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Comments 31801 to 31850:

  1. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    Oops - typo!

    Penultimate paragraph in my #16 should read...

    ... Stephen Chu... and his "coal is my worst nightmare" views

  2. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    Michael #13

    During the build up to the 2008 Bejing Olympics, the problem of atmospheric pollution (especially the PM2.5 crap) really started to get aired. (Pun intended.)

    My, admittedly very limited, understanding was that steps were certainly taken to reduce pollution in the vicinity of the Olympic venues, but that's hardly the same as country-wide. The Real Time Air Quality Index doesn't make for very comforting reading, although some areas in/around Bejing are better than others.

    Although many might distrust the source on principle, Greenpeace announced on 22nd Jan 2015 that Jia Zhangke, a Chinese filmmaker, had just released a short documentary dealing with the ongoing air pollution problem in China.

    I still remember Stephen Chu (Nobel Laureate and Secretary for Energy in President Obama's first term) and has "coal is my worst nightmare" views.

    Hence my scepticism regarding a reduction in sulphate emissions since 2009. It is obviously possible to increase coal consumption whilst reducing emissions, I'm just taking it with a pinch of salt until I see something a bit more concrete.

    Cheers     Bill F 

  3. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    jgnfld - Good point, autocorrelation isn't a huge factor at 5 years or more.

    However, decadal and multidecadal internal climate variations such as ENSO, PDO, and the solar cycle have considerable impact on that scale, and again the possibility of >15 year low or negative trends driven by variations, overlaying longer term positive trends from GHGs, is not to be discounted.

    It's noteworthy that GCM runs exhibit similar emergent behavior when driven by basic physics. 

  4. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    KR: Foster/Tamino aggregate at monthly intervals so of course there is a lot of autocorrelation. Aggregating at annual intervals tends to wash all or most away as shown by nonsignificant autocorrelation tests when you check. I have not checked the various series at half-decadal aggregations, but I suspect autocorrelation would be quite low at that level.

    I like the bet and given the magnitude of the long term trend I would have supported making it especially as the criterion was a simple rise of any magnitude greater than zero. I just disagree with that one particular bit of reasoning.

  5. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    jja,

    Thanks for the references.  I have always thought China aerosols would be important and am interested in seeing what is known.

    Bill: I understand that they are installing scrubbers on a lot of generators in China.   They are installing scrubbers because their pollution problem is so bad.  They are also replacing old units with newer, more efficient ones with scrubbers.  This means they can reduce sulfate emissions while increasing consumption of coal.  A quick Google gave me several news articles that were long on story and short on data. Supposedly the central government is forcing facilities to run the scrubbers because they are concerned about the terrible smog.  It makes sense that they would try to reduce smog but it will take some time to get in the peer reviewed system.

  6. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    jja #5 & #9

    I've had a look at the citation provided in #9, and, apart from the abstract, it is sadly behind a paywall. However, I found an article on a very similar topic to which you refer - interaction between Tropical Belt Width and the PDO - here on the AMetSoc web site.

    What I failed to find there was anything that remotely supported your comment (#5) concerning "China sulfate emissions reductions from 2009...". As stated in my #10, the information to hand suggests that China's sulphate emissions should be growing - hence causing a negative forcing (direct and indirect).

    There are three explanations that immediately spring to mind...

    1) I am developing selective blindness,

    2) Something (behind the paywall) in your citation talks about Chinese sulphate reductions, or

    3) You have inadvertently linked to the wrong article

    Cheers   Bill F

  7. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    jja #9

    Sorry, your response to Michael arrived whilst I was typing my #10.

    I'll have a plough through the citation you kindly provided.

    Cheers     Bill F

  8. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    jja #5

    "China sulfate emissions reductions from 2009 are also a major contributor to the recent warming trend"

    As Michael already indicated in #7, I would sure like to see a citation for this claim. I did a little presentation last year on energy consumption trends, and, as recently as 2012, China's voracious hunger for the nasty black stuff was showing no sign of abatement.

    Quoting an information brief from the US Energy Information Administration dated 14th May 2014...

    "Chinese production and consumption of coal increased for the 13th consecutive year in 2012. China is by far the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, accounting for 46% of global coal production and 49% of global coal consumption—almost as much as the rest of the world combined"

    Given that their consumption rate was still on the rise, it would be very interesting to learn what practices had been introduced that would result in a reduction in sulphate release!

    Cheers     Bill F

  9. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n4/full/ngeo2091.html

    Michael

    Anthropogenic aerosols and their indirect cloud effects are primary drivers of the PDO, this is only the first of preliminary results:

    In both time periods, anthropogenic aerosols act to modify the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and therefore contribute to the width of the tropical belt.

    In addition, Booth et. al (2012) correlated influence of aerosols on AMO http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7393/full/nature10946.html

    Though Zhang et. al has placed this observation in doubt.  http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog/isaac-held/2013/02/15/35-atlantic-multi-decadal-variability-and-aerosols/

    However, the unanswered questions regarding fluctuations in the AMOC driven by aerosols that Zhang brought up raises even more interesting questions regarding interhemispheral aerosol forcing effects on the AMOC and regional forcing effects on surface wind patterns in the South West and North East Pacific.

    I firmly believe that when these aerosol-ocean interactions are fully investigated we will find an entirely new anthropogenic fingerprint on surface warming.  If I am correct, we will see a very large increase in surface temperatures over the coming years as China is set to reduce her aerosol emissions profile significantly with emissions controls and a likely regional economic slowdown.

  10. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    jgnfld - There certainly is autocorrelation observed in the temperature record, which can be characterized as ARMA(1,1) in nature (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Appendix on Methods). A signal of that nature can easily show >15 year negative trends as variation over an underlying positive trend, as discussed at the end of this post with artificial data. 

    In addition, the GCMs produce much the same behavior from the physics, demonstrating autocorrelation and in effect inertia in variations. So the statement is entirely reasonable. 

  11. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    JJA:

    citation?

  12. Temp record is unreliable

    Thanks Tom a very informative video from Kevin Cowtan. That software he is using is pretty cool. VERY clever. Good of Kevin to take the time. Could I just mention something. KC makes reference to 1970 & 2005 'temperature drop' doesn't Berkeley Earth flag those two periods as 'station moves'? I noticed that in the ATTP link 'scaddenp' posted #333

  13. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    Re.: "A period of cooling due to incidental variations in the climate

    The climate knows random variations. Strengers wrote that these may lead to longer periods of no warming or even cooling, even under a steady increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. During the discussions, Strengers pointed to a study which shows on the basis of climate models that periods of up to 16 years of random cooling or non-warming may occur, even in an overall warming climate."  it may just be I'm not reading this right, but this seems to suffer from Gambler's Fallacy reasoning. That is unless he is invoking autocorrelation which does, in fact, allow such reasoning.


    In any case it might be worded more clearly.

  14. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    China sulfate emissions reductions from 2009 are also a major contributor to the recent warming trend.  The secondary cloud effects appear to be at the higher end of the uncertainty spectrum (more negative).

  15. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    " the degree of warming according to the UAH series, which is based on satellite measurements, was 0.1 °C over the last 5 years, compared to the mean of the 10 years before that. If this trend continues over the coming 5 years, our current decade will register a warming of around 0.15 °C"


    (From the second-to-last paragraph.)

    I don't follow this. If we had .1 degree warming over the first five years, would we expect .2 degees over the decade "if the trend continues"?

    Also, I was surprised to see no mention of volcanoes. Couldn't a major volcano eruption have through a major spanner into these rather short-term predictions?...

    ranyl asks: "...do we actually have a carbon debt rather than a budget already?"

    Certainly, yet, imho.

  16. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    Thanks Bart good read and interesting.

    You rightly highlight that there are papers suggesting a low CS recently and that given all thign matural we should be cooling, however have you also considered the several papers than suggest the CS might be higher than thought at ~4C but less than 5C and greater than 3C.

    "The mixing inferred from observations appears to be sufficiently strong to imply a climate sensitivity of more than 3 degrees for a doubling of carbon dioxide. This is significantly higher than the currently accepted lower bound of 1.5 degrees, thereby constraining model projections towards relatively severe future warming."

    Steven C. Sherwood, Sandrine Bony & Jean-Louis Dufresne, "Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing" Nature 37, vol 505, 2 January 2014

    In medical practice a 95% chance of success is generally considered reasonably safe when taking actions, 99% is preferable and less than this and things became deemed quite risky.

    Therefore shouldn't we be considering, what is the CO2 accumulative emissions amount that would give a 95% chance of avoiding greater than a 2C in the next 100 years?

    And if the evidence in the paper holds true, (which is likely considering all that heat going into the oceans etc.) then the range for CS would start at 3C and end at 5C. A shift in the CS range of that nature would significantly reduce the carbon budget estimations currently being made for policy makers to ponder.

    Further maybe we should even be asking what is the total GHG emissions that gives a 95% chance of keeping earth lower than 2C for the next 300 years, given that prevention is better than cure for future generations?

    And is 2C even safe?

    As the only way to actually turn the CO2 heater down is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, do we actually have a carbon debt rather than a budget already?

  17. Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?

    An interesting point, though, FreeDubay.  I'm set on cremation, but perhaps this is not the best way to go.  Maybe burial in a place designed for human sequestration.

  18. Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

    @4:

     

    That's exactly what it looks like. Should be fairly simple to check with the Paraguayan met office.

  19. Stephen Baines at 08:55 AM on 29 January 2015
    Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?

    FreeDubay @ 50

    Fossil fuels are from plants, its true, but that carbon was removed from the air hundreds of millions of years before humans ever walked the earth. So releasing that carbon isn't neutral from the perspective of human history or civilization. In addition, burning all of the fossil fuels would return us to a truly ancient pre-human atmospheric chemistry, with all its attendant consequences for climate, in only a only century or two, whereas it took many millions of years to stash away that carbon in the earth in the first place.  

    The CO2 we exhale, on the other hand, was usually taken from the atmosphere in the last year or two. The uptake of that carbon from the air by food crops contributes fractionally to the regular annual fluctuations in atmospheric CO2. Over scales longer than a year, the net effect on climate of carbon dioxide uptake by food crops and exhalation of CO2 by people is essentially zero.

  20. Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

    Over on notalotofpeopleknowthat (Booker's source), Paul has posted another exposé titled All Of Paraguay’s Temperature Record Has Been Tampered With, looking deeper at all the sites in Paraguay.

    In the comments someone called Eliza says (among other things):

    "My father set up/fixed to specified standrads [sic] all the stevensons boxes stations for the WMO in Paraguay during the 70’s (1964-1976)."

    Which is the period around that first drop in the raw data for several of the Paraguay stations. They don't seem to have noticed the connection over there.

  21. Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?

    Using your reasoning about humans being neutral in terms of CO2. Following that logic the burning of fossil fuels can be deemed neutral as well. Oil and coal are derived from plants. They just happen to be sequestered in the ground. Its interesting though once taken out of the ground they still don't add to the increase in CO2 as they are in a liquid or solid state. Not unitl they are "burned" do they release CO2. I wonder if that is the same for humans, whether you should be buried or sequestered?

  22. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    Sorry, forgot to add a footnote.  HadCRUT4 has been updated to a new version, but because the data with uncertainties was not currently accessible, I used the data for version 4.3.0.0 in my analysis.

  23. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    ryland @various, my argument is not with the Met Office.  It is with the pseudo-skeptics who created a furror when (according to them) GISS announced that 2014 was a record year without qualification.  The simple fact is that 2014 is the record year in the GISSTEMP temperature index.  As it happens, the GISS announcement actually discussed the uncertainty in greater detail than has the HadCRUT4 announcement.  They just did not use the form of words that the pseudoskeptics wanted.  What is worse about some pseudoskeptics is that when knowledge of the table shown @36 became available, they treated it as a subsequent announcement, as a backdown, and as proof that 2014 was not the record year.  Each of those claims was false, and the first two grossly misrepresent the communications from NASA GISS.

    Beyond the political agenda of those pseudoskeptics, what is going on here is that people are confused by what is meant by "record x".  The record x, for whatever x is, is simply the highest value in the record.  The Guiness Book of Records, for example, does not claim that the car that currently holds the land speed record was the fastest ever car.  It simply claims that it is has the fastest speed entered in the records.  Other cars may have been faster, but been excluded because of the presence of a strong tail wind, the failure to run the test in both directions within a given time limit, or the simple absence of an official observer.  They do not even take note of potential error margins in observations which are certainly there, although I do not claim they are significant.  Likewise when reporting on the fastest delivery in cricket, nobody worries about the uncertainties in measurement.  Indeed, when record cold winters for the US are announced, the pseudoskeptics definitely do not draw attention to uncertainties (which are even more of a factor).  They just accept face value, or distort the figures.

    So, 2014 is the warmest year in the GISS record, and the warmest year in the HadCRUT4 record, and the warmest year in the NOAA record, and the warmest year in the BEST record.  That does not mean it was in fact warmer than 2010, because the measurement of GMST is uncertain - but it is the record year for each of those temperature indices.

    Further, distracting from that fact by saying it may not have been the record year is pure obfustication.  With HadCRUT4 (having now actually run the numbers), if you allow that obfustication there have been just 3 record years (1850 (by definition), 1990, and 1998), rather than the 15 record years that have actually occurred - 9 of them since 1983 (inclusive); and 4 of them since 1998 (inclusive).  (Full list at end of post.)  Further, the obfustication means that, if we accept the distorted terminology, the most recent "record year" is 1998, even though 1998 has a very low probability of being the actual hottest year in the last 150 years according to HadCRUT4, (and is "statistically excluded" according to BEST).

    1850

    1851

    1868
    1877
    1878
    1944
    1983
    1988
    1990
    1995
    1997
    1998
    2005
    2010
    2014

  24. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    God, if only the stakes were really only a good bottle of wine.

  25. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    The way climate deniers are currently objecting to this latest record hot year, yes, that's what they're going to do. You'd have to have an extreme record to have the uncertainty fall above the uncertainty range of all previous years.

    And, 4C+ is a reference to business-as-usual emissions path leading to a 4C or better rise in surface temperatures over pre-industrial levels by 2100.

  26. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    I really don't think that will happen as I'm sure at some stage the global temperature  of a particular year will be statistically different from the temperature in other years.   In any event how important is it for a particular year to be called the "hottest ever"?  Apologies but I don't know  what you mean by surface temps rise to 4C+.  

  27. Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

    AFAIK, most changes in data records are either due to changes in sensor type (like going from mercury in glass to electronic sensors) or changes in hour of recording (including how to calculate daily averages). In a particular country, this (a break in teh record) was then probably due to a nationwide switch made by the national body in charge of those measurements. Have to ask our South American readers here to chime in ...

  28. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    Think it through, though. The way this is all suddenly being re-defined means that there will never be any new record warm years. There will likely always be some statistical likelihood (however small) that another year was actually warmer.

    So, now climate deniers can go all the way through the rest of the century stating that no year has been the warmest year, even as surface temps rise to 4C+.

  29. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    Thanks Rob Honeycutt for actually addressing what te UK Met Office is saying.  Yes I agree they are being cautious but, as I'm sure you know, when submitting a paper for publication, to ehance your chances with the reviewers it is usually better to err on the side of caution.  From the new post on SkS the bet wasn't scrubbed as the stats weren't conclusive shows that the two bettors didn't really care and fair enough too in the context of the bet. That said however I do think that accepting the constraints on conclusions  placed by adhering to the results of statistical analysis is preferable to disregarding the stats

  30. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    ryland... You may take note that the Met Office was the last to report the 2014 record. They waited (as far as I can tell) to see what responses came out from the other data sets. 

    In my opinion, the Met Office is taking an overly cautious approach to their statement. The NASA/NOAA folks took the extra step to point out the relative likelihood of each year being a record. In both sets 2014 stands out as being the most likely to be the warmest year. The Met Office soft peddled and merely stated that 2014 is "one of the warmest years" whereas, per Tom's comments above, it's quite clear that 2014 is by far the most likely to be the warmest.

    The only thing you're managing to point out is the fact that the Met Office has been more restrained in their definition. That's fine if that's how they want to approach the issue.

    The biggest point remains that 2014 was a ENSO neutral year and still managed to statistically beat all the other previous El Nino forced record years.

    That... is huge!!

  31. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    As I tried to make plain in my response to Tom Curtis, I personally, do not have any particular stance on the record heat or otherwise of 2014.  The text in my first post (@44) was taken directly from the UK Met Office.  Your comments should be directed to the UK Met Office, possibly to Dr Colin Morice,  as it is their  words to which you take exception.  All I did, mistakenly it seems, was to draw attention to a statement by a very reputable institution full of "reality based people"  that was somewhat at odds with the title of this particular topic.  Why do you and others not address what the Met Office is saying?

  32. PhilippeChantreau at 03:42 AM on 29 January 2015
    Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    Ryland's way of arguing is common and unfortunately typical of a certain mindset. Looking at temperatures in recent years, it is painfully obvious that there is no pause in the warming, and never was. This argument was only made possible by the 1998 whopper year and every drop of nonsense has been squeezed out of it by fake skpetics. Because the trend is still there, every 5 years the argument becomes more stupid. Now they turn the stupid argument inside out and squeeze it the other way to get more out of it. Inevitably, there will be a year in the near future that will be statistically significant way above 1998, but not 2014, so we'll have more quibbling about words and ridiculous hair splitting, just like here. All because the reality based people are actually being honest and describing facts accurately. You can't win with dishonest people. Even if you do, they'll say you didn't. Wrestling in the mud with pigs...

    Every record year makes me more disgusted with the reality of this "debate."

  33. Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm

    Bart, congratulations, not only on the win, but for turning the incident on an excellent scientific commentary.

    I am sure the wine did not taste bad, either!

  34. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    ryland, 2014 has the highest probability of being the warmest year.

    This complaint reminds me of the denier Paul Merrifield (aka "mememine") who has filled the internet with the claim that since the IPCC was not using the language of certainty, then they weren't really sure at all.  They were just guessing. As long as the public understands uncertainty in the crudest way, the denier program is in control.

    Let's hope that GMST remains in that complainable gray area where the uncertainty is greater than the difference between years.  Unless it goes down, of course, and that doesn't seem probable . . .

  35. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    Tom Curtis I'm not making any decisions at all about whether or not 2014 was or was not the hottest year but the UK Met Office certainly is.  The scientists there are making the point that as the uncertainties in the estimates of global temperatures are greater than the difference in temperatures between years then it is not possible to say definitively that 2014 was the hottest year ever. Are they wrong in this?  

    With regard to your point "because it is not statistically certain that it was the hotest, you are simply declaring that no year is the record year"  again I'm not declaring anything but again, the UK Met Office certainly is. Their comment "Nominally this ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record, tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it's not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest" Are they wrong to make this statement?

    And as for making  a big deal of it surely the Met Office are to be commended for making a statement that is correct based on the statistical analysis of their results.  Should they have ignored that analysis?

    And as these statements are coming from the UK Met Office itself your comment they are "signs of desperation by people whose message is coming unstuck in the face of new data" is perhaps not entirely appropriate.

    Moderator Response:

    [Rob P] - Whether or not 2014 was the warmest year recorded in the Hadley surface temperature data is not the really the most interesting aspect. The main takeaway is that global surface warming is still continuing. This is very obvious in the Hadley data:

    And of course 93% of global warming actually goes into the oceans, and the oceans are soaking up heat faster than before. The image below (from the IPCC AR5) stops at 2010, but ocean warming in the last two years has been rather spectacular - equivalent to 12 Hiroshima bombs per second in 2013 and 7 Hiroshima bombs per second in 2014.

  36. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    ryland @44, the HadCRUT4 dataset shows 2014 to have had a temperature anomaly of 0.563 C (final column).  That beats 2010 (0.555 C), 2005 (0.543 C), 1998 (0.535 C) and 2003 (0.507 C).  As a matter of curiousity, 2014 is the only one of those top five years not to fall on an El Nino year.  So, clearly 2014 is the record year in the HadCRUT4 dataset.  It is possible that the actual global temperature was warmer in another year, but the probability of being the record year is stronger for 2014 than for any other year.  Therefore, while that it is not statistically certain that 2014 was the warmest should be noted simply on the basis that we should always note uncertainties in observations; it is not relevant.  Making a big deal about it shows signs of desperation by people whose message is coming unstuck in the face of new data.

    I note that if you (or anybody else) decide that 2014 is not the record year because it is not statistically certain that it was the hotest, you are simply declaring that no year is the record year, for the same was true of 1998, 2005, and 2010 when they set the records; and the same will almost certainly be true for every new record into the future.  That should show how empty is the denier rhetoric on this point. 

  37. Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics

    From the UK Met Office release on Jan 26th It may be that 2014 was not in fact the warmest ever.  The Met Office stated: 

    The HadCRUT4 dataset (compiled by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit) shows last year was 0.56C (±0.1C*) above the long-term (1961-1990) average.

    Nominally this ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record, tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it's not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest.

    Colin Morice, a climate monitoring scientist at the Met Office, said: "Uncertainties in the estimates of global temperature are larger than the differences between the warmest years. This limits what we can say about rankings of individual years.

    "We can say with confidence that 2014 is one of ten warmest years in the series and that it adds to the set of near-record temperatures we have seen over the last two decades."

  38. Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

    Thanks for this.  It is excellent and a serious help for those of us who confront the crazies.  

  39. Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

    Thank you, Kevin. That video was so elegantly simple even I understood it!

  40. Satellites show no warming in the troposphere

    Geert Jan van Oldenborgh has an excellent guest post on Climate Lab Book:  "Is there a pause in the temperature of the lower troposphere?"

  41. Climate change could impact the poor much more than previously thought

    And this is how a Yaley Skull and Bonesman established an economic analysis pattern that would justify the use of outrageously high multi-generational discout rates.  By asserting the kind of unlimited growth projections that were previously found only with the "Chicago Boys" who were advocating total economic dismantling of Chile under the ruthless dictator Pinochet.

    If (when?) we reach 3.5 C of globally averaged warming, there will be only a small shadow of the former global human civilization since mass migrations, sea level rise and wars, famines and plagues have destroyed most of the global infrastructure.

    Were these real impacts incorporated in the models, the reduction in global output would justify a negative discount rate.  But you aren't going to get that from Yale.

  42. The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year

    Not to pile on here... but I believe PaxInterra's response is more an emotional one than a fact based one. If KXL were not important to the extraction rate of the tar sands, then they really wouldn't care. As it is, investors are pulling out of tar sands projects because it's looking less profitable. If we can get carbon taxes installed, then those FF sources of energy become less competitive and tar sands become even less attractive.

    There are lots of reasons to have a positive outlook on how things are going to play out in the coming 10-15 years. Taking a defeatist attitude only plays into the hands of the FF industry.

  43. The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year

    PaxInterra - We certainly need to engage in adaptation. But there's no reason to throw up our hands and say that mitigation is useless. Every bit of mitigation, of avoiding additional emissions, reduces needed adaptation down the line. And it's considerably cheaper to invest in mitigation now than that additional adaptation later. 

  44. The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year

    Paxinterra wrote: "I have very little faith that we will even begin that process [adapting to climate change] until people are dying on a large scale from famine, drought and conflict."

    The process of adapting to anthropogenic climate change began decades ago... people have been "dying on a large scale from famine, drought, and conflict" for thousands of years now. How many of the recent deaths from those (and other) causes are due to climate change is a matter of some debate, but certainly it has already been a factor.

    When New York city finally put in better flooding control mechanisms after Hurricane Sandy... that was adapting to climate change. The flooding from the storm wouldn't have been nearly as bad if not for the sea level rise from climate change. Without that extensive flooding damage the city wouldn't have (and for decades hadn't) bothered to act. The same cycle can be seen all around the world. Humans adapt to their environment... it's automatic. We could do so better if we more often anticipated future changes and prepared for them in advance, but the idea that we haven't begun adapting to climate change is inaccurate.

    As to your suggestion that we should not worry about reducing CO2 emissions because all of the tar sands oil and other fossil fuels will inevitably be burned eventually... if that is true then "there are going to be a lot fewer of us" no matter what attempts we make at adaptation. Burning all the known remaining 'easily accessible' oil and/or coal, let alone any further supplies made available by future technology and exploration would wipe out most of the human race. Fortunately, it seems fairly clear that fossil fuels are already on the way out... with no 'world economies collapsing' as a result.

  45. Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

    Thanks Dana. That was an interesting exercise. Here are a few comments:

    • I only picked one point from Booker's article. He makes a load of arguments, most of which have been debunked many times before. The Paraguay one was new, interesting, and rather more complex than the rest.
    • We still don't know why there appear to be synchronized breaks across the Paraguay stations. Berkeley list station moves in 1971 for Puerto Casado and San Juan, but we don't have a documented reason for the rest. That's an interesting question for further research.
    • Trying to do this kind of work at the speed of the news cycle is hard. The video would be much better if we worked on it for a week. But it would be far less relevant.
    • One of the things we really hope to acheive with the MOOC is to equip anyone to be able to test claims like this for themselves.
  46. The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year

    Paxinterra,

    When there are two rules for getting out of a hole that you have dug.  

    1) Do everything you can to get out of the hole.

    2) Stop digging deeper.

    If the oil sands and other alternate fossil fuels are all dug up it will be a disaster.  We have to stop digging and take all measures to deal with the problem.  Today, in the developed countries, adaptation is not too bad to deal with.  We focus on stopping digging to prevent the problem from growing out of control. 

  47. The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year

    I wish people would stop talking about how we need to do this and that to stop global warming.  We have already done enough that global warming is a given.  It will happen.  If we stopped every emission today, we will still have a warming climate for the next 25 to 50 years.  In that regard, it really doesn't make that much difference who or what caused it.  What we need is to start thinking about how to cope with it.  Shifting crops, drought, insect infestations, disease migration, lost animal habitat and extinctions, population migrations, weather pattern adaptation, and so on.  

    If we stopped trying to place blame and simply look at the trends, perhaps we could begin the process of adapting.  Unfortunately, I have very little faith that we will even begin that process until people are dying on a large scale from famine, drought and conflict. 

    There is roughtly $15.7 trillion of sellable oil in central Canada's tar sands.  If the XL pipeline is not built, then they will resort to trucks or trains.  There is no way that the owners, investors and the government will agree to leave $15.7 trillion in the ground just because of the damage it will do to the atmosphere.  Money is power and money has absolute control over the US government and msot of the Canadian government.  Even if Saudia Arabia is successful in its current effort to undersell oil so that the tar sands are not profitable now, there will come a time in the future when it will be again and eventually they will sell all 178 billion bbls of tar sand oil.  The money involved is so large that world economies would collapse if we suddenly stopped using oil.  

    So let's stop talking about who or why or reductions and get on with simple survival.  If we don't, there are going to be a lot fewer of us to continue the arguing.

  48. The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts

    jja #46

    The full text of the additional paper from Berkeley Lab to which you refer can be found here.

    This has caused some predictable responses from the ostrich brigade along the lines of "new study proves climate models are crap, blah, blah, blah". What does not seem to have penetrated various skulls is that this paper basically suggests that Arctic Amplification could be even worse than otherwise expected.

    The Berkeley paper strongly suggests that emissivity values used in radiative transfer calculations may be incorrect under certain conditions - e.g. at high latitudes and/or altitudes, and low water vapour content. In particular, this would seem to be of importance when linked to the presence or absence of sea ice.

    Surface properties apparently can greatly affect emissivity in certain spectral regions. The paper states that, in the far infrared region of the spectrum, a frozen surface can radiate more effectively than open water. So, when sea ice disappears, the amount of far infrared lost to space would appear to be less than previously expected.

    The Ice/Albedo Effect is a well known example of a positive feedback mechanism. Less well known perhaps, is the fact that it also has a built-in negative feedback: temperatures over open water do not plummet the way they can over ice, and this in turn allows easier transfer of heat energy from the ocean into the atmosphere which, in turn, is lost to space. (There is a very strong analogy with ENSO: when el Nino conditions prevail, although this leads to a surface warming, it also enables heat energy to escape from the ocean into space.) If this negative feedback is diminished, then the overall heating effect is enhanced.

    (NB The authors actually characterise this as a positive feedback, rather than as a reduced negative feedback as I described it. To be honest, I can't be bothered arguing semantics.)

    If the Berkeley paper stands the test of time, we could quickly see a deleterious effect on Arctic winter sea ice area/extent, which will inevitably feed back into summer values. Once we start regularly getting significantly reduced sea ice levels by mid May (or thereabouts) then it's game over for the September minimum. 

    With truly delecious irony - that is obviously lost on some - Berkeley use a climate model to do the donkey work for this paper.

    Cheers    Bill F

  49. Climate change could impact the poor much more than previously thought

    As documented in the following article, the leaders of the U.S. and India have just agreed upon a plan to simultaneously fighting warming and fighting poverty.

    Obama & Modi Link Zero Carbon and Zero Extreme Poverty by John H. Cushman Jr., InsideClimate News, Jan 26, 2015

  50. The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts

    http://postimg.org/image/iv4cty0df/

    This is the top of atmosphere energy imbalance data sheet I came up with.

    by the way, another paper published about the same time as the Caldeira paper above showed that the far-infrared response of sea ice is vastly different than that of open ocean. This calculus was not included in the Caldeira & Cvijanovic modelling.

    http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/11/03/far-infrared-arctic/ 

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