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Welcome to Skeptical Science

Eclectic at 15:40 PM on 1 May, 2024

Brtipton @123 :

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

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

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

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

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Theo Simon at 19:05 PM on 23 April, 2024

Thanks, I did notice that it was taking a position, which I took as a red flag. But I struggled to understand if it was making new claims regarding saturation, based on new experimental evidence, or if the explanations on this page essentially cover it already.

I'd be very interested to know how valid this papers arguments are and if they have been rebuffed, or found wanting in peer review, as I think this line of attack will be a very popular one in the coming months. I've already met it from numerous trolls elsewhere who currently think it's their "gotcha!"

How extreme was the Earth's temperature in 2023

Jan at 17:45 PM on 19 April, 2024

Made it a little bit nicer, as it is important:

On the causes of the exceptional temperature jump in 2023

First things first:

What was special about the warming in 2023 was, that it happened all in the last 6 months, so it was a much larger jump over these months than the mean values of 2023.

Further, only a moderate El Nino existed, so not too much warming came from here.

Reasons where:

SOx reductions over the shipping routes amplified the marine heatwave signal across the mid-latitudes.

The El Nino in combination with a positive Indian Dipole - both lead to a larger heat release of the tropical oceans as a clear and strong circulation cell is supported over the tropical oceans due to the zonal SSTs gradient.

Sea ice reductions around the Antarctic caused circulation changes that led to moist and warm air advection over Antarctica (strong effect on the warming as exceptional heat waves rocked Antarctica), as well as radiative effects of the sea ice reductions and heat release over sea ice-free areas.

Then that climate warming warms the oceans now more than natural variability is often able to produce colder than normal SSTs - at one time only some ocean regions existed with colder than normal temperatures.

Then we had the vast expansion of marine heatwaves across the global oceans, especially across the mid-latitudes reaching a coverage of more than 40% in July.

The warmer-than-normal Oceans created a cloud feedback thereby increasing shortwave absorption (reinforces marine heatwaves).

From 2012 to 2016 we had a non-linear increase of moisture in the marine boundary layer caused by exceptional SSTs. The next jump will have happened in 2023 causing a water vapor feedback over large parts of the oceans to increase. And tropical moist air advection is causing marine heatwaves in the subtropics to mid-latitudes. So also here is another feedback as more water vapor radiates longwave radiation back to the surface.

Further, we had during summer to autumn large areas where the soil-moisture-temperature cascade came into play producing these exceptional continental heat waves. It comes along with a cloud feedback and supports stalled/fixed high-pressure systems as these heat domes redirect the jet around them (higher troposphere).

Then we had the pattern effect of increasing zonal (east/west direction) temperature gradients at the ocean surface and continents which disturb the overlying circulation, often causing blocking patterns (also a reason for the marine heatwaves to build up)

Then we had towards autumn a heat release of the marine heatwaves across the mid-latitudes, as the atmosphere gets colder. Also, cold core and warm cors eddies cause extreme temperature gradients in the western boundary extension regions leading to a larger latent heat releases over these ocean regions (small-scale pattern effect of SSTs increases wind speeds).

Last it has been possible that the oceans released heat from the subsurface that had built up. Across the mid-latitudes warm freshening water masses are accumulating under the surface as shallow as 150m depth. And these heat depots could have been tapped, as the jets speed up during winter, as the density gradient between the tropics and poles increases in the upper atmosphere while it decreases near the surface, especially during winter. More and stronger low-pressure systems due to increased shear are the outcome. And all these extreme low-pressure systems in autumn and winter across the mid-latitudes in 2023/24 could have tapped these subsurface heat depots. But no study here as this is a new development seen in the intensity of the low-pressure systems the last years (e.g. number of atmospheric rivers hitting the US west coast)

Main problem thou is the expansion of marine heatwaves, as they are feedback driven by global warming heating the oceans from the surface too fast (thermal stratification increases non-linear in the upper 300m of the oceans in various regions), in combination with the pattern effect which disturbs global zonal circulation with the result of more stalled high-pressure systems (low wind speeds are in most instances the main precondition for marine heatwaves to form besides thermal stratification and shallow upper mixed layer depth).

Last the warming of the northern latitudes can also be included in the factors driving global warming in 2023.

In short, the warming of 2023 was feedback-driven by various systems forcing each other into a heating mode with the systems of the oceans, atmosphere, and landmasses acting in unison!

The exact series of which contributed to what extent to the heating science has to find out. But it would have to be done on a monthly basis!

The next jump will have devastating consequences as they become larger...

In my opinion, the model spread is now a joke as it is way too large proving the uselessness of models as they will increasingly become unable to predict what is coming as too many parametrizations prevent them from simulating the non-linear character of the mutually reinforcing systems with many processes operating on small scales...

p.s. we warm the oceans too fast from the surface that is our main problem!

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Bob Loblaw at 01:07 AM on 5 April, 2024

cookclimate @ 118:

I have looked at the paper in the volume I linked to in comment 121. There are definite changes compared to an earlier version I found that said "submitted to Earth and Space Science", so I presume that you've had some sort of review and modified the paper since the earlier drafts.

It looks like you have identified the 1470-year cycle using your eyecrometer. I see nothing in the paper that actually does any sort of signal processing to identify cycles using any objective statistical technique. You are seeing a cycle because you want to see a cycle.

Your speculation includes arguments that include all sorts of stuff that has been debunked many times before. Pages are available on Skeptical Science that cover thee topics:

Geothermal heat flux is included in this post.

The "CO2 lags temperature" argument is discussed here.

Most of your examples use regional, not global, temperature proxies. Regional temperatures are far more variable than global ones, and it is invalid to compare the two directly. This is discussed in this SkS post.

You're convinced that an increase in volcanoes are adding to warming. That is the opposite of the argument commonly made by "skeptics" that increasing volcanic activity caused the Little Ice Age, so a subsequent decrease is causing warming (discussed here). In any event, just counting the number of volcanoes (your figure 3) is extremely simplistic. Arguing that more volcanoes implies more geothermal heat is a non-starter, as discussed in the post linked above.

Your "computer models are unreliable" is an old, tired argument, scoring position 6 on the SkS Most Used Climate Myths. The rebuttal is here.

So, your paper is really nothing more than an "I see it" 1470-year cycle mixed with a rehash and Gish Gallop through a variety of common "skeptic" myths. I could probably find more, but it isn't worth the time.

I hope you didn't pay too much money to get it published.

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

Eclectic at 21:32 PM on 2 April, 2024

William @4 , @5 :

William, you are again failing to think logically.

The people of the Global North are fairly well accustomed to deal with the cold. ( Even in harsh Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period, the farmers kept their cattle in the barn for 5 months of the year. Later, a 0.5 degreeC temperature cooling did not cause their societal collapse ~ that collapse was due to socio-economic changes.)

The coming problems of further global warming do affect the people of the impoverished "South". The poor cannot afford house airconditioning ~ even if the national electricity prices were halved. And airconditioned barns . . . are a fantasy. Like the idea of solar panels for barn coolers. And most of the poorest are a long, long way from (expensive) transmission lines.

Yes, agricultural scientists have done some good work in breeding for more heat-resistant staple crops. But nature imposes genetic limits, and there is no Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card to ultimately save the day.

And the increasing sea level rise will also contribute to mass migrations. Think of "border crises" and demagogues ranting against them thar furriners. It will get a lot uglier than now.

William, you are intelligent enough to know all this. Please put aside your Motivated Reasoning, and skip past all the Denial, Anger, and Bargaining (and the Depression stage, too) . . . and move on to the Acceptance that real action needs to be taken against AGW.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #12 2024

nigelj at 06:05 AM on 22 March, 2024

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

This is very concerning and perceptive.

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

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

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

Excerpts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

MA Rodger at 19:54 PM on 12 December, 2023

Dessler's post does rather hedge its bets by suggesting it might be "due to natural variability persisting over an extended period" which will at some point come to an end (so as per the 2007-12 slowdown but in reverse). But he also points to the recent deep La Niña which may be amplifying the impact of the less-than-massive El Niño.

The ENSO indices do show the build-up to present weak El Niño conditions were unusually preceded by strong La Niña cinditions which had been, if anything, strengthening through the period rather than, as is usual, weakening as El Niño conditions approach. (The MEI perhaps shows this situation best.) Yet the big 1997-98 El Niño also strengthened quite suddenly and showed nothing like this 2023 bananas situation.

MEI el nino profiles

The bananas (sudden appearance of an additional +0.2ºC in the global average temperatures) won't be some sudden forcing as there is no sign of anything (or things) approaching the required force. That means we have a natural wobble.

But is that wobble reversing something that has been shielding the impacts of AGW and so it won't reverse? Or is going to abate in coming months/years? Dessler looks to the climate models as suggesting it is the latter. But the question is still an open one!!

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Likeitwarm at 04:38 AM on 28 September, 2023

Sysop, Thank you for allowing this conversation with scaddenp and myself to continue.

1562 scaddenp
You said "What I am asking is whether you can remember what switched you into looking for sites like CO2Science or temperature.global? Was it just disbelief about trace gases or were there other considerations?"

I've been thinking about an answer for you.
I started looking into "global warming" back in the mid 2000s, 25 years ago,
I think with this site https://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html.
Many other places and books since then.
I find a lot, 1000s or more, of scientists that disagree with AGW.
One is Nasif Nahle who has calculated the emissivity of CO2 at less than .003 and and says that it doesn't absorb or emit much if any IR. You can see his calculations at https://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/03/total-emissivity-of-the-earth-and-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide/
Then there is the Club Of Rome, a bunch of rich elitists that think they know best for the rest of us. Back in 1968-1974 they decided they needed a scare tactic to get people to reduce births, thus reducing the population of the earth and the resources used by them. They settled on AGW because CO2 is emitted when fossil fuels are burned. Reduce the available energy and you will reduce the birth rate.
The U.N. IPCC was not charged with finding out what makes the climate change but rather how to pin it on human causes. See https://shalemag.com/manmade-global-warming-the-story-the-reality/ and https://principia-scientific.com/the-club-of-rome-and-rise-of-predictive-modelling-mafia/
UN’s Top Climate Official: Goal Is To ‘Intentionally Transform the Economic Development Model’
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
You see, the goal was not to save us all from overheating the planet or acidifying the oceans. The goal was to scare everyone into giving up cheap fossil fuels.
I don't know what the goal of you and your colleagues at Skeptical Science is but I do know you can create logic and equations to describe anything, so I remain skeptical of your site.
Now you know where I'm coming from. See www.ourwoods.org.
Cheers

Climate Confusion

Eclectic at 11:18 AM on 5 September, 2023

Markp @42 and prior :

Simon Michaux is an intelligent guy, but is a "paralysis alarmist" who promotes inaction as the response to future difficulties which he sees as insuperable. Rather similar to those ( literally gloomy ) Malthusians who thought that an increasing world population would inevitably be condemned to nocturnal gloom and darkness ~ because there could never be enough whale oil for our lamps.

OnePlanetOF points out how AGW can be tackled not by a single silver bullet [or even an aluminium-film-coated bullet ] ~ but by a multiplicity of methods . . . though it's likely that "Reduced Consumption" by the general public would be a very hard sell.

Markp , what is the mirror coverage that you require? My back-of-envelope [Direct Normal Insolation 1000 W/m2 ; mirror efficiency 80% ; and 80% efficiency of shortwave transmission to space ] points to around 400,000 square kilometers of mirroring needed, to produce a 1 W/m2 of reduction in global warming. And presumably you would be aiming for at least 2 W/m2 reduction during 50 or 100 years? Might need to supplement that with some CO2 emissions reduction, as well.

For 400,000 or 800,000 square kilometers, the Sahara Desert would do nicely (being conveniently away from airports ) if the local inhabitants were suitably bribed . . . or bribed to move to an immigrant-welcoming locality such as Texas.

Climate Confusion

Markp at 03:04 AM on 2 September, 2023

I am not a scientist, but I've been working in climate science for a couple of years now.

I wouldn't say I dismiss models, I'm just careful with them. Perhaps "garbage in, garbage out" is more common an expression to describe models in the financial world than in the natural sciences, but even so, when it comes to climate modelers I'm merely echoing sentiments from those like James Hansen, who clearly value models but prefer using real data, real-world, whenever possible. I've spoken to established research scientists who laugh off the climate modelers who so cheerfully say "temperatures will just stop rising" if net zero is achieved. These are people I trust. They've had long careers doing real science, not short ones playing with computers.

And Rob, believe me, I do live a low-carbon life myself but I know very few others know or care about the need for that. The problem is, the accepted wisdom for many years now has been to not alarm people with GW talk, and churn out messages with hope and optimism, so what has happened is that people pretty much think "the experts" are taking care of things and there's nothing to really worry about. The person on the street has no clue how bad things are or how soon things will get very bad. No wonder they don't change their lifestyles further than maybe switching to a new sexy Tesla and eating vegan once a week.

I'm also involved in the renewable energy business and that's definitely been an excellent development but again, people are being misled into thinking that's all we need to do, but it's not going to happen. Have a look at Simon Michaux's work.

We've had the IPCC for 35 years and not much to show for it, and anyone who doesn't believe that is either simply ignorant or is fooling themselves. The IPCC plays politics with science. We need to take their estimates and double or triple them to achieve results close to reality.

All I can say regarding decarbonizing is that the money and the power is dead set against it because they're only concerned about today's profits, but as more and more of the world burns up, as food insecurity gets worse and water scarcity as well, their hands will be forced. The question is: will there be enough time then? Will the "laser focus" that might (might) be squeezed out of people when their backs are against the wall be too late? What is required, at the very least since people aren't acting like adults, are laws limiting waste in all industries, in all areas of government, and in our private lives, but is that coming? Are laws restricting unnecessary consumption coming? Laws banning the worst of the world's luxury goods would put a big dent in the fattest carbon emitters and send a message to all those people idolizing such frivolous living but is that coming? We could put tight curbs on new car sales and enforce drastic changes to allowable car specifications (reduction of size/weight/horsepower). We need governments to enforce "work at home" for all industries and jobs where that's feasible. We need public service messages telling people to stop trying to "live large," we need celebrities to publically downsize their lifestyles, television shows to stop glamorizing the selfish life... the list is very long. So much needs to be done and could be done, but is it? Scientists gluing themselves to bridges is what we need, it's just about the only sensible thing to do this late in the game to make people wake up, but instead of getting the message people scorn them and governments lock them up. We cannot blame these protesting scientists. They've been asked to do something they were never trained to do, and for which no infrastructure exists, and to make matters worse, they're being pushed into solving this emergency by adopting a profit-making model that flies in the face of the spirit of science.

The way I see it, we've got about one decade of "somewhat normal" life left before the food insecurity hits the privileged classes hard, and at that point, the societal collapse that has already begin is going to be much more life-threatening than heat. Net zero goals for 2050 may no longer matter when everything begins to fall apart.

As for the mirror concept, all the details are being researched but we're not talking about traditional glass mirrors but rather "specular reflectors" such as what you get combining PET with aluminum for a cheap, thin, durable, flexible mirror-like tool. These are already in use for local heat adaptation, but going from adaptation to global heat mitigation is just a matter of scaling up, and there are plenty of resources for it, unlike so much of the other ideas floating around. Plastics with no metal at all are also being developed that could be used. The whole concept is a simple evolution of white paint, which is not feasible for many reasons including the fact that it gets moldy and needs regular attention and re-surfacing.

Climate Confusion

Rob Honeycutt at 00:20 AM on 2 September, 2023

Markp @23...

"The fact is, when we talk about hypothetically achieving no more human emissions, we're talking about a time in the future that is not tomorrow or next year or next decade, but at the very least, several decades, at least going by the extremely lazy response by humanity thus far. Correct?"

I'd say this is a faulty assumption. It is most certainly a Herculean task that is required, made even more difficult by the need to pull ever more humans out of poverty. But when you look at the changes that are occurring, particularly in how quickly renewables are now getting deployed, I think there's a decent chance we'll get to net zero around 2050 and full zero in the decades following that.

It must be disheartening for all the scientists and engineers who have been working on renewable energy for decades, and for them to have now created methods that generate electricity that beat the cost of FF's, only to constantly hear people make statements like "the extremely lazy response by humanity thus far."

But perhaps they're too busy to take notice or even care what others say.

It's worth noting, we are definitely going to see huge global challenges in the coming decades as the planet likely warms another degree celcius. So, perhaps it's important to put yourself in the mind of someone living in 2050 with far worse climate impacts each and every year. I think all of humanity is going to be laser focused on getting the last vestigages of carbon emissions eliminated.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

MA Rodger at 00:33 AM on 19 August, 2023

Don Williamson @133 & others,
Discussion of the early 21st century SAT/SST record is hardily on-topic for this comment thread. The handful of years showing a reduced rate of warming surface tempertures did not lead to a reversal of warming but to an increased rate of warming, so any linkage to 1970's ideas of a coming ice age is entirely absent, despite an attempted linkage @108 up-thread. (And for the record, the take-away from the SciAm article referenced @133 is the ascribed response fro 'researchers' to all the 'hiatus' nonsense:-

"Picking a period of a decade or so where one part of the Earth's climate system fails to warm and using it to discredit all of climate science is a fallacious argument, and one driven by those with an agenda to discredit climate scientists."

Don Williamson, you have up-thread referenced Oreskes in the discussion of the 1970's idea of a coming ice age and insist there is some missing argument that gives continuing credibility to this 1970's idea (which are also ideas of earlier times according to Oreskes. "Throughout most of the history of science, geologists and geophysicists believed that Earth history was characterized by progressive, steady, cooling.") Do note the referenced pre-print conference paper does not constitute proof of a 'missing argument'. And were one sought, perhaps Oreskes (2007) 'The scientific consensus on climate change: How do we know we're not wrong?' can provide it.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 05:11 AM on 16 August, 2023

To Rob Honeycutt

Her inclusion of some fearing the coming ice age indicates at least some thought it was going to continue. I'm not aware of surveys of that era so I can't offer insights for what the dominant view predicted for the next years, decades or centuries.

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

daveburton at 17:24 PM on 5 July, 2023

One Planet, why are you asking me "about the human origins of global warming"? My comment had nothing to do with that.

As for your first indented question, it appears that you've made two unjustifiable assumptions:

Assumption #1: You assume that there's such a thing as "a locked-in doubling of CO2."

If I understand you correctly, that means you think CO2 added to the atmosphere just stays "locked in" there, forever, and the longer we add CO2 to the air the higher the level will rise. Is that what you think?

If that's what you think, you're mistaken. CO2 doesn't just stay in the atmosphere. Nature is rapidly removing CO2 from the air, into other carbon reservoirs. The only reason the atmospheric CO2 level is nevertheless rising instead of falling is that we're adding CO2 to the air even faster than nature is removing it.

But it's becoming harder and harder to keep up with natural CO2 removals, because they're accelerating. This is an excerpt from AR6 WG1 Table 5.1, showing how the removals are accelerating:

LINK (Note: 1 PgC = 0.46962 ppmv = 3.66419 Gt CO2.)

At the current 420 ppmv level (i.e., 135-140 ppmv above a 280-285 ppmv baseline), those negative feedbacks already remove an average of about 5.5 PgC per year (= about 2.6 ppmv), and for each 20-25 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration those removals accelerate by another 1 PgC/year.

With our current emission rate, the CO2 level is only rising by about 5.1 PgC/year (+2.4 ppmv). So it won't take much of a CO2 level increase before natural removals match our current emission rate: just (20 to 25 ppmv/PgC) × 5.1 PgC = (102 to 128) ppmv.

420 + (102 to 128) = 522 to 548 ppmv. That's the "plateau level" beyond which the atmospheric CO2 level cannot rise, unless our emissions increase further. If we were to continue our current anthropogenic emission rate indefinitely (or until the coal runs out), we'd still not quite reach 560 ppmv.

Assumption #2: You seem to think that the CO2 level controls sea-level. But the data do not support that assumption. Most coastal measurement sites have seen negligible acceleration in sea-level trend over the last century, even as the atmospheric CO2 level rose by 115 ppmv.

Here are the best long U.S. Atlantic and Pacific measurement records, respectively:
https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Battery&c_date=1923/6-2024/12
https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Honolulu&c_date=1923/6-2024/12
Both show a statistically insiginficant acceleration of 0.006 mm/yr² (± at least twice that) over the last century.

Hogarth studied many long measurement records, and concluded, "Sea level acceleration from extended tide gauge data converges on 0.01 mm/yr²"

That's very, very slight.

To calculate the effect of that acceleration use the following quadradic formula:

y = B + M·x + (A/2)·x²

where:

x is elapsed time
y is position or sea-level after time x
B is initial position or sea-level
M is current rate
A is acceleration

So (choosing some fairly typical values) if:

M = 1.5 mm/yr
A = 0.01 mm/yr²
x = 100 yrs

And if the trends were to continue:

y = B + 100·1.5 + (0.01/2)·100²
= B + 150 + 0.005·10000
= B + 150 + 50
= 200 mm = 7.9 inches

6" of that 8" is from the linear trend, and 2" of that 8" is due to acceleration.

However, there's a subtle twist. When acceleration is estimated by quadratic regression, we're fitting a quadratic curve to the measurement record to date. Extending that curve is the projection. But the curve's slope matches the linear tread at the midpoint, not at the end.

So, to find y (sea-level) 100 years from NOW, we should use x = 100+(L/2), where L is length of the measurement record.

So if we have a 100 year measurement record, to calculate the accumulated effect of the acceleration 100 years from now we should use x=150, not x=100.

Remember our formula:

y = B + M·x + (A/2)·x²

That last term is the effect of acceleration; using x=150 we get:

(A/2)·x² = 0.005·150² = 0.005·22500 = 112.5 mm = 4.4 inches.

So, an acceleration of 0.01 mm/year² is still negligible, but it's a "slightly bigger negligible."

A warming climate is know to have effects which both increase and decrease sea-level. Based on the negligible effect that the last century's CO2 increase and consenquent warming has had on sea-level trends, it is clear that, so far, the effects which increase and decrease sea-level must be similar in magnitude, and roughly cancelling.

So the assumption that a particular CO2 level "locks in" a particular sea-level is not justifiable.

CO2 is not the only driver of climate

MA Rodger at 20:11 PM on 10 May, 2023

piotr @78,

Going back to your up-thread enquiry, the responses were not entirely nailing you initial question.

piotr @70
I think you confuse the dips in the 11-year solar cycle with the Maunder Minimum. And I would add that associating the Maunder Minimum with a frozen River Thames rather defies the evidence. Frozen Thames events were very rare and only happened in winters when a long cold period of weather engulfed the region. And they stopped happening when they demolished the old London Bridge and embanked the river through London. Without such work, we would have witnessed a frozen Thames in 1963.

piotr @72
You asked what Martin Mlynczak was talking about when he talked of something that "will not cause noticeable cooling at the surface."
The source of that quote is here and I don't think it directly quotes Mlynczak although Mlyncsak was being quoted directly upthread @69 when he says "There is no relationship between the natural cycle of cooling and warming in the thermosphere and the weather/climate at Earth’s surface," the source here dating to 2018.

And what Martin Mlyncsak was talking about is the newly established Thermosphere Climate Index which back in 2018 was dropping due to the ending of sunspot cycle 24 and with the arrival of sunspot cycle 25 has since risen from 'cold' and approaching 'warm'. This is the "natural cycle" Mlyncsak referred to when he says it has no imact on surface temperatures and given this Thermosphere is a hundred+ kilometres up in the atmosphere, this should not be any great surprise. A graphic of the Thermosphere Climate Index.

CO2 is not the only driver of climate

Bob Loblaw at 11:20 AM on 8 May, 2023

piotr @ 70:

You ask what might have caused the Maunder Minimum. First, you should think about exactly what the Maunder Minimum was: a period of low sunspot numbers. Wikipedia has a good article, and they include this figure:

Technically, "what caused the Maunder Minimum?" is a question of astrophysics, not climatology. But what you are probably wanting to ask is "what caused the xxxxx?, where xxxxx is something that you feel is correlated with the Maunder Minimum. Reduced solar irradiance? Lower temperatures? The Little Ice Age?

So, this means that you are looking at something where the Maunder Minimum is an indirect/proxy indicator of some potential climate factor. You do realize that we do not have direct evidence that the Maunder Minimum caused a specific decrease in solar irradiance? You do realize that many of the observations indicating cooler temperatures - such as ice on the Thames -are local, and not global? The Little Ice Age appears to be related to a number of factors. You can read about it a bit more in this post.

Understanding of past climates is based on things like vegetation, sediments, etc. A lot of those have automatic time-averaging (trees don't grow in a year) and spatial averaging (sediments and pollen get carried in to lakes from large watersheds). The analysis of past climates includes a wide variety of proxy indicators. You can read more about it on this post.

In short, you need to be more specific in explaining what you do understand, and what questions you have.

The Big Picture

Bart Vreeken at 21:31 PM on 22 March, 2023

N R N P @168

Shall I have a try in answering your questions? I live in The Netherlands and here we have the same kind of discussions. Excuse me in advance for my English, it seems to be horrible.

A. Changing for the worse?
I hope we do agree that the earth is warming. It's an on going process and we (science) expect that it will go on for a much longer time. So it gives a lot of changes in the climate almost everywhere.

A key point is that the continents and the oceans are warming in a different speed. The oceans are warming much slower. This has consequences. When the atmosphere warms up it can contain more water vapor. But the less warming ocean can't deliver enough water vapour to keep the more warming continents humid enough. As a result there is more risk for drought at many places.
An other thing is that the air whole circulation will change. It means that local climates can change more than the global average. Wet climates can turn to dry climates, but also the other way round. Our agriculture, infrastructure and houses are not (always) prepared for that.
As you know, a warmer climate makes the sea level rise. The warmer water in the ocean expands, the ice sheets and mountain glaciers are melting to a certain extent. This sea level rise will give a lot of problems in many coastal areas. Here in the Netherlands the protection against the sea is very well organized, we can manage the first one or one-and-a-halve meter in this century. When it gets more we have a problem, but we are already try to prepare for that. Other countries, including deltas in Asia and parts of the US are less protected and will have large problems before 2100. By the way, it's not only the sea level rise there. Many of these places have also subsidence of the land, but these two come together and the problems are coming much faster then without sea level rise.

And then there is the unpredictable part. We don't know exactly how the ice sheets will react. Maybe there are mechanisms for a quick decline of parts of the ice sheets. In that case we have less time to prepare for it.
Of course, there can also be places where the climate gets better, or at least in a part of the year. And at least, we will need less fuel for warming the houses. (but more electricity for cooling in the summer.)

An interesting point is the direct effect of the increasing CO2 level to the vegetation and the agriculture. Plants can grow faster with that. Remote sensing shows something like 'global greening'. But it's a mixture of natural response and increasing agriculture. The last thing is tricky when water recourses are limited. And as we have seen, the increasing risk for drought is a cause for concern by itself. Maybe you know the story of the Aral See?
Then your question B) changing because of human activities?
Yes, we can be sure about this. We could calculate the effect of increasing CO2 hundred years ago and it's just what happening. Other possible factors, like changing sun power don't have much effect, these changes are too small. The less known part is how the atmosphere reacts (water vapor, clouds), how the ocean circulation reacts, how ice sheets react in detail.

"C) why this time it is different than the changes that have taken place?"
The changes are going very fast now, and as I said, the houses, the infrastructure, the agriculture and the water supply are not prepared for these changes. And there is the risk for sudden, even faster changes (tipping points).

The Big Picture

peppers at 02:50 AM on 21 March, 2023

HI One World, and also Rob made some sea level comments as well.
Im sorry I don’t have more time, and some of you commit large swaths of time here and I appreciate that.
Using NASA data, presuming they have the best resources and equipment, satellites and those argo sea probes et al. to gather original data, they show sea level rising since 1993 to be 3.8 inches.
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/
But what I think you are trying to indicate, and what the graphs show mostly, are that the rate of sea rise increases as the warming continues higher and higher. An exponential effect is presented. So taking past temperature increases will not explain future expected gains. It is either an exponential increase or the suggestion is that the increase is delayed so that as we go up in temperature, the rise happens decades later and there is a build.
I think we have finished with the run away suggestions for nature. The train bearing down on a child and all that. I see that as tactics to get people to listen and pay attention, but nothing true in our environment. Nature balances. She reacts. This Co2 rise is a reaction and right now she is reacting to this human population boom, which is unprecedented in history. And all the energy use associated with all these new counts of people on earth, living longer and healthier than ever, this is increasing Co2 counts and enriching our surface world in all the ways Co2 can do that.
Nasa used 4-5 scales to predict sea rise, 1. tracking if nothing is done, 2. some is done and 3. complete zero new emissions is achieved ( which cannot happen until the population levels out in 60 or so years ).
By 2100 there is Nasa modeling of .4 to .8 meter rise, using the data set of 2. some is being done. Doing what we can will be instrumental in keeping high tide from being higher than usual in that future time. I’ve tries to stay with the median predictions, so this is not discrepancy conversation of the outer 5%’s.
Science American believes no new storms are made but the severity of moisture based storms may increase by 2-4 miles per hour. The threat of sea rise is about the most serious threat.
I understand better where you are coming from. I still have the higher philosophical orientation to grapple with.
If mankind has finally achieved the goal of conquering the mission of dreams pondered throughout the pain filled ages, of solving misery and pain and finding medical success beyond any expectations. Is this worth it? A sea level rise?
The highest gain has been with infant mortality, which has plummeted from the high middle ages at 400-500 per thousand to 5.5 infants per thousand today. Think of all the occasions of birth deaths which also took the mother too, to quantify misery. That and antibiotics alone have caused this phenomenon of Co2 rise. Life spans have increased 61%, living conditions have soared, medicine is in a wonderland of abilities and birth to adulthood stats are beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The question is; is that worth a side effect of sea level rising a foot and a half, maybe 2 feet at high tide.
This endeavor appears to goad and cajole and shame people using fossil fuel and I suppose that is the fastest way to get attention. But I do not believe it to be honest. This appears to be unwittingly human caused and one must decide if it is worth the subsequent consequences ahead. It is not from derelict and wanton people, it is from the results of scientific achievement, sought after for ages and finally achieved within the science that coincided with the industrial revolution. The origin of this is important to be able to consider context to this issue. If I were there and had the choice in my hands, I’d have us standing exactly where we were today. Reducing Co2 is still important, but I wouldn’t be bullying any brothers from any mothers over this. It is important, but not that important all things considered.

It's not bad

peppers at 02:49 AM on 21 March, 2023

The Big Picture

michael sweet at 12:36 PM on 18 March, 2023

It is a real phenomenom that when the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctia melt that means there is less gravity there and the sea flows away. I remember that around Greenland itself that could be tens of meters less water and more around Antarctia. There are papers describing where in the globe there will be less water and where there will be more water (ths article describes the affect). By looking at the pattern of sea level rise (upthread I posted a map of sea level rise) and seeiing where it is higher and where it is lower scientists can get an idea of where the water is coming from.

Bart Vreeken posted a map upthread, it is probably accurate. They suggested that melting in the Antarctic will result in higher sea level rise than the global average but melting in Greenland will result in less sea level rise than the global average in Holland. Different parts of Greenland affect Holland differently.

There are other effects on sea level rise that are not intuative. The Gulf Stream carries water from North America to Europe. Sea level in Europe is about 1 meter (!!!) hgher than off North America. If the Gulf Stream stopped, sea level in Europe would decrease substantially while the East coast of the USA would flood. Who wudda thunk.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Bob Loblaw at 08:35 AM on 11 March, 2023

Bart @ 546, 547, and 549:

When I am having a serious discussion with someone in the comments section here, I expect certain things:

That they stick consistently to one aspect of a discussion, without jumping randomly from one sub-characteristic to another.

That when they refer to a figure, they are specific in explaining what part of the figure they are talking about.

That when they provide a link to a paper, they explain which part of the paper they want someone to read (e.g., by using quotes or section numbers, or figure numbers) and why it is relevant.

When they make multiple points, they give some indication that they are shifting gears and how the new point relates to the old point.

You've jumped from Grace data showing total mass, to links to papers discussing snowfall changes, to Surface Mass Balance, and back again - and it is all jumbled together in an incoherent mess.

In 546, you state, "I never said the the [sic] mass loss has stopped. (OK, last year incidentely) [sic]."

The whole purpose of your original comment @ 533 was to draw attention to that "incidental" observation in Grace data, and to tie it to sea ice loss.

In 537, you doubled down on the significance of that one year, and speculated about what might happen "in coming years". And linked to a paper that did not discuss Grace data at all.

In 541 you drew attention to how that one "incidental" point had changed the average, and said that it "gave us a hint..." You referred back to that same paper that does not cover Grace data.

In 544 you switched from Grace data in your original comment to discussions of SMB, without explaining, connecting, or justifying the change.

And now the primary evidence from your original comment (the 2022 Grace data) is dropped as if you just mentioned it "incidentely" [sic] and never meant it to be a claim that the mass loss had stopped?

I expected an honest discussion here, not a game of "Look, squirrel". And in 549 your response to Rob's request to explain what is "interesting" is basically a hand-waving speculation of maybes. If you are posting maybes so that you can backtrack and say things like "I never said the the [sic]mass loss has stopped", when that was the obvious implication of what you said, then it is impossible to have a serious discussion with you.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Bart Vreeken at 02:41 AM on 10 March, 2023

Hi Bob @534

I don't see a clear rebound effect in my figure.

And of course the mass gain of last year shall be exceptional. But at least it's an interesting thing to notice. And maybe the increasing precipitation can offset the increasing discharge in the coming years as we can read in the article below. As you say, the average mass loss is now something like 114 Gt per year. That's much less then the 151 Gt we read about on the website of NASA (Vital Signs).

tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/4053/2022/tc-16-4053-2022.pdf

2015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry

Bob Loblaw at 00:49 AM on 11 January, 2023

This is a very old thread, Long. Topal notes in comment #1 that all funds go to the Smithsonian, not individual scientists, but there are some catches to that.

Some of the links in the post are dead, but the "Climate Sceptic’s Fossil Fuel Funding Exposed" page is alive, and at the bottom of that article there is a link to original documents.

One of those documents is a 2008 contract between The Smithsonian and Southern Company Services Inc. The contract includes the proposal from Soon, and part of the proposal includes the items the money is to be spent on. That covers the following:

494 hours of Soon's labour, valued at $25,209. (That would put Soon's salary for a 2000-hr work year at roughly $100,000).

Program administration

Secretary

Leave and Fringe benefits (i.e., overhead costs related to labour)

"Direct Operating Overhead @ 30%".

This would be Smithsonian's cut, to cover things like office space, etc.

Travel

"Printing and reproduction"

The way I would interpret this is that at least part of Soon's salary at Smithsonian is (was?) not coming from general Smithsonian funds, but from grants and contracts that Soon pulls in. This is not uncommon, AFAIK.

So, Soon's salary is (was?) probably fixed by his employment arrangements with the Smithsonian, but the Smithsonian gets off the hook for finding money to pay Soon - or at least, partly off the hook. Soon does not get rich by having a lot of contracts, but his continued employment at the Smithsonian would be made much easier by virtue of having industry cover his salary.

...and having grants or contracts to cover travel makes it a lot easier to participate in the contrarian talking road show. (The details in that contract cover travel to a "Scientific meeting, San Francisco". Possibly the AGU, at a guess?)

I certainly would not argue against you in speculating that gas and oil money will be a lot easier for Soon to get than regular government research grants.

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

peppers at 19:08 PM on 4 January, 2023

HI One Planet,

Some really good and deep drilling down, and I appreciate the basic quest of common sense. As some of this line of thinking is not greatly established with data. We are noodling this out.

There is an urgent need to alter our dependence on fossil fuel. I am finding mere lifestyle change to be questionable though. That could slow or unlikely halt the co2 increase if we could apply ourselves. But a real knockout punch is nuclear. I hear even Gretha is talking nuclear.

I looked in to why the population has rocketed up to our current 8 billion.

NUmber one is medicine and health advancments. To drill down, number one of that is infant mortality decreasing and also life expectancy increasing overall. Specifically, upon the introduction of pennicillin in the early 1950's; worldwide life expectancy we went from 48 years in 1950 to about 69 now, going up in to the 70's for life expectancy soon worldwide. The links below also shows fertility rates dropping slowly, and specifically in USA while greatly increasing in Africa. This will present a shift from high producing locates to the low locates for co2 production over time, all else considered. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/main-factors-driving-population-growth/

As a landlord, I am very aware of the utility and products use of children and infants. One initially thinks, they are smaller, they use less! Far be it! As in population increase causing the increasing use of fossil fuels, which are the producers of co2, the children cause the adults to consume very large additional amounts of energy to care for thier babies. Every form of increased waste and product use comes in to play, right up to selling the small sedan and buying an SUV, with no concern about much of anything except the best for caring for the babies. We do become a bit crazy, about babies.

I think your premise of SkS's mission is correct, while we look to a solution the size of this sunami od human development. The increase of pressure of population is predicted to continue through this century, then abate. There is an overly simplified page from UCBerkeley about population increase:

https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/population-growth/

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

Using the second link above, there is a highly useful chart built, where one can sort in many important ways. China emits twice our output of co2, and they are villified for it. However, they are at 1/2 the per capita than the USA. So they are 4 times larger than the USA and we emit 1/2 their level, as the USA is at 15.52 per capita and they are at a pretty low 7.38. If we cut our use down by 1/2, to 7.38, we would reduce global emissions of co2 by 7% and that reduction would exactly match the 7% we are expected to increase in population of adding the next billion in 14 years. Again, population is expected to balance about the end of this century and stop increasing (I have not explored why).

I do not know what would be the lifestyle change that can make emmisions drop by 50%. More gain would be possible with worldwide reductions. There are 15 countries higher emitting than the USA, including Canada and Australia (which must have pretty good PR depts as they sound like they are on cutting edge!). The higher emitters total about 1/3 our population so the USA is the earliest target for sure, where the largest gain could be seen. And if a true worldwide effort succeeded, there is a chance to slow, stop and also reduce.

But nuclear and continue using electric which is only a delivery method and not an energy source would do it. Nuclear would allow us to stop another problem, which is the villian making which is happening among the people. People are not getting it. For whatever reason. Note the shift of sedan sales flipping to SUV's about 2015, and now pickup trucks and SUV's sell double low emitting sedans. And shaming, goading, hampering, I hear mocking and debasing and endless ways of fracturing the peace being presented from all sides on this important topic.

If. If it is a formula of population growth, bought on by historic medical discovery and advances, this is not any persons fault. Continuing awareness is appropriate, but will not produce the goals desired without running in to political opposition ( kill babies, reduced family sizes, really dramatic lifestyle changes, etc). And there is damage to the global psyche when peoples feel attacked. I categories much of the inappropriate responses to the horror approach of this ( folks are not explaining the problem and then asking for cooperation, for instance), and one could find explainations of any one responding badly when cornered. But I dont think people caused this by wanton debauched lifestyles. They are growing a lot of babies, which use a huge new amount of energy.

Nuclear would be a response about on the scale of pennicillin coming on the scene, and handle this in the shortest time, with the greatest impact and stop this shaming and blaming of peoples as a response. This is urgent and important. We could feed the world with the surplus value of the current plans.

A large part of this treatise is just noodling. It helps me think about it to write as I go. I appreciate the chance to drop this here. This is just my opinion, forming. Thanks all, D

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Rob Honeycutt at 10:34 AM on 28 December, 2022

Doug @376... This is starting to veer onto a new topic that might be better for a different thread, but what you're doing is promoting the canard about intermittency of wind and solar.

The fact is, we are not replacing existing FF facilities until the end of their useful life. Once a facility is built it will continue operation until retirement. New facilities are built to address increased energy needs and to replace retiring facilities. Because of the LCOE most new installed facilities are now wind and solar.

As the cost of grid level storage falls below the cost of peaker plants, those facilties will are become economically unviable to build. Existing peaker plants will continue to operate until their useful life expires and grid storage will replace them.

You say, "Remember to account for the battery storage when needed" but that is part of the canard about intermittency. Each of these are independent elements of the grid system. Each supply power when available (yes, even FF sources often unexpectedly go down as well).

With the falling cost of grid level storage what many new wind and solar facilities are looking at is co-location as opposed to grid level arbitrage. That storage cost could like fall to half of the current price in the coming decade, and once that happens there is no way for any mix of FF to compete in the market. It would just be a matter of allowing existing FF facilities to live out their useful lives to then be replaced with renewable sources.

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

nigelj at 05:51 AM on 28 December, 2022

Bob Loblaw at 74

Thanks for the comments. I get where you are coming from.

One clarification. I didnt mean that this website specifically deletes comments and I wasn't being critical of them for doing that. I was just speaking generally.

This websites moderation policy actually seems generally quite well considered to me. Comments are deleted if they ramble off topic, make wild claims without reference to scientific literature or that just get repetitive. People only have to obey a few simple rules to get their opinion published. Some people just resist this then get all agitated. They are either arrogant or just not very bright.

The point is this website doesnt delete opinions just because it doesnt agree with them. People get a generally fair go. So the level of 'censorship' on this website is acceptable, but I would say its right at the upper limit of whats appropriate.

Yes Fox News is absolutely selective and biased. However this is not an excuse for us to do ever do the same. We should always strive to be objective. If there is a bias or adherence to some ideology it should be advertised: The economist.com does this nicely in its mission statement but I cant find thething now to copy and paste. It was something along the lines that they lean centre right economically and towards free trade but are not adverse to governments having some involvement in the economy. And that they lean liberal socially. So readers know their philosophical leaning

Yes we all get that there have to be some limits on free speech. Its entirely about where one draws the line in the sand. Governments impose some limits on free speech. I have no problem with that in principle and generally they are fairly minimal in western countries and that is to my preference.

The NZ governmnet goes slightly beyond some countries because it has laws against racist speech and this makes sense to me for reasons stated up thread. Its been considering hate speech law but has given up for now, because its so difficult to define hate speech and there has been a lot of push back against potentially suppressing discussion because almost anything could be labelled hate. This seems like a valid concern to me.

But its not only governments that can limit free speech. My main concern is what websites do and I lean towards fairly minimal moderation. You and Electic seem to lean towards quite strong censorship on websites. Six months ago my views were virtually identical to Electics on this. So similar its quite startling. Now I just wonder if strong censorship might do more harm than good. I think the trigger was our governmnets attempts to bring in hate speech laws. It just doesnt seem possible to define adequately or practically viable and is too likely to suppress opinion, and just too Orwellian for me.

I'm sure you and Eclectic would do a good fair minded job of moderation of such issues, but its other people I worry about.

So back to Twitter. It is not entirely clear what Musk is up to yet. However it appears he leans strongly towards libertarian values and free speech and against censorship, and it appears he is not going to be banning people or deleting comments unless they are inciting criminal activity or are just being extremely verbally abusive and bullying.

One problem is there isnt another website offering a similar service to Twitter to my knowledge. Given I have my doubts about hate speech laws, and the lack of alternatives to Twitter, I dont think this website should feel it has to abandon Twitter at this stage. FWIW.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #43 2022

Art Vandelay at 10:24 AM on 7 November, 2022

MA Rodger @8 ...

" you assert will see rising emissions resulting from the underdeveloped societies "seeking a more first world existence in coming decades," a "first world existence" that has itself become non-emitting."

You're overlooking emissions as a consequence of building 'first world' infrastructure and industry, which includes transportation, high rise commercial development in towns and cities and first-world housing etc. That's a lot of concrete, steel etc and those materials must be mined, refined and transported, often from other countries and over vast distances.

"You are generally ignoring the goal of developed societies to reduce their own emissions to net zero, indeed to go beyond into the realm of net negative emissions."

Not ignoring, just focused on the developing nations who are responsible for the bulk of global emissions, and importantly, the majority of future global emissions this century.

"You also assert that "the transition towards a low carbon future" will involve a period of increased emissions. If a portion of the carbon-emitting economy is put to the task of building the non-emitting infrastructure, it may be thus engaged in more carbon-intense activities but I would be surprised if any impact on CO2 emissions were significant, especially given the delivery of non-emitting power follows close behind."

Leaving aside rebuilding the world's energy sector, replacing one billion motor vehicles alone is surely an enormously carbon intensive transition, necessitating the mining, processing, and transportation of raw and processed materials on an enormous scale. Studies indicate that EV's incur a higher carbon footprint than ICEV's during the manufacturing process, and the payback peried is over many years. Assuming that new demand for motor vehicles will also come from developing nations it raises the prospect of perhaps double the number of motor vehicles globally in coming decades. It begs the question of whether that's remotely sustainable.

NIJELJ @8 .."However I personally think both fossil fuel emissions and population growth are problems."

Population is definitely a huge issue if we deem current first world standards of living (and consumption) as a point of reference for the future. And regardless of our living standards humans will emit CO2 because humans are essentially organic combustion engines. Not only do we exhale about 10% of global CO2, our existance is at the expense of vast amounts of natural forest for both habitation and food production, both of which are highly emissive, with or without renewable energy.

At some point in the not-too-distant future we will be forced to have some difficult conversations to do with sustainable lifestyle and population, and come to an acceptance that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels is just one aspect of a much larger problem that no amount of wind and solar energy energy can ever solve.

Climate Change's Controversial Policy: Loss & Damage

One Planet Only Forever at 14:39 PM on 6 November, 2022

Walschuler and Art Vandelay have presented some valid points.

There is more to consider regarding climate change impact Loss and Damages.

Loss and damage, or reparations, is challenging (and challenged). It requires the development of adaptations by the highest harming per capita portion of the population. They need to make amends for harmful past, present and future actions they benefit(ed) from. They need to:

admit that harmful beliefs and related actions developed in the past and continue to be popular and profitable today. The past harm includes the injustice of developed perceptions of prosperity and status and the inequitable advantages that development created.

recognize the current continuing harm and harmful developed systemic problems.

understand that there will be future harm done that people need to be compensated for until the harmful beliefs and resulting actions are effectively limited. The improvement of awareness and understanding, especially among the wealthy and powerful, needs to be significant enough to ensure that collective governing will limit the harmful impacts.

A key consideration is that undeserving beneficiaries of harmful beliefs and actions will try to delay corrections that reduce their perceptions of prosperity and status. Delaying the reduction of harmful pursuits of benefit makes the required future adaptation more severe. And that can make it harder to get support from people who understandably should suffer any required negative consequences.

The delayed reduction of per capita impacts by the harmfully over-developed portion of the global population is building a more damaging situation, including more vicious fighting against deserved losses by undeserving (damaging) wealthy and powerful people.

A major impediment to the understandably required corrections is the perceptions of prosperity and status hat developed via benefiting from unjustified beliefs that excuse harmful unsustainable beliefs, systems and actions.

Admitting to the need for compensation for loss and damage due to climate change impacts understandably includes compensation for harm done by the past harmful development of perceptions of superiority. That is a slippery slope for the wealthy and powerful. Some wealth and power is legitimately obtained by developing sustainable improvements for humanity. But a lot of current day wealth and power is almost certain to be due to harmful actions and the promotion of harmful unjustified claims and excuses.

Admitting to the need for Loss and Damage requires the current day wealthy and powerful to admit that they do not deserve their developed perceptions of status. And it requires them to decide how they will:

collectively penalize themselves to stop the developed harmful pursuits of benefit

adequately compensate and correct for all of the harm done everything that contributed to their acquisition of higher status.

Regarding insurance:

The wealthy profit from private insurance programs. They have been reported to harmfully operate private insurance to maximize their profitability. Their actions include declaring that the circumstances some people needing assistance are in make them ineligible for insurance. In addition, the harmful among the wealthy and powerful have a history of abusing their influence on leadership to limit government assistance programs or have those programs implemented in ways that they benefit from.

The required adaptation is clearly the dramatic rapid reduction of harmful unsustainable pursuits of perceptions of prosperity and status relative to others.

The obvious challenge is overcoming the developed powerful resistance to the required adaptation actions.

Climate Change's Controversial Policy: Loss & Damage

walschuler at 08:17 AM on 4 November, 2022

I would add to the excellent presentation that some of the key questions include:

What precedents exist for dealing with other forms of environmental damage? Can those who pay damages specify how the money is spent by the damaged populations? In view of the universal nature of the climate crisis and the size of the damages already caused and upcoming due to inaction can we afford not to have pretty good control of how the money is spent? Private insurance has a role to play for some cases, perhaps the most localized cases. Also, the government insurance might have roles. In the US the Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of power companies operating nuclear reactors to $450mill per reactor plus up to about 100reactors at $120mill each or $12bill. This money is either by private carriers or assessed as fees to the power companies, which might possibly be recovered later in their utility rates. There is also an arrangement for cases of US makers whose reactors are in foreign countries. See https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821. Perhaps there are lessons there. I wonder if there are similar arngements for nukes in Japan or Germany. A downside of such insurance schemes is that they often take al ong time to settle, and we need action world-wide. China is ramping up its solar rapidly and has caused a drop in its costs which has contributed to adoption in the US and elsewhere, but has also installed and continues to install more coal powerplants. India is building coal fired powerplants too. Perhaps the role of already industrialized countries should be first and most urgently to subsidize renewables world-wide, to the extent that developing countries get them at a cost that undercuts the cheapest fossil plants by some modest amount. Such subsidies might count against past damages. Electrification network costs, which might be mostly independent of power source types and costs, ought to be borne by the developing countries and installed with future capacity needs in mind. (The future capacity is another problem. Should we all be looking to cap it or to make it indefinitely expandable?)

Climate change made 2022’s northern-hemisphere droughts ‘at least 20 times’ more likely

David Hawk at 21:19 PM on 25 October, 2022

Thank you for putting numbers on the future of the present. Your proposed situation for the very likely 2.0 degree C temp increase is pretty disheartening. Also, it looks realistic.

The next study might expand to include the actual yields from the same locations where moisture and temperature were collected. I run a 1,500 acre farm in Iowa where the harvest looks pretty bad. Many fields are running at a 50% yield. One field normally getting 200 bushels/acre produced only 11 this year via two month drought. Such looks bad for food availability.

Perhaps we need to rise above the Newtonian model of relying on cause-effect thinking about climate change consequences? I've been trying to develop a more systemic way to describe our future via the "effects of effects" instead of the usual cause-effect model applied to climate change. The public, including farmers, somehow relates more closely to such. Time is short; cause-effect studies are untimely and then unhelpful to change.

A new publication in Europe goes deeper into the effects from effects thinking. Titled, "Short-term Gain, Long-term Pain:Climate Change as a Faustian Tragedy" it responds to the question raised in a book "Too Early, Too Late, Now what?" It came from my 1975-77 research project done at the Stockholm School of Economics and Sweden's EPA. It was on environmental deterioration becoming climate change, with results from work with twenty major international firms and six governments trying to regulate them. Titled: "Environmental Deterioration: Analytic Solutions in Search of Synthetic Problems, " its results were heavily criticized, even by the then Head of the US version of EPA. He claimed climate change was an "ad hominem" issue to be avoided in serious research. His training was from a law school education.

Clearly, what we are now doing to manage climate change is insufficent.

Ag’s challenging future in a changing climate

David Hawk at 22:00 PM on 15 September, 2022

Agree with you Eric. Jeff has done a very good job that I will now distribute though parts of the agricultural industry via the governmental agencies involved in issues of: "soil and water conservation." My sister has been an important political member in this area of concern in Iowa for decades.

Your Parts 1 and 2 were very informative on many of the major issues that have surfaced as a problem in agriculture during 25 years, about aspects of major shortcomings in the path taken. Much diverse analysis of the causes of diverse effects has been done since 2010. Your notes weave together much of the cause-effect strands running throughout science and now seen in the climate change process. The limit is that this approach often misses the effects from effects where many are not in fact caused. The conclusion is that the overviews tend to be overly optimistic about the forthcoming situatoin. When Richard Garwin and I used to put on events for AAAS we kept making this point. Emphasizing causes comes to miss the effects of effects that are systemic in nature, not open to appreciation via analysis. The work I got to do with Hsue-Shen Tsien on systems sciences and complex problems came to the same conclusion.

I await your Part 3 that will more systemically integrate the pieces as is now under discusion in information systems science that frooze about 2010. Therein the 19th Century models of industrialization had been relied on to develop information technology. Mike Kelly's work at IBM, then DARPA and then at Georgia Tech move thinking from mass to single copy production and then my 2004 advice to Nokia to stay in open source programming and avoid the Microsoft model may now be instructive of a better response to climate change.

Agriculture is moving deeply into the unfortunate economcs behind Microsoft and Nokia relative to the long term costs of mass production and priviatized sourcing. You would do a good job of helping farmers avoid the road those two took.

The above is especially challenging relative to the rapidly spreading consequences of John Deer Inc. in its new design of their equipment for farming worldwide. Expanding their closed data mining, of farmer generated information, is now discouraging the wide participantion thought to be essential to creating the diversity of response constantly brought up on our Zoom calls by Stuart Kauffman. We are working with a group of farmers in many countries to keep the value of small and varied farmer pm the farm to create ideas of special value during climate change. He has long been into something special.

Conclusion: the standard cause-effect model used to create and spread the benefits of the industrial may not be the one to use when researching the consequences of that model. This is seen in the consistancy with which we see climate change changing and becoming more consequential than projected the prior year. Looking at those at the edges of the problem, not at the core, may be helpful to seeing things differently. Carl Sagan and I usedd to do such on this subject. This will be outlined in a forthcoming book: "Short-term Gain, Long-term Pain."

Thank you, and this site for continuance of the unusual and insightful doorways into difference.

CO2 effect is saturated

Eclectic at 21:28 PM on 11 September, 2022

Hi GreenEarth (@661) ,

Offhand, I am not sure which would be the best page here to point you to ~ IIRC this information can be found on a number of threads (and perhaps a kindly Moderator can indicate some suitable ones).

What we are talking about is very basic stuff known by all physicists having any connection with radiation & atmosphere (in other words, climate science).

In short, the atmospheric molecules are all knocking about against each other. Likewise for the various molecules of the Earth's surface ~ energy passes from surface to atmosphere, and vice versa, by these impacts. There is also bi-directional energy exchange between the planetary surface and adjacent air, via radiated photons. (Of course, there is also short-wave photonic energy coming from the sun ~ including from clouds, dispersion by dust etcetera in the air.)

The surface loses "heat" upwards by convection, by evaporation/condensation, and by radiation (mostly by radiation into the atmosphere, but a small amount by direct radiation out to space via the "window" band around 10 microns). The so-called "sensible heat" loss (producing warm air and thus convection) derives from molecular impacts as well as the limited-range radiation you have mentioned earlier.

Once the energy has risen to the so-called Top Of Atmosphere [TOA] it can then be radiated out into space (the TOA altitude level is different for CO2, H2O, CH4 , and other greenhouse gasses).

I hope I have not been repeating too much stuff that you already know.

The essential point is that because the greenhouse gas molecules are so thinly distributed among the bulk of N2/O2 air molecules, they are speeding/ slowing/ vibrating owing to impacts with the N2/O2 molecules which are moving at the (average) speed determined by the local air temperature. In effect, CO2 [for example] is able to broadcast 15 micron photons by gaining energy from local air (and by radiating, effectively cools the adjacent air). Almost all the energy for radiation comes from impact energy ~ and only a minuscule amount is contributed from a received/absorbed 15 micron photon from a "distant" CO2 molecule.

This is the reason why the concentration of CO2 at near-surface altitude is irrelevant to the greenhouse warming effect ~ because the concentration at TOA is the important determiner of the planetary effect. Then we get to the importance of the temperature at TOA and the actual altitude at TOA combined with the Lapse Rate temperature gradient.

GreenEarth, my apologies if my condensed explanation is not as clear as you would like, but I hope it sets you off in a useful direction of exploration of the basic concepts. And I would be interested to know where the incorrect ideas you got were coming from.

A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’

Eclectic at 18:15 PM on 10 September, 2022

Dvaytw @21 : my 2 cents on that August 2022 debate :-

Two questions.

A/ What is "minimal" impact? To use those cliches Global North and Global South . . . the North has considerable fat on its waistline. For instance, in the USA the wealth of the socioeconomic top 1% is approx 40 trillion USD ~ so the nation could comfortably manage to deal with a plus/minus 10% economic impact over the course of the next eighty-ish years.

# But for the South, things like the [presentday] disastrous Pakistan flooding/ other droughts floods heatwaves and increasing sea-level rise (over the coming 100 years & beyond) . . . are heading in the direction of cumulating catastrophe, which will fall most heavily on the South. Quite possibly the total global GNP's will continue to increase [to the applause of economists] ~ but that would provide little comfort against a vast scale of human misery. So shame on Koonin, if that is his line of "economic impact" argument.

B/ What do the people of the so-called developing countries actually need over the next 100 years? First answer is : food/ shelter/ education/ freedom from oppression, and so on. Parity, in the sense of a widescreen television etcetera would be nice, but it is a long way down the immediate wish list, I'm sure. Neither the food nor the TV will be produced by a large ramping-up of fossil fuel usage. Much reform (and careful international aid) is needed ~ but Koonin is absurd if he opines that Nigeria will necessarily benefit from more oil production or Congo Republic benefit from more cobalt production.

If Koonin thinks that more fossil fuel usage will not cause an overall digging-deeper of the present "hole" for global conditions, then he is being disingenuous (for the sake of quickie debate points).

# Third question . . . is the Koonin/Dessler debate worth viewing? Dvaytw, if the two points you mention are the best/strongest that Koonin can do, then their debate sure ain't worth viewing.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #32 2022

Doug Bostrom at 08:53 AM on 19 August, 2022

Ah-hah. Jason really wants us to notice Klaus Schwab.

Here's some background on why (note the parroting*). It helps to explain Jason's "hiding in plain sight" angle.

The Great Reset: What is it?

Jason's mapping the original Great Reset crowd-sourced anxiety onto the IPCC. It doesn't make the jump very well.

We're seeing a kind of platypus being stitched together.

Still not hearing any complaints about what we know about why we should deal w/warming, how this controverts common sense. Instead, hints of descent into old fashioned, dull and boring denial are becoming more visible. All roads lead there when there's no useful argument against "seatbelts are good."

The discussion remains substantially stuck on "my ideology is offended."

*_{“The Great Reset is not a conspiracy theory. The World Economic Forum website reveals its agenda.”}

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

nigelj at 11:17 AM on 26 July, 2022

David-acct @2

Changes in solar irradiance produce a much smaller warming effect than the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, so any solar heat energy thus sequestered in the oceans and later released, isn't going to be hugely significant. As follows:

"The Sun's overall brightness varies on timescales from minutes to millennia, and these changes are detectable in the global temperature record."

"During strong solar cycles, the Sun's total average brightness varies by up to 1 Watt per square meter; this variation affects global average temperature by 0.1 degrees Celsius or less. "

"Changes in the Sun's overall brightness since the pre-industrial period have been minimal, likely contributing no more than 0.01 degrees Celsius to the roughly 1 degree of warming that's occurred over the Industrial period."

"Projected warming due to increasing greenhouse gas levels in the coming decades will overpower even a very strong Grand Solar Minimum."

"Rising amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide have postponed the next Milankovitch-driven ice age by at least tens of thousands of years."

www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-incoming-sunlight

How to inoculate yourself against misinformation

Petra Liverani at 21:50 PM on 4 July, 2022

@Nigel 31

"You don't have to be a scientist to see certain (covid related) anomalies."

"But are they really anomalies?"

The moon landings is a very interesting case because it's the one where I fall out with my sometimes tribe in our disbelief of many things told to us by the authorities and it's one where you can really see people's inclinations to believe blind them to the evidence - just as we see other people's inclinations blind them to the evidence when they're inclination is to believe the authorities.

After I'd woken up to a couple of big lies I thought I'd take a look at the moon landings which I was all set to disbelieve too. I read the book, Wagging the Moondoggie (love the title if not the content), which said they didn't happen and, knowing nothing on the subject at that point, I found it compelling, however, I thought I should check the evidence myself and when I got to the audio between the astronauts and mission control I stopped dead in my tracks. "No way could this be faked," I thought. But, of course, that's just my opinion, isn't it, just like the opinion of those who think it could be faked. The fact is though that no one has identified any fakery in the audio and there's hours and hours of it. Law of Parsimony/Occam's Razor right?

And, of course, everything we see apart from a few seeming anomalies completely aligns with the lunar conditions so very different from the terrestrial.

While I may misinterpret or simply miss important evidence sometimes I'm definitely an evidence-based thinker, not an inclination-based thinker simply because I don't have strong inclinations. Sure, now I disbelieve so much from the authorities but only because I've clearly identified so many lies - and this all happened after the pretty advanced age of 53, 8 years ago. I don't WANT to disbelieve them though and I don't disbelieve them on the moon landings and man-made climate change - just most other things. And while I said I didn't believe in covid from Day One that doesn't mean I wouldn't change my mind - it's just no evidence came to light to make me change my mind.

Some of the anomalies we see in psychological operations are simply not anomalies that we can glide over. They are very distinctive and we can recognise them as deliberate anomalies not accidental. The most important quote about propaganda in my opinion is from British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels which he applies to both communist propaganda and political correctness but we can see it applies to all propaganda from power.

The purpose of propaganda is not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponds to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/124952-political-correctness-is-communist-propaganda-writ-small-in-my-study

The thing most people seem to have a problem coming to terms with is that those in power tell us the truth underneath the propaganda - they rub it in our faces and make fools of us. When I learnt of this phenomenon known as "revelation of the method" and "hidden-in-plain-sight" I didn't doubt it for a nanosecond because quite a number of giveaway clues had puzzled me. It seems so counterintuitive but it isn't when you know how power works and what could testify to power better than telling us what they're doing and still getting away with it.

Nigel your explanation for a Chinese research team finding Chinese cobras and many-banded kraits to be "reservoirs" of the virus is "flawed early research" but how is that a better explanation than "nonsense"? It really is nonsense because it makes no sense. Why would researchers look in those two species of snakes in the first place (and the pandemic is barely news at this point) but not others? And if they did look at others did they not find those species to be reservoirs only the two mentioned and if this was the case why not mention it? It doesn't make sense. Have we seen any people falling flat on their faces since Wuhan or people laid out on hospital floors or on the ground? No we have not. These are not the only nonsenses, there are plenty more such as actors playing covid patients.

NHS hiring actors to play covid patients

Henry Dyne, Award-winning crisis actor

A crisis actor speaks and shows her contract

What clearly says that the covid pandemic is not a complete fabrication and that everyone labelled sick or dead from covid isn't simply sick or died from something else such as cold, flu, pneumonia, etc? What says it's a real pandemic rather than fake? What's the evidence that clearly distinguishes it as real? What says that a bogus test hasn't been used to make "cases" for an illness that doesn't exist in its own right? Covid has been going for 2.5 years and of the people I've known who've tested positive, some were sick with what could easily be a cold, my neighbour said he felt close to death but recovered in a few days, and someone else had no symptoms. What says my neighbour didn't have a bad flu and the others just had a cold or nothing at all? If government and media didn't tell you 24/7 there was a pandemic would you have a clue there was one? If everyone wasn't made to wear masks, etc would you know there was a pandemic? No, you wouldn't have a clue. How can there be a pandemic that you can only know of through government and media?

We can look at an overall excess spike in mortality in Europe in April 2020 that seems to favour the alleged covid pandemic however when we look at the individual countries and notice how neighbouring countries don't necessarily show the same kind of spike we might wonder about that. Could the fact the spike doesn't cross borders be explained by aggressive drug trials rather than a covid pandemic? Something to very seriously ponder on.

Set the right marker to about Week 25 2020 to see how in the preceding weeks there's a big spike in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy but not in Portugal and Germany where no aggressive drug trials were conducted.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country

Oxford, Recovery et Solidarity : Overdosage in two clinical trials with acts considered criminal?

The problem of growth in a finite world

One Planet Only Forever at 04:14 AM on 6 March, 2022

Dear Peter Cook,

I have completed reading, and considering and evaluating, the paper.

From my perceptive, presented @13, the majority of the content of the paper is well reasoned and aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And the parts that are less well reasoned, of course, do not give me reaosn to change my perspective and understanding.

I will share a few suggestions regarding the paper from my perspective (this should help you find and adjust other parts that could be improved form my perspective). I have not provided pointers to specific parts of the document because each point applies to more than one location in the document. I also have not presented them in the order that they first appear in the document.

Wording should be revised to clarify that population action like Family Planning is to be in addition to education of women and girls, not instead of it. Note that SDG 3.7 is: “By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes”.

Revise the wording to reinforce the importance of meeting all the SDGs, not just this one point about Family Planning.

When listing Family Planning actions, include condoms and vasectomy (men also have the responsibility to limit how many children they father).

If the objective is fewer births, add the action of ‘stopping medical and technical assistance to people who struggle to become pregnant’. That is primarily an action for already developed nations to set the example for developing nations to follow (reducing new births, not expending special effort to produce new births).

Claiming that education about, and access to, family planning is important extends to understanding that immigrants to a country like Australia would be less likely to have children than if they did not become immigrants. They would be moving to a society that has more access to that education and assistance. They would also be closer to people who present examples of women who have fewer children, women who never have children, and women who can live independently.

Expecting people in developing nations to be unaware of the higher consumption and more harmful ways of living they can aspire to develop to is fantasy thinking. How the supposedly superior and more advanced people live is hard to miss. And people can be expected to want to develop to be like the people who appear to be superior and more advanced. Not becoming an immigrant would not reduce their development aspirations. Having the supposedly superior and more advanced people ‘all’ set better examples is required.

Agreed that immigration to Australia is not a required reparation for European colonial actions. However, harm requiring reparations was done by ‘European competitors for superiority pursuing resources beyond their borders and failing to keep the growth of their population under control within their regions – they sent their excess people to the colonies where they continued the example of population growth and attempts to dominate Others’. That requires significant reparations for populations of regions harmfully impacted by the colonization. Those reparations include development aid. Note that while NATO members are pushed to expend 2% of GDP on ‘means to kill others as a deterrent to nations trying to harmfully benefit like the colonizers did’ most of the nations fail to come close to delivering the agreed minimum 0.7 of GNP as Official Development Aid.

Immigration to Australia would shift the location of infrastructure building, not produce it exclusively in Australia. The presumption that the developing nations will not create impacts by building infrastructure is the result of not considering the big picture.

The concern about Australia’s food security is misleading. Global trade of food is required to respond to temporary regional shortages anywhere, as is correctly stated in the paper. Having the ability to get food to those who need it is the issue. And the infrastructure of a nation like Australia makes it easier to obtain and deliver imported food as required.

I hope that helps improve the paper.

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

One Planet Only Forever at 03:48 AM on 28 February, 2022

Santalives,

It is possible that you have become one of the many unwitting victims of harmful misleading marketers. The following may help.

I am an engineer. I learned to have the fundamental ethic of "pursuing increased awareness and improved understanding and applying what I learn to limit harm done and help develop lasting improvements for Others". But I have also learned that my work as a Civil Engineer, particularly my Structural Engineering work, divisively sets me apart from other Appliers of Science, especially the appliers of marketing science. My work powerfully motivates me to have that fundamental ethic govern over pursuit of popularity or profit. If I do not govern what I do that way "People will be far more likely to Die".

I also have an MBA. So I understand the powerful motivation Others can develop. They will be powerfully tempted to allow pursuit of personal benefit (like popularity or profit) to govern over 'concerns to limit harm done or develop lasting improvements for Others'.

As a Structural Engineer if I learn that an existing development is harmful or unsafe I am ethically obliged to push to have the use of the existing development be stopped until it can be made to be safe. Others who benefit from the risky harmful developments will resist the required corrections, because they do not want to suffer the loss of personal benefit that is associated with being governed to have safer, less harmful, developments.

Many developed societies, especially the western capitalist ones (but certainly not exclusively western capitalist ones), can be understood to harmfully allow misleading marketing in pursuit of popularity or profit to govern over concerns for limiting harm done or compromise the understanding of what is required to limit harm done and develop lasting improvements.

Misleading marketing is a powerful "Applied Science". And it is likely that you have, like so many others, developed your thinking, learned, while immersed in the influence of misleading marketing. I even notice other engineers who have been motivated away from governing their thoughts and actions base on limiting harm done and developing lasting improvements. The temptation to acquire more personal status relative to others is very powerful. And misleading marketers prey on that human vulnerability by producing and disseminating harmful misunderstandings that will be very tempting.

Becoming aware of the temptation to be harmfully misled is an important first step. The next step is to learn to change your mind for Good Reason (to be less harmful and more helpful) so that you are less likely to be tempted to be harmfully misled by messages that appeal to your 'gut instinct' or 'developed personal preferred beliefs'. If I, or any other structural engineer, were to design structures based on 'gut instinct' or 'developed personal preferred beliefs' the results would likely be disastrous.

I hope helps you appreciate the ways that others here have been trying to help you.

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

Evan at 21:42 PM on 20 February, 2022

Santalives you ask "... is there a problem here?"

Coming out of the last ice-age cycle temperature rose 5C, causing a sea-level rise of 400'. Temperatures have already risen 1.2C and there is enough carbon in the atmosphere, already, to take us to 1.7C. There is over 200' of sea-level rise locked up in the world's ice.

We know that ice melts when it gets warmer and scientists are witnessind destabilization of the big ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

More carbon -> higher temperatures -> more ice melting -> higher sea-level rise -> problem

This is just one of many problems.

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

John Mason at 11:51 AM on 20 February, 2022

I guess the thing that interests me, @Santalives, is the motivation. I've read all of your posts in this thread and I'm simply left with that one question: what motivates you here? Genuinely. Like a drowning man in a flooding river you grasp at bits of driftwood bobbing by, when the best advice all along was to stay away from the water because there was a flood coming.

I've also seen a lot of this type of reasoning with regard to COVID 19. Remarkably so, in fact. Is this the bargaining stage of grief?

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5 2022

Eric (skeptic) at 01:07 AM on 5 February, 2022

I read through the linked paper:

Each single Ethereum transaction is estimated to cause 85.47 kgCO2 (29) resulting from the mining devices involved in verifying the transaction, and there were 942,812 NFT sales in the month preceding October 10, 2021. (30) Assuming that NFT transactions on the Ethereum blockchain have the same carbon footprint as other transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, and based on the assumption that 4434 metric tonnes could kill a person unnecessarily, the mining devices needed to verify 51,877 transactions would produce enough emissions to kill a person between 2020 and 2100.

Essentially, in ref 29, they use the transaction cost in Ethereum as a proxy for energy use by estimating the portion of the mining earnings used to purchase energy. Ethereum's own estimate is 84 kWh per transaction https://ethereum.org/en/energy-consumption/ which means about 35 kg CO2 per transaction with natural gas: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

They assume there are no other benefits to that expense such as other smart contracts being stored in the Ethereum blockchain rather than on paper. I think the most important shortcoming of the paper is the assumption that the marketplace will fail at energy reduction because:

Blockchain developers are, however, cautious to move away from a tried-and-tested blockchain model with its security advantages [12] and acceptable ability to maintain Byzantine fault tolerance [13].

That does not appear to be correct: https://pixelplex.io/blog/top-ten-blockchains-for-nft-development/ With price as a proxy for energy use, there are many orders of magnitude of savings with ethereum competitors. The bottom line is that blockchain tech evolution is not just proof that proof-of-work works, it's proof that marketplace innovation works.

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.

From the eMail Bag: the Beer-Lambert Law and CO2 Concentrations

Bob Loblaw at 01:57 AM on 28 December, 2021

Charlie Brown:

Yes, your discussion touches on some of “the complexity of radiation transfer in the atmosphere” that I dismissed in a single paragraph at the end of the blog post. The blog post was only intended as a counter to the “CO₂ exists in small concentrations” misinterpretation of the Beer-Lambert law, and leaves a whole host of other fundamental principles in atmospheric radiation transfer to the imagination of the reader.

You refer to several issues that deserve more discussion – issues that take entire university courses or textbooks to cover. You mention at least four specifics I’d like to elaborate on:

re-emission of IR radiation

the three-dimensional aspect of the atmosphere

the vertical structure of the atmosphere

the concept of “saturation”

With regard to re-emission, the amount of IR radiation leaving the cylinder is the sum of what was transmitted through the cylinder plus the amount that was emitted within the cylinder (and manages to leave before being re-absorbed within the cylinder). With regard to the emitted IR:

Any CO₂ that absorbs energy will lose it by collision with other molecules, so chances are that it will be a different gas that is emitting, which means it might be at a different wavelength. Thus, to look at the whole situation we need to consider all the greenhouse gases in combination.

The emissions of IR radiation will depend on the temperature of the gases within the cylinder, which will depend on the balance of all energy fluxes, not just radiation.

Just as adding CO₂ increases the absorbance within the cylinder, adding CO₂ increases the overall emissivity within the cylinder, so more IR can be emitted at the same temperature.

The emission of IR happens in all directions, as you state, which means that only half of the emitted radiation can be said to be continuing in the same direction as any IR radiation that entered the cylinder (figure 4).

You mention IR lost through the side walls of the cylinder. There is also IR gained through the side walls, coming from adjacent cylinders that are behaving the same way as the one in figure 4. If the adjacent cylinders are identical, then each cylinder will be gaining and losing identical IR radiation amounts through the sides, so the net effect is zero.

Can we say the same things about the IR transfers between cylinders in the vertical stack of cylinders (figure 4b)? No, and there is a very important reason why. The net effect between adjacent cylinders (side by side, or top over bottom) depends on the temperature within each. If the temperatures are equal, the net IR transfer effect will be zero – but if they are not equal, there will be a net transfer from the warmer one to the cooler one. In the horizontal direction, temperature gradients are very small, so it is reasonable to ignore that direction. Vertically ,however, we see strong temperature gradients – the environmental lapse rate averages 6.5 C°/km. So, the top cylinder tends to be colder than the bottom cylinder, and the net IR transfer is upward.

So, we get to think in terms of up/down fluxes of IR radiation, and need to consider the thermal stratification of the atmosphere, as you mention. The up/down aspect has a formal label: the two-stream approximation. The extension of the use of the Beer-Lambert Law to include the emissions of IR radiation and the net IR flux along a temperature gradient also has formal solutions, one of which is called Schwarzschild’s equation.

Of course, the vertical temperature structure of the atmosphere is not purely due to radiation, so we can’t model it purely using radiation theory. Weather and climate models need to include convection, etc. - anything that transfers energy.

We also can’t leave the 3-d atmosphere discussion without mentioning clouds. Although gases in the atmosphere have absorption/emission characteristics that are highly dependent on wavelength, clouds (either as liquid or solid/ice) are essentially black bodies. In the same way that the two-stream approximation treats radiation transfer as either up or down, we can begin to cover cloud effects by dividing the atmosphere into a clear sky portion and a cloudy portion. Clouds have layers, too, and three-dimensional characteristics of clouds become quite complex, but the clear/cloudy categorization is place to start.

Lastly, you discuss saturation. I tend to dislike the use of that term, because it seems to mean so many different things to different people. One of the issues not mentioned in the blog post is pressure broadening, where overall increases in atmospheric pressure reduce the absorbance coefficient of the greenhouse gases such as CO₂. This leads to a “law of diminishing returns” as CO₂ concentrations increase, but we are far from running out of space on that one.

You use “saturation” in the context of IR radiation leaving the surface and escaping to space – and point out that nearly all the IR escaping to space is lost from the upper atmosphere. This is correct, and one way of looking at this is to ask “how many times will IR emitted from the surface be absorbed and re-emitted before the energy reaches the upper atmosphere and can finally be lost to space?” Even now, the probability that surface-emitted IR escapes directly to space is very small – but if adding CO₂ increases the number of absorb/re-emit cycles from two to four, to eight to sixteen, etc., there is a reduction in the efficiency of transfer of energy from the surface to space.

For each absorb/emit cycle, only half gets emitted upwards. The half that emits downwards must go through at least one more absorb/emit cycle to get moving upwards again – and it only has a 50% chance that the next absorb/emit cycle will get it going in that direction. If it emits downward again, then it needs another absorb/emit cycle – with only a 50% chance again that it will emit in the upward direction. Adding more and more CO2 will always increase the number of absorb/emit cycles involved, but there is a law of diminishing returns here, too, which leads to the closing paragraph of yours where doubling CO₂ from 200 to 400, or 400 to 800 ppm will have the same warming effect. Remember that convection is involved in that warming response, too – as radiation transfer becomes less efficient, convection takes a more dominant role (and it is already important).

It's albedo

blaisct at 05:08 AM on 15 December, 2021

Once again thanks for your comment (MA Rodger and the editor) and the additional papers on the subject. I will try to do better with the links.

The earlier data I was referring to was earthshine 10 years and CERES 10 years which showed that the data for the earths albedo was very noisy and flat. The flat part was what was expected for anthropogenic greenhouse gas , AGH, global warming. My initial understanding of AGH radiative forcing was that AGHs absorbed radiation (got hot) and that the higher the AGH concentration (at constant radiation) the more heat it could hold back thus the temperature would increase but the energy in vs out of the zone where this occurred would be the same (albedo would be flat). My understanding has been expanded to include: AGHs hotter temperature will reduce humidity and thus reduce cloud cover, expose more earth surface to the sun thus reduce earths albedo; therefor, albedo vs time for AGHs may not be flat.
The new (new to me) data I sited Earthshine 20 years showed a decrease albedo from both earthshine and CERES data – my only interest is this report was the agreement with earthshine an CERES data. The editor’s link CERES 20 years 1 and another link CERES 20 years 2 provided a lot more CERES data with different analyses. These three papers are the first time I have seen data showing a decrease in albedo (increase in TOA radiation) vs time. If all climate change was due to AGHs this graph would be flat. Using the CERES 20 years 2 graph for TOA radiation out. (of the three links I chose this one because it has the In Situ data (earth surface temperature)) one can see the good correlation between In Situ data and CERES data

Figure 1
“Comparison of overlapping one-year estimates at 6-month intervals of net top-of-the-atmosphere annual energy flux from the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System Energy Balanced and Filled Ed4.1 product (solid red line) and an in situ observational estimate of uptake of energy by Earth climate system (solid blue line). Dashed lines correspond to least squares linear regression fits to the data.”

. If there was any AGH global warming mixed In with the TOA (red) data it would have a slope lower than the In Situ data. The report CERES 20 years 1 did look for the AGH flat line signal and found it in the “Clear Sky” LW (long wave) data but nowhere else (1 of four graphs).
Two of these reports put a lot of emphasis on clouds decrease (new to me). (Decrease in cloud cover increased surface exposure to suns radiation and heats the earth more.) The report CERES 20 years 2 also found correlation to Water vapor, trace gases, surface albedo, as well as clouds. Both of these reports express doubts on the current understanding of climate change and make recommendation to further understand what is causing cloud cover to change.
While this new data is interesting and worth following up on it is still very noisy (low R^2) and another 20 years would be better.

I recognize that AGH global warming would promote other forcing including reduce clouds, reduced ice, reduced snow cover all exposing more surface to direct rays of the sun. Other man-made albedo changes can do the same thing. Here are two examples that may relate to the new papers.
Let’s start with the “heat island effect”, UHI. While the global warming from UHI’s lower albedo is small it does have observable effect on cloud formation, CERES 20 years 2.

“Figure 3
Attribution of Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System net top-of-atmosphere flux trends for 2002/09–2020/03. Shown are trends due to changes in (a) clouds, (b) surface, (c) temperature, (d) combined contributions from trace gases and solar irradiance (labeled as “Other”), (e) water vapor, and (f) aerosols. Positive trends correspond to heat gain and negative to loss. Stippled areas fall outside the 5%–95% confidence interval. Numbers in parentheses correspond to global trends and 5%–95% confidence intervals in W m−2 decade−1.”

When air rises from a UHI it is hotter than the incoming air without a source of moisture to saturate it; so, it leaves as dryer air. This air generally rises and moves to the east. Look at figure 3 (a) and see the lower cloud formation change off the coast of east USA, Tokyo, and downwind Europe. With time (1880-2021) the UHI does not get hotter but it gets bigger thus the volume of low moisture air gets bigger. I am not going to argue the significances of the albedo part of UHI other than to recognize it is lower than 1 W/m^2 but not zero. What UHI is not given credit for is what happens downwind to this hotter low humidity air. Does it cool the ocean, reduce the snow line, melt ice, or reduce the cloud cover down wind, since this hot dry air should rise the clouds should be the first target. I can also see a chain of events: Hot low moisture air (from AGHs, UHIs, or other land changes) rises and go downwind, reduces cloud cover, over water the sun heats the ocean, the hotter ocean currents circulate to the poles, and melt some ice.
I’ll leave the quantification of this observable (figure 3 (a)) new (to me) correlation to others. A new UHI contribution to GW will be the albedo effect + the lower cloud effect + any other.

Second, is land use changes such as forest to crop or pasture land or grass land to crop land. Albedo decrease in grass land to crop land change is documented in Grass to Crops. Forest to crop land change increase in albedo is documented in Forest to Crops. Over 205 years the paper Global albedo study calculates that all the pluses and minuses add up to little change in albedo from land use changes. It is assumed (by me) that decreased albedo of a parcel of land means an increase in temperature and vs/vs. The study Amazonia Forest to Crops shows that increasing albedo does not always mean cooler temps. This report shows that when rain forest was replaced with crop land that the temperature increased, the rain decreased, and the cloud cover decreased. The Figure 3 (e) above shows bright red spot for “water vapor” (I assume that is change to lower humidity) in Amazonia. This is not an uncommon effect from replacing forest with crop or pasture land. The report Forest study observes that forests vs crop/pasture conversion gets warmer as the conversion gets south of 35’N latitude.

This unintuitive (to me) observation that an increase in albedo does not always result in a decrease in temperature can be explained by moisture. The resulting temperature depends on a constant enthalpy (total heat in the air= gases + moisture). Enthalpy is usually determined by the albedo (higher albedo lower enthalpy vs/vs); therefore, land exposed to the same albedo (enthalpy) can have a wide range of temperatures depending on the moisture (relative humidity) of the albedo (enthalpy). This relationship has been captured in a psychrometric chart,

(Sorry for the poor quality of this chart)
Example of a rain forest conversion to crop land: Start out with a rain forest at 25’C (bottom scale) go straight up to 90% humidity curve; this is our hot humid rain forest. If we convert this rain forest to crop land with a higher albedo, we move to a lower enthalpy line (anyone will do). The constant enthalpy line run diagonal (upper left to lower right). If the moisture is maintained at 90% the temperature will drop as expected for the higher albedo. Following the same enthalpy line (same albedo) go to a lower humidity curve that may result (and does in Amazonia) and one will see the temperature will increase (even to above the starting rainforest temperature at very low humidity).
A concern is how NASA and the IPCC pair surface temperature data with relative humidity and albedo. The three all connected in enthalpy. A misunderstanding of climate change could occur if Amazonian (rain forest to crop land) high albedo, high temperature, lower humidity type data was included in correlations with Canadian (forest to crop land) lower albedo, cooler temperatures, high humidity, type data. Does anyone know if this has been looked at? The report CERES 20 years 1 has looked at ocean enthalpy correlations. I have not seen any land enthalpy data.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #49

One Planet Only Forever at 03:16 AM on 8 December, 2021

nigelj,

The term "radical environmentalist" is problematic. It can mean anything. I would support the "radical environmentalists" being the ones deciding what happens if they are "radical" by including "Social" considerations in their pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is going on and the application of their learning to pursue the end of social and environmental harm done by human developments and make amends for harms that have already been caused.

I agree that people should be concerned about the harmful impacts of human development, including harm done to birds.

But the focus of that bird concern deserves to be on buildings that are more than, say, 6 stories tall. There are plenty of easy to access resources explaining that tall buildings kill lots of birds, especially the glass covered ones, especially if they have inside lights on at night. It is likely that a tall building kills more birds than an equally tall wind turbine. So it may be that it would be less harmful for tall buildings to be replaced by 6 storey buildings with wind turbines above them (and the total harmful impacts of building and operating shorter buildings would also be less than the impacts of the tall buildings - "Rebuilding Earth" by Canadian Architect Teresa Coady, is the most recent item I have read that includes this type of information as part of the understanding of how to address the climate change problem and many other problems caused by human development).

But the biggest killers of birds are domesticated cats. And that relates to a "population problem of concern" than can and should be acted on - Reducing the harm of pet over-population. Some domesticated animals are helpful. But many pets cause harm and increase demand for resources. Reducing the harmful impacts and consumption caused by unnecessary Pets could be a helpful step while the human population problem is brought under control by the continued pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals through the next 40 to 50 years (peak global population may occur in the 2060s).

But even if the human population problem is controlled, the problem of harmful over-consumption by the highest consuming and most harmful portion of the population could persist, even becoming a bigger problem as the total global population declines.

So the real problem/solution is reducing the harmful over-consumption that some humans have developed a liking for. Free choice to believe and do whatever a person wants is not a solution. It is a problem. Reduced the energy demand will reduce the amount of harm done by "required" power generation systems like wind turbines.

The wealthiest are the ones who can afford to live the lowest energy consumption lifestyle. The required global fundamental understanding needs to be that the wealthiest and most powerful should be required to prove they deserve to be wealthier and more powerful by living with less benefit from harmful actions than those who are less fortunate. Wealthier or more powerful people should not be Freer to Choose to be more harmful, even if they can afford it or abuse their power and influence to get away with it.

That "Winning by harmful pursuers of status" is an Age Old Problem. But problems can only be solved by increased awareness of the actual fundamental problem.

Radical environmentalists could be the solution, depending on what type of person that term actually refers to.

The Keeling Curve: Part III

One Planet Only Forever at 08:36 AM on 16 November, 2021

Evan,

This presentation of the problem is very helpful.

It is undeniable that to avoid imposing unacceptably harmful climate change impacts on future generations NET will be required even if it is not "profitable or popular". The requirement for NET to be implemented without being popular or profitable helps to clarify the understanding of what is required for the future of humanity to be protected from harm done by actions of previous generations. Without systemic leadership change the implemented NET is likely to be inadequate, and potentially harmful rather than helpful. Also, developing a sustainable improving future can be understood to require systemic changes that reduce BAR. Reducing BAR will reduce the potential risks of implementing larger amounts of technological NET, or the even riskier implementation of other artificial technological methods that are claimed to solve the ghg global warming impact problem.

This presentation also helps clarify how challenging it is to get global leadership to collectively act to responsibly and fairly limit global warming impacts and make amends for harm done. It is likely that the wealthy and powerful portion of the population in the developing world, there almost always are some very wealthy people in the developing nations or benefiting from actions in developing nations, will aspire to be more like the wealthy and powerful in the USA, Canada, and Australia (high per-capita impacting hide-outs for the climate impact opportunists) rather than aspiring to be more like the better examples set by the wealthy and powerful in some, but not all, parts of Europe.

It is also important to be aware that a review of the historical evidence of human “advancement” leads to understanding that harmful pursuits of wealth and power have a history of Winning and Powerfully resisting being corrected. And the harmful winners can temporarily regionally win-back the power to undo justified helpful corrections that reduced their undeserved wealth and power. Those people have been winning the ability to harmfully compromise leadership in many nations, primarily with misleading marketing, especially through misleading marketing attacks on people who would help the general population better understand how harmful some of the wealthy and powerful actually are. As a result the historical trend line may even be an optimistic presentation of future impacts. Significant sustainable systemic leadership changes can be understood to need to occur that the evidence of history indicates have not yet been sustainably achieved in any wealthy powerful region.

It is accurate to say that the developed attitudes in the current global set of governing systems are accurately described by the statement that "There is nothing in our experience to suggest that the world, as a whole, will accept stagnating standards of living. Developed countries want to consume more, developing countries want to raise their populations out of poverty." An extension of that understanding is that harm being done in pursuit of perceptions of improved living will be dismissed, discounted, or excused. A more insidious point is that many Developed countries have a history of not meaningfully sustainably reducing poverty within their population and do even less to help sustainably reduce poverty elsewhere. As your World Bank sourced chart indicates, global GDP has increased faster than global population. But, in spite of the increasing wealth, extreme poverty and tragic failures to avert horrific suffering by the poor continues to happen (the statistical measure of extreme poverty is being reduced, but tragic extreme poverty still occurs). And there are plenty of presentations of history showing the persistence of tragic poverty is a “constant throughout Greek - Roman - European conquest and colonization history” in spite of GDP rising faster than population population (read the 2020 Human Development Report to appreciate the flaw of using GDP as a measure of advancement).

A good explanation for the “persistence of poverty in spite of increasing affluence” is that solving the poverty problem is “not profitable, or necessary, for the wealthy and powerful”. A similar explanation applies to the lack of action on climate change impacts. And action to sustainably solve the poverty and climate impact problem can easily be made unpopular among the less wealthy and less powerful through the appeals of misleading marketing tempting people to want more for themselves and see Others as the problem instead of understanding that the problem is the harmful members of the wealthy and powerful (and history is full of examples of the more helpful among the wealthy and powerful being unjustly, but very successfully, targeted for attack).

Leadership action needs to systemically sustainably shift away from the history of harmfully compromised leadership actions that appease undeserving wealthy and powerful interests. Without the systemic change of leadership behaviour to penalize the harmful among the wealthy and powerful the indicated required actions are optimistic (i.e. less likely to happen). What is more likely to happen is a continued disregard for the harm done to the future generations, or the implementation of technological actions that are claimed to be solutions but are likely to be more harmful and less helpful than they are claimed to be (like many economic developments are discovered to be, especially new technological developments, especially if they get to be implemented “at scale” before an in-depth understanding of the consequences is developed).

Achieving a sustainable improving future for humanity will require systemic change, especially the wealthier and more powerful portion of the global population reducing their level of consumption, reducing how harmful the consumption associated with their ways of living are, and giving up some level of perception of superiority relative to the less fortunate by acting to sustainably improve the lives of the less fortunate (i.e. the more fortunate helping the less fortunate and foregoing opportunities to obtain more personal benefits). That systemic change will reduce BAR. It will also reduce other harmful results, not just reduce the climate change impacts.

A critical review of history indicates that institutions and related beliefs like the UN, the free market, and democracy were developed in the hopes of limiting the harm done by wealthy powerful people (and the IPCC and SDGs are even newer attempts to limit the harm done by unethical competitors for perceptions of superiority relative to others). Those developments are the most recent steps of the many steps of advancement of civilization. Each step was implemented as a result of it becoming undeniable that wealthy and powerful people competing for impressions of superiority relative to others produce harmful results. Without diligent Ethical Governing the less ethical people harmfully win unsustainable impressions of progress and prosperity for their misguiding leaders and misled followers. And those winning groups powerfully resist learning about the need to have their harmfully developed impressions of superiority and “Opportunity for More – the vicious pursuit of Growth (including GDP growth)” limited.

Based on the evidence of what happened at COP26 this can be understood to have played out at COP26. The rational justified perspectives of the less fortunate who have not significantly contributed to the problem but suffer significant consequences from the problem, and would only contribute if they “choose to improve their lives in the ways the wealthier and more powerful did”, the nations with leadership that is less “captured” by wealthy and powerful people, were essentially dismissed. And the last minute power-play by India can be seen to be the wealthy and powerful in that nation abusing the perception that a “developing nation” like India should obtain financial aid and economic competitive advantage at the expense of the perceived to be more developed nations (but not pushing for benefits for the less powerful nations who are more harmed by what is going on). And the more developed nations that have leadership more captured by harmful wealthy and powerful people can be expected to have their general population, rather than their wealthy and powerful, pay whatever price is required. And it is likely that the poorest in those "helping" nations will suffer most by having the amount of assistance they obtain reduced rather than having the wealthy of the nation lose status (like the way the wealthy and powerful in France attempted to put a price on carbon without providing improved assistance to the less fortunate).

CO2 lags temperature

MA Rodger at 01:53 AM on 13 November, 2021

Yoshi @635,

I fear you misinterpret the 90% figure. As described by Skakun et al (2012) (& discussed in this SkS post), the 90% is not the percentage of warming coming out of an ice age that is caused by CO2. It is the percentage when increases in CO2 occur prior to increases in global temperature.

The actual post-ice-age warming resulting from increased CO2 is a portion of the GHG warming (which also includes methane). The GHG warming is given as 37% of the total in this CarbonBrief explainer. (The remainder is given as 50% ice albedo & 13% dust & aerosols.) The actual CO2 forcing is about 2.5Wm^-2.

The cooling of the world that leads to a glacial maximum is much slower than the warming of the world that leads to an interglacial. The cooling begins with increased albedo in high northern latitudes as they lose sunlight through the orbital wobbles.

The warming is quicker because it takes less time to melt down an ice sheet than it does to build it up. As with the warming, CO2 reacts to this cooling and increases the effect.

It's the sun

cph at 22:01 PM on 9 November, 2021

HK@1292 - "BTW, if clouds and snow/ice changed by themselves and not as a feedback to warming caused by GHGs, we wouldn't get a cooling stratosphere..."

--- I did not understand your last sentence. I am of the opinion that, for example, a changed cloud albedo cannot be explained by a rise in temperature alone. Changes and anomalies in global mean cloud cover can also be caused by fewer (sulfate) aerosols or expanding deserts (dry regions become drier).

https://www.carbonbrief.org/satellite-data-reveals-impact-of-warming-on-global-water-cycle

Timeseries for evapotranspiration (top), precipitation (second from top), discharge (second from bottom) and change in ground water storage (bottom) over 2003-19.

Evaporation increases by + 2.3 mm / year, which is not fully compensated for by increased precipitation of + 1 mm / year. A decreasing runoff through the rivers of -1.01 mm / year and a falling groundwater level of -0.75 mm / year quantify the drainage of the continents. This drainage (through drained bogs, wetlands, groundwater, aquifers, canalization of rivers and a constantly growing sealing of urban areas) is just as man-made as the CO² emissions, rising temperatures and the resulting higher evaporation. Too little H²O in desert regions and the earth's atmosphere, which in summer extend through droughts up to the Arctic Circle, are a temperature driver. Too much CO² is just as warming as too little H²O. Less evapotranspiration -> less cloud albedo -> higher incoming radiation energy and record temperatures on the earth's surface -> even faster drying out with even higher temperatures - imho, similar to the ice-snow albedo, form a vicious circle.

The authors estimate a "statistically significant" increase in evapotranspiration of around 10% above the long-term mean (corresponds to a temperature increase over land areas of ~ + 1.44 ° C). During the same period, precipitation only increased by 3% and global river runoff decreased by 6%.

---

What is noticeable here is a simultaneous decrease in relative humidity and cloudiness, which certainly correlates with a general increase in the number of hours of sunshine.

time series sunshine hours germany 1951-2020

Global time series of annual average relative humidity for the land (green line), ocean (blue) and global average (dark blue), relative to 1981-2010.

Book Review: Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

David Hawk at 01:47 AM on 23 September, 2021

Very nicely presented "Wilddouglascounty." I hope many read it. You are more optimistic than I can be; thus thank you for your sign of hope. I need such. I'll make it through the day.

My take tends to be with the flaws in being human, and the laws of a natural order that human fight with. Yes, I'm a bit skeptical about "scientific method," as was one of my mentors who authored the 1962 book of that title. He moved on to systems sciences, as did I, thus I encountered climate change in 1975 via reading the 1856 work of Eunice Foote.

In my courses, whatever they might have been titled, I covered two subjects. 1) Ethics: Fastian Negotiations always selling the soul, thus leading to end-state tragedy, and 2) Human economics and business always avoiding laws of thermodynamics, especially that funny 2nd one.

For the first I usually rely on Marlowe, Goethe, and Mann. For the second I rely on Einstein, Hawking and Sagan, where I considered Carl a friend. In 2007 in this regard a debate was held with China's leadership council, prior to their selection of Xi as President. I recommended they give up on Confucian thought (too similar to Plato) and return to Lao Tzu wisdom (similar to Socrates). They seems to really understand what such could mean to managing climate change, before they didn't a few years later. A similar debate would not have been held in Washington, unless about a dozen lobbiest approved the script. (I can give you a list, ha..ha.. )

I have a book coming out in Europe this winter on the above..."Short-term Gain, Long-term Pain." Its about Faust, Industrialization, and life during the human end state. Therein I cover 2,500 years of the idea of management as the problem, including the management of science. My focus ends with the inherent limitation in the first three letters of management. If so, we might try femagement for a bit? Their science is very promising. For politics they listen to their husbands, but are now moving on from that limitation. See you on the other side, I hope.

In 2015, when is was obvious that America was moving to a Trump version of leadership, I began a foundation in China to prepare girls for managing humans during masculine created climate change. An English version of its site is at EternalFeminine.org.

It's albedo

coolmaster at 23:46 PM on 13 September, 2021

@GPWayne:

"We know the planet is warming, and that human agency is causing it. What we cannot say yet is how climate change is affecting albedo, how it might be affected in the future, and what contribution to climate change - positive or negative - it may make."

coolmaster: The albedo is relative ... and depends primarily on the wavelength of the light that hits the body/molecule. We should therefore always specify a wavelength range for the albedo. Otherwise, strictly speaking, the entire incoming spectrum of the sun ( UVC140nm up to Micro waves10cm) is decisive. This relativity to the albedo is particularly important for an element as widespread worldwide as H²O. I.e. ice and snow with an albedo of up to 0,9 in the visible range(380-780nm) has an albedo in the micro wave range of only < 0,1.

Albedo of the earth ist 0,3 because absorbtion is 0,7(0,5 on the surface + 0,2 in the atmosphere) --> so the atmosphere has an albedo. Higher concentrations of GHG specially CO² is lowering the albedo of the atmosphere and is thus increasing temperature. We could always increase the albedo elsewhere: clouds, white color in the outdoor area or lighter field crops through foliar fertilization with light clays are just a few of the many possibilities.

The temperature of the earth's surface is globally determined by the radiation balance, the radiation budget. This records the interaction between absorption and reflection as well as re-emission and scattering.
But no matter which albedo you are looking at, whether short or long wave - a higher albedo can never cause a rise in temperature or energy. Conversely, every falling albedo increases temperatures or energy on earth.
So I suggest that you update the last sentence of your basic rebuttal.

@Moderation response: "last warning"

In my last comment, which you would like to see in the slr section, the word albedo appears 3 times - the words clouds and cloud cover even more often. You should also warn others, who do exactly the same(i.e. MAR,BL).
The inseparable connection between albedo - clouds - water and SLR was invented by an immovable mover (Aristotle's definition of God) ! not me !
I don't want to discuss religion here, if only because I don't belong to any official religious community and because my religion is art. For me, climate science is a discipline, just like painting, sculpture, dance, music, and theater, etc.

Nevertheless, I noticed that there once was a man who said he wanted to save the world. Among other things, because he supposedly could move over the water ...
I also want to save the world ... and move (spiritually & physically) over the water.

If you don't like my holistic, alternative climate protection strategy, which lowers sea level rise and earth temperatures - I can't change it, but I can't understand it either. In my opiniont it is the very last opportunity for you, your readers, commentators, your descendants, and the rest of creation to escape from climate hell (as long as anybody presents a much better, faster or cheaper concept.)

That was my last warning to you...

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.

How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean

Eclectic at 14:51 PM on 7 August, 2021

Steve @#37 ,

I must beg you for more details & more background to your questions. Are you basing your questions on real-world situations? If so, then the 25C or 27C are global average Surface Air Temperatures which have not been existent during the past 10 million years or so.

If you are talking of recent millennia, then coming from the latest "ice age" glaciation, the global SAT rose by around 5C and stayed at that Maximum (or "Optimum") for about 5000 years. Then during the past 4000 years, the SAT has gradually cooled by about 0.7C . (As you are likely aware, the PAGES12k studies indicate that the current [2020] temperature is nearly 0.5C higher than the Holocene Maximum.) During this time, the atmospheric CO2 level hovered around 280 ppm during the Holocene, and started rising during the past 2 centuries.

So your 300ppm and 400ppm scenarios are quite disconnected from the Earth's surface conditions during the past 10k , 100k , or million years.

Ocean warming is very slow, and it is the oceans which put a brake on SAT rise ~ more so than the other way around. The oceans take in more than 90% of the heat energy gained during total global warming periods, and the air itself represents only a few percentage points of the total. Which makes it difficult to get a good picture of what would happen in the abstract hypothetical situations that you pose.

The number of lives that clean energy could save, by U.S. state

Jds at 04:50 AM on 21 July, 2021

Data graphs... Interesting... Fact sheets, do tell. Article by who? Really. Source links to a group that links it's source information back to itself.

C02 is not a poison until it reaches highly concentrated levels. Rarely happens.

.04% of our atmosphere is c02. .0016% of that .04% is manmade. Multiply the two figures together to get the % of the atmosphere which is manmade c02. That's .000064. If you added .000064% pink panther fiberglass to your outhouse your butt would still be cold in the winter.

Studies reveal!!! What studies? Oh, Yale. University. Must be smart kids there these days. Reading books. Looking at thermometers.

Been researching C02 detectors myself lately. Basic description for the most detailed I shall provide now.

Too housing contains filter mechanism. Bounces Electrons (little buggers) back and forth between electrode plates. Electrolytes (salt water? Potassium? Gatorade?) change c02 to o2 through oxidation (rust) and reduces (evaporates)... get ready far this... oxygen into water. O into H2O. Yup... water into wine as well I suppose. The electrodes are biochemically sensitive to these changes.

I'll have to look this convuluted one up again for further details. It didn't mention any silicone chips nor as usually typical the almighty laser.

Fancy thermometer at best. Get yours free shipping from Walmart for like $30.

You can't even find anyone who wants to admit being the inventor of these snake oil charms nor will you find any original patents. Yet hundreds of mostly fly by night companies sell them for prices up into the thousands.

Shows parts per million.

NASA has these million dollar detectors that shoot lasers from far above to hit the earth surface and I suppose eventually be picked up by some big Gatorade coated hunk of metal which detects out of each of the million parts that exist in the atmosphere... 400 are C02. Further calculations determine that we cased half of this.

Here is an interesting argument. It has been millions of years since the global temperature and C02 levels have been this high and man wasn't even around back then which proves man is the current cause!!! Most unintelligent argument to date. Who caused the high rates back then if we were not around? Wooly mammoth? Hairy hippos? It's like saying your daughter's boyfriend must not have worn a condom the last time they had sex because your great grandmother was pregnant at one time.

Please think before you make pointless arguments.

We humans if all in one spot on a globe shoulder to shoulder would not even be much of a pin point. Combine all of our biggest cities into one megalopolis... a small freckle on the on the face of ma Gaia.

Mother earth has made home for countless creatures... if we were to just add the ones we have yet to discover to the internet... google would overheat and break down from an overload. And yet we still search for even one or to life forms elsewhere.

Mother earth has survived subzero trips to the shore and hot lava baths. She is covered in worm poo and skunk diddle.

And you worry she will die from second hand smoke which has been circulating since the dawn of her birth.

Your numbers are baseless. Your charts disconnected. Your facts biased. Your proofs conjectured. Your projections assumed. Your own researched will lead you down rabbit holes that will have you as well ask questions to determine validity. Give it time and you find... fancy thermometers. People pointing lasers at silicone chips. Digital readings.

There are no valid reputable respectable people in the realm of all of our highest minds who can validate and properly explain the how function of your fancy thermometers. They just assume like you did that the producers knew what they were doing by way of high intelligence and education and not one in the line of them would ever attempt to decide or hoodwink. Nobody dares to question fancy thermometer for fear they will look unintelligent themselves.

And you can take my statements directly to any of our scientists. Then bring those kids to me. I would like to see their heads sink in sullen shame as we review all of the information available in the world about fancy thermometer... and here them admit to it's nonsense.

Nice charts. Splendid graphs.

Pretty fancy thermometers.

Now prove to me that our c02 without one shred of any doubt 100% caused the average number of tsunamis per year to go from 2 to 3.

Show me just one autopsy report stating cause of death was... air pollution.

Show me the beaches where brilliant scientists are dutifully lined up measuring constant instant by instant changing ocean depths and receding shorelines.

Show me that the number of facilities which extract atmospheric data from the air are evenly distributed across the world and not primarily clumped into rural areas. The ratio difference of such facilities between rural and non grows every year in favor of the rural. That in itself makes for apparant temperature anomalies.

Show me where climate summits, committees, activist gatherings and fancy thermometer operators ever saved or even improved the life of even one person. Common sense of a child would tell you if they spent one tenth of the time exploring ways to prepare ourselves for natural disasters that are unavoidable regardless of our activities (you do know such things exist?) they would save many lives. Just one tenth of your focus shifted toward a more fruitful activiy... it is not much to ask.

Show me empirical evidence and precision studies prove that a two degree raise in global temp makes an unstable earth when global temperates rise and fall many multiples of degrees higher and lower within seasons (Siberia holds 100° record differential), months, weeks, days, hours... any increment of time. Regionally two degree shifts happen within seconds... why can you not make a connection to calamity in these instances? Why do you refuse to admit 2° shifts over a century might be a small % normal. bet if I told the right activist that scientists predict an unpredicted ten degree shift in average global temperature within the hour... those activist would fall in panic, run out the back door with their fancy thermometers pass out from the frantic exhaustion of getting their ownselves heated over a common occurrence.

Show me the credentials of each and every root source of every last statistic you have blind faith in. I would like to know if fancy thermometer makers might not be pushing a few numbers. Bet your bank account some are.

Show me how C02 is killing anything currently. Start looking for actual single file individual case examples in the anals of all our history of even one person who passed out from too much carbon dioxide... I'll give you the rest of your life to produce such papers... good luck. Before you can do that I will prove c02 allows for more life to flourish.

Show me a year that has not had both record high and low temperatures. Of course we must remember readings are not evenly dispersed yet and the lasers attached to satellites are yet to be a cover all.

Show me again the ice age many of the scientists from the 70's were warning us about... where is it? Guess that concept was beginning to sell less copies so they had to change the format or big guv who has an interest in people who have a concern the main public is following will stop funding them... seriously I want you to reread that last statement a few times... let it sink in. Think about the implications and how very real they might we'll be.

Show me causation, not correlation. The person did not get a sun tan on a hot day because a coconut dropped on their head that day.

And really a bunch of the information I may come up with is questionable as well. Who knows what's right? They give us estimates, rounded figures, apple orange comparisons. Coming up with pictures of prehistoric creatures bases on fragments of a single jawbone... then tell us approximately how millions of years since jawbone beast roamed earth... somewhere within this multimillion year range... and the temperature at that time was... and their favorite food was... and they squatted when they pooed fluffy spinich like clumps. Really. They know these facts due to the data represented by their Walmart C02 detectors.

Suckers are not born every minute. They develop through passages of time by way of emotional stimulations. They are targeted. Their opinions are advocated, supported and fed so to break down their defenses. Once trust is gained... (after all, fancy thermometer man has my same concerns therefore his concerns are for me personally as well)... they strike.

And you buy... in full... pun intended (aren't most all?).

And I buy as well... in part.

I wish not to find you reGret the weather... the Thunder... the iceBerg. Us grown ups are patiently waiting for your heroes... your people of the year... fan favorites... to grow up yourselves and drop the hatred and blame. Please stop pointing to the minute spinach stains on the teeth of others when immense festering cavities are being ignored.

8% of human c02 production counted is through breathing. So you can't get us to net zero anyway unless you well... kill us. A % of our CO2 production which makes up part of the statistical reports you adhere to... are from farm animals... eating, pooing, breathing... existing. Us meat eaters are trying to be rid of them as well for your satisfaction but only so much can fit on the plate.

Getting to NetZero is impossible. Waste of time anyway.

Proving that the .00005% is the only factor in 2° rise in the last century is harder than proving the chickens furting in a tornado caused more property damage.

Please be useful.

Activism is well intentioned griping. Would you like reward for it? I don't ever think I found any activist of any cause who enriched our environment beyond a sprinkling... especially the griping or as as I like to call the negative activist. Even the great MLK who was a positive activist is predominantly known by his most endearing followers by just four words... "I had a dream" sad how the majority of the world only knows this much of the man. The four words can be attributed to anything. Further research will educate a follower his dream was basically that some day all races will get along... not to insult but many have said same message with less recognition. It was a world wide sprinkling recognized best because of his ability to sell the product of his speech with the decor of his character. Charisma was the salesman. Same for the young swedish girl with face twisting sputtering gripe furiously. If said in a calm sensible tone she would have been ignored. So I see the point of bringing out the personality to sell the product. A 90 yo business owner/salesman friend told me to be successful you must sell the sizzle not the steak...

I will not abide to that when it comes to you and this subject you invested in. Instead I simply ask you...

where's the beef?

It's not bad

Eclectic at 19:07 PM on 16 July, 2021

TVC15 @390 :-

Permit me some general waffle : my comment is that you should be half'n'half ~ half optimist, half pessimist. The global situation is going to get bad but not catastrophic. Yes, we are going to blow straight past the 1.5 degree mark in global surface temperature rise since pre-industrial. The rise already (over 170 years) is about 1.1 degrees, and this makes a mockery of any contrarian who opines that the CO2-doubling Climate Sensitivity is less than roughly 2.0 degrees (and seems most likely to be in the 2.5 to 3.0 degree range at equilibrium ~ which also fits with non-historic data e.g. the paleo data).

With extraordinarily good management, we might conceivably halt the rise by 2.0 degrees . . . but our political track record so far is poor.

It is not just the politics, but technological advances which are still required. Sure : cheaper solar & wind technologies are coming, but we really should have started seriously developing these at least 10 years before we actually did. (But the past cannot be changed.)

The 2050 date for "carbon neutral" will require more than the present-day solar & wind, even at half of today's prices. Energy storage is absolutely necessary ~ and I am looking to bulk storage of electrolytic hydrogen. Hydrogen to provide electricity via fuel cells (at small scale) or steam-driven turbines at large scale (possibly combined-cycle?).

The second leg to stand on, is a hugely-increased supply of liquid hydrocarbon [octane / kerosene / diesel types] produced from non-fossil feedstocks, by means of catalytic / enzymatic / fermentational technology. In brief, we need to produce these hydrocarbons at a scale little short of present-day fossil fuel consumption. For a great amount of our energy usage, these hydrocarbons are necessary ~ and I suspect it will take many decades after 2050 , before we could replace such hydrocarbon fuels.

Extinction of a very large slice of animal/plant species . . . is arguable. Extinction of the human race ~ certainly impossible. The casualty rate may be high in the future ~ but extinction, no way. Mass migration of "climate refugees" will increase as sea level rise and heat waves occur, and there will be major social disruption. "Interesting Times" , as the old Chinese saying goes.

Climate's changed before

MA Rodger at 00:21 AM on 14 July, 2021

TVC15 @873,
Your denialist is actually making four bold statements that are patently nonsense with the rather pathetic request that you "Tell us why this Inter-Glacial Period should be different."

"Ice sheets and glaciers always melt during Inter-Glacial Periods." The melting actually happens in the run-up to the "Inter-Glacial Periods" which is what makes them "Inter-Glacial Periods" so in one respect this is entirely straw man territory. If the bold assertion is that glaciers and ice sheets shrink as they do today throughout an inter-glacial, that is false as sea levels of past millennia demonstrate.

"Sea levels are normally 4 meters to 14 meters higher than they are now during Inter-Glacial Periods." This is not supported by the evidence that
suggests only two or three of the eight had higher sea levels. (The graphic is from here but originates from this web engine.)
800,000 years sea level

"Global temperatures in the other 8 previous Inter-Glacial Periods were at least 7°F warmer than present." Again not supported by the evidence. A google search provides many graphical representations of 800,000y temperatures and globally the present interglacial has been warmer than all but three of them (although AGW may be on course to change that ranking).
800,000 year temperature

"The West always undergoes a drought during Inter-Glacial Periods." This is a more specialist assertion. That there has been "a drought" in "the West" through the Holocene is potentially correct. It isn't a place with massive rainfall. But more accurately there are periods of drought and periods when the rain is heavier. What we see to make sense of that is a bit of a Hockey Stick situation with drought conditions becoming more wide-spread. The graphic comes from here an account which does address the question "Will anthropogenic climate change cause the West to get drier or wetter?"
West drought since 800AD

Climate's changed before

Bob Loblaw at 11:17 AM on 13 July, 2021

TVC15.

Your interlocutor seems to be using a combination of "Climate has changed before" (this thread) and "we're coming out of an ice age", which is an odd twist on "we're going into an ice age". Maybe he's confused with "we're coming out of the Little Ice Age".

There is a post here at SkS that talks about sea level over the past 150,000 years. It includes the following graph of sea level, covering the last glaclal/interglacial cycle:

Sea level past 150000 years

I do not see anything on that graph to support his claim that sea level is normally 4 to 14m higher than now during interglacials. The peaks of that graph may be a touch higher, but there sure isn't a steady period of higher sea levels in the last interglacial. I suspect his claim is completely bogus, but you could always try to get him to provide his source of data.

On very long time periods, ocean basin size/shape changes have dramatic effects on relative sea level. On short time scales (glacial/interglacial cycles), local sea level in areas subject to the weight of ice have serous effects due to isostatic depression and rebound.

Of course, the answer to "why should this interglacial be different?" is "because we're adding CO2 to higher levels than seen in hundreds of thousands of years, and we're looking at rising temperatures and conditions not seen in past interglacials".

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.

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

Bob Loblaw at 11:47 AM on 22 June, 2021

"...getting it, whatever it is" does not seem like a particularly ringing endorsement of whatever Nick is promoting.

I'm more in agreement with MAR: NIck's writing "does not make for pretty reading".

Nick has again started off with a diatribe about how "none of us are fully getting what I am saying", but he's not going to tell us why our responses are "flawed" and accuses MAR of writing something that "is a mirror inage [sic]of the sort of toxic denialist misrepresentation of someone's position".

Maybe your arguments are not well expressed, and not that convincing, Nick?

I get that you dislike Greenpeace. I get that you don't like Oreske's work. I get that you have personal anecdotes that convince you that the oil industry really hasn't been behaving all that badly.

I have personal anecdotes, too. I studied the physics of freezing soils and construction of arctic pipelines from some of the expert witnesses involved in the Berger Inquiry, and then worked in the oil patch and research comunity for three years before going back to grad school. I saw personally how the industry struggled to figure out how to deal with thaw settlement of warm pipelines in permafrost, and frost heave of refrigerated pipelines in unfrozen soils. Building pipelines in the arctic was not like building them in Texas.

...and I saw the public position the companies took, blaming delays on "environmentalists", all while working internally to understand engineering problems they had no solutions to. I saw this 40 years ago.

So, Nick, your argument that you are presenting some new idea that goes against common viewpoints seems odd to me - I've seen the "the environmentalists made us do it" charade a long time ago, and it is a dog that will not hunt - unless you can come up with something more than personal anecdotes. So, when you say "...I realise I've got an uphill struggle with you lot because you are unlikely to have heard anyone arguing this position before...", you are definitely wrong.

As for your arguments presented here, and your accusations of "denialist misrepresentation", etc., have you really looked at how you have characterized the people you are arguing with here, and the positions (either comments here, or from the larger debate) you are arguing against?

"..the appearance of some of the more extreme campaigning activists by, in my view, misattributing dark motivations to and unfairly demonising the actions..."

"Greenpeace's highly misleading report"

"This is a seriously warped thing to assert."

"When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science,"

"it was the far left who more or less started denialism off "

"I believe it was the environmental organisations excessive and unwarranted views..."

"... Big Oil continued to support the "B.S. factories" because they were effective at trying to protect those corporations against unwarranted attack. "

"...chock full of cherry picking and insinuation ..."

"...most seem to have been happy to accept Greenpeace et al's interpretation of events as gospel ..."

"...an alternative explanation to the insinuative narrative that just about everyone seems to have accepted. I think that narrative is fundamentally flawed and was constructed by people with a strong ideological bias as a way to socially engineer the public ..."

"Perhaps it might help if you and the other two knew three things which might help you..."

"Just watch the 'usual suspects' jump on the word 'unabated' ..."

"You sound like a denialist! "

"You lot are STILL not understanding my main point and are jumping to fundamentally fallacious conclusions about my position."

"I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme, originated by Greenpeace and subsequently promoted by, IMHO, political forces not related to pure climate science"

"it's been interesting to see the, in my view somewhat biased, kick-back from long term Skepsci followers. I think what I might do in due course is approach John Cook to see if we can arrange a Zoom meeting. He and Stephan Lewandowsky are right at the forefront of the 'psychological' approach to deconstructing denialist attitudes and methods. Maybe they'll be more welcoming of a new hypothesis than others..."

"However, I assure you that..."

BTW, as some of you are using exactly the same insinuative style as hardline denialists do,

Do you realize how your choice of words makes you appear?

I know nothing about you other than what you post here (and possibly a bit more posted elsewhere - I don't recognize the name)). I also know for sure that you don't know anything about me, other than what I post here or on other climate-related blogs you might have seen me comment on. (You can read about me on the SkS Team page to know how I know this.)

What's the point? Your self-agrandizement is pretty tiresome, and you really are not doing yourself any favours with your claims of knowing everything better than everyone else. You are not adderssing other people's criticisms - you are just dismissing them based on your fixed ideas about their motivation and (usually incorrect) assumptions about their sources of information.

By the way, in this thread my count says you've mentioned Greenpeace about 25 times. Did I mention that we already know you don't like Greenpeace?

You have said "I'll try and restate things later, if I get time,"

Please don't unless you actually have something new to say.

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

Nick Palmer at 06:31 AM on 16 June, 2021

I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme, originated by Greenpeace and subsequently promoted by, IMHO, political forces not related to pure climate science. I've never said that Big Oil should have done what they did, just that their motivation to do it may not have been that which was attributed to them by that meme. FWIW, I think the true culpability of Big Fossil Fuel is not for resembling the activist meme of them being shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit but rather for being like the punk in Dirty Harry who, when neither of them knew for certain whether there were any bullets left in the Magnum, recklessly took a chance and paid the price.

If you've ever seen that analogy used in the climate wars, I originated it. My argument to denialists back then was that, by analogy, 'denier punks' had a right to risk their own lives by believing that there were no climate change bullets left, or that possible low climate sensitivity meant that any bullet would be nearly a blank, but that they had a much greater responsibility to not take any view which would put everyobdy else in the world at risk if they were wrong. I had long discussions about this general concept with Greg 'What's the worst that could happen' Craven whose approach of risk analysis I still think is far superior at getting through to the majority of the public rather than the 'This is what the science says', 'Oh no it isn't', 'Yes it is', shouting match that the public arena is.

I came to my ideas from a lot of experience over several decades debunking 'ordinary' denialism, but I also found it quite often necessary to debunk alarmists too, who went much further than the peer reviewed science actually said. Alarmism gives deniers a lot of amunition to smear the actual science, in the minds of the public, by proxy. A lot of current denialism consists of holding up the silliest statements of extremists to ridicule, rather than attacking the science directly, but unfortunately that rebounds badly on the actual science in the public's view who have little way of knowing which of the very confident sounding sides are accurate or legit.

Long before John Cook started off the whole Denial 101 F.L.I.C.C initiative, I had been made well aware of the multiple deceptive rhetorical 'tricks' used by ordinary denialists to deny the peer reviewed science. I also became aware that the vast majority actually completely believed their position, whether it was the 'almost mainstream' luke-warmer position or the weirder 'against the second law of thermodynamics' pseudoscience types. What I did notice was that, say, in the comments of WUWT, virtually none of the former ever criticised the latter. It was only a very, very few, such as Mosher, who took on the real loonies. I also came to see that the reverse was also the case in environmentalist literature. Apart from a few such as myself, who has always tried to root out any mistakes, delusion or deceptions wherever they may be found, activist alarmism in publicly available media seemed to get a 'free pass' from those who normally argued the science, such as skepsci types. For what it's worth, I find it much harder to deal with activists, rather than with the more moderate 'denialists' as activist ideology isn't really based on a rational bullet-proof knowledge of the science, but rather on persuasive memes and Hans Eysenck's 'hobgoblins' to scare the public. I couldn't help noticing that BOTH sides used the same techniques of misdirection, cherry picking etc although, back then, it tended to be the more extreme - the incorrigibles of the denialist side - who did the lion's share of it. In the last few years, as the political aspects of the climate arena have suddenly popped out of the closet far more than ever before, and the sides have become ever more partisan, I'd say 'what lies beneath' the surface of people on all sides debating climate policy is surfacing.

I used to sit on my former Government's Energy panel, which was set up to deal with energy policy relating to climate science and the energy transitions required and I became pretty well connected with some significant movers and shakers in the climate science arena, both scientists, civil servants and media folk. For what it's worth, the panel also had representatives on it from gas and oil 'fossil fuel' corporations, plus the area electricity supplier. That's another reason why I'm virtually certain that the Greenpeace/Oreskes meme, that even some smart people seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker, is a fair distance from the truth. The meme has a lot of the smell of simplified 'hobgoblins to sway the public' about it, rather than it being a completely accurate piece of historical reportage...

Anyway, it's been interesting to see the, in my view somewhat biased, kick-back from long term Skepsci followers. I think what I might do in due course is approach John Cook to see if we can arrange a Zoom meeting. He and Stephan Lewandowsky are right at the forefront of the 'psychological' approach to deconstructing denialist attitudes and methods. Maybe they'll be more welcoming of a new hypothesis than others...

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

Nick Palmer at 01:20 AM on 13 June, 2021

Well, there's too much to address there! Just a couple of points.
Phillipe@28 wrote: " However, that would leave one wondering why they continued to support the bullshit factories churning out propaganda favorable to their short-term financial interests in the following 30 years, as uncertainty dwindled away."

I thought I'd already addressed that. The short answer is that Big Oil continued to support the "B.S. factories" because they were effective at trying to protect those corporations against unwarranted attack. Pharmacological/vaccine corporations are currently coming under similar COVID19 propaganda type attacks to their detriment - they have less of a need to use 'B.S. factories' because most of the population have been familiar with vaccination most of their lives, so they know that the attacks are mostly baseless. The general voting public have no such familiarity with climate change, and the effectivess or otherwise of the many and various solutions put forward out there, so they are vulnerable to political manipulation by ideologically motivated types who think 'the answer' to the whole (not just climate change but biodiversity loss, inequality, 'white supremacy', LBTQ+ gender inequality etc etc) situation is to change 'the system' to end up with a world where we all live in some sort of vaguely defined harmony with nature and everybody is equal and all the wealth is redistributed to achieve their faith-based dreams of a socialist paradise. Part of that playbook is undermining established big industry and 'decentralisng'.

Anyone who regularly takes on the really incorrigible denialists, as I do - I don't mean the brainwashed rank and file Hicksville idiots, but the much smarter ones - soon discovers that beneath all the high sounding 'alternative science' of the 1000frollyphds, the B.S. factories, Heartland's James Taylor, Quora's James Matkin etc are people who are almost always actually motivated by just a couple of things, of which by far the most common is extreme ideological antipathy to the 'big government' solutions promoted by extremist activists - the deep green environmentalists, the 'Smash Capitalism' closet reds and the 'System Change, not Climate Change' demonstrators.

I really don't know if these 'denialist/lobbyist' people truly believe all the propaganda they put out, in which case they would have been driven to delusion to protect their favoured clients and industries to sabotage the 'stop all fossil fuel use today and indict the corporations types' or if they cynically know that they are deliberately spreading deceit and misdirection to achieve the same end.

The 'Greenpeace knew' report and the recent Oreskes/Supran paper really are not evidence showing which way the truth lies being, as I've suggested before, chock full of cherry picking and insinuation and, in my view, the leading-the-reader attribution of malignant motives to innocent(ish) behaviour because of the underlying ideology of the authors. Oreskes is known to be significantly left wing and long ago Greenpeace's leaders adopted similar, or stronger, politics and I find their campaigning and assertions have got increasingly slanted and deceptive too.

BTW, when I refer to left wing I am not referring to centre'ish politics like that of the US Democrats but more towards the sort of Utopian student revolutionary type beliefs.

Blowing my own trumpet, I am one of the very few climate science denier fighters who can actually beat them to the point where they shut up (the smarter ones) or else (the dumber/madder ones) they resort to increasingly irrational conspiracy theory ideology to respond (not 'the scientists are all faking it for grant money' conspiracy but full-on Rothschilds, Bilderbergers, Illuminati, New World Order - even the shape shifting lizards!) which lets the reading/listening audiences see 'what lies beneath'. What is noticeable is that no matter how convincingly one may have demolished their case, give them several weeks, or a couple of months, and one will often find them using exactly the same flawed logic, cherry picked facts and deceptive framing as before. This could mean either they have some sort of mental condition where their mind edits out their defeat so, like psychics who forget all their wrong predictions and only remember any correct ones, they maintain a spurious sense of their own abilities or they don't care much if you demolish their case in public because their only goal is to sway the public mind to their desired end and they know that the public has a very short memory and that the short denialist memes 'it's the Sun, it's cooling, it's cold now in Hicksville, it's cosmic rays etc have a very powerful ability to fool, or at least induce doubt and uncertainty in, the public's minds.

A clear example of the second type is Marc 'Climate Depot' Morano who is so confident of the validity of his position that he even proudly described it on camera to greenman3610 (Pete Sinclair).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnhTo6Wd80

He still appears to believe in his 'in denial of mainstream climate science' position but he does admit here to using misleading rhetoric etc to achieve his ends, which are to sway the views of the public. He more or less admits to using 'the game' to propagandise. Even this is not necessarily smoking gun evidence of 'evil' if he truly believes his own rhetoric is accurate, it's just yet another example of what I call 'non-clinically diagnosable insanity' of which the online world is now suffering a tsunami!

My main point is still this. I'm just about certain that the underlying motivations and beliefs of all major figures in the climate change wars are far more nuanced, and often hidden, than the simplistic 'they knew', 'they're evil', 'they're stupid' etc epithets flung at them by their opponents, whose motivations are similarly complex.

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

Micawber at 03:04 AM on 8 June, 2021

Michael Mann is correct in thinking that our information is totally controlled by media giants.
Scientists are charged to read their own publications and “peer reviewers” stack the peers so that no new ideas can get through. Rarely if ever do you find references to key earlier work by retired or deceased scientists. I give a few examples.
Microsoft Office still uses years beginning 1 January 1900. They charge for updates but still have a fatally flawed program. Why is he allowed to pose as a scientist and innovator?
Even David Keeling was nearly prevented from continuing verification of CO2 infrared heat blankets by rigged peer review. He gives a vivid account in his autobiographical review:
Keeling, C. D., 1998, Rewards and Penalties of Monitoring the Earth, Ann Rev. Energy Env, 23(1), 25-82, doi:10.1038/nature105981.
Blair Kinsman had earlier shown how the misuse of statistics and inability to take daily validation data could mislead to wrong conclusion. Unlike in lab experiments geophysical data once not taken cannot be repeated at will. This has happened with our gross neglect of near surface ocean data where is located most anthropogenic heat.
Kinsman, B. 1957, Proper and improper use of statistics in geophysics, Tellus 9(3), 408-418, doi:10.1111/j.2153-3490.1957.tb01897.x
Free access sci-hub.do/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1957.tb01897.x
"The dangers facing the earth's ecosystems are well known and the subject of great concern at all levels. Climate change is high on the list. But there is an underlying and associated cause. Overpopulation."
Sir David Attenborough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPmLWYbUqA
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
"The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our Inability to Understand the Exponential Function" Bartlett, Albert A., 1979
www.youtube.com › watch › v=F8ZJCtL6bPs
Wherever humans are involved we HAVE the Weimar greed equation. Better snap up fish stocks, or oil or whatever before someone else grabs it.
Graham Hancock has beeN ridiculed for suggesting there was a great civilisation as early as 400,000 years ago. Yet there are pyramids dated 130,000 years old in the Mississippi basin. Genetics link Oceania to S America. The compact nature of the Antikythera Clock suggest it was used for navigation. Why else would one cram a complete astronomical clock into a case the size of a sextant? The clock could predict lunar eclipses 78 years ahead as well as their colour. Many wheels have prime number of gears to give highly accurate astronomical times. There were even wheels for the Olympic and other games. Silicon valley may think of it as a mechanism or computer. But it was a clock long before Harrison’s. Such sophistication suggests many years development. It clearly could not have sprung up 350BC, any more than modern printed circuits could have been envisioned in 1957.

Sealevels averaged 50m below present in prehistory before 1750AD. There were many rich landmasses where merchant sailors could establish empires. They were wiped out by catastrophic sea level rise both cyclical and from asteroid impacts. We are at the top of earth’s remaining peaks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAqqA3fMwI8
Melting ice of Greenland and Antarctica is proceedING exponentially leading to rapidly rising sealevels, floods and storms as well depleted fish stocks.

Waters around Faeroes does not get cold enough for cod and halibut to breed. They need to be at least 10 years old before they start. (netflix seaspiracy)
The north sea herring disappeared before 1950s, the Newfoundland cod in the 1980s. Gunboat diplomacy could not save them.
What do you think we should do? Perhaps include the equatorial undercurrent in climate models?
There has been too much about hot air instead of hot water.
I have not heard Dr Mann mention this. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
There needs to be a real focus on what the great oceans are telling us.

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

Nick Palmer at 23:24 PM on 6 June, 2021

I'm really not happy about the direction Dr Mann has been going. Whilst obviously not doubting his extreme scientific credibility in the field of climate science, I think he is increasingly adopting the appearance of some of the more extreme campaigning activists by, in my view, misattributing dark motivations to and unfairly demonising the actions of governments, the fossil fuel industry etc.

Dr Mann is speaking well ouside of his area of special competence when he dismisses CCS, afforestation, nuclear, soil regeneration etc as unworkable or as a Machiavellian poker play of the 'delayers, dismissives, inactivists' etc. It seems like he has seen a holy light that dictates that only 100% renewables can allowed in his vision and that any other possible solutions must have been manufactured by dark forces to muddy the waters and prevent this one-dimensional solution coming to pass. It's going to be hard enough decarbonisng fast enough using everything we can throw at it - Throwing out everything but Dr Mann's 'pure' solution will make it harder or even unachievable early enough.

In recent months it has become increasingly common to see extremist activists more or less entirely blaming the fossil fuel industry for the situation. Probably the original root of this was Greenpeace's highly misleading report 'Exxon knew' which, in my opinion, uses every one of the deceptive rhetorical tricks that the denialosphere use to make their cases, including the wilful attribution of sinister motives where there are other more benign interpretations.

Very recently, and this seems to be in Dr Mann's book now, the valid response that the consumers of fossil fuelled energy and products, services and materials manufactured and extracted with that energy - the great mass of the public - are at least as responsible as the sellers is being portrayed as a malignant tactic by the 'delayers, dismissives etc'. This is a seriously warped thing to assert. The public's choices every time time they go to the shops or buy a car or complain about their energy bill means that they must share at least some of the responsibility for those choices - in my view most of it - because there are alternatives available which the majority are still not choosing. Activists who are trying to portray the public as innocent fluffy bunnies manipulated by Evil Big Fossil Fuel are, frankly, away with the fairies (being kind) or more likely pursuing some hidden ideologically based poltical agenda which the public would not suport if they realised it.

Knowledge of anthropogenic climate change has been widespread since James Hansen's 1988 speech to Congress - no-one can say that the public are still ignorant of the science and there has been a million articles, TV programmes and broadcasts delineating the risks. Whatever concerns the great mass of the ordinary public may have had and now have is clearly outranked by their desire to continue using the products and services more or less as usual.

But, obviously, Dr Mann is still a leading light in 'our side' and his powerful arguments that the consequences of the use of fossil carbon based energy must be priced into the economy is, in my view, the single most important thing that can be done to turn the market away from greenhouse gas generating energy by enabling the public to, by simply voting with their wallets, favour the cleaner green alternatives.

It's clear that many top economists favour the 'rising carbon fee and dividend' championed by that other prominent climate scientist/activist James Hansen. Excitingly, these economists come from all sides of the political spectrum and there seems to be acceptance from both the left and right wing of opinion that this relatively simple measure could be, if not a silver bullet, massively helpful at giving the market, and the great mass of the public who participate in that market, a strong signal which way to go without introducing authoritarian legislation and all the other heavy handed political tools which cause people to resist and fight back.

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.

Greens: Divided on ‘clean’ energy? Or closer than they appear?

One Planet Only Forever at 06:07 AM on 23 May, 2021

Nick Palmer @3,

I agree that Political Games should not decide what social or economic options Win. And the issue is far more extensive than the Climate Change aspects that sites like SkS focus on addressing.

This comment goes beyond the scope of SkS and Climate Science. But it is important for more people to be aware that there is more going on that also needs to be addressed.

Leadership providing a “... free'ish but lightly as possible regulated markets with social and environmental safety nets ...” would have been great if it had continued to be globally pursued and improved since the 1970s when the harmful reality of economic pursuit of More was becoming more clearly understood. The lack of helpful effective global leadership, especially the tragic Reagan-Thatcher “less Government assistance and less restriction so there is more opportunity for the Rich to get Richer because that helps everyone”, has produced the current developed reality where continuing to compromise what is understood to be required to limit harm done, the centrist compromised view, will significantly harm the future of humanity.

What is needed, and has always been needed, is for All Leadership (social, political and business), and an increasing portion of the population, to uncompromisingly pursue increased awareness and improved understanding of what is really going on and the diversity of ways (conservative and liberal, right and left, socialist and capitalist) to limit harm done, ideally excluding all harmful activity from competitions for popularity and profit. And it would be nice if unsustainable activity like burning up non-renewable resources, was also kept from competing for popularity and profit even if the harm done is not yet understood in detail (that would have meant restrictions on fossil fuel use even before climate science developed better understanding), because everything humans do needs to be Sustainable if perceptions of improvement of civilization are to be sustainable.

Recommended supplementary reading...

Video interview of Ian Plimer at Sky News falsely claims that a new study announces an incoming ice age, partly based on an incorrect Daily Mail headline, Edited by Nikki Forrester, Article Review, Climate Feedback, Jan 20, 2021

Veganism is the best way to reduce carbon emissions

Guilhem_S at 07:13 AM on 1 February, 2021

Hi all, I appreciate when people take time to debunk climate hoax, however I think this particular article is misleading, to say the least, and need major updates. It is both in the name of the truth in science, especially related to climate change, and the credibility of your page that I’m writing this very comprehensive exhaustive feedback on the many flaws I’ve identified.

We know that land use and food production are major actors in climate change. The argument for veganism from an environmental perspective is oftenly that animal agriculture is a big contributor to climate change and shifting toward a plant based diet is better for the environment. Most people would agree that Veganism isn't the single best solution to climate change, and that -for instance- collective suicide might probably be better, as well as a totalitarian regime imposing a zero carbon lifestyle. From an individual perspective, a non vegan eating a single slice of pork ham a year but living car and plane free is probably doing better for the environment than a vegan doing a Bali - New-York plane round trip every year. With these arguments in mind, “veganism isn’t the best way to reduce carbon footprint” is a no brainer. That being said, it is true that some animal right activists overestimate the impact that veganism can have so I understand why you wish to clarify to them that it is not as black and white as they wish it to be. However globally the impact of animal agriculture is hugely underestimated (see for instance https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0354-z) and by trying to debunk a very marginal argument (‘veganism is the single best way to reduce carbon footprint’), you end up downplaying the power that one have by shifting to a plant-based or even vegan diet. This kind of attitude might actually increase the total carbon footprint, or at least minimize the carbon mitigation of people’s action by discarding a sector on which people can have a huge impact which is widely unknown from the general public.

First, the livestock sector accounts for 65% of the food sector GHGE while only providing 18% of the world's calories. And while most of the food fed to animal is non-edible (in dry weight), meat production is still globally inefficient (it takes about 3kg of edible dry plant to produce 1kg of meat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013). Because the livestock sector is about 15% of all anthropogenic emissions as calculated from many LCA, notably by the FAO (http://www.fao.org/gleam/results/en/), it is a huge source of potential mitigations.

To get a first idea of what are the order of magnitude we’re talking about, governmental official French figures are as follows : An average omnivorous diet emits 2,8 tons of equivalent CO2 per year, about half of which is coming from animal products (meat, dairy and eggs). A diet with ruminant at every meal emits 6 tons of CO2 per year. A vegan diet can emit as low as 0.6 tons and is the least carbon intensive diet. To achieve Paris agreement on climate change we need an individual carbon footprint of 2 tons or less of CO2 per person per year, which is impossible to achieve on a cheese or meat-based diet. [1]. A vegan meal is, on average 0.8kg of CO2 [2], a egg-based meal is on average 2kg of CO2 [3], a cheese/pork/chicken based-meal is 5.4kg of CO2 [4] and a ruminant based meal is 25.2kg of CO2 [5]. According to the french national agency for climate transition, a vegan meal emits 2.5 to 31.5 times less CO2eq than any other meal and there is no reason that this figure should be much different in other countries. If anything, French carbon impact of animal products -especially ruminant- should be lower than in other countries such as Brazil. These kinds of figures appear nowhere in your article while they could provide useful insight to readers as to what are the best food sources to fight climate change.
[1] https://nosgestesclimat.fr/simulateur/bilan
[2] https://nosgestesclimat.fr/documentation/alimentation/plats/v%C3%A9g%C3%A9talien
[3] https://nosgestesclimat.fr/documentation/alimentation/plats/v%C3%A9g%C3%A9tarien
[4] https://nosgestesclimat.fr/documentation/alimentation/plats/viande-1
[5] https://nosgestesclimat.fr/documentation/alimentation/plats/viande-2

“Although veganism does have the potential to reduce GHG emissions associated with diet, it is important to consider other sectors that are also part of the problem.” → One might ask why we should consider other sectors when it is this one we are debating. This kind of “whataboutism” argument can be used to discard every policy on reducing carbon footprint.

Insisting on what people perceive (to be feasible, to be environmentally friendly, etc.) instead of what is factually positive for the environment is misleading. If you claim to answer the complex question of limiting the worst for the climate you cannot rely on people’s opinion. I know just as much as you that major societal and individual change are required to achieve climate goals and prevent the worst scenario. Claiming that veganism isn’t good because some people really want to eat meat as a main argument is unbelievable on a website such as yours and by trying to debunk such a minor myth in our society (PETA's claim), you perpetuate more dangerous myths (such that grass fed ruminants are carbon friendly). Because the myth that does currently more damage is that local, organic, grass fed animal are better for the environment you should reverse the debunking and show that actually, intensive exported plant food are way more carbon friendly (and that “organic” isn’t really doing much, except increasing the demand for land by decreasing the productivity)

When you’re pointing at non-vegan related issues such as food waste to dismiss the major changes that could be brought, you’re obscuring the debate further. When we talk about change, we have to think about counterfactual scenarios: the question is not ‘is veganism with a lot of fruit imported by plane wasted good?’ but ‘is veganism good, all things else being equal ?’. Otherwise it might sound like a strawman.

On the Kim et al. (2019) paper, I don’t know how you manage to distort the results that much in the process of trying to make veganism look bad. The paper is clear: the vegan diet is the less carbon intensive in all country studied (97% to be correct), only the low-food-chain diet is slightly above, but not statistically significantly different, from vegan diet*. The argument you make about vegetarianism has not his place here if you want to discuss Veganism. What the paper is saying is that it’s better to be ⅔ vegan than 100% vegetarian because dairy products have a massive impact so it doesn’t compensate for the ⅓ of omnivorism remaining. Therefore, your conclusion “there are arguments that a flexitarian diet with moderate amounts of meat is better than a vegetarian diet that cuts out meat completely, showing that stopping meat intake completely does not necessarily reduce dietary GHG emissions and cannot be assumed to do so in a vegan diet.” is a fallacious non-sequitur : vegan diet is better than both flexitarian and vegetarian diet (as shown by the very study you’re citing) because it eliminate both meat AND dairy which both are very carbon intensive. I can’t believe you haven’t seen that and I really wish I was able to assume you’ve made an honest mistake but I barely can. Such mistakes, always in the disadvantage of veganism, and repeated, seriously undermine the ideological neutrality of the author on these questions.
(*Please note that the low food chain diet is a diet where 90% of animal proteins are replaced with pulses, so we could say it’s a 90% vegan diet. That’s why it’s not statistically significantly different from vegan diet).

The vegan diet doesn’t lead to a higher consumption of fruit: because vegan doesn’t eat meat, cheese and eggs which are the main source of protein, fat and calories, we should expect vegan to eat protein and fat sources instead such as legumes, beans and nuts or oil. Increasing fruit consumption is within the nutritional guidelines of every country which have one. For these reasons, the whole paragraph appears as a non-sequitur. At best, the argument is very weak and it is on you to show that the eventual additional portion of fruit due to veganism (and not due to healthier lifestyle as vegans also usually have healthier lifestyle, but uniquely due to veganism, which its very existence is one of your unproven assumption) will increase carbon emission so much that it will cancel out the 8Gigaton of CO2 mitigation from quitting animal agriculture. I think because of the assumption it relies on, both the waste and plane-transported food fruits are not a valid argument

Speaking about the food waste, which is another issue a priori unrelated to and independent from veganism, there’s a paper titled “The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses” [https://www.pnas.org/content/115/15/3804]. The title is pretty straightforward: in the US, after adjusting for various nutrient density, the adoption of a vegan diet could feed 300 millions more people while the total elimination of all waste along the whole food production line (which is impossible) could only feed 100 millions more people. Once again, just like the “Vegetarian vs. vegan” paragraph, I don’t understand how you can try to use an unrelated issue to make veganism look bad but still fail.

As a reminder, the biggest meta-study on food impact shows that only 0.16% of the food on the planet is transported by plane [https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode]. It is questionable to mention it only here, when talking about veganism. The main impact of the vast majority of food is on-farm emission, as shown by the same meta-study on 38000 farm in 119 countries [https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local] eating 100% local would only reduce emission by 5-10% whereas eating vegan can divide by several time the carbon footprint of diet.

The argument of carbon sequestration by grazing livestock, a favorite of the industry, have been proven wrong for a long time, as the methane and nitrous oxide emission from ruminant far exceed the best sequestration possible. See for instance this review of the literature (and note the discrepancy between figure from the academic domain and claim from outsider unpublished in journal such as Savory) [https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf]. Also, wild ruminants could do the same job and it would be vegan, as grazing pasture doesn’t require either killing nor exploiting them. Many wild ruminants still exist, preceded humanity and very likely will still exist if humanity disappears.

You might want to update the carbon impact of a vegan diet because Scarborough and Berners-Lee are not really in agreement with current research. Current research from Poore and Nemecek [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987], of the BMJ paper by Springmann [https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2322] show that a vegan diet emits several times less (>50% less) CO2 than conventional diet. The official French figure show that a vegan diet can emit 4 times less CO2 than the current diet. You might as well check out the IPCC report on land use showing that a vegan diet could prevent the emission of 8 Gigaton of equivalent CO2 per year, showing a massive reduction (roughly 20% of all current anthropogenic emission https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/). A recent Science paper also showed that shifting toward a plant-based diet (EAT Lancet which is about 70% less white meat and 95% less red meat than current French diet) and other food change are mandatory to reach climate agreement [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705]. The Kim paper of 2019 you’ve cited above shows a global reduction of 70% GHGE (why did you choose to not mention it ?). In the light of these various paper, it seems strange that you choose to show only to moderate-impact paper.

The latest Lancet Countdown report shows that animal agriculture emits about 55% of the carbon footprint of food production (including the feed) while providing only 18% of the world's calories. What is really shocking to me is that 95% of the animal farming carbon footprint comes from ruminants which represent a tiny minority of the number of animals killed and meat consumed. How can you suggest that eating lamb or beef is sustainable in any way ? For an outsider it looks like you’ve internalized the rhetorics of the industry and are really detached from the reality of the current research. [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32290-X/fulltext]

The occurrence of cowspiracy appears as you have something against this movie and seems to alter your neutrality. There are ways to criticize some element of cowspiracy (such as the Goodland paper and the 51% figure) without making such a poor quality argument against veganism as a whole.

I would like to add few points that you have eluded about the impact a vegan diet can have: it can do much more to the planet than just ‘reducing GHG emissions associated with diet’. It can, for instance, lower potential health crises by reducing zoonotic emergence risk (70% of new diseases are zoonotic https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2001.0888). Land which are not used could be left to the wild, and with the natural reforestation of pasture we could sequester up to 700 Gigatons of CO2, making the climate goal of +1.5°C by 2100 feasible at 66% as shown by this Nature Sustainability article of 2020 [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4]. In countries where the meat consumption is high, it could drastically reduce the disease burden and total mortality, according to this BMJ paper, it could reduce total mortality of several tenth of % [https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2322]. Note that this article also explored the carbon impact and showed a vegan diet emit globally 80% less CO2 than what we are currently doing (and is of course the least carbon intensive of all diet studied)

I hope I have achieved to make you realise how this page may sound to an outsider who knows the figure, and I have provided you with many up-to-date research sources.

Please make an impartial page to properly inform about the climate impact of food and the huge potential of plant based, vegetarian but especially vegan diet to mitigate climate crisis. As you’re part of the Pro-Truth Pledge i’m sure you will take this matter seriously. I would be more than happy to help to write something about it if you want, or to answer any of your questions.

Thank you for your considerations,
Guilhem

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1

Philippe Chantreau at 05:01 AM on 15 January, 2021

DSJR,

I will not comment on your quality or ethics, as I really have no interest in it. This is not about you, or me, but helping readers form understanding. I reiterate that the framing of your argument on satellite data suggests nefarious intent, although you provided no substantiation of such intent. Perhaps you don't see that and it's a language issue.

There is on this site abundant discussion of satellite data, including the repeated shortcomings of the UAH team, who had to have others show major mistakes on at least 2 occasions. There are also detailed posts on the height of the "slices" where the measurements are taken from which temperatures are derived. Go hack at it there. Perhaps this is about other satellite data than the ones we are most familiar with, then more references are needed, so we can check for ourselves. Usually, when corrections are done, papers about the why and how of the corrections are published.

As for the idea that solar and wind power plants have any measurable effect at a global scale on surface temperatures, I'll say that what you provided falls short by so much that, under the current state of knowledge, it puts that hypothesis in the "not even wrong" category. However, my opinion is always open to modifications in the face of new findings. If the idea attracts research and it turns it had merit, I will acknowledge that. However, as of now, I don't see that we are anywhere close to have the weight of evidence necessary.

Don't take it personally. Once again, this is not about you.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy at 17:47 PM on 11 January, 2021

Negelj

Global Warming: It is an estimate of the annual average part of temperature trend. The trend of 1880 to 2010 is 0.6oC per century in which global warming component is 0.3oC – 1951 to 2100 is 0.45oC – according to linear trend. But in reality it is not so as the energy component is constant over which superposed sunspot cycle. However, the reliability depends up on the data used. For example number of stations in around 1850 were < 100 and by around 1980 [started satellite data collection started around this time] they were more than 6000 and with the availability of satellite data the number of stations drastically come down to around 2500. The satellite data covered both urban-heat-island effect and rural-cold-island effect and showed practically no trend – US raw data series also showed this. However, this data was removed from internet [Reddy, 2008 – Climate Change: Myths & Realities, available on line] and replaced with new adjusted data series that matches with ground data series. Here cold-island effect is not covered. With all this, what I want say is warmings associated with solar power plants is added to global warming. How much?? This needs collection of data for all the solar power stations. Met station covers a small area only but acts like UHI effect – I saw a report “surface temperatures in downtown Sacramento at 11 a.m. June 30, 1998 – this presents high variation from area to area based on land use [met station refers to that point only]. So, solar wind power plants effect covers similar to heatwaves and coldwaves. Here general Circulation Pattern plays main role.

Nuclear Power: Nuclear power production processes contribute to “global warming process” while hydropower production processes contribute to “global cooling process”; the nuclear power production processes don’t fit into “security, safety & economy” on the one hand and on the other “environment & social” concepts; unlike other power production processes, in nuclear power production process different stages of nuclear fuel cycles are counted as separate entities while assessing the cost of power per unit and only the power production component is accounted in the estimation of cost of power per unit; carbon dioxide is released in every component of nuclear fuel cycle except the actual fusion in the reactor. Fossil fuels are involved in the mining-transport-milling conversion-processing of ore-enrichment of the fuel, in the handling of the mill tailings-in the fuel can preparation-in the construction of plant and it decommissioning-demolition, in the handling of the spent waste-in its processing and vitrification and in digging the hole in rock for its deposition, etc. and in the manufacturing of necessary required equipment in all these stages and thus their transportation. In all these stages radiological and non-radiological pollution occurs – in the case of tail pond it runs in to hundreds of years. Around 60% of the power plant cost goes towards the equipment, most of which is to be imported. The spent fuel storage is a critical issue, yet no solution was found. Also the life of reactors is very short and the dismantling of such reactors is costly & risky, etc., etc.

Michael Sweet/ Negelj

In 70&80s I worked and published several articles relating to radiation [global solar and net and evaporation/evapotranspiration] – referred in my book of 1993 [based on articles published in international and national journals]. Coal fired power plants reduces ground level temperature by reducing incoming solar radiation. In the case of Solar Panels create urban heat island condition and thus increases the surrounding temperature. In both the cases these changes depends upon several local conditions including general circulation patterns. Ground condition plays major role on radiation at the surface that define the surface temperature [hill stations, inland stations & coastal stations] – albedo factor varies. Also varies with soil conditions – black soil, red soil. Sea Breeze/land breeze – relates to temperature gradient [soil quickly warm up and quickly release the heat and water slowly warm up and slowly release heat] and general circulation pattern existing in that area plays the major role in advection.

Response to Moderator

See some of my publications for information only:

Reddy, S.J., (1993): Agroclimatic/Agrometeorological Techniques: As applicable to Dry-land Agriculture in Developing Countries, www.scribd.com/Google Books, 205p; Book Review appeared in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 67 (1994):325-327.
Reddy, S.J., (2002): Dry-land Agriculture in India: An Agroclimatological and Agrometeorological Perspective, BS Publications, Hyderabad, 429.
Reddy, S.J., (2008): Climate Change: Myths & Realities, www.scribd.com/Google Books, 176.
Reddy, S.J., (2016): Climate Change and its Impacts: Ground Realities. BS Publications, Hyderabad, 276.
Reddy, S.J., (2019a): Agroclimatic/Agrometeorological Techniques: As applicable to Dry-land Agriculture in Developing Countries [2nd Edition]. Brillion Publishing, New Delhi, 372p.

2.1.2 Water vapour

Earth’s temperature is primarily driven by energy cycle; and then by the hydrological cycle. Global solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface and net radiation/radiation balance at the Earth’s surface is generally estimated as a function of hours of bright Sunshine. Total cloud cover [average of low, medium & high clouds] has a direct relation to hours of bright Sunshine (Reddy, 1974). Cube root of precipitation showed a direct relation to total solar radiation and net radiation (Reddy, 1987). In all these latitude plays major role (Reddy & Rao, 1973; Reddy, 1987). Evaporation presents a relation with net and global solar radiation (Reddy & Rao, 1973) wherein relative humidity plays an important role that reduces with increasing relative humidity. If ‘X’ is global solar radiation received under100% relative humidity then with the dryness [with relative humidity coming down] it may reach a maximum of 2X; and under net radiation also with increasing relative humidity net radiation is reduced. That means water vapour in the atmosphere is the principal component that controls the incoming and outgoing radiation and thus temperature at the Earth’s surface. Thar Desert presents high temperature with negligible water vapour in the atmosphere as maximum energy reaches the earth’s surface. However, these impacts differ under inland (dryness), hill (declining temperature with height – lapse rate) & coastal (wetness) locations and sun’s movement (latitude and declination of the Sun — seasons) (Reddy & Rao, 1973). IPCC integrated these under “climate system” and the advective condition by general circulation pattern [GCP].
Cold-island effect [I coined this, see Reddy (2008)] is part of human induced climate change associated with changes in land use and land cover. Since 1960’s to meet the food needs of ever increasing population, started intensive agriculture – conversion of dryland to wetland; & creation of water resources; etc. In this process increased levels of evaporation and evapotranspiration contributed to raise in water vapour up to around 850 mb levels in the lower atmosphere. Unusual changes in water vapour beyond 850 mb level [for example at 700 mb level] become a cause for thunderstorm activity (Reddy & Rao, 1978). Wet bulb temperature (oC) at the surface of the Earth provides the square root of total water vapour (g/cm2) in the vertical column of the atmosphere; and also wet bulb temperature (oC) is a function of dry bulb temperature (oC), relative humidity (%) and square root of station level pressure (height) relative to standard value in mb [p/1060] (Reddy, 1976). Thus, unlike CO2, water vapour presents a short life with steadily increasing with land use and land cover changes. However, met network in this zones have been sparse and thus the cold island effect is not properly accounted under global average temperature computations. Though satellite data takes this in to account, this data series were withdrawn from the internet and introduced new adjusted data series that matches with adjusted ground data series. Annual state-wise temperature data series in India wherein intensive agriculture practices are existing, namely Punjab, Haryana & UP belt, showed decreasing trend in annual average temperature – cooling. Some of these are explained below:

Reddy (1983) presented a daily soil water balance model that computes daily evapotranspiration, known as ICSWAB Model. The daily soil water balance equation is generally written as:

▲Mn = Rn – AEn – ROn - Dn

In the above equation left to right represent the soil moisture change, rainfall or irrigation, actual evapotranspiration, surface runoff and deep drainage on a given day (n). The term Actual Evapotranspiration [AEn] is to be estimated as a function of f(E), f(S) & f(C), wherein they represent functions of evaporative demand on day n, soil & crop factors, respectively. As these three factors are mutually interactive, the multiplicative type of function is used.

AEn = f(En) x f(S) x f(C)

However, the crop factor does not act independently of the soil factor. Thus it is given as:

AEn = f(En) x f(S,C) and f(S,C) = K x bn

Where f(S,C) is the effective soil factor, K = soil water holding capacity [that varies with soil type] in mm and bn is the crop growth stage [that vary with crop & cropping pattern] factor that varies between 0.02 to 0.24 — fallow to full crop cover conditions (with leaf area index crossing 2.75). Evaporative demand is expressed by the terms evaporation and/or evapotranspiration. Evaporation (E) and evapotranspiration (PE) are related as:

PE = 0.85 x E [with mesh cover] or = 0.75 x E [without mesh cover].

However, the relationship holds good only under non-advective conditions [i.e., under wind speeds less than 2.5 m/sec]. Under advective conditions E is influenced more by advection compared to PE. In the case of PE, by definition, no soil evaporation takes place and thus PE relates to transpiration only – where the crop grows on conserved soil moisture with negligible soil evaporation. With the presence of soil evaporation, the potential evapotranspiration reaches as high as 1.2 x PE or E with mesh cover. McKenney & Rosenberg (1993) studied sensitivity of some potential evapotranspiration estimation methods to climate change. The widely used methods are Thornthwaite and Penman presented 750 mm and 1500 mm wherein Thornthwaite method is basically uses temperature and Penman uses several meteorological parameters (Reddy, 1995).
In this process the temperature is controlled by solar energy but moisture under different soil types [water holding capacity] it is modified. This modified temperature cause actual evapotranspiration and thus water vapour. This is a vicious circle. For example average annual temperature in red soils Anantapur it is 27.6oC; in deep black soils Kadapa it is 29.25oC & in medium soils Kurnool it is 28.05oC. That means, local temperature is controlled by soils.
Reddy (1976a&b) presented a method of estimating precipitable water in the entire column of the atmosphere at a given location using Wet Bulb Temperature. The equations are given as follows:

Tw = T x [0.45 + 0.006 x h x (p/1060)1/2]

W = c’ x Tw2

Where T & Tw are dry and wet bulb temperatures in oC; h is the relative humidity in %; p is the annual normal station level pressure in mb [1060 normal pressure in mb, a constant] ; W is the precipitable water vapour in gm/cm2 and c’ is the regression coefficient.
WMO (1966) presented methods to separate trend from natural rhythmic variations in rainfall and assessing the cycles if any. (Late) Dr. B. Parthasarathy from IITM/Pune used these techniques in Indian rainfall analysis. Reddy (2008) presented such analysis with global average annual temperature anomaly data series of 1880 to 2010 and found the natural cycle of 60-years varying between -0.3 to +0.3oC & trend of 0.6oC per century [Reddy, 2008]. This is based on adjusted data series but in USA raw data [Reddy, 2016] there is no trend. The hottest daily temperature data series of Sydney in Australia shows no trend [Reddy, 2019a]. Thus, the trend needs correction if the starting and ending point parts are in the same phase of the cycle – below and below or above and above the average parts. During 1880 to 2010 period two full 60-year cycles are covered and thus, no need to correct the trend as the trend passes through the mean points of the two cycles.

3.2.4 What is global warming part of the trend?

According to IPCC AR5, this trend of 0.6oC per century is not global warming but it consists of several factors:
a. More than half is [human induced] greenhouse effect part:
i. It consists of global warming component & aerosols component, etc. If we assume global warming component alone is 50% of the total trend, then it will be 0.3oC per Century under linear trend;
ii. Global warming starting year is 1951 & thus the global warming from 1951 to 2100 [150 years] is 0.45oC under linear trend;
iii. But in nature this can’t be linear as the energy is constant and thus CSF can’t be a constant but it should be decreasing non-linearly;
iv. Under non-linear condition by 2100 the global warming will be far less than 0.45oC and thus the trend will be far less than half;
b. Less than half the trend is ecological changes [land use and land cover change] part – mostly local & regional factors:
i. This consists of urban-heat-island effect and rural-cold-island effect;
1. Urban-heat-island effect – with the concentrated met network overestimates warming;
2. Rural-cold-island effect – with the sparse met network underestimates cooling;

2.2.1 Uncertainty on “Climate Sensitivity Factor”

The word “climate Crisis” is primarily linked to global warming. To know whether there is really global warming, if so how much, climate sensitivity factor plays the main role. Climate sensitivity is a measure [oC/(W/m2)] – how much warming we expect (both near-term and long-term) for a given increase in CO2? According to Mark, D. Zilinka (2020), “Equilibrium climate sensitivity, the global surface temperature response to the CO2 doubling, has been persistently uncertain”.
Recent modelling data suggests the climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously believed, and experts said the projections had the potential to be “incredibly alarming”, though they stressed further research would be needed to validate the new numbers. Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said. “Climate sensitivity is the holy grail of climate science. It is the prime indicator of climate risk.
The role of clouds is one of the most uncertain areas in climate science because they are hard to measure and, depending on altitude, droplet temperature and other factors can play either a warming or a cooling role. For decades, this has been the focus of fierce academic disputes. Catherine Senior, head of understanding climate change at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said more studies and more data are needed to fully understand the role of clouds and aerosols. With this vital disputes how anyone can say there is global warming without solving this issue; so I said “global warming hysteria factor is climate crisis”.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy at 21:46 PM on 10 January, 2021

nigelj

on the solar and wind — see the reference I quoted earlier.

About nuclear power — I am against this and fighting on this. In India Hydropower is the major component after coal and in USA it is nuclear power — equivalent to hydropower % in India with coal % similar.

Coal power — the dust compensate the heat at the power station. Also water is used to cool some of it.

CO2 levels in SH are nearly one-third of NH. Also prior to 1960 a smooth increasing CO2 curve is an hypothetical curve.

IPCC claim that CO2 can cause catastrophic global warming. Because CO2 is not capable of causing significant global warming by itself, their contention is that increased CO2 raises temperature slightly and that produces an increase in water vapour, which does have the capability of raising atmospheric temperature. However, it is not the case, and on the contrary water vapour/relative humidity controls the energy coming from the Sun that controls the temperature at the ground. Since 1960 with the steadily rising irrigated agriculture and development of water resources caused steady rise in water vapour in the atmosphere but it has short life – not cumulative like carbon dioxide. That means under cold-island effect the temperature must decrease. This was recorded in satellite data. But later this data series were withdrawn from the internet and introduced new data series that matches with adjusted ground data series. Also annual state-wise temperature data series where intensive agriculture practice exists, namely Punjab, Haryana & UP belt showed decreasing trend in annual average temperature. Also climate sensitivity factor that converts CO2 in to heat/temperature is heuristic so far. Also the trend in global average annual temperature is not global warming but it is a part of trend is global warming that to based on adjusted data series.

A recent report states that CO2 level of 1970 was the height in the last 800,000 years — which is false observation. In fact CO2 measurements started around 1960 — According to WMO Fact Sheet 4 of August 1989— 45 stations of which 3 from SH and no station in tropics.

According to Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at C3S, it is unquestionably an alarming sign that May 2020 has been the warmest month on record globally. However, even more concerning is the facts that average temperatures of the last 12 months have become one of the hottest 12-month-periods ever recorded in our dataset. Of course, this does not as such represent a long-term climate trend, as monthly temperature deviations vary, and some regions showed below average conditions. May 2020 tied with May 2016 for average global land and ocean temperatures, while April 2020 was on par with April 2016 for the hottest temperatures since records began in 1880. The global average temperature for May 2020 was 15.7oC (60.3oF), according to two independent measurements by the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) included in the State of the Climate: Global Climate Report for May 2020. -— Both studies found abnormalities over Siberia and the Arctic Ocean with temperatures about 10.0oC (18oF) above average for this time of the year. That means these part of irregular variation part of natural variability. This is nothing to do with the CO2 linked global warming.

Climate's changed before

Daniel Bailey at 07:47 AM on 29 October, 2020

@michael sweet

"Then the question is how long will it take for all that ice to melt"

Sea level rise from ice sheets continue to track worst-case (High scenario) climate change scenarios (discussion here, source paper here).

Source

Which, charitably, means 2.0 meters SLR by 2100, given that the Greenland Ice Sheet has tipped into a negative mass balance state, Earth having lost 28 trillion tons of ice in the past 23 years and that Greenland is expected to exceed Holocene loss rates by 2100.

Image Source

Typically, when climate scientists try to understand some of the expected future effects of global warming and climate change, they first look to the past. And in looking to the past, we can use the example of the climate transition from the icy depths of the Last Glacial Maximum into our current Holocene Interglacial to guide us. From about 21,000 years Before Present (BP) to about 11,700 years BP, the Earth warmed about 4 degrees C and the oceans rose (with a slight lag after the onset of the warming) about 85 meters.

However, the sea level response continued to rise another 45 meters, to a total of 130 meters (from its initial level before warming began), reaching its modern level about 3,000 BP.

This means that, even after temperatures reached their maximum and leveled off, the ice sheets continued to melt for another 8,000 years until they reached an equilibrium with temperatures.

Stated another way, the ice sheet response to warming continued for 8,000 years after warming had already leveled off, with the meltwater contribution to global sea levels totaling 45 additional meters of SLR.

Which brings us to our modern era of today: over the past 100 years, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree C…with sea level response to that warming totaling about 150 mm. Recently, accelerations in SLR and in ice sheet mass losses have been detected, which is what you’d expect to happen when the globe warms, based on our understanding of the previous history of the Earth and our understanding of the physics of climate.

Support for above:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/study-predicts-more-long-term-sea-level-rise-from-greenland-ice/
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaav9396

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2923
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9059
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/43/15296.short
https://www.carbonbrief.org/sea-level-research-says-only-a-brief-window-to-cut-emissions

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2869/antarcticas-effect-on-sea-level-rise-in-coming-centuries/
https://www.pnas.org/content/110/4/1209
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6444/eaav7908
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau3433
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/30/14887

Climate's changed before

Daniel Bailey at 00:29 AM on 29 October, 2020

Since we are discussing sea level rise, recent sea level rise is unprecedented over the past 2,500 years (Kopp et al 2016):

Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970 (Slangen et al 2016):

"the anthropogenic forcing (primarily a balance between a positive sea-level contribution from GHGs and a partially offsetting component from anthropogenic aerosols) explains only 15 ± 55% of the observations before 1950, but increases to become the dominant contribution to sea-level rise after 1970 (69 ± 31%), reaching 72 ± 39% in 2000 (37 ± 38% over the period 1900–2005)"

Causes of sea level rise since 1900, from NASA and Frederikse et al 2020:

Takeaways:

1. Glacier-dominated cryospheric mass loss has caused twice as much sea-level rise as thermal expansion since 1900

2. The acceleration since the 1970s is caused by the combination of thermal expansion and increased Greenland mass loss

3. Ocean mass increases from land-based ice losses dominated the early 20th and 21st Century sea level rise record; ocean heating was the dominant component from 1970-2000

4. The closure of the 20th-century sea-level budget derived here implies that no additional unknown processes, such as large-scale deep ocean thermal expansion or additional mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet are required to explain the observed changes of global sea level

Additionally, new research (Miller et al 2020) affirms modern sea level rise is linked to human activities, and not to changes in Earth’s orbit:

"Surprisingly, the Earth had nearly ice-free conditions with carbon dioxide levels not much higher than today and had glacial periods in times previously believed to be ice-free over the last 66 million years, according to a paper published in the journal Science Advances.

“Our team showed that the Earth’s history of glaciation was more complex than previously thought,” said lead author Kenneth G. Miller, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Although carbon dioxide levels had an important influence on ice-free periods, minor variations in the Earth’s orbit were the dominant factor in terms of ice volume and sea-level changes — until modern times.”

Sea-level rise, which has accelerated in recent decades, threatens to permanently inundate densely populated coastal cities and communities, other low-lying lands and costly infrastructure by 2100. It also poses a grave threat to many ecosystems and economies.

The paper reconstructed the history of sea levels and glaciation since the age of the dinosaurs ended. Scientists compared estimates of the global average sea level, based on deep-sea geochemistry data, with continental margin records. Continental margins, which include the relatively shallow ocean waters over a continental shelf, can extend hundreds of miles from the coast.

The study showed that periods of nearly ice-free conditions, such as 17 million to 13 million years ago, occurred when the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide — a key greenhouse gas driving climate change — was not much higher than today. However, glacial periods occurred when the Earth was previously thought to be ice-free, such as from 48 million to 34 million years ago.

“We demonstrate that although atmospheric carbon dioxide had an important influence on ice-free periods on Earth, ice volume and sea-level changes prior to human influences were linked primarily to minor variations in the Earth’s orbit and distance from the sun,” Miller said.

The largest sea-level decline took place during the last glacial period about 20,000 years ago, when the water level dropped by about 400 feet. That was followed by a foot per decade rise in sea level — a rapid pace that slowed from 10,000 to 2,000 years ago. Sea-level rise was then at a standstill until around 1900, when rates began rising as human activities began influencing the climate.

Future work reconstructing the history of sea-level changes before 48 million years ago is needed to determine the times when the Earth was entirely ice-free, the role of atmospheric carbon dioxide in glaciation and the cause of the natural fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide before humans."

LINK

From the source paper, Miller et al 2020:

"High long-term CO2 caused warm climates and high sea levels, with sea-level variability dominated by periodic Milankovitch cycles.

Sea level rose in the Early Pliocene ca. 4.7 Ma, reaching highs that had not been consistently seen since the MCO. From a sea-level perspective, the Pliocene is marked by three intervals with sea level well (~10 to 20 m) above modern: 4.6 to 4.1, 3.9 to 3.3, and 3.3 to 2.85 Ma.

GMSL higher than 12 m above modern requires loss of ice sheets in Greenland, West Antarctica, and sensitive areas of East Antarctica, the Wilkes, and Aurora Basins. This interval is of keen interest, because global temperatures were >2°C warmer than today at times when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were on the order of those in 2020 CE (~400 ppm), and thus, the equilibrium sea-level state is relevant to ice sheet trajectories in coming centuries. The peaks between 3.9 and 3.3 Ma were even higher, reaching a peak of ~30 m during Gi13, and thus requiring some melting of the EAIS.

The development of a permanent EAIS by 12.8 Ma resulted in a change from responding to precession, tilt, and eccentricity to subdued to absent response to eccentricity and precessional forcing that had previously been strong; the 41-ka tilt cycle dominated ice sheet and sea-level response from ca. 12.8 to 1.0 Ma following the development of a permanent EAIS. During the mid-Pleistocene transition, very large, 100-ka paced LIS were amplified by 100-ka changes in CO2 from ~180 (glacial) to 280 ppm (terminations).

During the last deglaciation (ca. 19 to 10 ka), GMSL rise exceeded 40 to 45 mm/year, providing an upper limit on known rates of GMSL rise. Rates before radiocarbon ages are less certain, although the sea-level rises exceeded 10 mm/year during terminations. Sea-level rise progressively slowed during the Holocene until the late 19th to early 20th century when rates began to rise from near 0 to 1.2 mm/year in the early 20th century to a late 20th and 21st century rise of 3.1 ± 0.4 mm/year.

Sea level follows long-term trends of atmospheric CO2, with high sea levels associated with high CO2 and warm climates. CO2 played an important role with high CO2 maintaining warmth in the Eocene (with values >800 to 1000 ppm; associated with largely ice-free conditions and high sea levels. Generally, decreasing CO2 values during Middle Eocene to Oligocene led to cooling and glaciation, although a secondary CO2 increase at ca. 35 to 36 Ma may be associated with the late Late Eocene warming. The cause of the CO2 decrease over the past 50 Ma has been widely discussed and debated but must be due to long-term (107-year) changes in CO2 sources (e.g., higher CO2 associated with inferred higher ocean crust production rates) or more likely the effectiveness of sinks CO2 (e.g., increased weathering associated with uplift of the Himalayas or exposure of basalts in tropical regions).

Our records that suggest nearly ice-free conditions occurred during the MCO and are thus intriguing if this is an equilibrium state for warming levels that will be attained in this century or the next century under sustained greenhouse gas emissions.

Our sea-level history constrains cryospheric evolution over the past 66 Ma, with ice-free conditions during most of the Early Eocene, MECO, latest Eocene, and possibly the MCO, with ice sheets (up to 40-m sea-level equivalent) in the Middle to Late Eocene greenhouse and with continental-scale Antarctic ice sheets beginning in the Oligocene.

From 34 to 13.8 Ma, the EAIS varied from larger than today (sea-level ~35 m below present) to nearly ice-free (~50 m above present) but became permanent during the MMCT ca. 12.8 Ma."

Miller 2020, Figure 4, rotated once:

And the past 40,000 years, from Miller 2020, Figure 4 above:

Miller 2020

Climate's changed before

Tom Dayton at 07:09 AM on 19 October, 2020

Hal Kantrud, you wrote that you thinks you read that changes in Earth's axis of rotation may be involved in the Little Ice Age. You might well have read that, because misunderstanding is widespread. But the "Little Ice Age" was not actually an ice age. Indeed, what popularly are called "ice ages" actually are glacial periods nested within actual "ice ages." Within each actual ice age there is a series of glacial periods and "interglacial periods." Currently we are in an interglacial period within an ice age. The Little Ice age in fact was merely a short period of regional cooling within the current interglacial period. See this relevant post--first the Basic, then the Intermediate, and finally the Advanced tabbed pane.

"Wobbles" in the Earth's axis are so slow that they operate on the time scale of triggering the glacial and interglacial periods. See this post about Milankovich cycles.

What Tucker Carlson gets wrong about causes of wildfires in U.S. West

Daniel Bailey at 03:35 AM on 7 October, 2020

JoeZ, increased forest fire activity across the western U.S. in recent decades is due to a number of factors, including a history of fire suppression and human encroachment in forest regions, natural climate variability, and human-caused climate change. Forest management would help in some areas, however the wildfire numbers and burned area are also increasing in non-forest vegetation types. Wildfire activity appears strongly associated with warming temperatures (California spring/summer temperatures have increased by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970) and earlier spring snowmelt.

Source: NASA

"For all ecoregions combined, the number of large fires increased at a rate of seven fires per year, while total fire area increased at a rate of 355 km2 per year. Continuing changes in climate, invasive species, and consequences of past fire management, added to the impacts of larger, more frequent fires, will drive further disruptions to fire regimes of the western U.S. and other fire-prone regions of the world."

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL059576

Since the 1980s, the wildfire season has lengthened across a quarter of the world's vegetated surface.

"We show that fire weather seasons have lengthened across 29.6 million km2 (25.3%) of the Earth’s vegetated surface, resulting in an 18.7% increase in global mean fire weather season length. We also show a doubling (108.1% increase) of global burnable area affected by long fire weather seasons (>1.0 σ above the historical mean) and an increased global frequency of long fire weather seasons across 62.4 million km2 (53.4%) during the second half of the study period."

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8537

"The start of the Southwestern fire season—as indicated by the date of first large-fire discovery—has shifted more than 50 days earlier since the 1970s, accounting for about one-third of the increase in the length of the fire season. The substantially earlier SW fire season start is consistent with warmer temperatures and earlier spring seasons leading to earlier flammability of fuels in SW forests."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874415/

"Anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel aridity across western US forests over the past several decades and, during 2000–2015, contributed to 75% more forested area experiencing high (>1 σ) fire-season fuel aridity and an average of nine additional days per year of high fire potential.

Anthropogenic climate change accounted for ∼55% of observed increases in fuel aridity from 1979 to 2015 across western US forests, highlighting both anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability as important contributors to increased wildfire potential in recent decades.

We estimate that human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence.

Natural climate variability will continue to alternate between modulating and compounding anthropogenic increases in fuel aridity, but anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a driver of increased forest fire activity and should continue to do so while fuels are not limiting."

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11770

"By 2100, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, one study found that the frequency of extreme wildfires would increase, and the average area burned statewide would increase by 77 percent. In the areas that have the highest fire risk, wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs rise by 18 percent by 2055. "

https://climateassessment.ca.gov/state/overview/#wildfire

"The clearest link between California wildfire and anthropogenic climate change thus far has been via warming-driven increases in atmospheric aridity, which works to dry fuels and promote summer forest fire, particularly in the North Coast and Sierra Nevada regions.

Importantly, the effects of anthropogenic warming on California wildfire thus far have arisen from what may someday be viewed as a relatively small amount of warming. According to climate models, anthropogenic warming since the late 1800s has increased the atmospheric vapor-pressure deficit by approximately 10% and this increase is projected to double by the 2060s. Given the exponential response of California burned area to aridity, the influence of anthropogenic warming on wildfire activity over the next few decades will likely be larger than the observed influence thus far where fuel abundance is not limiting.

Since the early 1970s, California's annual wildfire extent increased fivefold, punctuated by extremely large and destructive wildfires in 2017 and 2018. This trend was mainly due to an eightfold increase in summertime forest‐fire area and was very likely driven by drying of fuels promoted by human‐induced warming. Warming effects were also apparent in the fall by enhancing the odds that fuels are dry when strong fall wind events occur.

The large increase in California’s annual forest-fire area over the past several decades is very likely linked to anthropogenic warming.

Human‐caused warming has already significantly enhanced wildfire activity in California, particularly in the forests of the Sierra Nevada and North Coast, and will likely continue to do so in the coming decades."

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019EF001210

Wildfire mitigation efforts can reduce wildfire intensity and severity while improving forest resilience to fire, insects and drought. The total area burned by wildfires is a trend driven by the warming climate (which is warming because of human activities), so mitigation efforts will not likely be able to affect the total area burned trend.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8

Droughts in the Southwestern US have been made nearly half-again worse by human activities and are projected to worsen yet.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/314

These droughts couple with rising temperatures, reduced soil moisture and lower humidity to kill vast amounts of trees, providing an ever-increasing amount of fuel loads for wildfires.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/238

California’s frequency of fall days with extreme fire-weather conditions has more than doubled since the 1980s. Continued climate change will further amplify the number of days with extreme fire weather by the end of this century.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab83a7

https://twitter.com/CAL_FIRE/status/1311722710284693505

There is strengthened evidence that climate change increases the frequency and/or severity of fire weather around the world. Land management alone cannot explain recent increases in wildfires.

Analysis shows that:

• Well over 100 studies published since 2013 show strong consensus that climate change promotes the weather conditions on which wildfires depend, enhancing their likelihood.

• Natural variability is superimposed on the increasingly warm and dry background conditions resulting from climate change, leading to more extreme fires and more extreme fire seasons.

• Land management can enhance or compound climate-driven changes in wildfire risk, either through fuel reductions or fuel accumulation as unintended by-product of fire suppression. Fire suppression efforts are made more difficult by climate change.

• There is an unequivocal and pervasive role of climate change in increasing the intensity and length in which fire weather occurs; land management is likely to have contributed too, but does not alone account for recent increases in wildfire extent and severity in the western US and in southeast Australia.

Human-induced climate change promotes the conditions on which wildfires depend, enhancing their likelihood and challenging suppression efforts. Although the global area burned by fires each year is declining, the majority of this trend is explained by conversion of natural savannahs and grasslands to agriculture in Africa (Andela et al. 2017). In contrast, the area burned by forest wildfires is increasing in many regions, including in the western US and southeast Australia.

• “Fire weather” refers to periods with a high likelihood of fire due to a combination of high temperatures, low humidity, low rainfall and often high winds.

• Human-induced warming has already led to a global increase in the frequency and severity of fire weather, increasing the risks of wildfire.

• Land management can ameliorate or compound climate-driven changes in wildfire risk.

• Wildfires can have broad impacts for human health and wellbeing and for the natural environment.

US fires:

• Fire weather has become more frequent and intense in western US forests.

• Fire weather is driving more wildfire activity in western US forests.

• Demographic factors alone cannot account for the magnitude of the observed increase in wildfires in the western US, but increased population leads to greater impacts.

• Land management practices are contributing factors, but cannot alone explain the magnitude of the observed increase in wildfires extent in the western US forests in recent decades.

Australia fires:

• The scale of the 2019–2020 bushfires was unprecedented.

• Fuel management through prescribed burns and improved logging practice cannot fully mitigate increased wildfire risk due to climate change.

• Extreme weather and Pyroconvection are projected to increase wildfire risk under future climate change in southeastern Australia.

Scientific evidence that climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and extent of fire weather, contributing to extreme wildfires around the world, continues to mount.

The severe droughts in the USA and Australia are signs that the tropics, and their warm temperatures, are expanding in the wake of climate change, due to the warming of the subtropical ocean.

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/climate-change-increases-risk-of-wildfires
https://sciencebrief.org/topics/climate-change-science/wildfires
https://sciencebrief.org/briefs/wildfires
https://news.sciencebrief.org/wildfires-sep2020-update/
PDF here

Climate change will continue to drive temperature rise and more unpredictable rainfall in many parts of the world, meaning that the number of days with “fire weather” – conditions in which fires are likely to burn – is expected to increase in coming decades.

Carbon Brief Wildfire explainer

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Eclectic at 23:32 PM on 24 July, 2020

Preston , you make a number of good points.

Yet each of these points is vulnerable to counter-points. Of which I can indicate a few, here. I do not wish to be unrelentingly "negative", but it is my duty to raise these matters for your consideration in your proposed OP article.

Looking into the crystal ball, I foresee a steady growth in wind/solar RE ~ but not near enough to achieve "zero carbon" by 2050. (And we still need that 30 years to ramp up - from a standing start - the production of liquid hydrocarbon fuels of non-fossil origin : such as vat-bred oils and/or ethanol etc catalysed through electric power coming from Nuclear or RE source.) Still, these efforts will at least help ameliorate some of the AGW deterioration.

According to my rather misty crystal ball, by around 2040 a degree of desperation will impel a more rapid approvals process & development of Nuclear power. Nowhere near enough for what's needed : but it will be a significant "wedge" of contribution. (My gaze cannot penetrate to whether these Nuclear Plants will be the Goliaths seen today, or will be the widely-distributed small modular Davids which are currently unborn.)

As you say, RE has the intermittency problem ~ which the coming decades can (probably but not certainly) resolve with better battery technology. And with other methodologies ~ one such being the excess/off-peak production of electrolytic hydrogen. Hydrogen, not burnt in gas turbines, but burnt to drive steam turbines. Hydrogen from RE, and from "overnight" Nuclear generation. So "negative electricity prices" will be a non-problem.

BTW, the overnight problem of "absent sunshine" is not quite as troublesome as you suggest. Aluminium smelters and suchlike do require steady high power of course. But 80-90% of domestic house power supply need not be 24/7 ~ for a well-insulated house can manage reasonably on purely day-time airconditioning / space heating / water-heating systems.

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

sauerj at 12:07 PM on 19 July, 2020

Reasons to Stay or Leave: 4 Reasons for each group. Rating each 1 to 5 (1 = stay, 5= leave)

Reasons for staying on FB:

1) No One Polices False Information: FB does not self-control (police) false information. Neither does most other media organizations (Fox News), and neither does MeWe. There will still be climate denier groups and individuals all over MeWe, peddling false information within their echo groups, once it gets a full spectrum of users. So, this is a neutral point: Rating = 3.

2) Flow of False Information Likely Only Slightly Less on MeWe: Many climate deniers are not FB users. They get the misinformation from many other sources. Even if everyone moved to MeWe, the flow of climate denial into MeWe will be the same (coming from other media sources). (Certainly the self-amplification of this misinformation within FB will be stunted - see first two points in next section - but I believe this internal amplification is a smaller accelerant of the flow of misinformation on FB compared to the incoming flow of misinformation from other media sources.) So, this is a neutral point: Rating = 3. ... (Although, since the flow of misinformation may be less (if even slightly less), then one could argue this should be a 4 favoring leaving.)

3) Loss of Readership & Loss of Penetrating the Internet w/ Good, Truthful Material: FB users like the "one stop shopping" aspect of FB's news feed. Not having to click around on different sites, just scroll down to see media material from groups & individuals of interest is very fast and convenient. But, there are many other social media (SM) platforms that users do click on, so adding MeWe to the list is only a partial inconvenience. But, until MeWe use builds, the readership of SkS on SM would plummet in the meantime if fully moving to FB. So, this is not a show stopper for leaving, but it is a major reason to stay (for now): Rating = 1.

4) Buy out of MeWe or future change of MeWe: There is no guarantee that MeWe won't succumb to future money interest. So, loss of readership and other headaches could be all for naught in a few years from now. But, this is only speculation: Rating = 3.

Reasons for leaving FB

1) No Profile Specific Ordering of News Feed: FB users can order their newsfeed based on time too (just like MeWe); but they have to click on this feature with every refresh; while, with MeWe, this is built-in. Odds are that only <5% of FB users methodically do this. Therefore, this reduces the "outrage trigger potential" of MeWe compared to FB. This is one reason why the internal self-amplification of false information would be less on MeWe vs FB. Rating = 5.

2) No Profile Specific Ads: FB users can block ads using adblockers (very effective) and hiding the rest (a minor inconvenience). But, only 30% of internet users use adblockers. So, 70% of FB users are getting profile specific ads which potentially feed their "outrage & false information addiction". So, this is another reason why the internal self-amplification of outrage and false information would be less on MeWe vs FB. Rating = 4. (or maybe a 5)

3) Make a Moral Point about the Social Health Fallout caused by FB: Most media publishers get their paycheck off of peddling "outrage" in order to draw readership so to sell ads. Some publishers rely on this to the extreme (Info Wars, Fox News, CNN, FB); others much less so or not at all (AP News, MeWe). Social media (vs older media forms) speeds up the flow of this "outrage quotient" by 1) being constant in time and 2) enabling the viewers themselves to contribute to the circulation of outrage, like a virus. This can take this flow & buildup of "outrage" to socially unhealthy levels of polarization and radicalization which can even overpower the old social stabilizing institutions that, in the past, would keep up with dampening past lower levels of outrage (keeping it in check). So, today's intense flow of "outrage" caused by social media groups, like FB which feeds off of it for its paycheck and purposely is designed to amplify it, is a serious social health issue. However, MeWe doesn't block incoming "outrage" content; but it does thwart the internal self-amplification of this outrage, via #1 and #2 in the above 'Leaving' reasons. By leaving, this is taking a stand against this kind of socially unhealthy pathology against FB's purposeful amplification of outrage for the sake of making a buck. Rating = 5.

4) Make a Moral Point about FB not controlling Climate Denialism: As a climate pro-science site, it would only seem fitting & in keeping with its mission that SkS should make a moral stand against FB's nefarious climate denial inaction. Rating = 5.

Average Rating = between 3.625 to 3.875

Conclusions & Recommendations: Based on this, I would work to leave FB but do so with as much noise as you can. I would try to team up with as many climate action advocate groups as you can (scientists, climate groups, institutions, schools, companies, churches, etc). Then, I would write a mass article, signed by all, to be published in a couple major papers (Guardian, Forbes) so to announce your plans to leave FB on Date = XYZ, unless FB meets specified demands in writing by that date (and spell out your demands in detail). The points above in #4 and #5 in the 'Leaving' section should be made clear (like a social condemnation against FB and how they are nefariously polarizing the world for the sake of a buck). Then, follow thru (in mass) and leave FB if they refuse to meet the demands in full by that date. Give instructions to your readership on how to set up MeWe accounts with plenty of "overlapping" time to ease the transition.

I have accounts w/ both FB and MeWe; although I am not a frequent MeWe user yet.

Everything You Need to Know About Climate Change

william at 07:00 AM on 15 July, 2020

Just a wee quibble. The last icy period wasn't an ice age. It was an glacial or glacial period and we are now in an interglacial. I have no problem with calling that period from the Eemian to the Holocene an ice age but we then need a different term for the ice age that we are in the middle of, which started some 2.75m years ago. Is this just quibbling. Well no. A great TV program by Nat Geo suggested that the extinction of the fauna of North America was caused by the change in climate coming out of the "Ice Age". What they should of said was coming out of a glacial period. They ignored the fact that through multiple cycles of glacial and interglacial, those same members of the mega-fauna survived quite well, thank you very much. Using ambiguous, poorly defined terms leads to mis-conceptions.

Models are unreliable

Deplore_This at 01:24 AM on 4 July, 2020

@scaddenp 1187

Here is another example of scientists who disagree with the IPCC’s conclusion on GCMs where more than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a “long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change” and were denyed.

“There is no climate emergency…Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”

“Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.”

“Warming is far slower than predicted. The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.”

“Climate policy relies on inadequate models. Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent.” “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”

“We invite you to organize with us a constructive high-level meeting between world-class scientists on both sides of the climate debate early in 2020. The meeting will give effect to the sound and ancient principle no less of sound science than of natural justice that both sides should be fully and fairly heard. Audiatur et altera pars!”

https://clintel.nl/brief-clintel-aan-vn-baas-guterres/

All Renewable Energy Plan for Europe

michael sweet at 08:52 AM on 30 May, 2020

Nigelj,

As described in the OP, the Smart Energy Europe plan is for efficient generation of All Power required in the economy. Many generating companies choose to rely on simple electric only plans that describe the need for large amounts of electrical storage. That simply means that those companies are not planning long range, not that expensive pumped hydro and battery storage are needed. I note that Jacobson 2018 (linked in the OP) includes exactly zero additional pumped hydro storage for all of North America (I did not check any other areas). A small number of battery farms like the one in Australia might be needed but most energy storage would not be batteries.

Replacing fossil natural gas with electromethane is the last step in the process. You need very high amounts of renewable energy in the system before it is useful to make electrofuels. The process of making electrofuels has been demonstrated and is well known. It is not yet economic to make electrofuels, fossil fuels are cheaper and the grid has too much electricity from fossil to make it worthwhile. Obviously if you use fossil fuel powered electricity to make electrofuels you will lose energy.

The battery power you cite is still several orders of magnitude more expensive than the storage of electrofuels. In general, for both pumped hydro and batteries they are only economic if they are charged and discharged on a daily basis. For long term storage of power, for example if the system generates excess power in the summer and needs storage for winter use, storage of electrofuels are pratical while pumped hydro and batteries are too expensive.

Here in Florida air source heat pumps are used for air conditioning. They are available in any size required, how could they possibly not produce enough heat? Ground source heat pumps, which are more efficient, are just coming on the market. From what I have read they are expensive to retrofit to a building but are economic for new build. Perhaps subsidies to promote them would help more installations. More insulation, which pays back in a couple of years, is resisted by builders because they want to minimize initial price. That is very short sighted. After the short pay back period more insulation makes the house more valuable since heating costs are so low. Long term efficient heat pumps will save money.

Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming

dannyvocal at 08:07 AM on 3 May, 2020

I have no difficulty in understanding the critiques of many quacky practices, but the question of what to eat, including the morality of one's diet, is much more difficult as there are many conflicting arguments. Even science based organizations like the American Dietetic Association, will tout the benefits of vegetarianism, as long as the eater does not neglect B12 and the 9 essential amino acids. Environmental writer George Monbiot of the UK paper The Guardian (https://www.monbiot.com/2018/04/03/the-day-i-became-a-vegan/) says that becoming a vegan will save the planet. Reading your statistics above leads to more questions than answers - for example, while stating that animal husbandry only contributes 9% of carbon dioxide, you then go on to state that the greenhouse effect is 20 times stronger for methane than for carbon dioxide. 20 times seems a rather large number, one of such magnitude that it would be difficult to argue that the 1.5 billion cows raised only for meat are not competing rather heftily with the 60% of carbon dioxide caused by the belching of cars, trucks and factories. Monbiot also states that food companies are now using bacteria to generate believable steaks, sausages and fish. I can believe that, given how realistic the plant-based burgers are becoming. While I haven't yet found a plant-based milk that enhances my tea, the plant-based chives cream cheese I just bought is absolutely delish! There are always problems I have found with people's arguments - the mere fact of making an argument means it is not going to be: "the benefits of this are... and the costs of this are...." - especially when it comes to a problem as severe as climate change. I also privately (as I never feel sufficiently armed with data to make almost any argument convincing) wonder if the liberal opposition to nuclear power is not also contributing to climate change. I am a liberal myself but I also know from psychology that liberals and conservatives each have their own biases. While I am very aware of how the Trump administration is dismantling all environmental laws, would the considerable influence of anti-nuclear energy among liberals which has for real hindered its research and development in Germany, UK, and the States during the Clinton Administration, not mean that liberals also contributed a great deal to existing climate change at a time (25 years ago) when we could have easily slid from non-renewables to nuclear (and the nuclear being developed at the time was nothing like Chernobyl reactor, it was the Integral Fast Reactor - one of the best books on that is from one of the scientists decommissioned by the Clinton administration (http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/P4TP4U.pdf). I know that has nothing to do with diet, but I make this point as with so many people making arguments for and against important positions like vegetarianism/veganism, we must each take our stands in the direction we believe the data support. I think for many vegetarians, giving up meat, as long as they are not excessively narcissistic and self-righteous about it, is a private decision made against the excessively consumerist culture, like replacing our cars with bicycles, practicing minimalism with our possessions, or even using one's typewriter when powering up the PC is unnecessary.

Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths

Eclectic at 22:43 PM on 29 April, 2020

Wol, as you are doubtless aware, the global desirable goal is zero nett carbon emission by about 2050. Technically, it is likely achievable in a practical sense ~ but political inertia will probably make us overshoot that date (judging by how things are running at present ! )

In comparison, have a look at the projected world population curve if by 2030 the human fertility rate drops to about 1.4 (present day examples : Italy, Japan). Or achieves that 1.4 fertility rate by 2050 . . . or 2070. Unfortunately , those scenarios are extremely unlikely to happen within the next half-century.

Africa & other poverty-stricken regions will not reach a low reproduction rate until they have a large increase in education levels for women, combined with increased wealth (and social security for old age). This seems to be the lesson of history.

Even with a 1.4 rate, miraculously, in the near future ~ the world population would stay high throughout this century [2020-2100]. So without the techological "fix" for carbon emissions, there cannot be a cure for the global warming problem.

If you notice today's amount of heel-dragging & push-back on CO2 emissions, then you might like to imagine the future outrage coming from the political and/or religious firebrands protesting about any suggestion of population limitation as direct governmental policy.

In short, we might achieve timely carbon emission control ~ but (wars and plagues aside) there is zero chance we can do that by population control. Fixing excess resources consumption, ecological pollution, overpopulation etc . . . are all problems which will mostly have to wait until we fix the basic climate/AGW problem.

Milankovitch Cycles

mkrichew at 00:46 AM on 23 April, 2020

April Milankovitch thoughts

1. What is the area of the elipse vs. the area of the circle that the earth's orbit makes?

2. What different areas does the earth's elipsoidal shape present to the sun or hemispherical shape?

3. Somewhere I read that previous to our current hundred thousand year trend for ice age cycles ( matching the eccentricity cycle ), there was a 41 thousand year cycle of ice ages ( matching the obliquity cycle ) but I did not see a reference ( which does not matter as I cannot access a library due to the pandemic ).

So, why am I asking these questions? As you may have guessed, I am not a great fan of the Milankovitch cycle theory of ice age cycles. I have my own theory which asks "Where does all this CO2 come from in the past cycles?" The Mike Krichew Theory says that it comes from the oceans. This means the oceans must have warmed. What would cause them to warm? I suggested the tail of a comet might provide the increasing insolation to slightly warm the ocean and increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 near sea level as warming sea water gives off CO2. This increased CO2 level would warm the atmosphere slightly which would slightly warm the ocean resulting in the release of more CO2 causing more atmospheric warming etc. This might explain the lag between warming and CO2 levels that opponents to worrying about greenhouses gases are quick to point out. The rest of my theory states that at some point the CO2 levels in the upper atmosphere reach a point where they capture the suns rays up there and radiate the heat out into space. This assumes the excess energy of a CO2 molecule is disapated by electron cascading rather than molecular collisions. Having said all this, then why am I asking the questions about orbital elipse size and earth cross sectional area at various points in the spin cycle of the earth.? If I were a rich scientist, I should be releasing weather weather balloons at statistically significant points in the Pacific ocean and measuring the CO2 levels at different altitudes. Unfortunately, I lack the funding. Maybe someone has already done this? The reason I am asking the questions is that in looking at the Vostok ice core graphs or the benthic graphs, it is hard to imagine coming up with modelling equations that would match the steep slope at the start of the warming cycle. The same can be said of Milankovitch cycles. I looked into magnetic pole flips and crons were just not in the picture.

Is becoming vegan the best thing people can do to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions?

RedBaron at 12:06 PM on 21 March, 2020

How much would becoming everyone becomming vegan reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions? Most likely none, but at best maybe 5%.

However, that’s not the full story because many ecosystems that could mitigate global warming are currently under the plow in order to provide feed for the most inefficient agricultural system we humans have yet to devise, factory farming of animals. When you include this destruction of ecosystem services on land primarily used to grow commodity grains for factory farms and biofuels, the number jumps to about 15%- 20% reduction in emissions and even more considering lost ecosystem services due to land use change.

So at first glance it may seem like a great idea just to eliminate all domestic animal production and return those vast prairies back to the native grasses found before we plowed them up. The problem with this is that the grasses eventually become moribund and choke themselves out. They then either create huge grass fires or simply die.

Walker et al. (1981) and Ruess (1987) and many more report that light grazing may stimulate grass growth, and lead to a higher biomass. This increase is probably due to the induction of tiller formation of perennial grasses (Tainton 1999). On the other hand, if grazing is too light, a significant amount of dry, moribund material may remain at the end of the season, causing the grasses to shade themselves.

The importance of herbivory

We could try burning that material. But that of course releases the CO2 and CH4 right back into the atmosphere, kills vast numbers of animals, and even can make a bad problem even worse. Don’t believe it? Ask Australia.

fires with Kangaroo

image courtesy New York Times

What to Read on Australia’s Bushfire Crisis

So you see it is entirely possible to both overgraze and to undergraze. Both cause ecological damages. This is where the Vegan argument breaks down. Here is why:

The vast herds of herbivores that once grazed worldwide are gone. In many cases like in Australia most are extinct and never coming back. In other cases remnants exist but it would be virtually impossible to bring back huge herds 10’s of millions strong.

In 1871, an American soldier named George Anderson send a letter to his sweetheart describing a herd he saw in Kansas.

“I am safe in calling this a single herd,” he wrote, “but it is impossible to approximate the millions that composed it. It took me six days on horseback to ride through it.”-George Anderson

Buffalo Holocaust

Can you even imagine a herd of wild bison like that roaming through say… Wichita, Kansas today? It could take days crossing major interstates connecting east with west. You think rush hour gridlock is bad. Try a week long traffic jam! That kind of numbers just isn’t possible even if we did stop growing corn and soy to feed animals and biofuels for cars.

So since it is impossible for us to completely restore those vast wild herds, and it is also impossible to restore the prairies without removing old moribund material because the top successional grasses just die or burn. That leaves us with only one solution. We actually need domestic animals raised properly to restore the habitat. If we do that we can restore much needed hapitat for dozens of endangered species.

Grassland Birds: Fostering Habitats Using Rotational Grazing

“As the small trickle of results grows into an avalanche — as is now happening overseas — it will soon be realized that the animal is our farming partner and no practice and no knowledge which ignores this fact will contribute anything to human welfare or indeed will have any chance either of usefulness or of survival.” Sir Albert Howard

However even that’s not the whole story, because far from causing AGW, animal production done properly can actually sequester vast amounts of carbon in the soil through the grasslands symbiosis networks.

Global Cooling by Grassland Soils of the Geological Past and Near Future

So amazingly a very significant problem suddenly becomes our biggest chance for a solution! All we need to do is change the way we raise those domestic animals, and instead of causing global warming, they could potentially reverse it!

“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

And it is not just cows either. Savannas, open woodlands, forests etc all need animal impact to function as healthy ecosystems. They too can be restored with domestic animals raised properly!

"The pigs do that work (by rooting in the forest and that creates the temporary disturbance on the ground that allows germination for higher successional species.) And so it allows for those pigs to be not just pork chops, bacon, and that. But now they then become co-conspirators and fellow laborers in this great land healing ministry ... by fully respecting the pigness of the pig." Joel Salatin

In fact there isn’t an ecosystem on the planet that doesn’t need animal impact in order to make it sustainable. This is important to understand if we are really trying to develop sustainable agriculture. The good news is there are new improved methods for every major food world wide! All we need to do is make the change.

Can we reverse global warming?

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labor; & of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system." Bill Mollison

Vegans are well meaning and I support their personal choices, but there is a much much better path forward that allows vegans to eat what they like and the rest of us to eat what we like, and both will mitigate Global Warming.

World’s intact tropical forests reached ‘peak carbon uptake’ in 1990s

Bob Loblaw at 07:44 AM on 12 March, 2020

William. I disagree with your concept of "mature" and your explanation that growing forests must be recovering from some past event.

.I am sure you are aware of the "CO2 is plant food" argument for CO2? Forests that were in a neutral state for carbon uptake can respond to increased CO2 by taking in more CO2 - i.e., growing. That this increased growth will not continue at the same rate forever is not particularly suprising.

Your "forest is recovering" argument sounds an awful lot like the myth that we are coming out of the Little Ice Age.

Climate's changed before

scaddenp at 10:26 AM on 26 February, 2020

Bruce. Hard to know where to begin.

CO2 does not reflect sunlight - the gas is transparent to the frequencies of radiation coming from sun. However, the gas absorbs infrared radiation leaving the surface. So GHG lets energy in but slows energy going out.

A warming ocean will emit CO2 (melting permafrost and temperate wetlands are other sources of GHG as temperature rise), but the oceans will not become net emitters of CO2 for hundreds of years. Currently they are absorbing CO2 (and becoming less alkaline).

The situation at the end of an ice age is different - the changing distribution of sun energy (milankovitch cycles) result in summer melt in high northern latitudes reducing the albedo (and thus the amount of sunlight reflected directly back to space from ice). The warming releases GHG by the various mechamisms and as a result whole planet warms.

How deniers maintain the consensus gap

Philippe Chantreau at 09:21 AM on 24 February, 2020

What baffles me with the claim about cost is the double standard. The 2008 financial crisis cost the world economy somewhere around 15 trillions. Yet none of the major individual actors who held significant responsibility in this pathetic mix of greed, corruption, fraud and incompetence experienced serious consequences. It was largely brushed off as a somewhat unavoidable side effect of unfettered capitalism. The enormous expense incured brought zero benefit to the world at large.

Nonetheless, the truly interesting thing about this miserable fiasco is how easily it was overall absorbed. Some countries were hit harder than others, and certainly there was some suffering caused even in the developed world, but nothing coming close to the great depression. It shows that the word economy is in fact capable of enduring a blow of 15 trillion over a couple of years without worldwide effects of the truly catastrophic type. If only that gigantic pile of moolah could have been spent on something useful instead of being squandered by egotistic criminals, something like energy transition. But of course, if such an idea was proposed, with a price tag of that weight, it would draw screams peppered with all the right propaganda words.

There is something in common with the cimate disruption, however: when people who knew what they were talking about, and had done careful study of the situation rang the alarm bell on the upcoming disaster, they were dismissed by others who simply denied that anything serious would happen, although they did not know what they were talking about and had not done the work. When some clever ones decided to bank on it, they were received eagerly by all the clowns who thought that they were crazy, the same clowns who would soon beg them to buy their positions back at multiples of the initial price.

We are nowhere near a doubling of CO2 concentration, and not close to equilibrium. Even if we stopped emitting right now, there would be still significant warming to come. yet we are already at 1deg C above pre-industrial. The probability the equilibrium temp increase for doubling will be 1.5 deg could be said to be small enough to be negligible. Is there a way to short the entire world economy on the 40 years horizon?

Sea level is not rising

Eclectic at 15:52 PM on 19 February, 2020

Duncan61 comments today on another thread [wildfires] :-

< "O.K. where is the sea level rising.I took it upon myself to contact Freemantle port Authority and they have measured no change in 163 years.If a lot of the ice has melted why is the sea not going up???.Is it O.K. for me to ask or is it a secret " >

Duncan, the scientific data shows a 200 mm rise in sea level at Freemantle in modern times ~ which is kind of average for worldwide sea leve rise (currently rising about 3mm per year and accelerating). The moderator indicates that you sometimes have to adjust for vertical land movement also : but that's less than 0.2 mm per year for coastal Western Australia, so quite insignificant.

Why would you think (or believe) that 100+ years of global ice melting and global ocean warming . . . would not produce an ongoing sea level rise? Even the science-denying propaganda shill who calls herself JoNova and who loves to deceive & mislead her readers . . . even she admits that the Freemantle level has risen 200mm in just over 100 years.

So it's a puzzle, Duncan, how you came to take up the ridiculous nonsense you got from the Freemantle Authority. Sounds like maybe your informant was a jokester enjoying pulling your leg . . . or he's a rabid Flat-Earther . . . or his brother is a Real Estate agent trying to clinch a big waterfront land deal. Could be all sorts of reasons for someone coming up with such rubbish, don't you think?

Freemantle sea level does fluctuate 150 mm over a decade or so, as the oceanic current is affected by the larger-scale effects of El Nino & Indian Dipole oscillations ~ but that averages out to about zero alteration to the underlying mean sea level rise coming from AGW. But I doubt it was that half-truth cherrypick which was what your misinformant was trying to trick you with.

Best just to stick with the reliable mainstream science, rather than listen to a source similar to "a guy you met at the tavern".

It's cooling

John Hartz at 08:15 AM on 10 February, 2020

Recommended supplermental rearding:

Claims of a coming 30-year “mini ice age” are not supported by science, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Feb 6, 2020

Clouds provide negative feedback

Hefaistos at 07:37 AM on 5 January, 2020

Interesting paper finds "surprising" results from CERES with a negative trend of Earth Energy Imbalance as well as a negative trend of Ocean Heat Content Time Derivative :

"Decadal Changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation and the Earth Energy Imbalance" by Dewitte , Clerbaux and Cornelis.

Abstract: Decadal changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation (RSR) as measured by CERES from 2000 to 2018 are analysed. For both polar regions, changes of the clear-sky RSR correlate well with changes of the Sea Ice Extent. In the Arctic, sea ice is clearly melting, and as a result the earth is becoming darker under clear-sky conditions. However, the correlation between the global all-sky RSR and the polar clear-sky RSR changes is low. Moreover, the RSR and the Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) changes are negatively correlated, so they partly cancel each other. The increase of the OLR is higher then the decrease of the RSR. Also the incoming solar radiation is decreasing. As a result, over the 2000–2018 period the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) appears to have a downward trend of −0.16 ± 0.11 W/m2dec. The EEI trend agrees with a trend of the Ocean Heat Content Time Derivative of −0.26 ± 0.06 (1 σ) W/m2dec.

...

"The Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) shows a trend of −0.16 ± 0.11 W/m2dec. The decreasing trend in EEI is in agreement with a decreasing trend of −0.26 ± 0.06 W/m2dec in the Ocean Heat Content Time Derivative (OHCTD) after 2000.
The OHCTD over the period 1960–2015 shows three different regimes, with low OHCTD prior to 1982, rising OHCTD from 1982 to 2000, and decreasing OHCTD since 2000. These OHCTD periods correspond to periods of slow/rapid/slow surface temperature rise [16,17], to periods of strong La Ninas/El Ninos/La Ninas [14,18], and to periods of increasing/decreasing/increasing aerosol loading [19,20]. "

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/6/663/htm# Purple curve: running yearly mean EEI. Green line: linear fit to running yearly mean EEI. Blue curve: 10 year running mean OHCTD. Orange curve: piecewise linear fit to OHCTD.

There is no consensus

scaddenp at 12:03 PM on 16 December, 2019

A further comment. I see most "lukewarmers" as too honest as to deny physics, but unable to imagine a policy response that is compatiable with their values/identity, hence work hard to try and deny the need for action. A pity because coming up with an acceptable and effective response is something the right wing badly need. The political debate should be about best policy not science denial.

However, I also acknowledge that there are people who frankly see the threats posed by climate change as an excuse to beat a different political drum and like the hard right, they are more interested in pushing their ideology than science. Most scientists dont appreciate being lumped with them simply because they do exist.

A good question to ask, "if we knew for sure that ECS was 2.0, then would you still be arguing for same policy response as if we knew for sure that ECS was 4.5?" My answer would be no way. Yes, it is still highly desirable to get off FF if no other reason than they are limited and sooner or later will run out anyway, but the urgency of the time frame is different and the scope for damage much less.

Reality is that we dont know ECS with certainty and evidence would have it closer to 3 than 2. Reducing the uncertainty is extremely difficult so the precautionary principle applies.

Anyone else notice that while climate scientists come in all political colours, climate science deniers seem to be overwhelmingly right wing?

Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change

nigelj at 17:22 PM on 4 December, 2019

RedBaron @27

You have made a sweeping statement that I got everything wrong. You have learned literally nothing about my comments about diplomacy. Most people are going to react to that sort of comment by dismissing both you are your ideas. Fortunately for you I have a thick skin and control my temper.

It's also an immensely silly statement, because some things I said are what you have said, or close enough.

You have not answered my question in paragraph 5. Again, you show no diplomacy, and no respect.

You have mentioned one specific thing that you disagree with: that I think we should eat less meat. You think we should eat more meat, but this doesn't make sense to me, because it means we need even more land for cattle. Do you not realise there is competing demand for land for biofuels, and beccs and foresty, and crops to feed a population heading to 12 billion people at least, and urban development?

Meat is a very inefficient use of resources requiring enormous inputs of land, biomass and water for a small quantity ofprotein outputs. Obviously you must know this.

Yes I understand the "corn" issue in America, but that is only one component of land demand as I've outlined.

It's really unlikely we can or should expand areas of land for grazing. Given rotational grazing is land intensive, if anything per capita meat consumption probably thus needs to fall, although not drastically.

Now you would presumably argue that actually hugely expanding grasslands for cattle farming is a great thing, because it draws down atmospheric carbon, and so this should all take precedence over everything else. This would be a big claim so needs massive levels of proof. I have had a look at the numbers, and even taking your best numbers of 5-20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr, and using 10 tonnes, this gives something like a reduction in about 10% of our total current emissions per year It's still a good number - but as pointed out on this website about a year ago it falls well short of the sort of claims made by people like Savory no matter how you try to spin it. And this assumes literally all farms work regeneratively, ( a massive scaling up operation with huge challenges) and this soil carbon diminishes over time as soils heat up and upper layers become a net carbon source.

The whole rotational grazing proposal has merit, but would therefore take a very long time to make a dent in atmospheric concentrations of carbon, so its hard for me to see a case for scaling up your proposal above current land area.

I can however see a very good case for making better use of what land area we "currently" use for livestock farming, and using Savorys rotational grazing system.

If you think my maths is wrong, by all means check it and tabulate your own calculations in an ordered fashion but my rough boe calcs and conclusions are not much different from scientists who actually specialise in this area.

I think you are in danger of coming across as an obsessive scientific crank with their pet project somewhat like Killian over at realclimate.org! Now perhaps I'm not being too diplomatic myslelf :) Imjust giving you a bit of advice.

You have posted a lot of details and links on soil science. I'm not disputing that stuff in the main and never have. So if you want to post it don't do it for my benefit, but perhaps you are doing it for other people reading.

To summarise, I do accept there is a valuable looking pathway where properly grazed pastures encourage the glomalin pathway and leads to deeper carbon rich soils ultimately, and as such we should farm that way, but the process looks slow to me, and theres not exactly a scientific consensus on the effectiveness of the issue, and there are many competing uses for land. As such its hard for me to think we should actually expand grazing lands, but rotationally grazing what we have seems logical. I think you are right in general terms, but you may need to be more realistic.

Sea level rise is exaggerated

Daniel Bailey at 09:28 AM on 1 December, 2019

"When I look at the graphs and tables for each island/islands, I find that the graphs are uniformly even and NOT showing increases in sea level."

Not sure what your definition of "uniformly even" is. Did you expect them to be so?

Firstly, global sea level rise is a global average and the surface of the oceans are anything but level (the surface of the oceans follow the gravitic shape of the Earth and are also subject to solar, lunar, sloshing and siphoning effects and oceanic oscillations, etc, all of which need to be controlled for).

From the NCA4, global average sea level has risen by about 7–8 inches since 1900, with almost half (about 3 inches) of that rise occurring since 1993:

SLR

From NOAA STAR NESDIS:

"Only altimetry measurements between 66°S and 66°N have been processed. An inverted barometer has been applied to the time series. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged."

Regional SLR graphics are also available from NOAA STAR NESDIS, here.

This is a screenshot of NOAA's tide gauge map for the Western Pacific (NOAA color-codes the relative changes in sea levels to make it easier to internalize):

Clicking on the Funafuti, Tuvalu tide gauge station we see that sea levels are rising by 3.74 mm/yr (above the global average) there, with a time series starting around 1978 and ending about 2011:

However, the time series used by your BOM link for Funafuti (1993-2019) is shorter and the BOM also does not apply a linear trend line to it like NOAA does:

Feel free to make further comparisons, but comparing a set of graphics with no trend lines vs those with trend lines is no comparison at all.

From the recent IPCC Special Report 2019 - Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate - Summary for Policy Makers, September 25, 2019 release (SROCC 2019), the portions on sea level rise:

Observed Physical Changes
A3. Global mean sea level (GMSL) is rising, with acceleration in recent decades due to increasing rates of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (very high confidence), as well as continued glacier mass loss and ocean thermal expansion. Increases in tropical cyclone winds and rainfall, and increases in extreme waves, combined with relative sea level rise, exacerbate extreme sea level events and coastal hazards (high confidence).
A3.1 Total GMSL rise for 1902–2015 is 0.16 m (likely range 0.12–0.21 m). The rate of GMSL rise for 2006–2015 of 3.6 mm yr–1 (3.1–4.1 mm yr–1, very likely range), is unprecedented over the last century (high confidence), and about 2.5 times the rate for 1901–1990 of 1.4 mm yr–1 (0.8– 2.0 mm yr–1, very likely range). The sum of ice sheet and glacier contributions over the period 2006–2015 is the dominant source of sea level rise (1.8 mm yr–1, very likely range 1.7–1.9 mm yr–1), exceeding the effect of thermal expansion of ocean water (1.4 mm yr–1, very likely range 1.1–1.7 mm yr–1) (very high confidence). The dominant cause of global mean sea level rise since 1970 is anthropogenic forcing (high confidence).
A3.2 Sea-level rise has accelerated (extremely likely) due to the combined increased ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (very high confidence). Mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet over the period 2007–2016 tripled relative to 1997–2006. For Greenland, mass loss doubled over the same period (likely, medium confidence).
A3.3 Acceleration of ice flow and retreat in Antarctica, which has the potential to lead to sea-level rise of several metres within a few centuries, is observed in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica and in Wilkes Land, East Antarctica (very high confidence). These changes may be the onset of an irreversible (recovery time scale is hundreds to thousands of years) ice sheet instability. Uncertainty related to the onset of ice sheet instability arises from limited observations, inadequate model representation of ice sheet processes, and limited understanding of the complex interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and the ice sheet.
A3.4 Sea-level rise is not globally uniform and varies regionally. Regional differences, within ±30% of the global mean sea-level rise, result from land ice loss and variations in ocean warming and circulation. Differences from the global mean can be greater in areas of rapid vertical land movement including from local human activities (e.g. extraction of groundwater). (high confidence)
A3.5 Extreme wave heights, which contribute to extreme sea level events, coastal erosion and flooding, have increased in the Southern and North Atlantic Oceans by around 1.0 cm yr–1 and 0.8 cm yr–1 over the period 1985–2018 (medium confidence). Sea ice loss in the Arctic has also increased wave heights over the period 1992–2014 (medium confidence).
A3.6 Anthropogenic climate change has increased observed precipitation (medium confidence), winds (low confidence), and extreme sea level events (high confidence) associated with some tropical cyclones, which has increased intensity of multiple extreme events and associated cascading impacts (high confidence). Anthropogenic climate change may have contributed to a poleward migration of maximum tropical cyclone intensity in the western North Pacific in recent decades related to anthropogenically-forced tropical expansion (low confidence). There is emerging evidence for an increase in annual global proportion of Category 4 or 5 tropical cyclones in recent decades (low confidence).
B3. Sea level continues to rise at an increasing rate. Extreme sea level events that are historically rare (once per century in the recent past) are projected to occur frequently (at least once per year) at many locations by 2050 in all RCP scenarios, especially in tropical regions (high confidence). The increasing frequency of high water levels can have severe impacts in many locations depending on exposure (high confidence). Sea level rise is projected to continue beyond 2100 in all RCP scenarios. For a high emissions scenario (RCP8.5), projections of global sea level rise by 2100 are greater than in AR5 due to a larger contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (medium confidence). In coming centuries under RCP8.5, sea level rise is projected to exceed rates of several centimetres per year resulting in multi-metre rise (medium confidence), while for RCP2.6 sea level rise is projected to be limited to around 1m in 2300 (low confidence). Extreme sea levels and coastal hazards will be exacerbated by projected increases in tropical cyclone intensity and precipitation (high confidence). Projected changes in waves and tides vary locally in whether they amplify or ameliorate these hazards (medium confidence).
B3.1 The global mean sea level (GMSL) rise under RCP2.6 is projected to be 0.39 m (0.26–0.53 m, likely range) for the period 2081–2100, and 0.43 m (0.29–0.59 m, likely range) in 2100 with respect to 1986–2005. For RCP8.5, the corresponding GMSL rise is 0.71 m (0.51–0.92 m, likely range) for 2081–2100 and 0.84 m (0.61–1.10 m, likely range) in 2100. Mean sea level rise projections are higher by 0.1 m compared to AR5 under RCP8.5 in 2100, and the likely range extends beyond 1 m in 2100 due to a larger projected ice loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (medium confidence). The uncertainty at the end of the century is mainly determined by the ice sheets, especially in Antarctica.
B3.2 Sea level projections show regional differences around GMSL. Processes not driven by recent climate change, such as local subsidence caused by natural processes and human activities, are important to relative sea level changes at the coast (high confidence). While the relative importance of climate-driven sea level rise is projected to increase over time, local processes need to be considered for projections and impacts of sea level (high confidence).
Projected Changes and Risks
B3.3 The rate of global mean sea level rise is projected to reach 15 mm yr–1 (10–20 mm yr–1, likely range) under RCP8.5 in 2100, and to exceed several centimetres per year in the 22nd century. Under RCP2.6, the rate is projected to reach 4 mm yr-1 (2–6 mm yr–1, likely range) in 2100. Model studies indicate multi-meter rise in sea level by 2300 (2.3–5.4 m for RCP8.5 and 0.6–1.07 m under RCP2.6) (low confidence), indicating the importance of reduced emissions for limiting sea level rise. Processes controlling the timing of future ice-shelf loss and the extent of ice sheet instabilities could increase Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise to values substantially higher than the likely range on century and longer time-scales (low confidence). Considering the consequences of sea level rise that a collapse of parts of the Antarctic Ice Sheet entails, this high impact risk merits attention.
B3.4 Global mean sea level rise will cause the frequency of extreme sea level events at most locations to increase. Local sea levels that historically occurred once per century (historical centennial events) are projected to occur at least annually at most locations by 2100 under all RCP scenarios (high confidence). Many low-lying megacities and small islands (including SIDS) are projected to experience historical centennial events at least annually by 2050 under RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The year when the historical centennial event becomes an annual event in the mid-latitudes occurs soonest in RCP8.5, next in RCP4.5 and latest in RCP2.6. The increasing frequency of high water levels can have severe impacts in many locations depending on the level of exposure (high confidence).
B3.5 Significant wave heights (the average height from trough to crest of the highest one-third of waves) are projected to increase across the Southern Ocean and tropical eastern Pacific (high confidence) and Baltic Sea (medium confidence) and decrease over the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea under RCP8.5 (high confidence). Coastal tidal amplitudes and patterns are projected to change due to sea level rise and coastal adaptation measures (very likely). Projected changes in waves arising from changes in weather patterns, and changes in tides due to sea level rise, can locally enhance or ameliorate coastal hazards (medium confidence).
B3.6 The average intensity of tropical cyclones, the proportion of Category 4 and 5 tropical cyclones and the associated average precipitation rates are projected to increase for a 2°C global temperature rise above any baseline period (medium confidence). Rising mean sea levels will contribute to higher extreme sea levels associated with tropical cyclones (very high confidence). Coastal hazards will be exacerbated by an increase in the average intensity, magnitude of storm surge and precipitation rates of tropical cyclones. There are greater increases projected under RCP8.5 than under RCP2.6 from around mid-century to 2100 (medium confidence). There is low confidence in changes in the future frequency of tropical cyclones at the global scale.
Challenges
C3. Coastal communities face challenging choices in crafting context-specific and integrated responses to sea level rise that balance costs, benefits and trade-offs of available options and that can be adjusted over time (high confidence). All types of options, including protection, accommodation, ecosystem-based adaptation, coastal advance and retreat, wherever possible, can play important roles in such integrated responses (high confidence).
C3.1. The higher the sea levels rise, the more challenging is coastal protection, mainly due to economic, financial and social barriers rather than due to technical limits (high confidence). In the coming decades, reducing local drivers of exposure and vulnerability such as coastal urbanization and human-induced subsidence constitute effective responses (high confidence). Where space is limited, and the value of exposed assets is high (e.g., in cities), hard protection (e.g., dikes) is likely to be a cost-efficient response option during the 21st century taking into account the specifics of the context (high confidence), but resource-limited areas may not be able to afford such investments. Where space is available, ecosystem-based adaptation can reduce coastal risk and provide multiple other benefits such as carbon storage, improved water quality, biodiversity conservation and livelihood support (medium confidence).
C3.2 Some coastal accommodation measures, such as early warning systems and flood-proofing of buildings, are often both low cost and highly cost-efficient under current sea levels (high confidence). Under projected sea level rise and increase in coastal hazards some of these measures become less effective unless combined with other measures (high confidence). All types of options, including protection, accommodation, ecosystem-based adaptation, coastal advance and planned relocation, if alternative localities are available, can play important roles in such integrated responses (high confidence). Where the community affected is small, or in the aftermath of a disaster, reducing risk by coastal planned relocations is worth considering if safe alternative localities are available. Such planned relocation can be socially, culturally, financially and politically constrained (very high confidence).
C3.3 Responses to sea-level rise and associated risk reduction present society with profound governance challenges, resulting from the uncertainty about the magnitude and rate of future sea level rise, vexing trade-offs between societal goals (e.g., safety, conservation, economic development, intra- and inter-generational equity), limited resources, and conflicting interests and values among diverse stakeholders (high confidence). These challenges can be eased using locally appropriate combinations of decision analysis, land-use planning, public participation, diverse knowledge systems and conflict resolution approaches that are adjusted over time as circumstances change (high confidence).
C3.4 Despite the large uncertainties about the magnitude and rate of post 2050 sea level rise, many coastal decisions with time horizons of decades to over a century are being made now (e.g., critical infrastructure, coastal protection works, city planning) and can be improved by taking relative sea-level rise into account, favouring flexible responses (i.e., those that can be adapted over time) supported by monitoring systems for early warning signals, periodically adjusting decisions (i.e., adaptive decision making), using robust decision-making approaches, expert judgement, scenario-building, and multiple knowledge systems (high confidence). The sea level rise range that needs to be considered for planning and implementing coastal responses depends on the risk tolerance of stakeholders. Stakeholders with higher risk tolerance (e.g., those planning for investments that can be very easily adapted to unforeseen conditions) often prefer to use the likely range of projections, while stakeholders with a lower risk tolerance (e.g., those deciding on critical infrastructure) also consider global and local mean sea level above the upper end of the likely range (globally 1.1 m under RCP8.5 by 2100) and from methods characterised by lower confidence such as from expert elicitation.

To sum:

1. Global sea levels continue to rise, with the rise itself accelerating (due to an acceleration in land-based ice sheet mass losses). This will continue, for beyond the lifespans of any now alive.

2. Beware of the eyecrometer. It will deceive you, if you allow it to.

SLR Components, from Cazenave et al 2018

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