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Comments 24851 to 24900:

24851. Tom Curtis at 17:47 PM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       OPOF @13:

       "Essentially, the International Community would have to be able to 'remove from power' any elected representatives in a nation like the USA (or leaders of businesses) who would claim that already fortunate people should still be allowed to benefit as much as they can from actvity that produces CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels (or be able to convince a bunch of voters who are easily tempted to be greedy or intolerant to change their minds and choose not to try to get away with getting what they want even though they probably could collectively get away with it, for a little while, perhaps long enough that they enjoy the undeserved benefits in 'their lifetime'.)."

       It is this, totalitarian instinct that means I will never agree with you on this issue.  I would rather the world perish striving for greater democracy than that it retreat to totalitarianism to preserve a mere, grubbing survival.  Fortunately, however, that is a choice we need not make.

       That is leaving aside that as a matter of practical politics, no external power would be able to removed the government of the US (or China, or Russia) without bringing us to nuclear war.

24852. Tom Curtis at 17:36 PM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       dklyer @14, The Economist's article on the IEA announcement states:

       "The IEA’s provisional findings will fan a debate about whether global emissions have peaked. China, after all, is trying to rebalance its economy away from heavily polluting industries towards services. But analysts say two years is too short a period to be considered a lasting trend. What is more, the IEA is relying on data that many economists question. If China’s official growth figures are exaggerated, then it would not be becoming less carbon intensive as fast as it seems."

       It is evident from context that what is doubted is the growth rate in China, not the net emissions.  Ergo your skepticism about the result is not warranted.

       For what it is worth, a seperate research group was predicting in December of 2015 that CO2 emissions would in fact decline slightly on 2014 levels, as also reported in The Economist.  So, if anything the IEA's report on emissions is conservative relative to the appropriate experts.  I would not read too much into that both because the Global Carbon Project team were partly projecting, and because the IEA by its nature has the best data available on actual emissions from fossil fuels.

       With regard to the CO2 concentration, in the very short term, CO2 levels are largely driven by temperature.  A very large increase in Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) as occured between 2014 and 2015 will result in a large rise CO2 concentration, while a large fall in GMST will result in a small rise in CO2 concentrations (indeed a fall if there is not net emissions).  The flat CO2 emissions means, absent variations in GMST, we would have expected a 2 ppmv rise in CO2 concentration in each of 2013, 2014 and 2015.  The very sharp rise in temperature between 2014 and 2015 results in a significantly higher rise in CO2 concentration.  With flat emissions, the rise in 2016 will be slightly higher again if 2016 is hotter (as seems likely).  However, later cooler years will have a much smaller rise in CO2 concentration, even with flat emissions.

24853. dklyer at 15:03 PM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Tom@12, I read about the IEA release in the online version of the Economist and as much as I’d welcome some good news I’m not sure I agree. As the article stated, “the IEA is relying on data that many economists question.” Meantime actual measurements show a different story.

       From the Scripps Institute, Keeling Curve page, “The annual growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) during 2015, above three parts per million (ppm) per year, was the largest ever recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, said climate researchers Wednesday. Independent observations by NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory and by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego show that not only did 2015 have the largest increase, but also that the annual increase was larger than two ppm for each of the last four years, another first.”

       Maybe you know how the IEA estimate is put together or whether other factors, such as decreasing natural sinks, might affect the CO2 measurements? I’d listen to reasonable arguments but, for now, I’m skeptical.

24854. barry1487 at 14:50 PM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       belliv,

       Here are a couple of references examining mid-century flat/cool trend.

       https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century-advanced.htm

       http://web.archive.org/web/20080501064616/tamino.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/hemispheres/

        

       And a more technical commentary on one paper, adding background detail:

       http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/yet-more-aerosols-comment-on-shindell-and-faluvegi/

       There are many factors affecting climate on various time scales. The questions you pose about fluctuating climate over the last 150 years or so have been long investigated. I hope you're not close minded as some here have suggested, and that you're curious enough to learn more about that aspect.

       (Excuse the lengthy response/s. Answers to your questions may be given in a paragraph, but probably not to the satisfaction of a truly skeptical mind. Each of us has to estimate how much detail is helpful)

24855. One Planet Only Forever at 13:51 PM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Tom,

       Faith in a system governed by 'temporary regional or tribal popularity and profitability among a current generation of humanity' effectively limiting the challenges it creates is not justified. The popularity of 'a better personal life in a person's lifetime' is a very powerful tool for people who would choose to abuse misleading marketing to prolong their ability to get away with actions they can understand are unacceptable.

       Your final point “International policy settings are not at a stage where that is yet likely, but they are not far off.” is unjustified wishful thinking. In the late 1980s the global community was also very close to acting responsibly to limit the challenges created for less fortunate people and for future generations ... but we all know how the last 30 years have gone ... bigger problems created with more wealthy and powerful troublemakers developed (not all wealthy powerful people are undeserving trouble makers, but many of them clearly are).

       The challenge today did not need to be as big as it is. All that was required was for the undeserving more fortunate, wealthier and more powerful people on the planet, people who gambled on getting away with less acceptable ways of living and profiting, to admit they deserved to lose their bets, to admit they did not deserve their perceptions of prosperity.

       The 'system of competition for maximum reward in an individual's lifetime is the real problem, creating mainly problems and few real sustainable solutions (if it creates any that can win in the popularity and profitability game made up by those who gamble on getting away with less acceptable ways of doing things it is almost completely by accident)'. The system has a clear track record of developing and prolonging activity that is understood to cause troubles that are faced by 'others', particularly those in future generations.

       I have previously shared this quote from “Our Common Future”, a UN Commission Report published in 1987, but it can never be repeated often enough.
       “25. Many present efforts to guard and maintain human progress, to meet human needs, and to realize human ambitions are simply unsustainable - in both the rich and poor nations. They draw too heavily, too quickly, on already overdrawn environmental resource accounts to be affordable far into the future without bankrupting those accounts. They may show profit on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses. We borrow environmental capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. They may damn us for our spendthrift ways, but they can never collect on our debt to them. We act as we do because we can get away with it: future generations do not vote; they have no political or financial power; they cannot challenge our decisions.
       26. But the results of the present profligacy are rapidly closing the options for future generations. Most of today's decision makers will be dead before the planet feels; the heavier effects of acid precipitation, global warming, ozone depletion, or widespread desertification and species loss. Most of the young voters of today will still be alive. In the Commission's hearings it was the young, those who have the most to lose, who were the harshest critics of the planet's present management.”

       The only way the required International Policy Settings will happen is the demise of the system that is driven madly by temporary regional and tribal popularity and competition to maximize personal reward. Unlike action for Ozone reduction (something that was actually less effective than it needed to be), there is a massive amount of personal desire in powerful pockets around the planet that can be mobilized to prolong the ability for undeserving people to 'enjoy creating a bigger problem by getting away with things they do not deserve to be able to get away with'.

       The belief that individuals being free to do as they please in pursuit of a better present for themselves will advance humanity to a better future, or even allow humanity to have a future, deserves to be shattered. And it will be shattered if the required effectively enforced International Policies can be imposed on all nations, including the nations that elect leaders who would be regionally popular because they refuse to behave responsibly.

       Essentially, the International Community would have to be able to 'remove from power' any elected representatives in a nation like the USA (or leaders of businesses) who would claim that already fortunate people should still be allowed to benefit as much as they can from actvity that produces CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels (or be able to convince a bunch of voters who are easily tempted to be greedy or intolerant to change their minds and choose not to try to get away with getting what they want even though they probably could collectively get away with it, for a little while, perhaps long enough that they enjoy the undeserved benefits in 'their lifetime'.).

24856. barry1487 at 13:27 PM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       belliv, you can do a test for whether there has been a pause in warming by comparing the uncertainty estimates for various periods (ie, prior to and after 2002). If you understand me so far regarding the uncertainty estimates, I'll lay out a fairly easy test you can do with apps available on the web, such as the one I used to generate these graphs.

       Here's the link to the graph generator if you want to have a look at that.

       http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html

       You can access the same app near the top of the left hand side side bar on this page, labeled 'Trend Calculator'.

24857. barry1487 at 13:13 PM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       To compare, here is what a trend estimate that shows warming looks like. Note that the trend is positive (warming), and the uncertainty is smaller than the trend. In other words the uncertainty is only to do with the degree of warming - it doesn't include a zero (or negative) trend estimate.

       Full time period for Remote Sensing System - Jan 1979 to Dec 2015:

       

       Now the trend is anywhere between 0.06 and 0.19 C/decade. The uncertainty does not include zero or negative values, only positive. We call this a 'statistically significant' trend.

       Let's do the same for NASA, same period.

       

       Trend is anywhere between 0.12 and 0.20 C/decade. The uncertainy doesn't include zero or negative values. The trend is statistically significant, unlike the trend estimates in the previous post.

24858. barry1487 at 12:51 PM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       Here are the other trend estimates for the various data sets.

       NASA: anywhere between -0.03 to 0.27 C/decade

       
       
       

       UK Meteorological Office: -0.07 to 0.23 C/decade

       

       Here are the global satellite data sets:

       Remote Sensing Systems: -0.25 to 0.21 C/decade

       

       University of Alabama, Huntsville: -0.14 to 0.31 C/decade

       

       The uncertainty estimates are larger for the satellite data sets because their data have more variability. You can't determine a trend or 'pause' from data sets as short as these. You need longer time frames.

       (For all of the data sets, including more data backwards from 2002 reduces the uncertainty until it is eventually smaller than the trend, and every one of them shows statistically significant warming once that threshhold is reached)

24859. barry1487 at 12:13 PM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       Yet in the several responses to my original comment I have seen no acknowledgement of the pauses.

       Say what? I wrote in the first line of my first response to you, comment number 8 in the thread:

       You are quite right that the long-term record has intermittent temp rises over multidecadal time scales, with a mid-century period relatively flat.

       Current understanding is that the warming caused by CO2 in the 3 decades post WWII - at that time not rising as fast as now - was offset by aerosols from industrial emissions and volcanism, which cool the surface. During the 70s and 80s various Clean Air acts and environamental policies around the developed world reduced aerosol emisions (smog etc), and the underlying warming continued. Also, this mid-century flatline or slight cooling is prominent in the northern Hemisphere, but not noticeable in the Southern Hemisphere, lending credence to the notion that aerosol emissions from heavily industrialized countries that are mostly located in the NH were in part responsible for the flattish global trend.

       Everyone dismises the notion of a 'pause' from 2002, including me, for the reasons given. The uncertainty in such a short data stream preclude any confirmation of whether the surface has been warming, cooling or flat. But I certainly acknowledged the mid-century flat period in my first comment to you.

       Here's the trend + uncertainty estimate from Jan 2002 to Dec 2015.

       

       The mean estimate is an upward trend, but, the uncertainty of +/- 0.145 means the trend could be slightly cooling, flat, or strong warming. To put it in numerical terms, the trend is anywhere between -0.012C to 0.278C per decade (95% confidence intervals).

       That's a proper reading of the trend estimate. No one can claim a 'pause,' warming or otherwise from such a short data set.

       NASA and the other data sets produce different trend estimates but they all have a larger uncertainty than the trend.

24860. Glenn Tamblyn at 12:09 PM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       billev
       
       "There is just not enough there there."
       
       Quoting the percentge of  CO2 isn't the relevant point. It is how many CO2 molecules are present, not the proportion.
       
       A cubic  meter of air, at sea level, contains around 8.5 thousand million, million, million CO2 molecules.
       
       Still sound insufficient.

24861. Tom Curtis at 10:01 AM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       OPOF @11, first, I am not advocating not pursuing other sustainability issues.  In fact, I think it is almost as urgent as tackling climate change, possibly more urgent, that we tackle global over fishing.  However, coupling the two issues such that we insist on systemic change to deal with both rather than piecemeal change to deal with each individually will only raise the bar so that we end up dealing with neither.  In contrast, a piecemeal approach has a substantial possibility of dealing with both simultaneiously.

       Second, that piecemeal approaches without systemic change are able to substantially tackle environmental issues is a matter of fact, established by the success of such programs as the Montreal Convention of CFCs, and the wind back of the use of DDT.  Given that, the case that we need to completely alter our economic model to tackle climate change is theoretical at best, and flies in the face of past evidence.  Further, it is advise that can point to no precedent to justify adopting it.  What we do know, however, is that resistance to fundamental changes to our economic system are far greater to resistance to tackling climate change.  Indeed, most resistance to tackling climate change stems from a false belief that it requires changing fundamentally our economic system.  Leaving that aside, however, that resistance to fundamental changes to our economic system is greater than resistance to tackling climate change means tying the two together politically makes the later much harder, and hence much less likely to happen on an urgent basis.

       Third, as it happens, net anthropogenic emissions (excluding LUC emissions) have plateaued over the last three years:

       

       That is probably primarilly due to the significant economic downturn in China, despite world GDP growing strongly.  Despite that, because of China's strong commitment to decarbonization, it is likely that an upturn in China will draw its energy primarilly from renewable resources.  And as is reported in the article above, it is at least partly due to a very strong growth in renewable energy production.

       In any event, that plateau currently means we are tracking on the RCP 2.6 scenario.  Indeed, better than RCP 2.6 in that RCP 2.6 has CO2 emissions continuing to rise until 2020.

       

       Of course, what is required is not just a plateauing of CO2 emissions, but a steady decline at approximately 2% per annum.  For that, however, we need renewables to not just supply new energy requirements (as is almost the case currently), but that it also replace older generation as it goes offline.  International policy settings are not at a stage where that is yet likely, but they are not far off.

24862. KR at 03:41 AM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       billev - "... No acknowledgement of the pauses..." Nonsense.

       You have been _repeatedly_ pointed to the thread on 'CO2 is not the only driver of climate', where it is clearly shown that the nonlinearity of climate change follows the ensemble of forcings, short term variations, and their summed nonlinearity. There is no reason whatsoever to expect monotonic warming. Your (repeated) claim otherwise is really quite disingenuous.

24863. billev at 03:05 AM on 28 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       What I  see when I observe the available temperature history charts is an upward trend in global temperature but  not continuous warming.  There appear to be significant periods of pause in temperature rise.  I think the pesence of these pauses is an obvious feature in these graphs.  Yet in the several responses to my original comment I have seen no acknowledgement of the pauses.  What I have seen, in fact, is a determined effort to make the pauses disappear.  I have also been cautioned not to focus on too short a period of years while watching some of the responses use the higher temperatures of the most recent couple of years to support their point. 

24864. One Planet Only Forever at 03:01 AM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Tom and Glenn,

       I would like to agree with your faith in the likely results if the current socioeconomic political systems governed by 'popularity and profitability' are allowed to continue unchallenged/unchanged.

       However, I would need to see a comprehensive presentation of evidence that subtantively refutes the already developed and established evidence that shows that the current system can be expected to succeed to a very damaging extent in fighting against achieving what is needed to be achieved (fairly obvious when you investigate and think about what is actually going on.

       I understand that you hope that the inherent greedy temptations partnering with the intolerant for support can somehow be kept from wanting to fight against the changes required to address the unacceptability of already fiortunate people continue to get more rewards from the burning of fossil fuels. But I consider such hopes to be unjustified. There is plenty of evidence that there are many wealthy and powerful people who are 'personally not interested in supporting the required changes of what is going on'. Hoping for them to simply give up their attempts to prolong their underserved wealth and power is unsubstantiated wishful thinking. They clearly continue to succeed in trying to prolong their undeserved influence to get away with actions that impede the advancement of humanity, including their successful efforts to drum up divisive in-fighting in a society by trying to make people more passionate in their greed and intolerance, rather than trying to make people more passionate about collectively advancing humanity.

       There is a substantial amount of evidence in many fields of evaluation of the sustainability of developed 'popular' political and economic activity (in far more issues than global warming), indicating that the current socio-economic political systems of 'pursuit of popularity, profitability, and personal reward any way that can be gotten away with' are a damaging unsustainable system that impedes the advancement of humanity (while it promotes self-interested pursuits of personal desires that are contrary to the development of a lasting better future for all).

       Unsustainable impressions can be created and be very popular for a long time, creating more damage the longer they can be prolonged. Faith in the current systems governed by the belief that pursuits of self-interest will advance humanity are clearly misguided. That unjustified faith results in promotion, prolonging and defense of attitudes and actions that can clearly be understood to be contrary to the advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all.

       The only viable future for humanity is a future where humans are not fighting over limited opportunities for personal reward, a future where all human activity is sustainable parts of the robust diversity of life on this or any other amazing planet.

24865. mark bofill at 01:14 AM on 28 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Tom Curtis, Glenn Tamblyn,

       I agreed with Tom strongly enough that I registered a login solely to write this / voice my agreement.  You'd call me a contrarian at best, and I've got no intention of engaging over here / hanging around, but seeing this rare case where I agreed with what Tom was saying I thought it was worth the trouble to say so.

       Thanks.

24866. barry1487 at 18:23 PM on 27 March 2016
       Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?
       

       Getting a handle on the various points you've brought up, billev, would require a reasonable (layman's) grounding in the science. I'm not sure if your views allow room for that kind of patience, or if you are entrenched in them. If the former, there is an excellent site that gives a historical overview of developments in climate science, and gives a good grounding in the fundamental concepts (barring statistical analysis, which you'd need to get info on elsewhere).

       https://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

       This site isn't polemic, just the course of science over the last couple hundred years, condensed and made understandable by a science historian.

       Some of the questions you pose can't be answered in a sentence or two without having a handle on some fundamentals. But if those questions are led by genuine curioisity, there are few better sites to get a grounding on climate science and the history behind the discovery of modern global warming (and past climate changes).

24867. Glenn Tamblyn at 17:39 PM on 27 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       I tend to agree with Tom. While I think our social and economic systems are terminal in their current form, that failure/need for transformation is decades away.

       In the short term, using methods within our current system are the better way to achieve a lot wrt AGW on the short term and in the process prepare the ground for bigger changes. Real Energy Efficiency improvements, complete electriciity from renewables/nuclear and renewable based transport would go along way to breaking the back of the AGW problem.
       
       The current propaganda is trying to paint that as disastrous when actually it is a huge economic opportunity, a net positive, and achievable in the time frame needed if we drive hard at it.
       
       It isn't our economies that are under threat from this, it is the neo-con far right perspective of our economies that is threatened. Keynesian Economics could accommodate this easily.

24868. Crask at 14:47 PM on 27 March 2016
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       

       Kind of like a Biologist who spends all his life studying biology and then decides that he knows whether or not God exists and why people believe in God around the world.

24869. Tom Curtis at 08:52 AM on 27 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       paulswann @7, I am personally very distrustful of proposed solutions to AGW that require us to "radically transform our political and economic systems".  That is not because I am averse to a radical transformation of our political systems (to make them more democratic, while improving education and news media to support that transition), or radically transforming our economic systems (to make them fairer and more sustainable).  But what I am averse to is tying those transformations to the solution to AGW.  IMO that needlessly raises the political bar to action to, in effect, unacheivable levels.

       As it happens, very little actually needs to be done to tackle global warming.  That is despite the requirement to eliminate net anthropogenic emissions within 50 years.  That is because a large part of the transition will be driven by pure economics as (particularly) wind and solar, and energy storage technologies improve.  What is desperately needed now is a clear and persistent price or regulatory framework to drive the transition more rapidly; and to focus the research on improving carbon free energy rather than more innovative ways of extracting and using fossil fuels.  That in turn needs either bipartisan support (in the US and Westminster system countries) or the equivalent in political systems that allow more diverse representation so that reforms under one government are not swept away when the opposition get into office.

       What is needed, and to a large extent, all that is needed, is a global, per capita, tradable, international limits on emissions properly policed; but as I will not make the perfect the enemy of the good, globally implemented carbon taxes, or even accelerated implimentation of Paris style multinational agreements will also do the trick.  Just not as efficiently.  And if we can transform our politics and economics in the right directions at the same time, all well and good.  But that is not a precondition on tackling climate change, and making it so merely delays effective action on climate change.

24870. Hank11198 at 02:05 AM on 27 March 2016
       Welcome to Skeptical Science
       

       Thanks Tom, that helps a lot. 

24871. paulswann at 00:50 AM on 27 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Tom Curtis & nijelj: in my view (fwiw) the most vital and urgent emissions reducing measure is to ditch the free trade agreements & negotiations (e.g. TTIP/TPP). And there's approximately a snowball in hell's chance of that happening.  

       As this article makes clear, there's no time left for tinkering; either we radically transform our political and economic systems in the very near future, or it could be game over. 

24872. Tom Curtis at 15:40 PM on 26 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       bozza @5, perhaps, but what Hansen and other say, at least in their new paper, should be taken with a large grain of salt.

24873. Tom Curtis at 15:19 PM on 26 March 2016
       Welcome to Skeptical Science
       

       Correction to my @10, the graphs I posted from real climate are specified as forcing adjusted, so they will have used historical forcings for the entire period, but the research was post the IPCC AR5 process, and so I do not know which models were used.  The paper from which the graph originated does not specify in the body of the text, only referring to the CMIP5 ensemble.  That should mean they have used one run only from each of the models used in the CMIP5 project, or almost all of them.  If you want to confirm that, however, you will need to send an email to the lead author, Gavin Schmidt.

       The graph from Zeke Hausfather is definitely stated to use the RCP4.5 extension on the historical forcings.

24874. Tom Curtis at 14:55 PM on 26 March 2016
       Welcome to Skeptical Science
       

       Hank @9, one of the model experiments is the historical forcings up to about 2002.  If you look at the KNMI data, you will see several models have a "historical" run.  However, when running any of the RCP experiments, the model will be run with the historical forcings first before switching over to the RCP forcings about 2002.  Because the RCP forcings do not vary significantly from each other for the first decade, and because of the thermal inertia of the models, the temperature response for all scenarios is approximately the same to about 2020-2030.  Consequently what you are seeing is the ensemble mean for one run per model for the historical forcings to the end of that data, and one of the rcp scenarios (often rcp 4.5) thereafter.  Which precise rcp scenario was used in Tracking the 2 C limit, I could not say.

24875. bozzza at 14:16 PM on 26 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Hysteresis is the word: what will happen in 40 years, for example, according to Hansen and others?

24876. bozzza at 14:15 PM on 26 March 2016
       Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
       

       Water Vapour melts ice... it's time to talk hysteresis as some say it takes 40 years for carbon emissions to reveal themelves as the true problem they are hypothesised to potentially be!

24877. Hank11198 at 12:41 PM on 26 March 2016
       Welcome to Skeptical Science
       

       Thank you Tom. What I’m trying to understand is what I’m looking at in your reply to me in comment #3 in the “ Tracking the 2 C limit – February 2016” post. It shows the CMIP5 Ensemble mean along with the actual temperature data from several originations. What was used to make that CMIP5 graph?

24878. nigelj at 08:31 AM on 26 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       I agree with Tom Curtis that we could spend forever debating perfect, globalised solutions. This is like negotiating global free trade agreements, which is very difficult. I think its better to concentrate on practicalities on what can be done to reduce emissions, and countries should do what they think best.

       However first here a few comments on the "idealised solutions."

       A carbon tax does have certain merits as it relies on pretty clear price signals and the tax collected can be used to subsidise lower income people hurt by the tax, or to subsidise electric cars. However the price signal is slow to produce actual results. However a carbon tax is certainly one of the better options.

       Carbon emissions trading schemes are so complex, convoluted, full of loopholes, and subject to very questionable carbon credits that they don't seem workable to me. None have produced good results that I'm aware of. And they take time to see if they are working and the world doesnt have that time.

       I think it makes more sense to simply regulate power companies and oil companies directly and for governments to subsidise electric cars. This covers the big emitters and biggest solutions.

24879. Tom Curtis at 08:06 AM on 26 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       Ronsch @2, while a global carbon tax would be very desirable, it would be difficult to impliment economically, and even more so politically at the moment.  If we are to make progress on climate change, we must not make the perfect the enemy of the good.  That is, we should take all practical steps we can take now, rather than holding out for the ideal solution, but realize that those steps are not a fully adequate solution - and so press for more.

       We ought also to realize that the 2 C target bandied about is not a hard line.  If we fail to achieve it, but keep warming under 2.5 C, we will still greatly reduce the harm done by global warming.  Alternatively, if we in fact keep the Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) under 2 C, that will not prevent all harm.  For instance, the Great Barrier Reef is currently undergoing a major bleaching event (as it did in 1998).  This is despite temperatures only having risen to 1 C above the preindustrial (annual average), or 1.6 C on a monthly basis (for February 2016).  That strongly suggest 2 C GMST will be associated with major bleaching events in more than 50% of years, which would effectively mean the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef as a system of reefs.  Other major harms, in some case greater harms, will also occur by 2 C.

       That does not mean politics, especially international politics, is no longer "the art of the possible"; but it does mean we cannot allow that mantra to cloak turning politics into merely the art of the convenient.

24880. Tom Curtis at 07:52 AM on 26 March 2016
       Welcome to Skeptical Science
       

       Hank @7, the CMIP5 ensemble mean, in IPCC usage, is the mean of the values of one run from each model that performed a given experiment in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5).  The runs for each Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) each represents a seperate experiment, so there is a CMIP5 ensemble mean for RCP 2.6, and a distinct one for RCP 4.5, for RCP 6, and for RCP 8.5.  The RCPs are not the only experiments that have been done with CMIP5 models, but they are the main ones.

       It is important to realize that not all CMIP5 models have performed model runs for all experiments (not even all RCP experiments), while some models have performed multiple runs in some experiments.  The IPCC restricts the ensemble mean to one representative per model so that those models are not given undue weight, but in some usages that restriction is not applied.  Typically, in those usages the paper reporting the results will specify the models runing the experiment, and how many runs were performed with each experiment.

       Finally, the outcomes of the CMIP5 RCP experiments can be found at the KNMI climate exporer, with all runs performed for each CMIP5 model performing a run.  If you make use of the data, just remember that to obtain the same results as the IPCC you need to select the data for "one member per model" in any category.  Otherwise you will obtain multiple runs for some models.

24881. Hank11198 at 06:57 AM on 26 March 2016
       Welcome to Skeptical Science
       

       Ok I don’t know where to post these questions so I’m trying here.

       
       I have made a few posts and have gotten very good answers that explain a lot. But I am still having difficulty finding the answers to these because the IPCC website is difficult for me to navigate.

       
       Is the CMIP5 Ensemble mean the average of all the different RCP models or an average of something different?

24882. Ronsch at 05:10 AM on 26 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       We must implement a global carbon tax at once.  Even a Cato conservative agrees (http://goo.gl/IihYbg).  Anything else is like bailing out a ship with teaspoons.

24883. Nick Palmer at 04:36 AM on 26 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Thanks Andy. I got fooled by a persistent denialist I was arguing with who was quoting a post Lubos Motl did about the Karl et al paper. The denialist was arguing that it was "typical alarmist bad science" to use "biased" ship's intake data and splice it on to the "much more accurate ARGO data". Motl himself did not make that mistake.

24884. richardPauli at 03:59 AM on 26 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Especially if the campaign trail goes through Kansas or Oklahoma, extra heat and restricted visibility. 

       from Associated Press  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39djTxLynjo

       http://climatecrocks.com/2016/03/25/kansas-youre-not-in-oklahoma-anymore/

24885. Andy Skuce at 02:51 AM on 26 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Nick,

       The buoys used to measure ocean surface temperatures are not the ARGO floats. For a detailed account, I would recommend Zeke Hausfather and Kevin Cowtan's article

24886. knaugle at 02:02 AM on 26 March 2016
       Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
       

       I think this link is related to the topic here.  The rate of CO2 release being the highest the Earth has seen in at least 60 million years.

       www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/current-rate-of-carbon-release/56253759

24887. Nick Palmer at 23:13 PM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Andy. While understanding the possible reasons for the warm bias of the engine inlet readings (conduction from the ship's structure plus the kinetic energy/friction from the incoming stream in the pipes) would it be true to say that the ARGO floats have an in built cool bias? As far as I know, the temperature readings are taken as the ARGO floats up to the surface from the deep, which is much colder, thus the bodies of the ARGOs would be colder than the surrounding waters. I expect this is taken into account, but is there a recognised cool bias to the sensors becasue of this?

24888. Nick Palmer at 22:30 PM on 25 March 2016
       How to inoculate people against Donald Trump's fact bending claims
       

       I love that phrase "firehose of falsehoods". Can I steal it for use in my online denialist fighting? It's so much more usable than pointing out a Gish Gallop, then having to explain what one is for the general audience, who have rarely heard the term before.

24889. bozzza at 18:43 PM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       It's easy: all we have to do is convince Donald Trump that solving Climate Change gets him the win over Hillary!

       ...what could he sell,.. what could he sell?

24890. BillyJoe at 15:22 PM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       ...sorry, double take...seems it is 2015 after all. Now it seems strange to add in the adjusted datum for 2015 when the graph footnotes says it covers the period "through to 2014".

       Also, I'm confused about how the adjusted datum for 2015 can be available when the raw datum isn't. Isn't the adjusted data adjusted off the raw data? 

24891. BillyJoe at 15:13 PM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       ...sorry, that should be 2014...which makes me wonder why the raw datum is still not available 15 months later!

24892. BillyJoe at 15:10 PM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       The adjusted value for 2015 should be left off the graph until the raw datum is available. What do you think? 

24893. Wol at 10:05 AM on 25 March 2016
       How to inoculate people against Donald Trump's fact bending claims
       

       Much as I admire Dr Death for his stated diligence in learning the maths, science and all in relation to climate change, I would caution him in that this isn't the answer.

       As a layman, with just a smattering of climatology education, the one thing that sticks out above all else is that the subject is immensely complicated, and involves expert knowledge of dozens of entirely different disciplines from statistical analysis through thermodynamics to ice core study.

       I am sure that most in the field have to take much of the studies outside their particular expertise on trust, within the scientific method. Trying to become expert enough to make sense of *all* the data out there is to me not sensible.

       Looking at it from well outside, however, and seeing just how much all the different disciplines converge on the same opinion, convinces me. There will always be outliers: spotting *them* is easier than following complex arguments that the majority of the scientific community agree on.

24894. ranyl at 08:09 AM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Looking at the GISS data set:

       http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts.txt

       The 1950-1980 monthly temperature anomally mean as expected is ~0, as 1950-1980 is climate period that the temperature anomalies reported by GISS are referenced to.

       Taking the 30yr monthly anomalies for that period produces a normally distrubuted pattern of values with a standard deviation of ~0.18C.

       The monthly anomally in Feb 2016 is 1.69C.

       That is a positive shift of just 9 standard deviations.

       Wonder what the odds of that are if the world isn't warming? 

24895. ranyl at 07:46 AM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Thanks Andy,

       Thought it must have been something like that.

       Makes 2015 very warm indeed.

       2015 is akin to 1997 in EL Nino development, therefore if similiar follows like, 2016 will be ~0.3C hotter.

       On the graph thats put 2016 at the height of the graph title and if similiar follows like again the next 12 years or so after 2016, will be ~that much hotter, getting a little hotter as time goes by until the next El NIno push, 1998, 2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 jump.

       Unless of course the El Nino this time follows a different path, although it does seem to be decaying on time at present.

24896. Andy Skuce at 06:32 AM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       ranyl

       Thanks.

       The record, adjusted temperature value for 2015 (the last point on the graph) was available at the time that figure was put together, but the "raw" data were not. I would expect the "raw" data for 2015 to be very close to the adjusted values for 2015.

24897. ranyl at 06:23 AM on 25 March 2016
       Temperature tantrums on the campaign trail
       

       Thanks Andy,
       Interesting and informative.
       One small thing...
       On the second graph where the red line shows raw, the green adjusted and the dashed the adjustments, I presume that the adjustments are the corrections needed to raw data in order to derive the adjusted temperature recorded. Until ~2014 that presumption seems to match the graph. However in the very last part of the graph the green adjusted record seems to surge above the unadjusted raw data red line. For me this might give the impression that in 2014 the adjusted data set is higher than the raw data set, yet the adjustment needed to the data plot (dashed line) at the same time seems to be basically running at zero. Therefore it seems in order to give the true picture that the 2014 warmth is real and definitely not part of the complex adjustment process, that the red line should overwrite the green line as per the rest of the zero adjustment period?
       Just seems strange to plot such a sudden departure at the end of the graph between the red (raw) and green (adjusted) lines, when the adjustment needed is zero?
       Anyway as you say a primary message is that the adjustments needed have actually meant that the amount of global warming that has been experienced is less than the raw would suggest.
       Be interesting to see where 2015 to date would lie of the graphic, suspect they would be off the scale as it is, especially this January and February.
       It is also going to be interesting to see how much the Arctic sea loss albedo flip accelerates things soon, keeping in mind, in summer the Arctic gets more solar energy input than the tropics so the ice melt should be adding some warming push soon, and Arctic temperatures are racing well away already and the Arctic air mass does spread south to dissipate the heat gathered further.
       I do wonder sometimes if a chaotic system coming into adjustment from a major increase in heating input might experience jumps into higher temperature states at times rather than always following a linear climb, especially if the input is rapid and leads to a sudden large energy imbalance for the earth's systems to have to adjust to.
       I also do wonder what the quickest way to get heat from the tropics to the poles to realign the energy balances as quickly as possible is?
       The laws of thermodynamics do mean that any energy imbalance has to return to equilibrium as quickly as possible and that is why heat always finds the fastest way to travel when going from hot to cold.
       Or more to the point what convective heat transfer system will move heart from the tropics to the poles in the quickest way possible I wonder and how will affect world weather systems?
       The Hadley system’s dynamics (that create the world’s weather patterns) can change apparently and even becomes a large unicellular system from the tropics to poles if the temperature differential between the two is shallow enough.
       Now that would change the weather.
       Interesting times...

24898. Jim Eager at 04:31 AM on 25 March 2016
       How to inoculate people against Donald Trump's fact bending claims
       

       Oh, I qute agree JH, but Ryland already let that horse out of the barn, and it might not turn out quite the way he hoped it would.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Ryland is skating on some very thin ice with respect to his posting privileges on this site. 

24899. Jim Eager at 01:00 AM on 25 March 2016
       How to inoculate people against Donald Trump's fact bending claims
       

       I see no problem with Ryland's advice to Dr Death to check out WUWT, Jonova, ClimateEtc, the GWPF, et al. If Tom is truly sincere in his intention to with intelligence and an open mind compare almost 200 years of cohesive science with its multiple lines of non-contradictory evidence to what the "debunking side" puts forward it will only make reaching his conclusion that much easier.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Dr Death should be able to ferret out climate science denier websites on his own. We are under no obligation to provide Ryland or anyone else with a venue for promoting them.

24900. One Planet Only Forever at 00:30 AM on 25 March 2016
       How to inoculate people against Donald Trump's fact bending claims
       

       I agree with the point that misleading marketing uses the listed methods to try to 'win support'.

       However, I would add that it is never possible to exhaustively fully present all information relevant to any issue. And less than full presentation means selcting what to present and how to present it.

       The real difference has to be the objective of the selected and carefully crafted message, evspecially messages that are designed to make people more passionate about something.

       The advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all has to be the measure of acceptability. Any other measure, like simple popularity or profitability, can clearly result in damaging ultimately unsustainable attitudes and actions becoming popular and profitable contrary to the advacement of humanity.

       By that measure it is clear that Ted Cruz is worse than Donald Trump. But Donald Trump, with his declaration of his success at grabbing as much reward for himself as he can get away with (he actually has declared that as one of his valued characteristics), is clearly not fit to 'lead' anything. And he has chosen to drum up passionate support for greed and intolerance. He clearly needs close monitoring by responsible thoughtful adults with effective intervention and "Tough Love" when appropriate.

       The real problem is the way that popularity and profitability clearly take over societies to the ultimate demise of those societies as their unsustainable created impressions of success through understandably unacceptable pursuits grows until it shatters dramatically.

       And it is clear that the power of selective (particularly misleading) marketing used for the wrong purposes is the most damaging weapon of mass destruction developed by humanity. And, unlike other developed weapons of mass detruction, misleading marketing is in regular use creating damaging consequences that inhibit the advancement of humanity.

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