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Comments 36901 to 36950:
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Don9000 at 05:34 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
Seeing Mike@4's comment about the change puts me in mind of Winston Smith and Orwell's 1984. I wonder if the Mail and other publications with sad denialist records on this topic, won't simply delete all their bilge when they eventually give in to reality. Clearly, it would be easy to do.
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LCBozo at 05:21 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
I would acknowledge the "Black Swan" principle when assigning % probabilities. Would a physicist claim there is a 99.9% probability that gravity exists? The existence of evolution is a fact, how it works is a theory. We can't assign such probabilities, as it presupposes we have some knowledge of what the 100% would be in the first place. -
localis at 05:21 AM on 12 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
quote: "Despite the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming supported by peer-reviewed research, expert opinion, the IPCC reports, and National Academies of Science and other scientific organizations from around the world, a large segment of the population remains unconvinced on the issue."
I guess a large segment of the population (ie.the majority) aren't even aware of the evidence regarding AGW one way or the other. I think we kid ourselves that far more people share our concerns or interest in climate change than actually do. Not only do we need to silence the damage done by deniers we need to convince many that they need to start considering the issue in the first place.
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StBarnabas at 04:35 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
@2 and 3. The likelihood that climate change is happening amd man made is > 95%. The likleihood that evolution is true is close to certainty that I would not know how many nines to put after 99.9%. The fact that people choose to put dogma before reality is depressing and sadly means that getting robust climate change policy will be an uphill struggle for years to come.
StB
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IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
dhogaza - I would note that your response to my comment is (a) to a large extent not responding to what I wrote, and (b) rather over the top in tone. "Do you think they're stupid, or what" and "Real Scientists (assuming you can accept the possibility that a biologist can be a scientist) do study these things" are rather insulting statements - I do not think they are justified from what I said.
What I said was that the raw numbers for cross-species bird kills shows a four order of magnitude difference between wind power and other factors, and that with only that information there is little indication of threat to specific species. That requires specific studies of those species, their habitat intersection with wind power, evaluation of whether their flight profiles are at an altitude threatened by wind power, and most importantly data about species kills. Data which you have only now provided a (single) link to - you had not previously.
In reference to the prairie chickens, for at least the greater prairie chicken, Sandercock 2013 notes "wind turbines have little effect on greater prairie chickens, and that these grassland birds are more affected by rangeland management practices and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites". That seems to be the case for the various references I found for the lesser prairie chicken, that the threat to them is far more about habitat (their range needs and their avoidance of tall structures as potential raptor sites) than about bird kills from collisions with either the blades or towers. Results like these make habitat preservation an important aspect of wind power.
An interesting discussion - but please ramp down on the rhetoric and tone.
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dhogaza at 03:59 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Let me finish by pointing out that conservation scientists understand that most wind farm installations do not cause significant impacts on populations of birds at risk.
The problem is when people like David Bailey extrapolate this to mean that no wind turbine installations can cause significant impacts on populations of birds at risk. Further extrapolation leads to claims that we don't need to take threatened or other at-risk species into consideration when siting wind farms, nor do we need to monitor or study impacts.
Wrong.
In reality, most siting studies tend to show that a given proposed wind farm doesn't pose a significant risk. Most. Not all.
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dhogaza at 03:44 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
KR:
And, yes, Real Scientists (assuming you can accept the possibility that a biologist can be a scientist) do study these things. There's quite a bit of literature out there. Here's just one example:
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/3/257.short
That's just the abstract. I have the print copy at home,.
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dhogaza at 03:40 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
KR:
You could start by asking why the industry always states that a lot more birds are killed by other causes rather than detail mortality by species.
Do you think they're stupid, or what?
"Do you have comparative mortality factors specifically for the lesser prairie chicken?"
lesser prairie chicken is already listed as a threatened species under the ESA. By definition every dead prairie chicken is more important from a conservation point of view than the death of, say, a starling.
"Given the four orders of magnitude higher bird kills by other factors"
Wow, four orders of magnitude!
There are only a bit more than 17,000 lesser prairie chickens in the wild. There are 150 million starlings alone. I will let you calculate how many orders of magnitude difference that represents.
Bailey includes tidbits such as:
"Cat's out of the proverbial bag. Per Loss et al 2013, feral cats kill most of the 87,000 times as many birds (in the US alone) than do all of the wind turbines in the world do, combined."
Again, no mention of species distribution, and again, this is intentional.
There is also this from Bailey, which is downright offensive:
"But climate deniers aren't interested in facts that disagree with their desired outcome."
I am no climate denier. The wildlife biologists I know are not climate deniers. I am not anti-wind power, nor are the wildlife biologists I know and have worked with over time in conservation contexts.
On the other hand, one might claim that those that equate a single starling death with that of the death of a member of a highly threatened species like lesser prairie chicken is a conservation science denier.
I'm used to this crap, being labelled "anti-environment", "climate science denier", etc simply because I point out that wind turbines are an important source of mortality for certain species at risk in certain portions of the country. The industry and friends began labelling conservation biologists as being "anti-environmental" (think about that for a minute) over two decades ago. The industry itself has reluctantly become more self-aware over time. People like David Bailey not so much.
"climate denier". Harumph. Stuff it.
Regarding Altamont, Bailey is trumpeting the success of mitigation (much better siting, removal of the old derrick-style supports that provided perches for perch-hunting species like red-tails, etc etc).
This is good news. Wind power supporters like myself who also understand conservation issues regarding certain species of birds have been very happy that newer windmill designs, attention to siting, etc have improved the situation.
We can have wind power and we can mitigate bird mortality if we pay attention to detail. There's no need to be a conservation science denier, as Bailey is.
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John Mason at 03:39 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
Mike - somewhere on this system I have a screengrab of the paragraph in question. The error was not to webcite it. Next time....
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michael sweet at 00:48 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Dhogaza,
Daniel provided links to a number of studies. One I looked at studied raptor fatalities in the Altamont area, which I have previously heard about as a center of raptor deaths. Daniel claims that a study showed that shooting, poison and cars killed more raptors than windmills. Can you provide data to support your claim that Daniels claim was incorrect? It seems to me that Daniel cares about raptors and has provided data to support his claim that they are not significantly affected.
Wind generator operators are still looking into this issue because they are trying to have a green image.
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IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
dhogaza - Do you have comparative mortality factors specifically for the lesser prairie chicken? Or other bird species of interest?
Given the four orders of magnitude higher bird kills by other factors, arguing that windmills pose an existential threat to specific species is going to take some solid data. It's good that the wind power industry is being prompted to mitigate windmill/bird kills, but the raw cross-species data doesn't inherently support the hypothesis of a significant threat.
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dhogaza at 23:43 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Daniel Bailey:
Comparing raw numbers of birds killed is useless. From a conservation perspective, the death of one starling is not equivalent to the death of one lesser prairie chicken. I could just as easily say we shoudn't be worried about gun deaths in the US because cars kill more oppossums in the US than guns kill people.
Concerns about windmills killing bird species of concern is legitimate. Fortunately the wind power industry itself (after governmental prodding) is taking the issue more seriously than people like you.
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chriskoz at 17:44 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
LCBozo@22,
Arizona's large Agua Caliente Solar Project generates electricity at a wholesale cost of about 22 cents per kilowatt hour whereas the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is about 3 cents per kilowatt hour
Can you provide the source of your claim? And what does your figure of 3 cents per kWh at Palo Verde include? Does it include (besides fuel and operation cost) amortisation of construction, spent fuel disposal and decommissioning cost?
A simple check at Wikipedia reveals that your figure is unrealistic up to the point of defying logic. Most of the studies cited there estimate the nuke energy cost at $0.25-0.30 per kWh (i.e. ten times higher) and growing up in recent years. That cost growth may be dues to recent tightening of safety standards and stricter spent fuel management and decommissioning standards (virtually non-existent in nuke haydays). Ben Sovacool, the most known nuke economic expert, estimates here a new 1GWe nuke plant to cost 41.2 to 80.3 cents/kWh produced. That's very high cost. And the economics of such cost would explain why nuke industry is declining in recent decade. And with the costs proliferating and the shrinking suply of high quality U ore, it will continue to decline, regardless of your logic defying enthusiasm.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:23 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
The Mail artcile tried in vain to discredit the connection between climate change and violent conflict. The truth is that "competition" to maximize potential benefits from fossil fuels has created massive amounts of violent and damaging conflicts. And that will only get worse as very undesrevingly wealthy and powerful people fight even more viciously for the most unsustainable opportunity to benefit they can get get away with.
Climate change due to excess CO2 is a clear problem. The success of attempts to get away with and prolong unsustainable and damaging pursuits makes the chances of the development of a sustainable better future for all, the only viable future for humanity, highly unlikely.
The socioeconomic system needs to be changed. And the ones benefiting the most from the current fatally flawed system know it. And they don't want to have to 'adapt' to a different circumstance. They don't want to participate in the development of the gift a better future for all. They only want benefit for themselves.
The resistance to the development of the best understanding of things through activities like climate science is easy to understand.
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Daniel Bailey at 13:55 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
In reality, cars kill 2,800 birds for every 1 killed by a wind turbine.
And cars kill more pedestrians than windmills kill birds. Is it time to ban cars yet?
The leading causes of Raptor deaths in the Altamont study:
1. Shooting
2. Poison
3. CarsBut climate deniers aren't interested in facts that disagree with their desired outcome.
Per Erickson 2005:
Table 2–Summary of predicted annual avian mortality.
Buildings_______________ 550 million
Power lines_____________ 130 million
Cats___________________ 100 million
Automobiles_____________ 80 million
Pesticides_______________ 67 million
Communications towers___ 4.5 million
Wind turbines___________ 28.5 thousand
Airplanes________________ 25 thousandCat's out of the proverbial bag. Per Loss et al 2013, feral cats kill most of the 87,000 times as many birds (in the US alone) than do all of the wind turbines in the world do, combined. That's 3.7 BILLION bird deaths per year, by cats alone...in the US. Or about 10 MILLION per day, as compared to about 2 per day per wind turbine.
Seems the bird holocaust is getting out of...paw. Meow.
This study from the EPA of Sweden documents siting strategies successful in alleviating most wind turbine bird mortalities:
To Debunk the Anti-Wind Myth of 14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in California:
LINKAnd now dogs are being employed to assist in carcass searches:
A good resource:
Furthermore, the ongoing Exeter University Wind Turbine Bat Research Programme examined the Resilient Energy Great Dunkilns in order to understand the effects of wind turbines on bat populations.
The researchers used trained dogs to check for any dead bats. No dead bats were found and this correlates with Exeter's research on similar sized wind turbines where bat mortality rates have also been found to be low to non-existent.
Lastly, the Association of Australian Acoustical Consultants has rejected claims that the frequencies created by wind turbines can have adverse health issues, saying the infrasound generated is often less than a person’s heart-beat.
To sum: About 2 birds and 2 bats per day, per wind turbine.
Versus everything else, which are many orders of magnitude deadlier.
Let's move on to actual, substantive issues.
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Klapper at 12:56 PM on 11 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
@Tom Curtis #58:
NINO3.4 from Hadisst1 is a perfectly fine proxy for ENSO. By your comments, it shows the same pattern as SOI, it has full temporal coverage, and no trend over the last 100 years which is all I looked at. Anyway, it was handy and met my criteria so I used it. The more pertinent fact is that it is a direct forcing as I've noted before, unlike SOI which is indirect.
Looking at your graph, I'm thinking that the pattern displayed is heavily influenced by the PDO. The peak ENSO "warm" trend looks to be a 30 year period ending in 1998. The error between CMIP5 and SAT in this period is 0.14 - .16C/decade = -0.02C/decade. However, the error now is much larger. The 30 year trend ending in 2014 is 0.17C/decade for SAT and 0.25C/decade, or +.08C/decade. I think you are implying that volcanic overcooling errors in the models account for the big difference in model error during the cool ENSO phase vs the warm ENSO phase.
I'm not sure what you mean by "models over estimate cooling from models"; I assume you mean volcanoes. You are right the models probably overcool during volcanic episodes, however since you don't quantify it's unclear whether the effect is large or small. We both agree on the sign of the bias for volcanoes, and the sign of the bias for ENSO over the last 30 years, but it seems we don't agree on the magnitude. With no numbers on the table perhaps we'll just wait a few more years and comment on the state of the divergence then.
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LCBozo at 10:09 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Rob Honeycutt: I certainly don't mean to imply that nuclear power is the only way to go. And, though I have a few problems with the overt alarmist nature of the climate change lobby, I'm more concerned about eliminating carbon based energy production, period, via free market venture capitalism (though I wonder where that is anymore).
Presently, nuclear power — third/fourth generation nuclear energy plant designs, are about the only way to quickly provide for massive 24/7 clean energy production.
If you count the total radioactive releases from all the nuclear plant accidents, it doesn't even come close to that continuously released from dirt burner chimneys.
I worked as a startup engineer, and maintenance programs planner (instrumentation) at PVNGS (Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station)... I have some perspective. For one, we worked (I retired in 2012) for the plant, not any persons. Which is to say, we worked for the laws of physics, which underlie every aspect of nuclear power generation.
PVNGS has virtually a small private army protecting the plant. Guards walk around in full body armor, and carry handguns, as well as fully automatic weapons. About a fourth of the guys I worked with had, as a hobby, continuing formal tactical firearms training — handgun, rifle, shotgun. I dare say, any bad-guy morons trying to penetrate PVNGS would not make it through the security gate. If they did, they would quickly become, well, discorporate. Our first priority was public safety and nuclear safety. Second is worker (industrial) safety, after that was productivity.
In energy production one pound of nuclear fuel equals about 6,000 barrels of oil! Personally, I think burning carbon based fuels is primitive! I think the concept of small modular reactors which run a 5 year refuel cycle, vs. the 18 month refuel cycle of PW reactors (bubblers go about 2 years between refueling) is the way to go.
After utilities have invested ~$30 billion into a government sponsored waste disposal (which I call, future fuel) site — with nothing to show, APS built its own dry-cask storage facility. If the morons in D.C. had any technical knowledge, they would understand that waste is really future fuel, and dry-cask storage is the most effective way to provide for future nuclear fuel — if we went the breeder route.
Arizona's large Agua Caliente Solar Project generates electricity at a wholesale cost of about 22 cents per kilowatt hour whereas the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is about 3 cents per kilowatt hour. Solar cells degrade at the rate of about 1 percent per year (though improving). Solar is great for rooftops, but covering the Sonoran Desert with hundreds of square miles of solar panels to eventually replace dirt burners and natural gas generators will not happen. Also, the subsidizing of these green energy sources is unsustainable, and an economic tipping point will occur long before they could replace conventional energy production. The only real long-term resolution for large scale energy production is fusion power. Geothermal is another viable technology that has minimal environmental impact.
The worst property of nuclear power plants is cost, but the investment is very long term, as major components can be replaced (PVNGS has new steam generators and heads — even got a bit more power efficiency). PVNGS generates massive scale electricity, and may well be operational for more than 100 years. It produces about 3 x 1,400 megawatts, with ~ 95% availability. If utilities would embrace liquid metal, and HTG nuclear plants, I bet the cost would drop per megawatt hour production, as the primary high pressure steam (NSSS) systems are responsible for much of the construction and maintenance costs. Breeders, with onsite fuel reprocessing would make so much sense!
Large-scale wind generators kill an estimated 1.4 million birds and bats every year. This will only increase as wind generation increases — not exactly a "green" side effect! Then we have both the solar and gas back-up generators which often supply quite a good percent of these "clean" energy sources electrical output.
It really boils down to: is there really a probability that AGW will push the earth environment to catastrophic levels, or is this just some weird political/science project? I personally would love to see more technical rigor in school curriculum, with emphasis on "we can do anything," rather than all the wrist wringing, "...but it isn't a perfect solution..." so do nothing attitude.
I helped send men to the moon, was in on the original HMG (carbon/graphite fiber) research, and helped startup half a dozen nuclear plants. I find it hard to accept this once great nation being so politically and technologically constipated. We can produce nuclear weapons when at war with other humans, but can't use available technology to bring about peace when presumably at war with our planet?
Yeah, I like nuclear energy produced electricity. Nuclear plants are the safest place I've ever worked.
One of nuclear powers biggest enemies has been the Oil and Coal industry! Try the movie, "Pandora's Promise."
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Tom Curtis at 08:36 AM on 11 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
Klapper @57:
NINO 3.4:
1) Nino 3.4 is the SST in the region from 5 degrees North and 5 degrees south, and from 170 degrees West and 120 degrees West.
2) The full NINO 3.4 record (Jan 1870-Jan2014) shows a statistically significant warming trend of 0.014 +/- 0.008 C/decade (2 standard deviations confidence interval).
3) The 100 year record does not show a statistically significant warming trend because it start years fall conveniently on a cluster of El Nino years, while its end years fall on a cluster of La Nina years.
4) The underlying observations for HadISST1 do not properly correct for differences in methods of measurement of SST. That is the difference between HadSST3 and other SST products.
5) All of this is beside the point. Given that you are wedded to NINO 3.4 using HadISST1, here are the recent running 30 year trends for that record. As you can see, they show the same pattern as that from the SOI. The consequence is that, since November 2005, ENSO as measured by NINO 3.4 (HadISST1) causes observed temperature trends to fall further below modelled trends than would be the case without ENSO. With SOI annual values, since 2005 ENSO has the same effect. Perhaps next time you dispute a data source, you will show that your preffered data source actually make a difference to the point at hand, and is not simply a red herring as your introduction of NINO 3.4 (HadISST1) has been.
Trends:I have shown conclusively that if models over estimate cooling from models, then there will be a divergence in model and observed trends due to recent volcanism on top of any baseline discrepancy. That divergence would start around 2002. I have also shown conclusively that ENSO will cause a further divergence in the same direction since about 2005. Yet you base your argument for a large baseline discrepancy between models and observations on the increasing divergence since 2004? Seriously?
I assume the cherry pick was accidental, but even you must now recognize that estimate the baseline divergence based on a period over the whole of which it is known that extraneious factors exagerate the observed discrepancy is not sound. If persisted it, it is not honest.
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Mike3267 at 08:25 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
A very small point. Rose's Mail column, "PUBLISHED: 18:37 EST, 7 September 2013 | UPDATED: 13:45 EST, 28 September 2013", does not now contain any mention of a crisis meeting. It may have been changed. It now reads:
"The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to reconsider its position."
You, and others, quoted it as saying:
"The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to hold a crisis meeting."
The phrase "crisis meeting" does still appear in at least one comment on Rose's column.
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Tom Curtis at 07:40 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
WheelsOC @2, long before I began discussing climate change on the internet, I was heavilly involved in the evolution wars. I did so not out of religious conviction, or any particular enjoyment, but because I beleived that people who train themselves in poor reasoning in one area of their life will do so in others. Raise a child a creationist and you raise them to not recognize good science, and to be easilly fooled by pseudo-science, something I thought must inevitably be harmful to our civilization. Little did I know my fears were already being realized. In any event, one of the things that first struck me on encountering global warming deniers was the amazing similarity between the arguments of the creationists, and those of the deniers. It is as though the took creationist argument as a "how to" manual for pseudo-science.
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WheelsOC at 07:06 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
So there we have it. Distorted. Misleading. Misrepresentation. Selective quotation. All of that will come as no surprise to Skeptical Science regulars who have seen us, over the years, taking on individuals and organisations who tend to use such tactics to get their political agenda across. And it often seems that they never give up.
I seen much of the same for years by focusing on another group of denialists; the anti-evolutionists. Quote-mining and spin is such a major part of their toolbox that it's becoming one of their distinctive characteristics. A very incomplete but very representative sample can be found here, which might help reinforce one's ability to spot the practice in action. The easier it is to recognize, the more efficient it is to deal with the tactic regardless of the subject.
More on topic, I've seen someone use the exact same misrepresentation of WG2 Chapter 9, regarding human migration risks. They didn't cite the Daily Mail in doing so, but it did happen the Monday after that piece was published. The IPCC's summary of Tacoli (2009) was quoted out of context to make it seem as though the WG2 itself concluded that "current alarmist predictions [...] are not supported by past experiences of responses to droughts and extreme weather events and predictions for future migration flows are tentative at best," without any indication that this was a description of just one paper considered by the IPCC. Obviously, the real conclusion of the WG was very different from their summary of a single paper.
When dealing with people quoting the IPCC in ways that seem to contradict the IPCC, always be mindful of the potential for quote-mining. Check the source and put their statements in context. That's usually enough to rebut the whole argument. -
PluviAL at 06:20 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
One Planet OF: Granting that sustainablity is abolutely critical, there is room to appreciate the marvel of humanitie's achievements. That achievement is the purpose of life, and so the justification for all the marvels of the Universe. Not to be narsisitic, but this column and this conversation are as marvelous and worthwhile of the planet as the species we endanger.
That is to say, give civilization a break, and let us work this thing out. We have talked about how Pluvinergy, wether it works or not is not the question, is one concept which can make the planet verdant, and continue the ascent of civilization. If so, the question of mitigation and coping entail the conviction that we can do both. Therefore, civilization is not worthless; it is the universe's proudes achievement, as backards as we might, or might not be, in this ascention.
As far as profitability; it is as lovely as scinece, to those who espose it, and it is equally productive. The IPCC report is moving in the right direction, that it makes anti-climate change people happy is good too; we can start talking from common ground.
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John Hartz at 05:30 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
@dhogaza: Since it appears that Poster is now arguing with him/heself, we might as well let him/her stew in hs/her own juices.
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dhogaza at 05:05 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Poster:
"Dhogaza has stated my comment @ 6 above that sceptics are unconvinced that humans are the sole and root cause of climate change is a strawman mischaracterisation of climate science."
Climate science entails much more than the study of the last 250 years of the 4.5 billion years of the earth's history. I stand by my statement.
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PluviAL at 04:52 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Rob H: We all propose the solution from what we know best, and our oun kids are alwyas the cutest too. That's human nature. LZBozo is right, and I don't think so LZ. Breeder technology is the necessary alternative to quadruple energy availablity for a growing world economy. In my consideration, growth, is increasing wealth, and can equal a more verdant world. It all depends on benign, verdant, energy.
Breeder technology does have the problem of plutonium proliferation, which in turn requires greater government vigilance, so that is a mixed bag. The only energy concept, besides nuclear-breeder, which is on scale of need, and which is nearly 100% benign is Pluvinergy. If it works is another question. It is many, many, orders of magnitude easier to develop than fusion. Fusion is pie in the sky; it allways has been, and alway will be avilable, 15 years in the future.
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Poster9662 at 04:48 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Dhogaza has stated my comment @ 6 above that sceptics are unconvinced that humans are the sole and root cause of climate change is a strawman mischaracterisation of climate science. I refer Dhogaza to an article published in the Guardian in July 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/nj34b2u). There are many commnets in this article commenting on the role of humans in climate change.
Comments such as "The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause".
"Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases,"
There are other similar comments that don't gel too well with "strawman mischaracterisation of climate science".
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Hyperactive Hydrologist at 03:00 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
The problem with adaptation is that it is a reactive rather than proactive response. Given the broard range of uncertainty in climate models, at the regional scale, it is very difficult to design adaptaion measures which are appropriate. It's all well and good saying "we can adapt" but if we don't know what we are adapting to then we run the risk of making things worse or wasting resources. Saying we can adapt also gives people the excuse to put off mitigation for a few more years without considering the risks involved. Also the cost of long term adaptation measures never really seems to be taken into account. How much will it cost to protect all the worlds coastal cities from 0.5-1m of sea level rise?
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MA Rodger at 02:44 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
The errors within Richard Tol's work mentioned by the IPCC press release had already resulted in a spat between Tol & Bob Ward. The account Ward gives of Tol's behaviour does perhaps intimate some dark doings, with an initial less controversial version of Tol's WGII Chapter 10 "leaked to a blog for climate change ‘sceptics’" and then a section is quietly inserted into the final draft on "‘Aggregate impacts’ which was based almost entirely on Professor Tol’s 2013 paper", this being the source of the mentioned errors.
Of course, Tol is one of Nigel Lawson's GWPF so nothing would surprise me. In the Mail article, Tol says of the spat between him & Ward - "It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.” Well, I suppose, if he feels he can act like one of Lawson's Gentleman Who Prefers Fantasy, then his credibility will indeed be rather difficult to hold on to.
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P.T. Goodman at 02:32 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
@Poster
Because they were scientists.
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Klapper at 02:18 AM on 11 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
@Tom Curtis #56:
I checked the Hadisst1 dataset for the NINO3.4 region (165 to 120W, +5 to -5 North) instead of getting the NINO3.4 index directly from climate data explorer and got a very slightly different answer for the last 100 years (-0.0047C/decade), but still no warming trend is apparent. I think my point is this: the dataset I used has no gaps and also has no long term trend so I believe it to be a valid proxy for ENSO, although I could detrend HadSSTv3 detrend it and use that too except it's full of temporal holes.
As for your second point I'm not basing my hypothesis the models are running hot on a single trend. Before you had posted your rolling trend graph I had tried to do the same thing but when SKS said I had to "host" I didn't bother. I'm basing my hypothesis on approximately 120 trends since 2004 that show an increasing divergence between CMIP5 model projections and the empirical data. You are right I did my error calculations on only the last trend in this series however.
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Poster9662 at 01:43 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Dhogaza @10 There is nothing in my comment that indicates anything about my personal beliefs on global warming/climate change and to suggest there is is both michievous and unsubstantiated. With regard to your claim that "deniers" did not discover solar cycles or Milankovich cycles or plate techtonics etc is pure supposition.. When most of the things to which you refer were identified/described, the current divisions on climate change did not exist. How can you be certain that, for example, Milankovich or Schwabe, might not have been "deniers" today?
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P.T. Goodman at 01:39 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Human adaptation will be necessary in the short and medium time-frames. Mitigation is essential for the long-term. What can adapt or be adapted? I see no evidence that plants and animals as they now exist naturally stand much of a chance in adpating to a drastically altered global climate. Basically, they are toast without mitigation.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:10 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Here is another way to make the point I presented in my earlier comment.
Humanity needs to be looking towards the hundreds of millions of years that this planet whould be the amazing home to life that it currently is. Consuming non-renewable resources of this planet is fundamentally unsustainable (absolutely complete recycling of such materials forever would be acceptable). And activity that damages the diversity and profusion of life is also clearly unacceptable.
Justification of the increased damage of current unsustainable and damaging activities and the increased risk of creating more rapid and more difficult adaptation challenges can only be by the creation today of absolutely certain benefits in the future that more than offset those future consequences.
An economic evaluation that pretends there will be economic growth into the future is not a valid justification. There would have to be absolute certainty of the benefit that will exist into the potentially more difficult future.
So the challenge to anyone claiming adaptation is the answer would be: The objective must be to provide a sustainable better future for all life on this amazing planet. Provide proof of the things being done right now with the benefit obtained by these unsustainable and damaging activities that will have real substantial value for future generations facing the resulting consequences. The evaluation must include significant costs for reduced access to non-renewable resources and reduced diversity and profusion of other life. And if there is any uncertainty about the evaluations the future costs must be magnified, and the evaluated future benefit must be reduced absolutely certain (no net-present-value calculation that pretends a future cost has less inherent value than a current day cost).
By that method of evaluation the past 40 to 50 years of global development have been worse than worthless, though they are perceived to be popular and profitable because the ones measuring success have not had to properly consider the future. They haven’t even had to properly consider the current immediate impacts of what they want to benefit from doing. The success of that attitude to gain popularity and be supported by the methods of evaluating the creation of value (the profitability measurement method), is what needs to change, or it is certain that the future for humanity will continue to be worse, because current day activities are worse than worthless in the future.
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dhogaza at 23:38 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Poster:
"I don't think sceptics dismiss climate change as not happening I think it more that they remain unconvinced that human activity is the sole and root cause."
But apparently they (and you) do believe in this strawman mischaracterization of climate science, which does not clam, and never has claimed, that human activity is the sole and root cause of climate change. Denialists didn't discover Milankovich cycles, after all. Nor solar cycles. Solar dimming? The geological processes which which modulate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere? Plate tectonics, which move the continents around causing very large climatic side-effects? Any of those discovered by denialists? Nope. All discovered (along with many, many things I'm not mentioning) by mainstream science, and their relationship with the earth's climate discovered by scientists as well.
What have denialists contributed? A lot of blog posts, for the most part.
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ZincKidd at 22:41 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
One big part of "adaptation" is going to have to be a willingness to accept refugees from island nations that have lost their fresh groundwater. Tuvalu comes to mind as one of the first, but I suspect we'll be seeing similar problems in a lot of other places before long, the Bahamas, much of Polynesia, etc. This is a tough problem-- as these people would no doubt like to keep their national identity.
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bjchip at 21:32 PM on 10 April 2014Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
What I have always found fascinating about the "conspiracy of scientists" theorists is the more likely conspiracy they ignore. Getting scientists to agree on things has a lot in common with herding cats, except that the cats are a lot easier to get moving in the same direction and probably better paid... whereas the financial wizards and CEOs funding entities like CEI and Heartland whence the lies about science emanate, the people who control the WSJ and Forbes where they are most commonly published... THOSE people have given us the LIBOR fraud, the FOREX scandal, the Global Economic Crisis, Billion Dollar Bailouts, "Too-Big-To-Jail", and a list of further scandal and corruption far far longer. They are the professional conspiracists and they pay themselves rather well. As someone pointed out, if scientists were in this to make money they're doing it wrong.
Yet that never quite touches their ideation, and that itself is a bit of a puzzle because as a conpiracy theory goes it has a lot more potential. So why doesn't it take off? Why isn't it a MORE common theory than the one that is espoused about climate scientists? ...or is it merely less vocal even though it is more widely held?There's a semi-relevant question in this because more than one conspiracy theory is available to consider. How is the conspiracy theory chosen by the theorist, why is one more "popular" than the another?
Not going to go into the debate with our visitors.
The difference between the consensus of the climate science and the consensus of the scientist's opinions, is an important one to make, and is missed by many. When one examines the papers to find 97% one is examining the consensus of the science, not the people. It makes the absense of contrary science far far more telling.
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CBDunkerson at 21:12 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
In my experience most 'skeptics' hold multiple beliefs: 'Global Warming isn't happening, but if it were happening it wouldn't be serious, and if it were serious it wouldn't be due to human activity'.
The 'Global Warming isn't happening' and 'Global Warming will not be serious' crowds have been in decline, but claiming that they don't exist is just nonsense. What's funny is that the science establishing human causation is even stronger than that showing that significant GW is happening. They've retreated to the least viable argument.
On adaptation, the problem is that AGW is now causing enough damage that adaptation is clearly needed... but the more effort we devote to adaptation the less severe the immediate consequences will be and thus the more likely we are to hold off mitigation and thereby produce eventual long term consequences that we won't be able to adapt to by any means short of massive population reduction.
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Earthling at 20:01 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Post #7 should read, only fools could believe.
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Earthling at 19:58 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Poster @ #6 You are correct, only fools believe could that sceptics claim climate change isn't happening.
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Poster9662 at 18:45 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Chris Snow @ #2 I don't think sceptics dismiss climate change as not happening I think it more that they remain unconvinced that human activity is the sole and root cause.
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ubrew12 at 17:42 PM on 10 April 2014Fox News climate change coverage is now 28% accurate, up from 7%
The U.S. Supreme Court recently reaffirmed its opinion that Money is Speech and thus subject to First Amendment protections against efforts to limit its influence in elections. If you look at those statistics for Fox News and CNN, it seems plain that, often, Money is the very opposite of Speech. Nobody wants to talk about one of the most important issues of our Age because, frankly, the money is directing them not to talk about it. Money isn't Speech. Money is a bullhorn or a muzzle, depending on how the donor wants it directed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:50 PM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
The real problem is that people claiming it is "best" if "we" just adapt, are people hoping to prolong their enjoyment of the undeserved benefits of creating the rapidly changing climate. And they are pretty certain they will not be the ones facing the consequences.
The warmer the callous disregard for the future consequneces force things to become, the more rapid and signficant and unpredictable the climate will change. And the local changes to be adapted to will become very difficult to predict in a manner that can successfully be adapted to.
Development of a sustainable better future for all life on this amazing planet is the only viable future for humanity. Rapid significant climate change, combined with all the other damaging consequences of the current massive unsustainable human consumption madness, make the future of humanity "less certain".
The current socioeconomic systems with their adoration of popular image creations and profitability clearly are not guaranteed to develop a better future. It seems quite certain that they never willingly lead to the collective effort of the entire population toward the develoment of anything but a series of failed unsustainable pursuits that only benefit a few in their moment.
And proponents of the "adaptation is better" approach know these are the most certain facts of the matter, and they obviously don't care, for the obvious reasons.
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chriskoz at 13:21 PM on 10 April 2014Watch Episode 1 of James Cameron's "Years of Living Dangerously"
My response to John Hartz@3 was deleted (i presume by accident - together with some unrelated driveby trolls - because it is on topic andinformative), so I'm reposting it:
Not just Heidi Cullen needs to be singled out here. I'm really excited to see someone like Tom Friedman involved in the production and speaking on Face the Nation. Tom's book "Hot Flat & Crowded" is simply a phenomenal peice of journalism about global warming & surrounding politics & FF industry. A must read, that I've already resommended elsewhere. If this series' narrative is similar to the Tom's book, then even though I haven't seen it yet, I can only concur with previous commenters: watch it!
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Tom Curtis at 13:07 PM on 10 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
Klapper @55:
1) The HadISST1 (not HadSSTi) is an observational dataset with interpolation, not a reanalysis. It is currently based on the HadSST2 dataset, which has been superceded by the HadSST3 dataset, which I used. Dropping the default requirement from the KNMI explorer from 30% valid data points to 5% valid data points, I was able do download an almost continuous annual data series from 1914 onwards. It misses only the year 1946, but many years prior to 1949 have less than four months data, and many months have less than 30% valid data points. However, based on that I then calculated the trend from 1914-2013. It is 0.045 C per decade, with a standard deviation of the trend of 0.022 C per decade. That is, if you ignore the poor quality of the data prior to 1949, the trend is significant. Given that the interpolated data field based on an obsolete dataset does not even preserve the sign on that trend, I would say so much the worse for trusting the interpolation until they update the dataset used.
2) I don't need to quantify the overcooling. The point of this excercise it to determine by how much, if at all, climate models run warm with respect to observations for the underlying trend. I have quantified that by comparing a large number of thirty year trends over different periods so that positive and negative biases on the discrepancy due to ENSO and volcanism will have largely averaged out. The only thing I need to specifically point to the volcanism for is to demonstrate that estimates of the discrepancy based on a single 30 year trend are unreliable.
However, as you are basing your estimate of how warm the models are running based on a single trend, you do need to estimate the volanism induced discrepancy and the ENSO induced discrepancy, (and the differences in forcing induced disrepancy) to make that estimate. Instead you treat the naive estimate as if it were a reasonable indicater. I have shown it is not.
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chriskoz at 13:04 PM on 10 April 2014Watch Episode 1 of James Cameron's "Years of Living Dangerously"
John Hartz@9,
Thanks for pointing that. Indeed, I ignorantly assumed that the indonesian rainforest formation time is comparable to that of an average boreal forrest. But as I'm learning from this link:
The lowland peat swamps of Borneo are mostly geologically recent (<5000 years old), low lying coastal formations above marine muds and sands [10][11] but some of the lakeside peat forests of Kalimantan are up to 11,000 years old.
it is clearly not. Removal of peat swamps is not the ordinary forest removal. If most of the emmisions come from 20 m deep peat, then based on the above numbers, I have to increase my original restoration estimate at least 10 times to some 1Ky or even 100times to few Ky. That's still far shorter than FF restoration but it may change the conclusion of my original post, depending on the definition of "forever". That timespan can be called "essentially forever", on the human life timescale,
As a sidenote, I've learned from the link above, that the peat fires in 1997, could have been largely responsible for a huge spike of emmision rates in 1998, as seen on this NOAA picture, so their contribution of peat destruction is by no means negligible.
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Klapper at 12:08 PM on 10 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
@Tom Curtis #53:
The trend in NINO3.4 for the last 100 years (Oct 1914 to Sep. 2013) is -0.002C/decade. There is no long term warming trend in ENSO. The data I'm using are HadSSTi downloaded from KMNI data explorer. I see zero trend in NINO3.4 over the last century so if you are finding trends, then they are likely driven by the PDO, another cycle which the models cannot emulate. The downloaded data show no missing months in the 144 year period available.
You can argue that this must be "re-analysis" data and therefore subject to high error, but the underlying warming trend in the central east Pacific appears to be statistically indistinguisable from zero. Hence I can't agree with your claim that there is an underlying warming trend in the NINO3.4 dataset.
As for your claim my "thoughts don't matter" I would point out you have not quantified your claim the models overcool during major volcanic events so you're doing a lot of hand waving but you haven't backed that claim up. Mind you I actually agree, but until you quantify this overcooling, statements like "potentially by a large margin" have no backup.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:39 AM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
LCBozo... I'm not sure I get how all the nuclear proponents always assume their solution is the only truly viable solution to the problem.
What I think you'll find is, most people who are concerned about AGW will say, we need all technologies being applied to the problem.
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LCBozo at 08:31 AM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Our evolutionary specialization is adapting the environment, not adapting to the environment. When considering the ability to modify the global environment, doesn't the question become: what kind of global environment is the most conducive for survival — especially for those organisms which need to literally adapt to the environment?
I worked in the construction completion and startup of the sodium cooled Fast Flux Test Facility in WA State, in the late 1970s. This stainless steel reactor was a jewel in the desert, and was to be the forerunner to the Clinch River breeder reactor - which was cancelled due to political hysteria. Since then, I've worked at about a dozen DOE and commercial nuclear facilities.
If people are really serious about greatly reducing greenhouse gasses in the environment, a healthy breeder reactor program is the only truly practical means of seriously reducing GH emissions. In fact, a breeder reactor is virtually a renewable energy source, and has the added benefit of converting nuclear warheads into clean energy (a sizable portion of present light water reactors is doing just that). This would represent a stop-gap measure until practical fusion reactors would provide that ultimate energy source.
I think the nuclear energy industry went off on the wrong track by investing in huge light water reactors. Liquid metal or HTG is a more rational approach to reactor design. You could pull the plug on the FFTF while at full power — it would have simply shut down, with convection cooling.
We need not adapt the concept of adapting to. We are the earth's supreme tool makers — it shouldn't be necessary to adapt to an unhealthy mode of existence.
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Chris Snow at 06:55 AM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
So the skeptics think we need to adapt to something that they claim isn't happening?
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localis at 02:11 AM on 10 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Adaptation will take place whatever happens for that is the very nature of human survival and has been so since we first appeared on the planet. Mitigation is the only sensible avenue that can be taken and the IPCC should remain steadfast in stressing just how dangerous it is to think otherwise.
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