minimize conductive effects. What is the temperature of that plate a/ when sun is shining. b/ at midnight? Textbook answers that match actual observations require use of the GHG effect. Please show us how your understanding of physics will give the correct answer for observed temperature of the plate without the GHG effect. I see little point in further comments from you on this forum from you till you have answered this question.

victorag@verizon.net at 05:34 AM on 19 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

OK, I'm back. First off I want to clarify by stressing that it was not my intention to accuse Foster and Rahmstorf of conscious deception. I have no reason to believe they were being anything other than sincere. Also, the impression I have that they were cherry picking might well be unfair. I'm not a climate scientist so it's possible there are things in their paper I do not understand.

Nevertheless it's very hard to discount the impression of cherry picking, because after all there are many more natural forcings than the three they selected, and one therefore can't help but wonder whether they were selected simply because they produced the desired result. And one also can't help wondering whether the paper would have been published at all if some other result had emerged.

While the detailed explanation very graciously provided by Tom might be perfectly valid, that does not alter the perception that confirmation bias could be at work, however unconsciously. My reaction, right or wrong, when I first read the paper was that 1. I questioned the choice of those three forcings as they appeared to be cherry picked; 2. even if we assume they were not cherry picked, one still can't help but wonder whether these same three forcings were all that were needed to correct for other discrepancies in the temperature data over a much longer time period, such as the 1940-1979 "hiatus" — and if they are not sufficient for this earlier period, why would they be sufficient for the period covered by the FR paper?

I am also wondering whether there has been any followup to the FR paper, and whether the three criteria they chose in 2010 still do the same job as convincingly when we consider the intervening years from then to now?

saileshrao at 04:03 AM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

RedBaron,

Thank you for the very detailed explanation and the useful links. Your agricultural knowledge is impressive. As you point out, there are a lot of things that need to be changed: agricultural production models, energy mixes and ecosystem recovery. But let me grant that your approach to carbon sequestration is workable within the current system.

I happen to be a systems specialist and take a holistic perspective. Climate change is a threat multiplier for a host of environmental threats: ecosystem degradation, toxic pollution, resource depletion and fresh water scarcity, to name a few. Couple those with the social ills of poverty, inequality, overconsumption, etc., and you have an apocalyptic mix ready to combust at any time. Solving carbon sequestration addresses the threat multiplier, but not the underlying threats.

Far from being dogmatic, Veganism is a rational response to climate change, the threat multiplier, as well as the underlying environmental threats, simultaneously! It releases pasture land back to Nature which can be re-wilded to their native biomes for ecosystem recovery. Rapid carbon drawdown occurs in re-wilded native forests until maturity (carbon stock remains sequestered as long as the forests stand) and as you point out, deep long term carbon sequestration can occur on prairies with native ruminants. Trees store the toxic pollution in their trunks in recovering forests, while people stop ingesting bio-concentrated doses of toxic pollution through animal foods. For instance, the USDA estimates that 95% of the dioxins in our bodies, which are some of the strongest carcinogens known to man, come from the foods we eat. Dioxins are released into the atmosphere whenever chlorine reacts with hydrocarbons and this happens, for instance, when we bleach wood pulp. Currently, the four main food sources of these dioxins are fish, eggs, cheese and meat, in that order. And so on.

This is why Veganism has taken hold among the youth, who are as far from dogmatic as you can get. In the US, as of 2010, according to a Hartman Group Research report, 12% of Millennials, 4% of Gen X-ers and 1% of Baby Boomers were vegan. Since then, interest in Veganism has tripled according to Google trends. The interest is especially strong in the developed countries of the world, which augurs well for Veganism’s continued exponential growth.

Veganism also forces society to address the social threats. We are ensconced in a socioeconomic system that is based upon consumption as an organizing value and competition as an organizing principle. We are each bombarded with 3,500 ads a day, persuading us to consume one unnecessary product or another. We constantly compete against each other to determine who is better at one activity or another. The social hierarchy so created greases this ritualistic consumption.

This socioeconomic system is incompatible with Veganism. When taken to its logical conclusion, Veganism necessitates conscious simplicity since any unnecessary consumption uses natural resources that hurts innocent animals somewhere. This is why going vegan is a process that doesn’t stop with our dinner plates. This is also why “vegan consumerism” is an oxymoron and why it frightens the elites in the current system that more and more people are going vegan. Hence the widespread “Cowspiracy” that has infected institutions everywhere, especially in the developed world.

But the response to Veganism shouldn't be fear. Veganism requires transforming our civilization around compassion, not consumption, as the organizing value, and cooperation, not competition, as the organizing principle. Is that such an onerous transformation to contemplate? Surely, we are truly lucky to be alive at this incredibly significant moment in human history, piloting such a transformation...

RedBaron at 03:38 AM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

@ John,

That's an interesting question John, because of the way you phrased it. The biological systems can recover extremely rapidly. In the order of a decade or less you could strat seeing significant reductions in atmospheric CO2 if every land manager started implementing these various regenerative agricultural systems. The soil starts recovering the first year, but 3 years +/- is when it really starts kicking off due to reinforcing feedbacks. Those reinforcing feedbacks will dominate and accelorate until the main stabilizing feedback, lower atmospheric CO2, slows them down.

But that's not exactly what you asked. You said how fast can we humans implement the changes required? That requires first of all that people not be in denial of AGW or soil degradation. Then one must convice the population of the planet to actually make the changes in agriculture. Then it requires education of the now motivated land managers in the regerative agricultural systems available for their local conditions. All these things require cooperation. That could indeed take a very very long time. Maybe too long.

Assuming we actually could get a world wide cooperative effort, both problems could be solved, or at least no immediate risk and well on their way to resolution, within a few decades.

John Hartz at 03:15 AM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

Red Baron @32:

The overarching question then becomes, "How rapidly can the human race implement processes to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and restore it to soils on a scale large enough to make a signicant impact on both the soils and the atmospheric concentration of CO2?"

RedBaron at 03:08 AM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

@John Hartz,

You are absolutely correct. In fact all you have done is restate the exact same problem from a different point of view than climate science. Same solution applies to both, because to regenerate soils requires sequestering organic carbon in those soils, and the source of that carbon is from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

Or to make it simple. The same carbon we have too much of in the atmosphere, we have too little of in our soils. The extra in the atmosphere causes the problem of AGW. And the loss of carbon in our soils causes deterioration of arable land.

So any solution that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and restores it to our agricultural soils kills two birds with one stone.

John Hartz at 02:16 AM on 19 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

Red Baron, et al:

Something for both of you to take into account in your ongoing discourse:

Humankind is a witness every single day to a new, unprecedented challenge. One of them is the very fact that the world’s arable lands are being lost at 30 to 35 times the historical rate. Each year, 12 million hectares are lost. That means 33,000 hectares a day!

Moreover, scientists have estimated that the fraction of land surface area experiencing drought conditions has grown from 10-15 per cent in the early 1970s to more than 30 per cent by early 2000, and these figures are expected to increase in the foreseeable future.

While drought is happening everywhere, Africa appears as the most impacted continent by its effects. According to the Bonn-based United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), two-thirds of African lands are now either desert or dry-lands.

The challenge is enormous for this second largest continent on Earth, which is home to 1.2 billion inhabitants in 54 countries and which has been the most impacted region by the 2015/2016 weather event known as El-Niño.

Arable Lands Lost at Unprecedented Rate: 33,000 Hectares… a Day! by Baher Kamal, Inter Press Service (IPS), Aug 16, 2016

Digby Scorgie at 20:33 PM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

Tom Curtis @27

Okay, so it seems the amount of long-term warming is in dispute. Please take this up with the author. I'm not qualified to do so.

But whatever the case, if CO₂ levels remain at 400 ppm (they won't), the planet is headed for more than two degrees of warming. Optimists think humanity can reduce CO₂ levels below 400 ppm. Just from bitter experience, I think they'll simply carry on rising until the changing climate gets so bad it wrecks global civilization — resulting paradoxically in the required reductions in emissions. Am I a pessimist or a realist?

Zoli at 16:33 PM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

@Tom Curtis
@RedBaron

Thanks. Meanwhile I found an SkS article in the subject 'Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2?'

So the climate in my post-apocalyptic story will be a bit colder.

RedBaron at 14:37 PM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

@saileshrao,

One solution is parallel to Freeman Dyson’s geoengineering “solution” of just plant more trees. There are many reasons this won’t work, but the basic one is that planting trees increases stocks, but doesn’t stabilize fluxes. Using the bucket analogy, you have a created a bigger bucket, but still a bucket with no drain. It helps temporarily … until the new bigger bucket gets full. We call that Saturation. It’s a temporary fix that helps, but it is not a long term solution.

However, maybe even accidently, Dyson might have stumbled onto something that can solve AGW to the benefit of all.

Atmospheric CO2 level is the primary human impact we can change that directly influences energy flows. It comes down to the carbon cycle and the CO2 fertilization effect. Dyson is correct BTW that there is more carbon in the soil than in biomass and atmosphere combined. Also correct about the fertilization effect on plant growth. This is what is called a stabilizing feedback. The debunkers of Dyson are also correct about the increasing emissions from the labile fraction of soil carbon as temperature increases. Called a reinforcing feedback.

Here is where it gets interesting. Dyson AND the vast majority of the Dyson debunking sources have focused on the wrong biome. It is NOT the forest plants that have the capability to mitigate AGW. It’s the grassland/savanna biome that actually can be a forcing for global cooling, and counter the current global warming trend.

In a forest, the stabilizing feedbacks and the reinforcing feedbacks largely counter each other, and little is done long term to mitigate rising CO2 levels. Once you reach that saturation point you are done. You might even decrease albedo. But grasslands sequester carbon very differently than forests. Most grassland carbon is not sequestered in biomass, nor labile carbon in the top O horizon of the soil, but rather the newly discovered liquid carbon pathway. Grasslands also have higher albedo.

Most terrestrial biosphere carbon storage is in grassland (mollic) soils. Where trees store most their products of photosynthesis in woody biomass, grasslands instead of producing a woody tree truck, secrete excess products of photosynthesis (exudates) to feed the soil food web, especially mycorrhizal fungi. Those fungi (AMF) in turn secrete a newly discovered compound called glomalin deep in the soil profile. Glomalin itself has a 1/2 life of 7–42 years if left undisturbed. The deepest deposits even longer with a 1/2 life of 300 years or more in the right conditions. Then when it does degrade a large % forms humic polymers that tightly bind to the soil mineral substrate and can last thousands of years undisturbed. Together they all form what is called a mollic epipedon. That’s your really good deep fertile soils of the world and they contain far more carbon, even in their highly degraded state currently, than all the terrestrial biomass and atmospheric CO2 put together. This LCP is what built those famously deep and fertile midwest soils.

Even though wood is resistant to decay, the biomass of forests is still considered part of the active carbon cycle (labile carbon) That litter layer on the forest floor is relatively shallow, and most that decay ends up back in the atmosphere, unless locked in some kind of peat bog or permafrost. Tightly bound soil carbon in a mollic epipedon is considered differently than the labile carbon pool. It is the stable fraction of soil carbon, and grassland biomes pump 30% or more of their total products of photosynthesis into this liquid carbon pathway.

The importance of this recent discovery of the Liquid Carbon Pathway (photosynthesis-root exudates-mycorrhizal fungi-glomalin-humic polymers-mollic epipedon) to climate science AND agriculture can not be stressed enough.

Mollic Epipedon

Glomalin: A soil protein important in soil sequestration

Glomalin Is Key To Locking Up Soil Carbon

Liquid carbon pathway unrecognised

Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling

So while specifically Dyson was wrong, he has identified in the most general terms the pathway forward. “Plants” is too general. Forests is categorically wrong, although we still need them for their rapid buffering capability on climate as well as many other important ecosystem services, not to mention lumber. But the forcing of CO2 mitigation long term comes from the grassland biome, now largely under agricultural management and that is plants after all. Dyson got the wrong plants and the wrong soils, but did hit on the right concept.

The real question is can this mitigation strategy work within conservative ideals so that a political coalition between both liberals and conservatives can be made to devise a plan acceptable to both? It is pretty obvious that a carbon tax has and will continue to meet with opposition.

I believe it is possible, yes. But certain areas will take dramatic change for that to happen. Most importantly energy and agriculture. Right now both those sectors have already overgrown what can be sustained. Quite predictable since they were never really sustainable since the industrial revolution anyway. Just took a while for people to realise it.

For it to happen though, agriculture production models will need to be changed to regenerative systems, energy will need technological fixes like solar and nuclear etc. and overall since population has already exceeded environmental capacity, a large amount of ecosystem recovery projects will be needed as well. So yeah, reforesting can be a part where appropriate. All of these are possible, however I personally believe they are unlikely to happen on their own given social and institutional inertia.

My focus is on agriculture. Having studied it quite intensely for years, I believe we currently have the ability to fix that one. Only a few minor gaps remain. I can only hope others committed to the other two big ones meet with similar success. But then comes the hard part, actually doing what we know how to do before these unsustainable systems currently in effect start failing world wide, collapsing even our ability to do what we know how to do! That’s the actual tricky part.

For example, if agriculture fails before we fully institute regenerative models and the infrastructure changes needed, civilization collapses. Not much going to be done about it then. AGW will see to it that all three will fail if changes are not done soon enough. Once again with the potential to collapse civilization, or at least many nations including ours. Again making it near impossible to implement what we already know how to do.

So how do we institute the changes needed in a free market economic base beneficial to mitigating AGW?

The most important leg is agriculture. The answer may be more simple than you think. The rise of “king corn” can be seen as a direct result of a series of changes in agricultural policy instituted by Earl Lauer Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Most important to this policy change was the Buffer stock scheme (ever full granary) combined with urgings to farmers to “get big or get out”. (Which happened by the way. Now there is actually a crisis from too few family farmers, average age being 60.) That led to huge surpluses which we then were able to successfully use for many purposes, including major grain sales to Russia and China and many humanitarian aid projects.

Something has changed though. Now China has opened up beef sales. This is a value added commodity over grain. It makes more sense to drop the buffer stock scheme on grain, and instead I propose a buffer stock scheme on grass fed beef instead. You can do this on the same amount of subsidies that we currently use for grain, and instead put them on restoring the great prairies/steppes/savannas of the world….raising beef. This would positively affect carbon sequestration, pesticide use, erosion, seasonal dead zones in our productive coastal waters, biodiversity, energy budget, economic growth, international trade balance, rural economic development, etc… AND if done properly, as many case studies at the USDA-SARE & USDA-NRCS clearly show, even increase total yields of food for humans.

So to fully answer, instead of adding a carbon tax, one way to solve this is simply change what we subsidize. No need for new taxes. In agriculture instead of a buffer stock scheme on king corn, a buffer stock scheme on carbon being sequestered in soils. Just redirect the same amount of funds away from one to the other. Same goes for energy. Fossil-fuel consumption subsidies worldwide amounted to $493 billion in 2014, with subsidies to oil products representing over half of the total. Those subsidies were over four-times the value of subsidies to renewable energy. Simply redirect the subsidies for fossil fuels over to renewables. Doesn’t necessarily need to cost one penny more.

The idea that we are still subsidizing AGW, while trying to find solutions to AGW is quite frankly ridiculous. Goes to the wise old saying, “A house divided against itself can not stand.”

Now for some interesting general numbers. “Under appropriate conditions, 30-40% of the carbon fixed in green leaves can be transferred to soil and rapidly humified, resulting in rates of soil carbon sequestration in the order of 5-20 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year.”

Liquid carbon pathway unrecognised

Fast facts: The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources

5-20 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year x 1.5 billion hectares = 7.5 - 30.0 billion tonnes of CO2 per year AND that's just arable cropland, that doesn't even include the ecosystem recovery projects that could be done on degraded desertified rangeland mentioned by Allan Savory in his famous TedTalk. That's actually a larger area of land, but much more complicated to calculate. Because some rangeland is healthy and currently sequestering carbon in the LCP. A larger % is degraded by overgrazing and/or undergrazing, both causes of desertification and either nearly net zero flux, or actually a CO2 emissions source. Depending on the brittleness factor, they also each respond differently when properly managed. So it is difficult to quantify exactly how much more CO2 could be sequestered per year restoring these areas, but likely even more total (but less per hectare). China's restoration project of the desertified Loess Plateau early results shows just how significant this can be.

Soil carbon sequestration potential for "Grain for Green" project in Loess Plateau, China

Pasture Cropping: A Regenerative Solution from Down Under

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI)…
… is climate-smart rice production

The next two have USDA case studies on file with the USDA, and instructional vids. I will post both.

No-Till Case Study, Brown's Ranch: Improving Soil Health Improves ...

Gabe Brown: Keys To Building a Healthy Soil

and

12 Aprils Grazing Dairy Manual

Trantham's Sustainable 12 Aprils Dairy Grazing Program: A Top Farm that Almost Went Under

As you can see, more food per acre. Little to no cost. More profitable. Large enough.

Tom Curtis at 13:47 PM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

MA Rodger and Digby Scorgie, the article abovelinks to the skeptical science article on Hansen and Sato (2012) to justify its estimate of ESS. The SkS article states:

"During a period like the Holocene while warming to a Pliocene-like climate, slow feedbacks (such as reduced ice and increased vegetation cover) increase the sensitivity to around 4.5°C for doubled CO2. However, a climate warm enough to lose the entire Antarctic ice sheet would have a long-term sensitivity of close to 6°C. Fortunately it would take a very long time to lose the entire Antarctic ice sheet."

The 4.5 C is consistent with MA Rodger's figures, while the 6 C is consistent with the article above. For the ESS to be that high, however, the current CO2 concentration must be sufficient (if maintained) to melt away near 50% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which seems implausible. In any event, given that Dana was working with a range of estimates of ESS, using the highest value without noting it was a worst case estimate is overstating the case, and I believe should be corrected.

saileshrao at 13:44 PM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

Moderator,

Noted, but don't human values play a significant part in effecting the behavioral changes needed to mitigate climate change and environmental degradation? There is plenty of interdisplinary scientific research that finds it to be the case. Please see, e.g.,

Corner, A., Markowitz, E., Pidgeon, N., "Public Engagement with Climate Change: The Role of Human Values," WIREs Climate Change, vol 5, issue 3, pp. 411-422, May 2014.

Thank you for your consideration and for the use of this forum.

Moderator Response:

[PS] You miss my point. Values are not very malleable. I very strongly doubt that any data about value of meat in diet or use benefits of grazing would turn you into a meat eater. Nor will any argument about "hurting innocent animals" likely to change the views of someone who regularly kills and eats meat. You look at the world through different eyes. The arguments-against-values discussion goes on ad nauseum in other fora and that is where it can stay.

Please feel free however to discuss things that can be decided on basis of data. Eg whether RedBaron's type of managed grazing is a net carbon sink, grazed soils versus forest soils as carbon sinks; whether abandoning feedlot meat would be good for planet as well as the animals; what would be effect on atmosphere if world went vegan and our herds disappeared etc. Ideally those discussions would continue over here.

saileshrao at 13:11 PM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

RedBaron,

"In my opinion the solution is not to eliminate cows. The solution is to raise those cows properly with respect to both the cows and the environment. Same goes for pigs chickens etc."

Per IPCC AR5, domestic animals annually consume 7.27 Gt of dry matter biomass and produce 0.18 Gt of animal-based foods for human consumption, at less than 3% efficiency of biomass conversion.

Of the 7.27 Gt that domestic animals consume annually, 3.87 Gt is sourced from grazing land that comprises 35% of the land area of the planet, 3.14 Gt is sourced from cropland that comprises 10% of the land area of the planet and 0.26 Gt is sourced from waste residues.

Of the 1.54 Gt that humans consume annually, 1.36 Gt is sourced from cropland as plant-based foods and 0.18 Gt is sourced from domestic animals as animal-based foods.

The animal agriculture industry is aiming to double the production of animal-based foods by 2030. Assuming that this requires the doubling of biomass extraction in IPCC AR5, this would require sourcing 14.54 Gt of dry matter biomass for the consumption of domestic animals alone.

Can you please explain how we could do this "properly" while producing the plant-based foods needed for an estimated 8.5 billion people in 2030, all in the face of accelerating climate change?

Moderator Response:

[PS] Discussions work best when you read others comments carefully. Red Baron posts clearly indicate that he is against feedlots (or any cropland to feed agriculture), but that grazing lands are (can be) carbon sinks that need grazing animals to support that sequestration. This was discussed in considerable detail (with you included) over here. (Which seems a better place for further discussion).

Digby Scorgie at 11:43 AM on 18 August 2016

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

MA Rodger @22

You have got me confused. I arrived at the statement you query by adding the numbers in the second paragraph of the article. To summarize:

(1) We've caused about 1 C of warming to date.

(2) Freezing atmospheric CO2 at 400 ppm now would result in another 0.5 C "over the coming decades".

(3) There'd be "another" 1.5 C "over the ensuing centuries".

Are you saying (3) is incorrect and that the further warming over the "ensuing centuries" would only be 0.75 C? If so, I think it should be up to you and the author to sort this out. (I hope that doesn't sound rude; it's not meant to be!)

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