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Anne-Marie Blackburn at 18:58 PM on 29 November 2013No, Greenland Wasn't Green
mspelto, thanks for the feedback. I think it's worth remembering that this is the basic version of the Greenland was green rebuttal, so my aim was to keep the message simple and highlight the key points only. I think it would be good to use the links you provide in the intermediate version of the rebuttal - I'll have a word with John and see if that rebuttal should be updated.
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bratisla at 18:49 PM on 29 November 2013Video: 10 climate myths debunked in under 4 minutes
I think he found a great way to answer the last argument. A personal way - this is an open question, one can disagree with him - but it's breaking the "you are haters wanting us to go back to the Dark Ages" meme in a not so common way. Fossil fuels indeed had advantages - it was a "cheap" way to extract and transport energy back in the XIX and XX century - the problem is that their drawbacks are now huge, it is not as cheap and it will become more expensive as we scrap the bottom of the barrel (peak oil).
And, for once, we have a Gish Gallop of correct answers - I would like "skeptics" to answer everything :]
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Dikran Marsupial at 18:38 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@28 I think you are reading too much into what has been written about the analogy, especially the existence of a subtext. It is hard to think of examples of large amounts of energy that most in the general public will appreciate that do not have some element of destructiveness. You yourself suggest thunderstorms, which have a clear detsructive element (and I would suggest the total amount of energy in a thunderstorm is not something the general public will easily appreciate). Likewise Saturn V rockets, how close to one would you want to be when it lifts of?
People are not very good with large numbers, so an example is needed where the individual components themselves are obviouly very large and then show that even for those large components you still need a large number of them. Almost evey object that has a large amount of energy assiciated with it wil have some element of danger when viewed in a particular way.
In discussing science (or indeed anythin) it is better to stick to what is actually said, rather than "reading between the lines" as it may be that you end up attacking an argument that nobody actually intended to make. I am a big fan of Hanlon's razor, although I like to reword it along the lines of
"always interpret the actions [or words] of others in the best light that is consistent with the observations".
Human being are only too good at inventing motives for others (I suspect an evolutionary adaption facilitating living as a member of a society), in the same way we are only too good at seeing patterns in noisy signals. None of us are mind readers, and if you think there is a subtext, it is better to ask for clarification rather than assume that it is genuinely there.
The real problem is that most people can't grasp the amount of heat we recieve from the sun (a large nuclear device that will one day destroy the Earth completely), which is why a very small change in atmospheric constituents can have such a large effect on the energy balance as it is modulating a very very large flow of energy. The widget helps to put the amount of energy into context without involving scientific units that will me meaningless to most people. Hopefully it will surprise people and make them think.
Would you agree that the text provided on the widget website on the impacts is moderate and well justified?
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r.pauli at 13:40 PM on 29 November 2013Video: 10 climate myths debunked in under 4 minutes
Great. I wish he would do more on the subject.. His video style would move things along considerably.
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Tom Curtis at 12:48 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Rob @16, it does matter. If "warmist" bets are closed and "coolist" bets remain open, the gap between them will be closed over time. After a few years it will appear that both sides are equally convinced of their claims as evidenced by willingness to bet, whereas "warmists" were overwhelmingly more confident of their opinion in fact.
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wili at 10:55 AM on 29 November 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #18: Warsaw Climate Talks
The link for the story, "South scores 11th-hour win on climate loss and damage" yields a "File Not Found" message for me.
William, I am not exactly against the tax approach, but it seems rather weak tea considering the catastrophe we face. It would be as if WWII Britain discovered that there was a whole industry on their soil that was madly producing thousands of bombs and sending them to the Germans to drop on British cities, and the British government's response was, "We are goint to increase the tax a bit on those blokes who are building those bombs and sending them off to the Gerries. That ought to do the trick."We know now that burning ff is deeply immoral and deeply damaging to ourselves, our children, and our future. We don't have to marginally discourage their use. We have to abolish their use. Essentially immediately.
But for some reason, that wasn't among the major proposals being considered in Warsaw last week, as far as I saw, unfortunately.
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Tom Curtis at 10:51 AM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Jason B @16 and Dikran Marsupial @24 & 25, here are some more interesting statistics for you. The Earth is accumulating energy due to global warming at a rate equivalent to 0.19 times that of the average energy of a thunderstorm every second. It is also accumlating energy at the rate of 2 milliseconds of global sunshine per second. Or of twelve Saturn V rockets per second.
Intentions are complex things. I am certain that the primary intention of John Cook and Bob Lacatena with the widget is to find a direct counter to the "global warming pause" nonsense being spouted by deniers; and one that will stick in peoples memories, and get their attention. But we often have more than one intention with regard to things we do, particularly complex things - and we are also often not clear in our mind as to what those intentions are. In this case, while the text of the widget is about energy accumulation, the subtext is about damage, and disaster.
This is made clear by the choices of comparators for the widget; all of which involve damage, and very great significant damage. It is telling that not one comparator that does not involve the risk of damage is used. Even with the atomic bomb comparator, the choice was made to not leave the risk of damage abstract, by choosing a comparator from a bomb test, eg, the Trinity device, but rather to make it very specific by comparing to Little Boy.
John Cook lets slip the subtext when he describes the reason for the widget:
"“Joules per second” is a difficult unit of measure to appreciate, and is especially foreign to people who are unfamiliar with science. This widget attempts to put that heating into terms that are easier to visualize. 250 trillion Joules per second is equivalent to:
- Detonating four Hiroshima atomic bombs per second
- Experiencing two Hurricane Sandys per second
- Enduring four 6.0 Richter scale earthquakes per second
- Being struck by 500,000 lightning bolts per second
- Exploding more than eight Big Ben towers, with every inch packed full of dynamite, per second"
There is, of course, no general difference between the energy of a lightning bolt that does, or does not strike somebody. There is a big difference in the harm. In this instance, this is a mere slip of words - but it is a slip that reveals an underlying intention. Note, underlying, not primary. Given the range of choices made in designing the widget - the choice of harmful comparators, the preference for an atomic detonation in war over a civilian population to a test device, and John Cooks slip of the pen, the subtext of the widget is very clear. So clear that when I simply described the comparators of the widget to my mother (without mentioning any of my objections), she exclaimed, "They're trying to scare people silly!"
I believe that John Cook and Bob Lacatena and the rest of the SkS team are so focussed on the primary intent that they may well be missing the subtext. But it is there. And because it is there it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that the rate of energy accumulation is a poor index of potential harm from global warming.
Finally, and specifically, Dikran draws attention to how difficult it is to concieve the amount of energy involved. That is correct, but the comparators do not help much in that regard. Can you really conceive of the energy involved in an atomic explosion? Your are familiar with scientific notation and units of energy. Does that allow you to look at an image of an atomic explosion you have not seen (or read about) before and guess with reasonable accuracy its energy in joules? All you really appreciate is that it is a lot of very destructive energy. The same applies to varying degrees to the other comparators. And as for Big Ben's full of dynamite, just how much dynamite is that? And how do you tell from appearances the amount of energy released per stick of dynamite? All that conveys is that it is a lot of energy, with a nice visualization of a massive explosion in central London.
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Tom Curtis at 09:24 AM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
chriskoz @26, the slugulator is a very simple model. It's "energy trapped" is the "time integrated readiative forcing", not the time integrated TOA energy imbalance. This creates three distortions for the use you want to put it to. First, the TOA energy imbalance is much less (currently about a third of) than the radiative forcing. Second, as temperature stabalizes (approximately 40 years in the slugulator) the TOA energy imbalance falls to near zero, while the radiative forcing remains significant for near 1 million years. Third, the slugulator introduces CO2 in a single slug, thus seeing CO2 concentrations (and radiative forcings) that will never occur with the gradual emissions from anthropogenic sources. The difference is that with the slugulator, initially atmospheric CO2 rises by the full value of the emissions, before falling to about 25% of that over a few hundred years. With gradual emissions, atmospheric CO2 never rises above 50% above initial emissions, before falling to 25% of initial emissions over the timescale of emissions plus a few hundred years.
It is difficult from that to determine an actual ratio of "good" and "bad" heat from fossil fuels. Integrated over 50 years (the time for near stabilization of temperature in the slugulator), "bad" heat is approximately 100 times "good" heat; and allowing for corrections for the difference between TOA energy imbalance and radiative forcing is approximately a third of that. I shall assume that the difference between the spike and gradual emissions (which extend the time to near energy balance) cancel each other out, which give a very approximate estimate that "bad" energy exceeds "good" good energy by about a factor of 33.
The slugulator, however, does illustrate one of the problems of focusing on the energy imbalance. The energy imbalance approximates to zero from about 50 years after the cessation of net emissions. The temperature consquences persist for hundreds of thousands of years. It is the temperature difference that does the damage. Therefore integrating TOA energy imbalance over time (let alone radiative forcing) is a very poor index of potential damage from global warming. It, however, does progressively less damage with time after stabilization as first society, and then ecosystems adapt to the new temperature. Consequently even integrating temperature difference overtime (which the slugulator also does) gives little indication of likely damages from global warming.
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TonyW at 08:56 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
jhnplmr, James Hansen's book is a good one to read. He shows that humans could overwhelm any natural forcing that would lead to an ice age by building one chlorofluorocarbon factory and ejecting the product. So, an ice age will never happen for as long as humans have such a capability. I suppose that might not be for long, though. -
chriskoz at 08:29 AM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Dikran@24,
Most scientifically correct and "least hyperbolic" way to realise the effects of AGW is to run David Archer's slugulator model:
climatemodels.uchicago.edu/slugulator/
Ignore (or get rid of) the methane spike which does not apply here and leeave the default CO2 spike. Then look to the top right to compare Energy Yield From Fossil Fuel to Energy Trapped (in Joules). Just with the default model settings (modest 1GtC emissions) and over just 100y (your theoretical lifespan), the numbers are already staggering:
3.75e+19 vs. 1.58e+22
i.e.: the "bad" energy due to GHG is 500times more than the "good" or "useful" energy we can get by burning FF. The actual number is like 1000 times due to efficiency of FF machines.
If you setup the longer time (e.g. million y) the number will be beyond imagination (~e+5 times) because a fraction (some 5-10%) of CO2 you've burned will last in the atmosphere more than 100,000y, essntially forever on any human timescale. As David said: "this is going to be the longest lasting legacy you will leave behind - think about it every time you fill in your gas tank"
That comparison is the best, better than Tom's comparison with food, because it compares apples to apples exactly and creates the right feeling - not scare or shock - but guilt. However, that comparison is inadequate if directed to the ignorant public who does not care to understand the science. That unfortunately includes the nast majority of piliticians, who perhaps do not even understand exponential notation. In such ignorant cases, the only analogy lest is a shocking analogy of #HB/s.
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Video: 10 climate myths debunked in under 4 minutes
The rebuttal of "The sun's just getting hotter" at 1:16 took about 0.5 seconds! :-) :-)
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Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#15 jhnplmr:
You are wrong. The insolation change you are referring to wasn’t global, but regional, while the GHG forcing is global. If you look at figure 2 here you will notice that while the annual insolation has decreased at high latitudes during Holocene it has increased in the tropics. The global average hasn’t changed at all. And figure 1 shows that AGW hasn’t only stopped the cooling trend that started 5500 years ago, but caused most of the warming back to Holocene optimum level or higher in only 150 years.
Human emissions of greenhouse gases are now the leading forcing that will determine the Earths climate for millennia to come.
BTW, the summer solstice insolation at 65oN is close to its minimum right now at 481 watt/m2 and will remain between 480 and 493 watt/m2 for the next 20,000 years because the precession that changes the time of perihel will be countered by decreased orbital eccentricity and axial tilt.
So, even without AGW it’s unlikely that we would get an ice age during the next 20,000 years. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:52 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
mrkt... Just double checked and the data I have is correct in the chart, I just stated it incorrectly in the blog post.
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:50 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
mrkt @6... You're right. I'll fix that.
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:41 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Tom @7... I should have gone back to read the terms more clearly. You're correct. But it didn't seem like a contentious issue on what charity would receive the funds. I remember there being some discussion of Doctors Without Borders, which is perfectly find. And I think Pierre likes them as well.
My primary point of the bet has already been confirmed, that deniers are not willing to put their money where their mouths are. I was actually excited at one point to be proven wrong on this point. Reading back through the comments there was another "warmist" who also wanted to come in at the time the betting was open for $5k. But we've so overwhelmed their betting level at this point that it doesn't really matter.
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jhnplmr at 04:21 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
"You just can't add 2.3Watts/m2 of man-made radiative forcing (source) to the climate system and believe the planet is not going to warm."
From the Jul 65N Milankovitch cycle the solar insolation was 469.44W/m2 at the maximum 10,000 years ago. It is 426.76W/m2 today, a fall of 42.68W/m2. It seems to me that you will have to add a lot more than 2.3W/m2 to avoid global cooling in the next 2000 years (minimum of present cycle). Whether this will be apparent in the next decade is anybodys guess, there are too many other variables.
Moderator Response:[TD] No, the next glaciation won't be happening for many tens of thousands of years. Here is a starting point for you, but read the comments as well: We’re heading into an ice age
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william5331 at 04:01 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Seems likely that there will be an El Nino before the end of this decade. Where do I get a piece of the action.
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Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
I’m quite sure you’ll win this bet, Rob!
This is the result if we use the data from GISS instead of RSS or UAH:
January 2001 – December 2010: 0.593oC
January 2011 – October 2013: 0.574oC
November 2004 – October 2013: 0.598oC
The running decadal average up till now is already in the lead, although the margin so far is much smaller than the uncertainty.
The fact that every year after 2000 have been warmer than every year before 1998 (according to GISS data) is a strong hint that the increasing forcing from the GHG’s already has cancelled out much of the cooling impact from negative ENSO, aerosols and a weak solar cycle during the last 10-12 years.
So, if a decant El Niño doesn’t occur soon, it’s just a matter of time before the next annual record will be set in a neutral or even an ENSO negative year!
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Emilio at 01:46 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
WT* American Meteorological Society are doing here?
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
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kmalpede at 01:33 AM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/extreme-whether
We are a not-for-profit 501 (c) 3 raising money to produce a play that tells the story of Climate Scientists battling climate deniers...it's based on what has actually happened to the real-life scientists. If you want a good "charity" think of contributing to our Indiegogo campaing. We will also be hosting Festivals of Conscience when scientists and activists dialogue with audiences. James Hansen, Jennifer Francis, the late, dear Father Paul Mayer have spoken after public readings of the play. Needless to say, the Sloan Foundation (which endows a chair at MIT held by a major denier) and other big foundations connected to fossil fuels have refused to fund us. Take a look at the video on the link above. I think you'll like what you see, or www.theaterthreecollaborative.org
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macoles at 23:23 PM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Yes, the last graph is by far the best way of tracking the bet, unfortunately I didn't see it on the first read.
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Dikran Marsupial at 23:07 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Incidentally, I am sure there are blogs out there that will attack the widget as being "alarmist" (even though it isn't*). However I suspect there will be rather fewer of them that attack it as being factually incorrect (i.e. there is a significant disparity in joules on each side of the equation).
As John Cook says:
"The only downside of this metaphor is it is emotional - the Hiroshima bomb does come with a lot of baggage. However, this metaphor isn't used because it's scary - it's simply about communicating the sheer amount of heat that our climate is accumulating. I've yet to encounter a stickier way of communicating the scale of the planet's energy imbalance."
*even the "impacts" tab of the widget website only goes so far as to say that it presents a "clear and worrying danger", and provides references to the literature to justify that assertion. I agree we should be worried about climate change, but that does not mean we should be frightened, scared or alarmed by it, that is hyperbole. There is still time to do something about it, but one thing is for certain, which is that bloviating about alarmism whilst being unable to accept scientific truths is not part of the solution.
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:33 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom, I think you are over-interpreting the widget. It records the amount of heat in multiples of Hiroshima bombs, not the amount of harm. Common sense ought to suggest that this is not the intended message as the harm of 2 billion atomic bombs is fairly easy to visualise, and would have left a rather more noticable effect on the planet!
The widget is intended to convey the amount of energy that has been added to the planet due to the imbalance in the energy budget to a general audience not to scientists, so some analogy is needed. For me the the food analogy doesn't work either because most people don't have a good conception of how much energy there is in a food calorie, it is actually quite a lot, but the body is rather inefficient in turning it into work, so it doesn't seem all that much.
As for whether things are scary, I don't see anything in the article that suggests that we should be alarmed or scared by this figure, just surprised.
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barry1487 at 21:19 PM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
FTR, If my bet is allowed I would pay the full amount regardless of what the other side pledges. Putting my money where my mouth is # it's for charity.
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chriskoz at 18:46 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
I have a simple question which I guess should go to Bob,
SkS and Guardian setup the widget to count from 1998.
However some other blogs e.g. this one managed to set the count from 1970. I cannot find the UI settings to change that parameter. Where is the setting for the starting year and can you set it to any year of your choice? Then, how does the widget calculate the baseline #HBs to start counting from? Based on the heat uptake history from some known publication, e.g. Nuccitelli 2012?
Moderator Response:[Bob] Any host can choose any start date (starting from 1970) when they configure the widget for their own web site or blog.
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macoles at 17:24 PM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Am I misunderstanding something?
The bet is that the absolute 2011-2020 decade average will be warmer than the 2001-2011 decade average. The graph is showing the derivative of the decades (progressively averaged to date). The bet isn't will 2020's decadal warming rate be higher than 2010's warming rate.
Unless January 2001 has the exact same absolute temp as January 2011 then ploting the warming rates side by side isn't going to tell you much.
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scaddenp at 16:53 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Okay, earth retains heat, but in practical terms the effect is that surface radiation is increased. Elsewhere ("its not bad"), is probably best place to discuss this but I would contend that your belief that this much energy doesnt matter is completely uninformed by science. Sealevel rise doesnt matter? Or by what have you convinced yourself that Dai doesnt matter?
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jyyh at 15:40 PM on 28 November 2013Will extreme weather like super typhoon Haiyan become the new norm?
I'm getting 180-190 mph limit for category 6 here, http://erimaassa.blogspot.fi/2013/11/haiyan-scale.html
I think there is a need for a consistent scale of above 11 beauforts, since i think the ocean water-atmosphere exchange should increase even though the height of the waves do not. Do stronger hurricanes produce saltier rain than the lesser ones? In the grand scheme of things this likely isn't very notable effect but locally it might be, not to talk anything about the devastation caused by the tropical cyclone itself. My 6$ isn't much but it should be enough for some water proof cloth for a shelter or rain water collection. on B.Gates income that would be some 10M$, and he does a lot of charity, but every little bit may help.
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Tom Curtis at 15:19 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
chriskoz @15, that is a very narrow definition of harm. Never-the-less you raise a valid point. Not all harm comes from the flows of energy per se, and therefore the inverse of entropy is a limited measure of potential harm. Life, for instance, is not just a heat engine, but also a complex set of chemical reactions in solution. As a result temperatures significantly below freezing, by freezing the solvent (ie, the liquid in which the chemicals are dissolved) prevents the continuation of life. As a result, a massive loss of energy from the Earth's surface as in a glaciation, is also harmful.
Never-the-less, to the extent the gain of energy is harmfull, it is largely due to the loss of entropy with that gain. And given the destructive nature of the units in the widget - atomic bombs, hurricanes, earthquakes, lighting strikes, 6,900 tonnes of dynamite (a Big Ben full) - are all destructive, there is no question that the widget emphasizes the destructive nature of the energy. It does so regardless of the intentions of the creators of the widget simply because of the chosen units. And given that, the issue of entropy is central as to wether the widget, in an attempt to communicate one part of the science very clearly inadvertently misleads on another.
In passing, by the way, I think you seriously underestimate the destructiveness continuing high frequency rain of nuclear weapons. A rain of atomic bombs at 4 per second means that everywhere on Earth, on average falls within the area of total destruction from an arial blast twice a year. Continued over a century (the minimum time frame for potential ocean anoxia) that would certainly exterminate all surface life. If bombs falling over the ocean detonated at 250 meters depth (or the bottom, whichever is deeper), it would also exterminate most ocean life, including all corals. In all, it would release 40,000 times the energy of a total nuclear exchange (at slightly higher entropy). It would only avoid ocean anoxia because it would create a nuclear winter sufficient to bring back, in all probability, snow ball Earth.
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Terranova at 14:40 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
scaddenp @ 18
The earth does not receive extra energy due to GHGs, but it does retain energy due to GHGs. But, no, at this point I do not find it neither scary, nor much less worrisome. And, the Stern Report is frought with issues that need to be addressed before it can be taken seriously.
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Tom Curtis at 14:23 PM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Rob, a small point. You say that the losers money will be donated to "a charity of the winner's choice". In contrast, Pierre Gosselin writes:
"As mentioned above, the charity organisation is yet to be chosen, but will (1) be one that both sides agree on, (2) help children in dire need (3) have low overhead and (4) be international."
You may wish to clarrify that point.
Further, who counts as a winner? Specifically, as denier bets are only a fraction of pro-science bets:
1) do all pro-science pledgers cound as winners (should they win), with loser bets assigned pro-rata?
2) Or is it first come, first served, with bets paired of based on time of reciept so that later betting pro-science winners are not counted as winners?
3) Or is it just handled en masse, with choice of charity decided by a committee,
4) or by the two principles (you and Pierre)?
Or is some other method used.
Further, will the "warmer" side only pay an amount equal to the "cooler" sides commitments in the event that the temperatures are cooler? Pierre seems to indicates as such. If so that makes the former question even more consequential, for with choices (1), (3) and (4) those betting for warmer will only need to pay a fraction of their commitment. In the case of (2), early betters will pay their full commitment, but late comers will not need to pay (if betting stays as it is).
The upshot is that only if Pierre is right about the paltry betting by "coolists" limiting the commitment of "warmists"; and further only if method (2) is used, does he have reasonable grounds for nolonger taking "warmist" bets. In all other cases, his refusal to take more bets looks like an attempt to limit the embarassment of "coolists" from their lack of conviction in their beliefs.
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Terranova at 14:18 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Add an option to that widget that shows the known human contribution in percentage to "heat" gained.
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scaddenp at 14:15 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
you are entitled to your opinion, but are you also claiming that the extra energy being received by earth as a result of increased GHG is not scary? What do you think of the numbers in the Stern report?
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Terranova at 14:05 PM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
TC @ 14
That was well written.
Cook and Lacatena,
I do not like the Hiroshima bomb connection. I am convinced it is meant to create a state of fear within the ignorant. This only leads to further divisiveness amongst the very people you should wish to make think about what is happening in the natural world. The math to compare the energy generated by an atomic bomb in a localized area to the energy received by the Earth from the sun every second of every day is not that difficult, and not at all that scary to someone with a working science background.
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mrkt at 10:43 AM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Just a small point - your current 'decadal running average' should run October 2003 through September 2013 (rather than October 2004) to cover a full 10 years.
P.S. I truly appreciate all the work done by the contributors to this site.
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barry1487 at 10:37 AM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Rob... although bets are closed, I posted just now to encourage Pierre to reopen them til 2015, to reap as much money for charity as reasonably possible. I made a $100 bet for a warmer decade. By his reckoning, reading the last comment there, I'm backing a losing proposition. Maybe he'll take me up :-)
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:02 AM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
barry... I'm assuming we will look at how the numbers look at the end of the decade. At that point, what was the 2001-2010 average might have been adjusted one way or the other. I would assume the most recent data at that time would be the most accurate.
I don't think it's going to be a problem either way. I think the end result will be the same. The latter part of this decade is likely to see some significant El Nino action, and with that a large change in surface temps that will bring the trend up to something close to the longer term trend.
Again, the only caveat might be a major low latitude volcanic event.
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barry1487 at 08:38 AM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
"Just to clean things up a little, here is how I would suggest is the most accurate way to track the bet. The 2001-2010 decadal average is set in stone."
Does this apply if both records are adjusted in the future such that the 2001 - 2010 values change?
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:10 AM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Composer99... I'm actually more pessimistic about that potential. If this decade doesn't show warming in the surface temperature record, that is more likely to mean that the next decade will show an even more rapid rise in temps. And, in the meantime, that means that we'll see even more delay in taking action to reduce FF consumption.
I'm actually quite confident that we'll see a rise in surface temps by the end of the decade. It's not much of a risk, IMO, when you're betting on the side of basic physics.
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Composer99 at 06:05 AM on 28 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Arguably, if this decade ends up not being as warm - surface temperature wise - as the last decade, we all win.
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william5331 at 04:17 AM on 28 November 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #18: Warsaw Climate Talks
As usual, the solution is blindingly obvious and painfully simple.
Adopt Jim Hansen's Climate Change Solution, namely tax and dividend. This will remove investment from fossil fuels and direct it toward renewables as investors try to avoid a hair cut that would be inevitable if they stuck with their fossil fuel shares. Long before there was price parity for electricity generated by FOS vs REN, investment would shift. With the increased competition to get a share of the REN market, as we mounted the learning and volume curves, prices would drop for Renewable energy. Soon coal, oil and gas would be feed stocks for industry and as such would last for thousands of years instead of tens of years. The Keling curve would switch from 8 up and 6 down each year to 6 up and 8 down. How do you overcome vested interests, though. Read the book on the hockey stick by Mann to see what lengths these venal old men are willing to go to to scupper any reduction in their ill gotten gains. The first step is to have the tax payer fund election campaigns and outlaw any corporate contributions. Sound expensive??? It would be a drop in the bucket compared to what this corrupt system is costing and will cost in the future.
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John Hartz at 01:27 AM on 28 November 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #41
@ W P Sokeland:
What type of article do you wish to post? Is it a news article? An original article written by you?
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JasonB at 00:37 AM on 28 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@14,
Here's an interesting statistic. Global warming is causing the Earth's surface to accumulate energy (heat) at 248 times the rate at which the total human population is consuming food energy. Put another way, global warming is storing 4.14 minutes worth of the total human food energy consumption every second. That is an impressive figure. But does it scare you?
Actually, I think that's an excellent comparison. Thinking about it like that made me go "Wow!". Perhaps that could be added to the widget as well. (Another one: the Earth is accumulating energy at a rate 15 times the total rate used by all of human civilisation combined.)
But I think "scare" is misplaced. In the Catalyst example I showed, the host wasn't trying to scare anybody, she was trying to help conceptualise the enormous quantity of energy involved. I also don't share your concerns with comparing high-entropy energy with low-entropy energy — nobody is seriously going to look out their window and wonder where all the mushroom clouds are, are they? Is anybody actually going to mistake one for the other?
The planet is accumulating heat at a rate of 0.5 W/m2 over the entire surface area of the earth. But the surface area of the Earth is very hard to visualise, so it's natural to try to scale down that area to something that you have a hope of visualising. But any attempt to do that will necessarily lead to the problem you describe. What is better? Describe the rate of accumulation averaged over an area too large to visualise, or averaged over an area that gives you a chance of visualising it? I quite liked all of the different representations, as well as yours, because it helps to put it into perspective. But if changing the entropy is not allowed, then we're stuck with 0.5 W/m2 over the entire surface area of the earth, which I don't find much easier to grasp than "2.5x1014 Watts". Seriously, how do you envisage 2.5x1014 Watts without putting it terms of something you're familiar with? And how do you do that without running afoul of your entropy concern?
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jzk at 00:37 AM on 28 November 2013Oceans heating up faster now than in the past 10,000 years, says new study
CB @4,
The abstract does not mention the global nature of the cited periods, but the editor's summary does:
"Rosenthal et al. (p. 617) present a temperature record of western equatorial Pacific subsurface and intermediate water masses over the past 10,000 years that shows that heat content varied in step with both northern and southern high-latitude oceans. The findings support the view that the Holocene Thermal Maximum, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age were global events, and they provide a long-term perspective for evaluating the role of ocean heat content in various warming scenarios for the future."
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wpsokeland at 00:01 AM on 28 November 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #41
John Hartz,
I have an article I would like to post. Please send me an email address where I can send it to you for your approval.
Thanks, W P Sokeland
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martin3818 at 23:38 PM on 27 November 2013Book Review: Global warming and oceans, a 21st century perspective
... and it costs 150 US$ !!!
It does sound fascinating and should you be willing to pass on your free review book, I would be very interested.
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mspelto at 23:13 PM on 27 November 2013No, Greenland Wasn't Green
The statement "So not only was Greenland already mostly covered in ice when Europeans settled there" is too vague. There is literature that can quantify this much better indicating the maximum retreat in the Holocene was before 4000 BP and the margin retreat was on the order of 10-15 km, which compared to the whole ice sheet width is quite small indeed.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018212800101
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379112004209
http://www.glyfac.buffalo.edu/Faculty/briner/buf/pubs/Briner_et_al_2010.pdf
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chriskoz at 22:45 PM on 27 November 2013No, Greenland Wasn't Green
Glenn@5,
...he was a Property Developer
Doe you have a reference to that? Half joking, half seriously, I've heard all sorts of stories who he was (warrior, killer, outcast) but this one looks as your invention unless you prove otherwise...
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chriskoz at 22:24 PM on 27 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@14,
Your closing comment "its [decreased Earth's overall entropy harm] is far less than suggested by the atomic bomb analogy" is highly subjective and depends on the definition of "harm".
I can define harm as: "destructions of entire ecosystems, e.g. from phytoplankton decline and ocean anoxia" which is quite possible scenario in BAU, similar to that experienced by Earth in PETM. With such definition of harm, I argue that 4HB/s fired sequentially and evenly in round robin fasion over land surface would not be hamful to ocean ecosystems at all. Therefore your comment is wrong.
But that's not my point here. My point is that while I agree with you in general, I note that in your closing comment you're comparing the "harm" of high and low entropy events, which is not comparable per se without context, according to your own discourse above. Therefore you are contradicting yourself here.
Personally, I think the HB analogy is directed at non-scientists, therefore its scientific accuracy is not important here. It's meant to say: "have you realised, this is a lot of heat? If not you'd better learn more about it". As such, it is less "scary" than my example above.
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Kit at 21:54 PM on 27 November 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
Ha, I'll be sure to mention you next time I see him! Apologies, though, I assumed you had access to the journals - happy to forward you a copy if you're interested.
As with anything, the degree of actual risk involved depends on the measures put in place to mitigate that risk. Perceived risk is about how that actual risk is communicated. The public (in the UK anyway) are against fracking because the perceived risk is high, primarily because of the stories coming out of the USA of contaminated drinking water. In this instance, because of light regulations in the US, fracking *has* been a high risk activity. The industry effectively got up to full-steam before any environmental impact research was carried out, and that is only now beginning to catch up. CCS would be different (one hopes!), since the research is ongoing before an industry establishes itself and will inform regulators and operators of the requirements to avoid and mitigate.
Fracking also has a hard sell because it is a deliberate fracturing of the rock, whereas the last thing you want when you're storing CO2 is to do anything of the sort! Fracking is therefore inherently risky at the start of a project, particuarly if the subsurface geology is not well characterised. CCS projects, on the other hand, are designed to be 'safe' because any leakage goes against the aim of the project, and there would likely be stiff penalties for allowing CO2 to escape - the framework for this is already in place in the EU under the CCS Directive, I believe. Therefore, confidence should be high that CO2 storage is a safe thing to do. Pressure maintenance is, of course, an issue and actually forms part of the basis for my PhD. Pressure can be relieved or maintained at a level that will/should not induce any/significant siesmicity (through water production, say) and once the injection wells are shut off then pressure will dissipate through time as CO2 dissolves into the water, mineralises, and migrates laterally in the subsurface. Careful also about scale - hydrocarbon fields are only a fraction of the size of the formations intended for CO2 storage.
However, as you say, the public equate fracking and CCS as the same thing. Communicating that they are different, with different levels of risk is clearly a challenge. In the UK, CO2 storage will be offshore, so less of an issue here but there is already opposition to it in parts of Europe unfortunately!
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