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MA Rodger at 23:25 PM on 2 August 2013An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy
Terranova @51.
I can but assume that you have never read Cook et al 2013. It might be beneficial for you to do so as I can assure you Cook et al 2013 does not as you assert establish that "97% of scientists agree that climate change is real and manmade" Of course, you could continue to ignore the paper and keep making silly comments, or not.
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Terranova at 23:13 PM on 2 August 2013An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy
MA Rodger at 50,
In referring to the recent Cook, et al paper:
"97% of scientists agree that climate change is real and manmade" is an accurate statement.
"97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, manmade and dangerous" is not an accurate statement.
Yet, the President's tweet was promoted and never corrected. There were (and still are) opportunities to correct it.
If the tweet had said, "97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, manmade and beneficial", you know as well as I do that it would have been corrected.
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Paul D at 22:13 PM on 2 August 2013Where SkS-Material gets used - Coursera's Climate Literacy Course
From your description it sounds like a well structured course.
I have had mixed results with the Coursera MOOCs. Out of the 3 I have tried, the first was brilliant, the second was terrible and the third was OK but could have been brilliant.I only got a pass in the first course which was well structured and organised (and often funny, thanks to the good lecturers).
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chriskoz at 21:33 PM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
mikeh,
This is not the first time issue of gas leakage has been raised. I remember Ray Pierrehumbert's response in those previous occasions was the same: even if the leakage is higher than current estimates of 1%, then the short and long term climate effects are still far lower than the effects of burning coal for the equivalent amount of energy received.
I completely agree with Ray here. The issue can be put to bed. Maybe one can show the actual minimal amount of extra forcings from increased methane concentrations due to leaks to prove the veracity of Ray's opinion. But I don't need that: the numbers in my head look obvious.
The extraordinary claim of Whiteman et al article is a different matter because the amount of C release is much larger. The key circumstance they rely their claim on is the extraordinary condition of ESAS. For example, to the assertion of Gavin Schmidt, that Arctic used to be warmer in early Holocene and Eemian, they reply, quote:
In the Early Holocene, the ESAS was not an underwater shelf but a frozen landmass, illustrating the pointlessness of this past analogy with contemporary conditions.
This looks like the basic assumption why the permafrost & clathrate feedback "will be vastly different this time". I don't know what to think of this assumption because I'm not an expert. Maybe others will analyse it.
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MA Rodger at 20:41 PM on 2 August 2013An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy
Terranova @48.
Barry Woods made very many points down this thread. They were mostly ignored, probably because most of what he said was simply not worthy of a reply. The Obama tweet you refer to was "especially" quoted by Barry Woods @1thus:-
@BarackObama Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://OFA.BO/gJsdFp
As a statement, this tweet is inaccurate in a number of ways. But to correct this would require more space than twitter allows and, importantly, the statement does end with a reference to further information which does allow any problems with accuracy to be corrected. Indeed, the tweet is surely imploring the reader to "read more."
Is the point you attribute to Barry Woods that the Reuters article the twitter links to is unfactual? If so, in what way? If not, what is the substance of this point that you are advocating for Barry Woods?
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jsam at 18:35 PM on 2 August 2013An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy
Perhaps Dana could use the same wording to correct BO as Mr Watts has used to correct Mr Inhofe over the last few years.
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mikeh1 at 12:47 PM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Further to @6, Ray Pierrehumbert has commented on natural gas and leakage here.
I do not want to take the discussion on Chris's excellent article off topic. Perhaps SKS can look at this issue in the future.
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scaddenp at 11:59 AM on 2 August 2013Each degree of global warming might ultimately raise global sea levels by more than 2 meters
ajkuiper - perhaps you should read the paper on which the article was based. The input and uncertainities are discussed both there and in the referenced papers. The number is good agreement with estimates from historical data (eg and in particular this referenced by the paper).
"Declared as Fact" is simply sloganeering on your part. It is simply the best estimate from science so far. If you wish to object to the conclusion, it would be better to discuss the actual paper and what difficulties you might have their methodology, assumptions or way of reaching a conclusion.
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Michael P at 11:57 AM on 2 August 2013Each degree of global warming might ultimately raise global sea levels by more than 2 meters
ajkuiper55- I assume you followed the link to the paper that this article discusses? Can you please explain how the evidence, data, facts and past history presented in this paper doesn't exist?
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Rob Painting at 11:49 AM on 2 August 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Actually, like many low-lying islands they are doomed. I was just pointing out the path to inundation is a complex one.
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ajkuiper55 at 11:38 AM on 2 August 2013Each degree of global warming might ultimately raise global sea levels by more than 2 meters
2.3 meter rise per degree of warming is a ficticious number pulled out of a hat and now declared as Fact. There is no Evidence, Data, Facts, Past History to support that conclusion.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please refer to this site's Comments Policy. Comments constructed such as this one of yours fall under the heading of Sloganeering, as scaddenp helpfully notes. Please comport all future comments to comply with the Comments Policy.
Thanks in advance for your compliance; have a nice day.
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Tom Curtis at 10:42 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
michael sweet @30, based on Turco et al that would have been the dominant impact of nuclear testing on climate. I believe Turco et al over estimated the impact of nuclear exchanges on climate, primarilly by underestimating the moderating effect of the thermal mass of the oceans. Further, many nuclear tests were underground (eliminating the aerosol forcing) or at sea (minimizing it), so it is not certain that he net forcing would have been negative, though still likely. However the effect in either direction would be far to small to distinguish from the impact of other factors on Earth's short term climate in the fifties and sixties.
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michael sweet at 10:42 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Google finds this article, unfortunately behind a pay wall. The abstract claims that the global temperature hiatus from 1950-1970 can be attributed to fine dust from above ground nuclear tests. Very few cites by scientists so apparently other scientists did not think much of the hypothesis.
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Terranova at 10:16 AM on 2 August 2013An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy
Barry Woods has a point that is being ignored. If the Obama camp (I seriously doubt he keyed it in himself) tweeted a statement from the original SKS post that was inaccurate (the dangerous part), then the best response from SKS, and any other website parrotting it, should have been, "Great, but to be accurate this is what we said..."
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michael sweet at 09:59 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
I read somewhere that the dust from nuclear testing might have had a cooling affect from increased albeido. Does anyone know if that is real or just something that is spread on the internet?
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Tom Curtis at 09:33 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Glenn @27, as you know I strenuously object to the use of the "Hiro" as a unit of energy, both because (as I understand it), the residents of Hiroshima find it offensive, and because its impact factor comes from its association with the explosion of Little Boy at Hiroshima, with the deaths of 100,000 people immediately or from injuries recieved, and further deaths of 100,000 people +/- from radiation exposure.
I also consider it a scientifically limited comparitor with the total forcing or TOA energy imbalance because it leaves out the essential factor of entropy. The energy imbalance due to the greenhouse effect is not like the dropping of four atomic bombs a second at random over the Earth's surface because far less destructive (while noting that the much less destructive effects will also be much longer lasting, and indeed will outlast the energy imbalance itself).
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gws at 09:28 AM on 2 August 2013To frack or not to frack?
New study on natural gas migration into water wells here.
From the abstract:
"Methane was detected in 82% of drinking water samples, with average concentrations six times higher for homes <1 km from natural gas wells (P = 0.0006). Ethane was 23 times higher in homes <1 km from gas wells (P = 0.0013); propane was detected in 10 water wells, all within approximately 1 km distance (P = 0.01). Of three factors previously proposed to influence gas concentrations in shallow groundwater (distances to gas wells, valley bottoms, and the Appalachian Structural Front, a proxy for tectonic deformation), distance to gas wells was highly significant for methane concentrations (P = 0.007; multiple regression), whereas distances to valley bottoms and the Appalachian Structural Front were not significant (P = 0.27 and P = 0.11, respectively)."
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Tom Curtis at 09:26 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
earthhouse @26, that is an interesting analogy.
Assuming that all energy from nuclear tests was dissipated as heat in the Earth's atmosphere (which without doubt over estimates the amount of heat generated), 0.000044 W/m^2 of energy was generated over the years of nuclear testing. For comparison, the total waste heat from human industry, power generation and transport is 0.028 W/m^2, or 636 times as much. The current Top Of Atmosphere (TOA) energy imbalance is approximately 0.6 W/m^2, or 13,636 as much. The current forcing by CO2 is 1.9 W/m^2, or 43,368 times as much.
Comparison with the power output of individual cars could, no doubt, be calculated, but I do not think the result would be informative. However, the total energy released by nuclear testing (2.5 x 10^18 Joules) is equivalent to that which would be released by burning 71.4 billion liters of gasoline, or 18.9 billion gallons. However, actually burning that amount of gasoline would release 164 million tonnes of CO2, which as it happens is a mere 0.012 ppmv of atmospheric content, considering only the portion retained in the atmosphere. The additional greenhouse effect of that tiny amount of additional CO2 would be 0.00016 W/m^2, or 3.6 times the amount from the total energy release from nuclear testing, with the difference being that that increased greenhouse effect would continue year on year, while the nuclear testing is over and done, and it forcing along with it.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 09:09 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
earthhouse
As a comparison, a common unit that is being used to describe the amount of heat accumulating in the worlds oceans, where over 90% of the heat is going, is the Hiro. The Energy of 1 Hiroshima bomb. Energy is accumulating in the oceans at around 4 Hiro's per second. The very largest bombs ever exploded were of the order of a 1000 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb but only a tiny number of those were ever tested. quite a few bombs that were 10 to 100 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb were tested. Possibly hundreds.
Wikipedia suggests there have been nearly 2000 tests.
So lets say as an upper limit that there were 2000 tests at 100 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. 200,000 Hiro's. That is the equivalent of just under 14 hours worth of heat accumulation in the oceans. So totally insignificant compared to the heating being observed.
It can be hard to get our heads around the relative magnitudes of different very large quantities.
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mikeh1 at 09:06 AM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
The methane story that we should all be concerned about is this one given the way gas is being promoted and implemented as a "clean" alternative to coal.
"As a longtime oil and gas engineer who helped develop shale fracking techniques for the Energy Department, I can assure you that this gas is not “clean.” Because of leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas, the gas extracted from shale deposits is not a “bridge” to a renewable energy future — it’s a gangplank to more warming ..."
I recall reading in a Slate article about 6 months ago that Ray Pierrehumbert was working on a paper that looked at this issue - is anyone aware if that was published.
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earthhouse at 08:44 AM on 2 August 2013How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Please my ignorance, but the way it was described to me many years ago in high school, dropping an h-bomb was equal to taking a teaspoon of the sun and exposing it to Earth's atmosphere. Is there any way someone might describe the thermal change caused by above ground testing in terms of heat from automobiles or dmage done by coal emissions?
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michael sweet at 08:10 AM on 2 August 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
ROb,
The Marshall Islands are far enough north but are only rarely affected by tropical cyclones. They are further East than the normal west Pacific Typhoons and further west than the East Pacific Hurricanes. They were affected by Typhoon Paka in 1997 source. Their situation is more on the edge with every centimeter of sea level rise and a single moderate hit (like 1997) could wipe them out. If they are lucky the IPO might shift to help them a little. Overall, ocean winds have increased from AGW which causes them problems. They are so low that any increase of the trade winds can potentially flood the country. Fresh water resources on small islands are always precarious and rising seas threaten the water they have. Currently the northern islands are starting to recover from a severe drought.
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Tom Curtis at 07:59 AM on 2 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #31A
shoyemore @2, I used to stop over at Mauritius in flights from Africa to Australia (and reverse) as a child. A beautiful island without doubt, and my favourite small island in either hemisphere.
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Rob Painting at 06:00 AM on 2 August 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Michael - the Marshall Islands appear to be very close to the equator. Tropical cyclones don't form close to the equator because the Coriolis Force moves toward zero - there is no way to impart the spin necessary for cyclone formation.
Counterintuitively, the region is likely to see a decline in the rate of sea level rise once the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) switches from the current negative phase to a positive one. In other words, the greater-than-globally-averaged sea level rise is a result of the extra water mass being pushed there as a result of winds which power the wind-driven circulation. When those winds weaken, so too will the rate of sea level rise in that region.
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John Hartz at 03:35 AM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Chris Colose:
Thank you. I had mistakenly assumed that you had finalized your OP before Ahmed's article was posted on The Guardian.
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Chris Colose at 03:28 AM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
#1- John
I dedicated a paragraph to Ahmed's article in the Paleo-analog section -
shoyemore at 02:52 AM on 2 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #31A
An add-on to the above news.
Professor Micha Tomkiewicz of Brooklyn College recently returned from a conference in Mauritius on climate change in Africa. Readers may find his comments of interest, and read more about the conference.
climatechangefork.blog.brooklyn.edu/2013/07/30/back-from-mauritius/
Mauritius is my favourite Southern Hemisphere island, from where my wife hails.
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dorlomin at 02:34 AM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
One of the lines of evidence people point too is the increase in global methane levels since the mid 2000s. However this also co-incides with the huge surge in shale oil and gas drilling in the US. There has been a large amount of flaring of gas in these wells, espeically the Bakken, so it is more than a touch imprudent to conclude this new methane must be from the ESAS.
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dorlomin at 02:27 AM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Thanks for this excellent article. There appears to be a great deal of wishful thinking and handwaving among many of the proponents of this apocolypse scenario and its based around precious little information.
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John Hartz at 01:58 AM on 2 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Chris Colose:
A counter-argument to your position is presented in the article:
Arctic methane catastrophe scenario is based on new empirical observations by Nafez Ahmed, Earth Insight, The Guardian, July 31, 2013
Is there a middle-ground between your perspective and that of Ahmed's?
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John Mason at 01:35 AM on 2 August 2013East Antarctica Ice-Sheet more vulnerable to melting than we thought: new research
Hi Chris - yes the uncertainties are large,much of which is down to the fact that isostatic adjustment may have affected raised shorelines in either direction. One good example of that is in E England where there are sea-cliffs composed of Pliocene/early Pleistocene fossiliferous marine sediments and the deposits extend a fair way inland, although the area in question is slowly sinking at present.
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chriskoz at 23:26 PM on 1 August 2013East Antarctica Ice-Sheet more vulnerable to melting than we thought: new research
Thanks John, for the summary of this very interesting, I would say a breakthrough article: we are gathering more and more evidence from paleo to our understanding of climate change.
I guess, the they are quoting eustatic SLR, right? I don't have access to the full text so cannot find out, myself. I'm also interested in the detail where the relatively large uncertainties (+-10m) come from. If we are take into account the SLR adjustment to the changed gravitational pull of the melting IS, then the SLR number should go higher although I'm not sure by how much.
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A Change in the Weather at 23:02 PM on 1 August 2013The Albedo Effect and Global Warming
Maybe I'm being dense, but this article isn't clear to me. I'm left with the impression that the Earthshine data still shows increasing albedo. The CERES graph is something of a cipher.
Dr. Francis makes good points. Just because there may be a cloud-driven increase in albedo in the higher atmosphere doesn't mean the albedo below is also increasing, nor does it mean that the planet's surface is cooling. In fact, those same clouds could be acting as a blanket, capturing a larger share of the energy that does penetrate. Again, this isn't clear from the write-up.
In fact, this piece doesn't read like a rebuttal at all, let alone a basic one, but a discussion with no strong conclusion. Time for re-draft, with the conclusion stated clearly at the top, and then supported by discussion?
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chriskoz at 23:00 PM on 1 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #31A
The "More carbon emissions = less global warming?" is the follow-up after a well debunked, screwed article in the Economist. I don't understand why a blog, such as scientificamerican.com, still publishes news based on such false allegations and misinterpretations, that were totally thrashed by Dana and subsequently by bunch of commenters on SkS, 10 days before. I thought our debunking should have put this news to bed. Not so: the falsehood is sticking hard.
IMO, scientificamerican is making a mistake by repeating this bunkum unnecessarily: contrary to the rules in the Debunking Hadbook on the right margin.
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michael sweet at 20:48 PM on 1 August 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Tom,
Your post is excellent and clearly shows that Morner is fast and loose with the data.
The post is about the Marshall Isalnds and not the Solomen Islands. For those who are not familiar with remote islands, The Marshall Islands are home to about 68,000 people. The average height of the islands is about 1 meter (see this Wikipedia article) They have had severe flooding problems from over 20 cm (that's 20% of all the above sea level height they have) of sea level rise in the past 30 years. Since they are a protectorate of the USA presumably they will be moving to the USA once Majuro is no longer habitable. A single large storm could decimate the country at any time.
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Tom Curtis at 16:42 PM on 1 August 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Tamino has documented yet another case of Morner presenting an argument whose entire weight is based on not considering all the available evidence, in this case in the Solomon's.
In this case, Morner compares two tide guage records from different locations in the Solomons. One clearly shows an rising and accelerating trend. In the second, Morner uses an inflated sea level scale to make the positive trend less obvious. He also uses a different time scale, starting from about the time of the acceleration in the other record. He concludes there is no acceleration.
Tamino points out that there is another, overlaping tide gauge record from the second island. Combining the two records for the same island shows that, yes, the sea level is rising, and yes, it does accelerate at about the same time as the acceleration for the other island.
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JasonB at 16:29 PM on 1 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #29B
JvD,
Your analogy concerning the Australian iron ore is not helpfull. Iron ore is not a scarce resource, so the market price is very close to the production price.
How do you expect your arguments to be taken seriously when they are full of such obvious errors? (There's a phrase that you like to throw around that I'm more reluctant to use, so I'll stick with "errors".)
From page 51 of Rio Tinto's investor chartbook, their 2012 cash cost of iron ore was US$23.50/tonne. The all-in cost to deliver to China including royalties, shipping, and underlying capital costs was $US47/tonne.
The market price peaked at $US191.90/tonne in 2011.
Mark ups on iron ore for global miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are now at a staggering 160 per cent, with profit margins at 62 per cent, nearly double that of the world's most valuable tech company, Apple Inc., as of June 30, 2013.
[...]
Iron ore rose from less than $US20 a tonne in 2000 to a record in 2011 near $US200, before levelling off.
In comparison, oil, the only traded commodity market larger than iron ore, rose only half as quickly when it hit an all-time high above $US147 a barrel in 2008 from about $30 in 2000. (Source)
If iron ore is not a "scarce" resource, perhaps you can explain why just two countries (China and Australia) account for over 60% of the world's production? (Source) Add in Brazil and you've got 73%; add India and it's 81.5% in just four countries. In comparison, oil is positively ubiquitous, with the top two producers accounting for just 26% of world production and the top four barely cracking 40%. (Source)
So not only was my analogy helpful, it turns out to be even more exaggerated in the characterists that define the oil industry. Yet Australian's don't get to buy iron ore at $23.50/tonne from Rio Tinto, nor do we get to buy it at $47/tonne [*]; we have to pay whatever the going rate is for it on the world market. Any requirement otherwise would amount to price support and a subsidy on the Australian consumption of iron ore.
[*] This gets back to the point I made earlier - just what is the "cost" of Saudi oil that you're referring to? Does it include amortisation of capital expenses, or just the marginal cost of extracting an extra barrel? I'd be surprised if the "true cost" is even publicly known, yet you've been asserting repeatedly that the Saudi's are selling it at that price with no references to support that that I've seen. Not that it actually matters to the argument, because either way it's still below market price, but I'm disinclined to take your word for it given the egregious errors you've made in areas that I am familiar with.
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Tom Curtis at 16:05 PM on 1 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #29B
scaddenp @56, based on the IEA map of the location of energy subsidies, they come predominantly from fossil fuel rich nations, or middle income nations such as China and India:
The same impression is given by the chart of the top15 providers of subsidies, with the only OECD nation among them being Mexico (13th).
I assume, therefore, you are drawing attention to the chart of the benefit recieved from the subsidy by income group,showing that the bottom 20% by income tend to recieve just 5-15% (8.5% mean) of the benefit depending on the fossil fuel subsidized. That does show that the poor are not well targeted by the benefits. Given the nations concerned, far more than just the bottom 20% of income in some of the nations could be considered poor by world standards, and in all those nations by western standards. Consequently a more usefull chart would be one showing the benefit gained by the top 20% by income in each nation. As it is, suggesting that the gains in reduced emissions from eliminating these subsidies would be paid by the (moderately) poor is not unreasonable.
It is likely, however, that the societies in question would benefit from eliminating the subsidies and redirecting the money saved within country. By doing so they would be able to reduce overall taxation, and at the same time better target aid the the poorest in their nations. It is also quite reasonable to claim, however, as does Faith Birol that the elimination of the subsidies would see a large reduction in CO2 emissions.
Returning to JvD's comment @4, "industrialized nations" has frequently been used a name of a group of nations including the OECD plus Warsaw Pact nations. On that basis only six industrialized nations contribute to the subsidy (5 warsaw pact plus Mexico). However, I do not think it reasonable to currently describe South Korea, India, China and Indonesia as not industrialized. So, approximately a third of the nations involved are industrialized, but less than a third of the subsidies are from industrialized nations. Consequently, I agree that the statement by the reporter (and not Dr Romani) that, "Industrialised nations plough $600 billion a year to subside coal, oil and gas activity" has to be considered inaccurate at best.
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scaddenp at 14:34 PM on 1 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #29B
And before claiming that "the poor" would be financing the Green fund, have a look at the graph of who is getting the subsidy (bottom 20% compared to top 80%) from IEA data shown here.
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chriskoz at 13:56 PM on 1 August 2013The Albedo Effect and Global Warming
francis@4,
Can you tell us why such distinction (planetary vs surface A) is important? My uneducated guess is that surface A may have large impact on arctic amplification (positive feedback in mid-to-high N lattitudes), while planetary A feedback may be confined to lower lattitudes only. But that's just may guess and I'd like to know your expert opinion.
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scaddenp at 09:17 AM on 1 August 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #29B
JvD - it is hard to have an argument with someone who believes they are free to define words as they like. You might like to look at how this price support is actually defined by say WTO as well how defined in the primary sources.
Critical to the concept of subsidy is action or policy that results in the price below market value. The price of water isnt cheaper in Netherlands due to government policy (as far as I know) but because it makes no economic sense to export water to dry countries. There is no option to get more money by selling overseas rather than local consumers. My country (NZ) is big milk producer. You would be sadly disappointed if you expected milk to be cheap because local market has to compete with international demand. Likewise in Saudi Arabia and other oil producers - the state oil company could earn considerably more money if it instead exported for market rate what it sells at cost to locals. Governments have many ways to aid their citizens but consumption subsidies should not be one of them.
I note that you have failed to provide any evidence to support your earlier assertions in which case perhaps you should apologize for the smear. I also note that you continue to duck the question of whether making oil producer citizens pay market price will reduce consumption and thus emissions.
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william5331 at 06:43 AM on 1 August 2013The Albedo Effect and Global Warming
There seems to be one little localized negative feed back occuring this year. Due to a persistant low pressure area over the Arctic Ocean, it is cloudier than it has been and this is reflecting heat back into space. The ice extent graph hasn't reached last year's values. The low pressure area may be due to the earlier cracking of the ice north of Alaska, releasing heat and water vapour to the atmosphere or thinner ice doing likewise. Gaia is trying to fight back.
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rockytom at 06:42 AM on 1 August 2013East Antarctica Ice-Sheet more vulnerable to melting than we thought: new research
John, thanks for another excellent post. The USGS, in one estimate, has stated that a total collapse of both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could potentially raise eustatic sea-level 260 feet. Of course this will not happen over night, but there is mounting evidence that the process(es) have started in both the Northern (Greenland) and Southern (Antarctica) Hemispheres . And of course, the vast majority of mountain (valley, piedmont, alpine) glaciers are also retreating rapidly. The situation needs to be brought to the public and politicians and through posts such as yours and others at SkS (and RealClimate.org, Tamino, and others) are helping. Tom
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DSL at 04:34 AM on 1 August 2013Sea level rise is exaggerated
Gads - Joe D'Aleo is on a The Weather Channel comment stream trying to convince people that Morner is a "the top world expert" in sea level. I quote:
"Also see http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1 where after studying tide gauges (instead of relying on failing models) they conclude: Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records. The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the+0.07 to+0.28 mm/y2 accelerations that are required toreach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010)."
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francis at 01:02 AM on 1 August 2013The Albedo Effect and Global Warming
I think this excellent post might be just a bit clearer if the discussion made a concrete distinction between the global or planetary albedo (which lumps together all the effects of clouds, aerosols, and surface changes and which may be increasing slightly) and the surface albedo (which does NOT include atmospheric effects for the most part). The surface albedo clearly is decreasing owing to the loss of snow and ice, and this allows more of the sun's energy to be absorbed by the system, even though there may be less of it entering the top of the atmosphere.
Moderator Response:[DB] Thank you, Dr. Francis. Your insights are always valued and welcome.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:49 AM on 1 August 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
OneHappy... I think you're totally right. It makes me wonder if people like Spencer and Watts have actually read the paper. They're using one broad definition from one place in the paper and ignoring the nuanced definitions that are clearly stated in the paper.
There is no possible way that any of these guys who claim to believe CO2 causes "some" warming are part of the 97% as defined by the paper.
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John Hartz at 00:47 AM on 1 August 2013Update on BC’s Effective and Popular Carbon Tax
Another article about the new study cited in the OP :
'Sky didn't fall' after British Columbia lowered income tax, dropped fuel use with carbon tax by Coleen Jose, ClimateWire, E&E Publishing, July 30, 2013
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DSL at 23:35 PM on 31 July 2013An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy
And it's a simple representation of what's going on. No interpretation necessary. Like MBH98 and Marcott et al. 2013, it's a single figure that is not easily re-contextualized. When Watts et al. try to spin it, they end up creating the kind of confusion that scientists typically create when they try to communicate the details to the public. In other words, there's no countermove. They've actually started to pull the Mann Maneuver on Cook: cast doubt on the source if you can't attack the work (funny how no one goes after the "et al."). Now that the Levitus 0-2000m OHC plot is getting some length to it, it's beginning to come under attack for the same reason (less so, though, because the professional spinners know that OHC vs. temp can be confusing to the general public). Watts has already tried to stir confusion re Levitus with his goofy attempt to diminish the level of energy going into the oceans.
Nothing at all to do with scientific progress. Everything to do with the power of the piece in the game of shaping public opinion, a game that is difficult for scientists and their communicators to play. The professional spinners are allowed to play by one set of rules (every trick in the book), and if science communication comes anywhere near any move that even causes a single hair on Ethical Cat's back to tremble, the spinners launch a full "exposure" of it. It must be quite intoxicating (in a Mad Dog 20/20 sort of way) to have no accountability re science and to have an audience that simply laps it up without question, cheering wildly at the ongoing argument for their own willful ignorance. The postmodern condition is alive and well.
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JvD at 21:25 PM on 31 July 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #29B
[moderation complaint snipped]
JasonB writes:
Supplying their populations with energy at the cost of production instead of market prices is "price support".
No, it isn't. "price support" entails supplying energy below the cost of production, which is what Feed-in tariffs do for example.
Keeping this distinction is very important, because otherwise we will not understand the real comparative cost of renewables versus fossil fuels, which means we will develop inappropriate expectations about their real global competitiveness, which poses a grave risk to our ability to make effective energy policy.
Your analogy concerning the Australian iron ore is not helpfull. Iron ore is not a scarce resource, so the market price is very close to the production price. A better analogy - IMHO - can be construed using water, as a hypothetical international commodity. For example:
In my country (the Netherlands), potable water is cheap, because of the geology we have. Now lets imagine that - perhaps due to increasing water supply stress due to climate change around the world - water becomes an internationally traded commodity and its international market price settles at 700% of the cost of potable water production in my country. Now someone like Dr. Romani gets up in front of the United Nations and claims the following:
"The Dutch and other water-rich countries pay far less for their water than than the international market price! This is a subsidy! We could use that subsidy to pay for water desalinisation plants, aquaducts and water-efficiency technology! Therefore, the subsidy ploughed into potable water in those countries should be transferred to the UN Green Water Growth fund!"
Do you now see how sick and misguided such a proposal would be? Let other countries pay for their water technologies with their own money! Let them not bother the Dutch, who have their own problems! The Dutch cannot pay to solve the world's water problems, just like the people in oil producing countries cannot pay to solve the worlds oil problems!
Moderator Response:[JH] You are skating on the thin ice of sloganeering and excessive repetition, both of which are banned by this site's comment policy. Please cease and desist, or face the consequences.
[Dikran Marsupial] Also comments about moderation are off-topic. I have snipped this time, next time I will delete.
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JasonB at 20:29 PM on 31 July 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #29B
JvD,
There is no 'price support' in Saudi Arabia, or other oil producting countries. Since the oil age began, they have been supplying their populations with energy at the cost of production. Should they now choose to add 600% domestic taxes to that energy, - in order to equal the international market price of energy - this will reduce co2 emissions only to the degree that their citizens become unable to obtain energy.
Supplying their populations with energy at the cost of production instead of market prices is "price support".
They don't need to add "600% domestic taxes", they just need to let the oil companies sell the oil at the going market rate. Saudi citizens could then buy the oil they want on that same market.
Do BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have to sell the iron ore they mine to Australian citizens at below market rates? No. Do Australian steel mills have to compete with Chinese steel mills for access to the iron ore mined in Australia? Yes. Australian citizens get what they are "owed" as original owners of the resource thanks to royalties that are levied on resources extracted from Australia, not preferential access to the result. Those royalties go into general revenue, reducing the amount of tax we would otherwise have to pay.
As I understand it, the Saudi oil companies are state-owned, so all of the extra profit derived from selling all of the oil at market rates will flow into the state's coffers, rather than some going into shareholder's pockets.
The benefit of doing so is that the extra money raised can then be targetted where it is needed the most. It could go into tax breaks, it could go into welfare programs, it could go into health and education, whatever; the point is that at the moment that same money is going into the pockets of those who can afford to buy oil and its derivatives, and the more they buy, the greater the percentage of that money they get! In other words, not only is it forcing market-priced renewable technology to compete with non-market-priced oil, but it's creating a perverse incentive whereby the more wasteful an individual or organisation is, the greater the benefit they derive — the larger their share of the pie — from the reduction in price of the oil compared to the going market rate.
If you don't want to call that "price support", then all you're really doing is redefining terms to mean something other than what everyone else means by those terms, and then calling those people "deliberate liars" for using those terms in conflict with your personal definitions. If people already understand what "price support" means in the Saudi context — i.e. selling oil domestically at below-market rates — then framing your argument as one about terminology rather than the practice itself isn't going to convince anyone. Your argument ought to be why it's better for Saudi's to sell oil domestically at below market rates thereby foregoing the revenue that would otherwise accrue if that's what you believe rather than call people liars because they describe that as an oil subsidy.
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