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

Recent Comments

Comments 23451 to 23500:

victorag@verizon.net at 10:03 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

To Tom and others responding to my posts: thank you very much for your thorough commentaries, which I find very interesting and helpful. I'll need some time to consider them and will need to do a bit more reading and thinking before offering a reponse, maybe some time tomorrow.

saileshrao at 09:57 AM on 18 August 2016

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

RedBaron,

The proper analogy is to ban all abuse of children if children are being abused. It is the eating, milking, forcibly impregnating or otherwise abusing and exploiting sentient beings that is unsustainable.

Imagine trying to reduce the global consumption of tobacco products exclusively through "smoke less" or "smoke gently" campaigns, instead of "smoking cessation" campaigns. It would not be successful. But we have to reduce the global consumption of animal products significantly to do any meaningful, reliable mitigitation of climate change and ecosystem degradation. And in a hurry.

Veganism is a way of living where we seek to never deliberately hurt an innocent animal unnecessarily. In all my talks to over thousands of people over the years, I have never met a single person who answered "Yes" to the question,

"Would you ever deliberately hurt an innocent animal unnecessarily?"

I'm afraid those who answer "No" to this question and yet balk at veganism must experience cognitive dissonance, akin to climate denial.

Moderator Response:

[PS] This is heading off topic very fast and the statements concerning animals are heading into very well worn territory of values. While scientific discussion of whether veganism would be beneficial for climate is welcome, attempts to use climate issues as an excuse to promote vegan values are not. There are other fora for such discussions.

Tom Curtis at 08:01 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag @57, the Foster and Rahmstorf paper uses a time period of 1979 to 2010 because the satellite temperature records start in 1979 and the paper was published in 2011 (and hence had no later data). It is difficult to describe using the full period of overlap of the temperature series they used available to them, as they did, as cherry picking with respect to time. It is possible to adopt the same approach as that in the paper over a more extended period, but the cost of so doing is that you must exclude the satellite datasets.

The three variables controlled for in the Foster and Rahmstorf model are the two known natural forcings plus the major component of natural variability. The resulting adjusted temperature therefore reflects not the temperature influence of CO2, but of the sum of all anthropogenic forcings. It may interest you to note than in discussions on his blog, Grant Foster indicated that he had tried variations of his model which also adjusted for the Pacific Decadal Oscilation and the (from memory) the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscilation and found that they had no appreciable impact (but also that you could use the PDO instead of ENSO with no appreciable impact). It is possible that the AMO was near linear over the time period dictated to Foster and Rahmstorf by their data, in which case the adjusted temperature series also includes an AMO component, but that does not sit well with measured values of the AMO:

Alternatively, you could argue that variations in the AMO closely mirror those of ENSO, and that as a consequence the ENSO adjustment in the Foster and Rahmstorf model incorporates an AMO signal into its ENSO adjustment. That being the case, the adjusted temperature series still represents the influence of the sum of anthropogenic forcings.

Finally, you could argue that there is a significant natural forcing in addition to the solar and volcanic forcing and which is not a linear function of either. In that case, the impacts of that natural forcing would also be included adjusted temperature. However, to my knowledge, no such natural forcing has been identified, and certainly no such natural forcing has been identified by the IPCC in any of their assessment reports - so Foster and Rahmstorf cannot be faulted for neglecting this purely hypothetical possibility.

Given all of this, I can see no basis for your accusation of cherry picking against Foster and Rahmstorf.

Tom Curtis at 07:39 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag @58, in Kevin Cowtan's model, the year to year change in radiative forcing for each component is provided by estimates of the historical values. You can use one of two estimates, the default Meinhausen (2011) estimates, or those GISS (2011). If you leave all weightings at 1 and look at figure 3 (scaled forcings) you will see they vary year by year. What the weightings allow you to do is adjust the relative strength of the forcings if you think one or more of those forcings have been significantly under or over estimated, or if you think the impact of one or more of the forcings significantly differs from what you would expect from their radiative forcing. To take a common "skeptical" line of thought, for example, if you think the effect of WMGHG and aerosols are one tenth of that which we would estimate by radiative forcing alone, and that the solar forcing has been underestimated, we could adjust the former three (WMGHG, aerosol direct and aerosol indirect effects) to 0.2 and the latter to 2. Doing so, however, drops the coefficient of determination from 0.932 to 0.807 (and does worse things to the RMSE, although the model does not directly calculate that). That suggests that this popular 'skeptical' theory does appreciably worse at explaining the 20th century warming than does the standard IPCC account, in addition to facing significant theoretical difficulties.

As I understand it, the default (2 box) variant of Kevin Cowtan's model is a variation of that described in section 3 of Cawley et al (2015). The only significant difference as I understand it is that the model in Cawley et al uses only one time constant which makes it closer to the 1 box variant. A more complete explanation of the model as presented can be found in the Skeptical Science online course which started on Aug 9th.

MA Rodger at 07:37 AM on 18 August 2016

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

Digby Scorgie @5.

You say "Now at last I am told that 400 ppm is equivalent in the short-term to 1.5 degrees of warming and in the long-term to about 3.0 degrees above the pre-industrial level. (Please correct me if I've misunderstood.)"

There is some in what you say here that I'm not happy with.

If we take 400ppm CO2 to represent rougly half the forcing that would result from a doubling of CO2, and if we take climate sensitivity (ECS) to be 3ºC, and if we assume other positive & negative forcings roughly cancel each other out, then 400ppm would result in 1.5ºC rise above pre-industrial (which is -0.31ºC on HadCRUT4, so 2015 was +1.06ºC on pre-industrial): 1.5ºC rise reached 100 years after reaching (& maintaining) 400ppm.

The warming described in the OP resulting from feedbacks beyond the mechanisms deal with in ECS I see as being twice what it should be. The OP says "The Earth’s surface would keep warming about another 1.5°C over the ensuing centuries as ice continued to melt, decreasing the planet’s reflectivity." This is surely wrong. The OP cites Hansen & Sato (2011) but that paper suggests the slow feedbacks would only add 50% to the ECS warming. So it would be another +0.75°C.

That then tots up to +2.25ºC rise but occurring over centuries.

So it really comes down to how quickly mankind can reduce CO2 emissions, the target being zero. I would be surprised if this cannot be done by 2060. And a thought. Consider how much of the technology available to mankind today was an impossible dream only 50 years ago. Without wanting to trivialise the task required to transform technology, I feel I am on quite solid ground arguing that in a couple of centuries (and before those slow feedbacks have the time to bite) mankind will have the technology to adjust global CO2 to a level that they consider to be convenient and one which will go a long way to preventing further damage from AGW.

victorag@verizon.net at 06:32 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

#60 No, it looks to me, Tom, as though Grant and Rahmstorf were doing the cherrypicking. What cherries do you think I picked?

Moderator Response:

[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 would also note that a similar statistical approach was used by Benestad and Schmidt 2009 with full forcing set. That paper points out the limitations on a statistical approach as well and I would suggest a look at the larger literature on attribution as other commentators have suggested.

I would also note that taking the non-statistical approach - directly account for forcing - is what models do and you have runs covering centuries as well as studies on say ice terminatation or initiation. However, such approaches do not directly reveal CO2 influence on simple graph but as a climate sensitivity number.

victorag@verizon.net at 06:30 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Thanks for the advise, KR. But I am at a loss to find a term characterizing those I've referred to as "warmists." I'm tempted to use "alarmists" but that's much worse, no? What would you suggest?

Moderator Response:

[PS] Lets not get offtopic with fights over labels. And in particular I would remind all parties to avoid provocative labelling. Victor I would note that "warmist" in your use would "climate scientist".

KR at 04:54 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Victorag - See the numerous attribution studies listed here. As to your yearly variations issue, that's a matter of measuring the forcings and applying them with either a derived (attribution study) or best estimate (projections) of their efficacies. There is extensive literature detailing estimated forcing levels, see the information on the GISS model forcings here.

Incidentally, the use of the term "warmist" on your part leads to the perception that you frequent denial sites, and aren't really looking for the science - just so you know.

RedBaron at 04:34 AM on 18 August 2016

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

@saileshrao,

I agree. My main issue with your posts isn't the current problem with the current wasteful systems. My issue with your posts is the dogmatic view that the solution must be no domestic animals at all.

As an analogy look at it differently. Your dogmatic solution is to analogous to proposing to eliminate all children because some children are abused. No, it is just as wrong. You eliminate abused children by not abusing them anymore. In agriculture animal husbandry is both cruel to the animals and harmful to the environment, including one source for AGW. But it isn't the cows fault. 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.

You said, "As scientists, it is disingenous to pretend that we don't know how to do that." And I would say the same. You are being disingenous in pretending we don't know how to raise domestic animals as part of an AGW mitigation plan. Of all possible solutions to AGW, your fixation to eliminate domestic animals is based on your religious Vegan dogma, rather than the rational scientific side. As I said, you are more than welcome to continue your Vegan boycott of all domestic animal products. I will help by boycotting CAFO products. But as a policy to restore ecosystem services to agricultural land, the vegan dogma is unworkable.

Tom Dayton at 04:16 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag, your logic behind your cherrypicking claim about Foster and Rahmstorf is invalid. The goal of Foster and Rahmstorf was to remove the influences of non-CO2 factors, to better reveal the effect of CO2. That is a straightforward procedure and logically airtight. Your claim that removing other factors somehow would hide rather than reveal CO2's effect is nonsense.

victorag@verizon.net at 04:09 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

I must add that I find Cowtan's graphs fascinating. Is there a paper that goes with them?

victorag@verizon.net at 03:58 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Tom Curtis @56. Thanks for the link. Cowtan has been providing some very useful services at his websites, I must say. I find this one very interesting, but it has me puzzled. We are expected to provide a weight for each forcing, but how could one be expected to know that without being able to quantify the effects of each, and on a year by year basis. For example, the weighting for volcanic aerosols would be different from year to year, depending on volcanic activity during each year. And one would have to have access to some very reliable studies in which such year by year effects are measured. And the measurements would have to be made compatible somehow with similar year by year measurements for all the other forcings. His results seem to depend on an equal weighting for each forcing for every year, which makes no sense.

What am I missing?

victorag@verizon.net at 03:42 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Yes, I'm very well aware of the Foster/Rahmstorf study. The problem is that it looks very much as though they carefully selected their forcings to provide the results they needed, and appear to have applied them to a time period also predetermined to give the desired results. While a great many forcings affecting climate over the last 120 years or so have been noted in various studies, they chose to include only three, over a period of only 30 years or so. The implication is that if they included more than the carefully selected three they would not have gotten their desired result.

The only way to conduct a scientifically viable test of CO2-temp. correlation would be by systematically eliminating ALL the forcings identified over the entire period in question, i.e. at least the beginning of the 20th century.

Now if you want toclaim that CO2 is responsible for all the warming since 1975, that's a totally different matter. Are you implying that there was some sort of tipping point reached at that time, prior to which the effects of CO2 emissions were negligible? If that's the case then it would not be proper to talk about a long-term warming trend due to CO2, would it? In that case you'd be talking about a period of 25 years when temperature did in fact shoot up in tandem with CO2 emissions. But after those 25 years, the temp. increase slowed while CO2 continued to soar. How do you account for that?

I see no alternative other than the elimination or "attribution" study I suggested, where ALL forcings are taken into consideration over the entire period in question. As it seems to me such studies so far have been conducted on a piecemeal rather than comprehensive basis.

Moderator Response:

[TD] All data and code for Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) are public, so you are free to scrutinize those and run the code yourself. You are also free to modify and run their code with additional forcing data. The links I provided describe multiple other studies that you have ignored. Please read those before claiming that they do not exist. For a very thorough review, read the IPCC's AR5 Chapter 10 on Attribution.

PluviAL at 03:22 AM on 18 August 2016

TV Meteorologists Warm to Climate Science

This is really important. These people are at epicenter of the controversy, not of the science, but the popular mind; long deceived by the disinformation industry into comfortable denial. They will receive the brunt of disapproval from the public, as they also form the engine of growing awareness. There is hope for civilization, when this problem can finally be addressed with the seriousness it requires. Hopefully the next president can build momentum to finally tackle the problem with the full support of congress, instead of kicking the can down the road. The opinion of popular weather-people, if their corporate minders don't expel them, is key to getting a functional congress too. So, this is a very hopeful development. As a member of AMS too, it is good to see this development.

saileshrao at 03:04 AM on 18 August 2016

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

RedBaron,

Ecosystems need animals to thrive, but not necessarily domestic animals. 35% of the land area of the planet is currently used for grazing domestic animals and that is a tremendous waste of precious carbon sequestration resources, where we could be "pulling a significant amount of atmospheric carbon and storing it safely".

As scientists, it is disingenous to pretend that we don't know how to do that.

RedBaron at 02:19 AM on 18 August 2016

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

@Zoli While Tom Curtis has posted a good diagram of the long carbon cycle, he has left out the impact of the biosphere on that cycle. During most the Pliocene The grassland/savanna ecosystem did not exist. During the Cenozoic, climate-wise, the Earth began a drying and cooling trend as grass/grazer biomes evolved and gradually spread forcing a drop in CO2 and CH4 levels, culminating in the glaciations of the Pleistocene Epoch.

Here is a good paper on it.

Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling

It has almost become a denialist mantra that CO2 was higher in ancient prehistoric times. While this is true, it is also true that the planet was warmer with much higher sea levels and vast swamps (which has now become coal) and much of the land not swampy was deserts. If we should return to similar conditions, civilization would very likely collapse. Probably actually long before reaching those conditions. Not to mention that the sun is actually warmer now than it was back then.

So the available land that is in the sweet spot between not swamps and not deserts and available for agriculture would shrink dramatically. It would be hard to concieve of a way modern civilization could thrive under those conditions, although I must admit I am not a futurologist. Maybe there might be some small remnant of civilized humans left.

Tom Curtis at 02:16 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

victorag @55, I recommend you run Kevin Cowtan's 2 box model in the default settings and look at figures 4, 5, and 6. Unfortunately the data terminates with 2010, but the extra five years will make little difference.

victorag@verizon.net at 01:09 AM on 18 August 2016

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

If the signal of CO2 is obscured by other forcings, then it should be possible to calculate the effect of these other forcings and remove them. What remains should be the CO2 signal (plus the signal of whatever other forcings exist that we don't know about). Cowtan's presentation does something like that for the last 20 years or so, but he says nothing about the effect of the same forcings since, say, the turn of the last century (20th century). If the warmist theory is correct, the same forcings should have been in effect for this entire time and removing them should reveal the CO2 signal. At that point one would want to look for a steady upward trend from roughly 1900 to 2015, to match the steady upward trend in CO2 emissions. Has this ever been done? And if so, where can we find the result? Thank you.

Moderator Response:

[TD] Foster and Rahmstorf created such a graph for around 1980 to 2010 (maybe it's a bit longer period than that). The general topic is called "attribution" of warming. Other studies covering the period starting around 1950 have their results shown in a bar graph on that same SkS post. See also A Comprehensive Review of the Causes of Global Warming. For details, see in the IPCC's latest report, the chapter on attribution. Humans have had a significant influence from at least 1850 to the early 20th Century, a dominant influence from then until around 1950, and have caused all the warming since at least 1975 and possibly earlier.

[TD] El Nino is removed from around 1955 through 2015, and also some other influences removed from 1970 through 2015, by Tamino.

Tom Curtis at 23:47 PM on 17 August 2016

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

Zoli @17, here is a schematic of the long term carbon cycle:

As you can see, CO2 enters the atmosphere through volcanic activity, and is drawn down out of the surface system by rock weathering bringing the carbon into the ocean as Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) which then falls out as sediment and is taken into the Earth at subduction zones. Over the long term, there is an approximate balance between the rates of these two processes. If volcanism increases, or the rate of rock weathering decreases, however, that balance will be disturbed and CO2 will build up in the atmosphere until a new equilibrium is reached. If volcanism decreases or the rate of rock weathering increases, the reverse will happen and the new equilibrium will be established with a lower CO2 content.

Several things effect the rate of rock weathering including the amount and elevation of exposed rock, the rate of rainfall, and temperature (with warm temperatures accelerating rock weathering). The first is primarilly effected by the rate of mountain building (orogeny). Thus, when the Indian sub-continent collided with the Asian continent, pushing up the Himalayas, that also increased the rate of weathering, thereby drawing down CO2.

Aaron S at 23:46 PM on 17 August 2016

CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming

I sincerely do appreciate such a thought out and well written response by Tom Curtis and others. So I want to reply with my concerns.

1) You are correct- the correlation is poor since about 2000. However, if you factor in this was a massive solar max based in isotopes and SSN and if you consider lags in the system associated with oceanic circulation (like AGW theory does for the delay in Antartic warming or PDO and the Hiatus) then you could increase stored heat and continue to even warm beyond the decrease in forcing when stored heat is realeased later. I have zero issue with the PDO storing heat for an entire negative positive couplet and there are much longer circulation cells. Let us remember to- I do believe in AGW and CO2 as a GHG- I just think ignorming solar activity and cosmic rays is not valid based on existing data. Also there is the obvious- the correlation between slope of warming trend in Hadcrut and A2 model warming has poor correlation over the same duration (The Hiatus is Real- Roberts et al. Nature CC 5, 2015). So correlation in this case is not a good argument either way as we are both aware climate is a complex system with feedbacks and lags.

2) Maunder minimum to modern maximum is a totally different situation than a Schwabe 11 yr minimum during a max or a decent from a max and we have not observed the impact from direct obserbations; the isotope record (Steinhilber et al) shows the intensity of the dipole is about the same (a little less for the dipole) as the intensity during the change from the Maunder to the modern max. Furthermore, the Maunder-scale cycles have much higher periodicity than the dipole- which means the wave has more energy given about the same amplitude. Period is important and if I speculate and dream a bit perhaps there is a dynamic equilibrium reached with longer duration changes related to the dipole that minimizes the impact. So I don't get your argument or suggestion that it is 17x the strength because isotopes (only data we have) say otherwise and the higher frequency change also supports more energy for the Sun. So considering that you don't have direct measurments to address anything but the interval during a solar max it seems a rather biased evaluation to me, but perhaps I am missing something as this is a stretch for my understanding. Thanks for making me think about this- it was a pleasant challenge and good learning.

3) Short term solar storms may not be long enough duration to trigger a response. The causal relationship between CR and intra annual solar activity is weak, but they are related to intra-annual events not short pulses.

4) The Earth's magnetic field is dynamic and dominates the Tropics- Agreed. Thanks for sharing that data. I think you need to add "during a solar max" because we don't know what the Maunder looked like- but it did likely impact Northern latitudes. Perhaps this explains the regional nature of the Little Ice Age.

5) You do not address the very strong correlation between the monsoon and cosmic ray intensisty. Correlation requires caution, but each vary greatly in time with a significant decadal scale lag of climate behind magnetics. THis pattern supports causation rather strongly. Nor do you address the quantified causal relationship at the intra-annual period in the other paper. Also, there is data from other proxy that climate responds to the sun's magnetic field. Each support the point in a independent way.

I am fortunate- I am arguing that there is now sufficient evidence to include a stronger sun scenario into the climate models. It is much more difficult to defend than your position to not consider the data validn. Your data is to short (during the max) or to long (100k yr doesn't have century scale resolution) for me to say it meets this threshold. Cosmic rays need included in the models.

Thanks for the opportunity to learn- you are a good teacher.

Zoli at 17:45 PM on 17 August 2016

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

The video says half of the CO2 increase would disappear within 20 years without further emissions. How was possible in the past to have high CO2 levels on the long term like in the Pliocene and earlier?

RedBaron at 15:41 PM on 17 August 2016

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

Willi,

You are right, and yet drew a different conclusion. Rainforest destruction is primarily for lumber. Crops come next until the soil deteriorates so badly no crops will grow. In those soils that doesn't take long. Once unfit for crops, then comes grazing, because that can restore soils.

While it is true that rainforest destruction is at least partly due to animal ag, in this case the real destruction aside from the timbering to start the process comes when it is cropped with corn and soy for supplying CAFOs. Grazing actually can be the first stage in ecosystem restoration if done properly. Once soil health is improved enough, then either let the ecosystem revert to jungle then forest. Or even plant.

The other point you may not know, is that on prime agricultural land, one can actually produce as much or more meat per acre at far less cost than growing commodity crops to feed animals.

The CAFO system does not actually increase meat produced per acre, comparing like to like. Not only can you produce animal foods where the conditions are unfit for crops, a similar advantage in food per acre happens on that prime land too. Whereas the meat industry has managed to propagandize people thinking that we don't like CAFOs but it is the only way to meet supply for a growing population, the truth is it actually is the opposite.

So yes, we certainly need to stop slash and bun of the forests, But if what you say is true, and we need to actually produce more on less acres without clearing forest, the solution is instead of clearing forest, to convert the prime acreage that supplies CAFOs to prairie again. The prime soils are NOT clear cut forests. The prime soils are plowed prairies.

wili at 15:10 PM on 17 August 2016

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

RedBaron, good points, but looking at this in absolute terms is not useful. The whole planet does not have to (and is not going to) turn vegan. So there will always be grazing use for those lands that are not well suited for other ag.

The problem is that, right now, more and more people are eating higher and higher levels of meat, and that is simply unsustainable, and is also contributing to global warming.

The are many pieces to the puzzle, and one of them is certainly reducing (and avoiding increasing) the amount of meat and dairy consumed, since most of this is now produced in ways that greatly increases GHGs in various ways, including rainforest destruction (especially in the Amazon).

One Planet Only Forever at 14:10 PM on 17 August 2016

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

tonychacher@10,

I am quite certain (almost 100%) that the evidence available to everyone following what is going on globally leads to a more correct version of your statement "Humans are not going to give up cheap, reliable power."

The statement that better explains the observations is: "Some Humans are not going to willingly give up trying to get away with obtaining personal benefit any way they can get away with, including trying to make burning fossil fuels be perceived to be a cheap, reliable power source."

The solution is social and political change of the economic game. It requires actual effective blocking of such unacceptable pursuits of personal benefit. The level of protest globally against industrial extractive unsustainable pursuits of benefit is proof that not all humans are like that more callous greedy group of deliberate cheating trouble-makers.

And a major part of the basis for that solution is the continuing effort to develop and communicate the best understanding of what is going on with the objective of advancing humanity as part of a lasting constantly improving future for a robust diversity of all life on this amazing planet.

Those who declare they will behave better when someone makes it easier and cheaper for them to behave better are part of the problem. And they deserve to be disappointed and ignored when they complain about efforts to make the damaging ways of living they developed a taste for more expensive and ultimately shut down. Hopefully, they will not respond violently to losing the freedom to continue to do whatever they please (some of them have influence over leadership of nations with nuclear first strike capability).

scaddenp at 12:20 PM on 17 August 2016

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

Tony, this site does occasionally blog on solutions eg (its too hard) but for a better source, try Jacobson et al.

There are many resources out there, but this site is primarily about responding to denier myths concerning the science.

Studies such as the Stern report dispute whether FF really are cheap - they have the appearance of being cheap because externalities like the damage to the climate are not currently factored into the price a consumer pays at the pump or on electricity bill. Puts those costs in and see if they are still cheaper than non-carbon sources. Sooner or later, humanity will have to move to other energy sources as stocks of FF become exhausted. I think future generations would prefer we move sooner.

RedBaron at 11:21 AM on 17 August 2016

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

saileshrao,

While I certainly sympathise with your choice to be Vegan, I do believe tonychachere is correct. I look at veganism as a boycott on current harmful methods of animal husbandry. Do doubt that must end, and if your boycott helps it end, I applaud you.

Do not be confused though. All the ecosystems on the planet evolved with animals. Not just animals but specifically a herbivore/predator relationship. That is why any attempt to restore agriculture to ecosystem services function again must include animals. You are welcome to boycott those animals as food too if you wish, but the farmer does need them to both feed the population and regenerate soil health (which is a mitigation solution to AGW) Without that animal impact carefully managed, yields drop and agrichemicals are needed to boost yields back up again. Then you end up back on that slow downward spiral were are on now. You might delay it a bit because the part of the industrial ag that is worst in the CAFO system. But being less bad for the biome is not the same as being good.

saileshrao at 10:30 AM on 17 August 2016

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

Tonychachere,

The data is consistent with my assertion. Please see my post on the Stanford MAHB blog here:

http://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/vegan-metamorphosis/

tonychachere at 10:19 AM on 17 August 2016

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

Dana1981,
What is the solution to knock down CO2 emissions? Humans are not going to give up cheap, reliable power. You post plenty about reasons to cut CO2 emissions, but never any solutions.

I am quite certain that at your job location, and your house that you depend on reliable power. Do you use any alternative energy as a source of power for your computing, heating/cooling needs?

tonychachere at 10:15 AM on 17 August 2016

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

Saileshroa,

Do you realize that going vegan will require much more land to be cleared of forests to grow sources of nutrition not dependent on protein based agriculture?

We have some wonderful animals like chickens and goats that can forage on insects, or unfarmable vertical land, respectively. They can convert those resources to meat, eggs, milk, etc... Protein is concentrated by these animals from items that we won't, or can't eat. Veganism is the absolute wrong answer.

saileshrao at 08:52 AM on 17 August 2016

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

"Pulling a significant amount of that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it safely will be a tremendous challenge"

Regenerate forests. Per Bill Ruddiman, anthropogenic emissions in the Holocene due to deforestation activities alone is upwards of 500 GtC. That's a lot of carbon that can be sequestered safely in recovering forests once humanity goes vegan.

One Planet Only Forever at 08:30 AM on 17 August 2016

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

RedBaron,

I agree with what you have presented. But I would encourage you not to refer to it as geoengineering.

What you describe is humanity figuring out how to sustainably coexist as a part of the robust diversity of life on this planet far into the future.

Here are some other examples of Geoengineering (each one now better understood to be globally damaging and ultimately unsustainable in spite of their popularity and profitability):

The current Industrial Agricultural practices
The massive chopping down of rain forests to create grazing land for cattle or to grow plantations
And burning fossil fuels

Note that each example is related to a pursuit of maximum short term profit by a portion of global humanity (in some cases a very large profit for very few humans) any way that can be gotten away with.

RedBaron at 14:48 PM on 16 August 2016

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

One Planet Only Forever,

Seems to me that there is one relatively low risk geoengineering solution. One that yes is profitable, but can't be locked in by any patents. So profitable to the general welfare and larger economies, but not exclusive to any one single individual or small group.

That potential solution is both large enough, and low enough risk to be almost pathological isanity not to do, IMHO. The solution is a fundamental change in agriculture that regenerates ecosystem services function in the soil, combined with ecosystem restoration projects like China's Loess Plateau Project (which does include an agricultural component as well). However, we do need to be serious about it. Alone these are not large enough. Everyone would need to make the changes needed worldwide. That the disadvantage. The advantage are 1 agricultural land is already managed. No need to develope a whole new untested industry. Just need to train the managers already on the land. 2 There is more than enough agricultural land world wide, even a small sequestration rate is enough. 3 Currently world wide agriculture is an emissions source, so converting it to a sink would do both, cut emissions and drawdown what's already been released. 4 Regenerative biological based systems are more profitable to the producer, because the more resources they use, the more that is left. Very different than economies based on scarcity. Economies based on scarcity are subject to boom and bust cycles. Regenerative economies are not as subject to this. Much more stable supply combined with a constant demand. 5 While agriculture of any sort can never be really considered "natural", those agricultural systems that mimic natural ecosystems by using biomimicry are taking advantage of relationships that evolved over millions of years, and thus are extremely unilikely to have unintended side effects. In fact the biggest risk would be to take out too much CO2 and start a cooling trend that is too large. However should that happen, it is well known how to fix that. ;)

Digby Scorgie at 14:42 PM on 16 August 2016

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

This article ties in nicely with the one by Bart Verheggen on inertia. It also confirms the understanding I had ever since reading "Six degrees" by Mark Lynas a few years ago — an understanding that I'd not seen mentioned at all until now.

In particular, it always seemed to me that 400 ppm of atmospheric CO₂ was equivalent to about two degrees of warming at least. I couldn't understand why this prospect didn't feature in discussions of the subject. Now at last I am told that 400 ppm is equivalent in the short-term to 1.5 degrees of warming and in the long-term to about 3.0 degrees above the pre-industrial level. (Please correct me if I've misunderstood.)

The conclusion then is that a limit of two degrees is pie in the sky. Humanity has blown it — unless these mythical NETs can be made to work. But I'll believe magic when I see it.

barry1487 at 09:05 AM on 16 August 2016

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

Average of the last 12 months in the GISS surface record is 1C above the baseline (1951-1980 avg).

data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Global surface temps will probably continue to subside from the peak earlier in the year, but this is quite a milestone.

knaugle at 08:21 AM on 16 August 2016

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

I do think some planning has to be along the lines of what if we do nothing? How do we survive this? The idea of going to zero emissions is anathema to so many with power and money.

One Planet Only Forever at 05:04 AM on 16 August 2016

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

villabolo,

I understand many people are pursuing ways of Geoengineering on a planetary scale. And fertilizing the oceans is one of those options.

However, as an engineer I am painfully aware of how diffult it is to actually fully understand something well enough to be sure of the result. And I am talking about uncomplicated rather isolated things like knowing how strong a steel building actually will be. It is essential to understand thta a lot of experimenting is done to support the final design of a structure. And a lot of careful monitoring is required to ensure the building will perform as expected. And if necessary parts that do not perform as expected will be noticed and be able to be corrected without a major consequence. NOne of that is possible with geoengineering. The consequences would be global and a surprise. And in any engineering the ultimate objective is No Surprises. Surprises need to be restricted to the research and concept development.

In addition humanity has a lousy track recond when it comes to understanding the actual implications and consequences of any large scale interactions with Regional nature systems. So I am very reluctant to support any geoengineering, regardless of the confidence expressed by the ones promoting it as a Good Idea.

Also the push for profitability often creates resistance to actually developing a better understanding of the impacts of activities. And there is no doubt that most proponents of geoengineering concepts are pursuing potential profit, including personally patenting their ideas rather than declaring them to be public domain ideas. And it can be very easy to drum up popular support for actions that some people who are wealthy and powerful think they will personally be ablke to benefit from (including profitable actions that will allow them to continue to benefit from otherwise understood to be unacceptable actions). In many cases many others can be easily tempted to like the benefit or chance to benefit that continuing the unacceptable activity could offer (the popularity of denying the unacceptability of burning fossil fuels is a massive proof of that point).

So ocean fertilization is indeed an option. But, like all other geoengineering options, it should only be learned about to be saved up for use on a nearly lifeless plant that future humans hope to make habitable (hopefully that nearly lifeless planet won't be this one).

villabolo at 03:37 AM on 16 August 2016

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

Is ocean fertilization an option? How much CO2 can it suck out?

JWRebel at 00:37 AM on 16 August 2016

2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33

The article on the superBlocks was inspiring.

I landed up staying in Europe largely because you can live here without having to own a car (no urban sprawl), that destroyer of cities. Among my best memories have been car-free days (due windless summer smog build up) when the roar of traffic subsides and people suddenly start talking to each other and their neighbours. In fact it reminded me of snow-days in Canada (too much snow to go to school or work) where everybody went to the store with a sleigh, talked to their neighbours, helped the elderly remove snow and get groceries, etc. In short, complete social transformation ...
In urban areas, 40% of public space is occupied by cars (traffic and parking). The real estate value is huge. Where I live, everybody bitches about the costs of parking permits (about $320/year). But nobody realizes that the 10m² you are hiring is a pittance compared to what you pay for the 2m² you are sleeping on: in fact, since most housing is multi-storied, so you are (typically) paying about 3× as much to park your bed as your car, about 18× as much per m².
The irony is that at least half the reason people need cars is to compensate for shortcomings in public transit (because everybody has cars) and to be able to escape the city!

RedBaron at 22:49 PM on 15 August 2016

How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?

@scaddenp,

The statistics you quoted are possible, however, they are significantly different in Western countries. For example, In the USA approximately a little more than 1/3rd of all beef slaughtered came from feedlots 1000 animals or larger. The majority of the rest are still feedlot finished, but on ranches and small feedlots instead. All beef cattle, whether they are grass-finished or finished in a feedlot, spend the majority of their lives grazing on grass pasture. However the vast majority finishing in some sort of feedlot, large or small, approximately four to six months. Only about 5% of beef produced in the USA remain on pasture their entire lives.

Poultry is even worse with over 97% of all broilers produced by just the top 4 industrial giants, Tyson, Pilgrim, Sanderson Farms, Perdue, never seeing the light of day a single moment of their entire lives.

Pork is similar with 97% of all pork produced in the USA raised their entire lives in confinement.

Assuming the source you quoted is correct (sometimes wiki isn't), it would have to be world statistics, not industrialized nations' statistics.

More importantly though is the vast areas of prime agricultural land being used to supply these CAFOs. Those vast acres of corn and soy etc. That is the key component of AGW. Grassland ecosystems, even including the animals grazing on them, are one of the major net sinks of both CO2 and CH4. However, modern commodity crops are net emissions sources. The "land use change" from a properly managed grazing system to a commodity cropping system used to supply CAFOs is therefore a significant cause of AGW.

Tom Curtis at 14:19 PM on 15 August 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

"This for me is the great strength of science; the theories interlock so well and build a coherent picture."

It is also for me, and it is worth saying again and again.

scaddenp at 14:08 PM on 15 August 2016

How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?

The diagram above does not account for the industrial use of FF in agriculture under the agriculture flow. That would be under Industry and a little bit under transportation. However, if you look at breakdown of the industrial use under the end-use, you can see that agriculture of any kind (animal and non-animal) is comparitively small and does not change the conclusions of this article. On the global scale you see that Food and tobacco is 1% under industry, and 1.4% agricultural energy each.

While I wouldnt buy anything that was factory-farmed on animal ethics grounds, it is worth noting that only pork (42%) and poultry (67%) are produced on factory farms in significant quantities. (Source)

Glenn Tamblyn at 14:07 PM on 15 August 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

Agreed Tom. They don't radiate directly from translation. But their translational energy does constitute a pool of energy that can be transferred into/out of vibrational or rotational modes and thus radiated/absorbed via those modes.

The interactions go even further. Vibration of molcules, especially in the stretching modes of vibration, will actually alter the Moment of Inertia of the molecule. In order to conserve angular momentum the rotational velocity of the molecule will be constantly changing as the molecule vibrates and the MoI varies. To conserve energy as well as angular momentum there will be a continuous interchange of energy between the vibrational and rotational modes, coupling them together to some extent. And collisions can exchange energy, momentum and angular momentum, as any snooker player can tell us.

Its fascinating how all these concepts - degrees of freedom of action, equipartition, Moments of Inertia and Quantum mechanics - all come together to give us a solid understanding of the reasons why different gases have the Specific Heat Capacities they do. And the basics of why molecules radiate and absorb.

This for me is the great strength of science; the theories interlock so well and build a coherent picture.

bomatthew1 at 13:31 PM on 15 August 2016

How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?

Does this article account for all of the fossil-fuel energy that is used specifically for animal agriculture? For example, all of the fossil-fuel burned in factories specifically for factory farms and such?

Tom Curtis at 12:35 PM on 15 August 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

Glenn Tamblyn @255, while CO2 molecules emit IR photons by giving up the energy stored in either one of three of their four possible vibrational states (see below), and microwave photons by giving up rotational energy; the energy of vibration and rotation is, on average in a gas, equal to the energy of translation along any of the three mutually perpendicular axis. That is a direct consequence of the equipartition theorem. That in turn is a consequence of the fact that any collision between two molecules can result in transfer of translational energy to rotational or vibrational energy, or the reverse. It follows that the amount of energy stored in a given vibrational state is a function of the temperature of the gas, ie, of the average translational energy of the gas.

I think this means that CO2 molecules do spontaniously radiate energy from their translational kinetic energy, but they do so through a mediated process. A hot CO2 gas sealed in a IR transparent case in a cold environement will gradually bleed away its translational energy (ie, drop in temperature) as collisions replenish the vibrational energy that is lost by spontaneous emission. It is that which Old Sage seeks to deny.

I know that we disagree on this only on whether that mediated loss of translational energy counts as "spontaneious radiation of translational kinetic energy", ie, on wording. But I think it is important to clarrify, both because Old Sage does not (I think) interpret the phrase "spontaneously radiate from their translational kinetic energy" as you do; and because readers unfamiliar with the process, or only casually familiar may be confused by that statement if the full relationship is not stated.

Glenn Tamblyn at 11:32 AM on 15 August 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

From a previously snipped comment by old sage:

"...radiation from gases at STP, they scatter, they absorb, but most definitely they do not spontaneously radiate from their translational kinetic energy to any significant extent. All they do is convey energy from one place to another in an energy neutral fashion."

Here in a nutshell is where old sage doesn't understand what he is talking about. For his statement is correct, but incomplete. They don't radiate as a consequence of their translational kinetic energy; in fact they don't absorb in a way that impacts the translational kinetic energy either.

They radiate 'from' their rotational and vibrational energy. This is the entire basis of the field of Molecular Spectroscopy which deals with emission and absorption by entire molecules as a result of rotational and vibrational transitions, in contrast with Atomic Spectroscopy which deals with electron energy level transitions within individual atoms.

Before commenting again old sage needs to do some research into the topic of Moelcular Spectroscopy. If he comments again without evidence that he has first done that research then he will have shown that he isn't interested in learning.

John Hartz at 08:47 AM on 15 August 2016

As nuclear power plants close, states need to bet big on energy storage

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