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

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Comments 27651 to 27700:

  1. There is no consensus

    KR @707, I think insufficient attention has been paid to uncertainty intervals with regard to the concensus.  In particular, in the case of Doran, Kendall and Zimmerman (2009), the sample size for question two, ie, the question on attribution, is only 77.  

    Calculating uncertainty depends not only on the sample size, but also (weakly) on the size of the total population.  In the case of climate scientists, the total number of climate scientists in the world is an unknown.  However, based on a literature review, Verheggen et al (2014) found the emails of approximately 8000 people, of which approximately 7600 where climate scientists (the other 400 being contacted because they where known "skeptics".  On that basis, the total number of climate scientists in the world is likely to be greater than 5000, but less than 50000.

    Using these figures and a confidence interval calculator, it is possible to determine that the 99% confidence interval is approximately is between + 2.6% and - 4.64 to 4.68%.  The larger of the two figures assumes 50 thousand climate scientists.  Of course the confidence interval calculator assumes a normal distribution, which is not possible in this case because there cannot be more than 100% concensus.  That is likely to mean the lower bound is understated by a small amount, but the 95% confidence interval almost certainly has a lower bound less than or equal to 4.7% based on these figures.

    More troubling for Doran is the actual question, which is:

    "2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?"

    (My emphasis)

    By asking if human activity is "a significant factor", it allows that other influences are as, or even more significant.  

    Taking significance to be "statistically significant", it asks whether global temperature increase since the "pre-1800s" would have been less than that observed by a statistically significant amount absent human influence.  Given the statistical uncertainty in determining pre-1800s temperatures (see graph below) that requires greater than 50% of the warming be attributed to anthropogenic factors.  I think this means the question must be understood colloquially, where "significant" does not imply "statistically significant".

     

    Colloquially, something contributing 25% of the effect would be considered "a significant contributing factor".  Arguably something contributing just 10% of the effect would also be considered "a significant contributing factor" but that is more dubious.  Taking the 25% benchmark, we can compare Doran et al to Verheggen et al, in which just over 90% agree that 25% or more of the warming is due to anthropogenic factors.  Allowing for the inclusion of approximately 5% known "skeptics" without regard of their scientific qualifications (and in most cases absent relevant scientific expertise), that result is qualitatively equivalent to Doran et al's.

    The upshot is that unless we are making the weak claim that the consensus is that anthropogenic factors are a significant factor in recent warming, we should no longer be citing Doran et al, and hence the 97% figure, for the percentage of scientists who accept the concensus position.  That is particularly the case given Bray and von Storch (2010) and Verheggen et al (2014), both of which post date Doran et al, have larger sample sizes and support a consensus figure in the high 80 percents.  In particular, Verheggen et al, excluding those invited because of their known "skeptical" opinion and without regard to their scientific qualification, find a concensus figure of 87% (85-89%). 

  2. There is no consensus

    For a survey of scientific opinions, rather than the published work, see Doran 2009, whose survey found that among scientists who had more than half of their recent work on climate (i.e., who are actively researching the matter), 97% agreed that: 

    "...human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures".

  3. There is no consensus

    LeonD...  I think that's a very common mistake. Relative to the Cook13 paper, many people fail to discern the difference between "position" and "opinion."

  4. There is no consensus

    My mistake, I thought they were querying the authors on their own views not on what their papers were saying.  

  5. There is no consensus

    I cannot find the reference at the moment, but as I recall Naomi Oreskes noted that as a scientific consensus grows the explicit mention of that consensus declines - because, again, there's no need to repeatedly tell your audience that water is wet, or that a clear sky is blue...

  6. There is no consensus

    LeonD - I'll repeat my question: do you think the high percentage of biology papers that fail to state a position on evolution are in fact evidence that biologists disagree with it? Or that the infinitesimal number of modern physics studies stating a position on the existence of atoms represents evidence of major disagreement there?

    There's no need to repeat known facts, especially in the limited space of a paper or even more so the 200-500 words of an abstract  - your argument is absurd.

  7. There is no consensus

    The source is the paper itself:

    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024 

    Specifically Table 5

    I am referring to the self-rated results but the abstract results are even less in favour of AGW.

  8. There is no consensus

    LeonD - I expect you're doing a 'drive-by', rather than actually engaging in conversation, but I would ask you to consider just what proportion of peer-reviewed biology papers make explicit statements for or against the validity of evolution in their abstracts? And whether you, for some reason, think the large percentage of such papers not restating known facts is in some fashion disagreement with evolution?

    The same holds of climate science. In fact, I suspect the estimated percentage of disagreement on climate is biased towards the negative (that the percentage might be lower than 3%), since authors disagreeing with the consensus have far more reason to mention AGW than authors who treat it as a known and understood background to the data. 

    Bzzzt.

  9. There is no consensus

    Interesting that you emphasise the 97% agreement of those expressing a clear view. On the surface this sounds convincing, however when questioned 37% of authors in the sample either did not present a view/ were undecided or rejected the idea of human produced climate change. Even in this, a paper that claims to show consensus, there is a large proportion of climate scientists who are not actively supporting the hypothesis.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Please document the source of your assertions. Thank you.

  10. Republicans are becoming the party of climate supervillains

    For a historical perspective of the potential global consequences of Republican and Tea Party denial of what the overwhelming majority of scientists are telling us about manmade climate change, see:

    The Next Genocide, Op-ed by Timothy Snyder*, Sunday Review/New York Times, Sep 12, 2015

    *A professor of history at Yale University and the author of “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.”

  11. The cause of the greatest mass-extinctions of all? Pollution (Part 1)

    dudo39 - there are plenty of detailed accounts of the Lake Nyos incident, if you want to do some online searching. That was a clear-cut case of asphyxiation due to the gas displacing the air. CO2 can also be a serious problem underground, in badly ventilated mineworkings, such as blind raises or winzes. Again, some searching will provide details. I recall collecting a pocket of pyromorphite specimens in the 1990s, up a 5m winze accessed by a ladder, and spending too long up there working in a strenuous position. Got breathless and very light-headed, with symptoms coming on suddenly. Descending down into the main workings, recovery was swift.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] The problems with C02 levels in Apollo 13 and with Biosphere 2 would be other examples of adequate O2 but excess CO2. But the relevance is??

  12. Republican leaders should take their own advice and listen to climate scientists

    If they have any money they could buy  a copy of this!!

  13. The cause of the greatest mass-extinctions of all? Pollution (Part 1)

    dudo39 @32, increasing CO2 content to 1000 ppmv decreases O2 content from 209,460 to 208,860 ppmv.  The effect on respiration is less than that of going from sea level to 30 meters above sea level - ie, unnoticable.

    Michael Sweet @31, the effect of moderate CO2 in ventilation is not a direct effect of CO2.  Rather "high carbon dioxide concentrations in offices" is "an indirect indication of poor ventilation and contaminant build-up".  The list of other contaminants in office (and school) air is quite extensive.  It is not known which of these, or which combinations of these lead to the loss of cognative function you mention - but it is not attributable to CO2 alone.

  14. The cause of the greatest mass-extinctions of all? Pollution (Part 1)

    michael sweet,

    Your comment and the study you cited bring up an interesting point: People in "Closed" enclosures will change the air composition within by increasing CO2 concentration at the expense of lowering the oxygen concentration [which the study does not mention]. The point, or question, is what is really affecting human performance? Too much CO2, too little O2 or both to various degrees? The chicken or the egg?

    In my opinion, lack of O2 is the main problem in buildings and airplanes.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] As interesting as the toxicity level of CO2 to humans is, I am failing to see how this has relevance to the argument or conclusions of this article. If there is some relevance to the article rather than intellectual curiosity, then can you please outline your argument? Otherwise, this seems rather offtopic.

  15. The cause of the greatest mass-extinctions of all? Pollution (Part 1)

    Dudo39,

    This study found cognative decreases that were sigificant at 1000 ppm CO2.  when the ventelating air increases to 500 ppm, it will become common to have air in buildings that is 1000 ppm or greater, some buildings already exceed those amounts.  I am not as sanguine as you that increasing CO2 does not affect human mental performance.  Think how sleepy people get when they do not ventelate the air enough in airplanes.

  16. The cause of the greatest mass-extinctions of all? Pollution (Part 1)

    The first question is based on the comment "at much higher levels it [CO2] becomes an asphyxiant": thus it is valid question that should be answered.

    Please don't cherry pick: My entire comment was "moderated".

  17. The cause of the greatest mass-extinctions of all? Pollution (Part 1)

    Tom Curtis @ 27,
    Please note that I mentioned that the relatively high CO2 concentration in exhaled air as an indication that CO2 in ambient air is not harmful or toxic to humans.
    While the inspired air currently has about 400 ppm of CO2, the residual air in the lungs has about 4% of CO2: as the inspired and residual air volumes readily mix the resulting CO2 concentration may be in excess of 1%.
    I did not say, nor imply, that the anthropogenic CO2 has something to do with direct physiological impacts.

  18. The Exception Extinction

    Beautiful article, one of the best I have seen here or anywhere. Al along reading I was groping about the pendulum swings and stabilizing mechanics which was the conclusion.

    One of the stabilizing factors I was groping for is the increasing masses of both carbon in storage factors, and in the capacity of the biome to reach plane adjusting scale.

    Finally, the one point that very little attention is given to, is the possibility that CO2 affects cryosphere dynamics and inertial mass, and potentially volcanism. If so, then mechanisms that adjust CO2, also adjust volcanism. The mechanics are enhanced by direct and indirect effects on storage systems. For example: CO2 to temperature, to clathrates and permafrost, to temperature, to volcanism, to temperature, to greater clathrate releases, etc. This is just a guess, but it sure seems plausible in the clear and colorful light of this article.

    The other thing is that we are working these mechanics by ignorance and so, we can work them by knowledge too: We can adjust climate, and subclimates, if we chose to.

  19. Climate change and Hurricane Katrina: what have we learned

    The agenda is clear.  Ignaz, in a monumentally simplistic move, reveals that government is evil because of the flawed design of one section of a Corps levee project.  I'm surprised Ignaz hasn't mentioned Obama.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Ignaz has recused himself from further participation in this venue, finding compliance with this site's Comments Policy a too-onerous burden.

  20. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    I have responded to Ignaz' first point @46 above where it is on topic.  I cannot help but observe that I already made a detailed rebutal of his point on that page, showing Ignaz to have clearly misrepresented the situation.  Ignaz appears unable to counter that rebutal, and has certainly avoided doing so.  Instead he merely repeats his refuted claim elsewhere, where he can hope some have not read the rebuttal.  Again (and typically) he provides neither citation nor link in support of his claims.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Ignaz has recused himself from further participation in this venue, finding compliance with this site's Comments Policy a too-onerous burden.

  21. Climate change and Hurricane Katrina: what have we learned

    Elsewhere, Ignaz has again asserted that "As per the Army Corp of Engineers, New Orleans flooded because of flawed levee design".  I think his refusal to discuss the topic here, where my response to his nonsense is immediately available is telling.  Typically for Ignaz, he provides no citation and no link for his claim.  I presume, therefore, that he is again rellying on the testimony of Lt General Karl Strock that he reffers to above.  The only direct report of that testimony that I can find states:

    "In the closest thing yet to a mea culpa, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that a "design failure" led to the breach of the 17th Street Canal levee that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.  Lt. Gen. Carl Strock told a Senate committee that the corps neglected to consider the possibility that floodwalls atop the 17th Street Canal levee would lurch away from their footings under significant water pressure and eat away at the earthen barriers below.  "We did not account for that occurring," Strock said after the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. "It could be called a design failure.""

    The report makes it very clear that Strock reffers only to the 17th street canal failures, not to all levee failures.

    His restricted admission is appropriate, as the USGS discussion of the levee failures makes quite clear.  That is because the majority of levee "failures" were the result of the levees being overtopped - ie, of "storm induced" failures in the wording of the legend of the first map @7 above.

    Yet again it is very plain that Ignaz is taking restricted evidence applicable to only a few of the levee failures, and explicitly stated in connection to the 17th street Canal failures only, and treating them as an admission regarding all failures, contrary to the facts.

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Yes. Ignaz is quickly running out of rope and is trying the patience of moderators.

  22. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    The experience of dioxin, the toxic waste by-product from the manufacture of chlorine products, is relevant when discussing the toxic by-products from manufacturing renewables. It is true that dioxin is a toxic waste product that has had a global impact, as it has been found in the food chain and associated with some cancers in humans. There is no doubt that the unfetted production of solar panels would no doubt lead to an accumulation of toxic substances in the environment if there were no effort to control them. Due to the unforeseen problems that dioxins have caused in the global ecosystem, dioxins are now treated in a highly regulated manner, i.e. Governments have intervened in the market to ensure that dixoins do not accumulate any further in the environment and cause any significant future harm. The toxic by-products from manufacturing renewables could be treated in the same manner making it mandatory for manufacturers to expidite proper disposal or seek alternative methods. Also, this is likely to be much more viable than any of the so called CO2 sequestration or geoenginnering schemes where the CO2 storage problems are immense and unintended environmental consequences are unkown and likely to be detrimental. Simply, toxic waste from widespread solar panel manufacture is unlikely to have the global impact that CO2 is currently having if a proper regulatory framework is in place.

  23. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Tom Curtis

    1) As per the Army Corp of Engineers, New Orleans flooded because of flawed levee design, i.e., govenrment incompetence, not because of a category 3 hurricane. Dance around it all you want, that is essentially what they reported.

    2) The reason for including buckballs, and "organic," is to piont out the fact you seem to studiously ignore, that the extraction of carbon is still part of the mix. (See graphene as well)

    3) Asserting that these toxic substances can be used safely is mere opinion. Thousands of so-called Superfund sites around the country, including ones which occurred after 1968 and the EPA's creation, belie your confidence. Moreover, assserting solar and wind "will probably require far less mining and toxic waste than the normal mining processes," is an absurd, unsupported specualtion, not a fact. You clearly have not looked into the envirionmental impacts of China's rare earth industry.

    4) You ignore the supply side of economics. Carbon fuels have increased in efficeincy as they have dropped in price. Remember when "peak oil" was a thing? I was a thing precisely because government created a shortage by edict. Now Obama tries to take credit for the innovation of private industry and the exploration and extraction that has occurred on prvate land. The inconvenient fact is that innovation and progress are agnostic. It is happening just as fast in the carbon-based economy as it is in the alternative fuel economy. No alternative fuel, except nuclear, can keep up with the energy denisty of carbon.

    5) You ignore the so-called "energy sprawl" problem, as well as the environemental impact of sprawling solar and wind energy projects, which yield orders of magnitude less energy per acre. Solar and wind have an outsized land use footprint, which includes mining and generation, compared to any other energy source. 

    6) On a personal note, if trailings from copper and cobalt mines were not a health hazard, then why would the government, let alone environmentists, be so concerned with their clean up? Silly boy, clearly you're using a personal anecdote to dispel concerns. The EPA evidently doesn't have as cavalier an attitude as you do.

    7) Again you make a disingenous, unscientific statement by assertind, "If the mere presence of these items had massive toxic effects, then we would all have died out alread for they are present (except for the few artificial compounds) in massive quantities at the Earth's surface already." I is obvious, and I should have to address this nonsense, that the prescence of the elements in TRACE AMOUNTS in the earth is qualitatively different than their industrial aggregation and refinement. If that is the best you have to dispell concerns about externalities, than you make a pathetic case for their safety.

  24. Republican leaders should take their own advice and listen to climate scientists

    mdenison, related is Tamino's showing of the trend of RATPAC radiosonde data from 850 to 300 hPa.

  25. Republican leaders should take their own advice and listen to climate scientists

    RSS provides an interesting discussion of satellite and radiosonde comparisons at www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature/validation. In section 'Sub-Sampling Satellite Data to Match Radiosonde Locations' they give trends of

    'HadAT Trend            0.189 K/decade' (radiosonde)
    'Sampled RSS trend  0.181 K/decade'

  26. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz @28 states, "Dr. James Hansen has stated that he does not support a carbon tax and he does not support the government picking winners and losers."

    I just went to the Youtube link you provided and watched. He's not at all saying what you think he said. The question posed to him was, "If funds collected from a carbon tax were directly allocated to carbon capture, instead of being redistributed to the people, would you still support it?"

    The question pre-supposes his support for a carbon tax and dividend system, but he's saying he wouldn't support having the funds diverted.

  27. The Exception Extinction

    Tom @ 3 makes many good points. I just have to correct the tropical temperatures/greenhouse forcing point: Recent literature supports Gondwanan ice from the mid-Ordovician on, and the CO2 levels coupled with the polar continent and weaker sunlight are compatible with this coolhouse scenario. The temperatures in the figures are tropical, not global. It's not clear to me that if there was also northern sea ice. Without substantial northern landmasses it's not clear if that northern sea ice was sustainable. That might be a factor in reducing ocean turnover.

    Given the geochemistry and sediments it's clear the oceans were indeed anoxic, but why they were so is a key question. The literature explains it with nutrient load and low atmoshperic oxygen, but sluggish turnover was probably also a factor.

    The ACC is a much later phenomenon, arriving at the Eocene-Oligocene transition. As Tom notes, Ordovician land configuration does not support an Ordovician equivalent, perhaps clearer on this image from Colorado Plateau Geosystems:

    Late Ordovician peleogography

  28. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz @36:

    1) Hansen supports not picking winners with the dividend fee.  He explicitly supports picking a loser with regard to coal power plants.  As with your misrepresentation of reports on the flooding in New Orleans, you misrepresent by taking an opinion about part of the topic, and representing it as the whole opinion on the topic.  I should note (for completeness) that favouring a carbon tax over an emissions trading scheme and using a flat per capita dividend rather than (for example) a dividend scaled with taxable income both increase the economic distortion of his preferred policy relative to alternatives and can therefore be described as "picking winners".  None of that in anyway contradicts that his reason for preferring a dividend structure rather than direct funding of emissions reduction schemes with the revenue from the carbon tax is a desire to not pick winners, but neither does that restricted application of that principle imply that he supports "not picking winners" unequivocally, or across the range of policies he supports as you implied.

    2)  You misrepresent me as denying the toxicity of items on your list when I explicitly stated (several times) that all substances are toxic in sufficient dosage.  Some of the items on your list are highly toxic, and some are included even though they are hardly toxic at all except at extreme doses.  In one instance (buckyballs) you include it on the list even though only toxic (LD50) at 0.5% of total body mass.  The reason you use such a laundry list is that, first, you are unable to show that the toxic substances cannot be safely used, and second, you are unable to show that manufacture of renewable plants involves more release of toxicity into the environment.  You are even unable to show (because it is not true) that the toxic elements are even necessary for the renewable industry (as opposed to being used in particular products).

    3)

    "More over, this futher claim you make, "Some evidence suggests that nickel may be an essential trace element for mammals", and Cobalt is "... is a very small part of our environment and very small amounts are needed for many animals and humans to stay healthy," is another example of intellectual dishonesty, because we both not that to fullfill the world's need of ~25TWh and growing, massive amount of these substances will have to be mined and process. So the impact to the envirionment is unlikely to be "small doses" needed for animal health."

    If the mere presence of these items had massive toxic effects, then we would all have died out alread for they are present (except for the few artificial compounds) in massive quantities at the Earth's surface already.  To be toxic, the substances need to by ingested or respired in circumstances normally only found during manufacturing processes.

    On a personal basis, if it were not so the amount of time I spent playing on tailings dams in Kitwe (contaminated with copper and cobalt) in my youth would have killed me of.

    I disagree with mancan18 (@43) that toxicity from manufacture of solar cells cannot become a problem with scale up of the solar industry, but it need not become one; and will probably require far less mining and toxic waste than the normal mining processes associated with modern industry.  That is particularly the case as all of the technologies used in solar and wind have alternatives that do not use noxious or rare compounds.

    4) It is a well known fact of economics that high demand for a substance increases the price.  The greatest demand for carbon is currently for standing power, and for fuels.  If those uses can be replaced due to a carbon tax, then the price of carbon in chemical uses will fall.  Particularly as many of those uses will not result in emissions (the compounds are chemically stable) and hence will not attract the tax.  

  29. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz @29

    As many other commentators have already indicated, Governments do pick winners and losers. In fact every time they support a piece of new military technology they pick what they think are winners all the time. In fact, historically, many of the products and the science that gave rise to those products were a direct result of the research paid for by Governments (and a few wealthy individuals - not the Koch brothers) who were more interested in studying the science and what can be done than actually developing saleable products. The LHC and the Human Genome Project are cases in point. They are supported by Governments from many nations, and would not be possible if they had to rely purely on the operation of the market.

    As regard the operation of markets, I would have thought that if Governments did ensure that companies paid for the negative externalities of the products they produced then that would not be the Government intervening in the market as you seem to see it. It would ensure that the market operated properly. In fact, Governments already do enforce taxes upon some products that have a negative externality involved in their consumption. The car market is such an industry. It requires car owners to pay a premium to an insurance company to ensure that any third party damage that arises from your use of your car will be covered, not by the taxpayer, but by the industry and consumers. We are all required to pay a premium each year based on the ascertained risk and the possible damage cost so that we can all drive our cars without taxpayers having to foot any damages bills. If it can be done with the car market, then it can certainly be done with the risk and potential damage that comes from using fossil fuels.

    As regard James Hansen and his views. I agree with Tom Curtis @32. You have misrepresented Hansen's views.

    Also, you miss Tom Curtis's point @35 regarding the toxic by-products of producing renewables. Those toxic by-products are not being produced in sufficient quantity in the manufacture of renewables to have a huge impact on the environment and can be easily contained if disposed of properly. This is quite unlike the CO2 by-product from energy produced using fossil fuels which is changing the very composition of the atmosphere in a remarkably short time, warming the planet and changing the climate to one not seen since humans first walked the savannah.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] I think this particular line of discussion with Ignaz is closed. No more please.

    Oh, and transcript of relevant part of the video with Hansen:

    Questioner: (Directed to Jim)

    "If funds allocated from a carbon tax were directly allocated to carbon capture instead of being redistributed to the American people as you outlined in your remarks, would you still support it?

    Hansen: No, because we should not decide what the winning technologies are. Give the money to the public and let the market decide on what is the best way to reduce the carbon emissions. ....

  30. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Moderator The politics is precisely appropraite, because Citigroup is making an argument for the biggest government intervention in the economy in our entire history! The whole purpose for the "green lobby's" existence is getting government to intervene in the economy and impose artificial conditions. It is perfectly legitimate to discuss historical examples of govenment economic intervention.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] I repeat politics is expressly forbidden. Politicians on all side defend their stance by appeals to history. Argue it somewhere else. Try Thinkprogress. 

    Note also: "Any accusations of deception, fraud, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted."

    Your attacks on citibank run periously close. Discuss content and science or dont bother.

  31. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz: "you are implicitly assuming that governments fully understands long-range outcomes, and furhter assuming that they have the best interests of all stake holders in mind."

    Strawman, Ayn.  Show me how you constructed the implication from my text.  I will say this, though: governments have the potential to collect and organize information to an extent far, far beyond that of any individual.  At this point, individual cases need to be assessed.  Social organizations, whether governments or businesses, all have the potential to be both beneficial and destructive.  Governments have proven extremely useful in organizing the response to large-scale disasters.  A response by private enterprise on the same scale would be chaotic to the point of amplifying the disaster.  If private enterprise was organized in its response, it would be nothing more than a government. When one fails to recognize what would happen in the absence of government, it's easy to criticize government.  It's also an error in thinking to assess and evaluate a government without considering the development of that government within the broader context of the economic mode.

    I'll wager this conversation will now disappear.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Any further politics and slides into offtopic conversation will indeed vanish.

  32. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    For those that missed them, here are the links describing Citigroups investment psotions and scope of their world wide operations.


    http://www.citigroup.com/citi/environment/opportunities.htm

    http://www.citigroup.com/citi/environment/operations.htm

    And keep in mind that this is only one investment bank. It would amont to professional malpractice for other investment banks - public and private - to not be positioning themselves to take advantage of forthcoming regulation and industry subsidies. 

    And Mr. Al Gore, who has already become the first "green billionaire" on the back of his well publizied hyperbole, is doing the same. (See below)

    https://www.generationim.com

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Skip the politics and the posturing.

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

    Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
     
    Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion.  If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.

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

  33. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    DSL Although this is not a political tread, I have to respond. In your statement,  "The problem with free markets is the same as the problem with democracy: these processes only work in their participants' best interests when the participants fully understand the long-range outcomes of their actions. That's not working out so well..." you are implicitly assuming that governments fully understands long-range outcomes, and furhter assuming that they have the best interests of all stake holders in mind. There's enormous amounts of historical evidence that belie both your implied assumptions. They are not so much statements of fact as they are statemenst of leftwing dogma.


    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Correct, it is not a political thread. If your interest is climate politics, then there are plenty of other web sites for your amusement. This is not one of them.

  34. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Hansen explicity says that the government should not be picking winners and losers, that Democrats are prone to that error, and that he supports the market operating to find optimal solutions.

    Are you all denying he said that in the video I posted?

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Hansen explicitly supports tax and dividend. (which means government is not picking a winner like CCS). That is what other commentators are telling you but you seem to fail to understand. The video in no way contradicts this.

  35. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    By the way, Tom Curtis, I don't like people who lie about the opinions of others either, as you seem to have done regarding what I heard from Dr. Hansen's own mouth. But perhaps you're just that good. You know his mind better than he knows his own

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Nothing but inflammatory comment.

  36. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Tom Curtis see video at 40:22 to 41:54 for what Dr. Hansen believes about the economics. Evidently, Dr. Hansen, at least in this symposium, does not agree with out interpretation of his position on the economics.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGY2cjSfsRA&ab_channel=UyrekaNante

    As for the toxicity of the list of elements I list, which are taken from abstracts linked to the Nocera Lab and NAS website, a simple goolge seach with bring up each and every one of them as being toxic and/or carcinogenic. I guess I incorrectly thought that a person with and open and inquiring mind as your purport yourself to have, would take the ten minutes or so that it would take to google these elements or ask a chemist you may know. To even question that cadmium, lead, cobalt and phosphine are toxic, or that ruthenium is a know carcinogenic, just says that you ought to spend less time pandentical correcting others, and inform yourself instead.

    And the point of highlighting "organic," which obviously went right over your head, is to point out that carbon mined from somewhere is still part of the "renewables" picture. Moreover, a technology that I didn't include, but which may interest you, is the work being done with graphene. It may very well turn out that the electric future of your dreams will be based on the near-supercondutivity at room temperature of this allotrope of carbon. Is it's a well known economic fact that one tends to get less of something that's taxed, it would be shooting oursleves in the foot to tax carbon and thus disincentivize this technology.

    You continue by saying about me, "In short, he does not show whether switching to renewables will increase or decrease the risk of toxicity in the environment; nor whether any risk involved is intrinsic or can be controlled by proper manufacture." However, I believe you are confused about you had the onus to show such evidence. I am not the one claiming that these are "clean green" technologies, thus implying to the general public that they are without externalities. To the contrary, failing to expose data that you know undermines the claim of "clean energy," is intellectually dishonest. 

    More over, this futher claim you make, "Some evidence suggests that nickel may be an essential trace element for mammals", and Cobalt is "... is a very small part of our environment and very small amounts are needed for many animals and humans to stay healthy," is another example of intellectual dishonesty, because we both not that to fullfill the world's need of ~25TWh and growing, massive amount of these substances will have to be mined and process. So the impact to the envirionment is unlikely to be "small doses" needed for animal health.

    You also studiously ignore that fact that the majority of lanthanide production is control by China, which has imposed export controls. Lanthanides, as you may or may not know, are not only vital to the "clean" energy industry but they are also vital to any modern weapon of war worth building. Again, are you ready to come out in support of a massive increase in open pit mining in this country? Or, would you rather keep the externalities in China and give them a trump card over our armed forces?

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Fixed link. Note that in that video, the question Hansen is answering is whether he supports carbon tax money going to CCS instead of redistribution to public. His reply reiterates the position claimed here by Rob and Tom. As with Nordhaus it seems you are not understanding video that you are putting forth in support of your own arguments.

    [PS] Please step back, take a deep breath and stick to arguing the facts. Skip the rhetoric and sloganeering. If you make a claim, back it up with references. (eg the "vital" to clean energy).

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

    Fruitful discussion happens when participants acknowledge points where they agree and state why they disagree with references and without the rhetoric.

     

     

  37. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz @25, for want of an actual argument, gives a laundry list of supposedly toxic components used in manufacturing renewable energy sources.  He does not show that components on the list are particularly toxic, relying instead on rhetorical questions and the hope that our ignorance matches his own.  Thus, he lists cobalt and nickel, asking "Between cobalt and nickel, which is the non-toxic one?"  Well, obviously both are toxic, as is everything in sufficient dose.  But "Some evidence suggests that nickel may be an essential trace element for mammals", and Cobalt is "... is a very small part of our environment and very small amounts are needed for many animals and humans to stay healthy" (in the form of vitamin B12 as it happens).  So, in small doses both appear to be necessary for good health.  In large doses they are not, but Ignaz provides no information to suggest the use of Nickel or Cobalt in artificial photosynthesis will lead to exposures to large doses.

    The desperation of Ignaz' rhetorical tripe is shown when he lists "organic electrodes" and writes "... the word "ORGANIC" of course related to CARBON" to explain the toxicity issue.  Well, yes.  Organic relates to carbon.  But that does not show organic electrodes to be anymore toxic than chlorophyll, vitamin C, or even glucose.  All of them are also organic compounds, consumed in high volumes (chlorophyll) or manufactured by the body (vitamin C except in great apes including humans; and glucose); and with sufficient dose, all also are toxic (as is everything).

    This is not do deny that some of the items on his list are toxic in small doses, or pernicious so that it is difficult prevent harm either in manufacture or from waste products.  But Ignaz does not discuss those cases only.  Nor does he compare with the toxicity issues from normal manufacture of other products, or other forms of energy (where coal in particular is very pernicious).  Most importantly, he does nothing to show that with appropriate techniques, these substances cannot be used safely in the manufacture of renewable energy plants.  In short, he does not show whether switching to renewables will increase or decrease the risk of toxicity in the environment; nor whether any risk involved is intrinsic or can be controlled by proper manufacture.

    Instead of a proper argument, he merely vomits forth a list of words in hopes of evoking an emotional response from the non-thinking.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] This is clearly over the line on "Inflammatory comments" as per comments policy as you should know.

    Please step back and stick to arguing the facts.

  38. 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #36

    Ignaz @13, the point of physical precision is that anybody who knew how to derive the basic mechanics of general relativity would know that E=mc2 and F=ma are incompatible.  (General Relativity, by the way, because of the involvement of acceleration.)  Even if you have just an informed intuition on the topic, you would have suspected a problem about simply accepting both at face value.  Ergo, that you chose these as your examples shows that you, at least, accept these not because you know their derivation, and the observational tests they have faced, but because you understand them to have been accepted as part of the scientific consensus (without apparently realizing that the second is only accepted as a usefull approximation in non-relativisitic contexts).

    Ergo, we have this paradox.  You are citing as examples of scientific truths not accepted because of consensus, scientific expressions you only accept because you understand them to be accepted by the conensus of relevant physicists. 

    If you do not recognize how that undercuts your case, well I have come to expect sloppy reasoning from you in any event.  If you think pointing these facts out is condescending, that again only reflects (poorly) on you.

    With regard to Nordhaus, the chicken and egg problem only relates to the particular technique Nordhaus uses to explore those issues.  We can use additional data from other sources to break out of that problem.  Indeed, that is just what Nordhaus does for one side of the equation.

  39. The Exception Extinction

    mitch @1, cooling at winter will make polar water more oxygen rich, but absent freezing of surface waters to increase salinity, that oxygen rich water will not be carried to the ocean depths.  This is particularly the case absent strong north (or south) flowing surface currents from the tropics (which also contribute to high salinity in polar seas).  If you look at figure one, it is evident that without any analog of the North Atlantic, ocean water transport to poles would have been much less at the end Ordovician.  Further, the much larger south polar land mass would (I think) have greatly weakened the Antarctic Circumpolar Current System, thereby weakening the flow of surface water to the deeps in the south.  On top of that, figure 2 above clearly indicates greenhouse forcing and tropical temperatures inconsistent with polar ice in the Ordovician.  Thus it is highly likely that prior to the start of glaciation deep waters would have been anoxic.  Whether glaciation (and the return of one of the pumps that drives the thermo-haline circulation) would have been enough to generate substantial abyssal circulation is an open question, and if it had, whether it would have been sustained long enough to re-oxygenate the deep ocean another.  These are questions that would need to be settled empirically, and apparently have been settled in the negative (although resolution and timing of geological data is always an issue).  Given how different the Ordovican ocean is to ours, however, we certainly cannot simply assume anoxic conditions to be prima facie improbable.

  40. The Exception Extinction

    That the deep waters were anoxic is not so much interpretation as  what is recorded in the geochemistry and geology. According to Armstrong & Harper: "The fact that a large reservoir of anoxic deep water persisted below the storm- and wave-influenced mixed layer is corroborated by a number of geochemical and sedimentary proxies." See also Zhou et al.

    We also have to bear in mind that atmoshperic oxygen levels were much lower back then.

    Marine sulfate concentrations reduced, indicating increased pyrite burial in the Hirnantian. "together these proxies indicate that as global sea level fell, increased nutrient flux and photic zone bioproductivity intensified and widewpread anoxic, and in places euxinic, conditions prevailed or expanded as the chemocline rose through the water column" (Armstrong & Harper).

    The extraordinary release of nutrients from a non-ocean reservoir is essentially Lenton et als' argument.

     

  41. The Exception Extinction

    One of the problems with the extinction interpretation presented here is that it is very difficult to make deep water anoxic. Any cooling in winter/at the poles will make a dense water mass loaded with oxygen, while tides will mix and pump up the existing deep water. Since nutrients go down with the organic matter that drives oxygen down, there is a steady state deep ocean that typically contains oxygen. In the present oceans, about 50% to 2/3 of the oxygen in deep waters is used.

    One needs to have an extraordinary release of additional nutrients from a non-ocean reservoir to drive the deep waters anoxic. If only the deepwater exchange with the surface drops, so do the upwelling nutrients, which lowers productivity and lowers the transfer of organic matter to the deep, lowering deep oxygen consumption.

     

  42. 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #36

    Tom Curtis With all that verbiage on physics which you so enjoyed showing off, you still don't refute that whatever the approxiamtion to truth those formulas may or may not provide, nonetheless it is not by a poll amongst scientists that those answers are given. No one has to depend on a scientist's opinion on the matter.


    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Empty assertions. If you want to continue to post here you're going to have to find some way to support the statements you make. Thus far you've been incapable of doing so.

  43. 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #36

    Ignaz - I strongly suggest that you take discussions of Cook et al to one of the relevant threads, where your rather poor attempt to reframe the data has already been discussed and (correctly) dismissed. I will in passing note that the abstract survey ratings were in fact more than supported by querying the authors of the full papers. Bzzzt.

    Your claim that projections have been lowered is, in fact, not correct, see the discussion of the 1990 FAR projections here, versus AR5 here (in particular, Fig. SPM 6), which projects 2C by 2100 for RCP6.0, just the median value seen in FAR. Your claim is therefore unsupportably wrong. 

    ---

    You've posted quite a bit of nonsense on SkS over the last few weeks, on multiple threads and in multiple directions, echoing many of the climate change denial blogs - none of which seems to hold up under examination. IMO your comments are just noise. 

  44. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz... "He supports that the so-called fossil fuel externality price be redistributed back to the public on a per capita basis..."

    You're describing a tax and dividend system, just the same as Democrats are trying to get enacted, and which Republicans are blocking. A tax or "fee" is the "external price" and the dividend is a tax credit on individual tax returns thus returned "to the public on a per capita basis."

  45. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz @29...  I don't want to dogpile here, but governments do, constantly, intervene in markets. In fact, markets cannot operate without some form of government. The SEC is a government agency. The US Treasury is a government agency. The Federal Reserve was instituted by the government and acts as a governing system. The IRS is clearly a government system.

    All of these can, and do, have influence on the marketplace on a constant and ongoing basis. Markets cannot function effectively and reliably without these governmental systems. 

    And to back up Tom Curtis, Dr. Hansen has long been a strong supporter of a revenue neutral carbon tax and dividend system.

  46. Volcanic vs. Human-Caused CO2 Emissions - Updated Graphic

    Ignaz - As stated in the opening post, volcanic emissions are less than 1% those of anthropogenic emissions. That also holds for SO2, as major emitters of SO2 are power plants, industrial facilities, extraction of ore, and burning of high sulfur fuels (diesel). 

    Volcanic contributions to GHGs are minimal, and they have not changed significantly (relative to anthropogenic contributions) over the course of the Industrial Revolution. Certainly those are far outweighed by the volcanic contributions to stratospheric aerosols due to major eruptions, as seen in the data thereof:

    Historic forcings as used in GISS models

    [Source]

    It seems a bit disingenuous to (as you are apparently doing) overemphasize volcanic contributions to climate change relative to anthropogenic activity. The numbers just don't support that. 

  47. 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #36

    Tom Curtis bozzza Cutting and pasting notion from Wikipedia aside, are you saying you know something Einstein did not? Or are you just playing games because I picked the wrong example for the point you know I was making?  Perhaps I used the wrong notation; perhaps the finer points are... whoopdy-doo! The point is that the veracity of the laws of physics, chemical reactions, etc., are not dependent on the number of scientist who accept them. In any case, I will run it by a physicist friend who is happy to answer questions without sarcasm and condescension.

    In any case, a consensus of opinion is exactly what the 97% trope is not. It is a disingenous attempt to create consensus where it is not clear one exists, since Cook threw out the abstracts that did not express an opinion and it is not unreasonable to speculate that the reason those scientists did not express an opinion as to AGW is because they felt the data didn't support expressing one. However, to remove that doubt would be fairly simple. Instead of throwing out all the abstracts that did not express an opinion, those scientist can be poll now. Moreover, care has to be taken how the questions are formulated. It is fairly easy, no pun intended, to force the statistical outcome of any poll by the way the questions and range of accepted responses is formulated. 

    In addition, in regard to Nordhaus, in his own words he expresses the trouble with "chicken and egg" problem in making definitive statments about temperature sensitivity to CO2 in the atmosphere, when the CO2/temperature dependency is not isolated. Incidently, it does happen to be true that every succeeding IPCC report since 1990 has lowered the range of predicted temperatures.

    And finally, and this is just a general question, is their anything like a double-blind study standard being imposed on climate studies? If so, what are they? (Links would be fine - no need to trouble yourself with a long condescending explanation.) If not, then what keeps the biases present in evey other scientific enterprise from creeping into this one? (Here feel free to by all means explain away - again, no pun intended.)

     

  48. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz @28:

    "Another bit if interesting information. Dr. James Hansen has stated that he does not support a carbon tax and he does not support the government picking winners and losers."

    I was going to leave responding to Ignaz's nonsense until tomorrow, but I dislike people who (apparently) lie about the opinions of others inorder to bolster their arguments.  In this case, the fact is that James Hansen is a vociferous and determined supporter of carbon taxes.  It is cap and trade (ie, emissions trading schemes) that he opposes.  See, for example, his detailed discussion here.  It should be noted that of the two, a carbon tax represents a more interventionist approach by government than does cap and trade.

    Further, Hansen is vociferous also in calling for a moratorium on all future coal power stations that do not capture and store their emitted CO2.  In a letter to the Obama's in 2008, he wrote of a "Moratorium and phase-out of coal plants that do not capture and store CO2" that it was the "...sine qua non for solving the climate problem."  Such a moratorium would represent a clear regulatory intervention by the government to obviate a market failure.  It would represent the government picking a loser (coal) in favour of winners (nuclear and renewables).

    In short, what Ignaz claims to be the opinion of Hansen is directly contradictory to Hansen's actual opinion.

    This is not the only example of such egregious misrepresentation by Ignaz.  I have previously discussed his misrepresentation of William Nordhaus, and his misrepresentation of the findings of inquiries into flooding in New Orleans.  This is developing into a pattern which is very hard to attribute to innocent error.

  49. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Ignaz, I don't want to derail the thread, but governments have always intervened in markets.  There has never been--and there will never be--a general, unregulated, large-scale market economy.  The fact that the global market exists and that economic growth continues is one measure of the success of government intervention.  You may have different criteria for "success." The problem with free markets is the same as the problem with democracy: these processes only work in their participants' best interests when the participants fully understand the long-range outcomes of their actions.  That's not working out so well, especially as the emphasis seems to be on dumbing down the participants and allowing the privileged representatives (capitalists and politicians, respectively) free rei(g)n to determine what is right for the participants.  

    A portion of every dollar spent on fossil energy goes to organizations that are dedicated to misinforming the public on the issue of climate change. The narrative (or "memes" really, as there is no coherent narrative and, for their purpose, doesn't need to be) produced by these organizations is strongly anti-regulation. The bottom line is that corporations and companies (and their shills) speak with forked tongues as they complain about government regulation but also attempt to regulate the market by controlling public discourse and altering the politics of market participants.

    Do wind and solar companies also attempt to misinform the public in order to gain an edge?  I'm sure they do, but this action has nothing to do with the drive toward a more sustainable energy platform.  It has everything to do with the essential culture of the economic mode in which they are engaged (or as the shills say, "it's just human nature"). The mode encourages confusion.

  50. Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

    Huge estimates of wind turbine land use are derived by pretending that all of the area between individual turbines in a wind farm is being 'used' by them. This is, of course, false.

    Huge estimates of solar land use are derived by pretending that solar power cannot be deployed in areas already being 'used' (e.g. on building rooftops or over parking lots) and thus take up no additional space. This is, of course, false.

    The 'kill rate' for birds from wind power is less than that from fossil fuel power... and both are tiny compared to cats and collision with windows.

    In short, you are spouting a whole lot of nonsense.

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