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Comments 26601 to 26650:

26601. bill shockley at 12:44 PM on 15 December 2015
       The 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.

26602. Tom Dayton at 12:33 PM on 15 December 2015
       Satellites 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.

26603. ryland at 11:59 AM on 15 December 2015
       The 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.  

26604. Tom Curtis at 11:13 AM on 15 December 2015
       How 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.

26605. Eclectic at 11:09 AM on 15 December 2015
       The 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?    :-)

26606. ryland at 10:38 AM on 15 December 2015
       The 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.

26607. Eclectic at 10:35 AM on 15 December 2015
       There 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% .

26608. Susan Anderson at 10:34 AM on 15 December 2015
       Wind 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

26609. CBDunkerson at 10:05 AM on 15 December 2015
       There 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.

26610. Usuallyunique at 08:05 AM on 15 December 2015
       The 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. 

26611. Owen at 07:21 AM on 15 December 2015
       2015 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.

26612. Alexandre at 06:03 AM on 15 December 2015
       The 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.

26613. JoeT at 05:52 AM on 15 December 2015
       Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
       

       Tom Dayton,

       I saw you post this on David Appell's site and was looking for an appropriate place to ask this question at skepticalscience. Would it be possible for you to explain the connection between total precipitable water and microwave emission from oxygen molecules that casts doubt on the calculation of tropospheric temperature. I am not following the discussion between ehak and Spencer at the site you linked to.

26614. flavoid at 05:46 AM on 15 December 2015
       There is no consensus
       

       If you read the sentence stating 97% support, it's a self selecting subset of the data,

       "of papers stating a position on human caused global warming"  

       of all the papaers in the Cook study,  only 0.5% Explicitly support and quantify AWG as > 50%.,  (64 out of 11944)

       of all papers stating a position, that number jumps to a whopping 1.5%.  (64 out of 3974)

       can someone explain to me how that equates to "consensus"

26615. MA Rodger at 05:37 AM on 15 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

        

       Wili @8.

       All pretty basic stuff.

       I used data from CDIAC  (FF+cement) to check the annual increases in emissions. I didn't but you could refine that by adding Land-Use Change data.

       1ppm requires an extra 2.13Gt(C) of CO2 in the atmosphere, with an airborne fraction of roughly 50%.

       The atmospheric increase data was from the NOAA global CO2 page from which the sd was calculated.

        

26616. matros_ at 04:51 AM on 15 December 2015
       The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
       

       

       From Carbon Tracker 2013 report

26617. Tom Curtis at 02:48 AM on 15 December 2015
       It's a natural cycle
       

       morken @23 and 24:

       1) Here is the Berkeley Earth index of European temperatures from 1750 to 2013:

       

       As can be seen, the very sharp fall in temperatures from 1770-1900 shown in your graph does not exist.  Evidently Luedecke has adjusted the data to fit his theory.

       2)  Your graph clearly predicts a fall in temperature from 2002 to present, which has not occured in the data.  Indeed, in the global data there has been an increase in temperature over that period.  This looks very like a failed prediction to me.

       3)  Luedecke et al compare their, purportedly solar driven forcings to European temperatures only.  He had good reason to do so as global temperatures fit his curve less well than do his (idiosyncratic) European temperatures:

       

       Note in particular the flatter, near zero trend prior to 1900, the delayed minimum around 1900 (ie, 191--20 rather than 1900 as in his model and the European data), the early (1940) mid twentieth century peak relative to European and Luedecke's model, and the continuing increase rather than the predicted decrease in temperatures post 2000 (not perfectly obvious as the graph lacks the new record setting years of 2014 and 2015).

       Not only has Luedecke cherry picked a data set to better fit his theory, but the poorer fit of global data means he is compelled to claim that European, but not global, temperatures are driven by the (global) solar forcing.  At least he would if he were not so practised at simply sweeping contrary evidence under the carpet.

       4)  I note that you so uncritically swallow Luedecke's nonsense that you don't even note the time of peak temperatures on his graph, and therefore don't even note the persistent lack of his predicted decline over the last decade. 

26618. RedBaron at 01:59 AM on 15 December 2015
       The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
       

       Fantastic! Assuming countries keep their agreement it is 1/2 the battle. Next is biome regeneration to actually sequester more carbon or the goals won't be reached.

26619. wili at 01:13 AM on 15 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       Thanks for the responses. Your numbers are very interesting, MA. Can you give some links or formulas for how you derived them so I can share them more convincingly elsewhere? Thanks.

       Eclectic, I'm sorry that you don't like my wording, but the news articles I've seen actually use stronger language than that: The world's CO2 emissions fell in 2015

       Perhaps I'm missing your point?

       I don't, by the way, necessarily trust these proclamation, since they seem to be based mostly on China's self reported data, data that has been norious in the past for under-reporting and for major 'adjustments' upward after the headlines have all been printed.

       I was really posing what (to me) is mostly a hypothetical--if these reports were true, when would we expect to see them reflected in the atmospheric concentration data, and how large would that effect be?

26620. morken at 01:05 AM on 15 December 2015
       It's a natural cycle
       

       Here more details: http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/03/german-scientists-show-climate-driven-by-natural-cycles-global-temperature-to-drop-to-1870-levels-by-2100/#sthash.4x551NDK.dpbs

        

       

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Fixed image size. Please limit your images to 500px in width.

26621. morken at 00:44 AM on 15 December 2015
       It's a natural cycle
       

       The climate It is created by an overlap of natural cycles, mainly the 65-year “Atlantic/Pacific oscillation” (AMO/PDO) and the 208 year “de Vries cycle”.

       CO2 is irrelevant for the climate. The temperature will go down in the next years because the solar de Vries cycle just had its maximum.

26622. martin3818 at 00:42 AM on 15 December 2015
       The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
       

       The Paris agreement is so much better than I had feared. I would have popped a bottle of French bubbly except I didn't want to emit more CO2. This is a very important first step.

       A votre Santé!

26623. CBDunkerson at 22:55 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       Eclectic, it's better than CO2 emissions not leveling off.

       Yep, we still need to see global emissions go down, but leveling off is a step in the right direction. Even the initial pledges just agreed at COP21 should start to drive global reductions in a few years... and then those pledges are supposed to be improved every five years.

26624. Eclectic at 21:53 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       wili @4 re "given the much lauded reports that CO2 emissions stalled this year" [unquote]

       I feel distinctly uneasy about your description of "stalled" emissions. Were you meaning that CO2 emissions stalled, as in a plane stalling in mid-air? Surely not ~ since that would imply an actual reduction of emission rate.

       If you meant a levelling of emission rate, then that is very far from comforting, since that is another way of saying that our buildup of (total) emitted CO2 is still rising rapidly.

26625. RedBaron at 20:33 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @saileshrao

       Preface false

       1 false the 52.8 GtC number does not even appear in your source. Even if it did, the way you phrased it shows ignorance of the fact 60-80% of the biomass of grasslands is below ground, and 30% of the total products of photosynthesis is root exudates that do not become part of the biomass either above or below, instead directly pumping these carbon compounds directly into the soil to feed the symbiotic soil food web.

       2 false

       You don't understand my point because you don't understand how the biosphere cycles carbon, making your recommendations, like most vegan recommendations, highly dangerous and potentially very harmfull. Yes fires are part of certain biomes, they are not normally part of a rainforest biome. Fires where part of the natural biome do not represent part of AGW due to the fact they recycle active cabon, not stable carbon. One reason the majority of biomass in a grassland subject to perioding fires is below ground, safe from fire unless too frequent. But your proposal identifies above ground biomass as sequestered carbon, it may in some cases, but actually it is active carbon, not stable carbon. It really isn't sequestered except temporarily. So this is why these biomes reach a "saturation" point upon maturity.

        

       Further, to gain a better understanding of the ruminant's function in a biome read your own source particularly this:

       "N is a limiting nutrient for plant growth in mid- and
       high-latitude regions (Vitousek & Howarth, 1991). In tropical
       regions, N is not considered a limiting nutrient,
       because the warmer and wetter tropical climate enhances
       N mineralization in soils (Vitousek & Howarth, 1991;
       Cleveland & Townsend, 2006) and biological N fixation is
       high (Yang et al., 2009)."

       The ecosystem function of that rumen is to provide the "warmer wetter" environment needed to increase mineralizaton. Without it external fossil fuel nitrogen is required to prevent nitrogen limiting. AND Haber process nitrogen besides being it's own missions source, also significantly negatively impacts soil total biota and diversity. That's why more is needed, not less. Of course there is a limit. You can overgraze too. But up to the limit of overgrazing, more, not less, is needed. Keeping in mind overgrazing is a function of time, not numbers of animals. I already explained previously how overgrazing actually forces a reduction of numbers.

26626. MA Rodger at 20:28 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       wili @4.

       CO2 emisions were rising at something like 200Mt(C) a year. If the rate levels off to zero, that would convert into a drop in atmospheric CO2 by 0.05ppm(v) within the measured annual increase of some 2.1ppm+/-0.64ppm(2sd).

       Mind, cutting emissions by 200Mt(C) a year every year, which will still not be immediately noticable in terms of atmospheric levels (possibly 5 or so years to do than), would reduce emissions to zero in 50 years, so it isn't a million miles from the required cuts.

26627. saileshrao at 17:47 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       RedBaron #141:

       Our objective should be to restore biodiversity, reverse desertification and heal the climate, all simultaneously as our proposed solution aims to do. Holistic management doesn't aim to do that. Besides,
       
       1. Even if a hypothetical "holistically managed" grassland could sequester more carbon than grassland that is otherwise managed, the fact is that as of 2014, ALL grasslands and pasturelands on earth, put together, contained 52.8 GtC in soil + above ground biomass, according to the Integrated Science Assessment Model (ISAM).
       
       2. In holistically managed livestock production, the livestock biomass is periodically being removed from the land, eaten and flushed into the ocean, thereby constantly depleting nutrients from the land. Such one-way nutrient removal is unsustainable.

       The numbers we obtain from ISAM comprise both above ground and soil carbon. Therefore, I don't understand your point:
       
       "However, the problem with using the 292.7 GtC number is firstly much of that is above ground biomass and not really sequestered in the long term stabile carbon cycle yet."

       Typically, at maturity, carbon sequesters in the soil and above ground in fixed ratios depending upon the forest biome. Are you suggesting that above ground carbon in a native forest is "not stable"? Is that because they could catch fire? If so, I refer you to Chad Hanson's work showing how fires are an integral part of certain native forest biomes and that they have negligible impact on the long-term and even short-term carbon sequestration. Please see, for e.g., here.

26628. RedBaron at 15:56 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @sailesshrao,

       I downloaded the chart. Doesn't really answer all my questions about how the data was obtained. on #119 above, I show a source that measured changes similar to your source #139.

       Impacts were greater in woodland and grassland biomes than in forest, desert, rain forest, or shrubland  biomes

       
       Now of course that study was not the abandoned tropical (rain) forest land that your study post #139 was about. Also they are not exactly the same as silver et al measured biomass and included that, whereas Conant et al was soil carbon. But I do think comparing them can be useful in understanding a few things. Look at your source: "faster rates during the first 20 years" and

       "soil carbon accumulates faster on sites that were cleared but not developed, and on pasture sites."

       and think what is going on.  Planted trees into either of these means for the first several years, there are grasses/forbs between the young trees, and there is why the soil carbon was increasing faster. Later the new forest canopy matures, closes and the grassland dies. Then the main mode of soil carbon accumulation changes to litter on top of the soil and slows.

       Nevertheless in wet and moist tropical climates the above ground biomass accumulation is quite impressive, 6.2 Mg ha−1 yr−1 during the first 20 years of succession! However the soil sequestration potential of proper managed grassland, opposed to the abandoned pastures used in the study, is double to triple the rate of the best reforestation methods. 1.30 Mg carbon ha−1 yr−1 vs 3.04 Mg C·ha−1 yr−1

       This suggests that in areas where tropical forests were subject to slash and burn, a successional strategy can be employed. Starting with grassland pasture to stabilise the soil and then succeeding to the native tropical forest and/or a permiculture style multi species food forest for those communities that can't afford to reduce food production. 

       I know of tropical reforest projects that forgot the importance of keeping the grasses cycled with ruminants, and decades of wonderful work destroyed by wildfire. All that above ground biomass sequestered carbon released at once. But if they had known about the function of the ruminant in the biome, this likely would not have happened. A few more years and the canopy would have closed and the risk of wildfire significantly reduced.

       Temporate and dry tropical areas a bit different, but the basic strategy is the same. Large areas here are grassland/savanna in their top successional stage. obviously in those areas planting a forest is counter productive and to manage this land properly requires a ruminant herbivore to cycle large quantities of above ground biomass, feeding all the soil food web in the process. But in areas where forest is the top successional state, the same strategy can be employed as above. It just takes longer, going from grassland to savanna to woods to forest step by step, the first three steps requiring grazers to properly manage the transistion.

       The advantages are twofold. One you do produce food for human nutritional needs, and two by starting with a properly managed grassland first, soils are stabilised and if fire should impact, the soil sequestered carbon is still there allowing fast regrowth.

       However, the problem with using the 292.7 GtC number is firstly much of that is above ground biomass and not really sequestered in the long term stabile carbon cycle yet. Also it assumeS grassland sequestration is zero when actually under the right conditions even larger than forest sequestration already. In certain conditions that change from pasture to forest can actually be a net reduction in sequestration rate. Each has its advantages, but in differing locals and climatic conditions. So you don't need to do one or the other, but instead a blend of both. And it likely wont be anywhere near 292.7 GtC unless grassland restoration is also included. You do need livestock for that.

       I will link an interview with John D Liu because he is a research fellow specialising in ecosystem recovery and once he held a similar stance as you, but later after looking at the evidence changed his views.

       John D Liu talks about Allan Savory & Holistic Management

        

26629. wili at 14:55 PM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Does it matter whether the price of wind has gone down or not? Doesn't it only matter if it's cheaper than coal? As it seems to be, in the US, at least, according to this eia chart: www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2.pdf

26630. wili at 14:48 PM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Isn't some sea transport already at least assisted by wind (and not just small sail boats)?

26631. saileshrao at 13:29 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       RedBaron @138:

       The answers to your questions are in the poster that you can download here. Specifically,

       Grasslands and Pasturelands (Grazing lands + Extensive grazing lands in IPCC parlance) constitute 47.3 MKm2 of land area worldwide in 2014 (it is 46 MKm2 in the IPCC AR5 Land use block diagram). In total, these lands contained 52.8 GtC in 2014.
       
       The 19.6 MKm2 of grasslands that used to be forests in 1800 contained 27.5 GtC. When reverted to their original forest biomes and upon forest maturity, this land sequestered 292.7 GtC so that the difference is 265.1 GtC, which is the stated result. We also assumed that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere didn't change during the forest regeneration as fossil fuels continue to get burned.

26632. wili at 13:12 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       chris mentioned trend. I was wondering, given the much lauded reports that CO2 emissions stalled this year:

       When might we expect such a thing, if it is real, to show up in a discernable way, in the atmospheric CO2 consentration data?

       Can we factor out the effects of the current El Nino to determine whether there there is an underlying flattening of the Keeling Curve that is being hidden by this relatively short term phenomenon?

       Or would we just have to wait many years to see if there is a change in the long-term trend, and if so, how many years?

       Thanks ahead of time for any light anyone can throw in my general direction on this.

26633. saileshrao at 12:48 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Tom Curtis @137:

       First, Indeed, I do pursue a nonviolent, vegan "agenda". I consider it inhuman to deliberately hurt innocent animals unnecessarily. So does Pope Francis, since he stated in the Laudato Si,
       "It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly."
       That is Ahimsa and that is Veganism. Veganism is not a diet, but a moral stance and it is precisely the modern implementation of Ahimsa.

       Second, Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that first appeared in the Rig Veda. It is the negation of "Himsa", which means to cause deliberate suffering to innocent beings unnecessarily. Indeed, Gandhi said in his 1931 speech to the London Vegetarians Union that he tried to pursue a vegan diet several times (though the word was not coined until the 1950s) but failed, most likely because he did not have ready access to a sufficient variety of plant-based foods. Today, given the smorgasbord of nuts, grains, seeds, fruits and vegetables available to the affluent worldwide, the American Dietetic Association has stated that it is unnecessary to eat animal foods of any kind at any stage of the human lifecycle. Indeed, since animal foods accumulate environmental toxins by orders of magnitude up the food chain, and since humans are pumping billions of tons of freshly produced environmental toxins annually, it is increasingly more unhealthy to consume animal foods, than to go on a vegan diet.
       
       In addition, In India until the 1960s, the cow was generally treated very well and milk was drawn from the mother for human use only after her baby finished drinking her/his fill. While such treatment might have been consistent with Ahimsa, I'm truly disgusted by the treatment of the cow in India today almost as much as I have always been horrified by her enslavement, exploitation and oppression in Western countries.

       Third, I don't understand your reference to Net Primary Productivity (NPP) cooption. I assume you mean that you disagree with the biomass estimates in the XKCD graphic?

       The XKCD graphic was specifically about land mammals and was based on Vaclav Smil's book. The estimate by Barnosky in the PNAS paper is for megafauna on land. But there is an independent line of evidence confirming these estimates - in the IPCC AR5.
       
       The IPCC AR5 Land Use block diagram in WG3/CH11/p.836 shows that the livestock system consume 7.27 GtC of dry matter biomass as food extracted from 45% of the ice-free land area of the planet, while humans consume 1.54 GtC. Subtracting out the meat/dairy/egg/waste output and considering the annual change in biomass to be negligible, we see that livestock metabolize 4.69 GtC while humans metabolize 0.93 GtC. Therefore, livestock metabolize 5X the dry matter biomass as all humans.

       The reason livestock metabolize 5X the biomass as all humans when livestock biomass is estimated to be around 3X the biomass of all humans is because the livestock mix is skewed towards a preponderance of babies and juveniles. Ultimately, it is the consumption that matters more than their physical mass.

       In addition, in the 2014 edition of its annual Living Planet Report, the World Wildlife Fund reported that the Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures the biomass of over 10,000 representative mammal, amphibian, bird, reptile and fish species, had declined by 52% between 1970 and 2010. During that same 40 year period, the human population of the world almost doubled from 3.7 billion to 7 billion and human per capita consumption also nearly doubled so that the net human impact on the planet nearly quadrupled. Unlike the standard predator-prey ecological model that predicts a reduction in predator intake as prey population declines, human beings have deployed technologies to continue the exponential increase in our consumption despite significant declines in the LPI. For instance, we now use remote sensors, satellite imagery and big data software technologies to track and catch fish stocks in the ocean even as they swim at depths of 2000m below sea level. If such exponential growth in the human impact on the planet continues apace into the future, it is easy to show that the remaining biodiversity of the planet will be extinguished by 2025. Therefore it appears inevitable that global lifestyle changes will be imposed upon humanity within the next 1-2 decades and it is incumbent upon us to ask what global lifestyle changes can be adopted voluntarily today so that they result in a softer transition towards a sustainable future.
       
       Fourth, 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.
       
       Even in the third point, the CO2 fertilization factor varies across forest biomes as we show in the table in our poster here. The highest value is 1.76 for tropical evergreen forests and the lowest is 1.12 for boreal deciduous forests. We also started from 1800, not 1850. Unfortunately, the HYDE database has more uncertainty as we go back further, but as Bill Ruddiman has pointed out, deforestation has been happening for thousands of years, not just in the industrial era. 
       
       Please note that we also validated our results with 20 year regrowth measurements from Silver et al.

26634. One Planet Only Forever at 12:38 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       Forgot to link the NOAA CO2 Movie in my previous comment.

26635. One Planet Only Forever at 12:37 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       chriskoz,

       I have also been following the CO2 levels reported by NOAA. The CO2 Movie presents the understood CO2 levels through the past 800,000 years. Until the recent spike due to human impacts the maximum CO2 level was 300 ppm about 300,000 years ago.

       So, ever since human impacts pushed the CO2 levels above 300 ppm we have been at CO2 levels that humanity, and much of the life on this planet that humanity has adapted to be a (supposedly) sustainable part of, had never previously experienced.

26636. chriskoz at 12:01 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       COP21 conclusion coincided with a very notable global milestone.

       They've just updated na average global monthly CO2 at NOAA. But IMO it's not the monthly value but it is the trend which is the most important metric. Find the tend in the last column of the monthly data and note that 400ppm was breached (400.17) for the first time in october 2015.

       This is the true global average CO2 concentration (excluding seasonal fluctuations), and this is the first time we as humanity (not a selected site such as in the Arctic or MaunaLoa) really reached 400. A milestone not to be proud of, considering it was (as you scroll the data up) still <370 at the turn of the certury and 350 just ten years earlier as I remember it from my primary school books at the time.

26637. Wol at 09:32 AM on 14 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       @6: 2% . Try here.

        

       Thanks. I did see this in NS in 2011. I wonder what the figure is four years later. I notice that (according to the article, anyway) they didn't seem to include all the desktop machines - only laptops. If true, that's very strange because desktops must be far more energyintensive and there must be vast numbers more than laptops.

26638. RedBaron at 09:24 AM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @saileshrao 136,

       I cant see the paper to judge the acuracy, nor even exactly to what grasslands you are refering. Most the historical grasslands are gone. For example the tallgrass prairie of N America is somewhere around 95% extirpated, currently either in crop production or slowly turning to desert due to undergrazing. However, of special note, there is no other ecosystem in America that removes as much carbon[1]. Converting the remnant to forest, if you could, would only decrease sequestration long term not increase it. Although you might get a short term gain in some cases. The shortgrass prairie still has some remenant, but it is too dry to support a true forest for the most part. Undergrazing even more destructive to that ecosystem.

       Perhaps you mean deforested areas instead of grassland pastures? Most deforested areas were done so to harvest lumber, or plant crops, not to make pasture. Usually only going to pasture once the soil deteriorates so badly nothing of value but scrub or weeds will grow. The very reason pasture is used being that previously mentioned trait, no other ecosystem sequesters as much carbon in the soil, and hense no other ecosystem regenerates the soil faster. Now of course once the soil is regenerated, then letting it go to savanna, woods, forest is an option. Just keep in mind savanna and woods both still support grazing.

       Still without being able to actually see the paper, hard to review it. Did it even subtract the carbon sequestration from lost grassland before adding the carbon sequestered by forest? Is it counting actual long term sequestered carbon in the long or stable cycle? Or short - medium term sequestered carbon in above ground biomass? IE the active cycle? Active cycle carbon reaches a saturation point as forest matures.

       Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. I am afraid that link you posted only makes a claim. Where is the evidence?

26639. Tom Curtis at 07:58 AM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       saileshrao:

       First, while the phrase "rabid vegan" is certainly ad hominen, and inappropriate, there is no doubt that you are pursuing a vegan agenda.

       Second, I find your cooption of the principle of ahimsa to veganism dubious at best.  For those who do not know, ahimsa is the principle of non-violence espoused by Ghandi, and which has deep roots in Indian religious tradition.  I do not think there is any doubt that Ghandi was its most prominent, and foremost proponent in the modern era yet he was a lacto-vegetarian.  Granted he aspired to veganism, but drank goats milk for health reasons.  In doing so he made a clear moral distinction between eating dairy products, and eating meat (which he said he would not do, even at risk of his life - see second link in the previous sentence).

       On a side note, despite my very great respect for Ghandi, I do not accept ahimsa as a moral principle on the basis that a moral code should not be a suicide pact.  While ahimsa worked for Ghandi in India, it would not have worked in South Africa, and would certainly not have worked for the jews against Hitler.

       Third, and more directly on topic, the cooption of Net Primary Production (NPP) by humans is significantly overstated by the XKCD cartoon shown on your website (and by Andy Skuce above).  While the 110 MtC in domestic animals and 40 MtC in humans is massively more than the vertebrates, it pales in comparison to the 400 MtC in marine invertebrates, 700 MtC in land invertebrates, 4500 MtC in fungi, and multiple tens of thousands of MtC in prokaryotes. (Sourced from the same source used by XKCD, see apendix F.)

       Fourth, turning to your poster at the AGU, you postulate that restoring 19.6 million Km^2 of land to forest would sequester 265.2 GtC.  Given that the cumulative emissions from LUC since 1850 amounts to 170 GtC, that is dubious.  You appear to require the reforestation to sequester >55% more carbon then the deforestation emitted.  Poster's not being papers, and hence not self explanatory, I cannot see your justification for that assumption.  It may be premised on the CO2 fertization effect which show prominently.  However, the global CO2 fertilization effect amounts to 30 GtC, 32% of the shortfall.  So, in the first instance it is unreasonable to expect the CO2 fertilization effect to make up the discrepancy from 15% of the land; and in the second instance, if the reversion of the land has a sufficient sequestration effect as to reduce the atmospheric CO2, it will also reverse the CO2 fertilization effect - turning the biosphere (and ocean) into net sources rather than net sinks.

       Your refuge from these inconsistentcies appears to be that the IPCC got it wrong because the world's scientists are biased by their meat eating habit.  This strikes me as far too similar to Monckton's similar charge of bias based on the world's scientists percieved authoritarian, internationalist and bureaucratic political views.  A conspiracy view of science is a conspiracy view of science no matter what the politics of the proponent.  However, even granting you are correct on this point, if biomes contain more carbon than previously estimated (as is required by your figures), then equally the airborne fraction of CO2 from combined FF&LUC emissions must be much smaller than IPCC estimates.  It follows that your 256 GtC will result in a reduction of significantly less than 50 ppmv of CO2.  That would make it a very minor player relative to industrial emissions with regard to future CO2 concentration history.

       Bringing in my meat eating bias, it would also make it a very economically and gastronomically expensive sequestration measure.   

26640. HK at 04:48 AM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50
       

       The Norwegian blogger Hans Petter Jacobsen has written an interesting piece about surface temperatures vs. temperatures measured by satellites and radiosondes (balloons).
       It’s quit telling how radiosonde data (especially RATPAC A) show a stronger warming in recent years than the satellite data do.

       

       Also note how the radiosonde data show a strong cooling in the stratosphere, which is an important fingerprint of warming caused by increased greenhouse effect and not by solar activity.

       

       A somewhat shortened version of this piece in Norwegian can be found here.

26641. jpjmarti at 04:37 AM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Figure for your convenience 

26642. jpjmarti at 04:25 AM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       The link I provided does not contradict what I said. Read the whole thing and not just the spin. Page 48 shows a figure of the project costs as a function of time. As you can see there is almost no change since early 2000. The capacity factor during this time has changed only slightly (elsewhere in the report) so the unit cost is almost the same. You can say that costs have decreased recently, but that is based on cherry picking 2009 as a base year and looking at costs from then on. As for citing PPA costs...report cautions "Finally, because the PPA prices in the Berkeley Lab sample are
       reduced by the receipt of state and federal incentives (e.g., the levelized PPA prices reported here would be at least $15/MWh higher without the PTC, ITC, or Treasury Grant), and are also influenced by various local policies and market characteristics, they do not directly represent wind energy generation costs." PPA costs are costs AFTER subsidies.

26643. saileshrao at 23:02 PM on 13 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Foolonthehill @73:
       
       With regard to the use of the term "rabid vegan" in this forum, it falls under the "ad hominem" variety of scientific denial. Unfortunately, the scientific community is in denial on the leading role of Animal Agriculture in causing our environmental ills because most scientists consume animal foods.
       
       In Rio 1992, there were 3 conventions that were originated as UN conventions:
       1. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity,
       2. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and
       3. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
       
       The first two conventions are not receiving much attention and indeed, their web sites (cbd.int & unccd.int) still look like their 90s version, because Animal Agriculture is indisputably the leading cause of these environmental devastations. But even with respect to climate change, it is only through accounting chicanery that we are pretending that Animal Agriculture is not a leading cause of climate change. As our AGU paper shows, the foregone carbon sequestration alone through Animal Agriculture exceeds the 240 GtC that humans have added to the atmosphere since 1750!

26644. Tristan at 22:00 PM on 13 December 2015
       Analysis: the key announcements from Day 1 at COP21
       

       So given the built-in exit clause, what happens if the GOP wins the next election and exits? 

26645. meteorquake at 21:00 PM on 13 December 2015
       Plant stomata show higher and more variable CO2 levels
       

       This was an interesting thread for me (being interested as a lay person in botany).

       I noted from the top that stomatal change from increased CO2 could be simulated by stress from lack of water, and that the graphs provided by D Middleton of stomata were taken in swamp vegetation (ie not lacking water).

       I would also be aligned with the notion that it may be hard to compare plants of today with those that look apparently the same a long time back. Plants form many variants within a species and like may not in fact be being compared with genetic like, unless one can find something sufficiently universal to plants as a whole or a genus.

       The thread is a few years old - I wonder if anyone has any updates to add to it?

       David

26646. scaddenp at 17:17 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Given that no. one priority is stopping burning coal, wind energy can be very useful part of the electricity mix for that. As for transport, heavy transport like trucks are small proportion of total energy use. Biofuel could easily handle all the needs for my country.

26647. Tom Curtis at 15:29 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       denisaf @6:

       1)  The "weak energy source" you mention actually has a total energy resource equal to 100 times current total human energy use.

       2)   Intermittency can be tackled in several ways, including by tapered use, chemical storage, geographically dispersed turbines, and elevating the wind turbines (see video below).  It follows that it is only an engineering problem, not a limit.

       3)  Electricity is unsuitable as a power source for large mobile units such as trucks and planes.  It has already been demonstrated as usefull for personal transport, and for rail networks.  It is certainly suitable for any stationay energy need.  As such, wind power (which produces electricity) is potentially suitable for the majority of our energy needs (75% plus).  That hardly represents a niche market.

       I doubt, of course, that wind will provide all our energy needs.  That will be some combination of wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, wave, hydro and nuclear power.  Of those, wind may be the largest single component, and will certainly be in the top three.  It is absurd, on that basis, to say wind has a "niche role" as, on the same basis you would need to say that solar, or nuclear, or for that matter, currently, coal has a "niche role".

       So, to summarize, your argument dogmatic assertions are either entirely wrong, or simply based on the assumption that the technology of wind energy cannot significantly advance on what is currently commercially deployed, despite several advances approaching commercial deployment:

26648. saileshrao at 14:59 PM on 13 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Jim Eager@62:

       As humans, we are all biased. I am an unabashed advocate of Ahimsa (nonviolence) and prefer that my biases stem from that position.

26649. saileshrao at 14:54 PM on 13 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       OnceJolly @61:

       The accumulated biomass of the animals is already accounted for in the block diagram. The net input is 7.27 Gt, the net output is 2.58 Gt leaving the rest as 4.69 Gt metabolized.

26650. bozzza at 12:53 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       You've certainly correctly pointed out that wind power can't do everything but to say it can't do anything is illogical and notably relies on unquantified argument.

       It comes down to cost in the end: this is where the waters get very deep.

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