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Kevin C at 21:15 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Is it due to differences in compensating for satellite drift or satellite temperature
That's exactly it. The RSS ensemble is constructed from different plausible values for each of the model parameters and adjustments required to construct the satellite record from the raw brightness data.
The spread of the RSS ensemble is an indication of the uncertainty in those adjustments.
However there is a second source of uncertainty: Not only are there uncertainties in the parameters used within a particular reconstruction method, there are different methods. So there is a second source of spread which can be measured (if rather more crudely) by comparing products from different groups (and arguably different versions from the same group in some cases).
Both of these apply both to the surface and satellite record, which is why having multiple versions is useful. Having an ensemble spread for the individal methods is also important, but currently only Hadley and RSS provide these.
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ryland at 20:00 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
The comment is made "On the other hand, different groups processing the same raw satellite data arrive at very different estimates of the warming trend in the atmosphere." I just don't understand why processing of the same data gives different results. Is it due to differences in compensating for satellite drift or satellite temperature or something else altogether? And is RSS more correct because those results agree more closely with surface stations? But as there is considerable emphasis on the fact that satellite and surface stations are not measuring the same thing is this a valid conclusion? I do apologise for this display of naivety/ineptitude/ignorance call it what you will. but I would be grateful if someone could explain why these differences occur. One further question, why use all the data if some are apparent outliers?
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Richard Lawson at 19:46 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
What is the reason for the divergence between RSS and RATPAC that happens around 2013? There is pretty good agreement before that time.
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Kevin C at 19:31 PM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Brandon: The 2sigma for the RSS ensemble is 0.067C/decade, so about 50% higher than the value from the paper. The 95% range would correspond to a 4sigma range, which leads to a similar conclusion.
Mears (2011) only included data to 2009. The 2sigma spread of the ensemble I plotted on that period is 0.059C/decade, which explains a part of the discrepancy. I am assuming that the remaining difference comes from the ensemble I plotted being from a later revision, but I'll ask Carl Mears.
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BBHY at 18:42 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
As I see it, the Ted Cruz type folks view this as a Perry Mason episode. Although the accused has 20 points of evidence indicating guilt, Perry always finds the one piece of evidence that refutes it all, shows his client is innocent and reveals the real murderer. They see themselves as Perry, and CO2 as the falsely accused. They think all they need to do is declare something about sunspots or cosmic rays and that will prove that CO2 is innocent.
The problem with that line of thinking is that while it makes for great TV courtroom drama, that is not how science works. There are many different, independent lines of evidence supporting the finding that excess CO2 in the atmosphere is warming the planet, and no single piece of contrary evidence can refute them all. Most of the contrary evidence doesn't even hold up to close examination.
We know with great certainty that CO2 absorbs infrared heat radiation. Nobody has proposed any mechanism that can possibly prevent CO2 from absorbing infrared heat radiation, and thereby causing the planet to warm. But even if they found such a mechanism, they would then still have to show how some other mechanism is warming the planet, with exactly the same characteristics as excess CO2. There is no known mechanism with such characteristics. So, that's two impossible tasks right there. But they continue to try to show that all the different temperature readings of the surface, ocean and air temperature are somehow wrong, that the measurements of heat flow into and out of the Earth are somehow wrong, and how the climate models are somehow wrong. how measurements of solar radiation are somehow wrong, etc. There is simply no single piece of contrary evidence they can possibly find that can refute all these different lines of evidence implicating excess CO2 as the cause of the warming of our planet.
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David Lewis at 16:52 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Wouldn't the Argo float data indicating an almost steady rise in ocean heat storage be the most significant indicator that the planet is heating up? Its physics, isn't it?
A bit of a shift in heat distribution in the ocean takes place, i.e. El Nino, and a major shift in global surface temperature results. The ocean is a big dog and average global surface temperature, or even less, average mid tropospheric temperature, are tiny tails.
The only thing that could account for the ongoing accumulation of heat in the oceans is that there is a planetary energy imbalance.
Running satellite data through a model to compute average global mid troposphere temperature is basically irrelevant compared to this, no matter what it says.
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Digby Scorgie at 14:32 PM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy
I should've read your blogpost yesterday, but I've done so now. I think I now understand what you mean. Let's see if I can summarize correctly:
If we boost carbon dioxide to 400 ppm and hold it steady at that level, there is a delay before the climate system reaches equilibrium. The average global temperature rises to a certain level and then stabilizes there.
If we add excess carbon dioxide so as to boost the level to 400 ppm but then stop adding any more, natural processes immediately start removing some of the excess carbon dioxide. The concentration of carbon dioxide decays exponentially (looking at the shape of the curve), but the average global temperature stops rising any further.
(Damn, now I don't understand why the temperature doesn't also fall, after a delay, in the latter case also. I'll have to reread your post!)
In the real world we cannot just stop our emissions all at once, but the sooner we start cutting emissions the better. Do I have that right?
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Eclectic at 14:16 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
J. Curry, judging by her website, relies upon a large amount of smoke & verbiage [ not "smoke & mirrors"! ] to cast a rather dense haze over the AGW topic. "Smoke" is the appropriate term, because the approach resembles the Haze of Uncertainty cast by Big Tobacco, for so many decades, to obscure the public's clear vision of the realities.
Cui bono? (as the lawyers would say). Money is always worth looking at ~ AFAIK no money is passed to her directly . . . unlike Dr Soon & a few others on the Silver Spoon of Heartland Spinstitute and suchlike hidden-donor propaganda machines. However, it is said that funds are paid into a company that she is closely associated with ~ and of course those funds would be used for expenses only (we would like to think!).
More importantly, in the cui bono line : for some types of personality there is a great attraction in notoriety ; in being seen as a maverick. I should imagine that this is quite a large factor, for those (handful) of real climate scientists who are turning a blind eye to the actual evidence.
And then, there's those all-expenses-paid trips for presenting testimony to Senate committees etcetera. All grist, for those who prefer 15 years of fame ( rather than the clichéd "15 minutes" ). Lights, cameras . . . and disinformation!
Moderator Response:[PS] Multiple comments policy violations. Let's drop this and stick to science.
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Bob Loblaw at 13:08 PM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
hank:
Does this help?
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Nick Palmer at 09:04 AM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy. In the last few years, almost under the radar, the potential of agricultural, pasture, forestry and horticultural soils to resquester carbon that they have lost over the last couple of hundred years has has been increasingly recognised.
I have checked the maths myself and there truly seems to be sufficient capacity to at least offset all current emissions but also, some say, sufficient to actually start drawing "ppms" of carbon back out of the atmosphere.
Here's an intro...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2015/12/04/fe22879e-990b-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html -
AuntSally at 09:02 AM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
What. In the world. Is going on with Judith Curry? Does anyone have any insight into her perspective? Christy and Spencer are well known to be down the path of right wing religious zealotry... but what's the story with Curry?
Moderator Response:[PS] Please stick to science.
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uncletimrob at 08:03 AM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Thanks. The last sentence says it all!
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Brandon R Gates at 07:08 AM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Kevin,
I'm reading through Mears et al. (2011), and find Table 2 reports 2-sigma trend uncertainty estimates for TLT as 0.044 K/decade, whereas Figure 4 of this note puts the 95% CI for RSS TLT at about 0.13 K/decade. Explanation for that nearly 3x difference is not readily apparent to me from reading the paper as both calculations appear to be estimating the same thing. Could you please explain my error in understanding and/or give a justification for the difference in estimates?
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hank at 04:23 AM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Is there a map of where around the planet the balloon measurements have been made over the past 15-20 years? Do those data points get matched closely with satellite data points for the same location/date/time? I've been wondering if the dramatic change in air quality over India and China during that period makes any difference in how the atmosphere looks to the satellites. If the balloon and satellite data match up, that would rule that speculation out. (I know, this amounts to a "please prove me wrong" but speculation is all I have.)
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tmbtx at 02:21 AM on 19 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
It's great to see these posts on the satellite methods and their uncertainty. I've trying to find some intermediate-level explanations of how it works and now I've got them. Nice, and thanks.
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hankspage at 02:05 AM on 19 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
As a structural engineer I don’t claim to be any kind of expert in climate science. However it has become my favorite subject and the one thing I am most concerned about for my children and grandchildren. Therefore I do a lot of reading about the subject. Also as a structural engineer I don’t get to fudge the numbers based on my political beliefs or the results would be catastrophic.
The subject of the pause in warming during this century has been completely aggravating to me. Living in East Texas I am completely surrounded by deniers that use this argument constantly. So I made a simple excel spreadsheet which showed the ‘degrees per decade’ rate of temperature from each year to 2015 using the NASA data at ‘http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt’ starting at 1975. At the year 2008 the number started getting very high since the time frame was so small and the temperature for those years was increasing rapidly. But before that the average degrees per decade increase was 0.273. The lowest rate of increase for the entire 40 year period was using 1998 which showed a rate of 0.124 degrees/decade because the temperature for 1998 was so high. If you use 1997 the rate is 0.206 and if you use 1999 the rate is 0.263 degrees/decade. This is the definition of cherry picking and went a long way towards debunking the argument of my peers that there had been no increase in temperature this century.
I have a feeling the satellite data would show the same results. -
One Planet Only Forever at 01:10 AM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Glenn,
My response to your leaky boat example is:
What if you need to mobilize a group of people to plug the leak you are aware of, but everyone else is enjoying the dance party and maybe a little drunk? Add the likelihood that a few popular loud-mouths who say very appealing things that keep the partires focused on their good-time because they want to party to continue (they know about the leak and understand the importance of plugging it, but do not want it done at the expense of the Party they are enjoying, or do not want it done because the are profiting rapidly at the gamblig tables and think they gave a great hand to win the pot before he real tragedy becomes so apparant to everyone taht it shuts the party down).
Now, instead of the boat case which has everyone on the boat in personal peril, which is a very different case than climate change, the case is a group of partiers who decide to enjoy something personally enjoyable but potentially very damaging like starting fires. And they initially did it without thinking about the potential for the fire to get out of control so they were starting them anywhere that suited their interests in havig a better time. And you are one person trying to get the partiers to stop lighting those fires because of the chance they could get out of control and cause massive damage to others. But again a few smooth talking personally profiting marketers who understand the risk want the partying to continue because they are making a killing selling things to cook on the fires to all the intoxicated and party addicted revellers. Introducing a fire extinguisher will not be very succeessful.
Now extend the scenario to a case where none of the partiers believe there is any chance that they personally will suffer any of the consequences of their partying (and they are likely correct that they personally will not suffer serious consequences). How likely are you to be able to develop a technological answer to the problem that does not 'stop the unacceptable aspects of the party' sooner than the partiers are willing to shut it down.
That last case is the scenario we face. More responsible technology alredy exists. It existed 30 years ago. The partiers enjoying the party the most refuse to change how they party, because it would not be 'as enjoyable' and the liou-mouth people who understand the need to change the party behaviour will continue to appeal to keep the party going until they personally see that they will get even more popularity and profitability from changing the way the paty is enjoyed (and those people will never try to figure out how to 'ensure that everyone on the plant and far into the future can enjoy the party' (there is no money in that and it is hard work and some people will not like you).
The Promoters of unsustainable and damaging party activity need to be kept from succeeding, even if they have revved up a grand party with lots of people enjoying their good time at the expense of everyone else (and wanting to continue to enjoy their party as oblivious as possible to the damage they are doing ... because understanding that would be a real Buzz-Kill.)
So my point is that the technological solution envisioned to 'solve the problem' may not be possible (because it has to satisfy the people at the top of the party pyramid that they will be even better off).
The technology needed has existed for a long time. However, in many cases the answer is a dramatic reduction of energy consumption by the activities of the wealthiest. And anyone who won't dramatically reduce their energy consumption by choosing to pursue the lower impact ways of profiting or doing things, giving up on what they understand is an unacceptable way of enjoying their life, may need global humanity to give them the motivation for a hard-reboot of their 'life perspective'.
A significant price on carbon would be a 'hard-reboot' and is clearly contrary to the interests of the promoters of the currently most popular way to party. It has been known for decades that it would be required. That massive price on carbon is clearly the best technological solution, if you consider develoments of new financial and socioeconomic arrangements 'Technology'. And if technology is considered to be the way things are done then indeed changes to the financial and socioeconomic system are 'technological developments'.
And I would propose that it is most likely that such technological developments will create the most rapid change of human activity. And I would even suggest that the technological development you refer to 'limited to mechanical things' relies on the socioeconomic changes occurring (will not be popular without the socioeconomic changes). Without the socioeconomic changes it is possible that no level of 'mechanical technology' will be able to change the way the most fortunate among huamanity choose to try to get away with "Enjoying Their Partying".
Back to my previous comment. The ability of the people who have undeservingly become wealthy and powerful to abuse misleading marketing to keep the Party going the way they want is the real problem, and needs to be worked on more aggressively than 'mechanical technological development'.
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Tom Curtis at 00:21 AM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
wili @39, see here. With zero emissions, CO2 concentrations falls (through achieving equilibrium of pCO2 in the ocean) at approximatly the same rate that feedbacks cause a rise in temperature to the Equilibrium Climate Response for a given concentration. Because the rates are approximately equal, the net effect is that temperatures would remain approximately constant even with feedbacks taken into account. In the longer term, the rate of fall after ocean pCO2 equilibrium, further falls due to rebuffering the ocean, and chemical weathering approximate in rate the slower temperture rise to the Earth System Reponse, ie, the long term temperature response due to slow feedbacks like retreat of ice caps. The net effect is shown in this diagram:
It should be noted the errors in these estimates are quite large, and the data is consistent with either slightly rising temperatures, or slightly falling temperatures with constant emissions. More likely, temperatures will slightly rise at some times, and slightly fall at others due to the rates and relative strengths of the responses not always precisely conciding.
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wili at 23:27 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
"in a zero-emissions world, CO2 concentrations would fall" ??
I thought in your piece www.skepticalscience.com/Macdougall.html , that figure 3 shows that temperatures in fact won't fall in a zero-emissions world (except under very optimistic assumptions about sensitivity) because even a partial inclusion of some of the permafrost feedback will at least counter the CO2 absorbed by the oceans. And that was back in 2012.
Have these calculations changed for some reason, or am I missing something?
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Tom Curtis at 21:34 PM on 18 January 2016Tracking the 2°C Limit - November 2015
angusmac @41, I am not going to respond formally to your post until it is clear that it will not be deleted for its rather egregious posting under the wrong topic. If it is so deleted, by all means repost in on the correct thread. If you feel there is some part of the discussion that asolutely belongs on this thread, you can then link to that repost and highlight briefly only what is relevant, and why it is relevant to the OP here.
I will note that it is extraordinary in science to only make criticism on weblogs (which is where you will find the criticism of Marcott et al), and to expect a more formal response by Marcott without demanding a more formal critique by the science assassins "climate auditors" represents a stunning hypocrissy.
Moderator Response:[PS] Can I suggest that any discussion relating to Marcott et al be conducted in this thread? I dont intend to delete the angusmac comment since it obviously involved some effort to construct and isnt totally offtopic, but I would appreciate responses in more suitable threads.
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angusmac at 19:15 PM on 18 January 2016Tracking the 2°C Limit - November 2015
Rob Honeycutt@39 & Tom Curtis@32
Rob, I agree that the conversation has veered off course for this comment thread but I do wish to make the following comments regarding Marcott et al (2013) that are relevant to baselining preindustrial temperatures:
- Marcott et al state that their results indicate that “global mean temperature for the decade 2000–2009 [HadCRUT3] has not yet exceeded the warmest temperatures of the early Holocene (5000 to 10,000 yr B.P.).” Therefore, if we were to use their reconstruction, we would be near to the Holocene peak.
- 80% of the Marcott et al proxies are derived from marine archives and consequently would underestimate global land-ocean temperatures. Consequently, the Marcott et al results should be adjusted upwards for an apples-for-apples comparison with land-ocean temperatures, as suggested by Glenn Tamblyn@9.
- Proxies tend to have multi-decadal to centennial resolutions and should not be compared directly with annual instrumental temperatures. Kaufman et al (2013) consider this by presenting the most recent 30-year period (1983-2012) from HadCRUT4 as shown by the star in Figure 2. However, a good case could be made for using a longer period for the instrumental mean when comparing it with proxies that are of centennial resolution e.g., Marcott et al (2013).
Figure 2 (Kaufman et al, 2013)Tom, I had thought that the uptick at the end of the Marcott et al reconstruction would provide a good correlation with instrumental temperatures but Marcott et al stated that their 1890-1950 warming was “probably not robust.” If it is not robust then why show it?
Further research indicated that there had been criticism of the paper, which resulted in a Q&A blog by Marcott et al in RealClimate which stated that, “the 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”
“Not robust” is an understatement when you compare Figure S3 from Marcott et al (2013) with Figure C8 in Marcott’s PhD thesis (2011). This comparison shows that there are differences in the two reconstructions in general and, in particular, the last 500 years shows completely different results. For example, there is an uptick in Figure S3 in the 2103 version and no uptick in Figure C8 in the 2011 versions (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Extracts from Figure S3 (Marcott et al, 2013) and Figure C8 (Marcott, 2011)
A difference of approximately 0.8 °C in the two versions of the reconstruction is presented in Figure 1 – yet they use the same proxies. Marcott et al do not address this significant difference by their “not robust” statement.
Regarding the criticism of their paper, it is very unusual to address such criticism in a weblog, as done by Marcott et al. It is normal scientific practice to address criticism in clarifications/corrigenda to the original paper in the pertinent journal because this allows a technical audit on the veracity of the paper. Not having done so certainly casts doubt on the robustness of the last 500 years of the reconstruction and perhaps even the entire paper.
In light of the above discrepancies in Marcott et al (2013), I would not recommend it as a reasonable paleo reconstruction.
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Andy Skuce at 19:07 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby
To keep concentrations constant at 400ppm would require continued emissions, albeit at a much lower rate than today's. These emissions would be required to make up for the CO2 that would continue to be taken up by the oceans and biosphere. In such a low emissions/constant concentration world, temperatures would continue to rise.
On the other hand, in a zero-emissions world, CO2 concentrations would fall and the temperature would remain roughly stalled.
Neither scenario is plausible in the very near future. We have a long way to go before we stabilize concentrations and further still before we reach zero or negative emissions, which we will need to halt the rise in global temperatures.
Check out the link I posted in #33 above. It's not very intuitive.
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Brandon R Gates at 17:48 PM on 18 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
Thank you for posting this follow-up. I offer a critique of following paragraph:
“Model input errors” and “different variability sequences” require a little further explanation. Let’s assume that some higher extraterrestrial intelligence provided humanity with two valuable gifts: a perfect climate model, which captured all of the important physics in the real-world climate system, and a perfect observing system, which reliably measured atmospheric temperature changes over the last 18 years. Even with such benign alien intervention, temperature trends in the perfect model and perfect observations would diverge if there were errors in the inputs to the model simulations,[h] or if the purely random sequences of internal climate oscillations did not “line up” in the simulations and in reality (23, 24, 30, 32-36).
It is my understanding, going all the way back to Lorenz (1963), Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow [1] that the more appropriate way to think of the weather/climate system is that it would NOT diverge from previous behavior if all the initial inputs were exactly the same. "Purely random" evokes the concept of a stochastic system where there is no such guarantee by definition.
I understand that what Drs. Mears and Santer mean by "purely random" is that with the the real system, which is massive and complex, we do not have the observational fidelity OR computational ability to reliably predict short-term climate trends (i.e., weather) in advance due to the sensitivity a deterministc system has for initial conditions — therefore, it behaves as an "effectively random" system for the purposes of exactly timed, very precise prediction of future states.
However, because it is an almost completely deterministic system, we can at least theoretically hope after the fact to suss out a causality chain for the various modes of internal variability and/or pertubations in external forcings which do contribute to constant change even absent our influences. I think this is a distinction which separates our argument from the magical thinking of the "climate is always changing (and nobody knows why)" crowd ...
... not that many of them see it that way since Lorenz (1963) is often abused as "proof" that climate cannot possibly be projected or predicted over the long-term because ... chaos.
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[1] http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Deterministic_63.pdf
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Ceist812534 at 17:45 PM on 18 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
Cruz should have also been questioned on why he would use a graphic from "Steve Goddards" blog. Tony Heller even boasts about it on his blog (see "Ted Cruz used my graph").
The 'hasn't warmed in 18 years etc" graph is Lord Monckton's deceptive graphic that does the rounds of contrarian blogs.
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Digby Scorgie at 17:43 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy
You pinpoint what I don't understand. Suppose for the sake of argument that one can expect an average global temperature of two degrees above pre-industrial when carbon dioxide is at 400 ppm. And suppose also that it takes 25 years for the temperature to rise to the two-degree level after carbon dioxide hits 400 ppm. Why then, will this not occur if one suddenly stops adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere?
Glenn and OPOF
You've given me a lot to think about that I unfortunately don't have time to respond to at the moment. I'll try later.
I see that, still, nobody has noticed my sneaky final comment! Suppose global civilization (not regional) does actually collapse by 2040. What will be the effect on fossil-fuel use? Will it fall a lot?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 15:31 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
OPOF
Yes and no. Is technology the answer? To what problem?
If you are in a boat that is unsound and sinking, your long term answer, your strategic answer is to get the boat to dry land. But if it is sinking too quickly you need a short term, tactical answer, something to plug the leaks so that you can make it to shore.
Technology may not be 'the answer' as you say in the longer term and we need to rethink how we do things. But in the short term we either shut off our entire energy supply and head back to the Dark Ages in which case your rethink becomes moot.Or we do nothing while just working on the rethink and we go back to the Dark Ages anyway as serious climate change knocks everything down and again your point is moot.
Or we do some technological stuff so we still have energy and not too much climate change and thus don't return to the Dark Ages, then/as well we implement your change.
Now can we put off your change till later while focusing on the short term technological fix? If we try for your change will peoples short term push-back against it also prevent the implentation of the tech fix? Will most people freely embrace your change - I will but I may not be representative - or will they need some spur to do so.
Personal view, and it is probably negative, and a bit cynical, is that your change is absolutely needed, but it won't happen until most people have had the living beejeesus scared out of them by what is happening. Then they will clamor for all the change to happen overnight.
A good first step might be changes that reign in the use of the media to promote the entire consumer society dream-machine. Getting control of the media out of the hands of business would be a powerful first step.
Nothing wrong with advertising (to make known) that company X sells product Y - " Hi, we are General Motors and we make cars. If you need a car come to one of our 'car-buying-places' and see if you like any of ours". Thats it. Not one iota more.
But if you want to do more, to 'pitch' your product, sorry, you will have to wait until a potential customer visits your 'car-buying-place'
Step 1, shut down Madison Avenue. Imagine a life, a world, where we only see an advertisement if we go looking for them. We never ever see unsolicited ads, in any context, ever!Give it a generation and how does our thinking start to change?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 15:08 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby, I am not saying I think commercial developments will change emission levels, quite possibly they won't. But if anything is going to surprise us I think it is that.
And anything that significantly changes emission levels is by definition a change to BAU.
Will this be enough. No. But it might buy time to do more.
As for civilisation collapsing by 2040, I tend to agree with Andy. Later this century is quite possible. 2040 I think it is more likely we are seeing the starting phases of a collapse. If a collapse were to occur, it won't happen overnight. It would be protracted over many decades.
Past civilisational collapses took time and they were more local. What we might see in a 2040 timeframe is a start to the breakdown of the links of globalisation with our societies reverting more to regional civilisations. Then each of those regional societies experiencing collapses at differing paces through the rest of the century and beyond.
And we would only really talk of a collapse of civilisation as a whole if all the regions collapse. Countries with good food supply to population ratios, local raw materials supplies, cultural diversity and good education will fare better.
So Europe & North America, Perhaps China (although it's population is a big stressor), perhaps Russia, Argentina, may fare better. My country of Australia may not fare as well. We tick many of the boxes but we would need to re-establish an industrial base to be more self-sufficient. And the USA's current internal cultural divisions may be it's biggest single weakness and vulnerability.
Governments have extraordinary emergency powers when times get tough. So regional civilisations might still survive even if they aren't as democratic. -
One Planet Only Forever at 07:26 AM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby and Glenn, Your discussion has gotten me thinking.
What is needed is a change of attitude in Humanity, not technological development.
Hopefully, the global acceptance of thoughtful considerate rigorously developed understanding will prevail sooner and quicker. Humanity could rapidly achieve the required results if the biggest impacting people simply changed their mind and accepted that they did not deserve their developed perceptions of prosperity and superiority.
My MBA training decades ago and my observations of what has been going on based on living and working in Alberta, combined with reading the presentations by others of what I do not personally observe has led me to the conclusion that technological development is not an 'answer to anything'. It is a 'result'. It is a development resulting from human desires.
Technology is the 'result of choices made about the application of development of better understanding'. And right now the focus is clearly on technology related to pursuits of popularity, profitability and perceptions of prosperity. That focus develops higher technology toys and benefits for wealthy people (and weaponry and security measures) without any conscientious responsible limits on development to ensure it is not contrary to the advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all.
And the marketing push for 'more impressive toys' affects the choices made regarding the types of better understanding that are pursued. It also affects how that new learning is 'marketed' (shared and promoted). Research that is focused on potential popularity and profit can be a distraction from research into better understanding how to advance humanity to a lasting better future for all.A particular area of research that lacks funding (because its results are highly likely to be contrary to the developed interests and desires of many wealthy and powerful people) is research into why the current socioeconomic system has developed so much damaging and unsustainable activity. The answer is almost certain to be that the system encourages the development and success of attitudes and actions that can be understood to be unacceptable, but are easily made popular and very profitable (for as long as can be gotten away with).
So, technological development is not 'the answer'. Socioeconomic change is the answer. How quickly that change occurs is anybodies guess.
The biggest improvement will occur when the people personally responsible for the most impact change their mind and limit their pursuits of profit and pleasure to actions that are clearly understood to develop toward a lasting better future for a robust diversity of life on this planet.
If all of the currently wealthy and powerful people who do understand this (and I am almost certain that they all do understand it), stopped fighting against it becoming the guiding force of global humanity then improvement could develop very rapidly, because there would be no barriers or distractions.If all of the wealthy and powerful will not change their minds (a very likely case), then another path to success is the conscientious responsible wealthy and powerful people collectively working to ensure the gamblers who try to prolong their ability to get away with unacceptable actions quickly become losers. This will take longer and be a slower change.
The efforts to terminate the success of the irresponsible callous pursuers who have become wealthy and powerful (or want to become wealthy or powerful that way) is the current path. And we are at the low end the scale regarding the rate change of limiting the damaging successes of people who choose to be callous greedy people. Many powerful wealthy nations still elect leaders who are clearly not a conscientious as they know they should be, because they do not want to be, or do not need to be, conscientious when being responsible would be contrary to popular profitable interests and the unsustainable perceptions of prosperity and superiority that such interests can create.
It is clear that the conscientious and responsible among the wealthy and powerful need the support of the general population. The general population needs to desire conscientious responsible leadership focused on developing a lasting better future for all. That transition of the general population to support such leadership is the biggest challenge, because it is very easy to impress people with scientifically developed marketing appeals to greed and intolerance. In addition to being a big challenge, that change of attitude, not technological change, must be accomplished if humanity is to actually advance to a better future.
The bottom line is that the focused needs to be on understanding the unacceptable power of misleading marketing. Effectively addressed that damaging development, the power of deliberately misleading appeals to vanity, greed and intolerance, is essential. And that objective relates to far more than the developing better understanding of climate change. It relates to all of the pointless and likely to be damaging distractions developed by socioeconomic pursuits of 'impressions of advancement and superiority'.
The technology for humanity to live is a sustainable part of the robust diversity of life on this amazing planet already exists. The lack of popularity and profitability of that attitude is the problem. And that attitude problem will not be solved by technological development.Skeptical Science is clearly targeting the right issue. It is one of many efforts striving to figure out how to raise awareness of the steady stream of unacceptable developments that have been produced, promoted and prolonged in the current global socioeconomic experiment.
What is obvious is that the experiment is not producing the 'claimed' results. And the arguments that 'better results will develop if there is more freedom for people to do whatever they want' clearly are not based on a rational conscientious evaluation of what is going on.
The failure of the 'freedom' experiment and the development of better understanding regarding its failure will lead to changes of attitude. That is why some powerful wealthy people are drumming up opposition to 'leadership guided by thoughtful considerate rigorous developed understanding'.
Some wealthy powerful people have a lot to lose if the socioeconomic political game actually changes. Developing better understanding of what is required to advance humanity is almost certain to be contrary to the interests of many wealthy and powerful people. And humanity has no real chance of advancing until those undeserving people among the wealthy and powerful change their mind or fail to succeed.
There are many books out there presenting information along those lines, including Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything", but so many more. The likes of Shakespeare and Dickens wrote about unacceptable developed attitudes and the required changes. Even many Greek and Chinese philosophers were pointing this out. And it is embedded in almost every religious text.
At some point that understanding has to become the guiding force for humanity to actually advance. But people will have to get over the belief that they can do whatever they please. And that will require limits on the effectiveness of misleading marketing. It is all about the marketing.
Marketing that fully presents the best understanding of something is obviously 'better', except in the minds of those who want to benefit from marketing.
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Magma at 06:13 AM on 18 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
A good, informative post. Mears in particular must become frustrated seeing his work constantly misrepresented.
With respect to ongoing research, I wonder if a series of high-resolution measurements in the 53-57 GHz band from an airborne microwave spectrometer (vertical looking up, vertical looking down and horizontal) under measured conditions of temperature, pressure and humidity might allow improved deconvolution of the satellite data. Most of the emission curves in the papers I've looked at have a very simplified, idealized look to them. (Maybe this has already been done, but if so I've missed it.)
As an aside, I think 48 references in a short blog post must be close to some kind of record. -
Andy Skuce at 05:58 AM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby, I'm not at all familiar with the work of Aled Jones, so I shouldn't comment. Nevertheless, claims of societal collapse on a global scale in 25 year's time seem implausible to me. Certainly, regional crop failures could lead to collapse in already unstable countries and the effects of that collapse could spread regionally, beyond the country's borders. The unfolding tragedy in Syria provides a model of this.
I think it's important to distinguish between the inertia of the climate system and the inertia of the global economy. I wrote a blogpost sometime ago that tried to clarify this. The climate system will actually respond quickly to any change in GHG concentrations and if, by some miracle, we could stop all emissions today, then global warming would stop very soon. The problem is, we can no more easily stop our emissions tomorrow than we could stop breathing or eating. To immediately shut down fossil-fuel consumption certainly would lead to global societal collapse.
It was Hemingway, I think, who wrote about the way people go bankrupt: slowly at first, then quickly. When you look at social revolutions in the past, they too show long periods of slowly simmering inaction followed by periods of rapid, revolutionary change. Looking back, the question "what took them so long?" often springs to mind.
I'm hoping that the Paris agreement marks a turning point between the 21-year slow phase and a much faster rate of decarbonization over the years to come. It had better.
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Jonas at 19:48 PM on 17 January 20162016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #3
>Environmental change rate unprecedented
When will #peakdestruction be reached?
How many species and humans will earth be able to carry from then on? -
Digby Scorgie at 19:35 PM on 17 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Glenn
You're implying that, notwithstanding the inertia of the climate system, cutting fossil-fuel use in the next few years will be sufficient to cause a significant deviation from the business-as-usual path. But will it? Not being a climate scientist, I don't know.
Assuming the world model used by Aled Jones is accurate, any change would have to take effect well before 2040. It has to stop the climate becoming so much worse than it is now that food production suffers. Andy, can you help?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 17:27 PM on 17 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby
Not so sure I agree that only modest reductions are likely before 2040 although that is certainly possible. The wildcard in this is the continuing drop in prices for solar, wind and batteries and the potential for serious scaling up when critical mass is achieved.
For example, Tesla hace built their Giga factory and are considering more. What happens when/if the economics are such that every car manufacturer reads the tea leaves and decides that they need to get into electric cars big time, pronto. Every car company starts building multiple battery factories and retooling their factories. Its a significant investment sure but on the scale of what car companies spend to bring each new model to market now it isn't out of the ball park.
If they decided it was the right thing to do and was urgent, they could switch 1/2 their model range to electric in 10 years.Similarly, how far off is it before all new build power generatiion is renewables. In 2014 it was 1/2 of all new capacity. Chile recently held an auction for some capacity, open to all technologies equally. Renewables scored the lot.
You might be right. But the next 5-10 years will tell. Either we will see a major shift started, not particularly driven by governments. Or we wont. -
Digby Scorgie at 14:42 PM on 17 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Let me get this straight. We need to decarbonize by about 2050. This requires drastic reductions in fossil-fuel use, beginning soon. Use of CCS, with or without BE, would help.
If we focus on the next 25 years (to 2040), I suspect that, to be realistic, there will be only a small reduction in fossil-fuel use. Also, from all I've read about CCS, I conclude that any help in that department will also be small.
But, considering only the next 25 years, does it matter? As I understand it, geophysical inertia ensures a delay of 25 to 50 years before average global temperatures reach the level expected for 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. We have another 0.5 degrees of warming locked in.
Now, over the course of the previous 25 years there has been a marked increase in extreme weather events. These have already had an adverse effect on food production, including in North America. During the next 25 years we can expect these events to become more frequent and intense, leading to even greater damage to food production. In effect, in the near term we will not be able to deviate from the business-as-usual scenario.
Meanwhile, the global population continues to increase, implying a greater demand for food, even as the supply is falling. Global civilization might not survive this. Indeed, I see that Aled Jones and his Global Sustainability Institute predict a collapse of global civilization by 2040.
It seems that Jones and company use a souped-up version of the world model used for "Limits to growth". The model is supposed to be good just for near-term predictions, but I imagine they couldn't resist running it to 2040. The predicted collapse surprised them, but this scenario seems to me all too plausible.
I conclude that any action taken on fossil-fuel use and CCS will not have much effect on the climate for the next quarter century. During this period the worsening climate might well result in the collapse of global civilization.
What intrigues me is the possibility that, if global civilization does collapse before 2040, the result will be the drastic fall in fossil-fuel use that we couldn't otherwise manage ourselves. The planet will have done the job for us.
Please feel free to pick holes in the above scenario.
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Mothra at 05:15 AM on 17 January 2016Climate's changed before
I usually offer deniers an analogy with forest fires.
Forest fires are often caused by lightning, a natural cause.
Does that mean that forest fires are ONLY caused by nature? Of course not. [Smokey the Bear has been telling us that for years.]
Forgive me if that's old and familiar to you.
I appreciate your website, it's excellent.
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michael sweet at 21:16 PM on 16 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Tom's comment above might be used as an OP to counter the claims he refutes, if the incorrect claims by Christy and Dellingpole start to be widely cited. It will be hard to find his specifics if they are left as a comment.
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Kevin C at 21:10 PM on 16 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
We can also check different subsets of the weather stations against each other, as I do in the video. We can check different SST platforms against each other, such as weather buoys against Argos. We can check island weather stations against surrounding SSTs. We can check in situ observations against skin temperature data from infrared satellites. We can check in situ observations against reanalyses based on satellites (including MSUs) or barometers and SSTs. All of these have been done, and more such comparisons are in the pipeline.
The UKMO Eustace project will be relevant in future too.
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Tom Curtis at 13:43 PM on 16 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Some of you are undoubtedly already aware of the excellent video on satellite temperatures recently released by Peter Sinclair:
There is now some denier pushback against that video, led by the infamous James Delingpole, ;at Breitbart.
Some of the pushback (typically of Delingpole) is breathtaking in its dishonesty. For instance, he claims:
"This accuracy [of the satellite record] was acknowledged 25 years ago by NASA, which said that “satellite analysis of the upper atmosphere is more accurate, and should be adopted as the standard way to monitor temperature change.”
It turns out the basis of this claim, is not, however, a NASA report. Rather it was a report in the The Canberra Times on April 1st, 1990. Desite the date, it appears to be a serious account, but mistaken. That is because the only information published on the satellite record to that date was not a NASA report, but "Precise Monitoring of Global Temperature Trends" by Spencer and Christy, published, March 30th, 1990. That paper claims that:
"Our data suggest that high-precision atmospheric temperature monitoring is possible from satellite microwave radiometers. Because of their demonstrated stability and the global
coverage they provide, these radiometers should be made the standard for the monitoring of global atmospheric temperature anomalies since 1979."A scientific paper is not a "NASA report", and two scientists bignoting their own research does not constitute an endorsement by NASA. Citing that erronious newspaper column does, however, effectively launder the fact that Delingpole is merely citing Spencer and Christy to endorse Spencer and Christy.
Given the history of found inaccurracies in the UAH record since 1990 (see below), even if the newspaper column had been accurate, the "endorsement" would be tragically out of date. Indeed, given that history, the original claim by Spencer and Christy is shown to be mere hubris, and wildly in error.
Delingpole goes on to speak of "the alarmists’ preference for the land- and sea-based temperature datasets which do show a warming trend – especially after the raw data has been adjusted in the right direction". What he carefully glosses over is that the combined land-ocean temperature adjustments reduce the trend relative to the raw data, and have minimal effect on the 1979 to current trend.
He then accuses the video of taking the line that "...the satellite records too have been subject to dishonest adjustments and that the satellites have given a misleading impression of global temperature because of the way their orbital position changes over time." That is odd given that the final, and longest say in the video is given to satellite temperature specialist Carl Mears, author of the RSS satellite temperature series, whose concluding point is that we should not ignore the satellite data, nor the surface data, but rather look at all the evidence (Not just at satellite data from 1998 onwards). With regard to Spencer and Christy, Andrew Dessler says (4:00):
"I don't want to bash them because everybody makes mistakes, and I presume everybody is being honest..."
Yet Delingpole finds contrary to this direct statement that the attempt is to portray the adjutments as dishonest.
Delingpoles claim is a bit like saying silent movies depict the keystone cops as being corrupt. The history of adjustments at UAH show Spencer and Christy to be often overconfident in their product, and to have made a series of errors in their calculations, but not to be dishonest.
The nest cannard is that satellites are confirmed by independent data, in balloons - a claim effectively punctured by Tamino:
Finally, Delingpole gives an extensive quote from John Christy:
"There are too many problems with the video on which to comment, but here are a few.
First, the satellite problems mentioned here were dealt with 10 to 20 years ago. Second, the main product we use now for greenhouse model validation is the temperature of the Mid-Troposphere (TMT) which was not erroneously impacted by these problems.
The vertical “fall” and east-west “drift” of the spacecraft are two aspects of the same phenomenon – orbital decay.
The real confirmation bias brought up by these folks to smear us is held by them. They are the ones ignoring information to suit their world view. Do they ever say that, unlike the surface data, the satellite datasets can be checked by a completely independent system – balloons? Do they ever say that one of the main corrections for time-of-day (east-west) drift is to remove spurious WARMING after 2000? Do they ever say that the important adjustment to address the variations caused by solar-shadowing effects on the spacecraft is to remove a spurious WARMING? Do they ever say that the adjustments were within the margin of error?"
Here is the history of UAH satellite temperature adjustments to 2005:
Since then we have had additional corrections:
- 5.2: Eliminate NOAA 16 data, +0.01 C/decade; Dec 2006
- 5.2: Discovered previous correction eliminated NOAA 15 by mistake, unknown amount; Dec 2006
- 5.2 Switch from annual to monthly anomaly period baseline, +0.002 C/decade; July 2009
- 5.5 Eliminate AQUA data, + 0.001 C/decade
There were also changes from version 5.2 to 5.3, 5.3 to 5.4 and 5.5 to 5.6 which did not effect the trend. Finally we have the (currently provisional) change from 5.6 to 6.0:
- 6.0, Adjust channels used in determining TLT, -0.026 C/decade; April, 2015
Against that record we can check Christy's claims. First, he claims the problems were dealt with 10-20 years ago. That, of course, assumes the corrections made fixed the problem, ie, that the adjustments were accurate. As he vehemently denies the possibility that surface temperature records are accurate, he is hardly entitled to that assumption. Further, given that it took three tries to correct the diurnal drift problem, and a further diurnal drift adjustment was made in 2007 (not trend effect mentioned), that hardly inspires confidence. (The 2007 adjustment did not represent a change in method, but rather reflects a change in the behaviour of the satellites, so it does not falsify the claim about when the problem was dealt with.)
Second, while they may now do model validation against TMT, comparisons with the surface product are done with TLT - so that represents an evasion.
Third, satellite decay and diurnal drift may be closely related problems but that is how they are consistently portrayed in the video. Moreover, given that they are so closely related it begs the question as to why a correction for the first (Version D above) was not made until four years after the first correction for the second.
Moving into his Gish gallop we have balloons (see link to, and image from Tamino above). Next he mentions two adjustments that reduce the trend (remove spurious warming), with the suggestion that the failure to mention that the adjustments reduce the trend somehow invalidates the criticism. I'm not sure I follow his logic in making a point of adjustments in the direction that suites his biases. I do note the massive irony given the repeated portrayal of adjustments to the global land ocean temperture record as increasing the trend relative to raw data when in fact it does the reverse.
Finally, he mentions that the adjustments fall within the margin of error (0.05 C per decade). First, that is not true of all adjustments, with two adjustments (both implimented in version D) exceding the margin of error. Second, the accumulative adjustment to date, including version 6.0, results in a 0.056 C/decade increase in the trend. That is, accumulative adjustments to date exceed the margin of error. Excluding the version 6 adjustments (which really change the product by using a different profile of the atmosphere), they exceeded the margin of error by 38% for version 5.2 and by 64% for version 5.6 (as best as I can figure). If the suggestion is that adjustments have not significantly altered the estimated trend, it is simply wrong. Given that Christy is responsible (with Spencer) for this product, there is not excuse for such a mistatement.
To summarize, the pushback against the video consists of a smorgazbord of innacurate statements, strawman presentations of the contents of the video, and misdirection. Standard Delingpole (and unfortunately, Christy) fare.
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Olof R at 21:18 PM on 15 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Glenn Tamblyn #19,
Po-Chedley et al 2015 use and praise the methods of NOAA STAR, and together with their own new diurnal drift correction, they can reduce the error/uncertainty substantially. They do a Monte Carlo uncertainty simulation, like that of RSS. From table 3 in that paper:
Trends ± 95% CI in tropical TMT (20 S-20 N)
Po-Chedley 0.115±0.024 °C/decade
RSS 0.089±0.051 °C/decade
Thus, Po-Chedley et al can reduce the uncertainty by half compared to RSS, and their narrower interval fits almost perfectly to the upper half of the RSS uncertainty interval.
There is other evidence that the true temperature trends of the free troposphere should be in the upper part of the RSS uncertainty interval. One example is this chart , an investigation of the claim "No warming for 18 years", with a collection of alternative indices from satellites, radiosondes and reanalyses.
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chriskoz at 21:16 PM on 15 January 2016Kids ask US presidential candidates to debate science
Sample of questions (in original article) is impressively exhaustive. Some of that questions clearly have nothing to do with science and cannot come from young kids, e.g.:
How should we manage immigration of skilled workers?
That's a socio-economic problem that kids honestly don't care about. Myself, I didn't even know about such problem until I started my uni education, i.e. I was well into the voting edge.
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uncletimrob at 19:48 PM on 15 January 2016Kids ask US presidential candidates to debate science
This is a really interesting study and reminds me of the 1960's and 1970's student protests. As a teacher I can assure anyone that quality time spent with 13 - 17 year olds, in an environment where they are stimulated, valued and listened to will show you that they:
1) do care about the future
2) do have an understanding of the issues of today and how they may affect the future
3) are concerned about extinctions and environmantal damage
4) do have an understanding of what climate change is and means.
Unfortunately Pollies look to the next 4 years, not the next 40 (or more) that our children will be exposed to. So the eyes, ears and hearts of the future are often ignored.
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Paul D at 19:15 PM on 15 January 2016Kids ask US presidential candidates to debate science
I recently tried talking about science and energy with my (UK) Minister of Parliament who is Conservative.
What I found is this:
1. A backbench MP who is interested in higher positions and sees politics as a career is unlikely to say anything to members of the public/voters that would contradict their political parties official policy.2. A mainstream MP will acknowledge climate change is real and we have to do something about it. However the party ideology and the MPs economic and social beliefs will always have a higher priority. It's because their brains have had years of self indoctorination that continually influences the path they take.
3. The bottom line is always winning the next election which will result in short term policies overriding any long term issues. A quick fix appeases party activists and opinion polls.
4. An MP will stop talking if you clearly have a completely different take on the subject. Put yourself in the place of a customer who wants a special version of a mass produced product, you ask the Apple sales person for an Android iPhone, they will tell you to go and shop somewhere else. MPs are products or product sales people, if you don't want their product and they can get plenty of business without changing, then they will get bored with you. -
Tom Curtis at 13:24 PM on 15 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy @28, I do want to emphasize the "relatively" in "relatively trivial levels associated with transport and processing". To see what that means, compare S4-7 (forest residues, counterfactual: leave in forest), S8 (forest residuces, counterfactual: burn as waste), and the previously mentioned 9b (salvaged dead trees, counterfactual: remove and burn at roadside figure 28 in the report). These have approximate emissions intensities as follows:
S4-7: 310 +/- 230 KgCO2e/MWh
S8: 25 +/- 40 KgCO2e/MWh
S9b: 0 +/- 100 kgCO2e/MWh
Natural Gas: 440 kgCO2e/MWh
Coal: 1020 KgCO2e/MWh
The difference between scenario S4-7 and S8 is that the branches that constitute the litter decay slowly in S4-7, thereby constituting a temporary carbon sequestration relative to the immediate combustion. Between S8 and S9b the difference is that combustion of a whole tree is inefficient, resulting the production of methane. Crucially, the difference between S8 bioenergy usage, and the counterfactual is that the counterfactual avoids all the transport and processing costs. Therefore, to a close approximation, that 25 KgCO2e/MWh represents the emissions represents the emissions from transport and processing.
As you can see, it is less than 10% of the cost relative to leaving the litter in situ, which cost is fairly representative of the costs or benefits of different changes in LU. A beneficial change in LU (barren, grass or agricultural land to plantation of naturally regenerating forest) will swamp that component; while for a harmful switch the transport and processing emissions will be swallowed by the error margin.
Hence "relatively trivial".
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Andy Skuce at 12:41 PM on 15 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Tom, I don't think it's quite right to claim that the transport and processing emissions are relatively trivial. I'm no expert on these matters, so I may have misunderstood something, but it seems that there is a lot of energy used to gather, dry, pelletize and transport the product (wood pellets) used in UK electricity generation. This involves the consumption of natural gas and petroleum. For example, Western Canadian wood pellets used in the UK (made from waste wood), the energy consumed could range anywhere from ~20% to ~80% of the final electrical output of the UK power stations.
Here is the graph showing the GHG intensity, measured over 100 years, of using waste wood for different sources. As you can see, emissions are mostly less than using natural gas, but are rarely near or below zero. And it's not just a matter of LUC.
Now, there are counterfactuals that make biomass consumption emissions-negative, for example, when agricultural or abandoned land is reforested, or where the management intensity of existing forests is increased (see Figures 5 and Figure 6, below). Mostly, the resource quantities in N America that qualify for negative emissions are smaller even than the demand for Britain alone.
And, of course, the life-cycle emissions of other kinds of biomass grown and used in other parts of the world may be entirely different, but these were beyond the scope of the DECC report.
Perhaps I went too far in saying that all biomass use is not carbon neutral, but, among the scenarios studied by DECC, the majority of them are. However, I think that it is certainly wrong to assume, as the EU currently does, that biomass combustion does not produce net GHGs.
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Tom Curtis at 10:04 AM on 15 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy Skuce @26, looking at the executive summary of the DECC report, it becomes obvious that the energy intensity of biomass is absolutely dependent on Land Use Change (LUC) over the short period. Scenario 9b (Deadwood from natural disturbance where the wood would otherwise have been burnt by the roadside) represents an interesting case in that it involves no LUC in the counterfactual. The report shows an energy intensity of approx +/- 100 kgCO2e/MWh in this case, with the uncertainty arising from whether emissions from processing and transport are outweighed by the more efficient combustion with avoided CH4 emissions. As emissions from combustion by the roadside and from natural decay will be approximately equivalent (though on a shorter timescale) this scenario approximates to that of biomass energy with no LUC.
Beyond that, carbon stocks in situ at a given site depend on the current land use, with:
Old Growth Forest > Naturally Regenerating Forest > Plantations > Agricultural and/or Grassland (a)
Thus if you cut down naturally regenerating forest to provide space for plantations, there is a large net loss of stored carbon and the biomass generated over the short to medium term will have large effective emissions to compensate for that difference. On the other hand, if you take abandoned land/grassland/agricultural land and convert it to plantations, there is an increase in carbon storage in the land so that the biomass energy produced has a net negative carbon intensity over the short term, even without CCS.
Clearly this means that over timeframes required to restore forests to natural conditions, carbon intensity from biomass energy from any source will trend towards the emissions from transport and processing. Assumed to operate in perpetuity, they will approach that level as an asymptote. That is, the biomass energy is essentially carbon neutral (ignoring the relatively trivial levels associated with transport and processing) except for the effects on LUC.
Of course, it is unreasonable to plan on the assumption a process will continue in perpetuity. That is particularly the case as biomass energy is often assumed to be a coal substitute to extend the life of existing plants. Ergo it follows that the energy intensity will approximate to emissions from LUC from preproject state to final project state/ energy produced over the lifetime of the project. Thus, biomass from plantations grown on abandoned/agricultural/grassland that is returned to its original state after the end of the project is essentially CO2 neutral, while bioenergy from disturbed forests will have positive carbon intensities, potentially as great as coal in the short term but in the long term >200 years are carbon neutral provided the land harvested is allowed to return to a natural forest state. And for completeness, bioenergy from agricultural waste do not add to emissions from the agricultural project itself.
Would you agree this is a fair summary?
If so it is in agreement with all I have said above, except that I have treated the bioenergy as essentially carbon neutral but noted that emissions from LUC do need to be accounted for (but accounted for separately). I would agree that the DECC accounting method is better when examining the effects of individual projects.
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Andy Skuce at 05:16 AM on 15 January 2016The Quest for CCS
To be clear, I answered "yes" to ryland's question @5 because he/she used the word "somewhat". There are cases, as Tom has pointed out, where biomass use can help reduce GHG concentrations at the same time as providing energy, particularly if/when BECCS is employed. What is wrong, however, is the assumption made by the EU and others that all biomass burning (without BECCS) is carbon neutral. Biomass burning is somewhat self-defeating and it has other mostly nasty environmental impacts, as well, on land use, water use and ecosystem preservation.
i would urge everyone to look through the DECC report I referenced in @7. This study has the fingerprints of David Mackay all over it. The emissions impacts of different kinds of biomass vary very widely and depend on a multitude of assumptions about geography (where we gather the fuel, where we burn it), counterfactuals (ie, what would happen if we didn't burn the biomass) and the time periods over which we measure the effects. Perhaps the only sweeping conclusion we can draw is that biomass energy, as it is currently practised, is not carbon neutral.
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John Hartz at 04:15 AM on 15 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Recommended supplemental reading/viewing:
Experts Fault Reliance on Satellite Data Alone by Peter Sinclair, Yale Climate Connection, Jan 14, 2016
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Tom Curtis at 03:29 AM on 15 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Joel_Huberman @23, Land Use Change. More correctly I should refer to Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry (LULUCF) but that is a bit of a moutful.
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RedBaron at 03:23 AM on 15 January 2016How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Glenn # 168
This is the most important point made on this whole page:
"Feedlots of grain feed cattle just so we can have lots of steaks that are marbled 'just so' aren't. That is a wasteful indulgence."
Since ultimately we are discussing how to change the current system to something that doesn't contribute as much if any to AGW, they key is what effects can be achieved by which changes.
The problem with the switch to vegetarianism/veganism is that we are still stuck with all the problems associated with fossil fuel derived haber process ammonium nitrate in crop production, and the resultant soil degradation that stems from that.
A properly integrated animal husbandry and crop production model needs little to no haber process nitrogen once SOM reaches ~4%-5% +/- and produces a synergy where waste and pests from one are food for the other. Finally several integrated systems have been shown to actually be net carbon sinks, sequestering more carbon in the soil than their associated emissions. For this reason, ultimately the changes required to mitigate AGW the most are to re-integrate animal husbandry production into cropping systems, rather than either feedlots or eliminating animal husbandry altogether.
I am not trying to diminish the harm livestock production causes now, just pointing out that we are talking about changing that harm to a benefit. Animal husbandry properly managed and fully integrated into crop production is the better option over veganism, though both are probably somewhat of an improvement over the CAFO and grain production models most commonly used now.
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Pol Knops at 03:11 AM on 15 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Indeed in addition to CCS we have to move to BECCS. But given the enormous amounts required (and thereby the land requirements) even BECCS won't be sufficiently.
As JWRebel noticed there are indeed more ways for Carbon Dioxide Removal:
- enhanced weathering: spreading Olivine and let it react with CO2. The cost are mainly depending on buying the olivine (and therefor the logistics).
- accelerated weathering; making of products with CO2. But this is still in a research phase. Although we want to scale up.
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