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Poster9662 at 20:16 PM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
denisaf@11 Why do you not include natural factors that are thought to have at least some effect such as the PDO, AMO, Milankovich cycles, natural aerosols etc? Your comment "People are more likely to respond soundly if they understand what is actually happening." is very valid. Having been a universit y academic in area of biochemistry for over 30 years I know from personal experience that getting others to understand scientific concepts you requires clarity of expression, attention to detail and some humour. What it does not require is the sarcastic, scathing, patronising and belittling responses so often given by those who consider their view of climate change is the only possible view. I hasten to add that this does not refer to anything you have written in your comment above.
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peter7723 at 19:00 PM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
I like the image of 97% of scientists. But the carbon cycle image does not grab the cognitive faculties of the non-analytical person. It requires time spent on it and some abstract understanding. A better image would be a pair of scales, with 350g weight on each tray, to one of which is added 1g of weight. The scales go out of balance, which is the point to be conveyed. (Then perhaps you can add the carbon cycle image).
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - Agreed. The same thing was pointed out by another SkS writer. We'll work on it - the scales concept is interesting. We're open to suggestions.
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denisaf at 18:32 PM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
One of the reasons why people find it hard to accept that they are causing climate change is the fact that they are not actually doing it. They just make the decisions. It is the operation of systems (coal-fired power stations, cars, trucks, aircraft, ships) and actvities such as logging are doing the irrversible damage. People are more likely to respond soundly if they understand what is actually happening.
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Trevor_S at 14:31 PM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
@ 5 John. I suspect that it's not aimed at you. Similarly here in Australia, I sold my business, moved to rural area with a milder climate and live in a very thick walled mudbrick house (mud from the little dam in front of the house used to store water for the vegetables and the orchard in the dry periods, pumped using renewable energy). A pedestal fan is more than enough in summer. We have a high efficiency wood heater that doesn't use much wood in the short, snowless winters and I live off the small income that business sale generated (retired at age 42, now 48) We grow much of our own stuff in our garden (seed saving etc) and have a small orchard. We keep, kill and breed our own free range chickens for eggs and meat and our electricity is renewable. My parter cycles to a part time job 3 days a week.
We do this because one gets a sense of things actually living this way, eating what's available in the garden, when it's in season, what ever fruit is in season and trying to ensure you have a rotation so you have fruit and vegetables all year, I am sure you underatnd but not so sure others do.Maybe the author can do a carbon budget profile on submission and publish them here in a separate section, to show how things can be different ? Low CO2e lifestyles are possible and no cave necessary.
I would be interested to see what these are once input emissions are used for the necessities let alone the emissions for sheer lunacy. Like how much does it cost in emissions because bureaucracies like the Tax Office have to send me a letter in the post instead of emailing it to me, I use this as an example as I received one yesterday :) -
jyyh at 14:14 PM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
good reminder, thanks.
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Trevor_S at 13:58 PM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
When I learned for the first time that an average European is responsible for emissions of almost 10 tons of carbon dioxide per year (and an American double that amount) I was really shocked
Why shocked ? Surely after several decades of having it front and centre this has to be obvious ?
The calculator lets you check your impact on the planet given other sources of energy, changes in industry and transport
I am still having trouble grasping this, or when you say students do you mean children ? The whole "keep the fossil fuels in the ground thing" has surely not passed people by, the whole "eat less meat thing" can't have passed people by, let alone owning a meat eating pet, driving a car, flying for holidays etc The whole Inconvenient Truth thing ? The IPCC thing over several decades ? This is know by all who emit. I am not expecting the khalari bushmen to be informed but those guys aren't the problem. Only the deliberately ignorant can't be aware and no amount of education will overcome the "deliberate" bit (watch any discussion on creationism v evolution for proof of that).
I am genuinely lost here (and am not having a go at the author), this seems like a bizarre thought experiment, the very reason people push back against CO2e reduction is how they think will impact their lifestlye today and tomorrow.
Below are various quotes I have clipped from Guardian CIF section over time that speak to this...
Someone who accepts the science yet finds a way to avoid taking personal responsibility for his or her share of the problem probably can't be convinced to act by more science. They have already distanced their behaviour from contributing to the problem. The more you repeat the science to that person, the more that person blames government, oil companies etal for satisfying that person's own demand for their fossil fuelled lifestyle.
People who campaign against slavery don't own slaves. People who campaign against smoking don't smoke. People who campaign against violence against women do not commit violence against women. And so it goes for almost all causes - except for climate change. Then, somehow, it becomes not only acceptable but almost obligatory for people who campaign against fossil fuels to burn more than their fair share of them.
James Garvey speaks to this with Causal Inefficacy
@3 It's not so much about frugality (albeit that can help, it's about emissions) Buying a cheap used car, taking the dog for a walk instead of joining a gym, flying on a budget airline and holidaying during the low season are all frugal activites that leave large C02e footprints. Or am I confusing your concept of frugality with living a simpler life ah la Ms Pick ? Confronting people with their large emissions is still socially taboo because it's acceptable and you're expected to try and match emissions with Al Gore. I have a hell of a time telling friends not to fly across the country (or across the World) to go for a hike etc, let alone not driving 4 hours to go for the same thing. Take a hike is the least of the retorts :) and yet if they were engaged in something equally repugnant like slavery ? They gasp at the thought and "hyperbole" is mixed in with plenty of other adjectives but rampant CO2e emissions, that's much worse... much much worse and yet ... crickets...
willi @ 4 gets it :)
The whole thing is a circle jerk (can I say that on here ?) Look at say The Guardian, they have a section promoting Travel, then juxtapose that with the section on Climate Change. Allegorically it would be like having a whole section on paedophilia and people being okay with that... and that from a "responsible" media outlet. We're in some sort of bizzaro world. We are so far away from "getting serious" on emissions reductions it's laughable. No way we're getting anywhere until people who do get the Science stop emitting.
The recently embroiled incontroversy, Stephan Lewandowsk wrote about this years ago:
When shown the trajectory of annual CO2 emissions, which to date has exhibited an ever-accelerating increase, the majority of people will propose that stabilization of emissions, or a slight decrease, will be sufficient to stabilize atmospheric CO2.
This is completely and inescapably false.
Whatever we're doing now has failed spectacularly to reduce global emissions, more of the same seems absurd.
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Doug Bostrom at 13:44 PM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
Here is a translation of Palmer's thinking, in words we can all understand.
You'll want to stopper your children's ears.
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John Wise at 13:27 PM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
I live in the country and farm for a living. My carbon footprint according to this calculator is high,but it didn't give me the option of inputting my reality. For example,I live in a straw bale house that is super insulated and uses very little wood to heat,but there was no way to indicate that. I don't use public transit,because there isn't any! I eat meat,but I raise it myself on grass-no grain feeding and no long distance shipping. I eat a lot of frozen food in the winter-which I grew myself,so fewer trips to town to buy food that was shipped from afar.
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wili at 11:38 AM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
Good reality check. I score under one planet at www.myfootprint.org, but over 9 planets here. Let's get real. Anything remotely resembling a modern life style is f'ing the planet to death. (Sorry for the abreviated profanity, but really, what else can express our utter disregard for the most basic, fundamental ethics of, at the very least, not utterly destroying the next generations chance of the most meager of existence?)
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empirical_bayes at 10:13 AM on 30 April 2014HadCRUT4: A detailed look
I know this post is a bit old, but I'm working with the HadCRUT4 ensemble of series, and was checking to see if something was well known before I approached Hadley/MetOffice with the question. In particular, Wilks in his Section 7.7.1 of 2011 3rd edition Statistical Methods, and Palmer, Roberto Buizza, Hagedorn, Lawrence, and Smith, in their:
Palmer, T. N., R. Buizza, R. Hagedon, A. Lawrence, M. Leutbecher, and L. Smith, 2006: Ensemble prediction: A pedagogical perspective. ECMWF Newslett., 106, 10–17.
as quoted, for instance, in WG1AR5 Chapter 11, make a point that (to quote Wilks) "Often, operational ensemble forecasts are found to exhibit too little dispersion". I have read Morice, et al, carefully, but, apart from "... the 100 constituent ensemble
members sample the distribution of likely surface temperature anomalies given our current understanding of these uncertainties. This approach follows the use of the ensemble method to represent observational uncertainty in the HadSST3 [Kennedy et al., 2011a, 2011b] ensemble data set". I have also looked at Kennedy's 2014 "A review of uncertainty in in situ measurements and data sets of sea surface temperature". Maybe we just don't know.If we don't, is there some way of doing "MOS postprocessing", after Wilks, to these data? Or does anyone know if that was done, or is routinely done?
Sorry to be on a highly technical point here. I am exploring whether or not the variance of the HadCRUT4 ensemble is highly understated. I'm seeking to try to estimate the internal variability of climate using these and the covariance estimates they provide, although I do not yet understand exactly what they are the covariances of.
Thanks.
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calyptorhynchus at 08:52 AM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
I wouldn't waste too much time on Clive Palmer. As a coal mining magnate it's in his own interest to misrepresent climate science. He has vowed to use his party's votes to vote down carbon pricing (the policy of the previous Labor government-he has also withheld his companies' payments under this scheme), but will also oppose the Liberal Party's much-derided Direct Action policy too. Looks as if he just doesn't want action on global warming in any shape or form.
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Kevin C at 06:50 AM on 30 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
SSTs are hard!
I agree it's issue. Let's see what ERSST can do with their next release.
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localis at 05:26 AM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
Should be a compulsory test for everyone (certainly in the developed world). It gave me quite a shock to find that my (what I thought) frugal life-style still coughed up around 9 tons. Must do better!
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Stranger8170 at 04:21 AM on 30 April 2014Models are unreliable
Thanks Alexandre but I was hoping for someting more that I could sink my teeth into.
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JPSwede at 04:03 AM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
Thanks for the interesting link. I thought my score would be low. I'm only traveling by public transport and bike. I'm living in a flat and I seldom fly abroad etc etc. But still ended up on 7 tons. If everyone on this planet would have the same standards as me, that would result in 1.4 times higher emissions, and to stop climate change in that scenario would require 7 planets. That's scary. (If I understod the summary correctly)
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Paul Pukite at 03:41 AM on 30 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
KC, looking forward to any bucket/engineRoom corrections you can make.
This is the most problematic area in the SST data. I think the WWII time interval is completely messed up.
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Alexandre at 03:37 AM on 30 April 2014Models are unreliable
Re Stranger at 02:28 AM on 30 April, 2014
Try this. Not very conclusive, but it has some preliminary hints.
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Stranger8170 at 03:05 AM on 30 April 2014Models are unreliable
I asked this question because I posted on our newspapaer the following.
The letter writer wrote: " Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, the international n February, he spoke before Congress about the futility of relying on computer models to predict the future."
I wrote, "But computer models predicted our current state of warming more than 30 years ago when winter temperatures were consistently sub zero around the nation. They predicted sea level rise. They identify trends not year to year predictions."
https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm
This is a reply I recieved.
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - The climate model simulations in CMIP5 do indeed show greater warming than is observed. But the simulations use projections from either 2000 onwards, or 2005 onwards, rather than actual observations. This animation below shows what happens when the models are based on what actually happened to the climate system - well our best estimate so far anyway.
See this post: Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming on Schmidt et al (2014).
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Stranger8170 at 02:28 AM on 30 April 2014Models are unreliable
Can someone give me some information concerning John C. Fyfe; & Nathan P. Gillett which that claims global warming over the past 20 years is significantly less than that calculated from 117 simulations of the climate?
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Alexandre at 01:13 AM on 30 April 2014What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from?
I like the idea, but it does not have the options that apply to me here in Brazil: no house heating and ethanol car.
Apart from that, it's a good way of having some feel of how diverse are the sources of CO2 emissions.
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Tom Curtis at 01:09 AM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
Muzz @6, first, you are being very pedantic in that context clearly indicates the scientists in question to be those knowledgable on global warming. Second, even on the pedantic interpretation, 82% of scientists in general accept the antropogenic origin of recent global warming. Significantly, the reduction in acceptance comes mainly from scientists who are neither expert in the field, nor active researchers - ie, those least qualified to advise on the topic.
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mancan18 at 01:08 AM on 30 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
The reason why the Australian public think that there is only a 58% agreement between climate scientists is because the debate in the popular media is mostly political where anything seems to be said rather than it being a scientific debate based on evidence. Also, the basic theory behind the scientific argument i.e. increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to humans burning fossil fuels will lead (and is leading) to global warming which will change the climate, is not being stated often enough in the media.
It should be fairly easy to prove this theory with some basic physics and chemistry. Most of the debate in the media concentrates on what we are seeing and what it means rather than on the very basis of the theory. If the theory isn't correct then it undermines our understanding of the science of atoms, the electromagnetic spectrum, isotopes, fluid dynamics and chemical reactions. If the theory isn't correct then it actually undermines our understanding of some of the very science that underpins our technological society.
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Muzz at 23:58 PM on 29 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
To be pedantic perhaps, Tony Jones did say a group of scientists, not a group of climate scientists, so amongst that group it might possibly be less than 97%
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chriskoz at 22:09 PM on 29 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
Riduna@4,
Based on the recently published details of current Government’s “Direct Action” scheme, my personal opinion is that, for both environment and australian people, it would be better to leave Australia without any legislative basis for reducing carbon emissions, rather than replacing existing Carbon Tax with said “Direct Action”.
The reason for my opinion is that “Direct Action”:
- will work against the emission reduction by rewarding polluters (giving them money for the "promise" to reduce emissions that may or may not work in practice)
- does not create any incentives on the consumer side to reduce/alter their energy usage
- will cost govts money that they will need to find by cutting some social spending or increasing base taxes (what they are already doing now)
So, while I agree with you that PUP's voting according to Palmer's vested interests after 1 July, will likely result in the complete alienation of Australia from global mitigation efforts, this result would not be the worst ever outcome. Palmer is a complete sciece denier at the most basic level as we've seen above, but at the same time he also understands the futility (and potential negative economic impact) of ill-constructed "Direct Action".
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Kevin C at 18:01 PM on 29 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
Alexandre: it's not a problem I've looked at, but I was pretty impressed with RegEM. I doubt we can improve on that.
There's interesting work to be done on the early instrumental record though. There are some significant divergences there, although they are far less topical than the recent record.
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Riduna at 10:16 AM on 29 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
It is important that Clive Palmer understands why human greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for global warming. This essay makes it very clear why this is the case, so one would hope that Palmer and his Party (PUP) read this lucid explanation.
This is particularly important given that PUP may hold the balance of power in the Senate after 1 July, 2014. Clive Palmer has already indicated that his Party is likely to oppose legislation to establish the Government’s “Direct Action” scheme for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He correctly describes it as costly and ineffective.
However, he has also indicated that PUP is likely to support abolition of the Carbon Tax and the extensive measures aimed at promoting renewable energy and the independent science-based body responsible for advising government on future carbon reduction targets. The net result of such voting would be to leave Australia without any legislative basis for reducing carbon emissions.
While this might be a satisfactory outcome for the owners of high emission businesses – of which Palmer is one – it would also ensure that Australia would not meet its treaty obligations to reduce carbon emissions.
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Tom Curtis at 09:10 AM on 29 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
John Cook, was the survey you conducted a survey of Australians based on US demographics, or a survey of US citizens based on US demographics? If the later, on what basis do you extent the results to Australians?
Re terminology, "consensus" is obviously unsuitable in this context. The consensus opinion is that opinion least disagreed with across all involved, and which the vast majority can agree with. Thus it would need to be expressed as a range, and a range that encompasses at least 90% of responses. On this issue, among the general public that range is likely to be 58% +/- 42% which would be singularly uninformative. I personally would recommend using popular language, but including a more exact description in brackets, such as:
"But when the average Australian thinks the consensus is not 97%, but just 58% (mean response), there is clearly a public misconception about what the scientists really think."
Of course, for all I know, such paranthetic clarrifications may be as bad as mathematical equations in terms of readership.
Response:[JC] The survey of Australians used Australian demographics and the survey of US citizens used US demographics.
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Don9000 at 06:43 AM on 29 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
John,
"the average Australian thinks the consensus is not 97%, but just 58%"
First a question, on the page with the bar graph, you write that the data is based on "a survey of a US representative sample." What is that? To me, an American, "US" means people from my country. So, what is "a US representative sample"?
Next, I'm not sure referring to "the average Australian" as you do is particularly useful. I'm always happy to see breakdowns of just what various groups of Australians (and Americans and Brits and Canadians, etc.) think about issues, but it seems to me that "the average Australian" or "the average American" or "the average any other citizen" is a very nebulous person indeed and the 58% figure you refer to in actuality characterizes the situation for all Australians. For example, this might be a more accurate way to phrase the idea: "When recently polled, the consensus among Australians was that only 58% of climate scientists agree that humans are responsible for global warming."
My guess is that a breakdown by political parties or along rural/urban populations or by the degree of education attained would be much more instructive, albeit potentially embarrassing to certain groups.
Response:[JC] Apologies for the technical jargon. A "US representative sample" is a small group (e.g., a few hundred people) whose demographics are selected so that they represent the entire USA population. For example, one of the demographics is age. If my survey sample was all young people, it wouldn't represent the population as a whole. So I had to make sure the distribution of ages in my sample matched the distribution of ages in the entire USA population. Similarly, a representative sample should match the demographics on gender and income level.
Fair comment re "average Australian". I'm talking about what you get when you average out the answer among the whole spectrum of Australians. Trying to explain things in simple, plain English introduces imprecision and science communication is always a balancing act between readability/accessibility and technical precision.
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ubrew12 at 04:38 AM on 29 April 2014Palmer United Party needs to go back to school on carbon facts
Upton Sinclair ("It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it") may apply here. "What's that you say, its 97% and not 50%? Hey Clive, this fellow here says its 47%!!"
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Alexandre at 02:58 AM on 29 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
Kevin C,
Not only in present intrumental records, but infilling is also resorted to in past surface temp paleoclimate reconstructions. Maybe even more so.
Is there some way of testing those algorythms as well?
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Kevin C at 08:09 AM on 28 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
The actual numbers are in the report.
However the main significance of this result is that the one thing which specialists (as opposed to lay persons) have questioned about our results is that our trends were higher than GISTEMP. And rightly so - when you produce a scientific result which is at odds with previous comparable results, then it is important to find out why. This bias explains about 2/3 of the difference between GISTEMP and our infilled data.
(We've got one more probable bias in GISTEMP to double-check and write up - it's not very interesting but along with the SSTs it closes the remaining gap. So I think the difference with Berkeley is now the most interesting area for further study.)
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grindupBaker at 06:44 AM on 28 April 2014Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
Me @ #82 I meant to comment this for 25 April 2014 post, not here.
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grindupBaker at 06:41 AM on 28 April 2014Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
VictorVenema #1 "those adjustments are huge". Hang on, those adjustments are huge for that region and obviously of great interest in knowing who is computing best, but offhand I think they look negligible as a global adjustment (the underlying topic). My assessment is only based on my eyeballing GISTEMP-Cowtan & Way graphic and estimating ranges of differences and areas but it's a low order of magnitude. I have 0.8Mk2 @ -1C<=>-2C, 1.0Mk2 @ 0C<=>-1C, 8.5Mk2 @ 0C<=>-0.3C and 8.5Mk2 @ 0C<=>+0.8C (GISTEMP a warmer anomaly for this one). I compute -0.0025C, -0.0010C, -0.0025C and +0.0066C as global equivalents for a net effect on GMST of +0.0006C (Cowtan & Way showing this much less global warming than GISTEMP) but my final quantity detail is not significant and might be incorrectly signed because I used the graphic, not data, and minimal effort so what it indicates is only that it's negligible as a global adjustment.
Per 2013-11-13 post, the Cowtan & Way paper regarding HadCRUT4 (on which this post is an interesting aside) noted HadCRUT4 at +0.046°C per decade GMST anomaly, NASA at +0.080°C per decade, the C&W kriging and hybrid data sets at +0.11C and +0.12°C per decade. That's the one with global adjustments are huge .
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Mal Adapted at 05:00 AM on 28 April 2014Climate's changed before
Autumnleaves's comment brings to mind Charles Darwin's observation that "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".
The response by Tom Curtis was outstanding.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:12 AM on 28 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
Kevin C @5.
Rather than a key point being that short term trends are not a good basis for drawing conclusions, I suggest that the best understanding requires all possible factors to be well understood. That means the process of developing the best overall understanding of what is going on requires the constant investigation into, and improvement of, the understanding of each potential factor.
That is understood in a community of people genuinely interested in constantly pursuing increased understanding. However, this issue faces challenges from a group of critics desperate for it not to be better undestood by the general population. And the general population contains many people eager for any excuse not to better understand this issue. Many people will fight against any indication that it is unacceptable to benefit from burning fossil fuels.
What is most important is to constantly point out that the improvement of understanding that develops confirms (does not contradict) the unacceptability of massive burning of fossil fuels, regardless of the popularity of that activity among those who want to benefit from it. It can be added that CO2 impacts are only part of the troubles and impacts created by the fighting over the right to benefit most from burning fossil fuels.
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Doug Hutcheson at 17:00 PM on 27 April 2014The consequences of climate change (in our lifetimes)
Peter says AGW does not alarm him, but (to paraphrase) the human reaction to the threat is alarming. I have to agree, with the caveat that I am alarmed by what AGW could do to our civilisation and, by inference, to our population. If our current cereal producing areas go out of production, what guarantees do we have that we can migrate our food plants as we migrate toward the poles? Sure, the cool areas may become warm enough to support our current prey organisms (plant and animal), but what will happen to plants adapted to a different day length, for example?
Will we see any concerted action before large numbers of people become alarmed enough to apply political pressure? I don't think so.
At the very least, the C in CAGW should stand for 'Concerning'.
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Doug Hutcheson at 15:48 PM on 27 April 2014Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean?
A very informative post, thank you.
Although I, too, would deplore the human suffering from weather extremes caused by a massive El Nino, it might at least cause some doubt about the veracity of AGW to be removed, at least in minds open to reason. A nasty jolt to our civilisation now, might just wake up some who are, currently, peacefully asleep at the wheel.
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Tom Curtis at 15:39 PM on 27 April 2014Climate's changed before
Autumnleaves @405, first a technical point. I do not believe in evolution. Evolution is not something I put my trust in as though it were a deity. Rather, I believe that modern living things have evolved from earlier forms through a process of random mutation and natural selection; and that all life currently on Earth share a common ancestor, which lived certainly more than a billion years ago, and possibly more than three billion years ago; and that all life share a first common ancestor that lived around four billion years ago. These are scientific claims having very little religious implication.
Second, your objection is specious because it does not take into account the pace at which evolution proceeds. Fixing a new genotype takes thousands to billions of generations. If there is little selective advantage, the time taken on average is the inverse of the size of the population (ie, currently 7 billion years for humans). The greater the selective advantage the shorter the time, but that selective advantage is measured in reduction in population size. For very rapid evolution, populations must teeter on the edge of extinction.
That fact creates a major problem when many species must evolved rapidly at once. Species are massively interdependent on each other in an ecological network. The near extinction of a few species can create large risks of exinction in their own right. The near extinction of many species simultaneiously means that very many of them will go extinct.
Further, the rapid rate of evolution I am describing depends on the existence of a large reservoir of genetic variability within a species that typically exists. Rapid evolution reduces this variability. After it is exhausted, evolution can proceed no faster than the rate of introduction of new, beneficial genes by random mutation, a much slower process. Given that following a period of very large selection pressures for very many species, species will need to adapt not just to the new environmental conditions but to the new ecological conditions, that means recovery from such large selection pressures will be very slow and extinctions consequently more likely. Indeed, it is worse than that. Humans have placed other organisms under massive selection pressures due to ecological changes over the last century, which will have already greatly reduced genetic variability in most species, limiting their ability for further adaption.
Finally, the impact of BAU global warming mirrors in impacts, but exceeds in pace, that of the End Permian mass extinction which saw the exinction of 90% of marine Genera. We know, therefore, that living things cannot, in general adapt to the current rate of environmental change is sustained over the next 100 plus years. The question among ecologists, SFAIK, is no longer whether or not the comming centuries will mark one of the greatest mass extinctions the Earth as seen, but only whether it will be comparable to that which killed of the dinosaurs, the Permian mass extinction, or something worse.
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Autumnleaves at 15:05 PM on 27 April 2014Climate's changed before
I'm not an expert on global warming, so I won't attempt to argue with anyone about that. What I am wondering is why you are worried. Since from your article you obviously believe in an old earth ("hundred thousand year cycle", "last 700 thousand years", etc.), then I am assuming you also believe in evolution. If evolution is true, than life must be adaptable enough to survive global warming, or there is no way it would have survived in the past!
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JIm Steele at 15:05 PM on 26 April 2014Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously
‘Years of Living Dangerously’ shouts climate fire! But, data says their shouting is simply noise. The documentary uses talented celebrities who are totally ignorant of the entire climate issues. Read my debunking of the first 2 episodes.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/25/years-of-living-dangerously-shouts-climate-fire-but-data-says-their-shouting-is-simply-noise/
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/14/exploiting-human-misery-and-distorting-the-science-an-environmentalists-critique-of-years-of-living-dangerously/
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - Your post links to a paper entitled: Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity - Westerling et al (2006). And includes this graph, which you even highlight in your post, illustrating a long-term increase in wildfire activity in western US forests:
Their abstract states:
".........We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt."
This is effectively what Years of Living Dangerously seems to be getting at - the long-term increase in wildfire activity is a result of global warming.
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Riduna at 09:44 AM on 26 April 2014Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean?
Wili @ 7
Another factor which may contribute to a strong El Nino are increased Chinese efforts to reduce their chronic air pollution. Every success they have in doing this increases solar radiation reaching the surface, adding that little extra to global surface temperature.
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Kevin C at 04:45 AM on 26 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
Paul: If you look in Appendix A of our report here you'll find some plots, but more importantly links to the plots from both GHCN and Berkeley Earth, both of which are very informative. Berkeley's Google Earth station browser in particular is a very powerful tool.
When it comes to differences with Berkeley, the questions become much harder. There are some localised differences in Antarctica - it comes down to Berkeley's better station count versus our use of the satellite data - that's an interesting question for further study. There are also some mid latitude differences which are not so localised so will be harder to track down.
While we're now pretty confident that GISTEMP is running a bit cool over the last few years, I really wouldn't want to have to pick between our results and Berkeley. Berkeley is a very impressive piece of work.
There are some further potential biases which neither Berkeley or us have assimilated with yet. Currently we are both using ocean temperatures from HadSST3, which is actually rather similar to ERSST3 over the study period, despite ERSST not including the engine room corrections. If ERSST4 shows a signficantly higher trend then the SST guys would have to fight it out as to who is right, but it would be another potential small upward adjustment.
Also, the air temperature over sea ice question isn't closed. While extrapolating from land temperatures is better than ignoring them or using SSTs, it doesn't capture everything. The reanalyses tend to show faster warming between the pole and the Chuckchi sea - you can see it in the GISTEMP-MERRA plot above - and this is completely inaccessible to the station record. While we show similar trends to MERRA in the Arctic, the other reanalyses show faster warming. The Antarctic ice will similarly be an issue, although if it is linked to ice cover the sign might be different.
Having said that, one of the key points of our work is that short term trends are not a good basis for drawing conclusions. Weeding out the biases illustrates the problem, and may mitigate it somewhat, but short term trends are always going to be dominated by much larger factors such as volcanoes and El Nino.
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keithpickering at 03:44 AM on 26 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
Great work, Kevin, and it answers a question I've had for a long time.
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Doug Bostrom at 03:33 AM on 26 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
The trends in the Arctic adjustments are shown in Figure 4, and show a basin-wide pattern of downward adjustments.
After years of reading mutterings by pseudoskeptics over NASA being involved in a conspiracy to adjust temperature records upward as part of an insidious global plan to turn us all into communists, I can't help but chuckle at reading that.
Somebody forgot to install Das Kapital into the software producing temperature statistics. The responsible party will surely be punished as soon as a chemtrails dispenser disguised as a commercial airliner can be dispatched to their location.
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pauls at 02:54 AM on 26 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
Nice work. Just a suggestion for illustrating the point: could you plot some example station time series with the adjusted and unadjusted versions compared?
Have you developed any ideas on the small 1997-2012 global average trend difference from Berkeley Land+Ocean?
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VictorVenema at 01:56 AM on 26 April 2014How global warming broke the thermometer record
That is interesting and those adjustments are huge. Will read the report.
The story has even been picked up by Science Magazine (pay walled).
News & Analysis
Climate ScienceClimate Outsider Finds Missing Global Warming
Eli Kintisch
Major climate data sets have underestimated the rate of global warming in the last 15 years owing largely to poor data in the Arctic, the planet's fastest warming region. A dearth of temperature stations there is one culprit; another is a data-smoothing algorithm that has been improperly tuning down temperatures there. The findings come from an unlikely source: a crystallographer and graduate student working on the temperature analyses in their spare time.
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AndrewDoddsUk at 19:29 PM on 25 April 2014The consequences of climate change (in our lifetimes)
Re: 6, It's interesting..
The Late Cretaceous is noted for very high sea levels compared to today - it seems that the whole ocean went over to thermohaline based circulation and warmed up significantly. Most currently inhabited areas were underwater in huge 'epicontinental' seas.
It's worrying that all other things being equal, the blue line on the graph for 2011 puts us at or around the point where no ice sheets are stable - certainly not the GIS and WAIS.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 18:47 PM on 25 April 2014Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean?
wili @7
The yearly increase in CO2 can jump around a bit - even modest changes in the rates for the major natural sources and sinks can have a big effect. So I would wait several years before calling such a large rate increase. That said the economy is picking up after the GFC so there could be some increase in the human emission rate. Too early to tell.
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AndrewDoddsUk at 18:17 PM on 25 April 2014Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean?
This is confusing my brain for a couple of slightly irrelevant reasons..
First, a large el-Nino event that blows away previous temperature records by a large margin would quiten doen the whole 'hiatus' hubbub. But that's scare comfort given the likely impacts. So on humanitarian grounds I want it to be a dud.
Second, there's a kind of Murphy's law involved.. everyone in the climate blogosphere is anticipating a big el nino.. but it's still possible that it'll fizzle out. Especially if people keep going on about it..
It's a bit like following the Arctic sea ice. It's a kind of addiction seeing if records are going to be set again this year.. but you know that the best thing that could happen is a sea ice recovery. And you also know that the moment you stop clicking 'refresh' on cryosphere today and forget about it, we'll have open water at the North Pole.
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billthefrog at 18:10 PM on 25 April 2014Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean?
And the moral is... "never post on SkS just before going to bed after an evening spent slurping real ale with old university chums!"
OPOF @ 10 & 11
Thanks for the f/b
I totally agree with your la Nina comments in #11. What I had been trying to convey was that, despite the significant upwelling of cold deep water in the Eastern Pacific during 98/99, the temps were still remained very elevated for the time.
SkS has (somewhere) a graphic with annual global temps filtered into 3 categories: la Nina years, el Nino years and ENSO neutral which (I think) really explains the idea far better than words.
Cheers me dears Bill F (Oh look, it's getting near opening time again.)
Moderator Response:[DB] Try here:
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"But computer models predicted our current state of warming more than 30 years ago..."
No, they haven't. Please read:
“Recent observed and simulated warming” by John C. Fyfe & Nathan P. Gillett published in Nature Climate Change 4, 150–151 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2111 Published online 26 February 2014"
I tried to find some disscusion here, REal Climate and Tamino and didn't have any success.