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michael sweet at 06:38 AM on 17 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Ryland,
When I Googled Dharnai I got several hits with your reference. I also got several links from Indian newspapers like this one which say the program was a success. None of the additional links described the problems your link cited. Since the Indians actually live nearby, why should I believe the report you cited? Can you provide a reference to support the claims that you have referenced?
Scientific American recently printed an article by the same author claiming that Nuclear is required to provide electricity (with no peer reviewed references) and an op-ed from Matt Ridley, a well known science denier, saying that warming is no problem. I am skeptical of what they currently publish.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:16 AM on 17 December 2015It hasn't warmed since 1998
MarDivPhoto... Dr Mears actually suggests that the satellite data is not so good. On the blog MA Rogers links to he clearly states, "A similar, but stronger case [for model/observations] can be made using surface temperature datasets, which I consider to be more reliable than satellite datasets (they certainly agree with each other better than the various satellite datasets do!)."
You can't casually discard models when you don't fully understand the accuracy of the observations. It's just as likely, at this point, that models are doing a better than observations are.
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MA Rodger at 05:55 AM on 17 December 2015It hasn't warmed since 1998
MarDivPhoto @369.
I assume you refer to the Carl Mears blog post here. You seem to be arguing here that it is Mears who is in denial, not you. That isn't a very good example for the "back & forth of discussions" you describe as being the stuff of science. And in dismissing Mears and his analysis, you replace it with "sunspots, etc." It is all a bit shallow, do you not think?
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ryland at 05:36 AM on 17 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
@21 My apologies. I should also have given the link to the Sci Am article. It is here
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ryland at 05:12 AM on 17 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
@21 As requested. The link is here
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RedBaron at 04:54 AM on 17 December 2015How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
@saileshrao #147
point #2) What you have there is a classic example of cherry picking and confirmation bias. You said "my interpretation of Ahimsa, which is part of my cultural legacy". Well your interpretation is not even close to your "cultural heritage". Veganism is an example of removing the individual religious dogma from the cultural heritage context. Nor does your link say what you think it says. From your link:"how we treat other animals" -nothing there about getting rid of the cow, rather about how the cow is treated. "Adopting a plant-based diet" - Plant based is not Vegan any more than "meat eater" is only meat. It mearly describes the bulk of the diet. In fact for those poor that can't afford enriched foods or supplements a Vegan diet is very harmful, or even fatal for the vast majority of people. Thus goes AGAINST the concept of ahimsa. Not to mention the harm to the environment. Also AGAINST the concept of ahimsa.
If you are actually serious about your new religion, and want a true understanding of the cultural heritage behind it, look here. Explained very well.
Point #3) Confirmation bias yet again. No where does that paper say getting rid of cows or other livestock, Rather it says, "efficient and sustainable food-production practices" are needed. And it says "means humans, can be sustained only by developing alternative energy resources to replace the dwindling supply of fossil fuels."
All of which means in agriculture, we need an efficient alternative to fossil fuel fertilizers. As explained to you multiple times, the most efficient alternative to that is the rumen, but other animals can help to a lessor degree. So efficient is the rumen in fact that it actually is far more efficient than the fossil fuels we typically use now in the Haber process. Managed properly of course.
point #4) All good you stand behind your work. I also agree we need to reforest. We could do that far more likely by getting rid of the factory farming production model and instead use the livestock to help us in our efforts.
Another couple quotes from someone who gets it, both the ethical and how livestock can be used for ecosystem regeneration.
"In our culture we view the pigs as just so much inanimate protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly hubris can imagine to manipulate it. And I would suggest that a culture that views its plants and animals in that type of disrespectful, arrogant, manipulative standpoint will view its citizens the same way...and other cultures" Joel Salatin
"The pigs do that work (by rooting in the forest and that creates the temporary disturbance on the ground that allows germination for higher successional species.) And so it allows for those pigs to be not just pork chops, bacon, and that. But now they then become co-conspirators and fellow laborers in this great land healing ministry ... by fully respecting the pigness of the pig." Joel Salatin
PS Oh and by the way, it doesn't mean you must stop being vegan. Eat whatever you decide. What it means is you must stop blaming the domestic animals for how we mistreat them.
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michael sweet at 04:02 AM on 17 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Ryland:
Can you provide a link to the op-ed, I did not see it on the Australian site.
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saileshrao at 00:53 AM on 17 December 2015How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Tristan@145:
Please see debunking here. -
saileshrao at 00:50 AM on 17 December 2015How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Tom Curtis@144:
1. Indeed, Pope Francis, being human, does not always do what he says. He consumed steak and lobster in NYC.
2. I stand by my interpretation of Ahimsa, which is part of my cultural legacy. The Hindu Declaration on Climate Change has now explicitly called for the adoption of a plant-based vegan diet.3. Prof. Anthony Barnosky of UC Berkeley has stated that the excess human+livestock biomass of megafauna could only be supported with excess energy appropriated from fossil fuels in the industrial era.
4. Silver et al. reported above ground regrowth measurements for tropical forests. The Integrated Science Assessment Model (ISAM) estimated both above ground and below ground carbon sequestration of all forest bomes at maturity.
We stand by the results that we presented at the AGU Fall Meeting on Monday. For any clarifications on land carbon issues, please feel free to contact my co-author, Prof. Atul Jain, who is a contributor to the IPCC and a land carbon expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. -
ryland at 00:33 AM on 17 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
This comment from the editorial in the Australian of Wednsday 16 December eloquently sums up the attempts to get global action on climate change. Note the editorial refers to a piece in Sci Am a publication not renowned for its scepticism on climate change.
"In an act of conceit, the developed nations decided others should not follow their path to prosperity built on abundant and cheap energy. No, poor nations should rely on the generosity of the developed world funding expensive and inferior clean and green energy. So people in need of cheap and reliable power — and the jobs, food, shelter, education, health and security it brings — instead would be given solar or wind.
"The futility of this approach has been detailed in Scientific American, which recounts how the village of Dharnai in India’s Bihar state was outfitted with solar electricity under a Greenpeace initiative. When children found themselves without light for study and families couldn’t use their electric appliances they protested at the official solar launch; the state was forced to relent and connect them to the coal-fired power grid".
As we sit in our airconditioned homes with all the conveniences modern society gives Westerners, many of which are due to stable and reliable electricity supplies, we have the temerity to say to those who can only dream of such amenities, 'you must do without". Yeah right! There are many here who applaud COP21 but here are many many more who will be very disadvantaged indeed. This is not an issue considered relavant by some who comment here but it is one that should not be ignored by respondents to SkS
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RedBaron at 00:31 AM on 17 December 2015How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
@Tristan #145,
Thanks for the link. I will be bookmarking it for further use.
I was not aware of the paper, but certainly am aware of the problem. In fact it is my own research field. Even though I work with vegetables and not livestock, I researched the newer methods of each crop and animal husbandry type to find which had suceeded in turning agriculture from an unsustainable emissions source to a carbon sink. Or at least made big improvements over conventional, without losing yields and scalable. There are several. Already mentioned above in several posts are SRI for rice[1], and multi-species MIRG for livestock[2][3], but also you can add pasture cropping [4][5][6] for small grains like wheat and intensive dairy, various no till multi species cover crops [7][8][9] for commodity grains and cotton, integrated MIRG and orchard/vineyards for fruits and nuts.[10]
Then I looked for the underlying principles in common.[11] All of these improve yields and soil health, while reducung and/or eliminating fossil fuel derived inputs at the same time. But a glaring lack of a proven method also scalable both large or small for most vegetables. Even large scale organic hasn't solved this yet. Though a few small scale permaculture methods have, they are not really easily scalable, too labor intensive. A few people have gotten close.
So anyway I do believe I have a solution, but still as of yet unproven. I applied for a grant last year to have a case study done reviewed by a third party, but didn't get it. I will keep trying for the grant to document it properly, in the mean time still tweaking it. We will see. I mentioned this only to let you know you are absolutely correct about vegetables, but I personally see no fundamental reason that can't become a carbon sink as well... With a little more research and development. Not just me, but a lot of people are converging on that solution too.
PS Sorry for the mixture of lay citations and scientific study citations, but some of these methods are so new, people don't even understand what I am talking about. All of these excepting my own research has already good evidence in case studies and/or published papers. And of course as soon as I am able, I will properly document my work as well.
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MarDivPhoto at 00:30 AM on 17 December 2015It hasn't warmed since 1998
I went looking for whatever set of satellite data were least challengeable, and found the excellent graph by Dr. Mears. Since he is a firm believer in AGW and would not be somehow trying to manipulate data to make less of any warming trend, that seemed the safest bet.
However, examining his graph, what I see is that, neglecting the spike at 1998, the ups&downs of the chart from about 1994 or so make a classic SPC chart that shows a stable process. While the various computer programs predict a 1 to 1.5 increase in the time, the actual level is about 0.3 deg above centerline. Clearly the models are badly flawed, and in science, when your models don't work, you discard them. Thus it is not some kind of biased "denial" to take the position that there is no compelling evidence of a warming trend. Dr. Mears goes into all the reasons why we are seeing a "pause", but this is basically trying to discount what his own data indicate, based on the belief, not reasoning, that there MUST be warming going on.
The counter arguments of skeptics deserve something more than personal attacks on "denialists". The very use of such terminology is unworthy of those seeking truth. In Science the back and forth of discussions is supposed to be the norm up until there is compelling evidence to prove an hypothesis is valid. There may yet come clearer evidence of warming, or some of the alternative theories about sunspots, etc, may gather more evidence. Until then it would behoove all of us (yes, I am a scientist with degrees and long practice) to remain at least tolerant of views other than our own.
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CBDunkerson at 22:49 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Also keep in mind that local laws in some countries will force them to meet the committments they made at COP21. We saw that earlier this year when the Dutch courts forced the government to increase their GHG reduction plans to meet EU standards.
It really comes down to the US and China. If they keep their committments and improve them every five years as intended then that's a huge chunk of the world's total emissions right there. Any nations NOT doing their share would then also have to deal with the two biggest economic and military superpowers being on their case. In a sense, COP21 is just the world following on to what the US & China did with their agreement last year... and there is no reason to believe that won't continue so long as those two countries keep making progress.
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Tom Curtis at 18:18 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
B'wana Finklestein @16, that an agreement is not legally binding does not make it not an agreement. It does mean the enforcement measures are political and/or diplomatic rather than legal - but that is true of nearly all treaties. Even those with legal enforcement mechanisms nearly always allow countries to autonomously excempt themselves from those mechanisms. (As a cynical aside, the only important exceptions to that rule relate to "free trade" mechanisms, which are far more enforcible, and rigourously enforced than, for example, human rights provisions. That mismatch is an indictment of our civilization, and shows clearly where real power lies in our nations.) Nor does it mean, contrary to Ryland's link, that it is an agreement to increase emissions, although it is certainly not an agreement that guarantees no further increase in emissions.
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ryland at 16:06 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
If you read the reference posted by jsousa @10 you will find a very different take on COP21. As it is not linked @10 I have reposted a link to that reference here. After all the hype and ballyhoo all that has been brought forth is a toothless tiger that has no powers to enforce adherence by anyone to any of the recommendations made. Whatever COP21 produced it seems much less an agreement and more a bunch of hopeful aspirations.
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B'wana Finklestein at 14:59 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
But isn't that the point TonyW is making Tom... it is not an Agreement...?
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Tom Curtis at 14:23 PM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
wili @7, high temperatures in 2015 relative to post 2000 values is primarilly due to the strong El Nino, and yes, they will revert to trend. The trend they will revert to is most probabibly about 15% less than the model predicted trend of 0.2 C per decade. That trend will increase overtime, but gradually at first so it is not likely to be much above that till after 2030.
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Tom Curtis at 14:20 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
TonyW @14, it is not a fraud. What has been accomplished is that the world's nations have made explicit, testable statements of what they think they can accomplish. In doing so, they have bet their national, and personal prestige on their doing so. Further, they fact of the commitments provides genuine political and/or diplomatic leverage against policies which fail to meet commitments.
That is not very much - but it is something. Further, it is as much as can be expected at the moment politically and diplomatically. That it is all that can be expected is a travesty, but it is what it is. I am certain that COP21 will result in reduced global emissions relative to what would have happened had no agreement been reached. Just nowhere near the reduction in emissions necessary for avoiding 2 C (ignoring large scale carbon sequestration).
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TonyW at 13:56 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
I'm amazed that the agreement has received such a positive response. Actually, James Hansen had one of the most reasonable responses - it's a fraud. As others have noted, there are no actual plans for how even the paltry INDCs will be implemented and no legal means of enforcing them. The language is weak and an aspiration of 1.5C sounds nice but I doubt you'd find any climate scientist that thinks it's possible (apart from the odd contrarian who doesn't think sensitivity is very high). So if they are including an impossible aspiration, then that really drags down the whole thing. We'll see more talk-fests in 2018, 2020 and 2023, whilst GHG concentrations continue to rise (unless we get economic contraction).
Also, fair comment, Wili. -
wili at 13:40 PM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Forget population and growth: even freakin' fossil fuels were apparently unspeakable in the Paris deal.
therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15300
How can we ever actually get anywhere if we can't even use the most basic words that most accurately describe the sources of the problem and the areas that most have to change??
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wili at 13:29 PM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
Tom, are you trying to say that the increased temperatures this year are due to El Nino and that soon after we will return to the longer-term trend of near linear increases in GW?
Do you expect that we will see any acceleration of that heating anytime in the coming years and decades?
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Tom Curtis at 11:43 AM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
ArnotSmith @4, there is also a lagged natural drawdown of CO2 concentration so that if we ceased all emissions, to a first order approximation, temperatures will remain constant. The gradual increase of temperture to ECS will be balanced out by the gradual drawdown of CO2. That means that if we could genuinely eliminate all emissions, including all anthropogenic NOX or CH4 emissions, even at 560 ppmv we would have a 50/50 chance of limiting temperature rise to 2 C (470 ppmv for 1.5 C).
As it happens, with out sequestration, it is impossible to eliminate all emissions, particularly of agricultural CH4 and NO2 so that we would hope to reach zero net emissions of CO2 significantly prior to that. That is not going to happen on the COP21 agreement. Therefore our chance of keeping temperatures below 2 C, and certainly for below 1.5 C depend on economically viable, large scale sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in the second half of this century. Absent that sequestration, we are looking at 2.5-3.5 C for midrange TCR estimates, and must relly on the fortunate fact that the 2 C cutoff is somewhat arbitrary. Going above 2 C will be worse than staying below it, but incrementally so rather than a dicontinuity resulting on complete catastrophe. That is, it will be bad, and will result in significant loss of life, but is unlikely to result in the end of civilization.
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ArnotSmith at 11:41 AM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
What's more, at 1.0C we are already seeing significant instability in the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets, pointing to up to 10m sea level rise in an uncertain period, even if we stay below 1.5C.
Can we go back 20 years and try again?
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ArnotSmith at 10:57 AM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
But - there is a lag. 400ppm CO2 is enough to bring us to around 1.5C increase in equlibrium. Therefore we can not accept any more CO2 emissions. Which seems unlikely to happen. :(
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Tom Curtis at 09:24 AM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
wili @2, trend is relevant when we hit peaks just as much as when we hit troughs.
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wili at 08:50 AM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
What is your estimate for the amount that the world's temperature will raise if/when we stop spewing enormous amounts of polluting (but insolation-shielding) aerosols into the atmosphere?
I've heard estimates from .2 C to 2 C, but I haven't kept up to date on the latest studies on this.
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wili at 08:48 AM on 16 December 2015Myles Allen: Can we hold global warming to 1.5°C?
"value of human-induced warming is over 0.9C"
Isn't it closer to 1.1 C?
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Eclectic at 08:45 AM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Wyoming ( @11 ) , you are much too pessimistic. The situation is not black-and-white; not all-or-nothing. The Kyoto agreement was (and is) rather effete, yet the Paris agreement shows signs of being halfway realistic. And sure, the global warming crisis [ or is "gradual crisis" a better term? ] is something which justifies much greater action : greater action which could be taken without significant harm to the world economy. Nevertheless . . . half a glass is better than an empty glass.
You are of course right, in that "drastically reduced population" would be of considerable benefit here. But that is not going to happen by choice, is it? Halting or reducing the population surge is (politically) unspeakable.
And you are right, about another great unspeakable : and that is, doing something to curb "Growth". The world's economic Growth is such a deity, that it is barely permissible to mention growth without using a capital "G". Political leaders are quite locked-in to praising & pursuing "growth", because they have long educated the populace to believe that "growth" [measured in dollars] is an entitlement, a cure for all ills, and an innately worthy goal . . . its only alternative being evil stagnation or (yet more evil) decay.
Quite a nonsensical position, to be sure. But any politician mentioning a plan for halting Growth (or even, oh shudder, aiming for negative Growth) would immediately be howled down as a heartless monster and baby-killer.
No, it is much too late to speak sensibly about our "growth" problem. All I can see, is the possibility of speaking of aiming at Quality Growth as an alternative choice to our present god Quantity Growth. Quality growth implies better quality, longer-laster physical possessions : which are not requiring the vast churn of resources & energy currently done in our manufacturing (and planned-obsolence) economy.
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Tristan at 06:32 AM on 16 December 2015How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Ha anyone consumed this paper yet? It's claims seem rather surprising.
It suggests that a greater percentage of fruit and veggies in diets is worse for the environment.
"These perhaps counterintuitive results are primarily due to USDA recommendations for greater Caloric intake of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and fish/seafood, which have relatively high resource use and emissions per Calorie."
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Wyoming at 04:36 AM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
'....deniers have lost the climate wars.'
'In short, leaders from around the world have agreed that we must do everything we can to slow global warming as much as we can,......'
???
Well I must say I don't understand those sentiments at all. My understanding of the world and what happened in Paris would come up with a statement more along the lines of this.
"Once again world leaders failed to live up to their responsibilities of looking out for the good of the populace and bowed to short term political and corporate interests."
This 'agreement' is worthless for all the obvious reasons. It does not advance us in any meaningful way beyond Kyoto. Anyone who has paid attention to what countries say and then later do knows that there is no commitment there and many lies have been told. Look at what people are doing not at what they are saying. One knows for certain that what we will get is much less than the text of the 'agreement' and the agreement is for numbers which spell disaster. Bright green BS is no more useful to us than fossil based obstruction.
We will not be making progress until there are 'actions' which implement a dialogue on the need to drastically reduce population numbers (not just the growth rate), reduce affluence (not raise it), reduce consumption (not raise it), ban burning coal (and use force to make it happen), etc. All we have here is more wordsmithing like we have seen for the last 20 years.
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Tom Curtis at 02:46 AM on 16 December 2015Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money
JohnSeers @23, From Keenlyside et al:
"We now consider two forecasts, started in November 2000 and November 2005. The MOC is predicted to weaken almost to its 1950–2005 mean over the next decade (Fig. 3a), leading to a weakening of Atlantic SST hemispheric difference towards zero (Fig. 3b). North Atlantic (not shown), western European (Fig. 3c) and North American (Fig. 3d) surface temperatures cool towards 1994–2004 levels. In contrast, in the un-initialized (twentieth century-RF) predictions the MOC slightly weakens, the hemispheric SST difference is unchanged, and warming of surface temperatures over the latter three regions continues (Fig. 3a–d). Eastern tropical Pacific SST is forecasted to remain almost unchanged, but 0.3 K cooler than the uninitialized predictions (Fig. 3e). The differences in predicted North Atlantic and tropical Pacific variability lead to a large difference in the global mean temperature prediction: the initialized prediction indicates a slight cooling relative to 1994–2004 levels, while the anthropogenic-forcing-only simulation suggests a near 0.3 K rise (Fig. 4). In the long-term both projections agree with each other, as is found by extending the 2005 prediction till 2030 (Fig. 4). Internal decadal fluctuations were also found to offset anthropogenic global warming in a previous study19, but the offset was much less pronounced and associated primarily with changes in the tropical Pacific."
(My emphasis)
And here is the relevant figure 4:
Note, the prediction (greenline) is that the decadal average starting Nov 2000 will be "slightly" cooler than the observed 1994-2004 levels on HadCRUT3 (redline), not their hindcast values (greenline) which are lower.
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José M. Sousa at 02:29 AM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2015/12/13/cop21-world-agrees-to-increase-emissions/
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jipspagoda at 02:16 AM on 16 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
The only thing accomplished was job security for the bureaucrats in attendance.
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JohnSeers at 01:54 AM on 16 December 2015Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money
"In 2008, a paper was published in the journal Nature predicting that global surface temperatures would cool slightly in the years 2005–2015 as compared to 1994–2004."
Not quite what it says in the abstract (which is all I can see):
"Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, ..."
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Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money
I've found it fascinating - over the last five years the deniers have in turn focused on HadCRUT3, then UAH, and now RSS in sequence. Moving to whatever temperature record showed the least warming over recent years, and jumping ship whenever that record reversed variability and warmed faster, or received an update that took it off the bottom of the list.
Cherry picking in the extreme.
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knaugle at 23:45 PM on 15 December 2015Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money
It is interesting that the discussion is very specific about UAH, ver 5.6 or 6.0, yet RSS is at version 3.3 and nearly every source I read in the public literature is silent on this. The point remains that it seems many politicos, like Sens. Cruz & Inhofe, argue that when the surface datasets make revisions, they are cheating. Yet when the satellite data is modified, they are silent, and that is just the normal course of science?
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bill shockley at 13:03 PM on 15 December 2015The Road to Two Degrees, Part Two: Are the experts being candid about our chances?
Source article:
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bill shockley at 12:57 PM on 15 December 2015The Road to Two Degrees, Part Two: Are the experts being candid about our chances?
O boy. Didn't mean for the image to be that big... hope I haven't broken the site. :)
If it's not clear from the image captions, each scenario assumes 2 GtC/year CO2
drawdown in the years 2031 -2080 by reforestation and agricultural soil management techniques.
The source article is here.
From instances where a carbon tax has been tried, indications are that emissions begin to come down
in the first year.
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bill shockley at 12:44 PM on 15 December 2015The Road to Two Degrees, Part Two: Are the experts being candid about our chances?
I'm arriving late to this discussion but I sure do have a couple questions for KA if he's still accessible.
His objection to a carbon tax is that it unfairly burdens the least wealthy in society. This opinion seems to imply that he is unaware of the revenue neutral option, a circumstance I find not probable, considering James Hansen's long and loud advocacy. So, what else might be his objection to the rev-neutral fee/dividend approach.
Similarly, Hansen has been advocating for a global policy of CO2 drawdown via deforestation and agricultural soil management methods, which he thinks can amount to 2 GtC/year once the program is in full swing. Such a capability would be a huge boost to our ability to moderate atmospheric CO2 levels. Has KA considered and rejected this notion, or is he unaware of the potential?
Moderator Response:[GT] Image resized to fit page. Please ensure any images you insert are sized to no more than 500 wide - larger breaks the page.
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Tom Dayton at 12:33 PM on 15 December 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Sorry, JoeT, I haven't tried to understand Roy Spencer's admission of the satellite-based estimate of tropospheric temperature being not usable as a proxy for surface temperature. I don't have time right now, since I'd have to spend a lot of time to research it. I posted that just because it's informative that even Spencer has admitted it.
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ryland at 11:59 AM on 15 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Thanks eclectic I wish that I was more careful and you less observant as I now feel very mortified. Perhaps the moderator (who is not unfamiliar with editing my posts) will rescue me with a small p.
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Tom Curtis at 11:13 AM on 15 December 2015How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
saileshrao @139:
1) The pope, apparently, prefers "...frugal, healthy meals made up of fruit, skinless chicken, and salads, with the occasional glass of wine." Ergo he is not even a vegetarian, let alone a vegan. It follows that whatever constitutes making animals "suffer and die needlessly" in his opinion, it does not include killing them for meat. To quote him to suggest otherwise is to misrepresent him. Nor does it encourage me in believing yours is a "moral stance". (Perhaps you should look up the meaning of satyagraha).
2) Whatever Ghandi's desires, the fact is that he was not a vegan. It follows that veganism is not necessary for the practise of ahimsa. Your insistence that it does merely speaks to your dogmatism, not to the meaning of the word, or the philosophy. It suggest that because you are unable to argue for veganism on its own merits you need to coopt a well recognized moral philosophy and argue falsely that veganism is the only expression of that philosophy.
As to actual dairy practises, I spent time on a dairy farm (in western Victoria) in my youth, and the practises were not cruel. Certainly they could be developed to be so (and may have been), and I would be against that development - but there is no necessary connection between dairy products and animal cruelty as you yourself acknowledge. Nor is there a necessary connection between meat products and animal cruelty although cruel slaughter practises may be more typical than not.
3) The point of the XKCD cartoon was to simply draw attention to some curious facts about mammals. You and Andy Skuce, however, use it to suggest humans have coopted most of the natural capacity of the world to support animals, it, most of NPP. So used, it is misleading in the extreme as it does not quantify all animal biomass, only land mammal biomass. Specifically, you state:
"After all, it is clear from the breakdown of the weight of land mammals on Earth that the livestock sector is a huge albatross around our necks today. The biomass of humans today, is already 1.8 times the biomass of wild megafauna that was sustained in native ecosystems for millions of years prior to human ascendance. Therefore, why would we continue supporting livestock megafauna whose biomass is additionally triple that of humans?"
Andy Skuce was more succinct, stating:
"XKCD has a cartoon that nicely illustrates the disproportionate mass of the world's cattle, with the implication that they have an outsize ecological hoofprint."
However, looking just at megafauna is fundamentally misleading about the world's sustainable biomass for the simple reason that prior to human impact, and even now, megafauna are a very small percentage of total biomass. A more informative comparison would be to note that human and human domestic animal biomass has raised megafauna biomass from 7 to 17% of land animal biomass. Even more informative would be to note that over the 20th century, Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production doubled from 13 to 25%. Of course, much of that human appropriation was in the form of increased cropping, which isn't on message for the vegan agenda.
4a)
"I presume that you accept my statements on the deleterious effect of livestock production on 1) biodiversity loss and on 2) desertification. Otherwise, focusing on just my third point would fall under "Cherry Picking" in John Cook's list of denial types."
It is foolish and insulting to make any such presumption and/or accusation. I used to have a disease:
I don't have it anymore. You can make all sorts of egregious errors and I may well ignore them because there is simply not enough time.
But as you raise the issue:
- The various great plains, savannah and other grasslands of the world sustained very large herds of hoofed animals for hundreds of thousands of years before human industrialization. The idea that replacing those herds with human controlled herds of hoofed animals will necessarilly lead to desertification is absurd. Some management practises may lead to that, but that at most leads to an argument for improving management practises.
- Large scale herding operations can lead to a loss of biodiversity, but on nowhere near the scale of large scale growing of grains.
- In both instanses, specific measures to deal with the problems are far better than blanket measures which are only indirectly related. Preventing deforestation of tropical rainforest is more effective than banning beaf. Those measures may well (indeed, will pobably) change the proportion of meat and vegetable matter farmed, with consequent changes in diet - but that is not the purpose of the measures, and merely legislating or volunarilly making the changes in diet is a very indirect and poor mechanism to drive the specific measures needed.
4b) Silver et al report sequestration for reclaimed tropical forest. You are not entitled to apply it to all lands confirm your estimate.
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Eclectic at 11:09 AM on 15 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Quite right, Ryland. Pleasing as the Paris Gabfest was, there was more than a hint of the system of the old Stalinist "Five Year Plans" ~ where Politically Correct goals were lauded and trumpeted . . . to be followed by severe under-performance . . . until the pronunciamentos of the following Five Year Plan.
But at least, there is some indication that the convoy intends to steam in the same direction, even if at different speeds. Not many Flat-Earth political Captains remaining to assert that the ships will eventually fall off the edge of the world.
I also like your comment: "There's a lot of looholes [sic] to be exploited . . . " ~ très amusant, non? Dr Freud would doubtless categorize as anal-retentive, those political leaders who are actually closet deniers of climate science? :-)
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ryland at 10:38 AM on 15 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Pleasant as it is to bask in the euphoria generated by the conclusions at the Paris COP21 conference te devil in this case will be in compliance. There are no specific policies, no penalties for not meeting agreed targets and emission cuts are not legally binding.. There's a lot of loopholes to be exploited and in reality the 2C target is unlikely to be reached let alone the 1.5C target in the proposed time frame. Good to be euphoric but sensible to temper euphoria with a significant slug of reality.
Moderator Response:[GT] 'p' added. Left the subsequent comments in place - we all need a little humour from time to time.
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Eclectic at 10:35 AM on 15 December 2015There is no consensus
Flavoid, to put it another way: your statements have gone well wide of reality ~ you have missed the truth by a country mile !
I don't know how you managed to get it so wrong. Very likely, you haven't actually read the paper Cook et al., 2013. Even just a read of the the paper's Abstract [see link at the head of this thread] will show you how wide of the mark you are. Read with a calm mind, and you will see how straightforward it all is.
You will then also note the excellent quality-control of the Cook paper ~ and how the surveyed papers' authors themselves have expressed the same 97% via their own assessment.
So the matter of consensus is quite clear, too.
Even mavericks like Dr R. Tol have admitted (in a slightly curmudgeonly way) that the "consensus" is 90+% .
If there is to be a valid criticism of the "97%" as shown in the Cook paper, then the criticism [today] would be that the 97% is based on somewhat dated information [i.e. being on papers averaging about 10 years old by now].
A present-day and deep-searching survey would now probably show a climate-scientist consensus closer to 99% .
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Susan Anderson at 10:34 AM on 15 December 2015Wind energy is a key climate change solution
In northern Europe, solar is not the best option, but wind does quite well. Leitwind and the Leitner group are pursuing a variety of solutions:
http://www.leitwind.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_Group
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CBDunkerson at 10:05 AM on 15 December 2015There is no consensus
flavoid, sure I'll explain:
We only look at papers stating a position on the topic (of which 97% state that humans are causing most global warming) because factoring in papers which DON'T address the topic would be ridiculous.
Papers on needlepoint don't state that humans are responsible for global warming... ergo no consensus. See? Ridiculous.
Happy to help.
Moderator Response:[PS] Perhaps flavoid could clarify their position about "self-selected dataset" by providing examples of papers that dont support the consensus that would be missed by the selection procedure.
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Usuallyunique at 08:05 AM on 15 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Before everyone does a slow clap and fade to credits.... After speaking tlarge numbers of people about climate change, I have come to the conclusion that the real problem isn't deniers, or the propagandists... It's the average person. Something drastic must be done to go above the noise of everyday existence that drowns out the siren from the future.
I was thinking the best way to accomulish this is to have all world climate scientists to go on strike until a carbon tax is instituted. the point of all of this research is to base policy decisions on it. This climate agreement isn't nearly enough and we all know that. Imagine the average persons reaction if it's announced.
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Owen at 07:21 AM on 15 December 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50
Ted Cruz (likely Republican candidate for President in US) is making a big deal out of the satellite data. It is important to understand these recent discrepancies.
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Alexandre at 06:03 AM on 15 December 2015The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
Well... deniers would eventually loose anyway, since they're playing against the facts. But I guess the delay itself was already an achieved goal for them.
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