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Search for logic

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More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

At a glance - Does CO2 always correlate with temperature?

Eclectic at 12:19 PM on 12 April, 2024

William @1 , you are making multiple failings in logic.

Bigly confused politicians tend to use a "word salad" ~ but William you are using a "logic salad".

Maybe somewhere you have some good points to make . . . but it's certainly not obvious! Please slow down a bit, and make your points one at a time ~ and use a carefully considered logical analysis. The "close your eyes and use a shotgun" approach is unconvincing and counterproductive, if you are seeking to persuade readers.

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

nigelj at 05:10 AM on 4 April, 2024

William @ 38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

jimsteele at 12:21 PM on 3 April, 2024

Eclectic, you missed something basic in physics and in logic ?

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

Eclectic at 12:13 PM on 3 April, 2024

Jimsteele @76 :

You have answered incompletely. Have I missed something basic in physics or in logic ? e.g. ~

Solar shortwave radiation -> ocean

ocean heat -> atmosphere by molecular vibration and by IR radiation

atmospheric heat -> ocean (predominantly by molecular vibration, but a small component of IR radiation too)

CO2 -> greenhouse effect -> lower atmosphere warming [lapse rate]

Ergo, CO2 provides a large (but indirect) amount of ocean warming.

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

Bob Loblaw at 04:25 AM on 3 April, 2024

William @ 24:

You refernce a newspaper story from 2015. The actual study is probably this one:

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0

Have you read the actual study? (The Lancet copy is paywalled, but Google Scholar will find free versions.)

The RealClimate post I linked to (and you chose to ignore) is newer, and written by an expert in the field (not a journalist). And it looks at more than one study, including a more recent one (2017) written by many of the same authors as the one your newspaper story mentions.

In that newer study, their interpretation is:

This study shows the negative health impacts of climate change that, under high-emission scenarios, would disproportionately affect warmer and poorer regions of the world. Comparison with lower emission scenarios emphasises the importance of mitigation policies for limiting global warming and reducing the associated health risks.

So, the authors of that study do not seem to share your "nothing to worry about" point of view.

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

William at 03:19 AM on 3 April, 2024

lchinitz 13,
It is interesting to compare Covid with climate change. With Covid I was ( certainly at the beginning ) very much on the precautionary side. It was a brand new unknown virus and rising exceptionally .

Climate change is of a completely different order - with Covid speed because of the exponential growth speed was of the essence. No such things occurs with climate change - there is no exponential threat as such . Very importantly the threat is extremely slow moving - if a low lying island is threatened we have years to adapt .
There are no upside benefits to a virus - warming/less cold might be good.
We panicked over Covid because people died and very quickly - we were right to panic - and even if we might ( or might not ) have panicked too much - we did the right thing at the time without hindsight.
We are now more relaxed about Covid because fewer are dying - we have had 40 years of climate change coverage and fewer people are also dying.
I am much more worried about a future pandemic than climate change - a pandemic hist you quickly - we can adapt to climate change and we have plenty of time.
nuclear war , biological terrorism even AI worry me a lot more than climate change - they are scary and unpredictable.
In 2019 the WHO cited climate change as the greatest threat to huma health in the next 12 months. Talk about looking in the wrong place and getting things wrong.

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

Eclectic at 00:17 AM on 3 April, 2024

Ichinitz @16 :

Quite so ~ it would be a gargantuan task to undertake a full analysis of the type you would wish.

A decade by decade costing of a rapidly-expanding probability tree, having increasing levels of uncertainty also.

And how to put a dollar cost on individual suffering . . . or how to use other yardsticks (would 10,000 philosophers be enough, over a decade?). Ignoring ecological damage ~ how to cost societal disruption and instability . . . with all the possible consequences in political and other fallout that history has been teaching us (even very modern history).

Daunting. And probably the best we could do is apply some dispassionate commonsense to our estimations. Along with caritas (in the Christian sense).

What we should not do, is ratchet up our Motivated Reasoning, and slide into denial of real-world problems.

Pragmatically, we know of the social & technological inertias that will slow the whole response to AGW. But at least we can be walking fast in the right direction, where we ought to be running.

Half a loaf .....

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

Eclectic at 23:24 PM on 2 April, 2024

William , your Motivated Reasoning is in overdrive. Give it up.

Air-conditioned barns for farm animals in the poor parts of the Third World? Have you costed that ~ and with where the electricity will come from? And the social disruption, with mass refugees? Costed that?

And now you are falling back on: Predictable problems will not occur because Mr Malthus was not 100% right in his predictions 200 years ago. William, you know that is not a logical argument.

Yes, the Do-Nothing approach will result in adaptation by poor people in the hotter zones of the planet . . . they will adapt by migrating. Costed all that?

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

Bob Loblaw at 22:44 PM on 2 April, 2024

Regarding heat deaths vs cold deaths, RealClimate had a post on that a few years ago:

Will climate change bring benefits from reduced cold-related mortality? Insights from the latest epidemiological research

From the introduction:

Climate skeptics sometimes like to claim that although global warming will lead to more deaths from heat, it will overall save lives due to fewer deaths from cold. But is this true? Epidemiological studies suggest the opposite.

As for William's latest @8, once again William simply does not accept the extensive economic calculations that say avoiding the problems will cost less than dealing with them.

Air conditioning will not help people that have to work outside. Air conditioning will not save agriculture. Air conditioning will not stop flooding.

William demands "absolute certainty" before any action should be taken to prevent a problem.

Do you have car insurance, or fire insurance, William? Or are you waiting until you have absolute certainty that a car accident or fire has already happened?

As a general rule, it seems that people that argue "there are bigger problems" [cough]Lomborg[cough] never seem to actually put any effort or resources into taking actions on those "bigger problems".

[Courtesy of XKCD]

XKCD Bigger Problem

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.

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

Eclectic at 10:20 AM on 2 April, 2024

William @1 :

William, you are being illogical in your objections ~ illogical because (a) you are avoiding looking at the big picture . . . where "weather disaster deaths" are only a very small part of assessing the ongoing problem of rapid global warming

.... and (b) because you are handicapping yourself by using emotive and very poorly defined terms such as "emergency". Emergency?? ~ "How dare you" . . . speak like Greta Thunberg ;-)

IMO the two biggest threats (from AGW) are the longer-term ones ~ more frequent bigger/longer heat waves affecting crops & humans . . . and rising sea-level over the next 100 years. Both will cause a massive refugee problem, measured in 100's of millions of desperate migrants, with resultant huge social disruption in the "receiving" countries. And huge dollar costs, too.

As Michael Sweet points out, climate consequences produce $ costs in the billions & trillions. William, you seem to be forgetting that these $ costs will be occurring on both sides of the ledger. Not just on one side.

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

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

Two Dog,

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

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

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

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

Bob Loblaw at 04:38 AM on 1 April, 2024

It's also worth noting that the trend values OPOF is providing from the SkS Trend Calculator use 2σ ranges for the uncertainties.

...and if you look closely, none of the trends OPOF mentions are significantly different from 0. So, the "cooling from 1940 to 1970" is really "no significant warming [or cooling] from 1940 to 1970". To argue "cooling", you need to

ignore the statistical significance of the linear fit

choose your starting point carefully.

In comment 41, Two Dog makes the point "...then only a few years "blip" in warming must presumably call the theory into question? ". That depends on "the theory" being that CO2 is the only factor causing warming on an annual or several-year basis. As we've been pointing out, this is not "the theory" that climate science is working with.

Two Dog is making the classical logic failure that is discussed in the SkS Escalator.

The Escalator

In fact, Two Dog is also arguing with himself. On the one hand, he is arguing that climate science can't possibly know all factors that might be affecting global temperature, no matter how many factors they have already considered in the relevant scientific literature. And then on the other hand, he is criticizing climate science because any blip in temperature that is not explained solely using CO2 as the only factor "...must presumably call the theory into question?". The two positions he argues are mutually contradictory.

Unfortunately this is a common thing in "skeptical" arguments against well-supported climate science - mutually-contradictory (and often impossible) positions on the subject. It's like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland:

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

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

Eclectic at 05:33 AM on 30 March, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

res01 at 02:45 AM on 30 March, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re - post #36:

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

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

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

However, rapid change is and has been dangerous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

nigelj at 04:55 AM on 25 March, 2024

Nick Palmer says "It's becoming increasingly clear that virtually all of the 'engine' behind 'denialim is the Machiavellian manoeuvring of highly motivated political ideologues who believe their cause is so overwhelmingly important that it justifies the use of mass deception and the naked propaganda that is in this film."

Love this statement. So accurate. It concisely sums up the whole thing.

At the level of the general public denialism is probably a bit more broadly based, including people with vested interests in the fossil fules industry, or just worried about costs, and others with a more ideological or political agenda. Or a combination. Just based on my anecdotal impression and reading studies by various people but the pattern is very clear.

As to Margaret Thatcher, not my favourite politician, but not totally bad either. She had a chemistry degree. She undestands science and accepted anthropogenic global warming. Probably also a bit opportunistic promoting nuclear power but at least she accepted the science. The idea it was all to impoverish poor people is in the realms of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.

Certainly I have read many comments by deniers where they cant help reveal their political ideologies, and its frequently small government, libertarian freedom loving (taken to an extreme), or very conservative, or sometimes hard left concern trolling (mitigation will hurt poor people). Sometimes the right use the same argument that mitigation will hurt poor people, but I would suggest they couldnt care less and just use any ammunition they can get.

According to psychological studies people who value security as a priority tend to vote left, those who value freedom (of action) as the main priority tend to vote right. However these tendencies exist on a spectrum and most people value both. The freedom loving libertarian ideologues are way out at the extreeme to the point its a bit pathological and where they resent all laws except very minimal and basic criminal and property law. You cannot run a society like that. It doesnt work. An example:

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling

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

Doug Bostrom at 04:04 AM on 24 March, 2024

"Climate vs. Freedom" is the main point of the movie, the mainspring of the climate denialist clockwork. Careful disassembly and reverse engineering of this particular brand of synthetic ignorance inevitably reveals solipsism expressed in ideology as the movement's power source; so-called "freedom" here means "I get to do whatever I want regardless of costs to others," and powers the entire affair.

The film's funders would like us to confuse the freedom to think that is central to enlightened governance with freedom to dump sewage at our property line. This brings us into the territory of irony. Enlightenment thinking delivered the facts governing the anxieties of the film's producers— and this film is essentially trying to wind back the clock on several hundred years of the results of freedom to think.

The producers of the film are not at all concerned with freedom of thought and its outcome of science and enlightened understanding of our world. Their fears are centered on application of scientific results to public policy dealing with climate effects of CO2 emissions, circumspect and informed decisions proscribing unaccounted external costs. This will threaten any ideology founded on "everything's all about me."

Is application of climate science to public policy decisions itself ideological, even socialist? In a way it's true that climate policy is "socialist" if we're thinking in terms of social vs. antisocial, if we're employing the word "social" in its basic meaning.

Climate policy is an outcome of "socialist ideology" in the same sense that traffic regulations are a social response to selfish automobile drivers. Individual irresponsible actions come at cost to bystanders. Society is generally concerned with fairness and rejects that one person may destroy another for no good reason.

Some small percentage of persons are so poorly socialized as to care nothing about others, so we must resort to various forms of coercion to force societally-compatible behaviors. Reckless driving is discouraged by force of policy and law, ranging from fines to imprisonment because we attach such high value to fairness.

So it's proving to be the case with the external costs of vending fossil fuels, and hence we end up with climate policy that ultimately will end up with sharp edges of coercion to deal with diehard antisocial elements, given that some very tiny fraction of our society is composed of people truly uncaring of anybody but themselves.

If vast amounts of money were to be made by driving over the speed limit, we'd find a vigorous public relations industry centered on denying that e=1/2mv². The intent would be the same as with climate science and climate policy, to fool us into thinking we don't know established facts and by extension the outcomes of those facts.

We'll never see "Traffic Tickets: The Movie" because there's no group of people for whom a vast revenue stream is threatened by being forced to drive safely. In this case of climate science and (more importantly) climate policy there is indeed a postively astronomical vector of money that will change due to policy arranged around facts and fairness and informed by science. So here we are, dealing with a slickly produced film created entirely for the purpose of prolonging profoundly anti-social behavior and employing the tactic of propagating synthetic ignorance.

Freedumb isn't freedom. It's the opposite. Freedom to think well and to make informed choices isn't the same as freedumb, feeling free to make stupid decisions because we've been fooled into believing we're ignorant.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Loblaw at 02:48 AM on 14 February, 2024

Regarding an individual's religious viewpoints and conflicts with their behaviour, it helps to understand the psychological concept of compartmentalization. It's a psychological defence mechanism that allows people to believe two (or more) conflicting things.

...and there is always the George Costanza defence:

Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5 2024

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction ends with:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2 2024

One Planet Only Forever at 14:33 PM on 20 January, 2024

gerontocrat’s recommended reading (comment @2) is informative and enlightening.

It is well aligned with the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Green-washing item I commented on @1.

The Introduction opens with:

Modern humans and millions of other species face an unprecedented number of existential threats due to anthropogenic impacts exceeding our planet’s boundaries.1 We are in dangerous territory with instability in the known realms of biosphere integrity, land system change and novel entities such as plastics and synthetic toxins, climate change, freshwater change and biogeochemical flows.

Considering the dynamic, closed and interconnected nature of Earth’s systems together, these threats pose an increasingly catastrophic risk to all complex life on Earth. Many scientists privately believe it to be already too late to avoid the tipping points that will trigger devastating and irreversible feedback loops.2

It is increasingly acknowledged that all of these threats are symptoms of anthropogenic ecological overshoot. Overshoot is defined as the human consumption of natural resources at rates faster than they can be replenished, and entropic waste production in excess of the Earth’s assimilative and processing capacity.

And the opening of the Conclusion is:

In summary, the evidence indicates that anthropogenic ecological overshoot stems from a crisis of maladaptive human behaviours. While the behaviours generating overshoot were once adaptive for H. sapiens, they have been distorted and extended to the point where they now threaten the fabric of complex life on Earth. Simply, we are trapped in a system built to encourage growth and appetites that will end us.

And the Conclusion includes the following:

The current emphasis for overshoot intervention is resource intensive (e.g. the global transition to renewable energy) and single-symptom focused. Indeed, most mainstream attention and investment is directed towards mitigating and adapting to climate change. Even if this narrow intervention is successful, it will not resolve the meta-crisis of ecological overshoot, in fact, with many of the current resource-intensive interventions, it is likely to make matters worse. Psychological interventions are likely to prove far less resource-intensive and more effective than physical ones.

We call for increased attention on the behavioural crisis as a critical intervention point for addressing overshoot and its myriad symptoms.

We advocate increased interdisciplinary collaboration between the social and behavioural science theorists and practitioners, advised by scientists working on limits to growth and planetary boundaries.

We call for additional research to develop a full understanding of the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis (including the overwhelming influence of power structures) and how we can best address it.

We call for an emergency, concerted, multidisciplinary effort to target the populations and value levers most likely to produce rapid global adoption of new consumption, reproduction and waste norms congruent with the survival of complex life on Earth.

We call for increased interdisciplinary work to be carried out in directing, understanding and policing widespread behaviour manipulation.

I bolded the last item because it is a key point. The paper indicates that efforts to raise awareness and improve understanding of the problem, promoting the science, are not bringing about the required rate and magnitude of changes of behaviour.

The section immediately preceding the Conclusion is titled: Directing and policing widespread behaviour manipulation. It is brief and is quoted below:

Behavioural manipulation has been intentionally used for nefarious purposes before, and as we’ve just explored, has played a critical role in the creation of the behavioural crisis and consequential ecological overshoot. Eco-centric behaviour is the heart of any sustainable future humanity might wish to achieve. Moreover, we are at a crossroads,with three paths ahead:

We can choose to continue using behavioural manipulation to deepen our dilemma,

We can choose to ignore it and leave it to chance, or

We can use an opportunity that almost no other species has had and consciously steer our collective behaviours to conform to the natural laws that bind all life on Earth.

This raises ethical questions, for example, who is worthy of wielding such power? At present, the answer is anyone with the necessary influence or financial means to exploit it. However, we should not entrust this to any individual human, company, government or industry. Instead, any continued use of widespread behavioural manipulation should be firmly bound by, and anchored within a framework built upon the laws of the natural world, as well as the science on limits to growth.

We urgently call for increased interdisciplinary work to be carried out in directing, understanding and policing widespread behaviour manipulation.

What the authors are calling for will require ‘policing of political marketing’. That will require ending the legitimacy of demands for the freedom of competitors for leadership and higher status to claim whatever they want as the justification for doing whatever they please, with popularity and profit being the measures of acceptability.

That ‘systemic change of what is allowed in competition for status and leadership' is essential for humanity to have a lasting improving future on this one, and potentially only, amazing planet that humans could have a long future on.

It's only a few degrees

John Mason at 23:43 PM on 18 January, 2024

#10, Retiredguy

A link to any such argument would be useful, if you would be so kind. But see the responses to Jasper above. They should at least partially answer your question. Denier logic is always badly flawed but we need more details of the argument to point out why.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2 2024

gerontocrat at 05:24 AM on 14 January, 2024

I recommend this paper....

World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00368504231201372?utm_source=nationaltribune&utm_medium=nationaltribune&utm_campaign=news

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2 2024

One Planet Only Forever at 13:33 PM on 12 January, 2024

Greenwashing and sustainable finance: an approach anchored in the philosophy of science, by Lagoarde-Ségot, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, presents an interesting evaluation of the ways that a business-finance focus, a belief that economic interests are the most important consideration, can be understood to systemically create harmfully distorted perceptions of reality, perceptions that really have no future (like the evaluations that significantly discounted the future costs of climate change, and did not fully account for the future impacts, to excuse more economic benefit obtained today by being more harmful).

It is fundamentally flawed to consider ‘economic financial interests’ to be more important, to govern over, social or environmental concerns (especially having economic finance interests govern over concerns that can be seen to be ‘costs to the economic system without appearing to maximize the benefit for investors’)

A related flaw is to be focused on what can be empirically observed and measured like:

only what can be monetized ‘really matters’

monetized items are valued even if the perceptions of value are distorted, unreliable, or mythical

and if something can’t be monetized, or is not chosen to be monetized, it doesn’t really matter

The following quote is part of the Introduction

This paper employs a critical realist lens and contends that the mainstream finance paradigm is based on several flawed hypotheses regarding the nature of reality. These inaccurate ontological hypotheses frame controversies in finance within a specific worldview by shaping and limiting the range of acceptable questions, acceptable methods, and acceptable answers. They have far-reaching implications for greenwashing, to the extent that corporate and financial executives, as well as policymakers, see the world through the distorted lens of financial theory. For instance, corporate and financial executives typically consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings as another causal variable in their quest for short-term financial ‘materiality’ rather than adjusting their mission to tackle the social and ecological crisis. Similarly, sustainable finance policies lead to a further expansion of financial markets (through the increased commodification and financialization of nature) rather than embedding capital accumulation within planetary and social justice boundaries.

The last paragraph in the section headed “The (social) world is not flat” includes the following:

The science of business administration, where theories function as instruments of managerial control, clearly belongs to such a structure 5••, 25, 26. In particular, the mainstream belief that unfettered financial markets could reveal the ‘fundamental’ (monetary) value of the Earth System has accelerated the financialization of nature.

And the conclusion is as follows (highlighting the need for systemic change to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – which requires ‘no successful greenwashing’.

Conclusions

This paper has made two claims. First, the growth of green financial markets2 in recent years does not necessarily imply that the economy will become ‘greener’. Green finance does not protect global commons but accelerates the inclusion of nature and society within financial logic, narratives, and interests. The mainstream finance paradigm is a powerful structure that accelerates the financialization of nature by providing a ‘software of the mind’ to corporate and finance actors as well as regulators. Senior professional investors indeed typically consider ESG simply as ‘another data set’ 1, 45, 46, 47.

As pointed out by Chiapello [49], the ‘green’ financial industry has been pushed by so many policy and corporate actors as a solution precisely because of its subordination to the mainstream paradigm. This entails considering nature and society as the next frontier for capital market development, when the current context requires us to turn the order upside-down and re-embed global capitalism within planetary boundaries [44].

Second, we have argued that the mainstream’s empirical and reductionist biases prevent financial economists from addressing sustainability issues, with unfortunate consequences for the design of sustainability policies. It follows that placing the financial sector under the control of society to hit the Sustainable Development Goals would imply a scientific revolution in finance. In this process, we contend that critical realism could provide a consistent metatheoretical alternative to the mainstream paradigm.

By approaching their study object through the lens of critical realism, progressive financial economists could inquire into the real processes by which global finance shapes social and ecological conditions; and gain a fresh understanding of how the latter retroact against economies and societies, at various scales. This research agenda project should then pave the way to identifying new global collective institutions and binding rules ensuring global prosperity and resilience in the 21st century.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Just Dean at 09:44 AM on 11 January, 2024

I think this is where data from paleoclimatology can help as well. Three recent studies have looked at the earth's temperature vs CO2 during the Cenozoic period, Rae et al., Honisch et al., and Tierney et al. . Each of those show that the temperature of ancient earth continues to rise as CO2 increases. As I understand it the first two are based solely on proxy data while the Tierney effort includes modeling to try and correlate the data geographically and temporally.

All of these are concerned with earth system sensitivities that include both short term climate responses plus slower feedback processes that can take millenia, e.g. growth and melting of continental ice sheets. Both Rae and Honisch include reference lines for 8 C / doubling of CO2. In both cases, almost all the data lie below those reference lines suggesting that 8 C / doubling is an upper bound or estimate of earth's equilibrium between temperature and CO2. Also notice that there quite is a bit of spread in the data.

In contrast, when Tierney et al. include modeling they get a much better correlation of T and CO2. They find that their data is best correlated with 8.2 C / doubling, r = 0.97. Again, this represents an equilibrium that can take millenia to achieve but does to my way of thinking represent "nature's equilibrium" between T and CO2.

In these comparisons, the researchers define changes in temperature relative to preindustrial conditions, CO2 = 280 ppm. For Tierney's correlation then on geological timescale, the temperature would increase by 8.2 C at 560 ppm. At our present value of 420 ppm there would be 3.7 C of apparent warming potential above our 1.1 C increase already achieved as of 2022, i.e., global warming in the pipeline if you will.

Bottom line, based on paleoclimatological data, there is no apparent saturation level of CO2.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #26 2023

Eclectic at 10:27 AM on 1 January, 2024

Just Dean @6 :

The 2017 study you link [by W. Jackson Davis] is quite bizarre. And overall, is a waste of time for anyone to read.

Red flags can be seen in the Author's voluminous Conclusions. Such as his statement: "... that other, unidentified variables caused most (>95%) of the variance in [temperature] across the Phanerozoic climate record" <unquote>

Variables unknown to modern science, apparently?

In his final paragraphs, he seems to have a political axe to grind. Indeed, his whole extensive paper shows much Motivated Reasoning ~ a triumph of weakly-based statistical analysis over logical analysis.

I rate his paper as 10/10 for length and 0/10 for scientific substance.

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

nigelj at 05:37 AM on 29 December, 2023

Prove we are smart @5

Regarding the video:

.www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiRzpKWshwU

Its just more material from the same guy. Again I'm not going to tolerate that incessant stream of foul language and insults so I didn't watch it in full. I skipped though it very, very quickly stopping at a few random points:

He talked about "entitled twats" driving Ev's. Its just an unsubstantiated, empty appeal to hate, emotion and envy. Plenty of ordinary people are driving EVs and who cares who drives them, since its reducing emissions that matters. The same entitled twats would be driving ICE cars.

He stated that building smaller houses would reduce emissions more than taking an ICE car off the road. This is not good argument not to build EVs, because just building smaller homes wont fully solve the climate problem.

He complained about extra tire wear due to the weight of EVs. But its is a trivial issue. "A Tesla Model 3 Performance with AWD weighs 4,065 pounds — 379 pounds more than a BMW 330i XDrive.". Yes the EV is heavier but not hugely so therefore extra tire wear is trivial and pollutants from the tire wear are trivial. Refer for weight comparisons:

www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/americas-new-weight-problem-electric-cars/He

He mentioned that cars are only a small part of the transport fleet so why bother with Ev's. It's illogical reasoning along the same lines as his comments about houses. And we are starting to develop electric trucks etc,etc (eg Tesla)

These sorts of talking points have been long since debunked, so Im not prepared to go through the entire video for probabaly more of the same in a giant gish gallop.

I agreed with a couple of his criticisms of EV's and his factual statements about how much of the grid is renewables, etc,etc, seem correct, but his arguments agains't renewables and EV's I listed above lack basic logic and understanding.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

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

nigelj,

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

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

currently 37 Gte of emissions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Planet Only Forever at 04:12 AM on 14 December, 2023

MA Roger,

Thank you for pointing to alternative approaches to global warming scenario development. And thank you for pointing out those justified concerns about how the limited scope and method of presentation of an evaluation can be misleading.

In all honesty, I conceptually created the 3 situations to try to make the point that how we get to a global warming impact temperature value at 2100 and what is done after 2100 makes a difference. I hoped to present the understanding that there are a variety of ways of achieving a value of 2100 warming impact, with an ‘important differentiating consideration’ being what happens beyond 2100. And I simply chose to call the three created example situations ‘scenarios’.

I chose 1.7 C in an attempt to be brief but clear that I am not referring to any of the formally presented scenarios. I am pessimistic that the 2100 warming impact level of SSP1-1.9 is likely to be achieved. But I am hopeful that something better than SSP1-2.9 can be achieved. The important point is that there are many ways to conceptualize getting to the same 2100 impact result. And the variety of ways of getting that 2100 result, including what happens after 2100, are not ‘equivalent levels of harm reduction’.

I will add that my MBA included Organizational Behaviour and Design where I learned that it is incorrect to believe that a specific set of policy or operational rule changes can be certain to produce a desired ‘objective change’ (I believe this is part of the reason for the range of results for each IPCC scenario). New policies and rules may result in changes, or they may not, or they produce unanticipated changes.

When there is a need to change the collective behaviour of the members of any organization, including the organization of all of global humanity, a diversity of hoped to be helpful policy and rule changes can be conceptualized. And some of those changes would be based on improved understanding developed in the very hard to investigate fields of social, political, and economic behaviours where irrational behaviours can, and do, significantly occur. Irrational behaviour, including resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others, can especially occur due to the potential to benefit unjustifiably, especially from from secrecy (people less aware than they could be) or the popularity of misunderstanding (abusing the powerful science of marketing).

Therefore, when pursuing an objective correction of unsustainable or harmful developed behaviours by changes of policy or rules it is important to diligently monitor the changes that actually occur and revise the policy and rule changes as required to increase the chances of achieving the desired correction of collective behaviours. (hopefully accomplished by each COP session).

I have to add that when I got my MBA education in the 1980s it was rather rare to have the MBA program include ‘social and psychological’ considerations. Most MBA programs of the time, particularly the most prestigious programs, were focused exclusively on ‘maximizing making money matters most’, like Economics, Accounting, Finance, Efficiency of Operations and Material supply, Marketing, and Legalities related to financial activities and contracts.

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

nigelj at 05:38 AM on 13 December, 2023

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

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

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

LINK

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

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

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

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

At a glance - Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?

Eclectic at 05:43 AM on 7 December, 2023

Eunice Foote certainly deserves to be more notable. History is often unfair, in its "colloquial" form.

bf@4 : Thanks for those thoughts.

I was intrigued that you had described the color box as dark orange tab ~ rather than the dark red tab which I had automatically pictured.

As you say, it is a devilish job to design even a simple black&white "form" for people to fill out correctly (without danger of misinterpretations).

Then we get to the devilish question of colors themselves ~ and how they are perceived (even at different illumination levels) by the "mainstream" viewers, versus the various so-called "anomalous" genetic subgroups that make up each & every population (and are exhibited differently in males/females). Fortunately, these different color perceptions are usually not of great importance . . . although camouflage-designers and traffic-light-designers would disagree on that. [You may have idly wondered why the green "GO" traffic light has a faint tinge of blue.]

And then there is the psychological component, where humans may mentally perceive the color that they expect to see (in a certain object or context).

And nowadays we have the problem of designing eye-catching layouts for a target population of people who are busy and/or distractable ~ and who are viewing on screens (usually without standard color calibration) of widely-differing sizes . . . sizes down to even a few inches, quite commonly.

But enough of this off-topic verbiage from me. The small groups of volunteers managing the SkepticalScience website have a wickedly big load on their shoulders, in all sorts of ways.

At a glance - Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?

nigelj at 05:04 AM on 7 December, 2023

"By the end of that century, Eunice Foote and John Tyndall had proved him quite correct through their experiments with various gases..."

Exactly so. It might be good to include a brief statement about how the experiments worked (with canisters of CO2 exposed to a radiant heat source and measurements taken?). I say this because this is really the crucial foundation of things, along with observations of the planets climates and deducations from that.

In order to make sense of the whole complicated issue as a non expert, I have always done this. It seems to we know for a fact from laboratory experiments that CO2 is a greenhouse gas because it (simplifying) absorbs heat while oxygen and nitrogen etc,etc do not. Therefore if you add even very, very small quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere, even one single molecule, it must absorb heat and thus have at least some warming effect on the atmosphere, and the issue is entirely about how much CO2 is added to the atmosphere, and what warming effect results in total. This is simple logic.

Arrhenius did some calculations in the 1890s I dont fully understand but they seem robust as they made accurate predictions about warming in the 20th century. While I generally dont like assumptions, it seems safe to assume our current climate calculations are more sophisticated. So I see no need to be scepetical any longer about the greenhouse effect, and the proclamations in the climate myth box that the greenhouse effect contradicts so called physical laws is just ignorance or made up nonsense.

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

abostrom at 11:55 AM on 29 November, 2023

It was Thanksgiving of 1993 when I caught a ride with my brother, to join him, his wife and two cats for the traditional meal. Widespread use of the internet was in its infancy and we whiled away hours of the trip excitedly chattering about all the potentials this new medium might unlock. Looking back, I think we were a bit naive about just how experimental and unpredictable this all was, and I don't mean technologically. There have been undeniable benefits (this site is proof), but given how 'social media' and the near global resurgence of authoritarianism seemingly have paralleled one another, one can't help but wonder whether what good, in the big picture, has come out of that phenomenom.

Perhaps I see social media too darkly. It has been pointed out, that very likely even the likes of Mark Zuckerberg did not fully grok the impacts of what they were doing as they cashed in. Too bad for democracy.

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

nigelj at 06:05 AM on 26 November, 2023

I have a comment regarding this terrible explosion of misinformation and disinformation. So whats gone so horribly wrong recently that we have an explosion of misinformation and disinformation? IMO its largely the internet causing this upsurge. Certainly various analysis easily googled implicate the internet. There are obviously political motives as well. So here is my understanding of it all...

Firstly we need to remember that misinformation and disinformation been around forever, and its often linked to partisan politics, but generally it seems to have been at lesser scale than presently and a fringe thing with the vast majority of people accepting basic information and facts coming from scientists and officials and mainstream media (even if they disagree with opinions, interpretations and ideologies).

Our education system was designed to encourage respect of authorities and for scepticism to be rational scepticism. Our core information sources were mostly academia, official sources, mainstream media, etc,etc.

Any basic text on sociology will tell you all this.

However it appears the internet has changed everything, by giving a free or low cost platform to every individual (or group of individuals) who can thus spread their message globally and near instantly and gain a huge audience. We can effectively all now be our own media platforms at little or no cost. And the reach is amazing. This is a serious challenge to the old media and other information sources.

And not everyone is honest, well informed, or rational and sadly the inflammatory misinformation that contradicts official sources is inherently like a maget so it attracts a large following. It gains traction.

The end result is the proliferation of misinformation and huge and unjustified distrust of the mainstream authorities and naive trust in fringe "alternative" internet sources. While the mainstream sources of information have never been perfect, the "alternative" sources are in 99% of cases far worse.

And society has been completely unprepared for this onslaught, because its exploded in just a decade or two at most. The misinformation and disinformation is not only suddenly prevasive it uses techniques most people were never educated to recognise. I was lucky that as a young teenager I stumbled across a book on logical fallacies which is the core of the misinformation, so I'm reasonably ok at recognising fake information and junk science (as are many other regulars on this website). But if you haven't read that sort of thing at some stage, you simply dont have the skills, and they dont appear to be taught in school. If you are really smart you will work some of the skills out for yourself, but...not everyone is really smart.

We are effectively in catch up mode. I applaud the efforts of this website to help educate people to recognise misinformation. I feel it should also be front and centre of every schools curriculum. Sensible people on all sides of politics will benefit from this.

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

res01 at 13:24 PM on 4 November, 2023

Eclectic @40,

Thank you noting my post.

I am not sure if you read the RE Stumm article*, or watched the movie, but the calculations made by Stumm in his article shifts the curve by Robertson over a bit, but generally confirms what is being said here by M. Popkiewicz; the CO2 physiological danger is not being overblown. If we are not already done in by climate change, the direct effects of CO2 on us and other life forms will start haunting us around the end of the century. I suppose it depends on one's age if this is alarmist or not. If you're a senior with no kids like I am who is going to check out in a few years anyways then the whole subject is simply academic. However, if I were a twenty something or younger who may likely otherwise live to see the end of the century, I'd be freaking out right now.

*The R.E. Stumm article unfortunately is behind a paywall. However a preprint that is not too significantly off from the peer reviewed published article can be found at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4500439. Recommend reading as it should answer your questions on CO2 impact on human body physiology.

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

Eclectic at 20:01 PM on 3 November, 2023

Res01 @39 :

Agreed ~ as stated in a number of comments [2014 onwards] earlier in this thread, this whole question of CO2 physiological danger is overblown.

The original research article was of poor quality and poor experimental methodology, and hence poor conclusions. Or so I gather from others' comments [for me, the linked Robertson article showed as Page Not Found]. I would also argue from basic principles of bodily homeostasis, that whatever transient mental incapacitation (minor, I gather) would occur for a few hours at higher ambient CO2 ~ the body would respond (by increased renal excretion of acid) in the longer run, with the effect of raising the blood pH back to the normal range.

No need for any alarm, for man nor beast (nor fish).

Res01 ~ pehaps you might be kind enough to comment specifically on that R.E.Stumm article, and also the "Die Back" video you mentioned. I am unclear whether you mean they are alarmist or not.

At a glance - Climate scientists would make more money in other careers

Philippe Chantreau at 09:31 AM on 31 October, 2023

Interesting theory.

From the chronological point of view, would it not be possible to observe the emergence of a consensus of research results before the accumulation of investments that resulted from that consensus? If that is the case (it assuredly is), does that not make it impossible for these investments to be the cause of the results, since effects can not precede cause?

What is the source for that 5 trillion figure? This would correspond to a vast array of very diverse and numerous separate "industries" and interests, how do they coordinate their influence on those scientists anxious for their jobs? How can said scientists know where the money is coming from and ensure they say what is expected of them? Once a large number of studies from.many different sources all converge in one direction, is it still reasonable to assume that it is just the result of efforts to satisfy funding sources? How about studies coming from sources that have an interest against belief in AGW that also confirm these results?

What are the criteria to declare that a business existence and success are dependent on "belief" in AGW?

Is there a figure for the level of investment dependent on delaying energy transition policies?

Not that I would engage in deflection but, to pursue the same logic, what level of public opinion manipulation can be expected from a single industry that generates hundreds of billions of profits (not talking about investments here, simply profits)? Would it not be easier to coordinate an effort to manipulate when only a few very large interest groups are involved?

Just asking questions.

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

Eclectic at 12:12 PM on 28 October, 2023

TWFA , it is clear from your discursive writing style that you are an intelligent guy. At the same time it is transparent that you are engaging yourself in Motivated Reasoning ~ you have set your goal, your conclusion, and you have assiduously worked backwards to justify it to yourself.

I am sure that part of you is aware of that . . . while part of you rejects that insight. Part of you wishes to test yourself against those damn mainstreamers at SkepticalScience website ~ maybe "they" will give you added information to resolve your conflict, either by allowing you to be persuaded to the mainstream . . . or by allowing part of you to achieve a (self-assessed) performative triumph of intellectual conquest.

And maybe part of it is to enjoy the hubris of "not running with the crowd". But whatever way, it comes back to the exercise of Motivated Reasoning.

Good luck in your journey to self-understanding.

(And yes, we all need improvement ! )

********

Rob Honeycutt : quite right, the biological sciences field is many orders of magnitude more complex than climate physics. No comparison !

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

Rob Honeycutt at 06:32 AM on 28 October, 2023

TWFA... "It's not that I don't care about surface temperature, I care about whether the models for surface temperature have been applied to predicting temperatures above and below, a perfectly logical query."

Yes, this is a perfectly reasonable and logical query. So, pause right there before you move forward with any assumptions.

The answer to the best of my understanding:

Yes, climate models are applied to the surface and up through the various layers of the atmosphere. Once you get above the surface you run into challenges with measuring those various layers. The surface has the advantage of extensive direct data, above that you have to rely on either balloon data (which is sparse) or satellite data (which is an indirect measure of temperature and actually poorly measures some layers, like the mid-troposphere).

For deep ocean models, I'm unsure. But I would imagine those would have little affect on shorter time scales and is more important measure as a longer term reservoir for accumulating heat energy.

For sea surface or near surface modeling, there is a lot of coupling between the ocean and atmosphere, thus those are going to be inherent to climate models.

The other important point to understand about climate modeling is that they are, as mentioned earlier, "boundary conditions" modeling.

You can think of "initial conditions" modeling like the hurricane storm tracks you see on the news. We know where the model is and the models project the likelihood of where it will track over the following days.

Climate models are different. What they're doing is running model ensembles. Essentially, they're doing longer term weather/climate runs, over and over, in order to see what the mean state is. As they say, "All models are wrong, but they are skillful." We're not asking models to tell us whether this year will be warmer or cooler than the last. We know that's inherently noisy. We're asking climate models to tell us, over time, how much warming we can expect to see.

Understand that? They're wrong because one model run will say next year is warmer and another will say it's cooler. But they are "skillful" because they can tell us, with a high degree of confidence, the longer term trend for the climate system.

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

TWFA at 06:09 AM on 28 October, 2023

It's not that I don't care about surface temperature, I care about whether the models for surface temperature have been applied to predicting temperatures above and below, a perfectly logical query.

If we have a model that can replicate historical data there is a good chance it can predict as well, but if the models have only been devloped using surface data, adjusted to match history, then you should be able to take the exact same model and run it to replicate historical and predicted data for temperatures aloft or level of thermocline below.

Sure the values and rate of response will be different, but the trends should not, and that is what I am looking to see. As you know, any temperature observtions at flight levels would be at pressure altitude and need to be corrected to true altitude. There are decades of oceanic route position reports, I seem to recall it was typically four or five on the North Atlantic tracks, probably there are double that on the Pacific, don't know if that data is in a silo somewhere or integrated into other, but it is historical and of interest to me.

At one site on "the other side" they showed data that indicated temperatures aloft at 200 hPA have NOT been increasing above 1.7 per century but the models predicted 4-4.5, so of course ALL the models are crap.

When I explained to them I would not expect them to if the readings were at pressure altitudes because I know from experience that unless there is a significant diversion from the standard lapse rate, weather, they will not... even if all the forests on earth were afire, at a 200 hPA pressure altitude of about 40,000' I would expect virtually no variation, and at 5,000' without including the world inferno lots of noise in the signal and would want to look deeper at such a data set to make sure it was as closer to standard atmosphere conditions as possible and corrected to AGL.

As you can imagine, I got the same kind of crap there, what does it matter, I don't have a clue, all the studies studying all the models of the other studies show them all to be wrong, etc., etc. Nobody is right all the time, but nobody is wrong all the time either, even if they turn out to be right for the wrong reasons.

So, my search will go on, if there is anybody else here who understands what I am looking for and has something to offer other than, "Get a PhD in climate studies, otherwise believe what we say" I would love to hear from you.

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

TWFA at 11:44 AM on 27 October, 2023

Without a time machine the answer as to whether Clauser or "everybody else" is right or wrong is not and cannot as yet be known, theory is not an outcome, consensus is not data, only measurement is, as Spock would say, "Insufficient data, captain".

No, I am not claiming to be as intelligent or logical as Spock and you are not going to be able to insult or castigate me into agreement or silence. I and doubtless others do not find such an approach the least bit persuasive, and the biggest problem the experts have is being persuasive instead of dismissive.

Whether you like it or not there will be other old geezers like me and Clauser who have only earned their advanced degress in ignorance through a lifetime of experience and observations of nature, people, their predictions and outcomes, most recently all the peer reviewed scientists and experts claiming that a vaccine, a mask and two weeks to flatten the curve was all that was necessary to bring things to a halt, but in my case a serial entrepreneur and inventor investing in my own ideas and predictions as well as those of others.

We have learned that it is not the answers that make the case, it is the questions that precede them, and we know how to ask them. Do not dismiss the value of lay participation in an esoteric field, especially when it affects them directly, you never know where wisdom and breakthrough may come from.

I mean, who would ever expect that a dumb playwright without an advanced degree in probability theory like Bernard Shaw could ever be able to explain it to the masses in a public debate of his day not unlike the one we are engaged in right here.

However I am pleased to learn from you that we have some kind of recorded data of planetary cloud cover history, presumably from cave drawings forward, or perhaps Martian observations contained in journals carelessly left behind after landing and departing Nazca International Spaceport, instead of inferred or imputed data through a chain of supporting inferred or imputed data, and because the effects of cloud cover and weather is my primary area of interest I would appreciate links to that data.

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

Eclectic at 09:19 AM on 27 October, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

New report has terrific news for the climate

One Planet Only Forever at 03:58 AM on 23 October, 2023

I have an important concern about the examples presented in the NPR article “How gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations” I refer to in my comment @9 regarding the way that ‘conservative’ has been used by some scientists regarding evaluations of risk of harm.

As an engineer my learned conservative concern is to severely limit the potential for harmful results. An opposite use of ‘conservative’ appears to be abused as justification for higher risk of harmful outcomes. Tragically, trending to be more harmful, fighting against developing evidence of harm or potential harm, seems to align with what some ‘political interests’ want to claim is conservative – maintaining, excusing and defending the status quo - avoid harming/restricting developed popular or profitable activities that are potentially, or actually, harmful.

Many portions of the NPR article present versions of this twist of political influence on science.

A specific (lengthy) quote is the entire section headed Identifying uncertainty and highlighting it: (I bolded the secific words in the quote, but the rest of the quote contains presentations of thinking that are also contrary to 'conservative meaning limiting harm', especially contrary when limiting harm requires 'change')

Another strategy deployed by the gas industry focused on uncertainties in the emerging body of indoor air research and amplified them. Uncertainty and questions are part of research, but giving them disproportionate emphasis makes the science seem shakier than it is.

The Gas Research Institute, which funded research for the gas industry, hired the firm Arthur D. Little to produce this kind of material. Arthur D. Little had a history of conducting similar work for the tobacco industry. A 1981 paper completed by Arthur D. Little surveyed available research on the health effects of gas stoves but focused on questions the research did not answer and found the epidemiological data was "incomplete and conflicting."

The company says it doesn't have access to records for this project, conducted more than 40 years ago. "We have no reason to believe that the GRI report wasn't conducted with the same high standards of rigor and objectivity with which Arthur D. Little approaches all client engagements," Etienne Brumauld des Houlières, global marketing and communications director, wrote in an email.

The industry also favored reputable scientists who were considered scientifically conservative, for generally wanting to see a larger body of evidence than their peers before reaching conclusions.

Among them is Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, who has a long history as an epidemiologist and researcher. A 1995 review produced by tobacco company Philip Morris concluded that his reputation "as an authority in pulmonary medicine and epidemiology" was "probably due at least in part to his scientific conservatism."

Samet's 1993 study of infants living in Albuquerque, N.M., homes found no connection between respiratory illness and the presence of a gas stove. It was funded by the Health Effects Institute, which received funding from a wide variety of sources, including the gas industry.

Samet says he never did research for the tobacco industry and that it set "a high water mark for egregious behavior and discrediting science." He does not see that same behavior when it comes to the gas industry and health effects of cooking with gas.

"Over my career, there are people who felt that I waited too long before perhaps saying that X causes Y. But that's because I don't think we want to have false positive determinations," Samet told NPR. Scientists say accomplishing that in epidemiology can be tricky because often there are multiple factors present that could be causing a health problem.

When it comes to assessing science that will inform new policies, Samet says it's rare that one study is enough to reach a conclusion. "I've been involved in enough of the development of authoritative reports in different contexts to take the view that the right way to understand what the science shows is to put it all together," Samet says. "And sometimes, unfortunately, the answer is that we don't have enough. So if that's conservative, that's fine."

As evidence around the health effects of gas stove use has accumulated, Samet's views are changing. "If I had a child who might be particularly susceptible because of asthma, for example, then I would probably think carefully about what I could do to make my home safer and a gas stove would be on that checklist," Samet says.

From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation

Bob Loblaw at 04:33 AM on 18 October, 2023

Rabelt @ 28: "quote which part I said anything dismissive about the carbon cycle."

The fact that you say virtually nothing coherent at all about it - when it is essential to understanding the graph/data you criticize - is all the evidence that is needed.

@ 29: "I love how the guy putting words in my mouth is acussing me of strawmaning his arguments,"

I am not accusing you of strawmanning my arguments - you have strawmanned "the main narrative" (in the context of what climate science - e.g., the IPCC - has said). If you want to provide a counter-argument, you need to give a thorough explanation of "the main narrative" (including the carbon cycle). Until you provide actual evidence that you have at least a basic level of understanding the carbon cycle (not just an assertion), then you're just blowing smoke.

Also @ 29: "Quote my comments and explain why they follow your supposed "logical consequences"

I did quote you, in my comment 19.

You finish with "I said Delta changes previous to human emissions following co2 concentration not FF emissions as there were none, and the ones that existed were accountable for insignificant amounts of co2." The way you have worded this suggests that you think that either CO2 concentration changes cause C13 changes ("delta changes ... following CO2 concentration"), or that C13 changes cause CO2 concentration changes ("delta ... accountable for ... CO2").

You have not responded directly to that, to provide any sort of clarification or indicate what you really meant. Yet you come back with "Again, never said co2 concentrations cause changes in Delta C13..." From this view, it looks as if you are just dodging the question.

And now you are stating "Differences in the carbon cycle are expected, yet only are accepted if they dont contradict the main narrative,"

Congratulations. You have now scored a third point on FLICC - the 5 techniques of science denial. - Conspiracy theories.

Since you clearly are unable to actual specify what "the main narrative" is, your speculation about what contradicts it is not worth the electrons used to transmit it.

And finally, @ 30 "I am talking about emissions not co2 concentrations"

Yet the graph that you began this whole flood of nonsense over is a graph that shows two things as a function of time: CO2 concentrations, and C13 isotope ratios. There is no coherence or consistency to what you say. Buy a clue please: CO2 concentrations, CO2 emissions, CO2 uptake - all are part of the carbon cycle that you keep dismissing. Oh,, sorry - not "dismissing" but just "ignoring".

From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation

Rabelt at 23:57 PM on 17 October, 2023

Bob Loblaw,

I love how the guy putting words in my mouth is acussing me of strawmaning his arguments, 10/10.

Quote my comments and explain why they follow your supposed "logical consequences", just saying it again, as you dont show the ability to read the comments I am posting.

"You see a correlation over the period 1750-1860, and then expect to see the exact same response at later times" During this entire period is a stable trend downwards, yet emissions during this period are incapable of generating such a trend. This is only one of the multiple periods I talked.

Again, never said co2 concentrations cause changes in Delta C13, I even said that there had to be other natural mechanism capable of producing this effect. What a great ability to read.

Differences in the carbon cycle are expected, yet only are accepted if they dont contradict the main narrative, unless you wanna say that the decrease during the beginning of the industrial revolution was natural, which I completely agree.

Again another fantasy about what I belive or think, saying I am trying to invalidate climate science, I only talked about 1 specific thing but the entire field will crumble to the ground for just this specific inconsistency, what a joke of an argument.

Sorry to say that your ability to read degrades quite quickly, I never said you didnt have knowledge on the carbon cycle, I said you didnt have any authority to say what the main narrative states, and I was right, as you are just another of the thousands of people that provide research and not a spokesman or director of the main organizations.

From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation

Bob Loblaw at 23:20 PM on 17 October, 2023

Rabelt:

Again, you are saying "I never said..", and avoiding the logical consequences of what you are saying.

The conversation has all the hallmarks of the following sequence:

A person says:

A = 3

B = 8

C = A+B

Someone else says "So, you are claiming that C = 11?

And the first person says "I never said that C = 11. Stop putting words in my mouth."

You keep referring to "the main narrative". Unfortunately, what you have written here tells me that your idea of "the main narrative" is pretty much a strawman. I don't think you have any clue how the carbon cycle works, how different carbon isotopes fit into that cycle and why they would change over time.

Your comment at 23 illustrates this very well. You see a correlation over the period 1750-1860, and then expect to see the exact same response at later times. You seem incapable of realizing the following:

There is no direct cause-effect between C13 ratios and atmospheric CO2 levels. They are part of the same large carbon cycle, but one does not cause the other, regardless of any fantasies you have about "the main narrative". As long as you ignore all the indirect connections (known as "the carbon cycle"), you will continue get everything wrong.

The different time periods have different conditions, different fluxes, and different relative important of atmospheric inputs and sinks of carbon as a result, they would be expected to show slight differences in the patterns.

Your overly-simplsitic "I see with my little eye..." analysis is telling us nothing about the global carbon cycle. Where you see inconsistencies you think can't be explained (because you won't look) and invalidate climate science, climate science sees the carbon cycle working as expected (because they have looked).

You are hitting two of the five main components of FLICC - the 5 technicques of science denial:

Logical fallacies [your misunderstanding of "the main narrative" is just one]

Impossible expectations [your overly-simplistic view of what you think should be happening, and your belief that this disproves something]

FYI, yes I have some authority with respect to carbon cycles, having been involved in analysis of forest carbon cycles and storage, and having my name on several publications related to that. You can read more about my background on the SkS Team page.

From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation

Bob Loblaw at 10:41 AM on 17 October, 2023

Frankly, Rabelt, you are not making any sense. You are throwing out vague assertions, and you are not providing any logical argument for those assertions.

Carbon cycles are not interpreted solely on the basis of correlations, which is essentially all that you have referred to.

You state "..that Delta C13 is a precise indicator of FF usage...", which clearly shows that you do not understand what C13 ratios tell us. As I explained, it is one small piece of the puzzle, and it is combined with additional information to draw conclusions. You seem to expect a perfect correlation - but if you understood why C13 ratios change (different sources and sinks over time), then you would realize how the specific C isotope characteristics of different sources can help us identify which sources are active.

I have provided additional links to places that will explain it to you, and all you can say is that you think part 1 is irrelevant. I see no evidence that you have understood anything in part 1, or any indication that you have bothered to read any of the other links I provided.

You also state "I have never said that because there was change before any other change is normal/justified in nature", but that is essentially the logical consequence of what you say. Read Michael Sweet's comment at 10. You are assuming that behaviour patterns of C13 ratios and CO2 concentrations prior to 1800 must follow the same variations that occur once fossil fuel sources are added to the mix. Any argument that you make includes the logical consequences of what you state, whether you state it explicitly or not.

You finish with "I said Delta changes previous to human emissions following co2 concentration not FF emissions as there were none, and the ones that existed were accountable for insignificant amounts of co2." The way you have worded this suggests that you think that either CO2 concentration changes cause C13 changes ("delta changes ... following CO2 concentration"), or that C13 changes cause CO2 concentration changes ("delta ... accountable for ... CO2"). This is not even wrong. Both CO2 changes and C13 ratios are the result of other factors in the global carbon cycle. As long as you persist in ignoring the carbon cycle overall, you will be doomed to drawing erroneous conclusions.

From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation

Bob Loblaw at 07:40 AM on 17 October, 2023

Rabelt @ 9, 11, 13, and 14:

You are really missing the big picture on carbon isotope ratios. The C13 levels alone are not "proof" that the fossil fuels are causing the atmospheric rise in CO2 - they are one line of evidence that rules out other sources. You are over-interpreting what you are reading here (or elsewhere).

This post is titled "Part 2". I suggest that you also read Part 1. It gives essential background about how isotope ratios differ across C12, C13, and C14, depending on the source.

You should also read Climate Change Cluedo. Steps 4 and 5 note the significance of changing C14 and C13 levels. To quote,

Declining C14 ratio indicates the source is very old, hence fossil fuel or volcanic (ie, not oceanic outgassing or a recent biological source);

Declining C13 ratio indicates a biological source, hence not volcanic;

Isotope ratios are also discussed on How we know human CO2 emissions have disrupted the carbon cycle, and on What is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2.

The caption on figure 3, which states that declining C13 ratios tell us it is fossil fuel combustion should really be interpreted as "the declining C13 ratio tells us that it is not volcanic. Since volcanoes are the only other possible source of C14-depleted carbon, the only remaining explanation is fossil fuels".

And none of those explanations require that C13 ratios be solely dependent on fossil fuel combustion. Figure 3 shows that for 800 years, C13 ratios were only slightly variable, and have now changed significantly once fossil fuel combustion began.

Your argument that "it changed before, so it can't be fossil fuels now" is just a peculiar flavour of the general "climate's changed before" myth that is number one on the hit parade listed on the upper left of every SkS page.

Just because you don't know of or understand an explanation does not mean that there isn't one.

Climate Confusion

Eclectic at 04:59 AM on 30 September, 2023

Markp @51 :

Your link to the extract from Wim Carton's 2020 book is not (IMHO) particularly useful. Carton supplies many paragraphs of general discussion ~ mainly equal parts vagueness and bloviation.

2020 may have been a bit early for ChatGPT as a co-author. Then again, Carton may have been an early adopter, and was contracted for a 100,000 word book. Yes I am being a bit harsh : but a book with extensive sociological commentary is always in great danger of being vague and so all-inclusive that it ends up failing to produce a clear message ~ it can be Bible-like, in that you (the reader) can find & select almost anything your heart desires from it.

At a glance - How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

Evan at 06:37 AM on 28 September, 2023

rip71749@2, to add to the impact of your analogy, coming out of the last glacial cycle CO₂ rose at a rate of 1 ppm/100 yrs for 1000s of years. So even the relatively slow increase you note of 1 ppm/year during the early years following the Industrial Revolution were, in geological terms, extremely rapid.

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

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Rob Honeycutt at 04:11 AM on 28 September, 2023

Likeitwarm... Well, I guess Peter Ward believes, in effect and contrary to conversion of energy, that energy can be destroyed.

Ward also claims, "...however, [ozone depletion] provides a much more detailed and precise explanation for changes in climate observed since the industrial revolution and throughout geologic history." And this us pure, unadulterated BS.

You might be interested to know that Ward is a Seismologist, not an an atmospheric scientist nor a physicist. He speaketh from an orafice unbecoming for a serious researcher.

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Likeitwarm at 02:56 AM on 28 September, 2023

1585. Rob Honeycutt
"what's it do? a u-turn?"
Ha! You're funny!
Not exactly a u-turn, but effectively.

Re-radiated IR cannot warm the surface according to Peter L Ward at the U.S. Geological Survey.
https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/wp-content/uploads/Papers/Ward2016OzoneDepletionExplains.pdf
He explains as follows:
"Thermal energy can only transfer
physically via resonance in this way from higher
amplitude to lower amplitude at a given frequency
and, through mechanical contact in matter, from
higher frequency to lower frequency, thus
explaining the second law of thermodynamics.
…
It is the
frequencies and amplitudes of these radiating
oscillations that, when absorbed by cooler matter,
increase the amplitudes and frequencies of the
internal oscillations of the absorbing matter,
thereby increasing the absorbing matter’s
temperature. It is these frequencies and amplitudes
that appear to be reflected, rather than absorbed,
by warmer matter [22]. When radiation has lower
amplitudes of oscillation at each frequency than
the prevailing amplitudes of oscillation within
receiving matter, heat cannot flow into the matter
by resonance, cooler to hotter. Therefore, by
conservation of energy, “colder” radiation must be
reflected. It can only flow away from the matter,
hotter to cooler. There is no physical way for
warmer matter to absorb “colder” radiation.
Resonance does not work in that direction. The
flow of thermal energy is all about the propagation
of a broad spectrum of oscillations in matter, in
space, and in gas molecules from higher
temperature to lower temperature."

It's cosmic rays

MA Rodger at 21:33 PM on 22 September, 2023

sailingfree @120/121,
The H. Svensmark input into AGW science has been in general seen as entirely overblown unless you are in denial about AGW when the idea that the sun plays a much bigger role than the climatology shows is usually seen as supportive of their denialism.

Svensmark first published a cosmic ray climate effect back in 1997 demonstrating a remarkable fit between cosmic rays and global cloud cover. The fit proved to be spurious while experiment has demonstrated the causal link between cosmic rays and cloud formation to be very very weak. Undeterred by these setbacks, Svensmark has since been examining the detail of the cosmic ray/cloudiness relationship in an attempt to show there was a climatic effect after all.

Part of this analysis by Svensmark homed-in on Forbush Decreases, a phenomenon identified back in the mid-1900s and today catalogued at an average rate of over 100 events per year. A relationship bewteen these Forbush Decreases and changes in cloud had been observed back in the 1990s.

Svenmark first published on this phenomenon back in 2009. They used the most energetic Forbush Decreases (just 26 over 21 years) to produce a correlation between peak cloudiness and the Forbush Decrease strength (Fig 2- not entirely convincingly) and plotting the averages of cosmic ray evolution and average cloudiness evolution for the five most energetic Forbush Decrease events (Fig 1) although the reason for showing the averaging of these five alone is not evident to me in this paper.

Svensmark et al (2021) which you ask about is simply Svensmark et al (2009) but using a correlation with the CERES radiation data. The CERES data restricts analysis to post-2000 events and now only the 13 most energetic events are analysed for the correlation (fig 2) with event evolutions averaged from (again) the five strongest events (fig 1), this apparently because there is too much "dominant meteorological noise" if more events are included, although I'm not sure that squares up with the effect being climactically significant.

Of course, with the sun less active since SunSpotCycle 23, and thus presumably the cosmic rays increasing cloudiness which cools the climate, this would suggest that Svensmark's work would be implying amplification of the role of AGW rather than a diminution which denialists hope for. But such understanding may be a bit too involved for denialists to grasp.

Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

nigelj at 06:42 AM on 17 September, 2023

Cork@7.

"Nevertheless, I opened the link to the Breakthrough Institute and all I found were articles promoting the reduction of greenhouses gasses emissions by expanding the use of Throrium/Uranium in pre-existing nuclear plants and other plants to be built in the emergent countries where no other option may be available."

When I opened the link I found articles on multiple different power sources, food and agriculture, and more issues. Listed right on the opening pages and menu bar.

The articles promoted nuclear power and mostly cricised wind and solar power judging by the titles. The articles leaned strongly towards free market solutions rather than governmnet lead solutions so there is a clear ideological leaning.

Out of curiosity I googled The Breakthrough Institute:

"Tucked away in the heart of liberal Berkeley is one of the most controversial organizations in the environmental movement: the Breakthrough Institute, known for advocating for nuclear energy and a pugilistic approach to disagreement."

"The think tank’s critics, who include prominent advocates and researchers, decry the group as advancing right-wing ideas and say its policy proposals would delay action on climate change. But if the Breakthrough Institute’s leaders are to be believed, they are reformers with a 21st century strategy for solving the planet’s problems......"

SF Chronical article

"While sometimes functioning as shadow universities, think tanks have been exposed as quasi lobbying organizations, with little funding transparency. Recent research has also pointed out that think tanks suffer from a lack of intellectual rigor. A case in point is the Breakthrough Institute run by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, which describes itself as a "progressive think tank."

"The Breakthrough Institute has a clear history as a contrarian outlet for information on climate change and regularly criticizes environmental groups. One writer describes them as a “program for hippie-punching your way to fame and fortune.” So it was not shocking to see their column last Wednesday in the New York Times criticizing a new documentary on climate change that was put together by award-winning journalists. In their article, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger state that the documentary will raise public skepticism about climate change because it uses scare tactics......"

ethics.harvard.edu/blog/breakthrough-institutes-inconvenient-history-al-gore

"Anyhow when I wrote "All hands on board! Each point of view should be heard. Teaming up will be the only answer." I meant that thorium/uranium are tools in the box and it may not be possible to do without them."

Possibly. I have no objection to the use of nuclear power in principle. I'm somewhat energy agnostic as long as its clean, zero carbon energy (or close to it). Nuclear power is essentially clean zero carbon energy.

That said, nuclear power is not looking like a big part of the climate solution. Its too slow to build, its very expensive to build, its more expensive generation than wind and solar power (refer to an energy analysis like Lazard), and there are problems with waste disposal.

Uranium is a finite resource and one of the less common minerals in the earths crust, and it cant be recycled like materials used in wind power turbines. Nuclear power is not liked by the general public in western countries due to the perceived danger (this may be overblown but perceptions are perceptions.)

Its therefore unlikely generating companies or governmnets in western democracies would choose nuclear power right now. And its totally understandable. Its up to the nuclear industry to solve these problems. Nobody else can solve them.

Personally I think we should push ahead with things like wind and solar power and perhaps nuclear power might eventually become part of the mix. Many countries have traditionally had a mixture of electricity generation. I suspect looking for the one perfect generating source is a delusion.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Bob Loblaw at 11:46 AM on 12 September, 2023

MAR:

If the only error or uncertainty is a single, fixed offset that applies to all readings, and there is never any variation at all from that fixed offset, then when adding two numbers with different offsets, the result should be as follows:

A_meas = A_true + A_offset

B_meas = B_true + B_offset

C = A_meas + B_meas = A_true +B_true + A_offset + B_offset

In which case you are just simply adding the offsets to get the error. And if you are then dividing the sum by N, the offsets also get divided by N. But you don't go through the gymnastics of squaring and then square-rooting. That is completely redundant. The offsets are not "combined in quadrature", as Pat Frank keep saying.

And if you are dealing with the situation where you are subtracting numbers, say, by calculating anomalies, then a fixed offset means:

D = A_meas - B_meas = A_true - B_true + A_offset - B_offset

..and now you need to compute the difference between the two offsets. And if the offset is so fixed that it is the same for both A and B, then you get the true result for D without having to have any idea at all what that offset is.

Just below equation 6, Pat Frank mentions anomalies, and correctly states that you calculate one by subtracting the monthly mean from the 30-year normal...

...but then he still adds the two offsets together instead of subtracting them. And he does it in the obfuscation of "quadrature".

The form of his equations 5 and 6 is an extreme obfuscation, and only is correct if there is nothing else that affects the errors. And Pat Frank keeps calling it an equation that extends equation 4 (daily uncertainty) into monthly and annual mean temperature uncertainties. He can never give an explanation of what makes equation 4 (as corrected) different from equations 5 and 6.

At PubPeer, he keeps going on about "intrinsic resolution" of liquid-in-glass thermometers, and in the paper he says this about the value coming out of equation 4:

This ±0.382C represents the field-conditions lower limit of visually-read resolution-limited 2σ uncertainty to be assigned to any global daily mean land-surface meteorological LiG air temperature.

So, is it fixed offset, or a 2σ uncertainty? Only he knows, it seems, and it depends entirely on what argument he is trying to make. Screaming "intrinsic resolution" at the top of his lungs is not a justification for assuming that LiG thermometers only ever have a constant offset with no variation. And fixed errors do not start with "±". Calling it a "±0.382C ... 2σ uncertainty" is the exact opposite of a fixed, unchanging offset.

The Pat Frank Uncertainty Principle seems to be a parallel universe to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can tell what he is saying, or what he means, but not both. Things are one thing until Pat Frank says they are something else completely different.

I can only conclude that he is so confused about the issue that he has compartmentalized many different aspects of it, and he can't see the conflicts in his positions. To paraphrase the words of a long-time commenter over at RC "Pat Frank and I have one thing in common. Neither of us has any idea what he is talking about".

Pat Frank's statistics are like Pa Kettle doing basic math. Internally self consistent (in his mind), but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfq5kju627c

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

nigelj at 06:46 AM on 9 September, 2023

The IPCC reports are clearly conservative leaning. However the latest IPCC report does project warming at around 4 - 5 degrees by end of this century at BAU (Business as usual emissions) and SLR (sea level rise) worst case up around 1 - 2M end of this century. And it will go on rising after that if we do nothing.

There are lower SLR projections out there and a small number of higher projections by people like Hansen at around 4M end of century, but his is very speculative. So Im not sure that the IPCC are being excessively conservative on the key numbers.

For me SLR projections of 1 - 2M end of this century look very worrying with the potential to cause massive problems. Even although 2M is worst case and low probbaility the impact is potentially huge so such a scenario should be guiding or mitigation response. If people cant see all this and feel motivated to take serious action, then I'm not sure they would change their attitude if the number was 4M anyway.

So obviously the IPCC should robustly communicate the climate problem, but I think we are at risk of scapegoating the IPCC for the lack of strong mitigation response, when the culprit is really peoples complacency, due presumably to numerous factors from vested interests, resistance to change, psychological barriers, ideological views, the denialist campaign etc,etc.

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

Doug Bostrom at 08:53 AM on 7 September, 2023

"Your logic would also have us stop trying to change flaws in our law courts and legal system, flaws in our election system, ad infinitum, because "what we have works and they are doing their best."

Mark, as you're upset about the direction this discussion has taken let's just note that you've invented a situation wherein we claim the IPCC is perfect and not subject to improvement.

I'm familiar with Spratt & Dunlop's brief. It's critiquing the IPCC process, methods and results against an imaginary purpose for the organization.

Spratt & Dunlop's conclusory remarks are notably lacking in any concrete prescription of actionable, practical advice for remedy. They are unhappy with what exists but apparently are not able to conjure a better substitute.

With critics failing to deliver a plan for how progress might appear, the reader is left with a false impression; no additional communications vehicle is suggested by the authors, so surely the solution lies in altering the subject of the critique so as to address the authors' untethered objections to the IPCC. If so, what happens?

As Schellnhuber points out, what's missing from the IPCC is reports is imagination divorced from a continuum of evidence (possibility vs. probability). There's a role for unsupported extrapolation, but that's an additional communications task that if commingled with strict evidentiary requirements will quite arguably leave the entire process of dealing with climate change even more amenable to misinformation and disinformation than it is today. Notably and despite such critiques as the one we're discussing here, the IPCC is the subject of concentrated, prolonged polemical attacks on its credibility from the side of the fossil fuel industry and other enthusiasts of unaccounted external costs. Arming such rhetoricians with valid grounds for their own purposes of critique wouldn't be a smart move.

It would be nonsensical to claim that no improvement is possible in the IPCC process and methods. Fortunately nobody here is making that claim. But improvement doesn't include introducing science fiction into the foundations of IPCC reports, and it's hard to see how bringing possibility divorced from probability into the IPCC's work would be other than exactly that. We're blessed with imagination and can and should exploit it, but here our imagination needs a solid tether— as a separate feature— because imagination comes with degrees of credibility and here credibility is mandatory.

It's cooling

CORK at 00:22 AM on 7 September, 2023

In the last GIEC report a difference is made between CO2 records in geological times: C02 would raise 1000 years after the spike in temperature (melting of ice and erosion of sediments etc... = delayed release) and CO2 records in recent times, CO2 increasing 50 years before a spike in temperatures. And they insist that both phenomenons occur at the same time of course and may feed each other.

Over the last 150 years, the spike in temperatures occurring after a spike in CO2 would be very bad news indeed.

It's cooling

Eclectic at 23:59 PM on 6 September, 2023

Cork @330 : I would answer slightly differently from Bob Loblaw ~ and I hope I may give my answer here in this thread, for the sake of continuity.

English language has horrible spelling, and an overly-rich vocabulary (which can be useful for nuances of meaning, as well as for the artistic appeal of literary style). Nevertheless the English language, like most other languages (possibly excepting Japanese? ) can also be used in a simple effective manner - like a hammer - to convey ordinary meanings.

Cork, my protest was not against your literary style, but against the ideas that you wrote.

For example, your sentence: "The anomaly of the temperatures of the last 150 years may just be an anomaly." There are technical scientific meanings of "anomaly". Here it is not clear what you mean by an "anomaly" ~ but you seem to be using the word anomaly in its ordinary Oxford Dictionary sense of: "irregularity, deviation from the common or natural order, exceptional condition or circumstance".

If you meant that sort of anomaly . . . then yes, the sudden steep temperature rise in the last 150 years, is certainly an anomaly.

Permit me to answer your question this way ~ by this example :- You, Cork, are walking on a sandy beach; you are alone and no-one is in sight. The sand is pure and white. And then you see a gold coin lying on the beach. The gold coin is an anomaly. You know that there is an explanation for this anomaly ~ someone has dropped the coin there (it did not get there without a mechanism causing a coin to be present).

Likewise, we know the mechanism of rapid rise of CO2 producing the anomalous modern spike in temperature.

Our proxy records of temperature a million or ten million years past, are "smoothed together" over thousands of years, and will not show a sudden short spike (as rapid as our modern spike). Perhaps there were some (few) sudden spikes in ancient geological times ~ but, like the gold coin on the beach, there would need to be a mechanism which produced a spike. And our knowledge of geology and physics tells us that such spike-mechanisms must have happened very rarely.

The important point is that we now have a modern anomaly ~ a rapidly rising temperature, and we know it will continue to rise (since we know the mechanism). And we must tackle this problem. [My apology for this long answer : but I can be more verbose, if you wish ! ]

It's cooling

CORK at 21:38 PM on 6 September, 2023

Eclectic @329

My apologogies for sounding confused. English is not my native language.

"You seem to be saying that global warming (or cooling) cannot be assessed by measuring temperatures":

The anomaly of the temperatures of the last 150 years may just be an anomaly.

How can we be certain that anomalies of temperature did not occur a million year ago or before, when the only sparse data that we have for these times are estimated by proxi?

We compare averaged estimated data (of the geological times) to the measures of today. That does not make sense to me.

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

Markp at 18:14 PM on 6 September, 2023

I'll admit that the IPCC is the largest organization producing climate analysis, and as such provides the overall best information we have. However, much of that information is deeply flawed, according to scientists both inside and outside the organization. Is it wrong to want that corrected? Because that's all anyone is saying.

Your logic would also have us stop trying to change flaws in our law courts and legal system, flaws in our election system, ad infinitum, because "what we have works and they are doing their best."

Have you read either of the papers I've provided links to? If you haven't, it's unlikely you know anything about the problems you are trying to close everyone's eyes to.

Once again, you do not do yourself favors by refusing to be realistic about the good efforts that have been made to fight climate change, and to pretend there is nothing wrong, or to hold that to say so is some kind of blasphemy, or is unfair or unkind, and to suggest that rather than try to shed light on things that need improving if we are to have a fighting chance here, that we should just keep our mouths shut, close our eyes and offer thanks and praise.

It's cooling

Rob Honeycutt at 06:54 AM on 5 September, 2023

CORK... "But this is not incompatible with a cooling at geological time scales."

What's important to understand is that warming or cooling, on whatever scale, is due to physical processes, most of which are at least fairly well understood by researchers.

The Escalator graphic is demonstrating there are inherent variations in the surface temperature trend. This makes sense when you understand that short term changes surface temperature is a function of energy going into and coming out of the earth's oceans.

The Escalator graphic is presented to explain how "skeptics" will use very short trends in global temperature to claim the "globe" has stopped warming, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The earth, on the whole, is rapidly warming primarily due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. That fact is true regadless the short term rate of warming at the surface.

It's cooling

CORK at 04:27 AM on 5 September, 2023

Climate's changed beforeWhat bothers me in the "Escalator" is the time scale. From 1970 to 2022 the temperatures rise, yes.

But this is not incompatible with a cooling at geological time scales. We may be in a rising part of the curve which will go down and over several 1000s of years the average will show a cooling trend.

The scale of time can be used and the curves can defend both arguments. Therefore the "escalator" is of no use.

The only pure fact in all the climate change saga is that humans are producing greenhouse gasses.

From that fact a whole theory of climate has been built. It is very difficult to say things like that without being insulted today.

Climate Confusion

Eclectic at 23:21 PM on 1 September, 2023

Markp @23 , to respond is simple. Name the person you are addressing, and preferably add in the # post number, for greater precision. Occasionally that # goes "wrong" if the Moderator has altered some post numbers ~ but usually posts go onto the thread in the chronological order they were received.

Again, I am not sure why you are bothered by "models and scenarios". As you say, the social/political/technological response to CO2-derived global warming is rather tardier than ideal, in slowing and eventually halting the current rapid warming. Yes, decades.

Simply apply common sense, and remember the first step needed is the reducing of human-caused CO2 emissions. Eventually, the CO2 level stops rising (and if you are curious, you can observe how much more warming occurs after that . . . so no actual need for "models"). Then you can observe the speed of subsequent CO2 level fall . . . and take further high-tech action if that seems warranted, in order to accelerate the CO2 decline. If not going the high-tech route immediately to begin with!

Probably best to ensure the CO2 does not drop below about 350ppm (since eventually the natural Milankovitch-cycle cooling will start to show). That "natural cooling" has been estimated to become problematic in roughly 15,000 years . . . so not an urgent problem! Plus humans will then have the option of warming the planet by burning small amounts of coal (assuming we have been wise enough to keep a goodly amount of coal available for such future need . . . although by that stage presumably we will have the option of heating limestone per fusion-powered electricity).

Markp, your idea of mirrors (ground-based, not space-based) seems reasonable in theory . . . but what about the practicalities? Please go ahead and "show your workings" for areas needed / desirable locations / dollar cost per sq. meter / CO2-cost of building & installing mirrors / and so on.

Remember the old axiom : Politics is the art of the possible.

Stop worrying yourself about models ~ leave the models to the scientists. Your personal responsibility (to yourself and others) means taking practical action with what you can do now .

Eastern Canada wildfires: Climate change doubled likelihood of ‘extreme fire weather’

Bob Loblaw at 22:18 PM on 29 August, 2023

Davz @ 4:

That specific paper was discussed recently on the "How human-caused global warming worsens wildfire", thread, starting with this comment.

Short version: the paper has serious weaknesses when using it to make the claim you are making. Reducing fires in savanna and grassland in Africa does not help people living in areas where increases in forest areas burned are affecting livelihoods.

In spite of "fewer fires" in Canada this year, the area burning - and the damage and cost to the Canadian economy and people's lives - has far exceeded historical records.

Which would you rather have? Five grease fires in a year while cooking dinner that were easily put out, or one house fire that burns your entire house down? After all, five is worse than one, isn't it? (According to your logic).

You only see this as "propaganda" because you don't like the message.

ClimateAdam: The Vlog Brothers on geoengineering

Rob Honeycutt at 00:00 AM on 25 August, 2023

Markp... "Adam and Miriam accept the logic that the only necessary thing to do in order to reverse GW is to reverse GHGs, in other words, get rid of them. That's a little bit like having your doctor tell you that in order to cure your tobacco-caused cancer, you just need to stop smoking."

This is a grossly innaccurate comparison. GW isn't a cancer, being that cancer is a growth. Tobacco smoking damages cells which then become cancerous. You can't reverse that effect.

Global warming, on the contrary, is not a growth. It is an effect due to the radiative properties of GHG's in the atmopshere. If you stop emitting CO2 you stop the warming, and it's now understood, that cessation of warming would be near immediate when we stop the increase of atmospheric concentrations.

ClimateAdam: The Vlog Brothers on geoengineering

Markp at 22:49 PM on 24 August, 2023

This is a reasonably well-done video by Adam, but there are some points that need to be made.

As many people have learned, the IPCC has done a pretty lousy job of informing the public, and the scientific views it presents have been warped both by the scientists themselves (the dreaded "scientific reticence" effect) as well as the politicians from 195 member countries that have veto power on much of the content released to the public which can be generally characterized as very, very conservative. In other words, it's way worse than they tell us, and their "solutions" not nearly as effective as they tell us. Adam and his friend Miriam are both, from what I can tell, very much cheerleaders for the IPCC. Not surprising: they are fresh out of university and so in that sense have not spent much (any?) time in the real world of working scientists, so their current YouTube careers aside, they may not want to annoy the IPCC-dominated narrative on all things climate.

Two big issues: 1) we need geoengineering more than they tell us, and 2) there is more to geoengineering than SAI.

1) Like so many climate scientists under the spell of the IPCC, (for many reasons which take too long to unpack here) Adam and Miriam accept the logic that the only necessary thing to do in order to reverse GW is to reverse GHGs, in other words, get rid of them. That's a little bit like having your doctor tell you that in order to cure your tobacco-caused cancer, you just need to stop smoking. Fighting the cause isn't always guaranteed to bring about a result in a timely manner. Reducing GHGs, yes, but who is doing that? Miriam said something like international agreements like Paris have "already reduced warming by 1C" and I say huh? All the talk of international agreements sounds good but isn't our reality, as anyone looking at our world's biggest problems today knows in an instant. Our "efforts" to reduce emissions are nowhere. It's not happening. Targets and discussions aren't enough. The point that people behind geoengineering make is: emissions reduction is not and WILL NOT happen fast enough to stop our ecosystem from collapsing. Additionally, carbon removal methods, whether nature-based or mechanical, have huge scaling problems. Yes, nature has dealt with CO2 in the past, but not like what we have now. They are very slow, are not always even feasible (tree-planting a perfect example, look at the studies) and have other issues such as water constraints making them impossible at scale. And mechanical CO2 removal is even worse. When it works, it's fast, but unscalable, with DAC being the most obvious case. So after the IPCC cheerleading stops, we have to face the music. We don't have time to rely only on the method of "turn off the tap and clean up the mess."

2) Geoengineering (you heard Adam slip in "SRM" as well, Solar Radiation Management, a type of geoengineering) is almost always equated with just ONE currently discussed method, which is Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, or SAI. That's because it's got a lot of billionaire-potential!

SAI is NOT more than a theory at this point, however. But you won't find that mentioned by many of its proponents. It is not the only way to go, is not loved by many (unbiased) climate scientists, has oodles of scientific problems to overcome if it would even work, and so is NOT the end of the geoengineering or SRM story. So Nigelj's characterization above, which makes it seem that SAI is ready-for-take-off, is wrong.

I will admit that, like the VAST majority of actual movement on climate we have seen, geoengineering efforts have a lot in common with disaster capitalism, and so should be checked out very thoroughly. Making money off of GW is the most effective thing we humans have done to date, which is a crime against humanity. Period. Governments now throwing large sums of money out for grants only on very narrowly-defined work chokes real progress. What we forget is that scientists have to get paid. Who pays them? Why? Most scientific research is arguably being funded by those who are expecting a product to patent and sell if things go well. Scientists are NOT always out there trying to find the fastest most practical fix here. The more tech that goes into it, the better. The more career-building we can get out of it, the better. That's why we see people talking about, of all things, space mirrors, as if simply putting them on the ground here to do what clouds and snow do is out of the question. There are people promoting that very idea and it has vastly more promise than any other geoengineering solution but is largely ignored (but that's changing) because it doesn't create billionaires and cannot be weaponized.

Like many things, this discussion has so much more to it than meets the eye. We need to think, REALLY think, and be realistic, and stop listening so much to government institutions (or their cheerleaders) that have almost never served anyone other than the powerful very well.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 00:10 AM on 19 August, 2023

"The 'warming' was taking place where there's little to no measuring devices?

Is that sound science?"

Don... If heat energy is moving into realms that have little or no measuring devices, it's absolutely science. Researchers don't get to pick and choose how the physics operate. They can only devise methods to better account for the physics. This is precisely what science is about.

If you look at the animated escalator graphic, this is exactly what it's telling you. Heat energy is moving into and out of other systems which are coupled to the atmosphere. This has been understood for many decades, regardless of whether you're just catching on. Your only mistake would be to become so ideologically entrenched so as to be unable to grasp such a simple concept.

It's honestly okay to just say, "Hm, I hadn't thought about that."

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 08:21 AM on 17 August, 2023

To Rob Honeycutt

One of the main thrusts of Ms Oresekes' article was the reversal of the dominant view - whether contrarians picked up on it or not.

Why wouldn't "this abrupt about-face—from cooling to warming" create doubt?

It seems logical to question the reversal especially when the climate scientists themselves reversed their opinion.

A few years after the new consensus was formed - the hiatus made it's unfortunate debut.

I think I understand why people are interested in finding out why the abrupt about-face more than 'just accept the consensus because it's a consensus and we really mean it this time''

It's not bad

jlsoaz at 23:48 PM on 16 August, 2023

Hello Bob Loblaw,

Thanks for the explanation, it makes some sense. I have to say though that the consequences are looming large for all of us of not responding to denialists relying on the myths of
"nobody has died from this".
"you can't attribute the deaths accurately"
"causality is hard to establish, and amateurs misuse the word"
etc.

I do think it would be useful to memorialize your own response into part of a new myth rebuttal. Perhaps it would be useful to break the response down to bite-sized chunks like this:

Myth: It is impossible for scientists to attribute any increase in deaths to anthropogenic global climate change, or to its related phenomena.

Reality: Epidemiological science has these tools which allow for analysis of such problems in thus-and-such a way. They do not allow for saying "x" but they do allow for saying "y". Thus, while scientists have struggled to provide an accurate body count that can be attributed credibly to the change in climate, peer-reviewed papers over the last 20 years provide us with this range of estimates."

In the rebuttal composition a place could also be made for helping readers understand what the difficulties are in the science (lack of controlled experiments, various complicating factors, etc.) but how it is a myth (I am thinking it is anyway) that these difficulties mean that science is powerless to help us understand anything about developing a body count estimate.

I also think the tobacco industry point seems useful, but somehow that was overcome, right?

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Bob Loblaw at 23:05 PM on 16 August, 2023

Don:

@114:

You have not specified what you think are the two sides implied by your "both sides" quip.

If you are going to be condescending about throwing out Michael Mann's name, your credibility is going to go to zero. Without a statement explaining what you think "both sides" means, then providing names is meaningless.

It is not the label "Geology" on Mann's PhD that makes him a climatologist. It is the nature of the work that he did (paleoclimatology) and what he has done since. It appears that you would rather obfuscate, than clarify.

@ 115:

Let's look at Oreskes' exact words in the last paragraph of her introduction:

If scientific knowledge can be characterized as the convergence of expert opinion, then this kind of abrupt reversal of opinion might undermine our confidence in that knowledge, unless we can give a convincing account of the empirical reasons behind that reversal, and the historical context in which those reasons became persuasive.

Since sarcasm and condescension seem to be the kind of discussion you want to have, please note Oreskes' use of the word "might". In case you are unfamiliar with the word, it means "possibility". It is a conditional statement, and the condition is "unless we can give a convincing account".

The simple fact is that we do have information about why old viewpoints regarding the cooling of the earth on geological time scales transformed into an expectation that CO2 would lead to warming. And Oreskes' paper discusses this.

You appear to want to make a mountain out of a molehill.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Bob Loblaw at 09:59 AM on 16 August, 2023

Bdgwx:

Thanks for the additional information. From the Bevington reference you link to, equation 3.13 looks like it matches the equation I cited from Wikipedia, where you need to include the covariance between the two non-independent variance terms. Equations 4.13, 4.14, and 4.23 are the normal Standard Error estimate I mentioned in the OP.

Of course, calculating the mean of two values is equivalent to merging two values where each is weighted by 1/2. Frank's equations 5 and 6 are just "weighted" sums where the weightings are 30.417 and 12 (average number of days in a month, and average number of months in a year), and each day or month is given equal weight.

...and all the equations use N when dealing with variances, or sqrt(N) when dealing with standard deviations. That Pat Frank screws up so badly by putting the N value inside the sqrt sign as a denominator (thus being off by a factor of sqrt(N)) tells us all we need to know about his statistical chops.

In the OP, I linked to the Wikipedia page on MDPI, which largely agrees that they are not a reputable publisher. I took a look through the Sensors web pages at MDPI. There are no signs that any of the editors or reviewers they list have any background in meteorological instrumentation. It seems like they are more involved in electrical engineering of sensors, rather than any sort of statistical analysis of sensor performance.

A classic case of submitting a paper to a journal that does not know the topic - assuming that there was any sort of review more complex than "has the credit card charge cleared?" The rapid turn-around makes it obvious that no competent review was done. Of course, we know that by the stupid errors that remain in the paper.

It is unfortunate that the journal simply passes comments on to the author, rather than actually looking at the significance of the horrible mistakes the paper contains. So much for a rigorous concern about scientific quality.

The JCGM 100:2008 link you provide is essentially the same as the ISO GUM I have as a paper copy (mentioned in the OP).

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 04:30 AM on 16 August, 2023

To Rob Loblaw

I couldn't find any reference to MacDonald saying the dominant view of the 1950s to 1970s was a cooling climate in your wikipedia link. Perhaps you could demonstrate that it was his thoughts not hers. I can't really bend my brain into that logic without supporting documents. What have you found?

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 04:19 AM on 16 August, 2023

To Rob Honeycutt,

The article - as is - was presented at a meteorological conference in Germany.

I'm sure I can find the link to the seminar that hosted her article.

She's a professor of the history of science so I'll have to defer to her expertise

Unfortunately she seems to have suggested rather awkwardly, that contrarians exploit the about face.

It's not bad

jlsoaz at 06:23 AM on 14 August, 2023

Hi -

As has been remarked by others, arguably this "It's not bad" response is good, but may be trying to cover too much ground. In particular, I'm here to request that the team consider writing a response to the related or subordinate myth(s), which are in my opinion arguably the most important myths not yet debunked on this site, that
- nobody has died from climate change,
- any claim of increased deaths can't be attributed to climate change.
- and, therefore, calling this a "climate emergency" is exaggerating, alarmist and hysterical.

I believe the science here would fall in the area of social science or biological sciences (i.e.: discussing increased mortality above what is expected per time period, and whether it is attributable, under established scientific practices, to climate change). There are peer reviewed publications out there which may give some idea and basis for a proper rebuttal, though admittedly we could use more of such publications to lean on in the face of such arguments. A couple of examples:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01058-x
Article
Published: 31 May 2021
The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change

1. I think these two links relate to the same study published in Nature in 2021:

LINK
Global Study Evaluates Heat-Related Deaths Associated with Climate Change
By David Richards

2.
Also in 2021, this may be a completely different study (I can't tell for sure at a glance. It seems to have been published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
LINK
World’s largest study of global climate related mortality links 5 million deaths a year to abnormal temperatures
08 July 2021

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext

Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study

Prof Qi Zhao, PhD
Prof Yuming Guo, PhD
Tingting Ye, MSc
Prof Antonio Gasparrini, PhD
Prof Shilu Tong, PhD
Ala Overcenco, PhD
et al.
Show all authors

Open AccessPublished:July, 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00081-4

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These above are just one or two recent examples. There are probably other credible-seeming ones if the team is able to look, in preparing a rebuttal, and they may vary as to which climate change impacts (heat, drought, rise in sea level, increased storms, etc.) have what mortality increase (or decrease, in some isolated cases, I suppose is possible) figures associated with them. As to "associated", I think it's to the scientific papers to clarify what the correct approach is.

Anyway, to simplify, please take a look at what I believe to be arguably the most important myth not yet addressed on this site.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32

nigelj at 08:11 AM on 13 August, 2023

Regarding "With Temperature and Other Climate Extremes Shattering Records, Should We Call it 'Global Boiling'? 'Weirding'? Or...? by Tom Yulsman"

The idea discussed is that too much doomy rhetoric demotivates people. This is correct. It can have a deadening effect on people where they give up on contemplating solutions and habituate to the doom and just choose to live with the problem as best they can, like people in a war zone frequently do.

If there is any doomy rhetoric, its important to at least offer people solutions.

Another idea discussed is that creating too much climate fear is not a good thing.This is different from doomy rhetoric. However fear is a natural human motivator. We are hardwired genetically to feel fear when threatened and this generally motivates action. We communicate threats to each other that will cause fear and motivate action. This is all psychology 101. So its absurd to suggest we should somehow soften rhetoric to not make people fearful. This would be a dangerous manipulation that could backfire. It would not even be accurate.

However if the climate threat is innacurately described or exaggerated to try to cause fear this could backfire horribly because its likely the innacuracies or exaggerations will be exposed. We also cant solve problems effectively If we dont state them as accurately as possible neither understating or overstating a problem.

The reasons for the slow pace of climate action are probably not so much the way the threat is communicated anyway. Most people must know the basic problem by now and the scientists consider it serious, unless they have been living under a rock for the last 25 years. The reasons for slow progress are many and varied but one issue is we are psychologically hardwired to respond most urgently to immediate threats (like a wild animal attacking us) rather than slowly unfolding future threats like climate change even if they are very serious. Given climate change is now being more present and dramatic this might start motivate more change. Reference:

LINK

Other reasons are raised by people like OPOF to do with many leaders in society being reluctant to make lifestyle changes or support carbon taxes, because they are very addicted to materialistic displays of wealth as status signals.

However these problems do suggest to me we should try to motivate people to make changes by putting a lot of focus on the wider benefits of climate solutions, like EV's being more reliable cars, less reliance on imported petrol, cleaner electricity generation, etcetera.This is actually probably why renewables are gaining some traction.

Daniel Glick says " In communicating about that threat, we’ve tried terms like global warming, global weirding, climate emergency, and now global boiling." And he asks if any of this gets through to people and motivates people to make changes.

I can only give my gut reaction. Global warming - accurate. Climate emergency - a bit too colourful for me and people easily dismiss it as an exaggeration by giving examples of obvious dramatic and very present emergencies like Ukraine war. Global boiling - quite good. Nobody with any sense takes it literally, but this sort of satirical hyperbole might resonate with people. It does with me. Global weirding - accurate.

Just call anthropogenic climate change what it is: a huge problem for reasons xyz but that we have viable solutions.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

nigelj at 06:21 AM on 13 August, 2023

Eclectic @11.

I agree the cranks are a small subset of denilaists and that many of the denialists are fundamentally driven by selfish and economic motives. However you should add political motives to the list, being an ideologically motivated dislike of government rules and regulations. Of course these things are interrelated.

I have a bit of trouble identifying one single underlying cause of the climate denialism issue. It seems to be different denialists have different motives to an extent, randging from vested interests, to political and ideological axes to grind, to selfishness, to just a dislike of change to plain old contrariness. Or some combination. But if anyone thinks there is one key underling motive for the denialim I would be interested in your reasoning.

The cranks are not all deniers as such. Some believe burning fossil fuels is causing warming but some of them think other factors play a very large part like the water cycle or deforestation. A larger part than the IPCC have documented. They unwittingly serve the hard core denialists cause. They are like Lenin and Stalins "useful idiots."

I do visit WUWT sometimes, and I know what you are saying.

"To very broadly paraphrase Voltaire : It is horrifying to see how even intelligent minds can believe absurdities."

Voltaire is right. Its presumably a lot to do with cognitive dissonance. Intelligent minds are not immunue from strong emotively or ideologically driven beliefs and resolving conflicts between those and reality might lead to deliberate ignorance. Reference on cognitive dissonance:

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738#signs

This does suggests cranks might be driven by underlying belief systems not just craziness.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

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

Bob Loblaw @11

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

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

MA Rodger at 18:52 PM on 11 August, 2023

Nigelj @13,
The paper Frank (2019) did take six months from submission to gain acceptance and Frontiers does say "Frontiers only applies the most rigorous and unbiased reviews, established in the high standards of the Frontiers Review System."
Yet the total nonsense of Frank (2019) is still published, not just a crazy approach but quite simple mathematical error as well.

But do note that a peer-reviewed publication does not have to be correct. A novel approach to a subject can be accepted even when that approach is easily show to be wrong and even when the implications of the conclusions (which are wrong) are set out as being real.
I suppose it is worth making plain that peer-review can allow certain 'wrong' research to be published as this will prevent later researchers making the same mistakes. Yet what is so often lost today is the idea that any researcher wanting publishing must be familiar with the entirety of the literature and takes account of it within their work.

And for a denialist, any publication means it is entirely true, if they want it to be.

In regard to the crazy Frank (2019), it is quite simple to expose the nonsense.

This wondrous theory (first appearing in 2016) suggests that, at a 1sd limit, a year's global average SAT could be anything between +0.35ºC to -0.30ºC the previous year's temperature, this variation due alone to the additional AGW forcing enacted since that previous year. The actual SAT records do show an inter-year variation but something a little smaller (+/-0.12ºC at 1sd in the recent BEST SAT record) but this is from all causes not just from a single cause that is ever accumulating. And these 'all causes' of the +/-0.12ºC are not cumulative through the years but just wobbly noise. Thus the variation seen do not increase with variation measured over a longer period. After 8 years in the BEST SAT record is pretty-much the same as the 1-year variation and not much greater at 60 years (+/-0.22ºC). But in the crazy wonderland of Pat Frank, these variations are apparently potentially cumulative (that would be the logic) so Frank's 8-year variation is twice the 1-year variation. And after 60 years of these AGW forcings (which is the present period with roughly constant AGW forcing) according to Frank we should be seeing SAT changes anything from +17.0ºC to -12.0ºC solely due to AGW forcing. And because Frank's normal distributions provides the probability of these variations, we can say there was an 80% chance of us seeing global SAT increases accumulating over that 60 years in excess of +4.25ºC and/or decreases acumulating in excess of -3.0ºC. According to Frank's madness, we should have been seeing such 60-year variation. But we haven't. So as a predictive analysis, the nonsense of Frank doesn't begin to pass muster.

And another test for garbage is the level of interest shown by the rest of science. In the case of Frank (2019), that interest amounts to 19 citations according to Google Scholar, these comprising 6 citations by Frank himself, 2 mistaken citation (only one by a climatological paper which examines marine heat extremes and uses the Frank paper to support the contention "Substantial uncertainties and biases can arise due to the stochastic nature of global climate systems." which Frank 2019 only says are absent), a climatology working-paper that lists Frank with a whole bunch of denialists, three citations by one Norbert Schwarzer who appears more philosopher than scientist, and six by a fairly standard AGW denier called Pascal Richet. That leaves a PhD thesis citing Frank (2019)'s to say "... general circulation models generally do not have an error associated with predictions"
So science really has no interest in Frank's nonsense (other than demonstrating that it is nonsense).

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Bob Loblaw at 05:39 AM on 11 August, 2023

MA Rodger @ 9:

It is an open question whether it is better to ignore papers such as Pat Frank's most recent attempt, or spend the time debunking it. I chose to debunk it in this case, but to paraphrase Top Gun, "this is a target-rich environment". There are so many logical inconsistencies in that 46-page tome that it would take weeks to identify them all. Just trying to chase down the various references he uses would require months of work.

I took this as an opportunity for a "teaching moment" about propagation of uncertainty, as much as an opportunity to debunk Pat Frank. Thanks for the reference to Lenssen et al. But what Pat Frank needs to do is start with a Statistics 101 course.

Nick Palmer @ 10:

I'm sure the general answer to your question is "yes", but I did not try to chase down every blog post and link in the lengthy chain exposed by the linked post at ATTP's. I did read parts of some, and remember that some of his earlier efforts to publish involved open review.

Nigelj's comment that some people "...are unable to ever admit to themselves or others that they are wrong about something..." seems particularly true about Pat Frank.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

MA Rodger at 02:40 AM on 11 August, 2023

I'm not sure Frank is responsible for 'propagation' or the spreading of nonsense. He is the creator of nonsense that others happily spread. But strangely the remarkable level of stupidity achieved by Frank and other denialists is not an issue for those who spread such denialist messages, or those who happily receive them.

As for debunking Frank's crazyman attack on climatology, this debunking can be achieved in many ways. There is plenty of opportunity as the man is evidently heavily in denial over AGW and stupid enought to feel he is able to prove that his denial-position is correct while the whole of science is flat wrong.
I'm not of the view that climbing down the rabbit hole to chase his nonsense round down in the wonderland world of Pat Frank is the best way to debunk Fank's lunacy. (I talk of 'chasing his nonsense' because his latest published serving of nonsense is an embellishment of work now a decade-plus old while a whole lot different from his nonsense from four years back featured in the video linked @4.) Yet this SkS OP is attempting such a chase.

Frank's obvious stupidity does lend itself to debunking although his embellishments with lengthy coverage of associated stuff in this 2023 paper provides him a means of obfuscation. In such a situation, I'd go straight for the conclusions, or in Frank's latest paper 'final' conclusions.
So Frank agrees that there has been warming since the 19th century (as shown by phenology which certainly does indicate "unprecedented climate warming over the last 200 years, or over any other timespan" has occurred in recent decades). But generally Frank's paper would suggest the instrument temperature record cannot show any warming. Indeed having told us of the phenological "direct evidence of a warming climate" he then tells us "The 20th century surface air-temperature anomaly, 0.74 ± 1.94 °C (2σ), does not convey any knowledge of rate or magnitude of change in the thermal state of the troposphere." That 0.74 ± 1.94 °C (2σ) surely suggests a 23% chance that measurement of actual temperature represents a cooling not a warming, with a 5% chance of a cooling of -1.2 °C or more.
And really, if anybody were attempting to question the accuracy of the global temperature instrument record, it would be sensible to start with the work already done to establish such accuracy, eg Lenssen et al (2019). But Frank seemingly doesn't do 'sensible'.

The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature

John Mason at 16:15 PM on 6 August, 2023

re #2: As Eclectic points out, wildfires have occurred in the geologic record ever since land plants colonised the landmasses. Charcoal horizons in terrestrial sedimentary rocks provide the evidence. Dry lightning is a very obvious cause and is a key causal factor in many parts of the world today.

Vegetation does not spontaneously combust but can become well-primed by prolonged hot rain-free conditions to become an inferno should a fire start from any cause.

The UK has certainly had a below-average July but that's because it was stuck on the cold side of the jetstream for much of the month.

Looking back through reanalysis charts, 'Cerberus' was a flabby anticyclone but nevertheless it caused northwards warm air advection from northern Africa, just as UK heatwaves involve warm air advection from southern Europe as a rule, hence the meteorological term, 'Spanish Plume'. In a warming world, the chances of such events causing even hotter conditions are obviously increased.

The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature

Eclectic at 10:02 AM on 6 August, 2023

Davz @2 ,

You have many questions ~ but I would be grateful if you would clarify your second question.

Your second question does not seem to make sense. I assume that you are correct in that the ignition temperature of scrubland materials would be high (for instance, the wood-based material known as paper has an auto-ignition temperature above 200 degreesC ). And climate range does not extend anywhere near 200 degreesC, or even 100 degreesC.

And yet wildfires have occurred throughout pre-history, before humans & hominids, and even well before 1 million years BC. So your "question" presents a paradox ~ wildfires cannot occur naturally . . . and yet wildfires have occurred naturally.

Perhaps the paradox can be resolved by you expressing yourself more logically. Were you perhaps meaning to say that climate favoring hotter drier days would make wildfires worse in extent & intensity . . . which would make sense ~ but that makes nonsense of your second question.

It's not urgent

Eclectic at 23:02 PM on 30 July, 2023

PollutionMonster @32 & @33 :

It is not very clear what points you wish to discuss re your link to the February 2019 article by a Mr Nicolas Loris. His article seems little more than a half-baked gentle rant (and is published by the Heritage Foundation . . . which is simply a propaganda organization).

Loris's article is rather dated, being from 4.5 years ago, and talks against a (leftist politician's) supposed "Green New Deal" which planned major changes over 10 years. And basically, this "Deal" is non-existent ~ just vaporware on the political stage, with about zero chance of being implemented in the USA.

Loris uses very vague wording about "industrialized" countries reducing CO2 emissions to zero yet having negligible effect on global temperature by 2100. But he simply does not analyse the situation with any care or logic. [By quoting temperature rises to 3 decimal points, he hopes to give the impression of scientific ultra-precision & credibility.]

In short, Loris is wasting the reader's time ~ IMO he aims to produce an impression that our current situation is hopeless and that we all might as well close our eyes to problems . . . and go back to sleep & take no climate action. Pure propaganda ~ not subtle but merely vague.

Wildfires are not caused by global warming

Eclectic at 05:57 AM on 26 July, 2023

Scott @12 , thank you for the link to the Royal Society research article (by Doerr & Santin) published in 2016. This was somewhat earlier than the disastrous wildfires recently in Australia and in California ~ disastrous not so much in their extent as in their effect on human lives & livelihoods.

Also earlier than the more recent ( non-Mediterranean ! ) wildfires in Canada that were "smoking out" regions of New England, into the bargain.

Also earlier than the [current] disastrous wildfires in southern Greece and Rhodes. (Difficult to picture a more Mediterranean scenario than southern Greece and Rhodes.) Human impact is a large factor in assessing the significance of fires ~ but I am sure the inhabitants & tourists in Rhodes are at present comforted by by the knowledge that the island of Rhodes is small in area, in global terms.

[IPCC] was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 ... to provide policymakers with regular assessments on the current state of knowledge about climate change. [And was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 1988.] So I suppose we can say that the IPCC is a political body in a sense . . . perhaps rivalling the well-known political nature of the WMO. Scott , you need to explain what you mean by the "political agenda" being "pushed" by all these international bodies. Are they in any way partisan or nefarious?

Wildfires are not caused by global warming

Bob Loblaw at 04:55 AM on 26 July, 2023

Scott @ 12:

Frankly, you appear to be having some difficulty in reading comprehension. You make the serous accusation that "the IPCC is a political body with a political agenda to push", but you have very little in the way of logic or data to support that claim. Such an accusation flirts with the Comments Policy here, but let's entertain your case for a bit.

So,, you reference in your very first paragraph "the diagram from the IPCC". Can you be specific as to which diagram you are referring to? The original post references the IPCC just once, near the end, where is says:

...the latest IPCC report found in 2014 that “fire weather is projected to increase in most of southern Australia,” with days experiencing very high and extreme fire danger increasing 5–100% by 2050.

The first diagram in the post, in the tweet from Robert Rhode, has no citation, but states that the data are from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The graph is for Australia.

The second diagram is for California data. Again, the diagram is not attributed to a reference, but states "Data from Cal Fire", and is titled "California Wildfire Acres Burned".

The third diagram looks at the forest area burned in the western US. It is sourced from page 1105 in the referenced Fourth National Climate Assessment. The "national" part of that report title relates to its origin: the US Global Chance Research Program.

..and that is the last diagram in the post. So where is this "diagram from the IPCC"???

The original post also makes specific reference to Australia and California in its opening paragraph (the green box at the top). Under "heat worsens wildfires", the post specifically says (emphasis added):

In simple terms, vegetation and soil dry out, creating more fuel for fires to expand further and faster. This is particularly a problem in Mediterranean climates that are prone to drought, like in California and Australia.

So, the post is specifically looking at certain regions. What about the paper you link to? You make the claim:

Yet research published by the Royal Society shows the opposite...

Now, you do add "(globally)" after that. But why are you presenting this as if it evidence that goes again the evidence provided for Australia, California, and the western US? If we dig into that reference (which is now 7 years old), what we find is statements like the following, in their Synthesis and Conclusion:

We do not question that fire season length and area burned has increased in some regions over past decades, as documented for parts of North America, or that climate and land use change could lead to major shifts in future fire consequences, with potential increases in area burned, severity and impacts over large regions

That reference discusses many of the factors affected fire statistics, and make frequent reference to regional variations. (It also provides no new research - it is a review of existing research and expresses an opinion.)

And the figure you provide - which you introduce with "In particular in Europe..." is, as it says in the caption (which you included), for the European Mediterranean region.

So, your case seems to boil down to "but if we average out the areas where burning is less with the areas where burning is more, then the areas where burning is more won't be affected"??? Add in a bit of "but if there is not a trend in current data, there won't be a problem in the future", and you have someone that simply does not like the science. The OP and the references all indicate that increased risk of fire is something that is worth worrying about.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

Eclectic at 05:59 AM on 14 July, 2023

Daniel Bailey @25 ,

Yes, agreed, the off-topic is strong . . . and the copying-and-pasting is strong . . . and the Motivated Reasoning is strong. Twas ever thus, on the Dark Side of the Force ;-)

Daveburton @24 ,

Thank you ~ and you are quite correct about the [magnitude of] reduced nutritive value of crops in some circumstances. I mentioned the matter briefly (as a one-liner) as a reminder that one is dealing with vastly complex biological systems . . . and that one should avoid having a religious fervor for the undoubted benefits of high CO2 for [most] plants.

Daveburton, you get yourself in a tangle by your third paragraph. "No possible mechanism" [unquote] by which a higher CO2 level could cause an increase in natural carbon sink rate? An examiner would quote that as a Howler, to be circulated for the amusement of his fellow markers. # Dave, possibly you were expressing yourself extremely poorly . . . but either way, you go on to contradict yourself in one of your later paragraphs. And you re-contradict yourself in yet another paragraph. [ Is "re-contradict" an English word?]

And then you re-re-contradict yourself soon after.

[ Oy Veh to the O.E.D. ]

Moving on . . . Daveburton, you are looking at the world through a straw. Please look at the whole world, not just the 49-state USA. Droughts /floods /heat-waves already are (and will be) increasingly problematic, thanks to AGW. Unfortunately, the important staple crop maize [yield] is exceptionately sensitive to high and/or prolonged heat-waves. Luckily, other staple crops are "not quite so much" . . . but the plant geneticists have their work cut out for them, to keep up with future changes.

SkS Analogy 9 - The greenhouse effect is a stack of blankets

bobhisey at 21:27 PM on 13 July, 2023

There is a logical fallacy at the root of this misleading analagy. That is, if some CO2 absorbs some IR, then more CO2 will always absorb more.

But CO2 can only effectively absorb the Earth's IR in one radiation band. That of 14-16 microns wavelength.

1992 NASA data shows that at present CO2 levels, the CO2 absorbs all of the enery in this band. So more CO2 cannot absorb more energy-it is not there.

My analogy. If there is one cup of water in a bowl, and 1 sponge can absorb 1 cup. 1 sponges will not absorb 2 cups-it just isn't there.

NASA Technical Memorandum 103957. Appendix E. This has not been available until very recently. A full discussion can be found in "Carbon Dioxide-Not Guilty". Hisey, 2022. Kindle.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

daveburton at 15:36 PM on 13 July, 2023

Rob wrote elsewhere, "greening is now turning into 'browning.' ... fertilization [has now been] overwhelmed by other effects... In other words, the greening has now stopped," and here, "You were making the claim that natural sinks were removing more of our emissions, and that is not the case by any stretch of the imagination.""

Here's AR6 WG1 Table 5.1, which shows how natural CO2 removals are accelerating:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter_05.pdf#page=48

Here it is with the relevant bits highlighted:
https://sealevel.info/AR6_WG1_Table_5.1.png
Or, more concisely:
https://sealevel.info/AR6_WG1_Table_5.1_annot1_partial_carbon_flux_comparison_760x398.png
Excerpt from AR6 WG1 Table 5.1, showing how natural removals of carbon from the atmosphere are accelerating
(Note: 1 PgC = 0.46962 ppmv = 3.66419 Gt CO2.)

As you can see, as atmospheric CO2 levels have risen, the natural CO2 removal rate has sharply accelerated. (That's a strong negative/stabilizing climate feedback.)

AR6 FAQ 5.1 also shows how both terrestrial and marine carbon sinks have accelerated, here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter05.pdf#page=99

Here's the key graph; I added the orange box, to highlight the (small) portion of the graph which supports your contention that, "greening is now turning into 'browning.' ... fertilization [has now been] overwhelmed by other effects... In other words, the greening has now stopped."

https://sealevel.info/AR6_FAQ_5p1_Fig_1b_final2.png

Here's the caption, explicitly saying that natural removal of carbon from the atmosphere is NOT weakening:

The authors did PREDICT a "decline" in the FUTURE, "if" emissions "continue to increase." But it hasn't happened yet.

What's more, the "decline" which they predicted was NOT for the rate of natural CO2 removals by greening and marine sinks, anyhow. Rather, if you read it carefully, you'll see that that hypothetical decline was predicted for the ratio of natural removals to emissions.

What's more, their prediction is conditional, depending on what happens with future emissions ("if CO2 emissions continue to increase").

Well, predictions are cheap. My prediction is that natural removals of CO2 from the atmosphere will continue to accelerate, for as long as CO2 levels rise.

The "fraction" which they predict might decline, someday, doesn't represent anything physical, anyhow. (It is one minus the equally unphysical "airborne fraction.") Our emission rate is currently about twice the natural removal rate, so if emissions were halved, the removal "fraction" would be 100%, and the atmospheric CO2 level would plateau. If emissions were cut by more than half then the removal "fraction" would be more than 100%, and the CO2 level would be falling.

I wrote elsewhere, "This recent study quantifies the effect for several major crops. Their results are toward the high end, but their qualitative conclusion is consistent with many, many other studies. They reported, "We consistently find a large CO2 fertilization effect: a 1 ppm increase in CO2 equates to a 0.4%, 0.6%, 1% yield increase for corn, soybeans, and wheat, respectively.""

If you recall that mankind has raised the average atmospheric CO2 level by 140 ppmv, you'll recognize that those crop yield improvements are enormous!

Rob replied, "If you actually read more than just the abstract of that study you find this on page 3: 'Complicating matters further, a decline in the global carbon fertilization effect over time has been documented, likely attributable to changes in nutrient and water availability (Wang et al. 2020).'"

Rob, I already addressed Wang et al (2020), but you might not have seen it, because the mods deemed it off-topic and deleted it. Here's what I wrote:

Rob, it's possible that your confusion on the greening/browning point was due to a widely publicized paper, with an unfortunately misleading title:

Wang et al (2020), "Recent global decline of CO2 fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis." Science, 11 Dec 2020, Vol 370, Issue 6522, pp. 1295-1300, doi:10.1126/science.abb7772

Many people were misled by it. You can be forgiven for thinking, based on that title, that greening due to CO2 fertilization had peaked, and is now declining.

But that's not what it meant. What it actually meant was that the rate at which plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere has continued to accelerate, but that its recent acceleration was less than expected. (You can't glean that fact from the abstract; would you like me to email you a copy of the paper?)

What's more, if you read the "Comment on" papers responding to Wang, you'll learn that even that conclusion was dubious:

Sang et al (2021), "Comment on 'Recent global decline of CO2 fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis'." Science 373, eabg4420. doi:10.1126/science.abg4420

Frankenberg et al (2021), "Comment on 'Recent global decline of CO2 fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis'." Science 373, eabg2947. doi:10.1126/science.abg2947

Agronomists have studied every important crop, and they all benefit from elevated CO2, and experiments show that the benefits continue to increase as CO2 levels rise to far above what we could ever hope to reach outdoors. Perhaps surprisingly, even the most important C4 crops, corn (maize) and sugarcane, benefit dramatically from additional CO2. C3 plants (including most crops, and all carbon-sequestering trees) benefit even more.

Rob also quoted the study saying, "While CO2 enrichment experiments have generated important insights into the physiological channels of the fertilization effect and its environmental interactions, they are limited in the extent to which they reflect real-world growing conditions in commercial farms across a large geographic scale."

That's a reference to the well-known fact that Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) studies are less accurate than greenhouse and OTC (open top container) studies, because in FACE studies wind fluctuations unavoidably cause unnaturally rapid variations in CO2 levels. So FACE studies consistently underestimate the benefits of elevated CO2. Here's a paper about that:

Bunce, J.A. (2012). Responses of cotton and wheat photosynthesis and growth to cyclic variation in carbon dioxide concentration. Photosynthetica 50, 395–400. doi:10.1007/s11099-012-0041-7

The issue is also explained by Prof. George Hendrey, here:

"Plant responses to CO2 enrichment: Much of what is known about global ecosystem responses to future increases in atmospheric CO2 has been gained through Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiments of my design. All FACE experiments exhibit rapid variations in CO2 concentrations on the order of seconds to minutes. I have shown that long-term photosynthesis can be reduced as a consequence of this variability. Because of this, all FACE experiments tend to underestimate ecosystem net primary production (NPP) associated with a presumed increased concentration of CO2."

Rob wrote, "It does seem that you're claiming CO2 uptake falls with increasing temperature.""

That is correct for uptake by water. Or, rather, it would be correct, were it not for the fact that the small reduction in CO2 uptake due to the temperature dependence of Henry's Law is dwarfed by the large increase in CO2 uptake due to the increase in pCO2.

Rob wrote, "But it's unclear to me how you think this plays into the conclusion that CO2 levels would 'quickly normalize' over the course of 35 years" and also, "You also claimed CO2 concentrations would quickly come down (normalize) once we stop emitting it. This is also not correct unless you're using 'normalize' to mean 'stabilize at a new higher level'."

Perhaps you've confused me with someone else. I said nothing about CO2 levels "normalizing."

I did point out that the effective half-life for additional CO2 which we add to the atmosphere is only about 35 years. I wrote:

The commonly heard claim that "the change in CO2 concentration will persist for centuries and millennia to come" is based on the "long tail" of a hypothetical CO2 concentration decay curve, for a scenario in which anthropogenic CO2 emissions go to zero, CO2 level drops toward 300 ppmv, and carbon begins slowly migrating back out of the deep oceans and terrestrial biosphere into the atmosphere. It's true in the sense that if CO2 emissions were to cease, it would be millennia before the CO2 level would drop below 300 ppmv. But the first half-life for the modeled CO2 level decay curve is only about 35 years, corresponding to an e-folding "adjustment time" of about fifty years. That's the "effective atmospheric lifetime" of our current CO2 emissions.

Rob wrote, "Dave... The fundamental fact that you disputed is that oceans take up about half of our emissions."

That reflects two points of confusion, Rob.

In the first place, our emissions are currently around 11 PgC/year (per the GCP). The oceans remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a current rate of a little over 2.5 PgC/year. That's only about 1/4 of the rate of our emissions, not half.

More fundamentally, the oceans are not removing some fixed fraction of our emissions. None of the natural CO2 removal processes do. All of them remove CO2 from the bulk atmosphere, at rates which largely depend on the atmospheric CO2 concentration, not on our emission rate. If we halved our CO2 emission rate, natural CO2 removals would continue at their current rate.

Because human CO2 emissions are currently faster than natural CO2 removals, we've increased the atmospheric CO2 level by about 50% (140 ppmv), but we've increased the amount of carbon in the oceans by less than 0.5%, as you can see in AR5 WG1 Fig. 6-1.

Sorry, this got kind of long. I hope I addressed all your concerns.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

daveburton at 08:56 AM on 13 July, 2023

Rob, in answer to your first question, Bob is correct: they use different units.

Both the graph and the "plug in suitable values" calculation (above) are for freshwater, but that hardly matters. CO2 is noticeably less soluble in saltwater, but the effect of temperature on CO2 solubility is nearly identical. Here's the same calculation with salinity 35 (typical seawater), for a 1° temperature increase (from 288K to 289K):

1 - ( (e^( -60.2409 + (93.4517*(100/289)) + (23.3585* ln(289/100)) + 35 * (0.023517 - (0.023656*(289/100)) + (0.0047036 * (289/100)^2)) )) / (e^( -60.2409 + (93.4517*(100/288)) + (23.3585* ln(288/100)) + 35 * (0.023517 - (0.023656*(288/100)) + (0.0047036 * (288/100)^2)) )) ) =

Bob is also correct that ocean chemistry is more complicated than that, in part because most of the dissolved CO2 immediately dissosiates into various ions. Here's a good resource on ocean chemistry:
http://www.molecularmodels.eu/cap11.pdf

What's more, in the oceans, biology generally trumps chemistry, and that is certainly true for CO2 uptake. Some people think that the capacity of the oceans to take up CO2 is limited to surface water by ocean stratification. But that's incorrect, beause the "biological carbon pump" rapidly moves CO2 from surface waters into the ocean depths, in the form of "marine snow."

The higher CO2 levels go, the faster that "pump" works. Here's a paper about it:
https://www.science.org/doi/reader/10.1126/science.aaa8026

Once carbon has migrated from the ocean surface to the depths, most of it remains sequestered for a very long time. Some of it settles on the ocean floor, but even dissolved carbon is sequestered for a long time. For instance, it is estimated that the AMOC takes about 1000 years to move carbon-rich water from high latitudes to the tropics, where it can reemerge. That is obviously far longer than the anthropogenic CO2 emission spike will last.

Due to the temperature dependence of Henry's Law, a 1°C increase in temperature slows CO2 uptake by the oceans by about 3%. That's a slight positive feedback: more CO2 in the air increases water temperatures, which slows ocean uptake of CO2. But it is very minor, because a 50% (140 ppmv) rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerates CO2 uptake by the oceans by 50%, which obviously dwarfs 3%. That's the main reason that ocean uptake of CO2 continues to accelerate despite the temperature dependence of Hanry's Law.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

Rob Honeycutt at 04:47 AM on 13 July, 2023

Dave... Going back to read what you previously wrote. (sigh)

You stated, "Some people point to that little orange box and say that greening has ceased."

No, I don't think anyone is pointing to your little orange box, nor are they using the original graph to make such a determination. This was a predicted result long before that graph existed. The determination of whether it's occurring is based on other observations related, I believe, primarily related to ongoing deforestation, changes in land use, etc.

You also stated, "This recent study quantifies the effect for several major crops. Their results are toward the high end...[etc]"

If you actually read more than just the abstract of that study you find this on page 3:

Complicating matters further, a decline in the global carbon fertilization effect over time has been documented, likely attributable to changes in nutrient and water availability (Wang et al. 2020). While CO2 enrichment experiments have generated important insights into the physiological channels of the fertilization effect and its environmental interactions, they are limited in the extent to which they reflect real-world growing conditions in commercial farms across a large geographic scale.

That directly confirms for you what I've been saying. (You really do need to read the full papers.)

It does seem that you're claiming CO2 uptake falls with increasing temperature. But it's unclear to me how you think this plays into the conclusion that CO2 levels would "quickly normalize" over the course of 35 years. Research tells us that's not the case.

Persistence of climate changes due to a range of greenhouse gases

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

Rob Honeycutt at 11:11 AM on 7 July, 2023

Dave @29... Here you're playing the classic science denier game of cherry picking facts that support the conclusion you prefer. Your graphs are technically correct but intentionally misleading because you're using them outside of the full context of the issue at hand.

If, on the absurd chance, you actually believe what you're presenting is compelling evidence then it is encumbent upon you to publish your findings in a legitimate science journal and convince a panel of experts that your findings are significant.

Given you've been doing this for something over a decade now I would have expected your position to become more substantive and nuanced. But it's not. You're regurgitating the same junk you've been posting all over the internet this entire time.

This leads me to believe you're not genuinely interested in facts or science. You're merely promoting an ideological position and you think this is an interesting way to do that.

Once again, this is not ad hom. Lots of people do exactly what you're doing and they (and you) have every right to do so. All any of us are doing is pointing out how weak your position is.

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

MA Rodger at 04:10 AM on 6 July, 2023

manuel2001nyc @444,
You are very dedicated. It is a super-human task attempting to learn from the comments in a long comments-thread such as this.

I would guess the term "saturation" you used concerns more the saturation as in laser intensity** rather than any climatological/atmospheric consideration. (**That is, an excited CO2 molecule cannot absorb IR until it has returned to its unexcited state. Such consideration doesn't really apply here.)
As other commenters have explained, 15μm IR can be absorbed by CO2 and the resulting excited CO2 molecules would almost always then be in collision with other atmospheric molecules and lose its excitation in that manner. Thus the absorbed IR energy is converted into thermal energy in the atmosphere. This process is because these collisions with molecules in the atmosphere will occur within microseconds while the relaxation period allowing the CO2 to emit IR is on average in the tenths of seconds.
But that does not mean there is little 15μm IR emitted by CO2 or that such emissions are rare. As well as taking-away the excitation from a CO2 molecule, these numerous collisions can also impart excitation into CO2 molecules. Thus the vast majority of the excited CO2 is because of these impacts. And if the Earth's surface is at the same temperature as the local atmosphere, the CO2 will be shooting off the same amount of 15μm IR back down at the surface as the surface is shooting upwards. (Note the surface only shoots upwards while the CO2 will shoot both up and down)

So, to answer yor first question.
It is a rough rule in physics that the absorption and emission of photons balance, usually. If they don't there will be a net flow of energy, with more/less emissions cooling/heating the substance and thus reducing/increasing emissions. Thus the absorption-emission balance would be achieved.

The 8μm-14μm waveband is often called the Infrared Window because in a dry atmosphere the IR from Earth's surface has a clear path out into space. Clouds would block that clear path and water vapour acts as a weak absorber.

There is other IR absorbtion in the 8μm-14μm waveband. There is a strong ozone absorption band at 9.6μm. Also, if we do let CO2 concentrations rise far enough, CO2 absorption bands will appear close to 10μm, these starting to become significant for CO2 concentrations above 1,000ppm.

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

daveburton at 03:51 AM on 6 July, 2023

Thanks for fixing those links, Rob. We were obviously typing simultaneously; you beat me to it by 7 minutes.

However, nothing I wrote was misleading. If you "follow the link to the actual IPCC page to read the full" table, you'll see that it shows exactly what I said it shows: as atmospheric CO2 levels have risen, the natural CO2 removal rate has sharply accelerated. (That's a strong negative/stabilizing climate feedback.)

The commonly heard claim that "the change in CO2 concentration will persist for centuries and millennia to come" is based on the "long tail" of a hypothetical CO2 concentration decay curve, for a scenario in which anthropogenic CO2 emissions go to zero, CO2 level drops toward 300 ppmv, and carbon begins slowly migrating back out of the deep oceans and terrestrial biosphere into the atmosphere. It's true in the sense that if CO2 emissions were to cease, it would be millenia before the CO2 level would drop below 300 ppmv. But the first half-life for the modeled CO2 level decay curve is only about 35 years, corresponding to an e-folding "adjustment time" of about fifty years. That's the "effective atmospheric lifetime" of our current CO2 emissions.

Moreover, it is not correct to say that "the ocean takes up about half of our emissions." Our emissions are currently around 11 PgC/year (per the GCP). The oceans remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a current rate of a little over 2.5 PgC/year, but they are not removing some fixed fraction of our emissions. If we halved our emission rate, natural CO2 removals would continue at their current rate.

In the oceans, biology generally trumps chemistry, and that is certainly true for CO2 uptake. Some people think that the capacity of the oceans to take up CO2 is limited to surface water by ocean stratification. But that's incorrect, beause the "biological carbon pump" rapidly moves CO2 from surface waters into the ocean depths, in the form of "marine snow."

The higher CO2 levels go, the faster that "pump" works. Here's a paper about it:
https://www.science.org/doi/reader/10.1126/science.aaa8026

At a glance - Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin

Gordon at 12:02 PM on 5 July, 2023

Bob, Rob,

Lets call Acidic South and Basic North - using the logic of moving from pH 9 to 8 described as becoming more acidic (i.e moving South) then which direction are you travelling if the moves from pH 4 to 5 which is described as becoming less acidic ? It has to be less South correct ?

At a glance - Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin

Bob Loblaw at 11:41 AM on 5 July, 2023

Gordon @ 9:

Let me introduce you to the equator, and the concept of north latitude and south latitude. It appears that this geographical concept is one that you are unfamiliar with.

London is at 52N, Paris is at 49N.

By the logic you present in #1, you cannot go south from London to Paris.

And yes, it is perfectly reasonable to say that Paris is not as far north as London.

At a glance - Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin

Gordon at 11:26 AM on 5 July, 2023

Bob @3, if you apply the logic that I was presented with @1 then by traveling from Sydney to Singapore you would going less South as you can never travel North !

The Dynamics of The Green Plate Effect

Bob Loblaw at 10:58 AM on 30 June, 2023

The bucket analogy does relate to the greenhouse effect in terms of reducing the rate of loss, which requires an adjustment of the bucket level. The reason the bucket reaches a new equilibrium is that as the water level rises, the pressure increases (a linear function of the height of water above the hole), and that increased pressure succeeds in forcing enough water through the smaller hole. We need to remember that there is a pressure term that drives the flow.

The increased pressure in the bucket is an analogy to the increased surface temperature creating a larger temperature difference between the surface and the ubiquitous 255K emitting IR to space in the greenhouse effect.

On the other hand, the Green Plate effect is intended as a specific counterargument to the "cold object can't cause a warm object to heat up" myth. It does not need any reference to the greenhouse effect at all to demonstrate that this "cold object/warm object" myth about the 2nd law is wrong.

If the "cold object/warm object violates 2nd law" argument was correct, then the argument would have to show an error in the Green Plate scenario. If any hard-core denier want to continue with that argument here, they are going to have to do it without any reference to the greenhouse effect. If they can't "disprove" the Green Plate effect, then there is no way that they will be able to apply the [lack of] logic to the more complex greenhouse effect.

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