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One Planet Only Forever at 07:59 AM on 23 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
This is the UN webpage for the series of Conferences that started with the 1972 Stockholm Conference (50th anniversary this year) that I mention in my comment @92.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:51 AM on 23 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
My apologies for using 'his' in reference to Santalives in the opening statement of my comment @92. I should have used 'their'.
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Eclectic at 07:49 AM on 23 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Historical note for future readers of this thread :
the good Santalives has simpy transferred his circular and repetitive non-arguments to other threads.
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Evan , allow me to repeat: your Lead Article is perceptive, and the analogy you draw is apt. The sociological impediments are large indeed, and yet progress is being made.
One example, IMO , is the new model Ford pickup truck, the Ford "F150 Lightning Electric". Not yet "on the streets" in numbers ~ but the advance orders are huge, and the Ford company is struggling to ramp up its production facilities. It is a large and impressive vehicle ( not a trendie greenie pricey Tesla sedan car ) , with impressively brisk acceleration, with extensive AC power outlets for tradesman's tools, and with substantial Vehicle-2-Home capability (which is a strong emotional point in its favor).
This is an electric vehicle which will powerfully impress the friends & neighbours of its new American owners. And will help break down the extensive grass-roots opposition (in the USA) to "all that darn new-fangled stuff". Now who would have thought, 10 years ago , that a humongous Pickup would be a leader for change in social attitude?
Renewable electricity generation still lags disappointingly ~ and faces huge problems in ramping up the supply.
And there is no escaping the point: the world still has not gotten the greatly-needed supply of "renewable" liquid hydrocarbon fuel. A fuel which is usable everywhere, in large quantities ~ as we see every day, as we look around. That technological advance would win hearts-and-minds !
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:48 AM on 23 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
In response to Santalives’ questionable insistence on asking questionable questions, especially his demand for a comprehensive response to a cherry-picked questionable paper, Evan@89 has concisely and correctly asked Santalives a valid question.
I await Santalives’ thoughtfully considered comprehensive response.
However, Santalives’ responses to all other efforts to help them learn to be less harmfully misled, and every other commenter has tried to help, has prompted me to share more thoughts.
Santalives has rather conclusively proven that they are powerfully motivated to persist in harmfully misunderstanding matters that matter to the future of humanity, like many of the fans of sites like WUWT.
When I first read this item, when there were no comments, it prompted me to consider the matter and consider how I could thoughtfully respond. When I returned with some thoughts I was thrilled to see that there were already many other comments ... then I read the comments to see if they would modify my thinking. Reading the comments motivated me to make the comment I made @23. Santalives clearly did not pick-up on the hint.
My comment @48 was motivated by what continued to happen. Santalives responded @49 in a questionable way that was rapidly and effectively responded to by Evan (no need for me to respond). Santalives’ lack of a meaningful response to Evan @50 (I did not see the comment that disappeared. But I can infer from the remaining comments that Santalives’ response was more misunderstanding, adding proof of my point about them being a unique individual who shares the “anti-commonsense” “Hard of Learning – Selective Learning” characteristic (a play on “hard of hearing – selective hearing”) of fans of WUWT.
Santalives questionably asked about Newton vs. Einstein. “The Big Picture” by Sean Carroll (highly recommended reading for everyone, not just Santalives) explains that science has developed different ways of talking about similar things. Einstein’s way of talking about physics does not contradict Newton’s way of understanding what would happen to an apple when you let it go. And as a structural engineer I prefer to apply Newton’s way of describing things, even though it does not work for everything that Einstein's way does. And newer ways of describing physics are developed for newer things that Einstein was unaware of. And those newer ways of describing things are very unlikely to ‘overturn’ the fundamental understandings of Einstein. And it is highly unlikely that more in-depth pursuit of awareness and understanding regarding climate science will overturn the consensus understanding that human impacts are rapidly causing climate changes that harm the development of a sustainable improving future for humanity.
Returning to Santalives questionably asking about the motivation of people commenting on WUWT. They would each have their own motivations, beliefs and biases which have to be inferred from the patterns of their behaviour (Many situations require the development of understanding of what is going on to be inferred from observation, with the understanding that any interaction may affect the observed result. This is covered effectively by Sean Carroll in “The Big Picture”, but is more relevant to socioeconomic-political matters). Further details regarding the context for my response can be found in my comments on the three recent versions of “Analogy 1”: this one, the previous one, and the one before that.
The important question is: Is a person interested in, or willing to, learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. Everyone undeniably always has the ability to learn. People who can be seen to 'Resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others' are harmfully motivated to harmfully misunderstand things. And competition for perceptions of superiority relative to others can produce very harmful motivations, with related harmful misunderstandings, and harmful resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. And competition for popularity and profit can develop harmful demands for the freedom to believe whatever excuses doing something understandably harmful that a person may hope to benefit from.
The Sustainable Development Goals are a very comprehensive presentation of the constantly improving understanding of how to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. They are the result of the efforts of thousands (perhaps millions) of people who became officially globally coordinated to collaborate by the 1972 Stockholm Conference.
Global warming related climate change (btw, As an engineer I would define “climate” as the regional climate norms - like temperature, wind, rain, snow, freezing rain - and their expected variations) is a significant impediment to Sustainable Development. The diversity of rapid climate change impacts harmfully distracts attention by forcing the pursuit of ‘adaptation attempts’ rather than the pursuit of ‘sustainable improvements’ (like the ways that a war or recovery from a natural disaster can ‘appear to improve economic performance measures like GDP’). And changes of atmospheric CO2 levels due to burning fossil fuel is a significant, but not exclusive, cause of the problems faced by global humanity into the future.
Admittedly from a ‘Sustainable Development to improve the future for humanity’ perspective there are many other harmful unsustainable ‘developed popular and profitable activities’ that are excused by harmful misunderstanding. However, this site is focused on the subset of harmful misunderstanding that relates to climate science (btw, the other human caused ghgs of concern are examples, so indeed it isn’t just CO2).
The following items are offered as further evidence of the harm being done by the popularity and profitability of harmful misunderstandings that sites like WUWT fail (potentially deliberately) to help fight against:
Sea Level Rise related to the previous versions of SkS Analogy 1.
Broader impacts of rapid human caused climate change
Regional specific impact of human caused climate change that has already happened.
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BaerbelW at 04:17 AM on 23 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
@Santalives #11
As you are commenting on one of my blog posts, I'll chime in. Skeptical Science is in the business of fact checking, hence our big list of rebuttals of often heard misinformation related to climate change. We also publish resources to give facts a fighting chance against misinformation and repost interesting articles about critical thinking from the website Thinking is Power. Give them a read, if only to avoid the pitfalls of doing your own research which you've been rather prone to thus far based on many of your comments!
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:37 AM on 23 February 2022Study: Climate-changed rainfall dampens economic growth
Santalives,
I am a professional engineer, so I have learned to pursue constant learning to limit harm done. And I have an MBA, so I am aware of the motivation of pursuit of profit and the potential for harm to be done, especially through misleading marketing. So maybe my perspective and understanding will help you better understand this matter.
Economists have no laboratory study style way to investigate their theories. They can only infer things from the observations of incredibly complex integrated systems by observing sub-sets of the incredibly complex integration of All Life on This Planet.
This study did a rigorous review of regional economic detailed data paired with regional weather data and identified statistically significant correlations. Attempting to determine the exact mechanism of the correlation is like the attempts to explain why smoking correlates to increased risk of cancer - interesting but not really relevant to the understanding of the importance of limiting smoking.
And the desires of people to benefit from understandably harmful activities, like selling people tobacco, leads some people to seek out and promote nonsense that appears to excuse the understandably harmful pursuit of benefit.
Please try to learn to stop attempting to find harmful misunderstandings that excuse the harmful dead-end pursuits of benefit from burning non-renewable buried ancient hydrocarbons. The activity is harmful in many more ways than the climate change harm that is being caused by the excess CO2 it forces into the environment rather than keeping that carbon locked away.
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MA Rodger at 22:32 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @11,
I fear you are verging on the incoherent with this comment @11.
There are places on the internet where "censorship" is in operation (or proposed) to remove fake facts. Such removal requires "fact checking" to know what is fake and what is real. You go on to describe such "fact checking" as suppressing argument and that any use of such suppression forfeits the argument to those whose argument is thus suppressed. But such "censorship" is a very narrow interpretation of "fact checking" and your comment suggests you not only consider such "censorship" should not be used, but it cannot be used.
Rebuttal is not a "back and forth to argue our view of the facts" but a one-way process. You seem to consider that "facts" are not something that can be established but are things that could (& perhaps should) contradict each other. Thus you happily talk of "alternative facts" and of "original facts" and proclaim "I would suggest overtime they work out for themselves what is the correct facts and what is not and no amount of alternative fact propaganda will change that position permantly."
This website is called Skeptical Science because it addresses the science and in such a forum there is stuff that is obviously correct and other stuff that is plain wrong. And while there is also stuff that has not been classified yet as either correct or wrong, there is no equivalent of "a free society" where wrong stuff is acceptable.
And thus within science, "fact checking" in the form of a rebuttal (and what you might feel is "censorship") not only can be used but should be used.Finally, perhaps you should re-read "that article" Carey et al (2022) as you badly misrepresent what it says.
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Eclectic at 21:40 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @11 , what is all this waffle of yours about suppression ? Facebook, Truth Socialist, Twitter, and the Prairie Home Companion Journal (headquartered at Lake Wobegon) and suchlike, are all quite irrelevant to the question you seem to be trying to ask. And when it comes to the field of science, there's no suppression in journals ~ even for complete rubbish. You've seen that evidence with your own eyes, with the case of the deluded Prof. K. (who is otherwise a nice anthropos).
Is SkS trying to suppress WUWT ? No. When the scientists at SkS look at WUWT , the only thing the scientists are trying to suppress . . . is laughter.
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Santalives at 21:12 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
@rodgers@9
We donot need fact checkers period, like those setup by google, Facebook and the like to supress facts based on what they decree and any contra view is disinformation and requires censorship. Rebuttal is where we go back and forth to argue our view of the facts. I am not trying to supress yours, actually I welcome it. But if you think the only way to win an argument is use a 3rd party fact checker to suppress that argument then you actually have lost.
But back to that article it makes the point if you take someone and provide them with alternative facts they will initially believe them but over time they revert back to their believe in the original facts. So why is that? I would suggest overtime they work out for themselves what is the correct facts and what is not and no amount of alternative fact propaganda will change that position permantly. So to solve that annoying problem of people thinking for themselves we insert the fact checker to supress any alternative facts. Read 1984 anyone.
Moderator Response:[DB] Sloganeering snipped.
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Eclectic at 20:23 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives , what is "the other side" ? (unquote). You still haven't shown you cards about that. And there doesn't seem to be any actual hint that you have any ~ not even a bulge up your sleeve.
I myself have looked for such a "side" for years, but have never found it. Nor has MA Rodger, who is far more knowledgeable & experienced in climate matters than I am.
Sorry, but it is really impossible to see unicorn poo in a mare's nest. Goshdarnit, ain't even a whiff, thar. Despite all the talk and promises.
Those "Contrarians" [polite term used by geologists for Flat-Earthers] have got nothing to back them up. Zilch. And it is passing strange that someone as clever as you, cannot recognize that. Why do you think that is?
Santalives, you'll have to do better. You've bounced onto SkS , full of ginger & self-confidence . . . and you haven't produced anything ~ no logic, no evidence, nothing, nada. And all you've given us is empty words. And you are blaming SkS for your own failures.
If you have a genuine card, then play it. What are you waiting for ?
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MA Rodger at 20:19 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @8,
Before you pile too much more into this thread, can you explain the difference between this "fact checking" which you consider is unnecessary (as you "can read" and thus "can make up [your] own mind," although if you "can read" I'm not sure how "fact checking" could be construed as being "censorship") and this "specific rebuttal" which you consider is necessary.
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Santalives at 19:30 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Ma Rodger @7. and eclectic @6 not sure for the pile in but I must be hitting a nerve. But staying on topic, I am not comfortable, with with fact checkers checking censoring anyone including you guys. Yes there does need to be specifc rebuttal, because if you can't argue the other sides argument you have already lost.
Moderator Response:[DB] Inflammatory and sloganeering snipped.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly posts in violation of and ignoring the Comments Policy. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
Finally, please understand that moderation policies are NOT open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.
There will be NO further warnings issued.
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MA Rodger at 19:08 PM on 22 February 2022It's albedo
blaisct @123,
It is good we can now see clearly the mechanism (1) to (5) of your LHAC theory in which you propose a driver of increasing global temperatures.
But then we run into a problem or two.
If the driver is step (1), a decrease in surface albedo driven by spreading urban development, how can you now say "the change in albedo is not that significant"? The change in albedo is surely the driver of the process. Or is my "translation of LHAC theory" less than correct?
Perhaps the contradiction I posed @122 (that Costa et al [2007] showed increasing albedo rather than the required decreasing albedo yet still showed warming temperatures) is in some way explained but I do not see it. And identifying the driver of a process is fundamental to such theorising. It appears that has not been achieved.You also say the chart @106 shows the maths but I would disagree. The chart sinply plots temperature (aka dry-bulb teperature, aka psycometric temperature) against dew-point temperature to allow heating engineers to calculate water content etc. It does no calculating. (A clearer version of the chart may assist.)
And the process concerns changing energy fluxes. While heating engineers may work in W-hr/m^3, in climatology there are a fixed number of hours in a day and of cubic kilometres in the sky. So Wm^-2 is perfectly adequate as a measure of the proposed mechanism at work.
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MA Rodger at 18:43 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @5,
You boldly declare "I don't like the idea of anybody fact checking what I can read, I can make up my own mind ... it's not about victories but 1the search for truth."
Yet this rather contradicts all the blather you were presenting in another thread in which you kicked-off insisting "To win the argument there has to be direct rebuttal of the articles (especially the peer reviewed) that are shredding climate science as nothing more than voodoo." You then contribute a further seventeen comments which provide a further contradiction to your position @5 as they demonstrate clearly that your reading of the literature does not in any way assist a "search for truth."
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Santalives at 18:34 PM on 22 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Scaddenp @90. Just one. But I will say I sat through countless hours of meetings of coders demonstrating there y2k bugs. Yep there was heaps that were a problem at an annoying level, but never did we see one that was a catastrophic system failure where we could not recover. We fixed them all because we basically had unlimited money but there was never a bug that was catastrophic, unless seeing 1900 instead of 2000 on your Calendar triggers you.
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Eclectic at 18:31 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @5 , it is very clear that you need to get help from the experts who study climate science for years & decades. You are failing to understand the topic.
Read as much as you like, and then consult the experts. In your heart, you know the experts are in 99+% agreement exactly because they have all of the mountain of evidence backing them.
The other <1% have zero to back them ~ all they have is unicorn poo in a mare's nest [look up mare's nest?] Yeah, they talk big and confidently, but it's all schist [geologist's term]. If someone doesn't know much about climate science and logic then you can easily have the wool pulled over your eyes [a Home Truth, eh].
It's not about "freedom & censorship & propaganda" ~ not unless you close your eyes and are desperate, really desperate, to avoid the scientifically obvious.
Beware the Dunning-Kruger attitude. Hope you don't need to look that one up ~ and yes, it does mean making a turtle fool of yourself.
Good luck with your climate search ~ and your inner search. That Dunning-Kruger attitude can be a real bitumen [geologist's term].
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Santalives at 16:05 PM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Ah eclectic, you got me with the turtles reference, I had to look it up.
I don't like the idea of anybody fact checking what I can read, I can make up my own mind. I might get it wrong but that's what a free society is all about. Once you add in fact checkers you get censorship promoting propaganda.
it's not about victories but 1the search for truth.
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Santalives at 15:33 PM on 22 February 2022Study: Climate-changed rainfall dampens economic growth
Really don't understand how this one got past peer review, but can anyone tell me that a whole paper based on economic cost of "wet days" is based on not an investigation of how or why but it being "plausible" "mere presence".
The study authors did not investigate why an increase in the number of wet days would hamper the economy, but Wenz suggested, “It seems plausible that the mere presence of a rainy day can have a disruptive effect on businesses, construction, transportation etc
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Eclectic at 10:11 AM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @3 ,
if you were meaning "quis custodiet" . . . then the standard answer is:
"It's turtles all the way down!" ( I hope you remember that oldie.)
Santalives, you appear to have abandoned your old playing ground in the thread: "SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?" Perhaps it would be a good mental exercise for you, if you got your ideas in order there , before you go sighing for fresh worlds to conquer, on other threads. One victory at a time, Alexander.
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Santalives at 09:34 AM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Eclectic @2. So who is fact checking the fact checkers?
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scaddenp at 05:16 AM on 22 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives. "How serious was the Y2K bug, I would say close to zero, why because this was western government obsession, many counties simply didn't have the money or expertise to do any Y2K remeadation but they did ask the rich countries to pay for it however. "
I agree that there was way too much hype and doom-saying nonsense, but the problem was very real and did affect systems in unexpected ways.
Out of curiousity, how many examples of system-taking down bugs would I need to show you before you admitted that you were wrong?
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blaisct at 03:36 AM on 22 February 2022It's albedo
Rodger @122
Yes, your translation of the LHAC theory is correct. Sorry for the whole apple, it was the only way to answer your question. One point of clarification. The production (flux over time) of hot low humidity air (through the day when the sun is shining) will occur no matter what the albedo of the UHI or cultivated land is, so the change in albedo is not that significant but the change in moisture availability is. The albedo affects how hot, water availability affects how low the RH, and area affects how much is produced over time. The Amazonia study showed this. The psychometric chart in @106 shows the math. In the LHAC theory, hot low RH air has always been a part of weather. Over time, man has changed how hot, how low the RH and how much is produced with UHI’s and new cultivated land. The generation of hot low RH air deals with W-hr/m^3 not W/m^2 and destruction of clouds should be on the same W-hr/m^3 basis.
Correction in @121
At bottom of @121 should read: we get -1.6W/m^2 change in incoming SW [ 342W/m^2*0.8% cloud cover change*(85% *(1-0.05)+(1-85%)*(1-0.15) – (1- 0.31 earth’s albedo)*(1-50% cloud albedo))] -
Evan at 21:12 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives. Please make specific claims from any paper you like, and we will respond. But right now you are just accusing us of being closed minded.
Tell us what point a paper makes that you thinks needs to be clarified. But don't through a paper at us and ask, :"What do you think?"
Be specific.
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Eclectic at 18:37 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
MA Rodger @87 ,
no no no thanks !
Enough of the Koutsoyiannis rubbish, already.
Why should Koutsoyiannis's paper get preference over all those Flat-Earther screeds, those Anti-Evolution screeds, those Qanon screeds, or over that confirmation of Jewish Space Lasers (or was it the UFO's ?). Or of that Faked Moon Landing?
Fair's fair, MA Rodger. You should devote a full week's analysis to every bit of rubbish "out there".
Desist, sir !
Or come back in 2035, after total debunk of all Dreck.
Stop Press. Early announcement by Nobel Committee. First Greek to receive Nobel Prize for physics. Name withheld, pending dissolution of IPCC. Riots in Athens. More to come.
Er, one moment there, MA Rodger . . . I might reconsider my request.
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MA Rodger at 17:32 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @78,
You again express an interest in having Koutsoyiannis (2021) debunked for you. Such a debunk has been offered you in the past (@18 up-thread for instance) but you have failed to take them up. There are many similar papers purporting to overturn the science behind AGW and indeed you brought a second such pack-of-nonsense into this thread in the shape of Seim & Olsen (2020). The large quantity of such sub-standard publication is why a single instance of such a paper does not get coverage ar SkS but if you remain interested in seeing the nonsense within Koutsoyiannis (2021) explained to you, do say so. I am not going to bother debunking it in detail if you are not going to read the result.
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John Mason at 17:12 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@Santalives #80
"I have always thought rather than just endless debates 2 steps removed on these websites, why not a TV show where the best climate scientist debate against best deniers on these topics."
And in the studio tonight, we have an internationally acclaimed marine biologist and a very cross man who are here to debate, "are there fish?"
(wild audience applause and cheers)
That's how silly an idea it is. The role of energy-emitting atmospheric gases was guessed at in the 1820s but not demonstrated, the specific role of carbon dioxide was experimentally confirmed in the late 1850s-early 1860s by two scientists working independently and in different countries and the effect of doubling its concentration on temperature was calculated at the turn of the 20th Century. That calculation is not far from the currently-accepted value.
Today we additionally have a vast wealth of palaeodata and we far better understand Earth's slow carbon cycle, that acts as the planet's thermostat over geological timescales, and into the gears of which we have dropped a very big wrench. -
nigelj at 16:47 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @80
I already said what I think drives people over at WUWT @74. I've amended it slightly here. Imho denialists seem to mostly engage in a lot of deliberate stupidity, mixed together with political and ideological motives (often libertarianism) , motivated reasoning, cherrypicking, and a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. However some just appear naturally quite stupid (eg: JDS over at realclimate.org). There are also the scientific cranks with science degrees who just seem to like to be different and become very stubborn and narcissistic. This is my observation. I suspect you wont like this but its how they all frequently come across to me.
Regarding "Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water by Demetris Koutsoyiannis"
Some of his discussion is interesting and colourful. However a discussion of how to better define climate doesn't much interest me. I said before its pedantry. In no way does such a thing directly relate to or undermine findings that humans are causing a warming effect. And what we are interested in is relativities and rates of change from one period to another. You do not need a precise and perfect definition of climate to measure that. I'm sure you would get what I mean. I haven't the time to study his maths in detail and I'm rusty on some of that but I'm sure its probably correct, but it isn't relevant to the points I've just made. He himself said people will probably regard his paper as useless!
He then goes into a long discussion about water: "This idea is further expanded to establish a linear causality chain of the type: human CO2 emissions → increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2; → increasing temperature → changes in hydrological processes and water balance. This is evident in the popular practice of studying the so-called climate change impacts on hydrological processes. However, this is a naïve idea that does not correspond to physical reality.........Arguably, the fact that the CO2; has been so heavily and repeatedly studied, particularly in paleoclimatology studies (e.g., [49,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]), does not suggest that it is more important a greenhouse gas than water. Here we argue that water is the most crucial element determining climate (e.g., [58,59]), or as put by Poyet [60], “Water is the main player”. We list epigrammatically some of the reasons justifying it: (Abundance, heat storage etc.)"
The fact that water is abundant and a heat store and can be influenced by changes in solar energy and that water vapour is the more abundant a greenhouse gas is not contested or new information, and obviously does not in any way undermine the conventional idea that changes in Co2 is causally linked to increased evaporation which can cause further warming. He has conflated things, and enaged in a logical fallacy by deliberate intent or lack of awareness.
He has to be able to explain how his own theory of water would explain climate warming over the last 100 years. He provides no evidence based causal link to expalin a change in water vapour levels in the atmosphere over the period. But Co2 causing warming and evaporation and further warming explains things perfectly well and is consistent with the evidence.
Don't ask me why, how or when on all the details. I don't have the time for more. I'm giving you the essentials as I see them. To me its all fairly obvious. Think about it. I'm just an interested observer and while I enjoy discussions I dont have all day.
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Eclectic at 16:28 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @82
sorry Santalives, my lengthier (slightly humorous) post got cut off at the knees, while I was slowly composing and typing a thoughtful reply to you. So you get a severely shortened version (phew! for you)
I sincerely hope the moderators can prevail upon the site admin to allow a much longer window before time-out occurs. Can we try for a 90 minute slot?
And no, I don't see that I get any extra-special slack from moderators.
The site is actually very civilized.
You should do well, if you follow the posting rules, and avoid excessive repetition, avoid bullshitting, etc. It might be worth you giving that a try.
What is the central argument at WUWT ?
There are several :-
ABCD , also:-
99+% of climate scientist are incompetent . . . or are fabricating data . . . or are just working to milk grant money from the taxpayer's pocket . . . or are in a grand conspiracy to overthrow the American Constitution and create a communist World Government (to be led by Soros; or by International Zionists; or by Xi JinPing; or by those shape-shifting Lizard People; and so on). Also :-
There is no global warming . . . or it is very slight . . . or if it's big, then it's not caused by humans . . . or if it's big and it is caused by humans, then it will be very, very good for us.
I could give you more, Santalives ~ but I think you get the picture.
Gotta rush. Sorry.
Those High-IQ but science-denying elite at WUWT ? Yeah, very interesting . . . analysis will have to wait for a later occasion.
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BaerbelW at 16:22 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@Santalives #80
"I have always thought rather than just endless debates 2 steps removed on these websites, why not a TV show where the best climate scientist debate against best deniers on these topics."
This would be a fake debate because both "sides" are not equal when there is a scientific consensus on a topic. It just paints a very wrong and misleading picture for people watching such a fake debate on what is basically settled science. This is explained in The Consensus Handbook on pages 8 and 9 and in this sketch from John Oliver's Last Week Tonight show which is as true today as when it came out in 2014!
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Santalives at 14:54 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Eclectic @81, yes it is a lot of fun here, but I think the moderator cuts you a lot more slack than me.
I will ask you the same question as nijelj then
. what would you say is the central argument that sites like wuwt believe?
The next question is why? As I said many of these people are clearly not dummies they have Phd, s they are work at university's, doing and publishing research. I doubt many are well funded as being on the other side of the argument would not pay well.
Moderator Response:[DB] Moderation complaints snipped.
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Eclectic at 14:06 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
from Santalives: < ... it is obvious that the temp has increased, that the sea level rises ...> (unquote)
"You see, my dear Santalives, but you do not observe." ~ if I may slightly misquote Sherlock Holmes ;-)
That's right, it is so ~ but the question is: Why has that happened at a time when (per Milankovitch) the temp should be falling and the sea level falling too !
# The job of scientists is not to marvel at these events, but to discover why they happen. And that's exactly what the scientists have done over the past 100 years or so. And sorry, simply waving your hand and saying "ain't so" . . . is laughable . . . is exactly the sort of thing science-deniers do ( er, not that you are one of those denialists, of course. We take you at your word on that ! ) And you still haven't shown the slightest evidence that the scientists are wrong.
Santalives, it sounds like you have the bug ~ no, not the Y2K bug or the Covid bug ~ but the ABCD bug. (That's "Anything But Carbon Dioxide" ~ a typical denialist plaint, where they accept any causation whatsoever, so long as it's ABCD .)
Lots of fun, here, eh !
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Santalives at 14:06 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Nigelj @79, what would you say is the central argument that sites like wuwt believe? I have spent a bit time reading and a lot of the people on there are clearly not dummies but they simply don't accept the settled science.
On prof Koutsoyiannis, to say his assumptions are nonsensical and dismiss the paper out of hand, certainly does nothing for someone like me trying to learn something and I think plays into the hand of deniers who say the other side won't debate. Evan response was an explanation of the consensus not a rebuttal.
As Evan paper is about what we do and how do we convince people to do it. I have always thought rather than just endless debates 2 steps removed on these websites, why not a TV show where the best climate scientist debate against best deniers on these topics. Especially on the settled science. It would be certainly a lot more interesting the current BBC climate programme that seems to have run out content.
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nigelj at 13:05 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santileves @78, I have followed the global warming issue ever since James Hansens speech that we have hard evidence of a human influence on climate in the early 1990s. I was even a bit sceptical at one point in the early days, but lot of time has gone by and tens of thousands of papers have been published. If we were wrong, it would almost certainly have been found by now.
And if we are wrong, we will have built a lot of new energy infrastructure that we will need eventually anyway because fossil fuels are a very finite resource. So being wrong is not a massive problem and will not bankrupt the world economy, not even slightly. Doing nothing could be a massive problem. The worst case scenarios are very bleak and cannot be completely ruled out.
You have been given some references to proper rebuttal of one of the papers you quoted. Several people have posted comments on the paper by Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis. It is not necessary to go through his claims line by line when his basic assumptions are nonsensical.
Regarding y2k I agree there was some degree of hype. But using this to cast doubt on climate science is fairly weak. They are very different issues involving different people. And nobody really knew exactly what would happen after year 2000. When theres even a small chance aircraft could fall out of the sky its better to upgrade the computer chip / change the software.
The basics of climate science go back centuries. Svante Arrhenius did detailed calculations in the 1890s on the effect of industrial CO2 on the climate. He predicted a 5 degree warming in total and 1 degree c of warming in the 20th century. He worked essentially alone. He wasn't paid a fortune for this work. He had long been curious about such issues as what caused climate change. Nobody has been able to scientifically rebut his work, and obviously his prediction for the 20th century has been proven reasonably accurate. Successful predictions are good evidence a theory is on the right track.
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Santalives at 12:33 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@nijelj 69. It is obvious that that the temp has increased, that the sea level rises is ongoing and has been for thousands of years. don't know anybody who does not accept that. Except over at Elecroverse who are pushing move to somehwhere warm and learn how to grow vegetables. God help us if they are right. My skeptism is we seem to have put all our chips down on betting on c02 that produced by man is the source of our problem. Whilst I support the study of that,but we should be constantly asking what if we are wrong? As Eclectic wrote @16 I live in hope that someday, some year, WUWT will uncover some killer evidence that the mainstream climate scientists are wrong. I would have thought that would be hope of this site.
Anyway I seem to getting accused of trolling etc. But I was really hoping to see some proper rebuttal for instance the paper by Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water. There has been no rebuttal of his paper other than no this is settled science. His paper is quite specific in its claims and evidence which clearly goes against the settled science. It's a question of if he is wrong where is his paper wrong.
On the Y2K analogy, I never said it was a scam. The Y2K bug was real and we still have come across it from time to time since. My analogy was trying to express the idea how singly focused we all became on something that was a theoretical problem. This focus was initiated by governments but driven by endless money. Even when we found that it was not of concern for some system at all, companies just pushed on spending money to rip out old systems for new technologies under the excuse of Y2K. We dismantled and tested everything from ATM machines to, microwave trammitters. Dragged out 80 year Cobol programmers (for a 6 figure sum for a few months work),Decommissioned more mainframes than I can remember all to prevent a perceived catastrophe.
How serious was the Y2K bug, I would say close to zero, why because this was western government obsession, many counties simply didn't have the money or expertise to do any Y2K remeadation but they did ask the rich countries to pay for it however. Nothing happened, no power grid failures, no planes crashed, banks didnt collaspe anywhere in the world. I know plenty of coders who still think we were saving the world but for me if I am upfront we all went along for the ride because it was easy to scare the people, the politicians, the CEOs to make a lot of money. Seems to be a lot of similarity to AGW.
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Eclectic at 12:04 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Evan @72 , please keep up your good work.
And I was not meaning to imply that engaging with a climate troll would bring them to their senses. Trolls are, by their very nature, impervious to sensible thinking.
As you say, it is all about the unseen audience. The troll is partly aware of that too. Yet IMO the troll's greater motivation is to "act out", to vent his anger. Trolls are angry people. They don't all go to WUWT blogsite to vent their anger ~ well, not full time anyway.
But WUWT is an interesting blogsite ~ the visible tip of an iceberg of angry people . . . angry about occult personal issues . . . crackpots whose conceptualizations are ignored by the wider world . . . conspiracy theorists who find a sympathetic echochamber reassures them of their sanity . . . political extremists who are angry about their slipping status in a changing world (and who complain of their gullible "Leftist" children). There is a certain amount of dog-whistling too . . . but to their credit, WUWT moderators & algorithms are very quick to eliminate any frankly racist comments.
WUWT is a sour, angry site, with a touch of bitterness also. Some of their funding is from a lot of general advertising ~ and to generate many clicks, the editors make sure they frequently throw red meat into the cage for their target audience to snarl over.
(Let me see . . . have I myself vented enough, about WUWT ? Hmm.... )
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John Mason at 11:59 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@nigelj #74 - indeed - and do we not see exactly the same patterns emerging over COVID? I find the parallels remarkably similar, if not identical. Yet away from that hard-core of naysayers most of us get that it is a very serious virus - indeed many of us, me included, have witnessed it taking out friends and relatives. Perhaps that's for another discussion beneath another post, though!
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nigelj at 11:49 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
The y2k issue was clearly a problem for certain types of software and industries, however y2k seemed to be over hyped. From National Geographic. "Countries such as Italy, Russia, and South Korea had done little to prepare for Y2K. They had no more technological problems than those countries, like the U.S., that spent millions of dollars to combat the problem."
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nigelj at 11:41 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Eclectic @72
I do agree with all your views on the denialist trolls and how to respond to them. They are indeed quite interesting and entertaining.
Some people say don't respond or engage with the denialists, because it gives them visibility, but I feel that is a grave mistake. We dont know who is reading comments sections and if the denialists nonsense goes unanswered it may gain traction with middle of the road people reading.I tend to respond to denialists largely with those people in mind.
I tend to often keep my responses short and facts based rather than getting into a long debate, to avoid giving them too many opportunities to spam the website. Especially on general news media websites. However sometimes I will get into a longer discussion if it seems useful or interesting, and its unlikely vast numbers of people are reading the posts and they are not the spamming type of troll. I've noticed that rebuttals can actually create some interesting discussion. The people that say never respond to denialists take themselves a bit too seriously.
Imho denialists seem to mostly embrace a lot of deliberate stupidity, mixed together with political and ideological motives, motivated reasoning, cherrypicking, and a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. However some just appear naturally quite stupid (eg: JDS over at realclimate.org).
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John Mason at 11:27 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Oh well. I was hoping for a more interesting answer than someone blowing the now thickly-accumulated dust off that very old and now generally long-abandoned denialist talking-point regarding the Y2K coding bug!
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Eclectic at 11:23 AM on 21 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Jonas @1 , thank you for the Nature article, indicating the rather transient effect achieved by debunking/fact-checking misinformation. It was perhaps a tad over-pessimistic. It illustrates a sad amount of frailty in the human mind.
Not quite exactly in the same line ~ but advertisers have long been aware of this problem. Which is why they keep repeating their message over and over again . . . hamburger, hamburger, hamburger. It's not just that they are afraid of the rival advertising from their competitor.
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Jonas at 10:26 AM on 21 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Not a climate article but maybe of interest to the misinformation inoculation bubble here at SkS: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01278-3 (I can't judge quality, but since it's in nature ..).
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Evan at 10:00 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
As an example of what happens when Y2K-like problems are not taken care of, there is the "scaleup" of the Ariane 4 to the Ariane 5 and the software bug that brought down the first flight in flames. Y2K was likely not all scam.
Eclectic@70. Thanks for your comments. It helps to see what connects and what does not. I respond to trolls in the event that a fence-sitter is watching. It is also good practice to formulate defenses when challenged. But I am amazed that so many people stuck it out. It's nice to be part of an active, engaged community. :-) Gives you hope for the future, even though the challenges are great.
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scaddenp at 08:56 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
I think there is something in the Y2K analogy. Experts see a problem and make warning. Coders look at code and go "uh-oh". Large no. of $$ fixing the problem and things went well. Also, doom merchants and the uninformed-but-like-publicity getting lots of media hype. There is some of that with AGW but with both, what the experts said is what is worth noticing. (ie, for AGW, read the IPCC reports).
Was Y2K a real problem, well geez, you just needed a programmer to show you production code and see what would happen to it if not fixed. I was also involved with Y2L, fixing for power stations code and consequences of not fixing there were control systems failing.
Like Y2K, we can minimize AGW by taking action in advance. Unlike Y2K, we didnt start soon enough and we are already coping some major downsides.
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Eclectic at 08:51 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Getting back On Topic . . .
Evan , your Lead Article is excellent and perceptive. Yes, there are so many sociological hindrances & constraints ~ far more formidable to overcome, than the technological ones. Yet we progress. But it is like wading through honey. The pious wish of carbon neutrality by 2050 , is only half-achievable (short of a miracle) . . . but is at least a worthy target to be steering towards. In this regard, the world is still due for many cuts and bruises for the remainder of this century.
The forces of stupidity are still strong ~ coming both from the intellectual troglodytes and the elites. ( I had the pleasure of reading a recent public speech by the eminent emeritus Dr William Happer, on climate. Oh me, oh my. As Professor Carlo Cipolla has pointed out, it is the intelligent but irrationally stupid people who do the most damage in this world. )
Speaking of which ~ leads me back to the observation of the trolls who frequently crop up in the threads of SkS. Evan, I hope you will forgive me for engaging with them. The trolls are a fine example of one of the sociological "push backs" you mention.
At the same time, the trolls provide entertainment & amusement in the comments columns. Remarkable, how they seem to enjoy embarrassing themselves in public. IMO it is their unacknowledged anger issues motivating them. And they are like a child who rushes to the top of a tiny hillock, plants his "flag" and proclaims loudly: "I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascals!"
Should a troll be ignored on his hillock? No, of course not. We should patiently point out his errors/stupidities, and point out that his childish "flag" is in reality just a square of dirty toilet paper. And the exercise does serve to re-illuminate some climate information.
Plus, trolls are interesting to observe, in themselves! At first , the reader thinks: could this just be an ill-informed person who is seeking knowledge? But almost immediately, the aroma of troll emerges ~ however skilfully & subtly he tries to conceal it. Interesting to observe the different levels of skill there ~ the troll is like a classic actor wearing a "persona" mask. Interesting, to observe how the mask slips a bit, from time to time. Or the troll churns through goalposts/arguments ~ so interesting, to see how the troll is a chameleon trying to change colors frequently : or wear different colors at the same time !
But eventually the troll gets tired and goes away (sometimes, after several pages). Or disappears when the Moderator hammer comes down (on the most obnoxiously repetitious trolls . . . in their various sockpuppet forms). Yet the trolls do provide amusement.
( Nigelj , my above comments will perhaps interest you more than they interest Evan. )
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nigelj at 05:56 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives claimed he was a sceptic, not a climate denialist. So I asked him what parts of the AGW theory / consensus he accepted. Presumably if hes not a denialist he much accept at least some parts. He didn't answer. I wonder why that would be (sarcasm)
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Eclectic @66. Yes eclectic it can be enjoyable debating with denialists and similar characters, but I get a bit annoyed with them. Like badly behaved children they sometimes need some verbal punishment.
And they do not appear to apply much scepticism to their preferred sources of information, ironically.
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Evan at 23:42 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Mikel@65 Thanks for your thoughts. We are volunteers here at SkS working hard to connect with people like yourself. There are many objectives of this site. Mine is to educate people like yourself about the science and what is happening so that you can make better, informed decisions.
But I learn from the comments that come back. Keep reading this and other climate sites and please continue to share your thoughts in these comment threads. I read them all and often incorporate ideas shared here in future postings.
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MA Rodger at 23:33 PM on 20 February 2022It's albedo
blaist @121
I had the impression the Order of the Day set out @111 was "small bites" but @121 you appear to be serving up a giant five-course meal.You seem to be proposing a driver of AGW with a mechanism initiated by (1) a decrease in surface albedo due to the spread of urban areas leading to (2) a rise in surface temperature which in turn leads to (3) reduced relative humidity which leads to (4) reduced cloud cover which then amplifies the warming due to (5) a reduction in cloud albedo. Do correct me if I have misunderstood your proposed mechanism.
Yet if this suggestion is to hold water, how does it reconcile with the 'Amazonia report' you cite, Costa et al (2007) which (as you describe) "showed that in despite of an increase in albedo from rain forest to crop/pasture, the temperature increased." And this increase in surface albedo with land-use-change is global and has been on-going since 1700 according to your other citation Ghimire et al (2014) whose Fig 2 is pasted below showing a cooling radiative forcing (inset rising albedo).
So if there is an increase in surface albedo, what is it causing the increasing global temperature and thus kicking-off your proposed mechanism, (1) to (5) above? Why would we be experiencing warming if globally surface albedo has been increasing since 1700? -
Evan at 21:42 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives you ask "... is there a problem here?"
Coming out of the last ice-age cycle temperature rose 5C, causing a sea-level rise of 400'. Temperatures have already risen 1.2C and there is enough carbon in the atmosphere, already, to take us to 1.7C. There is over 200' of sea-level rise locked up in the world's ice.
We know that ice melts when it gets warmer and scientists are witnessind destabilization of the big ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
More carbon -> higher temperatures -> more ice melting -> higher sea-level rise -> problem
This is just one of many problems.
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Eclectic at 19:18 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @62 , since you mention me, I'll give my 2 cents, too.
The Y2K threat, as an analogy? Love it. Very droll of you.
But no real parallel, at all. And so poster John Mason @61 will still be waiting to see if you express your actual emotional motivation for you doubting the laws of physics. Will Newton's famous apple fall downward, or upward? Gosh, what a problem to solve.
Let me stand back and look at the overall problem. You, as an intelligent inquirer about climate . . . you have of course learnt about the 100,000-year Milankovitch cycles of warming/cooling of this planet. So you know that things have been gradually cooling ( around 0.7 degreesC over 4000 years, until about 1850 A.D. ) . . . which would naturally lead to a new "Ice Age" setting in around 16,000 - 20,000 years in the future.
Except now ~ for the past 170-ish years ~ the planet's temperature has reversed direction, is now going upward a at a rapid rate of knots (geologically speaking). The ocean is warming; the sea level is rising; and the planetary ice is melting rather than increasing.
In fact, the surface temperature is about 1.1 degreesC hotter than the mid-1800's (and it's slightly hotter than the plateau peak of the Holocene era, 5-10.000 years ago ~ according to the expert scientists who study past temperatures).
And the temperature is still rising rapidly ~ because physics. You know ~ Newton, Maxwell, Einstein . . . them guys. So the climate scientists of the past 100 years have predicted it would get warmer, and it's very clearly been getting warmer . . . and is continuing to do so. (Sorry Santalives ~ there's no contradictory observations there ~ and the ice and oceans don't lie to us.)
Climate predictions accurate enough for practical purposes? Check! World continuing to get warmer? Check! Scientists understand the reasons causing it? Check!
Sorry Santalives, but you've struck out: Three Times. And your batting average is still zero. Next innings better, perhaps? Seems unlikely, going on track record.
If you want a stretched analogy, Santalives (but not as stretched as your Y2K analogy) . . . then think about that old joke of the guy who fell off the top of the Empire State Building. Yeah, he was an optimist, saying:- 32 floors and okay so far . . . 45 floors and okay so far . . . 62 floors and okay so far . . .
For me, Santalives, I'm not such an optimist as you are. You, as a skeptic (aka science-denier) want to wait for the clear-cut splat onto the pavement. Me, I go with the scientific evidence, and vote for pulling the ripcord on the parachute [yeah, I know, that wasn't in the original joke . . . but you know what I am alluding to] .
In tally : climate predictions ~ Scientists 1 , Santalives 0 .
And real world observations ~ Scientists 1 , Santalives 0 .
Next innings please.
And a pleasure to talk with you, Santalives. Entertaining !
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Mikel at 19:11 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
I thought this is a very good post from Sks but am very disappointed to see the comment thread get hijacked.
i don't have any good suggestions to make. I feel quite conflicted about various measures which can probably be summed up as the need to end the pursuit of perpetual economic growth and consequences from both success and failure to meet that objective.
