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Bob Loblaw at 11:29 AM on 24 January 20232015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
Long:
Although this is an old thread, comments never close here at SkS - for just the reason that someone may want to discuss them again in the distant future.
Institutions will differ; countries wll differ. Funding can be quite complex.
My own experience in universities is within Canada, and from roughly 30 years ago. Times have changed. Academic positions will have rules that affect what sort of outside contracts a professor may hold - but expectations may differ even between departments in the same university.
Where I was (Geography), outside contracts and external activities that took away from your research time were not looked upon all that favourably, but my understanding was that within some other departments - e.g. Engineering - that outside consulting work was essential to advance your career. If you weren't getting outside contracts for "real engineering" work, what good were you? At least in our academic environment your entire salary was typically covered by the university for the entire calendar year.
My understanding was that many U.S. universities only paid a professor's salary during the school term, and you had to get outside funding that included salary dollars for yourself during the summer (non-teaching) periods. That could come from grants, etc.
In Canada, major academic granting agencies would not allow grant money to go to the principal investigator's salary - but it could go to grad students or post-docs. In the U.S., grant money for your own salary was more or less expected. Institution claw-backs for "administrative overhead" could also vary, depending on the institution, the type of funding, etc.
In the example above (comment #3), clearly part of the contract was going to Soon as salary - but there is no indication whether this is to cover his regular salary, or is an extra "perk". Either way, though, Soon benefited personally, directly from that contract.
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Long Knoll at 11:04 AM on 24 January 20232015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
Thanks for this information Bob Loblaw. I realise its a very old thread but I wasn't sure how else to have a chance of finding an answer; I couldn't find another relevant thread and I'd read a lot of articles on the subject to no avail, probably because I don't have a great grasp of how these institutions work. I was asking due to a debate I was having with a climate skeptic. Again, I appreciate your time.
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:14 AM on 24 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Evan... Oh, we absolutely will get to net zero carbon emissions. There's no doubt about that. It's a little like flying an airplane. You're eventually going to land, it's just a matter of how you land.
My personal optimism comes from the fact that energy technologies are coming forth in rapid succession. Years back I remember wondering why so much money was being poured into off-shore wind when the cost was >$300/MW. Then, I watched turbines escalate in size and fall in cost and I went, "Ohhh..." Same is happening with grid storage now. There are certainly going to be physical constraints to each solution that comes to market, but fortunately lots of solutions are coming to market.
All (or nearly all) energy generation plants are going to be replaced over the coming 30+ years. It already makes little sense to invest in new FF plants. There are aspects of decarbonization that are going to be more tenatious problems to solve, but I know smart people are eager to work on those problem. My larger 30,000 ft level view concern is the general notion out there that nothing is being done, and it's just plain wrong. People have been working on this for decades and those efforts are clearly bearing fruit.
Regarding the Keeling Curve, I believe it's going to be a lagging indicator of what's happening, and figures related to the growth of renewables (which have been tragically underestimated) is more of a leading indicator.
The biggest wild card, in my mind, is human behavior. We're sure to see some pretty serious socio-political upheaval over the coming 30 years. My biggest concern is whether such disruptions will further delay progress right as we need to further accelerate progress.
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Evan at 03:28 AM on 24 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Thanks Rob for your comments.
I agree with most of your points, but differ in messaging. Climate scientists, and even yourself, use the phrase "Once we get carbon emissions down to net zero," as though it is a foregone conclusion that we will. For the not-so-well-informed, watching from a distance layperson, one could get the feeling that we've found a way out of our mess, that we're well on our way, and that the current rollout of renewable energy and EVs will solve the problem. Yes, there are promising technologies, but rolling them out across the globe and replacing, not supplementing the fossil-fuel industry, is quite another matter. This all assumes, of course, the renewable energy is replacing fossil-fuel energy. Or is renewable energy merely allowing cheap expansion of more generating capacity? Rapid growth of renewable energy does not mean we are reducing emissions.
And as you well know, energy consumption is just one part of the problem.
I am not trying to spread pessimism. I am trying to help people prepare for a likely future. It is far more likely that we will have warming in the pipeline for decades to come, than not. It is far more likely that our current CO2 concentrations represent committed warming than not. The fact that the future theoretically lies in our hands and depends on what we do, cannot be construed to give us a likely future where we get to net zero emissions by 2050.
Take a look at the following graph, where I've taken the 1970-2005 upward accelerating trend line and projected it forward. The 2010, 2015, and 2020 data all lie about this upward accelerating trend line! I don't see any indication of an inflection point. What I do see is a hint, not proof, but a hint that the trend line is more than accelerating upwards.
For all of our sakes Rob I hope you're right and that I'm wrong. But the Keeling Curve only tells me one message. Time to prepare for a very tough future. We're in the middle of building a house now, and we're putting a lot of money into building it strong, into a ground-source heat pump, and into an expensive roof that can withstand high winds and hail. In short, the Keeling Curve is suggesting that we must build far beyond current building codes to keep up with the changing climate.
I am serious, though, when I say that I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I don't want to be a pessimist. But I do want to help people prepare for the likely future.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:24 AM on 24 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Evan @13... I don't think "scientists" make such a mistake, nor do they make specific assertions about whether we will or won't get to net zero.
Climate research offer up a very wide range of potential outcomes, since obviously no one can predict future events. All researchers are doing is saying "if" we get to net zero (and there certainly is a chance we can achieve this in the next 30 years) then warming should stop as we reach that level.
You say, "But so far, nothing we have done has slowed the upward acceleration of the Keeling Curve." I think the challenge there is, when you're at the inflection point it's very hard to determine where the trend is going to go by eyeballing charts.
I remain positive on this topic because I do see things are happening. Every day when I read the news I see new technologies and new strategies aimed at elimination of greenhouse gases. I know that renewable energy is now the cheapest energy available and is continuing to fall in cost, and it's now scaling exponentially.
I also find pessimism to be a mindset that robs people of motivation to achieve new things. By framing the issue as "we're screwed" tends to act as a self fulfilling prophecy.
I am realistic in that I know for certain things are going to get worse. The tasks ahead are gargantuan. The impacts are going to affect different people to different degrees. But there are levels of how bad this gets. As Dr. Stephen Schneider said, "'End of the world' and 'good for us' are the two lowest probability outcomes."
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Evan at 22:01 PM on 23 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Take a look at the following curve that I published in Addressing the Climate Crisis: Evolution or Revolution. It suggests a very strong connection between population and the accumulation rate of CO2 in the atmosphere, spanning many different levels of technology and governance. It also illustrates our path to net zero emissions, even though this graph only shows our path to stabilizing CO2, and not to net zero emissions. My point in bringing this up is that we must not speak confidently of reaching net zero emissions as though it will happen. If all we did was to follow the path to net zero accumulation, that would still leave "warming in the pipeline".
I also offer thoughts on this issue in a separate post, Climate Confusion, where I address this issue of prematurely concluding that there is no longer warming in the pipeline. Some people are becoming confused by the scientific messaging, thinking that warming in the pipeline represents old science. The only way we avoid warming in the pipeline is by going beyond atmospheric CO2 stabilization and getting it to drop. Here is a graph of what the warming would look like if we stabilized CO2 immediately, and reached net zero emissions by 2100.
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EddieEvans at 19:50 PM on 23 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
"But so far, nothing we have done has slowed the upward acceleration of the Keeling Curve."
I cannot ignore the past, and there's more than enough evidence to show the role of government and fossil fuel's role in the Keeling Curve's relentless climb. James Speth, "They Knew" and Juliana vs The United States ), and the Climate Files scream at us to stop burning fossil fuels.
We have no real cause to doubt the inexorable climb of the Keeling Curve and our reliance on passing the buck to the next generation, as they will do to the next generation.
I have a sense of the frustration Galileo must have felt.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:39 AM on 23 January 2023Can induction stoves convince home cooks to give up gas?
The following NPR article, “Gas stoves became part of the culture war in less than a week. Here's why”, shows that the people who want to benefit from prolonged, or increased, gas burning jumped on, and dumped on, the report of the study about the harms of cooking with gas.
Marketing promoting the ‘positives’ of anything is actually a serious problem. And consumerism fuelled societies are full of it. Exclusively selling positive impressions, including selling how a product or service will alleviate unjustified fears like the health and cosmetic industry does, builds popular support and profitability. And that popularity and profitability can cause people to resist learning about harmful aspects of what they have been enticed to develop a liking for. People can be harmfully tempted to like leadership that makes-up things to be feared and claims to fight against the created, but unjustified, fears and anxiety. And a nasty twist of that understanding is the ways that misleading marketing can get people to believe that climate change impacts are a ‘made-up fear’.
Most of the societies in human history that are perceived to be more advanced and superior, aspired to by others, can be understood to have been governed by misleading marketing and a related resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others.
Human history is also full of evidence that a portion of the harmfully governed dominant populations have tried to promote learning about the harmful realities of the supposedly advanced and believed to be superior societies and cultures.
The challenge continues to be breaking that cycle to get an increasing amount of human activity governed and limited by the pursuit of learning about what is harmful. That requires leadership actions that understandably reduce real harm done, repair harm done, and help people who genuinely need assistance to live a basic decent life. All human activity being governed that way would develop amazing sustainable improvements.
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Evan at 01:46 AM on 23 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Honeycutt@4
"Once we get carbon emissions down to "net zero""
The mistake scientists are making is assuming so strongly that we will get to net-zero emissions, that they are already saying there is no warming in the pipeline because we will get to net-zero emissions. There is no evidence to suggest that we will reach net-zero emissions, but there is ample evidence to suggest that we will continue with emissions sufficiently high to effectively guarantee warming in the pipeline.
It is merely a theoretical conclusion that there need not be warming in the pipeline, but this is a theoretical conclusion that currently appears to be completely disconnected from our actions. I am planning my life and recommending that others plan as though there is warming in the pipeline. If, not when, we get emissions under control, we will be that much better off. But so far, nothing we have done has slowed the upward acceleration of the Keeling Curve. There is lots of talk and plans, but it is relatively easy to get a small sector of the world to agree on what we need to do. It is an entirely different matter to get the rest of the world to follow suit.
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EddieEvans at 18:30 PM on 22 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Thanks for helping me out with the Hausfather paper. It took a couple of readings but is worth the time. It clarifies the "mixing of two different concepts: a world where CO2 levels in the atmosphere remain at current levels; and a world where emissions reach net zero and concentrations begin to fall." I believe that I was at the latter, "a world where emissions reach net zero and concentrations begin to fall." That was some years ago, and it seemed intuitive. Somewhere I became interested in the former and forgot the latter. I remind myself of today's biggest climate literacy problem, how many voters mix weather and climate. (My in-laws) I will summarize the article and make a robotic read video for Youtube.
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John Mason at 01:46 AM on 21 January 2023Can induction stoves convince home cooks to give up gas?
I've been using a single portable induction-hob and it's amazing the diversity of dishes that it can churn out. Got a single ring camping gas stove too, of a similar size, that I used for much of last year. I've kept that in case of power-outages, but am very impressed with the hob.
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Cajetan at 14:08 PM on 20 January 2023Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use
It is evidently a global warming issue. Since Kilimanjaro is located along the equator it makes matters even worse. Climbing Kilimanjaro during the wet season you might not notice but during the dry and warm season, you can obviously notice how dry the peak can be. is it that glaciers have a lifespan or global warming is the primary cause? Most glaciers and icefields have receded. Some of the famous glaciers on the Mountain e.g, Arrow Glacier, and others have disappeared completely.
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scaddenp at 11:07 AM on 18 January 2023Can induction stoves convince home cooks to give up gas?
i have used a few induction tops which convinced me that good controls are necessary to convince someone used to using gas. On 250V supply, it heats much faster than gas. However, first one I used had digital controls which were fussy to use and effectively "quantized" control to 10 levels. Compared to fine level of control on gas, this was awful. Also, the control system had slow feedback so on low settings the heat oscillated around the control point - ie your simmer was constantly going off and on. These put me off till a friend (very keen cook) showed me his which had none of those problems. If you are switching from gas, then pay the money for decent controls.
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Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 10:32 AM on 18 January 2023Can induction stoves convince home cooks to give up gas?
My induction stove top is 20 years old this year. It works as well as it ever did. It was installed beside a gas cooktop because at the time we were getting a lot of brownouts.
It's years since we've used the gas. The induction stove is much, much better to cook with. The temperature control is terrific plus it's so clean.
Is it the low 110V domestic power supply in the US that is the drawback to takeup there? It seems strange. I've always thought Americans were early adopters of technology.
(I'm planning to sell the gas stove together with the gas heater that also hasn't been used in years.)
Moderator Response:[PS] Edited more or less as requested
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sailingfree at 08:30 AM on 18 January 2023Scafetta's Widget Problems
MA Roger @69,
Thanks for clarification of the data. And thank you moderator [PS] for fixing the mess I made with the URL.
Moderator Response:[PS] You are welcome. Thanks for your work
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Bob Loblaw at 04:08 AM on 18 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Eddie: Rob linked to the Hausfather paper at the end of paragraph 2 in comment #4. The text only displays "Hausfather", but the lin is there if you click on it.
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EddieEvans at 02:24 AM on 18 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
I'm not sure where to find you link; I must have missed it.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:05 AM on 18 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Eddie... Regarding the Hansen paper, note it's not a peer reviewed paper, yet. It's going to go through revisions prior to being published. Take this pre-review version with an appropriate quantity of salt (even from Hansen).
@5... No, I'm not ignoring ocean heat. What I stated is, once we stabilize CO2 concentrations warming will stop. Please read the Hausfather explainer I linked to.
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BaerbelW at 01:58 AM on 18 January 2023New paper: Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections
Thanks, Joel! But credit has to go to Geoffrey Supran for laying things out clearly in his Twitter thread! I didn't do much more than a "copy & paste job" with just a few tweaks here and there.
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Joel_Huberman at 00:50 AM on 18 January 2023New paper: Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections
Thank you, Baerbel, for this clear, informative summary.
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EddieEvans at 00:37 AM on 18 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Here's a recent pipeline article by James Hansen. It took some searching.
"6.14 Recently, the first author (JEH) of our present paper published a
qualitative description of the decade-long investigation that led to the conclusion that most climate models are unrealistically insensitive to freshwater injected by melting ice and also that ice sheet models are unrealistically lethargic in the face of rapid, large climate change.15"Not to be obnoxious, but I did want to refer to James Hansen. Also, if you believe that a warming ocean is a "blessing" to humanity, you might want to take that up with residents in Maimi, Maryland, Vietnam (Mekong Delta, a rice bowl to millions), China, and an assortment of Pacific islanders. Then there's the plankton surviving in a warming ocean, never before tested in human history. Biodiversity in the Global Ocean will become stressed beyond the bounds of natural selection and loss of habitat for unknown numbers of ocean ecosystems.
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EddieEvans at 23:30 PM on 17 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
If you are following US politics, you may believe that descent is underway. It would not matter in any case. I refer to history, especially after US President Johnson pointed to the issue in 1965, over half a century ago. I also refer to Jame's Speth "They Knew: The US Federal Government’s Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis," and Juliana vs The United States Government. James Hansen recently co-authored a paper on CO2 in the pipeline, and it was not encouraging. Then there's global dimming and the rest, not to mention Arctic Sea ice melt, which no one has found a way to rectify. I could go on and on. I have not seen research on cooling the global ocean in any short-term scenario. What I'm reading says "hundreds of years," at least. If you have more comforting information, I would enjoy seeing it. We have no idea what we are handing to the next generation. "Nature is very complex to think about, and probably more complex than we can think."
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MA Rodger at 19:25 PM on 17 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
EddieEvans @1,3&5,
The threat to humanity is not the extinction of our species. The threat is the collapse of the world economy and a descent into a future where the sovereign state system is replaced by an anarchy. The further we push the climate and thus also the natural world, the more likely that threat will become a reality.
The idea of there being "plenty of CO2 in the pipeline" is worth a few words. The IPCC has for some time set out the science which links the rise in global temperature we face with the accumulative CO2 emissions reached at the point of 'net zero', as per AR5 Fig SPM.10 below. As we know the CO2 emissions so far, that sets a budget of CO2 for any measure of temperature rise. And it appears humanity is struggling to stay within a budget commenserate with a +1.5ºC rise, indeed struggling to admit there is any such budget.
But do note that to curtail the temperature rise for a CO2 budget, the 'net zero' event is now followed by decades of 'net negative' when CO2 is drawn down more quickly than nature would manage alone (amounts depending on the scenario) with (for the SSP1-1.9 projections) all our emissions ~2007-to-'net zero' extracted as 'negative' emissions.
And the "warming oceans" you mention are actually a bit of a blessing. Once the energy balance out into space is restored, the "warming oceans" will maintain a cooling of surface temperatures. But of course we do need to get the energy balance up above zeroed.
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EddieEvans at 17:29 PM on 17 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
At the risk of being dogmatic, your assessment seems to miss the warming ocean, which cannot be cooled in any foreseeable future. Nuclear weapons, population pressures, plague, and overall loss of sustainable habitat tell me we'll live up to our history, we'll kick the can down the road, and pass the buck to the next generation until there is no next generation. I'm pointing to what I'm reading, seeing, and hearing, and my personal experience. The question is not if, but when. Science cannot answer this question because it's a bit metaphysical. We have no crystal ball, only our history on thi planet.
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:02 AM on 17 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Eddie... @1: Human extinction is highly unlikely in any scenario. Extinctions (plural) of a broad range of wild species is ongoing and likely to worsen. Those extinctions have impacts on humanity. High emissions scenarios could produce a collapse of modern society as we know it. That would entail a great deal of human suffering. But actual human extinction isn't likely.
@3: The recent research on "warming in the pipeline" is suggesting this is incorrect. Once we get carbon emissions down to "net zero" (to the point where atmospheric concentrations stabilize) warming is expected to stop. Currently, with renewables scaling exponentially, we could get to net zero by mid-century. (Haufather)
Climate related impacts are certainly going to keep getting worse until we can get our emissions stabilized. Bringing them back down to, say 350ppm, isn't in the cards any time in the foreseeable future. Thus, I think the climate we have for quite a while is the one where we stabilize emissions. That's a very different world than the one most of us were born into.
...but, again, human extinction? No.
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EddieEvans at 02:25 AM on 17 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
I'm basing my comment on what I'm reading and seeing on the Internet and in books. Global ocean warming cannot be stopped or turned around any time soon, and there's plenty of CO2 in the pipeline even if, and when humanity gets it right.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:54 PM on 16 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
EddieEvans,
I am optimistic about the future of humanity. Human history appears to have a long-term trend towards individual activity being governed by ‘the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful’. There appears to be more thoughtful leadership limiting the harm done, encouraging people to be more accepting of harmless differences, and encouraging people to be more helpful to Others.
I am encouraged by the development of important global understandings like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals, and even the ‘inadequate so far’ global agreements to limit the harm done by climate change impacts.
Some powerful groups try to fight against helpful harm reducing learning. But it is unlikely that their attempts to stifle learning will succeed in the long-term. Unfortunately, as the climate change challenge proves, a lot of harm can be done while they fight their losing battle against improving the future for humanity.
However, I understand that the long-term winners may be the disastrous cases in the past where ‘interests contrary to learning to be less harmful’ become permanently powerful by resisting learning to develop sustainable improvements.
It is tragic when undeserving winners of power and perceptions of superiority relative to others can over-power learning to be less harmful. It is discouraging to see supposedly more advanced people fail to effectively govern and limit harm done. They set very bad examples that others can be tempted to aspire down to (a potentially tragic downward spiral).
Hopefully more people are learning to be less harmful fast enough to govern and limit the harm done by the pursuits of 'more perceptions of superiority' by people who resist learning to be less harmful.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:50 AM on 16 January 2023Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
The C-14 article is just lipstick on an old pig - the same errors that permeate earlier papers are applied to C-14 concentrations instead of just CO2.
The key factor is that differentiation over the short term cannot tell you much about long-term processes. There is a fundamental error, covered in the "correlation" link above, but not really expanded on or explicitly stated. Basically, when you differentiate (look at the short-term rates of variation) you eliminate the constant terms. Many moons ago I expressed this in a private forum as follows:
I am reminded of a math joke told to me years ago by a mathematician
friend. (Yes, I know. "math joke" is an oxymoron. Don't ask me to tell you the one about Noah and the snakes.)Two mathematicians are in a bar, arguing about the general math knowledge of the masses. They end up deciding to settle the issue by seeing if the waitress can answer a math question. While mathematician A is in the bathroom, mathematician B corners the waitress and tells her that when his friend asks her a question, she should answer "one half X squared". A little later, when the waitress returns to the table, mathematician A asks her "what is the integral of X?". She answers as instructed, and mathematician A sheepishly pays off the bet and admits that mathematician B was right. As the waitress walks away, she is heard to mutter "pair of idiots. It's one-half X squared, plus a constant".
Salby and Harde forget that integration is not complete without adding a constant - a moot point if you are just doing the integration symbolically, but absolutely critical if you want to put actual numbers on it. CO2 does track the integral of temperature - as long as you don't forget to add back in the constant that dominates the correlation. Without the constant, there is no correlation, which tells us that the short-term variations in temperature are not affecting the long term buildup of CO2. Because Salby sees a correlation between the noise in T and the noise in CO2, he mistakenly assumes that integration will entirely reverse the differentiation without reference to the constant.
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EddieEvans at 21:24 PM on 15 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Five years ago I still believed that humanity would avoid extinction whenever possible. I'm now confident that I was wrong. I see the next generation's ruling elites taking part in climate deception, and then the next if there is a next.
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EnderWiggin at 20:07 PM on 15 January 2023Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
Thanks alot to Bob for his answers! I already knew the four articles on skepticalscience you linked to, but apparently the C-14-articles were not adressed therein.
Sorry for posting several times, I just thought to increase my chance to get an answer. Next time, I'm going to post only once.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:55 AM on 15 January 2023Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate
Doug Cannon,
The fundamentals of the argument you continue to make are still:
- The emissions from the ‘tailpipe’ of the most efficient hybrid is to be compared with all of the emissions of charging 'any and all' EVs or plug-in hybrids with fossil fuel generated electricity that does not have emissions reduced by CCS.
- Therefore, until there is no fossil fuel generation of electricity 'anywhere' there should be no EV or plug-in hybrid use. Not maintaining this part of the argument opens the argument up to the question of how much EV use makes sense.
Try again after reviewing all of the comments, particularly my comment @36, particularly the point that any unnecessary fossil fuel use, including electricity use in regions with fossil fuel as part of the generation mix, needs to be curtailed.
That understanding leads to appreciating the benefit of, and need for, government action to encourage the purchase of EVs paired with government action to reduce unnecessary energy use, especially actions that rapidly end fossil fuel use which would include discouraging the purchase and use of fossil fuelled vehicles, including hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
Note: I have always driven my efficient hybrid as little as possible. So, some people do not need government encouragement and discouragement to be less harmful and more helpful. But since everybody's climate impact actions add up government actions to encourage less harmful behaviours and discourage more harmful behaviour are required contrary to, and corrective of, developed popular misunderstandings and related harmful profitable activities.
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BaerbelW at 04:37 AM on 15 January 2023Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus
To add another option to share this explainer, I created an audio version and put it up on Youtube: https://youtu.be/CQIowIu0yoc
This might come in handy whenever trying to explain a scientific consensus in YouTube comments where links to other videos work, but - at least for me - comments with links to other websites make them disappear immediately.
P.S.: Thanks to EddieEvans for giving me the idea to do this recording!
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:20 AM on 15 January 2023Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate
Doug @44... "So the net result of adding the EV load is an equivalent 'increase' in coal generation compared to the scenario when no EV load existed."
Coal generation is clearly declining.
Renewable energy is now scaling exponentially.
The net result is reduced carbon emissions. Electrifying surface transportation with EV's is a (the most, even) significant part of that equation.
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Doug Cannon at 02:47 AM on 15 January 2023Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate
One Planet Only Forever #43
I would take issue with your second paragraph re “....any(all) electricity for EV's must come from fossil...”
In my original #15 I was very specific in the first two paragraphs. I made it clear that my position was in regard to “total CO2 emissions in the U. S.” and it was based on”a best case scenario” for renewable electricity by the eia. I later gave a link to that eia report.https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf
In that scenario, in the middle of page 15, the graphs confirm the fuel mix I described in my 2nd and 3rd paragraph.
You're correct. There is a conceptual issue. The concept being: as we're trying to clean up the grid, and the two variables in the fuel mix are (1) increasing renewable generation and (2)equally decreasing coal generation, then: as an EV load is added, that increased EV load has to be met by not decreasing the coal generation. So the net result of adding the EV load is an equivalent “increase” in coal generation compared to the scenario when no EV load existed.
It's a very simple concept. One can disbelieve the eia forecast; that's fine. But, assuming their forecast is correct, the resulting concept is clear. -
MA Rodger at 00:56 AM on 14 January 2023Scafetta's Widget Problems
sailingfree @68,
Note that the data for global temperatre you plot is NOAA data but not GISS (LOTI) data. Both use the same raw data but process them differently. Thus in NOAA 2015 is warmer than 2017 by +0.02ºC while in GISS 2015 is cooler than 2017 by -0.02ºC.
And both have published the 2022 figure which slots into the record above 2021, although not by much in NOAA.
As you rightly say, the present La Niña is depressing the global average SAT, a La Niña which is expected to end through the coming year, and expected to end a lot more suddenly than previous strong La Niñas (like 1988, 1999 & 2008 which were more sudden transitioning into La Niña and more gradual transitioning out).
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sailingfree at 14:00 PM on 13 January 2023Scafetta's Widget Problems
Here is the update to Scafetta's Widget.
Moderator Response:[PS] I have updated comment to the actual image, and removed failed attempts You again linked to a page, rather than the image in that page. You want link that has .png, .jpg etc in it.
Additional information on adding image or html to a comment can be found on the comments policy page (at the bottom). The link to the comment policy is just under the comment editor.
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Bob Loblaw at 06:44 AM on 13 January 2023Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
A follow-up to my comment @ 69, which was a response to EnderWiggin @ 68.
On Tuesday, I did a search for the title and author (Salby) that EnderWiggin provided. I was able to find parts 1 and 2 on a site hosted at scc.klimarealistene.com - but by Wednesday, that domain name had disappeared and could no longer be reached.
klimarealistene.com does still exist, but has no signs of the papers. A bit of searching on their web page found a link to scienceofclimatechange.org. Eventually, the two papers were found on this page (Volume 1.2 December 2021).
A bit of background. Klimarealistene is a well-known Norwegian climate "science" contrarian group. The "journal" Science of Climate Change is their creation. I suspect the change in web location has to do with reorganization of the journal's online pages. The old "scc" portion of the klimarealistene link was undoubtedly short for Science of Climate Change.
On the main SCC page, they say:
4 November, 2022
The journal Science of Climate Change was funded by Klimarealistene in Norway in September 2020, and the first issue appeared in August 2021. Several additional articles have been published in 2021 and 2022, but due to a heavy work load on the Editor they have not been collected into Volumes before now. A few articles have also been delayed in being published. The Scientific Council of the Norwegian Climate Realists is at the moment working on a plan for the management of the journal from 2023. In the mean time I have stepped in as Editor to handle the backlog…
The list of authors on their Volumes and Issues page reads like a who's-who of climate science contrarianism in Norway. Standard names such as Salby, Humlum, Harde, and Solheim dominate.So, the "obscure" journal, as EnderWiggin refers to it, looks like it is basically just a mouth-piece for Klimarealistene, so they can "publish" stuff and make it look like a journal. Credibility factor approaching zero.The two CO2 papers in question are co-authored between Salby and Hermann Harde. Interestingly, Salby is listed with an affiliation of "Ex Macquarie University" -a university he was fired from in 2013, after only 5 years. Not an inaccurate claim - he's clearly no longer there - but rather reeks of resume padding. (Of course, Salby is now "Ex Earth", having passed away in 2022.)Part 1 basically looks at C14 fluxes and argues that it can be used to estimate carbon uptake rates. Part 2 follows to look at recent (nothing older than 1956) variations in CO2 and temperature, to claim that anthropogenic contributions to the rise in CO2 are negligible.I didn't try to evaluate their math in detail, but basically it looks like yet another case of taking the short-term variation in CO2 concentrations and temperature, and making erroneous statistic correlations that mislead them about long-term trends. Same dog, same old tricks.In my comment above, the most applicable debunking is probably the one in this SkS post: -
sailingfree at 06:33 AM on 13 January 2023Scafetta's Widget Problems
photos.app.goo.gl/9y372EWor6C9ExJi9
Moderator Response:[PS] if you use a image service that just serves the image, then you can use insert image, make sure width is constrained to 500, and the image will display in the comment. google photos is bad for this as links are to the photo viewer, not the image.
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sailingfree at 06:29 AM on 13 January 2023Scafetta's Widget Problems
It has been a decade since Scafetta’s 2011 projections were made, so it is time to update the temperature data to compare it to his projections.
In the figure below I have updated his graph by adding the global surface temperature yearly
average anomalies from NOAA/GISS. I’d say the IPCC models are pretty good, especially since the last few years have been La Nina years.
Scafetta projection, the black wavy line, misses the temperature change over the decade by a third of a degree. Recent temperatures of 2015 to 2022 are already comparable to his projection for 2100.(The NOAA/GISS data is referenced to the 1900-1999 average so I adjusted it to the 1960-1999 reference that Scafetta used. The NOAA/GISS data average for 1960-1999 is 0.135, so I
subtracted that from the data before plotting it as the black dots.)Moderator Response:[PS] If you want to put an image into a comment, you need to first put the image into some suitable image server (eg imgur) and then insert a link. SkS doesnt have ability to host images despite the illusion of it doing so.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:31 AM on 11 January 2023Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
EnderWiggin:
First, you've posted the same question in three locations. That is bad form. In the main menu under the masthead, the "Comments" link will show any new comments on any thread, so posting your question once will allow it to be found easily.
As for Salby, without a link to the papers I can't tell what that particular version of Salby's wanderings are wrong, but his name has been a frequent occurence here. You can use the search function at this site to find more, but in roughly chronoogical order here are several posts that discuss errors in Salby's work. I don't think he's come up with anything new in many years, so even old posts will probably cover any "recent" errors.
https://skepticalscience.com/Murry-Salby-CO2-rise-natural.htm
https://skepticalscience.com/Murry-Salby-Confused-About-The-Carbon-Cycle.html
https://skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.html
https://skepticalscience.com/salbyratio.html
Moderator Response:[BL] Edited 2023/01/12/ to delete a link that pointed to an unpublished web page.
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EnderWiggin at 04:19 AM on 11 January 2023Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
Greetings, I'm new here. I was directed to Murry Salbys 'C-14 proof', apparently 'Control of atmospheric CO2 Part 1&2' in the obscure 'Journal' 'Science of Climate Change'.
Does anybody has any informations about where exactly he goes wrong in his proof?
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EnderWiggin at 04:17 AM on 11 January 2023CO2 has a short residence time
Greetings, I'm new here. I was directed to Murry Salbys 'C-14 proof', apparently 'Control of atmospheric CO2 Part 1&2' in the obscure 'Journal' 'Science of Climate Change'.
Does anybody has any informations about where exactly he goes wrong in his proof?
Moderator Response:[BL] This question was also asked on another thread. I have posted an answer here.
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EnderWiggin at 04:16 AM on 11 January 2023Murry Salby finds CO2 rise is natural
Greetings, I'm new here. I was directed to Murry Salbys 'C-14 proof', apparently 'Control of atmospheric CO2 Part 1&2' in the obscure 'Journal' 'Science of Climate Change'.
Does anybody has any informations about where exactly he goes wrong in his proof?
Moderator Response:[BL] This question was also asked on another thread. I have posted an answer here.
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Bob Loblaw at 03:29 AM on 11 January 20232015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
There are some other interesting tidbits in that contract between Smithsonian and Southern Company Services. A lot is just boilerplate put in by the lawyers, but it also lists deliverables:
- progress reports
- detailed summary and analysis of results and findings
- ...and freedom for SCS to use the data and results "for its internal purposes"
There is also a Publicity clause:
Smithsonian shall not publish and utilize the name or otherwise identify SCS or its affiliate companies in any publications or other advertisements without the express written consent of SCS. As further consideration to SCS, Smithsonian shall provide SCS an advance written copy of proposed publications regarding the deliverables for comment and input, if any, from SCS.
In one context, that simply gives SCS the right to review the results of the work to make sure that it meets their needs as "deliverables".
In another context, it looks like SCS wants to keep the source of the funding secret, and wants to make sure that any results it does not like will not see the light of day.
Most academic granting agencies will want their name spread far and wide as supporting research, and academic freedom allows researchers to publish and publicize their results regardless of outcome.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:10 AM on 11 January 20232015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
I would say there's a certain perverse incentive built into the system enabling a certain level of bad research to get funded. Soon is a perfect example.
As I sit here, the question occurs to me: Is there some inherent value to this kind of activity?
I've always believed it's important to understand what doesn't work as much as what does work. Researchers are almost going to aggressively defend their work, good or bad.
I don't know. Is the noise their work generates more destructive than the bad science they produce? If so, maybe that's a problem with how information propogates in the public sphere, and how private interests utilize it, rather than an inherent problem with people like Soon producing bad science.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:49 AM on 11 January 20232015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
This is a very old thread, Long. Topal notes in comment #1 that all funds go to the Smithsonian, not individual scientists, but there are some catches to that.
Some of the links in the post are dead, but the "Climate Sceptic’s Fossil Fuel Funding Exposed" page is alive, and at the bottom of that article there is a link to original documents.
One of those documents is a 2008 contract between The Smithsonian and Southern Company Services Inc. The contract includes the proposal from Soon, and part of the proposal includes the items the money is to be spent on. That covers the following:
- 494 hours of Soon's labour, valued at $25,209. (That would put Soon's salary for a 2000-hr work year at roughly $100,000).
- Program administration
- Secretary
- Leave and Fringe benefits (i.e., overhead costs related to labour)
- "Direct Operating Overhead @ 30%".
- This would be Smithsonian's cut, to cover things like office space, etc.
- Travel
- "Printing and reproduction"
The way I would interpret this is that at least part of Soon's salary at Smithsonian is (was?) not coming from general Smithsonian funds, but from grants and contracts that Soon pulls in. This is not uncommon, AFAIK.
So, Soon's salary is (was?) probably fixed by his employment arrangements with the Smithsonian, but the Smithsonian gets off the hook for finding money to pay Soon - or at least, partly off the hook. Soon does not get rich by having a lot of contracts, but his continued employment at the Smithsonian would be made much easier by virtue of having industry cover his salary.
...and having grants or contracts to cover travel makes it a lot easier to participate in the contrarian talking road show. (The details in that contract cover travel to a "Scientific meeting, San Francisco". Possibly the AGU, at a guess?)
I certainly would not argue against you in speculating that gas and oil money will be a lot easier for Soon to get than regular government research grants.
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Long Knoll at 11:46 AM on 10 January 20232015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
There's something I don't get about Willie Soon. Even though he's received huge amounts in grants from oil companies, presumably he hasn't got rich off them, because scientists don't get rich even off large grants as pointed out elsewhere. So why is he taking the grants from oil, as oppose to the government grants he once received? What's the advantage? It only seems to undermine his credibility. Is it because he is incapable of getting public money due to the poor quality of his research?
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Charlie_Brown at 07:33 AM on 10 January 2023IPCC overestimate temperature rise
pbarcelog @67
As a retired engineer (chemical) myself, I can address the fundamental problem with Seim & Olsen’s experiment from an engineer’s perspective for the benefit of your friend. The key mistake is neglecting the cold temperature of the tropopause (217K) that is the source of radiant energy loss to space in the range of about 13.5-16.5 microns. This has to be combined with the overall global energy balance.
The experiment is designed to measure radiant energy in conditions similar to the lower atmosphere, near the surface. Much of it sounds technical, so that it might sound convincing to someone with a technical background who does not fully understand how the greenhouse effect really works. The explanation provided in the Introduction is correct, but falls short of being complete because of the key mistake that I mentioned above. Section 3.4 addresses a variety of thermal issues that demonstrates knowledge about energy balances and confounding effects of convection and conduction. But it misses how the atmosphere is thermally balanced within the context of cold temperature at high altitudes, which is a common misunderstanding, and the fundamental fact of radiation that emitted energy from a CO2 molecule depends only on the presence and their temperature.
There is too much to explain in a short note without knowing the specific nature of your friend’s stumbling block in their understanding of global warming and the experiment. The basic, intermediate, and advanced rebuttals in the myth 74 “CO2 effect Is saturated” provide concise explanations for the fundamental misunderstanding underlying the experiment. The last few comments in that thread provide references for detailed explanations (especially Zhong & Haigh, 2013) for the overall global energy balance, fundamentals of radiant energy transfer, and basics of atmospheric physics. I suggest that your friend takes some time to study them. MODTRAN, as MA Rodger just referenced above, is an excellent and fascinating educational tool that should spark the interest of a curious, technically-minded, engineer (see Brown, et al, "Introduction to an Atmospheric Radiation Model" Chemical Engineering Progress, May 2022.)
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MA Rodger at 04:44 AM on 10 January 2023IPCC overestimate temperature rise
pbarcelog @67,
That appears to leave only Feldman et al (2015).
This was always an odd paper. Note on google scholar it is showing with 206 citations but if you look, most of these are not real citations of the paper's findings.
The question is: much extra downward surface IR you would expect from increasing CO2 from 370ppm to 385ppm (which is what Feldman et al attempt to measure)? MODTRAN gives a rise of 0.188Wm^-2 when modelling a mid-latitude winter and 0.314Wm^-2 when modelling mid-latitude summer. That these values are even the same order of magnitude of the climate forcing from such an increase in CO2 (which would be 5.35 x In(385/370) = 0.21Wm^-2) is entirely coincidental.
Your "retired engineer" appears to be dismissing this +0.21Wm^-2 CO2 forcing over the decade 2000-2010 because he says there is some cloud effect that is an "order of mangitude more relevant." So is there an increase in cloud forcing of +2Wm^-2 through that decade? Or is it perhaps a decrease of that size he talks of? Whichever, he does need to demonstrate this massive cloud effect that appeared through that decade to show he is not talking codswallop.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:40 AM on 10 January 2023IPCC overestimate temperature rise
...and the Seim and Olsen paper was also discussed in several comments on this recent thread:
SkS_Analogy_01_Speed_Kills_Part3_How_fast_can_we_slow_down.html
