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Comments 40051 to 40100:

  1. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Nigelj - "I do agree human stories of climate impacts are a great idea, however I dont think you want examples of specific human suffering creeping into this websites articles on the science, as you will make yourself targets for accusations of scaremongering."

    As I wrote earlier, climate change has and will continue to cause suffering. To ignore this simply because climate science cranks make spurious allegations is weak justification in my book. Burning fossil fuels = suffering. Those are the cards that physics has dealt us. Doing something about it is a moral challenge.

    "In terms of reaching the public the research debunking the pause is criticical."

    I think you underestimate the temporary nature of these memes. They are soon forgotten and new ones evolve over time. This meme doesn't really have any legs because the Earth as a whole continues to warm - especially the oceans. Ongoing global sea level rise is a testament to this.

    SkS also has a series coming up on the wind-driven ocean circulation explaining the fundamentals of the so-called 'hiatus' and 'accelerated warming' decades. Finishing the animations and graphics are the hold-up at the moment. 

  2. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Yube - it's an anecdotal observation. I am unaware of any public survey which delves into the level of understanding of its respondents sufficiently to gauge whether they truly understand the ramifications. When I talk to people (non-experts) I've yet to run across a single person whom has even heard of ocean acidification. And yet, on our current trajectory, an extinction event later this century appears likely as a result of ocean acidification and ocean warming.

    Coral reefs are already headed toward functional extinction, and a looming change in the wind-driven ocean circulation (greater warming in the tropical oceans) will see massive coral reef mortality in the coming years. Too late to stop that sadly, but it is likely to further galvanise climate policy activism.

    Boswarm - I have no idea what you mean about coming back to bite us. The scientific basis for climate policy action is overwhelming. SkS writes about the science relentlessly, and will continue to do so. But the more people that understand the moral implications of climate change and ocean acidification the better. If Jim Cameron's mini series, and the use of movie celebrities, helps to penetrate public indifference or apathy, even better still. Hopefully he avoids further scientific mistakes, such as those I pointed out in the trailer.

  3. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    @Jeremy(#9) - yes, Jeremy, I do address the denialist campaign (which in my screnplay has gone strong thru 2070).  I am fairly well informed (for a 'lay person') around climate issues.  It has been fun AND challenging to think about what to include and/or not include in a 2 hour 'blockbuster' type movie about a 4C warmer world.  For example, I have NOT mentioned ocean acidification because I am trying to be conscious of what the average (re: at best, superficially informed) citizen-movie goer can take in.  For instance, I include a scene straight from a headline story in my local (Eugene, Oregon) paper last month about coastal fishermen hauling in nets full of writhing jellyfish and baby octopi climbing onto their fishing lines in an attempt to escape an oceanic 'dead zone' - but do not mention OA specifically.  BTW, email me at dagold56@hotmail.com, be glad to send a copy for a read and some feedback!

  4. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    I have a design background but also some science, and I take an interest in climate change. I do agree human stories of climate impacts are a great idea, however I dont think you want examples of specific human suffering creeping into this websites articles on the science, as you will make yourself targets for accusations of scaremongering.

    If there must be articles like this on this website, they need to be separate articles clearly stating that they are dealing with the human side of climate change. Articles in newspapers would be good but they must be highly accurate or they will get ripped apart.

    For example look what happened to Al Gore. Al Gores book was very good on the science but it also made some open ended disaster speculation on sea level rise that went beyond the IPCC predictions, and he made himself a target for accusations of scaremongering. One relatively little thing in his book weakened it somewhat.

    In terms of reaching the public the research debunking the pause is criticical. Assuming this is strong research it needs much wider exposure in the mainstream daily media. This in combination with a human interest and suffereing angle would be quite compelling.

  5. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Although welcome, I doubt that a movie is going to move sufficient number of people to make a difference. It’s all about marketing – people need to hear the message 10-15 times before they sit up and take notice. And by message I don’t mean blogs, or arcane science papers that help contribute to our knowledge but are almost totally meaningless to the general public. By message I mean extreme weather events: extended droughts, massive storm surges, typhoons, extreme heat waves, etc. Even though the deniers attempt to downplay the relevance of climate change to these events, my sense is that most people recognise these events as being unusual, and climate change offers an explanation. But how many Florida residents can see the writing on the wall regarding loss of potable water because of just modest sea level rise? How many people in the south western USA think that somehow they will continue to have drinking water despite the continued reduction in Colorado river water flows? Just two examples of the many that abound in the world regarding the effects of climate change.

    I recently attended Green Party meeting where I live (BC, Canada), and a well-known climate scientist commented that I was a pessimist because I didn’t see any significant action happening in time to mitigate climate change (although he did subsequently comment that perhaps I was being a realist). The question is one of balance – how to convince the public not just that climate change is real (it appears most people now get that!) but to convince them that the consequences are going to be very severe unless something is done about it, and done soon, yet at the same time not have them give up hope. People need to be mobilized so that governments worldwide are forced to take strong action to reduce CO2 emissions. That is the real problem facing us. Living in Canada, with both federal and provincial governments hell bent on extracting fossil fuels as fast as they can, and a population that appear to be resigned to the status quo, hanging onto hope is tough!

  6. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    Tom @12,

    I doubt you're right there. How are countries going to adapt to SLR of say 2-4 meters/century after 2100 (assuming they've managed to adapt until then)? The rich countries may succeed in adaptation for a while, but in the poor countries mass migration seems a more likely result, which would probably have strong effects in the rich countries as well (assuming there will still be rich and poor countries by then). It will be very costly to keep adapting to rapidly and continually changing shorelines, and retreat may be the only option at a certain point. Only if you assume the world will get richer and richer over the coming centuries, can I imagine such SLR would not be a major problem. But I don't think we can assume that, because there seem to be strong limits to such growth.

  7. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    John @ 18 

    Well surely you will allow me to ask for Rob to link a source for his "great bulk of humanity is unaware" comment. 

    (-snip-)

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Moderation complaints snipped.

  8. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    wpsokeland: Your comment was deleted because it was sloganeering in the form of gobblygook. Sloganeering is prohibited by the SkS Coments Policy. Please read this policy and adhere to it.

  9. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    YubeDude: Your most recent post has been deleted because it constituted excessive repetition which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. You have made your points and Rob Painting has responded to them. Please move on.

  10. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Boswarm wants to delete my comment because it's not about science and he or she doesn't like the idea of showing the real face of the suffering resulting from climate change.  First, this particular blog is NOT about the science, but about the upcoming movie.  Second, science has failed to convince people to act.  Science is clearly important, but there are many more people in this world Un-moved by science than are moved by it.  

    I follow the science because I'm a scientist and it's interesting to me.  I 'care' about the subject because it is now, and will continue to, cause both human suffering and suffering to other species.  Because life is beautiful.  Children the most of all.  They are innocent, and they will feel the burden more than others.  Why is it offensive to try to make people understand that?

  11. Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

     

    Ok, I've been having a back and forth about CO2 and water vapor and the usual about how it's a much stronger green house gas..  I referenced SK and discriped how water vapor creates a positive feedback loop.  He then goes into areas of science that are pretty technical but I suspect it's somewhat convoluted.

    He claims to be a H2O vapor is that it is vastly more variable as a mol fraction in the atmosphere than CO2, and that the signal to noise ratio picking up the effects of a boost of CO2 from 0.25% to 0.40% is going to be a challenge given the background noise of H2O cycling from near 0% to over 5% wildly over vast areas of the earth such that it is hard to know what average is.
    That is just background physics from knowing how relative humidity works, and knowing quite a bit about radiation heat transfer in gasses from having taken graduate level engineering classes in that subject.

  12. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Great to hear, this is a good thing and about time. People are moved by things that touch and affect their lives, like nothing else.

    Apologies in advance but I have to get this off my chest.

    There is no disputing the dedication and determination of climate change activists, and those working towards a 'carbon free' future based on the outstanding work of our scientific community. You’d have thought the overwhelming weight of evidence would have been enough to rouse and activate an increasingly apathetic and at times confused public (outside the community of dedicated activists). So what happened?

    Any change in direction will have to be driven by popular demand, and not by osmosis.

    Perhaps the key is to move the argument to the ‘audience’ and engage it at an emotional and organic level. Whilst individuals remain insulated from the true nature of things, leading comfortable lives, and who’s greatest fear is losing, or not accumulating wealth; they will not be inclined to act. Isn’t this message of fear being pushed by the denial fraternity?

    I would probably go further:

    Projects such as this TV series are essential to help engage and educate the public. They also help to mitigate and marginalize a highly organized and financed propaganda machine.

    However, there are a multitude of initiatives that work tirelessly towards a common goal, but where is the ‘Communications Strategy’?

    I doubt there any single organisation with the finances and clout to drive the message into the lives of the people who will ultimately make things happen.

    Dialogue and cooperation, coordinated through a single strategy (perhaps away from the UN) will deliver economies of scale…

    • Deliver an effective and incontrovertible empirical argument.
    • Move the whole debate away from politics to evidenced based arguments, defining and quantifying the ‘Opportunity Costs’ of the individual.
    • Identify the 'value proposition' that demands and holds the attention of the majority of the population
    • Personally attach the ‘audience’ to the problem, they need to own it!
    • Develop an irresistible 'call to action'.
    • Through highly targeted and well planned communication campaigns, neutralize the opposition's strategic and tactical position and operational advantages.

    It is now time to recognize the situation for what it is, emulate a corporate model and take a leaf out of the business strategic and marketing handbook. It is essential this is a professional and well led ‘Corporate Marketing Campaign’.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Unneccesary white spaces deleted.

  13. How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

    Poster, there is a list of denier meteorologists maintained by Forecast the Facts.  With quotes.

  14. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    @YubeDude #10:

    Simply put, SkS cannot be all things to all people. There are numerous quality websites that focus on the issues you have identified. Over the course of the past couple of years, more than 200 of these websites have been highlighted in the Spotlight section of the SkS Weekly Digest.

  15. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    The comment above that included this should be deleted:

    Since children are especially hard-hit by warming related diseases, there should be a ruthless use of their loss, the same way those religious organizations do to get donation money.

    I have always regarded SKS as an aurthority and and educator and still do, but this is beyond the realm of normal science comments.

    I am disgusted about the above, but to Rob, keep up the good work, as maybe you are right, but this eventually may come back to bite. Undecided so far.

    I prefer science.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] For future reference, please identify the name and number of the comment that you are referring to when you post a comment like the above . Doing so, helps everyone follow the converstation without spending time searching through a batch of prior comments. Thank you.

  16. How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

    Poster,

    Joe Bastardi is a well known denier who is a meteorologist.  Watch Fox News for the weather report.  Any Fox meteorologist is also most likely a denier.  They were probably not listed in the posts you read since they are so common the writer thought it unnecessary to give examples. I find your apparent claim that no meteorologists are deniers strange.   What is your point?

  17. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    lennartvdl @11, obviously adding sea level rise to the generalized threat from global warming does increase the risks; but the overall risks from sea level rise itself are sufficiently small that even quite rapid (2 m/century) sea level rise does not greatly increase the risk.  Indeed, were it the only risk, or were the other risks minor, I would say the correct response to the risk from sea level rise would be adaption.  Unfortunately the threats are a package deal, and the threats from other aspects of global warming are sufficient to make mitigation a necessity. 

  18. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Yube - you are obviously entitled to start your own blog and focus on such issues. This post does not advocate any particular climate policy. 

  19. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Jeremy - I think you and Yube appear to be looking at this in the wrong way. The great bulk of humanity are completely unaware of the enormous threat posed by global warming and ocean acidification. Those people are Jim Cameron's target audience, and are unlikely to have heard of any of the bogus claims by contrarians.

  20. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Jeremy@8

    those 'minor' errors that will be latched onto by deniers, blown out of all proportion, and used to try - probably with some degree of success - to undermine all accurate / credible content.

    When you know the science, pound the science.
    When you know the facts, pound the facts.
    When you know neither pound the table.

    One of the points I was making by suggesting that the usual suspects will latch on to the messenger (Hollywood) or apply a cherry picker to find inaccurate outliers and then wail from the highest highs about how the science is wrong; never mentioning that science is not what Cameron is about or that slight mistakes in a glossy production does not alter the reality that various metrics have established.

    Something tells me that Heartland planed a fund raiser and cocktail party the moment this program was announced.

  21. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Rob@7

    So I take it that you also would like to establish a parallel forum that invites a freer range of topics as they relate to AGW? Would you agree that amelioration and geo-engineering issues should be discussed in depth? Would you find it helpful to open up discussions on the nature of communication and the media as it relates to AGW and climate change? Should we not be talking about the economics as they relate to both the impact from climate change and the cost of re-directing the industrial paradigm?

    I know I would, but the SKS structure currently is resistant to these kinds of discussions as they enter a more subjective and interpretive area of discourse. Questions or discussions that enter into the politics of the debate and the form the message takes are somewhat off limits and it is often times hard to know when and if particular subject can or should be discussed.

    I applaud all the hard work being done here by the site administrators, the moderators and those who take the time to do the hard yards of research and submission of articles. I only ask if we couldn’t do more and establish a new line of conversation that allows topics and discussions currently frowned upon. Your posting Rob would be a perfect opening for this new forum.

  22. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    .... I should have made clear that I hope dagold (@comment 1), not Cameron et al., will include some 'historical' take on denialist culpability! My mistake.

  23. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    99% vs 97%? hurricanes twice as bad?

    It's exactly those 'minor' errors that will be latched onto by deniers, blown out of all proportion, and used to try - probably with some degree of success - to undermine all accurate / credible content.

    Cameron and colleagues will need to be extremely careful on that score.

    I hope they will also include some element - even just a passing reference - to denialist efforts to undermine effective mitigation. It would be interesting to have a credible, carefully thought-through 'historical' take on the issue, from the 'future'.

  24. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    "Yes tell the human story, yes tell it to a mass audience on Showtime, sure why not get James Cameron involved, by why discuss it here on SKS?"

    SkS has no shortage of blog posts on the dry technical aspects of  global warming. I contribute to SkS because, ultimately, we need to act to reduce fossil fuel emissions to limit further harm - the science is crystal clear on that. Unless, of course, the great majority of people want to act out their Mad Max fantasies for real. 

    A series such as this may help shift the needle of public opinion toward support of climate policy and this is to be condoned (IMO). The consequences of climate change and ocean acidification are emotive issues - people have and will continue to die because of the effects of climate change (more intense and more frequent heat waves for instance), so I am unclear how James Cameron is able to film the human aspect without invoking an emotive response - nor should he.

    Slavery/segregation/apartheid did not end because white people were convinced that people of coloured skin were not inferior, nor was it driven by politicians - they only reflect the prevailing attitudes of the day.  Slavery/segregation/apartheid ended when enough people were convinced it was morally wrong, and they then forced politicians to act. I expect the same with climate change/ocean acidification - there is going to be only so much suffering that people will put up with.

    SkS will continue to publish dry technical posts, but we (me in particular) will also deviate from that from time-to-time.  

  25. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    I personally feel that a parallel thread is needed that goes beyond the actual science here at SKS; a place where the message is discussed and not just the metrics of science. Alas we do not have one so I am confused about this post.


    Unfortunately this is going to be for Heartland, WUWT, Morano and his lordship Monckton the kind of unrelated to the actual science focus point on which they can anchor all manner of obfuscation and irrelevance. This will be for the denailinistas what Sara Palin is to logic, reason and informed political discourse; a side show that addresses style over substance, where Hollywood takes the place of MIT and where science is shunted aside for a rain of tears as little innocent children run naked in fear.
    Yes tell the human story, yes tell it to a mass audience on Showtime, sure why not get James Cameron involved, by why discuss it here on SKS? If we are supposed to stay on topic and use linked sources to address the actual science why do we entertain these diversions that are neither scientific nor empirical in nature?
    There is no way in hell this movie/documentary film is going to avoid using the emotions card to try and bend our perceptions and attitudes; as soon as it does it will be game over for any objective and scientific discussion as it relates to the message.

    IMHO

     

  26. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    Tom @10,

    I think you're right. And adding the risk of large and fast SLR to other severe climate risks probably does change the maths into making even relatively limited global warming a civilizational threat, that we better insure ourselves against, as far as we still can.

  27. Dikran Marsupial at 18:31 PM on 6 December 2013
    Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry

    4timesayear wrote "It is most unfortunate that the IPCC did just exactly that with their research - the focus was solely on man-made CO2."

    someone obviously hasn't taken the time to actually read the IPCC WG1 reports then! ;o)

  28. Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues

    I have a question about LAI heating data in figure 1. Is it taken from part 2.3-5 in Church et al. (2011)? If you add those numbers you get 0.4+0.2 *1022J from ice, 0.2 from the atmosphere and 0.67 from land. This adds up to ca 1.5 *1022J, which seems like your result, although your graph implies you have more data from the period and not just an interpolation of these values.

  29. How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

    John Hartz  Having read the piece to which you pointed, I note that nowhere in that piece (as far as I could see) does it say that some meteorologists deny global warming.  What it does say is that some meteorologists are not convinced of human input into global warming,  which isn't quite the same thing

  30. Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry

    4TimesAYear, your comments rise--or fall--to the level of 'so wrong, they're not even wrong." Not sure where to start but here will do.

    "It is most unfortunate that the IPCC did just exactly that with their research - the focus was solely on man-made CO2."


    The IPCC did not *do* research: they compiled and--dare I say it?--averaged the data and research of thousands of respected and well-supported organizations, from governments' research institutions, down to the work of individual climatologists. The "focus...solely on man-made CO2" only exists in the minds of the dismissives: I assure you that, for nearly 150 years, all your other sources have been studied. 

    Facts, being pesky things, have shown that nothing can account for the change in our climate--from paleo records, to ice records, to dendro records, and to heliological studies--and the only thing left, as Sherlock would say, however improbable, is the answer. Humans have caused this rapid and unprecedented change in the Earth's atmosphere, and to bring this back on topic, the consensus of >97% of the world's scientists and scientific organizations....disagree with *you.*

     

  31. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    What I think would have the biggest impact is showing real people's faces who either lost their lives, lost their children, or lost their homes and way of life, telling their stories to the world.  Since children are especially hard-hit by warming related diseases, there should be a ruthless use of their loss, the same way those religious organizations do to get donation money.


    Part of the problem here in the US is that many of the worst effects are on the other side of the world (well, there are plenty of examples right here too, and maybe that needs to be displayed as well to make it more close to home) and the average person never sees the face of the suffering.  Too much focus is placed on the future sometimes, when the reality is that there are real consequences now, today.  And that will only get worse.  Make it moral.  Because it is.

  32. How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

    Also see Chris Mooney's Blue Marble/Mother Jones blog post, Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming 

  33. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    lennartvdl @4, in general you should base your policy on the expected value of your actions.  With regard to sea level rise, this means determining your range of policy options and finding the costs (including the mitigation and adaption costs) of that policy over the range of possible outcomes; multiplying the cost times the probability of each outcome for each policy option; taking the sum of the products for each policy option; then choosing policy with the lowest integrated product (ie, expected value).  Because costs for sea level rise increase with the size of the rise, and with the rapidity of the rise, the expected value of greater rises will be greater than equally probable, but lower rises.  Therefore they will be given more weight.  However, the worst possible outcomes will have such a low probability that their expected value will be small.  Thus, policy should be weighted towards avoiding higher sea level rises, but not premised doing everything to avoid the worst possible but low probability outcome.

    Of course, if the worst possible outcome represents an existential threat to (in reverse order of severity), our civilization, our species, or our biosphere, that changes the maths and we should be basing our policy on avoiding the worst possible plausible outcome.  In this case, however, global warming does not threaten the biosphere (although it does threaten mass extinction); it may but is unlikely to be to threaten our species extinction, and has a plausible risk of threatening our civilization.  Sea level rise by itself, however, does not threaten any of the three, even with multi-meter per century rises.  

  34. What climate denial has learnt from tobacco denial

    ALL: Vincentrj found it impossible to comply with many provisions of the SkS Comments Policy. Therefore all of his comments, and responses to them, are being deleted.

  35. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    GrindupBaker,

    Ocean water is more complicated.  The coefficient of expansion changes with salinity and pressure.  In the Arctic at the surface, the maximun density is about -2C.  Unfortunately, I do not have a reference for the values,but they are complicated.  Without a clear reference table it is best to not speculate on expansion from temperature increase.

  36. We're heading into an ice age

    Its worth pointing out that the other thing you need to turn a local NH glacial event into a global event, is to pull down the GHG levels. See Hansen and Sato 2012 (esp Fig2). NH Albedo change only really affects NH climate.

  37. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    "water expands as it heats" in the posting can be misleading because water colder than 4C contracts as it heats (until 4C) and average ocean temperature is a tad above 3C according to sparse and somewhat contradictory information I've found. However, the topmost few hundred metres, with the significant +ve thermal expansion coefficient in lower latitudes, still has most of its heat remaining to be added to reach balance with the surface layer (I compute roughly 80% of heat still be added in the topmost 300 metres) so I think there's some decades of thermal expansion yet to come.

  38. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    It's great to see a heavy weight film maker as James Cameron motivated to tell this story to a larger audience. Way to go, Jim!

  39. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    Composer -- along those lines, my screenplay strives to firmly adhere to scientific projections.  I hope to have a website where folks can explore the scientific basis of the different scenarios depicted.  In fact, I initially wrote in a scene featuring methane clathrate 'explosions' but then deleted it after looking at the latest findings on the 'clathrate gun' scenario.

  40. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    Phil,

    I agree if we're talking about the IPCC ranges. I was thinking of the expert judgement ranges, however, assuming that the experts take into account the potential feedbacks that the IPCC models ignore.

  41. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    The downside of a popularized account of the impacts of climate change is that it could end up being The Day After Tomorrow.

    Fortunately, I expect this new Showtime programme will not reach such depths. With any luck the production team will consult heavily with scientists while developing their themes and storylines for each season and episode, allowing an effective combination of factual accuracy and emotional/motivational impact (ideally maximizing both).

  42. Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously

    (Forgive the 'non-sciency' comment, but as this is a 'non-sciency' post..)  I am a climate writer over at Huffington Post.  Watching a Hollywood blockbuster a couple months ago (the Brad Pitt zombie movie, 'World War Z'), I realized that many, many millions more people would see and possibly be 'moved' by a Hollywood climate change blockbuster than ever would by my articles.  I've just about completed the screenplay; am about to send it in to a 'script doctor' for vetting and feedback.  Called 'The Devil's Bargain' ( a la Hansen's 'Faustian bargain'), it is set in 2072 in a now 4C warmer world on the eve of humanity's enormous geoengineering intervention via aerosol sulfate injection -- "Project Shield".  James Cameron is my target (along with Leonardo DiCaprio).  Perhaps it is time for such a movie -- whether my screenplay is up to snuff remains to be seen!

  43. We're heading into an ice age

    jhnplr:

    I didn’t bother to duplicate your graph, just inverted it (better with time running from left to right, don’t you think?) and adjusted it a bit.

    First of all, let me emphasize that I’m not a sceptic of the Milankovitch theory in general as it fits the temperature data quite well. And the reason why the summer insolation in the north seems to control the climate in the south is clearly related to the fact that the albedo feedback from ice sheets and vegetation is much larger in the north.

    As explained earlier, the main reason why I don’t believe in a new glaciation within the next few millennia is that the summer insolation in the north won’t drop much further before starting to rise again in 2-3000 years. Let’s look at the graph and study the end of the last interglacial, the warm Eemian.

    Insolation changes at the end of the Eemian

    When the temperature had dropped to present level about 118,000 years ago (1) the 65N July insolation (2) was already lower than during the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago! It was in fact lower than at any time during the last 110,000 years, except for a short period about 70,000 years ago. When the insolation reached it minimum 3-4000 years later (3) after a drop of nearly 100 watt/m2 from the peak, the temperature (4) was still comparable to the level 14,000 years ago – when the insolation was almost 60 watt/m2 higher!

    It clearly takes a large increase of insolation to pull us out of a glaciation once it has started and a large decrease to initiate a new glaciation from an interglacial. The next few millennia will not give us that large decrease, but some of the CO2 we’ve already emitted will stay in the atmosphere long enough to keep the concentration above 300 ppm – highest for 800,000 years – until the insolation start to rise again.

    The claim that early agriculture and deforestation may have prevented or delayed the next glaciation is an interesting theory. We shouldn’t dismiss that early humans may have had a significant impact on the environment despite their primitive technology if given some tens of millennia considering what we have done in only a few decades. But some of these impacts, deforestation and desertification from overgrazing, have increased the Earths albedo and therefore acted as a negative forcing. I don’t know if the positive forcing from a few more ppm of CO2 was enough to counteract this. Maybe no one knows for sure, but it’s an interesting topic.

  44. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
    Worse than worst case is pretty hard to estimate, I think only situation during PETM comes close of the current imbalance on the energy budget, and as that happened on earth without ice sheets, there is no good precedent to take clues of what's going to happen on grand scale. Sure the geomorphology constrains glacier flows somewhat, but surges of glacial ice from most glaciers having a marine outlet - say in ten year intervals - might result on further increases in the IPCC numbers.
  45. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    lennartvdl

    Decisions should be based on worse than worst case scenarios! There really is no indication that the abysmal efforts to mitigate climate change will change anytime soon, so we have to assume BAU. On that basis, we then have to assume an accelerating increase in positive feedbacks, not just from continued increase in anthropogenic CO2 and other GHGs, but also release of CO2 from the oceans as they warm; release of more CO2 and methane from melting permafrost; reduced albedo as the Arctic continues its death spiral; and reduced CO2 uptake from biomass such as Amazonia as extreme weather (changes in precipitation) adds to destruction caused by human activities. I for one cannot help but feel we're rapidly approaching a tipping point, if we haven’t done so already, that will result in runaway climate change.

    It will take a gargantuan and unprecedented global effort to slow down, let alone halt or reverse, climate change . For example, to replace the estimated 18.3 trillion kWh of electricity production by fossil fuels in 2025 (US IEA) would require the installation of about 4 million Megawatts of non FF electricity production. Assuming an optimistic 50% capacity factor, that’s about 6500 London arrays (the largest offshore wind farm in the world), or 1200 Hinkley nuclear power stations. And that will reduce CO2 emissions by a ‘mere’ 30% by 2025, which by itself will slow down the onset of runaway climate change, not prevent it.

    Although there’s hope that world leaders will wake up before it’s too late, it behoves policy makers to plan for worse than worst case – adaptation may be all we’re left with.

  46. How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

    Tom,

    In the USA there is little difference between a BA and a BS or an MA and an MS.  For a survey like this I would consider them equivalent.  I used to hire scientists and I just looked for a masters degree, I did not look at whether it was an MS or an MA.  The school that granted the degree, and the specific classes taken, were more important.

  47. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49A

    Chaps, slightly sideways, but I hope you pick this up as it deserves larger exposure than my poor blog can provide: http://www.iied.org/offer-extended-free-access-papers-cities-climate-change .

    I hope you can use this.

  48. Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

    John Abraham writes:

    "According to the best case scenario (humans take very aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gases), the experts think sea level rise will likely be about 0.4–0.6 meters (1.3–2.0 feet) by 2100 and 0.6–1.0 meters (2.0–3.3 feet) by 2300. According to the more likely higher emission scenario, the results are 0.7–1.2 meters (2.3–3.9 feet) by 2100 and 2.0–3.0 meters (6.5–9.8 feet) by 2300."

    This is what these experts as a group think likely. But what do they think is possible? What could be the worst case?

    According to one of the authors, Stefan Rahmstorf, about half of these experts think there's a 5% chance that SLR by 2300 could be more than 4 meters in a worst-case scenario (whereas 3.8 meters seems to be about the worst-case according to IPCC AR5, chapter 13, figure 13.13).

    Four of this half think there's a 5% chance it could be more than 9 meters. Three of these four think it could be more than 10 meters. Two of these three think it could be more than 12 meters. And one of these two thinks it could be even more than 15 meters by 2300 (see Rahmstorf's inline response to my comment 9 at the RealClimate post).

    So should citizens and policy makers make decisions based on the likely range, or on the worst-case in the possible range?

  49. Dikran Marsupial at 19:03 PM on 5 December 2013
    CO2 measurements are suspect

    A good way to check on claims that have been made in journal papers is to use Google Scholar to identify papers that have cited the paper and see if any of them are critical or provide evidence that answers the claims made.  I this case, I found

    T. GüllükF. SlemrB. Stauffer, "Simultaneous measurements of CO2, CH4, and N2O in air extracted by sublimation from Antarctica ice cores: Confirmation of the data obtained using other extraction techniques", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (1984–2012)l Volume 103, Issue D13, pages 15971–15978, 20 July 1998

    A sublimation technique has been developed to extract air samples from polar ice cores for subsequent simultaneous measurement of several trace gases by frequency-modulated tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy. This extraction and analysis technique is shown to be suitable as an extraction method for the determination of concentrations of the greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O in air samples of ∼1–5 cm3 recovered from ice samples of 10–50 g. Air samples from the Siple ice core have been analyzed covering the period between 1772 and 1973. In addition, a few samples from two different ice cores from Vostok station have been analyzed. Our results are in a good agreement with results obtained by other researchers using melting and crushing extraction techniques. This agreement indicates that processes connected with the formation of clathrates in ice under high pressure at greater depths and their destruction after drilling are not affecting the CO2, CH4, and N2O measurements significantly.

    [emphasis mine]

    Which appears to provide experimental evidence directly refuting one of Jaworowski's arguments (in addition to that provided by Etheridge).  Essentially the scientists that work on ice core data do know what they are doing and do their best to examine possible sources of bias or error and eliminate them, as these two papers demonstrate.

  50. How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

    Dhogaza @48, what you wrote, verbatim was:

    "The AMS requirements were not as stringent in the past, as I indicated in my first comment. Watts is there because he's old enough to have escaped the need for a degree. He was a member long, long before he was an author of a relevent scientific publication."

    OK, where is your evidence that Watts was ever member of the AMS rather than an associate member?

    Where is your evidence, given that you have evidence of his full membership, that he retained full membership when associate membership was introduced?

    And, where is you evidence that Watts was a special case in either of the above - for lacking that, what was true of Watts could be true of any other non-degreeed member or associate member of the AMS from the same era?  You now claim that the assertions I attributed to you @45 where not yours.  No, they were merely direct implications of your assertions and the assumption that Watts was not a special case.  So unless you want to assert he was, stop evading your own claims, and defend them.  Or admit you were wrong.

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