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Eclectic at 11:15 AM on 9 May 2024The science isn't settled
TWFA @85 ,
the Obamas' expensive mansions have something like 10 feet (or more) of elevation . . . and judging by expected sea-level rise, the Obama grandchildren may well need to sell (or abandon) the mansions when they themselves reach the age of 100 years or thereabouts. Yes, it's a sad problem when super-rich families have to move house ;-) And perhaps you could spare some thoughts & concerns for the poorer folks who live on the coastlines of the world?
TWFA . . . please use more mathematics, and less sour grapes.
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scaddenp at 10:03 AM on 9 May 2024The science isn't settled
It is not 2 buckets - it is close to 1000 buckets a year. Maths matters.
"Nobody with beachfront property of any size is going to be moving"
Trivial to see that is not true. Why do you believe that given that coastal erosion data and property loss is readily available? You can also look up loss of agricultural land to salt incursion.
Again, why do you believe adaption is going to be cheaper than FF phase-out?
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TWFA at 08:13 AM on 9 May 2024The science isn't settled
I came up with that bucket in a quick mental estimate, which was well within an order of magnitude of your exhaustive analysis... so big deal, it's two buckets a day, not ten or a hundred, and that's for somebody with the money to have an acre on the beach.
Nobody with beachfront property of any size is going to be moving, I can assure you, even after hurricanes with 15' storm surges they don't. Obama has two lavish oceanfront estates in the Atlantic and Pacific, he doesn't seem to be worried about his great, great grandkids drowning.
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scaddenp at 07:40 AM on 9 May 2024The science isn't settled
"a five gallon bucket of sand tossed upon your acre of oceanfront property every day will keep up with 8" of sea level rise over the next century."
I think that example is problematic.
8" = 200mm -> 2mm per year. Global sealevel rate is currently 3.4mm and accelerating.
Check your maths on the 5gal of sand. I make that 19L or 19,000 cubic cms. 1 acre = 40470000 cm2 19,000/40470000 isnt remotely keeping up with 2mm/year of sealevel. Out of curiousity, where did you find this statement about the 5gal bucket? Sounds like a source bent on misinformation.
Where do you get your sand? At a sustained 4mm/year of sealevel rise, your beachs vanish.
Sand or any other easily mined material is also highly erodable - without an expensive seawall, wave action will take it away.
And finally, the real point. Adaption is not free. It costs to make those changes. Why are you so confident that adaption is cheaper than just converting energy sources to renewables, especially as renewables+storage has better LCOE than FF?
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TWFA at 03:52 AM on 9 May 2024The science isn't settled
I still get hung up on the plane example, not sure anybody is framing it correctly.
If you consider the plane to be built upon an aeronautical theory of AGW and is predicted with 97% certainty by those who designed it to be airworthy and get you to your destination, which would be surviving changes in the climate by preventing them altogether using a human controlled CO2 thermostat to control the temperature of the verses planet... verses choosing an alternative, far more pedestrian and proved means of transportation to climate survival that has worked for thousands of years, namely innovation, adaption and migration, which would you choose?For example, a five gallon bucket of sand tossed upon your acre of oceanfront property every day will keep up with 8" of sea level rise over the next century.
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ubrew12 at 14:01 PM on 8 May 2024At a glance - Tree ring proxies and the divergence problem
"the correlation breaks down after 1960" and Rachel Carson published 'Silent Spring' in 1962. Jess' Sayin'.
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sailrick at 14:59 PM on 7 May 2024Why India is key to heading off climate catastrophe
"India is a sunny country with great solar power potential, and it has been solar farms at a rapid clip."
A typo: word missing after "been" -
Paul Pukite at 23:02 PM on 6 May 2024Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
Lags are tricky in feedback-controlled systems. If one signal is 90 degrees out of phase with another, you can't really say one is leading or lagging over the other.
However, it's clear for the current interannual measure that CO2 lags the temperature shifts as T is clearly primarily seasonal and secondarily ENSO+AMO related. CO2 simply follows that temperature change via the outgassing relationship.
More problematic IMO is the belief that ENSO is a lagging indicator to shifts in prevailing winds, i.e. shifts in prevailing winds will trigger an El Nino event. One can argue that the winds are in fact a lagging indicator of the ENSO phase, with climatologists not able to accurately discriminate the two signals precisely enough. AFAIK there is only one article that has looked closely at this https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49678-w and they find that ENSO is initiated at the subsurface level (likely due to tidal cycles). The wind is a lagging indicator as the ENSO modified thermocline level creates spatially-resolved surface temperature variations, leading to atmospheric pressure gradients, and that's what drives the wind as it blows from regions of high pressure to low pressure. This happens dynamically so it explains why so many are fooled by this misguided correlation = causation attribution.
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Eclectic at 21:59 PM on 6 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
Scaddenp @61 : "I am interested in how people build up their mental models, and how we update these mental models as new information is presented."
By sheer chance, within the last few hours, I encountered a radio program discussing Conspiracy Theorists. One of the descriptors used was the narcissist personality of many conspiracists.
Epiphany. Had to kick myself, for not previously making the conscious link between narcissism and climate-denialism.
Sure, not all Denialists have rampant narcissism in their personalities ~ but many would have a slice of the "spectrum of narcissism" , manifest by: short-term thinking; selfishness and disregard of others; and of course motivated-reasoning to defend their climate-denialism. And presumably these traits also occur in the cynical paid-propagandists (e.g. Heartland propagandists, including the Emeritus types).
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Ignorant Guy at 09:17 AM on 6 May 2024Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
DeeplyMoronic @158
I suspect that you misunderstands what "lag" is and how it is shown in the diagram you ask about.
First: It is not so simple that the horizontal displacement distance of the yellow curve and the blue curve is the time lag. The yellow 'curve' (collection of measurement points, rather than a curve) and the blue curve represents two quite different things (CO2 concentration vs temperature) and their respective scales are a bit arbitrary. They are selected to make the diagram easy to read with a glance. Imagine that the scale of the blue curve was selected so that it was much taller than the yellow curve. Then, if you assume that the horizontal distance was directly indicative of the lag, it would appear as the time delay was different, i e smaller. Just because of a change of scale.
Second: The concept 'lag' is a bit fuzzy. In this case we have one variable, representing a certain phenomenon, temperature, that depends on another variable , representing the phenomenon concentration of CO2. The temperature responds to changes in CO2 concentrations. This can be compared to signal theory where an out-signal responds to an in-signal. If the in-signal is a step then the out-signal is the step reponse. A typical step response starts immediately after the input but will take some time to reach its final value. In fact it will take some time before it's clearly visible - even if it really starts immediately.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_response
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_response
If the in-signal is not a perfect step (and in the real physical world it never is) then the response will look a bit more complicated and will take longer time to reach its final value.
Lots of physical system has this kind of behaviour. So in this case we have that when the CO2 concentration rather suddenly rises the temperature immediatly also start to rise, but the response takes quite a long time to finish. The climate is a very complicated physical system with all sorts of feedbacks and 'filter functions' involved so you should expect a diagram of past events to be a bit hard to read.For our current situation we have a change in CO2 concentration that is not 'rather sudden' but very, very sudden. So we can expect that the temperature response will be visible a lot faster.
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ubrew12 at 06:05 AM on 6 May 2024At a glance - Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline'
So, stealing somebodies private emails and broadcasting them to the World out of context, and with your own spin attached, resulted in a lot of confusion and misdirection? I must say, sarcastically, who could have ever seen that coming?
Phil Jones was making cover art for a WMO report. That's the subject of his 'hide the decline' email. He should have just photoshopped a tornado. Of course, then people would say he made it look too scary.
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Eclectic at 01:01 AM on 6 May 2024Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
DeeplyMoronic @158 :
Start by reading the article at the head of this thread.
Then read the advanced version of Climate Myth Number 12 (see top left, of this page.
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DeeplyMoronic at 00:03 AM on 6 May 2024Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
Hello everybody. I'm not sure this is the best place to ask my question, this topic is so old, but I try. Also please excuse my bad english.
I was wondering about this graph :
How is it that the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is so far removed from the increase in global Earth temperature ? I estimate that there must be between 500 and 1000 years of difference; How is it possible ? Isn't CO2 once in the atmosphere supposed to immediately warm it up ?
And when we look at the curves about more recent times, scientists explain to us that the climate began to warm up from the start of the industrial area, we don't see a gap of several hundred years.
Do you have an explanation ?
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BaerbelW at 21:09 PM on 5 May 2024We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
Please note: the basic version of this rebuttal was updated on May 5, 2024 and now includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @ https://sks.to/at-a-glance
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scaddenp at 11:36 AM on 5 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
Bob, I agree but not many deniers are in the habit of respecting empircal tests over their biases and mental models. If they did, then deniers wouldnt exist. I am interested in how people build their mental models, and how we update these mental models as new information is presented. I am interested in just how JJones arrived at such a firm belief.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:04 AM on 5 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
scaddenp:
I previously pointed out in this comment on this thread that concentration in ppm is not a good way to determine the effects of CO2 on IR radiation. I stated that the absolute amount is the key, and pointed to this "from the email bag" post that illustrates this point. That comment was two comments above where JJones posted his first comment in March of this year, so it's probably too much to expect that JJones actually read it. He seems more interested in posting than in reading and learning.
As for JJones idea that CO2 in trace amounts can't absorb enough radiation, there are commercial CO2 gas analyzers that are designed to measure CO2 by measuring the amount of IR radiation it absorbs, and they can do this on very small quantities of air. One such instrument is described here:
https://www.licor.com/env/products/gas-analysis/LI-830-LI-850/
From the "how do they work?" section of that web page:
How do they work?
The LI-830 and LI-850 use non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) gas analysis to measure gases in air. A broad-band optical source delivers infrared radiation through the sample onto optically filtered detectors. Optical detectors measure the sample and reference bands to compute absorption by CO2 and H2O (LI-850 only).
I expect that the manufacturer of this device (and the many manufacturers of similar devices) will be awfully disappointed to find out that they can't possible work, because JJones has asserted that trace amounts of CO2 can't absorb enough IR radiation to make a difference.
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scaddenp at 10:26 AM on 4 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
JJones - despite the examples in main article of very small amounts capable of having large effect, you seem to be clinging to idea that the concentration cant be important. Can we unpack this please? I want to see how you understand this?
From the basics, the sun warms the earth and heat is radiated out to space through the atmosphere as photons with wavelengths in the infrared part of the spectra.Now as I understand it, you believe because the concentration is low, then there are not enough CO2 molecules to catch all the photons leaving the surface? Is that a reasonable summary of your position?
One way to check that sort of question is consider how far, on average, a photon at say 15microns wavelength might travel before hitting a CO2 molecule if the concentration of CO2 is 400ppm. If you want to think about it a very crude approximate way, then think of cylinder 15microns wide going to top of atmosphere. Now then what is chance of it encountering a CO2 molecule? Doing it properly is quite complicated because density of molecules varies with pressure as you go up the atmosphere, but can start with simple sealevel values and the gas equation.
If you start the calculation, eg how many CO2 molecules in a meter of that tube, then you immediately realise that while 400 molecules in a millions seems rather small, Avagadro's number is extremely large. There are a lot of CO2 molecules in the way.In short, the photon will likely get only a metre or so before being captured. 400pm can easily trap all the photons in appropriate wavelength leaving the surface. To really understand the greenhouse effect though you have to know what happens next.
PS - you wouldnt walk into a room with 400ppm of cyanide gas would you? -
michael sweet at 05:39 AM on 4 May 2024Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project
Ichinitz:
The problem with George Wills argument is that he only states the cost of one side of the equation and then concludes that it will be cheaper to just go on using fossil fuels. The current fossil fuel industry is about 10% of global gross gdp. If a renewable system only costs 2% than it will be much cheaper than the existing system. Many scientific papers (for example Jacobson et al) show that it will be much cheaper to switch to a completely renewable energy system.
I think your suggestion that you write a rebuttal to the myth "it's bad but it is cheaper than renewables" is a good one. The deniers make this type of absurd claim all the time.
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John Mason at 01:30 AM on 4 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
By JJones1960's reckoning I mean!
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John Mason at 01:29 AM on 4 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
Re. #55 -
One man may unleash a catastrophic shooting. On 9-11, at least 19 men were involved. Compared to the global population of around 8 billion, that's a tiny percentage so by your reckoning they must have been harmless.
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lchinitz at 00:05 AM on 4 May 2024Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project
Hi all,
In a previous thread I tried to convince people that this site needed to address a specific topic. I don't think I managed to do that, but I'd like to try again here.
The topic title would be something like "The Cure is Worse than the Disease." The argument to be addressed is that advocates of changes to address GW do not ever address the negative effects those changes would have, especially on less affluent people who could not pay more for gas to get to work, energy to heat their homes, food that is more expensive due to transportation costs, etc.
The response would need to include those negative effects in a cost/benefit analysis, and yet still (likely) conclude that changes need to be made.
I'm raising this again because I just saw this same argment made, again, by George Will in the WaPo, quoting an article in the WSJ. A few clips:
Will article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/01/rising-threat-nuclear-war-annihilation/
"A recent peer-reviewed study of scientific estimates concludes that the average annual cost of what the excitable U.N. secretary general calls “global boiling” might reach 2 percent of global gross domestic product by 2100."WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/follow-the-science-leads-to-ruin-climate-environment-policy-3f427c05This is behind a paywall, but the first paragraph sort of lays out the argument. "More than one million people die in traffic accidents globally each year. Overnight, governments could solve this entirely man-made problem by reducing speed limits everywhere to 3 miles an hour, but we’d laugh any politician who suggested it out of office. It would be absurd to focus solely on lives saved if the cost would be economic and societal destruction. Yet politicians widely employ the same one-sided reasoning in the name of fighting climate change. It’s simply a matter, they say, of “following the science.”
So the basic argument here is that climate change is not a big enough threat to warrant the cures being proposed, and that any reasonable analysis would show that to be the case. Apparently those cures lead to "societal destruction."
I think we should rebut that. To be clear, this is different from the "It's not bad" rebuttal. That one says "yes it is bad." What is needed here is an analysis that says (1) yes there will be pain involved in making changes to address GW, but (2) that pain is justified by the badness that will result from not making those changes.
If I am able to get anyone to agree that this makes sense, I'd like to work on it with anyone else interested.
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Bob Loblaw at 22:48 PM on 3 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
jjones1960 @ 54:
After two months, the best you can come up with is an empty assertion that CO2 is a trace gas? On a post/thread that is devoted to demonstrating why that is such a bogus argument?
Well, let's review the calculation that you provide or reference, in support of your claim that CO2 "cannot trap a significant amount of heat anyway."
...oh, wait. You did not actually provide any calculation. Unfortunately for you, the people that have done the calculation come up with a different conclusion.
I miss the days when contrarians/deniers could actually put together a reasonable argument (however wrong) that presented some actual analysis (however wrong) that supported their positions. These days, it seems more and more that contrarians commenting here have nothing to say that goes beyond a 240-character slogan.
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Eclectic at 22:29 PM on 3 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
JJones @54 & prior :-
Your "trace" argument sounds a very useful one . . . useful in all sorts of situations ~ such as by the Flat-Earthers who will say: "The Earth must be Flat because [JJones] can only see a trace of surface curvature, from wherever he stands."
Or do I detect a trace of leg-pulling by you?
~ If so, then Congratulations [plus a trace of irony] .
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JJones1960 at 17:58 PM on 3 May 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
Bob Loblaw @ 51:
“CO2 is not "colourless" when it comes to infrared radiation. Just because JJones1960 can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.”
The point that you miss that that CO2 is a trace gas, therefore cannot trap a significant amount of heat anyway.
OPOF @52:Your quote:
“Tropospheric ozone (O3) is the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).“The point you miss is that ozone traps heat in relation to CO2 and methane as the ‘third most important greenhouse gas’ but that is IN RELATION to those gases. My point is that those gasses don’t and can’t trap a significant amount of heat because they are in trace amounts, therefore neither would ozone.
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wilddouglascounty at 01:10 AM on 2 May 2024Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather
Yes, you're correct in pointing out the multiple causal factors in a system that contribute to the performance of a system, whether it be in a marathon or the climate. This can and does contribute to distortion and manipulation by those who want to detract.
My point is that attribution should be a conversation about a variable, i.e. carbon emissions, not the measuring tool, i.e. climate change.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:06 AM on 2 May 2024Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather
Wild:
In the steroids analogy, one can always say "it's not the steroids, it's the training". But the use of steroids allows for faster recovery from the training, which allows more training, more strength, more endurance, etc. The path of causality is not direct. It's not simply "steroids", it's "steroids via this path..."
I think this is similar to what you are saying about climate - the root cause is not "climate change", it's fossil fuel use, which leads to X, Y, and Z.
Causality is a whole can of worms that has many nuances. Wikipedia's article seems to be quite reasonable. People arguing against climate science's position on fossil fuel-driven climate change often distort those nuances. That's an old strategy, used in the tobacco wars, the fight to reject evolution, etc.
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wilddouglascounty at 23:13 PM on 1 May 2024Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather
Yes, you are precisely correct, Bob (and calling me Wild is just fine!). The point I am making in my analogy is that the "steroid" in the climate change dynamic is not climate change, it is fossil fuel use, or more generally all human activities which are contributing to increased carbon emissions that are overwhelming the system's sinks abilities to absorb it fast enough enough to keep the equilibrium in the system. It's the carbon emitting activities that causes heat retention, that result in increasingly extreme weather events, which causes climate change, and by saying that climate change CAUSED the extreme weather muddies the understanding of what triggered what and what to do about it.
Hope this helps! Attribution studies should be pointing the finger at increased carbon emissions, not climate change, at the steroids, not the changing averages, that's all.
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BaerbelW at 18:23 PM on 1 May 2024Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
Please note: a new basic version of this rebuttal was published on May 1, 2024 and includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @ https://sks.to/at-a-glance
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Eclectic at 15:40 PM on 1 May 2024Welcome to Skeptical Science
Brtipton @123 :
Bob, you are correct. As you know, roughly 83% of society's energy use is coming from fossil fuels. And total energy use is continuing to increase. And it is unhelpful & misleading, when "renewable" wind & solar gets reported not as actual production, but as the potential maximum production (the real production being about 70% lower, on average, than the so-called "installed capacity").
However, the biggest need is for more technological advancement of the renewables sector (and especially in the economics of batteries). Maybe in 15-20 years, the picture will look much brighter. And maybe there will be progress in crop-waste fermentation to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuel for airplanes & other uses where the (doubtless expensive) liquid fuels will still be an attractive choice.
Carbon Tax (plus "dividend" repayment to citizens generally) would be helpful ~ if political opposition can be toned down. But technological advancement is the big requirement, for now. There is political opposition to more-than-slight subsidies to private corporations . . . but surely there is scope for re-directing "research money" into both private and non-profit research ~ so long as it can avoid being labelled as "a subsidy". Wording is important, in these things.
With the best will in the world, it will all take time.
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brtipton at 10:41 AM on 1 May 2024Welcome to Skeptical Science
I spent a large part of my career investigating, exposing and debunking scientific and engineering boondoggles or fraud within US DOD.
The SCIENCE behind climate change as about as well done as humanly possible. I have found zero politically motivated exaggeration of the situation on the part of climate the climate scientists. If anything, many reports have been watered down somewhat on the positive side.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true on the climate SOLUTIONS side of the coin. While all of the statements I can find are legally, and scientifically accurate; they are highly misleading creating a false sense of progress.
This became painfully evident during the 2022 meeting of the World Climate Coalition's conference on finance when the ONE climatologist who spoke correctly pointed out that ALL efforts to date have had no measurable effect on reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. In fact, atmospheric CO levels are accelerating upward. The MC followed up with "well, that's unfortunate. Let's move on to the good news." Followed by that session not being published on conference website.
Examples:
US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data states that about 2/3 of planned new generating capacity is green (correct.) They omit that new generating capacity if 1.2% of US total consumption and 2/3 of 1.2% is 0.8% PER YEAR for US conversion from fossil fuels to renewables.
The same source correctly states that about 25% of US sustainable energy comes from wind, but obscures that only 11% of total consumption is sustainable. This results in installed wind accounting for 4% of US total consumption. Note: That is INSTALLED wind, not ACTIVELY operating wind. A casual drive or fly by usually shows a large percentage of wind turbines are inactive. I have been unable to find data documenting the actual operating levels.
An article in the UK Guardian, about a year ago, reported that the first UK offshore wind turbine was operating. Based on their reported number and size of turbines, the entire installation, when completed, would generate about 1.9% of UK total consumption.
This linked in articles further digs into the state of affairs on "solutions." - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-does-megwatt-114-watts-bob-tipton-asdfc/?trackingId=8eOLtQUcTwizRZ8AN%2Fe4Pg%3D%3D
All of these are observations and attempts to discover core facts and are in need of skeptical review. As a skeptical reviewer, I welcome this.
There is an engineering adage - you cannot control what you cannot sense. If our leaders do not know the true state of affairs it is not possible for them to make effective decisions. It's not enough to put laser focus on the accuracy of the risk reports from the climatologists while ignoring the over exaggerating capabilities of the solutions we are staking our success on.
In my OPINION, the tools we have are not adequate to win this battle. There are few to know effective efforts to develop new tools. The vast majority of out best and brightest minds are bogged down adding more volume to a case which is already well proven. Further documentation of our impending mass extinction is a poor use of strategic resources.
The true battlefield we are on is one of COST to the consumer and TAXATION of the taxpayers. Until we have solutions where the green way is the cheap way, we will be pushing a boulder up a mountain. When we achieve that point, progress will be rapid and viral.Bob Tipton
Cofounder [Howard] Hughes Skunkworks -
Charlie_Brown at 02:32 AM on 1 May 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Martin Watson @ 5,
Bob Loblaw and Eclectic provide good explanations. To add to them, look up Kirchoff’s Law for radiant energy: Absorptance = Emittance when at thermal equilibrium. Understanding this concept will go a long way toward helping understand the mechanism of global warming. Combined with the atmospheric temperature profile, it is key as to why global warming is a result of increasing CO2 and CH4 in the cold upper atmosphere. It explains why absorption in the lower atmosphere does not prevent radiant energy in the 14-16 micron range from being transferred to the upper atmosphere. Consider a 3-step process: 1) absorb a photon, 2) collisions bring adjacent molecules to the same temperature, 3) emit a photon. It might seem like a pass-through of photons, but think of it as conservation of energy, not conservation of photons. Thus, absorption and emission are functions of temperature. The atmospheric temperature profile is controlled by several factors including adiabatic expansion, condensation, convection, and concentration of greenhouse gases. When these factors are not changing, the temperature profile is fixed. Temperature controls radiant energy. The temperature changes only when something upsets the energy balance and steady state equilibrium temperature, like increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
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Eclectic at 00:49 AM on 1 May 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Martin Watson @11 and prior :
thanks for that info ~ and yes, as Bob Loblaw says, the NoTricksZone website is indeed pretty much a complete waste of time.
Note the names Pierre Gosselin and Kenneth Richard attached to the "NTZ" article you linked to. These two names have a long history of showing a shameless disregard of truth & probity, and they appear to have no hesitation in trotting out a pile of misleading half-truths ~ year in, year out. Or quarter-truths. Or worse.
NoTricksZone may have the occasional worthwhile article ~ but I have never yet come across one there (admittedly I haven't bothered to make an extensive search of that website). NoTricksZone is the sort of website which you might use to kill some time reading . . . if it's a wet weekend . . . and you absolutely, absolutely , have exhausted every other avenue of mental entertainment.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:19 AM on 1 May 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Martin:
To see an example of the sort of "tricks" used by NoTricksZone, you can read this pair of old posts on the 1970s global cooling myth:
https://skepticalscience.com/70s-cooling-myth-tricks-part-I.html
https://skepticalscience.com/70s-cooling-myth-tricks-part-II.html
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Bob Loblaw at 00:05 AM on 1 May 2024Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather
Wild (may I call you Wild?):
...but if you look at that same runner's "best times of the year", and over a few years you see that "best time" is also dropping at a rate similar to the average time, then can you not link that "best time" decrease to steroid use?
Over a year, in multiple marathons, you will have other factors affecting the time. The course. Weather (temperatures, winds). Fatigue. Seasonal factors such as training schedules. When you take all that into account, and after 10 years of steroid use the runner suddenly has a "best time" that he could not have come close to before he started steroids (and his worst time of the year is better than his "best time" from 10 years ago), then isn't it safe to say he probably would not have set that "best time" without steroids?
I think the article is quite clear about this distinction. Climate scientists do usually get this right - although media articles often don't do so well.
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Martin Watson at 00:05 AM on 1 May 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Thanks, Bob Loblaw
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Bob Loblaw at 23:55 PM on 30 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Martin Watson @ 8:
As a general rule, you can assume that any paper that is linked to at NoTricksZone wiil not say what NoTricksZone thinks it says. That site is pretty much a complete waste of time.
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Bob Loblaw at 23:50 PM on 30 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Martin Watson @ 5:
From a quick reading, there is nothing wrong with the information presented in the link you provide. It looks like an accurate discussion of what happens to the energy contained in an IR photon when it is absorbed by a greenhouse gas (CO2 or otherwise). That energy is almost always lost to other molecules (including non-greenhouse gases such as oxygen and nitrogen), and this leads to the heating of the atmosphere in general.
The article you link to also goes on to explain how higher temperatures in the atmosphere lead to more collisions with CO2 molecules (or other greenhouse gases), which will increase the rate at which they emit IR photons. And it explains how those are emitted in all directions, and how this leads to the greenhouse effect.
Just because very few absorbed photons lead directly to an immediate photon emission by CO2 does not mean that the energy is lost forever and the energy is not eventually emitted as a photon. The complete 100% of the absorbed photon energy is added to the atmosphere, and it continues to remain in the atmosphere until it is eventually emitted out to space or absorbed at the surface.
Eli Rabbet's blog has an excellent discussion of this same factor.
In other words, that article is an accurate description of exactly the process by which greenhouse gases such as CO2 lead to warming of the atmosphere. It provides nothing that represents a refutation of modern (the past 100+ years) of climate science. The article does not mean what the people are claiming it means.
If you are in a debate with someone making this argument, perhaps you can try asking them "what happens to the other 99.998% of the energy?" Or perhaps ask them "why are you referring to an article that accurately describes the greenhouse effect and how it causes warming, as if it refutes it?"
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Martin Watson at 23:43 PM on 30 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Hi Eclectic
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, it was another website making the claim that this research meant the effect of CO2 was infinitesimally small. I then tracked down the geoexpro as the original source of the info. I have to confess I didn't understand it!
This was the website where I first read it:
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Eclectic at 23:30 PM on 30 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Martin Watson @5 ,
the absorption and re-emission of IR-photons by CO2 molecules is discussed in "Most Used Climate Myths" Number 74 ~ check the top left of (every) page on the SkepticalScience site. [Click on View All Arguments]
The energized CO2 molecules then then immediately transfer energy (kinetic) to neighbouring molecules (being mostly N2 and O2). Much the same thing happens with other GreenHouse Gas molecules e.g. of water molecules etc.
And N2 and O2 molecules transfer energy by impact to their neighbours ~ including to CO2 as well. All these impacts happening at a rate of billions per second.
Therefore, even though the IR-photon emission "percentage" is ultra-low for a particular molecule of CO2 or other GHGas . . . the billions of impacts produce an emission of a sea of photons per cubic millimeter of air.
Also, the geoexpro article you link to, goes into all this in a more detailed way.
Martin, I did not see that article make a suggestion that CO2 had an "infinitesimally small" global warming effect. Have I missed something ~ or were you confusing your memory with some other article elsewhere on the internet? It would be interesting to examine who or what was making the claim that CO2 (or H2O or other GHGasses) was inert . . . and was making a claim that GreenHouse-type global warming does not exist. Because such a claim goes against all the evidence gathered during the last 100+ years of investigation by physicists.
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wilddouglascounty at 23:29 PM on 30 April 2024Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather
Not to belabor it too much, but the relationship between climate change, the causes of climate change, and extreme weather is the same relationship as exists between a marathon runner's average running time, his use of steroids, and his best running time.
If a marathon runner's average time has been dropping over time since he began taking steroids, from 3 hours to 2 hours 50 minutes, and the next marathon he ran at 2 hours 35 minutes, or 15 minutes faster than his average. The real attribution of this change goes to his continuing steroid use, so it seems a bit wonky to attribute the fast run to his changing average.
This is what we are doing when we say that climate change CAUSED an extreme weather event. I think scientists need to be very clear when talking about causality, because linking the changing profiles of weather events to the changing average, or the changing climate, is confusing the causes with the measurements, which is not as clear as linking it to the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and oceans caused by human activities, with fossil fuel use near the top. This also clarifies the difference between the nature of the current changes in the climate we are experiencing and past climate fluctuations caused by other changes in our climate system: Milankovich cycle, volcanism, etc.
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Bob Loblaw at 23:27 PM on 30 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
nigel @ 4:
I have to admit that I did not read the link to Bendell's web page before commenting on the portions you posted. Reading the link, I still don't like the way he refers to "elites" and such. What the heck is an "elite"? Although wiktionary includes a definition of "Someone who is among the best at a certain task", it also includes a definition of "A special group or social class of people which have a superior intellectual, social or economic status as the elite of society".
In the context of climate, economic, and social debates, the latter definition is probably closer to what is intended - but it also becomes a dog-whistle for "those uppity people that are trying to control us". The wiktionary definition uses the word "superior" - but that implies some sort of measurable scale by which the ability or status can be determined. If we consider "the elite" as people that have earned that status through demonstrated ability, then it's not a pejorative. In dog-whistle politics, the term "elite" has the implied meaning that the individual or group is unjustified in asserting any sort of superior position.
In that context, Bendell probably has some sort of point to make - but I think he has lost the battle by accepting the framing of the contrarians. The vagueness of the term "elite" works to their advantage - we may not know who "the elite" are, but we know they are Bad™. There is an innate resentment of that vague group, and framing the debate that way feeds the anger (to the advantage of the contrarians).
It used to be an argument of "but that's communism", and we now see "woke" being used in the same fashion. Apply a term everyone "knows" is Bad, and avoid actually making a concrete argument. It's not a new approach.
In reading Blendell's full post and his About page, I also see that he is not a climate scientist - and that some of his comments about contrarian arguments (e.g. climate models) demonstrates a lack of understanding why some of those contrarian arguments are wrong.
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Martin Watson at 22:31 PM on 30 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
I am really hoping that somebody will be able to debunk the following claim in a way I can understand, or point me to an article which already does that. Yesterday, I was Googling about climate change and I came across a claim about CO2 and photons. Basically, it was saying that out of every 100,000 CO2 molecules which absorb a reflected IR photon from the surface, only 2 will actually re-emit that photon. Instead the other 99,998 molecuales will bump into a molecule of nitrogen or oxygen. And the claim was this means the contribution of CO2 to global warming was infinitesimally small. It seems to be referencing this article. Thanks.
geoexpro.com/recent-advances-in-climate-change-research-part-ix-how-carbon-dioxide-emits-ir-photons/
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nigelj at 05:26 AM on 29 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Bob Loblow.
I agree entirely that the first paragraph was not well written. I almost didn't post it - but I felt it was needed for context and cutting bits out of it is tedious work.However it looks like hes just having a moan about mainstream media by suggesting The Guardian are far from perfect and also that its readers are allegdely unaware of the views of the current contrarians (which I would dispute). If you even just quickly scan the link its clear the writer is a bit of a media sceptic himself and also a bit suspicious of elites.
This is why I highlighted material in italics the second paragraph which seemed to summarise the main point of his article, which is the anti elite and anti globalisation agenda and how thats a convenient excuse to do nothing about the climate change. I think you seem to have got distracted by the other stuff.
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Bob Loblaw at 03:53 AM on 29 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
nigel:
Reading that quote from Jem Blendell in comment #1, I can't tell if the first paragraph represents an argument against standard climate science, or an argument against the contrarian/denial viewpoint. It's not very well worded. In the second paragraph, it seems more clear that he thinks the contrarian viewpoint is not well supported.
When he talks about "the elites" and people being in the Guardian/BBC/CNN "bubble" and "the whole agenda on climate change", it certainly looks like he accepted some rather bogus arguments against climate science. Personally, don't accept climate science because of what I read in newspapers, web pages, or media outlets - I accept climate science from having learned it in university classes, teaching it in university, and reading the scientific literature and reports summarizing that literature such as the IPCC.
That final sentence in paragraph one finally reassures me that Jem Blendell has not drunk the contrarian koolaid, so the second paragraph is more palatable.
The unfortunate reality is that expecting the general public to become more scientifically-literate is a tough row to hoe. The tier-1 contrarians, who know they are peddling lies, know that emotional and bogus rhetoric wll convince a lot of people. There is the old variant of the old saying:
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time...
...and that's enough.
There is also the old Christian Science Monitor cartoon:
SkS used to have a web page that highlighted contradictions in "contrarian" viewpoints. Things such as "the temperature record is unreliable" while using the same temperature record to claim "no warming since 1998 2016". (The SkS page was taken down because it was too much work to maintain. There is an archived version here.)
The contrarian "science" is full of such contradictions. The ability to believe multiple contradictory viewpoints at the same time is a feature of compartmentalization.
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nigelj at 06:12 AM on 28 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Sorry the link got messed up. Corrected link:
jembendell.com/2023/10/10/responding-to-the-new-wave-of-climate-scepticism/
Moderator Response:[BL] If you do not include the "https:" part of the link when you create it, it looks like the SkS web code assumes it is supposed to be an SkS link.
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nigelj at 05:54 AM on 28 April 2024Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year
Some commentary on a recent form of climate scepticism that I thought was interesting:
Prof Jem Bendell: When my book Breaking Together came out in May, some of my climate activist friends were surprised that I gave significant attention to rebutting scepticism on the existence of manmade climate change. I also surprised some of my colleagues at COP27 a year ago, when I gave a short talk on the rise of a new form of scepticism. That new form is couched in the important desire to resist oppression from greedy, hypocritical and unaccountable elites. I think the surprise of some that we still need to respond to climate scepticism reflects the bubble that many people working on environmental issues exist within. That’s a bubble of Western middle classes who believe they are well-informed, ethical and have some agency, despite relying on the Guardian, BBC or CNN for much of their news. Outside that bubble, there has been a rise in the belief that authorities and media misrepresent science to protect and profit themselves, while controlling the general public. That was primarily because of the experience of the pronouncements and policies during the early years of the pandemic. When people who are understandably resistant to that Covid orthodoxy have discovered the way elites have been using concern about climate change to enrich themselves, such as through the carbon credits scam, many have become suspicious of the whole agenda on climate change. Those of us who know some of the science on climate, and pay attention to recent temperatures and impacts, can feel incredulous at such scepticism. My green colleagues ask me: “How can someone deny what’s changing right before their very eyes?”
My correspondence with people expressing a new type of freedom-defending climate scepticism has led me to conclude that something else is needed than simply correcting their views with clear logic and evidence. My answers to the questions, which you can read below, may not have been perfect (he presents a list of climate myths and correct information similar to skepticalscience.com) . But the responses from sceptical people have sometimes seemed irrational. For instance, one type of response is an inconsistent switching between epistemologies (the fancy word for describing our view of how we come to know things about the world). That inconsistency involves sometimes claiming to reject all scholarship as untrustworthy instead to trust only firsthand experience. It is inconsistent because they ignore lots of firsthand experience contrary to their view, while also reaching for second hand and poorly referenced or debunked scholarship (often in the form of a blog or video clip) that might seem to support their view. Another irrational approach is the repetition of a claim that has already been debunked, which is the intellectual equivalent of raising one’s voice. One example is sending a blog or a video that repeats previously debunked claims. Another approach is to switch topic on to values and principles, while repeating false binaries given to them by the media. Specifically, that is the binary that climate change can’t be real because globalist elites are profiting from the issue and trying to control us. Instead, both the former and latter can be true at the same time (yep, quite elementary logic). Finally, the most widespread and pernicious irrationality is to regard these discussions as just one topic, and then choose criticism of the globalists as being the most important response, rather than understanding the situation of the natural environment and responding to it in a better way. That happens when people think “after all this debate, I’m not sure about climate change but I’m certain about resisting the globalists, so I’ll focus on that.” If one’s motivation for inquiring into public affairs is to feel like a moral agentic person and experience a burst of energy from belonging to the good guys in a fight, then such a conclusion is seductive. That is especially because it requires no painful recognition of the ecological tragedy, no sacrifices, no risk taking, no changing of lifestyles, and no complicated participation in community projects. It also generates easy likes on social media from people similarly addicted to narratives that avoid difficult self-reflection and change. Unfortunately, the result of this irrationality is people don’t begin to prepare emotionally and practically for what has already started unfolding around them.
wijembendell.com/2023/10/10/responding-to-the-new-wave-of-climate-scepticism
( I don't entirely agree with the writers own tendency towards criticism of globalism and elites, and of the mainstream authorities motives, and of the idea of covid lockdown policies, but I thought he makes some good points on other issues as above)
Moderator Response:[BL] Link fixed.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:28 AM on 26 April 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
The similarities of climate and Covid (or other) denial psychology are indeed of interest, and sort of loosely on-topic, but let's try to not get into details Covid discussions.
For the psychology aspect, I have several times referred to the web site The Authoritarians. There is a long ebook there, plus a few other blog posts as follow-ups. It discusses the learnings of a social psychology prof that spent a career looking at what he called "authoritarian followers". That is to say, he was more focused on the psychology and behaviour of the people that follow authoritarians - not the authority figures themselves (although that is also discussed).
Sadly the most recent note on that web page is the announcement that the author - Bob Altemeyer - had passed away. Eclectic's note that Dan Kahneman had passed away was something I had read about in my local paper.
As for the sequence of "denial" thought patterns, it has been long discussed that the sequence often goes along these lines:
- It's not happening
- It's not us
- It's not bad
- It's too late, and why didn't you warn us?
Philippe's comment about "a matter of when, not if" regarding Covid extends to my experience. As a grade school student, I learned that the Spanish Flu had killed more people than the first world war, and there was concern it could happen again. Any post-Covid cries of "we never expected this" seemed rather hollow - given I learned about it in grade school.
In a similar vein, on a weather-related topic, I remember watching a cable news channel reporter interviewing a local police official on the US east cost, a few days before a hurricane was expected to hit. (This was in the early days of TV sending reporters into the middle of disasters before they happened.)
- The reporter asked "How long have you been preparing for this hurricane?"
- The official said "25 years."
- He continued by pointing out that they lived in an area prone to hurricanes. You don't wait until one is in the forecast before you decide how to deal with it. You know that you are eventually going to need those plans.
We can see previous commenters on this thread that firmly believe that action is not warranted until after harm has happened.
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Eclectic at 04:14 AM on 26 April 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
It would be interesting to see an intensive study of the overlap in mentality of Climate-Deniers and Anti-Vaxxers and Flat-Earthers. All three groups show a rigid delusional thinking, which has (thus far) proved to be impervious to rational discussion/education.
But delusions & other irrationality of thinking woud be a hard topic to study well ~ and possibly it would be somewhat unethical to spend the effort & money in studying such intransigent minds.
# Note : The prominent psychologist, Prof. Daniel Kahneman (author of "Thinking, Fast and Slow") is known for his studies of the "kinks" in the human mind. His death at age 90, was announced last month.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:39 AM on 26 April 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Indeed, it would be inappropriate to launch the C subject here, although the conspiratorial thinking aspect is shared with many other efforts of organized denial found in other subjects. I personally have very little patience for it, after working in the ICU throughout a crisis that anyone who ever had a microbiology class knew was not a matter of if but a matter of when. It may be the only one I see in my lifetime but certainly won't be the last.
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transposer85 at 20:53 PM on 25 April 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
One Planet Only Forever @27
I am with you on this issue. I am currently trying to present such points in the best way to inspire deniers to change on a channel where somebody posted this film which garnered some positive resonance. As an environmentalist, vegan activist who studied ecology and human ecology in which, in 1992 we delved into the idea of man-made climate change at a time where it was generally seen as a laughing stock, I wanted to chime in with some relevant points:
The channel I am referring to is actually more Covid centred. I find myself in the fairly unusual position of being very pro consensus science in the field of environment, whereas I find medical science is riddled with corruption, mistruths and effective lobbyism which came to a head with Covid together with coercion at a level where it is entirely rational to assume plausibility of at least some conspiratorial aspects. Plenty of evidence is there.
I am mentioning this partly because you touched on the topic but more importantly because I believe it is important to understand the psychology of climate deniers in a more nuanced manner, i.e. in more depth. Unfortunately, as far as I understand it, many people with legitimate concerns regarding Covid measures, associated discrimination and other significant costs to society, got drawn in to certain (predictably) politically motivated groups and for whatever reason, emotional triggers, legitimate lack of trust in the system for some aspects, lack of time for the reviewing the details (big one) etc, have just fallen for climate denial propaganda.
This is at least one part of the spectrum of the climate denial "group" which theoretically could be won back to rationality and trust in the areas of science where trust is actually deserved.
It may be that more emotional people are attracted to these traps. The more we can refine our understanding of the psychology of transformation, the better chance we have of inspiring rationality and deserved trust. Unfortunately, simply facts normally doesn't do it very well. So we have to get creative as scientific mindsets who are characteristically not so emotional on average. It's very important for people to sense they have been heard and taken seriously, even if we strongly disagree with their perceptions and belief systems.
In short we need to apply kindness and compassion even when we feel like throwing that out of the window and slamming people for being ignorant et cetera. An invitation to follow the money could be useful, like you pointed to. Funding and wages in science it's a very variable thing depending upon the type of science. Environmental science is probably on average at the lowest end a financial return, compared with "science" that largely comes straight out of industries, wishing to make profits on their products.
I'm not going to hammer out my evidence for the C topic because my comment will most likely be deleted. I am new here so don't know how this works yet but if you really are interested I will (somewhat begrudgingly) spend even more of my free time to lay it out in a private message ;) otherwise we may have to just agree to disagree.
Moderator Response:[BL] Welcome to Skeptical Science.
Yes, let's please try to avoid any lengthy discussion of the C-word here (where C = Covid, not Climate). The comments sections here are intended for discussion of the topics presented in each Original Post. It is not a general forum for discussion of whatever pleases people.
As a new user, the Comments Policy is your guide. (It is also the guide for the moderators.)
Violations of the comments policy will see a gradual sequence of escalating actions by moderators:
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It usually takes as while to reach the final stage. Rapid ascent (descent?) through the process requires really obnoxious behaviour. If you read all the comments on this thread, you can see the moderation comments (green box beneath the comment) that have been added previously. One individual chose to stop commenting here and go elsewhere to complain, rather than follow the simple advice to take the discussion to another thread where it would be on topic - but that was his choice to stop, not ours.
