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chriskoz at 08:59 AM on 10 April 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #14
A denial press release that Mike Mann shared on his FB.
Denier Delingpole Wishes For ‘Climate Nuremberg’
It's not worth reading the original (referred therein by Joe Romm) because it's indeed nauseating, if taken seriously. Waste of time to wrestle with pigs. But it's worth at least reading this commentary by Joe.
Climate Science Deniers have reached the new low. To date I thought Monckton was the bigest nutter among the deniers. Now he was overtaken by James Delingpole.
This James Delingpole fellow openly admits he has nothing but the "art of metaphor". Abusive and bullying metaphors, like a kindy child, or a nutter in a mental institution. And a UK Daily Telegraph has printed it. Unbelievable! Lower than I ever expected. I wonder if they can go any lower still... -
Tom Curtis at 08:43 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @30, here are US expenditures by income bracket on rates and gasoline in 2009:
Rates include both electricity and water, and it is possible but very unlikely that the increased expenditure on rates with income comes solely from increased water consumption. The increased expenditure on gasoline and motor oils with income is straightforward.
You make unsubstantiated claims to support the contention that high income groups spend less on energy than low income groups. Of course, your anecdotal evidence is incomplete. You mention energy efficient fridges, but fail to factor in the size of the fridge, or the number of fridges. A low income household is likely to struggle by on a single fridge while a high income household will have a large fridge, a freezer and one or two bar fridges.
Likewise your claim on energy use for heating fails to factor in the size of the dwelling being heated.
I note that Sphaerica calls your claims anecdotal evidence. They do not rise to the level of anecdotal evidence which would require you to actually mention specific cases, including showing that the high income familly actually spent less on energy, something you do not bother doing.
Assuming, as is reasonable, that expenditure on household energy use rises with rates, it is clear that household energy expenditure rises with rates. It is further clear that. Ergo higher income families would pay a higher absolute value in the carbon tax, and recieve less than their expenditure on the carbon tax back from a flat rate dividend. Conversely, those on low incomes would spend less on the carbon tax and recieve back more from the flat rate dividend than they pay. Ergo they would be better of. They could invest that extra money recieved in high energy efficiency fridges (which are not significantly more expensive than low energy efficiency fridges) and insulation and be better of still.
It is noteworthy that household expenditure on energy as a percentage of income declines with increasing wealth; so a dividend based on taxable income would make the poor worse of - but that would be a political decision to do so, and is not what is being proposed.
It is further noteworthy that household expenditure on rates including electricity never rises above 4.5% of household income, showing that doom and gloom stories about the impacts of a carbon tax on the poor are works of fiction.
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Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
Note - an earlier summary of this paper as a poster presentation is available here, for those blocked by the paywall.
This poster also describes using an ensemble of AGCM (atmospheric global climate model) integrations without the pressure observations, finding that the reconstructions with the pressures are a much better match to surface temperature observations - the barometric pressures add considerable information.
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Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
william - They used data from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project and:
...have ignored all air temperature observations and instead inferred them from observations of barometric pressure, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice concentration.
[Emphasis added]
This was done to remove influences of various influences on surface land stations such as urban heat influence, station moves, equipment changes, land use, statistical processing, and all of the other things that 'skeptics' have been complaining about.
In short, they estimate air temperatures by what they could be when constrained by the other measurements.
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scaddenp at 06:28 AM on 10 April 2013It's the sun
Chris, your idea of "reasonable degree of accuracy" obviously expects models to predict science says they cannot. They are designed to predict climate not weather and have shown considerable skill. Please see "Models are unreliable" and feel free to comment if you still dispute this after reading the article.
Please note to that strawmen arguments are easy - disputing a claim that the science has never made - but doing that here will win you no points.
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william5331 at 06:14 AM on 10 April 2013Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
Do I feel dumb. I didn't understand a word of this article. What data were they using to determine the temperature change over the period studied.
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Pete Dunkelberg at 05:40 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
Compare Bedmap2.
http://spaceref.com/earth/antarctica/bedmap2-a-detailed-view-of-antarcticas-landmass.html
If enough ice melts, the two separate populations become one.
Moderator Response:[DB] Hotlinked URL; embedded linked graphic.
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Lanfear at 04:51 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
Actually all of the links in the reference-list are Facebook-prefixed.
Moderator Response:[DB] You are correct. Bitly was used to keep the links short for the article, originally written for the FB site The Earth Story. I have updated the References Sources section into the standard SkS linked format.
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Phil at 04:51 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @30
People are going to consume energy in proportion to heating / cooling needs primarily, and only secondarily to wealth.
People also consume energy through Travel costs (both commuting and leisure) and indirectly through consumption of manufactured goods
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bouke at 02:09 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
The link to http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1468.html links to facebook instead.
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Bob Lacatena at 01:32 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin,
You don't seem to have much faith in the concept of a free market economy. You also seem to be focusing on rather narrow (and ill-conceived) anecdotal episodes.
If a lot of people need more energy efficient appliances, then manufacturers will be motivated to create and supply them. People will also be motivated to find other alternatives, like wearing a sweater instead of just cranking up the heat. Rich people can ignore that sort of thing, but most people simply need to adjust their behavior. As their behavior changes, and demand for inefficient products goes down, the market must similarly adjust.
This is basically how capitalism works... unless you break the system by providing subsidies while ignoring external costs (i.e. the damage done by greenhouse gases), so that people can pretend that there is no problem while other people get disproportionately rich by absorbing all of the wealth while the ultimate burden will be shared by everyone, eventually.
The basic idea of a free market economy is that things cost what they cost, and the market will adjust -- through changes in demand, innovation and evolution -- to meet reality. Subsidies and external costs break that system. They should be anathema to anyone who believes in a true, free market economy.
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CBDunkerson at 01:18 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, there is a vast difference between 'it could be done wrong' and 'it cannot be done right'. The essential point is that it is entirely possible to eliminate the massive direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry without negative economic impacts. A carbon tax with rebate is one way to do that.
As to 'rich people have greater energy efficiency'... I don't care how efficient the machinery is, a mansion is going to take more power to heat than a two bedroom apartment. Find a study showing that total energy use decreases with wealth anywhere on the planet and we'll talk. Until then it just sounds like nonsense.
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Kevin8233 at 00:41 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
1) It is patently obvious that a carbon tax will draw money from people approximately in line with their energy use. That means wealthy people who have high energy use will pay more tax. It follows that if the rebate is equal for each person, people on low incomes will be rebated more than they originally paid in carbon tax. You would get a lot more respect around here if you did not feel it incumbent on you to assert such blatent faslehoods so frequently.
It is not patently obvious at all. People are going to consume energy in proportion to heating / cooling needs primarily, and only secondarily to wealth.
As wealth increases, so does one's ability to purchase better more energy efficeint equipment, or to better insulate one's home. In fact, some lower income families do not own the home, so they can't make efficeincy improvements (while some don't pay for heat).
2) As is also patently obvious, you don't need to invest anything to take advantage of a flat rate per capita rebate. Further, you can cut energy usage as a simple means of reducing additional costs, something anybody can do.
My point on reduction of energy usage - Let's say you make plenty of money. You get a top of the line refridgerator that is tops in efficeincy. I do not make as much. I have to settle for a Searsbottom of the line refridgerator.
Bottom line, I consume more electricity every day, yet you make more money than I do.
CBDunkerson,
Thanks, that was an interesting article. Glad it worked for them, but I do know that US congressmen / Senators or even state representatives can / will screw anything up/
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Composer99 at 00:31 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin:
If the vast majority of human history shows anything, it is that humans can get by - and even thrive - with extremely low energy consumption by the standards of modern materially affluent societies. Indeed, there are many societies and proto-societies still extant in the modern world where people appear to be getting along just fine with but a fraction of the energy consumption that materially affluent societies engage in. Some of them are in quite inhospitable environments, to boot.
So as far as I can see energy consumption is rather more flexible than you make it out to be.
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Tom Curtis at 00:29 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @26, from your first article:
"More people die from the cold weather in Britain than in any other European country, including Siberia."
As Siberia is undoubtedly colder than Britain, clearly the excess deaths are not caused by the cold per se but by not taking adequate measures against the cold. Or, as the article says, quoting William Keatinge,
"Many people here simply do not take the cold seriously and appreciate the danger it poses.
"Simple things like wrapping up warm and keeping moving when hanging about in the cold really can save your life".
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Tom Curtis at 00:20 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @23,
1) It is patently obvious that a carbon tax will draw money from people approximately in line with their energy use. That means wealthy people who have high energy use will pay more tax. It follows that if the rebate is equal for each person, people on low incomes will be rebated more than they originally paid in carbon tax. You would get a lot more respect around here if you did not feel it incumbent on you to assert such blatent faslehoods so frequently.
2) As is also patently obvious, you don't need to invest anything to take advantage of a flat rate per capita rebate. Further, you can cut energy usage as a simple means of reducing additional costs, something anybody can do.
3) Energy consumption is not infinitely flexible; but nobody said emissions would be reduced solely by eliminating consumption. An increased cost of supply that is not applied to emissions free generation will drive up supply by emissions free generation. It will also drive the substitution of lower emissions generation (gas) for higher (coal).
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Kevin8233 at 00:14 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
Here are a couple of articles for you...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1754561.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16817162
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332343/Nine-pensioners-died-cold-hour-winter-prices-soar.html
Moderator Response:[DB] Note that link-vomiting (posting links without proper context) is frowned upon in this establishment. And a Comments Policy violation.
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CBDunkerson at 00:13 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, as Tom Dayton notes... your rhetoric is at odds with reality. Indeed, Skeptical Science has an article about this thing which cannot possibly happen.
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Tom Dayton at 23:56 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, Alaska has been doing this for decades. Not exactly a hotbed of Communism.
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Kevin8233 at 23:16 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
CBDunkerson,
Under the rebate plan discussed by scaddenp, there is no way it is easier for people to heat their homes. At best, it is break even. However, when was the last time that a govt. sponsorred rebate plan worked as advertised? The next time will be the first.
This essentially transfers money from high energy consumers (i.e. corporations and the wealthy) to low energy consumers (e.g. the poor)...
Again, not true. The corporations and the wealthy have the money to invest in infrastructure to take advantage of these incentives. Those on fixed income, or low income do not!
TOM CURTIS,
The most fundamental point is that your claims amount to the claim that market mechanisms cannot efficiently adapt to changes in prices.
Just a comment on this point. Energy consumption is not infinitely flexible. There is a lower amount that people have to have. The market can, and does, flex its muscle and push in certain directions, however, it can only push so far.
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Tom Curtis at 23:04 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @20, there are far cheaper ways to stay warm in the winter than central heating. Blankets, jumpers, thermal underwear etc can keep you warm enough to survive in Antarctica if thick enough, and that with no heating at all. No mere Chicago winter (or what ever example you have in mind) is cold enough to cause people to die from lack of central heating. So, in the first instance, even if your premise (that more people would not be able to afford central heating) where true, your conclusion that there would be more deaths is false. What there would be is more people wearing jumpers and thick socks indoors so they can keep the thermostat a little lower, with a net saving on the powerbill.
Of course, your premise is also dubious, as argued by DBDunkerson. In fact, a fee plus flat rate per capita dividend, as he envisions, will result in people currently at risk from cold having more money to do something about it. Of course, we cannot assume that a flat rate per capita dividend will be implimented anywhere, least of all in the US. Consequently we cannot be certain that people on low incomes will be better of because that depends on the particular design of the carbon tax or emissions trading scheme implimented. It does mean that the poor being worse of (if it occurs) will be a consequence of deliberate choice just as the poor in the US often not having enough money for power bills is a matter of political choice.
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CBDunkerson at 22:52 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, you're ignoring the rebate side of the equation... that is, the carbon tax dollars collected are then given back to the populace. This essentially transfers money from high energy consumers (i.e. corporations and the wealthy) to low energy consumers (e.g. the poor)... making it easier for them to heat their homes.
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Kevin8233 at 22:28 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
It also means that more people will not be able to afford to heat there homes during the winter, which also means that more people will die from an inability to properly heat their homes during the winter.
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CBDunkerson at 21:49 PM on 9 April 2013It's the sun
Chris wrote: "Those who cite CO2 as the only culprit in weather change..."
No such people exist. As should be clear from the original article, the Sun does have a major impact on weather and climate. It just demonstrably is not responsible for the current unprecedented warming. Volcanoes, ENSO fluctuations, greenhouse gases other than CO2, aerosols, clouds, and many other factors which influence climate are discussed in detail in various posts on this site.
However, the factor currently undergoing the biggest change is clearly the atmospheric CO2 level. We can look at every other factor and see that it has changed by a few percent at most... atmospheric CO2 is up by more than 40% in the past ~150 years. That's a profound change at a rate vastly greater than anything we have ever seen in nature. Ditto the corresponding increase in temperature. We've got two shockingly fast global increases occuring in tandem and basic physics tells us that increasing CO2 must cause increasing temperatures... yet somehow people keep insisting that we ignore the obvious primary issue and concentrate on anything and everything else.
Why is that?
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Chris Eastaughffe at 20:57 PM on 9 April 2013It's the sun
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions, or looking for a simple correlation?
The nexus may not be a direct link nor logarithmic progression. It may be that a number of factors must align, or a threshhold be reached, before the effect of sunspot activity, volcanic activity or other factors have more than a negligable effect on the weather - this would perhaps be best demonstrated by research into unusual tornado events in winter, in the US. It was suspected the link related to El Nino/La Nina events. This, and swings in the jet stream related to it, were eventually established once the right question was found. This is not a simple correlation but rather that a cluster of severe torandoes must be identified, rather than simply that a tornado occured, before the effect is identified (movement of the jetstream, spinning up the severe tornados, related to the El Nino/La Nina winds changes), and a correlation established.
This information was there for all to see but not found until the right question was asked.
Those who cite unusual weather events as proof are puting the cart before the horse, and ignoring the fact that weather prediction is an evolving science without absolutes.
Those who cite CO2 as the only culprit in weather change are again ignoring the fact that our models to date have failed to predict temperature and weather movements with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
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ajki at 19:59 PM on 9 April 2013The History of Climate Science
Very nice and to the point.
May I suggest to enrich the text with links to the studies, articles or abstracts?
SkS has most of the needed links right here.
(A special thank you goes to BaerbelW for the german translation)
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chriskoz at 19:33 PM on 9 April 2013The History of Climate Science
John,
Your jargon is not understandable to me at all. You could as well speak Welsh :)
But the evidence of "weathering lasting just ten thousand [years]" is very much interesting (if you translate it to non-professional English) and hopeful that the geo processes that we need desperately in XXI century can be sped up.
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scaddenp at 12:06 PM on 9 April 2013The Fool's Gold of Current Climate
The Matthews and Solomon paper appears to depend on the earlier Matthews and Caldeira paper. However, as far as I can see neither this nor the earlier Matthews and Weaver paper dealt with effects of aerosol reduction which must surely also accompany emissions.
On the other hand, that paper references Montenegro et al 2007 which surely gives lie to those who think CO2 levels in the atmosphere are short-lived.
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Andy Skuce at 11:22 AM on 9 April 2013The Fool's Gold of Current Climate
I have a post in the works (out later this week) that will discuss the recent Matthews and Solomon paper in Science and which refers to the MacDougall et al paper on permafrost that Icarus mentioned. I did a blogpost a few months ago on that paper. Figure 3 from that post is similar to Figure 3 in the MacDougall paper and I have reproduced it below.
Figure 3. Showing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 following a shutdown of human emissions in 2013(left) and, after following DEP 8.5 for 39 years, a shutdown in 2050 (right). The dotted blue line shows the results at a climate sensitivity of 3.0°C and the upper and lower lines 4.5° and 2.0° respectively. Selected and modified from Figure S8 in the Supplementary Information.
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scaddenp at 09:34 AM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
" the retail price increase may be proportionally more than the tax increase."
I find that very unlikely. An increase in bulk energy (crude oil, electricity generation) usually comes to retail as less. If all middle men are working to fixed margins, then retail go up precisely by same percent. In practise, industries would be extremely lucky to be able to sell on fixed margins.
The set up under discussion is a 100% rebate scheme so let's discuss that rather an alternative which I agree you would not want. In this scheme, your income after tax increases. If you spend less than average joe on carbon, then you are better off not worse. The obvious way to improve your income is to look around for ways to pay less carbon tax than average joe because then you become even better off. So an energy company that sell to you with no carbon tax will get your business. They get more market share so that is what provides the incentive.
Actually in an unfair carbon tax, where only say 70% is rebated, there is actually an even bigger incentive to get your energy from sources with no carbon tax.
If live in a country where the reality is that people vote right-wing into power, then you have to also find climate change solutions that the right wing can live with.
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Tom Curtis at 09:28 AM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
gaillardia @17:
1) Introducing a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme will set a higher mean retail price for energy.
2) That means that corporations that can deliver energy with less carbon production will pocket more of that retail price, and hence will have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions by switching energy production from coal to gas, or from coal to renewables.
3) It will also mean there is a greater incentive for private individuals to independently source their energy needs by installing their own renewable energy capacity.
4) It also means that private individuals will have a greater incentive to conserve energy, ie, by installing better insulation and running their heater/air conditioner at a lower rate, or by turning down (or up in hot climates) the thermostat slightly, or by turning of electronic equipment at the wall when not in use. Conservative estimates show that households can reduce power consumption by at least 10% by these means, which would make them slightly better of even without a rebate.
5) Finally, it would mean the savings on power from installing insulation or renewable power would likely exceed the interest payments on the loan taken out to do either or both of the above (if you don't have the ready cash). So it is not true that you won't have the extra money to change consumption habits provided that those changes reduce your energy bills.
The most fundamental point is that your claims amount to the claim that market mechanisms cannot efficiently adapt to changes in prices. If true, we had better switch to socialism because the efficiency of free markets is premised on the ability of markets to adapt to price signals. That is why it has been conservative economists who have proposed and pushed the use of pricing mechanisms rather than regulation to control carbon emissions.
Of course, the evidence is that markets do adapt efficiently to price changes.
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gaillardia at 09:09 AM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
scaddenp at 06:07 AM on 7 April, 2013
gaillardia - how can you claim - "my income and everyone else's won't change (assuming a %100 rebate)" The 100% rebate idea means you get back the tax money. You can get more than your fair share if you less carbon than average. That gives companies a serious incentive to build low carbon infrastructure.
The idea that tax money is used by government to improve infrastructure unfortunately is an anethema to the right who do not trust government (with some justification ) to do this efficiently.
Sequence:1. Carbon tax is levied on energy company.
2. Energy company raises price by amount of tax, at least.
3. Middlemen and retailers raise their prices also, and since they frequently do this on a percentage basis, not by amount of expenses or some other real quantity, the retail price increase may be proportionally more than the tax increase.
4. Best case scenario: Because of the additional tax, I pay more for the product, by an amount equal to (not more than, see #3) that product's share of the tax.
5. The tax is rebated to me, maybe at %100, but I've already spent that money paying for the tax.
6. My income has not changed, in fact there's a good chance it will go down a little. I have no additional disposable income to buy anything, let alone something as expensive as a personal renewable energy system.
7. This scheme merely cycles more money, with greater opportunity for energy companies to skim off the top. They don't care that more dollars are cycling through the system, as long as their net profit is maintained (They don't care that some individuals might get a bigger rebate, and some might get less. That makes no difference). They have no incentive to change.
We need systemic change, yesterday. We have to do it as a society, all together, or it won't happen. Let's take the tax money and build what we need the way that it's actually possible, by pooling the money to buy the big systemic changes: better-designed communities, mass transit, and renewable energy infrastructure.
I know the right thinks it's anathema. They think taxes are anathema. That problem must be confronted, since it won't go away by waiting for it to go.
Waiting for the market is waiting for purposefully ignorant grifters to see the light.
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Jonas at 06:56 AM on 9 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Agnostic @ 23: Randers says: "The global population will peak around 8 billion people in 2040", see ca. 10:40, link to video starts at 9:50: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8qDy0jHo_DQ#t=590s I know this is not mainstream and I can't judge it, but it's interesting and it's a report to the club of Rome ... . See also http://www.2052.info , where you can also find the spreadsheet with the data to run your own forecasts, depending on the parameters. Just FYI.
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dana1981 at 05:23 AM on 9 April 2013Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
keith @1 - indeed, Anderson is the 'natural thermometers' reference in the 5th bullet at the end of the post.
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keithpickering at 02:26 AM on 9 April 2013Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
Also worth mentioning is the recent paper by Anderson et.al. 2013, which extends proxy temperature records forward to 1980. The Anderson data also nicely confirm thermometer records' accuracy; at 20-year smoothing, Anderson and HADCRUT4 are virtually indistinguishable from 1920 forward.
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Daniel J. Andrews at 01:54 AM on 9 April 2013The History of Climate Science
This is good! I find myself forgetting some of the historical details, and this is the perfect refresher (the picture graphs alone are good memory aids). Weart's book is great, but if I have limited time, I tend not to check it out unless it is a "need to know" for a reply I'm working on. This article and the graphic timeline will make it so much easier to double-check myself (and certainly replaces my scribbed notes based on the info gleaned from Wearts book). Thank you.
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Joel_Huberman at 01:23 AM on 9 April 2013The History of Climate Science
In the third paragraph of the section "1930s: Hulburt and Callendar", the word "slated" is obviously a mistake. Perhaps the intended word is "slanted"?
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DSL at 23:21 PM on 8 April 2013Sportsmen’s and Anglers’ Views Highlighted in New ‘This Is Not Cool’ Video
Bill, that highlights one of the great unknowns about the consequences of rapid warming on top of an interglacial. We don't have a good analogue for the rapid transmutation of the biosphere in the post-glacial regions. The dis-integration and trans-integration of species is, even as an 'issue', largely ignored by the general public living in developed areas. The typical response I see when a relevant article does happen to be published in mainstream press is "See how goofy they are? They blame everything on global warming."
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Bob Lacatena at 22:43 PM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
DSL,
I was going to say it, but I say it so often I get tired, but yes, I think that Hadley Cell expansion, in and of itself, is one of the major expressions of climate change, and perhaps the one with the greatest human impact.
Hadley cell expansion means the desertification of otherwise heavily populated and mostly arable land. Most of the deserts of the world are defined by their position within the Hadley cells (the Mojave, Arabian, Sahara, all of the Australian deserts, etc.). But they are often bounded by heavily populated and farmed regions.
The expansion of the Hadley Cells will mean the desertification of otherwise useful land in Texas, Oklahoma, Spain, Italy and many other parts of the world.
Imagine a world where southern, or even all of, Spain and Italy are deserts. Imagine refugees leaving Texas and Oklahoma for "greener pastures."
That's a sad thought.
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CBDunkerson at 21:50 PM on 8 April 2013The Fool's Gold of Current Climate
Icarus, we know that human industry emits about 30 billion tons of CO2 per year and that the atmospheric content of CO2 is increasing by about 15 billion tons (2 ppm) per year. Thus, we know that natural sinks are removing about 15 billion tons more than natural sources are emitting. If human emissions suddenly dropped to zero natural sinks still take about 15 billion tons (2 ppm) out per year... at first. That would rate would decline as the atmospheric and ocean surface carbon levels came into equilibrium. This kind of decline can be seen in the red line of graph A of Andy Skuce's post #29 above.
The alternate view, as with the MacDougall paper, is that we will soon see a shift in the balance between natural sources and natural sinks as permafrost and other sources release long held carbon. If that does happen then atmospheric CO2 levels might remain raised, or even continue to increase, even without human emissions. There is still a great deal of debate about the temperature at which this shift in natural emissions vs sinks would take place and how large an impact it would have. As you note, MacDougall seems to predict that we have already passed the point at which natural emissions will grow to offset natural sinks. If true then we're looking at a 'best case scenario' (i.e. immediate zero human CO2 emissions) matching the blue line in charts A & C from Andy Skuce... with level atmospheric CO2, temperatures would continue slowly rising for centuries.
However, that difference between 'flat' temperatures if atmospheric CO2 levels fall and slowly rising temperatures if atmospheric CO2 remains stable is relatively insignificant in comparison to the real danger... which is the currently upward rocketing temperatures as atmospheric CO2 levels climb. The sooner we get to 'flat' atmospheric CO2 levels the better. If we can then go further and actually decrease atmospheric CO2 that'd be good to, but we have got to stop the level from increasing ASAP.
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Icarus at 21:08 PM on 8 April 2013The Fool's Gold of Current Climate
"Significant contribution to climate warming from the permafrost carbon feedback" – Andrew H. MacDougall, Christopher A. Avis & Andrew J. Weaver.
In figure 3, the paper suggests that even with a hypothetical complete cessation of anthropogenic CO2 and sulphate emissions in the year 2013, atmospheric CO2 would not fall by more than about 10ppm for hundreds of years, if climate sensitivity is ~3C per doubling. That seems very worrying if true – doesn’t it mean that they expect permafrost carbon release to have offset all natural carbon sinks within the next decade or two? The usual scenario is that land and ocean sinks would quickly start to draw down atmospheric CO2 if we stopped emitting it (e.g. in the ‘Climate change commitments’ RealClimate article from 2010).
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BillEverett at 15:05 PM on 8 April 2013Sportsmen’s and Anglers’ Views Highlighted in New ‘This Is Not Cool’ Video
Posted on a friend's blog 16 June 2010: "The massive environmental upheaval caused by global warming in the pine and spruce forest of Idaho and Montana is stunning. The forest is dieing. Pine Beetle and Spruce Moths are unchecked by the long frosts of winter. The result is hundreds perhaps thousands square miles of dead and dieing forests. There is the loss of the wood and timber...the water holding of the trees, the air purification, the oxygen generation but, more.... The millions of pine and spruce needles in the waters have changed the PH of the lakes and streams. The water born insect life is gone. Three different streams, three hoops set out for three days each ... less than 20 insects collected where there should have been thousands. Breeding salmon seen but no fry, no first or second year fish, no trout, no white fish, no suckers...the streams are dead.
"Sorry my mind is still struggling with the facts and unsure as to how I will deal with those who say my truth is lies. Will they come walk the streams, roll the rocks, hang the hoops, count the insects, float the rivers and prove me wrong or will they simply move their mouths in denial? I was unable to write this last summer and do not know what I can do this year."
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DSL at 13:09 PM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Johanson & Fu (2009) might be worth looking at as well re things drying up. From the abstract:
"Observations show that the Hadley cell has widened by about 2°–5° since 1979. This widening and the concomitant poleward displacement of the subtropical dry zones may be accompanied by large-scale drying near 30°N and 30°S. Such drying poses a risk to inhabitants of these regions who are accustomed to established rainfall patterns."
Others . . .
Hoerling et al. (2012):"The land area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea has experienced 10 of the 12 driest winters since 1902 in just the last 20 years. A change in wintertime Mediterranean precipitation toward drier conditions has likely occurred over 1902–2010 whose magnitude cannot be reconciled with internal variability alone. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol forcing are key attributable factors for this increased drying, though the external signal explains only half of the drying magnitude. Furthermore, sea surface temperature (SST) forcing during 1902–2010 likely played an important role in the observed Mediterranean drying, and the externally forced drying signal likely also occurs through an SST change signal."
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villabolo at 13:00 PM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Agnostic @23
There is actually an entire industry catering to survivalists that supplies bulk grain packaged in either nitrogen packed cans (almost gallon size) or food grade mylar bags with oxygen absorbers inside 5 gallon buckets.
Dry grains packed in nitrogen have a 20-30 year shelf life. Those packed in plastic buckets have anywhere from 3-10 years shelf life.
I myself had a quarter ton worth of hard red winter wheat in the gallon sized cans. The cost comes out at about a dollar per pound of grain.
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Riduna at 11:39 AM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Glen Tamblyn @ 7 … The most obvious effects of ocean warming are on fish habitat (eg coral reefs) and fish physiology – forcing fish to move further north or south of the equator, which is why I gave it a mention. It also leads to accelerated melting of ice, reduced albedo, rising sea levels, loss of permafrost, carbon emissions and a whole host of nasties not considered here.
Ainsworth et al (2011) point to the effects on biodiversity of ocean warming in their regional study of the NW Pacific. Pratchett et al (2011) also have some interesting stuff on the effects of ocean warming on seaweed and fish habitat and heaps of references to other material.
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Riduna at 09:59 AM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Ivoryorange @ 17 … Good point. Desertification could well result from global warming induced climate change, such as persistent drought. I have not read much on this topic and I am surprised that very little on the subject is available on SkS. Both need rectifying.
Moderator Response:[DB] Desertification is an emergent outcome of a warming world, as is an intensification of the hydrological cycle. For the former, see this post. IIRC, Rob Painting has a forthcoming post on the latter.
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Riduna at 09:42 AM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Jonas @ 3 … Thanks for the reference on population which shows a mid-range estimate of 9.3 billion by 2050, not inconsistent with an estimate of 10 billion by 2065. Even if we assume global population does not exceed 9 billion by 2100 (unlikely), can we assume that they will all be adequately fed and housed? Can human ingenuity in the sphere of genetics produce food plants able to cope with a rapidly changing, less predictable and more extreme climate?
Villabolo @ 5 … That’s a novel idea, canned wheat – very expensive but not very practical since it would involve transporting grain to a “cannery” The problem is how to store millions of tonnes of various grains to cover shortages arising from crop losses caused by severe climate events, grain losses due to insect and rodent predation and transport delay due to infrastructure damage. This already cause significant grain losses but nowhere near as large as those likely to occur as the effects of global warming increase.
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Tom Curtis at 09:38 AM on 8 April 2013The two epochs of Marcott and the Wheelchair
scaddenp @58, the temperature increase in the 20th century has been matched by an approx 2.2 C increase in temperatures at the GISP2 site, only 1.5 C of which is captured in the ice core record (Kobashi et al, 2011). For comparison, the 8.2 Kya trough was approximately 3 C in the nearby Aggasizz-Renland core.
And contrary to KR, it does not show up in the Marcott reconstruction. Indeed, direct comparison with the data from the SI spreadsheet shows that at the time fo the dip, the reconstructed temperature is rising from a low point at 8.31 Kya to a high point at 8.05 Kya. The 8.2 (technically 8.17 in the Agassiz-Renland data) trough is at best matched by a 0.01 C inflection in that rise.
If the -1.5 C excursion at 8.25 Kya of the Dome C record was in reality the same event, this is possibly a global temperature excursion greater than 0.9 C. The 80 year differnce in time matches 1 SD of temporal error in the A-R record and 0.5 SD in the Dome C record so allignment in reality is certainly within the bounds of possibility. Indeed, it is probably that they, and similar troughs in the 50 odd proxies with data points in that interval align in at least one realization of the reconstruction, but with that many proxies, allignment across all would be rare so that such allignments would be washed out by the majority of realizations in which there is no alignment.
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Tom Dayton at 08:51 AM on 8 April 2013Food Security - What Security?
Steve Easterbrook summarized a recent lecture by Damon Matthews on the consequences of reductions of emissions. (Hat tip to somebody in some comment here on SkS a while ago who brought this up, but I dunno who.)
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DSL at 07:17 AM on 8 April 2013The History of Climate Science
Oh - the graphic! Snort. Thanks, jg.
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