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2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46

wilddouglascounty at 00:07 AM on 19 November, 2024

You might check the May 2021 article out from PLoS One on Article level classification of scieentific publications. What came to mine when I skimmed this article is that for your purposes it might be worth getting a bibliometric analyst involved in your stable of volunteers and she/he might be able to take your latest batch of articles you want to post on the site and whip them into taxonomic shape in no time, categorizing them into clear categories without any AI involved. I suspect that there are some out there who would understand the carbon footprint issues that AI represents and could figure out a way to do it sans the energy intensive approach.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #45

BaerbelW at 06:45 AM on 12 November, 2024

Cleanair27 @ 1

Thanks for your comment! It's definitely a good thing to keep energy consumption of AI in mind, but somewhat counterintuitively this study from earlier this year found that utilizing AI for a task like the one we used it for - namely to create the categorized summary of the many shared articles - is apparently a lot more energy efficient than doing it manually:
"The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans"

Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?

nigelj at 05:17 AM on 11 November, 2024

Jess Scarlett @6, you appear to be implying scientists at CSIRO ,an Australian government funded climate change advice agency, were gagged and bullied and fired for being sceptical of anthropogenic climate change and so those left were the ones believing in anthropogenic climate change. This does not appear to be correct. It appears that the issues at CSIRO was essentially scientists were gagged, bullied and fired if they published studies or spoke out publicly in a way not consistent with the governments direction on climate science and mitigation policy, which of course varied form government to government. It appears CSIROS mangement were afraid of offending the governmnet of the day.

The scientists actually gagged, bullied or fired seemed to be scientists who spoke out publicly about climate dangers and weak emissions reduction targets and who published studies critical of weak climate mitigation schemes. For example a study by Dr Splash, a scientist, critical of emissions trading schemes and recommending a carbon tax. This is essentially the complete opposite of your claim. The following link gives a good account of the issues:

www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-05-02/csiro-missing-in-action-on-climate-advice/8479568

The planet is ‘on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,’ scientists warn

Jess Scarlett at 23:52 PM on 8 November, 2024

Great link to some scary technologies in the name of climate and net zero are geo engineering and mining into rich carbon storage for minierals in the deep sea.

[link to UNDP.org site]

Climate Risk

Bob Loblaw at 00:58 AM on 5 November, 2024

Paul @ 5, 7:

I wouldn't say that Curry has flipped - but I have to admit that I have not being paying a lot of attention to her and I have never had the impression that she has a coherent, logical, consistent position on much related to climate science. She would have to actually hold a position in order to be able to flip away from it. She has a history of broadcasting all sorts of whack-a-doodle stuff (calling it "interesting") - but in a way that she can deny she supported it (or opposed it) when the cards line up.

So, in that tweet, what the heck is she really claiming she has been saying for over a decade now? Only the contents of David Wallace-Wells' tweet, which says little? If you interpret his tweet as saying that there are other factors besides CO2 driving the current warming trend, and stopping CO2 emissions will have little effect, then maybe that fits her history of obfuscation and attacks on climate science as we know it. But is that what David Wallace-Wells really means?

We could try to find David Wallace-Wells' article at The Conversation. Not hard. It's here. Want more detail? The article at The Conversation links to the actual paper it is based on. It is here.

I have not read the paper in detail - it is moderately long and technical - but I can get the gist of it. It certainly does not support any argument that CO2 levels are less important than presented in the IPCC reports and positions. What the paper does seem to present is an argument (from model simulations) that the expected drop in CO2 levels after reaching net zero - due to fast parts of the carbon cycle continuing to remove CO2 - will be offset by other slow feedbacks in the climate system that will cause continued warming.

The paper uses the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator Earth system model (ACCESS-ESM-1.5), which appears to include a number of slow-response feedbacks related to ice, ocean circulation, etc. (The paper provides references that explain that model in more detail, but the details are not apparent from a quick read of the current paper.)

So, the gist of this new paper seems to be that slow feedbacks often not included in many models will make things worse than expected, once net zero is reached. They also indicate that the longer we wait to reach net zero, the worse things will be.

This may fit into Curry's Uncertainty Monster scenario ("See, I told you there were things the models didn't get right!), but it is an uncertainty that will bite us in the posterior regions - not Curry's favoured "everything uncertain will fall to our benefit".

I would not be surprised if Curry hasn't actually read the paper (or maybe even the Conversation article), and just saw what she wanted to see in the tweet - without actually understanding it.

Climate Risk

MA Rodger at 19:36 PM on 4 November, 2024

Paul Pukite @5,
I don't see Judy Curry having flipped.

While seeing her apparently agreeing with David Walliace-Wells is remarkable, the agreement is perhaps best seen as another instance of Judy re-defining the words of others. Over the last decade, since the WUWT failed to "change the way you think about natural internal variability" (WUWT=Wyatt's Unified Wave Theory which Judy calls the Stadium Wave), Judy has taken up ambiguity as a means of manufacturing what she calls "a wicked problem" to cloud the climate debate and give room for denialists to flaunt their nonsense.

Her book 'Climate Uncertainty and Risk : Rethinking Our Response' was published last year (a 40-odd page preview HERE) and a few months back she set out the same message at the denialist GWPF's AGM.
The book runs to fifteen chapters and 340 pages. Well hidden within it, Judy sets out her same old message, this from a book review.

The need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is much less pressing than the IPCC and the UN contend because of the implausibility of extreme emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5 and of high values for the climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide (the warming caused by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere). Natural variability is likely to slow down the rate of warming over the next few decades, and further time can be bought by targeting greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, which account for up to 45% of human-caused warming.

(Note that the 45% number is wrong. The non-CO2 forcing is no more than 35% and over tha last decade it is down to 26%.) The hidden message from Curry is that her imagined natural climate wobbles have masked the weak nature of human-caused climate change and fooled us all. So we can sit back and enjoy ourselves while we make plans for when all the oil runs out.

CO2 lags temperature

michael sweet at 04:31 AM on 26 October, 2024

Eclectic at 673,

We agree on most issues regarding Climate Science. At 673 you said "There's more than half a century of scientific investigation showing that CO2 causes warming."

In the 1850's scientists first measured the emission lines of carbon dioxde and noted that if carbon dioxide increased in the atmosphere it would heat the Earth (170 years ago). In about 1898 Arhennius calculated the temperature increase from a doubling of carbon dioxide and got a result not too far off the current estimates (125 years ago). In 1965 the National Academy of Science told President Johnson that climate change would be a big problem in the future (60 years ago).

The science of climate change has been understood by scientists for much longer than half a century. I find that many novices think that climate science was only recently developed when in fact it is well established, long understood that carbon dioxide will heat the Earth.

I think we should say "There's more than 170 years of scientific investigation showing that CO2 causes warming". Jbomb need only look at the absorbtion lines of carbon dioxide to see convincing experimental evidence that the Earth will warm with more carbon dioxide in the air.

Climate Risk

Jess Scarlett at 06:55 AM on 24 October, 2024

Being a Greenie all my life in Australia Ive bern watching this machine funded climate change take over the whole Green movement. Ive watched thousands of forests removed for external companies for woid chip and complete devastation of climate by removal of carbon balanced cooling environments. As I now start to see a massive alkiance with tge metal industry and using net zero bs agenda to deep sea mine the largest carbon storage in our deep seas for matals for the so called S.M.A.R.T technoligical movement that is part of the W.E.F agenda its very alatming to see how this doesnt look as corrupt as the whole petrolium industry. Under most forests in rich dence metals in the soils.. I just cant help but research back to around 2008 to 2009 when the IPCC shifted focus to humans effect on global warming so only collecting data on this rather than the vast reasons on global carbon increse. Drilling in the earth can release carbon and thats exactly what this new political global agenda is about. The IPCC was done for hiking temperatures and changing glacier melting times by over 100x the year amount. With all the removal of trees around the planet for toxic solar panels is a direct attack on sustainability. Recently hearing Bill Gates saying investing in trees is not science. Yet we have 50 countries playing with geo engineering as we debate means any data from here on is not natural or at least influenced. Finding these documents have become much longer a search based on the massive influx of paid science and topics of conversation. If anyone looks up Shares in Geo Engineering it will prove how much private companies are playing god at the moment. My father was a top scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne. In 2013-2015 most accurate data analyists and records were defunded and CSIRO and NASA gagged them all. Its a very big hot debate and appreciate researching way back if you commonly use government controlled internet search engines. I am driving up as passenger in a car.. So I apologise in advance for my 1st draft off top of head response. Im also dyslexic but I love this site and especially love the comments. I actually cannot go back to fix via phone.

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

Cedders at 19:44 PM on 6 October, 2024

I would also welcome any expansion of the 'it's too hard' section of myths, as this has been such a boom area since about 2015. Generally industry and society has moved from denial that climate change is a human-caused threat, to delay and sometimes fatalism ('it's too late' could be a whole new top level of the taxonomy). While there are a small rump of people with 'dismissive' attitudes to climate science, a majority of people accept there is a major problem, but are helped to feel powerless to do anything (per Michael Mann's The New Climate War).

Addressing this trand could be seen as straying into technological and economic and policy questions, but objectivity is still possible (eg citing whichever economic opinions are expressed and a range of informed views where there are no scientific facts).

This would be very helpful to deal with in the same format as there are certainly a lot of myths circulating in political circles and media. Typically the misguided arguments concern technology and what can be permitted within remaining carbon budgets, but also sometimes groups of scientists and activists. For example in the context of a climate mitigation conversation, policy-makers can express a preference for hydrogen cars over EVs or even public transport. At that point someone lie Auke Hoekstra or Michael Liebreich can explain simple facts about energy losses in electrolysis and fuels cells or combustion engines. This makes it clear that the most efficient use of renewables will not be hydrogen cars or heating, so investmeet in some hydrogen infrastructure would be a misguided dead end, rather like 'low tar' cigarettes or diesel engines. This is also a consequence of understanding from about 2009 that carbon pollution has to be cut to ('net') zero.

Essentially to get a major policy through needs people to agree it is fair, effective and beneficial. Incumbent industries want to preserve their business model and deny access to new entrants by influencing regulation. So they need to suggest clean technology uptake is inherently unfair, or that it has inherent environmental costs. Informing people about not just why stopping fossil fuels is fundamental but that the transition can generally improve equity and have environmental co-benefits is the hard task ahead.

I hope this take wasn't too off-topic. My thanks to all the SkS authors and editors for their continuing work.

Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup

Cedders at 20:47 PM on 5 October, 2024

This is my attempt to contrast biogenic CO₂ and fossil CO₂ in one figure, referring back to this page. The diagram already seems too complex without all the ocean carbon cycles and weathering details. One implication: Bill Gates's recent comment about ineffectiveness of tree-planting is not far off the mark.

Diagram of carbon processes emphasising coal, oil and gas extraction

The animal carbon cycle estimate is based on rough caloric intake and vertebrate biomass estimates; I'd be interested in any better sources. Also notable from IPCC figure: ocean-air fluxes are up nearly 50% owing to human activity, and photosynthesis up 25%.

I'm not sure what the image constraints are here, but playing it safe: this is half-width the graphic is intended for.

2024's unusually persistent warmth

Bob Loblaw at 05:21 AM on 20 September, 2024

pattimer:

To have chemistry or biology affect atmospheric temperatures, you need to argue that there is a mechanism by which those changes in chemistry and/or biology lead to a physical change in atmospheric heat storage.

For ocean chemistry, you would need to have chemical reactions that release enough energy to lead to increased ocean temperatures, which would then lead to increased atmospheric temperatures. This seems highly unlikely, but I'm open to suggestions.

For biological activity, the same applies. Photosynthesis is a possible suspect, as that consumes energy at the surface. The energy that goes into photosynthesis would otherwise go into the other energy transfers that occur at the surface: emission of IR radiation back to the atmosphere, transfer of heat (thermal energy) into the atmosphere, transfer of heat into the ocean or land, or the evaporation of water (which then goes into the atmosphere in the form of latent heat, and is released to thermal energy when the vapour condenses again). If there is less photosynthesis, then more energy would go into the other fluxes, but where?

...but photosynthesis is already part of the system (as is heat released as carbon is oxidized), and you'd have to argue a change in biological activity that is pretty large.

2024's unusually persistent warmth

Bob Loblaw at 05:07 AM on 18 September, 2024

pattimer:

My first reaction is to think "nothing chemical or biological". The energy sink that we see as global warming is entirely physical - thermal energy. Plant photosynthesis does store energy from the sun, but that is essentially offset by the release of energy as biological carbon decomposes.

Most of the energy imbalance (solar radiation absorbed, minus infrared radiation emitted out to space) goes into oceans. The heat capacity of air (the entire atmosphere) is a tiny fraction of the heat capacity of the oceans.

Our routine temperature observations only cover small proportions of the ocean/atmosphere systems. Our most detailed ones are air temperature near the surface - your everyday weather station data. When you see global air temperature fluctuating during El Nino cycles, we are seeing a shift between what stays in the atmosphere and what goes into oceans.

I think it will take time to figure out just what part of the oceans is storing less heat during this period of warmer atmospheric temperatures. And even more time to understand just exactly how the physics has played out.

...but my gut says "physics", not chemistry or biology.

On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2

Bob Loblaw at 02:28 AM on 4 September, 2024

Mark Johnson @ comment 18:

No, rkcannon @ 16 is not clearly referring to anything specific. For his first comment on this thread, he just comes up with one statement (in two sentences), and can't be bothered to tells us whether he's looking at the original post, or one of the comments? Did he put more than 20 seconds of thought into his question?

Even if we look at the graph in comment 6, which spike is he referring to? Possibly the last one, but he has not take the time to write a clear comment explaining exactly what he is looking at or explain his reasoning. And he has not returned to clarify what he means - which I asked him to do.

rkcannon has a history here. which includes several occasions of throwing out one-liner "gotcha" kinds of questions, and then not bothering top engage in any constructive discussion when his errors are pointed out. That behaviour is "hardly conducive to constructive debate".

And yes, I have read the Koutsoyiannis paper referred to in this post. I have also read the comments on that paper and an earlier one on PubPeer, as I indicated in comment 3. The comment from rkcannon @ 16 comes on the heels of one he made on another thread. In that thread, rkcannon quoted the abstract of another Koutsoyiannis paper (emphasis added):

Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect.

Similar statements appear in several Koutsoyiannis papers. The statistical technique used by Koutsoyiannis is incapable of detecting multi-directional processes, and it is incapable of detecting correlations at multiple time scales. Even though Koutsoyiannis et al do not state it or imply it, it is an essential characteristic of their method. The fact that they do not even realize this is why Koutsoyiannis keeps producing papers that contain the same basic error. In essence, they have assumed their conclusion as a result of their methodology.

On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2

Bob Loblaw at 04:42 AM on 3 September, 2024

rkcannon @ 16:

What on earth are you talking about? Figure 6 does not have temperature in it, so what temperature graph are you referring to? And figure 6 is showing short-term variation that includes annual or shorter times. It is a rate of change graph, not a cumulative storage graph. And which "very high spike" are you referring to? What year?

...and are you seriously thinking that every temporary spike in CO2 (really, rate of CO2 change, if you are using figure 6) will lead to a temperature spike? It takes time for global temperatures to change. The atmosphere alone has a sufficiently large heat capacity that it takes months for an energy imbalance of a few W/m² to reach a new equilibrium. If you take the shallow ocean mixed layer (<100m depth), the heat capacity means it take a decade or two for it to adjust. When you take the deeper ocean into account, the time lag increases proportionally.

...and CO2 is not the only factor affecting temperature. especially on the shorter time scales.

By thinking that every little short-term spike in CO2 has to correlate with a spike in temperature, you are making exactly the sort of basic error that Koutsoyiannis et al have made (several times). Koutsoyiannis has assumed that there is only one cause in one direction at all times scales, and has completely ignored the multi-factor and multi-time-scale nature of the carbon cycle and global temperature - and done it using a technique that removes the multi-decade slow rise in CO2 and how it correlates with global temperature.

It seems that you are not looking at the whole system, and focusing narrowly on some tiny feature that you think disproves the big picture.

CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration

Bob Loblaw at 02:26 AM on 3 September, 2024

rkcannon:

An earlier paper by Koutsoyiannis was debunked on this post here at SkS. He has been repeating the same basic bogus analysis in a series of papers, all of which are basically junk.

In the snippet you copy (which appears to be the start of the abstract), he again repeats his assertion of "evidence ... for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect." This claim appears in most (all?) his previous works, and it is still "not even wrong".

I notice that Koutsoyiannis has again chosen an MDPI journal for his assertions. MDPI does not have a particularly good reputation, having been a go-to location for a lot of bad papers that do not get proper review.

Is there any reason to think that Koutsoyiannis has actually gotten something right this time? For the most part, papers by Koutsoyiannis are simply not worth reading.

CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration

rkcannon at 01:34 AM on 3 September, 2024

Regarding C14, the gradual decline may be due to the nuclear tests that created C14 that is decaying or disappearing naturally. Ref this paper. Also this paper also looks at 13C/12C ratio, saying the following. Is there discussion on this somewhere?
Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age
by Demetris Koutsoyiannis
[ORCID]
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechneiou 5, 157 72 Zographou, Greece
Sci 2024, 6(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/sci6010017
Submission received: 19 December 2023 / Revised: 23 February 2024 / Accepted: 29 February 2024 / Published: 14 March 2024
Abstract
Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect. In the most recent study, this finding was supported by analysing the carbon cycle and showing that the natural [CO2] changes due to temperature rise are far larger (by a factor > 3) than human emissions, while the latter are no larger than 4% of the total. Here, we provide additional support for these findings by examining the signatures of the stable carbon isotopes, 12 and 13. Examining isotopic data in four important observation sites, we show that the standard metric δ13C is consistent with an input isotopic signature that is stable over the entire period of observations (>40 years), i.e., not affected by increases in human CO2 emissions. In addition, proxy data covering the period after 1500 AD also show stable behaviour. These findings confirm the major role of the biosphere in the carbon cycle and a non-discernible signature of humans.

CO2 is just a trace gas

Jeff Cope at 13:11 PM on 28 August, 2024

Put some table salt in your hand and dump out all but 2 grains. Keep hold of them while you read this:

Cyanide’s LD50, the dose that kills half those exposed to it, is 13 parts per million. Arsenic’s is 6. Some snake venoms, algal bloom toxin, & ricin, can kill at 1 part per million (0.0001%).

The main source of methyl mercury in the world is coal burning. It can kill in quantities smaller than 1ppm; at even smaller doses it doesn’t kill, it just has scores of profound lifelong physical and mental effects. Are there Alice in Wonderland fans here? Alice’s Hatter spoke in the bizarre tangles called word salad as a result of what’s Put some table salt in your hand and dump out all but 2 grains. Keep hold of them while you read the next 2 paragraphs.
Cyanide’s LD50, the dose that kills half those exposed to it, is 13 parts per million. Arsenic’s is 6. Some snake venoms, algal bloom toxin, & ricin, can kill at 1 part per million (0.0001%).
The main source of methyl mercury in the world is coal burning. It can kill in quantities smaller than 1ppm; at even smaller doses it doesn’t kill, it just has scores of profound lifelong physical and mental effects. Are there Alice in Wonderland fans here? Alice’s Hatter spoke in the bizarre tangles called word salad as a result of what’s still called Mad Hatter syndrome. It takes even less than that 1ppm in the chronic doses hat makers breathed in from the mercury nitrate (Hg(NO₃)₂xH₂O) they used for about a century to toughen fur fibers, allowing them to matt together better for a firmer hat. The process was called carroting because Hg(NO₃)₂xH₂O is orange.

Phyllobates terribilis, Golden Dart Poison Frog, ‘Orange’ (Imagine a picture here)

Dart poison frogs' batrachotoxin's LD50 is 1/1000th of that (1mcg/kg or 1 part per billion), so if those 2 grains of salt in your hand were batrachotoxin, it's a coin flip whether it would be enough to kill you just by holding it, if you had even a tiny cut on your palm. Sorry, there’s no antidote, and you have about 9 minutes left. It would take 6 salt grains worth of VX, while Botulinum toxin kills at 1 thousandth that amount—1 nanogram, or 1 billionth of a gram/kg body weight. One part per trillion of it can kill.

9 ppm is the maximum indoor safe carbon monoxide level over 8 hours.  200 ppm or greater will cause physical symptoms and is fatal in hours.  800 ppm of CO or greater in the air is fatal within minutes.

Climate Adam: Kamala Harris and Climate Change - Hope or Hype?

prove we are smart at 00:05 AM on 15 August, 2024

Well, it certainly needs all that because to be the worlds "good" policeman, you need at least 100million barrels of oil a year. It's a bit of an estimate since to disclose your militaries emissions is an optional answer at the COPs. The worlds militaries account for maybe 5.5% of the worlds CO2 in a year. www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/12/elephant-in-the-room-the-us-militarys-devastating-carbon-footprint

I certainly agree the classic ugly american Trump is unbelievably bad for most and the planet but as in my Australia and many countries, for many reasons,trust in our chosen public officials has declined and seems the sad new norm. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Public_trust_in_government.webp

CO2 lags temperature

Charlie_Brown at 23:59 PM on 7 August, 2024

Bob Loblaw @ 670:

That level of water chemistry is not needed to convey or understand the concepts of equilibrium and lead/lag for CO2 and temperature. It would be needed to go on to explain acidification or total dissolved carbon.

CO2 lags temperature

Bob Loblaw at 10:28 AM on 7 August, 2024

Charlie Brown @ 669:

One needs to be careful about referencing Henry's Law when it comes to CO2. CO2 does not just dissolve in water - it ends up dissociating and forming carbonic acid. This complicates the solubility equations.

SkS has a very good series on ocean acidification - in 20 parts. The 9th part discusses Henry's Law. The entire series is summarized in the 19th and 20th posts in the series.

Climate Adam: How deadly heatwaves are blown up by climate change

michael sweet at 06:02 AM on 7 August, 2024

There was a newspaper article cited by Carbon Brief about a heat wave in South Korea. Apparently about 11 people and 250,000 livestock were reported killed by the heat. Most of the livestock were chickens. The heatwave is expected to last another ten days.

CO2 lags temperature

MA Rodger at 20:05 PM on 6 August, 2024

Blusox69 @664,
The paper you link-to is Koutsoyiannis (2024) 'Stochastic assessment of temperature–CO2 causal relationship in climate from the Phanerozoic through modern times' which is hot off the press. The author should immediately ring alarm bells being a known perveyor of crazy denialism.

This SkS thread deals with the Temp → CO2 → Temp relationship prior to recent times when mankind began to increase atmospheric CO2 levels by burning fossil fuels and clearing forests.
The author of Koutsoyiannis (2024) also co-authored Koutsoyiannis & Kundzewicz (2020) 'Atmospheric Temperature and CO2: Hen-Or-Egg Causality?' which addresses a different relationship and does so with eye-bulging stupidity.
[To explain this stupidity, the measured CO2 record of recent decades has wobbles caused by El Niño impacting rainfall patterns and thus reducing vegitation growth in tropical regions. This effect is enough to slow the draw-down of CO2 and accelerate the atmospheric CO2 increase from human emissions, delaying the absorption of perhaps 15Gt(CO2) over a matter of months. Such a wobble is quite visible on the measured CO2 record. The whole process has been measurd from satellites.
An El Niño also causes a wobble in global average temperature and this temperture wobble arrives earlier than the CO2 wobble This is the situation Koutsoyiannis & Kundzewicz are measuring, a Temp wobble preceeding a CO2 wobble.
What Koutsoyiannis & Kundzewicz entirely fail to explain is the long-term rise in CO2 due to human emissions. This becomes eye-bulgingly stupid when they address the source of this long-term CO2 rise if it is due to rising temperature. They "seek in the natural process of soil respiration" and also "ocean respiration" but fail to actually look and find it. This should be no surprise. While warming biosphere and oceans would release CO2, the CO2 content of the biosphere & oceans is today increasing not falling, not exactly what you'd expect in a CO2 source.]

I cannot say I have read Koutsoyiannis (2024) properly. After a lot of blather, it tells us it there are questions to be asked about the role of CO2 within the climate system. Is it a GHG? Is it "decisive" in this role? Is the GH-effect enhanced in the last century? Are human emissions increasing the GH-effect? Are human emissions "decisive" in this regard? Is mankind the cause of rising CO2 levels? Is CO2 increasing global temperature, or visa versa, or both?
Koutsoyiannis (2024) then lists a bunch of references to support the assertion that "conventional wisdom" is wrong although the science behind the "conventional wisdom" is rather unwisely (and unscientifically) ignored. Note that all nine of Koutsoyiannis's bunch of references is authored by Koutsoyiannis. He has, according to himself, managed to overturned the scientific understanding of our planet's greenhouse effect.

And this new paper, Koutsoyiannis (2024), proceeds to use 12,000 words examining the temporal relationship between CO2 and global temperature for periods back 541million years. I have not read those 12,000 words but they certainly comprise more eye-waterlingly stupid blather.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29

One Planet Only Forever at 08:37 AM on 31 July, 2024

It is important to understand that Project 2025 would be unacceptable (being anti-intellectual poorer judgment) even if it supported intellectual better judgment regarding climate science and the importance of rapidly ending, and making amends for, the harms done by fossil fuel use.

A political group’s collective of interests is unlike cases where the net-benefit is a legitimate evaluation such as:

a medical treatment where the patient’s net-benefit is the important evaluation (not the medical industry’s net-benefit)

a business investment decision with only investors at risk of the harm of poor return on their investment, no harm is done to others

Project 2025 contains many interests that conflict with ‘intellectual good judgment in pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of how to limit harm done and be more helpful to others’. Note that it is not harmful to limit the ability of a person or group to succeed in the pursuit of interests that conflict with intellectual better judgment.

The dystopian drama series “The Handmaids Tale”, a story where the majority of Project 2025 interests win power over substantial parts of the US, has Gideon fully embracing low carbon living. That aspect of the interests of Gideon should not count as a positive against the negatives. The negatives of a collective of interests has to make the overall evaluation of the collective of interests negative. Otherwise you get harmful nonsense like ‘claims that the benefits as determined by the people wanting to benefit from that collective of interests appear to outweigh the negatives as determined by the people who want to benefit from that collective of interests’.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29

shohag at 09:34 AM on 28 July, 2024

Hi All, BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz

You absoulately right about the heatwave during hajj. It was not only in middle east but also all over the world. i put the asia heatwave data in my blog during developing my https://carbonrevolve.com/ site.

A major milestone: Global climate pollution may have just peaked

nigelj at 08:02 AM on 24 July, 2024

Regarding "A major milestone: Global climate pollution may have just peaked." Something related and important:

From the Sydney Morning Herald: “It’s good news’: Scientists suspect history about to be made in China” July 13th 2024.

“But it is data from the past few months that is intriguing analysts today. The world’s economy is growing. China’s economy is growing. Yet greenhouse gas emissions appear to have peaked.”

“Some time last year, or perhaps earlier this year, it appears China’s emissions, in particular, reached a high point. If China has peaked, there is good reason to believe global emissions peaked, too. It would mean that some time over the past few months, the stubborn nexus between economic growth and greenhouse gas pollution was snapped, and the 250-year surge in emissions ended…….”

“In November last year, he wrote that despite the post-COVID surge in emissions, China’s massive deployment of wind and solar energy, growth in EVs and an end to a drought that had cut hydroelectricity generation had caused emissions to tumble.”

“A 2023 peak in China’s CO2 emissions is possible if the build-out of clean energy sources is kept at the record levels seen last year,” he wrote in an analysis for Carbon Brief based on official figures and commercial data.”

“Largely as a result of the China green surge, global investment in renewable technology in 2023 outstripped that in fossil fuels for the first time, the International Energy Agency reported.”

www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/it-s-good-news-scientists-suspect-history-about-to-be-made-in-china-20240709-p5jsbi.html

Lots of caveats of course. But I found the article interesting. Especially Chinas self interested motivation to dominate certain technology markets, and reduce its dependence on foreign oil for geo political reasons. But at least the environmental consequences are positive:

A major milestone: Global climate pollution may have just peaked

Bob Loblaw at 04:54 AM on 24 July, 2024

Joel:

The figure mentions OurWorldInData.org. They have a large collection of charts of CO2 and greenhouse gas information on this web page.

One of the charts (second row, right side, in the view I have) is for "Annual greenhouse gas emissions by world region". It looks like the total for that chart matches the values in the figure in this post, so I expect the figure here is using the same data (just not by region).

If you dig down into the information for that chart at OurWorldInData, it gives the following reference:

Jones, Matthew W., Glen P. Peters, Thomas Gasser, Robbie M. Andrew, Clemens Schwingshackl, Johannes Gütschow, Richard A. Houghton, Pierre Friedlingstein, Julia Pongratz, and Corinne Le Quéré. “National Contributions to Climate Change Due to Historical Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide”. Scientific Data. Zenodo, March 19, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10839859.

That paper describes the data as "emissions CO2, CH4 and N2O from fossil and land use sources during 1851-2021."

If you follow the link to that paper, it then points to yet another paper that gives a more complete description: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02041-1. The abstract of that paper starts with:

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have made significant contributions to global warming since the pre-industrial period and are therefore targeted in international climate policy.

From that information, it seems pretty clear that forest fires, peat, etc. are not included.

The figure here provides enough information that your question can be answered with a little effort tracking down sources.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29

nigelj at 07:16 AM on 22 July, 2024

Regarding Project 2025 and its unfortunate attempts to dismantle the administrative state. Firstly I suggest we need to come back to some of the core problems we face as a society, and why this lead to the administrative state. And virtually all successful civilsations have an administrative state:

1) The capitalist free market is great at producing goods and services, but is not inherently good at providing adequate health and safety. This is known as a market failure in economics and well acknowledged by virtually all economists.

2) The failures of some leadership in all facets of society to act responsibly and helpfully towards people.

3) "The tragedy of the commons" is the concept which states that if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result a tragedy for all." (Wikipedia definition)

Modern society has responded to these problems with various attempts at corrective mechanisms including , self regulation, and civil court action (lawsuits), government laws, regulations, and market orientated mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap and trade, and incentivising people not to pollute. These mechanisms and the related government agencies are the administrative state (excepting self regulation obviously).

Self regulation has a history of mostly not working, and the only real winners with lawsuits are lawyers. Government paying people not to pollute gets expensive but might ocassionally have its place (IMO). Because of this most civilisations have developed a set of government organisations, agencies, laws, regulations, cap and trade schemes and so on and these have been very effective when they have been strong enough.

Examples are the ozone hole was reduced using a cap and trade scheme to push alternative refrigerants. Air pollution has plumetted in various countries due to government laws and regulations witrh penalties. The growth in renewable energy has been due to the use of regulations, carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes and incentives (subsidies) depending on the country and which solution it has preferred. Some countries use a combination of solutions.

The proponents of project 2025 by dismanting the administrative state are putting all these gains at risk. They are apparently trying to return to hiding environmental problems, (for example by dismanting NOAA) and to bring back failed self regulation, or failed, very weak regulations, and costly reliance on lawsuits, and will no doubt try to weaken even that as well. As Einstein said "dont keep doing the same experiment and expecting different results".

Of course sometimes you can have too many regulations or bad regulations and governmnet agencies can get too powerful. There are simple ways to minimise this and America already does a decent job of this by its democratic government and its divisions of government power. What is unfortunate is a clumsy wrecking ball like project 2025, that destroys agencies, is slanted to benefit the big corporates and rich people, puts profit above all other considerations, and that clearly does not serve the wider public interest.

Of red flags and warning signs in comments on social media

One Planet Only Forever at 02:27 AM on 18 June, 2024

I just read the following BBC article that presents a ‘red flag’ twist on the Agenda 21 point raised by nigelj @1 and expanded on by Nick Palmer @2.

BBC News: How a Kenyan farmer became a champion of climate change denial

I have seem many comments dismissing the undeniably required rapid significant correction of developed activity and related perceptions of status by claiming that ‘Agenda 21 types of actions’ are ‘unjustified wealth redistribution from rich to poor people’ (unjustly based on the unjustified beliefs that people perceived to be richer deserve to be richer and people who are poorer deserve to be poorer).

This ‘red flag twist’ is basically that actions to correct the developed harmful ways of living ‘harm the poor’. It is often simplistically claimed that ‘putting a price on carbon’ should not be done because it hurts the poor. Of course, parallel actions to help the poor, like rebating collected carbon fees with more going to poorer people than to richer people, are required to limit the harm done to the less fortunate by the undeniably helpful action of making it more expensive to be harmful.

The following quote from the BBC reporting is the twist made by a ‘social media popular African farmer (Mr Machogu)’:

“On social media, he has repeatedly posted unfounded claims that man-made climate change is not only a “scam” or a “hoax”, but also a ploy by Western nations to “keep Africa poor”.”

So the climate change actions can be unjustifiably accused of ‘keeping the poor poor’ as well as ‘redistributing from the rich to the poor’.

Of course, anyone who cares to learn about important matters like Agenda 21 will understand the injustice of demanding restrictions on harmful actions by ‘poorer farmers’ without ‘wealth redistribution from those who are richer’ that effectively improves the lives of poorer farmers, especially the poorest, in parallel with richer people dramatically reducing how harmful their developed ways of living are (even if they believe that such harm reduction by them combined with having to help the least fortunate makes them poorer relative to the poorest).

The BBC article also includes the following statement directly related to a ‘red flag’ already identified in the OP:

““Climate change is mostly natural. A warmer climate is good for life,” Mr Machogu wrongly claimed in a tweet posted in February, along with the hashtag #ClimateScam (which he has used hundreds of times).”

On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2

Bob Loblaw at 00:29 AM on 4 June, 2024

David @ 5:

Yes, that wording of "commonly assumed" in the Koutsoyiannis paper is rather telling. Either they are unaware of the carbon cycle and climate science work that has gone into the understanding of the relationship between CO2 and global temperature, or they are using a rhetorical trick to wave away an entire scientific discipline as if it is an "assumption".

That Looney Tunes clip has one more snippet that I think applies to Koutsoyiannis et al: at the end Foghorn Leghorn says "No, I'd better not look". I think that Koutsoyiannis et al did that with respect to learning about the science of the carbon cycle: "No, I'd better not look".

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 08:11 AM on 3 June, 2024

An organization called Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) just released a report on small modular reactors. The title of the report is "Small Modular Reactors: Still too expensive, too slow and too risky". It says that small nuclear reactors will not be able to contribute significantly to the energy transition and the money spent on them is being wasted.

Key Findings;

1) Small modular reactors still look to be too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning from fossil fuels in the coming 10-15 years.

2) Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years.

3) Experience with operating and proposed SMRs shows that the reactors will continue to cost far more and take much longer to build than promised by proponents.

4) Regulators, utilities, investors and government officials should embrace the reality that renewables, not SMRs, are the near-term solution to the energy transition.

Follow the link above to read the full report. The IEEFA apparently is a left leaning think tank that opposes nuclear power.

On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2

Bob Loblaw at 02:02 AM on 2 June, 2024

To continue, one nice new example that appears in this blog post is the accelerator versus the brake analogy. The OP does a nice job of describing the natural carbon cycle, pointing out that the natural portions of the cycle include both emissions and removals - adding to and subtracting from atmospheric CO2 storage.

Koutsoyiannis et al basically assume that if there are changes in atmospheric CO2, they must be linked to something that changed emissions. As the OP points out, the likelihood is that the correlation Koutsoyiannis et al see (in the short-term detrended data set they massaged) is more likely related to changes in natural removals.

Once again, Koutsoyiannis et al do not realize the limitations of their methodology, ignore a well-known physical process in the carbon cycle (rates of natural atmospheric CO2 removal), and attribute their correlation to the wrong thing. The right thing isn't in their model (statistical method) or thought-space (mental model), so they don't see it.

The OP's bathtub analogy is useful to see this. The diagram (figure 4) looks at the long-term rise in bathtub level (CO2 rise), but it is easy to do a thought experiment on how we could introduce short-term variability into the water level. There are three ways:

Short-term variability in the natural emissions (faucet on the left).

Short-term variability in the human emissions (faucet on the right).

Short-term variability in the natural sinks (drain pipe on the lower right).

The bathtub analogy is similar to the water tank analogy that is used in this SkS post on the greenhouse effect. The primary analogy in that post is a blanket, but the level of water in a water tank appears further down the page.

In short, the Koutsoyiannis et al paper ignores known physics, fails to incorporate known physics in their methodology, and comes to incorrect conclusions because the correct conclusion involves factors that were eliminated from their analysis from the beginning.

On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2

Bob Loblaw at 01:31 AM on 2 June, 2024

Yes, this blog post does a really good job of outlining the correct scientific background on atmospheric CO2 rise, and pointing out the glaring error that Koutsoyiannis et al have made.

The recent paper is a rehash of an earlier Koutsoyiannis paper that is allude to but not specifically linked in the OP and comments. The OP does subtly link to a rebuttal publication of that earlier work (link repeated here... You'll have to verify you're not a robot to get to the paper). As Dikran has pointed out, the authors appear to have doggedly refused to accept their error.

Both the current Koutsoyiannis et al paper and the earlier one have threads over at PubPeer:

The current paper only has one short comment.

...but the earlier paper has more extensive comments, including more detail on the criticisms Dikran mentions here in comment 1.

...and as Dikran mentions, this basic error is an old one, being repeated again and again in the contrarian literature on the subject. Two Skeptical Science blog posts from 11 and 12 years ago discusses this and similar errors. Plus ca change...

The blog And Then There's Physics also posted a blog on the earlier papers.

The importance of the differencing scheme used by Koutsoyiannis et al cannot be overstated. I hate to inject that dreaded word "Calculus" into the discussion, but if you'll bear with me for a moment I can explain. Taking differences (AKA detrending) is that dreaded Calculus process called differentiation - taking the derivative. This tells you the rate of change at any point in time - but it does not tell you how much CO2 accumulates over time. To get accumulation over time, you need to sum those changes over time - in Calculus-speak, you need to integrate.

The catch is, as Dikran points out, that taking differences has eliminated any constant factor - in Calculus-speak, the derivative of a constant is zero. And when you turn around and do the integration to look at how CO2 accumulates over time (basically, undo the differentiation), you need to remember to add the constant back in. Koutsoyiannis et al fail to do this, and then make the erroneous conclusion that the constant is not a factor. Their method made it disappear, and they can't see it as a result. David Copperfield did not actually make that airplane disappear - he just applied a method that hid it from the sight of the audience. (Of course, David Copperfield knows the airplane did not disappear, and is just trying to entertain the audience. In contrast, it appears that Koutsoyiannis et al are fooling themselves.)

At least introducing Calculus to the discussion give me a chance to mention one of my two math jokes. (Yes, I know. "math joke" is an oxymoron. Don't ask me to tell you the one about Noah and the snakes.)

Two mathematicians are in a bar, arguing about the general math knowledge of the masses. They end up deciding to settle the issue by seeing if the waitress can answer a math question. While mathematician A is in the bathroom, mathematician B corners the waitress and tells her that when his friend asks her a question, she should answer "one half X squared". A little later, when the waitress returns to the table, A asks her "what is the integral of X?". She answers as instructed, and mathematician A sheepishly pays off the bet and admits that B was right. As the waitress walks away, she is heard to mutter "pair of idiots. It's one-half X squared, plus a constant".

On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2

Dikran Marsupial at 23:41 PM on 31 May, 2024

Good article!

Koutsoyiannis et al. have made essentially the same mathematical blunder that Murray Salby did ten years ago (and he was far from being the first), which I covered here:

https://skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.html

Correlations are insensitive to constant offsets in the two signals on which it is computed. The differencing operator, Δ, which gives the difference between successive samples converts the long term linear trend in the signal to an additive constant. So as soon as you use Δ on both signals, the correlation can tell you precisely nothing about the long term trends.

When the earlier work was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, I communicated this error to both the authors of the paper and the editor of the journal. The response was, shall we say "underwhelming".

The communication (June 2022) included the observation that atmospheric CO2 levels are more slowly than the rate of fossil fuel emissions, which shows that the natural environment is a net carbon sink, and therefore the rise cannot be due to a change in the carbon cycle resulting from an increase in temperature. It is "dissapointing" that the authors have published a similar claim again (submission recieved 17 March 2023) when they had already been made aware that their claim is directly refuted by reliable observations.

Climate Adam: Can we really suck up Carbon Dioxide?

One Planet Only Forever at 06:47 AM on 23 May, 2024

An extreme example of carbon dioxide removal greenwashing is the marketing of the glory of the Pathways Alliance plans to make Alberta oil sands production 'Net-zero by 2050' (see here for their self promotion details).

As mentioned in Climate Adam's video, and the earlier CCS video he mentions (a link at the end of this Climate Adam video), CCS of oil sands operations will only keep part of the ghg impacts of the operations from entering the atmosphere, with risk of leaks of the stuff thought to have been captured and stored. In particular, any methane emissions are not captured for storage.

So, to be 'net-zero' the Pathways Alliance will have to divert (consume) some of the 'real carbon removal activity' that will almost certainly be necessary to bring total human impacts back down to 1.5 C levels (human impacts are expected to exceed the globally agreed 1.5 C level).

Pathways Alliance action, if they get subsidized to the degree they want and actually do something to reduce carbon emissions, would improve Canada's Climate Actions. But the most recent Climate Action Tracker evaluation of Canada linked here (pointed to by prove we are smart in this comment on another SkS item) is "Highly Insufficient" significantly due to leadership being compromised by being interested in profiting more from being more harmful and evading the costs of being less harmful. The Pathways Alliance improvement may only move Canada to "Insufficient" Climate Action.

It appears the (Canadian, Alberta, oil sands investors) hope is that some fossil fuel use will be globally agreed to be needed after 2050 to exclusively provide essential assistance for the least fortunate to live basic decent lives. And they (Canada, Alberta and oil sands investors), being net-zero suppliers by then, should be globally supported to be the chosen suppliers.

Harmful actions can only be justified if the harm is required to provide essential life assistance to the less fortunate (and it would be unacceptable for anyone to profit from providing that assistance - it should be not-for-profit).

That raises many questions including:

Will Canada, Alberta and oil sands investors all agree to be Net-zero-profit-takers after 2050?

And will they have taken action and paid what it costs to minimize the need to divert 'real carbon removal actions' to offset their remaining impacts (diversion required so they can claim to be 'net-zero' suppliers of a harmful product)?

And will they agree by 2050 that the only benefit from their 'net-zero product that will produce harmful impacts when used as expected' is to be obtained by the least fortunate (refusing to export it to questionable buyers)?

Fact Brief - Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?

One Planet Only Forever at 05:52 AM on 19 May, 2024

Great brief rebuttal of the ridiculous belief that breathing contributes to increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

A minor nit-pick with a suggested better presentation added in italics:

The CO2 we breathe is part of a balanced carbon exchange between the air and the earth. In contrast, burning fossil fuels injects oxidized carbon, CO2, into the atmosphere that has been stored underground in hydrocarbon molecules for millions of years, causing a rapid buildup.

Tragically, the popularity of absurd beliefs requires efforts to 'change the minds' of people who are easily tempted to believe nonsense when the alternative is 'learning about the need to stop trying to benefit from being unjustifiably more harmful'.

The first Open Access Notable presented in "Skeptical Science New Research for Week #20 2024" - Publicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change - highlights that regions benefiting from high harmful CO2 impacts have higher percentages of the population willing to believe nonsense.

I live in Alberta so I was not surprised by the research results regarding climate skepticism ... and I am painfully aware that nonsense beliefs like 'breathing contributes to the CO2 problem' can be persistently popular among 'highly educated people' who have developed interests that conflict with being less harmful.

There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature

Martin Watson at 03:16 AM on 14 May, 2024

Could someone clear up another little issue for me. I've come across this graph today, which was taken last year from a big literature review in the journal Science. I'm confused by the dip at about 25 million years ago. It seems to show CO2 levels similar to today but temperatures much higher. I don't think I've seen this dip on other graphs.

news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/12/07/a-new-66-million-year-history-of-carbon-dioxide-offers-little-comfort-for-today/

The science isn't settled

TWFA at 16:08 PM on 9 May, 2024

scaddenp, FF phase-out means petrochemical phase-out as well, you can't have one without the other, refine a quart of corn chowder into a quart of vegetable soup with nothing left over, so as long as there is plastic, insulation for all those wires needed in the FF-free world and asphalt to roll the synthetic rubber Tesla tires on, there will still be at least a third of every barrel of crude being cracked into some form of hydrocarbon fuel or gaseous byproduct that cannot be sequestered or stored, only burned.

The science isn't settled

TWFA at 13:36 PM on 9 May, 2024

Of course I looked at Fig. 1... the ebb point in curve is at 1750, clearly rising by 1800 and well on the way by 1850.

I just want to know why, if we are the ones causing all this, that it began long before we were emitting measurable amounts of CO2, which was around 1890. Do I need to show you a chart of sea levels vs emissions?

Time series of sea level anomalies (blue) Jevrejeva et al. (2014).
Million tons of carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC 2014)

CO2 is just a trace gas

JJones1960 at 17:58 PM on 3 May, 2024

Bob Loblaw @ 51:

“CO2 is not "colourless" when it comes to infrared radiation. Just because JJones1960 can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.”

The point that you miss that that CO2 is a trace gas, therefore cannot trap a significant amount of heat anyway.

OPOF @52:

Your quote:
“Tropospheric ozone (O3) is the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).“

The point you miss is that ozone traps heat in relation to CO2 and methane as the ‘third most important greenhouse gas’ but that is IN RELATION to those gases. My point is that those gasses don’t and can’t trap a significant amount of heat because they are in trace amounts, therefore neither would ozone.

Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather

wilddouglascounty at 01:10 AM on 2 May, 2024

Yes, you're correct in pointing out the multiple causal factors in a system that contribute to the performance of a system, whether it be in a marathon or the climate. This can and does contribute to distortion and manipulation by those who want to detract.

My point is that attribution should be a conversation about a variable, i.e. carbon emissions, not the measuring tool, i.e. climate change.

Pinning down climate change's role in extreme weather

wilddouglascounty at 23:13 PM on 1 May, 2024

Yes, you are precisely correct, Bob (and calling me Wild is just fine!). The point I am making in my analogy is that the "steroid" in the climate change dynamic is not climate change, it is fossil fuel use, or more generally all human activities which are contributing to increased carbon emissions that are overwhelming the system's sinks abilities to absorb it fast enough enough to keep the equilibrium in the system. It's the carbon emitting activities that causes heat retention, that result in increasingly extreme weather events, which causes climate change, and by saying that climate change CAUSED the extreme weather muddies the understanding of what triggered what and what to do about it.

Hope this helps! Attribution studies should be pointing the finger at increased carbon emissions, not climate change, at the steroids, not the changing averages, that's all.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Eclectic at 15:40 PM on 1 May, 2024

Brtipton @123 :

Bob, you are correct. As you know, roughly 83% of society's energy use is coming from fossil fuels. And total energy use is continuing to increase. And it is unhelpful & misleading, when "renewable" wind & solar gets reported not as actual production, but as the potential maximum production (the real production being about 70% lower, on average, than the so-called "installed capacity").

However, the biggest need is for more technological advancement of the renewables sector (and especially in the economics of batteries). Maybe in 15-20 years, the picture will look much brighter. And maybe there will be progress in crop-waste fermentation to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuel for airplanes & other uses where the (doubtless expensive) liquid fuels will still be an attractive choice.

Carbon Tax (plus "dividend" repayment to citizens generally) would be helpful ~ if political opposition can be toned down. But technological advancement is the big requirement, for now. There is political opposition to more-than-slight subsidies to private corporations . . . but surely there is scope for re-directing "research money" into both private and non-profit research ~ so long as it can avoid being labelled as "a subsidy". Wording is important, in these things.

With the best will in the world, it will all take time.

Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year

Martin Watson at 22:31 PM on 30 April, 2024

I am really hoping that somebody will be able to debunk the following claim in a way I can understand, or point me to an article which already does that. Yesterday, I was Googling about climate change and I came across a claim about CO2 and photons. Basically, it was saying that out of every 100,000 CO2 molecules which absorb a reflected IR photon from the surface, only 2 will actually re-emit that photon. Instead the other 99,998 molecuales will bump into a molecule of nitrogen or oxygen. And the claim was this means the contribution of CO2 to global warming was infinitesimally small. It seems to be referencing this article. Thanks.

geoexpro.com/recent-advances-in-climate-change-research-part-ix-how-carbon-dioxide-emits-ir-photons/

Simon Clark: The climate lies you'll hear this year

nigelj at 05:54 AM on 28 April, 2024

Some commentary on a recent form of climate scepticism that I thought was interesting:

Prof Jem Bendell: When my book Breaking Together came out in May, some of my climate activist friends were surprised that I gave significant attention to rebutting scepticism on the existence of manmade climate change. I also surprised some of my colleagues at COP27 a year ago, when I gave a short talk on the rise of a new form of scepticism. That new form is couched in the important desire to resist oppression from greedy, hypocritical and unaccountable elites. I think the surprise of some that we still need to respond to climate scepticism reflects the bubble that many people working on environmental issues exist within. That’s a bubble of Western middle classes who believe they are well-informed, ethical and have some agency, despite relying on the Guardian, BBC or CNN for much of their news. Outside that bubble, there has been a rise in the belief that authorities and media misrepresent science to protect and profit themselves, while controlling the general public. That was primarily because of the experience of the pronouncements and policies during the early years of the pandemic. When people who are understandably resistant to that Covid orthodoxy have discovered the way elites have been using concern about climate change to enrich themselves, such as through the carbon credits scam, many have become suspicious of the whole agenda on climate change. Those of us who know some of the science on climate, and pay attention to recent temperatures and impacts, can feel incredulous at such scepticism. My green colleagues ask me: “How can someone deny what’s changing right before their very eyes?”

My correspondence with people expressing a new type of freedom-defending climate scepticism has led me to conclude that something else is needed than simply correcting their views with clear logic and evidence. My answers to the questions, which you can read below, may not have been perfect (he presents a list of climate myths and correct information similar to skepticalscience.com) . But the responses from sceptical people have sometimes seemed irrational. For instance, one type of response is an inconsistent switching between epistemologies (the fancy word for describing our view of how we come to know things about the world). That inconsistency involves sometimes claiming to reject all scholarship as untrustworthy instead to trust only firsthand experience. It is inconsistent because they ignore lots of firsthand experience contrary to their view, while also reaching for second hand and poorly referenced or debunked scholarship (often in the form of a blog or video clip) that might seem to support their view. Another irrational approach is the repetition of a claim that has already been debunked, which is the intellectual equivalent of raising one’s voice. One example is sending a blog or a video that repeats previously debunked claims. Another approach is to switch topic on to values and principles, while repeating false binaries given to them by the media. Specifically, that is the binary that climate change can’t be real because globalist elites are profiting from the issue and trying to control us. Instead, both the former and latter can be true at the same time (yep, quite elementary logic). Finally, the most widespread and pernicious irrationality is to regard these discussions as just one topic, and then choose criticism of the globalists as being the most important response, rather than understanding the situation of the natural environment and responding to it in a better way. That happens when people think “after all this debate, I’m not sure about climate change but I’m certain about resisting the globalists, so I’ll focus on that.” If one’s motivation for inquiring into public affairs is to feel like a moral agentic person and experience a burst of energy from belonging to the good guys in a fight, then such a conclusion is seductive. That is especially because it requires no painful recognition of the ecological tragedy, no sacrifices, no risk taking, no changing of lifestyles, and no complicated participation in community projects. It also generates easy likes on social media from people similarly addicted to narratives that avoid difficult self-reflection and change. Unfortunately, the result of this irrationality is people don’t begin to prepare emotionally and practically for what has already started unfolding around them.

wijembendell.com/2023/10/10/responding-to-the-new-wave-of-climate-scepticism

( I don't entirely agree with the writers own tendency towards criticism of globalism and elites, and of the mainstream authorities motives, and of the idea of covid lockdown policies, but I thought he makes some good points on other issues as above)

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

MA Rodger at 00:15 AM on 25 April, 2024

The paper Kubicki et al (2024) 'Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases' is utter garbage from start to finish. When something is so bad, it is a big job setting straight the error-on-error presented.

As an exemplar of the level of nonsense, consider the opening paragraph, sentence by sentence.

Due to the overlap of the absorption spectra of certain atmospheric gases and vapours with a portion of the thermal radiation spectrum from the Earth's surface, these gases absorb the mentioned radiation.

I'd assume this is saying that the atmosphere contains gases (or "vapours" if you are pre-Victorian) which absorb certain IR wavelengths emitted by the Earth's surface. Calling this "overlap" is very odd.

This leads to an increase in their temperature and the re-emission of radiation in all directions, including towards the Earth.

The absorption if IR does lead to "an increase in their temperature" but the emission from atmospheric gases is determined by its temperature. Absorbed IR only very rarely results in a re-emission of IR (and if it does, the IR energy is not cause "increase in their temperature").

As a result, with an increase in the concentration of the radiation-absorbing gas, the temperature of the Earth's surface rises.

This is not how the greenhouse effect works. For wavelengths longer than the limit for its temperature defined by 'black body' physicis (for the Earth, about 4 microns), the planet emits IR across the entire spectrum. The level of emission depends on the temperature of the point of emission which for wavelengths where greenhouse gases operate is not the surface but up in the atmosphere. For IR in the 15 micron band, CO2 will result in emissions to space from up in the atmosphere where it is colder and thus where emissions are less. If adding CO2 moves the height of emission up into a colder altitude, emissions will fall and the Earth then has to heat up to regain thermal equilibrium.

Due to the observed continuous increase in the average temperature of the Earth and the simultaneous increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it has been recognized that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration associated with human activity may be the cause of climate warming.

This was perhaps true before the 1950s but the absorption/emission of IR by various gasses was identified and measured when the USAF began to develop IR air-to-air missiles. The warming-effect of a doubling of CO2 (a radiative forcing of +3.7Wm^-2) has been established for decades.

So just like debating science with nextdoor's cat, taking the heed the whitterings of Messers Kubicki, Kopczyński & Młyńczak is a big big waste of time.

What is Mexico doing about climate change?

prove we are smart at 00:04 AM on 16 April, 2024

On behalf of Mexico and the many,many nations on this planet who will struggle more than the "entitled wealthy", climate justice - can it come from those who have given us the current 20% of global co2. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zP0L69ielU

Full article here www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

William24205 at 22:37 PM on 6 April, 2024

Nigelj - thank you for your reasonable reply - that did accept the evidence .

So when I look at the big picture there is a strong case to stop greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a new zero carbon energy grid.

Would you not acknowledge that transitioning away from fossil fuels to a different energy form carries some risks in itself ?

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

nigelj at 05:10 AM on 4 April, 2024

William @ 38

"At what point - would you start to not trust a climate alarmist - if deaths continue to fall or not rise for another 40 years - would you think maybe we should not trust those who make these predictions and fuel the narrative. Or do they just get a forever pass - and you will always accept more predictions - even though the people and movements who made them before have always been wrong."

Scientists are making the best predictions and projections they can. The best evidence they have says heatwaves have already become significantly more frequent and intense (refer last IPCC report), and that this situation will get worse over time particularly as warming gets above 2 degrees C. I see no reason to doubt them. The predictions are rational, logical and evidence based. I am a sceptical sort of person but Im not a fool who thinks all predictions should be ignored or that everything is fake or a conspiracy.

Scientists generally predict heatwave mortality will increase and be greater than reducing deaths in winter due to warmer winters, as per the reference I posted @34. What scientists cannot possibly predict is what advances there might be in healthcare and technology that might keep the mortality rate low. All we know is there will likely be further improvements in healthcare and technology, but quantifying them is impossible and it would be foolish to assume there will be massive improvements. We have to follow the precautionary principle that things could be quite bad.

If warming over the next 20 years causes less harm than predicted mitigation policies can be adjusted accordingly. This is far better than just making wild assumptions that global warming would be a fizzer.

Please appreciate that contrary to your comments elsewhere, multiple climate predictions have proven to be correct. Just a few examples:

theconversation.com/20-years-on-climate-change-projections-have-come-true-11245

www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/oct/25/charlie-kirk/many-climate-predictions-do-come-true

"I think people just want to believe things will be terrible and there are primed believe end of days narratives."

Some people yes. Other people think things will always be fine. Both are delusional views. I would suggest the vast majority of people between those extremes have a more rational, nuanced view and that they look at the overall evidence. Polling by Pew Research does show the majority of people globally accept humans are warming the climate and we need to mitigate the problem.

"Yes - anything could happen in the future and deaths and damage levels could rise again- but it is nor healthy to ignore the present - or trust people that wilfully distort it."

I'm not ignoring the present or past. The mortality rate from disasters has mostly fallen over the last 100 years and that looks like robust data. I didn't dispute this above. I dont recal anyone disputing it. However you cant assume that trend will always be the case. The climate projections show deadly heatwaves are very likely to become very frequent and over widespread areas, and so obviously there is a significant risk the mortality rate will go up.

It's almost completely certain that at the very least considerably increased resources will have to go into healthcare, air conditioning, adaptation, etc,etc. This means fewer resources available for other things we want to achieve in life. Once again its not all about the mortality rate per se. So when I look at the big picture there is a strong case to stop greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a new zero carbon energy grid.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 23:27 PM on 3 April, 2024

Gentlemen:

The proper place to be carrying on this discussion about ocean heating is on this thread:

https://skepticalscience.com/How-Increasing-Carbon-Dioxide-Heats-The-Ocean.html

Yes, the original post in that link is from 2011, but it is still open for comments.

Scaddenp is correct in pointing out (in comment 70 here) that jimsteele is regurgitating debunked myths from more than a decade ago. Jimsteele: please actually read the appropriate post and comments before you start repeating yourself.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

michael sweet at 05:10 AM on 2 April, 2024

Two Dog,

In 1989 Dr Hansen spoke before congress and warned the USA about Global Warming. He projected the temperature increase expected from human emissions. It is now 45 years after Dr Hansens projections. The temperature has increased almost exactly along the line Dr Hansen forecast. How do you explain the extraordinary accuracy of Dr. Hansens projections if scientists do not understand the climate system? You need to say what are very the strong natural processes causing the climate to change exactly at the time humans started releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere?

I note that the climate had been cooling for the 4,000 years previous to humans starting to release large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Can you explain why the Earth was cooling before humans started releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses but now unknown natural processes have turned into heating at a rate not seen in the geological record for many millions of years? What a wild coincidence!! Human emissions are estimated to have caused 105% of current warming (ie that natural forcings woud have cooled the Earth in the absence of human pollution). You are simply uninformed about the facts of global warming. If you inform yourself you will find out that scientists have investigated everything you question and found out that natural processes currently are cooling the Earth.

Scientists predicted in 1850 that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase surface temperature. Arhennius projected in 1894 the approximate amount of heating from increasing carbon dioxide would be similar to what has been observed. Why are the scientists of the 1800's "a group who are highly unlikely to admit the strength and frequency of natural factors"?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

John Mason at 20:35 PM on 1 April, 2024

Re - #51 diff01:

I'll break this up into Q&A because there's a range of questions:

Q. Will changing one small ingredient (0.04%) of the earth's greenhouse gases (CO2) arrest gloabal warming (if that is what is happening)?

A. CO2 has increased 50% since pre-industrial times. Can you imagine if sunshine became 50% stronger?

Q. If the scientists(?) believe this to be the case, how will it be regulated to adjust the climate to maintain an average that is not too hot or cold?

A. We have yet to see!

Q. If all anti-carbon emitting policies were implemented, what says the climate will not be too cool?

A. Already locked into further warming for centuries.

Q. How will the climate be regulated (say changing one greenhouse gas does the trick) if the sun's intensity changes (sun spots), the reduction in carbon emission works, and it cools too much?

A. Changes in total solar irradience across a sunspot cycle are very low, but not neglibible.

Q. Another question I have is about other factor's, such as the recent eruption at Hunga Tonga. Apparently water vapor increased by 10% in the stratosphere. Won't that affect the climate?

A. It may be accoutable for a few tenths of a degree of recent warming, but research continues.

Q. What about the earth's orbit, and it's distance from the sun?

A. You are referring to Milankovitch cycles that affect three orbital parameters. However they do so over tens of thousands of years, not in a couple of centuries.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

diff01 at 19:38 PM on 1 April, 2024

Will changing one small ingredient (0.04%) of the earth's greenhouse gases (CO2) arrest gloabal warming (if that is what is happening)?

If the scientists(?) believe this to be the case, how will it be regulated to adjust the climate to maintain an average that is not too hot or cold?

If all anti-carbon emitting policies were implemented, what says the climate will not be too cool?

The other, obvious hole in the argument for drastic economic change in the name of cooling the planet, is that the sun is not factored into the equation (by the way, I am all for increasing efficiency and reducing waste). How will the climate be regulated (say changing one greenhouse gas does the trick) if the sun's intensity changes (sun spots), the reduction in carbon emission works, and it cools too much?

Another question I have is about other factor's, such as the recent eruption at Hunga Tonga. Apparently water vapor increased by 10% in the stratosphere.

Won't that affect the climate? How do the 'models' account for nature not doing what the computers predict?

There are a myriad of other questions. I haven't watched the movie yet, but will, with interest.

When I searched for the movie, this website popped up right under the movie heading.

It's always interesting to hear from the 'true believers'.

The whole thing is a sham of biblical proportions. You need just a modicum of reasoned thought to tell you so.

Just had a quick look at your response regarding 'the sun'.

You say the 'irradiation level' has been measured with accuracy for the last 40 years, and shown little variation.

The sun has been influencing weather on earth for 4 and a half billion years. What about the earth's orbit, and it's distance from the sun?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

diff01 at 19:32 PM on 1 April, 2024

Will changing one small ingredient (0.04%) of the earth's greenhouse gases (CO2) arrest gloabal warming (if that is what is happening)?

If the scientists(?) believe this to be the case, how will it be regulated to adjust the climate to maintain an average that is not too hot or cold?

If all anti-carbon emitting policies were implemented, what says the climate will not be too cool?

Another question I have is about other factor's, such as the recent eruption at Hunga Tonga. Apparently water vapor increased by 10% in the stratosphere.

Won't that affect the climate? How do the 'models' account for nature not doing what the computers predict?

There are a myriad of other questions. I haven't watched the movie yet, but will, with interest.

When I searched for the movie, this website popped up right under the movie heading.

It's always interesting to hear from the 'true believers'.

The whole thing is a sham of biblical proportions. You need just a modicum of reasoned thought to tell you so.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Eclectic at 05:33 AM on 30 March, 2024

Res01 @46 : thank you for resuming the conversation of 2023, and the mention of the new [2/2024] paper by Dr P. Bierwirth (please note the second "r" in Bierwirth).

His 2024 Abstract quotes: "Protein malfunctions in cells due to elevated CO2 and associated low pH has [sic] the potential to cause threats to life including cancer, neurological disorders, lung disease, diabetes, etc. ... overexpression of carbonic anhydrase, the enzyme that catalyses CO2 in the body, causes calcification in the kidneys arteries and tissues, along with other diseases and this may be an existential threat."

Please excuse my adding of underlining emphasis, in the above. The body of the paper does not really add much, I think, to earlier comments on the topic. # It is all rather breathless [please forgive my feeble attempt at a pun, of sorts].

Looking at the bigger picture, we see that the dinosaurs survived millions of years of "high" ambient CO2. Were their bodily proteins shaped by evolution to perform satisfactorily at high CO2 levels ~ or did their kidneys simply compensate for high CO2 ? We don't know ~ and yet we know that the dinosaurs did survive and thrive.

Is there any experimental evidence to support Dr Bierwirth's gloomy comments about long-term CO2 exposure? # Well, for what it's worth, there is a 3-month study in mice, by C. Wyrwoll et al (2021). Gestation through to 3-months of age. Despite some slight ambiguity in the Abstract, they quote: "There were no clear anxiety, learning, or memory changes. Renal and osteological parameters were minimally affected." [my emphasis]

If there be some clear-cut evidence of failure of the mammalian body to make (renal or other) adjustment/compensation in high ambient CO2, then I would be pleased to learn of it.

At SkS , we all know the potential of increasingly severe adverse effects of higher atmospheric CO2 levels. But these dangers are terrestrial, rather than physiological, for mammals.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

res01 at 02:45 AM on 30 March, 2024

Skeptical Science Team, Eclectic @42, et. al,

Recent paper by P. Bierwith (2024)* notes, "There is now substantial evidence that permenant exposure to CO2 levels in the future will have significant effects on humans." The article goes on to summarize recent findings; all of which generally support the subject article here. I find though the article does contain a few "technical errors" as it was written with the knowledge as it was best known a few years back, it is in no way unnecessarily "alarmist." The problem I believe is that to some the subject itself is "alarmist", and in truth it should be.

To address Eclectic's concern a bit more succinctly; the human body's CO2 compensary mechanisms have been considered in the papers being questioned. Basically, though the body can compensate for very high levels of CO2 for short periods of time, eventually these mechanisms will "give out" over time as one is continually immersed in even mildly elevated levels of CO2; the effect becoming noticeable around 800-1200 ppm. The general effects are bone dimeneralization, calcification of soft tissues, and neurological agitation which will give rise to a range malidies not favorable for human health and well being.

*P. Bierwith, (2024), "Long-term carbon dioxide toxicty and climate change: a critical unapprehended risk for human health. Australian National University. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311844520_Long-term_carbon_dioxide_toxicity_and_climate_change_a_critical_unapprehended_risk_for_human_health

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

John Mason at 09:42 AM on 29 March, 2024

Re - post #36:

The second questions's rhetorical and since I neither own nor moderate Skeptical Science it's irrelevant to me.

Thr first question is more interesting. On a geological time-scale, the answer is no.

Earth has continually rearranged itself through slow processes such as plate tectonics that operate over tens of millions of years. Since landmasses and oceans move around during such goings-on, climate is bound to be affected, but the fossil record indicates no big problems because of the time factor. Stuff could adapt.

However, rapid change is and has been dangerous.

Past instances of rapid change fall into two camps with a spectrum in between. We have bolide impacts (instant major change) at one end and Large Igneous Provinces (thousands to tens of thousands of years of major change) at the other.

Large igneous province events only occur every few tens of millions of years. Humans have never seen one. It's volcanism on another level.

The trouble with such rapid events is they are associated with mass-extinction with rapid climatic changes having a big role. The geological record preserves clear evidence for such things.

What we've done with carbon since pre-industrial times is directly comparable to a Large igneous province in terms of pollution created and dispersed around the globe. This current climate change may not feel fast - you may not see remarkable events on a daily basis - but geologically speaking it is going along at breakneck speed. I guess I could now ask a question back:

Just HOW bad do you want things to become before you take notice?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

One Planet Only Forever at 02:59 AM on 28 March, 2024

Two Dog @26,

The movie in question is still questionable and misleading even if it contains 'points that have merit'.

I am a structural engineer with an MBA. I present two examples for the merit of my opening point:

A structure design is unacceptable even if some parts of the design could be claimed to be 'perfect'. All it takes is one obvious error to justifiably declare the design to be unacceptable.

A business plan is unacceptable even if some parts of the plan could be claimed to be 'perfect'. All it takes is one obvious error to justifiably declare the plan to be unacceptable.

As for the ‘merit’ of things in the questionable misleading movie you perceive to have merit:

Climate Change can be understood to be the term applied to the vast body of science that has proven conclusively that human impacts, not just CO2 from fossil fuel use, have caused significant rapid changes to the climate conditions of regions on this planet. “Climate Change Denial” is a term referring to people who resist learning about the constantly improving understanding of Climate Change science.

The answer provided above questions the merit of your second ‘perceived point of merit’ about the significance of human impacts. There are many presentations of better understanding that shatter the ‘merit of what you perceive is a point of merit’. One example is SkS Myth/Argument 192 “The IPCC confidence in human-caused global warming is based on solid scientific research”. A related presentation is the Carbon Brief item form 2017 “Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans” (and more recent investigations have strengthened that understanding).

I will conclude with the following: “Resistance to learning”, not “shutting down debate”, is the real problem. Being ‘hard-of-learning’ (see my comment @18), can cause people to claim that justifiably criticizing their ‘questionable attempts to debate points they unjustifiably believe have merit’, and pointing out that ‘repetition of already well-debunked misunderstandings has no merit’, is “shutting down debate”.

Note: Regarding ‘covid’ you did not present an example of a ‘conspiracy theory’ you believe was proven to be correct. But I would suggest that for this topic on this website you should focus on presenting an example of what you believe is a ‘climate change conspiracy theory’ that has proven to be correct. One example I am aware of is the ‘conspiracy theory’ that undeserving wealthy powerful people have been deliberately misleading regarding Climate Change science resulting is massive amounts of unjustified “Climate Change Denial”.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

nigelj at 05:51 AM on 26 March, 2024

The greening of the Earth is approaching its limit.

When plants absorb this gas to grow, they remove it from the atmosphere and it is sequestered in their branches, trunk or roots. An article published today in Science shows that this fertilizing effect of CO2 is decreasing worldwide, according to the text co-directed by Professor Josep Peñuelas of the CSIC at CREAF and Professor Yongguan Zhang of the University of Nanjin, with the participation of CREAF researchers Jordi Sardans and Marcos Fernández. The study, carried out by an international team, concludes that the reduction has reached 50% progressively since 1982 due basically to two key factors: the availability of water and nutrients.

"There is no mystery about the formula, plants need CO2, water and nutrients in order to grow. However much the CO2 increases, if the nutrients and water do not increase in parallel, the plants will not be able to take advantage of the increase in this gas", explains Professor Josep Peñuelas. In fact, three years ago Prof. Peñuelas already warned in an article in Nature Ecology and Evolution that the fertilizing effect of CO2 would not last forever, that plants cannot grow indefinitely, because there are other factors that limit them.

If the fertilizing capacity of CO2 decreases, there will be strong consequences on the carbon cycle and therefore on the climate. Forests have received a veritable CO2 bonus for decades, which has allowed them to sequester tons of carbon dioxide that enabled them to do more photosynthesis and grow more. In fact, this increased sequestration has managed to reduce the CO2 accumulated in the air, but now it is over. "These unprecedented results indicate that the absorption of carbon by vegetation is beginning to become saturated. This has very important climate implications that must be taken into account in possible climate change mitigation strategies and policies at the global level. Nature's capacity to sequester carbon is decreasing and with it society's dependence on future strategies to curb greenhouse gas emissions is increasing," warns Josep Peñuelas.

The study published in Science has been carried out using satellite, atmospheric, ecosystem and modeling information. It highlights the use of sensors that use near-infrared and fluorescence and are thus capable of measuring vegetation growth activity.

phys.org/news/2020-12-greening-earth-approaching-limit.html#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20carried%20out%20by,nutrients%20in%20order%20to%20grow.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

One Planet Only Forever at 04:33 AM on 26 March, 2024

Nick @14 and John @15,

I am no expert regrading the greening or browning of the planet. But I am aware that 're-greening' happens fairly quickly after the 'browning' of a forest fire. However, it seems it could take a long time for the 're-greening' to re-lock-away all the locked-away carbon that was released by the fire. Also, the carbon released by a forest fire would include locked-away carbon that is released as the dead wood decays.

Hopefully there is enough data now for the experts to complete a robust evaluation and reach a reasonably sustainable conclusion.

It would be tragic if this was another 'we need to wait for more evidence' excuse (waiting is delaying). The early arguments against the science were 'we need to wait and see how things actually turn out'.

That 'there is not yet enough proof (to satisfy me to the point of changing my mind and changing my behaviour)' appears to continue to be the basis for many of the misunderstandings that are passionately believed and espoused by people who continue to be 'hard-of-learning' regarding climate science - demanding the freedom to believe whatever they want and do as they please, including resisting learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others (as Doug Bostrom explained so well @3).

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #12 2024

nigelj at 06:05 AM on 22 March, 2024

Regarding "Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory, Schmidt, Nature [perspective]:"

This is very concerning and perceptive.

This following article by Copernicus has a great review of the effects of aerosols, and some interesting ideas of what may have contributed to last years unusually high temperatures in the nothern atlantic in partcular:

"Aerosols: are SO2 emissions reductions contributing to global warming?"

https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/aerosols-are-so2-emissions-reductions-contributing-global-warming

Excerpts:

In 2020, the International Maritime Organization adopted its ‘IMO 2020’ regulation to drastically reduce shipping-related sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Studies have concluded that the drop in emissions significantly reduced the formation of clouds over shipping lanes. An analysis by Carbon Brief estimated that that “the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050 (My note: Clearly this doesnt do much to explain the last 9 months unusual warming, and why would a change in 2020 shipping fuels that was implimented in that year, not slowly phased in, suddenly manifest 3 years later anyway? ). This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions.” However, linking SO2 reductions directly to the recent extreme marine heatwaves omits part of the complexity of using models to calculate sulphate aerosol interactions in the atmosphere or estimating the effective application of the IMO 2020 regulation, and, more generally, the complexity of climate and atmospheric chemistry.

Reviewing the record North Atlantic Sea surface temperatures in June 2023, a preliminary analysis from CAMS scientists found a significant negative anomaly in Saharan dust aerosol transport over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, and an increased anomaly in biomass burning aerosol over the North Atlantic, coming from the massive Canadian wildfires. These aerosol anomalies are much bigger than the sulphate change from shipping emission reductions. This makes the estimation of the impact of reduced sulphate aerosol emissions on the sea surface temperatures very challenging.

June 2023 monthly mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) anomaly relative to June average AOD for the period 2003-2022 from the CAMS global reanalysis of atmospheric composition shows a negative anomaly related to reduced dust transport across the tropical North Atlantic (blue) and a positive anomaly related to smoke transport from Canadian wildfires over the extra-tropical North Atlantic (red). Base on non-validated data Credit: CAMS

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) also suggested that, among other factors, the reduced winds of a weakened Azores anticyclone - an extensive wind system that spirals out from a centre of high atmospheric pressure - could have reduced the ocean-atmosphere exchange and the vertical mixing of the ocean between colder and warmer waters, as well as reducing Saharan dust transport over the Atlantic, all of which has the potential to increase the ocean surface temperature.

“There will be, no doubt, long-term impacts from the reduced SO2 emissions, but it will demand dedicated research to understand the impact of sulphur changes. The changes in dust or black carbon have a more tangible effect in the short term”, says Richard Engelen CAMS Deputy Director.

My comments: Of course this doesn't easily explain the unusually high levels of warming in the pacific. Next year will be revealing. It should be relatively cooler year on past patterns but if it isnt IMO it would suggest a step change in anthropogenic global warming. We know the climate is non linear and abrupt changes are possible. Will be interesting to see what BS the denialists will come up with to counter another unusually warm year.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #09

One Planet Only Forever at 13:04 PM on 6 March, 2024

Efforts to fight disinformation and the resulting tragic popularity of harmful misunderstanding, especially the application of Cranky Uncle beyond the important climate science matters (as highlighted in The Story of the Week), are highly valuable (tragically not valued by all leadership competitors). They help promote learning to improve the future for all children on this amazing planet which may be the only viable place for children to continue to be born to live on as sustainable parts of an amazing robust diversity of life. (tragically not the objective of all leadership competitors)

This new CBC News article: After Mulroney, being a 'green' PM got a lot tougher presents a history lesson about the need for the development of Cranky Uncle, and more like it, to try to counter-act tragically popular and profitable harmful developments and resistance to correction of damaging unsustainable misunderstandings over the past 30 years.

The CBC story is about a major political group in Canada, a nation that many people would currently mistakenly consider to be quite advanced. Before the early-1990s the group that Mulroney led pursued ‘learning to develop improvements for all children, including leadership actions to limit Canada’s ghg emissions’. But the group was rapidly captured (taken-over) by interests that oppose leadership actions that are being learned to be required to ‘develop sustainable improvements for all children’. (Note that the related concern about ‘harmful capture’ of potentially helpful learning institutions is highlighted in Academic capture in the Anthropocene: a framework to assess climate action in higher education, Lachapelle et al., Climatic Change:, the 3rd open access notable item on Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9 2024.)

The following quote from the CBC article highlights this tragic transition:

Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government also enacted the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to manage toxic substances in the environment, and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to review the environmental impacts of major projects.

It established the International Institute for Sustainable Development — still a leading voice on global environmental policy — and launched the National Roundtable on the Economy and the Environment (NRTEE), an expert advisory body that published analysis until Stephen Harper's Conservative government abolished it in 2013.

The Harper Conservatives were what the Mulroney PCs had transformed into. And the opposition to learning to be less harmful and more helpful has increased in the Conservative Party of Canada since Harper stopped being its leader. See the following string of quotes from the article:

In 1990, the federal government released "Canada's Green Plan," a 174-page statement of intent to deal with a host of environmental problems, including global warming. That plan set a lofty goal of stabilizing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2000 — the first of several targets Canada would announce and fail to pursue seriously between 1990 and 2015.
...
The Green Plan touted the possibility of pursuing an emissions "trading" program — what we would now call a cap-and-trade system, one of two primary methods for establishing a price on harmful emissions.

"There is evidence that a market-based approach to the problem can be quicker, more efficient and more effective in reducing emissions and the costs of achieving these reductions," the PC government wrote.
...
It would be another 29 years before the federal government [Liberal-led] finally applied a "market-based" approach to carbon emissions, through the current government's carbon tax. But now the future of that policy is very much in doubt — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Mulroney's [and Harper’s] political heir, has loudly and repeatedly vowed that a government led by him will "axe the tax."

This tragic transition of a major political group that was ‘striving to be more helpful and less harmful’ into ‘harmful disinformation producers’ trying to ‘oppose and delay learning to develop improvements for all children’ can be seen to have happened (still happening) in many other nations.

The undeniably high-value leadership goal of ‘Learning to improve the future for all children’ is tragically opposed by special interest groups with ‘Other interests they consider to be important enough (to them) to justify being damaging rather than improving the future for all children’.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #09

ChangeTheName at 11:20 AM on 4 March, 2024

As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!

The term "climate change" is an Orwellian BENIGN and VAGUE term for a civilization threatening DISEASE.

A medical approach to naming this disease would result in a term such as "Atmospheric Carbon Poisoning".

Atmospheric is the LOCATION of the POISON

Carbon Gases (CO2 and CH4) are the NAME of the primary POISONS.

Poisoning is an unequivocal declaration of dangerous toxicity.

A skeptical scientist should think about telling the public the TRUTH and not shy away from naming the disease like a good scientist would. Climate change is clearly vague and inadequate. The generally public is woefully ignorant about this DISEASE.

https://www.change.org/p/change-name-of-climate-change-to-atmospheric-carbon-poisoning?recruiter=261487266&recruited_by_id=d2d62b10-d0fa-11e4-b3f4-bd4f0f527c9b&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_dashboard_share_modal&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_37915781_en-US%3A3

CO2 is just a trace gas

One Planet Only Forever at 04:52 AM on 2 March, 2024

JJones1960 @48,

I hope the following helps you understand that John and Bob have correctly pointed out that you have made a very weak counter-presentation regarding the significance of small amounts. The points presented in the Argument effectively counter the simplistic and understandably incorrect belief that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is too small to make a difference.

A major weakness of your counter-presentation is that you appear to lack even a small amount of knowledge regarding the matter, here’s why:

You stated • You don’t use trace amounts of ozone to trap a significant amount of heat

That belief is contradicted by improved evidence-based understanding (contradicted by learning what is already known). One of the many presentations about the global surface temperature impacts of ozone is the NASA Aura item: The greenhouse effect of tropospheric ozone. It opens with the following:

Tropospheric ozone (O3) is the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Ozone absorbs infrared radiation (heat) from the Earth's surface, reducing the amount of radiation that escapes to space.

A lot can be learned from the items presented on SkS and other reliable information sources.

Learning from reliable sources can make a world of difference.

Climate Adam: Are food influencers wrong about climate change?

scaddenp at 18:49 PM on 29 February, 2024

https://experiment.com/projects/what-is-the-rate-a-new-regenerative-agricultural-method-sequesters-carbon-in-the-soil

Another couple of years for results though

Climate Adam: Are food influencers wrong about climate change?

nigelj at 04:22 AM on 27 February, 2024

Another clearly stated, thought provoking video from Climate Adam.

Has anyone heard anything about Red Baron (Scott Stroughs) soil carbon project, and how its progressing, and whether he has any results?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 23:50 PM on 24 February, 2024

John Oneill at 357:

I note that you have made another post without a single cite to suport your wild claims.

Brandolini's Law certainly pertains to this exchange so I will be as brief as possible.

"Nuclear is not economic": All of the reactors currently being built are financed almost entirely by governments. The market has completely rejected nuclear power because it is not economic.

"Takes too long to build": According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report 2023 "For the 58 reactors being built, an average of 6 years has passed since construction start—slightly lower than the mid-2022 average of 6.8 years—and many remain far from completion." while "The mean time from construction start to grid connection for the seven reactors started up in 2022 was nine years," (my emphasis) This includes only construction time. The additional planning time, time to obtain construction permits etc is many years. Typical timeframes for nuclear are 10-15 years. By contrast, wind and solar projects typically take 2-4 years from proposal to completion.

"There is not enough uranium": According to Abbott (2012) as of 2012 there is only enough uranium in known deposits to power the world for 5 years. Nuclear supporters would not be attempting to obtain uranium from the ocean if there was enough uranium on land. You provide no references to support your wild claim that enough uranium exists. Frankly, this is common knowledge among informed people.

Your comments on renewable power are contradicted by experience. Educated readers here will not be fooled. Obviously in the 70's to the 2000's renewable sources did not contribute much because they were not economic at that time. Now they are the cheapest power in the world and are reducing carbon emissions more every day.

According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report, at least Italy, Japan and Sweden currently have no plans to build new reactors. Bertolini's Law applies, I have not checked the rest of your list. I note that France's much heralded announcement about building 6 new reactors will not replace their current 56 reactors that are at the end of their useful life. I note that over 50% of Frances nuclear fleet was offline in the past few years for unplanned repairs due to age. In addition, no money has been budgeted to build the announced reactors.

Meanwhile, according to the IEA:

"Over the coming five years, several renewable energy milestones are expected to be achieved:

In 2024, wind and solar PV together generate more electricity than hydropower.
In 2025, renewables surpass coal to become the largest source of electricity generation.
Wind and solar PV each surpass nuclear electricity generation in 2025 and 2026 respectively.
In 2028, renewable energy sources account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%."

I note that the IEA has historically severely underestimated the amount of renewable energy that would be constructed in the future.

Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

How oil sands undermine Canada’s climate goals

One Planet Only Forever at 09:49 AM on 24 February, 2024

This is a great summary of the reasons for the persistent failure of leadership to do what could and should be done.

Another way of presenting the problem is that it is the combination of:

the need to remain popular enough to continue to be in control of leadership actions

it is easier to be popular by misleadingly pursuing and excusing 'increased benefits from being more harmful' than it is to responsibly lead the reduction of harm.

A minor change of the title would make the nature of the problem clearer:

How the popularity of misleading promotion of benefiting from harm undermines Canada’s climate goals

And a 2021 article in Nature: Scientific Reports "Methane emissions from upstream oil and gas production in Canada are underestimated" indicates that the way that methane emissions are estimated significantly underestimate the magnitude of ghg emissions in Canada and other nations.

But at least the current Canadian Government is doing something about the concerns raised by this Yale Climate Connections article. They have renamed the rebate - CBC News - "Liberals rebranding carbon tax rebate to ensure Canadians know where the money comes from". That action will only reduce Canada's emissions if it improves the popularity of the current government enough to avoid having the more harmful Conservative Party become the leaders after the next election. The Conservative Party has made it clear that they would 'cancel the carbon tax and rebate program' and take other actions that would result in 'more benefit obtained by some people by being able to be more harmful'.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 19:26 PM on 23 February, 2024

'Please provide one example of a peer reviewed proposed future world power system that uses more nuclear than the currently built reactors.'

'The IPCC found that, on average, the pathways for the 1.5°C scenario require nuclear energy to reach 1 160 gigawatts of electricity by 2050, up from 394 gigawatts in 2020. 1 160 GW by 2050 is an ambitious target for nuclear energy, but it is not beyond reach.' https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-10/nuclear_energy_and_climate_change_-_cop26_flyer.pdf

Insisting on peer reviewed papers is a good way of ensuring that I can't read them. Here's a calculation on the cost of moving the United States to 100% nuclear electricity. As Joris van Dorp writes, it's a thought experiment on the cost of providing percentages of nuclear from 0 to 100, at various interest rates and build costs. '..It looks like solar and wind are today cheap enough to allow them to work economically as a fuel saving technology with natural gas. And if nuclear costs stay as high as they are today, it even looks as though a combination of storage, wind, solar, demand response and nuclear may be an optimal mix for a zero carbon energy system. However, this does not detract from the fact that nuclear power as a single technological concept is evidently sufficient to allow achieving a low-cost zero-carbon energy system, with no help needed at all from any wind power, solar power or anything else, which is the only thing this article was intended for.'

https://medium.com/generation-atomic/how-much-would-a-100-nuclear-energy-system-cost-3dd7703dd5d3

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

Bob Loblaw at 02:38 AM on 14 February, 2024

In the RealClimate post that scaddenp links to in comment 9, Gavin Schmidt makes specific reference to that Spencer claim that climate models do not conserve energy. Schmidt states:

Do climate models conserve mass and energy? Yes. I know this is be a fact for the GISS model since I personally spent a lot of time making sure of it. I can’t vouch for every single other model, but I will note that the CMIP diagnostics are often not sufficient to test this to a suitable precision – due to slight mispecifications, incompleteness, interpolation etc. Additionally, people often confuse non-conservation with the drift in, say, the deep ocean or soil carbon, (because of the very long timescales involved) but these things are not the same. Drift can occur even with perfect conservation since full equilibrium takes thousands of years of runtime and sometimes pre-industrial control runs are not that long. The claim in the paper Spencer cited that no model has a closed water cycle in the atmosphere is simply unbelievable (and it might be worth exploring why they get this result). To be fair, energy conservation is actually quite complicated and there are multiple efforts to improve the specification of the thermodynamics so that the models’ conserved quantities can get closer to those in the real world, but these are all second order or smaller effects.

Note that this statement from Schmidt is in a postscript added three days after the original post. At the top of the postscript, Schmidt states:

Spencer has responded on his blog and seems disappointed that I didn’t criticize every single claim that he made, but only focused on the figures. What can I say? Time is precious! But lest someone claim that these points are implicitly correct because I didn’t refute them, here’s a quick rundown of why the ones he now highlights are wrong as well. (Note that there is far more that is wrong in his article, but Brandolini’s law applies, and I just don’t have the energy).

This is not the first trip to the rodeo on Spencer's work of this sort. There is a pattern.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 11:04 AM on 10 February, 2024

1000 km of grid interconnections is clearly inadequate for solar, where potential power providers are literally half a world away much of the time. Wind, too, is usually in synch over areas above 1000km in diameter. Wind farms across the whole of northern Europe are positively correlated. Going as far away as Spain gives a weakly negative link; southern Russia, Turkia and north Africa are other possibilities, assuming that 1) the donor region will have enough excess capacity to keep both ends of the link powered at night, and 2) you trust the governments of said region not to pull a Putin, and cut supply any time it gives political advantage. Cutting off power would cause instant chaos, worse than a fuel supply, where there's more time to react. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would never allow dependence on wind and solar power from China.

Proponents of '100% wind, solar, water' (usually effectively 95%+ just wind and solar) claim that comparatively tiny amounts of storage will suffice, if a massively overbuilt wind and solar capacity is coupled with a 'copper-plate' grid, where power produced anywhere is effortlessly transported to wherever it's needed. Both those preconditions are far from being met anywhere. California has enough wind and solar to theoretically cover its peak daily demand, Germany has twice as much (151 GW for a peak demand yesterday of 73GW.) Germany still has to complete the HVDC cables that would let it transport North Sea wind power to industry in Bavaria, let alone from Moroccan solar. The North Sea-Bavaria link might be completed by the mid-30s, and will supply, weather permitting, about half as much power at peak as the three reactors Germany closed a year ago did all the time. California last month got 0.29% of its power from grid scale batteries, despite having the world's largest capacity by far. I was a supporter of the proposed Lake Onslow storage scheme in New Zealand, but most countries do not have the topography for projects large enough to cover their power needs for a significant period.

The size of the existing nuclear fleet shows that, at least in the past, it did make economic sense. The number of countries committing to extensive new build - Japan and South Korea, China, India, Egypt, Turkia, most of eastern Europe- suggest that it still does. Ontario has by far the lowest-carbon electricity in North America, apart from in three other Canadian provinces, and parts of Washington State, which are pretty much all hydro. They've recently announced a major refurbishment of four large reactors at Pickering, plans to build four smaller 300MW reactors at the Darlington site, and intentions for many more large reactors, including at Bruce, already the largest operating nuclear plant in the world. Sweden, which correspondingly has the lowest-carbon power in Europe, also announced a goal of two new gigawatt-scale reactors by 2035, and up to ten by 2045. Czechia, with a population of 10 million, has just opened tenders for four gigawatt-scale reactors, to supplement the four GW worth which already provide nearly half its power.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5 2024

One Planet Only Forever at 15:59 PM on 2 February, 2024

Thank you for another informative and enlightening curated set of research reports.

I particularly recommend: How Economics Can Tackle the ‘Wicked Problem’ of Climate Change, Stiglitz et al., School of International and Public Affairs/Institute of Global Politics, Columbia University (from this week's government/NGO section)

The entire document is a relatively brief presentation. I am a fairly slow reader. And it only took me 40 minutes to read all of the document.

The following extracted points may encourage people to read the full document.

Introduction ends with:

This report describes how the tools of economics, when combined with insights from other disciplines, can help policymakers address tradeoffs, implement climate policies that are both equitable and cost-effective, and help the world achieve a more sustainable future.
The Conclusion ends with:

We cannot “optimize” climate actions with any useful precision by balancing the benefits and costs of action — understanding risk and uncertainty and the concomitant urgency of addressing climate change are central to climate policy. Carbon prices work best when combined with other policies to support the development of infrastructure, institutions, regulations, and alternative technologies. In addition, international treaties are most effective when they combine sticks and carrots to encourage deeper cuts in emissions over time while maintaining broad — if not universal — participation. As befits a “wicked” problem, we need to continue to learn from the past and adapt our strategies for reducing emissions as we go.

What I found particularly informative was in the section headed WHAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL OF CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY? The following quote is from the middle of the section:

A surprising source of fodder for the climate action naysayers has come from a group of economists who use models that generate so-called “optimal” pathways by attempting to balance the benefits and costs of climate action. While these models can be calibrated to show virtually any result, the versions that have received the most attention show that the “optimal” level of action would be to allow the earth to warm between three to four degrees Celsius by 2100 — a level of warming that most scientists say is truly frightening.4 Recent updates to the model suggest an optimal warming of 2.7 degrees in 2100.5

This level of warming is still high. Researchers at Columbia and elsewhere have investigated these models, called Integrated Assessment Models (or IAMs) because they integrate environmental effects with economics, something that all good models do. The assumptions ingrained in these models about the environment, the economy, and how they interact are badly flawed.

The section then elaborates on the flaws including the following selected quotes:

... while climate change is a threat multiplier that will affect societies in countless ways, damage estimates focus on the few effects of climate change that are easiest to capture. Many or most categories of climate damage — migration, conflict, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, etc.— are not included in state-of-the-art models.

...the models usually ignore distributional concerns, which are highly relevant to policy responses because climate change has the greatest impact on the poor, who have the fewest resources to protect themselves.

Future generations will also be disproportionately harmed by climate change, and they are typically undervalued in IAMs as well. Indeed, a critical assumption in the IAMs is how future benefits are “discounted.” A dollar today is worth more than a dollar 100 years from now, but how much more? And how do we value the reduced risk of a climate catastrophe confronting our grand-children? Most climate damage estimates implicitly undervalue future generations by discounting future benefits using market rates of return, which are determined largely by the preferences of individuals today over consumption at different points during their lifetimes — thus failing to grapple with the ethical issues raised by taking on risks that will be borne by future generations.

More reasonably, and more ethically, we should value our children and grandchildren as much as we value ourselves. Consider a situation where climate change’s effects turn out to be particularly severe, which is a realistic possibility that most IAMs ignore. Incomes of future generations will be reduced as a result — but they will have to spend a lot to repair the damage and to adapt to the new climate, at precisely those times when they are least able to do so.

In addition to undervaluing the benefits of action, the IAMs do not provide useful estimates of the costs of climate action, in part due to the extreme difficulty of forecasting technological innovation over centuries. The models also assume that markets are perfectly efficient, or that they would be efficient if only we could get the price of carbon right — the only distortion is caused by green-house gas pollution. But, as we discuss further in the next section, research over the past 50 years has highlighted the multiple inefficiencies in market economies that serve as barriers to emissions reductions — imperfections of competition, of information, of absent markets, and ill-informed or less-than-rational individuals.

To be sure, the most recent studies have produced enormous improvements over earlier versions of IAMs. For example, an analysis by Danny Bressler of Columbia University shows a seven-fold in-crease in climate damages from incorporating an estimate of human mortality caused by temperature increases.9 The latest estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now includes damages from temperature-related mortality.10 However, even the state-of-the-art estimates of climate damages are plagued by the same limitations noted earlier.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 04:26 AM on 2 February, 2024

It is difficult to reply to a post filled with so many half-truths and mistakes. All your claims have been shown to be false upthread.

1) As you pointed out, Jacobson and hundreds of other researchers have shown that an all renewable energy system (primarily wind and solar) can support the entire economy. It will cost trillions of dollars less than fossil fuels and save millions of lives. Your mentioning a few days with low wind is simply fake news. Since you provide no links to support your wild claims I will not link any either. There are several countries that generate essentially all of their electricity using renewables, a technology that has only been installed widely for less than10 years. France had to purchase a boatload of expensive electricity from its neighbors during the electricity crisis because their reactors failed. I note that no energy researchers support using nuclear power as the primary energy to power the world. Few or no researchers support using even a small amount of new nuclear energy in the future.

2) Your claim that nuclear power "is already larger than wind and solar combined" is deliberately false. According to Our World in Data, in 2021 wind and solar produced 2900 TWH of electricity and in 2022 wind and solar produced 3422 TWH of power world wide. That will increase by at least 15% in 2023. In 2021 nuclear produced 2750 TWH of power and in 2022 nuclear power produced only 2632 TWH of power. The amount of power produced by nuclear has not increased significantly for over 20 years. It is unlikely that the amount of nuclear power will increase for at least 10 years and it is more likely to decrease substantially as old reactors are shut down.

3) Why would a sane person suggest pouring more public money into a failed technology like nuclear? The "new" modular reactor proposals are old designs that were rejected in the 1950's and 1960's as uneconomic or simply too difficlut ot build.

4) Projections of 2024 energy use are that renewable energy will be built at a fast enough rate to reduce world wide carbon dioxide emissions. After 70 years nuclear provides less than 4% of all energy in the world and has not helped reduce carbon emissions for over 20 years. I note that 70% of primary power produced by nuclear is wasted heating the surroundings versus essentially zero waste heat using renewables.

5) Your claim work on using renewables for "transport, steel and fertilisers has hardly even begun" is simply false. Nuclear has not done anything to address these technologies. I, and millions of other people, already drive an electric car. More electric cars are sold every year. Electric trains are widespread. Electric heavy trucks are being manufactured. It is easy to make ammonia fertilizer from renewable energy. Steel is being made with electric furnaces and using green hydrogen. As more and more renewable energy is built it will be used for those purposes since renewable energy is cheaper than fosil fuels. Since renewable energy has only been the cheapest energy for about 5 years there has not yet been time to build out a completely new power system yet. After 70 years nuclear cannot even keep up with its current production as old reactors are retired.

6) Nuclear power in France was down by 50% last year. At all times in a system with nuclear power they require at least enough spinning reserve to cover for the sudden shut down of the reactors because nuclear reactors are prone to unplanned shutdowns at any time. This is not needed for renewables since they do not shut down with no notice. Ways to control for down transmission lines are still required.

7) Nuclear is a failed technology. It is too expensive and takes way too long to build. Due to economies of scale, smaller, modular reactors will be more expensive than big reactors that are already too expensive to compete with renewable energy. Since reactors take so long to build, the entire electrical system will be renewable before new nuclear designs are ready to be widely built. I do not even need to mention that there is not enough uranium in the world to power more than 5% of all power, an insignificant amount.

Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there are not enough rare minerals.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 11:04 AM on 31 January, 2024

Natrium is not designed to compete with wind, but to complement it. I believe Warren Buffet has an interest in it, and his fund also owns large wind farms in Wyoming. Unlike most reactors, Natrium does not depend on selling steady base-load power. The sodium from the hot end is 200C hotter than the steam from a conventional light water reactor, and is to be run through a heat exchanger to heat a store of nitrate salts, as pioneered by solar thermal plants such as Ivanpah in California. The nitrate salt is pumped from a cold tank to a hot tank, both insulated, and is a much cheaper way to store energy than batteries. When the wind's blowing, the whole output of the reactor goes into filling the hot tank. When the wind dies, the reactor's output is used to heat steam for a turbine, as is the hot salt. The plant produces nothing when the wind's blowing, and prices are low, but when the wind drops and spot prices rise, it can make 50% more than its maximum nuclear output for as many hours as the hot tank lasts.

Whether it will be economic is another story, but Kemmerer welcomes employment to replace the coal plant it's losing. The proposed Nuscale plant, in contrast, was to be in the middle of nowhere. The regional suppliers who had agrred ten years ago to put an option on it can get plenty of power from gas, but they expected a carbon price to penalise that. No carbon price eventuated.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

sekwisniewski at 19:36 PM on 28 January, 2024

"I note that there is no process for disposing of the sodium coolant after it becomes radioactive." - michael sweet wrote at 337.

Metallic sodium coolant can be converted to sodium carbonate and disposed as LLW (Low-Level Waste), which was done with previous sodium-cooled reactors. Source: Nuclear Waste Attributes of SMRs Scheduled for Near-Term Deployment Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Supply Chain (2022) by Argonne National Laboratory, pages 17-19.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2 2024

michael sweet at 06:18 AM on 14 January, 2024

Zekie Hausfather posted a summary of 2023 on Carbon Brief today. He put a summary of the temperature record on Climate Brink. The Carbon Brief article contaiind more data about sea level rise, climate records, sea ice and glacier melt and a few other things. They are written for lay people to read. They are very informative. The Climate Brink article is shorter.

He says that the reason that 2023 was so not is not known. The predictions of the 2023 temperature from a year ago were much too low. He says he thinks the volcano and aerosols have too small an effect to account for 2023 but so does a typical El Nino. We will have to wait for more data to find out the scientific reason.

The Climate Brink article would make a good OP here at SkS. The Carbon Brief article is longer than OPs usually are here.

At a glance - Plants cannot live on CO2 alone

PSBaker at 20:27 PM on 12 January, 2024

I think this explainer needs a bit of work.
In the first place it’s not necessarily true that plants in containers struggle without expensive liquid feeds. Provided the mix of soil and organic matter is adequate, in a reasonable sized pot, most vegetables can be grown quite easily, with some additional fertilizer as required. This can be a simple NPK fertilizer dissolved in water and will cost a few pennies per application.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/vegetables/containers
https://www.rhs.org.uk/herbs/growing-bags
On the other hand, growing in some soils can be problematic, in some/many locations they may be sandy/compacted/acidic etc. and will need considerable work to improve.

And while it’s true that atmospheric CO2 increases have led to ‘global greening’ which has helped ameliorate warming (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146296/global-green-up-slows-warming) trying to figure out how things will continue in the future turns out to be very complicated (https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-rising-atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108/ ; https://ripe.illinois.edu/press/press-releases/photosynthesis-unaffected-increasing-carbon-dioxide-channels-plant-membranes ; https://botany.one/2021/08/rising-carbon-dioxide-concentrations-are-making-the-worlds-most-destructive-toxic-weed-more-toxic/ )

Elevated CO2 has a strong impact on the other aspects of C3 plants' physiology, especially nutrient metabolism which can be attributed to:
• increase in the biomass of plant leaves results in a lower mineral concentration via a dilution effect,
• reduced transpiration cause reduced mass flow in the soil, and hindered nutrient translocation via the xylem sap,
• reduced photorespiration & production of NADH, leading to a decreased NO3 assimilation,
• disturbance in the regulations of root N uptake and signaling.
https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(22)00247-3

Cranky Uncle with Dr. John Cook

Rob Honeycutt at 08:09 AM on 7 January, 2024

Ben... I think crashing the economy wouldn't be a wise approach to avoiding disaster. You can't rationally trade one form of human catastrophe for another. Crashing the economy would potentially be as bad or even worse than the path we're currently on.

I would note there are no researchers (that I am aware of) suggesting crashing the economy as a solution to the climate change crisis. My suggestion for you is to consider the idea that deployment of carbon-free energy is operating on a exponential scale. That could actually bring us in line with zero carbon goals, if we can achieve that. Probably the bigger concern is resource limitations to carry out exponential deployment of renewables.

I drove 6,000 miles in an EV. Here’s what I learned

One Planet Only Forever at 04:56 AM on 1 January, 2024

I hope next year (or this year for those already there) continues to see sustainable improvements from leadership.

I can wrap up this year with a positive perspective regarding the hoped for response to the growing need for direct air carbon capture.

The segway to that positive perspective from my comment @19 will be the following NPR article: “The rules of the road are changing, but not fast enough for everyone”. The story is a tragic result of the systemic problems developed by competition for perceptions of status based on popularity and profit. The system developed to promote faster motorized personal vehicle use - contrary to the convenience and safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

The developed dangerous and inadequate transportation infrastructure, from the perspective of cyclists and walkers, is the result of pragmatic politicians compromising the undeniable safety concerns of pedestrians and cyclists to appeal to the popular and profitable interests of ‘motorized personal vehicle enthusiasts’ wanting to go faster. A similar pragmatic political compromising has been delaying the reduction of harm from fossil fuels to the detriment of many current day people and the future generations of humanity.

The positive perspective is that harmful compromising by leaders is becoming less excusable and harder to hide.

The transition away from leadership that pragmatically harmfully compromises the development of sustainable improvements and corrections of harmful developments, including the development of direct air carbon capture and the reduction of need for that action by transitioning away from fossil fuel use, is happening slower than it should ... but it is happening.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 05:00 AM on 29 December, 2023

michael sweet @17,

Agreed that the use of CO2 to scrub oil off of rock formations, a possible benefit of CO2 injection to increase the production of oil as presented in the article, would almost certainly mean that CO2 comes out with the oil. But, to be fair, CO2 injection can potentially lock-away CO2 while producing more oil from an oil deposit.

Here are potential stages of oil production:

Natural pressure of the trapped oil deposit forces oil to the surface when it is drilled into – the ‘gusher’.

Pressure drops as the oil flows out.

A pump-jack increases the rate of extraction by ‘lifting’ oil out of the well – like a water well pump.

As more oil is removed the rate of flow to a well point pump-jack declines.

Injecting gasses like captured CO2 can increase the pressure in the oil deposit and force more oil out of the well locations. Current operations inject CO2 captured from the exhaust of burned fossil fuels. This process potentially traps the injected CO2 in the rock formation that the oil was trapped in.

So oil can be produced by injecting and trapping CO2. But scrubbing oil off of the formation that the oil is in would mean CO2 comes out with the oil.

However, CO2 thought to be trapped in an oil deposit may not be truly trapped. Accurate pressure monitoring over a long time frame would be required to prove that the CO2 is staying where it was put. And until the completion of that pressure testing it is uncertain that the ‘claimed to be trapped’ CO2 is properly trapped. If a pressure test fails, the pressure drops, then the ‘carbon removal’ action plan is failing. And there would be little that could be done to keep the rest of the ‘believed to have been locked away’ CO2 from leaking out.

Who will pay for removing it and locking it away? Everybody essentially pays for the profit obtained, or pays for the government subsidy (worse when the government subsidizes the obtaining of profit - nobody should profit from publicly funded harm reduction like CO2 removal).

It would be nice if the ones who benefited most from the developed total current problem paid the most to limit the harm done ... but the current systems have a histry of making the least fortunate, who do not deserve to be penalized, suffer the most harm. Refer to the lead article in the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 for a detailed presentation of concerns regarding free-market development of Carbon Capture.

I drove 6,000 miles in an EV. Here’s what I learned

prove we are smart at 23:49 PM on 28 December, 2023

Ok, I believe in keeping an open mind with most things these days.

RH@2, I agree, it wasn't a "review". You know, I will often just click on various parts of a video, to be sure I have the right tone of it- judging a book by its cover,I learnt long ago.

Nigelj@3 Sorry you only lasted 4minutes longer, I suppose that was a lot considering you said " I already know the downsides of EVs, and I doubt some motor repair mechanic will add anything."

By the way, the "you" in my moniker is for any replies I read on this blog site- I have learnt a lot following yourself and others replying to many with inaccurate info.

I reckon at least you got the patronising, piss-taking, swearing and taking ages to get to point right with JC If you could have toughed it out,( I'm sure against your better judgement) we might have agreed with some of his observations and disagreed..

I"m not agaist EV cars, far from it but a smart person can check out many sources of info and recheck again from others to get the big picture and not a green washed fervour towards the complicated issue of EV cars.evse.com.au/blog/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-an-internal-combustion-hybrid-and-electric-car-emit/

"We need more renewable wholesale electric to support clean electric cars. This is where some detractors have valid points when they argue that electric cars are shifting the problem."www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-statistics/electricity-generation

Every electric car is forcing these electricity generators to work harder. In Australia thats 68% worth from fossil fuels. There is a lot to do and time is running out-( a familiar comment) for us as we are already behind the 8 ball. www.drive.com.au/news/electric-car-battery-recycling-australia-environmental-harm/

These and a few other issues are mentioned by our smart arse mate Mr Codogan-don't ask him about EV fires.. In truth, I believe hybred cars are better during this transition, ask Mitsubishi and Toyota-at least for Australia,www.drive.com.au/news/electric-vehicles-worse-for-environment-than-petrol-cars-report/

You wrote.."There is a group of people on the hard left of politics and academia who dislike EVs (and sometimes wind and solar power) because they are the product of the capitalist society and industrial society and because rich people drive them and profit from their manufacture. You see this in internet discussions sometimes.

While unrestrained greed and laissez faire capitalism is not my thing, their reasoning seems shallow and emotive. It is a fallacy of perfectionism - where a perfect, implausible socio- economic utopia is prioritised, and more realistic attainable compromise solutions are discarded."

Your talking to a guy who has worn many hats, and speaks simply because of all the fake people and their entitled behavior, here is another one, see if you can stomach the guy and tell me are his facts correct?..www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiRzpKWshwU

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

michael sweet at 23:10 PM on 28 December, 2023

OPOF:

In addition to the flaws you discuss about the Stratos plant, as you described in post 16 it is "being built in the midst of oil fields" The carbon will not be stored, it will be used to extract more oil from the ground!!!

Oil companies are not storing carbon when they are using it to extract more oil, the carbon dioxide comes back out of the ground with the oil. This is a completely false story, Occidental fooled the reporter. I guess that you could claim that Occidental is showing how to air capture the carbon.

We will have to wait until the plant is built to evaluate how much energy it takes to capture the carbon and at what cost. My bet is that it will be too expensive and take too much energy, but that is simply speculation at this time.

Even if you thought that using the carbon to extract more oil is storing it, as Nigelj pointed out, the number of plants needed to make a dent in carbon pollution is enormous and the number of plants being built is very small. The scale of extraction plants is way too small to make any significant difference.

Who will pay for carbon that is permanently stored? Not the fossil fuel industry.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 07:51 AM on 28 December, 2023

Regarding nigelj's @1 astute point about the scale of the direct air carbon capture challenge:

The NPR article I pointed to in my comment @14 is about Occidental Petroleum's Stratos carbon capture plant which will be 0.5 Mt/year. The article introduces the plant as follows:

"The Stratos plant — being built in the midst of oil fields — is playing a key role in scaling up the technology, which is not fully proven yet. Once it's up and running, the billion-dollar facility will be 100 times bigger than any direct air capture plant ever built — and yet, even if it works perfectly, it will take a year to remove less than 10 minutes' worth of global emissions."

Later in the article it provides more details about the scale of the global challenge, with my inserts in [square brackets]:

"Some climate advocates agree that Oxy's doing something extraordinary for the planet. Others, however, are raising alarms about why.

The International Energy Agency calculates that the world needs to remove 80 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year through direct air capture by 2030, and more than 1 billion metric tons per year by 2050, to meet the world's goal of holding warming beneath 1.5 degrees Celsius.

That assumes the world also cuts emissions sharply and restores vast expanses of forests and wetlands, which also remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Getting to that scenario would require about a thousand giant direct air capture plants twice the size of Stratos, each capturing a million metric tons per year

But the slower the world acts [to reduce fossil fuel use], the bigger the numbers get. [DAC used to offset 'unnecessary', but popular and profitable, climate impacts develops the need for even more 'unnecessary' DAC]

The IEA described one possible future where cutting emissions more slowly would mean that the world would need to capture more than 3.3 billion metric tons per year from the atmosphere. Some projections call for much more than that."

And near the end the following statement is made:

"The Stratos plant may be the biggest of its kind, but even when run perfectly, it would end up taking a full year to capture what the world releases in 7 1/2 minutes today [the 'less than 10 minutes' bit].

Pulling carbon dioxide out of the sky the way Oxy plans to do also requires enormous quantities of energy.

And carbon removal has simply never been done at the scale Oxy envisions. In a report this fall, the International Energy Agency warned that relying on this kind of technology to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is unacceptably risky because if technologies fail to deliver, there's no backup option.

"Removing carbon from the atmosphere is costly and uncertain," Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA, said this fall. "We must do everything possible to stop putting it there in the first place.""

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #51

One Planet Only Forever at 03:51 AM on 28 December, 2023

The following NPR News item is new recommended reading for anyone interested in what is happening regarding Direct Air Carbon capture.

It is a comprehensive report showing how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is developing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage. And it shows how governments can be motivated to subsidise harmful unsustainable 'misguided' developments to protect unjustified perceptions of status (including unjustified perceptions of people like Warren Buffett being concerned about being less harmful and more helpful).

"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"

Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage is almost certain to be needed to bring human climate impacts back down to 1.5 C levels of impact. Plans like Occidental's, and many other 'profitable or popular net-zero efforts', do not help achieve that undeniably desirable result.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023

One Planet Only Forever at 03:39 AM on 28 December, 2023

NPR News has published the following comprehensive report on Carbon Capture. It shows how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is causing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage to be pursued for the benefit of people who unjustifiably developed ways to have higher status by getting away with ‘excused’ harmful unsustainable activity.

"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 03:36 AM on 28 December, 2023

NPR News has just published the following comprehensive report on Carbon Capture. It shows how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is causing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage to be pursued for the benefit of people who unjustifiably developed ways to have higher status by getting away with ‘excused’ harmful unsustainable activity.

"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"

This Market-drive development undeniably makes the future worse than it needs to be by protecting unjustified unsustainable developed perceptions of status. Burning fossil fuels is not sustainable. Getting more of the non-renewable stuff out does not have a future ... but it sure can increase current day ‘enjoyment of life’ by some people.

Marketplace competition ‘freer from ethical governing’ develops very little motivation to learn to be less harmful and more helpful. There is a tragic diversity of examples of harmful unsustainable activity becoming popular and profitable, some benefit at the detriment of other, including cases of the current generation benefiting to the detriment of future generations.

Competition for status undeniably develops interests that very powerfully motivate people to oppose and resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023

One Planet Only Forever at 15:13 PM on 18 December, 2023

I highly recommend the top highlighted article "The distortionary effects of unconstrained for-profit carbon dioxide removal and the need for early governance intervention", Grubert & Talati, Carbon Management.

It is very comprehensive. I learned a lot.

The chosen quote is a very good representation of the article.

I think the following quote of the concluding statement presents the many key points made in the article:

A call to action

The structure of the CDR sector is not yet final, though current trends suggest a strong bias toward an unconstrained for-profit market model. The nascency of the sector, including the lack of entrenched interests, widespread property claims, or legal liability means that there is still an opportunity to thoughtfully design a CDR sector that both protects the climate and structurally incentivizes more just outcomes. Although the need for CDR exists because of longstanding and ongoing injustices, the sector can be designed in ways that do not perpetuate the patterns that created the conditions that necessitate it. Particularly given the clear risk for significant interdependencies to develop between CDR and the fossil fuel industries, especially oil and natural gas, identifying and avoiding such patterns early will be necessary for long-term sustainability of CDR as an atmospheric function with high potential to provide substantial societal benefits, including by stabilizing and perhaps even repairing the climate, and by providing a pathway for some form of reparations by the most responsible. For now, the nascent CDR sector is reliant on public infrastructure and public funding, much of which has not even been disbursed as of this writing. This reliance suggests a clear pathway to public ownership and public management of CDR in the long term – but one that will quickly disappear as the sector matures. CDR has the potential to be both more successful and more just if it is not developed under an unconstrained for-profit regime. The time to act is now.

It is never too late to act to limit harm done. But in cases like the governing of CDR the opportunity for significant benefit is reduced the longer that global leadership fails to focus on effectively limiting the harm done and maximizing the benefit of the new development.

Leadership, in politics or business, that mistakenly believes that unjustified developed popular perceptions are worthy of being promoted, conserved, and excused can be very damaging.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 14:37 PM on 18 December, 2023

michael sweet,

I agree that focusing on building the renewable energy systems, along with reducing unnecessary ‘luxury’ ghg emissions, is the most rewarding action, from the perspective of the future of humanity. It is far better to do that than build partial fixes like Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) in an attempt to make ‘parts of unsustainable damaging systems – like the fossil fuel systems – appear to be ‘helping to achieve’ global net-zero.

In addition to wasting effort attempting to prolong an unsustainable damaging developed system with CCUS, getting those parts of the fossil fuel system to appear to be net-zero will require significant amounts of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).

A serious concern is the use of CDR to make those parts of the ‘system that is still, all things considered, very damaging’ appear to be excusable/acceptable. The article I linked to in my comment @3 explains things well in the following quote from the part titled A CDR thesis:

CDR is a limited resource [Citation14]. For-profit goals inherently prioritize the activities for which some entity will pay the most, which are likely disproportionately related to compensatory removals in high wealth contexts. Allocation of more CDR to compensatory functions constrains availability for drawdown while increasing overall demand for CDR and CDR scaling. These incentives create a structural bias toward providing offsets to high-wealth emitters who can provide ongoing revenue streams, and away from offsets for low-wealth emitters or remedial drawdown activities. In effect, unconstrained for-profit governance of CDR allows for luxury consumption to colonize [and tragically abuse] an emergent global commons.

Another example of plans, not started to be built, for a major CCUS operation with an eventual demand to unnecessarily consume CDR resources is the action plans of the Alberta oil sands operators in Pathways Alliance. Refer to this linked CBC News article “Oilsands giants continue work on proposed $16.5B carbon capture project, despite lingering questions”

Alberta already has some CCUS, similar to the Middle East capture of CO2 and its use to produce more oil or gas. But a major collective CCUS project, subsidized by public funding, is the first part of the Pathways Alliance plan to be able to claim to be ‘net-zero’ producers of exported fossil fuels by 2050.

By 2050 there will hopefully be a very small market for exported fossil fuels. And that fossil fuel use would hopefully be restricted to assisting people who live less than basic decent lives.

The Alberta oil sands operators, with the support of government in Alberta and Canada, plan to compete to be exporting 5 million bpd or more in 2050 and beyond (being an exporter of choice). Other regions with already discovered exportable fossil fuel resources can be expected to do the same. Who would give up on such a potentially lucrative opportunity? And they will all potentially end up fighting to be among the few who end up with the least ‘stranded fossil fuel reserves’. Tragically, that marketplace for-profit competition to be the biggest winner will also consume massive effort and resources, public and private, to build CCUS facilities that will also end up ‘stranded’.

If, instead of being assisted to build CCUS, they were required to build DAC facilities, those DAC facilities could continue to be beneficial after the need for ‘dead-end fossil fuel extraction for export’ is substantially ‘transitioned away from’ (by 2050).

Global leadership focusing on rapidly building the transition away from fossil fuels, along with reducing unnecessary energy demand, will reduce the unnecessarily tragic damage being done to the global commons by making the ‘deservedly tragic future’ of all the ‘pursuers of maximum benefit from fossil fuels’ harder to deny.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

michael sweet at 03:11 AM on 18 December, 2023

It seems to me that to find the bottom line for carbon capture used to keep fossil fuel production going in the future all you have to do is look at the production facilities that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the oil majors have built or planned. As I understand it, they combined have about one large facility world wide. They recover CO2 from their refinery operations and pump that back into the ground to recover more oil, but that is not carbon capture and storage.

If the fossil fuel produceers were serious about carbon capture there would be many facilities planned or under constrution. These facilities take 5 years or more to build, and longer to plan and permit. The lack of proposed facilities indicates that this is the last gasp of the oil producers hoping everyone will look at the squirrel instead of installing solar and wind.

The only realistic solution is to build out wind and solar as fast as possible. If all fossil fuel subsidies were transferred to building renewable energy we would finish the system in a decade.

China alone will install over 300 gigawatts of renewable energy this year. If the entire world put in as much effort as China we would be in a much better place. The fossil plants China is building will be obsolete before they are commissioned.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 08:44 AM on 17 December, 2023

nigelj,

While reading the report I mention in my comment @3, I came back to re-read your comment.

There is indeed a concern about the scale of required DAC's. But the math appears to be:

currently 37 Gte of emissions

20% assumed to be impractical to stop is 7.4 Gt, not 4,625 Gte

Number of 8 kte DAC plants is 925,000 (as you correctly indicated)

The report I refer to @3 indicates a higher possible range of required Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in the following quote:

Thus far, estimates of how much CDR might be needed range from almost none up to more than 300 gigatonnes (Gt) cumulatively by 2050, or over 1,200 Gt cumulatively by 2100 [Citation10] – that is, up to about 10–15 GtCO2/year starting immediately, contingent on simultaneous rapid emissions mitigation, to meet 1.5° or 2 °C targets. Such estimates are purely mathematical, balancing positive with negative emissions: in theory, CDR could be used to counteract any emission (currently about 60 GtCO2e/year [Citation5]). As such, CDR requirements will be higher for less rapid and/or lower levels of emissions mitigation. To date, binding requirements for decarbonization that clearly articulate which emissions should be mitigated and which remain residual emissions to be addressed via CDR [Citation12] are rare, and CDR remains voluntary, contributing to a lack of clarity on necessary scope, scale, pace, and degree of resource competition.

Also note that the author's CDR includes many actions, not just mechanical DAC, as described in this quote:

Here, we define CDR to mean intentional, additional actions taken to capture CO2 from the atmosphere (either directly or via intermediaries like biomass or the ocean) and permanently store it such that the CO2 will not return to the atmosphere on time scales that at least match the lifespan of its impacts on the atmosphere and ocean [Citation5]. Commonly proposed approaches that are potentially capable of delivering CDR include (but are not limited to) direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS); biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS);Footnote1 direct ocean carbon capture and storage (DOCCS); enhanced rock weathering (ERW); forestry; and soil carbon management. Some storage mechanisms, particularly those that rely on biological sinks like forests and soils, are not permanent in the sense of matching the lifespan of CO2’s impacts. As such, we distinguish between CDR-capable interventions (e.g. an afforestation project) and actual CDR, which might entail consistent rehabilitation or replacement for projects where CO2 is stored for less than geologic time (and which necessarily imposes greater administrative burden for strategies requiring relatively short replacement intervals).

CO2 limits will harm the economy

PollutionMonster at 08:59 AM on 16 December, 2023

One Planet Only Forever @121

I am still reading your post and sources. I recommend a book by Jason Stanley. How fascism works explains how the Merchants of doubt borrow fascist strategies to spread disinformation and fearmonger. Combine this with the communist technique of the fire-hose of falsehoods and no wonder they are such a formidable adversary.

I also heard on NPR that we need to "phase out fossil fuels anything else is a distraction." From arguing with deniers a carbon tax is a snake pit argument like AGW deaths with too many ways to be derailed. Thank you for talking to me. :)

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 03:16 AM on 16 December, 2023

The top item (the first Open Access Notable) in the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 appears to be a comprehensive presentation of understanding related to and aligned with my comment @2.

I have only read the introduction of The distortionary effects of unconstrained for-profit carbon dioxide removal and the need for early governance intervention, Grubert & Talati, Carbon Management.

After I have read the full item I will make any further comments about how Carbon Dioxide Removal will hopefully be managed/governed to limit harm done to the future of humanity on Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 (based on reading the Intorduction, I expect to learn a lot and may have nothing more to add).

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 15:21 PM on 14 December, 2023

Excellent point Nigel.

I would add that the lack of reduction of climate change impacts by the portion of the global population that benefit most from the harm being done has made 'Carbon capture from the atmosphere and locking it away' an essential action to bring the level of impact back down to 1.5 C.

The people today who have benefited most from the damage done to date owe the future of humanity a significant number of DAC facilities being built and beginning operation in the near future, no matter how expensive that is.

Excessive levels of impact, far beyond 1.5 C, are now almost certain. The accounting of credit for actions to limit the harm done during the curtailing of human caused climate change impacts, during the transition away from unsustainable developed activity, needs to exclude any 'credit' from DAC facilities (or extra trees planted). Those CO2 removal actions need to be understood to be a 'debt penalty owed' in addition to the Loss and Damages penalties owed.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

nigelj at 12:31 PM on 14 December, 2023

Informative video as always. Its true that fitting CO2 capture technology to coal fired power stations isn't compelling because it just prolongs our reliance on coal fired power and the technology is plagued with problems. DAC (direct air capture) that removes CO2 directly form the air sounds helpful in dealing with areas of the economy that are hard to decarbonise. Or would it? Consider the maths:

We emit about 37 giga tons of CO2 globally each year.
Lets assume we use direct air capture to extract 20% of this each year, so 4,625 giga tons, because about 20% of the economy is really hard to decarbonise.
There are about 20 DAC facilities operating globally. The largest existing DAC facility extracts 8,000 tons CO2 each year. And this plant is large and complex and energy intensive.
This means you would need 925,000 DAC plants!!!!!

I feel the number speaks for itself. Yes you would not necessarily rely just on DAC but even so it would be a collosal challenge.

A New 66 Million-Year History of Carbon Dioxide Offers Little Comfort for Today

nigelj at 05:38 AM on 13 December, 2023

The information on earth system sensitivity of 5 - 8 degrees C is very sobering. There are many accounts of what a 6 degree world is like easily googled and its very inhospitable for humans and other species. Because ESS develops on long time frames we might adapt to some extent, but that doesn't really make it any less inhospitable.

This is one authors depiction of a 6 degree world based on available research. The description is based on such a world developing over the next couple of centuries and a failure to curb emissions, but even if it takes thousands of years as a result of ESS, many of the outcomes would be similar.

"Special coverage is given to the positive feedback mechanisms that could dramatically accelerate climate change. The book explains how the release of methane hydrate and the release of methane from melting permafrost could unleash a major extinction event. Carbon cycle feedbacks, the demise of coral, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and extreme desertification are also described, with five or six degrees of warming potentially leading to the complete uninhabitability of the tropics and subtropics, as well as extreme water and food shortages, possibly leading to mass migration of billions of people."

LINK

The IPCC seems to have focused most attention on warming and sea level rise rates by 2100. We have projections of around 3 degrees C of warming and worst case about 5 degrees, and SLR around 1 metre with a worst case 2 metres. The details on longer term trends several centuries into the future, or millenia into the future like earth system sensitivity, are buried away in their reports or not given much attention.

The IPCC have a chart buried in their reports showing a worst case of about 10 degrees C by about 2300 if equilibrium climate sensitivity turns out to be high and we just go on burning fossil fuels. Likewise by 2300 SLR could be well over 2 metres. This may be somewhat attenuated by the impacts of renewable energy already reducing projected coal use, but it would still be a big number and theres a lot of SLR already baked in even if we stop warming right now.

I wonder if this focus on year 2100 is a deliberate psychological strategy to focus on our immediate future. If they focused on the longer term trends there might be a risk that people would say why worry that won't effect me or my children.

However warming of for example 3 degrees by 2100 and one metre or so of SLR doesnt sound very scary to some people, while numbers like 5- 8 degrees longer term and SLR of 10 - 20 metres are obviously intuitively far more scary and certainly get my attention. Clearly we do need a focus on year 2100, for obvious reasons, because its in our lifetimes and adaptation would be very costly, but I wonder if a bit more attention on longer term time frames would have really shown people the huge scale of change we are facing.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49 2023

michael sweet at 01:16 AM on 10 December, 2023

This MSN article, Which is apparently a press release from the Columbia Climate school describes a paper in Science. The paper is a collaboration of many scientists summarizing knowledge of CO2 concentrations for the past 65 million years. The MSN article is easy to read. Since it is a press release it would be a good OP here at SkS. I have not yet read the paper.

Unfortunately, they conclude that Earth system sensitivity, the climate response when all slow feedbacks respond, is 5-8 C. The processes involved can take a long time to equilibrate (as much as thousands of years). Still, it is a very grim conclusion. I note that Dr. Hansen has long held an Earth System Sensitivity of 6 C. The IPCC consensus has been 3C. This is unlikely to affect anyone living but bodes very bad for 1000 years from now. The question of how long the slow processes take to equilibrate is left unanswered.

Most people don’t realize how much progress we’ve made on climate change

One Planet Only Forever at 07:41 AM on 7 December, 2023

There is reason to continue to be skeptical regarding the rate of progress on the undeniable need for corrections of many ‘harmful popular profitable developments’ to limit the harm done to future generations by ‘most fortunate people’ today.

Things are undeniable worse today than they should have been. The following quote describes actions that caused less correction to occur than could have and should have happened.

“After years of inaction despite constant warnings from climate scientists, hopes had been high for a breakthrough in climate agreements in 2009, leading up to the U.N. summit — known as COP15 — in Copenhagen.

But just a few weeks before that event began, a hacker broke into a server at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and released a tranche of climate scientists’ stolen emails. Though there was no indication of wrongdoing in those emails, some phrases taken out of context, combined with the then-unusual nature of the public release of private email correspondence derailed the Copenhagen summit, which was ultimately widely considered a failure.

Climate science denial and policy obstruction thrived in the ensuing years (after the theft of East Anglia emails and misleading promotion of them prior to COP . That was exemplified by an incident in which then-Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, brought a snowball to the floor of the Senate in February 2015, because he apparently believed that winter snow proved that global warming was a hoax. (it doesn't)”

Inhofe was likely promoting a misleading marketing scam. And the ‘liking to benefit from making things as bad as can be gotten away with’ crowd is still at it today.

This recent NPR item “Oil firms are out in force at the climate talks. Here's how to decode their language” (linked here) exposes that those who resist harm reduction efforts rely on science, the science of misleading marketing. See the NPR item “U.N. climate talks head says "no science" backs ending fossil fuels. That's incorrect" (Linked here) which includes the following: “...al-Jaber responds to Robinson's suggestion with this incorrect statement: "I respect the science, and there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5 [degrees Celsius]." That is my basis for stating that the beneficiaries of being more harmful ‘love the science ... of misleading marketing’.

As presented in the first NPR item the Oil (and gas) firms have developed misleading marketing abuses of the following terms (watch out for how they are abused):

Low carbon and Lower carbon (no admission of the need to meet the Paris objective)

Unabated fossil fuels (abated gets a free pass even if it isn’t a significant abatement)

Net-zero (relies on the magic of actions that suck carbon out, or relies on the harm of their actions, providing fossil fuels that ‘other harmful people burn’, being perceived to be net-zero)

Reliable. Affordable and ‘secure’ energy (questionable claims made using these terms – all dismissive of harm done.

The worst claims are the one about reducing perceptions of poverty - without mentioning that is accomplished via unsustainable and harmful actions – which means that no real reduction of poverty has occurred, just fleeting impressions that things have improved.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

michael sweet at 03:01 AM on 30 November, 2023

AB19:

In support of John Mason at 64, here is the carbon dioxide graph:

carbon dioxide graph

The graph is from the Royal Society CO2 concentrations from ice cores go back about 800,000 years. As you can see, the last 200 years are completely exceptional. The antarctic temperature has not yet responded as much as global temperatures above.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

Just Dean at 22:59 PM on 15 November, 2023

nigelj,

I appreciate your kind words. It is fun to speculate. I probably spend too much time consuming climate change science and solutions online. It has become a passion for me in retirement. I suspect commenting at sites like this help me replace the interactions I used to have at work. I do appreciate knowledgable communities. Some of my favorite sites are The Climate Brink, Sustainability by the Numbers, And then theres physics and CarbonBrief.

I must admit I am biased when it comes to Zeke. If I have a question about a climate change issue, I always start by finding out what Zeke thinks, e.g. WDZT.

cheers,

Dean

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

Just Dean at 23:14 PM on 14 November, 2023

Michael,

Fine, but my money is on Zeke and the moderate, mainstream climate scientists. I'm just not buying the theory of Simons and Hansen of an "aerosol termination shock."

As I say I'm not an expert, but I am a retired research engineer who worked with fusion scientists and high-energy-density physicists for 34 years, so I've seen a thing or two and this just seems too speculative to me.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

Just Dean at 06:41 AM on 14 November, 2023

nigelj,

I'm not sure what I else I can say. I'm not an expert but I'm telling you that based on what I can find on the web, the consenus by climate scientists appears to be that Hunga-Tonga is not reponsible for our the spike in surface temperatures, contributes but is not a major factor. If you have not visited Dessler's post at The Climate Brink, I encourage you to do so. I'm sure he would still welcome questions or comments if either you or MA Rodger wish to discuss it with him.

I referenced a paper by Stuart Jenkins @27. I don't have access to the paper but I found a detailed article about the paper at CarbonBrief . It has a nice plot of the projected increase in surface temperature as a function of time after the eruption. It causes a very slight increase over several years and then dissipates.

This is the only study cited by Dessler that claims Hunga-Tonga added to heating. Two others actually believe it would cause slight cooling. Dessler claimed he was working on a peer-reviewed paper but I don't expect any surprises there.

I'm tapped out. I've gotten nothing else that I feel like I can contribute to this discussion.

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