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Rob Honeycutt at 07:08 AM on 30 August 2014US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
Here's an argument corollary to Russ' posted above.
I made the calculations to estimate how many calories I would burn if I were to walk to the store, half mile away. It would require me to walk a total of 1600 steps, based on calculations that agree with other's assessments that will only burn 113 calories.
That's just too little to have an impact on my growing waistline, thus I shouldn't even try.
The point is, it's 169 million tons of CO2e that shouldn't be going into the atmosphere in the first place. You can do the same calculation for every single thing that needs to be done to lose weight or to end emissions of CO2. The only way you make progress is to get off your a— and do all of them.
You don't wait for the next thing that will maybe be a better solution. As coaches say: "Just do it."
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Russ R. at 06:22 AM on 30 August 2014US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
" I also take a different route to get to the same general answer as John Abraham's."
I took the same route as John Abraham in assessing the maximum amount of CO2e emissions that Keystone XL could possibly generate and I came up with 169 million tonnes of CO2e per year, virtually the same value as he arrived at.
But unlike Abraham (or anyone else here), I took the logical next step of estimating the impact of Keystone XL's potential emissions on the planet's temperature, and I come up with a result that is remarkable in its insignificance... less than 1/100th of a degree Celsius per century. Absolutely trivial.
Feel free to play with your own assumptions. Calculations and sources here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78507292/Keystone%20XL.xlsx
All I ask is that next time you're arguing to block the construction of this pipeline, please be upfront about the actual impact it will have on climate.
Too small to measure.
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longjohn119 at 05:54 AM on 30 August 2014What I learned from debating science with trolls
Godwin's Law - As an online argument grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that someone will bring up Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. When this event occurs the person guilty of invoking Godwin's Law has effectively forfeited the argument.
The Al Gore Corollary to Godwin's Law - As an online argument on Climate Change grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that someone will bring up Al Gore. When this event occurs the person guilty of invoking Al Gore's name has effectively forfeited the argument and lost the debate, badly.
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Composer99 at 01:51 AM on 30 August 2014What I learned from debating science with trolls
Some techniques are comically simple. Emotionally charged, yet evidence-free, accusations of scams, fraud and cover-ups are common. While they mostly lack credibility, such accusations may be effective at polarising debate and reducing understanding.
Those appear to be the perennial favourites of the "regulars" who blight the comment threads of Dana & John's posts at The Guardian.
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US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
wilbert - Perhaps by implementing carbon taxes to make producers of energy pay the actual (societal) costs of fossil fuels and emissions rather than just profiting on the low price of their feedstocks? If that was done consistently renewable power becomes almost a no-brainer in terms of utility profitability.
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wilbert at 23:48 PM on 29 August 2014US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
(And what about not build Keystone and get energy from non-carbon sources instead?).... Could you expend that comment? How can that be done?
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MA Rodger at 21:43 PM on 29 August 2014Southern sea ice is increasing
Klaus Flemløse @15.
If you look at narrower bands of latitude, the "step function" you have identified occurs between 70ºS and 55ºS. Another feature of such analysis is the decreasing interannual variation with increasing latitude. The variation is strongly linked to ENSO. I would guess most of the "step function" is actually those high southern latitudes reacting to ENSO which has generally been a lot more negative since 2007 than the period 1981-2006.
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Andy Skuce at 14:51 PM on 29 August 2014US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
It is odd that many of the proponents of Keystone XL argue that we absolutely must do it because it will make so little difference to outcomes.
A recent paper may provide a new way of looking at big energy infrastructure projects.
“One of the things that makes climate change such a difficult problem is that it lacks immediacy,” Steven Davis of the University of California, Irvine, told environmentalresearchweb. “It’s going to have huge impacts in the long run, but its effects on our day-to-day lives seem small. The way we’ve been tracking carbon-dioxide emissions reinforces this remoteness: the annual emissions we monitor are small relative to the cumulative emissions that will cause large temperature increases. The alternative we present, what we call commitment accounting, helps by quantifying the long-run emissions related to investment decisions made today.”
Open-access paper by Davis and Socolow here
i will be looking at the Erickson and Lazarus paper in more detail in an article here next week. I also take a different route to get to the same general answer as John Abraham's.
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Tom Curtis at 14:35 PM on 29 August 2014US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
RussR @1, ah yes! The "do evil now lest somebody else do it before me" school of moral philosophy. You must be so proud.
On a more pragmatic level, that Keystone XL is the preferred option to export the oil from tarsands shows that profitability will be less, or prices higher with the alternative. Therefore not building Keystone will result in the extraction of less oil from the tarsands in the long run regardless of any other pipeline built.
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Russ R. at 13:44 PM on 29 August 2014US State Department underestimates carbon pollution from Keystone XL
John Abraham lists three possible alternatives regarding Keystone XL:
- Build Keystone and pump tar sands.
- Not build Keystone but extract the equivalent oil somewhere else.
- Not build Keystone and instead, use our energy more wisely, saving money and reducing pollution.
There's another very real alternative that he fails to consider.
- Not build Keystone XL and extract tar sands regardless.
"Since 2012, the billionaire Irving family has been advocating a proposal called Energy East. The 2,858-mile (4,600-km) pipeline would link trillions of dollars worth of oil in land-locked fields in the western province of Alberta to an Atlantic port in the Irvings’ eastern home province of New Brunswick, north of Maine, creating a gateway to new foreign markets for Canadian oil. The $12 billion line, ...would pump 1.1 million barrels per day..."
So, by blocking a 830,000 bpd pipeline that would transport tar sands bitumen to the United States, you're increasing the likelihood of building a 1,100,000 bpd pipeline, to ship the very same oil to countries like India and China that have far worse environmental and pollution regulations.
Well done.
And for what? Because you'd like to avert in imperceptible amount of warming (less that 0.007 C) over a century?
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link. (And what about not build Keystone and get energy from non-carbon sources instead?)
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scaddenp at 13:31 PM on 29 August 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
I fail quite to understand what point you are making here? Sealevel rise from Antarctica comes from the loss of ice sheet, not ice shelves. The main issue with the loss of ice shelves is the buttressing effect on glaciers. Where shelves have been lost, glacial calving rates have gone up. If you want to see what is the real issue, start with this paper. It is discussed in the NASA press release here.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:55 AM on 29 August 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #34
sw @1... a) No, Christy merely pulled a fast one on you by improperly applying baselines. LINK
b) The models are not failing. LINK
sw @2... a) Engineers are not climate scientists. Next time you have an electrical problem in your home, are you going to call a plumber?
b) Religion is faith in something without any evidence. Climate change has 150 years of research and data behind it.
c) Mann's original graphs (MBH98/99) only go back to the MWP, not past it. You should actually read the paper. Or better, read any of the dozen papers that have been written on the same subject since 1999.
d) Why was Greenland green? When? 65 million years ago? 250 million years ago?
e) Christy again? Really?
f) Yes you are. I don't suspect any of these posts will survive the next hour.
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jetfuel at 10:29 AM on 29 August 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
I did some research on smithsonian.com and found out that Antarctica is much larger than the US lower 48 in area. The Ross Ice shelf is about the size of Texas. It lies on a shallow sea and the shelf is less than a km thick. It has always been melting from underneath. The study of Ice shelf loss recently done over a long period found that 85% of all ice shelf loss was from along the penninsula. There, the sea is warmer, has more currents, and the shelves are numerous, small, and farther from the S. pole. The shelf sits on the ocean anyway and won't add much to sea level rise because it is not on land. Right now, these shelves are surrounded by possibly the most extensive sea ice ever since records started being kept. The ice shelves are mostly the thinnest ice cover thickness areas of Antarctica, sit over the ocean, and are a small fraction of Antarctica'a huge area. They also get heavy snowfall and if they were to melt significantly, there would be an abrupt end to the melt as the area that has ocean under ice would be used up, leaving the vast majority of Antarctica's land ice still totally protected from the warm water of the sea being underneath. Really nothing new here, as this water has always been underneath the ice.
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2014 SkS Weekly Digest #34
<snip>
Moderator Response:[PS] Welcome to Skeptical science. Please read and thoroughly digest the comments policy. Note particularly, "Make comments in the most appropriate thread". No gish gallops like your one. "No sloganeering.".
Use the search function on the top left to find appropriate place to comment. Stick to topic and produce evidence to back your position. References to peer-reviewed literature are best.
If you just want a rant there are plenty of other sites which would welcome your comment. Stay here if you want to discuss actually the science.
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Klaus Flemløse at 03:55 AM on 29 August 2014Southern sea ice is increasing
@12
I have tried to include a discontinuity at September 2006 in the sea surface temperature(sst):
In this case the fit is better and the SST is increasing, but not significantly. Is the discontinuity comming from an error in sea ice cover data?
Can someone tell me if there is a know error in NOAA data around 2005-2010 ?
What am I going to believe?
Moderator Response:[RH] Need to keep the width of the images limited or they break the page formatting. I added a zoom so you can see the details (or at least I thought I did). Edit: Okay, next best thing is an added link to the full sized image. ;-)
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Temp record is unreliable
Ashton - Marohasy's article is an online publication through the Sydney Institute, "a privately funded not-for-profit current affairs forum encouraging debate and discussion", in Sydney Papers Online, which is most definitely not a peer-reviewed publication.
Your above claim about its review status is wholly in error. And there is no sign that anyone with knowledge or expertise on the temperature records had critical input to the article.
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ianw01 at 23:18 PM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
michael sweet @17:
It would seem that my comments misled you: I'm not interested in listening to deniers over experts. I was just seeking to better understand the relationship between glaciers and river flows, primarily because that is likely going to be the way that Albertans experience global warming in a way that might change a significant number of minds.
Andy Skuce @18:
Thanks for the interesting link. The point it makes about the boost to flows from glacial melt masking the coming problems is important. (It is similar to the storage of heat deep in the oceans in that it delays unavoidable consequences.) And your analogy about the behaviour of glaciers as well managed dams concisely describes their value.
Tom Curtis: @19:
Good point about the relationship between land area and freezing level in the mountains - I had not considered that.
jimb @20:
Nope! :-)
Bob Loblaw @27:
Good catch! I'm not sure where that typo came from.
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John Mason at 19:52 PM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
And just for completeness, here's the abstract in Science:
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Tom Curtis at 19:50 PM on 28 August 2014Temp record is unreliable
Ashton:
1) Read my posts more carefully. I did not say anybody was brainwashed to reject AGW. Rather, I ironically suggested that those who disagree with Marahosy had been "brain washed" to emphasize the fact that, considering who they were, that was not the case and that their independent finding of a positive temperature trend in the Brisbane valley using satellite data was truly independent, and indeed refuted Marohasy.
2) Given that Marohasy accuses BOM of fraudulently tampering with data, something you apparently have no problem with, your taking of offense even at your misinterpretation of what I wrote is simply hypocritical and not worthy of notice.
3) Marohasy has not written any peer reviewed reports on the temperature data. Rather, she has merely echoed the results of an Australian blogger on her blog, and in emails to the Australian, and to a Minister in the Abbot government. I believe it was you, not she who made up the cannard about her findings being from a peer reviewed report.
4) In contrast, the appropriateness and proper conduct of the BOM methods have been peer reviewed, and reported on in a publicly available document. It has also been peer reviewed in the scientific literature.
5) I have been downloading raw temperature data for stations nearby to Amberly today, and in the process noticed that Marohasy has clearly cherry picked her examples. The most telling point is that she cites airport (29.53 km from Amberley) to support her case, but neglects Ipswich (4.73 km away) and two stations at Gatton (37.99 and 38.61 kms distant), all of which show strong positive trends (contrary to my mistaken rememberance in my previous post). A number of other local stations also show positive trends. The key point here is that Marohassy neglects those stations, even though they are in the majority and are often closer and more climactically similar to Amberley than those she does cite.
6) I note you do not report on past and present times of jacaranda blooming in Western Australia. I on the other hand have linked to reports of the phenomenon in Sydney, Ipswich, have verified it in Brisbane, and can confirm it for Grafton (sorry. lossed the link), Camden San Diego (California), Florida (normal flowering time from April to June) and Los Angeles.
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John Mason at 19:50 PM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
GP Alldredge, thanks. I've figured out what happened here. The original paper published in Science had "climatic" in its title. It was later incorporated into the book, "Climate change: critical concepts in the Environment (vol.1) published in 2002, where the term "climate" is instead used. Luntz must have nobbled the publisher!!
The link on that screengrab now points to the relevant Google Books page, as it was wrongly pointing to some much more recent NASA document. Trying to do too many things at once, as usual!
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Tom Curtis at 18:49 PM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
John Mason @6, just to books in the Google Book collection.
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Ashton at 18:39 PM on 28 August 2014Temp record is unreliable
Apologies again I should have noted that Dr Marohasy's paper was peer reviewed and asked if the reviewers were "evidently brainwashe"?
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Ashton at 18:36 PM on 28 August 2014Temp record is unreliable
Apologies Ton Curtis should read Tom Curtis
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GP Alldredge at 18:09 PM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
Just an historical correction: The actual title of Wallace S. ("Wally") Broecker's 1975 paper in Science is "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?"--that is, "climatic" rather than "climate". (I just copied and pasted that title here from my PDF copy downloaded from the Science online site.)
In a further historical note, that 1975 paper was not the first appearance of the term "global warming" in the scientific literature, as was asserted by Stefan Rahmstorf in his 28 July 2010 RealClimate post "Happy 35th birthday, global warming!". I cannot account for the term not being found earlier according to the ISI database search Stefan cited in that posting. But in a short time with Google Scholar I found and verified at least three prior to 1975; my search was not exhaustive, so there may be others even earlier. The earliest of the three I found was:
J. Murray Mitchell Jr. (1961). "Recent Secular Changes of Global Temperature", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 95 [Issue topic: "Solar Variations, Climatic Change, and Related Geophysical Problems"], pages 235 -250, October 1961. [The term "global warming" appears in the half-page Introduction, viewed at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1961.tb50036.x/abstract.]
Mitchell was reporting an update he performed as a follow-on to Willett's 1950 report of global temperature rapid increase in the early 20th century up through a pentad centered on 1937 (1935-1939), which had still strongly increasing temperatures. Mitchell used Willett's methodology (but with corrected latitudinal weighting, and extended it with data for the 4 pentads centered on 1942, 1947, 1952, and 1957 (1955-1959). Thus, ironically he was using "global warming" to describe what Willett observed, but the added span of data in Mitchell's analysis fell in much of the 1940-1975 mid-century "hiatus", so he was finding that slight "global cooling".
But even though Broecker's 1975 paper is not the first instance in the scientific literature of "global warming", it may well be the first coupling of a form of "climate change" and "global warming" in the title of a scientific paper, and title aside, it is a seminal paper whose 35th birthday was noteworthy.
My nit-pick on the subject of Broecker's 1975 paper's title aside, I add my thanks to John Mason for this posting.
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Ashton at 18:08 PM on 28 August 2014Temp record is unreliable
Tom Curtis asks "so who are you going to believe etc" and then goes on use derogatory terms such as "evidently brainwashed" obviously suggesting any one who may question his conclusions is unsound. Naturally one would assume the three independent teams of temperature experts are more likely to be correct, although one might question the importance placed by Ton Curtis on his Jacaranda observations which could be local and ask why the Jacarandas are not flowering early in Western Australia. However, one is given cause for pause when the reasons given by the BoM for their adjustments are refuted by those who actually worked where the stations in question are sited. Are those who refute what the BoM says "evidently brainwashed"?
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John Mason at 16:46 PM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
Interesting Ngram results there. Can the same tests be applied to the mainstream media?
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Ashton at 16:29 PM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
I'm a unsure whether is allowed. If not my apologies. I was referring to the recent, peer reviewed, paper by Jennifer Marohasy which has been discussed in the Australian. I went to the link supplied above where Tom Curtis is in the process of crtitiquing her paper.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:01 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Another short comment - this time about stream flows.
A minor correction to ianw01@16 - the rivers flow east through Alberta.
As for tracking the use and supply of water: Canada has a detailed agreement between the federal and provincial governments covering water usage in rivers flowing out of the mountains and across the prairies. There is even an intergovernmental board to deal with it: the Prairie Provinces Water Board (PPWB). Each province must recognize the rights of downstream users.
The Athabasca River actually forms part of the Mackenzie River Basin (which empties into the Arctic Ocean), so it by-passes the most populated portions of the prairies. As a result, it does not appear to be part of the PPWB mandate. The existence of the PPWB does indicate that river flows are taken seriously in this part of the world, though.
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jmorpuss at 10:51 AM on 28 August 2014Climate Change Impacts in Labrador
As population grows and demand increases for energy supply, the Artic will keep loosing ice because this will ramp up http://rt.com/news/154028-arctic-russia-ships-subs/
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Bob Loblaw at 10:48 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Hopefully the moderators will accept one more temperature discussion. It does get on-topic to the Athabasca glacier area, eventually!
For the off-topic temperature information, there is another weather station nearby, at Saskatchewan River Crossing. Across the continental divide in British Columbia, there is also weather data collected at Yoho Park. Both are valley bottoms, so limited in usefulness. Environment Canada is not in the habit of trying to maintain stations at high altitudes in the mountains.
Yoho Park is on the "wrong" side of the mountains. Saskatchewan River Crossing is a Parks Canada site, only recording since 1976, and historical data is hard to find on-line (i.e., I couldn't in easily-digestible form...) The metadata I could find suggests it's not a high quality observation station.
For glacier work, research data is probably the best bet. Peyto Glacier is a little further southeast - about half way between the Columbia icefields and Banff, It has an extensive record of ice mass balance research. The Wikipedia page (linked above) includes a reference to a fairly recent paper by Scott Munro, titled "Temperature trends in the Peyto Glacier weather station record", but the link appears to lead to a dead end. I did find this link to some information about the paper, and this link to a newsletter that briefly mentions the conference presentation. In that last link, it refers to an 11-year record, which is much too short for extensive trend analysis.
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Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Ashton - I'm reading unsupported armwaving on your part. More important at the moment, I believe that your issues with homogenisation are far more topical on the Temperature Record thread, not here, as you have said nothing about glacier melt in your posts.
Moderator Response:[PS] Yes, please put any concerns over the temperature record in the thread pointed to. They are offtopic in this thread. This applies to any follow-ups. Ashton, if you have issues with homogenisation, then please provide specific examples of your concern so others can evaluate what you are claiming. There are numerous spurious claims about this process and without specifics, it is not possible comment further.
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Ashton at 07:28 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Of course you are correct in that there are closer stations the point I was trying,perhaps not very well, is that stations close to stations that are being homogenised are sometimes disregarded in the homogenisation process while stations further removed are not. This is usually justified by explanations of why closer stations were less suited to the homogenisation process than those further away even though the closer stations often had longer records than those eventually used in the hmogenisation process.
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Tom Curtis at 06:07 AM on 28 August 2014Temp record is unreliable
ronswanson @301, I am in the process of drawing together a blog post on her criticisms of the Amberley temperature record (because it is geographically close to my location). In essence here claim is that three seperate teams (BOM, GHCN, BEST) have looked at the Amberley data and despite all using distinct methods, have all concuded the slight cooling trend in the raw data is spurious, but that her non-mathematical examination is superior to the consensus of the experts. To do that she compares Amberly to the nearby Archerfield station, but not to the even nearer Ipswich station (available from BEST) that shows the positive trend she says does not exist, or the also nearby Gatton stations (one of which shows the positive trend, and one of which does not)- and certainly not to stations in the wider region which do show the trend.
She says it is ridiculous to consider the discrepancy found independently by three different teams by mathematical analsysis exists because no change in the metadata is recorded at that time, even though BOM warns that the metadata is incomplete and has not had all paper sources entered into the relevant digital database on which she relies.
She also neglects to mention that satellite data over the relevant periods shows a temperature trend consistent with the homogenized BOM (and GHCN and BEST) data, but inconsistent with her data. Presumably climate change deniers John Christy and Roy Spencer are also homogenizing their data to show a trend as well:
She also claims that there are no natural phenomenon consistent with the warming trend, neglecting to mention that Jaccaranda trees in the area are flowering a month earlier than they used to, a fact attributed to global warming. (My attention was first drawn to the early flowering of the Jacaranda's by my mother, who studied in Brisbane in the early fifties, and comments every year when the jacaranda's start blooming on their early flowering.)
So, who are you going to believe - three independent teams of temperature experts, and the (evidently brainwashed) deniers with the satellite data who have so cleverly rejigged the DNA or 78 year old jaccaranda trees to hoodwink us - or former right wing think tank member, Jennifer Marahosy who obviously couldn't have a political reason for her beliefs (unlike those well known lefties, the Jacarranda's).
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Temp record is unreliable
ronswanson - I will also point out that your question seems to indicate that you have not read the opening post nor any of the links provided. I would suggest you do so, as you might find them informative.
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Temp record is unreliable
ronswanson - There is a significant literature on this, for example these papers. For a more informal discussion Victor Venema has written a great deal on the subject. The BEST temperature record project applies a closely related methodology to identify individual station break-points, although they simply separate the data into separate non-overlapping station records rather than correcting a single record for regional consistency.
Station moves occur, as do equipment changes, both of which change the absolute temperatures recorded at the station affected and thus bias anomalies. Homogenization looks at nearby stations that do not experience simultaneous changes to detect and measure how the temperature anomaly offsets have changed for the modified station, and corrections are applied accordingly. Hansen and Lebedeff 1987 demonstrated strong correlations in observed temperature anomalies over distances over 1000km, meaning that nearby station anomalies are very reliable indicators for identifying individual station changes.
As I've said before, It could be argued (and has by people like Marohasy) that it’s better to look at raw temperature data than data with these various adjustments for known biases. It could also be argued that it’s worth not cleaning the dust and oil off the lenses of your telescope when looking at the stars. I consider these statements roughly equivalent, and would have to disagree.
Ignoring known and correctable biases to search out some subset of raw data that seems to support your thesis IMO indicates either (a) deliberate distortion or (more charitably) (b) a huge misunderstanding of science and statistics accompanied by confirmation bias. Either way, such claims are simply not meaningful.
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Andy Skuce at 05:39 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Ashton, if you read the comments (4,5,6,8) you will see that there are other weather stations closer by and others in the region with longer and more complete records than the Jasper station referred to by Jrexx. Seasonal changes and precipitation changes matter as well as annual temperature trends for glacier growth/shrinkage and these factors can vary rapidly with location and altitude in this part of the world. The fact that lower elevations have generally (but not always) higher temperatures says nothing about temperature trends.
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ronswanson at 05:04 AM on 28 August 2014Temp record is unreliable
Jennifer Marohasy has been really attacking homogenization this year. Recently she wrote a "paper" detailing her criticisms, directed at a few stations in Australia, who, after homogenization, experienced cool to warm trend shifts. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone was on top of this or could direct me to some information that might clear this up.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Changing_Temperature_Data.pdf
Thanks :)
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Tom Curtis at 04:56 AM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
Rocketeer, 1896 actually, but it has been corrected. Thanks.
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rocketeer at 04:54 AM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
Nice work by Tom and andy. Of course, Tom meant 1886 rather than 1986. For my wn contribution to the list of old CC references:
T. C. Chamberlin, Journal of Geology, October-November, 1897, A Group of Hypotheses Bearing on Climatic Changes
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Tom Curtis at 04:38 AM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
A more bulk approach to the analysis can be provided by the Google Ngram, which tracks relative usage of terms in books:
The Ngram is started in 1896, the year of Arrhenius' famous paper on the greenhouse effect. In the entire 113 years shown, in only three years does "global warming" get more use than does "climate change", in 1948 and 1950, and again in 1991.
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Andy Skuce at 04:33 AM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
Thanks for an interesting article, John.
You can use the Google Books Ngram tool to search for word frequencies over time within books. A simple search of "climatic change" (blue), "global warming" (green) and "climate change (red) from 1980 to 2008 looks like this:
For a bigger and more readable version click here.
As John's selection of papers suggests, "climatic change" was the term of choice prior to 1988. Its usage peaked in 1991. "Climate change" and "global warming" both took off in 1987 (around the founding date of the IPCC), with "climate change" becoming the dominant term in the mid-1990s (before the "pause" started).
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Ashton at 04:22 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Moderator `in your reply to Johannesrexx@1 you said:"though I am not quite sure of the relevance of a station that is nearly 100km away and 2400m lower"
Surely the distance of 100Km is comparable to the distance between stations in the temperature "homogenisation" carried out by the Australian BoM, distances considered by the BoM as entirely appropriate. The fact that the station referred to is lower might indicate it has a higher temperature readout than the temperature at the glacier.
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Tom Curtis at 04:03 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
sotolith7 @14, the original research you seem to be relying on is Hormes et al (2001) and Joerin et al (2006). What in fact happened to the theory (to answer MA Rodger's question) was Schnedejoch, and more particularly the discussion of the Schnidejoch finds by Grosjean et al (2007). Specifically, Grosjean et al show the continuous presence of ice in the Schnidejoch Pass (based on the argument I presented above). They discuss the apparent discrepancy with Hormes et al and Joerin et al, saying:
"At first glance our conclusion differs from the conclusions drawn from exposed trees in the forefields of melting glacier tongues (Jo¨rin et al., 2006). However, the conclusions by Jo¨rin et al. (2006; see also by Hormes et al., 2006) refer to the AD 1985 level:‘glaciers in the Grimsel [and Alpine] area were smaller than at 1985 AD during several times for the last 5000 years’; while our conclusion reads: ‘in the year of 2003 AD, the ice field at Schnidejoch has reached the smallest extent since the last 5000 years’.
This is not a contradiction. We argue that this difference is explained by the dissimilar response lags of the two types of archives compared: ice mass balance near the LA (Schnidejoch) responds immediately to sub-decadal climate variations, while Alpine glacier tongues respond with a multi-decadal lag to climatology (20–60 years (Jo¨rin et al., 2006); importantly this fact also applies to the study by Hormes et al. (2006)). Differences between the equilibrium states of fast and slowly responding climate archives are typically large during phases of rapid changes. Indeed while the ice field at Schnidejoch is in equilibrium with the state of the atmosphere of the most recent years, the glacier tongues have not yet fully responded to the excessively warm years of the last 15 years, when (1) solar radiation at the Earth’s surface has increased owing to brightening of the atmosphere (globally 6.6 W m-2 10 yr-1 between 1992 and 2002, Swiss Plateau 7.2 W m-2 10 yr-1; Wild et al., 2005), (2) anthropogenic greenhouse forcing with related strong water vapour feedback enhanced the downward longwave radiation in Europe (+1.18 W m-2 yr-1, data 1995–2002; Philipona et al., 2005) which increased temperatures, and (3) negative trends in the specific mass balance of Alpine glaciers accelerated (Zemp, 2006)."
In short, the discrepancy is explained because (1) the two results use different reference years and there as been a large change in atmospheric forcing and temperature between those two years, and (2) glaciers respond slowly to changing conditions so that the current glacial extents (let alone those of 1985) are not in equilibrium and will retreat quite a bit further before they are.
It should be noted that the finds in Schnidejoch do not directly contradict the results of Hormes et al or Joerin et al in that different microclimates in different alpine valley are known to result in slightly different responses to temperature changes at different times. Note that Schnidejoch responded rapidly to warmth in recent times, and the potential of decay precludes decades long exposures of the artifacts found in the pass. That therefore precludes glacial retreats in the past 5000 years greater than the current equilibrium state of Alpine glaciers (although greater than the current retreat due to slow response times).
Finally, Grosjean is not a complete answer to Hormes and Joerin in that they also show a higher altitude treeline. Treelines, of course, also respond slowly to changes in temperature. Nicolussi et al (2005) estimate early 2000 treeline levels to reflect climate conditions in the 1980s. Since the 1980s, climate change has resulted in a 1 degree C increase in temperatures at the alpine treeline since the 1980s, with a projected further rise of the treeline by 200 meters as the result (Gehrig-Fasel et al, 2007) . Returning to Nicolussi et al, they find:
"In the space of the last 4000 years the dendrochronological tree-line record is not continuous, probably due to human impact. Tree-line positions similar to or slightly above the 1980 tree-line are established for the time periods approx. 1000 to 640 b.c. and a.d. 1 to 330 respectively. For the time period between approx. 7100 and 2100 b.c. the dendrochronologically analysed logs show nearly continuous evidence of a tree-line above the 1980s limit. Very high elevation of the tree-line, between 120 and 165 m above the 1980s level (2245 m a.s.l.) and even higher than the a.d. 2000 tree-species-line (2370 m a.s.l.), are recorded for the periods 7090–6570, 6040–5850, 5720–5620, 5500–4370 b.c., approx. 3510–3350 b.c. and 2790–2590 b.c. Additionally, a tree-line which was located at least 50 m above the 1980s limit can be shown for the periods 6700–5430, 4920–3350 and 3280–2110 b.c. The dendrochronological record from the Kauner valley, showing high and very high tree-line positions between approx. 7100 and 2100 b.c. with only two gaps (around 6490 b.c. and from 3350 to 3280 b.c.), suggests that summer temperatures as observed in the late 20th century were at the normal or the lower limit of the temperature range which can be assumed for long periods of the early and middle Holocene epoch."
So, treelines above the 1980s level were found 4000 years ago, or older, with two small episodes of treelines matching the 1980s level after that. No trees were found as high as the projected stable treeline for current alpine temperatures (with the highest, being from the early holocene, and about 30-40 meters below that level).
Consequently, the Hormes and Joerin results are accurate, but consistent with early 2000 temperatures exceding stable alpine temperatures at any time in the Holocene. Of course, those temperatures have been only been occuring for a decade, and decadal temperature fluctuaions above that in the early to mid holocene, and specifically prior to the earliest remains from Schnidejoch are quite likely. Those elevated NH temperatures, however, are a direct consequence of the milankovitch cycles that lead to much higher NH summer insolation at that time. Further, soon anthropogenic warming will take alpine temperatures above even those early holocene peaks - indeed much above them.
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EOttawa at 03:43 AM on 28 August 2014Climate Change: the Terminological Timeline
Thank you for putting this together. As you say, a picture(s) is worth a thousand words.
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jimb at 03:17 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
lanw01
Suppose you received the following notification from your water supplier;"Based on past usage, your yearly water requirement is 50,000 gallons. Because of changing circumstances, we will deliver that amount to your home beginning on January 1st and ending on March 31st. Please adapt your usage to this changed delivery schedule." Could you cope?
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Tom Curtis at 03:09 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
ianW01 @16:
" If summer river flows are dependent on glacial meltwater, then those flows would have been lower before the 1800's, assuming there was roughly no net melting of the glaciers then."
Summer flows are not due to glacial melt but due to melt of the seasonal snowpack. In the 1800s, the seasonal snowpack would have extended to a lower altitude, and the upper limit of snow melt would also have been at a lower altitude but there would still be a large snow melt in summer to provide summer river flows. In fact, due the shape of mountains, a lower snowpack would have occupied more area, and hence is likely to have had a greater volume of snow melt. Hence the initial premise of your argument does not hold.
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Andy Skuce at 03:05 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Ian, I deliberately avoided discussing the importance of glaciers for river flows; it's complicated. There is a good article at Yale 360 on this. Melting glaciers, smaller snowpacks that melt earlier in the year as well as increased demand for water in the N American West, all combine to cause a supply problem. It's not all about glaciers.
If you had to devise a water management scheme not involving dams--one that evened out water flows, providing more water in summer, more water in dry, hot years, less in cool years and in years with heavy snowfall--the chances are that you would come up with something like a glacier. Possibly, in some areas, part of the role of glaciers in modulating water flow can be compensated for by building artificial reservoirs in mountain valleys.
It is true that receding glaciers are contributing positively to river flows. But relying on that is like basing your retirement income on capital withdrawals rather than interest. That will indeed work, but only for a while.
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michael sweet at 02:42 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
lanw01,
Too often in these discussions we hear uncritical arguments made without considering the consequences of what is being suggested. Deiners frequently do not think through their arguments.
Certainly it can be argued that total river flow will be the same as it was. Unfortunately that is not the only consideration. In these areas it rains a lot in the winter and spring and little in the summer. If all the rain runs off there will be floods in spring and drought during the summer. What great conditions for agriculture!! Who needs all that food anyway? The forests are also damaged by the drought in summer. The volume of water is too great to hold back using dams (which cause their own problems in any case).
We already see increased springtime floods in the US Midwest caused by too rapid melt of snow.
Think through your suggestions so that they make sense. Perhaps if you listened to experts, who have thought through the issues, you would have different ideas than when you listen to deniers who do not think of the consequences of their actions.
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ianw01 at 01:08 AM on 28 August 2014Athabasca Glacier: a tragic vanishing act
Back to the Athabasca glacier, and the melting of glaciers in the Rockies: I wonder when (or if) the current trends will significantly affect river flows heading west through Alberta. That would make climate change more apparent to the population of the province.
Consider this: If summer river flows are dependent on glacial meltwater, then those flows would have been lower before the 1800's, assuming there was roughly no net melting of the glaciers then. And one could argue that once the glaciers are gone, we'll be back to the same point: no net melting of glaciers, just the seasonal snowpack.
So, what is wrong with a contrarian position that says that net melting of glaciers is no big issue, it is just a temporary and unsustainable boost to river flows during those centuries?
Of course there are other issues related to changes in precpitiation that come with climate change - let's leave that constant for current discussion purposes.
I conclude that the changes in the freezing level in the mountains will reduce their ability to seasonally store and delay the water flow in the river. Therefore floods and droughts should become more common.
However, it is not also true that the loss of the glaciers is not fundamental to river flows?
Too often in these discussions I hear that glaciers are needed for good river flows, yet at the same time we do not want them to melt. We can't have it both ways.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:21 AM on 28 August 2014Global warming denial rears its ugly head around the world, in English
Lloyd,
The ideology many adhere to is greed related, or created to justify greed. As such, the person you are struggling to get to change their mind may be one of those I would eventually stop trying to convince ... because their greed based ideology means they cannot be reasoned with. Their mind is clearly made-up as will be their relentless arguments. I would move on to find people who are less informed or misinformed. There are plenty of those around who will change their mind when made more aware and given a reason to. Mind you some of those people read discussions like the one you are having and can learn to better understand much more by seeing the example of unreasonable reluctance as well as becoming more aware of the climate science facts. So the question becomes when to stop the effort to convince a person who clearly is not interested in changing their mind (because they see no personal benefit from accepting what better understanding climate science requires people to accept, their greed motivation actually makes them see a personal loss coming from acceptance of the science).
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