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2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #13

Bob Loblaw at 02:59 AM on 5 April, 2024

Gavin Schmidt has also posted about this over at RealClimate.

Much ado about Acceleration

In the concluding paragraph:

Remarkably, the Hansen et al projections are basically indistinguishable from what the mean of the TCR-screened CMIP6 models are projecting. Or, to put it another way, everybody is (or should be) expecting an acceleration of climate warming (in the absence of dramatic cuts in GHG emissions)

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

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

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

Bob Loblaw at 03:59 AM on 2 April, 2024

Frankly, Two Dog, you are continuing to put words in other people's mouths, and continuing to create strawman caricatures of climate science. Many people working in climate science are actually well-trained (if not primarily trained) in physics and geology. All you are doing is showing your abysmal ignorance of the science and the people involved.

I'll choose one example - in fact, the first example I decided to check. Michael Mann is often a target of the fake "skeptics". He is a well-respected member of the "climate science" community. You can find his biography at realclimate.org. Here is his academic training:

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University.

You should be embarrassed at how easy it is for people to show that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Once again, nobody has ever claimed "knowledge of all factors that impact the climate." Nobody has claimed that natural factors are not significant. Nobody has claimed that all natural factors are temporary (which is what I presume you have meant with your use of the term 'temporal').

Natural factors exist on a variety of time scales, from hours to thousands of years, and "climate science" has considered many of them, and found that many of them can be both measurable and predictable. And they have collected evidence to support the position that these factors are having impacts that are much less important that CO2 over the past few decades - and are extremely unlikely to become more important than CO2 in the coming decades.

What you have utterly failed to do is to provide any new "natural factor" that you think has not been considered and can possibly have a large enough impact to explain what is already fairly well-explained by the factors that we do know about and have quantified. It's time to put up, or shut up.

What you have done is refuse to actually engage in discussion with people that have pointed out your errors. You simply re-assert your unfounded and uniformed opinions. As OPOF says, you have an "apparent resistance to learning".

Before you comment again, I suggest that you read the Comments Policy, especially the part about excessive repetition. If you are only going to repeat your uninformed and unfounded strawman arguments, you should expect to see parts or all of your comments subject to moderation.

Comments should avoid excessive repetition. Discussions which circle back on themselves and involve endless repetition of points already discussed do not help clarify relevant points. They are merely tiresome to participants and a barrier to readers. If moderators believe you are being excessively repetitive, they will advise you as such, and any further repetition will be treated as being off topic.

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

Bob Loblaw at 06:14 AM on 29 March, 2024

William @ 21: you say "Interstingly it left out the best point for sceptics of climate alarm: Deaths from disasters have fallen by a large amount."

Unfortunately, you may be correct that "the best point for sceptics" is claims such as the one you point out. As "best points" go, the sceptic inventory has a pretty low bar to rise over.

Unfortunately for sceptics, such claims are usually very poorly supported. Damage from natural disasters (including deaths) is hugely affected by human ingenuity in building better and better structures, and developing better and better weather forecasts that help people avoid tragic outcomes. The sceptic claims usually rely on a couple of factors:

Choose a subset of the global data that makes for noisy results, making it hard to find a statistically significant result.

Do not account for technology improvements that reduce damage and loss of life over time, even if climate was not changing.

SkS has a rebuttal that looks at the damage costs (although it does not look specifically at deaths).

RealClimate.org has had several posts over the years that look at many of these "sceptic" analyses. A couple of links:

Absence and Evidence

The most comon fallacy...

Of course, you could provide a link to the study you are using as evidence...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

scaddenp at 06:49 AM on 13 February, 2024

retiredguy - see here. Always kind of bugs me to see someone pushing overtly Christian worldview being happy to play loose with truth.

At a glance - Evidence for global warming

nigelj at 06:17 AM on 29 November, 2023

We have many ways of measuring global warming. Urban areas, rural areas,oceans, the middle, and upper atmosphere. Sea level rise is also an indication of warming. All these show a similar warming trend. How much more do people want to be convinced? There really isn't any part of the planetary system left to measure.

If we were reliant purely on land surface data in cities for example, I would be scepetical. One data set might be flawed. But the chances of so many multiple data sets all being flawed and in the same direction is effectively zero.

Sarah Palin seems like a typical example of a lay person who thinks she knows better than the climate experts. Of course its good to discuss things and question if the experts are right, but remember the experts know things you dont know and small details are important in science.

Another expample of someone out of their depth is John Clauser, a physicist with a nobel prize in quantum physics and an outspoken anthropogenic climate change sceptic despite the fact he has never published any research related to climate change or formally specialised in something like atmospheric physics. It hasn't stopped him telling everyone that climate science is all wrong. He has made many indisputably false statements sometimes by using very out of date information. So even scientists outside their area of expertise can fool themselves. Good commentary here:

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/

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

Bob Loblaw at 05:29 AM on 19 November, 2023

Gavin Schmidt, over at RealClimate, has posted a take-down of Clauser's claims.

The closing summary:

So where does this leave us? Effectively, we have an overconfident Nobel Prize winner, who hasn’t done their homework in an area outside their field, who makes very obvious errors, and whose fame is being capitalized on by the forces of denial. Not really an original story (c.f. Kary Mullis, Linus Pauling, etc.), but still a bit of a shame.

Plus ca change...

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

Rob Honeycutt at 02:09 AM on 29 October, 2023

TWFA... "The climate would and will continue warming at this phase even if man never existed..."

Here, yet again, you literally have no clue what you're talking about but present something as if it were fact.

If you look at the paleo record it is very clear that the Earth was entering a cooling phase due to slow changes in orbital forcings. It's only when humans started burning fossil fuels and substantially altering surface albedo (deforestation, farming, etc) that the planet abruptly changed and entered a steep warming trend.

Real Climate, Marcott 2013

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Nick Palmer at 01:26 AM on 12 August, 2023

nigelj @13 wrote " I have never come across any articles in our media by climate scientists or experts addressing the climate denialists myths. The debunking seems to be confined to a few websites like this one and realclimate.org or Taminos open mind"

That's true - but don't forget 'And then there's physics'... and Climate Adam and Dr Gilbz (both phd'd climate scientists) on Youtube quite often debunk stuff. Here's them collaborating - it's fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojSYeI9OQcE

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

nigelj at 07:37 AM on 11 August, 2023

I enjoyed Bob Loblows article because it did a thorough debunking and I learned some things about statistics.

Some of the errors look like almost basic arithmetic and I thought a key purpose of peer review was to identify those things? They did an awful job. It looks like they didnt even bother to try.

Regarding whether such papers should be debunked or not. I've often wondered about this. Given the purpose of this website is to debunk the climate myths it seems appropriate to debunk bad papers like this, or some of them. It would not be possible to address all of them because its too time consuming.

There is a school of thought that says ignore the denialists because "repeating a lie spreads the lie" and engaging with them gives them oxygen. There is some research on this as well. There has to be some truth in the claim that responding to them will spread the lies. It's virtually self evident.

Now the climate science community seems to have taken this advice, and has by my observation mostly ignored the denialists. For example there is nothing in the IPCC reports listing the main sceptical arguments and why they are wrong, like is done on this website (unless Ive missed it). I have never come across any articles in our media by climate scientists or experts addressing the climate denialists myths. The debunking seems to be confined to a few websites like this one and realclimate.org or Taminos open mind.

And how has this strategy of (mostly) giving denialists the silent treatment worked out? Many people are still sceptical about climate change, and progress has been slow dealing with it which suggests that giving the denialists the silent treatment may have been a flawed strategy. I suspect debunking the nonsense, and educating people on the climate myths is more important than being afraid that it would cause lies to spread. Lies will spread anyway.

A clever denialist paper probably potentially has some influence on governments and if its not rebutted this creates a suspicion it might be valid.

However I think that actually debating with denialists can be risky, and getting into actual formal televised debates with denialists would be naieve and best avoided. And fortunately it seems to have been avoided. Denialists frequently resort to misleading but powerful rhetorical techniques (Donald Trump is a master of this) that is hard to counter without getting down into the rhetorical gutter and then this risks making climate scientists look bad and dishonest. All their credibility could be blown with the decision makers.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Eclectic at 09:08 AM on 10 August, 2023

Nigelj @8 , you are correct about some of the characters that you yourself encounter at RealClimate blog. Psychiatrically though, the WUWT blog presents a "target-rich environment" for a wider range of pathologies. And Dr Pat Frank is still to be seen making brief comments in the WUWT threads . . . but mostly his comments match the run-of-the-mill WUWT craziness stuff, rather than relating to the Uncertainty Monster.

Anecdote ~ long ago, I knew a guy who had spent a decade or more tinkering in his garden shed, inventing an electrical Perpetual-Motion machine. Continual updates & modifications, but somehow never quite hitting the bullseye. He had a pleasant-enough personality, not a narcissist. But definitely had a bee in his bonnet or a crack in his pot [=pate]. R.I.P.

And the Uncertainty Monster still lives in the darker corners of public discussion. Living sometimes as a mathematical nonsense, but much more commonly in the form of: "Well, that AGW stuff is not absolutely certain to six decimal places, so we ought to ignore it all." Or existing in the practical sphere as: "It is not certain that we could eventually power all our economy with renewables & other non-fossil-fuel systems . . . so we should not even make a partial effort."

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

nigelj at 07:04 AM on 10 August, 2023

Pat Frank sounds like a classic case of a person promoting crank science. Scientific crank for short.

I'm no expert in scientific cranks, or crank science, but I have a little bit of background in psychology having done a few papers at university, (although I have a design degree). I have observed that cranks have certain attributes.

1)They are usually moderately intelligent, sometimes highly intelligent. This helps them come up with inventive nonsense.

2)They are very stubborn and dont admit they are wrong, either to themselves or anyone else.

3) They also frequently tend to be egocentric, arrogant, very confident and somewhat narcissistic. Some people have a disorder called NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) or lean that way:

"Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism." (mayo clinic)

Narcissists are usually overconfident and very arrogant and they can sometimes be very dishonest.

We all have some egoism or self love, but narcissists are at the extreme end of the spectrum. Maybe its a bell curve distribution thing.

I've noticed that narcissists are unable to ever admit to themselves or others that they are wrong about something and perhaps its because its exceptionally painful for this personality type. So they just go on repeating the same nonsense forever.

While nobody loves admitting they are wrong, or have been fooled or sucked in, either to themselves or others most people eventually do and move on.

Unfortuntately this means the cranks hang around influencing those who want reasons to deny the climate issue.

And of course some of the scientific cranks prove to be correct at least about some things. Which confuses things further. But it looks to me like most cranks aren't correct, especially the arm chair cranks who may not have science degrees.

The Realclimate.org website attracts some of these cranks, including both climate science denialists and also warmists usually with dubious mitigation solutions. You guys probably know who I mean.

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

Bob Loblaw at 00:59 AM on 7 July, 2023

Rob @ 25, Eclectic @ 26.

Oh, I think it is almost certain that our daveburton and "the other Dave Burton" are one and the same, but Tamino's posts give extensive detail that applies to daveburton's arguments whether it is the same person or not.

Tamino's posts also give considerable detail on the background of the other Dave Burton that give a pretty good idea of where the other Dave Burton's biases might originate. The other Dave Burton has peddled his wares at other blogs that I have seen - RealClimate, and And Then There's Physics.

At a glance - How reliable are climate models?

Bob Loblaw at 00:36 AM on 3 June, 2023

For what it is worth, RealClimate has a recent post on model evaluation:

Evaluation of GCM simulations with a regional focus

At a glance - How reliable are climate models?

Bob Loblaw at 11:48 AM on 31 May, 2023

PSBaker @1:

You need to stop reading contrarian sources that ignore the uncertainties that the scientists are presenting and try to pretend that it is the scientists that are ignoring the uncertainties.

Here is a recent RealClimate post that compares models and observations. They update it each year.

Here is the main figure from that post. Notice how it has a shaded area showing the "Model ensemble spread"? Is that too "hidden"?

RealClimate model comparison

You may also wish to read the links and look at the graphs I have presented above, in response to Gordon.

At a glance - How reliable are climate models?

Bob Loblaw at 11:27 AM on 31 May, 2023

Gordon @ 5:

Congratulations on exposing the sources you are using for your comments here. It is unfortunate that so much of the "contrarian" talking points keep going back to the same unreliable sources.

This looks like another variation of a diagram from John Christy's flawed work, which has been debunked many times before. It is even featured in the Models are unreliable page that this short "at a glance" is updating. It is unfortunate that people like you can't be bothered to read the full blog posts you are challenging.

Here is the figure from that SkS page:

Christy misleading graphs

Here are a couple of RealClimate posts on the matter:

From 2016

From 2017

...and the key figure from those posts.

Christy misleading graphs

At a glance - The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics

John Mason at 00:46 AM on 7 May, 2023

NigelJ #28 - yes it is a complex challenge achieving balance in this business. The deniers have the advantage that they can make stuff up. We cannot!

Also, some myths are very straightforward to rebut - e.g. "it hasn't warmed since 1998". This particular one we are discussing here is something of a pig by contrast!

Realclimate has improved by strides since its inception. I was working on "Further details" about the Urban Heat Island effect - a debate largely triggered by a paper by Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels in 2004. Realcimate's response was robust but only undererstandable to someone with serious statistical training. I nevertheless linked to it but with a note to that effect.

Fortunately, most of the myths on the database can be laid to rest in the At-a-glance pieces in less than 500 words, that being the ideal word limit for that class of rebuttals. Like I said, the one we are commenting on is a bit of an outlier in this respect because so much needs introducing to the layperson. But I firmly believe we need to be near-absolutely inclusive in this business - near because I accept that there are people out there who have reading difficulties, but nevertheless reaching the biggest possible audience is the aim here.

At a glance - The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics

nigelj at 06:43 AM on 6 May, 2023

Just my two cents worth on communications style. I believe this website is well written overall and would be reasonably intelligible to the general public. It avoids complex jargon and when it uses jargon there are definitions. It has beginner and advanced sections in the myths. This is a great feature.

In comparison realclimate.org is too technical.

It's a very hard balance to strike. The thing is its only possible to simplify science to a certain extent before it starts to become meaningless. And science is hard and some people will never understand.

Of course its always possible to refine and improve things. I'm just saying that theres probably not a whole lot more that can be done to communicate the science better. The real problem is people who don't want to understand or receive the message, or who don't see climate change as an urgent threat. Just writing the science differently won't solve those particular problems.

I thought Charlie Browns original comment on radiation physics and the second law @17 was rather good, and sounded technically correct and would be reasonably intelligible to a lay person. People do undertand numbers and probably have some understanding of the terms used enough to get the right message. I liked its brevity so you wouldnt want it to get too much longer.

I think with a little bit of refining the comment would be 100%.

The only real criticism I would have Is your final statement was "Nothing about this radiant energy flow violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics" It might have helped to briefly explain why and define the law. It left me sort of hanging, for want of a better word. I understood why but others may not have put two and two together.

At a glance - The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics

nigelj at 13:03 PM on 28 April, 2023

John Mason @7

Thanks. I agree its useful to include general information on thermodynamics in the rebuttal. Make it a teaching session. But I just believe "at a glance" should be something reasonably short, so the full teaching session would be better in the "details" section. Seems obvious to me.

Just to clarify. My version in ten lines is very much in my own words and structured, expressed and ordered as I wished. I just used the realclimate resource as background information and a detailed point they made seemed very good. In other ways their account as a bit confusing.

--------------------

Bob Loblow @8.

I did a quick scan of the internet on the greenhouse effect violating the second law, because my own knowledge was sketchy. I found three versions. The one I mentioned was the most commonly expressed version I came across.

I agree its a complicated area and does require a lengthy explanation but for me that is better in the "details"section. Or perhaps I'm being a bit OCD about how its organised!

At a glance - The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics

nigelj at 19:13 PM on 27 April, 2023

My quick version of "at a glance" in about ten lines:

"A climate myth claims that greenhouse gases cannot warm the earth because the flow of energy is from cold greenhouses gases to a warm surface, and this violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that energy can only flow from hotter to colder objects (unless energy in some form is supplied to reverse the direction of heat flow).

However the CO2 is not generating heat. It acts like a blanket to slow the transmission of heat energy from the surface and in the atmosphere to colder space. The energy still transmits from hot to cold, just less heat at a slower rate, so the second law is not violated. By analogy, if greenhouse gases violated the second law a blanket would not keep you warm."

(Its based on memory of an explanation on a realclimate.org page. Its rough and needs refining, and I do not claim to have much scientific expertise, but I believe the essentials are there in about ten lines.)

Extreme heat waves in Europe may be linked to melting Arctic sea ice

Bob Loblaw at 10:57 AM on 1 April, 2023

Thanks for the link, Gordon. For future reference, when you provide a quote like that one, it really helps if you give a proper link to the source, rather than leaving people guessing.

I can find that quote on page 22. There is very little context there. They repeat the 40,000 number on page 37, where they say:

Gallagher Re estimates that as many as or more than 40,000 excess deaths were recorded between June and August from heat-related activity in the region, which particularly hit the UK, France, Spain and Portugal. This was conducted based on national-level mortality analysis.

and then again in the appendix tables on page 52. In none of those cases do they provide any further details on the analysis method.

Without details on the analysis method, there isn't much hope in trying to come up with an explanation of why they attribute European summer deaths to heat, and other spikes are attributed to other causes. The original quote you provided does state that this was a "preliminary estimate", which suggests that it was not as thorough as they would like.

You may wish to read this Reaclimate post on heat-deaths vs cold-deaths under a warming climate. It mentions that winter mortality rates in Europe are normally higher - but hopefully an "excess mortality" assessment would take this into account.

The Eurostat link in comment #1 does not tell us if the 19% "sharp rise" in December 2022 is within a normal range of variability for December, and it does not tell us if they use individual monthly averages for each "excess death" calculation, or an average over several months, a full year, or several years. The quote I gave in comment #2 contains values for four other peaks in the past three years - two in April, and two in November. That suggests that they might not be making monthly base/reference calculations - but it's really hard to tell.

Methodology is critically important in these sorts of calculations.

Climate sensitivity is low

MA Rodger at 09:17 AM on 31 March, 2023

retiredguy @387,

Lewis (2022) 'Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence' was given the once-over in a comment thread at RealClimate when it first appeared last year.

Climate Science Denial Explained

MA Rodger at 21:54 PM on 20 March, 2023

Eclectic @20,

The other denier you mention, Spencer, has been described as mixing religion with his science (eg by The Christian Science Monitor). As for him doing actual science, I remember hearing his 2010 book 'The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists' (thus implying he is not himself a 'top climate scientist') was published with the expectation that the paper presenting the scientific work underlying that grand title would be refused publication. However it was published but, I heard, it has been shown to exaggerated the effect he was proposing, an effect which does exist but as a very minor effect.

The Big Picture

Bob Loblaw at 00:52 AM on 18 March, 2023

Peppers @ 36: "Do you have cites for your 'abundantly obvious reasons?", Thx"

Sorry. Rob assumed that he was talking to a reasonably well-informed audience.

Look at some of the links I gave to RealClimate in my previous response to Bart.

The Big Picture

Bob Loblaw at 00:50 AM on 18 March, 2023

Bart @ 38 responds to Rob @ 35 by saying "I don't make a mistake", and then proceeds to explain that he (Bart) has done exactly the mistake that Rob said he was doing: using historical data to extrapolate out SLR over the coming century. Bart even included the quote from Rob saying you can't do that, so Bart has no excuse for not paying attention to what Rob said.

Bart says he included "an extrapolation of the change by year" - but this is still using historical data to extrapolate. Mistake confirmed.

Anyone who is reasonably well-informed about sea level rise projections understands that such projections need to include physics and processes that will cause sea level rise - glacier dynamics and their response to temperature and precipitation changes; climate warming and associated changes in ocean temperatures (including horizontal and vertical distributions of temperature change). Projections require understanding the future path of these factors - and the past sea level is not necessarily an indicator of the future of glaciers and global temperatures.

RealClimate often covers this topic, and covers it well. A few related pages there:

dont-estimate-acceleration-by-fitting-a-quadratic

sea-level-in-the-ipcc-6th-assessment-report-ar6

why-is-future-sea-level-rise-still-so-uncertain

Another mistake made in Bart's short comment: the Netherlands doesn't need to worry about Greenland's contribution to sea level because it is "not very much here". (Granted, the last few sentences of Bart's comment are very poorly worded, so it's hard to understand exactly what point he is trying to make.)

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

nigelj at 11:43 AM on 17 December, 2022

Free speech has generally recognised limits such as time and place restrictions, like some of Rob Honeycutt's examples. Only the fanatics think the limits are wrong, and I bet there are things they wouldn't tolerate in their own homes over the dinner table.

But we are really talking about information and opinions (sometimes hate filled) posted on websites, and whether there should be moderation of that.

I used to believe websites should delete the very worst misinformation, and ban the most serious offenders that spread misinformation (Like Trump) but now I'm just not sure. Twitter had literally thousands of people trying to moderate this sort of thing, and I wonder if its really feasible to keep that up. Banning opinions or information is also going against the spirit of free speech.

Of course there are things that can be done that dont go against the spirit of free speech like rules against spamming, requiring people to back up claims by reference to published science, and boreholes like at realclimate.org that silo the drivel while still allowing people to have a say. Maybe thats the best approach generally.

I loathe hate speech especially when it targets vulnerable people. But the problem is that hate speech is very difficult to define and could be widened out to include almost anything. Racist speech is relatively easy to define and is illegal in New Zealand, and I support that because it effectively incites violence. But I believe limits on free speech should be kept quite minimal.

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 20:41 PM on 2 December, 2022

sailingfree @1322,

The four 'corrections' to Christy's senate presentation presented in the gif in the OP above are originally set out within this RealClimate post. While that post makes no mention of problems with the averages presented by Christy (eg apples being compared with oranges), I am a bit sceptical of Christy's Global graphics given the graphed 'correction' in that RealClimate post.

The RSS TMTv4 plotted in the 'correction' would not have been available in Feb 2016 (it was a month later) so Christy's 'Ave 3 satellite datasets' plotted as 'squares' would presumably be UAH TMTv5.4, RSS TMTv3.3 & NOAA STAR. While the divergence between model & satellite data in Christy's Tropical graphic appear to match, the Global divergence seems 'stretched' in the Christy version relative to the 'corrected' version. Thus scaling the graphics gives Christy showing +0.47ºC divergence while the 'corrected' version shows just +0.39ºC for just RSSv3/UAH, a value which presumably would be even smaller (+0.36ºC) if NOAA STAR as plotted in the 'correction' is the third 'satellite dataset'.

I think this is probably Christy plotting his averages with more carelessness than would be expected from a genuine researcher rather than it being an 'apples-&-oranges' thing.

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 07:31 AM on 29 November, 2022

Eddie et al (comments 1314-1417) on Spencer's video and blog post.

Thanks, MAR, for the link to Spencer's blog post. I followed his link to the NOAA data source, and looked at the numbers. If I grab the June, July, and August monthly values (the standard climatological "summer"), I get the same results: about 0.26C/decade. That checks out. A few things that Spencer does not mention:

The overall trend is not particularly linear.

The r² value is rather low.

The standard error on the slope esitmate is 0.04 C/decade.

Here is a graph of the data:

Continental US Temperatures

The uncertainty on the trend covers some of the model range he provides in the blog post. Two sigma range places the observed trend between 0.17 and 0.35 C/decade.

The model trends also include a level of internal variability. The observations follow a specific pattern of "unforced variations" related to cycles such as El Nino, etc., while individual model runs and models will have different patterns within a specific model run. Over shorter periods, and smaller areas, you need to consider this in making any comparisons. For models, they often get an "ensemble mean" of many runs with different variability - but the observations are still a "single roll of the dice" that can fall anywhere in the range of the collection of model runs and still be consistent with the models.

I see that you have already found the Great Global Warming Blunder post at RealClimate. They also have a couple of other relevant posts:

This one talks about how unforced variability affects model runs.

This one talks about things to consider in comparing models and observations.

Tamino's blog is also a useful place to look whenever statistical stuff comes up. In this post, he points out several aspects of the use of the continental US for data. He covers the non-linearity of trends, the variations in trends in different parts of the US, and points out that the continental US represents 1.6% of the global area (ripe for cherry picking).

In general, Spencer tends to get more wrong than he gets right.

P.S. The preferred abbreviation for SkepticalScience is SkS (for obvious reasons).

Models are unreliable

EddieEvans at 19:57 PM on 27 November, 2022

Bob Ludlow, I'm concluding my Spencer search via Real ClimateReview of Spencer’s ‘Great Global Warming Blunder’ to "cdesign proponentsists-the case against "Intelligent Design" and it's not even five in the morning. I mentioned Potholder54 because I believe that I first heard Spencer's name in one of his videos. Now I know, and the redirection to "cdesign proponentsists" and climate change deniers, deceivers sheds more light. I hope I have not transgressed boundaries on SS with this post. I also wonder if RealScience's copyright applies to copying text and posting it on Youtube. I better ask first. Regards

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 04:47 AM on 27 November, 2022

Eddie:

I have not watched the video you linked to, but this SkS repost of a RealClimate blog post discusses how Spencer has gotten things wrong in the past:

Comparing models to the satellite datasets

How not to solve the climate change problem

Bob Loblaw at 02:45 AM on 25 August, 2022

For what it is worth, RealClimate also has an older post (March 2020) on bad papers in the "Climate change is caused by solar radiation" subject area. Triggered by the retracted Zharkova paper, but a broader discussion.

How to inoculate yourself against misinformation

nigelj at 08:59 AM on 2 July, 2022

Petra Liverani @4

"To call a medical doctor who has studied scientific papers and points out what she thinks shows errors in scientific method a conspiracy theorist or a spreader of misinformation is the wrong approach. "

Could you at least provide a specific example, details and a link. Because I don't know of that happening quite like you say. There would be more to it. I believe you are creating a strawman. Things that get labelled misinformation are instead wild claims that vaccines dont work, or covid is just like the common cold, or that bleach will cure covid. Things that we know through science are false.

It's probably hard to precisely define misinformation, but something contradicting the weight of scientific evidence is good enough for all practical purposes. Interesting article on misinformation here:

Like PC I have a very low tolerance for the rabid covid deniers. They are idiots, and they need to be told they are idiots.

Climate's changed before

MA Rodger at 02:52 AM on 11 March, 2022

paulbegin @885,
Increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase global temperatures directly through the greenhouse effect. An increase in temperature can influence CO2 concentrations but less directly. Thus colder oceans are more able to absorb CO2 so CO2 will be drawn from the atmosphere into the oceans during an ice age, this increasing the ice age cooling. But there are other temperature-CO2 correlations, for instance during the ENSO cycle with temperature and CO2 increasing in the aftermath of an El Niño. Yet in the ENSO cycle the fluctuating CO2 levels are not due to temperature but due to changing patterns of rainfall causing changes in vegitation growth in the Amazon basin.

So it is CO2 that drives temperture while temperature has a small influence on CO2.

I'm not emtirely sure what you are asking for with your last question. The various drivers of climate change, be they forcings or the resulting feedbacks, are reasonably well understood for the past few million years but there is more difficulty going back into the more distant past as the drivers and the climate are less well understood.
The big difference between the last few-million-years and the last century-or-so is that the major climate forcing has resulted from human activity and that said, I'm not sure what you expect from comparing the last century-or-so with the last few-million-years.

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

MA Rodger at 17:53 PM on 28 February, 2022

Concerning 'The Greenhouse Defect' website.

At the back-end of last year I encontered a commenter at RealClimate calling himself E. Schaffer who linked his presence there to that defective website. E. Schaffer proved to be a proper numpty.

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

BaerbelW at 18:10 PM on 27 February, 2022

@Santalives #19

We had received an email about the paper you mentioned and sent back the below as an initial reply. It contains some quick hints of what to check when encountering a paper to quickly judge it's credibility (or lack thereof):

Here are a few initial "red flags" about the paper and journal it has been published in - none of which necessarily mean that the content is actually wrong but that it at least needs to be taken with a suitably large grain of salt.

Science Publishing Group, which publishes the "journal", is on Beall's list which is a collection of potentially predatory journals

The "journal" doesn't have/show an impact factor

less than 200 papers have thus far been published in it

judging by the time line - Received: Aug. 2, 2021; Accepted: Aug. 11, 2021; Published: Aug. 23, 2021 - not much (if any) proper peer review happened

non of the authors seems to have a background in climate science, two of them are retired from companies

questionable authors like William Happer and Herman Harde are listed in the references

In addition, the authors appear to have made a common (or perhaps even deliberate?) error in evaluating the total greenhouse effect (which we know is much larger than the observed changes) instead of the change to the greenhouse effect (which is what matters in discussions of climate change).

Hope this helps to put this publication into perspective!

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

nigelj at 16:47 PM on 21 February, 2022

Santalives @80

I already said what I think drives people over at WUWT @74. I've amended it slightly here. Imho denialists seem to mostly engage in a lot of deliberate stupidity, mixed together with political and ideological motives (often libertarianism) , motivated reasoning, cherrypicking, and a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. However some just appear naturally quite stupid (eg: JDS over at realclimate.org). There are also the scientific cranks with science degrees who just seem to like to be different and become very stubborn and narcissistic. This is my observation. I suspect you wont like this but its how they all frequently come across to me.

Regarding "Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water by Demetris Koutsoyiannis"

Some of his discussion is interesting and colourful. However a discussion of how to better define climate doesn't much interest me. I said before its pedantry. In no way does such a thing directly relate to or undermine findings that humans are causing a warming effect. And what we are interested in is relativities and rates of change from one period to another. You do not need a precise and perfect definition of climate to measure that. I'm sure you would get what I mean. I haven't the time to study his maths in detail and I'm rusty on some of that but I'm sure its probably correct, but it isn't relevant to the points I've just made. He himself said people will probably regard his paper as useless!

He then goes into a long discussion about water: "This idea is further expanded to establish a linear causality chain of the type: human CO2 emissions → increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2; → increasing temperature → changes in hydrological processes and water balance. This is evident in the popular practice of studying the so-called climate change impacts on hydrological processes. However, this is a naïve idea that does not correspond to physical reality.........Arguably, the fact that the CO2; has been so heavily and repeatedly studied, particularly in paleoclimatology studies (e.g., [49,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]), does not suggest that it is more important a greenhouse gas than water. Here we argue that water is the most crucial element determining climate (e.g., [58,59]), or as put by Poyet [60], “Water is the main player”. We list epigrammatically some of the reasons justifying it: (Abundance, heat storage etc.)"

The fact that water is abundant and a heat store and can be influenced by changes in solar energy and that water vapour is the more abundant a greenhouse gas is not contested or new information, and obviously does not in any way undermine the conventional idea that changes in Co2 is causally linked to increased evaporation which can cause further warming. He has conflated things, and enaged in a logical fallacy by deliberate intent or lack of awareness.

He has to be able to explain how his own theory of water would explain climate warming over the last 100 years. He provides no evidence based causal link to expalin a change in water vapour levels in the atmosphere over the period. But Co2 causing warming and evaporation and further warming explains things perfectly well and is consistent with the evidence.

Don't ask me why, how or when on all the details. I don't have the time for more. I'm giving you the essentials as I see them. To me its all fairly obvious. Think about it. I'm just an interested observer and while I enjoy discussions I dont have all day.

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

nigelj at 11:41 AM on 21 February, 2022

Eclectic @72

I do agree with all your views on the denialist trolls and how to respond to them. They are indeed quite interesting and entertaining.

Some people say don't respond or engage with the denialists, because it gives them visibility, but I feel that is a grave mistake. We dont know who is reading comments sections and if the denialists nonsense goes unanswered it may gain traction with middle of the road people reading.I tend to respond to denialists largely with those people in mind.

I tend to often keep my responses short and facts based rather than getting into a long debate, to avoid giving them too many opportunities to spam the website. Especially on general news media websites. However sometimes I will get into a longer discussion if it seems useful or interesting, and its unlikely vast numbers of people are reading the posts and they are not the spamming type of troll. I've noticed that rebuttals can actually create some interesting discussion. The people that say never respond to denialists take themselves a bit too seriously.

Imho denialists seem to mostly embrace a lot of deliberate stupidity, mixed together with political and ideological motives, motivated reasoning, cherrypicking, and a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. However some just appear naturally quite stupid (eg: JDS over at realclimate.org).

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

nigelj at 17:25 PM on 20 February, 2022

Santalives

So your logic is Y2K was over hyped so climate change is over hyped. Experts have been wrong about some things. That doesn't mean they are wrong about everything. The issues between computer chips and climate science are obviously also quite different. You have posted another nonsensical denialist talking point. Are you going to ignore your doctors advice because doctors have not always got things right?

"So it brings us back to the basic question is there a problem here? So far climate predictions have not really what you call acurrate"

Just blatantly false, unsubstantiated statements. Warming predictions have been quite accurate refer here:

www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/02/another-dot-on-the-graphs-part-ii/

Go away and waste someone elses time. You could find this information yourself, troll.

CO2 effect is saturated

Bob Loblaw at 05:31 AM on 28 October, 2021

MA Rodger links to a 2005 RealClimate post that discusses the relative importance of CO2 and water vapor in IR transfer. A more recent journal paper on the subject is:

Schmidt, G. A., Ruedy, R. A., Miller, R. L., and Lacis, A. A. (2010), Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D20106, doi:10.1029/2010JD014287.

Gavin Schmidt is, over course, the one that wrote the RealClimate post, too.

Discussion of water vapour vs. CO2 belongs on the following thread, though:

https://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

CO2 effect is saturated

MA Rodger at 00:49 AM on 28 October, 2021

andrewhoward @628,
Concerning the 'nit-picking', back in September there was no sign of the Coe et al paper [full paper here] but instead another paper occupying those pages. It thus appeared at that time to be somewhat more than 'nit-picking'. There since has been some page re-numbering by the journal which isn't very professional and the side-bar buttons for 'Submit a Manuscript' and 'Become a Reviewer' and even 'Launch a New Journal' suggest a title that is more vanity publishing than serious science.

This would not be the first time denialists have accessed HITRAN to produce a pack of nonsense. Their description shows them calculating how much surface radiation is absorbed by the various GHGs and ignoring the emissions from the atmosphere. It is the density/temperature of the GHGs where they emit into space that determines the GH-effect so the paper's calculations are simple nonsense.

In terms of their basic findings, they find H2O alone would provide 91.8% of the GH-effect, CO2 alone would provide 24.7% but when added to H2O, CO2 would provide an additional 7.7%. The CH4 & N2O alone value isn't expressly given while their additional contribution is 0.5%.
This is all very silly. This RealClimate post provides a more conventional set of findings but includes further contributions to the GH-effect. Thus the CO2 percentages do not look greatly different. But H2O alone is given as just 66% and while the 'Other GHG' (which would be more than just CH4 & N2O but they would be the lion's share) provide an additonal 2%.

When Coe et al address ECS, they are entirely off with the fairies. It is well known that the forcing from 2xCO2 increases global temperatures by +1ºC. These jokers manage to find just +0.4ºC, a certain maker of 'idiots-at-work'. Coe et al say ECS estimates range from +1.5ºC to +4.5ºC. The usual best estimate is seen as +3ºC, thus a trebling of the CO2 warming through feedbacks. The statement by Coe et al that "More recent work, however, suggests ECS values of less than 1degC" is plain wrong - a cherrypick of fellow denialist work. Coe et al prattle through a pack of nonsense to turn the climate feedback from a best estimate +200% into just +12.4%. Of course, if such a crazy finding were in the slightest bit serious, it would need nailing down and strongly justifying. But Coe et al jump straight to what is the purpose of their task and so predictably conclude "There is no impending climate emergency and CO2 is not the control parameter of global temperatures."

It's albedo

MA Rodger at 05:23 AM on 18 September, 2021

The commenter @97 is no-longer a participant here but as this response to his comment @97 is albedo-stuff, I hope the moderators will allow it.

☻ Concerning the spectrum of reflected light in earthshine:- @97, the objection was to Woolf et al (2004) using an arbitrary ordinate scale on their Fig 1 (shown @96) rather than Wm^-2. Addressing this objection (although Woolf et al Fig 2 should have sufficed as it shows a roughly constant % albedo with wavelength), below is a graph of spectrum for wavelengths 0.25 to 6.5 microns (so into the UV) with a Wm^-2 ordinate scale. (Woolf et al above shows the spectrum 0.48 to 0.92 microns, so into the IR.)

albedo spectrum

☻ Concerning Wild et al's -19Wm^-2 clear-sky radiation:- Indeed, as commented @97, it is "visa versa" @96 as "cooling" was written in error and should have been "warming" from clear-sky relative to all-sky.

Do note that the cooling from an AGW-induced decrease in albedo is greatly due to the reduction of tropical marine cloud. AR6 provides a better assessment of such cloud today that allows AR6 to state that "A net negative cloud feedback is very unlikely" with a potential range of -10Wm^-2ºC^-1 to +9.4Wm^-2ºC^-1 ['very likely' =1.67sd]. (Although half the range given in AR5, these remain broad confidence intervals.)

Yet the -19Wm^-2 result from Wild et al (2019) was not misunderstood. The value is saying that the net energy balance under clear skys is -19Wm^-2 relative to the global average. (Note a coincidental -19Wm^-2 is also given by Wild et al for Land relative to Global.)
It doesn't follow that a reduction of clear-sky conditions would result in a comenserate cooling of the planet (just as an increase in the land area of the planet would not be expected to increase planetary cooling). It is not so simple.
Note what Wild et al consider their finding would be useful for:- "To better constrain (global climate models from CMIP5), we established new clear-sky reference climatologies." There is no mention of geo-engineering. (And note that if it were, the net planetary cooling would be -19Wm^-2 for the extra cloud and a further -19Wm^-2 for the loss of clear sky - this assuming a 50% global cloud fraction.) However, the impact of altering the global level of clear-sky conditions would depend entirely on the particulars of the alteration.
Indeed, consider the cloud-effect in its totality. If the models take all the clouds out but keep everything the same, the GH-effect is diminished by about 15%. This would suggest increased cloud warms (and so does not cool,) a warming with a back-of-fag-packet global value of [33ºC GH-effect x 3.7Wm^-2/ºC x 15% =] +18Wm^-2. So +ve and not -ve. An interesting result.

☻ Finally, the mistake within the annotations of Fig3 of Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021) - It a trivial mistake (that the value of 2.3mm/yr in Fig3a should be 2.3mm/yr/yr and likewise elsewhere) as the mistake is quite evident. Simply look at the regression line. The graphed regression line rises from an anomaly of -18mm/yr in 2003.0 to +21mm/yr in 2020.0, so a rise of 39mm/yr over the 17-year period graphed = 2.3mm/yr/yr.

It's albedo

coolmaster at 10:47 AM on 13 September, 2021

MA Rodger93:

MAR: "Your proposed grand scheme seems to be assuming atmospheric water can increase by 0.001335M km^3 annualy, or a 10% annual increase."
No - I never ever assumed, wrote or thought about that I plan or can increase atmospheric water by 1335km³ annualy.

You are making a very similar mistake as Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf from PIK in Potsdam in response to my comment in another climate forum.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/sea-level-in-the-ipcc-6th-assessment-report-ar6/#comment-794653

Your mistake is probably that you have not read my posts with due attention, even though they are kept very simple and straightforward.
An increase in atmospheric water by 10% / year would mean that, according to the CCF, earth temperatures rise by approx. 1.4 ° C per year. A state of the climate which means certain death for all life on earth.

So you also completely misunderstood me.

My climate protection strategy would like to take the volume of 3.7mm SLR(1335km³) from the global rivers discharge when their water levels are sufficient(&clean) or even specially in flood events after rain- !!! to store it in soil moisture and groundwater over the land mass.
In principle a simple, seasonal storage of retained river water also to adapt to droughts and floods.

In dry seasons, this water will be mainly evaporated from agriculture, but also the before mentioned “amunas” of the old inca culture and their water management are a perfect way to rewet forests & moors.

hidraulicainca.com/lima/sistema-hidraulico-amunas/

This in turn ensures an increasing relative (and specific) humidity and additional cloud formation over land in a regional drought season.

After an average of ~8.5 days in the atmosphere it will return – even with a relatively high probability – as precipitation over another land area. There will be a multiplier effect that increase together with soil moisture and evaporation rate (wet regions become wetter).

As a result, the water cycle over the land areas is intensified by ~ 1-1,5% and thus the increasing size of the annual mean cloud cover over land areas leads to a higher albedo & CRE, which I estimate to be at least a cooling RF of ~ -0.2W/m² / year.
A really cooling, additional radiative forcing, which, in my opinion, can more than compensate for the current annual radiative forcing caused by CO² .

A holistic, functioning climate protection strategy,(stopping SLR AND global temperature rise & adaptation to droughts and floods) which works alternatively and independently of the reduction in CO² emissions, which only promises to stop the temperatures rise perhaps after ~ 2070 (if we as humanity can reduce emissions immediately – which I personally do not believe)

In the latest IPCC report / WG1 Chapter 7.4.2.4.3, the positive feedback of the cloud cover on an atmosphere warmer by 1 ° C is given with +0.42W m-2 ° C-1.

We are slowly but steadily losing not only areas of ice and snow albedo, but also the clouds albedo due to decreasing global mean cloud cover and higher lapse rate.
The cooling CRE with ~-19W m-2 (chapter 7.2.1. in the same report) should decrease accordingly.

The slower warming of the oceans means that there has not been enough moisture evaporated into – and then held in – the air above the oceans to keep pace with the rising temperatures over land. This means that the air is not as saturated as it was and – as the chart below shows – relative humidity has decreased, desertification is spreading rapidly mainly caused by human activities.
Dryness is a temperature driver and cloud killer.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Global-time-series-of-annual-average-relative-humidity-for-the-land-ocean-and-global-average-relative-to-1981-2010.jpg

That is why I (as an artist - not a climate scientist) think it's a good idea to create additional “artificial” clouds by additional artificial irrigation retained by river discharge from the superfluous water of the oceans.

---

MAR: but the reported 10% increase in evaporation rate 2003-19 over land equates to some 7,000km^3/y while the reported 3% increase in rainfall equates to 3,300km^3/y and the decrease in direct discharge from land to ocean a further 3,000km^3/y.

This suggests your grand scheme wouldn't make a ha'p'orth of difference. Evaporation over land is shown to have increased five-time the amount you propose yet AGW and SLR continued apace.

coolmaster: ???

360.57M km² ocean area * 3.7mm SLR = 1334.1km³ water = 8.93mm above the land area.

149.43M km² land area * 2.3L / m² increasing evaporation per year = 343.689km³ water.

* 1L / m² increasing precipitation per year = 149.43km³
* -1.01L decreasing runoff through the rivers per year = -150.92km³
* -0.75L decreasing groundwater level per year = -112.07km³

Your calculator probably has a built-in joker.
And if you are holding a PhD, you should hand it over (to me ?) as soon as possible.

It's albedo

Bob Loblaw at 02:35 AM on 15 August, 2021

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

Blaisct:

You continue to make poor choices in the numbers and calculations that you are doing. Going over your latest effort by number:

1. You continue to select an albedo for urban areas that is too low for anthropogenic surfaces, and you have failed to cite a reference for your value. In my comment # 64 on the Urban Heat Island discussion, I gave a reference to several artificial surface materials, all with albedo values that exceed the the value you have chosen. "Urban" areas are a mix of things like grass, roads, houses, etc. You would need to calculate how much of the surface is covered by each type, and work out an albedo for an "urban" area that way. If that is what you have done, you need to show your detailed calcuations on how you arrive at the 0.08 value.

2. There are no assumptions in the 0.31 albedo value for the earth as a whole. That is based on satellite measurements, and includes reflection from the surface, clouds, clear atmosphere, etc. Note that the only part of the surface reflection that reaches space is the part that makes it back out through the atmosphere and cloud cover. To calculate this in a model (which is what you are trying to do), you need to account for spatial variations (and daily/seasonal cycles) of solar input, surface albedo, cloud cover, and atmospheric conditions.

3 to 14. You continue to make unreasonable assumptions about the area that is undergoing a surface change, and how it relates to population. There is no reason to think that they are related through a simple proportion.

15 to 20. You continue to make errors in converting solar output (1367 W/m^2 measured perpendicular to the sun's rays) to an areal average over the surface of the earth. As MIchael Sweet points out, there is a factor of 4 involved, not a factor of 2. I also mentioned this in my earlier comment. If you do not understand why this is the case, then it is difficult to see how you can expect to do any useful calculations. You also need to consider seasonal variations in solar radiation distribution and seasonal albedo.

21. Converting radiative forcing to global temperature change involves looking at the top-of-atmosphere changes (what is seen from space), not surface changes alone. To properly incorporate surface changes into a calcuation, you need to use a much more complicated model of climate response to surface albedo changes.

22. You still get a wildy incorrect answer, due to bad data input and bad assumptions.

I have not bothered to follow the link to the Mark Healey document you mention. If that is the source you are getting your incorrect ideas from, then it is not worth bothering. The result you quote (that albedo changes can account for all the obsvered temperature rise) is completely inconsistent with the science.

Over at RealClimate, they have recent posted several articles on the just-released IPCC reports. One of those summarizes 6 key results. In that post, they provide the following graph from the IPCC report, which shows the estimated temperature response due to a variety of factors over the last 100 to 150 years. "Land use reflection and irrigation" is the second-last bar on the right. Note that the calculated effect is minor cooling, not warming.

RealClimate IPCC radiative forcings

Michael Sweet's suggestion to read the IPCC reports is a good one. I often suggest that people start with the first 1990 report, as this covers a lot of the basic climate science principles in a manner that is easier to understand for the non-expert. In the 1990 report, they mention the Sagan et al paper I linked to in my first comment. Google Scholar can probably help you fnd a free copy.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/206/4425/1363.abstract

Key takeaways from the new IPCC report

Bob Loblaw at 07:04 AM on 12 August, 2021

ilfark2:

I'm not quite sure what you are asking.

In the graphs above, SSP1-1.9 represents a case where we stop emitting CO2 and get net emissions to zero by 2050. In such a scenario, atmospheric CO2 stops rising - and then over long periods (centuries) will gradually decline. We will still be faced with a world where atmospheric CO2 is above current values.The earth will not quickly absorb the CO2 that is in the atmosphere.

Temperatures will continue to rise for a while, but wll eventually stabilize - at a temperature warmer than today.

There will not be a return to pre-industrial climates (CO2 levels or temperatures) through natural processes at any time in our lifetimes (or for generations to come).

RealClimate has a graph from the SPM, originating from a 2018 IPCC report that shows the temperature ranges expected from scenarios of CO2 levels similar to the graph presented above. It bsaically shows that if we stop adding CO2, we stop warming (with delays), but it's not related to a reduction in atmospheric CO2.

IPCC temperature ranges

Models are unreliable

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

sailingfree @1294,

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

He says he does.

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

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

Christy's misleading graphs

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

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

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

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

Chrisiy's latest nonsense.

Models are unreliable

sailingfree at 14:16 PM on 8 August, 2021

MA,Thanks.

I'll look at RealClimate. So did Christy use model predictions for the "bulk atmosphere?

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 13:03 PM on 8 August, 2021

sailingfree @1292,

The GCM models cover the entire climate system so it is up to the analyst creating a graph what part of the modelled climate system he takes data from for his comparison.

The problem with Christy is that he is rather too enthusiastic about demonstrating his denialism and so makes a very poor job of his comparisons.

RealClimate provide comparisons of model output with temperature data including global & tropical TMT data and have also provided a critique of Christy's efforts.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31

Eclectic at 16:55 PM on 3 August, 2021

One Planet,

it really doesn't matter much, which baseline Spencer uses - since his main monthly publication site seems to be on the WattsUpWithThat* blog.

*Where "The Error-Prone Viscount" ( as science journalist Potholer54 terms Lord Monckton) has already posted another global temperature has paused for 6 years now . . . as per usual.

It is a pity - and absolutely quite inexplicable - that WUWT doesn't ever publish the Spencer UAH TLT graph overlaid with the RSS graph of TLT temperatures.

The WUWTers are frequently complaining how climate scientists mislead the ordinary public by giving temperatures as temperature anomaly figures instead of expressing a real Celsius temperature. Perhaps we can persuade Dr Spencer to chart his UAH TLT temperature figures in simple Celsius figures - where the TLT baseline is about Minus 26C . (If I have correctly understood commentary at RealClimate blog.)

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

Bob Loblaw at 22:18 PM on 21 July, 2021

Although his blog post does not refer directly to Clifford Mass, Tamino (who has participated in the discussion of this at RealClimate, has posted an analysis of the heat wave:

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/northwest-heat-wave/

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 21:00 PM on 6 July, 2021

Bob Loblaw @1289,

The paper that fuelled the 2011 Scientific American item linked @1288 is presumably Carter et al (2005) 'Our calibrated model has poor predictive value: An example from the petroleum industry' [ABSTRACT] which may provide the argument for "6 or 7 in interdependant variables" preventing model calibration although likely this is no more than a different version of the famous Fermi quote:-

“I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

However, this Fermi quote concerns "arbitrary parameters" and what Carter had in mind when he says "As far as I can tell, you'd have exactly the same situation with any model that has to be calibrated," isn't defined. But this 2011 Scientific American quote of Carter (I don't see an earlier statement of it) has occasionally been used by denialists to suggest the same calibration situation affects climate models. Of course GCMs do have a big challenge with calibration but I don't think it is down to the number of independent variables. There are many physical measures that can be used to callibrate the processes within GCMs, which is probably why they can (collectively) demonstrate useful predictive qualities. (The graphic is from this 2021 RealClimate post.)

RealClimate GCM performance 2020

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

Philippe Chantreau at 02:58 AM on 12 June, 2021

Nick Palmer,

I can not agree that your characterization of CMIP6 as running "too hot" accurately reflects the performance of the models involved in the exercise. Some of the models have a higher ECS than any found in CMIP5 and thus pulled up the average ECS for the ensemble. They may be wrong, and the Zelinka paper suggests a possible reason, but that is no reason to discount the rest of them, and not even a reason to consider their high ECS as impossible. Everyone would love to see a low ECS materialize, especially so-called skeptics, but AFAIK nobody has shown that any ECS significantly lower than the most common 3degC estimate has a higher probability of being real than one that is much higher. The high ECS models tend to perform lower at hindcast, but that also says only so much.

I did not find at Real Climate anything that would remotely confirm the blunt language you used, which is awefully similar to the types you condemn. When inputting CMIP6 in the RC search box, I found these posts:

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/11/sensitive-but-unclassified/

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/06/sensitive-but-unclassified-part-ii/

Both are good reads for anyone truly interested in understanding what goes on in the CMIP6 exercise. Zeke Hausfather has a great take on the CMIP6 issue, which I suspect was posted before publication of the Zelinka paper:

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/cold-water-hot-models

Forgive me if I misinterpreted, but the overall tone of your remarks on models seem to suggest that their performance has been poor, in general, and that they can't be trusted. This couldn't be further from the truth, as shown by Gavin Schmidt in the latest update at RC on the subject:

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/update-day-2021/

I don't really know what the Oreskes and others' message is, as I don't read much from advocacy groups. It seems you have a beef with the idea that accusing Exxon, among others, of wrongdoing back in the pre-1990 times is misleading. That may be so. However, that would leave one wondering why they continued to support the bullshit factories churning out propaganda favorable to their short-term financial interests in the following 30 years, as uncertainty dwindled away.

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

Philippe Chantreau at 04:17 AM on 10 June, 2021

Nick,

You just reiterated the points you made earlier.

Uncertainties have not been represented inadequately in the IPCC reports. Cloud feedbacks have always been at the top of the uncertainty ladder.

You are sliding toward the very behavior you condemn by saying the CMIP5 models run "too hot." In reality they run slightly warmer than observations, and slightly is even generous. There is plenty of good posts on that RealClimate and even here showing how well within models' expectations the observations have been. The cloud feedback underestimation has not prevented actual temps of increasing beyond .15 degC/decade. Everything considered, the models have performed remarkably well, even the old ones. Describing it as "too hot" does exactly the same as what all the sides you accuse of taking liberties with the facts do.

I'll add that over-emphasizing uncertainty is Judith Curry's preferred method of manipulation and it is every bit as bad than anything done by so-called alarmists. It is a free pass for do nothing or slowly do a little, neither of which are adequate.

I can understand the pressures and imperatives that a business like Exxon has to reconcile. The state of their knowledge, and the remarkably reasonable tone in most of the old documents (see the wayback machine link) are so far removed from the propaganda they pushed that your excuse falls short. Why such an immense disconnect? Sure there was significant uncertainty in 1979. Less so in 1989. Much less in 1999. All the uncertainty that could justify not seriously starting a transition was gone in 2009. Exxon kept on pushing the same narrative, and still does, through the same actors.

I do not disagree that, if one wants to understand the science, the message coming from activist organizations is often not helpful. I do not disagree that some have a wholefully unrealistic perception of the difficulty of a full energy transition. The energy transition we are faced with is a major undertaking. Both the magnitude and urgency of it have been made far worse by the decades of inaction caused by the fossil fuel backed opinion campaigns.

As for myself, I strive to be reality-based and firmly believe that no option should be off the table, except those whose range of consequences can not be well assessed )atmsopheric geo-engineering comes to mind). I am not opposed, in principle, to nuclear. I believe that existing dams that can produce electricity and allow to store water should be kept. I think that enhanced geothermal deserves more attention. I also know for sure that a world in which the pursuit of more profit at any cost all the time is the main driver is a world doomed to fail.

A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’

nigelj at 08:16 AM on 6 June, 2021

Eclectic @15

"I myself do spend time "there" because (A) I am entertained & intrigued by the range of psychopathologies to be found in the comments columns, and (B) it allows me to construct & internally rehearse counter-arguments to the rubbish currently fashionable ....etc..."

I totally understand. Nothing wrong with that. To be clear I'm equally intrigued by such psychopathologies and their seemingly endless varieties , having done a couple of psychology papers at Univerity many moons ago, but I get enough of them popping up here and over at realclimate.org and in our local media.

Talking about the denialists hypocrsisy that JH mentions. Another feature of scientific cranks in their shameless hypocrisy. They seem completely unable to see it in themselves. I see some hypocrisy in myself sometimes, painful though it is to admit.

Is WUWT a good or bad thing? They cook up all this nonsense and feed off and strengthen each other, and you can bet they spread it elsewhere as well. Hard to see it as a good thing.

Of course I would be worried if there was no climate scepticism, but when the scepticim descends into cherrypicking and stubborness its no longer scepticism. As we both know.

The thing is we have free societies with freedom of speech thankfully (with a few justified commonsense restrictions) so you will get crazy comments and websites like WUWT. Theres probably no alternative but to rebut them while trying hard not to give these guys too much oxygen. The climate science community appears to have generally taken the view better to ignore the denialist crazies (with the exception of a few websites like this and people like MM) and that may have been a mistake in my view. I know facts wont convince the angry politically motivated hard core of denialists, but there are a lot of other people in this world watching.

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

MA Rodger at 21:49 PM on 25 May, 2021

Eclectic @3,

The promotion of Koonin to premier-league climate-change dnier does give the opportunity to demolish another of these folk. He certainly gets a bit of a kicking here and here.

So what is his message?

This New York Post OP from Koonin appears to be saying that, while the science is sound, the problem is with the interpretation of the science. Yet while the exemplars he gives are probably flat wrong, they are not central to the AGW science so quite irrelevant in the full analysis. The only other thing he presents in this OP about his grand message is:-

"Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate. The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it."

This he says he learned at the feet of Lindzen, Curry & Christie during the APS RedTeam-BkueTeam exercise Koonin chaired in 2013, an exercise that contains nothing of merit that I can see.

And as for climate models making useful predictions, they've done a pretty good job up to now.

So whay actually is Koonin bleeting about? Waht is his message? It would be good to see the actual message because so far all I hear is a blowhard!!

What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?

Philippe Chantreau at 04:50 AM on 20 May, 2021

The trend over the length of the record is statistically significant. 10 years may not be enough data to extract significance but that is irrelevant, since there are much more data than is needed to assess a real trend. Such analysis will likely show that, not only there is a significant warming trend, but that it also is accelerating.

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/11/08/global-temperature-update-6/

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

Excerpt from the NOAA page: "the combined land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit ( 0.08 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1880; however, the average rate of increase since 1981 (0.18°C / 0.32°F) has been more than twice that rate."

Considering the observed increase in decadal trends, and considering the physical reasons for the trend to continue, Ado's remark doesn't have much value.

Some of SkS contributors made a bet with the No Tricks Zone deniers and of course, they won, because the trend is unmistakeable. I have no doubt the same bet will yield the same result for the next decade. It will most likely be very close to 0.2 degC/decade, Ado's uncertainty notwithstanding.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/02/dont-climate-bet-against-the-house/#more-23421

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #17

scaddenp at 07:31 AM on 29 April, 2021

I agree with Bob - Dale H appears to be confusing physical models with statistical models. Flying a drone on Mars shows you what physics modelling can achieve.

A good introduction to nature of climate model is here. There is also an old discussion here which explores some of the differences between climate models and other kinds of numerical models.

Finally, (putting on a moderators hat), discussions about reliability of climate models should be placed here.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #11

Jonas at 09:11 AM on 21 March, 2021

FYI: I clicked on "The Rise and Fall of the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” and noted that the link is bad (skepticalscience prefixed).

After correcting the link manually, I was shocked to see that realclimate is offline (or hacked or whatever), but my correction was bad: they are on http only, not https. Phew ..

CO2 measurements are suspect

Bob Loblaw at 00:34 AM on 18 March, 2021

Beck's work seems to come up a lot. There are several other (reliable) places you can read about it on the web:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/beck-to-the-future/

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/10/amateur-night.html

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/03/beckies-as-tonstant-weader-knows-eli.html

...and an old comment here at SkS by Tom Curtis:

https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=55&p=2#75463

Also note that Beck's paper was published in Energy and Environment. Not the highest quality journal.

https://www.desmogblog.com/energy-and-environment

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021

Rob Honeycutt at 14:45 PM on 14 March, 2021

SunBurst @20... "...does any of your 'New Research' turned up a plausible explanation as to how we know that human carbon dioxide emissions are the cause?"

That doesn't really require new research since the old research has demonstrated that more than sufficiently. Just look at the change in radiative forcing for CO2 over the past century.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021

nigelj at 13:21 PM on 13 March, 2021

Starburst @6

"I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming. As I stated in my first posting, global warming means warming over the entire global, which certainly isn't happening."

My understanding is most regions of the world show warming. The few regions showing cooling or no change do not have enough cooling to offset the warming in the regions with warming. This means the world as a whole is warming. This is commonsense. Scientists measure all these things and take it all into account because they are basic things. The heat energy content of the entire planetary system has also increased in the last several decades. Again scientists look into these things because its what they are trained to do.

If you still dont understand or agree, please provide a list of all countries in the world and its oceans as well, and their warming rates and cooling rates (if there are any) over the last 50 years and we shall see which dominates, - warming or cooling. Until you do this in detail, with links to all your data, and making sure you are comparing like with like, you have got nothing worth me considering.

"For people in these regions, global warming is not the problem and fossil fuels are necessary for making a living, or even just surviving. These people simply cannot afford governments imposing additional taxes (or "cap and trade") for their use of fossil fuels. "

I sympathise with the challenges people face, but these comments about what they can afford are just empty assertions. On what basis with what facts? What expert study says this? Even if they had difficulties affording this you can have carbon tax and dividend schemes which are financially gentle on people (google it).

Many expert reports like the Stern Report find we can mitigate the worst of climate change at a cost of approximately 2% of global gdp per year. This is very roughly equivalent to 2% of peoples incomes. I suggest all but very poor people can afford that, and poor people can be given finanical assistance by governmnet so they can cope or could be excluded from carbon tax schemes. At least some countries do this sort of thing. I dont have time to list them all but this sort of thing is eassily googled.

"Finally, with the failed prediction track records of Al Gore and other pro-AGW politicians,..."

You provide no evidence of these alleged failed predictions. But its not relevant anyway , because the IPCC reports about climate change are not based on anything Al Gore said. The IPCC and climate scientists make their predictions based on science, and so far warming trends are very close to predictions made decades ago. Refer:

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/01/update-day-2020/

Solar Cycle Model fails to predict the recent warming

Philippe Chantreau at 00:31 AM on 21 February, 2021

Thank you HPJ for this update. It is interesting that cycle 24 was one of the weakest in recent history yet we saw global temperatures in 2020 tied with the all time record set in the large El-Nino year of 2016.

I think people in Norway ought to challenge Solheim and Humlum to a bet like the Real Climate folks discussed recently.

A Climate Bet Impossible to Lose

Bob Loblaw at 07:25 AM on 5 February, 2021

RealClimate has a new post up about a number of climate bets of this sort. They have a graph very similar to Rob's first graph above, and link back to this post as one of the bets.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/02/dont-climate-bet-against-the-house/

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3, 2021

michael sweet at 01:30 AM on 4 February, 2021

Thank you for all the work you put in to orgnaize these reference lists. I am hoping that Gavin at RealClimate will comment on this paper.

Case study - identifying myths and fallacies in Climate Science (Mis)Information Briefs

nigelj at 06:24 AM on 30 January, 2021

BaerbelW @3, yes I have read it thanks. I have posted a link to it in a response to someone over on the Realclimate website.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3, 2021

michael sweet at 23:05 PM on 26 January, 2021

Carbon brief referred to an article in Science Advances:
In the abstract they claim that they have developed a new method of assessing climate models and their results. They claim:

“Our results suggest that using an unconstrained multimodel ensemble is no longer the best choice for global mean temperature projections and that the lower end of previous estimates of 21st century warming can now be excluded.”

If this claim is correct that seems to eliminate the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5C. What do people here think about this article? Does anyone have a link to comments from scientists on this topic?

I also posted this note on the RealClimate unforced variations thread. That thread has degenerated into mostly commentors insulting each other so I do not think I will get a reasoned reply there. It makes me appreciate more and more the job the moderators at SkS do to keep the conversation under control. Thank you to all the moderators who keep the conversation on topic.

There's no empirical evidence

Tom Dayton at 10:24 AM on 26 January, 2021

gzzm2013, here are explanations of greenhouse effect causality:

Benestad at RealClimate

Augmentation of that by And Then There's Physics...

by Chris Colese

Tamino

Earth versus Mars

Falsifiability

Erskine, Demystifying Global Warming

Closer to level of a six year old

Free online book, downloadable, by Schmittner

Models are unreliable

Tom Dayton at 13:24 PM on 23 January, 2021

RealClimate has posted its 2021 comparison of models to observations.

Models are unreliable

Tom Dayton at 12:45 PM on 23 January, 2021

gzzm2013:

2. Numerous groups of researchers all over the world create and run climate models, which intentionally differ from each other to provide consilience in the evidence. Scroll down in this page in the RealClimate site for a list of links to just a few of the model's web sites, where you will find the information you asked for. The most prominent, though certainly not only, organized effort to create and compare multiple models is CMIP--Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. The most recently completed version of that multimodel project is CMIP5. CMIP6 is in progress. There is a summary of the degree of independence of the most prominent models, in this RealClimate post. More fundamentally, you need to learn better what "model" means in this context; Steve Easterbrook's post is a good summary. Getting at the root of your questions, watch Steve's TEDx talk.

Analysis: When might the world exceed 1.5C and 2C of global warming?

nigelj at 07:32 AM on 19 December, 2020

Just some related information. Hadcrut have apparently changed how they evaluate things and their temperature record now looks much more like NASA GISS:

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/12/an-ever-more-perfect-dataset/

Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes Video - 2020 edition

Bob Loblaw at 10:37 AM on 6 December, 2020

Wilt:

Regarding your first point, keep i mind that large bodies of water in the Northern hemisphere, such as Hudson's Bay and the Great Lakes, already go through seasonal cycles from ice-free to substatially ice-covered. Even an "ice-free" Arctic Ocean will have a lot of ice for a lot of the year.

https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/#historical

Yes, penetration of solar radiation into open water is a primary mechanism of feedback for additional warming. Maximum solar radaiation is on June 21, though - not in September when the ice minimum will (most likely continue to) occur.

As for point #2: RealCimate has freqently dicussed the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and it's potential climate effects. A search there for AMOC turns up several posts over the years. The most recent one is:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/09/new-studies-confirm-weakening-of-the-gulf-stream-circulation-amoc/

Climate's changed before

michael sweet at 05:24 AM on 29 October, 2020

Daniel baily:

From your second link:

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

Ice free conditions means sea level 60-65 meters higher than current!! Then the question is how long will it take for all that ice to melt. At a foot a decade it would not be too long before many cities were in troube. I live in Florida (at over 40 feet elevation) and parts of South Florida are already hurting from only 1 foot of sea level rise.

RrealClimate has several good discussions of potential sea level rise. 2013 article 2016 article In general, the IPCC estimates are at the low end of what expert opinion is. This is because of the method the IPCC uses to come to a consensus. The IPCC states what a consensus of experts feel is the lowest range of sea level rise. The average of experts is then higher than the IPCC reports. There is a lot of discussion on melting rates. It seems to me that knowledge of probable melting rates is still being developed.

Climate's changed before

Daniel Bailey at 09:44 AM on 18 October, 2020

Hal Kantrud,

Atmospheric CO2 levels reached about 265 ppm about 11,000 years ago, near the end of the last glacial phase and the start of the current Holocene interglacial. From then until just before preindustrial (1850), CO2 levels slowly increased to about 280 ppm, an increase of 15 or so ppm.

The last 10,000 years

(bigger image here)

What this doesn't take into account is that human activities starting around the development of agriculture until preindustrial times added about 25 ppm to those atmospheric levels. This implies that, without the human impacts, atmospheric CO2 levels would have naturally dropped by some 10 ppm over the same interval.

In more depth, human activities have been modifying the climate system for far longer than most people realize. Evidence exists that humans have been doing so since the development of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, contributing as much as 25 ppm to existing, preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels. During periods of previous pandemics, reforestation of formerly cultivated lands have drawn down atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enough to measurably lower global temperatures.

"Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors - a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity.

This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO₂ is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation. It demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began."

Link1
Link2
Link3
Link4
Link5
Link6
Link7
Link8
Link9
Link10
Link11
Link12

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

nigelj at 15:43 PM on 9 October, 2020

Daniel Bailey, I've actually reposted your comment over at Realclimate, because it backs up some points I have just made, and it might be of general interest. So many thanks.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35

John Hartz at 00:36 AM on 6 September, 2020

I inadvertently deleted the following post:

gseattle at 15:36 PM on 5 September 2020

What is the human percent CO2 percentage? As shown (and ignored), sources seem to range 1% to 5%. I went with the apparent maximum estimate, 5%. This says "The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees human CO2 is only 5 percent and natural CO2 is 95 percent of the CO2 inflow into the atmosphere". But the source?

It is invalid to deny science and claim CO2's jump from 1880 can only be human. The reason for this is because of the massive effect of the ocean sink together with ocean slowing over the last 200 years now being studied. The ocean is said to store 50 to 60 times the CO2 of air but its capacity has diminished. Shown above, the air CO2 rise from 1880 is partly from nature, no other way to explain it.

"The oceans as a whole have a large capacity for absorbing CO2, but ocean mixing is too slow to have spread this additional CO2 deep into the ocean. As a result, ocean waters deeper than 500 meters (about 1,600 feet) have a large but still unrealized absorption capacity, said Scripps geochemist Ralph Keeling".

IPCC: "oceans [...] contain roughly 50 times the quantity of carbon currently contained in the atmosphere". In the past, it was considered 60 times (see Arhrenius, Callendar and/or Revelle).

This has the highest estimate I could find for total anthropogenic CO2 in gigatons since the industrial revolution. The number should be 1374 rather than 1370.

Doha infographic gets the numbers wrong, underestimates human emissions

If there's a higher number somewhere, a link to a specific page containing it would be helpful. I always like to use numbers that will favor the side of anyone who might want to argue the point when reasonable, and web pages they can like, when possible. Except in the case of 200 species per day, which is 100% unscientific.

This says 1 ppm CO2 per 7.77 Gt for the calculation. (James Hansen)

NASA: 291 ppm in 1880

NOAA: 414 latest (NOAA's measurement while NASA's 2020 value is lower and just a model). Another source might be https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2, daily, etc.

Unfortunately couldn't find the string "Most Used Climate Myths" anywhere on this domain, perhaps use a direct link instead. MA found 1,617Gt (CO2) in Global Carbon Project, there's an xls file on the page at that link, seven tabs, perhaps he calculated it, didn't say, a description/walkthrough of the intended process may help. Reading further at realclimate on that large page, author stefan vilifies 5%, implying he knows, and then places it at 110% "the best estimate for the anthropogenic share of global warming since 1950 is 110 percent" and the source offered is another page written by stefan which cites his source as a Tweet by Gavin Schmidt which points to a 2015 Bloomberg article which does not provide any value for human vs natural CO2 at all. Typical confusion. Curiously, no one corrected .58 above, it should be 1.67/yr (still less than Greta's up to 73,000/yr). Numerous points made by gseattle have gone unopposed, they have to logically be regarded as likely solid logic and scientifically sound unless eventually opposed using science (rather than scorn). The message everywhere from climate alarmists when presented with facts seems to be, you must believe or we're going to get mad and use ridicule/scorn. Information being treated like blasphemy, that's anti-scientific.

No, really, be kind to opponents on this thought-battlefield and let your weapons be scientific facts, actual content with references in a calm way. Ad hominem is not science. Attempts to devalidate an opponent by labeling one as bad or wrong or not understanding anything isn't science nor educational to any who might read this in generations to come, nor correct. The chances are very good if any of us knew each other personally we could get along just fine and like and respect each other even with differences of opinion, all of my friends are wrong about everything and I still love them (a bit of levity there, in case it isn't obvious that was nervous humor, pending copyright).

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 04:54 AM on 5 September, 2020

Daniel Bailey:

On the forced variations thread at RealClimate a nuclear argument like the last 30 posts above has been going on for several years. Unsupported claims and the opinion of people informed only by their reading on the internet are constantly repeated month after month.

I do not like to have these post at SkS go unanswered. At some point we need to say that everyone has had their say and given their references and leave it alone or the thread will go on forever. If references were required and repetition not allowed the argument would soon end since there are few papers to support the nuclear argument.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35

MA Rodger at 19:27 PM on 4 September, 2020

Gseattle @8 & @10,

You venture into consideration of atmospheric CO2, a subject area in which you evidently have very little understanding. I would add that levels of atmospheric CO2 are not directly a factor in the rate of species extinctions.

The pre-industrial atmosphere contained some 280ppm CO2. The increase from 280ppm to today's 412ppm (this a current annual global average) is almost wholly directly due to human emissions. The rate of increase in CO2 has been accelerating through the industrial period and is now running at +2.5ppm/year.

I don't recognise the numbers you present for (what I assume you consider to be) accumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions in that @10 you talk of 1,370Gt and this being in some way equivalent to 177ppm.

The Global Carbon Project assess anthropogenic emissions from Fossil Fuels since 1750 as 441Gt(C) = 1,617Gt(CO2). If such a quantity of CO2 were added to the atmosphere it would increase atmospheric concentrations by 207ppm.

Additional to FF emissions are the anthropogenic emissions from Land Use Change. The Global Carbon Project assess these LUC emissions back to 1850 and thus arrive at a total for anthropogenic CO2 emissions (FF + LUC) of 645Gt(C) = 2,361Gt(CO2), a quantity which would increase atmospheric levels 303ppm if added to the atmosphere.

Global Carbon Project assess the level of CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from human activities through the industrial period amounts to 277Gt(C) = 1,106Gt(CO2) and which would (and indeed does) increase CO2 levels by 130ppm. The ocean & land sinks that have drawn CO2 from the atmosphere through the industrial period are show to account for the difference between the all-emissions 303ppm & the emissions-plus-sinks 130ppm.

None of this atmospheric CO2 business is in any way controversial outside the febrile and ridiculous reasonings of climate chage deniers. As the RealClimate item you reference @8 proclaims:-

"The basic facts about the global increase of CO2 in our atmosphere are clear and established beyond reasonable doubt."

For reasons that cannot be explained by me, you chose to ignore this message and instead choose to quote from a piece of climate denial being debunked by the RealClimate item.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35

gseattle at 12:01 PM on 3 September, 2020

Not yet bc I don't know how to contact Greta, would if I could, she's on facebook but I dropped fb. If she started seeing people in numbers saying hey, where's the science on that, it seems to me the only likely way she would take note of it.

Tricky to talk about, one risks being seen as not caring about the environment, and it's all so complex, but the only way we can solve anything is being willing to open our eyes to the real problem, the extra 150 new people on earth every minute [1]. Currently the message is: Oh no, our CO2 is destroying this world. But our CO2 portion of the increase is only 1/20th of 1 part per million per year. [2]

For anyone interested, today I ran into this free paper providing an overview of the various extinction models: Emergence of a sixth mass extinction? John C Briggs 2017 Oxford Still trying to wrap my head around the methods and find an actual complete formula.

[1] 150 new people on the planet every minute based on United Nations population numbers and projection for 2050.

[2] NASA: 1880 to 2020 CO2 increased from 291 ppm to 414 ppm = +123 ppm. 123 / 140 years = .88 ppm average per year. 95 percent come from natural sources. Therefore our CO2 is .88 ppm x .05 = only .04 ppm per year average. That's why NOAA pointed out the covid shutdown didn't make a dent in CO2 levels at Mauna Loa Observatory, because nature's portion is so vast.

So our part of the CO2 increase is only 4 hundredths of 1 part per million per year. And the temperature increase is only 0.0071 degrees C average per year over 140 years, based on total 1.0 C (NASA). And there is no known species extinct from those tiny changes underlying climate change, instead only 869 total since 1500 and all due to the crush of humanity, hunting, new farmland, pesticides etc (IUCN), or .58 species per year.

Everyone can agree .58/yr (actual) is less than 73,000/yr at 200 per day (imagined).

Thank you kindly for that BBC article Nigel, I wasn't aware of it. Says this for example, and might a key to what went so wildly wrong:

Hubbell's point is that if you increase a habitat by, say, five hectares, and your calculations show that you expect there to be five new species in those five hectares, it is wrong to assume that reversing the model, and shrinking your habitat, eliminates five species.

The full version of this has a formula and I don't understand it yet: Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss, Stephen P. Hubbell and Fangliang He, 2013, Nature

[links are all designated to open in a new tab or window]

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 07:25 AM on 1 September, 2020

Preston Urka at 202:

You say "[in my post 199] You just can't read the links and caveats can you?"

At post 199 I was responding to your post 198. Your post 198 has no links to read. I note that your post 202 also has no links to support your arguments. I cannot read links that are not provided.

Your post 202 consists primarily of your fantasy use of nuclear waste heat to power industry. I note that you concede that zero current nuclear reactors use their waste heat. Since you cite no peer reviewed papers, or even industry white papers, and you claim no education, training or experience in the design or running of nuclear plants, idle speculation about possible use of waste heat is sloganeering so the moderator has deleted it.

You additionally mention your fantasy that nuclear power could be used in shipping. Only one freighter has been built wiith a nuclear power plant. It is uneconomic to run since a reactor requires many more operators than a traditional ship. Military vessels do not care about the extreme cost. In addition, you would need approximately 50,000 reactors to power the world fleet of freighters. Imagine the disasters as 50,000 atomic powered ships sink, are abandoned or are overpowered by terrorists worldwide!

Your posts and arguments are identical to Engineer Poet at RealClimate. Why have you changed your handle?

Nuclear power is uneconomic. It currently costs more for operation and maintenance of a nuclear power plant with no mortgage than to build a new renewable energy plant with a mortgage. As MARodger points out, it takes 10-20 years to plan and build a nuclear plant versus 2-5 years to plan and build a renewable plant.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

nigelj at 08:01 AM on 7 August, 2020

Michael sweet @14

"You are not familiar with scientific discussion. In a scientific discussion I say "this paper supports my position". Then you say "this paper supports my position".

Please don't be ridiculous. Yes its good to quote papers when appropriate, but It's possible to have a scientific discussion without having to mention papers. It happens all the time all over the place and by highly qualified people. Realclimate.org a highly reputable leading edge climate website and they dont demand that people posting comments have to quote scientific papers. It would just shut down discussion. People dont always have the time and relevant papers might not exist.

That said, I post references to peer reviewed papers quite often, with respect to this websites rules, and because it is good to back up claims with a source, but its absurd to have to constantly quote scientific papers all the time. I notice you never demand it when people make claims about the benefits of renewables or expound on the dangers of climate change. You appear to apply double standards.

You have also utterly ignored what I said. Sometimes there are valid criticisms of a scientific issue and no relevant published research to quote in support.

"In this discussion I have provided a paper that supports my position, Abbott 2012. You say you do not like that paper and we should all agree with you. You have provided no reason why we should all agree with you."

I did not say that.

"You must support your claims with at least white papers from industry. "

I provided a white paper above at comment 12 being a lengthy criticism of Jacobsons work. I provided a published study on renewable energy. I provided entirely credible material on why nuclear projects are being built. So why do you go on misrepresenting me?

Regarding Abbot, there is no need to provide studies on the known scale of earths mineral resources, this is common knowledge easily googled. Do I need to provide studies that the moon goes around the earth?

"Your unsupported opinion as a person who claims no training or professional experience in the field"

Where do you get that from? I have never claimed that. I have said several times on this website I did physical geography at university, which covers the introductory basics of weather and climate. I also have a design degree in architecture and I may have mentioned that here, cant remember. I also did psychology and some basic maths and chemistry at university. Not that any of this makes me right or wrong about anything, but since you raised the issue I have to correct your error.

"Bringing in information that you pick up in unmoderated forums on the web also does not advance the discussion."

This is not a valid argument. Its illogical, and pretty much an ad hominem. Whether a forum is moderated or not clearly does not make information either right or wrong.

And you are wrong to claim Realclimate.org is not a moderated forum. It has a moderation policy, and comments get deleted, or sometimes thrown into the junk file.

"Clack 2016 does not rebut Jacobson 2018."

Whatever. Who cares. Maybe its because hes tired of arguing with Jacobson. Maybe he's got better things to do.

"If you cannot find published critism of someones work then you must look harder for support for your wild claims. "

Ridiculous statement.

"Since you have no training or experience in any power systems, and you refuse to read the published literature on the topic, why should I care what you think?"

I have read some of this material. I have told you that already. I'm trying to find the time to read more.

"If you want to speculate on these topics many non-scientific boards, like the unmoderated thread at RealClimate, exist."

All threads at RC are moderated as per previous comments. More lightly than here but they are still moderated.

"The moderators want to encourage discussion of nuclear power so they have allowed nuclear proponents to make many wild, unsupported claims. I respond to these claims. Since you make many unsupported, uninformed claims I respond so that casual readers do not think that your arguments have merit."

People make wild unsupported claims about renewables and other matters on this website. I never here you complain about that. You apply double standards.

"I linked the incorrect Jacobson paper on materials for renewable energy. It is actually Jacobson 2011. He shows that all materials for a renewable energy system exist. Please provide data to support your deliberately false claim that not enough materials exist for a renewable system."

I have never disputed this so why do you keep implying otherwise.? My point was whether they would last for a thousand years. As far as I can recall Jacobson never considered this. Its a discussion we should be having.

"Your point that renewable energy projects use more tons of concrete and steel than nuclear power plants was popular with nuclear supporters in 2005 (I remember when they first used this argument). Since Jacobson 2011 was published, all informed people know that it is a false argument. You show your lack of preparation when you cite an argument that is 10 years out of date."

I never said that. I said renewables look like they use a larger volume of all materials in total, so concrete, steel, copper, fibreglass etcetera combined.

"By contrast, Abbott 2012 described the lack of rare materials used in the constructions of nuclear plants (especially uranium and "unobtainium"). ..... All known uranium reserves will only produce 5 years of power for the world. "

I assume you mean land based reserves. Uranium is abundant in sea water, with billions of tons enough to power the world for many centuries assuming we can extract it. Table of quantities here. Uranium has been experimentally extracted from sea water here. Even if the costs are high they would inherently form a very small proportion of the costs of running a nuclear power plant. Abbot looks like it might be out of date in respect of this.

"Renewable systems use little of the rare elements,"

That is just a huge understatement, and ignores other materials in relatively limited supply like copper and aluminium ( bauxite reserves could all be gone in a century or two) required for generators and a vast network of new trasmission lines to enable power to be shared regionally.

I was not going to respond to you, but I dont like it when people missrepresent my position hence the response.

Moderator. I have a history here of quoting studies, more so than other people. Indisputably so. I will make the effort to quote more papers bearing in mind there are only so many hours in the day.

However I'm getting really tired of the way M Sweet repeatedly and blatantly 1) puts words in my mouth (hes done it to others as well) and 2) missrepresents my position and 3) misrepresents by background and 4) intellectually bullies people he doesnt agree with, and 5)falsely accuses me of making things up. And the way you let him get away with it.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 05:37 AM on 7 August, 2020

Nigelj,

Skeptical Science is a scientific site. Apparently you do not understand the method of scientific discussion. This is common with nuclear supporters. On the other nuclear thread at post 14 I described the scientific method of discussion to Barry:

"You are not familiar with scientific discussion. In a scientific discussion I say "this paper supports my position". Then you say "this paper supports my position". Then I provide more papers to support my position and show why it is more accurate. You provide papers to support your position. Others read the papers and decide who they think has the best argument.

You should read the entire post linked above.

You must support your claims with at least white papers from industry. Your unsupported opinion as a person who claims no training or professional experience in the field does not contribute much to the discussion. Bringing in information that you pick up in unmoderated forums on the web also does not advance the discussion.

You linked the Clack et al paper which actually is a peer reviewed criticism of Jacobson 2015. It is common in science for papers to be rebutted in this way. Clack disagreed with Jacobson on the use of hydro power, the most flexible renewable power. Jacobson responded with his 2018 paper (linked above) and answered all the questions that Clack raised. I have not seen any references to any criticism of Jacobson 2018 so I conclude that Clack felt that Jacobson et al 2018 answered his questions. Clack 2016 does not rebut Jacobson 2018.

If you cannot find published critism of someones work then you must look harder for support for your wild claims. Since you have no training or experience in any power systems, and you refuse to read the published literature on the topic, why should I care what you think? If you want to speculate on these topics many non-scientific boards, like the unmoderated thread at RealClimate, exist.

The moderators want to encourage discussion of nuclear power so they have allowed nuclear proponents to make many wild, unsupported claims. I respond to these claims. Since you make many unsupported, uninformed claims I respond so that casual readers do not think that your arguments have merit.

I linked the incorrect Jacobson paper on materials for renewable energy. It is actually Jacobson 2011. He shows that all materials for a renewable energy system exist. I believe this paper has never been challenged. Please provide data to support your deliberately false claim that not enough materials exist for a renewable system. If you cannot find data to support your wild claims stop posting here.

Your point that renewable energy projects use more tons of concrete and steel than nuclear power plants was popular with nuclear supporters in 2005 (I remember when they first used this argument). Since Jacobson 2011 was published, all informed people know that it is a false argument. You show your lack of preparation when you cite an argument that is 10 years out of date.

By contrast, Abbott 2012 described the lack of rare materials used in the constructions of nuclear plants (especially uranium and "unobtainium"). Renewable systems use little of the rare elements, unlike nuclear plants which depend on these rare materials. 100 million tons of concrete is a small amount compared to world production of 10 billion tons. All known uranium reserves will only produce 5 years of power for the world.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 03:24 AM on 6 August, 2020

Nigelj:

I note that you have provided no references, even to industry propaganda, to support your wild claims. I have directly cited at least 3 peer reviewed papers in this thread and in the past I have given you many more peer reviewed papers to read. I recognize that you claim you do not have enough time to read peer reviewed papers and prefer to read the unmoderated forum at RealClimate to get information.

Your claim that nuclear power will be comparable in price to renewables plus storage is completely false. You rely on unsupported industry propaganda for your nuclear estimates. Connelly et al and Jacobson et al 2018 show that renewables are at least a factor of three cheaper than nuclear power. I note the largest pumped hydro storage plants in the USA were all built to store excess nuclear power. You have not added in the necessity of storage for nuclear power in your wild claims.

Abbott showed that no more than 5% of All Power can be generated by nuclear. You have just made up your 20% claim. Abbott showed that a 100% nuclear system would use up all known uranium reserves in 5 years. That means for a 20% system the uranium would run out in 25 years, way before fossil fuels.

It is possible that in 5,000 years steel will run out and we will have to all go back to using stone. I doubt it. You are simply speculating without any support. Jacobson 2009 showed all materials exist for a renewable system. Since then renewable systems are built with less materials so even less materials would be used.

Moderators: it is very tiresonme to have to respond to Nigelj's false posts every time nuclear is mentioned. I understand that you want to promote a nuclear discussion but allowing repeated postings of completely unsupported falsehoods is sloganeering. Nigelj should be required to support his claims like everyone else.

Nuclear supporters commonly make the false claim that renewable energy cannot generate enough energy (or is too expensive, etc) and then claim that we have to use nuclear instead. This is a false argument. Even if renewables could not supply enough future energy that does not mean that nuclear would work.

Nuclear plants are being shut down worldwide because nuclear is not economic. Nuclear proponents have been saying that in 10 years they will have solved all nuclear's problems ever since I was born and I am an old man now. Jacobson 2009 shows that any money spent on nuclear increases carbon emissions since that means less money will be spent on cheaper wind and solar power that can be built much faster.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 03:10 AM on 5 August, 2020

Nigelj:

At post 3 you say: "For example, Nuclear power is expensive compared to wind and solar and gas, but probably cost competitive with wind and solar and mass storage, at current costs of mass storage."

Connelly et al 2016 (reviewed at SkS here) and the references in it show that the bigger the system the lower the storage cost. This means that an electricity only system requires relatively much more storage than a system that provides all electricity, heating, transportation and industry. That means a system that provides ALL POWER requires much less storage than an electricity only system. They show that a well designed All Power system might require zero storage. Obviously if we want to get to zero carbon dioxide emissions we require an All Power system. Electricity only systems, as nuclear supporters describe, are not helpful in reaching zero carbon emissions.

I wrote that summary specifically to address your complaints that storage for renewable energy would be too expensive. Nuclear supporters, like those on the RealClimate thread you frequent, do not discuss All Power systems because electricity only systems make renewable energy look more expensive. The OP has the same problem since it is written from a nuclear point of view.

I have shown your claims of expensive storage are false as described in the peer reviewed literature. If you want to claim expensive storage you need to find peer reviewed sources to support your repeated, false claims.

Your claims at post 3 " Nuclear power relies on a non renewable fuel, but several of the metals used to make wind and solar power plants will obviously not last for all eternity either" are also false. I have referred you repeatedly to Jacobson 2009 which shows that all the materials to build out renewable energy exist is adequate amounts, except for rare earth elements in the turbines. Since then the turbines have been redesigned so that they do not use excess rare earth elements. By contrast, Abbott 2012 shows that many rare elements in nuclear plants, including uranium, do not exist is sufficient amunts to build out more than 5% of All Power. The nuclear industry has not replied to Abbott which shows they agree with his assessment. In general, renewable plants use common materials which are not in short supply. By contrast, many exotic materials are used in nuclear plants to attempt to counter the extreme conditions of heat, corrosivity and radiation field found in nuclear plants.

If you want to contradict the accepted, consensus science you need to provide references to support your wild claims. Constantly repeating false claims does not make them true.

Nuclear supporters constantly repeat false claims about renewable energy. It does not make nuclear look better to falsely claim renewables have problems.

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

Eclectic at 00:30 AM on 30 July, 2020

Thank you, Nigelj. From time to time I do see your comments at Realclimate ( I am an irregular visitor to the site).

Yes, the comments sections at WUWT are much more for venting, than for actual discussion. WUWT puts out several new articles per day ~ and the comments after each article are mostly repetitious venting, a churning of scores-to-hundreds of posts by the usual suspects. Often with scant connection to the article itself. Yet there are subtle variations in the exhibited Motivated Reasoning . . . and this I find interesting (maybe my brain is already curdled or yoghurtified? ) And always, but always, there are immediate & childish attacks on anyone making a rational well-informed comment there (something which a few brave souls - e.g. Nick Stokes - do venture to make, occasionally.)

Facebook itself is a different kettle of fish, on my limited experience of it. I like to think that WUWT is perhaps useful in satisfying the anti-social aggressiveness of its denizens ~ so that they are less likely to go out and commit gun massacres . . . but really I'm not sure on that.

Facebook seems a mixture of good and bad, for society. Probably more bad than good ~ but its existence is now a "given" , and we must now join the dance and make the best of it we can.

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

nigelj at 18:17 PM on 29 July, 2020

Eclectic @38, yes it's certainly interesting observing them. Dont let it curdle your brain.

I suggest have a look over at realclimate.org at the latest article: "Somebody Read the comments." Its very relevant. The research paper is a long and somewhat tedious read, but it has this interesting snippet near the end:

"Substantially more double interacts were identified in the user comments of RealClimate than Watts Up With That. This finding suggests that there is more deliberation in user threads of RealClimate as users engage with more alternative viewpoints (Collins & Nerlich, 2015). In contrast, Watts Up With That functions more as an echo chamber, as users tend to agree with comments of previous users. We need to be cautious with comparing both data sets in terms of the deployed framing strategies, as the RealClimate data set included more double interacts. Yet the fact that users of Watts Up With That always deployed issue framing and were less inclined to use identity and process framing with negative denotations supports our argument: Watts Up With That functions more as an echo chamber in which users feel safe and perceive comments less as a threat to their cultural identities. Overall, these observations are consistent with literature on one hand showing that user comments offer potential for deliberation and mobilization around climate change (Collins & Nerlich, 2015; Cooper et al., 2012; Graham & Wright, 2015; Uldam & Askanius, 2007), and on the other pointing to concerns about echo chamber effects creating niches of denial and demonstrations of incivility (Collins & Nerlich, 2015; Walter et al., 2018)."

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30

MA Rodger at 19:44 PM on 27 July, 2020

nigelj @3,

And that RealClimate OP thread does contain this link accessing the full paper.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30

nigelj at 17:30 PM on 27 July, 2020

Some free details and opinions on the new climate sensitivity study here.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 07:53 AM on 11 July, 2020

Looking for something else I found this post at RealClimate about Shellenburger's OP-Ad (they describe Shellenburger's article as an advertisement for his book).

One scientist summarizes Shellenburger's OP-Ad as:

"Is this the problem, then? Half-truths, incoherent cases, sound-good arguments that in total don't add up to a coherent case against environmentalism except seemingly on 4-minute between-commercial segments on conservative talk radio but not in thought-out rational discourse?"

— David Appell (@davidappell)

Sounds to me like they don't agree with Shellenburger. The RealClimate post goes into great detail discussing Shellenburger's main points (I didn't read them all).

Climate sensitivity is low

scaddenp at 12:39 PM on 8 July, 2020

leehoe - do you understand the difference between Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (often just climate sensitivity) and Transient Climate sensitivity? The box on pg 1110 of the IPCC WG1 has some explanation.

Discussions around estimates of climate sensitivity from the instrument record here especially the Marvel et al paper. And also here for earlier work by Otto, Curry, Lewis

Models are unreliable

Tom Dayton at 08:04 AM on 5 July, 2020

Deplore_This: It is impossible for you, or anyone else, to evaluate that statement "without relying on someone else's opinion." Because science is a collaborative enterprise. Even, and 100% of, the scientists who create GCMs rely on other people's opinions--critically so. Certainly you can reduce your reliance on someone else's opinion, by learning about climate science. Computer simulated GCMs are only a tiny portion of that climate science. And trying to learn climate science by directly trying to learn computer simulated GCMs is an utterly doomed approach. Several people have given you multiple resources for learning enough climate science for you to start to be able to rely less on other people's opinions. You could stop rejecting those suggestions out of hand.

With regard to the particular claim you mentioned, you could start with the "How sensitive is our climate?" post here on SkS. Read the Basic tabbed pane first, then the Intermediate, then the Advanced. To dig in a bit more, go to RealClimate and type "sensitivity" into the Search box at the top right, then peruse the resulting posts. If you want to jump to cutting edge research on that topic, see the recent RealClimate post about the CMIP6 models.

Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong

michael sweet at 20:45 PM on 2 July, 2020

Nylo@53:

Skeptical Science is staffed completely by volunteers. It turns out that few people can find the time to update old posts' graphs to reflect new data. That is life.

If you want to find out what the updated graph would look like you might go to the Real Climate Climate model comparison page, which is updated yearly. Their up to date graph looks like this:

Data model comparison

Measuring carefully with my eyecrometer I findl that the data from 2017-2019 makes the model look better. If the writers were attempting to cherry pick their data they did a poor job and left off data that they should have included.

It looks like 2020 is going to be a very hot year. Perhaps when RealClimate updates their graph next January you can come back here and show us what the new graph looks like.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25

nigelj at 10:28 AM on 28 June, 2020

Slarty Bartfast@30

Slarty says "The only mistakes I made were these... " (he lists two mistakes and tries to make excuses for them.)

But hes made plenty of other mistakes. Here are just a couple of others:

Slarty @11, "By the way, thanks for pointing out the error in the thermal expansion coefficient. I used the wrong one by mistake"

Slarty @12 "But this doesn't change my overall point, that sea level rise is miniscule and unmeasurable" This is clearly an error, no matter what way you look at it, as pointed out several times eg me @14.

Slarty @12 "What I did say about the Arctic is that we don't know what the temperature trend is because there are no long term weather stations within 1000 km of the North Pole, and there never have been."... "You need 50 years to establish a climate trend"

I pointed out @16 we have at least 60 years of data over the open arctic. And I would add saying you need 50 years of climate data is only Slartys opinion. Every source I've read says 30 years is sufficient, for example the experts on realclimate.org.

Slartys website blog claimed that climate change is caused by waste heat and quoted New Zealand as evidence where population density and industrial output is low and our glaciers haven't shrunk very much. I pointed out research @22 showing our glaciers have shrunk a great deal at 33% since the 1970s. Anyway there will be some difference between hemispheres because the northern hemisphere is warming faster due to a preponderance of land mass.

Own you mistakes Slarty. I suspect you have a pre determined conclusion, and when you work like that you tend to twist things to suit the conclusion and mistakes multiply. Nothing personal: you are well educated and know more statistics than me, but I have a razor sharp ability to recognise nonsense in almost any field of study.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25

CD at 11:21 AM on 21 June, 2020

@ Tom Drayton

Yes I've read the RealClimate post and it makes the same point I made in my <a href="https://climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/06/14-surface-heating.html">recent blog post</a>, that the waste heat is only about 0.03 W/m^2, or the equivalent of a global temperature rise of about 0.013 K. This sounds trivial until you realize it isn't spread evenly across the Earth's surface. The point I made is that when examined on a country-by-country basis, this heating can become very large, e.g. 1.0 K for Belgium & the Netherlands, 0.66 K for England and 0.5 K for Pennsylvania. That is not trivial and it accounts for almost all the temperature rise seen in these states/countries in the entire 20th Century. I'm surprised that doesn't make you stop and think.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25

Tom Dayton at 09:12 AM on 21 June, 2020

Slarty Bartfast, that is a very old, and long discredited, myth. See, for example, this RealClimate post.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2020

michael sweet at 06:25 AM on 14 June, 2020

Gavin at Realclimate posted on higher ECS today

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #23, 2020

michael sweet at 05:39 AM on 14 June, 2020

The Guardian newspaper has had a lot of articles about climate change lately.

This article talks about the new model runs for the IPCC AR6 due next year. About 25% of the models have climate sensitivity of 5C compared to teh range of 2-4.5C (3C is commonly used) that has been found for about 40 years. 5C would be much worse change than 3C.

There were not a lot of references to original articles but I found the article to be a reasonable summary for laymen on this topic. (I do not read a lot about climate sensitivity but I have heard about these new models with higher sensitivity.) Apparently changes in cloud modeling (long known to be a weak area) have lead to this increase.

This RealClimate article from November 2019 discusses this issue with more technical detail.

Michael Moore's 'Planet of the Humans' documentary peddles dangerous climate denial

alea at 20:52 PM on 7 May, 2020

nigelj@26

"Yes true about the low hanging fruit. It may surprise you, but I do think all the other solutions you list are realistic and people may yet adopt them better.But M Moores solutions require we go much further than that. Remember his solution to climate change is lower population growth and less use of energy. Full stop."

Thing is I can see that the extreme advocacy of living to the true definition of sustainability (as put forward by one contributor on RealClimate), and that literally doing that is impossible without hardship, and people will resist it, could both be right.

I have had a go at making significant inroads into my carbon footprint. I cut right down on meat intage, rented an allotment, turned the thermostat down to 12C in winter and compensated with a hoodie (UK winters are too cold to dispence with space heating completely), don't buy anything that I can't logically justify, use an energy provider which invests in renewable energy, avoid flying, use the train to visit family (240 miles away), cycle all local journeys, and worked up to being able to cycle to work daily (19 mile round trip with hills). I even went as far as going car free for about three years. The latter worked until I was hit by a careless driver and nearly died in hospital. My experience taught me that going beyond the low hanging fruit is tough, and is made worse with the system punishing me for taking more sustainable options. Visiting family by train costs over £100. Driving costs £45 in fuel. Which mode of transport would most people choose? I can't transport hundreds of kg of manure to my allotment for soil improvement, but now have a car again which solves that problem. Choosing a bicycle as my primary mode of transport means taking costs, in the form of limited mobility and increased vulnerability (externalised by motorists), because everyone else is still driving, but the tangible benefits are not immediately apparent, there are lagged benefits in the form of reduced financial cost and increased cardiovascular health.

I can't see how you can convince people en-masse to make lifestyle changes that make life less convenient or enjoyable without a tangible benefit, yet ultimately we have to do something to knock down emissions, and that something (or combination of somethings) is going to have to go beyond the easy stuff. This is where I haven't come across a decent solution, although cleaning up energy production is a good start, how do you tell businesses to stop having meetings requiring people to fly abroad, and use video conferencing instead, or stop people from buying consumer goods they don't need, or manufacture stuff to last so it doesn't need replacing as often, instead of either designing things to break just past the guarentee or telling people they need the latest model of xyz because..., or tell people to holiday locally instead of flying? Some of this could be done with regulation, but people don't like regulation beyond a certain point, and any democratic government that goes beyond that point will find themselves out of office next election.

I guess I am looking for some hope (to combat despair), in the form of a step by step feasible method of transitioning to a significantly more sustainable way of living on a global scale, it doesn't have to be the purist version, your definition would be adequate.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 23:51 PM on 10 April, 2020

Thanks Nigelj , yes I do read Realclimate from time to time (and note your presence there too ).

Now I am reporting back after reading the first article listed on Page One of climatescience.org.nz

# It is a fine example of one style of Denialist propaganda.

The article is titled, in very large blue letters in upper case :- [ * Moderators please excuse my use of upper case for this exact quote] :-

" DROP IN NUMBER OF SUNSPOTS SIGNALS IMMINENCE OF A COOLER WORLD "

~ this is followed by a single paragraph in small font, commencing:

" An important new paper by Dr David Whitehouse for the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that 2019 was mostly without sunspots. ... [and finishing:] This paper discusses some of these issues." With LINK to the GWPF important new paper .

Note the typical Denialist technique:

(A) The huge headline indicating Imminence of a Cooler World ( i.e. that the mainstream scientists are wrong about ongoing global warming)

(B) An entirely unrigorous newspaper-supplement-like report (by Dr Whitehouse) is implied to be a respectable scientific paper. It is no such thing.

# The editor of this website knows that many of his Denialist clientele will not bother to read past the headline, and they will proceed elsewhere holding the comforting knowledge that the planet is about to enter a cooling phase.

And that those who do actually read the single paragraph, also will proceed elsewhere, holding that same "Cooling" impression.

(C) Those who do follow the link, are met with a multi-page essay headed by beautiful huge photos & artistic illustrations of close-up views of the sun (all looking a bit National Geographic sciencey). Followed by 8 pages (plus sciencey reference list) of Whitehouse's text ~ discursively discussing cherry-picked famine in 17th Century France; horrible child mortality in Europe during the Little Ice Age; dire comments from a sermon by a contemporary English preacher . . . and various other irrelevancies including historical aspects of sunspot observations.

In the end, Whitehouse has given no quantification of the implied Grand Solar Minimum which is "imminently" about to strike us. Indeed, regarding future climate, he hasn't really said anything at all. His "important new paper" is lurid but vacuous commentary.

As such, it all comes as no surprise to regular readers of SkS.

Nigelj , I fear that the rest of the NZ website's headlines probably have a similar modus operandi. Is that correct? (And does that website have comments columns?)

I am very much reminded of that propagandist, the marvellous Lord Monckton who boasted that 400 scientific papers demonstrated the worldwide nature and much-higher-than-today warmth of the Medieval Warm Period. When science-journalist Peter Hadfield (Potholer54) challenged him for the list, Monckton blandly supplied the references [actually a list by Dr Idso]. Hadfield said that he carefully studied the first 6 papers on the list, and found none of them supported Monckton's MWP claims. So no point reading further down the list. (Monckton is well known for his bold mendacities/errors.)

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

nigelj at 16:54 PM on 10 April, 2020

Eclectic @22, for gems of imaginative denialist madness try the crank case and bore hole at realclimate.org. Or even their main pages comments section, for example comments by Victor and Ken Maynard.

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