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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Welcome to Skeptical Science

cookclimate at 09:28 AM on 4 April, 2024

CO2 does not cause Earth’s climate change.

It is estimated that it will cost $62 trillion to eliminate fossil fuels, but eliminating fossil fuels will be a complete waste of our tax and corporate dollars, because it will not stop the warming. You can’t stop Mother Nature.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) frequently shows that temperature correlates with CO2 for the last 1,000 years as proof that CO2 is causing the warming. But if you extend that to the last 800,000 years, the temperature and CO2 lines do not correlate or fit (Figure 14 in Supplemental Data). If the lines don’t fit, then you must acquit CO2. CO2 is not guilty of causing climate change. CO2 does not control Earth’s temperature. The IPCC has not demonstrated any scientific evidence that CO2 controls Earth’s temperature (they only have unproven theories).

The facts:
• Earth is currently warming (it is still below the normal peak temperature).
• CO2 is increasing (it is above the normal CO2 peak).
• Earth’s current warming is being caused by a 1,470-year astronomical cycle.

The 1,470-year astronomical cycle warms the Earth for a couple of hundred years and melts ice sheets primarily in Greenland and the Arctic. It has repeated every 1,470-years for at least the last 50,000 years. It is normal that it would be happening again. It accelerates Earth’s rotation, stopping length of day increases (Figure 9). It warms the Earth. Based on historical data, the current warming should peak near the year 2060 and then it should start to cool.

For more information, see A 1,470-Year Astronomical Cycle and Its Effect on Earth’s Climate,

DOI: 10.33140/JMSRO.06.06.01

and Supplemental Data,
www.researchgate.net/publication/379431497_Supplemental_Data_for_A_1470-Year_Astronomical_Cycle_and_Its_Effect_on_Earth's_Climate#fullTextFileContent

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!

scaddenp at 06:38 AM on 3 April, 2024

Two dog. The OHC content data in red comes from the Argo array. You can find reasonable description here. The old pentadecadal data is ship-based and has much bigger error bars. I cant immediately find the paper that determined the accuracy of the Argo data but if interested I am sure I dig it out.

On interannual and to some extent the decadal scales, variations in surface temperature are strongly influenced by ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, but I think you would agree that the increasing OHC rules that out as cause of global warming?

"I did also read that the warming effect of CO2 decreases as its concentration increases so the warming is expected to reduce over time. Is there any truth in that?"

Sort of - there is a square law. If radiation increase from 200-400 is say 4W/m2, then you have to increase from CO2 from 400 to 800ppm to get 8W/m2. However, that doesnt translate directly into "warming" because of feedbacks. Water vapour is powerful greenhouse gas and its concentration in the atmosphere is directly related to temperature. Also as temperature rises, albedo from ice decreases so less radiation is reflected back. Worse, over century level scales, all that ocean heat reduces the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2. From memory, half of emissions are currently being absorbed there. Hot enough and the oceans de-gas. These are the calculation which have to go into those climate models.

Which brings us to natural sources. Geothermal heat and waste heat are insignificant so would you agree that the only natural source of that extra heat would be the sun? Now impact of sun on temperature has multiple components that climate models take into account. These are:
1/ variations in energy emitted from the sun.
2/ screening by aerosols (natural or manmade). Important in 20th century variations you see.
3/ changes in albedo (especially ice and high cloud)
4/ The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Now climate scientist would say that changes to all of those can account for all past natural climate change using known physics. They would also say very high confidence that 1/ to 3/ are not a significant part of current climate change (you can see the exact amount for each calculated in the IPCC report). Why are they confident? If you were climate scientist investigating those factors, what would you want to measure to investigate there effects? Seriously, think about that and how you might do such investigations.

Is it possible there is something we dont understand at play? Of course, but there is no evidence for other factors. You can explain past and present climate change with known figures so trying to invoke the unknown seems to be clutching at straws.

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"?

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

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 07:32 AM on 24 February, 2024

'Nuclear is not economic' - the 17 countries building new nuclear missed your memo.

'..takes too long to build..' Mean construction time was 7.5 years, with a long tail. Countries involved in a concerted buildout do rather better - Japan averaged less than 5 years, China and South Korea less than 6. Sheffield Forgemasters, one of the few companies qualified to make reactor pressure vessels, has just demonstrated a new method of ion beam welding, letting them weld around the girth of an RPV ring in one day. This weld, on a 4 metre diameter, 200 mm thick piece, with very tight inspection requirements, would normally take up to a year. RPVs have been one of the bottlenecks for nuclear growth. Other solutions, such as the heavy water reactors used in India, don't have RPVs.

'..there is not enough uranium.' This was the perceived reality when the industry was just starting up - and when Cold War bomb-making led to a frantic search for uranium reserves, since enriching to 90% U235 bomb-grade uses up far more feedstock than does the 3-5% used in light-water reactors, or the natural uranium used in mainly Canadian and Indian heavy water reactors. At the time, it was also assumed that energy demand would keep growing at 1960s rates, and that most of the growth would be from nuclear. L Ron Hubbard's famous graph of human energy use rising sharply from a low base, as fossil fuel reserves are used up, and dropping equally sharply back to pre-industrial levels, was used by Peak Oil doomers to predict a coming crash, to be followed by unending scarcity. In fact, Hubbard original graph showed nuclear growing as fast as fossil fuel energy, completely replacing it, and then maintaining that level indefinitely. Plans were in place to switch to fast reactors, converting the 99.3% U238 of natural uranium to fissile plutonium, and to use thorium, 3x more abundant again, as fissile U233. This effort stalled when demand fell, and uranium proved to be much more abundant than thought. Until recently, global production has been well below demand, due to oversupply causing very low prices. Many high grade mines, like MacArthur River in Saskatchewan, were closed during the drop in demand after Fukushima, with the word's third and fourth largest users, Japan and Germany, temporarily shutting their whole industries. With demand now booming, these mines are reopening, and new prospecting has resumed. (Many nuclear operators are on long-term contracts, and have existing stocks, so are not immediately affected.)

Hubbard's fossil peak has been slower to arrive than expected, and so has the nuclear growth he expected to replace it. Long term though, I expect his insight to be accurate. The drive for increasing energy use is still there - nobody wants to stay poor (religious orders aside). The down-ramp on fossil use will be steeper than the rise, as climate concerns spread. Can weather-based energy fill the gap? Not judging by the view out my window (mid summer, 8/8ths cloud cover, national wind fleet at 1/3 of capacity).

I've read some of Mark Jacobson's papers - all the way back to his cover article on Scientific American, in 2009. Before him, there was Amory Lovins' vision of a 'soft path' energy future, very influential on Jimmy Carter's policy. The two were actually diametrically opposite in their prescriptions. Lovins decried the cost and energy waste of the transmission grid, calling for efficiency ('negawatts'), small-scale, local wind and solar, backed by fluidised bed coal. Jacobson wants a maximal grid, moving greatly overbuilt wind and solar across continents, with probably battery backup, no biofuels or combustion energy, no new hydro. Neither prescription has done well when put into practice in reducing emissions. US CO2 emissions per capita hardly changed from the 70s to the 2000s, only falling with the switch from coal to gas (though increased methane leakage may have negated some of the climate benefit). Widespread, government-sponsored wind and solar growth, most notably in Germany, has bought a rapid rise in installation, but though the individual solar plants and wind turbines became much cheaper, their integration into the grid led to increasing power costs, while fossil fuel use persisted at a higher level than on grids that had already switched to nuclear for largely economic reasons.

Some countries whose governments had declared that nuclear power would cease have reversed course, and plan new build - notably Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Italy. Others - Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, which had 20 to 40% of their power from nuclear - currently persist in de-nuclearising. Russia is building plants in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, India, Bangla Desh, and shortly Hungary. Russia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, and possibly soon Saudi Arabia, are building nuclear plants at home because it displaces gas, which earns much more money as exports. Japan and South Korea are building nuclear for the opposite reason - it makes power much more cheaply than imported liquefied natural gas, at East Asian prices. The important question for the future is whether nuclear can take more than a toehold share in countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Indonesia, where energy use is rising fast, and coal is now the chosen option.

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.

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

nigelj at 04:44 AM on 29 December, 2023

Prove we are smart @5. Thank's for the comments and links. Looks like useful information.

"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."

The entire first five minutes of the video (might have been a bit less, I wasnt timing it) was devoted to sarcastic, insulting, generalised comments about EVs and their drivers. There was not one specific factual claim about the actual technology. I decided I wasn't going to risk yet more of this.

"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..."

Ok, but they are stating the obvious about needing more renewables. The same EV critics who say the problem is that renewables aren't expanding fast enough are sometimes the same people who criticise or oppose renewables. They contradict themselves. Their aim in most cases doesn't seem like true scepticism. It is just to throw mud at anything to mitigate the climate problem.

"Every electric car is forcing these electricity generators to work harder. In Australia thats 68% worth from fossil fuels.

Yes ok, but this is better than cars burning petrol which is 100% fossil fuels. The grid will also have to expand due to the extra demands, but thats obvious.

IMO its also a logistical exercise like this: Would you deploy millions of EVs In Australia at day one when the grid is all fossil fuels? No this wouldn't make sense because it would put too much demand on the grid and there is no benefit.

Do you wait until the grid is entirely renewables before deploying any EV's? No because you then have a long delay while Evs are scaled up and with climate change time is an issue and you miss out on some benefits of Evs.

So you phase EV's in gradually while the grid gradually moves to renewables and gets larger (but preferably faster than it is) . So the critics dont have much of a point.

Will get back to you on the video.

Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back

One Planet Only Forever at 03:19 AM on 23 December, 2023

Related to the "If Trump Wins" project John Hartz pointed to in his comment @17...

Anyone that the likes of Trump sense is exposing the harmful unjust actions of Trump and his likes, including everyone trying to expose and correct misinformation or disinformation, including the ones fighting against misunderstanding of climate science, faces potential violent responses from the likes of Team Trump.

This NPR report "Violent online rhetoric heats up after Colorado ballot ruling on Trump" highlights the problem that has developed.

Unjustified Rhetoric is a 'plausible deniability' gateway mechanism for triggering violent unjustified actions, including violent intimidation actions like making threats against promoters of improved climate science understanding.

Fuelling violent thoughts with unjustified rhetoric is very hard to legally prove directly caused violent actions. And even if proven that way, as in the Colorado case, or any environmental legal action, it can still be denied ... because ... well ... the likes of Team Trump well understand that even the laws and its judges can be unjustifiably biased by ideology.

The senseless 'common sense' of groups like Team Trump is a Tragedy of the Commons of Sense. It is almost impossible to establish and improve global common sense understanding when non-sense is allowed to be popular and be excused. Each COP session has provided proof of that point.

At a glance - Evidence for global warming

Paul Pukite at 01:45 AM on 6 December, 2023

But you asked why I commented on this post with respect to ENSO, when it was you that mentioned La Nina in the the post itself. But we're no longer in a La Nina regime but in El Nino.

I just wanted to test the waters here again to see if this site has changed its approach to being more about research than gatekeeping. I keep thinking that the name Skeptical Science describes the charter.

I am skeptical that ENSO is chaotic.
I am skeptical that ENSO is random.
I am skeptical that ENSO is triggered by a change in prevailing winds.

I think I get it — the skepticism is directed not at current models of bleeding edge climate science where millions of $$ are being poured into machine learning for ENSO predictions by the likes of Google and NVIDIA, but at skepticism to combat crackpot models that claim AGW is being generated by subsurface volcanic activity.

Cheers. I think I'm good now.

CO2 effect is saturated

MA Rodger at 18:47 PM on 27 October, 2023

chuck22 @709,

I would suggest it is more that Venus shows what a thick atmosphere does to climate while Mars shows it for a thin atmosphere. Both have an atmosphere comprising about 95% CO2. Yet the surface of Mars has zero GH-warming while on Venus it is an impressive +407ºC.

Venus has about 80% of the solar warning relative to Earth, this due to its higher albedo (left hand graphic below) which more than compensates for being closer to the Sun. Thus the "naked planet" temperature for Venus (230K) is lower that Earth's (254K). Venus has a 92 bar atmosphere and the clouds in such a thick atmosphere are a major insulation mechanism preventing IR across the entire spectrum from escaping to space from anywhere near the surface.

Zhong & Haig (2013) show (their Fig6b) that the climate forcing on Earth from CO2 (which at 389ppm provides with feedbacks GH-warming of +34ºC) would be perhaps trebled by CO2 levels up near the 90% mark, (Fig6b shows the direct forcing up to ~30% CO2) an unrealistically high level, but it does show that additional CO2 does not "saturate".

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

Eclectic at 09:19 AM on 27 October, 2023

TWFA, you are skirting around the issue ~ of whether John Clauser is "yer average emeritus fruitcake" or whether he has achieved a brilliant Galileo-like stroke of genius . . . showing that all the prior scientific experts have been grossly wrong. While I do enjoy reading your discursive philosophical/lawyerly rhetoric, nevertheless you are failing to discuss the matter logically.

Please concentrate on whether Clauser is right or wrong about climate matters. (And note that the planetary history indicates that he is essentially wrong in his suppositions about clouds.) Do not dwell on whether Gore and/or Gates and/or China are offending your political identity issues or your personal economic-theory sensibiities.

Waffling discursions are quite easy ~ for instance , you will be aware of Kuebler-Ross's famous Five Stages of Grief. TWFA, you seem, climatically, to be showing the first two grief stages : Denial and Anger.

Have you reached the Bargaining stage (in hoping that that Clauser is right, despite a mountain of evidence that he is wrong) . . . or even the Depression stage? (Depression can indeed co-exist with the other stages of Anger etcetera.)

Are you fearful that the Acceptance stage threatens to change your inner character of personal identity? Personal change can be difficult for the ego to face up to ~ in the shorter run it's easier to keep in Denial.

See ~ rhetorical waffle is easy-peasy. And entertaining when it has an admixture of truth !

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

TWFA at 07:45 AM on 27 October, 2023

How is it not?

Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals.

Let's not get into the weeds over definitions, let's try to convey meaning, and to head off the next point of argument, they didn't invent them, Gates had a contract with IBM for the PC, Jobs saw a GUI at 3M, but they certainly formed conclusions and they applied them.

Now we have Al Gore and others who want to apply your conclusions upon the rest of us, like Gates and Jobs he has and others have profited immensly and have a vested interest in their experiment in climate control, but unlike Gates and Jobs if these folks have their way I will have no choice but participation in their experiment, just as if I had my way, wait for more data, they would be participating in mine.

But there is no profit motive in mine, only preservation of my standard of living and those of my descedents until such time as the real world data and not just the modeled projections show it is clearly being being affected by our behavior and beyond the control of nature or chance... at which point you would need to do something about China, currently participating in both experiments at once via dirty manufacturing of green products at a profit.

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

TWFA at 04:34 AM on 27 October, 2023

I suppose you are referring to advancements in "pure" science as opposed to "applied" science, or perhaps even need to explain to me just what your concept of "science" is. Gates and Jobs made advances in applied science, their accomplishments and the consequences obvious and without which all the prior advances in computer science would have remained in the lab the same way communications advances were locked up in Bell Laboratories until TPC (The Phone Company in "The President's Analyst) was broken up.

Inconveniently for the masterminds, people actually have to live in a world with a combination of nature and applied science, unlike lab rats they have the ability to resist those who wish to experiment with their lives and livelihoods.

So when you take theories in pure climate science and then try to apply it to, or at great expense or sacrifice impose it upon folks accustomed to individual liberty there are consequences, one of them being that, like a good doctor, you need to do a better job of explaining your diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment to your patients than simply proclaiming that all of you doctors know more about this than anybody else and you are all in agreement that the rest of us need psychotherapy or brain surgery.

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

TWFA at 02:47 AM on 27 October, 2023

I seem to recall that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did not have any peer reviewed papers on computer science when as teenagers they charted the future of computing and communications and folks invested millions into their unproved, non peer reviewed theories.

I think it is healthy to get outside observation and critique from folks with good minds that may not be "set". One does not have to be a specialist or have studied the field all his life to ask why if none of the current models can accurately reproduce what has happened over the last century why should we have faith in their predictions for the next?

And "faith" is what it is all about, because nobody can "prove" the future while in the present, but we can hopefully understand the present with results from the past... if we choose to pay attention to them, and that applies to far more than climate science.

When folks accuse others of being "deniers" it means they themselves must be "believers", neither can prove their case with facts, neither can prove something will or will not happen in the future until the future arrives, meaning until then we are talking about religion and not science. "Show me a video of God and I will believe" vs "How could all of this come to be without Him?" If 99% of alleged scientists agree on something either it is no longer science or they are not scientists, it is either religion or they are evangelists.

As a non-peer reviewed entrepreneur, renaissance man and pilot flying ABOVE clouds I have always marveled at the weather, the incredible energy conversion and transmission capacity of phase change and latent heat, for decades before Clauser came along I have been screaming about cloud reflectivity because I have seen it first hand... all that light beneath me is going back to space. 70% of the Earth's surface is water, from which clouds will form, temperature goes up, more clouds form, more reflection, less insolation.

It's not rocket science, or even computer science, put a pot of water on the stove, no matter how high the heat the water temperature never gets above boiling. If what Al Gore said at Davos this year were true, that the oceans are boiling, presumably not just where magma is erupting, it would have defied the laws of physics and thermodynamics, it would be impossible to capture and retain such heat with the 100% cloud cover we certainly would have.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #38 2023

David00099 at 17:48 PM on 23 September, 2023

I must say, the research presented in Week #38 of Skeptical Science has once again left me both astonished and hopeful. As I delved into the details provided by the scientists, my passion for understanding our planet's changing climate grew significantly.

In this week's research, the team at Skeptical Science dived into a previously unexplored aspect of climate change – the impact of reforestation on global temperatures. The study revealed that widespread reforestation efforts have the potential to mitigate the effects of rising <a href="https://kdramasduniya.blogspot.com/?m=1">KDramas</a> temperatures significantly. The presence of more trees not only helps sequester carbon dioxide but also promotes localized cooling by providing shade and reducing heat absorption by the ground.

One particular finding caught my attention: the relationship between reforestation and the frequency of heatwaves. The study showed that areas where reforestation efforts had been implemented saw a marked decrease in the intensity and duration of heatwaves. This correlation suggests that trees may act as natural air conditioners, helping to regulate local temperature extremes and protect communities from the adverse effects of heat stress.

Furthermore, the research team emphasized the importance of utilizing native tree species in reforestation projects. Native trees are better adapted to local climates, enhancing their resilience to changing conditions and ensuring their long-term survival. This key insight offers a valuable lesson for policymakers and environmental organizations collaborating on reforestation initiatives worldwide.

As I read through the research, it became apparent that the pursuit of reforestation is not only an environmental imperative but also a social responsibility. The study illustrates that by investing in reforestation projects, we can foster healthier ecosystems, safeguard biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and improve human well-being. It provides evidence that tackling climate change need not be a daunting task; rather, it presents a beacon of hope in the form of a practical and effective solution.

In conclusion, the research presented in Week #38 of Skeptical Science not only sheds light on the critical role reforestation plays in combatting climate change but also ignites a flame of inspiration within individuals like myself. It reaffirms the notion that by working together and taking sustainable action, we have the power to carve a better, greener future. Let us use this knowledge to strive for a world where forests thrive, temperatures stabilize, and harmony between humans and nature is restored.

With renewed optimism and determination,

CuriousNature79

As CuriousNature79 clicked the "Submit" button, they couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction. Their comment served as a testament to the impact that thoughtful research, such as the one presented by Skeptical Science, had on individuals around the world. Together, through knowledge and action, they believed that humanity could indeed navigate the complex challenges of climate change and create a brighter future.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Nick Palmer at 21:36 PM on 11 August, 2023

Bob Loblaw @11

I was interested in what the two reviewers listed actually said. I couldn't find it. Wunsch is highly unlikely to have given it a 5* review and I don't think Zanchettini, who is much less well known, would either.
The reason it would be helpful to know is that Frank's recent '23 paper and its past incarnations, such as '19, are currently being promulgated across the denialosphere as examples of published peer reviewed literature that completely undermines all of climate science. If one knew that Wunsch and Zanchettini had both said seomthing like 'the overall construction of the paper was interesting but has some major logical and statistical flaws in it', and Frontiers in Science had decided to publsih it anyway, that would be very useful anti-denialist 'ammo'.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29

One Planet Only Forever at 11:57 AM on 28 July, 2023

Bob Loblaw,

I understand the focus on presenting defensible statements. But the science is pretty clear that the use of fossil fuels has produced the majority of human influence on observed Climate Change.

We are clearly in a system/state where the 'popularity of an idea' can trump the 'merit of an idea'. I am not sure that any significant portion of humanity has ever developed out of this condition. Even current day science, what is investigated and how it is reported, can be seen to be influenced by powerful interests that conflict with how a ‘pure pursuit of science’ would improve the understanding of what is going on.

It seems that the degree of power held by ‘popularity of impressions favouring those with higher status’ has varied. But ‘popularity of impressions’ has rarely been fully governed by the ‘pursuit of improved understanding’. In such a system/state it seems that people who are willing to mislead others in the hopes of benefiting from popular misunderstanding will have a competitive advantage ... no matter how carefully worded a statement of understanding that they dislike is ... no matter how much evidence supports the understanding they dislike ... no matter how much evidence contradicts the belief/misunderstanding they prefer and want to promote.

Competition for status has developed in a diversity of nations and cultures. The result is a diversity of ways that 'many people with higher status' potentially have to lose status relative to others if 'increased awareness and improved understanding governed'. That applies 'Big Time' to the matter of the harms of climate change.

It seems there is little chance of increased risk of harm from indicating that fossil fuel use is causing unacceptable climate change (unacceptable because the persons benefiting from harmful fossil fuel activity are not the persons being harmed by that activity).

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

daveburton at 01:45 AM on 14 July, 2023

Eclectic wrote, "Daveburton @22 ~ Please explain more of your first chart [ IPCC's decadal Carbon Flux Comparison 1980-2019 ]. The natural sink flux figures… show a rather steady proportionality to the total carbon emissions."

Glad to. Any two things which steadily increase are thereby correlated. There's only a possibility that the relationship might be causal if there's a possible mechanism for such causality.

There's no possible mechanism by which the rate at which CO2 emerges from chimneys could govern the rate at which CO2 is taken up by trees & absorbed by the oceans, or vice-versa, so the relationship cannot be causal — just as this famous relationship is not causal:

does cheese consumption cause death by bedsheet entanglement?

Eclectic wrote, "The land sink shows about 30-35% of total emissions, while the sum of land & ocean remains around 55-60%."

Yes, I usually say "about half," as in, "If our CO2 emissions were cut by more than about half then the atmospheric CO2 level would be falling, rather than rising."

It is important to recognize that the relationship is merely coincidental, not causal.

Eclectic wrote, "as the decades progress, the natural carbon sink flux in absolute terms rises with the rising emissions ~ but does not show a proportional increase."

The rate at which natural processes, such as ocean uptake, uptake by trees and soil ("greening"), and rock weathering, remove CO2 from the air, is affected in minor ways by many factors, but in a major way by only one: the current amount of CO2 in the air.

Our CO2 emission rate does not and cannot affect the natural removal rate, except indirectly, in the long term, by being one of the most important factors which affect the amount of CO2 in the air.

Eclectic wrote, "looking back in time ~ as the atmospheric CO2 level decreases, the size of the natural sink flux decreases also."

That is correct. It will also be correct looking forward in time, when CO2 levels are falling, someday.

Eclectic wrote, "this directly contradicts your hypothesis of 'if emissions were halved ... atmospheric CO2 level would plateau.'"

If you'll allow me to use "halved" as a shorthand for "reduced to the point at which emissions merely equal current natural removals, rather than exceed them," then those two statements are both correct, and perfectly consistent. It's pCO2 (level), not the rate of CO2 emissions, which (mostly) governs the rates of all the natural CO2 removal from the atmosphere.

Of course there are also minor factors which affect the removal rates. For instance, as we've already discussed, a 1°C rise in water temperature slows ocean uptake of CO2 by roughly 3%. Conversely, a rise in air temperature accelerates CO2 removal by rock weathering. (Sorry, I don't have a quantification of that.) But the main factor which controls the rate of CO2 removals is pCO2.

Eclectic wrote, "While the nutritive components of some food crops may reduce slightly as CO2 rises…"

Oh boy, another rabbit hole! That's the Loladze/Myers "nutrition scare."

It is of little consequence. That should be obvious if you consider that crops grown in commercial greenhouses with CO2 levels as high as 1500 ppmv are as nutritious as crops grown outdoors with only 30% as much CO2.

≥1500 ppmv CO2 is optimal for most crops. That's why commercial greenhouses typically use CO2 generators to raise daytime CO2 concentration to well above 1000 ppmv. It is expensive, but they go to that expense because elevated CO2 (eCO2) makes crops much healthier and more productive. (They don't typically supplement CO2 at night unless using grow-lamps, because plants can't use the extra CO2 without light.)

If elevating CO2 by >1000 ppmv doesn't cause crops to be less nutritious, then elevating CO2 by only 140 ppmv obviously doesn't, either.

Better crops yields, due to eCO2 or any other reason, can cause lower levels (but not lower total amounts) of nutrients which are in short supply in the soil. But that doesn't happen to a significant extent when agricultural best practices are employed.

I had an impromptu online debate about the nutrition scare with its most prominent promoter, mathematician Irakli Loladze, in the comments on a Quora answer. If you're not a Quora member you can't read it there, so I saved a copy here. He acknowledged to me that food grown in greenhouses at elevated CO2 levels is as nutritious as food grown outdoors.

Faster-growing, more productive crops require more nutrients per acre, but not more nutrients per unit of production.

Inadequate nitrogen fertilization reduces protein production relative to carbohydrate production, because proteins contain nitrogen, but carbohydrates don't. Likewise, low levels of iron or zinc in soils cause lower levels of those minerals in some crops. So, it is possible, by flouting well-established best agricultural practices, to contrive circumstances under which eCO2, or anything else which improves crop yields, causes reduced levels of protein or micronutrients in crops.

But farmers know that the more productive crops are, the more nutrients they need, per acre. Competent farmers fertilize accordingly.

Or, for nitrogen, they may plant nitrogen-fixing legumes — which benefit greatly from extra CO2.

If you don’t fertilize according to the needs of your crops, negative consequences may include reductions in protein and/or micronutrient levels in the resulting crops. The cause of such reductions isn't eCO2s, it's poor agricultural practices.

The nutrient scare is an attempt to put a negative "spin" on the most important benefit of eCO2: that it improves crop yields.

Eclectic wrote, "it is (as you state) beyond argument that higher CO2 benefits overall crop yield & plant mass."

That's correct. Moreover, agronomy studies show that for most crops the effect is highly linear as CO2 levels rise, until above about 1000 ppmv (which is far higher than we could ever hope to drive outdoor CO2 levels by burning fossil fuels). That linearity is obvious in the green (C3) trace, here:

CO2 vs plant growth, C3 & C4

That improvement is one of several major reasons that catastropic famines are fading from living memory.

If you're too young to remember huge, catastrophic famines, count yourself blessed. Through all of human history, until very recently, famine was one of the great scourges of mankind, the "Third Horseman of the Apocalypse." But no more. This is a miracle!

https://ourworldindata.org/famines

Ending famine is a VERY Big Deal, comparable to ending war and disease. Compare:

● Covid-19 killed 0.1% of world population.
● 1918 flu pandemic killed about 2%.
● WWII killed 2.7%.
● The near-global drought and famine of 1876-78 killed about 3.7% of the world population.

Eclectic wrote, "other CO2/AGW concomitant effects of increased droughts /floods /heat-waves can be harmful to crop yields in open-field agriculture. [And especially so for the staple crop of maize.]"

Well, let's examine those one at a time.

Heat-waves. Overall, temperature extremes are not worsened by the warming trend. Heat waves are slightly worsened, but by less than cold snaps are mitigated. That's because, thanks to "Arctic amplification," warming is disproportionately at chilly high latitudes, and it is greatest at night and in winter. The tropics warm less, which is nice, because they're warm enough already.

1°C is about the temperature change you get from a 500 foot elevation change. (That's calculated from an average lapse rate of 6.5 °C/km.)

On average, 1°C is similar in effect to a latitude change of about sixty miles, as you can see by looking at an agricultural growing zone map. Here's one, from the Arbor Day Foundation:

From eyeballing the map, you can see that 1°C (1.8°F) = about 50-70 miles latitude change.

James Hansen and his colleagues reported a similar figure: "A warming of 0.5°C... implies typically a poleward shift of isotherms by 50 to 75 km..."

1°C is less than the hysteresis ("dead zone") in your home thermostat, which is the amount that your indoor temperatures go up and down, all day long, without you even noticing.

In the American Midwest, farmers can fully compensate for 1°C of climate change by adjusting planting dates by about six days.
Des Moines temperature by month

Floods. Theoretically, by accelerating the water cycle, climate change could increase the frequency or severity of floods. But the effect is too slight to be noticeable. AR6 says no change in global flood frequency is detectable:

AR6 on floods

Droughts. Droughts have not worsened. In fact, the global drought trend is slightly down. Here's a study:

Hao et al. (2014). Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system. Sci Data 1(140001). doi:10.1038/sdata.2014.1

Here's the U.S. drought trend (the bottom/orange side of the graph):
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/uspa/wet-dry/0

U.S. very wet and very dry

Not only does climate change not worsen droughts, it has long been settled science that eCO2 improves plants' water use efficiency (WUE) and drought resilience, by improving CO2 stomatal conductance relative to transpiration. So eCO2 is especially beneficial in arid regions, and for crops which are under drought stress.

Maize (corn) has been very heavily studied. Even though it is a C4 grass, it benefits greatly from elevated CO2, especially under drought stress. Here's a study (one of many):

Chun et al. (2011). Effect of elevated carbon dioxide and water stress on gas exchange and water use efficiency in corn. Agric For Meteorol 151(3), pp 378-384, ISSN 0168-1923. doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.11.015.

EXCERPT:
"There have been many studies on the interaction of CO2 and water on plant growth. Under elevated CO2, less water is used to produce each unit of dry matter by reducing stomatal conductance."

Here's a similar study about wheat:

Fitzgerald GJ, et al. (2016) Elevated atmospheric [CO2] can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi-arid environments and buffer against heat waves. Glob Chang Biol. 22(6):2269-84. doi:10.1111/gcb.13263.

However, I agree with you that putting a monetary value on the benefits of CO2 for crops is difficult. In part that's because the price of food soars when it's in short supply, and plummets when it's plentiful. So, for example, if we were to attribute, say, 15% of current crop yields to CO2 fertilization & CO2 drought mitigation, and value that 15% using current crop prices, we would be underestimating the true value, because absent that 15% boost the prices would have been much higher.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

Rob Honeycutt at 11:17 AM on 11 July, 2023

Dave... Your reference to the inset on FAQ 5.1 is comical at best.

It states exactly what I'm telling you, as did the other bits I posted.

FAQ 5.1: Is natural removal of carbon
from the atmosphere weakening?
No, natural carbon sinks have taken up a near constant fraction of our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the last six decades.

You were making the claim that natural sinks were removing more of our emissions, and that is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. And the caption you posted goes on to say...

However, this fraction is expected to decline in the future if CO2 emissions continue to increase.

How can you not understand this? Take note that AR6, though it's the most current IPCC report, came out nearly two years ago, and the report is relying on data and research that was completed well before even that.

The most recent papers are saying that, yes, that CO2 fertilization effect is now waning.

High economic costs of reduced carbon sinks and declining biome stability in Central American forests

Rising Temperatures Can Negate CO2 Fertilization Effects on Global Staple Crop Yields: A Meta-Regression Analysis

Tropical Forests’ Carbon Sink Is Rapidly Weakening – Crucial for Stabilizing Earth’s Climate

Once again, in your own citation the language is clear.

FAQ 5.1 | Is the Natural Removal of Carbon From the Atmosphere Weakening?
For decades, about half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that human activities have emitted to the atmosphere has been taken up by natural carbon sinks in vegetation, soils and oceans. These natural sinks of CO2 have thus roughly halved the rate at which atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased, and therefore slowed down global warming. However, observations show that the processes underlying this uptake are beginning to respond to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere and climate change in a way that will weaken nature’s capacity to take up CO2 in the future. Understanding of the magnitude of this change is essential for projecting how the climate system will respond to future emissions and emissions reduction efforts.

The "observations show" means they are already seeing this happening, and that is based on research that's at least half a decade old.

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Likeitwarm at 11:16 AM on 12 June, 2023

I know this post will technically be off topic, but is a direct answer to scaddenp's inquiry.

scaddenp 1543 - I see there are many who claim their science is right on both sides of the climate argument and everyone presents what appears to be good arguments to support their position. I know that it is normal human behavior to have some bias toward one's own argument. This is the opinion of all that I talk to in the non-scientist group. Many don't know who to believe and pay any attention to what can be a confusing subject. Myself, not being a well educated physicist, feel at a disadvantage. My math is only basic, algebra 2 in high school. Someone very good with math could easily pull the wool over my eyes with complex formulas involved in this science. I am a machine designer/cost anayizer/production programmer/personel manager for the production of an old product who got there by the seat of my pants. I have been retired now 6 years.

I just could not believe a trace gas of .04% of the atmosphere could have such an effect, especially with the history of CO2 volumes and estimated historic atmospheric temperatures not jiving with each other. There are so many factors that have different affects, it is hard to discern which are reasonable causes. With "global" temperatures reportedly being fairly flat since 1998 and CO2 continuing to rise at a steady rate and the U.S. Government spending $375B, recently, towards climate initiatives(some is my tax money and yours if you pay U.S. taxes), I am still seeking the truth to inform my congress of the truth that I see. I do not believe we should be destroying the world economies and spending vast amounts of the public treasure when there is so much disagreement on what is causing climate change. That was the opinion of Dr. Allen Carlin of the EPA in 2009. He called the evidence for AWG incomplete.

I know you guys that support this site put a lot of time and effort into the science and site. That's why I come here to investigate.

If there is a better place to have this conversation, please let me know.

At a glance - How reliable are climate models?

PSBaker at 21:44 PM on 2 June, 2023

Goodness @Bob Loblaw @eclectic !
Much of your ire seems to be focussed on lack of specificity, vagueness etc …

Sorry, I didn’t realize there is some sort of rule about it … but if you look at the OP, it is a model of vagueness, no papers cited – frankly, it’s pretty much waffle.

In my response I did provide examples, albeit the first to hand. I could have done better, but since @eclectic stated “ . . . but uncertainties are, for the rest of us, probably not worth addressing” I felt that, together with the lack of specificity in the OP, this gave me some liberty to extemporize. I also did not want to finger specific papers since I know some of the scientists involved, who have enough problems trying to navigate their careers without feeling picked upon.

I’m not surprised by the response though, this has been my experience through the latter part of my career – that criticizing modelling evokes a particular snarky rage from the priesthood who elect to guard the eternal flame.

My central point however remains valid, the models are good at somethings, lousy at others and there’s a whole sub-industry of scientists applying them to make unrealistic projections. We who work in the field, trying to help (in my case poor farmers) find them of little use and even counterproductive.

That, in my humble opinion, is what the discussion of climate models should be addressing and what I, in my albeit halting fashion, was trying to convey.

Here’s Dr Baethgen covering some of these points better than I can, in a lecture from 2020, (start ~8 mins), esp. 18 & ~35m “So when you see these beautiful maps with reds and greens, don’t trust them, remember that behind that colour is a big uncertainty.”

https://worldcoffeeresearch.org/news/2020/watch-a-new-way-to-think-about-climate-change

Antarctica is gaining ice

scaddenp at 07:54 AM on 23 May, 2023

"Nobody knows.." Hmm. Certainly investigated. See "Interannual ice mass variations over the Antarctic ice sheet from 2003 to 2017 were linked to El Niño-Southern Oscillation"

Shows correlation of AP and WAIS with ENSO and anticorrelation of EAIS.

Hmm. ok, only 2017. What about GFO and recent records. There is some detailed analysis in "Spatially heterogeneous nonlinear signal in Antarctic ice-sheet mass loss revealed by GRACE and GPS (2023)"

and another study of links with other quasi-periodic cycles in Antarctica in "Antarctica ice-mass variations on interannual timescale: Coastal Dipole and propagating transports"

Evidence to date - based on correlations of where the changes in ice mass are occurring - links interannual change to short term (2-8 year) quasi-periodic weather cycles (ENSO, Antarctic Circumpolar Wave, Antarctic Occillation) influencing Antartica.

My money (literally) would be on continued long term ice loss. Short term variation as observed here to date would certainly NOT be a reason for change in climate mitigation policy.

Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

One Planet Only Forever at 03:08 AM on 2 May, 2023

Evan @6,

I briefly reviewed the 2014 Research Article you pointed/linked to (note it is almost 10 years old). I would update my previous comments to add that human actions causing increased N2O in the nitrogen cycle are to be considered the same way I refer to impacts on the carbon cycle. And I would add that there are other good reasons for more aggressive reduction of nitrogen cycle impacts than climate change (refer to Planetary Boundaries).

I will also clarify that reducing methane emissions from rice is still an opportunity for reducing the peak level of ghg impacts even if that methane could be considered to be ‘part of the natural carbon cycle (an action that does not increase the amount of carbon in the carbon cycle the way that burning fossil fuels or leaks of methane from fossil fuel operations or permafrost melting do).

More specifically, the report’s evaluated floor level of non-CO2 emissions from food production and consumption (Global total 7 GtCO2e/year by 2050 with more if population continues to grow beyond 2050 and also influenced by 'potential changes of attitudes towards being less harmful') appears to be based on the perceived willingness of the UK population, at the time the report was prepared, to learn and be less harmful consumers. And the evaluated UK willingness is extended globally with all people expected to want develop to live in ways comparable to the less harmful ways that the UK population was evaluated to be willing to live.

The following is a quote from the “Options and barriers to mitigating food system non-CO2 emissions - Agriculture” section of the Research Article:

“For both N2O and CH4, socioeconomic and environmental circumstances dictate the extent to which changed agricultural technologies and practices can deliver cuts in emissions at a systems level. Stakeholders suggested that important factors influencing uptake of mitigation options affecting the UK revolve around cost, dominant practices, the aging farming community and attitudes of ‘young farmers’, existing infrastructure, cultural norms, changing climate as well as a feedback linked to levels and patterns of consumption.”

A quote from the “Options and barriers to mitigating food system non-CO2 emissions - Consumption” section of the Research Article:

“Within the UK consumption-based scenarios, the most significant dietary change considered was a 70% per capita cut in meat consumption, with the deficit replaced with rises in other food types. However, even with changes to per capita meat consumption, absolute emissions levels are driven by population growth (consistent across the scenarios) as well as growth in per capita consumption levels. Population growth per se strongly constrains N2O mitigation, as crops for consumption and for feed for livestock continue to require manure or mineral fertilizer. Barriers to changing patterns of consumption are confirmed through consumer focus group analysis: moderate changes in meat consumption (20% per capita) were considered in line with financial pressures to reduce expenditure given the context of the 2009–2012 recession, whereas a 70% reduction was perceived too substantial a change for many [Citation33].”

That indicates that the evaluation was (likely unwittingly) biased by accepting questionable opinions like ‘the higher cost of being less harmful is a valid reason to be more harmful’ and ‘the developed popularity of eating more meat is a valid reason to not reduce meat consumption’. Note that I tried to present both of those points in a way that highlights that populist political misleading messaging significantly caused those attitudes to develop to be so influential that they compromise the evaluation and the way it is reported.

Quote from “Discussion - Implications for cumulative GHG emissions”

“Finding ways of reliably reducing non-CO2 emissions will become increasingly pressing as global demand for food rises. A wide range of feasible CH4 mitigation options were put forward by stakeholders, taken from the literature and quantitatively assessed during the scenario process, providing evidence for greater scope for achieving substantial CH4 mitigation than for N2O. This, coupled with the much longer lifetime of N2O compared with CH4 as well as the influence of carbon cycle feedbacks in raising the GWP of CH4 from 21 to 34, highlights the critical importance of fully exploiting CH4 mitigation potential whilst increasing the research effort towards developing agricultural systems that can minimize N2O production.”

That indicates that if the developed research bias is corrected there could be more reduction of N2O resulting in a lower ‘floor level’.

Quote from “Discussion - Implications for managing and mitigating CO2”

“The focus here on non-CO2 reinforces other studies that identify the existence of an emissions floor, further emphasizing an urgent need to mitigate CO2 emissions where it is most feasible and quickest to do so. The higher the non-CO2 floor, the more rapidly CO2 emission cuts are needed within the constraints of a chosen climate target. Conversely, relying on a low or non-existent emissions floor suggests a larger CO2 budget is available, again relaxing the rates of mitigation for a chosen climate change target, delivering a more palatable but less realistic assessment of the climate change challenge.”

This emphasizes that the learning from the report is that more rapid efforts to reduce fossil fuel use are required.

Quotes from the “Conclusion” of the research article:

“A continuation of absolute growth in global N2O emissions, despite assuming optimistic mitigation has, because of cumulative emissions, direct implications for how urgently and deeply to cut both CO2 and CH4 for an assumed climate target.”

This reinforces the need for more research to reduce N2O and the need to more aggressively cut CO2 and CH4 unless new research develops viable ways to rapidly reduce N2O.

“As energy systems become decarbonized, global non-CO2 emissions largely associated with food consumption and production will increase in the share of annually produced GHGs. Emphasizing the importance of making cuts in food-related emissions highlights an urgent need for policymakers in Annex B nations to consider not only technological and supply-side interventions, but tackle the thorny issue of levels and types of consumption. Unlike large-scale infrastructure developments, measures tackling consumption and demand have the potential to cut emissions of CO2 and non-CO2 alike in the short term and could improve the diminishing chances of remaining within the carbon budget commensurate with the 2ｰC threshold.”

That highlights the need for policymakers to “tackle the thorny issue of levels and types of consumption” because the reports conclusion is that current over-developed populations are not as willing to be less harmful as they should be.

A quote from the “Future perspectives” part of the research article:

“If the challenges posed by climate change are to be overcome, at least in part, a meeting of minds to define problems can offer new, much needed insights. This is already emerging in some quarters, with an increase in interest from research funders around the food–water–energy nexus as well as a rise in the number of researchers keen to engage in genuinely interdisciplinary activity. Of course disciplinary research may, out of necessity, continue to dominate, but the emerging expertise in interdisciplinary research needs support and encouragement given the extent of the systemic and complex challenges facing society.

"The climate change challenge becomes ever more urgent each year, with time limiting the options available for mitigating emissions to be largely those that can deliver change in the short term. Perhaps with agronomists, biologists, engineers, political and social scientists working increasingly in single units, systemic ‘solutions’ to the climate challenge can be found. Specialists in demand and consumption require the same prominence in the portfolio of research endeavour as technologists, physical scientists and engineers. Only then will resilient options be derived and ultimately implemented in a timescale befitting of the scale of change facing society.”

Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

One Planet Only Forever at 09:10 AM on 30 April, 2023

Evan,

Your question may be questionable.

The climate change issue is primarily about human actions that are increasing ghgs in the carbon cycle (increasing the balanced state of ghgs in the atmosphere and causing other harms like increased CO2 absorption in oceans).

That perspective helps identify and understand the differences between the variety of ghg impacts caused by human actions. Most important, it helps understand that some causes of CO2e from human food production and consumption are ‘not the concern’.

Steady-state production of ghgs from food production and consumption is not the primary concern. That would be a sustainable carbon cycle. Food production and consumption that increases the level of ghgs, especially the use of fossil fuels, is the primary concern. An increasing population that eats less ‘higher impact food like meat or rice’ can actually result in a reduction of the steady-state level of ghgs. In addition to an increasing population having less consumption, the remaining consumption can be changed to be less harmful, like developing meat and rice production that does not cause as much ghg impact.

Therefore, an answer to the question about the ‘per capita CO2e’ is that, due to the current developed problem of significant excess ghgs, especially CO2, already in the atmosphere, unnecessary CO2e impacts from human activity need to be ended and actions that will reduce the steady-state ghg levels in the atmosphere are required. (The peak level of ghg increase due to the historic, and continuing, lack of interest in seriously restricting harmful and unnecessary actions will undeniably be a harmfully excessive level).

Also, the required changes of food production and consumption for the collective of human activity to be more sustainable will vary by region. Regions that currently have more people eating less than a ‘diet necessary for healthy living’ can be expected to have increasing impacts. But if such a region also has a significant amount of harmful unnecessary food consumption, due to a significant status gap in that region's society, then that region could, depending on how much harmful consumption is occurring in the region, reduce the total regional level of ghg impacts while the less fortunate in the region increase their impacts.

PS. The titles of the two study reports linked in the last paragraph you are questioning are informative (the reports are even more informative): “A meta-analysis of projected global food demand and population at risk of hunger for the period 2010–2050” and “Future warming from global food consumption”. However, developed socioeconomic-political biases can bias what is investigated, how it is investigated, and how it is reported. That is likely a significant root cause of the populist political attacks on less biased science that establishes a requirement for significant changes of developed beliefs and actions, especially if it highlights the need for rapid changes of popular and profitable developments. It may also be why I did not see the obvious problem of harmful over-consumption being highlighted.

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Albert at 17:00 PM on 20 April, 2023

The Kinnard has Arctic ice extent increasing from about 750 to 1500 which is an absurdity. Vikings colonised Greenland about 980 and farmed some areas that today are permafrost.

But the graph shows 980 ice extent to be about the same as 1700 and by that time the areas farmed were permafrost.

The graph shows ice extent dropping dramatically from about 1400 but the little ice age was ramping up in 1400, not down.

The graph shows ice extent increasing dramatically from about 1600 but the LIA peaked around 1650-1700 and temperatures have risen sporadically ever since. The Central England Temperature database correlates well with this.

Here is a different reconstruction that shows 1940 Arctic ice to be about the same as

[LINK]

See figure 1b

But the guy was italian and what would they know? See, I can be sarcastic as well.

CO2 limits will harm the economy

MA Rodger at 18:35 PM on 2 April, 2023

retiredguy @112,

You do specifically ask about rebuttals of Lomborg's verbose 2020 paper 'Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies' and as has been pointed out, this paper is packed full of the usual Lomborg nonsense. I don't know of any specific rebuttal to this paper. I think with a 'broken record' like Lomborg, you need the expertise to unpick his nonsense as well as the dedication to keep at it. A month after this paper, Lomborg published a book 'False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet' and that did result in a rebuttal.

As for the paper 'Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies,' we can cut through all Lomborg's nonsense and simply consider his basic argument which is that AGM mitigation preventing large levels of global warming (as in scenario SSP1-1.9) is, according to Lomborg, not as benificial to mankind as allowing fossil fuel use to continue without restriction (as in secanario SSP5-8.5, roughly similar to the previous RCP8.5). From the abstract:-

Long-term impacts of climate policy can cost even more [than 2030 costs]. The IPCC's two best future scenarios are the “sustainable” SSP1 and the “fossil-fuel driven” SSP5. Current climate-focused attitudes suggest we aim for the “sustainable” world, but the higher economic growth in SSP5 actually leads to much greater welfare for humanity. After adjusting for climate damages, SSP5 will on average leave grandchildren of today's poor $48,000 better off every year. It will reduce poverty by 26 million each year until 2050, inequality will be lower, and more than 80 million premature deaths will be avoided.

This argument is thus mainly based on the economic predictions set out by IPCC ARs within these SSPs and then downplaying to the point of insignificant the economic damage in a SSP5-8.5 world experiencing +4.4ºC by 2100 (this a central figure in the range +3.3ºC-5.7ºC) and which will continue warming post-2100, the 2300 range being given as +6.6ºC−14.1ºC. Now that is scary. (And note in the graphic below, the SSP5/RCP8.5 temperatures are still rising in 2300. There is even more to come.) Lomborg is advocating a really scary future while insisting there is no scary future.

The Big Picture

One Planet Only Forever at 06:34 AM on 22 March, 2023

Bart Vreeken @131,

There was no question. I was presenting an understanding based on observations of evidence in your comments. Your presented interpretation of my comments appears to support my observation in my comment @99 that:

"There is a wealth of evidence in Bart’s comment history that appears to indicate that their interests are not Big Picture. Their interests appear to be much smaller/narrower. They appear to be seeking ‘positive perceptions from the perspective of short-term regional interests’."

I have made other comments about the harm of pursuing positive perceptions because it delays learning the Truth about the Big Picture harm being done to the future of Humanity. Arguing for a 'positive, less panicked, perspective' has produced the current serious harm, and risk of more significant harm, to the future of humanity that is presented in the article I pointed to in my comment @130. Another report on that same topic is by NPR "Cut emissions quickly to save lives, scientists warn in a new U.N. report".

The harmful reality you appear try to avoid understanding, even if you present global interpretations, is not altered by speculation based on one year of heavy snow fall on Antarctica and an unsubstantiated perceived correlation between snowfall and sea ice extent, or because Greenland may only melt on its east coast (conclusions you appear to be interested in jumping to).

Also, as I presented in my comment @68, the very negative (panic level severity) of possible outcomes is what the people who benefit most from the harm need to 'mitigate'. It is important to understand that what is referred to as 'climate change impact adaptation' is mitigation required by others because of a failure of harmful people (success from their short-term limited regional interest perspective) to mitigate their harmfulness. And part of how the harmful try to justify being more harmful is by claiming that "It's not that Bad = positive perceptions that the harm is not very significant" or "Harm done is worth it because of the Perceived Positives".

The Big Picture understanding is that it is generally unacceptable to use benefits or potential benefits to excuse harm done or potential harm done. The only case where that 'may be' acceptable is a case where the individual pursuing or obtaining the benefit will be the only one suffering any harm. It does not even apply to a group because different members of a group may obtain different degrees of harm and benefit.

In spite of that undeniable Big Picture understanding regarding the importance of learning to minimize harm and help those who have been harmed, many people today try to excuse continuing to pursue more benefit from being more harmful. And part of their harmful effort is the pursuit of harmful misunderstandings or a focus on 'positive perceptions that minimize the need for helpful mitigation by reducing the perceptions of severity of harm being done' (like claiming that less fortunate people deserve to be less fortunate, or being dismissive of what is happening to places like Bangladesh).

The Big Picture

Bob Loblaw at 04:47 AM on 20 March, 2023

Bart @ various posts...

You don't see the problem with comparing numbers in % and mm/yr? You do understand the importance of units in geophysical measurements, don't you? 32°F is not warmer than 15°C. A person walking at 6km/hr is not moving faster than an airplane doing mach 0.8.

% is a ratio between two values that use the same units. It has a numerator and a denominator. The mm/yr in your figure in comment 84 are a "relative sea level change" - they are a difference from some unspecified base. They need context to become meaningful, and comparison is only possible if you can resolve differences in context and produce numbers with the same units.

Repeatedly in this forum, you fail to give context to quotes, diagrams, papers, etc. You change contexts at a whim, making your comments hard to follow and difficult to perceive. If you think people are misunderstanding you, then spend more time preparing your comments.

Now, back to your diagram posting in #84 (and repeated in #94). You failed to give context - in particular, you failed to given any indication of what those values are relative to. You also failed to give any source, until I asked. You didn't even include the caption that goes with the figure. Here is the figure, with caption:

Bamber and Riva figure 2

Note that the caption says "relative sea level variations due to the gravitational and Earth rotational effects of ice mass loss". [Emphasis added]

Do we have any other things to consider as context? How about the last paragraph of the paper's introduction?

We stress,however, that we consider, here, only the gravitationally consistent signature of ice melt. We do not include the response of ocean dynamics to the additional influx of fresh-water nor other changes in ocean dynamics due to predicted climate change, which can have a significant impact on RSL over decadal timescales. We also do not include spatially variable thermosteric effects on sea level.

So, figure 2 in their paper has a lot of context that you have left out. What do they say about their analysis? At the bottom of page 623, they say:

It is important to consider the separate fingerprints of RSL from the major sources to investigate their individual gravitationally-consistent “fingerprints”, but for present-day and future trends in sea level, it is the combined signal that is important. To first order, this can be approximated as the sum of the individual sources. We show the combined RSL changes, from all land ice sources considered, in Fig. 4.

And here is their figure 4:

Bamber and Riva figure 4

Things aren't looking so rosy for The Netherlands in that image. It certainly is not going to escape the effects of rising sea levels.

What else do Bamber and Riva have to say about their work?

In addition to GIA and surficial mass exchanges, there are two processes within the oceans that affect relative sea level. Steric effects (density changes due to salt and heat content variations) were responsible for about a quarter of the total SLR rise over the last 50 years, increasing to almost a half since 1993 but with large regional variations.

The paper clearly indicates that this regional fingerprinting (as displayed in their figure 2) is only one small part of a Big Picture (to get back to the topic of this blog post).

One more aspect of the paper you link to: it is doing an analysis base on Grace and other data up to 2008 - it is not a projection into the future. They even put a caveat in their Methods section (p622):

It is important to note, however, that this flux is time-evolving, including during the period of interest in this study. As a consequence, both the amplitude and pattern of RSL considered here may change in the future.

In short, you are frequently leaving out context of the information you provide - and as a result you are way over-stating the significance of what you present. Whether this in intentional or not, we cannot know.

All of this comes back to my very first question to you after your first comment here:

What exactly is your point?

You would be much better off with a small number of well-thought-out, reasoned, well-referenced posts than the scatter-blast that you've been doing.

The Big Picture

John Mason at 16:24 PM on 19 March, 2023

Just having first coffee of the day so will deal with comment #100 in a piecemeal fashion.

"Sections 6 (Human GG are causing global warming) and 8 (warming will continue) overstate the case. We know those to be true not from a simple application of "fundamental physics" but from elaborate computer models trying to approximate physics too complex for us to grapple with any other way."

Assuming the first principles of this topic are correct (they are) then how can that statement be inaccurate? We've known for over 150 years that if GHG concentrations are driven upwards, then a warmer climate will be the eventual result and that the warming will take decades to develop to its fullest extent. Now that may be a blunt object approach, but remember that set of conclusions was reached long, long before computers were around.

Models are not perfect but nevertheless extremely useful. They help us interrogate complex and highly variable systems to see how they respond to changes in those variables. Think of them as tools in the tool-kit, alongside observations, human resources, basic principles and so on. For we don't need models to tell us it will carry on warming the more CO2 emissions grow. We;ve known that all along.

The Big Picture

One Planet Only Forever at 03:17 AM on 18 March, 2023

Peppers @36,

In spite of all that you have claimed the evidence-based understanding continues to be:

1. The climate impact problem of developed human activity is real.

2. The climate impact to date has already seriously compromised the future of humanity, especially due to the locking in of significant sea level rise). And because of the inertia of harmful developed over-consumption by the most harmful portion of the population things will be worse before humans stop making it worse. The continued harmful activity requires more repair (adaptation). And ‘adaptation effort’ delays human development of sustainable improvements. And the required adaptations will not be done for every body (I see not plans for the current portion of the population responsible for the rising sea levels to build flood mitigation systems that will be required for Bangladesh). And in some cases the harm is not repairable (The rising sea level impacts on Bangladesh may not be possible to adaptively mitigate).

3. The problem is the portion of the total population that is most harmful per-person. The total population increasing is a concern. But the problem of the total harm done is the real concern. And that can be understood to be due to the portion of the population that has developed a liking for over-consumption, not just unnecessary energy over-consumption. And the problem within that problematic ‘highest harm’ portion of the population is the portion that has less interest in learning about the harm caused (or the risk of harm) by their pursuits of ‘more personal enjoyment or benefit’

4. The problem can be solved. It just requires all people, even with an increasing population, to understand and accept the need to limit how harmful they are and to want to be more helpful to Others. There is a planetary limit on how many humans can live sustainably, concurrently live basic decent lives into the distant future. Many studies have established a consensus understanding that the maximum sustainable global population is a function of how much harmful over-consumption develops within the population. The planet can sustainably support more than 10 billion humans living basic decent lives (doing what is needed to live a decent basic live, and limiting the harm done by that essential activity). The planet cannot sustainably support the current 8 billion (or the most harmful 800 million) because of the developed harmful over-consumption within the population (and not just the harmful climate change impacts). Also, the developed systems fail to ensure that every body has the necessities of a basic decent life, including failing to provide basic minimum energy needs to every body and failing to have the ‘needed energy’ be as harmless as possible.

What is tragically missing from most discussion of the climate change problem, and other human harmful impact problems, is that the solutions require everybody to be governed by the desire to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Some people 'doing their best to be less harmful and more helpful, and trying to help others be less harmful and more helpful' face the uphill challenge of overcoming the harm done by 'people who have developed other interests and related harmful misunderstandings'.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Bart Vreeken at 18:56 PM on 10 March, 2023

Hi Bob, the increase of the SMB of Antarctica is not so very speculative. It started last century, this NASA study says:

climate.nasa.gov/news/2836/antarcticas-contribution-to-sea-level-rise-was-mitigated-by-snowfall/

When we look at the last seven years then five of them were above average; four of them were far above average and none of them were far below average. So, it's not only last year.

Most of the uncertainty is in the expected discharge, I think.

Antarctica Surface Mass Balance

It's not bad

MA Rodger at 21:57 PM on 19 February, 2023

PollutionMonster @406,
I think I concur with Eclectic's 'snake pit'.
Zhao et al (2021) is a paper those climate deniers would find useful as it does show that for the period 2002-18 globally there was a decrease of 275,000/y deaths correllating with cold weather while the increase due to hot weather rose 113,000/y, simplistically suggesting AGW is 'good', although as today cold deaths are found to be much greater (4.6M/y) than hot deaths (0.5M/y), this finding is not so surprising.

In terms of this sort of analysis, this is very early work and likely an inaccurate account of the impact of "non-optimal ambient temperatures" on mortality. Note that a similar study Burkart et al (2021) drew criticism for its methods which found 1.3M/y cold deaths & 0.34M/y hot.

And given the numbers involved with global mortality, it is not difficult to establish large numbers of deaths in such simplistic correlations. The premature deaths due to pollution resulting from fossil-fuel-use is a case in hand. And when these studies point in the direction of 'hot is bad' or visa versa, they will be happily wielded by either 'warmists' or 'deinialists' with little thought to what is being 'wielded'. (Regarding 'visa versa', note Wu et al (2022) from the same team as Zhao et al finding an increase in excess deaths over the same period (2000-19) of +0.16M/y due to "short-term temperature variability".)
Much of this 'wielding' is remarkably poor. Note this Bloomberg headline - the 'subscriber only' article also covers Zhao et al (2021) and the actual account may be less ridiculous than the headline.

The impact of temperature directly on mortlity is surely today not as great as the indirect impacts described in the OP above although quantifying it all will be always controversial. (But should they be. I recall an argument we presented to a UK enquiry over an off-shore wind farm. Using even the smallest estimates of AGW deaths, we suggested the wind farm [Navitas off the Dorset coast] would globally save a very significant number of lives globally, that is very significant to such enquiries. Sadly the denialists won the day with the enquiry although the reasons given for the decision were entirely flawed.)

However, the direct impact of temperature should be a concern. Zhao et al point out "At a global level, the results indicate that global warming might slightly reduce net temperature-related deaths in the short term, although, in the long run, climate change is expected to increase the mortality burden." And the question, of course, is how big that "increase" will become. Myself, I would add that if AGW were allowed to intensify to +6ºC, we can say that the tropics will become a death zone for anybody outside an air conditioned environment. And +6ºC is not such a crazy number if we do nothing about AGW.

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Bob Loblaw at 23:40 PM on 15 February, 2023

The Climategate and Peer-review link I gave above is #95 on SkS's "Most Used Climate Myths". (This thread is # 17.)

If you really want to read about corruption of the peer-review process, you should look at # 205 on the list: "How contrarians used pal review to publish contrarian papers". In the contrarians' world it is easy to imagine that the mainstream climate scientists are corrupting the process, because that's exactly what the contrarians are willing to do when they have control of a journal. Accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing...

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Bob Loblaw at 23:24 PM on 15 February, 2023

JonJC, Eddie:

I suspect that the video in question is the one recently discussed on the "It's the sun" thread. MA Rodger's comment provides a link to the Curry/Peterson part of the video, with a pithy comment about the quality of Curry's blatherings.

I also suspect that there is nothing new in Curry/Peterson that isn't the result of a gross misrepresentation of the email contents. For the peer-review aspects, you should also read this SkS post on the subject:

Climategate and the Peer-review Process

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Eclectic at 20:40 PM on 15 February, 2023

JonJC @85 ,

the Climategate biz is rather ancient history by now ~ but the science-denialists are desperatey short of ammunition . . . so they have to keep dredging it up (and they can never admit they got it wrong).

My favorite discussion of it is by science journalist "Potholer54" , back in about 2010. Google his youtube video titled "Climate Change - Those hacked e-mails".

His video runs 9 minutes, and you will find it amusing as well !

( The issue has had no significant developments since since then.)

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

EddieEvans at 20:11 PM on 15 February, 2023

JonJC

I'd like to listen to the suspect climate gate program. Do you have a link?

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

JonJC at 16:54 PM on 15 February, 2023

Judith Curry recently did an interview on Jordan Peterson's podcast - and she still leans very heavily on Climategate. She made some points which I've not seen covered here - about emails where climate researchers were bullying editors into silencing critics - it would be good to have some of that rebutted here (just because Peterson's reach is huge).
If you're not across it I'll suffer through listening to it again and will provide a summary - please let me know if you'd like me to do this.

It's the sun

Jim Hunt at 00:42 AM on 13 February, 2023

As blind chance etc. would have it I currently find myself engaging with Judith Curry's denizens under her article about the recent joint venture with Jordan Peterson.

This is presumably the cause of some or all of the "it's the sun, stupid!" nonsense currently being promulgated in the Twittodenialosphere?

As a consequence my Arctic alter ego felt compelled to bring the following NASA article to the attention of one such Dunning-Kruger sufferer:

https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/

Elon's new thought police helpfully suggested that I might want to reconsider my attempted violation of Twitter's community guidelines:

The allegedly "offensive language" was merely echoing that of the DK sufferer in question.

What a "Brave New World" we currently inhabit!

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5

slumgullionridge at 12:22 PM on 8 February, 2023

Well, I'm new here and I don't understand many of the "arguments" made by "some" of the contributors. There has never been a time in history when the wealthy have ever "rescued" the "proletariat". At the same time, an attack on the weathy (check: Marxist, especially Soviet or 20th Century Chinese history) didn't benefit the "poor". So it seems to me that any effort to escape the conditions leading to an uninhabitable planet might need to be made through mutual suffering, everyone will have to take their lumps.

Some suggestions: ground all airplanes, set a date for outlawing the use of private fossil fuel vehicles, eliminate industrial animal agriculture, place a moratorium on the manufacture of cement, and diminish all forms of international trade that require any form of physical transport.

That will cause all to suffer according to their own particular level of discomfort. The burden will be borne by everyone according to the "lifeboat principle" which burdens, yet saves everyone "on board".

If I understand the science correctly, cutting emissions along with its collateral injury to the environment, the above actions are enough to reverse climate change, not just mitigate/adapt to it. We could then expect the ice to return, the Amazon and other jungles to reforest, the oceans' pH to rise, many extinctions to slow down, and the human population explosion to shift into reverse. Localism will be the central operating principle of this effort, as it was before the age of Mercantilism (cir 1,500) and the advent of Capitalism (1776). The historical evidence shows that humanity entered this quandary at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution which is why, I suspect, we now label this the "Anthropogenic"?

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Philippe Chantreau at 03:56 AM on 6 January, 2023

I believe that this has been looked at already in details by multiple teams:

arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/electric-cars-have-much-lower-life-cycle-emissions-new-study-confirms/

Overall impact is highly dependent on battery manufacturing processes, and the ones made in Asia have an overall higher adverse impact:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721079493

By far the most comprehensive analysis I have seen on the subjects is that of the EEA:

https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/electric-vehicles-from-life-cycle

From section 6.1, summary of key findings, climate change impacts: ". In general, GHG emissions associated with the raw materials and production stage of BEVs are 1.3-2 times higher than for ICEVs (Ellingsen et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2016), but this can be more than offset by lower per kilometre use stage emissions, depending on the electricity generation source (Figure 6.1). Hawkins et al. (2013) reported life cycle GHG emissions from BEVs charged using the average European electricity mix 17-21 % and 26-30 % lower than similar diesel and petrol vehicles, respectively (Figure 6.1). This is broadly in line with more recent assessments based on the average European electricity mix (e.g. Ellingsen et al., 2016, Ellingsen and Hung, 2018."

The referenced papers are available, Hawkins et al (2013) is probably a little dated but not as European specific as others cited. Neugebauer, Zebrowski and Esmer (2022) has a variety of models that show benefits in most situations. Ellingsen and Hung (2018) is more specifically focused on the European generation mix. In general, CO2 emissions favor EVs, unless the EV would replace a still operational ICE car that is driven less than 5000miles/year. This holds even for generation mixes that are heavily reliant on coal.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #52 2022

Daniel Bailey at 07:57 AM on 1 January, 2023

@HairyButler

Michael Mann has tweeted against the conclusions in this paper (see these whole threads):

https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1603437412272726017
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1603446912073764865

Reading Hansen's piece, I was wondering why he never mentioned literally at least dozen papers (going back to before the AR5) plus the most recent assessment, the AR6 (I had a hard time believing that his entire author team also missed it, too).

This illustrates the need for peer review by non-affiliated experts prior to making things public...and to rely upon primarily the major scientific assessments and the published, peer-reviewed science.

This is the salient portion of the Lunt paper from 2010 that Mann references:

"Our combined modelling and data approach results in a smaller response (ESS/CS∼1.4) than has recently been estimated using palaeo data from the Last Glacial Maximum, 21,000 years ago (ESS/CS∼2). This is probably due to the fact that transitions from glacial to interglacial conditions in the Quaternary involve large changes in the Laurentide and Eurasian ice sheets (see, for example, ref. 36), which result in a significant large-scale albedo feedback in these regions that is irrelevant for climates warmer than present. Furthermore, the main driver of Quaternary climate change is ultimately orbital forcing, which is close to zero in the global mean, and is therefore difficult to reconcile with a traditional climate sensitivity analysis."

Note the expression of the ratio of ESS to CS (Earth System Sensitivity to Climate Sensitivity). If CS=3 C (per doubling), then therefore ESS would be about 4.2 C (and not 10).

We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.

One Planet Only Forever at 12:29 PM on 31 December, 2022

Reviewing all of the comments helped me develop the following response to peppers @86. I hope it is helpful.

The following questions hopefully establish a common understanding regarding the harm done by the proliferation of misunderstandings on a public-service system like Twitter.

Note: The harmful results of efforts to delay or diminish the awakening of understanding of harm being done, including the attempts to over-power or threaten people who try to help others learn to be less harmful, is not restricted to climate science.

Important questions for everyone:

1. Do you understand how Bayes’ theorem explains the way (perhaps the only way) that humans ‘minimize conflict of interests by developing and improving common sense understanding’? Ideological indoctrination will make people resist following Bayes’ theorem and fail to develop common sense understanding. Problematic beliefs include:

cheaper and easier (or more profitable, or more desired) justifies/excuses harm done

richer and more powerful people are excused for being more harmful because they can afford to, and are able to, be more harmful

harm done (to Others) can be excused if benefits are obtained (by the In Group).

Ideological beliefs can reduce conflicts within a group (or nation or group of nations). But the resulting group will increase their conflict with Others. Limiting the harm of global conflict requires everyone, or at least all leaders, to apply Bayes’ theorem in pursuit of improved awareness and understanding of what is harmful and how to be less harmful and more helpful to Others (that is the origin of important learning and presentations of understanding like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the IPCC, and the Sustainable Development Goals).

2. Do you accept that all of the Climate Myths presented under the Arguments tab are misunderstandings that everyone can learn to better understand? If not, revisit the Arguments after understanding the next question.

3. Do you accept that it is harmful to believe and propagate misunderstandings that would delay learning about the importance of rapidly ending fossil fuel use? Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone to learn to be less harmful and more helpful if there was less repetition of harmful misunderstandings, less temptation to excuse harmful actions? Wouldn’t it be better if there was a public gallery of misunderstandings with comprehensive, open to improvement, explanations everyone could learn from (like the SkS Arguments list)? Wouldn’t it be great if every posting that included a repetition of a misunderstanding directed viewers to the appropriate, already established, educational rebuttal?

4. Do you accept that a high level Ethical/Moral Rule is “Be less harmful (when possible)”? I admit that being harmless is not possible. To live you have to harm other life. But sustainable living is possible. It requires distinguishing ‘Needs essential to living’ from ‘All other desires’. The harm done by meeting essential needs can only be limited to ‘pursuing the least harmful ways to ensure those essential needs are met – By/For Everyone’. Desires, however, are not necessary. Desires should be screened/governed/limited so that the only desires acted on would be sustainable (without accumulating harm) if everybody did the desired action to the same degree (relates to the problem of developing people being tempted to want to live like the harmfully over-developed who are perceived to be superior).

That brings us to the population question raised by peppers. More people on the planet does result in more restrictions on ‘desired actions’. It also makes the provision of everyone’s essential needs more harmful. An understood solution is pursuing, and improving on, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Learning about the SDGs leads to understanding that pursuit of the goals would reduce the harmfulness of the developed and developing populations. And a recent research report in the Lancet “Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study” indicates that achieving the SDGs would also be expected to reduce the peak global population, primarily due to the birth-rate reductions expected to occur in societies with ‘more educated and freer women’.

Also, the more harmful the climate change impacts are the harder it is to achieve the SDGs. Exceeding 1.0 C of impact has been identified as entering the realm of significant risk of harm. Refer to my comment regarding the Story of the Week “1.5 and 2°C: A Journey Through the Temperature Target That Haunts the World” in the “2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #50”

With the above established, responses to specific statements made by Peppers @86 are as follows:

Responding to the population question point that “The causation is fossil fuels, the proliferation of them. But if it is the explosion of bodies from 1 to 8B, exactly matching the rise of Co2, is ID'd as the cause, then our solution would be re-thought as well.”

nigelj’s response @88 is great. But there is more.

The problem is admitted to be fossil fuels. But there is no admission of the need to ‘end the harm of fossil fuel use’. Not mentioning the harmful unsustainability of the ways of living developed by the ‘supposedly more superior people that Others aspire to be like’ indicates a lack of understanding of the basics of the issue (refer to the questions above).

Also, saying “An important part of my 8 billion comment goes past the division of consumption calcs, which I understood too...”, indicates more may be going on than a lack of understanding. Claiming that the comment regarding population “looks past” the fact that a small portion of the population has massive harmful impact is questionable. It is looking through, or looking around, or looking away from the understanding that more harmful people have to make more, and more rapid, corrections of how they live and that developing people should be helped to develop more sustainable lives with the least harmful transition through the fossil fuel use phase of development (waiting for technological developments that will be cheaper and more popular to end the harm done will fail without increased awareness and effective governing to limit misunderstanding and related harm done. Technological solutions, like nuclear, could be unsustainable and harmful like the problem they were believed to solve).

The problem is made worse by people perceiving the more harmful people to be superior. That misunderstanding could cause people to want to develop to be ‘part of that group and live like they do’. Developing a sustainable solution requires all of the ‘perceived to be superior people (not just the ones who care to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others)’ leading the rapid transition/correction past (away from) fossil fuel use.

Responding to the “One Planet, If you can decide your are so correct in defining that more input is deemed impossible to add anything, then you could move forward with the censoring and re-education plan. The world has seen that before however, and they are still reflecting, what were we thinking?”

Common sense understanding of the pursuit of improved awareness and understanding of what is harmful and how to be less harmful and more helpful to Others is not ‘my decision or definition’. It is common sense ethics/morality.

Claiming that limiting the influence of the proliferation of misunderstanding is ‘censorship’ is a misunderstanding.
Using the term re-education rather than saying ‘learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others’ is a misrepresentation because re-education has negative connotations that do not apply to learning to be less harmful and more helpful.

What the world ‘has seen before’ is the result of harmful misunderstandings becoming popular and powerful. That results in ideological indoctrination of populations (with nationalism and other selfish interests). And that causes the resulting population to powerfully and harmfully conflict with Others. They collectively resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. People should reflect on ‘Seeing what happened’ (continues to happen) within many political groups in many nations. Many groups become increasingly resistant to learning about ‘the harmful results’ of fossil fuel use. People should also reflect on and how other harmful beliefs are embraced by those groups as they ‘wrap themselves in flags’ and pursue the ability to have more influence to be more harmful.

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Long Knoll at 11:56 AM on 12 December, 2022

Thanks for the quick response.

The article 'Were skeptic scientists kept out of the IPCC' shows evidence that the working group did not suppress contrarian papers but honestly critiqued them, hence it can be argued that they also honestly critiqued Briffa's tree ring data (and from what I know, they did indeed and there was a detailed discussion of Briffa's tree ring data in the report). But someone making the argument I laid out in the above post might still say the quotes, including apparently quite explicit ones from Briffa himself, are evidence of improper pressure to create consensus rather than uncertainty for the policy makers, even if in this case there was ultimately no impact on the results. As you say, I think there's a good chance the quotes are taken out of context like so much of the selective quoting done by 'Climategate' proponents, but if they have been I can't find any material showing how they have been taken out of context.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46

wilddouglascounty at 02:39 AM on 4 December, 2022

2 Eddie,

Apologies for the delay; I just checked back today to see what you have done here. Thanks so much for this--I see that there are 137 folks as part of your channel, so I'll check out the other posts you've made there. I think small circles are really a good way to spread the conversation and discussions to elevate the discussion toward taking on the many tasks that will be required to create real change.

And 3/One Planet, I agree that acknowledging that climate change is a problem is the starting point for sustainable improvements. Different circles are at different points in this process, so fortunately we don't have to have all of humanity to agree to anything all at the same time in order to proceed.

I think also that the participants in the COP process are well past this point and that the real questions that have emerged in my mind and many others are: since fossil fuel interests have positioned themselves to be able to neutralize and even stop needed reforms called on by the scientific community in the COP meetings, how to proceed?

-Do we showcase their fossil fuel interests as sacrificing the ability to mitigate an increasingly hostile environment for short-term, selfish gain?

-Do we show that delays and resistance only increase the severity of large scale suffering, mass migrations, warfare and authoritarian regimes?

-Do we spend our time really showcasing successful transitions of large economies to drastically reducing emissions as well as showcasing economic development of the South in ways that are empowering and sustainable?

It's my sense that we need to be doing a mix of all of these and probably other initiatives if we are to have a chance. The important realization for me is that we cannot expect those changes to come through the COP process. There must be pressure applied in ways that the fossil fuels interests cannot so easily insert themselves into to stop.

I'm really interested in hearing more about these types of things and hope that this website will showcase these types of things more and more.

Models are unreliable

EddieEvans at 22:16 PM on 27 November, 2022

MA Rodger - - Thanks for the information. For the record, I'm still learning to navigate SS.

FYI: My chief goal, however useful, aims to make more information available on Youtube; I'd like to add your post to a growing project on climate deniers on one of my Youtube channels, "Climate Deception." Interestingly, my hobby with climate deception dovetails with climate damage, and global warming simplified. Although the global warming simplified project lags because it's hard to simplify beyond NASA's Climate Kids. So, I think I'm going to post the difficult reading on it too. I'm old and this is my most useful activity as it turns out. Regards.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #43 2022

Art Vandelay at 23:18 PM on 9 November, 2022

So it turns out that published studies exist. This from 2021.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346307914_Human_breath-

CO2_matters

Extract from the study..

In short, contrary to published claims [Alexander, 2010; Palmer, 2009; Withers, 2009], the assumption that breath emission is always ideally balanced by cycling of CO2 is not tenable. Given B > P, airborne flux b equals B – P. Cycling implies that breath emission B gives rise to an airborne flux b in excess of the cycling flux P, adding CO2 to the atmosphere. There is a whole range of positive values of b,
excepting only a single point where B coincides with P. Greenhouse effect and global warming will follow an increase in atmospheric CO2, making the escape of breath-CO2 relevant for the climate.
The mainstream argument maintains that 1) emission of CO2 by the breath of humans is fully compensated, largely by photosynthesis, and 2) only non-cyclic processes like the consumption of fossil fuels give rise to an airborne fraction of CO2 which alters the atmosphere. In contrast, I maintain that full compensation of breath emission by photosynthesis is not tenable. Rather, all emissions of CO2, including anthropogenic emission by the breath of humans, have an airborne fraction > 0, by means of which they affect the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse
effect.
While in the past an increase of the atmospheric greenhouse effect by human breath was denied, this increase, contrary to the burning of fossil fuel, turns out to be an unavoidable consequence of human physiology. It is linearly dependent on population size, thus birth control may be expected to cope with it.

Permitting: America’s next big climate conundrum

One Planet Only Forever at 02:46 AM on 16 October, 2022

David-acct @9,

I, like many others, pursue increased awareness and improved understanding about what is harmful and how to be less harmful and more helpful. I do that because that is what is needed for the development of sustainable improvements for the future of humanity. Every critical thinker knows that, but everyone should share that common sense governing objective.

So I welcome good reasons to improve my understanding.

A key point is ‘good reason’. And the interests and beliefs developed in the marketplace of popularity and profit are not ‘by default good reasons’. In fact, there is ample evidence that the developments of that marketplace game can be expected to be as harmful as can be gotten away with. And, secrecy, misleading marketing, and other forms of deception are key tactics in that game.

So, thank you for accepting all the other points I made, especially the repeated one about the harmful misleading game-play in the marketplace of popularity and profit.

With that established I will now update my understanding based on your latest comments. I appreciate that you still have 2 minor points of contention. Michael sweet and nigelj have provided good reasons in response to the concerns about the variability of renewable power generation. So there is no adjustment to be made by me on that point. Therefore, I will focus my response to the minor concern you express regarding the building of parts of an integrated renewable energy system on or adjacent to existing fossil fuel generation facilities.

Any fossil fuel power generation facility that is surrounded by residential development is likely harming those neighbours, especially the older ones (applicable to the plants and the neighbours). There are so many legitimate reports on that topic that I won’t bother pointing to a ‘favourite one’. But thank you for appearing to accept and agree that all the other fossil fuel plants that are not surrounded by neighbourhoods could, and should, have renewable energy systems built adjacent to them as they are phased out of use (and thank you for appearing to accept that your concern about the cost to remove the existing facility was not a valid concern because that full cost should be fully paid for by the owners of the fossil fuel facility).

Even if a fossil fuel plant is surrounded by neighbourhoods worth maintaining, unlike all the neighbourhoods that are now realizing that they have to consider relocation due to climate change threat, the site could have solar power generation maximized by installing solar panels on all of the homes and businesses adjacent to the plant. There could also be batteries in the homes and businesses. And there are many other ways to convert the site from its current harmful unsustainable developed state into a less harmful and more helpful (more sustainable) part of the system (making the system more sustainable).

Regarding back-up power supply for renewable energy generation, already addressed by michael sweet and nigelj, I will add the awareness of gravity battery systems ( that could also be installed on a site. They require very little footprint compared to a fossil fuel power plant. (Substantial amounts of easy to find reporting also exists for this, so I will not point to a ‘selected favourite’. Simply enter the term ‘gravity battery’ in an internet search)

That point raises an important understanding. Claiming that we need to wait for better battery technology to develop is a symptom of failing to critically and seriously investigate this issue. If ‘waiting for a better alternative to develop’ was to govern, then fossil fuel use never should have developed into the massive harmful activity that it has become. And the developing nations should never have been encouraged to start using fossil fuels.

I will close by summarizing that the minor points of contention you have raised are the result of misunderstanding developed in the system of competition for status based on popularity and profit. Don’t feel bad. The system made you do it. Only feel bad, because you would be, if you continued to resist changing your mind.

That system/game created the current massive problem(s) (it has developed many problems, not just harmful rapid global warming and resulting climate change). And it powerfully resists correction of the harmful developments that have incorrectly become so popular and profitable.

Popularity and Profitability do not, by default, mean that something is justified or correct. And failing prey to their temptations leads to the development of poor excuses for understandably incorrect beliefs and resulting harmful actions.

The corrections of the harmful unsustainable activity that had become so popular and profitable was technologically possible to implement decades ago. The only thing stopping the reduction of rate of harm done and limiting of total harm done is the resistance to correction in the system/games of popularity and profit that insidiously and harmfully encourage people to ‘want more without regard for limiting the potential harmful consequences’.

Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation

One Planet Only Forever at 09:44 AM on 28 August, 2022

JasonChen,

Perhaps a clarification of the issue being discussed would help. Discourse is only possible when there is a common understanding of what is being discussed.

The issue is the need to help people be less tempted to believe misunderstandings regarding climate science.

There is undeniably a problem of successful efforts to selectively/misleadingly tempt people to want a product or service that they do not 'need'. There is even the hope that people will be so powerfully tempted that they will consider an 'unnecessary want' to be an 'essential need' which will keep them from investigating or recognising harm done. Those marketing efforts include deliberately failing to investigate and inform about, or misinforming about, harmful risks or results of the 'hoped to be popularly needed' product or service.

'Does it work' is therefore regarding how effective the 'game' is at helping a person be less likely to be misled into misunderstanding climate science matters. The objective is to reduce the popular support for unnecessarily harmful human activity.

So it is possible that your perception of the issue is 'a good distance', remote, from the common sense of what the issue is. The popularity of the 'game' is not the issue. Neither is the possibility that someone who is fond of misunderstanding climate science matters would feel 'manipulated' by the game.

If you believe there is a better tool to help limit the popularity of harmful misunderstanding offer it up. It could be helpful beyond the challenge of the popularity of harmful misunderstandings regarding climate science. But it is common sense that it would be wise to use any such 'better' tool in addition to, not instead of, other helpful tools.

Remote sensing helps in monitoring arctic vegetation for climate clues

MA Rodger at 23:03 PM on 24 August, 2022

David-acct @3,

So you are actually saying that tree-line records assist in providing "a better proxy for temp," not that they are better relative to "proxies such as tree-rings," although you still suggest tree-line data would "most likely" have precedence over tree-ring data when the two datasets show differing results, but I'm not sure why that would be.

As for that 'Yamal controversy', I don't think there was anything that would have abated that particular denyospheric storm because the last thing the perpetrators were seeking was "reconciliation."

The subject review of tree-lines of Harsch et al (2009) 'Are treelines advancing? A global meta-analysis of treeline response to climate warming' is still a good start to understand the value of tree-line records as temperature proxies, to which we can now also add Hannson et al (2021) 'A review of modern treeline migration, the factors controlling it and the implications for carbon storage'

There's no tropospheric hot spot

MA Rodger at 19:23 PM on 23 August, 2022

Cedders @33,

And having had a read of that PDF...

Cedders @33,
Having examined the PDF (16 pages not 24), it is quite evident that it is a pile of utter nonsense, a "welcome to the lunatic asylum" message and not anything in any way scientifically-based.

The author is Piers Corbyn, a well-kown denialist and an elder brother of Jeremy Corbyn (a long-serving left-wing Labour MP who bizarrely gained the heady position of Leader of the Labour Party for 4½ years).

Piers Corbyn is described in Wikithing as "an English weather forecaster, businessman, anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist" and does feature here at SkS being (1) Cited within a spot of denialism of 2015 in the Daily Express tabloid/comic, (2) The main source of a pile of climate nonsense of 2013 from the then Mayor of London Alexander Boris von Pfiffle Johnson, a man now renowned throughout the known world for not being particularly truthful, (3) Listed here at SkS as a denialsit with zero peer-reviewed writings.

The 16 page thesis linked up-thread @33 is a 2019 thesis presented to the Reading University Debating Journal and sitting at the top of a list of 24 such theses posted 2018-19, top of the list because it is the most recent (the journal lasted less than a year), a list which addresses such important topics as 'Why Self-Service Checkouts are the Invention of the Devil' and 'The Great University of Reading Catering Con: Man Shall Not Live off Sandwiches Alone' and an anonymous piece 'Why I Support the Conservatives: The Most Successful Party in British History'.

The Piers Corbyn thesis begins by citing David Legates' dismissal of the 97% AGW consensus before dismissing that because "it is about facts; and no Global-Warming Inquisition is going to prevent me exposing their nonsensical theories."

Corbyn then kicks off by asserting anthropogenic CO2 comprises 4% of atmospheric CO2 (thus confusing FF carbon with naturally-cycled carbon) and that CO2 is not the main controller of global temperature (here presenting a graphic which confuses the US temperature with global temperature - shown below in this comment).
A further assertion is then presented, that CO2 is the result of warming oceans with six references/notes provided in support which seem to all point back to crazy denialist Murry Salby.

So, a la Salby, the present rise in CO2 is claimed to result from the good old Medieval Warm Period. A graphic is presented comparing a denialist 1,000y temperature record (based on the schematic FAR Fig 7c) with the much-confirmed scientifically-based Hockey Stick graph.
This brings us to the halfway page of Corbyn's denialist rant.

The thesis continues with pageful of misunderstanding of how the GH-effect works, ending with accusations that this misunderstood 'theory' breaks the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (or it does if you misinterpret the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics).
Happily, this misunderstanding is considered to be not supported by "better scientists" who consider the lapse rate. And this indeed is a 'better' consideration. But here Corbyn perhaps confuses the tropical 'hot spot' (which is caused by increased tropical rainfall transporting more latent up into the troposphere) with some CO2 effect. (The 'hot spot' results from a warmer tropics and not per se any enhanced GH-effect.) And he fails to address the reasons why there is difficulty detecting this tropical 'hot spot'. Indeed he brands it as a 'coldspot' that he seems to say is caused by "more CO2 & other GHGs" which cause a diurnal fluctuation in the IR "heat-exit height" to become greater and, due to the 4th-power in the SB equation, this causes cooling. Whether such a phenomenon extends beyond the tropics (thus globally more-than negating the 'hot spot') is not properly explained but, due to the lapse rate this phenomenon can apparently also negate "the original expected surface warming."

A first graphic box is presented with three unsubstantiated bullet points explaining "Why CO2 theory does not work" alongside two similar "apart from"s.
A second graphic box also titled "Why CO2 theory does not work" states:-

In the real atmosphere there are day/night temperature fluctuations (eg in upper atmosphere). They are larger with more CO₂ because CO₂ (infra red absorber / emitter) gains & loses heat easier than N₂ & O₂ and so enables all the air to adjust quicker.

This is a fundamentally different explanation from the previous fluctuation in IR "heat-exit height" explanation described earlier, and it is still wrong.
(A packet of air with X concentrations of CO2 will both emit and absorb an IR photons of quantity P. With absorb=emit, it is thus in equilibrium. Add CO2 so the concentration is doubled to 2X, and the emitting photons will double to 2P and the absorbed photons will also double to 2P so absorb=emit and the same equilibrium is maintained. The main result is that twice the level if IR emission has half the pathlength before absorption so at any point the IR flux remains unchanged. And CO2 does not "gain & lose heat easier than N₂ & O₂" when it remains thermally coupled to the N₂ & O₂. )
The remainder of this second graphic box on PDF page 9 is a little too confused to rebut with any confidence. A diurnal range of "about 5 or 6 deg" is given which is apparently a temperature range yet whatever “deg” means (presumably Kelvin), the bulk of the troposphere has a far smaller diurnal range than even 5ºF. The mechanism for the enhanced cooling from the "heat-exit height" is presented as due to a fluctuating temperature losing more heat (by radiating IR) than a constant temperature (which is true). A rather dodgy-looking equation is followed by the note "Detail subject under research" but no reference is given and three-years-on there is no sign of such "research."
And a third graphic box is shown on the next page also titled "Why CO2 theory does not work," this third such graphic mainly presenting a pair of images from Australian denialist David M. W. Evans who has his own SkS page of climate misinformation.

The thesis then turns to the proposition that it is not CO2 but solar forces that "rules climate temperature" with the dotted line on the graphic below described as such a ruling influence. It apparently shows how the "9.3yr lunar-nodal crossing & the full 22yr solar magnetic cycle" allegedly shift the jet stream and "many circulation patterns." The graphic's 60-yr periodicity is less than convincing,being fitted to US rather than global temperature which, when extended beyond the 1895-2008 period shows itself to be simple curve-fitting (eg the Berkeley Earth US temperature record 1820-2020 does not show it, even to a blind man). The graphic was presented by Corbyn at the Heartland Institute's 2009 conflab in NY in which Corbyn [audio] insists other findings demonstrate “something is going on” but why it is this graphic being reused in this 2019 thesis is not clear – perhaps the forecast of world temperature dropping to 1970s levels by 2030 is too evident on other slides he used in that Heartland presentation.
To support his thesis Corbyn mentions an alleged cover-up by the likes of the BBC in reporting only global warming when the 'true' data shows cooling, the reported support for all this Piers Corbyn craziness from oil companies who shy away only because they want to use AGW to "make higher profits" and how these AGW-inspired mitigation agendas are already directly responsible for needlessly killing "millions" annually.
The thesis ends with a challenge:-

It is for this reason that I, Piers Corbyn, challenge whoever is willing in Reading University or other appropriate institutions to a debate on the failed Global warming scam vs evidence-based science.

So I interpret the thesis as a "welcome to the lunatic asylum" message from Piers Corbyn.
Piers Corbyn graphic

IPCC Explainer: Mitigation of Climate Change

dennisar at 00:32 AM on 19 August, 2022

Hello John Lang,

Wow!

These graphics and the graphics in the other work listed above will be incredibly valuable for me in my advocacy work. I am a fortunate Making-Sense-of-Climate-Denial alumni who went on to become a volunteer Climate Reality Project Leader.* I am now working with 1. the Climate Reality Project, 2. the Climate Reality Boston Metro chapter**, 3. HACE (Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment)***, and my town's Climate and Sustainability Action Plan Steering Committee.

I will continue to investigate your work and share it wherever it seems applicable. I will also contact you to introduce myself and explain whenever I'd like to use your work for specific applications and how you'd like me to cite it. I am excited. I've only begun to think of how I can "speak" with your graphics.

Your work is an incredible resource for me, and I argue for everyone who wants to speak with the general public about these issues as you and Katharine Hayhoe so eloquently point out is essential. Thank you.

Sláinte,
Dennis Richards
#ClimateReality

* Climate Reality Project
** Climate Reality Boston Metro
*** Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment

Taking the Temperature: a dispatch from the UK

One Planet Only Forever at 02:30 AM on 24 July, 2022

Fixitsan,

Regarding the Scotsman article about things near Edinburgh likely being ‘below annual flood levels in 2050’ have a look at the Climate Central map that is linked in the article:

“A map produced by Climate Central, an independent organisation of leading scientists, shows the most under-threat areas.

The map predicts the impact climate change would have by 2050.”

The presented description of the actual Climate Central map is “Land projected to be below annual flood level in 2050”.

Indeed, the approach roads to the Kincardine Bridge and Clackmannanshire Bridge (not the tops of the bridges) are indicated to be below the likely annual flood level in 2050. The approaches to the A91 bridge over the Forth would also be below the likely annual flood level in 2050. And the approaches, and significantly more road length, to the M9 and A905 crossings of the River Carron are also below the likely 2050 annual flood level.

That leads to understanding an answer to your question in your comment @24: "What is one to say to someone who shows to me that the hottest May was nearly 200 years ago ?"

The problem appears to be a lack of interest in more fully, and more logically, investigating things, even things that are rather easy to more logically fully investigate and better understand.

Taking the Temperature: a dispatch from the UK

Fixitsan at 22:06 PM on 23 July, 2022

I don't recall ever suggesting there has been no warming.

We are definitely only talking about a single location on the planet which continually monitors the temperature, unlilke most locations on the planet.

I suppose most people would think that the hottest day of any month, or the hottest average recorded temperature for a whole month would by now, given the frequency and strength of argument update in the media, show without doubt that all the hottest months are relatively recent.

But there is clearly 1 location on the earth where that is not true.

What is one to say to someone who shows to me that the hottest May was nearly 200 years ago ?

I'm in the UK, the UK news swamps me constantly with global warming warnings whenever a single hot day comes along and an idiot lights a fire (clearly even at 100C dry grass doesn't burst into flames, ignition is still always required, self ignition never happens at lower temperatures)

I have a similar issue with sea level rise to be honest, living near to the Forth Bridge which the Scottish National newspaper warned could be under water by 2050. A brief calculation reveals that in order to cover the Forth Bridge the required rate of sea level rise is 1500mm per year. Nasa shows it is currently 3.4mm per year and the historical record shows sea levels have risen at between 1.5mm to 3.5mm per year for about 7000 years.

Who checks the media ? certainly nobody in the science community seems to pull them up for these outrageous claims, but should someone suggest that there hasn't been as much warming as the IPCC says, or the danger is less than claimed, the science community as it is, only puts it's gloves on then, but never when claims are reidiculously overstated and that is a very disappointing judgement to have to make of people who claim to be deeply interested in truth and facts

Sea level rise, we were told would cause The Maldives to be evacuated within 30 years, is another outrageous claim I need to mention as I'm on the subject. I can say that now , because that claim was made 30 years ago and since then the population of the Maldives has doubled and banks lend easily to build sea front resorts and CO2 levels have increased accordingly. I guess we need to throw bank managers in with other people who are acting irresponsibly together with scientists who permit lies to be published

Back to the Forth Bridge, anyone can see where the high tide mark was in 1892 photographs and hold it up today to see where the hgih tide mark is today, and discover that the sea level rise over the past 130 or so years is nothing unusual.

I'm dining tonight with a couple of mid 20's people, who fear, literally fear, sea level rise in this area thanks to media lies and exaggerations, which were made with absolutely no consideration for either what has gone before or what is most likely to happen next (According to NASA). All I'm saying is their distorted view of reality spoils what could otherwise be a good night out. And I bet they would not believe me if I said the hottest month of May in the UK happened hundreds of years ago, despite the record showing otherwise. They're virtually convinced this isle is about to be washed away

Science, sort yourself out, and please, please, shoot down the messengers of lies who predict 1500mm of sea level rise per year, that's nearly 5mm PER DAY are you absolutely out of your mind ? If you allow those lies to persist the net result is it becomes difficult to believe scientists

I am sure at this point in time that a reader of this message is actuvely taking out his TI calculator to try to prove how 1500mm per year is actually possible.

No it isn't, put the calculator away, write a letter to the people who are lying in the news and demand they tell the truth instead if you're a decent sort of human being

I think there has been some warming over the past 100 years

I believe there can never be climate stability, and climate change is the only possible scenario given the large numbers of inputs and feedbacks which are never stable

Therefore I feel it is irresponsible of science to allow any sort of publishing of an argument which claims we can 'get control' of the climate as if the temperature will stabilise and never change once again. It's unicorn thinking. Dire. Idiotic. It needs to be stamped out or else science is guilty of permitting lies to be propogated

Recklessness defined: breaking 6 of 9 planetary boundaries of safety

One Planet Only Forever at 07:03 AM on 22 July, 2022

The analogy of the dangerous bus is good. But a Structure analogy may be better, though far less amenable to engaging and colourful story-telling.

An important point is the unsustainability of life on this planet if any of the identified safe limits (boundaries) are exceeded. A related understanding is that it is likely that additional Boundaries will be identified (the ‘Novel Entities’ category is for newly identified boundaries). And the competition for popularity and profit has proven it is very unlikely to investigate and limit the harm done by its developments.

The Structure analogy would be something like this:

This amazing planet is the only structure/system available to humans that is certain to be able to support life that humans can be a sustainable part of.

An environment developed that has sustained a diversity of life for millennia. Life evolved in ways that were sustainable parts of the developed evolving structure/system.

Like any physical structure (building), parts of the global life support structure can be degraded. What is important to the future of life is that ‘critically important aspects of the structure are not impacted beyond the safe limits (degraded or over-loaded)'. The Planetary Boundaries are critically important structure aspects. In Structure design they would be like the elements of the Primary Structure System. If part of the primary system fails the entire structure will fail. The life support structure is at risk of failure if any of the critical boundary safe limits are exceeded. And the magnitude of the failure will increase the longer, and more severely, any safe limit is exceeded.

Through the millennia the global life support structure has had parts (regions) develop to be very unlivable ‘considered to be deserted’. But the changes were almost always gradual enough, or localized, allowing life to continue to evolve and adapt to the slow changes. However, occasionally something happened that pushed things beyond a global safe boundary for life and did it so rapidly that a lot of life perished.

It is helpful to identify which boundaries are beyond the safe limit. But what is more important is the history and current trend regarding each critical concern. Ocean acidification looks OK at this moment (below the safe limit). But if the trend is ‘rapid recent increase likely to continue that way for a while’ then it is a potentially larger problem than a case where impacts are beyond the safe limit but are declining. And that ‘trend rate’ evaluation would clearly indicate that Climate Change is a major problem (note: in the original Planetary Boundary evaluation, done only a few years ago, Climate Change impacts were below the safe level).

Humanity has developed, for the first time in history, to undeniably be ‘pushing things beyond global safe boundaries for life so rapidly that a lot of life has and will perish’. Many critical aspects of the planetary life support structure are being rapidly severely degraded because of ‘human development’. And many, but not all, members of the developed global leadership (the global wealthy and powerful) struggle (fail) to help stop the obvious undeniable destruction. The unhelpful ones try to:

maintain their status in the Status Quo (maintain popularity and profitability)

deny or diminish the severity of problem (promote deliberately misleading marketing to get people to misunderstand the issue)

stifle, threaten, or attack anyone who tries to raise awareness or improve understanding of the problem and the required corrections of the developed Status Quo.

Recklessness defined: breaking 6 of 9 planetary boundaries of safety

One Planet Only Forever at 03:41 AM on 22 July, 2022

Hedeholt @2,

I tend to agree that ‘developed measures of poverty and its reduction’ (said that way for a good reason), are not based on a fuller understanding of what is going on. The Sustainable Development Goals do a decent job of presenting the required corrections of what has developed. And limiting global warming impacts makes it easier to achieve and improve on the SDGs.

Indeed, independent farming families can incorrectly be counted as ‘living in poverty’ if they do not appear to participate in economic activity. And they can be harmed by having global trade reduce their ability to benefit from selling their produce in their local markets. But in many cases their lives can be at unnecessary risk due to many things including:

a lack of sustainable access to food and water (lack of assistance in times of need)

a lack of health care

a lack of education (including not learning how to farm more sustainably)

Properly discovering who needs help to sustainably improve their lives is challenging. Many people living in rain forests only need to have the negative impacts on their environment ‘by others’ stopped. They only need ‘assistance’ if the harm done to their environment will not be stopped.

That is a way to understand many developed problems. ‘An individual or collective portion of humanity’ develops activity that is beneficial (profitable) for them or their group (sub-set of humanity), but is understandably detrimental to other life (including, but not restricted to, future generations of humanity). And that group mislead themselves and others into believing that their actions are ‘not unacceptably harmful’ or that their harmful unsustainable activity benefits other humans. They try to claim that the broader benefits of their harmful profitable pursuits include reduced poverty levels. But they do not rigorously investigate their claimed benefits to ensure that the improvements are valid and sustainable.

That understanding applies to the Ozone case (and climate impacts and so much more):

Some humans developed ways of personally benefiting that were damaging the ozone layer.

The ones benefiting did not investigate if what they were doing was harmful.

Eventually, people external to the systems of pursuit of benefit discovered that harm was being done and how it was being done.

The marketplace competition for ‘more perceptions of improvement’ failed to respond to becoming aware that the developed popular and profitable activities were harmful.

Even learning that the damage done to the ozone layer was going to be harmful to the ones benefiting from the damage done did not result in effective marketplace corrections.

It took some time, but eventually global leadership powers agreed to actions that would collectively reduce the harm done. But even their agreement allowed harm to continue to be done. Each nation’s leadership was allowed to decide how rapidly they would stop the harmful activities.

The Climate Impact story goes beyond the story regarding Ozone impacts.

An added step in the climate impact story is the massive continuing efforts by ‘beneficiaries of fossil fuel use’ to raise doubts about the need to rapidly stop the harmful activity, efforts to delay correction of what has developed. And one of their most twisted misleading marketing efforts is claiming that reducing fossil fuel use will harm the poorest.

The only people who can really be excused for attempting to benefit more from fossil fuel use today are the people who are living less than basic decent lives (including the desperately poor in the supposedly more advanced nations). The richest can afford to reduce their pursuit of fossil fuel benefits (they could have afforded it 30 years ago). And the richest should be helping the poorest improve their lives with minimum harm done, with minimum pursuit of benefit from fossil fuel use, even if that causes the richest to lose some degree of their ‘developed perceptions of superiority’.

It's cooling

One Planet Only Forever at 01:27 AM on 20 July, 2022

Rationalise @320,

My personal beliefs (open to improvement) include:

learning (improved understanding) is developed by the pursuit of increased awareness of what is going on (evidence and thoughtful consideration consistent with all of the evidence) with a focus on limiting harm done.

Science efforts that are not focused on improving understanding and limiting the potential harm done, especially the potentially devastating science of marketing, can be very bad.

Increased awareness of the evidence limits the range of reasonable explanations of what is going on (and exposes misleading marketing). Obtaining more evidence legitimately cancels (corrects) beliefs that are inconsistent with the evidence.

That is what science pursues - improved understanding of what is actually going on. Science can be especially helpful when it exposes new areas of improved understanding, like discovering harmful consequences of popular and profitable pursuits of personal benefit that had not been investigated or were attempted to be hidden or be doubted by people benefiting from harm done.

Based on those beliefs (understandings), I am pretty sure that the inconsistencies of each Climate Myth vs. the available evidence and a more consistent, but open to improvement (common sense), understanding has been presented. Of course, new evidence (not different opinions) could change the developed, open-to-improvement understanding.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #28 2022

One Planet Only Forever at 07:56 AM on 17 July, 2022

Doug,

I appreciate that there are more rigorous/robust ways for a team to do the investigation/evaluation that Reynolds performed solo. But after reading the presentation and reflecting on it I am updating my initial comment.

Reynolds makes good points about summary statements and press releases needing to be consistent with the understanding of the evidence. However, the following quotes appear to indicate that the author lacks awareness of the evidence and understanding of the bigger picture that SRM is a part of.

Quote at the end of Case 1 evaluation:

“Whether the disruption of the Asian summer monsoon is enough to argue against SRM depends on other scientific questions (What would be the expected agricultural impacts? How would evaporation and water availability change? Could water storage and irrigation systems mitigate any negative impacts?) as well as normative and political ones (Would the reduction of other climate change impacts outweigh this regional precipitation one? Could other countries and regions compensate negatively affected areas?)."

Quote in Discussion:

“Likewise, one could argue that my critique of the generalized assumed regime implicitly assumes that SRM would be used in a nearly optimal, globally coordinated manner. However, the papers in question generalize assumed regimes that would be in multiple actors’ interests and likely within their capabilities to prevent.”

The author appears to be unaware of the history of failure of multiple actors to collectively prevent harm done by ‘actors pursuing benefit from actions that harm Others’ (not just the case of failure to limit global warming impacts). Total human wealth has grown far more rapidly than global population. In spite of centuries of perceived per capita advancement, many less fortunate people still live far less than decent basic lives and die unnecessarily early deaths. And perceptions of advancement and reduction of poverty due to unsustainable harmful activity like fossil fuel use are not sustainable impressions of improvement.

The following quote in the Discussion is also questionable.

“My critiques of inappropriate reference world and focus on the residuals assert that SRM should be compared with a world of elevated GHG concentrations, not a preindustrial one.”

SRM evaluations, like any other scientific investigation of part of a bigger picture, should be consistently presented in the context of understanding of the bigger picture. For SRM, the bigger picture is the requirement for global leadership action to limit peak ghg impacts to 2.0C (ideally limiting impacts to 1.5C) plus actions to rapidly bring CO2 levels back down to 350 ppm (or perhaps even lower would be better) and strictly limit other ghgs. That understanding should be the ‘reference world’ (baseline) for evaluating the potential benefit of ‘temporarily adding SRM’. And SRM, temporarily applied that way, needs to be proven to harmlessly provide global benefits. The major challenge would be to have near certainty that there would not be harm done by ‘adding SRM’. Until global leadership consistently proves its ability to rapidly effectively limit and remedy harm done by pursuits of benefit, it is inappropriate to encourage any ‘added’ actions that may be harmful in spite of perceptions of improvement.

A Building Code analogy would be better than my original comment example of medical treatments needing to be ‘real world tested’ to prove they are safe and helpful before being used to ‘safely actually help a patient’.

A Building Code analogy highlights that the important evaluation of SRM is not a focus on bits of hoped for benefits like: less warming, less sea level rise, or less storm intensity. In a Building Code analogy, SRM is like a ‘novel building system’. It is not a rigorously proven ‘tried and true’ system.

Building Codes present minimum checks to be performed on known and proven to be reliable structural systems. They make it clear that ‘novel materials or systems’ (not already well proven) must be proven to be reliable safe ways of building a structure before they are used. And it appears to be virtually impossible to ‘prove the safety of the novel SRM system in the real world before SRM is implemented’.

From a Building Code analogy perspective SRM would not be within the realm of relevant helpful options for scientific investigation. Investigating SRM ‘benefits’ without focusing on the potential for harm would be in the realm of fantastic (fantasy) science investigation. It may produce interesting ‘new understanding’, but should not be a prominent focus of investigation.

That leads to the same conclusion as my original comment:

Never lose focus on the need to limit harm done. And never forget how unexpectedly (shockingly knowingly) harmful human actions can be.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #28 2022

One Planet Only Forever at 08:15 AM on 15 July, 2022

“Communication of solar geoengineering science: Forms, examples, and explanation of skewing” is interesting with some points meriting some consideration. I have not thoroughly read the item. But I have read enough to make the following critical observations (making no mention of points I consider worthy of consideration). I will carefully read the entire document to see if my initial impressions presented below need to be revised.

1. The author appears to have sought out examples that fit their desired conclusions. Then they played some games to get a 'best fit'. They provide no examples of the opposite of the type of examples they chose to focus on.

2. The author appears to be unaware that there is an important distinction between solar radiation modification (SRM) and medical treatments (they make many subjective comparisons between SRM and medical treatments - like "This important distinction can be clarified by analogy. Despite its own risks and negative side effects, chemotherapy is sometimes used to treat cancer."). Most medical treatments by something like:

initial rigorous testing on non-humans,

if the non-human treatment passes that initial testing then testing is done on a small number of carefully selected humans,

if that testing is passed then testing is done on a larger and broader population,

if that testing is passed then testing is done on an even larger and broader population.

And medical treatment tests are often done for a long periods of time to potentially discover unanticipated long-term consequences. COVID-19 vaccine testing was an exception to the longer-term testing of other medical treatments because of the clear evidence of the risk of significant harm done by COVID-19 infections.

There do not appear to be any non-planetary objects to meaningfully experiment SRM on. There are not hundreds of planets to have the second testing run on. There are not thousands of planets to have subsequent testing done on. There is this only one planet that, without humans messing it up by behaving like an asteroid, should be habitable for humanity for 10s of millions of years.

It is absurd to suggest that it is acceptable to run a global experiment on the planet. It is especially absurd to suggest the ‘need for, and benefit of, an SRM global experiment’ because leaders will not do what needs to be done (disappoint a portion of the global population that believes it is superior). Global Leadership needs to rapidly end the continued forcing of CO2 and other ghgs into the atmosphere )(which is an unacceptable global experiment that is not ‘mitigated’ by additional global scale experimentation).

3. The conclusions by the author regarding reasons for concern about how scientific presentations on SRM may be interpreted fails to mention the potential for political leaders (policy-makers) to be tempted to consider the potential for SRM to be a ‘solution’. The author appears to be unaware that some policy-makers have already exhibited a willingness to seek excuses for increasing harm to be done to future generations by the global leadership of the current generation failing to effectively reduce the harm being done. Some political game players may even selfishly consider it acceptable to delay the reduction of harm done, do more harm, because ‘future generations should be able to develop and use SRM’.

That said, climate science is complex. And the diversity of action plans in response to the undeniable harm being done deserve consideration - never losing focus on the need to limit the harm done, and never forgetting how unexpectedly harmful human actions can be.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25 2022

One Planet Only Forever at 04:22 AM on 25 June, 2022

The following NPR item exposes the challenges of getting people to better understand climate science (or any improved understanding).

Factual climate change reporting can influence Americans positively, but not for long

The study referred to confirms that accurate reporting regarding climate science can be temporarily influence many Americans to be more concerned about reducing climate change impacts. But it also confirms that many Americans are easily tempted to unlearn what they learned when they are later presented with misleading marketing regarding climate change.

The authors believe that means that more repeating of accurate climate science information will be a solution. That is likely only part of the solution. And, by itself, the repeating of accurate understanding of the requirement to correct harmful developed popular and profitable stuff is unlikely to be a solution. However, it is likely almost impossible to prove what needs to be done to sustainable correct harmful misunderstandings because the other thing the study exposes is how difficult it is to perform social science research.

The study does not appear to establish a comprehensive understanding of the 'starting point beliefs and basis for those beliefs' for each participant in the study. They did not delve into what the participant originally believed and why. That would include verifying how many times they had seen messages aligned with their beliefs and how those messages were presented (how scientifically misleading were the messages that form the participants starting point). They also did not investigate what motivated the participant to develop their starting point belief.

The study appears to compare each study participant's level of belief that climate change is real and that government should act: before being shown accurate science information, immediately after the accurate presentation, and after being shown subsequent messages that included misleading marketing messages.

The reasons for not investigating the participant's starting point in more depth include:

the attempt to determine the starting point beliefs and the participant's motivations would likely bias the study.

the more difficult part of base-lining study participants is that the study participants may not accurately share their history or motivations, either because of suspicions about the study or simply because it is more subconscious than being something they are honestly aware of.

What is undeniable is that many people develop a powerful preference for harmful misunderstanding (the persistence of popularity of harmful climate misunderstanding is one of the many proofs of that). They can exhibit an appropriate response when they know they are being observed regarding their response to accurate climate science information. But, given an excuse, they will revert to a powerful preference for harmful misunderstanding.

Therefore, in addition to requiring all leadership contestants and all news media to only report accurate science information, there needs to be actions that limit the repeating of harmful misleading marketing messages in alt-media venues, especially the influential social media systems - no matter how loud and angry the demands for 'Freedom to believe whatever a person wants to believe' become.

New IPCC report: Only political will stands in way of meeting the Paris targets

One Planet Only Forever at 13:20 PM on 14 April, 2022

I share Eclectic's interest in seeing rayates55 provide more detailed thoughts.

I am well aware of the harmful history of success of political and consumerism misleading marketing tempting people to believe harmful misunderstandings rather than critically investigate things and learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others.

SkS includes many helpful tools regarding misleading marketing targeting climate science. Those understandings relate to other harmful misleading marketing that tempts people to like to benefit from harmful activity and related harmful misunderstanding that excuses the harm done, or discredits and distracts from evidence of the harm done, by those who benefit from harm being done.

Distracting misleading efforts can include attempts to focus attention on the growing population rather than the highest harming portion of the population that has set harmful examples that many lower status people can be expected to aspire to develop towards.

Clearly, the policy development that is required must focus on identifying harmful pursuits of benefit and make those pursuits less desirable (more expensive or harder to do) regardless of the potential popularity and profitability of more harmful actions being permitted.

The lack of political will is understandable and is understandably unacceptable.

The Climate Shell Game

One Planet Only Forever at 08:55 AM on 24 March, 2022

Evan, nigelj,

I am still pondering all of this, so thanks for the feedback.

Another observation (like a question), but this time directly linked to a specific point of the presented information.

The question is: Why is there a lack of rigorous effort to investigate potential harm of developments, and lack of related leadership actions and policy implementation, to limit harm done?

In the Science Disconnect image there is something missing. 'The scientific investigation of the potential harm of new developments' is missing. The people pursuing profit and popularity understand that many people who developed by being immersed in the pursuit of benefit from new developments (consumers) are only potentially interested in 'personal harm'. Harm to Others, especially future generations is irrelevant to them. And, even if there is risk of personal harm, many people seem OK with that if the sales pitch for the new thing seems to be 'promising enough potential personal benefit'.

It is obvious that serious investigation into the potential harm of new developments is not something that the power players in the developed competitions for perceptions of status care about. In fact, it is pretty apparent that the power players likely have powerful motivations to stifle any potential investigation into the potential harm of what they benefit from. And there is powerful knowledge of misleading marketing power that is at their disposal to fight against that type of investigation happening or its results becoming common sense understanding among their captive audience of compliant, desperate, easily manipulated consumers.

That leads to another question: What will effectively un-brainwash people who have learned (developed a way of thinking) driven by liking what they perceive to be personally enjoyable, thrilling, or beneficial? What will change the mind of someone who will passionately rely on misunderstanding to defend and excuse what they like to believe against evidence that it is harmful? Older people can still learn. But they have developed many beliefs that can be hard to over-turn (the mind builds those short-cuts through learning). And if they sense personal benefit is obtained by preserving a harmful misunderstanding (meaning they will have to give up personal benefit if they give up the harmful misunderstanding) they are likely to passionately insist on more harmfully misunderstanding things (they get angrily resistant when pushed toward corrected understanding that they sense they will not personally benefit from).

How to be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, presents an interesting understanding based on the origin of the term racism being the 'race (or competition) for superiority; the development of artificial and likely unjustified hierarchies of people. And he mentions the problem of climate change several times in the book as a harmful result of persistent harmful misunderstanding. His conclusion is essentially that the solution requires institutional, systemic, policy changes. And the policy changes require the people who 'care to address the problem' to have the power to make the policy changes happen.

A related understanding is that "everybody's actions add up". Regarding climate change, that obviously is why the problem continues to grow. More people are continuing to cause more harmful impact thta adds up. And the solution is people acting helpfully to limit the harm done. And the policy changes required need to equitably limit everybody's harmful contribution. The less fortunate should be the only ones who 'temporarily' benefit from harm done (not any of the most fortunate). And the more fortunate, all of them, especially the most fortunate, need to lead the rapid correction of what has developed. Any more fortunate people 'freer to believe and do as they please' makes the future situation worse than it needs to be, including the bad example they set for others to aspire to develop towards.

The Climate Shell Game

Evan at 21:21 PM on 23 March, 2022

jan, I started writing analogies for the very purpose you describe: to reach the masses. I work in the sciences and generally communicate like an engineer. But I understand the need to which you're referring to speak to lay people on a different level. And some times this gets me in trouble with climate scientists because I will sacrifice scientific rigor to improve clarity and understanding.

One of the problems we face is the mental, digital switch: all or nothing. If people lose hope, they say, "What's the point in trying." Yet life is often lived in a gray, imperfect zone, and we extract meaning from daily struggles with the results of less-than-perfect decisions. Whatever happens in the future with our imperfect political systems, life will go on, and the better people understand what is happening and why, the better they will be able to navigate life's bumpy roads.

SkS is a great forum for discussing climate-science communication strategies.

The Climate Shell Game

MA Rodger at 10:58 AM on 22 March, 2022

I cannot agree with the notion set out by the OP that "accelerating" AGW is being driven by the rise in global population.

Firstly, yes, the global population is increasing, presently at 80 millions per year, and the population & CO2 emissions rises are very similar, but the societies with rising population are not the major contributors to the emissions rises. There is thus no viable connection between population & CO2 emissions.
Secondly, what is meant by the idea that AGW is "accelerating" does need to be nailed down before it is presented in such an analogy.

I do agree with the general view that there is a disconnect between the science and the real-world policies to mitigate AGW.
There certainly is a "don't scare the horses" agenda being propagated by politicians. (Or perhaps it is the civil servants that advise dumb politicians who are doing the propagating.) The idea that we can scale up renewables to achieve a 50% cut in GHGs by 2030 and 100% cut in CO2 by 2050 is not practical given the present efforts to achieve it.
I am from UK whose ruling politicians are not-so-long-ago climate-change-deniers. They delight in telling the world how we have cut our emissions by a world-beating 40% since 1990. Ignoring the significant exporting of emissions through the period since 1990 that allowed the 40% cut to be achieved, we are still (2020 data) at 32M toe non-fossil-fuels primary energy production, a value that hasn't moved since 2017. (See DUKES 2021 datasets) So no sign of any actions to address any looming climate emergency. Instead we get bonkers Boris and his world-beating nonsense.
So I generally agree with the message the OP is hoping to provide, but am not at all happy with the analogies.

I would also point to errors in the portrayal of "net zero". The zero is about CO2 emissions and not about atmospheric concentrations. The scenario SSP1-1.9 hits net zero emissions by 2050 but atmospheric ppms peak and begin the drop from 2040 (at 440ppm according to Meinshausen et al 2020).

The problem of growth in a finite world

nigelj at 12:32 PM on 1 March, 2022

Reading Evans article I recalled this:

"The world’s biggest carbon-removal plant just opened. In a year, it’ll negate just 3 seconds’ worth of global emissions....Put another way, Kalmus told Insider, “at any given moment, it will capture one 10-millionth of humanity’s current emissions. ”

www.businessinsider.com.au/carbon-capture-storage-expensive-climate-change-2021-9?r=US&IR=T

This doesn't look very promising even if efficiency improves. You would obviously need considerable reliance on other technologies as well. There are other negative emissions technologies like enhanced rock weathering, planting trees, BECCS and regenerative agriculture, and a combination looks feasible to me and reduces pressure on planetary mineral resources. I believe it could be done in theory if the motivation is there. The operative word is "if".

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

MA Rodger at 22:43 PM on 27 February, 2022

Santalives @28,
You now present a third pile of nonsense here at SkS. At least you show a level of consistency. Coe et al (2021) 'The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures' is as ridiculous as the other two you presented.

Coe et al (2012) claims that it addresses the issue of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) which, as is well known, has not been well-nailed-down by science for four decades now. So it would be quite a feat if there was even a smidgeon of promise in this paper to some contribution to the asssessment of ECS.
I could set out why this is an entirely non-scientific paper that well deserves its place in the trash can but in your ignorance you would likely see this as "one side" being disrespectful to "the other side".

So instead let me address what these numpties Coe, Fabinski & Wiegleb are doing that is so badly wrong.

The crux of the ignorance presented within Coe et al (2012) begins to congeal in their Section 1.4. Here they derive entirely on their own** a value called “n” the “energy retention factor” given "a" the "atmospheric absorptivity" (or the proportion of surface radiation gets to space through a clear atmosphere. By using HITRAN to derive "a" (the calculated percentage of surface radiation that reaches space through that clear atmosphere), they derive "n" by balancing "a" against the radiation that has to reach space to balance the incoming solar warming.
(**Note the one citation presented by the numpties for this grand work, Wilson & Gea-Banacloche [2012], is a total misrepresentation.)

The process they use runs as follows.

If a black body of 288K (representing the surface temperature) was in equilibrium with today's absorbed solar energy which equates to a 255K black body, they calculate that the energy out into space would be just 61.5% of the 288K black body radiation.
Thus, they derive for today's atmosphere (with a=a₀₎ n.a₀ = 38.5% of the surface radiation will be absorbed by the atmosphere. However, they also calculate using the grown-up HITRAN database, that the transmission through today's clear atmosphere of such 288K black body radiation would be a₀ = 73.0% allowing them to derive in their Section 2.7 a value for "n"; n = 52.7%.
And this incredibly simplistic method allows all the sceintific effort over the last four decades attempting to derive accurate ECS values to be sidestepped. Even the complex impact of clouds on this finding is sweetly side-stepped because, as they tell us in their Section 5.1, clouds are already accounted for in the derivation of "n".

And all this is their own work. No supporting evidence. What clever numpties are these Coe, Fabinski & Wiegleb.

Of course, there are feedback mechanisms to be negotiated and the numpties calculate (using simplistic assumptins) feedback values for water vapour (+18%) and the wavelength change in the radiation from a warmer world (-5%) with a net result feedback of (1.18 x 0.95 =) +12%.
They then calculate the impact of differing levels of CO2 GHGs on the absorption of surface radiation through a clear atmosphere to calculate direct warming from a doubling of CO2 (400ppm to 800ppm) of +0.45ºC (when the science is irrefutably sure the value is +1.0ºC) and thus with a feedback of +12%, they can derive ECS = +0.5ºC (when the science says +1.5ºC to +4.5ºC).

Of course, the GH-effect doesn't work in anything like the manner assumed by Coe et al (2012) so all these numpties Coe, Fabinski & Wiegleb are doing is advertising their own stupidity.

Study: Climate-changed rainfall dampens economic growth

One Planet Only Forever at 01:37 AM on 23 February, 2022

Santalives,

I am a professional engineer, so I have learned to pursue constant learning to limit harm done. And I have an MBA, so I am aware of the motivation of pursuit of profit and the potential for harm to be done, especially through misleading marketing. So maybe my perspective and understanding will help you better understand this matter.

Economists have no laboratory study style way to investigate their theories. They can only infer things from the observations of incredibly complex integrated systems by observing sub-sets of the incredibly complex integration of All Life on This Planet.

This study did a rigorous review of regional economic detailed data paired with regional weather data and identified statistically significant correlations. Attempting to determine the exact mechanism of the correlation is like the attempts to explain why smoking correlates to increased risk of cancer - interesting but not really relevant to the understanding of the importance of limiting smoking.

And the desires of people to benefit from understandably harmful activities, like selling people tobacco, leads some people to seek out and promote nonsense that appears to excuse the understandably harmful pursuit of benefit.

Please try to learn to stop attempting to find harmful misunderstandings that excuse the harmful dead-end pursuits of benefit from burning non-renewable buried ancient hydrocarbons. The activity is harmful in many more ways than the climate change harm that is being caused by the excess CO2 it forces into the environment rather than keeping that carbon locked away.

SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?

MA Rodger at 21:10 PM on 19 February, 2022

Santalives @40/41,

❶ You use the term "back scatter radiation" and you may be forgiven for using it as the term even appears in the title of Seim & Olsen (2020). But the term is not correctly used. Backscatter concerns the physical reflection of radiation. The radiative effects being modelled involves only absorbtion and re-radiation. The peer review should have been down on this like a ton of bricks but evidently the paper was not properly subject to such review.

❷ You are correct that Seim & Olsen (2020) reference the IPCC (although rather sloppily) to support their description of the GH mechanism. However, Houghton et al (1997) 'An Introduction to Simple Climate Models used in the IPCC Second Assessment Report' does not provide such description (and why should it, it is desribing model representation, not what the model represents). Again, peer review should have been onto this non-reference like a ton of bricks.

There are further references provided for their description of the GH mechanism.
The first is a text book Benestad (2006) 'Solar Activity and Earth's Climate'. The full text is available on-line but not downloading for me. The content pages are available and it is Section 5.4.3 which would provide a description of the GH mechanism, but this section is not being very come-hitherish.

So to the last reference provided by Seim & Olsen (2020) which is Pierrehumbert. (2011) 'Infrared Radiation and Planetary Temperature'. It is no surprise to see zero support for the Seim & Olsen (2020) description of the GH mechanism. Instead we find the following description of the GH mechanism.

"An atmospheric greenhouse gas enables a planet to radiate at a temperature lower than the ground's if there is cold air aloft. It therefore causes the surface temperature in balance with a given amount of absorbed solar radiation to be higher than would be the case if the atmosphere were transparent to IR. Adding more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere makes higher, more tenuous, formerly transparent portions of the atmosphere opaque to IR and thus increases the difference between the ground temperature and the radiating temperature. The result, once the system comes into equilibrium, is surface warming."

So yet another non-reference within Seim & Olsen (2020) has slipped through the peer review, as did the silly description provided by Seim & Olsen (2020) itself.

And if this is how the GH mechanism operates, does the wonderful experiment of Seim & Olsen (2020) in any way demonstrate the GH mechanism? Or is it just demonstrating a pair of numpties playing climate-change-denial in a lab?

SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?

One Planet Only Forever at 05:41 AM on 29 January, 2022

Evan @3,

I would say it is unethical to state that "Sea level rise of 1ft/100 years is doable".

It is unethical to suggest that a portion of the current population should be allowed to benefit from a harmful activity that, from their perspective, appears to be an acceptable imposition of harm on others and all of the future of humanity. There are already island nations that have had centuries of sustainable living be ruined by the small sea level rise that has already occurred. And many other low lying areas are already harmfully impacted. And the sea level rise is only a part of the total climate change impact problem.

A potentially justified version of that thinking is:

The least fortunate can 'exclusively' be helped to live better, at least decent, lives by a short-term transition involving understandably unsustainable and harmful activity.

The fuller understanding of that version is that the people who are not less fortunate should be helping the least fortunate and ensuring that no lasting negative consequences are produced. That would involve the current day wealthy, all of them - not just the ones who care, doing whatever is required to neutralize the negative impacts of the short-term actions taken to help the least fortunate live decent lives. That would mean 'not accepting' a level of harm done to future generations, because excusing harm done is an ethically slippery slope to 'no future for humanity'.

That is also an ideal. But the understanding needs to be that anything short of that ideal is 'understandably unacceptable, not excusable'. And everybody needs to appreciate that reality and the constant need to investigate and correct what has developed to limit, and correct for, harm done.

The challenge of today is the reality that a lot of what has developed is harmfully over-developed, especially in the supposedly superior nations on this planet. Undoing all that harmful over-development, and repairing the damage done, is required for humanity to have a sustainable improving future.

The phenomenon of ‘Don’t Look Up’ (Part 2)

One Planet Only Forever at 07:26 AM on 25 January, 2022

It is incorrect to restrict Don’t Look Up to being an attempt to raise awareness about climate change.

I watched the movie in late December. And I watched it again recently. It is not just a satirical story trying to expose the many aspects of the harmful resistance by leadership to taking action that would limit the rate and ultimate magnitude of climate change harm caused by human activities.

I will start with the item that triggered my interest in responding – a comment about the End

Having watched the movie again, and trying to avoid spoiling the movie for anyone who is yet to see it, the scene described as “And the one scene praised even in negative reviews of the movie, the reconstituted family that gathers for a final prayerful meal at the end, may ultimately promote a sort of religious resignation or fatalism in the face of climate change.”, is not what it is claimed to be at all. That presentation is a gross distortion. See for yourself. The gathering is more than a reconstituted nuclear family. And the religious aspect is a minor part of the gathering interactions. It is sort of along the lines of ‘an atheist faced with the ultimate end may briefly dabble in spiritual possibilities’. And the spiritual bit is presented in a religiously neutral way, but mono-theistic so not truly representing the spectrum of spirituality, by a young outsider of the family who is welcomed at the gathering. And the gathering only happens when it is virtually certain that they can do nothing more to avert or lessen the harm done by the coming tragedy.

The Movie is about more than the challenges of climate change

Don’t Look Up exposes the developed socioeconomic-political system challenges to raising awareness and improving understanding of the harmful aspects of popular and profitable developments. Those challenges are not exclusive to climate change. The UNEP 2022: Emergency mode for the environment published January 6, 2022 as a Climate Actions Story identifies the “... enduring crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.” That is far more than climate change. And the story links to 10 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And the other Sustainable Developments Goals, which are social rather than environmental, face similar resistance to learning that what has been developed is harmful and unsustainable.

Court Jester style ridicule of high status more powerful people, not just the ‘rich’, can help everyone, including lower status people, identify the harmful actions among the higher status, particularly exposing who is being harmfully misleading in pursuit of personal benefit. But, as the movie exposes, many people can be tempted to Identify with cult-like incorrect beliefs and biases. And, like cult members, they will resist learning, and even fight against learning, that their bias and beliefs are incorrect until it is glaringly obvious to them through the potently restrictive biased filter of their developed Identity. (At this point I will add that everyone has developed personal biases and beliefs. My current developed bias is towards increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and the application of that learning to help others by developing sustainable improvements – The Ethical Engineer).

Note that the movie was not made to make money or garner ‘popularity points’. And the criticism that it may ‘turn-off’ some people who are not yet convinced about climate science is a bit of misleading marketing. When it comes to matters like Sustainable Development the fence sitters need to learn and choose a side. Their choices are:

Learn what is harmful to the future of humanity and try to Help reduce, idealing ending, the Harm Done so the future of humanity is sustainable and improving or,

Continue to be the harmful distracted learning resistant people they have been by resisting that learning and potentially becoming more harmful by choosing to fight to defend and excuse harmful unjustified aspects of the developed Status Quo.

Science is helpful when it is biased to increase awareness and improve understanding of what is harmful and apply what is learned to help develop sustainable improvements. That requires constant investigation for evidence of harm being done to the robust diverse ecosystem that humans undeniably are only a part of and cannot survive ‘apart from’.

More considerations

Criticisms of the film also expose the harmful ridiculous (deserving ridicule) developed ways of thinking that have regrettably been able to dominate development. They can be seen to be misleading marketing efforts by people who have a bias for the Status Quo. That bias opposes corrections of development required by the global leadership level learning that was developed and presented at the Stockholm Conference of 1972, and has continued to be developed and publicly shared since then.

The Stockholm Conference was a significant global leadership admission of the diversity of global Human Development problems that had occurred. It exposed that the problems would get worse and new problems would develop unless significant systemic changes were made to the developed predominant beliefs and biases.

A harmful response to that raising of awareness of the need for systemic changes that would alter developed perceptions of superiority and progress blossomed in the 1980s. The Reagan-Thatcher right wing power plays for popularity and profit can be understood to be concerted efforts by harmful wealthy powerful interests who would lose status if the harmful unsustainable beliefs and actions they benefited from were limited and corrected to achieve sustainable improvements for global humanity. The scope of the Stockholm Conference went beyond the harmful injustices of colonialism that people were still attempting to raise awareness and improved understanding of (A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn was written in 1980 was part of that centuries long effort that continues today). Raising awareness and improved understanding of what was harmful and unsustainable threatened many powerful wealthy interests. And it continues to threaten them because they have not yet lost their undeserved perceptions of status and related harmful biases and beliefs.

.......
With the above frame of reference, worldview, established I will make the controversial point that, contrary to a gross generalization that science is unbiased, “science can be biased”. All individuals have biases and perceptions of reality that they develop based on their experiences and learning. And scientists are people.

The claim that science is unbiased is understandably restricted to the constantly improving awareness and understanding based on the evidence found so far regarding what was investigated so far. Science can be understood to be biased against investigating more complex matters, especially having a bias against anything that cannot be confirmed by repeatable experiments. Experimental learning is important. But it is limited to parts of more complex reality that can be isolated for ‘repeatable’ experimentation. And that Achilles heel of science is a weakness that has been exploited to raise doubts and discredit scientists ... they change their minds, never say something is absolutely certain, and seem to be unable to extend their rigorous science to more complex realities. That leads to the obvious opening to play games of misleading influence claiming that the current understanding on any issue can be wrong and subject to change, no matter how ‘distinguished’ a scientist may appear to be (the competition for status relative to Others governs everybody – doesn’t it).

And I will build on that point to ridicule criticisms that simplistically claim that the film is biased and, as a result, may turn-off people who have ‘to date’ resisted learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. ‘Learning resistant’ is a more accurate description of the ‘moderates' who are not yet biased to believe that many aspects of developed human activity are harmfully degrading the future of humanity. On important matters the 'moderates’ or ‘undecided’ can be understood to be willing to compromise better understanding because of a desire for respecting less sensible, more harmful, opinions (Loving the Freedom to believe and do whatever one wants is a powerfully harmful bias and belief system).

Science is biased to be the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding. It can be opposed to a bias to maintain and defend the developed status quo. But science is not biased to focus on the investigation of harmful or potentially harmful things. Science can be biased away form that by the status quo it operates in.

And the ‘status’ part of ‘status quo’ gets pursued by people who allow themselves to be co-opted into a status quo competition for perceptions of status (including competitions pursuing popularity and profit). And the pursuit of status is also not biased to be governed or limited to developing lasting improvements for humanity. The harmful reality of the results of people being freer to believe and do as they please are undeniable. Yet some people still fight to maintain the status quo belief in Individual (or Regional, or National, or Cult) Sovereignty to believe and do as they please. Even scientists can feel they should be sovereign to investigate whatever they would choose to investigate. That sovereignty of science investigation can be helpful or harmful, just like competition for popularity or profit can be helpful or harmful.

So the obvious key is for everyone to be biased to want to learn what is harmful and learn how they can be more helpful to Others. Science (and economics and politics) governed (and limited) by that bias is what is required.

The lack of interest and paltry funding for increased awareness and understanding of what is harmful and the related lack of having everyone governed and limited by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others can be understood to be the expected result of pursuits of status in poorly governed and ineffectively restricted competition for status (popularity and profit).

Science can also be understood to potentially be harmfully biased against investigations and explanations of the complex interconnected nature of reality that cannot be experimented on to rigorously confirm theories being investigated. The hierarchy of the importance of pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding can be understood to be (one of many references supporting this is Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture):

Physics - the ways things happen down to the sub-atomic levels

Chemistry - the interactions of physical items that are larger than the sub-atomic

Biology – the more complex interactions of organic matter

Psychology – the way that brains work in biological organisms to respond to their experience in their environment

Sociology – the ways that independent organisms of similar type (societies) interact.

Ecology – the ways that organisms of different types interact.

The most important and most complex, and least able to be investigated by experiment, is clearly the Ecology and its potential to develop sustainable constantly improving success for the organisms involved. And the lowest level of importance to the future of humanity, while still having significant importance, is Physics.

Note that that ranking also means that protecting the environment from harm should also significantly govern economic and political actions. And it also means that protecting the society of global humanity, now and into the distant future, from harm also needs to significantly govern economic and political actions. The resulting understanding is that individual interests, including that tempting individual freedom of belief and action, also need to be governed to limit harm done. Restricting freedom and changing the status quo are not 'harmful by default'.

That understanding explains why it can be so hard to change the mind of a person who has developed their biases and beliefs immersed in poorly governed socioeconomic-political competition for perceptions of superiority. Anyone who has powerfully developed their identity in that way is like a conscript in a cult. And extreme measures can be required to free minds from harmful cults.

Note that being a member of a cult can also be helpful if the cult is helpfully governed to limit harm done. But it would be preferable for people to learn to be less harmful and more helpful rather than be that way because of the leadership of a cult they have become a captured member of.

And science is also biased to the belief in the supremacy of humans, and the related harmful potential belief in the superiority of a sub-set of humanity that developed perceptions of their superiority through unjust pursuits of perceptions of superiority relative to others.

Competition for perceptions of superiority can be fierce among scientists. And there are many examples of scientists being harmfully biased regarding their choice of what to investigate by the biases they developed based on their experience in the system they learned in. That will be harder to change without significant systemic changes that effectively restrict the Freedom of development of harmful competitive biases for pursuit of status.

How weather forecasts can spark a new kind of extreme-event attribution

wilddouglascounty at 01:01 AM on 4 January, 2022

Isn't attribution of individual extreme weather events more of a psychological pursuit than actual science? I mean, climate is an aggregated construct that is not unlike a baseball batting average, i.e. a statistical cumulative creation designed not to predict weather, but to evaluate what past activities show us and to tease out trends, correct? For a baseball player, if he starts injecting steroids into his body, all things being equal, his batting average or the number of homeruns may jump.

Now it is the steroids which caused the change, just as a jump in the amount of greenhouses in the atmosphere has caused an increase in extreme weather events that cumulatively changes the climate, right? But it seems to me that just as it is questionable science to try to tease out how much those steroids added to that last individual baseball hit compared to that player hitting that ball before he started taking steroids, the same pursuit with individual extreme weather events seems to be confusing the cumulative indicator with the observed data point. In other words, did the increased batting average cause the baseball player to hit that ball further, or was it the steroids? To conflate the two is a psychological pursuit, not a scientific one in my mind.

How machine learning holds a key to combating misinformation

One Planet Only Forever at 03:24 AM on 21 December, 2021

This is an excellent development within the scope of SkS (to identify and counter climate science misinformation and disinformation). Hopefully others outside of the SkS scope will be able to extend this learning to help identify, restrict and penalize individuals and organizations who are the prime harmful motivators of the development and dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. The ‘whack-a-mole’ challenge of addressing harmful actions, like misleading appeals to easily impressed people, after the fact has a limited ability to limit the harm done.

‘After the fact’ of the development of harmful beliefs and actions it is hard to completely amend and end the harm being done. Effectively and pro-actively limiting the harm done requires the high status people associated with, and benefiting from, harmful actions to be identified and be effectively corrected and limited by:

hopefully changing their mind so they become helpful members of humanity rather than continuing to be harmful.

having them effectively make amends for the harm their unjust pursuits of status caused

limiting their ability to benefit more harmfully, if they won’t change their mind.

essentially being diligent about Corrective efforts that include severe restrictions and penalties. That is ultimately needed for matters of persistent harm. Corrective efforts and limits of Freedom need to be applied to those who are the most harmfully resistant to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others

Note: The current legal need for an identifiable person with ‘standing - recognition’ in a legal system to provide substantial proof that they were personally physically or monetarily harmed by specific provable ‘actions of another identifiable person or corporation that the legal system applies to’ has failed to protect humanity from many harmful developments, not just the harm of climate change impacts. Many people are working to develop improved legal systems that address inter-generational and inter-national harm. But they lack popular support among global leadership. And they are attacked just like climate scientists are attacked, typically as promoters of Evil Socialist Global Government. Also note that Government can be understood to mean ‘To act collectively to Guide and Limit everyone’ and that really irritates people who are determined to have more freedom to believe and do as they please.

That is my perspective as a Professional engineer in Canada who obtained an MBA in the 1980s and has tried to pay attention to what is going. I have learned that engineers sustainably succeed by self-governing their pursuit of learning about ways to limit harm done. They seek increased awareness and constantly improved understanding of what is potentially harmful. Limiting harm done requires understanding the root causes. Repairs to an identified harmful result can look like the harm has been dealt with. But if the cause of the harm has not been properly identified, what appears to be a repair has not solved the problem. The harm will re-occur like whack-a-mole, or climate-zombie beliefs.

Responsible engineers can’t just try to create the appearance that a harmful result, or risk of harm, has been addressed. They need to pursue understanding of what caused the harmful result. Then they pursue ways to properly rebuild things to avoid future problems. They will also extend their new learning to everything that has been built. And they will take things out of service until the harmful problem is able to be corrected. To a responsible engineer, nothing harmful is so important that it must be allowed or continue in service (compromised bridges and buildings can stay in service with reduced use limits).

Responsible engineers limit freedoms of others for the benefit of everyone. Their actions even benefit the people they place limits on in spite of some of those people being so determined to personally benefit that they angrily resist understanding that their actions should be limited, or be more expensive (Note: it clearly can be understood that being able to afford to be harmful is unacceptable. An engineer should not accept a higher payment as the ‘marketplace based justification’ for providing a more harmful or less safe service).

A key understanding is that “pursuits of personal interest in competition for perceptions of superiority relative to Others” compromise that fundamental engineering understanding of “Do not allow harm to be done”.

The engineering pursuit of the root of the problem leads me to consider 4.3.2 “Low Public Support” to be the key objective of the climate science denial system. And closely related points are 4.1.1 “Policy increases cost” and 4.3.5 “Limits Freedoms”. Increased public awareness and understanding will lead to support for policy that makes it more expensive or more difficult to continue to benefit from the harmful systemic developments. The required action is to limit the ability of people to believe whatever they want as the excuse for doing as they please. And “Limiting Freedom” is an insidious argument. More awareness and increased evidence limits the freedom to believe things to the subset of beliefs that are not contradicted by the evidence. And the “Limiting Freedom” complaint is easily liked by anyone who wants to be freer to do as they please in defiance of being able to learn that what they want to do is harmful or risks causing harm. The “Limits Freedom” and “makes things more expensive” arguments are powerful ways to make something “Less Popular”. The many other categories of made-up claims are also ways to get a diversity of people to have a stronger harmful selfish attitude.

A master stroke is the use of nonsense claims about 4.1.4 “Rich future generations”. That fairy tale is based on the fatally flawed holy grail belief in the Constantly Richer Future because GDP per capita has continued to increase so far. Increased awareness and improved understanding has amply exposed how destructive the continued Growth of GDP has been because harmful activity counts and, as a result, harmful GDP contributions won’t be shut down unless a cheaper and easier alternative is developed that maintains the fatally flawed belief that growing GDP is required to develop lasting improvements.

The evidence harmfully contradicts developed popular beliefs that unjustly excuse or defend harmful activities that some people benefit(ed) from to the detriment of others, especially to the detriment of poor people, people in other nations, or future generations (people with little or no legal or marketing power). So the people who pursue increased awareness and improved understanding of the harm of developed beliefs and actions need to be attacked in order to delay the correction of harmful unjust developments. The result is the powerful need for the harmfully selfish who are learning resistant to harmfully unjustly impugn with impunity.

Significant system changes are required. Popularity and profit have proven repeatedly to be a poor basis for deciding winners in socioeconomic competition. Perceptions of good results from a system do not excuse or make up for harmful results produced by the developed system. Even perceptions of poverty reduction due to fossil fuel use are a harmful unsustainable developed perception.

The current systems are the developed results of people who have (had) status allowing them to form and transform the systems they are part of. And the evidence indicates that there is a long history of the problem being “people who develop a willingness to benefit from harmful actions winning higher status”. Wealth and power enables the harmful to make the system more harmfully suit, and defend, their interests.

An example would be the case of people who have developed or obtained and shared “what wealthy powerful people wanted to keep hidden”, like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, being tracked down for punishment. People who pursued information they could twist into attacks on increased awareness and improved understanding of climate science and attacks on people who try to increase other’s awareness and understanding have not been “as powerfully pursued for punishment”. There are laws that were broken by Manning, Snowden and Assange that powerful wealthy people applied, along with considerable resources they control for their interests, to the maximum capability. Comparatively, very little has been done by powerful wealthy people about Climategate, other than the actions by many of them to maximize the personal benefit they obtain from the unjust impugning with impunity they could get away with.

Returning to engineering, doing something helpful should not absolve a person of any harm they continue to cause. Ending harmfulness is required to get any credit for helpfulness. Imagine a temptation for personal benefit leading to a lack of diligence to properly review all aspects of the design and construction of a building, with the result being a building where the majority of the structure is perfectly sound, but small parts are fatally flawed (like some: balconies or railings failing, windows not keeping the rain out or falling off). Do the parties who were less diligent than they could and should have been deserve “massively net-positive evaluations” because the vast majority of the building was well designed and well built?

Learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others (especially the future generations), and understanding that the non-human non-technological environment needs to be protected and improved, is anathema to harmful individualists (Libertarian Freedom demanding types – the types demanding that all opinions are equally valid). Helpful collectivists need to also be diligent to protect against authoritarian rule. They need to try to help Righteous Minded people avoid becoming harmfully righteous. The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, explains some human predispositions that are potentially serious impediments to efforts to get everyone to learn to be less harmful and more helpful, especially concerning when those traits are connected to the evidence-based concerns presented by Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny.

The roots of a problem need to be understood in order to develop a sustainable solution. A root of this climate science denial problem appears to be the developed harmful cheaper and easier ways of enjoying life that are an undeniable legacy, and continuing to grow, problem of humans who develop harmful attitudes and pursue “improvements that are restricted to what they benefit from”. Humans who have developed that bias, rather than a bias for learning to be less harmful and more helpful, can be expected to fight against increased awareness and improved understanding that what they benefit from is harmful. From the perspective of the harmfully selfish, that type of learning is “not an improvement”. They see it as a threat.

How machine learning holds a key to combating misinformation

Nick Palmer at 00:33 AM on 15 December, 2021

John - you wrote "It turns out these were the least common forms of climate misinformation. Instead, the largest category of climate misinformation was attacks on scientists and on climate science itself."

I agree that smearing the science and scientists has indeed been the predominant form of denial/pathological scepticism for a long time - it's what I've found from my own experience tackling the toughest exponents, however I think the mechanisms they use to achieve the 'smear' are still the old tried and true 'Skepsci' favourites - Soon's 'it's the Sun', Climategate, Briffa's Yamal tree rings, Curry's 'uncertainty monster', Mann's hockey stick PCA's, Svensmark's cosmic rays, Morner on sea level etc. etc., although the originators are not nowadays mentioned by name so often these days - they don't need to be - their 'sceptical' objections have become established as canon in the denialosphere.

Honest Government Ad | Net Zero by 2050 (feat. Greta Thunberg)

swampfoxh at 21:50 PM on 13 November, 2021

Clever, entertaining, cute presenter with charming English "accent"... But targeting the lesser villian. It could be said that fossils fuels remain the whipping boy in order to crush the increasing evidence that agriculture, both plant and animal, will be able to cruise through the breach of the thick, smoking line of causality. Continuing to whack at the fossil fuel companies, "those mean old Capitalist running dogs" grants pleasure equivalent to a sensamillia joint, but after the high, the agriculture industry, mostly the animal portion, still owns responsibility for 33% of an aggregated ten important categories of adverse ecological damage. But, who can blame farmers? For anything? Both the farmer and the oil executive are merely providing a product that everybody wants, and doing so in a form practically everybody is willing to put up with. We have closely scrutinized fossil fuels for their single contribution to global warming, let's apply the same scrutiny to the multiple negative contributions agriculture makes to an increasingly dangerous change in the climate.

SkS Analogy 25 - Emissions vs Accumulation

cph at 08:33 AM on 9 November, 2021

michael sweet@19 - "It appears that large scale irrigation lowers the temperature a little. This has been known for a long time..."

-— What you call a wild plan - I call it water cooling. It is much more efficient than air cooling and is generally described in climate science as the Bowen ratio. While it is ~ 0.1 over tropical oceans and rainforests, it reaches ~ 10 in deserts.

Decreasing surface BR plays a major role in the surface energy budget. It is estimated that the cloud feedback may increase albedo by 0.13 and reduce Rnet by 25 W m−2 in summer over agricultural land.

ms: - " The suggestion of piping enourmous volumes of water to the desert is absurd. / ...all available water is already used for irrigation and no additional water remains. "

-— I suggested a water transfer without pipeline ! Absurd - is to think that you only have to turn on the tap to get water. / Perhaps in the Central Valley people should start thinking about using the water retention measures I described above. - In principle a simple, worldwide request to politics, agriculture, industry but also to private persons to build up extensive water reserves wherever & whenever possible in order to use them generously in plant growth, evaporation, clouds and "water cooling" during periods of drought in spring and summer.

SkS Analogy 24 - Atmospheric Carbon Loans

RedBaron at 09:35 AM on 28 October, 2021

The kinds of food you eat have from little to nothing to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) caused climate change, one way or the other. Rather, how and where what you eat is produced would have a much bigger impact. In fact being vegetarian worldwide could even be counterproductive in the fight to end climate change.

The reason for the confusion is what they call a “life cycle assessment” in calculating carbon footprints.

Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard: This standard involves understanding GHG emissions related to a specific product, based on raw materials used, production, distribution, and disposal. [1]

Just to simplify things a little, lets break down the carbon footprint of a tomato.[2]

The primary importance in calculating tomato carbon footprints depend on the season and the type of production system as well as transportation, storage and refrigeration.

Basically you figure out the amount of fossil fuels used in the chain of supply from the farmer to the fresh market. Greenhouses need heated in winter, and cooled in summer. The fertilizer used could possibly be made from haber process nitrogen[3] which is made from Natural gas. Trucks deliver the tomatoes to markets and burn fossil fuels to get there. The market probably uses electricity made from fossil fuels to keep the air the ideal temp for storage and prevent them from spoiling. All of these factors added up together give us a quantified idea of the total fossil fuels used and a carbon footprint is calculated for each pound of tomatoes. Basically the tomato itself, like all food, has no global warming effect at all, but all the other things like fertilizers, production, distribution, and storage do!

So how do we fix this?

Well starting with fertilizers. Instead of haber process nitrogen used to make NPK fertilizers, we could use natural fertilizers like compost and manure. That would greatly reduce the carbon footprint of food production worldwide. Geothermal and solar heated and cooled greenhouses eliminate the need for fossil fuel use in out of season tomatoes.

Next is location. The backyard grown garden tomato has no transportation needed. A local organic farmer might have some fuel costs to drive to the local farmers market, but minimal if a close neighbor. Also electric vehicles, powered by electricity produced by hydroelectric, wind, solar, nuclear, have almost no carbon footprint. So transportation improvements and shopping local or growing a garden can reduce the tomato carbon footprint a lot. If you need a fresh tomato out of season, make sure the greenhouse growing the tomato is local. If it is an organic, geothermal heated, local greenhouse produced tomato, all the better!

One thing typically not included in calculating the carbon footprint of a tomato is soil carbon. It should be, but isn’t typically included because data is limited. Certain production methods (mostly organic and permaculture methods) have been shown to improve soil carbon dramatically. This soil carbon would need to be subtracted off the emissions side of tomato production. It is theoretically possible then to produce a tomato that has a negative carbon footprint, as long as the production method increases soil carbon more than the emissions caused by fertilizers, production, distribution, and storage.

Soils from organic farms had 26 percent more potential for long-term carbon storage than soils from conventional farms, along with 13 percent more soil organic matter (SOM).[4]

Better data would be needed to actually calculate carbon footprints based on soil carbon. But it is clear that some farmers have been able increase the carbon in their soils, and as long as the other side is not too high by using some of the above solutions to reduce emissions, we should be capable of mass producing tomatoes with negative carbon footprints! We are not now, not at any scale to speak of at least. But we potentially could!

Being a vegetarian could in fact be quite helpful in mitigating climate change, as long as the vegetables were fertilized, produced, distributed, and stored in these improved ways! Every bite you took of vegetables you eat could actually by a tiny amount mitigate climate changes caused by us humans! Not a lot mind you, but there are billions of people on this planet, and if enough of them did this, a little multiplied by billions of bites could indeed add up to a big improvement!

What about meat?

There is one thing that needs addressed though. Meat production is very similar to the above. Carbon footprints of meat production are all life cycle calculations as well! Most the carbon footprint for animal foods also lies in production, distribution, and storage! However, if what we feed a chicken or a cow etc has a positive carbon footprint, and the animal eats lots of that food to grow itself, then the carbon footprint becomes multiplied by how much food it eats![5] Some animals can actually eat so much that their feed conversion is as much as 10x! Certain industrialized production methods for meat production can have insanely huge life cycle assessment carbon footprints for this reason, as much as ten times higher than vegetable carbon footprints. That’s why you see so many campaigns to reduce meat consumption in the media these days. Keep in mind though, these are also life cycle assessments. The meat itself is carbon neutral or close to it, it's the fossil fuels used in production mainly to blame for the multiplied effect.

“The number one public enemy is the cow. But the number one tool that can save mankind is the cow. We need every cow we can get back out on the range. It is almost criminal to have them in feedlots which are inhumane, antisocial, and environmentally and economically unsound.” Allan Savory

But here is the nuance. If what we fed those animals had a negative life cycle assessment of carbon footprint for the feed we gave it, then we would be multiplying that number by as much as 10x too! So in theory we could produce animal foods with as much as ten times better NEGATIVE carbon footprints as vegetable foods! And by the way, people are doing that right now in fact. There actually are farmers raising both crops and animals with such improved NEGATIVE carbon footprints.

Why pasture cropping is such a Big Deal - Milkwood
Pasture cropping allows cereal or grain crops to be sown directly into perennial native pastures and have them grow in symbiosis with the pasture.

So you see? It's not the food, it's how that food is produced and distributed.

“Yes, agriculture done improperly can definitely be a problem, but agriculture done in a proper way is an important solution to environmental issues including climate change, water issues, and biodiversity.”-Rattan Lal

In that potential future case where all our future foods are produced, distributed and stored properly, then a vegetarian would not be helping end human caused climate change as much as a standard diet. But right now, that future does not exist. Right now being vegetarian does indeed help! However, changing the entire worlds dietary habits would seem to be much harder than just raising our food better to begin with! We had made that effort to produce the so called "green revolution" and that worked. We could do the exact same strategy again, this time emphasizing reducing carbon footprints in agriculture. It could work. And without the obvious dead end that simply forcing the world to become vegetarian has.

Estimates of the economic damages from climate change

swampfoxh at 17:52 PM on 7 October, 2021

Seems to me that meaningful action to mitigate adverse climate change does not include considerations of economics. Some of the climate problems are already upon us...yet, the greater public and their government's decision-makers are paralyzed. The economic cost of adverse climate change seems directly (and largely) related to the presence on Earth of a biomass composed of (going on) 8 billion humans and billions of domestic livestock who's numbers nearly no one is able or willing to reduce. As long as that footprint upon the planet exists, matters of economic cost or benefits will never find a meaningful place in the discourse...certainly not in any action plan. Jared Diamond might offer that a "collapse" will have to finish out its typical process, after which "what's left" will have to begin again...albeit differently.

CO2 effect is saturated

MA Rodger at 01:12 AM on 13 September, 2021

Hari-Seldon @616,

(I assume you have adopted the name of the character Hari Sheldon from Asimov's Foundation trilogy but claim nothing of his prescience.)

Picking up on michael sweet @617 description of the mechanism of CO2 forcing and its logarithmic nature....

Chicago University's MODTRAN which you employ is a very useful on-line resource. But I don't think it is correct to suggest that CO2 levels are "in a condition similar to saturation" because the forcing is logarithmic.

You show the climate forcing incrementing due to 2x/4x/8x the pre-industrial CO2 280ppm level as being (& I correct your arithmetic) +3.30, +3.36 & +3.52Wm^-2. A further increase to 16x to 4,480ppm again yields an additional +3.74Wm^-2 with 32x incrementing +4.11Wm^-2 & 64X incrementing +4.68Wm^-2.

And a halving of the pre-industrial level to 140ppm from 280ppm yields -3.36Wm^-2. And this 'halving' sequence can be contimued down to roughly that 1ppm you mention, halvings running down from 140ppm -3.42, -3.52, -3.48, -3.45, -3.14, -2.51, -1.88Wm^-2. And these halvings from 280ppm down to 1.094ppm total to -24.8Wm^-2.

While I am not sure how well MODTRAN works at CO2 levels well beyond today's atmospheric levels (I assume the well-established 3.7Wm^-2 value does not appear in the doubling 280ppm-560ppm as the model is set for the clear-sky tropics), it is plain that CO2 creates a reasonably constant climate forcing for each doubling from roughly 20ppm up to 2000ppm. This logarithmic relationship is well-known. Al levels of CO2 above 800ppm, Zhong & Haig (2013) found the forcing from these higher CO2 levels begin to exceed the logarithmic relationship due to significant additional radiative effects appearing at 10μm which provide extra forcing as the 15μm effects diminish.

So the relationship is stronger than logarithmic and thus describing such a relationship as "in a condition similar to saturation" is neither applicable nor (given the dismissive connotations of calling it 'saturated') helpful.

Implications for mitigating methane emissions in agriculture

Evan at 23:46 PM on 10 September, 2021

Eclectice @2

Yes, more would need to be done. I was trying, as a first step, to digest the information in ATTP's post, because these numbers are new to me.

The danger I see in my math is that it propogates the idea that we will easily stabilize climate. I find the paper cited in this post interesting, but the problem, as with many other studies, is that it assumes all other things don't change. What this article really shows is just how sensitive our climate is to CH4. So if we all reduce our hamburger intake by 1/yr or so, but if natural CH4 emissions increase to more than compensate, we have a problem. As this article points out, a really big problem. However, the average person will make a modest change to their diet, thinking we are now OK. But with natural emissions likely to increase, and with global population continuing to increase, it will likely take more than eating one less hamburger/year to really make a difference.

But the first task was to make sure I understood the ideal math, before embarassing myself with my related thoughts.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35, 2021

MA Rodger at 18:31 PM on 5 September, 2021

citizenschallenge @1,

You could also ask whether "anybody has seen or commented on":-

Pangburn (2017)

"Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and other trace greenhouse gases have little if any effect on climate."

Pangham (2015)

"Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has had no significant effect on average global temperature."

Pangham (2014)

"CO2 has no significant effect on climate."

"Long term prediction of average global temperatures depends substantially on long term prediction of sunspot numbers"

Pangburn (2008)

"The conclusion from all this is that carbon dioxide change does NOT cause significant climate change."

The lack of interest in Pangburn's work is evident in the total absence of reference to it within the scientific literature. But perhaps you ask why this lack of interest? Or what is the nature of the nonsense being so persistently peddled by Pangburn?

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35, 2021

citizenschallenge at 13:59 PM on 5 September, 2021

I don't suppose anyone has seen or commented on Dan Pangburn 2021? —

LINK

'During the time period when water vapor (WV) and carbon dioxide (CO2) have been accurately measured worldwide, 1988-now, WV increase has been responsible for the human contribution to Global Warming/Climate Change with no significant net contribution from CO2."

If so, a link would be much appreciated.

It's albedo

coolmaster at 10:43 AM on 3 September, 2021

Also in response to blaisct's comment #66 posted over on the Urban Heat Island discussion.

The albedo is relative ... and depends primarily on the wavelength of the light that hits the body. We should therefore always specify a wavelength range for Albedo. Otherwise, strictly speaking, the entire spectrum of the sun is decisive. This relativity to the albedo is particularly important for an element as widespread worldwide as H²O.

As water vapor, it absorbs (28W / m²) largely only in the long-wave range and lets most of the visible light pass through.

As liquid water on the surface, it absorbs long-wave and short-wave light very strongly, although as a cloud in the same aggregate state, finely distributed in the atmosphere, it again reflects a high proportion (-47W / m²) of the high-energy, short-wave radiation.

As solid ice or snow on the surface, it reflects short-wave radiation as well as clouds. On the other hand, in the long-wave range it behaves like a black body and a layer of ice over the open sea isolates the one below
warmer water and prevents it from emitting its heat radiation to the atmosphere and space which in turn relativizes the ice albedo effect.

So @bleisct is not that wrong if he ascribes the Earth's albedo a major influence on global temperatures. The atmosphere (and every single component - including CO² molecules) also has an albedo if the solar spectrum is viewed holistically across all wavelength ranges and light refraction and transmission are taken into account as factors. Higher levels of GHG lower earth`s albedo by absorbing ~20% of radiation energy.

@MA Rodger is right when he remarks that the cloud albedo ingeniously has the strongest albedo and the global albedo(change) is of very minor importance over urban areas.

With a global mean surface albedo of 13.5% and net shortwave clear-sky flux of 287 Wm−2 at the TOA this results in a global mean clear-sky surface and atmospheric shortwave absorption of 214 and 73 Wm−2, respectively. From the newly-established diagrams of the global energy balance under clear-sky and all-sky conditions, we quantify the cloud radiative effects(CRE) not only at the TOA, but also within the atmosphere and at the surface.

The cloud-free global energy balance and inferred cloud radiative effects

Illustration of the magnitudes of the global mean shortwave, longwave and net (shortwave + longwave) cloud radiative effects (CRE) at the Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA), within the atmosphere and at the Earth’s surface, determined as differences between the respective all-sky and clear-sky radiation budgets presented in Fig. 14. Units Wm−2

When assessing the earth`s albedo, it`s also helpfull to have a look to the different radiation balances from land and sea and the fact that the cloud albedo is very closely interlinked with latent heat flux of evaporation in the radiation balance.

Do not confuse the strongly cooling CRE (-19W / m²) with the warming cloud radiative feedback CRF of ~ + 0.42Wm-2 ° C-1, which is a missing +RF in the above graphic by @Bob Loblaw as is also the radiative forcing of the ice Albedo effect.

. The energy balance over land and oceans

The energy balance over land and oceans

Thinking is Power: The problem with “doing your own research”

Philippe Chantreau at 03:32 AM on 18 August, 2021

I'm not sure the comparison is valid Graydrake. What you are describing is like delving in the cloud feedback litterature and finding a detail that will allow to refine regional forecasts. What is seen in the so-called "doing my own research" crowd when it comes to climate science is more like: "all these scientists have had it wrong but I know where the truth is, look at this YouTube video." Or someone trumpets that there is no GH effect when they clearly have no understanding of the radiative properties of the gases involved.

Medicine is indeed art and science, and there is a big difference between medical practice and medical research. However, you wouldn't give credence to anyone questioning the fact that we are made of cells or that sterile technique must be used to prevent surgical infections.

It is an already well known problem for practitioners that the quantity of new research findings coming out in a constant stream is impossible to keep up with. It would be convenient if there was an IPCC-like body for every specialty, that would synthesize the findings and come up with a "summary for practitioners." There is no such thing, unfortunately, and practitioners who have many patients to manage must rely on practice guidelines established by their specialty's associations and other bodies. These try to keep up but it always takes time to form guidelines, so they appear often years after research has been confirmed.

Doing no harm is the ultimate guiding principle; that often translates into simply doing less, or waiting until there is more scientific evidence. Every medical action or intervention, including diagnostic, carries risks; every medication can have adverse effects. Information obtained from tests and diagnostic procedures is only worth obtaining if it is truly useful and actionable, and the benefits from said action outweighs the risks of both the action and the diagnostic.

It sounds like you're alluding to recent guidelines recommending the use of Metformin outside of the range for which it is approved by the FDA. That may be advisable in some cases but any practitioner faced with that choice must weigh the risks and benefits and make an educated guess of how they will play out for a specific individual. Using a medication off label (i.e. Metformin for someone whose A1C falls below the range of FDA approved use) also carries liability risks for the practitioner. Metformin is not a benign drug. It sounds like you already had a good A1C and low enough blood glucose, what benefit did you obtain from using the medication?

Humans are the ultimate complex system, with a brain that can create therapeutic effects, side effects and even severe adverse effects when given placebos, whether they are placebo drugs or placebo procedures. Devising effective therapies for humans is a constant struggle because of that, and because of the level of refinement that has been attained by medical science. Practitioners also have to contend with people showing all sorts of dysfunctional relations to health and health care: high anxiety, hypocondriacs, Munchausen, and everything in between on the spectrum. You did not expand on your back pain MRI but, from the practitioner's point of view, if there is a well identified cause for it visible on the scan, trying to treat another possible cause is difficult to justify. In fact, practitioners can be questioned by insurance companies and ethics boards if they do that.

The positive outcomes you claim still fall under the "anecdotal" category. Practitioners are obligated to rely on well established evidence before recommending anything to their patients. Of course, we know that's not always the case, and that shooting in the dark can give results, nothing is perfect.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 17:48 PM on 10 August, 2021

I'm still waiting for an emailed copy of the Beyea, Sovacool, von Hippel paper which raises Jacobson et al's 125 deaths ( 15 to 1100) to more likely 1000. Papers from Sweden and Finland did not find a significant effect from Chernobyl-

'Sweden received about 5 % of the total release of 137Cs from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986. The distribution of the fallout mainly affected northern Sweden, where some parts of the population could have received an estimated annual effective dose of 1–2 mSv per year...a possible exposure–response pattern between deposition of 137Cs and cancer incidence after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident was investigated in the nine northernmost counties of Sweden (2.2 million inhabitants in 1986)... In conclusion, using both high quality cancer registry data and high resolution exposure maps of 137Cs deposition, it was not possible to distinguish an effect of 137Cs on cancer incidence after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in Sweden.'

'We analyzed the relation of the estimated external radiation exposure from the fallout to cancer incidence in Finland in 1988-2007. The study cohort comprised all ∼ 3.8 million Finns who had lived in the same dwelling for 12 months following the accident (May 1986-April 1987). Radiation exposure was estimated using data from an extensive mobile dose rate survey. Cancer incidence data were obtained for the cohort divided into four exposure categories (the lowest with the first-year committed dose

In any case, even granting 1000 deaths worldwide from Fukushima, that was the only major nuclear accident in thirty years, Increased deaths just in Germany, from coal pollution increases after the closure of nine reactors, has been estimated at 1100 people every year. Figures for Japan, where fifty reactors were shut down, and largely replaced with coal, are probably much higher. That's not even considering climate change deaths.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102770/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24135935/

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26598/w26598.pdf

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 00:25 AM on 9 August, 2021

sailingfree @1294,

You ask "Did Christy use model predictions for the bulk atmosphere?"

He says he does.

It is not easy to be sure what Christy "uses" as he is not a reliable researcher. In specific cases it would/should be possible to see what he says he is "using" and then compare the numbers he "used" with what he says. But this is not always a trivial task and Christy's public statements are not considered of the slightest scientific importance by those best positioned for this task. So they mainly ignore them. But note the issue of modelled tropical tropospheric temperatures (which is real) is being addressed with, for example Vergados et al (2021) or Po-Chedley et al (2021).

You mention @1292 the "102 model runs", so a specific case of data use (although Christy happily reuses his grand finding oblivious to any errors it contains). The prime-time appearance of "102 model runs" was presumably Christy's testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space & Technology 2 Feb 2016 and in this case Christy's use of data has been questioned more than once but this is technical enough for even climatologists to trip over this task (as the correction within yet another RealClimate posting illustrates). What is perhaps most telling in this situation is the silence of John H Christy who thus acts more like a troll than a proper scientist who would be expected to defend his position by resolving any doubt on the matter.

Christy's misleading graphs

So on these graphics we see John Christy saying he uses "Global Bulk Atmospheric Temperature, Surface to 50,000ft" and also 'Global' and 'Tropical' "TMT Temperature Variations" (which actually go a bit higher than 50,000ft). The TMT satellite data is a statistical sample of emissions from a great swathe of altitudes, even up into the stratosphere where it is cooling due to AGW.

MSU weighting functions The RSS browser tool with the correct choice of 'Channel' and 'Region' shows a TMT Tropical trend of +0.145ºC/decade. This compares with the UAH TMT Tropical trend of +0.09ºC/decade. Christy's assessment of model data puts the comparable model trend at +0.214ºC/decade although the model assessment presented by the RealClimate critique linked above gives a model trend of +0.19ºC/decade.

This +0.214ºC/+0.19ºC isn't a massive difference but this and the visual trickery employed by Christy has resulted in a film (actually a 7 minute YouTube video).

Christy latest wheeze is to brandish yet another fun-with-figures graphic (below) which compares TMT data (measured from surface up to 70,000ft with differing strength) with a small layer of the modelled atmosphere (roughly from 30,000ft to 40,000 ft). Presumably this is because the denialists require redder meat with the passing years.

Chrisiy's latest nonsense.

As scientists have long predicted, warming is making heatwaves more deadly

prove we are smart at 10:21 AM on 24 July, 2021

Taken from Wiki: "Mass maintains a popular weblog in which he posts regular articles on meteorology, Pacific Northwest weather history, and the impacts of climate change[8] written for the general public. According to Mass, "Global warming is an extraordinarily serious issue, and scientists have a key role to play in communicating what is known and what is not about this critical issue.[9]"

Mass has stated publicly that he shares the scientific consensus that global warming is real and that human activity is a major cause of warming trend in the late 20th and 21st centuries.[10][11] He has been critical of the Paris Climate accord for not going far enough to address the negative impacts of climate change.[12]

However, Mass is frequently critical of and has expressed concern that when media and environmental organizations make exaggerated claims about the current impacts of climate change, or cite climate change as the cause of specific weather events. He is concerned about misinforming the public about a key societal issue, distracting public and governmental attention from more immediate environmental concerns, and stifling opportunities for effective bipartisan policy-making to slow climate change and mitigate its effects.[13][14][15][16]

His statements on the severity and progression of anthropogenic global warming have elicited condemnation from The Stranger[17] as well as members of activist environmental organizations[18] due to concerns that Mass's scientific approach to understanding and communicating the risks associated with global warming could result in public apathy or be used by climate change deniers to bolster their claims."

I think Professor Mass is just typical of climate scientists giving responses to their perceived inaccuracies in the increasing climate craziness reporting. What is different with this professor is he is more of a "personality". Possibly the second link from 2.Bob Loblaw at 22:18 PM on 21 July, 2021 disproves Mass' theory but the science though was beyond my understanding.

The back and forth exchange between scientists peer reviewing "science" is what keeps us up to date and reliably informed. The fact Climate Change deniers can cherry pick a "headline" will never change. I don't know whether to feel hopeful or nor when I read this either,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1rxv1yPQrc

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25, 2021

Daniel Bailey at 06:51 AM on 26 June, 2021

Reading the research paper and the Nature commentary on it, they are pretty much in-line with the recent 2019 SROCC (Chapter 4 is most relevant). Table 4.4 gives these numbers:

Don't take my word on it, though. There's a number of discussions out there already (like here and here) saying pretty much the same thing.

For me, the main thing is that they look at the recent research, both the early research by DeConto and the later stuff, which shows that some of the early concerns about marine ice cliff instability were not as bad as originally feared.

“What we found is that over long timescales, ice behaves like a viscous fluid, sort of like a pancake spreading out in a frying pan. So the ice spreads out and thins faster than it can fail and this can stabilize collapse. But if the ice can’t thin fast enough, that’s when you have the possibility of rapid glacier collapse.

There’s no doubt that sea levels are rising, and that it’s going to continue in the coming decades. But I think this study offers hope that we’re not approaching a complete collapse – that there are measures that can mitigate and stabilize things. And we still can change things by making decisions about things like energy emissions, methane and CO2.”

Does this mean that the land-based ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland may not hold some SLR surprises in store for us? Of course they might. But without a magic crystal ball or a time machine to know with certainty what emissions pathways society will follow in the future, we have to go with what they physics of ice sheets informs us. This research does not rule out worse results this century than the SROCC delineates.

As scientists Joelle Gergis and Richard Alley told a group of us at a recent AGU meeting, the current models (CMIP3 and CMIP5) treat the land-based ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica as "like rocks, but painted white". Meaning that they were not coupled or interactive with their surroundings in any climate-related way. The CMIP6 models, however, look to more fully couple those ice sheets with their surrounding ocean regimes.

Society will have an enormous difficulty in dealing with the first meter of SLR, due at some point this century. If it gets a second meter this century (perhaps not globally, but possibly in some regions), that will be catastrophic.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

MA Rodger at 21:26 PM on 23 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @88,
Delingpole? I don't see Delingpole as somebody who has any grip on anything that is worth my consideration. He is an absurd right-wing commentator, a wind-up merchant.

You are wrong to say the 2019 Katharine Hayhoe coverage"touches on the 'watermelon' aspect." It does not. It is saying some explain their denilaism by saying they see reds-under-the-AGW-bed, not that there are any there. All Hayhoe is saying is that the solutions to AGW have not been made as toxic as the science within the minds of those captured by denialism. That perhaps brings us back on-topic as the Mann book is saying that denialists are now laying claim to solutions such as CCS & nuclear to undermine the development of renewables. (I noted just yesterday on the BBC's Politics Live programme Steve Baker MP, one of the Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy, happily arguing for CCS & nuclear and bad-mouthing solar.)
Your other two links both discuss the same paper - Campbell & Kay (2014) 'Solution aversion: On the relation between ideology and motivated disbelief'.
I would suggest these citations simply makes the case against your assertion that Mann is pushing some deep-green agenda insinuated into the world by the evil GreenPeace. Rather, it suggests Mann has spotted this denialist shift in tactic.

...

You then turn to addressing us pidgeons which doesn't last long before we get another dead cat lobbed at us. "I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but...."
You expend 1,700 words trying to convince us that Exxon are being unfairly stitched up by Greenpeace/Oreskes. (I would suggest this is now appearing as something you care rather too much about for you not to have a dog in the race.)

You insist GreenPeace cherrypick from ancient Exxon documents to create their case against Exxon. I would suggest that an accusation of fundamental cherrypicking by GreenPeace could be (indeed should be) backed up by some evidence (maybe show us some false allegstions of Rochefeller funding work to undermine Arrhenius). You tell us these cherrypicks are "relatively few in number" but it seem presenting them is too complicated for you even though you later tell us it "is actually very quick and easy to do"!!.

What we do see is within you ability is to present some of the cherrypicks from Climategate (something that tick Delingpole tries to lay claim to exposing). Perhaps you feel this has more need of exposure than the case you are trying to make against GreenPeace.

...

All in all, Nick Palmer, you do not present your argument or yourself well here. Rather than the cocktail of argument you attempt to present, we pidgeons get a pile of dead cats. Perhaps your arguments need presenting for you.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 23 June, 2021

Just in case you lot are still resisting the idea that the politics relating to climate science have become extremely polarised - in my view to the point where ideologues of both the left and right think it justified to exaggerate/minimise the scientific truths/uncertainties to sway the democratically voting public one way or the other - here's a video blog by alt-right hero and part of the original Climategate team who publicised the emails, James Delingpole basically saying that 'the left' have infiltrated and corrupted the science for the purpose of using political deception to seize power for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=866yHuh1RYM

Deconstruct or follow up Delingpoles' rhetoric elsewhere and you will find a helluva lot of intelligent articulate people who believe that the public's environmental consciences are being exploited by closet socialist forces to deceive them, using 'fear porn', into voting for policies which they otherwise wouldn't consider voting for, in a dark strategy to bring in some form of latter day Marxism. They insinuate this has got its tentacles into climate science which they assert has led to the reality of the science, as presented to the public, being twisted by them for political ends. It's absolutely not just Greenpeace, as I already said, who've 'gone red' to the point where it has 'noble cause' corrupted their presentations of environmental matters and, crucially, the narrow choice of solutions they favour - those which would enable and bring on that 'great reset' of civilisation that they want to see. It's much, much bigger than that.

I think we are seeing a resurgence and a recrystallisation of those who got convinced by Utopianist politics of the left and free market thinkers of the right taught at University - Marxist-Leninism, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith etc. Most of those students eventually 'grew up' and mellowed in time, leaving only a small cadre of incorrigible extremists but who are now, as the situation is becoming increasingly polarised politically, revisiting their former ideologies. In essence 'woking' up. I submit that the real battle we are seeing played out in the arena of climate matters is not between science and denialism of science - those are only the proxies used to manipulate the public. The true battle is between the increasingly polarised and increasingly extreme and deceitful proponents of the various far left and right ideologies and their re-energised followers.

It is now almost an article of faith, so accepted has it become, amongst many top climate scientists and commentators, that 'denialism' is really NOT motivated by stupidity or a greedy desire to keep on making as much money as possible but is rather a strong resistance to the solutions that they fear are just 'chess moves' to bring about the great Red 'reset' they think the 'opposition' are secretly motivated by.

Here's an excellent article by famous climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe identifying those who are 'solutions averse' as being a major factor in denialism. It touches on the 'watermelon' aspect. You can turn a blind eye to what I am saying if you want, but in that case you should also attack Hayhoe too - but don't expect many to applaud you...

https://theecologist.org/2019/may/20/moving-past-climate-denial

Also try this: https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/solution-aversion-can-explain-climate-skeptics.html

https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

I think some people who fight climate science denialism still have the naive idea that just enlessly quoting the science to them, and Skepticalscience's F.L.I.C.C logical fallacies, will make denialists fall apart. I too used to think that if one would just keep hammering away, eventually they would give up. Anyone who tries this will find that it actually does not work well at all. Take on some of the smarter ones and you will rapidly find that you are, at least in the eyes of the watching/reading/listening public, who are the only audience it's worthwhile spending any time trying to correct, outgunned scientifically and rhetorically. That's why I don't these days much use the actual nitty-gritty science as a club with which to demolish them because the smarter ones will always have a superficially plausible, to the audience at least, comeback which looks convincing TO THE AUDIENCE. Arguing the science accurately can often lose the argument, as many scientists found when they attempted to debate such notorious, yet rhetorically brilliant sceptic/deniers such as Lord Monckton.

I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but right back at the beginning, in post#18, I fairly covered what I was trying to suggest is a more realistic interpretation of the truth than the activist's simplistic 'Evil Exxon Knew' propaganda one. In short, most of you seem to believe, and are arguing as if, the science was rock solid back then and that it said any global warming would certainly lead to bad things. This is utterly wrong, and to argue as if it was true is just deceitful. As I have said, and many significant figures in the field will confirm, I've been fighting denialism for a very long time so when denialists present some paper or piece of text extracted from a longer document as 'proof' of something, I always try and read the original, usually finding out that they have twisted the meaning, cherry picked inappropriate sentences or failed to understand it and thereby jumped to fallacious conclusions - similarly I read the letters and extracts that Greenpeace used and, frankly, either they were trying deliberately to mislead or they didn't understand the language properly and jumped to their prejudiced conclusions and then made all the insinuations that we are familiar with and that nobody else seems be questioning much, if at all. The idea that Exxon always knew that anthropogenic climate change was real (which they, of course, did) AND that they always knew that the results of that would be really bad and so they conspired to cover that bad future up is false and is the basis of the wilful misreading and deceitful interpretation of the cherry picked phrases, excerpts and documents that has created a vastly worse than deserved public perception of how the fossil fuel corporations acted. Always remember that, at least ideally, people (and corporations) should be presumed innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty. Greenpeace/Oreskes polemics are not such proof. Their insinuations of the guilt of Big Oil is just a mirror image of how the Climategate hackers insinuated guilt into the words of the top climate scientists.

Here's a clip from my post#18

NAP: "When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science, as if today's relatively strong climate science existed back when the documents highlighted in 'Exxon knew' were created. Let me explain what I think is another interpretation other than Greenpeace/Oreskes'/Supran's narratives suggesting 'Exxon knew' that climate change was going to be bad because their scientists told them so as far back as the 70s and 80s. Let me first present Stephen Schneider's famous quote from 1988 (the whole quote, not the edited one used by denialists).

S.S. "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.""

Stephen Schneider, as a climate scientist, was about 'as good as it gets' and he said that in 1988. Bear in mind that a lot of the initial framing to prejudice readers that 'Exxon knew' used was based on documents from considerably longer ago, so what are the activists who eagerly allowed themselves to be swept up in it until no-one questioned it turning a blind eye to? It's that the computer models of the time were extremely crude because computer technology back then was just not powerful enough to divide Earth up into enough finite element 'blocks' of small enough size to make model projections of much validity, in particular projections of how much, how fast and how bad or how good... Our ideas of the feedback effects of clouds and aerosols back then was extremely rudimentary and there were widely differing scientific opinions as to the magnitude or even the direction of the feedback. The scientific voices we see in Exxon Knew tend to be those who were suggesting there was lot more certainty of outcome than there actually was. That their version has been eventually shown to be mostly correct by a further 40 years of science in no way means they were right to espouse such certainty back then - just lucky. As I pointed out before, even as late as the very recent CMIP6 models, we are still refining this aspect - and still finding surprises. To insinuate that the science has always been as fairly rock solid as it today is just a wilful rewriting of history. Try reading Spencer Weart's comprehensive history of the development of climate science for a more objective view of the way things developed...

ExxonMobil spokesperson Allan Jeffers told Scientific American in 2015. “The thing that shocks me the most is that we’ve been saying this for years, that we have been involved in climate research. These guys (Inside Climate News) go down and pull some documents that we made available publicly in the archives and portray them as some kind of bombshell whistle-blower exposé because of the loaded language and the selective use of materials.”

Look at the phrases and excerpts that were used in both Greenpeace's 'Exxon Knew' and 'Inside Climate News's' exposés. You will find they actually are very cherry picked and relatively few in number considering the huge volumes of company documents that were analysed. Does that remind you of anything else? Because it should. The Climategate hackers trawled through mountains of emails - over ten years worth - to cherry pick apparently juicy phrases and ended up with just a few headline phrases, a sample of which follow. Now, like most of us now know, there are almost certainly innocent and valid explanations of each of these phrases, and independent investigations in due course vindicated the scientists. Reading them, and some of the other somewhat less apparently salacious extracts that got less publicity, and comparing them with the 'presented as a smoking gun' extracts from Greenpeace/Oreskes/Supran etc I have to say, on the face of it, the Climategate cherry picks look more evidential of serious misdeeds than the 'Exxon Knew' excerpts. Except we are confident that the Climategate hackers badly misrepresented the emails by insinuating shady motives where none were. Why should we not consider that those nominally on the side of the science did not do the same? Surely readers here are not so naive aas to believe that everyone on 'our side' is pure as the driven snow and all those on the 'other side' are evil black hats?

Here's a 'top eight'

1) Phil Jones "“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”

2) “Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…. The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” [Kevin Trenberth, 2009]

3) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple." Keth Briffa

4) Mike [Mann], can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] re AR4? Keith will do likewise…. Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Phil Jones, May 29, 2008]

5) “Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were….” [Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, December 20, 2006]

6) “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” [Phil Jones, July 8, 2004]

7) “You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report] would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember it.” [Phil Jones, May 12, 2009]

8) “If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip….” [Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, to Phil Jones, September 28, 2008]

Please at least consider the possibility that Greenpeace, who have been deceiving the public about the toxicity and carcinogenicity of this, that and the other for decades (ask me how if you want to see how blatant their deceit or delusion is... showing this is actually very quick and easy to do) were, in a very similar way, and motivated by their underlying ideology, deliberately (or delusionally) misrepresenting innocent phrases to blacken names excessively too.

Clouds provide negative feedback

MA Rodger at 01:46 AM on 23 June, 2021

sunnyx @258,

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere during the early Earth is usually assumed to be very high because the sun was a lot weaker (it has been brightening by something like 5% every billion years) and we know from rocks that there was liquid water so the Earth could not have been very cold. For the period back to 500My the CO2 level can be assessed from proxy data and also modelled. This shows CO2 was a lot higher than today for most of the last 500My. The impact on the climate is a matter of how many doublings of CO2. So three or four doublings would suggest a climate something like 10ºC-13ºC warmer. But the loss of 2½% of solar heating with the weaker sun back 500My would equal perhaps two of those CO2 doublings. So much of the climate forcing of the additional CO2 was negated by there being a cooler sun.

Changes in climate result from the feedbacks as well as the CO2/solar forcing and will not have chaned greatly. But the net feedback would have to be large to have caused a runaway warming. Imagine ECS=3ºC. That is the net feedback (the sum of positive and negative) result in trebling the temperature increase initially caused by the CO2. But that is all you get - a trebling. It would take a stonger net feedback to become runaway (actually 50% stronger).

(The ECS=3ºC is a compound result in that the warming of the feedback itself induces feedbacks. The trebling of ECS=3ºC is equivalent to a simple feedback of 0.67. As Philippe Chantreau @259 says, the magic number to achieve runaway is 1.0, an increase on 0.67 of 50%.)

I hope that makes sense for you.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 23:49 PM on 9 June, 2021

When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science, as if today's relatively strong climate science existed back when the documents highlighted in 'Exxon knew' were created. Let me explain what I think is another interpretation other than Greenpeace/Oreskes'/Supran's narratives suggesting 'Exxon knew' that climate change was going to be bad because their scientists told them so as far back as the 70s and 80s. Let me first present Stephen Schneider's famous quote from 1988 (the whole quote, not the edited one used by denialists).

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."

I submit that part of the apparently damning content of the documents was exactly caused by Exxon's scientists, Schneider-like, simplifying their message to initially present it to their corporate employers. In exactly the same way that the denialosphere combed though the Climategate emails to find apparently damning statements and then interpreted them through a filtered 'lens' to insinuate fraud and data manipulation, usually by editing out context etc and even previous and subsequent sentences which changed the meaning completely, I submit that Greenpeace's 'Exxon knew' team did that too. They knew that the majority of people who read their report would assume that the current science that projects the bad consequences that we are (fairly) sure about today was as rock solid back way back then as it is now and would therefore jump to their desired conclusion that Big Capitalist Oil was just being evil. I'm absolutely not suggesting that Greenpeace's team were consciously being deceptive, just that they allowed their zealotry to run away with them so they saw just what they wanted to see...

Today's science, that projects bad outcomes, was by no means solid back then. I think that what Big Oil should be fairly accused of is the much less 'evil' culpability of not adequately informing the public about the full probabilities of the risks - which again is the 'Schneider' method of tailoring one's output for one's audience. Perhaps they didn't get "the right balance is between being effective and being honest" quite right. As denialists will endlessly tell us, the use of fossil fuels has been on balance a huge boon to humanity and I suspect that past one-dimensional calls by activists (including those I naively made!) to not use or explore for any more fossil fuels almost overnight, to a corporate mind, would require a public relations strategy to counter that extremist view while waiting for the science to get solid enough to start serious corporate planning for change should it be needed.

'Ban all exploration for or use of fossil fuels today' is a frequent call of today's extremists and no doubt they are sincere that they think the risks are such that such draconian action must be justified, and that things such as new technology, carbon capture, Gen3/4 nukes, agricultural changes etc must be Machiavellian Big Industry just manouevring to do nothing now to protect their financial bottom lines - delaying tactics that must be resisted. I think Professor Mann too has fallen in to the trap of feeling 'certainty' about what he thinks the solutions should be and this has lead to his dismissal, even libellous characterisations, of those who offer up a more nuanced way forward. Activists who call for an immediate ban on fossil fuels and 100% renewables by next Tuesday do not seem to realise that they are thinking in a one-dimensional way. Their 'solution' might address climate change, but such a solution would instantly cause enormous global disruption and would likely spark off the mother of all global economic recessions, which would rapidly cause long lasting extreme global hardship much greater, at least in the short to medium term, than anything global warming is scheduled to do for several decades.

So what were the 'uncertainties' back then? Some of the most important parameters plugged into climate models are those for climate sensitivity. While (widely varying) estimates existed before 2000 it only got well constrained and modelled within firm(ish) limits by papers published after then. Check out the links in this Skepsci article to see when the major papers were published.
https://skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity.htm

Here is Carbonbrief.org explaining the lack of certainty back then

"From Carbon Brief https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-scientists-estimate-climate-sensitivity

"In 1979, the Charney Report from the US National Academy of Sciences suggested that ECS was likely somewhere between 1.5C and 4.5C per doubling of CO2. Nearly 40 years later, the best estimate of sensitivity is largely the same.
However, Prof Andrew Dessler at Texas A&M University pushes back on this suggestion. He tells Carbon Brief:

I think that the idea that ‘uncertainty has remained the same since the late 1970s’ is wrong. If you look at the Charney report, it’s clear that there were a lot of things they didn’t know about the climate. So their estimate of uncertainty was, in my opinion, way, way too small"

"Back in 1979, climate science was much less well understood than today. There were far fewer lines of evidence to use in assessing climate sensitivity. The Charney report range was based on physical intuition and results from only two early climate models.

In contrast, modern sensitivity estimates are based on evidence from many different sources, including models, observations and palaeoclimate estimates. As Dessler suggests, one of the main advances in understanding of climate sensitivity over the past few decades is scientists’ ability to more confidently rule out very high or very low climate sensitivities.""

Activists try to insinuate that the documents and memos show that Big Oil 'knew the scientific truth' back then and adopted a position of denial, or psychopathic deception for the sake of profits, in the face of noble environmental groups campaigning against them because they also 'knew the truth' too. Much though it pains me to admit it, I was part of the campaigning certainy of those groups back then. I used to coordinate a Friends of the Earth area group and all the material I saw did not mention any of the scientific doubts and the uncertainties which featured in the scientific literature. I trusted it - it was the same thing we see today when such as Extinction Rebellion go waay over the top with the certainty of their assertions and the cherry picked nature of the information they present to the public. This is why I think that all sides - denialist/alarmist/doomist/sceptic etc - use misleading rhetoric to spin their narratives. I realise that many of the environmental activist 'troops' in their crusades like to feel certain that they know the 'truth' that Evil Big Industry had psychopathically tried to hide but I think total honesty is necessary to enable the public to judge the situation properly, so that policy changes we need are not based on the shifting sand that the 'divine deception' of the rhetoric of extremist campaigners and political forces is. Noble cause corruption is not a good strategy whether it is that of the greens, the left or right.

It's not as if even today's science is completely bulletproof, as a new paper about clouds shows. Consideration of it offers up an explanation as to why the new CMIP6 models are running too hot, and that is because observations show that some parameters plugged into current cloud models about longevity, warming and precipitation are wrong which mean that clouds cool more than previously thought. It doesn't,as it happens, change what we need to do but it does demonstrate that even today a fairly major part of the mechanics of climate changee can - uh hm - be changed.

New paper on clouds
https://www.carbonbrief.org/cooling-effect-of-clouds-underestimated-by-climate-models-says-new-study

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

One Planet Only Forever at 23:14 PM on 8 June, 2021

The questioning of Mann’s actions and statements, which would extend to others who express similar perspectives, has prompted me to develop a set of questions for everyone who is questioning Mann’s, or any other person’s, actions. The questions are apolitical. And they apply to any socioeconomic-political environment a person has developed in. And they apply to the full range of important considerations like the Sustainable Development Goals, not just the important Climate Change impact issue.

As a lead in to the questions I will share how my perspective developed. I continue to develop my thinking on this issue. As a Canadian Registered Professional Engineer, my starting point is the things that make Engineering successful. The things that make Engineering successful, and also apply to many other situations, are:

not allowing harmful things to be done (Do No Harm, to the environment or any other people)

because there is always uncertainty, focus on reducing and limiting harm and risk of harm

constantly pursue increased awareness and understanding of the potential harm of things, especially for any new way of doing things before they are implemented, but also of already developed and built things

if something has been built and in service or is being built but is learned to be harmful or risky it is repaired or removed from use.

The following are an incomplete set of questions, perhaps not in the best order or phrasing, that people questioning things, or thinking about or doing things, should consider (everyone should be curious and question and wonder about things):

Who is responsible when something develops popularity or profitability but is discovered to be harmful?

Are the developers of a new activity or institution (institution meaning: a developed cultural belief or formal aspect of social organization) responsible for thoroughly investigating the potential for harm?

Are the first consumers or beneficiaries of the activity or institution responsible for thoroughly investigating the potential for harm?

Is a person who benefits more from the activity or institution more responsible for thoroughly investigating the potential for harm?

Is a person of higher status (wealth, power, or influence) obliged to also provide a higher level of leadership regarding awareness and understanding of what is harmful and how to limit or stop harmful actions?

Are the higher status people obliged to help lower status people live better (live at least a basic decent life, not be harmful), including by setting a good example for others to aspire to?

What about Marketing or Educating? What is the Merit of marketing or education that does not pursue and promote increased awareness and improved understanding of how to be less harmful and more helpful to Others?

Should something that is understood to be harmful be allowed to continue until something more popular or more profitable is developed to displace it?

Who should be determining how harmful something is? Should people who benefit from the harmful activity or institution have a say regarding how harmful it is? Should people who would potentially benefit from something harmful be allowed to compromise the efforts to limit the harm done?

In what situations is it acceptable for an evaluation of benefit to be used to negate or counter an evaluation of harm being done?

The perspective a person develops as they consider these questions can relate to their pathology. It is important to consider each question from a perspective of not knowing what position or role you would have in any situation. A responsible rational person would adopt the perspective of a person potentially being harmed. A harmfully selfish person, however, would adopt a perspective of hoping to benefit from harm done.

I support the position that actions like CCS, afforestation, nuclear, soil regeneration etc are harmful actions if they are used to justify ‘more fossil fuel use’, or in the case of nuclear are considered to be a sustainable solution that future generations can continue to benefit from and face no risk of harm. In addition, it is undeniable that the energy consumption by the highest consuming people, the ways of living that less fortunate people would see as the example to aspire to, need to be reduced. And harmful risky unsustainable systems like nuclear used to prolong the over-consumption of energy by the more fortunate is unacceptable. These things are helpful as temporary actions in addition to rapidly ending fossil fuel and reducing the energy demands of the highest demanding people. Attempts to claim that curtailing fossil fuel use, especially by the more fortunate, can be slower if these action are employed are indeed misleading marketing games played by the likes of 'delayers, dismissives, inactivists'.

A root of the socioeconomic-political problems that develop appears to be that harm done will often be ignored or excused, especially when there are potential benefits. Medical treatments where the potential benefit for the patient outweigh the potential harm are exceptions where benefits should be allowed to excuse harm. Another example would be a business investment where the person or group of people making a financial investment will be solely at risk for any financial loss. Things get problematic when there are personal differences in Benefit and Harm, when the person or group benefiting more is not the person or group harmed more. Particularly problematic are cases where the harmed people cannot effectively penalize those who harmed them such as: future generations, people in other legal jurisdictions, people with different degrees of legal power.

Problems develop in Business and Social matters when the focus on “Do No Harm” that produces engineering success fails to be rigorously applied. The result can be the development of the unethical/immoral/unjustified belief the “Harm Done can be Justified by Benefits Obtained”.

If something harmful or risky is allowed to compete for popularity or profit, the risk is that it will become popular or profitable. And something that has developed popularity or profitability becomes harder to correct or stop, especially with the power to abuse misleading marketing.

An obvious conclusion is that misleading marketing is a serious part of the problem. What is required is significant penalties for participating in being misleading, with more serious penalties applied to wealthier and more influential people, including penalties for elected representatives who participate in being harmfully misleading or who fail to properly learn and educate others on important issues.

A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’

Eclectic at 15:24 PM on 4 June, 2021

Citizenschallenge @7 / @8 ,

Pardon my poorly-pertinent reply, for I am presently somewhat at leisure to doodle and tap on my keyboard.

IMO most people are busy getting on with their immediate problems, and are giving scant attention to this early stage of the climate train-wreck. The passenger carriages are swaying and bumping a bit more than usual, it's true . . . but we've had various rough patches in the past, haven't we? And most of the wheels haven't come off (yet).

Despite the decades of well-executed denialist propaganda, there is now more talk by the Press & politicians about the need to take action on climate. The talk has increased . . . the action, not so much. But at least the ship has left the quayside, and is picking up speed (though only reaching 3 knots so far).

I am a regular reader of the extremists' blog WattsUpWithThat. Entertaining if you have a strong stomach, and it's (just) occasionally informative. The articles tend towards the Sour Grapes attitude, and the comment section is a marvellous menagerie of wingnuts and weally vewy cwoss Elmer Fudd [what an apt surname!] characters, overlapping with flat-earther "no-such-thing-as-GreenHouse-Effect" crazies.

WUWT is only the tip of the iceberg - and I am very uncertain about the size of the underlying berg. But I have noticed - increasingly over recent years, and especially since mid-November 2020 - that the denizens of WUWT are showing a slightly-desperate belligerence, and they sense that the infidel hordes have encircled the citadel of True Science (inhabited by the denizens). And that the infidel/liberal-Press army is battering at the gates.

The denizens feel (almost) confident the siege will soon be broken by the arrival of colossal electricity prices and the arrival of the oft-foretold onset of Giant Global Cooling. But it seems the denizens can't entirely shake off a nagging feeling of dread.

Let's hope the WUWT denizens will be justified in their worries. And let's hope that Koonin achieves little more than preaching to the choir. Likewise with the multi-year crapola on the extremist fringe of YouTube. I suspect that the majority of non-partisan voters pay little attention to both the good and the bad on YouTube.

Dr. Ben Santer: Climate Denialism Has No Place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

MA Rodger at 22:33 PM on 31 May, 2021

We are now a few days after Koovin's seminar at the LLNL but I don't see a word of the grand message presented by Koonin. Presumably it is as embarassing as his silly book.

Trying to find some coverage of the seminar, I did spot Koonin's pathetic attempt at de-debunking, that is debunking the WSJ Mills' article [LINK-paywalled] that debunked his silly book. Koonin's efforts at de-debunking simply demonstrates the level of utter nonsense you can expect from an obfuscatiing denialist troll like Koonin.

Just holding up the first of the nine items Koonin attempts to de-debunk shows the purile standard. This first item involves the following untruthful quote from Koonin's book which needs little comment to debunk.

"Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago."

Cutting through the nonsense presented by Koonin's de-debunk, the troll defends his grand assertion using Fig 1d of Frederickse et al (2020) 'The causes of sea-level rise since 1900' which shows the 30-year average rate of SLR attributed to Greenland by the study 1910-2010. Koonin tells us:-

"The “fact check” [by Mills] does not refute the statement quoted, which is about the rate of sea level rise 80 years ago."

...

"The 2019 paper by Frederikse et al. clearly shows that Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise around 1940 was about three times higher than it was in the last decades of the 20th century."

Yet, if it is about SLR and not Greenland, then the relevant evidence from Frederickse et al is shown in Fig 1c not Fig 1d. And Fig 1c shows average rate of SLR in 2010 was 33% greater than at any time "eighty years ago" and that "today" it is likely higher again. Greenland is not the sole contributor to the acceleration in SLR (thus a cherry-pick) while Koonin's use of "the last decades of the 20th century" to represnt "today" is no more than disigenuous trolling.

...

And in the intrests of correctness (the troll Koonin may have been saving his best until last), the ninth and last of his de-debunking atttempts to defend the Koonin quote:-

"...while global atmospheric CO2 levels are obviously higher now than two centuries ago, they’re not at any record planetary high — they’re at a low that has only been seen once before in the past 500 million years."

The context of this quote which compares today with "the past 500 million years" is not given. It appears Koonin bases his "only seen once before" comment on CO2 relative to today's 400ppm being lower 300 million years ago. And presmably his grand book does not provide a justification for this comparison. So, as was discussed in the debunking by an actual geoscientist, 300 million years ago the sun was much weaker, this perhaps 1.5% weaker 300 million years ago, so [0.025 x 250Wm^-2 =] 3.75Wm^-2 or the equivalent to a doubling of CO2. Koonin ignores such argument agaist him and instead concentrates on refuting the potential for future CO2 levels reaching 1000ppm.

Talking about climate change: Necessary, yet so uncomfortable

Jim Hunt at 06:38 AM on 31 May, 2021

Evan @6 - Once upon a time, in my professional capacity, I gatecrashed one of Kevin's seminars to a couple of lecture theatres full of climate scientists. Et moi.

I discovered that I still had my surfcam in my backpack, so here is the abstract:

https://youtu.be/LEm42vKl4Ro

There's a link to the whole thing in the YouTube description.

Greens: Divided on ‘clean’ energy? Or closer than they appear?

Greg at 06:20 AM on 23 May, 2021

Having been around since FDR was US President, and having been a Republican, an Independent and a Democrat, I have seen and experienced many ups and downs with how things are going in the US, but the existential threat posed by climate change is by far the greatest threat that we will all face. When I talk to people about climate change, whether they are deniers or not, I ask them if they have noticed changes in the climate, regardless of the cause. The answer is usually yes. Then I ask if they think humans are contributing at all to the problem. Most are now saying yes, and for those who say yes and are on the denier side of the coin, their response is usually followed by saying there is not much they can do regarding climate change anyway. Unfortunately, nearly all Americans do not understand the causes of climate change nor do they understand the pros and cons of alternative actions that could be taken to eliminate the production of greenhouse gases. This, I believe, is due primarily to misinformation from Big Oil and politicians, whose interest in wealth, power and profit undermine attempts of obtaining a sustainable and acceptable future for us all. So, for those who feel there is nothing they can do, I tell them there is a very easy and significant first step they can take now and that is to not vote for ANY Republican politician (Representatives, Senators, Delegates, etc., at both the State and Federal level) who are lawmakers for at least the next decade. Even though their body language or verbal response indicates that there may be some truth to that position, their body language or verbal response indicate that that will never happen.

So, is there any hope? Yes, I am seeing a glimmer of hope coming from a strange place – the recent announcement that the Ford F150 Lightening pickup truck coming out at the end of the year (the F-150 product line is a multi-billion dollar business for Ford and is popular with many – over 750,000 sold last year). This is not a Ford commercial. Also, the more electric vehicles sold, the more it will help shift the momentum to electric vehicles. And, whether Ford, Tesla, VW, Volvo, etc., more charging stations will be needed and more people will feel comfortable with electric cars. Hopefully, it will help kick off an exponential growth of green vehicles. And, I think that even climate change deniers will buy the new trucks because they can power their table saws at the jobsite, power what they need at campsites, and power key equipment at home when the grid goes down the next time, without saying they are doing it for the climate.

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

Eclectic at 05:43 AM on 3 April, 2021

Rkcannon, permit me to add a comment, as a non-expert in these matters. Measuring the alterations in outgoing IR radiation from Earth, is a matter of measuring a very small quantity against the background of a very large quantity. Rather like measuring your bodyweight on ordinary bathroom scales ~ with and without wearing your wristwatch. It is hard to get an accurate assessment of the weight of your wristwatch, even though you repeat the measurements daily over many years!

(Nevertheless, basic physics and common sense do combine to tell you that the wristwatch has a real positive weight, not a negative or zero weight.)

Taking a step back and looking at the climate situation :- over many decades, the observed surface temperature is rising, and the observed Ocean Heat Content is rising, and the observed planetary ice-sheets are melting, and the observed sea-evel is rising. And these changes are in accord with our understanding of radiational basic physics, too.

So only a fool (or scoundrel) would assert that Global Warming is not occurring. (Despite the difficulties inherent in a situation of continual variations and distributions of planet-wide cloud types.)

Speaking of which :- the NoTricksZone website has an appalling track record of presenting distorted and/or misleading information. It is clear that "NTZ" has a strong agenda of presenting disinformation via misquotes and misinterpeting of scientific papers. Yes, I am making an ad hominem comment ~ and it is a very well deserved ad hom in the case of NTZ and its chief editor. Whenever you see something "scientific" reported on NTZ website, your own proper skepticism should immediately go to Triple Red Alert overdrive status.

There are several versions of reporting circulating about an initial study (Kramer et al., 2021). NTZ's effort mentions a Zoe Phin, who is IIRC one of these "GreenHouse Effect does not exist" people ~ so again, your skepticism should result in a close examination of what's being put forward. (Unless you wish to dismiss it all as a huge waste of time for you to investigate. Just as you do when faced with a complicated "proof" of Flat Earth . . . or a new Perpetual Motion Machine . . . or a complicated screed of mathematics supplied by AGW-deniers like Christopher Monckton.)

It's planetary movements

MA Rodger at 21:19 PM on 29 March, 2021

Likeitwarm @Elsewhere,

You link to comment presented in Semi (2009-unpublished) 'Orbital resonance and Solar cycles' specifically p48 which says:-

The "wave" of approximate period of 934* years, which could also probably be anti-correlated with Sun spin rate, seems to match the climatologic events of Medieval optimum and Global warming, and also the Little Ice age of Maunder minimum, and similar periods in earlier ages (fig. 81)...
If this is right, now the Solar activity could drop a little, but will approach a larger maximum arround year 2050, not disturbed by the peak anomally, and then drop to a next little-ice-age arround 2400 AD. The time-lag between the spin rate change and activity change is still uncertain...

The periods of low scalar angular momentum (and higher Solar activity) roughly correspond to human civilization thriving: 1450BC Egypt, 600BC Greece, India and China, 200AD Rome and China, 1200 Medieval optimum (population growth in Europe), 2000AD (present "technical boom"). The periods of high scalar angular momentum (and lower Solar activity) correspond to crisis periods of human civilization.

According to this connection**, the current warming rate should slow down a little now, but will grow to local maximum arround year 2040, from which point it should drop to next little ice age arround year 2430 and to next warming arround year 2900. [**This referring to the paper's Fig 81 which plots the scalar sum of angular momentum of 9 planets and Sun with the climatologic data from Moberg et al (2005) which presents a 200-year NH hockeystick.]

This is all about a "wave" in the Scalar sum of Angular momentum and the page also presents a NOTE saying:-

NOTE: It was remarked, that Scalar sum of Angular momentum is a nonsense, which it is...

I think I would have to agree with this NOTE. Angular momemtum is considered maintained in a closed system and any heat-related effects that may work beyond a close system (the sun loses 130 trillion tons of mass a year through nuclear fusion) wouldn't make a great deal of difference to that, processes which themselves may show variation but again not significantly even if the sun's position relative to the solar-system's barycrentre were a factor (which Semi [2009-unpublished] asserts is when peak Scalar Sum of Angular Momentum occur).
Further to the NOTE, Semi (2009-unpublished) also does not set out this as an overall finding as it is unmentioned in either the abstract or conclusions.

Of course, that does not stop the swivel-eyed denialists. I note one of the two papers referencing Semi (2009-unpublished), Holmes (2018) 'Thermal Enhancement on Planetary Bodies and the Relevance of the Molar Mass Version of the Ideal Gas Law to the Null Hypothesis of Climate Change ' is cites Semi (2009-unpublished) as apparently showing "Yoshimura is in evidence throughout the climate system, and in proxy records, on all time-scales," (Yoshimura [1978] being cited to support a 55-year barcentric solar-system cycle but with zero actual mention of Earthly climate in that paper).

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021

nigelj at 13:21 PM on 13 March, 2021

Starburst @6

"I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming. As I stated in my first posting, global warming means warming over the entire global, which certainly isn't happening."

My understanding is most regions of the world show warming. The few regions showing cooling or no change do not have enough cooling to offset the warming in the regions with warming. This means the world as a whole is warming. This is commonsense. Scientists measure all these things and take it all into account because they are basic things. The heat energy content of the entire planetary system has also increased in the last several decades. Again scientists look into these things because its what they are trained to do.

If you still dont understand or agree, please provide a list of all countries in the world and its oceans as well, and their warming rates and cooling rates (if there are any) over the last 50 years and we shall see which dominates, - warming or cooling. Until you do this in detail, with links to all your data, and making sure you are comparing like with like, you have got nothing worth me considering.

"For people in these regions, global warming is not the problem and fossil fuels are necessary for making a living, or even just surviving. These people simply cannot afford governments imposing additional taxes (or "cap and trade") for their use of fossil fuels. "

I sympathise with the challenges people face, but these comments about what they can afford are just empty assertions. On what basis with what facts? What expert study says this? Even if they had difficulties affording this you can have carbon tax and dividend schemes which are financially gentle on people (google it).

Many expert reports like the Stern Report find we can mitigate the worst of climate change at a cost of approximately 2% of global gdp per year. This is very roughly equivalent to 2% of peoples incomes. I suggest all but very poor people can afford that, and poor people can be given finanical assistance by governmnet so they can cope or could be excluded from carbon tax schemes. At least some countries do this sort of thing. I dont have time to list them all but this sort of thing is eassily googled.

"Finally, with the failed prediction track records of Al Gore and other pro-AGW politicians,..."

You provide no evidence of these alleged failed predictions. But its not relevant anyway , because the IPCC reports about climate change are not based on anything Al Gore said. The IPCC and climate scientists make their predictions based on science, and so far warming trends are very close to predictions made decades ago. Refer:

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/01/update-day-2020/

Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessment

prove we are smart at 22:25 PM on 22 February, 2021

Firstly, if most people like me would only read the easily understood science of how global warming works-that would be a great help for our planet. Your site here is my goto for anyone interested. Some like me, then really wade in and can give concise retorts to the fake news believers..

And that is still a major hurdle. Here is a depressing story #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming
World leaders fail to curb climate change in 2020 | DW News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGGTUSXeahk

And why they didn't act? , because we elected the wrong leaders. Enough Australians believed the bs and thats history now. You might say we got the govt we deserve but we need a govt the planet deserves. Perhaps those appocalyptic fires will not become just another short term memory loss and I wondered about that after reading this https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-05/australia-attitudes-climate-change-action-morrison-government/11878510

So the crux of my thoughts were formed after reading that the latest IPCC assesment for 2021-22 will be released soon. Will our politicians of most persuasions be allowed by their donors to do what we want? Will the media be helpful? Will the lure of an election cycle be enough to procrastinate another 4yrs and see what happens? I wish I could see my fellow citizens being thoughtful and people in power who can navigate a path through the many crises everyone is facing..

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