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Comments 3351 to 3400:

3351. One Planet Only Forever at 05:21 AM on 17 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      The following NPR article "Maria Ressa's 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator' is a memoir and manifesto", is an example of the harmful results of a failure to effectively govern and limit the influence of harmful misunderstandings.

      Advocates of 'more free speech' seem to conveniently ignore the harmful realities of their 'theoretical belief in the Ultimate Good of more freedom'. Another reality they ignore is that their argument would include leaving graffiti on publicly visible surfaces. I personally believe that graffiti, well done, can improve the vibrancy and inclusiveness of public spaces (or the otherwise boring passing of string of train cars). But harmful graffiti should be removed (and so should poor quality graffiti, even if it is not harmful).

      Another reality that appears to be ignored by people who declare that harmful misunderstandings will natural fail to be influential are the many examples of success through the promotion of harmful misunderstandings. The following CBC News item "Indigenous-provincial relationship is a long road. Danielle Smith is making potholes" is an example of a 'Leader' who seems confident that her fans will believe her claim that her undeniable declaration of an understandably harmful misunderstanding 'may have been misunderstood by some people' who are now attacking her for saying something she now claims is not what she said - she claims to be the victim of misunderstanding.

      There are many Leaders who have made absurd presentations of harmful misunderstanding regarding climate science. They seem to be confident that they can rely on their fans to believe the harmful misunderstandings. And, if they get publicly directly challenged regarding their presentation of a harmful misunderstanding (by a predatory news investigator) they will follow the play-book of being more misleading and claiming that they are being 'attacked by woke people (with the understanding that 'their fans' misunderstand being Woke to be a Bad Thing).

      Having social media and other media full of presentations of harmful misunderstanding is not helpful. However, I consider it important to preserve each unique presentation of harmful misunderstanding (not allowing multiple instances to spawn all over) along with a detailed explanation of why it is not to be believed.

      Some group should do that regarding climate science - Oh Wait - maybe there already are groups doing that (if only people who claim to be self-researching to self-learn could find such resources).

      That leaves the required actions to be the limiting of harmful production and spreading of understandably harmful misinformation. If only all Leaders would help with that effort.

      There will always be people who dislike restrictions on their freedom to benefit from harmful misunderstandings. But it is not necessary to compromise 'responsible ethical leadership efforts to limit harm done' in an effort to 'not disappoint the people who want more freedom to act harmfully and be excused by harmful misunderstandings'.

      Leadership is about deciding who to disappoint, what actions to discourage, and who should be helped. Harmful misleading has no real future, but it can be popular and profitable for as long as it can be gotten away with.

3352. One Planet Only Forever at 04:33 AM on 17 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      Follow-up to my comment @12,

      This NPR report about changes in leadership of the Westlands Water District (the largest agricultural irrigation agency in the US):

      Some of America's biggest vegetable growers fought for water. Then the water ran out'

      is a good example of the type of leadership change needed at all levels of leadership on all issues related to climate change impact (and many other issues).

      What is not mentioned, and is an important part of the required systemic change of leadership, is whether the changing leadership will also be pushing for higher-level leadership to do more to limit the harm of increased climate change impacts.

3353. Bob Loblaw at 01:15 AM on 17 December 2022
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022
      

      Peppers @ 4:

      Your first sentence covers two standard myths, found on the SkS list of "Most used climate myths" (upper left of every page - here is a direct link to the list).

      • CO₂ is a trace gas
      • Water Vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

      Your second sentence in nonsense. Humidity and clouds are indeed modelled and tracked. After all, we know that humidity exists (and changes with location and time), and I can see clouds out my window right now. We have long-standing data sets recording both for well over a century. Weather forecasts and climate models routinely include both in their calculations.

      Controlling clouds and humidity? Maybe there you have a bit of a point. On a global scale, our "control" is limited to the changes we are causing due to warming caused by our emissions of CO₂. (Read the above lings on trace gas and water vapor.)

      In the rest of your paragraph, you seem to be confusing hydrogen and nitrogen. Nitrogen is 78% of the atmospheric gases. Hydrogen is less than 1%. And the information in the original post is how hydrogen will affect methane concentrations.

      Whatever is guiding your understanding, you really badly need to find some better sources of information (or find a way of getting a better understanding of what you are reading).

3354. peppers at 00:06 AM on 17 December 2022
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022
      

      I am still struggling with our involvement with Co2 at .04 of 1% and water vapor is the main ghg factor at a hundred times more the effect at up to 4% of the total volume. Humidity and clouds cannot be modeled, tracked or controlled, which will be vexing to all the white knights out there. And now we are considering dangerously affecting hoydrogen which is 78.02% of our atmosphere? I am not getting the data here that we have the power or culpability to be significant in these regards. But I seriously question whether we can affect anything involving 78% of our entire atmosphere. Is this serious?

3355. MA Rodger at 23:30 PM on 16 December 2022
      It's a natural cycle
      

      Long Knoll @33,

      If confusion is sought, the early attempts at creating an Arctic Sea Ice Extent/Area record is a good place to start.

      The 'splice' of two of these early attempts was probably not the work of Heller but of a Kenneth Richard shiown in this NoTricksZone post from 2016.

      The more recent part of the spliced graph is taken from Fig 7.20a in the first IPCC Assessment Report of 1990. A similar graph appears in the second IPCC Assessment Report of 1995 as Fig 3.8a. These Arctic Ice records do not match later records which begin to appear in Chapman & Walsh (1993). I have plotted out these various records (see here the graph posted 16/12/22) but have not had any success finding an explanation for the dip in Arctic Ice levels 1973-76. (The use of US Navy data is not something considered accurate today, but the decision not to use it or to use it differently is not something I have seen explained.)

      The earlier part of the 'spliced' graph is from Vinnikov et al (1980) which isn't on-line but note the graphic in this 2013 slide show by Vinnikov from Vinnikov et al (1999) (abstract on-line) presents a record consistent with the current records. And for good measure Walsh is one of the co-authors of Vinnikov et al (1999). So again we see a major reappraisal of the data which hasn't been explained in the literature. And without access to these early papers, the question remains of what the basis for these early records actually is. (And my assertion back in 2017 that Vinnikov et al (1980) was plotting summer ice levels is probably wrong.)

3356. Rob Honeycutt at 11:01 AM on 16 December 2022
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022
      

      But Philippe, he seems to have worked very hard finding the answers that confirmed his predetermined conclusions. (sarc)

3357. Philippe Chantreau at 07:46 AM on 16 December 2022
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022
      

      I suggest to enter this one in a new, specially created category: longest, most tedious Gish-Gallop ever. I can't recall any previous utterance that would have a chance to compete; congratulations, you win. The enormous amount of verbiage does not manage to hide the lack of specifics, which itself is beaten by the lack of substantiation, the latter being still far behind the lack of understanding of the many subjects grazed. Koonin and 10 minutes of PragerU? Consider me unimpressed...

3358. peterklein at 07:12 AM on 16 December 2022
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022
      

      I mostly became mostly aware of the climate and global warming issue about the time that Al Gore began beating the drum (even while he continued to fly globally in his private jet). Since then, I've read about climate change and climate modeling from many sources, including ones taking the position that ‘it is not a question if it is a big-time issue, but what to do about it now, ASAP?’.

      In the past few weeks, it appeared to me there has been a of articles, issued reports, and federal government activity, including recently approved legislation, related to this topic. While it obviously has been one of the major global topics for the past 3+ decades, the amount of public domain ‘heightened activity’ seems (to me) to come in waves every 4-6 months. That said, I decided to write on the topic based on what I learned and observed over time from articles, research reports, and TV/newspaper interviews.

      There clearly are folks, associations, formal and informal groups, and even governments on both sides of the topic (issue). I also have seen over the decades how the need for and the flow of money sometimes (many times?) taints the results of what appear to be ‘expert-driven and expert-executed’ quantitative research. For example, in medical research some of the top 5% of researchers have been found altering their data and conclusions because of the source of their research funding, peer ‘industry’ pressure and/or pressure from senior academic administrators.

      Many climate and weather-related articles state that 95+% of researchers agree on major climate changes; however (at least to me) many appear to disagree on the short-medium-longer term implications and timeframes.

      What I conclude (as of now)
      1. This as a very complex subject about which few experts have been correct.
      2. We are learning more and more every day about this subject, and most of what we learn suggests that what we thought we knew isn't really correct or at least as perfectly accurate as many believe.
      3. The U.S. alone cannot solve whatever problem exists. If we want to do something constructive, build lots of nuclear power plants ASAP (more on that to follow)!
      4. Any rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels will devastate many economies, especially those like China, India, Africa and most of Asia. Interestingly, the U.S. can probably survive a 3 or 4% reduction in carbon footprint annually over the next 15 years better than almost any country in the world, but this requires the aforementioned construction of multiple nuclear electrical generating facilities. In the rest of the world, especially the developing world, their economies will crash, and famine would ensue; not a pretty picture.
      5. I am NOT a reflexive “climate denier” but rather a real-time skeptic that humans will be rendered into bacon crisps sometime in the next 50, 100 or 500+ years!
      6. One reason I'm not nearly as concerned as others is my belief in the concept of ‘progress’. Look at what we accomplished as a society over the last century, over the last 50, 10, 5 and 3 years (e.g., Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles about every two years!). It is easy to conclude that we will develop better storage batteries and better, more efficient electrical grids that will reduce our carbon footprint. I'm not so sure about China, India and the developing world!
      7. So, don't put me down as a climate denier even though I do not believe that the climate is rapidly deteriorating or will rapidly deteriorate as a result of CO2 upload. Part of my calm on this subject is because I have read a lot about the ‘coefficient of correlation of CO2 and global warming, and I really don't think it's that high. I won't be around to know if I was right in being relaxed on this subject, but then I have more important things to worry about (including whether the NY Yankees can beat Houston in the ACLS playoffs, assuming they meet!).

      My Net/Net (As of Now!)
      I am not a researcher or a scientist, and I recognize I know far less than all there is to know on this very complex topic, and I am not a ‘climate change denier’… but, after
      also reading a lot of material over the years from ‘the other side’ on this topic, I conclude it is monumentally blown out of proportion relative to those claiming: ‘the sky is falling and fast’!
      • Read or skim the book by Steven Koonin: Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters /April 27, 2021; https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798
      • Google ‘satellite measures of temperature’; also, very revealing… see one attachment as an example.
      • Look at what is happening in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka! Adherence to UN and ESG mandates are starving countries; and it appears Canada is about to go over the edge!
      • None of the climate models are accurate for a whole range of reasons; the most accurate oddly enough is the Russian model but that one is even wrong by orders of magnitude!
      • My absolute favorite fact is that based on data from our own governmental observation satellites: the oceans have been rising over the last 15 years at the astonishing rate of 1/8th of an inch annually; and my elementary mathematics suggests that if this rate continues, the sea will rise by an inch sometime around 2030 and by a foot in the year 2118… so, no need to buy a lifeboat if you live in Miami, Manhattan, Boston, Los Angeles, or San Francisco!
      • Attached is a recent article and a Research Report summary.
       Probably the most damning is the Research Report comparison of the climate model predictions from 2000, pointing to 2020 versus the actual increase in temperature that has taken place in that timeframe (Pages 9-13). It's tough going and I suggest you just read the yellow areas on Page 9 (the Abstract and Introduction, very short) and the 2 Conclusions on Page 12. But the point is someone is going to the trouble to actually analyze this data on global warming coefficients!
      My Observations and Thinking
      In the 1970s Time Magazine ran a cover story about our entering a new Ice Age. Sometime in the early 1990s, I recall a climate scientist sounding the first warning about global warming and the potentially disastrous consequences. He specifically predicted high temperatures and massive floods in the early 2000’s. Of course, that did not occur; however, others picked up on his concern and began to drive it forward, with Al Gore being one of the primary voices of climate concern. He often cited the work in the 1990’s of a climate scientist at Penn State University who predicted a rapid increase in temperature, supposedly occurring in 2010 and, of course, this also did not occur.

      Nonetheless many scientists from various disciplines also began to warn about global warming starting in the early 2000’s. It was this growing body of ‘scientific’ concern that stimulated Al Gore's concern and his subsequent movie. It would be useful for you to go back to that and review the apocalyptic pronouncements from that time; most of which predicted dire consequences, high temperatures, massive flooding, etc. which were to occur in 10 or 12 years, certainly by 2020. None of this even closely occurred to the extent they predicted.

      That said, I was still generally aware of the calamities predicted by a large and diverse body of global researchers and scientists, even though their specific predictions did not take place in the time frame or to the extent that they predicted. As a result, I become a ‘very casual student’ of climate modeling.

      Over the past 15 years climate modeling has become a popular practice in universities, think-tanks and governmental organizations around the globe. Similar to medical and other research (e.g., think-tanks, etc.) I recognized that some of the work may have been driven by folks looking for grants and money to keep them and their staff busy.

      A climate model is basically a multi-variate model in which the dependent variable is global temperature. All of these models try to identify the independent variables which drive change in global temperature. These independent variables range from parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to sunspot activity, the distance of the earth from the sun, ocean temperatures, cloud cover, etc. The challenge of a multi-variant model is first to identify all of the various independent variables affecting the climate and then to estimate the percent contribution to global warming made by a change in any of these independent variables. For example, what would be the coefficient of correlation for an increase in carbon dioxide parts per million to global warming?

      You might find that an interesting cocktail party question to ask your friends “what is the coefficient of correlation between the increase in carbon dioxide parts per million and the effect on global warming?” I would be shocked if any of them even understood what you were saying and flabbergasted if they could give you an intelligent answer! There are dozens of these climate models. You might be surprised that none of them has been particularly accurate if we go back 12 years to 2010, for example, and look at the prediction that the models made for global warming in ten years, by 2020, and how accurate any given model would be.
      An enterprising scientist did go back and collected the predictions from a score of climate models and found that a model by scientists from Moscow University was actually closer to being accurate than any of the other models. But the point is none were accurate! They all were wrong on the high side, dramatically over predicting the actual temperature in 2020. Part of the problem was that in several of those years, there was no increase in the global temperature at all. This caused great consternation among global warming believers and the scientific community!

      A particularly interesting metric relates to the rise in the level of the ocean. Several different departments in the U.S. government actually measures this important number. You might be surprised to know, as stated earlier, that over the past 15 or so years the oceans have risen at the dramatic rate of 1/8th of an inch annually. This means that if the oceans continued to rise at that level, we would see a rise of an inch in about 8 years, sometime around 2030, and a rise of a foot sometime around the year 2118. I suspect Barack Obama had seen this data and that's why he was comfortable in buying an oceanfront estate on Martha's Vineyard when his presidency ended!

      The ‘Milankovitch Theory’ (a Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch, after whom the Milankovitch Climate Theory is named, proposed about how the seasonal and latitudinal variations of solar radiation that hit the earth in different and at different times have the greatest impact on earth's changing climate patterns) states that as the earth proceeds on its orbit, and as the axis shifts, the earth warms and cools depending on where it is relative to the sun over a 100,000-year, and 40,000-year cycle. Milankovitch cycles are involved in long-term changes to Earth's climate as the cycles operate over timescales of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.

      So, consider this: we did not suddenly get a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere this year than we had in 2019 (or other years!), but maybe the planet has shifted slightly as the Milankovitch Theory states, and is now a little closer to the sun, which is why we have the massive drought. Nothing man has done would suddenly make the drought so severe, but a shift in the axis or orbit bringing the planet a bit closer to the sun would. It just seems logical to me. NASA publicly says that the theory is accurate, so it seems that is the real cause; but the press and politicians will claim it is all man caused! You can shut down all oil production and junk all the vehicles, and it will not matter per the Theory! Before the mid-1800’s there were no factories or cars, but the earth cooled and warmed, glaciers formed and melted, and droughts and massive floods happened. The public is up against the education industrial complex of immense corruption!

      In the various and universally wrong ‘climate models’, one of the ‘independent’ variables is similar to the Milankovitch Theory. Unfortunately, it is not to the advantage of the climate cabal to admit this or more importantly give it the importance it probably deserves.

      People who are concerned about the climate often cite an ‘increase in forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, etc. as proof of global warming’. And many climate deniers point out that most forest fires are proven to be caused by careless humans tossing cigarettes into a pile of leaves or leaving their campfire unattended, and that there has been a dramatic decrease globally on deaths caused by various climate factors. I often read from climate alarmists (journalists, politicians, friends, etc.), what I believe are ‘knee-jerk’ responses since they are not supported by meaningful and relevant data/facts, see typical comments below:
      • “The skeptical climate change deniers remind me of the doctors hired by the tobacco industry to refute the charges by the lung cancer physicians that tobacco smoke causes lung cancer. The planet is experiencing unprecedented extreme climate events: droughts, fires, floods etc. and the once in 500-year catastrophic climate event seems to be happening every other year. Slow motion disasters are very difficult to deal with politically. When a 200-mph hurricane hits the east coast and causes a trillion dollars in losses then will deal with it and then climate deniers will throw in the towel!”

      These above comments may be right, but to date the forecasts on timing implications across all the models are wrong! It just ‘may be’ in 3, 10 or 50 years… or in 500-5000+ before the ‘sky is falling’ devastating events directly linked to climate occur. If some of the forecasts, models were even close to accuracy to date I would feel differently.

      I do not deny there are climate related changes I just don’t see any evidence their impact is anywhere near the professional researchers’ forecasts/models on their impact as well as being ‘off the charts’ different than has happened in the past 100-1000+ years.

      But a larger question is “suppose various anthropogenetic actions (e.g., chiefly environmental pollution and pollutants originating in human activity like anthropogenic emissions of sulfur dioxide) are causing global warming?”. What are they, who is doing it, and what do we do about it? The first thing one must do is recognize that this is a global problem and that therefore the actions of any one country has an effect on the overall climate depending upon its population and actions. Many in the United States focus intensely upon reducing carbon emissions in the U.S. when of course the U.S. is only 5% of the world population. We are however responsible for a disproportionate part of the global carbon footprint; we contribute about 12%. The good news is that the U.S. has dramatically reduced its share of the global carbon footprint over the past 20 years and doing so while dramatically increasing our GDP (up until the 1st Half of 2022).

      Many factors have contributed to the relative reduction of the U.S. carbon footprint. Chief among these are much more efficient automobiles and the switch from coal-driven electric generation plants to those driven by natural gas, a much cleaner fossil fuel.

      While the U.S. is reducing its carbon footprint more than any other country in the world, China has dramatically increased its carbon footprint and now contributes about 30% of the carbon expelled into the atmosphere. China is also building 100 coal-fired plants!

      Additional facts, verified by multiple sources including SNOPES, the U.,S. government, engineering firms, etc.:
      • No big signatories to the Paris Accord are now complying; the U.S. is out-performing all of them.
      • EU is building 28 new coal plants; Germany gets 40% of its power from 84 coal plants; Turkey is building 93 new coal plants, India 446, South Korea 26, Japan 45, China has 2363 coal plants and is building 1174 new ones; the U.S. has 15 and is building no new ones and will close about 15 coal plants.
      • Real cost example: Windmills need power plants run on gas for backup; building one windmill needs 1100 tons of concrete & rebar, 370 tons of steel, 1000 lbs of mined minerals (e.g., rare earths, iron and copper) + very long transmission lines (lots of copper & rubber covering for those) + many transmission towers… rare earths come from the Uighur areas of China (who use slave labor), cobalt comes from places using child labor and use lots of oil to run required rock crushers... all to build one windmill! One windmill also has a back-up, inefficient, partially running, gas-powered generating plant to keep the grid functioning! To make enough power to really matter, we need millions of acres of land & water, filled with windmills which consume habitats & generate light distortions and some noise, which can create health issues for humans and animals living near a windmill (this leaves out thousands of dead eagles and other birds).

      • So, if we want to decrease the carbon footprint on the assumption that this is what is driving the rise in the sea levels (see POV that sea levels are not rising at: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRChoNTg) and any increase in global temperature, we need to figure out how to convince China, India and the rest of the world from fouling the air with fossil fuels. In fact, if the U.S. wanted to dramatically reduce its own carbon footprint, we would immediately begin building 30 new nuclear electrical generating plants around the country! France produces about 85% of its electrical power from its nuclear-driven generators. Separately, but related, do your own homework on fossil fuels (e.g., oil) versus electric; especially on the big-time move to electric and hybrid vehicles. Engineering analyses show you need to drive an electric car about 22 years (a hybrid car about 15-18 years) to breakeven on the savings versus the cost involved in using fossil fuels needed to manufacture, distribute and maintain an electric car! Also, see page 14 on the availability inside the U.S. of oil to offset what the U.S. purchases from the middle east and elsewhere, without building the Keystone pipeline from Canada.

      Two 4-5-minute videos* on the climate change/C02/new green deal issue, in my opinion, should be required viewing in every high school and college; minimally because it provides perspective and data on the ‘other’ side of the issue while the public gets bombarded almost daily by the ‘sky is falling now or soon’ side on climate change!

      * https://www.prageru.com/video/is-there-really-a-climate-emergency and
      https://www.prageru.com/video/climate-change-whats-so-alarming

      Moderator Response:

      [DB] Gish Gallop snipped.  Please use the Search function to place comments and questions on the most appropriate chat threads.  Simply dumping everything minus a kitchen sink into one comment is a Gish Gallop, and in violation of this venue's Comments Policy.  Please read that policy and better construct future comments to comply with it.  Thanks!

3359. Bob Loblaw at 06:28 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Slight clarification/correction of my last sentence in comment # 11.

      If someone were to threaten anyone else with violence for any reason, they would be instantly banned....

3360. Rob Honeycutt at 06:02 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Agreeing with Bob, likewise, rules of grammar are not a limit on free speech. They're there to assist you in becoming a better communicator. By the same right, commenting policies can assist the user in effectively communicating their ideas without devolving into methods that destroy good exchanges of ideas.

3361. Bob Loblaw at 05:52 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Further to Pepper's comment at 4 and the responses.

      Elon Musk has reportedly criticised Apple for a lack of commitment to "free speech", due to Apple reducing advertising on Twitter and threatening to block Twitter from its app store.

      "Free speech" does not allow someone to force themselves into getting access to someone else's platform/megaphone. Surely Musk must recognize that Apple is free to not speak on Twitter (ads), and free to not spread products it does not like via its own store? Or is it only certain types of "free speech" that Musk supports?

      Twitter, Facebook, other social media sites, Apple's App store, etc. are not (AFAIK) considered common carriers, where there are obligations to accept traffic from everyone (but still subject to regulation - for example, dangerous goods).

      And there is a world outside the U.S.A., and Twitter is not an exclusively-U.S. business. There are laws in most countries against hate speech, inciting violence, etc.

      On a slight tangent, it might be worth reminding you that Skeptical Science is not the government, is multi-national, and has it's own rules for people participating here. (It's call "the Comments Policy".) Your "free speech" position would seem to imply that anyone would be allowed to say anything here (they cannot). The rules may limit you - but they also limit people responding to you. If anyone were to threaten you with violence here, because of your position, they would be instantly banned.

3362. Bob Loblaw at 05:25 AM on 16 December 2022
      It's a natural cycle
      

      Long Knoll:

      Note that the comment you refer to from MA Rodger was made 5 years ago.

      Is this the figure you are referring to from the Carbon Brief article you mention? (I can only link to the image, not embed it here.)

      https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Walsh-et-al.-2016-Fig8.png

      Note that the values in that figure are for sea ice extent. That is not the same as sea ice area.

      • Sea ice area in the area that is actually ice.
      • Sea ice extent is the are of ocean that has at least 15% ice cover. Up to 85% of that area is water, not ice. 1 million km² of sea ice extent at 15% ice is only 150,000km² of sea ice area.

      Further explanation is available here.

      So, you should not be comparing area and extent numbers. The area number will be much smaller.

      As for Heller: yes, he is simply combining two different things: full year vs. late summer.

3363. Doug Bostrom at 05:01 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Peppers: "Meaning if you seek out hate speech you can find it, but it will not come up without actively looking for it."

      That's a remarkably oblivious claim, objectively so ignorant as to make one wonder if it was truly spoken from a stance of "I believe this." Not to go ad hominem about it but this kind of abject seeming blindness is a legitimate topic in itself. 

      There's a UW professor Carl T. Bergstrom on Twitter. He's routinely threatened with various forms of bodily harm there including "you should be killed." He's not even at the top of the Bell curve demographic for being a target of such speech. For Bergstrom, "actively looking for it [death threats]" consisted of talking truthfully about matters of which Bergstrom is well informed. He's one of myriad examples, many of those loudly surfaced in lots of easily visible forms.

      Obtain situational awareness and speak truthfully, please. 

       

3364. BaerbelW at 04:47 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      peppers @6

      In what way and for what do you see the article as an Advertisement?

3365. Long Knoll at 03:54 AM on 16 December 2022
      It's a natural cycle
      

      MA Rodger @30,

      I'm confused by this post, and have probably just misinterpreted it. If, as you say "Vinnikov (1980) fig5 is a plot of the annual ice coverage for the months of July, August & September" that would imply ice coverage was similar in 1935-1960 to what it is now; NSIDC data shows that July, August and September mean Arctic ice cover averages at about 6 million square kilometres in recent years, just as the Vinnikov graph does from 1935-1960. That can't be right. In fact, the idea that there was 6 million square miles of coverage for July-August-September over 1935-1960 is contradicted by the recent study Walsh et al 2016, Carbon Brief story In the study, the month September, which obviously has coverage below the July-August-September average, had an average cover of over 7 million square kilometres from 1935-1960.

      And what error has Heller made exactly in his attempt to graft the two graphs together? Has he incorrectly aligned them, or are the data between the two graphs simply showing different things?

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Link activated.
      
      The web software here does not automatically create links. You can do this when posting a comment by selecting the "insert" tab, selecting the text you want to use for the link, and clicking on the icon that looks like a chain link. Add the URL in the dialog box

3366. Rob Honeycutt at 02:47 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      I believe the fundamental conundrum Twitter faces is to allow as much free exchange of ideas as possible within the scope of the necessity to keep both users and advertisers. Rampant antisemitism definitely drives away advertisers who need to protect their brand. Rampant conspiracy theories are great for flaming interactions but also drive away users with large followings. To my understanding, that's exactly what Twitter was actively doing moderately well and what "critics" believed was wrong with the site.

      Even Musk is saying (though I remain dubious he'll accomplish this) is going to find ways to algorithmicly drive hate speech to the bottom of the conversation heap. How is that different? Above, Pepper seems to believe  hateful, awful, and vocal people are to be celebrated because it means we're free. I believe it's a recipe for devolving into social chaos. Musk's attemps to detrend hate will just lead to the same complaints if the hateful can't see their hate rise to the top.

      I've always held, Twitter doesn't have an engineering problem, it has a people problem that is amplified by revenue requirements. And I actually think that is exactly the problem Mastodon solves. Mastodon is essentially a social media site with no stock ticker, no revenue, no investors. It's a distributed structure where each instance operates their own resources at their own costs.

3367. Rob Honeycutt at 02:21 AM on 16 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Peppers @ 4... "Free speech" is about what the government can do to limit your criticisms of the government. I am fully within my rights to kick you out of my home if I don't like the things you say, and that would not be an infringement on your free speech.

       

      It's fascinating to me how such a large number of people have come to believe that "free speech" means they can say anything they like anytime they like. Go sit in a courtroom and start yelling anything you like. See what happens. Go sit in your local church and start reciting Nietzschi at the top of your lungs. See what happens. We do, as a matter of regular social interaction, necessarily limit people's speech. 

3368. peppers at 23:17 PM on 15 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      This article is entirely an Advertisement.

3369. djinghis at 23:08 PM on 15 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Incredibly immature and inaccurate article and a total embarrasment to an otherwise great web site.
      "Emotional damage"
      "Elon is a Nazi"
      "Elon Musk’s recent acquisition was launched with the explicit intent of normalizing hate speech,"
      
      Who's the clown who wrote this?

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Inflammatory portions deleted.

      "Quotes" that are not quotes (i.e., do not actually appear in the article) deleted.

      Please read the comments policy. In particular, it says:

      No profanity or inflammatory tone. Again, constructive discussion is difficult when overheated rhetoric or profanity is flying around.

3370. peppers at 21:16 PM on 15 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      I was under the impression that free speech was facilitated by speaking freely. Twitter is now allowing all Americans to have freedom of speech, but the scope of casting it becomes limited. Meaning if you seek out hate speech you can find it, but it will not come up without actively looking for it. But it is not another Americans legal and moral activity to interfer with anothers right to speak. From the movie 'An American President': "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".

      You cannot re-name what another American says as Hate Speech or any pronoun, because it is against what you believe is right, and then moderate or remove that other American or thier view based on that. They cannot silence you as well. 

      Having an opposing view has a function. In addition to giving America as many choices as possible, it cauterizes your opposing viewpoint and strentghens your own beliefs. Death enlivens life and losing hieghtens efforts to win.

      This article suggests unamerican activity which goes against the free discussions of the cranky uncle. As confident as the uncle is of winning, the discussion constitutes the nessasary freedom of the american forum.

3371. One Planet Only Forever at 12:42 PM on 15 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      EddieEvans @11,

      There is indeed serious ethical concern regarding the actions of someone like E.E. David, Jr. But the more serious ethical concerns are people in leadership roles (in Exxon, other businesses, and Government) who choose to be influenced by harmful misunderstandings presented by people like E.E. David, Jr.

      I recommend focusing more on the behaviour of Leaders.

      The common sense understanding should be that leaders need to be ethically responsible for: paying attention, learning to limit harm done, and helping to make amends for harm done. Leaders who are not 'ethical in that sense’ will fail to develop sustainable improvements (in business or government). Leaders choosing to compromise their judgment because of ‘other interests’ (like popularity or profitability), will most likely make harmful decisions and fail to produce lasting benefits (because the harm being done gets harder to hide or excuse).

      I try to focus on the need for ethical governing/limiting of harmful impacts, with ‘ethics’ being understood to be about limiting harm done and helping to correct for harm done. It leads to understanding that ‘it would be great if everyone self-governed that way’.

      Everyone pursuing increased awareness and understanding of what is harmful and trying to help minimize and repair harm done is clearly a fantasy. There will always be some people trying to hide or excuse harm done because of benefits obtained (by them or their group). That is the absurd result of ‘ethical perspectives’ claiming to seek things like ‘the Greatest Good’ (like Utilitarianism). That type of thinking can justify ‘an individual (or group) obtaining massive benefit to the detriment of all others’ (they are shown to be self-defeating theories by Derek Parfit’s ethical evaluations in “Reasons and Persons” published in 1984 – cited more than 14,000 times. Parfit’s presentation includes ‘responsibility towards future generations’).

      Clearly there will always be a need for people who will not responsibly ethically self-govern to be 'Governed and limited by Ethical Others'. The problem becomes more challenging when ‘ethically compromised’ competitors win significant leadership influence through popularity or profitability.

      That is a long way of saying that “What happened at the leadership levels regarding climate science was most likely the result of unethical people winning significant influence over leadership”. The result was probably not because of the actions of people who present misunderstandings. The problem is leaders who seek out and act based on harmful misunderstandings. The people developing harmful misunderstanding share in the blame. But decision-makers who seek out, and allow themselves to believe, harmful misunderstandings are the root of the problem. And that systemic problem has to be corrected to develop sustainable improvements.

      Also, in case there was a misunderstanding, I wish to clarify that the Sustainable Development Goals include Climate Change. In addition to Climate Action being identified as Goal 13, limiting Climate Change impacts makes it easier to achieve, and improve on, many of the other SDGs.

3372. scaddenp at 08:49 AM on 15 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      I have responded to ecgberht on a more appropriate place. I would urge ecgberht to read the article the comment is associated with. 

3373. scaddenp at 08:47 AM on 15 December 2022
      Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
      

      Responding to ecgberht

      I believe the MIT referred to is this one.

      "Greater than 90 per cent of the carbon dioxide input to the atmosphere–ocean system each year derives from the natural decay of organic carbon"

      However, they contribute zero % to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere as this article explains. ecgberht is falling foul  of misinformation.

      The IPCC reports cover ongoing research into the natural CO2 fluxes in great detail. ecgberht would do well to read the relevant chapter in the report. 

3374. ecgberht at 02:51 AM on 15 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      Why is there no article on the MIT study that shows that 90% of CO2 released comes from rotting leaves? 

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] If you want to claim that some "MIT study" shows something, you are going to actually have to provide a link to the study. And you're going to have to explain why it is relevant to the blog post at hand.

3375. ecgberht at 02:45 AM on 15 December 2022
      We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.
      

      The "hate speech" graphic on new Twitter has been completely debunked.  It's made up. 

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] If you want us to believe that you are not just making things up, you are going to have to actually provide a link to where this supposed "debunking" has been done.

3376. EddieEvans at 22:41 PM on 14 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      I'm not so sure that ethics will help with denial or the climate, but I seem to think so at times. 

      We are speaking of ethics in climate science. Here's an example of the problem.

      In a recent publication, J. Hansen et al., footnote #9, says that E.E. David, Jr. later became a global warming "denier." I'd like to know more about David's history with Exxon. It's part of the denier's legacy. This stuff needs to be documented, something like in Speth's "They Knew."

      David's turnabout is especially egregious because he previously said in David, E.E., Jr.: (American Geographical Union Monograph 29), footnote #8 of Hansen et al.

      "Assuming the greenhouse effect occurs, rising CO2 concentrations might begin to induce climatic changes around the middle of the 21st century." page 3

      I'm not sure what constituted a "denier" at the time, but the consequences outweighed a "fair and balanced" opinion, a lingering assumption on David's part. David had no right, no duty to declare anthropogenic climate change a dead idea if that's what "denier" meant. He's like Exxon's guy.

      Exxon and the others are still at it.

      I'm arguing with myself here. Venting after running into Hansen's paper.

3377. One Planet Only Forever at 12:17 PM on 12 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      EddieEvans,

      I agree that a major part of the problem is the lack of legitimate ethical considerations governing thoughts and actions. Misleading marketing is a serious ethical problem.

      I read Stephen M. Gardner's "A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change" several years ago. It is an easy read compared to other presentations on ethics. It is encouraging that more books are being produced by a diversity of people on a diversity of issues related to ethical understanding. And those books are aligned with the consensus understanding presented in the Sustainable Development Goals. Those diverse converging lines of thought develop increasing awareness and improved understanding that competition for status needs to be governed to limit the development of harmful unsustainable results (and some current perceived winners need to lose status).

      Effectively solving the climate change problem, and many other developed problems, will require systemic changes that increase governing by ‘ethical consideration’ rather than ‘popularity or profitability’. Competition based on popularity and profitability has a tragic history of developing harmful results when it is not rigorously governed by the ethical objective of constantly improved learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. And when it is poorly governed the competition for status develops harmful undeserving winners who can powerfully resist their deserved loss of status, especially through misleading marketing of harmful misunderstanding.

3378. Long Knoll at 11:56 AM on 12 December 2022
      Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy
      

      Thanks for the quick response.

      The article 'Were skeptic scientists kept out of the IPCC' shows evidence that the working group did not suppress contrarian papers but honestly critiqued them, hence it can be argued that they also honestly critiqued Briffa's tree ring data (and from what I know, they did indeed and there was a detailed discussion of Briffa's tree ring data in the report). But someone making the argument I laid out in the above post might still say the quotes, including apparently quite explicit ones from Briffa himself, are evidence of improper pressure to create consensus rather than uncertainty for the policy makers, even if in this case there was ultimately no impact on the results. As you say, I think there's a good chance the quotes are taken out of context like so much of the selective quoting done by 'Climategate' proponents, but if they have been I can't find any material showing how they have been taken out of context.

3379. John Hartz at 04:01 AM on 12 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #49
      

      Jonas: As always, thank you for the positive feedback.

3380. David Hawk at 23:21 PM on 11 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #49
      

      Thank you Jonas. You comment allowed a small wiff of fresh air to challenge site management being appalled at what they losely define as ad hominem to thus remove comments that find context essential to meaning. Its okay, and normal to do such, but it necessarily erodes credibility when mistakes are made. Humans make mistakes. I used to reference this site in much of my teaching in three countries and advising on research funding but no longer reference this location. A site manager sent me a note saying I had included a reference to one of my books on the importance of feminine research on climate change in 1856, a book presented to OECD in 1979 on climate change. He said he had thus removed the book title. In fact he only removed the content but left the book title?  This was similar to a prior event where my cartoon against humans was criticized as political, thus the comment and cartoon were removed. Later, the site manager reposted the cartoon without my name?  I guess we all make mistakes as humility.

      Mistakes occur with arrogance in the climate change subject area. We really need to be more careful  A few years ago Science posted a review of one of my books and received more than 800 responses. The editor became upset by the responses and wrote me saying they were imposing a cap of 150 responses. He said the 2,100 pages that had resulted were too much to manage?  I eased his life by no longer referencing them.

      Jonas, once again, your comment was a nice reminder of the importance of openness and transparency in the tradition of Socrates and Joan of Arc, but of course they were treated badly for such. Seems whatever they said was either political, ad hominem, or simply "off-topic."  My debate with China's Leadership Council a few years ago on governance of climate change was eventually so classified via new leadership.  Humans?

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Moderation complaints snipped. The only moderation you have received here is in conjunction with your repeated peddling of your own book (which you have mentioned again here).

       

3381. Jonas at 15:12 PM on 11 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #49
      

      Hello John, a long time ago, when you resumed the weekly News Roundup, I wanted to say a warm "Welcome back" and to Bärbel who did it until you came back a "Thank you". As time goes by .. and end of year is full of deadlines .. So I will take the nearing end of the year (and the fulfillment of a deadline which allows me to chill here ..) as an opportunity to express again my deep gratitude to you and the whole SkS team for this invaluable work! Unfortunately it is still very much needed, and even more than ever, with all kinds of backlashes, lately. 

      I know this whole comment is illegal, because it is "ad hominem", but I can't think of another channel and in this case, I just don't care ;-)

3382. Long Knoll at 13:30 PM on 11 December 2022
      Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy
      

      There are some quotes from emails sent on September 9th 1999 which are frequently brought up by conspiracy theorists that don't seem to be discussed here. Forgive me if I have simply missed discussion of them. They regard the divergence of Keith Briffa's tree ring reconstruction from Mann and Jones.

      IPCC author Chris Folland writes "A proxy diagram of temperature change is a clear favourite for the Policy Makers summary. But the current diagram with the tree ring only data somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly." 

      Briffa writes there is "pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data…,’”

      Mann writes "Everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint we’d like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series"

      This has been used to suggest that the IPCC is after particular data to support a message which it will pressure scientists for, and the IPCC will ideally exlude data which 'dilutes' the message. I don't believe that but it's become a common talking point.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] The tendency for contrarians to take email quotes out of context is well known.

      Two additional myth rebuttals at SkS cover parts of this discussion, and reference material from Briffa:

      Climategate and the peer review process

      Were skeptic scientists kept out of the IPCC

       

       

3383. EddieEvans at 23:17 PM on 8 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      Yes, "The Baby Boomers and religious groups can and should help the younger generations break out of the cycle of excusing harmful pursuits of perceptions of prosperity and superiority."
      The new climate change creates "a perfect moral storm that threatens our ability to behave ethically." So I'm obliged to follow Stephen M. Gardner's wordy "A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Environmental Ethics and Science Policy Series)".
      In the US, we have the science; we know what must happen, and it's clear that at the bottom, it's now an ethical issue, climate deception, denial, and delay. Our climate joins the intergenerational buck-passing we find in nuclear weapons, waste, and mass extinction. Yet, I guess that James Hansen remains unknown to the general population, and looney politicians and cult followers have control over idols of the market, idols of the stage.
      So when do intergenerational social and cultural patterns break for science? When it's far too late for the following generations. Tragically, they each will pass the buck by necessity or choice to the following generations, if any.

3384. Eclectic at 18:10 PM on 8 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48
      

      TahitiSunset @2  :  You are absolutely correct.  Censorship is a deadly weapon leading inevitably to the collapse of Western Civilization and all we hold dear.

      Everyone has the right to free speech : even in favor of child pornography & child sexual abuse, and including discussing construction of terrorist bombs (and how best to shoot-up electrical transformer stations) or how to make/release poison gas or to spread anthrax or how to assassinate public officials (in the Capitol or elsewhere) . . . and so on.   Censorship is absolutely wrong and can never ever be justified.

      I also admire your stand on the strawman argument regarding mass exterminations (except where ordered by the Anonymous Q , for the purpose of countering the Great Replacement).   We are in furious agreement about that !

      TahitiSunset , it seems you have been comatosely unaware of social developments during the past 30+ years.   And unaware of human nature ~ and the madness of crowds.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] The comment you are responding to has been deleted.

3385. One Planet Only Forever at 08:40 AM on 8 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      EddieEvans @7,

      I agree that the current situation, and the future for humanity, is more damaged than it needed to be.

      The problem is indeed better identified by understanding that the main reason things are so bad is the popularity of ‘resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful’ (that applies to far more than climate change).

      People who choose to develop and defend an interest that is contradicted by reasoning and evidence-based pursuit of being less harmful develop ‘Conflicts of Interest’. Their developed perceptions of prosperity or opportunity for more prosperity are able to be understood to be harmfully obtained. But their desires conflict with that learning.

      Among the diversity of ‘categories’ or ‘groupings’ of people the one that matters most is the clear categorization of:

      • constant reasoned and evidence-based learning to be less harmful and more helpful
      • resisting that learning because of other interests.

      Based on that categorization/division the USA and its Baby Boomers or religious groups are not categorically a problem. USA Baby Boomers, including many religious Boomers, were a significant part of the development of learning how socioeconomic interests conflicted with the development of a sustainable improving future for humanity. That ‘still improving understanding’ had developed global awareness at the highest levels of leadership in the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Many developments since then, not just the UNFCCC/IPCC, have improved the consensus understanding of the harmfulness of Economic interests being prioritized over concerns about Social or Environmental harm being done. But admittedly, many members of the USA and other harmfully over-developed(ing) nations have been aggressively opposed to that learning becoming the global common sense (consensus understanding).

      The important learning from that evidence is that:

      • with few exceptions like medical actions that risk harm to a person for the benefit of that person and things like vaccinations which protect the person but also benefit the general population, Harm Done or risk of harm done cannot be excused by Good Done.
      • An important clarification of that understanding is that Harm Done to some people is not excused by Benefits Obtained by other people.
      • A related further understanding is that “It is not harmful to reduce perceptions of prosperity or opportunity by: restricting harmful actions, making harmful actions more expensive, and correcting unreasonable beliefs (especially beliefs that are contradicted by the evidence)”.
      • And a final related understanding is that people who need assistance to live basic decent lives can be excused for doing something harmful in pursuit of improvement of their circumstances, attempting to develop up to basic decent living. And more fortunate people should help those people live better less harmfully.

      The bottom line is that the serious problem needing to be admitted as unacceptable is: Groups that choose to be gatherings of harmful special interests, creating larger groups that excuse each other’s harmful interests, and claim that they are ‘harmed’ by having their freedoms or beliefs and actions contradicted and restricted because their beliefs are unreasonable and are contradicted by the evidence and understanding of harm done.

      The Baby Boomers and religious groups can and should help the younger generations break out of the cycle of excusing harmful pursuits of perceptions of prosperity and superiority.

3386. EddieEvans at 21:33 PM on 6 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      Regarding your comment, “I agree that a diversity of actions are required to increase the number of people who change their mind to abandon harmful Beliefs by improving their knowledge regarding how to be less harmful and more helpful.”

      In the US, it’s clear that churches play a big part in climate literacy potential and climate denial. The fatal mix of ideology with science has a wide track to Galileo Galilei. Medical science history repeated itself in my lifetime: the HIV denial, deception in both the US Presidency and some prominent religious leaders; play it again, recent Covid-19 deception and delay in both the White House and churches.

      We have one prominent, but not nearly as popular as needed, climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hayhoe

      Popular entertainers, singers, and musicians may pierce the denial wall, but not so long as my generation, Baby Boomers, remains extant. (USA)

      We Baby Boomers overstayed our welcome on this planet. It’s time for Katharine Hayhoe and Greta Thunberg’s followers to shape what my generation ignored. Sadly, we left them too little time, too slow to stop extinction and reshape the earth’s atmosphere.

3387. One Planet Only Forever at 13:48 PM on 6 December 2022
      Models are unreliable
      

      Bob Loblaw @1328,

      Thanks for providing even more evidence and reasons to doubt what Spencer produces and the claims he makes-up.

      I share the understanding that Spencer does not care about how flawed his analysis is.

      I would add that it appears to be highly likely that, long ago, he predetermined that his focus would be on finding ways to claim that less aggressive leadership action should be taken to end fossil fuel use. Spencer's motivating requirement appears to be having the analysis 'results' fit that narrative.

3388. Bob Loblaw at 12:33 PM on 6 December 2022
      Models are unreliable
      

      That is one weird analysis presented by Spencer. I read the blog post OPOF pointed to, and the one linked in it that points to an earlier similar analysis.

      I really cannot figure out what he has done. Figure 1 refers to "2-Station Temp Diff.", but there is no indication of how many stations are included in the dataset, or exactly how he paired them up. Is each station only paired to one other station, or is there a point generated for each "station 2" that is within a certain distance? He talks about a 21x21km area centered on each station - but he also mentioned a 150km distance limit in pairing stations. Not at all clear.

      There are also some really wonky statements. He talks about "operational hourly (or 3-hourly) observations made to support aviation at airports" and claims "...better instrumentation and maintenance for aviation safety support." He clearly has no understanding of the history of weather observations in Canada. Aviation weather historically was collected by Transport Canada (a federal government department), and indeed the Meteorological Service of Canada (as it is now known) was part of that department before the creation of Environment Canada in the early 1970s. Even though MSC was in a different department, it still looked after the installation, calibration, and maintenance of the "Transport Canada" aviation weather instrumentation. This even continued (under contract) for a good number of years after the air services were moved out into the newly-created private corporation Nav Canada in 1996. The standards and instrumentation at aviation weather stations was no different from any other station operated by MSC. Now, Nav Canada buys and maintains its own instruments, and MSC has ended up going back to many of these locations to install their own instrumentation because the Nav Canada "aviation" requirements do not include long-term climate monitoring. (Nav Canada data still funnels into the MSC systems, though.)

      What has changed over time is levels of automation. Originally, human observers recorded data and sent it into central collection points. Now, nearly all observations are made by fully-automated systems. A variety of automatic station types have existed over the decades, and there have been changes in instrumentation.

      As for the 3-hour observing frequency? Not an aviation requirement - but rather the standard synoptic reporting interval used by the World Meteorological Organization.

      So, reading Spencer's analysis raises large numbers of questions:

      • What stations?
      • How many?
      • Which ones are paired together?

       

      Without this information, it is very difficult to check the validity of the comparisons he is making. Figure 1 has a lot of points - but later in the post he mentions only having four stations in "SE Alberta" (Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, and Cold Lake). Does figure 1 included many "within 150km" stations paired to each individual station in the list? Does this mean that within an area containing say 5 stations, that there are 4x3x2 "pairs"? That would be one way of getting a lot of points - but they would not be independent. We are left guessing.

      Spencer links to this data source for weather data. I managed to search for stations in "Alberta", and found 177 active on January 1, 2021. It contains six stations with "Edmonton" in the name. Which one is Spencer's "Edmonton" is important. It is almost certainly the International airport south of the city (often jokingly called "Leduc International Airport because of its distance from the city proper), but the downtown Municipal airport is also on the NOAA/NCEI list. The difference in urbanization is huge - the Leduc one has some industrial areas to the east, but as you can see on this Google Earth image, it is largely surrounded by rural land.  The downtown airport would be a much better "urban" location. The Leduc location only has "urbanization" to the east - downwind of the predominant west-east wind and weather system movements.

      My number of 177 Alberta stations is an overestimate, as the NOAA/NCEI web page treats "Alberta" as a rectangular block that catches part of SE British Columbia. I also only grabbed recently-active stations - the number available over time changes quite a bit. The lack of clarity from Spencer about station selection is disturbing.

      As MAR has pointed out, Spencer's four "SE Alberta" stations of Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, and Cold Lake make for an odd mix. The first three are all in a 300km N-S line in the middle of the province. Edmonton is 250km from the mountains; Red Deer about 125km, and Calgary about 65km. (For a while, I had an office window in Calgary where I could look out at the snow-capped mountains.) Cold Lake is about 250km NE of Edmonton, near the Saskatchewan border. The differences in climate are strong. Spencer dismisses these factors as unimportant.

      Spencer's Table 1 (cities across Canada) suffers from the same problems: not clearly identifying exactly which station he is examining. At least here he says "Edmonton Intl. Arpt".

      He does not clearly explain his method of urban de-trending. I followed his link to the earlier blog post that gives more information, but it is not all that helpful. As far as I can tell, he's used figure 4 in that blog post to determine a "temperature difference vs urbanization difference" relationship and then used that linear slope to "correct" trends at individual stations based on the Urbanization coefficients he obtained from a European Landsat analysis for the three times he used in his analysis (1990, 2000, and 2014). Figure 4 is a shotgun blast, and he provides no justification for assuming that an urbanization change from 0 to 10% has the same effect as a change from 80-90%. (Such an assumption appears to be implicit in his methodology.) In fact, many studies in urban heat island effect have show log-linear relationships for UHI vs population of other indicators (e.g., Oke, 1973). Spencer's figure 4 in that second blog post is also for "United States east of 95W". No justification as to why that analysis (with all its weaknesses) would be applicable in a very different climate zone such as the Canadian prairies (Alberta).

      His list of 10 Canadian cities also has some wildly different climate zones in it.

      • Saskatoon? Regina? Both cities of about 200,000 people. Both cities where the airport is to the west of the built-up area. Both areas where most of the weather systems move west to east, so "upwind" is rural.
      • Grande Prairie? Population about 63,000. What a booming metropolis!
      • Abbotsford? In the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver. Air masses funnel between the mountains into the valley. No local effects to see here! (NOT!)
      • St. John's NL Airport? A coastal city. Airport is located on a rocky peninsula about 15-20km wide (E-W), with huge variations in microclimate. Great place to assume nothing else affects "urban heat island". Easy to see on Google Earth. (HTML really badly needs a "sarcasm" tag.)

      Spencer should be embarrassed by this sort of analysis, but I doubt he cares. He has the "result" he wants.

3389. One Planet Only Forever at 07:13 AM on 6 December 2022
      Models are unreliable
      

      MA Roger @1326,

      Thank you for adding technical details to my 'general evaluation' that Spencer is not developing and sharing genuine improvements of awareness and understanding.

      The following part of the Conclusion that I quoted @1325 is a very bizarre thing to be stated by someone supposedly knowledgeable and trying to help others better understand what is going on.

      "As it is, there is evidence (e.g. here) the climate models used to guide policy produce more warming than observed, especially in the summer when excess heat is of concern. If that observed warming is even less than being reported, then the climate models become increasingly irrelevant to energy policy decisions."

      Spencer is silent about considering aspects of the models that underestimate the warming (those aspects probably deserve as much, and potentially more, consideration). Their narrow focus actually makes their developed analysis 'irrelevant to energy policy decisions'.

      In spite of Spencer creating something claimed to dictate that there should be reduced effort to end fossil fuel use, the point remains that the overall global warming and resulting global consequences are the required understanding for Policy Development by any government (at any level).

      I have work experience with the development of large complex projects. Planning is done at various stages to establish an expected duration and cost to complete the project. The resulting plans often trigger game-playing by project proponents, especially if the plan indicates that completion will be too late or cost too much for the project to be pursued any further. The game-players try to focus on what they believe are long duration aspects that should be able to be done quicker or higher cost items that should be able to be less expensive. What people like me do, to be helpful to all parties involved, is agree with the narrow-focused project proponents as long as they agree to put the extra effort into re-evaluating every aspect of the project plan, especially the items that could take much longer or cost more than estimated.

      People like Spencer are like those project proponents. They seek out and focus on the bits they think help justify their preferred belief rather than increasing their overall understanding to make a more knowledgeable decision.

      Discovered inaccuracies in the models may be important to correct. But for Energy Policy development the most important consideration is the overall understanding of the model results, not a focus on selected bits of model results.

3390. MA Rodger at 05:23 AM on 6 December 2022
      Models are unreliable
      

      One Planet Only Forever @1325,

      Spencer is not the first to waste his time searching for that mythical archepelago known as The Urban Heat Islands. Of course these explorers are not trying to show such islands exist (they do) but to show the rate of AGW is being exaggerated because of these islands. That's where their myth-making kicks off.

      This particular blog of Spencer's is a bit odd on a number of counts. He tells us he is correlating 'temperature' against 'level of urbanisation' using temperature data of his own derivation and paired urban/rural sites, this all restricted to summer months. Yet this data shown in his Fig 1 seems to show temperatures mainly for a set of pretty-much fixed levels of ΔUrbanisation (no more than 5% ΔUrbanisation over a 10-mile square area), so not for any significant changing levels of urbanisation. The data showing these urban records warming faster under AGW that nearby rural stations and thus the actual variation in warming between his paired rural/urban stations is not being presented.

      And note his "sanity check" appears to confirm that "homogenization" provides entirely expected results so why is he using his own temperature derivations?

      And I'm also not sure his analysis isn't hiding some embarassing findings. Thus according to the GISTEMP station data, the urban Calgary Int Airport & rural Red Deer have a lot less summer warming than the urban Edmonton Int Airport & rural Cold Lake. The data doesn't cover the full period, but it is rural Cold Lake that shows the most warming of the four.

3391. One Planet Only Forever at 14:26 PM on 5 December 2022
      Models are unreliable
      

      This is new information related to the video by Spencer mentioned by EddieEvans @1312 and comments about it since then.

      Roy Spencer has a November 19th 2022 blog posting titled "Canadian Summer Urban Heat Island Effects: Some Results in Alberta".

      In the conclusion Spencer says:

      "The issue is important because rational energy policy should be based upon reality, not perception. To the extent that global warming estimates are exaggerated, so will be energy policy decisions. As it is, there is evidence (e.g. here) that the climate models used to guide policy produce more warming than observed, especially in the summer when excess heat is of concern. If that observed warming is even less than being reported, then the climate models become increasingly irrelevant to energy policy decisions."

      That is very similar to the wording by Spencer included in the comment by MA Rodger @1316. It appears to be Spencer's "New Trick" - seeking any bits of data evaluation to make-up a claim about model inaccuracy that is then claimed to mean that "Energy Policy" should be less aggressively ending fossil fuel use.

      And the introduction of this blog post by Spencer makes it pretty clear he has made this line of investigation, evaluation and claim-making regarding "Energy Policy" his new focus.

3392. One Planet Only Forever at 09:52 AM on 5 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      wilddouglascounty @4,

      I agree that a diversity of actions are required to increase the number of people who change their mind to abandon harmful Beliefs by improving their Knowledge regarding how to be less harmful and more helpful. And that includes recognizing that not all people in a 'category of people' are harmfully selfish even if the majority in that category are.

      I think that the best thing would be for people to use their connections and methods of connecting with others to be more helpful including:

      • raise awareness and improve understanding about the harm of fossil fuels and the harmful actions of people trying to maximize their benefit from fossil fuels as harmfully as they can get away with.
      • correct harmful misunderstandings or misleading claims when they encounter them (don't be a by-stander)

      Unlike 'more on-line interactive' people like Eddie Evans who have the potential to reach a broader audience, I am not a Social Media participant. My interactions are more direct encounters with people in my many diverse groups of acquaintances. I do not bring up topics like climate change. But whenever a misunderstanding is raised I try to improve the understanding ... with mixed results. I live in Alberta. So I interact with many people who are powerfully motivated to misunderstand a topic like the harmful climate change impacts of fossil fuel use.

      I have made a more expansive comment about this regarding the added challenge of the 'recent changes by Twitter' on the 2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48. The recent SkS post "Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus" is also related to the problem.

3393. One Planet Only Forever at 08:03 AM on 5 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48
      

      Developing improvements for humanity is almost certain to be harmed by Twitter allowing and excusing, and as a result promoting with relative impunity, harmful misunderstandings and harmfully misleading comments (note: Some misunderstanding and misleading can be neutral or even be helpful. It is less important to correct or limit the influence of neutral or helpful misunderstanding).

      It is important to differentiate between Knowledge and Beliefs. Belief can be anything. Knowledge is limited to reasoned or evidence-based understanding. Beliefs can be entrenched dogma. Knowledge is constantly improving. Belief and Knowledge have a history of conflict.

      There is now ample evidence, and robust reasoning related to the evidence, that ‘people being freer to believe, comment, and act however they wish without effective governing of harm done’ will lead to a failure of humanity developing sustainable improvements. The climate science case is one of the most significant examples. Thirty years after the development of a robust evidence-based and well-reasoned understanding that fossil fuel use is unsustainable and very harmful there continue to be people trying to resist that learning becoming the ‘significantly more’ common sense. (Note that climate science is not the only case of harmful results due to people being freer to believe and do as they please in competition for personal benefits and status).

      Constantly improving consensus understanding of what is harmful and how to effectively limit harm done is essential to the development of sustainable improvements for humanity (refer to the SkS Explainer regarding Scientific Consensus but extend it to other reasoned or evidence-based understanding). Constantly improving the ‘common sense about harm and the need to limit harm done’ is especially important for correcting harmful unsustainable human development and developing sustainable improvements.

      Free speech is important. But, like most things, Free Speech can be helpful or harmful. To limit its harmfulness, Free Speech needs to be governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful. Helpful learning and education about harm to effectively limit harm done is critical. The most important application of critical thinking is learning to limit harm done (that involves learning that may reduce developed perceptions of status or opportunities for benefit).

      It would be great if everyone diligently learned and self-governed their Free Speech to be as harmless as possible and strive to be helpful. But that is unlikely to ever be the reality for humanity. Some people will probably always try to benefit from harmful Free Speech (or other Freedoms). There will probably always be a need for prompt effective correction of harmful misunderstanding or misleading claims. And, in the worst cases, it will be necessary to ‘cancel’ the ‘sharing of very harmful misunderstanding’ and effectively block the influence of the most harmful repeat offenders (the ones who resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful).

      Repeatedly harmful people, people resisting helpful harm reducing correction, are traditionally penalized or kept from harmfully influencing things. That tradition needs to govern the ‘sharing of beliefs’.

3394. Doug Bostrom at 05:58 AM on 4 December 2022
      New paper: A toolkit for understanding and addressing climate scepticism
      

      [Update: Unfortunately this paper will not be open access until 6 months after publication, apparently a glitch in reportage from the journal. We apologize for the error.]

      Sorry about that, wstephen.

      It's our practice to only center publications suggested for our readers' attention that are open access.

      At the time this item surfaced for New Research, Unpaywall identified it as open access and indeed it was (we always check, for highlights). Now it's not. 

      Working on it and hope to remedy.

3395. wstephen at 05:28 AM on 4 December 2022
      New paper: A toolkit for understanding and addressing climate scepticism
      

      I suspect this is an excellent article in its entirety, as this summary is an attention grabber.  It's a shame the entire article is behind a paywall and inaccessible to those of us who have long ago retired from an institution with a subscription.  This is much too important a topic to require $32 to read it.  

3396. EddieEvans at 03:31 AM on 4 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      The subcribers number on climate deception is inaccurate by far. I do not have any sexy-like content, and much of it is not strictly climate deception; had I kept my voice I would have done more original, less robot reading. 

      I am eclectic and pick and choose; so I have gone far afield from strictly climate deception material. I cannot produce enough to remain a ranking channel without highjacking kinda related content. For example, today, I will upload a fifteen-minute podcast highlighting the plutocrat control of information, which means more climate deception, denial, and delay.

      I choose all four of your questions and then some. There is no silver bullet. Besides, more people must notice that the Mississippi River is a stream, Lake Powel is a fish bowl, and California burns from time to time.

      For the record, I am looking for others to contribute and/or take over anyone or all of my channels: climate deception, climate damage, and global warming simplified. Note that NASA's climate effects page and NASA Climate Kids need more attention than any Youtube channel. 

3397. wilddouglascounty at 02:39 AM on 4 December 2022
      2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
      

      2 Eddie,

      Apologies for the delay; I just checked back today to see what you have done here. Thanks so much for this--I see that there are 137 folks as part of your channel, so I'll check out the other posts you've made there. I think small circles are really a good way to spread the conversation and discussions to elevate the discussion toward taking on the many tasks that will be required to create real change.

      And 3/One Planet, I agree that acknowledging that climate change is a problem is the starting point for sustainable improvements. Different circles are at different points in this process, so fortunately we don't have to have all of humanity to agree to anything all at the same time in order to proceed.

      I think also that the participants in the COP process are well past this point and that the real questions that have emerged in my mind and many others are: since fossil fuel interests have positioned themselves to be able to neutralize and even stop needed reforms called on by the scientific community in the COP meetings, how to proceed?

      -Do we showcase their fossil fuel interests as sacrificing the ability to mitigate an increasingly hostile environment for short-term, selfish gain?

      -Do we show that delays and resistance only increase the severity of large scale suffering, mass migrations, warfare and authoritarian regimes?

      -Do we spend our time really showcasing successful transitions of large economies to drastically reducing emissions as well as showcasing economic development of the South in ways that are empowering and sustainable? 

      It's my sense that we need to be doing a mix of all of these and probably other initiatives if we are to have a chance. The important realization for me is that we cannot expect those changes to come through the COP process. There must be pressure applied in ways that the fossil fuels interests cannot so easily insert themselves into to stop.

      I'm really interested in hearing more about these types of things and hope that this website will showcase these types of things more and more.

3398. EddieEvans at 22:26 PM on 3 December 2022
      Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus
      

      This a really helpful reader for a non-specialist like myself. I suggest a tone-down, common language version and placing it on Wikipedia. At least on Wikipedia, its subject becomes documented for posterity. Besides, it's ready to go as is.

      Search on Wikipedia

      Moderator Response:

      [BW] embedded link

3399. EddieEvans at 20:01 PM on 3 December 2022
      Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus
      

      I have only one recommendation for this important subject, use a heavier font style for webpage publication. Even with the typeface enlarged with the browser tool, it's still less than easily read by the visually impaired and older folks like myself.

      myself. Link to the Credible Hulk article

      Moderator Response:

      [BW] Embedded link

3400. One Planet Only Forever at 10:19 AM on 3 December 2022
      Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus
      

      This is indeed a helpful presentation.

      A related thought would be that science is about education/learning, which is the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding. The consensus understanding is always being improved. However, the following quote from the “explainer” exposes how some scientific pursuits may impede the development and improvement of a consensus:

      “Given the combative nature of science it’s highly unlikely that any scientist sets out to become part of a consensus.”

      The “competition” between scientists can be helpful or harmful. Open collaboration is clearly the better way to pursue learning. Combative competition for wealth or status can produce negative results in many ways including:

      • reducing openness (selective sharing of information, hiding disliked results)
      • influencing what is chosen to be investigated, especially ‘not choosing’ to investigate the potential harm done by potentially beneficial activities.
      • misleading presentations on an issue, especially using selected evidence (knowing better, but not sharing the better understanding)

      A related understanding is that a very important sub-set of learning is "learning about what is harmful and the ways to limit harm done". Learning (science) aligned with the pursuit of limiting harm done is more sustainable. That is essentially the basis for the developed consensus understanding, open to continued improvement, of the Sustainable Development Goals.

      That understanding leads to awareness that not everybody cares to govern their learning by the sub-set objective of limiting harm done. Other objectives can lead people to argue against a 'developing consensus understanding' in their pursuit ways to prolong or increase their ability to benefit from understandably harmful beliefs and actions.

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