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

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Comments 25001 to 25050:

  1. pjcarson2015 at 06:57 AM on 2 April 2016
    Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

    #59 MA Rodger.
    1. If my simple equation is incorrect, why does it give the correct answer!? [The equation is simple, isn't it!] It does show why I regard IPCC's IR badly.

    2. Please give quantitative answers to show my lunacy.

    3. No ad hominem! It only degrades its user.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB]  Argumentative, baiting and inflammatory snipped.

  2. Why is 2016 smashing heat records?

    According to University of Maine's daily global temperatures on the "Climate Reanalyzer" website, March has definitely blown away February's all-time hottest month in modern Earth history record. Global warming is 93% in the ocean which is why El Nino years are tending to get hotter as the oceans giving back some of that warmth.

    There is some evidence that this El Nine might not totally go away but rather make a small comeback after September. This makes is very likely that 2016 will be even warmer than 2015 as projected several months ago by the UK Met. All major global warming gases are at record levels and are still increasing. 

    Many world governments are still not being honest about their emissions. The IPCC only used a Transient Climate Sensitivity of 1.8C instead of the more scientific estimate of 3.0C+. The Arctic is already starting to release large amounts of methane 70 years ahead of schedule. Arctic sea ice is at a record low and looks very likely to set a record low maximum this year. 

    We need to do all we can to reduce the scale of the coming catastrophe. It's going to be huge and sooner than you think. Ban new fossil fuel vehicles, new fossil fuel power plants, cattle except in zoos, deforestation for any reason. Pass a global carbon tax of at least $200/ton of CO2 with money returned to the people and to help finance the shift to renewable energy.  We are in for a hell of a ride. Billions are certain to die this century.

  3. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    Tom,

    No, you misunderstand. I am not talking about increasing the upland soils so that they cover 5 times their current area. I am talking about changing the agricultural practises to those that increase the effectiveness of the methane sink by 5X or more. That's why I provided those additional studies and quotes from them. Of all the CH4 sources and sinks, the biotic sink strength is the most responsive to variation in human management, and examples I showed prove that increases of 5X or more is at least possible. Although I am fully aware that one published study is not vetted enough to proclaim it is necessarily possible on all oxic cropland. That would take additional studies of course. However since a very high % of intensively managed cropland is used to produce food for livestock, and that change in management to a forage based system was the change in management showing the highest increase in methanotroph numbers and activity, it leands me to believe all that is needed in confirmation studies. The principle itself seems sound.

     

    BTW we are also using two different definitions of "upland soils". The definition I am using (and that of the citation I provided) is land above the level where water flows  (i.e., well-drained, oxic soils), to differentiate from swamp, delta or paddy soils. That means most agricultural land excepting rice production.

  4. Global food production threatens to overwhelm efforts to combat climate change

    RedBaron, Awsome. I am not familiar with your figures, but sense this is true from my house vegetable gardening, and from my studies for other solutionis. We can do it, we must be a positive contributor to a  healthy ecosystem, and we will be one with nature soon.

    Imagine walking through San Diego Zoo, and that this is the way the whole world is, but instead of enclosures to keep nature in, we live in exclosures, to keep civilization in designed balance with nature. Yes we can!

  5. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Tom Curtis - I had considered the 'prisoners dilemma' as an alternative term myself, but that has the implication that all actors in the decision are fully aware of the tradeoffs and potential costs of their actions. That's not the case in the situation of unpaid external costs from fossil fuels, or even in many cases industrial pollution. 

    An interesting discussion of emantics - now, back to the original discussion...

  6. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

    Tom Curtis @58.

    The link to pjcarson's 'grand work' has been moderated away and it should be reinstated to allow understanding of this interchange.

    I do sympathise with you in trying to correct his thesis. And we are off topic on this thread, but where do you start on something so heavily loaded with nonsensical assertions. For instance, that equation he presents is simply the diameter in degrees of the planetary disc visible from the satellite divided by 360 degrees. It is obviously wrongly applied but his description of what he thinks it represents is simply nonsensical.

    I think myself I would make a start at unravelling his lunacy at the beginning by asking for clarification of his opening statement:-

    "IR properties have been somewhat neglected, eg in the thousands of pages churned out by IPCC, very few refer to IR – and even these are of dubious scientific character."

    I am not familiar with any parts of IPCC ARs that could be described as being "of dubious scientific character." I consider it quite outrageous for someone to make such an statement entirely unsupported.

  7. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

    pjcarson @57, I was in no way intrigued by your 'analysis'.  That sort of flat earther level denialism is a dime a dozen.  Because it is premised on not undersanding the science it criticizes, its criticizisms cannot be interesting.  I made the comment only because I thought my 8 minute comment meant I owed you that much.  So, I have delivered.  You have responded with flat denial and more nonsense.  So, you won't learn hence there is no point my trying to teach you.  End of conversation.

    (If any readers want more details on why pjcarson's website is nonsense, I will be happy to do so on a more appropriate thread, but he himself at this stage can only escape the charge of dishonesty by pleading idiocy, given his response.  Horse, water, etc.)

  8. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    chriskoz @38, as noted in my original comment, I was just flagging my dislike of the Hardin sense of the phrase.  I did not think I was making a substantial point on the issues being discussed before my comment.  I think flagging my dislike and the reasons is usefull because sometimes terms are designed to set us up to accept certain positions without due scrutiny.  "Tragedy of the commons" in Hardin's sense and use was certainly designed with that purpose.  Noting the Orwellian nature of that term pulls its rhetorical teeth.

  9. michael sweet at 23:32 PM on 1 April 2016
    Global food production threatens to overwhelm efforts to combat climate change

    Chriskoz,

    I think you have misunderstood the figure.  It accounts for all the emitted CO2.  As you know, the atmospheric CO2 is increasing (3ppm last year), that is a sink.  Since about half the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere, it is the largest sink.

  10. Global food production threatens to overwhelm efforts to combat climate change

    chriskoz @2, it may be better to think of it as a partition.  The total value of fossil fuels plus net LUC should equal the total value of atmospheric growth, land sink and ocean sink, with the relative ratios showing how the increased CO2 in the total reservoir is partitioned.  Atmospheric growth is then just the growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

  11. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    RedBaron @24, yes, all we need to do is increase the upland soils (dark blue on the map below) so that they cover 5 times their current area:

    (Source)

    How could there be any problem with that at all?  /sarc

    And please note that in the US, nearly all cropland is in lowland (ie, net methanogenic) soils, while in the rest of the world for the most part (by area), crop intensity is very low.  The exceptions are in countries with very high population densities where a loss of cropland would result in a severe risk of famine.

  12. Global food production threatens to overwhelm efforts to combat climate change

    Unexplained on the figure is the huge CO2 sink (ca -5pGC/y) called "Atmospheric Growth". What is it??? I don't recall seeing such sink on any carbon cycle picture of any scientific publication. Is it some mistake/ misnomer? A sink (whatever mysterious its origin is) should not be called "Growth"...

  13. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    Tom,

     Lets try and discuss the relevant parts only please. 

    I happen to agree with this part of your statement, right up until your conclusion:

    "3) In fact, with regard to upland soild Conrad et al cite Holmes et al (1999), who conclude that globally, acidic soils are a net sink of 20-60 million tonnes of CH4 annually. Even at 60 million tonnes per annum, that is substantially less than CH4 emissions from cattle. That, of itself, makes it unlikely that the complete biome (upland grasslands plus grazers) is a net CH4 sink, and it is, it is certainly a small one. More importantly it means that even without grazers, the loss of grassland cannot account for even a very small fraction of total emissions anthropogenic emissions (just short of 500 million tonnes per annum in 2012)."

    How is it that we can look at exactly the same evidence and draw the exact opposite conclusion? I agree that now the cropland that supports animal husbandry is not nearly large enough to offset emission. It functions quite differently with regards to methanotroph activity. So why would citing the sink is only 20-60 million tonnes of CH4 annually somehow refute what I am saying? That's actually my point. Increase that sink by 5x or more and you get 100-300 tonnes of CH4 annually. that actually puts a big dent in the just short of 500 million tonnes per annum total anthropogenic emissions from all sources. By the time you add in abiotic oxidation and improvements in rice production, it appears as if we might be able to remove the "mystery CH4" in the OP, as well as actually reducing atmospheric CH4.

  14. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Tom Curtis@30,

    Yet, term tragedy of the commons can be ambiguous. But I @28, use the term tragedy of the commons in Hardin sense. It's obvious in the context of topic at hand, as KR@31 & yourself@32 confirmed.

    Therefore, I don't understand why you're trying to explain the other, Orwelian sense of it, a discussion that goes off topic here, which is rapidly increasing CO2 emissions and difficulty stopping it. As you did not provide any reason for your Orwelian deliberations about TOC ambiguity, I consider your comment off topic trolling, unless you clarify it.

  15. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Of course, Dcrickett, I hope you are feeling well!

  16. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    @ 34,

     You just seemed to be having a mindless dig at so called 'socialism' without realising all 'legitimate' markets are Governed. Year 11 economics starts with this as truth.

     You can say everyone prefers market forces but they are just as imaginary as the fabled invisible hand! Ronald Reagan is famous for saying, "If it moves tax it; if it keeps moving regulate it; if it stops moving subsidise it!"

  17. Why is 2016 smashing heat records?

    Simon,

     Is Argo confirming any trends?

  18. Simon Johnson at 17:53 PM on 1 April 2016
    Why is 2016 smashing heat records?

    Jim Hansen has said that the best measure of the Earth's energy budget is the heat content of the oceans. That has been measured for about a decade by the Argo 'floats/buoys' project. 

    See http://skepticalscience.com/Ocean-Warming-has-been-Greatly-Underestimated.html

    See http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans.htm and

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/measuring-ocean-heating-key-to-track-gw.html and

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=12

  19. pjcarson2015 at 17:34 PM on 1 April 2016
    Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

    Tom. I’m glad you are intrigued. You write, you read my site casually. Consequently you haven’t got anything correct. Try to read it without bias; it’s simply a scientific investigation, not a manifesto. It’s there to be corrected if it’s wrong, but you haven’t done so.

    1. No

    2. No

    3. No. I don’t asume anything about the AIRS instrumentation. You’ve misread again. My diagram actually shows the section of Earth’s surface that is able to direct energy to the satellite. The instrument doesn’t appear in the equation and so the results are independent of the sensor.

    4. The equation is independent of wavelength. Apart from the equation itself, you really should have tweaked IF you really did read my Conclusions …

    “ ALL satellite spectra will need to be adjusted with regard to their measured magnitudes” .

    Your “Without further need to check the maths” suggests you haven’t been able to work out my equation. Although it’s simple, it does require a little trick – changing one’s perspective from Earth’s (first), then to what the satellite sees. Take it as an exercise.

    Anyway, if it’s wrong, how does it get the correct answer?

    5.Try to not make “ad hominem” remarks. You have not shown any errors at all.

    To cap it all off, I’m trying to add another section which explains much more simply why the Greenhouse Effect is minuscule.

    [By trying, I mean working with Wordpress can often be difficult! I’ll get there.]

    However, its essence is

    All the above is true and accepted by all, but embarrassingly, what has been forgotten is that radiation is but one method of transferring energy, the other two being conduction and convection, and it is principally using these processes that Earth heats its atmosphere.”

    You say you left a message. My site hasn’t registered any comments from you.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Inflammatory and argumentative snipped.

  20. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

    For whatever it is worth, I have just posted this comment at pjcarson's website:

    "pjcarson:

    A casual read of your chapter 1 plus annex reveals:
    1) That you have taken purported evidence that CO2 emissions of IR to space come from high in the troposphere (an essential feature of the theory of the greenhouse effect, see https://www.skepticalscience.com/basics_one.html) as a disproof of that theory, thereby showing you do not understand even the basics of the theory you purport to disprove;

    2) That you misread Pierrehumbert (2011)'s explanation of the maths of line by line radiation models as itself an explanation of the greenhouse effect (it is not), thereby showing you have misunderstood even basic level explanations of the evidence;

    3) That you assume in your equation that the AIRS instrument scans the entire visible globe in each frame, whereas it in fact scans an area 1600 km wide, thereby destroying the logical justification of your equation (see http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/mission_and_instrument/instrument);

    4) That your equation contains no variable for the wavelength or frequency of light, thereby applying equally to all wavelengths. From that it follows that it cannot explain changes in the brightness temperatures at specific wavelengths as is observed in the satellite instrument. Without further need to check the maths, this is sufficient to show your equation does not explain what you claim it to explain.

    5) These very basic errors, discoverable with a very superficial reading, show that you do not bother with basic fact checking, and are out of your depth in logical analysis. That gives sufficient reason to check no further.

    From this, an 8 minute turn around on your submission merely shows the sub-editor had a basic knowledge of climate science, and therefore sufficient knowledge to reject the paper on such a superficial reading."

  21. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    RedBaron @22, what I clearly refuted was the claim that largescale return to intensive grazing will solve greenhouse gas problems into the future.  Your claims about methane above are of the same nature.  However, seeing you challenge the point:

    1)  You say "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidences", but provide not significant evidence.  A list of unexplained links coupled to out of context quotes is not evidence.  It is a smokescreeen.  You need to explain what the papers (and blogs) show in detail and how they support your views.

    2)  You claim @18 that "According to the following studies those biomes actually reduce atmospheric methane" but Conrad et al (1996) studies only the trace gas emissions and sinks of soils.  It is not a study of the entire biome, which of course includes the animals on them.  Ergo, your extraordinary evidence consists of exageration.  (This is not suprise as the papers are available to the IPCC, who take them into account.  It follows that if you come to signficantly different conclusions to the IPCC from those papers, you are likely misreading or exagerating them.)

    3)  In fact, with regard to upland soild Conrad et al cite Holmes et al (1999), who conclude that globally, acidic soils are a net sink of 20-60 million tonnes of CH4 annually.  Even at 60 million tonnes per annum, that is substantially less than CH4 emissions from cattle.  That, of itself, makes it unlikely that the complete biome (upland grasslands plus grazers) is a net CH4 sink, and it is, it is certainly a small one.  More importantly it means that even without grazers, the loss of grassland cannot account for even a very small fraction of total emissions anthropogenic emissions (just short of 500 million tonnes per annum in 2012).

       

    These arguments just echo in form the arguments with regard to CO2 that refuted your positions on that gas.  There is not substantial difference between the cases, and no reason to consider your claims of any more interest with regard CH4 than there was with CO2 unless you actually unpack all the numbers, including peer reviewed estimates of loss upland grassland to horticulture, CH4 sink per km^2 for grassland relative to CH4 emissions per km^2 for grazing cattle at expected herd densities etc 

  22. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    Rebuttal of Rudiman is not exactly the same as actually taking a minority view of methanotrophs and claiming you refuted their function in controlling atmospheric gasses is it? Do you honestly believe anything you posted on that other thread refutes the work of Dr Ralf Conrad? Really? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidences. You provided none at all regarding methanotrophs. Your post of biomass that includes human biomass has little relevance regarding herbivores existing on a grassland/grazer biome either. Except as the prairie was plowed at about the same time as the industrial revolution, the curve could support either hypothesis.

  23. 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #13

    The news article "Peru Tries to Adapt to Dangerous Levels of UV Radiation Brought on by Climate Change" by Lucas Iberico Lozada, Newsweek, Mar 15, 2016, in the Sunday, March 20 list badly confuses climate change with depletion of the ozone layer. This could be very confusing to those who don't understand the difference. 

  24. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    RedBaron @20, I was merely pointing out that your claim about megafauna was false.  I am not interested in rediscussing your other views, which have already been sufficiently refuted here.

  25. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    KR @33, the term 'prisoners dilemma' is the general term for such situations in the discipline that actually studies strategies for dealing with them.

  26. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    @29 Bozzza — I see no conflict in what I wrote. Maybe I am merely in a drug-induced stupor; I had major surgery. But I would be glad to attempt an explanation, if you would explain what you see as conflict.

    What I do see as not entirely clear is my point that there is little time for taking proper and adequate action to address the CO₂ crisis. I fear the point of no return (more like a span of time than a point in time, but the phrase stands) could pass before the paradigm of inaction gives way. Maybe Ragnarök would be a better analogy than updated French Revolution. Either way, not a good time to be a one percenter. Or a human of any kind.

  27. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Tom Curtis - Do you have a preferred alternative term for the tendency of individual self-interests to drive actions contrary to the common good? Such as in pollution of the air, water, etc, the externalities that are currently not accounted for in fossil fuel prices?

  28. Global food production threatens to overwhelm efforts to combat climate change

    There is just one tiny point I disagree with slightly. You said, "The greenhouse gas footprint of food is growing while the role of the food system in climate mitigation is not receiving the attention that it urgently needs." In my opinion food production has the attention. It even has well vetted solutions that are simply huge due to the very size of agriculture worldwide. BUT the problem is that there is tremendous backlash and opposition to actually making those changes. Almost insanely high levels of backlash.

    This should help a whole lot.

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

     

    This also has great promise, although not quite as vetted.

    Pasture Cropping: A Regenerative Solution from Down Under

     

    And of course one thing that keeps popping up in agriculture all over everywhere one looks:

    Holistic management (agriculture)

     

    One reason I believe the resistance is so huge for these changes is the results are so huge and so beneficial it literally is embarrassing to those who implemented their destructive agricultural practices we have now. For example take a look at the results from pasture cropping.

    "Jones calculates that 171 tons of CO2 per hectare has been sequestered to a depth of half a meter on Winona."

    Any climate scientist that starts plugging in numbers like that into worldwide agricultural acreage and they get numbers so huge they proclaim it just is too good to be true.

    171tons CO2 per hectare X 224.2 million hectares = over 38,000 million tons CO2 sequestered just in changing one crop, wheat, to regenerative agriculture. Start applying similar practices to all agriculture and the numbers get ridiculously huge. People just can't accept numbers so huge. They refuse to believe it really is that simple as simply restoring our soils to fertility.

     

    "I am an organic farmer. I am not afraid of change, I am the change."

  29. PhilippeChantreau at 02:41 AM on 1 April 2016
    Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    I think Tom Curtis has it right. Billev has been provided with more reading than he even had time to do before responding with again the same objections, indicating that he has either not attempted to understand the material, failed to do so, or has no interest in anything that deviates from his already held belief, regardless how invalid that belief is. This seems to be a waste of time. Perhaps there should be a quick test to pass on suggested reading before one can post again...

  30. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    KR @31, I am quite aware of the standard definition of the "tragedy of the commons".  I am pointing out that that definition is Orwellian in nature, and motivated by a desire to supplant customary tenure held by (primarilly) indigenous peoples with fee simple tenure held by corporations.

    For what it is worth, the term "tragedy of the commons" was coined by Hardin in 1968.  It was not coined by Lloyd, although he discusses a model of the commons, and draws an analogy from that to the labour market, arguing that because the labour market is a commons, laborours will essentially breed without restraint. (pp 30-33).

  31. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Tom Curtis - While that abuse may be part of the history of the term "Tragedy of the Commons", originally and in particular when describing climate change it follows a different definition, that put forth by William Forster Lloyd in 1833:

    The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory of a situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently and rationally according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting that resource.

    The term may have been misused, but that doesn't invalidate the original meaning. 

  32. Six burning questions for climate science to answer post-Paris

    Nice to see someone else on Skepsci who's aware of the large potential of agicultural/pasture soils to sequester large enough amounts of carbon quick enough to counterbalance our current emissions and holds out the hope of actually reducing atmospheric C levels.

    It would require changing most agriculture away from the big chemical input methods we have today. Most people, when hearing about this for the first time, usually expect that crop yields would fall but, on balance, it seems crop yields can even improve.

  33. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    chriskoz @28, I will respond to the greater substance of your comment later.  Just now I want to flag my dislike of the term "tragedy of the commons" in its current usage.  That goes back the the first, and genuine tragedy of the commons, also known as the enclosure movement.  In essence, at the end of the midle ages, land holdings were based on a system of enfiefdom, wherein a tennant would hold land from their lord based on a requirement for certain duties.  The duties varied based.  For peasants they could include mandatory service on their lord's land, serving in their lord's militia on demand, payement of a small percentage of their own corn, and payment of a fee on inheritance of the rights.  For that they typically had possession of a small amount of arable land, the right to liven in the village, to protection by their lord, and the right to graze livestock on the commons and/or fallow land, and the right to forrage (but not hunt) in the commons.  The key point was that the system of responsibility was mutual, and in particular, the lord could no more refuse the relationship than could the peasant, or the king refuse the equivalent relationship to the lord - at least in principle.  

    In practise, of course, customary rights tend to be enforcible for those with power, and not for those who are weak.  As a result, when it was discovered that more money could be had by grazing sheep on the land, many lords started to enclose their land, either just the commons or all of the land for sheep.  This was in breach of customary law, and later in breach of several acts of parliament, but no effective action was taken.  The tragedy here was not that the commons were being over used.  It was that a very large number of the relatively poor and powerless were rendered destitute so that the rich and powerful could gain more wealth by seizing the commons to their exclusive use.

    In principle and in practise, this was no different to the English seizure or Australian land under the doctrine of terra nullius, or equivalent denial of customary land rights in Kalimantan and West Papua by the Indonesians.

    In current usage, the term "tragedy of the commons" is used to justify the seizure of customary rights of access to land/and or fisherys and giving them a simple property rights to the wealthy.  It is in fact, a modern enclosure movement.  Nothing more, and nothing less.  And as their rhetorical justification for that seizure, they choose as their flag a misdescription of what actually happened to common land in Europe all those centuries ago, and what the actual tragedy of the commons in fact was.

    The term is Orwellian.

  34. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    @ 27, your comment seems conflicted.

    You say taxes would be better than regulation but then you go on to say that systemic change is required.

  35. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Tom Curtis,

    Your acceptance of free market with no negative externalities within the set of sovereign nations being the best available playground for sustainable enonomy, can easily be challenged as inadequate with respect to the climate change problem.

    The issue is that CO2 polution is the tragedy of the commons not just within the economies of each of the sovereign nations. If it was, the externality of CO2 polution could be fixed by known mechanisms such as emission tax/trading scheme or regulations. However, CO2 polution is a truly global tragedy of the commons problem, in a sense that it goes beyond the realm of all sovereign economies. Therefore, the mechanisms cited above cannot fix it. It is described by some as the big  TOC where sovereign nations are the actual players. IMO, you must ultimately resolve such TOC problem at this level to succeed.

    Assuming the so called "global economy" is the playgrond here, it is far more difficult to fix the CO2 emision externalities while preserving the sovereignty of the players. The same applies to other TOC types of  issues that you consider, e.g. the problem of ocean overfishing. The question is not just that mechanisms suitable in global economy do not exists. In fact a global carbon tax ideas have been circulating for some time, e.g. Hansen's idea of ubiquitous tax and dividents at all levels, at the source point (i.e. mining), import points and finally burning. But that idea is unimplementable without a breach of players' sovereignty. For a starter, how are you going to police it to ensure the enforcement?

  36. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    Tom,

    Lets say you are right, and we have more total ruminents now. (I am not convinced of that but not worth arguing) That is a good thing if the animals are part of the grazer/grassland biome which is a net sink. The only reason it is a problem is due to removing those animals from the biome and putting them in CAFOs instead.

    What we have now is a loss of ecosystems services over a vast area of land, because a cropfield most certainly does not function the same in regards to methane oxidation as a grazer/grassland biome. In fact at least one of the sources I quoted above found it functioned at only 20% the effectiveness of an adjacent grazed area. Think of all the cropland in the world producing grains and operating at only 20% efficiency in methane oxidation!

    It is not unusual for agriculture to actually produce more food than a natural ecosystem. It is managed after all. But grasslands can be managed as well. There is no need to overproduce grains, far more than we could possibly eat, and then feed them to livestock, just so we can count that productivity twice. More important to AGW mitigation is to bypass all the "middle steps" and go straight from grassland to animal so we don't loose that ecosystem service.

  37. New survey finds a growing climate consensus among meteorologists

    We had what I would consider a very mild winter. Temperatures even in late December were in the 70's, and in late February/early March we had more warm spells, even touching 80 degrees in some places.

    But in January we had one big snowstorm, and somehow that was reason enough for folks on social media to claim that we had a record cold winter. It wasn't even that cold during the snowstorm. That is really some extreme spin they are putting on.

  38. Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    Here is an eyeball test of whether or not there has been a pause since 2002.

    NASA 2002

    Frist line is the trend 1970 to December 2001.

    Second line is the tend 2002 to december 2015.

    Doesn't look like much of a pause to me.

    How about if we include January and February of 2016?

    NASA 2002

    Doesn't look like a pause since 2002.

    Now, that's just the 'eyeball' analysis. It's totally insufficient. But if you are not interested in doing it properly, billev, if you're just going to go with what your eyes see, then you have to agree that there's been no pause since 2002, right?

    Here's the link to that web page, too, so you can check for yourself.

    [Link]

     

  39. Six burning questions for climate science to answer post-Paris

    Obviously reducing emissions is one way to help. But Nick is correct. Regenerative agriculture is the solution. Most the schemes mentioned might help, but they are no where near large enough to actually solve the problem. Agriculture is easily large enough. Need methane oxidised? Methanotrophs. Need carbon sequestered, soil carbon actually increases food yields. Water shortages? Soil carbon actually holds water resisting the effects of drought.  Floods? Same. Soil carbon increases infiltration rates mitigating the effects of floods. Is the soil sink large enough? Absolutely. Larger than all the carbon in the atmosphere. We might actually be forced to slow down a bit in our efforts just so we don't actually pull too much carbon out of the atmosphere and accidently trigger a glaciation event. But we need to get started soon. We have worldwide such massive soil degradation that in about 50-60 years agriculture will fail worldwide. Once that happens all is lost. With no agriculture as a base both civilization fails and any chance at using agriculture to mitigate AGW is lost as well. Then we are stuck with the much slower natural biomes to do the work, and they are not up to the task as they are also highly degraded. Mass Extinction event in my opinion.

  40. Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    billev,

    No one expects a long-term warming trend to follow a straight line year after year. There are long and short-term spikes, dips, flat periods etc. If someone was trying to pull the wool over your eyes than those temperature graphs from NASA and other groups would look like a straight line.

    I don't know why you expect the warming from CO2 to be represented as a straight line going from cooler in the past to hotter. I don't know why you think the variation that we see means something important about CO2 warming. As we all agree, there are other short term and long term factors that influence temperature. That's why we see the variation, the spikes and dips and flattish periods. The long term signal doesn't dominate at short time scales. It is, however, more persistent. We're going to see more warmth in the future, with spikes and dips and flattish periods. The signal is clear.

    For most of your other points, the list of links in KR's post answers them well.

    I tried to explain why no one can claim a pause, warming or cooling from short data sets (like since 2002). I can only link you back to the explanation.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/gw-basics-what-has-changed.html#116608

     

    When you say 'pause', you are instantly in the domain of trend analysis. You need at least a basic understanding of that to make any kind of claim, or to have an understanding of the claim you are making. Eyeballing a graph isn't good enough.

    But if you are only going to use your eyeball, then I showed you the results since 2002 for a bunch of graphs, all but one of which showed a warming trend. The line went from lower temps in 2002, to higher temps at the end. A naive reading is that this is a warming, not a flat trend. If you are going to stick with a naive reading, an eyeball assessment, then you must conclude that there is no pause since 2002?

    I even linked you to the application where you can check for yourself. It's very easy to use.

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

    If you want NASA's trend, then click on GISTEMP (GISS is the acronym for the department of NASA that does the temperature records), type 2002 in the 'start date' box and click 'calculate. Then look at the trend you get.

    Tell me what you see for yourself. A pause or a warming trend?

  41. Why is 2016 smashing heat records?

    The bottom line according to Hansen is that surface temperatures are not necessarily the best indicator!

    So what is then? According to Hansen it is the total energy in versus out budget: which includes various unkowns.

    So, where do we go from here?

    It's risk managament 101 and rather than change billions of dollars of plant the big swingers are going to play pause button politics until they can get the jump on the affirmed data. Oh noes.. what if the new guy starts with a well placed bet!

    Divestment wins...

  42. Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    billev @42:

    "The NOAA temperature charts clearly show me that while the Earth is warming, the warming is not continuous. If this is not the case then the charts are misleading so why are they provided to the public? There is a determined attempt to argue that there has been no pause in continuous warming in this century even though the chart shows there to be."

    Nobody here has argued the warming is continuous.  What has been argued is that your choice of breakpoints for long term trends are arbitrary, that there is no justification for seeing them as a repeating pattern, and that there is no breakpoint in 2002.

    What the charts show after 2002 is a continuing positive trend that is not statistically significant only due to the small duration of the period.  Further, the slope is lower than that of the trend of the preceding 30 years only because of strong La Ninas in 2008, and 2011/12.  You argue that unusual peaks should not be factored into determining trends, but insist on including those in your trend calculation while refusing to acknowledge they are the impact of a short term effect.

    What is worse, since this has been clearly pointed out to you, you have introduced no new evidence, made your claims vaguer and simply repeated the claims with no attempt of justification.  Your argument has reduced to the repetition of a slogan.

    You have similarly studiously ignored the refutation of your claim that CO2 has not effect @22 above.  Once again, the graph shows the IR spectrum at the top of the atmosphere, plotted so that equal areas under the graph represent equal amounts of total energy transmitted.  The large trough due to CO2 therefore implies a large reduction in energy transmitted to space due to CO2.  That in turn requires that the surface of the Earth be warmer to drive greater energy transmission away from the CO2 trough to compensate, and bring the total energy transmission up to levels that match input of solar energy.

    That is a very simple, very direct proof of the impact of CO2 on climate.  It is based both on direct observations, and on models based on direct laboratory observations of the radiative properties of gases.  In this instance, theory matches observations to an astonishing degree.  Your commentary on the topic since has shown that you are determined to avoid evidence you do not like.  If you are going to simply avoid evidence that challenges your views (as clearly you are) it will be much more convenient for both you and us if you do it elsewhere. 

  43. Six burning questions for climate science to answer post-Paris

    The tipping point was reached decades ago so irreversible rapid climate change and ocean acidification and warming is under way. The most mitigation that can possibly be done is to institute a number of measures to reduce the rate of emissions so slow down the rate of increase in atmospheric and ocean temperature. Suggesting that this temperature rise can be limited is erroneus. There should be more focus on measures to cope with the consequences, such as sea level rise and storm surges.

  44. Six burning questions for climate science to answer post-Paris

    Regenerative agriculture holds the promise of being way more effective than biofuels with carbon sequestration

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture

  45. Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

    Certain CO₂ abatement policies — such as the Carbon Tax — are clearly more effective than others — such as massive regulation. I think 'most anybody prefers the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith over the Heavy Hand of a Soviet Five-Year Dictum. And regardless of the currently apparent popularity of certain US and other wuzbe Cæsars, a real turnaround in attitudes is at hand. The problem appears to be that certain people have attained unjustifiable wealth and power and are ready to use unjustifiable means to maintain their unjustifiable holds on the aforementioned unjustifiables.

    The best option is to try to change the system while change is possible. Otherwise we will hear the people singing the songs of angry men as they get out their torches, tumbrels and Remington 870’s, which will not have happy outcomes.

  46. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    RedBaron @18:

    "In my opinion methane is a problem primarily because of CAFO's. It is not a problem in a properly managed grassland/savanna biome. After all those biomes supported many millions and millions of grazers who were extirpated. The methane levels before they were extirpated were actually lower than now!"

    You have this backwards.  The current megafaunal biomass is approximately 7 times that prior to human induced mass extinctions.  The biomass of human livestock alone is 4.5 times that of all megafaunal biomass prior to human induced mass extinctions.  See Barnosky 2008:

     

    So, quite aside from the fact that not all grazers produce methane in the quantities of cattle, the amount of cattle now far exceeds the quantity of wild grazers they have displaced.  Even the estimated 60 million American Bison pre-1800 have been replaced by 90 million cattle in the US alone, a further 12 million in Canada, (plus 500,000 Bison).

  47. A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change

    In my opinion methane is a problem primarily because of CAFO's. It is not a problem in a properly managed grassland/savanna biome. After all those biomes supported many millions and millions of grazers who were extirpated. The methane levels before they were extirpated were actually lower than now! According to the following studies those biomes actually reduce atmospheric methane due to the action of Methanotrophic microorganisms that use methane as their only source of energy and carbon. Even more carbon being pumped into the soil! Nitrogen too, as they are also free living nitrogen fixers.
    http://blogs.uoregon.edu/gregr/files/2013/07/grasslandscooling-nhslkh.pdf
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC239458/pdf/600609.pdf
    LINK
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11706799
    http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2013.00225/full
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0038071794903131

    Grasslands and their soils can be considered sinks for atmospheric CO2, CH4, and water vapor, and their
    Cenozoic evolution a contribution to long-term global climatic cooling.

    The subsurface location of methanotrophs means that energy
    requirements for maintenance and growth are obtained from
    CH4 concentrations that are lower than atmospheric

    Upland (i.e., well-drained, oxic) soils
    are a net sink for atmospheric methane; as methane diffuses from the atmosphere into
    these soils, methane consuming (i.e., methanotrophic) bacteria oxidize it

    Nevertheless, no CH4 was released when soil surface CH4 fluxes were measured simultaneously. The results thus demonstrate the high CH4 oxidation potential of the thin aerobic topsoil horizon in a non-aquatic ecosystem.

    Of all the CH4 sources and sinks, the biotic sink strength is the most responsive to variation in human activities

    The CH4 uptake rate was only 20% of that in the woodland in an adjacent area that had been uncultivated for the same period but kept as rough grassland by the annual removal of trees and shrubs and, since 1960, grazed during the summer by sheep. It is suggested that the continuous input of urea through animal excreta was mainly responsible for this difference. Another undisturbed woodland area with an acidic soil reaction (pH 4.1) did not oxidize any CH4.

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Shortened link that was breaking page format.

  48. Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    billev - Your last comment is really just a Gish Gallop, a collection of slogans, anecdotes, and nonsense. I suggest reading:

    Seriously, your post is nothing but a bag of sloganeering nonsense, the errors of which has already largely been pointed out to you. 

  49. Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    billev @42.

    I will take just one of the questions you pose and provide an answer, in exchange for an answer from you.

    If we stand on the hot sand of a beach the bottoms of our feet are most uncomfortable but the tops of our feet, only an inch from the sand, are not. If the heat retention power of CO2 is enough to drive the air temperature on Earth why does it appear so ineffectual at preventing such significant heat loss so close to the source.

    When you stand on that hot sand, the reason the blood above the soles of your feet does not freeze in your veins is because there is an insulating atmosphere above you preventing the low temperatures of outer space from sucking the heat from your body. That atmosphere above you stretches eight miles up to the stratosphere and up beyond that as well. Over that eight miles the temperature drops about 70ºC, less that 10ºC per mile, a rate of temperature reduction not noticable over a few feet. It is the accumulative effect over the whole height of the atmosphere that does the job. So most of that insulating air is well over a mile away. At such a distance, why would it reflect back the heat from hot sand and toast the top of your foot at the same time as the bottom? Simply, it would not because it is almost entirely far too far away for to catch anything significant of the heat emitted by the sand and return it to the top of your foot.

    And my question to you - You say "I have previously stated that the presence of a current pause in temperature rise will probably be more evident in another ten or fifteen years, toward the end of the pause." We know day follows night, winter follows summer and that they recur at fixed intervals. What mechanism is it that makes you think that your "pauses" recur at a fixed interval?

  50. Global Warming Basics: What Has Changed?

    I have read the thread about CO2 and have read all of the comments in answer to my last comment.  Nowhere have I found any measure of how effectively CO2 captures and retains the heat radiating from the surface of the Earth and solid objects on its surface.  I do know that the difference between daytime and night temperatures is significantly different in arrid areas than more humid areas indicating that water vapor may play a role in heat retention in the hours of darkness.  The NOAA temperature charts clearly show me that while the Earth is warming, the warming is not continuous.  If this is not the case then the charts are misleading so why are they provided to the public?  There is a determined attempt to argue that there has been no pause in continuous warming in this century even though the chart shows there to be.   I have previously stated that the presence of a current pause in temperature rise will probably be more evident in another ten or fifteen years, toward the end of the pause.  Also, comparing a small amount of arsenic with a small amount of CO2 is meaningless.  It also is an argument that can be taken two ways.  A one inch thick steel sheet can, no doubt, stop a pistol bullet fired into it.  But a sheet of steel 1/2500th of an inch thick would probably not even slow the bullet as it passed through.  Finally, where is there any physical manifestation in our daily life that shows the heat retention powers of CO2.  If we stand on the hot sand of a beach the bottoms of our feet are most uncomfortable but the tops of our feet, only an inch from the sand, are not. If the heat retention power of CO2 is  enough to drive the air temperature on Earth why  does it appear so ineffectual at preventing such significant heat loss so close to the source.  Since that heat loss increases as distance from the surface increases is there any evidence that the current level of CO2 has any measureable effect on temperature?  

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] You are now skating on the thin ice of sloganeering which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. 

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

    Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.  Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.

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