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PhilMorris at 03:48 AM on 22 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
wpokeland@9: I
really like how you provide references to peer reviewed journals substantiating your statements. Oh, sorry, I read your comments so quickly I didn't realize that you hadn’t provided any such references. You are, of course, simply stating results from real research, but forgot to include them, right? No? Are you quoting from newspaper articles, then? Or certain blog posts (numerous ones come to mind...)? Hm, perhaps its what you feel intuitively has to be the case then? Perhaps reading some of this site, or any of the other sites that have real science, would help clarify the true situation for you - one can but hope! In the meantime let me tell you about two physicis items...
1. CO2 absorbs infrared. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=200
2. CO2 absorption of infrared predicts that the troposphere will warm and the stratosphere will cool. And we have satellite evidence that this is happening. See "Human and natural influences on the changing thermal structure of the atmosphere", PNAS, Aug 2013.
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kmalpede at 03:33 AM on 22 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
I had an interesting and disheartening experience at an event with artists and scientists held through the Columbia Earth Science PositiveFeedback program. When I mentioned my play "Extreme Whether" and said it had elements in common with Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People", most of the scientists I spoke with had never read Ibsen's great play, or even heard of it. Are science and the humanties really so far apart? Art and literature give us insight but also courage. As a theater writer writing about climate change, as a college teacher who teaches literature and also gives students scientific papers to read and discuss, I would urge scientists to read--at least read "An Enemy of the People"...it is a great play and is directly related to the topic under discussion here.
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wpsokeland at 02:38 AM on 22 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
“Scientists should communicate more about what they do and find.”
I agree! Higher than normal energy input from solar storms that spawn hurricanes has caused the average global temperature to increase over the last 30 years. The convection of energy by the north Atlantic current from the tropics to the arctic has caused the sea ice to melt and produce a minimum area of sea ice as a result. The number of hurricanes were a minimum this season, 2013, and as a result; the area of sea ice at the northern ice cap will increase and the average global temperature will drop.
The average solar energy input to our planet by radiation is a constant over the period of one year. If Carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases were continually increasing and the power source is a constant, the average temperature of the earth would be continually increasing. This is not what is observed in the average temperature data; therefore, the radiation from the sun is not the only energy source. The incoming severe weather from solar storms is a variable and the average global temperature will increase and decrease on a yearly basis as a function of the severe weather energy input to our atmosphere.
Moderator Response:[TD] I'll point you to just a starter set of factual rebuttals to just a few of your claims, in addition to what PhilMorris pointed you to:
- CO2 is Not the Only Driver of Climate, so you are incorrect that if the Sun's energy hitting the Earth is constant and greenhouse gases increase then temperature must increase at an identical rate.
- The Earth has not cooled nor even paused in warming, when you look at total energy content instead of only at the surface temperature, and even when you look only at the surface temperature but you do so over a legitimately long time span.
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climatelurker at 01:54 AM on 22 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
I've always wondered how individual scientists who 'hide' their views on hot topics (...one particular scientist comes to mind...) can think that's the same thing as being neutral. It's not. Nobody can divorce themselves from their human nature, even scientists. Way better to be honest, so that your peers, and yourself, can see your biases and handle them accordingly.
Not to mention we are citizens first. Why shouldn't we have opinions about policy? Why should Joe Plumber's opinions about climate change policy be more acceptable to express than a climate scientists' opinion about it? Scientists live in this world just the same as everyone else. Which means we scientists suffer the consequences just the same. Why would anyone want to prevent a citizen from exercising his or her right to be a part of society? We can vote, but we can't ever say out loud what we think? How dumb is that?
(I'm no climate scientist, just speaking about scientists in general.)
Moderator Response:[RH] Corrected typing error.
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BaerbelW at 23:42 PM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
Gavin Schmidt's lecture is now available on AGU's Youtube Channel:
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wili at 22:24 PM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
"Nor should we assume that such a tax would be sufficient to solve the climate crisis. In my opinion, this would only be a good start, we'll need lots of regulations..."
That's my sense, too. When something is causing actual harm, we don't usually just tax it to make people less likely to buy it. We ban it, or put severe restrictions on it. If someone sold childrens toys that would spontaneously blow up and take off kids' hands and feet, I hope we wouldn't just put a high tax on it to encourage parents not to buy it.
I tend to trust scientists most when they are issuing warnings; often less so when they are saying to trust some technology or other. Nuclear is a tought sell after Fukushima, rightly so imho.
What needs to be given up is the idea of limitless growth. Shortening the work week and reconsidering the mad rush to automate everything will go a longer way to full employment than continually chasing the impossibility of endless economic growth.
What we have to hear very clearly from Hansen is his call for six percent or more decrease in C emissions immediately and Kevin Anderson's call for 10% or more reductions from industrialized countries. These are arguably the top climatologists in the world.
Neither nukes nor alternatives can be built fast enough to accommodate those kinds of cuts--cuts needed if we are going to have even the mere posibility of a livable world. Only 'demand side' can possibly respond that fast.
These scientists have bravely told us the truth--the situation is beyond crisis level now. If we don't immediately turn the ship around we are going over the falls. The job of the rest of us is to telegraph that extreme level of urgency to our fellow citizens and to our 'leaders.' -
Andy Skuce at 13:52 PM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
I suspect Eli was influenced by Hansen's AGU presidential address. Hansen was very clear for the first part of his talk when he described the physics of climate change. It is obvious that he has a solid grasp of this, because he can explain it in a rational and logical manner, as well or better than anyone. On the moral imperative, he was also very convincing, speaking from the heart and with everything based on moral principles that he holds and that most of us share.
However, at the end of his talk, he drifted into a bit of an incoherent ramble. He is clearly a skeptic of the potential of renewable energy to power our economy and an enthusiast for nuclear power. I hesitantly lean that way, too, but it's a difficult case that needs to be made with detailed arguments and data, not just assertions and appeals to common sense.
Similarly, he wants to see a revenue-neutral carbon tax introduced, but it's not enough for him simply to say that such a policy is self-evidently the best one, although I would agree that it probably is. Nor should we assume that such a tax would be sufficient to solve the climate crisis. In my opinion, this would only be a good start, we'll need lots of regulations, plenty of government support for research and development and a change in the culture of consumerism and growth.
Hansen shows both the positive and negative cases for scientists becoming advocates.
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Paul W at 10:50 AM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
Just as a question to EliRabett @3. Why do you need to be careful about assiging expertise to people like Hansen?
I've found his public statements to be very well thought through and backed by data that is sound science.
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EliRabett at 09:04 AM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
The key to understanding what Gavin said is to figure out who benefits if scientists can be kept from commenting on policy implications of the science. Now true one has to be extremely careful of assigning expertise to the policy statements of people like Hansen, but one also need be careful of anything said by those who try and control the dialog.
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ubrew12 at 07:42 AM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
Scientists have an obligation to communicate effectively to the public one aspect of AGW in particular: the delay between human action and planetary response. The public has gadgets that respond instantly to commands, we order something and expect it yesterday, our media is '150 channels and nothin's on'. 'Change is here, now' is every politicians soundbite, and our motto is 'I want it now'.
This culture is in no way prepared to take hard, revolutionary action on Climate Change and find the Planet indifferent to that sacrifice for up to half a century. Halt all CO2 emissions forever, starting today, and the Planet will cheerily continue warming for 40 years or more. And IN that 40 year window of Planetary indifference, the Arctic will continue melting and absorbing more sunlight, the permafrost will continue melting and venting CO2: processes will be unleashed that could make a MOCKERY of our sacrifice. This aspect of this slow-rolling tragedy is just not understood by the general public, afflicted as it is with 'short-attention-span' disease, and I fault the Scientists, in part, for not making that plainer.
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Alexandre at 04:10 AM on 21 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Tom Curtis at 18:58 PM on 20 December, 2013
Actually, I think GDP is a good measure of economic growth. The problem is more that often economic growth is a lousy proxy to well being, sustainability or wealth distribution.
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Alexandre at 03:54 AM on 21 December 2013Gavin Schmidt … Speaking up and Speaking Out
"That's the responsibility of having eyes when others have lost theirs."
Jose Saramago
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Tom Curtis at 18:58 PM on 20 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Stephen Leahy @20, I agree that GDP is a poor measure of economic growth. Unfortunately it is not clear that there is a better one, and certainly not one that is agreed to by a consensus of economists. Further, it is almost impossible to find general statistics for historical periods for other measures.
Further, I agree with you that our economic system sucks in a variety of ways. One of those ways is the dependence on growth for economic stability. However, I think it is a grave strategic mistake to tie those issues together with global warming. First, it is a much bigger ask to both convert the economy to a new basis and to tackle global warming at the same time, then to do each separately. Further, and more important, tying the two together ensures that those with a conservative political leaning will oppose actions to tackle global warming because they will see them as actions designed to overthrow an economic system they still value. There is enough resistance from conservatives to tackling global warming from the myth spread by deniers that AGW is a stalking horse for ending capitalism. We have no chance of tacking global warming if we turn that myth into a truth.
Like it or not, tackling AGW is too important to tie it up with other political issues. That means we will need a solution to AGW that is economically conservative, that does not threaten capitalism of free markets, and that is consistent ongoing economic growth for developed nations. If we cannot find such a solution, we will only tackle global warming very late, at great cost, not just in GDP, but in real and personal terms.
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Stephen Leahy at 11:53 AM on 20 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
TC@19 thanks for correcting the links.
Economic growth is bit of red herring since it is such a vague concept in real terms. Growth for who and what exactly? A country's GDP can triple and the total number of people in poverty increase, levels of education go down and overall health decline. This is the pattern for most petrostates, incl Canada.
De-growth isn't all that scary since our economic system sucks.
Quoting UK economist Tim Jackson: "It's blindingly obvious that our economic system is failing us." Climate change, pollution, damaged ecosystems, record species extinctions, and unsustainable resource use are all clear symptoms of a dysfunctional economic system, Jackson, author of the report and book Prosperity Without Growth, told IPS
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KiwiInOz at 09:08 AM on 20 December 2013Climate and economic models – birds of a different feather
Ah yes, the old conversation of mass issue.
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bouke at 07:42 AM on 20 December 2013Climate and economic models – birds of a different feather
To me, a model is nothing more than a hypothesis where all the supporting assumptions have been made so crystal clear and explicit that the whole thing can be put in a computer which can then calculate the consequences of the hypothesis. If the results are different from the real world, you revise the hypothesis and/or supporting assumptions.
The results will always be different from the real world, so this process never ends. But that doesn't matter. At some point the results are good enough to be useful. We have been at that point for some time now.
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Composer99 at 02:06 AM on 20 December 2013Climate and economic models – birds of a different feather
To me, a climate model is the laboratory experiment of climate science.
You can grow microbes in a Petri dish and study their inner workings with relative ease; you can study fruit flies, or mice, or even primates. You can roll balls down slopes, you can smash streams of particles traveling near the speed of light into each other and see what comes out, you can mix two substances together and see what happens. And you can do these - and many other things besides - over and over and over again.
You can't go out and build even a single planet identical to Earth and run through decades of climate history in an afternoon (or over a weekend), never mind dozens.
So you need a computer-generated simulation. You need a model.
It's not perfect, but like so many things in life, it's good enough.
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Alexandre at 23:24 PM on 19 December 2013IPCC is alarmist
I'd like to suggest a subject for a future post:
IPCC figures are virtually all limited to 2100. And all IPCC scenarios assume some emmission curbing at some point (ranging from slow to fast). That's unrealistally optimistic at this point, since there are no signs of leaving carbon reserves unexplored and buried undergound. They're even exploring new possibilities in hydrocarbons (like methane clathrate), and looking for new oil reserves (like in the Arctic).
If we burn every reserve we know, this paper below projects a 16 ºC warming eventually, making "much of the planet uninhabitable by humans".
"Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide"
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Tom Curtis at 23:16 PM on 19 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Stephen Leahy @18, I assume you meant to link to this site, with regard to this research.
First, with regard to the research, it is implicit in a global emissions reduction at 3% per annum in which third world nations initially increase their emissions that developled nations must decrease their emissions, at least initially, faster than 3% per annum. I am not certain that they must do so at 8-10% per annum, a figure Anderson and Bows-Larkin arrive at by assuming the pattern of growth and reductions for China will be the same as for the rest of non-annex 1 nations. That seems implausible to me. Having said that, given the likely delay before actual emissions reductions are actually implimented, reduction rates much greater than 8% per annum are going to be required in practise so there is no point quibbling over whether developed nations need to reduce at 5 or 8% if they started reducing now.
Second, Anderson notes that:
"Reductions in emissions greater than 3-4% p.a. are incompatible with a growing economy (or so we’re repeatedly advised)."
That is plausible. Certainly the faster emissions must be reduced, the greater the economic cost. Emissions reductions at <2% per annum can probably limit the cost of reductions to the difference in the levelized cost of the energy sources in that new energy sources can replace obsolete power stations that need to be replaced or substantially refurbished in any event. Once reductions rates exceed the depreciation rate on energy capital, however, it involves an increasingly large recapitalization rate above that implied be the gradual obsolesnence of equipment and technology. At high emissions reduction rates it also involves an high social cost in rapid changes in employment patterns, and social patterns built around energy expenditure.
However, and third, the biggest threat to humans from global warming at low to medium increases in global temperature (2-4 C) is from the end of economic growth. At low levels of global warming, nearly all impacts of global warming can be reduced to economic losses for the globally affluent. For the non-affluent, the cost is not just economic, but comes in terms of lives lost or substantially harmed. As this will be the biggest impact, we are not justified (and will not succeed, regardless of justification) in pursuing a policy that mandates negative economic growth. So, if emissions reductions greater than 3% cannot be achieved without ending economic growth, we are condemned to a greater than 2 C world.
Consequently I hope that Anderson is wrong. I do not think that hope absurd. The US economy grew during WW2:
That growth was achieved, despite some personal privation, through a sustained national effort to enhance production to supply America's military needs. A similar effort today would be able to convert the US economy to a near zero emissions economy in about the same timespan as WW2. Given the political will, therefore, emissions reduction rates far greater than 10% per annum may be possible without ending economic growth (if not without economic disruption).
Of course, I do not know that that is possible. Consequently the most urgent thing today is to start reductions at sustained levels that do not preclude economic growth so that we are not put to the trial on the issue, and that if we are we are in the best position possible to deal with it.
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scaddenp at 13:58 PM on 19 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
"I would think that the surface air temps and Ice loss are not largely related." yeah, me too! However you could argue that some ice loss (west Antarctica) is due loss of loss of buttressing ice-shelves which have be eroded by warmer waters rather than warmer air. However I note the East Antarctic ice loss corresponds with warmer air temperature. Indirectly this is a possible factor in sea ice increase due to more surface fresh water from the melt.
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chriskoz at 13:35 PM on 19 December 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #51A
Piece of news from Federal Aus politics:
Renewable energy target faces cut by Abbott
The Abbott-Hunt (env minister) duo, already famous for using selective quotes from wikipedia as their scientific consultation, now want Australia to become "affordable energy superpower" (whatever they mean by that) and apparently renweable energy is in the way of that dream. Meanwhile, the electricity demand is falling (due to people installing more and more rooftop PVs and drawing from them) and some utility companies are worried that the renewable target will be "overshoot"... Aha! That's why the target needs to be reduced: because Tony wants to keep said utility cmpanies in business.
I don't need to add that LNP went into the election with a promise to keep the renewable energy target & the 5% decrease in CO2 levels by 2020. A broken promise is emerging here. Who is going to pinpoint and expose that?
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bligh at 11:38 AM on 19 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
There was a lot of data within the article that describes possible explanations for the expansion of surface ice around Antarctica all of which are valid, however, the expansion of surface ice is not a reflection of a cooling condition around the continent. Gravity data collected from space using NASA's Grace satellite show that Antarctica has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002. Remarkably, Eastern Antarctica is showing some ice loss. I would think that the surface air temps and Ice loss are not largely related.
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Stephen Leahy at 08:52 AM on 19 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
TC@12 Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin say most carbon budget estimates are wrong, including the IPCCs. (Can't remember exactly what but it wasn't just feedbacks... Anderson's personal website)
Wili@16 Agree.
Naidoo is saying democracy has been hi-jacked. There is wide agreement on that by civil society organizations like WWF. Writing letters is not going to change that.
That's also Anderson's point: we can no longer take reasonable, measured responses.
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scaddenp at 06:23 AM on 19 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
Well I am not exactly convinced that latitudinal band is best way to way to assess the margin. As maps from same data presented here show, most of coast is warming. You get that even more so from the more sophisticated methods used in Steig 2009 and ODonnell 2010 (see their maps for 1982 - 2006).
However, this is quite far from the topic of sea ice. The expansion of the sea ice is far from land where the SSTs on this margin are warming. Increasing ice despite warming marginal seas is what this topic covers.
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Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
My image in #20 disappeared. Let’s try again:
As you see, 0.5–1.0oC of warming in most of western Antarctica, while the overall trend in eastern Antarctica is close to zero.
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wili at 04:44 AM on 19 December 2013Climate Risk Index 2014: Haiti, Philippines and Pakistan most affected
"The climate summit in Warsaw is expected to chart a road-map for an ambitious 2015 agreement." Well, I guess that didn't happen.
"Our results are really a wake-up call" The crucial folks seem to still be asleep.
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dana1981 at 01:25 AM on 19 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
Thanks shoyemore.
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shoyemore at 18:45 PM on 18 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
Found it!
It's
PA31B-1827
Taking Social Media Science Myth Debunking to a Presidential Level (Invited)
Search for author "nuccitelli".
Great work!
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shoyemore at 18:40 PM on 18 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
Dana,
It is hard to find your poster among all the ones from the AGU - can you post an identifier? Thanks.
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Klapper at 17:14 PM on 18 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
@Scaddenp #19 et al:
I used to keep up a database of all the manned weather stations around Antarctica (including Vostok, and Amundsen Scott), all the Russian, Australian, US, Japanese etc., and back a few years ago a majority would have shown either no warming or cooling trends over the last 30 years.
However, now with KNMI Explorer, I can extract the gridded data. Here's the header on a GISTEMP source file with grid cells between -60 and -75 latitude which I calculated a linear regression on between 1980 and 2013.
# ./bin/plotdat anomal /data/climexp/climexp/data/igiss_temp_250_0-360E_-60--75N_n.dat # /data/climexp/climexp/bin/get_index NASAData/giss_temp_both_250.nc 0 360 -60 -75 dipole no minfac 30 nearest lsmask NASAData/lsmask.nc all giss_temp_250_0-360E_-60--75N_n # using minimal fraction of valid points 30.00 # tempanomaly [Celsius] from GISTEMP Surface Temperature Analysis # cuttingout region lon= -360.000 0.000, lat= -75.000 -60.000 The regression slope is -0.05C/decade. In the comments above from others it appears the discussion has shifted to both sea ice and the land stations, so I took both but I think I have an option to check land only, although I'm not sure if your "around the edges" is just land or both.
UAH TLT (version 5.3) also show a slight cooling trend in the same band (-60 to -75 latitude), about 0.04C/decade.
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Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
#15 Klapper:
It’s definitely warming in most of western Antarctica, not only the peninsula. The trend has been about 0.5-1.0oC since 1980 (dark yellow). Eastern Antarctica has some warming and some cooling, with the overall trend there close to zero.
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scaddenp at 06:29 AM on 18 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
Besides papers pointed to above, I would also add the indirect evidence of ice-loss from both GRACE and altimetry. Steig et al 2009 and the O'Donnell et al 2010 (co-author one S McIntyre) show positive warming from weather stations on the coast, so I wonder about your source for coastal weather stations showing no warming? I would also note the tropospheric trends from Screen and Symonds 2012.
However, for the matter of sea ice, it is the SST data that provides the interesting question.
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Composer99 at 04:56 AM on 18 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
If global warming is adding approximately 4 Little Boy bombs' worth of energy to the Earth every second, it would take 533,250 seconds, or approximately 6.2 days, to add the energy equivalent of the 2011 quake as per From Peru's figures.
So every year the Earth adds energy equivalent to 59 9.0-Richter-scale earthquakes to the climate system.
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From Peru at 04:00 AM on 18 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
The Hiroshima bomb was deadly, killing some 100 000 people. However, its energy was "just" 15 kilotons of TNT. For comparison, the United States test "Castle Bravo" bomb was 15 000 kilotons and the Soviet Union test "Tsar Bomba" waas 50 000 kilotons.
A 6.0 earthquake is approximately equal to one hiroshima.
A 9.0 earthquake (like the 2011 Japan Earthquake) is equal to 32 000 000 kilotons (32 gigatons) of TNT according to the British Geological Survey:
Source:
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/hazards/earthquakes/MeasuringQuakes.html
This is equal to a bit more more than 2 133 000 Hiroshimas.
It would be interesting to add a 9.0 earthquake as a unit of measurement instead of a Hiroshima bomb, given the enormous scale of the radiative imbalance caused by global warming
Or maybe measuring global warming in Yellowstone Supervolcano eruptions per year.
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dana1981 at 03:16 AM on 18 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
Composer99 - those are John Cook's preliminary experimental results, not yet published.
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Composer99 at 03:12 AM on 18 December 2013In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference
Is the graph showing the effects of the agnotology-based approach to debunking the OISM petition is from a paper?
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DSL at 03:05 AM on 18 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
And this extends Rob's GISS map back to the Zhang period.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:17 AM on 18 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
And I think scaddenp was probably referring to this chart from Zhang 2007.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:14 AM on 18 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
Klapper @15... You could try this one:
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John Hartz at 01:32 AM on 18 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Directly tied to the above discussion is the "must read" article, Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice? by Dahr Jamail posted today (Dec 17 US) on Tom Englehardt's website, TomDispatch.com.
Englehardt's introduction to Jamail's article is also worth a careful read.
Both articles are choked full of links to key resource documents.
*Dahr Jamail has written extensively about climate change as well as the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. He is the author of two books: Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq and The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He currently works for al-Jazeera English in Doha, Qatar.
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Klapper at 22:31 PM on 17 December 2013Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?
@scaddenp #14:
I'd challenge the contention that Antarctica is warming "around the edges". Maybe the peninsula is, but that's the exception to the rest of the land data from Antarctica. The manned weather stations on the coast don't show any overall warming since 1980 or so. If you have data to demonstrate warming around the edges, please direct me to it.
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wili at 20:26 PM on 17 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Thanks for the valuable discussion, all. I hope we can all agree that, whether it's 3%, 6+%, or 10+%, the first priority is to get the sign right> annual reductions rather than annual increases.
I am mindful that the latest paleo-study concluded that climate sensitivity is double the traditional 1.5-4.5 degree C range (global temp increase for every doubling of CO2). So all numbers may need to be adjusted accordingly. And in any case, I would agree with OPOF that it is wiser to take precautionary principle and aim to give utter climate calamity a wide berth.
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Tom Curtis at 19:31 PM on 17 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
One Planet @14, I downloaded the RCP 4.5 emissions data. Cumulative emissions to 2100 of CO2 alone is 1280 GtC, and 955 GtC to 2050. Using a 3% reduction per annum from 2014, and the RCP 4.5 emissions data before that, I get cumulative emissions of 770 GtC and 855 GtC to 2050 and 2100 respectively. RCP 4.5 does not have declining emissions until after 2040, and achieves reductions around 3% per annum in only a handful of years. Consequently the 3% reduction per annum is a far more aggressive scenario than RCP 4.5. For what it is worth, RCP 4.5 shows cumulative emissions of 860 GtC for CO2 alone from 2000-2100. You have probably quoted a near equivalent figure rather than the full historical cumulative emissions.
Further, RCP 4.5 maintains sufficient emissions each year after 2100 to maintain constant forcing. That is, it maintains sufficient emissions to balance any decay of CH4 etc, or ocean absorption of CO2 such that atmospheric concentrations remain constant. In that scenario, temperatures will continue to rise to the Equilibrium Response of the peak concentration rather than only the Transient Response to the peak concentration and the Equilibrium response to much reduced CO2 levels due to ocean uptake after several hundred years.
These two factors (the much greater cumulative emissions and constant forcing after 2100) account for much of the differences in projected temperatures you commented on. A further difference is that I calculated the CO2 forcing only, whereas the RCP 4.5 scenario accounts for all forcings. With ongoing emissions, aerosol emissions approximately cancel WMGHG emissions other than CO2 so that is a fair approximation. In a scenario with reducing emissions, however, that is not so. eventually the anthropogenic aerosol emissions resulting in a short term temperature spike from the other WMGHG prior to their decaying and washing out of the system. Therefore short term temperatures may peak 30% above those I indicated (and indeed 50% above that again allowing for error). In the medium to long term, however, those additional GHG, if no longer emitted, will decay to a sufficiently small quantity of CO2 that they can be neglected.
The CMIP-5 models used for AR5 have a higher equilibrium response than either CMIP 3 models, or is justified by paleological data. I, therefore, have continued to use sensitivities based on AR4. In that, AR5 is in agreement with me, they having lowered the estimated climate sensitivity. The models, however, are run with their innate sensitivities and hence will slightly over estimate temperature responses. I believe this to be a far less significant factor in the difference than the first three factors, and in particular the first two.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:54 PM on 17 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Tom Curtis @12,
Though you say you have treated figures conservatvely the results of your evaluation appear signifigantly unconservative when I compare your peak temperatures with the presentation in the IPCC AR5 Report. Cummulative emission of 880 GtC by 2100 is greater than RCP4.5 (which is 780 GtC). And in the IPCC report the mean expected increase of temperature by 2100 for RCP4.5 is approximately 2.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial average, with the temperature continuing to increase after 2100. Your analysis would appear to be on the 'optimistic extreme' of the range of results presented in the IPCC report.
So, to protect the future generations, based on the uncertainty of what we are able to evaluate, even more dramatic reductions of the burning of fossil fuels will be required. The current global economy is fundamentally unsustainable anyway because of all the activities developed that rely on the unsustainable practice of burning (and consuming) non-renewable resources. The fighting over the remaining fossil fuels (and other non-renewable resources), will only get worse if 'some people are allowed to continue to be benefit significantly from that unsustainable and damaging activity'. Eventually humanity will need to figure out how to live without burning fossil fuels. We need to give future generations a fighting chance at a decent life by reducing the benefit that we allow the greediest of the most fortunate among us to obtain from the burning of fossil fuels.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:22 PM on 17 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
wili @6, I agree with Tom Curtis @7. The required action is making sure leaders and leadership hopefuls know your priorities of concern.
I would add that another action to take is to persistently try to help others become better informed. This site is a great resource for that effort. Every time I come across someone making an unfounded claim I am able to provide a prompt and direct rebuttal with the better understanding I have gained from sites like this as well as direct reference to other sources of information like the World Meteorological Organization, IPCC, Met Office/Hadley, NASA/GISS and NOAA.
My personal objective is global development toward a sustainable better future for all life. That is a much broader topic including the need for 'civil society', 'environmental reverence', and dramatically reduced consumption by and damage created by the most fortunate. This issue is a significant aspect of what needs to be understood and changed. However, we do not need to only improve 'one thing at a time'.
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Tom Curtis at 12:33 PM on 17 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
wili @8, compounding emissions reductions of 3% per annum starting in 2014 (ie, 2015 is the first year of reduction) results in a total cumulative emissions of Carbon by 2050 of 775 GtC; and by 2100 of 860 GtC. Given that 75% of total emissions will be absorbed by the ocean in the next two centuries, ie, an extra 20% over the 55% of cumulative emissions absorbed on an ongoing basis, that leads to peak atmospheric concentrations of about 460 ppmv drawing down to 360 ppmv over the time scale over which the equilibrium response is achieved. That represents a transient climate response of about 1.5 C above preindustrial levels - and a temperature that stabilizes at about 1.6 C above preindustrial levels after the full Earth System Response. I believe that once emissions are down to 0.75 GtC per annum (2100 at that rate of reduction), the net emissions can be controlled at reasonable expense by carbon sequestration to bring the long term response lower, however, we will have time to fine tune the response. Importantly, all of these figures are below the 2 C "threshold" for dangerous global warming.
This information is derived from my spreadsheet of cumulative emissions plus David Archer's online version of the Geocarb model, along with an assumed TCR of 2 C, and ESR of 4.5 C per doubling of CO2. I have treated figures conservatively, ie, rounding emissions per annum and cumulative emissions up rather than down.
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From Peru at 12:12 PM on 17 December 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #51A
I am thankful that my country appears here. 2014 will be an interesting year.
So far almost nobody talks about the COP 20 (the Pan-American Games of 2019 are mentioned more frequently), and everybody talks either about the political scandal of the week or about the increase in criminal activity. I hope this state of things in the media improves next year.
One the bright side, I must say that while the issue of Climate Change is mentioned very rarely, there is a broad consensus over all the political spectrum that this is a real and a serious problem. However I am concerned that as next year the conference get closer, there will be a disinformation campaign (so far nonexistent in my country) that targets my country population and a lot of people will be fooled.
Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you for the positive feedback. Pleased keep us apprised of how the media in your country is covering climate change. Generally speaking, I would like to include more articles from South America in the news roundups.
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Don9000 at 08:05 AM on 17 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
That the UN climate talks ended with this anemic outcome does not bode well for the likelihood of meaningful action where it matters most. In short, I suspect it will be extremely difficult to get any of the big polluters to act unilaterally to cut emissions as much as necessary, particularly when nations like Canada and Australia are actively running in the other direction, and thus the lack of a robust agreement to act collectively is a serious blow to avoiding exceeding the 2 degree C rise.
Providing funds for mitigation efforts in other nations is even more of a stretch. Based only on my sense of the political zeitgeist over here, getting the US to unilaterally commit serious longterm funds to third world nations at this time (which is going to extend at least until the 2016 Presidential election) will be an extremely hard if not impossible sell. Tongue only semi-firmly in cheek, I think it would be a lot easier for nations seeking this kind of financial support to take a page out of The Mouse That Roared and declare war on the US or NATO or their former colonial occupier(s), launch a few cavalry charges or their equivalent, and hope their opponent(s) prove magnanimous in victory (just remember, in the movie, The Duchy of Grand Fenwick wins, albeit in a rather creative way).
Getting the US to take concrete steps toward imposing a carbon tax--the truly necessary first step in my opinion for any serious effort to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the long term--is currently a non-starter given the weak economy, the weak hand of Obama, and the anti-tax rigor mortis stance of the Republicans. The only thing I can imagine changing this impass is a signficant move by the EU on the same front, complete with penalties for first world trading partners that don't follow suit. If that kind of thing came to pass, the US just might be guilted in action. But I doubt even that would work, as the average politician over here really isn't worried about the floods and droughts that people outside his or her district experience, let alone outside his or her nation or hemisphere, and any attempt to force the US to act would galvanize the anti-tax wing of the GOP into paroxisms of self-righteous pontificating.
Realistically, I doubt that Obama could get any useful UN treaty approved by the US Senate at this point, as that requires a two-thirds majority, which is about as likely as getting Senator Ted Cruz to behave like a moderate for more than fifteen minutes when he's standing in front of a Tea Party rally.
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william5331 at 04:10 AM on 17 December 2013Behind the Lines: Herschel's Discovery of Infra-Red
The strength of Methane vis a vis Carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is 20 0r 30 times as much only if you include the phrase "on a 100 year basis". It's actual strength is somewhere around 100 times that of Carbon dioxide and hence the approximately 2ppm methane in the atmosphere has the same effect as 200ppm Carbon dioxide. I reverse engineered the figure using a half life of 7 years and a relative strength of 20 on a 100 year basis and got x140. Does anyone know where the original work is that worked out the actual relative strengths. In the NSIDC web site, they recently used a figure of x86.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/the-real-strength-of-methane.html
wlhgmk@gmail.com
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wili at 23:40 PM on 16 December 2013South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage
Thanks, Tony. The analogy that comes to my mind is someone who has gangrene (or some similar spreading infection). At first it is just at the tip of one toe, and he is told that very minor surgery will take care of it. But he's in denial that there is any rot on his wonderful body and that it could ever be a real threat, so he ignores the advise. Next it's the whole toe that has to go, and he can't imagine parting with so precious a thing. Then the whole foot has to go, and that he certainly can't abide...you get the idea.
We are certainly at or past the toe stage, hopefully not to the stage of having to lose a leg or more, but hard to tell.
W
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