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

nigelj at 05:38 AM on 3 April, 2024

Two Dog @65. All that additional heat energy accumulating in the oceans has to come from somewhere. Possible candidates are anthropogenic warming, increased solar activity, and an increase in sub sea geothermal or volcanic activity.

Scientists have ruled out solar forcing and geothermal or volcanic activity. It's really hard for me to see where else that quantitiy of energy could come from if not those three possibilities. Just waving your hands and saying there may be something else isnt remotely convincing to me. Its just so implausible and such a vanishingly small possibility and so unlikely.

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

nigelj at 05:40 AM on 1 April, 2024

Some sources related to my comment @49:

PDO cycle in negative (cooling phase) mid last century:

www.researchgate.net/figure/PDO-over-the-last-100-years-Nine-years-moving-average-PDO-index-is-indicated-in-black_fig1_323553944

Weak el ninos mid last century:

psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei.ext/

Solar irradiance trend flat after 1950:

skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

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

nigelj at 04:48 AM on 1 April, 2024

Two Dog @41

"Finally, on the "cherry picking" of the 50s, 60s and 70s. I think its a fair point to pick 30 years out of 150 in this case. Indeed, the argument above is, as I understand it, that the main and dominant factor in the current warming is human GHG emissions. For that theory to hold, in any period where GHG emissions are increasing year on year, then only a few years "blip" in warming must presumably call the theory into question? (unless we can find another new and temporary factor like air pollution)"

The reason the temperature record has "blips" and is not a smooth line is because the trend is shaped by a combination of natural and human factors that have different effects. However the overall trend since the 1970s is warming. The known natural cycles and infuences can explain the short term blips of a couple of years or so, (eg el ninos) but not the 50 year overall warming trend since the 1970s. Sure there may be some undiscovered natural cycle that expalins the warming, but its very unlikely with chances of something like one in a million. And it would require falsifying the greenhouse effect which nobody has been able to do. Want to gamble the planets future on all that?

The flat period of temperatures around 1940- 1977, (or as OPOF points out it was really a period of reduced warming) coincides with the cooling effect of industrial aerosols during the period as CB points out. This is the period when acid rain emerged as a problem until these aerosols were filtered out in the 1980s.

However the flat period mid last century also coincided with a cool phase of the PDO cycle (an ocean cycle), a preponderance of weak el ninos, and flat solar activity after 1950 and a higher than normal level of volcanic activity. Literally all the natural factors were in a flat or cooling phase. In addition atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were not as high as presently, so it was easier for the other factors to suppress anthropogenic warming.

So for me this is all an adequate explanation of why temperatures were subdued in the middle of last century. Just my two cents worth. Not a scientist but I've followed the issues for years.

Can we still avoid 1.5 degrees C of global warming?

nigelj at 06:31 AM on 14 November, 2023

"The report found that the net greenhouse gas emissions from human activity would need to be 43% lower by 2030 compared to 2019 to maintain a two-thirds chance of either meeting the long-term 1.5°C goal or only briefly overshooting it."

This looks technically and economically possible to me as follows.

"A new study by Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson and his team published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science calculates that the world would need to spend around $62 trillion to build up the wind, solar, and hydro power generating capacity to fully meet demand and completely replace fossil fuels. That looks like a huge number, even spread out across the 145 countries cited in the study. But after crunching the numbers, estimates show that countries would make the money back in cost-savings in a relatively short period of time: Between one to five years."

adventure.com/global-cost-of-renewable-energy/#:~:text=A%20new%20study%20by%20Stanford,and%20completely%20replace%20fossil%20fuels.

My view: To meet this goal of cutting emissions 43% by 2030, lets assume that we spend half the required 62 trillion, thus 30 trillion on renewables over the period 2023 - 2030 . That is 4.2 trillion dollars each year. Total global gdp (economic output) each year is currently about $100 trillion, so 4.2 trillion is about 4% of global gdp per year.

This looks a feasible amount of money to me if we really wanted. Its not going to impoverish the world. Its about what the USA spends on the military each year as a % of its own gdp. It would require cutting about 4% from other budgets including probably government spending and consumer goods spending. 4% is not a massive number.

It would mean a huge engineering effort to transfer capacity into renewables but America and other countries did a similar sort of thing producing military hardware in WW2. And we are already partly there with renewables growing fast.

Of course electricity generation is just one component but its the big issue, and the highest cost issue we need to address.

It's really a question of whether the world can find the motivation to do all this. There are just several impediments in the way 1) The denialist campaign 2) Our brains are hardwired to priortise massive immediate threats like covid or wars, not insidious longer term problems like climate change even although they are a larger threat, 3) Lots of resistance to lifestyle change for various reasons, 4) politics.

So I alternate between hope and despair.

New report has terrific news for the climate

nigelj at 10:08 AM on 21 October, 2023

Fred Torssander @5

"It's great - in a way - to have my suspicions and my amateurish comparisions between reported emissions of GHG and measured atmospheric CO2 confirmed by Washington Post no less!"

Yes although I think we all had those suspicions. However IMO while the under measurement of emissions is very concerning, for our purposes it isn't the big issue, because its been reasonably constant going well back. As I stated the big issue is the trend in emissions whether increasing or declining over time, and that trend is likely to be roughly accurate and the growth in emissions looks like it is nearing a plateau from data I've seen.

"Variations in atmospheric CO2, when and if such changes appear, will be hard or even impossible to claim this as an effect of human political (democratic?!) activity. "

Not really. Fistly atmopsheric CO2 levels have been increasing reasonably steadily except that the trend includes a lot of short term wiggles up and down, but those wiggles only last a year or two. They are a result of such things as the yearly seasonal growth cycle, el nino, and the occasional volcanic activity. But these all have very short term effects and known causes.

Once we see something like a change in this atmospheric CO2 trend that lasts at least ten years we could be pretty confident its because of reducing human emissions. It's very difficult to see what else it could be, because no natural cause of emissions is likely to cause a ten year effect on the trend. And if it did it would have to be massive, unprecedented volcanic / geothermal activity of some sort and we would certainly notice that.

"Even in the case that the figures and charts showing temperature confirmed the good news, they would have a margin of error +23%, -0%(!) depending on what the reporting parties (states/nations) pleases."

Temperatures will not be 100% accurately measured, but I doubt temperatures would be that innacurate as 23% out. Where did you get the number?

However I would say atmospheric CO2 levels would be a bit more accurate than temperatures (or emissions trends) and would be the most compelling proof we have made a difference provided we see a decent 5 - 10 year difference in the trend. CO2 levels are quite accurately measured.

"And worse. The emissions of type iii in my first comment, will be compleatly hidden!"

You mentioned el nino and volcanoes. But el nino is not hidden. It is a well known cycle and we know approximately what effect it has on CO2 emissions and its a very short term effect of a couple of years. El nino does not explain long term (greater than five years) trends in CO2 levels.

And volcanic activity is not hidden. Scientists monitor this activity. Unless there is a massive krakatoa sized eruption it is not a significant generator of CO2. Its more significant related to aerosols.

"Lastly: More power produced by "significant solar and wind power" does not neccesarily result in less power produced by burning fossil fuels.Remember Jevons Paradox!"

Jevons paradox says (roughly) that making energy use more efficient does not decrease total energy use, and this has proven to be true, unless you actively fight against the paradox. Germany has had some moderate success making energy use more efficient and also decreasing total energy use, but its required some tight government lead incentives and programmes. And Germany is very disciplined as a people, so other countries might struggle to emulate their modest success.

Regarding the wind and solar power issue, I'm not sure its strictly a Jevons paradox issue because we are not trying to achieve more efficent energy use "per se". We are substituting renewables for fossil fuels. So far those efforts have only stopped the growth in fossil fuels, but as wind and solar power uptake improves in scale, fossil fuel use will fall in absolute terms and has already done in some places. For example, Paraguay, Iceland, Sweden, and Uruguay and France get something like 90% of their electricity from low carbon sources.

New report has terrific news for the climate

Fred Torssander at 08:00 AM on 21 October, 2023

nigelj @5

It's great - in a way - to have my suspicions and my amateurish comparisions between reported emissions of GHG and measured atmospheric CO2 confirmed by Washington Post no less! But the problem is still there. Variations in atmospheric CO2, when and if such changes appear, will be hard or even impossible to claim this as an effect of human political (democratic?!) activity. So how can we build an informed opinion on claims that "governments have made substantial progress in curbing their climate pollution" and even that "global temperatures are on a less dangerous path than they were a decade ago" which can't be seen, at least I can't see it in the temperature data? Or in the CO2 data.
Even in the case that the figures and charts showing temperature confirmed the good news, they would have a margin of error +23%, -0%(!) depending on what the reporting parties (states/nations) pleases.
And worse. The emissions of type iii in my first comment, will be compleatly hidden!
Lastly: More power produced by "significant solar and wind power" does not neccesarily result in less power produced by burning fossil fuels.Remember Jevons Paradox!

Yours
Fred Torssander

CO2 is not the only driver of climate

piotr at 06:09 AM on 8 May, 2023

Greetings. @Daniel Bailey

""Observations have shown that solar flare activity on the surface of the Sun is in the quiet phase of its continuing 11-year cycle. This causes cooling of the thermosphere—a layer of the atmosphere that starts 65 miles above the surface—and will not cause noticeable cooling at the surface""

- so how could happen the Maunder Minimum, when the baltic sea and the thames were frozen then?

Btw. Im still curious on early indirect data measures. We use satelites and probably thousand of observation-stations everywhere, even in already urban densed areals where its hotter due to soil sealing/buildings etc. than decades ago.

but how precise can data be when hundreds or even thousand of years ago, where we usually collect data from drilling cores from ice, dendro analysis etc.? the modeled graphs showing co2 concentration or temperatures from early periods of the neogene era for example could never be scaled that detailed like modern oberservations, so how do we could know other than extrapolate or try to forecast on this "rough" data? just saying the data of the past century heavily fluctuates with different natural events as we have a lot of different parameters and thousend of different stations to check. but few hundred years ago there are some marks here and there for months or years, not thousends a day - you know what i mean?

so anyway do we have a chance to differentiate natural occuring warming of the past few decades from self-induced co2 with this methology?

I just think we cannot use modern nanotechnolgy to understand stone-age tools were used, or maybe better metaphor: collecting a bunch of single bones from an ancient creature is no evidence to know how it moved or hunted, even we know a lot of biomechanics today and may let us classify the biological type/race etc.

hope its understandable, as im no native speaker obviously :)

There is no consensus

Albert at 09:46 AM on 20 April, 2023

"Such low ECS figures would mean the earth's climate should be almost perfectly stable over geologic time (no glacial-interglacial cycles) and we know that's not true."

Rob, believe it or not there are other factors that effect global temperature like, the sun, solar winds, magnetic fields, cosmic rays, transportation and retention and expulsion of ocean heat, volcanic activity above and below water, aerosols, clouds, gravitational pull of other planets, milankovitcg cycles, earth rotation wobble, shifting of poles, etc.

Our current warming cycle started around 1700 as The little ice age peaked negatively and we have been warming sporadically ever since.

its all perfectly normal with many historical precedents in the Holocene and previous interglacials.

1000 years ago Vikings colonised and farmed parts of Greenland that are still permafrost today. How can this be unless Greenland was far hotter than today. etc Etc etc.

But Michael Mann showed us in his model that the medieval warm period and little ice age never existed so all those thousands of scientists that proved they did exist must be wrong.

Solar cycles cause global warming

Bob Loblaw at 11:09 AM on 31 March, 2023

retiredguy:

You have linked to the publisher's site, which only has a portion of the paper visible (along with "Access through your institution" and "Purchase PDF" buttons). Google Scholar led me to a full version here.

The first half of the paper simply reiterates a variety of reasons to expect variation in solar input to the earth system on a variety of time scales, without getting into specific solar irradiance values. They also talk about the importance of spectral variations - in addition to simple variations in total energy input.

In section 3.1, they cover "the reconstruction of the past solar irradiance". In that section, they state (emphasis added):

"Our own irradiance reconstruction is based on the frequency of the Schwabe cycle because we find a better fit with the temperature data if we assume a linear relationship between cycle frequency and irradiance (Fig. 7).

Their figure 7 is a graph of the reconstructed solar irradiance. It shows a solar irradiance value of about 1362 W/m² in 1850, and a value of about 1366 W/m² in 1990, for a difference of 4 W/m². The wiggles in their reconstruction go as low as 1361 W/m² in 1900, up to 1364 W/m² from 1920-1950, and down to 1362 W/m² around 1965.

Skeptical Science also has another page on "It's the sun". On that page, we see another solar irradiance reconstruction:

Solar irradiance and temperature

Note that the reconstruction from the paper you linked to shows much more variability and range. Their figure 7 mentions a "14-y low-pass filter", so it should probably be compared to the 11-year average in the above figure.

So, the first thing is that they have estimated a much larger change (about 4x) in solar irradiance over the 1850-1990 period than most other sources. This would explain their conclusions that solar forcing is a strong effect.

So, you have to ask, which solar reconstruction is better? Well, I think the clue is in the section I quoted and highlighted above, regarding their choice of method of reconstruction:

"...because we find a better fit with the temperature data..."

To put it bluntly, to claim that solar forcing is an important factor affecting temperature after choosing a solar reconstruction "because we find a better fit with the temperature data" is plain bad science. In all likelihood, they have erroneously fitted other causes of temperature change into their solar reconstruction, which leads to an overestimate of the magnitude and importance of solar forcing.

I notice their figure 10 is also for northern hemisphere temperature, not global. They do talk about the two hemispheres in the text, but I don't see an explanation as to why they did not use global temperature in their final evaluation.

In short, the main weakness is that they have a really bad solar irradiance reconstruction.

The escalator rises again

nigelj at 06:12 AM on 7 February, 2023

"The New Pause lengthens again: 101 months and counting …"

This astounds me. Have these denialists nothing better to do? Haven't they noticed a decades long repeating pattern of pauses of various sizes such that the temperature trend is step like? Havent they figured out by now that is how the warming trend progresses? Haven't they studied the obvious reasons it would be like this, such as the influence of solar cycles, etc,etc?

Are they really that lacking in thought? Or perhaps its more of an activity that just makes them feel good and gives them comfort by throwing mud at perceived enemies! Or perhaps its just wanting to protect vested interests for as long as possible. Or are they just cranks? Probably WUWT is an unholy alliance of all these types of personalities and more.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022

peterklein at 07:12 AM on 16 December, 2022

I mostly became mostly aware of the climate and global warming issue about the time that Al Gore began beating the drum (even while he continued to fly globally in his private jet). Since then, I've read about climate change and climate modeling from many sources, including ones taking the position that ‘it is not a question if it is a big-time issue, but what to do about it now, ASAP?’.

In the past few weeks, it appeared to me there has been a of articles, issued reports, and federal government activity, including recently approved legislation, related to this topic. While it obviously has been one of the major global topics for the past 3+ decades, the amount of public domain ‘heightened activity’ seems (to me) to come in waves every 4-6 months. That said, I decided to write on the topic based on what I learned and observed over time from articles, research reports, and TV/newspaper interviews.

There clearly are folks, associations, formal and informal groups, and even governments on both sides of the topic (issue). I also have seen over the decades how the need for and the flow of money sometimes (many times?) taints the results of what appear to be ‘expert-driven and expert-executed’ quantitative research. For example, in medical research some of the top 5% of researchers have been found altering their data and conclusions because of the source of their research funding, peer ‘industry’ pressure and/or pressure from senior academic administrators.

Many climate and weather-related articles state that 95+% of researchers agree on major climate changes; however (at least to me) many appear to disagree on the short-medium-longer term implications and timeframes.

What I conclude (as of now)
1. This as a very complex subject about which few experts have been correct.
2. We are learning more and more every day about this subject, and most of what we learn suggests that what we thought we knew isn't really correct or at least as perfectly accurate as many believe.
3. The U.S. alone cannot solve whatever problem exists. If we want to do something constructive, build lots of nuclear power plants ASAP (more on that to follow)!
4. Any rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels will devastate many economies, especially those like China, India, Africa and most of Asia. Interestingly, the U.S. can probably survive a 3 or 4% reduction in carbon footprint annually over the next 15 years better than almost any country in the world, but this requires the aforementioned construction of multiple nuclear electrical generating facilities. In the rest of the world, especially the developing world, their economies will crash, and famine would ensue; not a pretty picture.
5. I am NOT a reflexive “climate denier” but rather a real-time skeptic that humans will be rendered into bacon crisps sometime in the next 50, 100 or 500+ years!
6. One reason I'm not nearly as concerned as others is my belief in the concept of ‘progress’. Look at what we accomplished as a society over the last century, over the last 50, 10, 5 and 3 years (e.g., Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles about every two years!). It is easy to conclude that we will develop better storage batteries and better, more efficient electrical grids that will reduce our carbon footprint. I'm not so sure about China, India and the developing world!
7. So, don't put me down as a climate denier even though I do not believe that the climate is rapidly deteriorating or will rapidly deteriorate as a result of CO2 upload. Part of my calm on this subject is because I have read a lot about the ‘coefficient of correlation of CO2 and global warming, and I really don't think it's that high. I won't be around to know if I was right in being relaxed on this subject, but then I have more important things to worry about (including whether the NY Yankees can beat Houston in the ACLS playoffs, assuming they meet!).

My Net/Net (As of Now!)
I am not a researcher or a scientist, and I recognize I know far less than all there is to know on this very complex topic, and I am not a ‘climate change denier’… but, after
also reading a lot of material over the years from ‘the other side’ on this topic, I conclude it is monumentally blown out of proportion relative to those claiming: ‘the sky is falling and fast’!
• Read or skim the book by Steven Koonin: Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters /April 27, 2021; https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798
• Google ‘satellite measures of temperature’; also, very revealing… see one attachment as an example.
• Look at what is happening in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka! Adherence to UN and ESG mandates are starving countries; and it appears Canada is about to go over the edge!
• None of the climate models are accurate for a whole range of reasons; the most accurate oddly enough is the Russian model but that one is even wrong by orders of magnitude!
• My absolute favorite fact is that based on data from our own governmental observation satellites: the oceans have been rising over the last 15 years at the astonishing rate of 1/8th of an inch annually; and my elementary mathematics suggests that if this rate continues, the sea will rise by an inch sometime around 2030 and by a foot in the year 2118… so, no need to buy a lifeboat if you live in Miami, Manhattan, Boston, Los Angeles, or San Francisco!
• Attached is a recent article and a Research Report summary.
 Probably the most damning is the Research Report comparison of the climate model predictions from 2000, pointing to 2020 versus the actual increase in temperature that has taken place in that timeframe (Pages 9-13). It's tough going and I suggest you just read the yellow areas on Page 9 (the Abstract and Introduction, very short) and the 2 Conclusions on Page 12. But the point is someone is going to the trouble to actually analyze this data on global warming coefficients!
My Observations and Thinking
In the 1970s Time Magazine ran a cover story about our entering a new Ice Age. Sometime in the early 1990s, I recall a climate scientist sounding the first warning about global warming and the potentially disastrous consequences. He specifically predicted high temperatures and massive floods in the early 2000’s. Of course, that did not occur; however, others picked up on his concern and began to drive it forward, with Al Gore being one of the primary voices of climate concern. He often cited the work in the 1990’s of a climate scientist at Penn State University who predicted a rapid increase in temperature, supposedly occurring in 2010 and, of course, this also did not occur.

Nonetheless many scientists from various disciplines also began to warn about global warming starting in the early 2000’s. It was this growing body of ‘scientific’ concern that stimulated Al Gore's concern and his subsequent movie. It would be useful for you to go back to that and review the apocalyptic pronouncements from that time; most of which predicted dire consequences, high temperatures, massive flooding, etc. which were to occur in 10 or 12 years, certainly by 2020. None of this even closely occurred to the extent they predicted.

That said, I was still generally aware of the calamities predicted by a large and diverse body of global researchers and scientists, even though their specific predictions did not take place in the time frame or to the extent that they predicted. As a result, I become a ‘very casual student’ of climate modeling.

Over the past 15 years climate modeling has become a popular practice in universities, think-tanks and governmental organizations around the globe. Similar to medical and other research (e.g., think-tanks, etc.) I recognized that some of the work may have been driven by folks looking for grants and money to keep them and their staff busy.

A climate model is basically a multi-variate model in which the dependent variable is global temperature. All of these models try to identify the independent variables which drive change in global temperature. These independent variables range from parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to sunspot activity, the distance of the earth from the sun, ocean temperatures, cloud cover, etc. The challenge of a multi-variant model is first to identify all of the various independent variables affecting the climate and then to estimate the percent contribution to global warming made by a change in any of these independent variables. For example, what would be the coefficient of correlation for an increase in carbon dioxide parts per million to global warming?

You might find that an interesting cocktail party question to ask your friends “what is the coefficient of correlation between the increase in carbon dioxide parts per million and the effect on global warming?” I would be shocked if any of them even understood what you were saying and flabbergasted if they could give you an intelligent answer! There are dozens of these climate models. You might be surprised that none of them has been particularly accurate if we go back 12 years to 2010, for example, and look at the prediction that the models made for global warming in ten years, by 2020, and how accurate any given model would be.
An enterprising scientist did go back and collected the predictions from a score of climate models and found that a model by scientists from Moscow University was actually closer to being accurate than any of the other models. But the point is none were accurate! They all were wrong on the high side, dramatically over predicting the actual temperature in 2020. Part of the problem was that in several of those years, there was no increase in the global temperature at all. This caused great consternation among global warming believers and the scientific community!

A particularly interesting metric relates to the rise in the level of the ocean. Several different departments in the U.S. government actually measures this important number. You might be surprised to know, as stated earlier, that over the past 15 or so years the oceans have risen at the dramatic rate of 1/8th of an inch annually. This means that if the oceans continued to rise at that level, we would see a rise of an inch in about 8 years, sometime around 2030, and a rise of a foot sometime around the year 2118. I suspect Barack Obama had seen this data and that's why he was comfortable in buying an oceanfront estate on Martha's Vineyard when his presidency ended!

The ‘Milankovitch Theory’ (a Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch, after whom the Milankovitch Climate Theory is named, proposed about how the seasonal and latitudinal variations of solar radiation that hit the earth in different and at different times have the greatest impact on earth's changing climate patterns) states that as the earth proceeds on its orbit, and as the axis shifts, the earth warms and cools depending on where it is relative to the sun over a 100,000-year, and 40,000-year cycle. Milankovitch cycles are involved in long-term changes to Earth's climate as the cycles operate over timescales of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.

So, consider this: we did not suddenly get a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere this year than we had in 2019 (or other years!), but maybe the planet has shifted slightly as the Milankovitch Theory states, and is now a little closer to the sun, which is why we have the massive drought. Nothing man has done would suddenly make the drought so severe, but a shift in the axis or orbit bringing the planet a bit closer to the sun would. It just seems logical to me. NASA publicly says that the theory is accurate, so it seems that is the real cause; but the press and politicians will claim it is all man caused! You can shut down all oil production and junk all the vehicles, and it will not matter per the Theory! Before the mid-1800’s there were no factories or cars, but the earth cooled and warmed, glaciers formed and melted, and droughts and massive floods happened. The public is up against the education industrial complex of immense corruption!

In the various and universally wrong ‘climate models’, one of the ‘independent’ variables is similar to the Milankovitch Theory. Unfortunately, it is not to the advantage of the climate cabal to admit this or more importantly give it the importance it probably deserves.

People who are concerned about the climate often cite an ‘increase in forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, etc. as proof of global warming’. And many climate deniers point out that most forest fires are proven to be caused by careless humans tossing cigarettes into a pile of leaves or leaving their campfire unattended, and that there has been a dramatic decrease globally on deaths caused by various climate factors. I often read from climate alarmists (journalists, politicians, friends, etc.), what I believe are ‘knee-jerk’ responses since they are not supported by meaningful and relevant data/facts, see typical comments below:
• “The skeptical climate change deniers remind me of the doctors hired by the tobacco industry to refute the charges by the lung cancer physicians that tobacco smoke causes lung cancer. The planet is experiencing unprecedented extreme climate events: droughts, fires, floods etc. and the once in 500-year catastrophic climate event seems to be happening every other year. Slow motion disasters are very difficult to deal with politically. When a 200-mph hurricane hits the east coast and causes a trillion dollars in losses then will deal with it and then climate deniers will throw in the towel!”

These above comments may be right, but to date the forecasts on timing implications across all the models are wrong! It just ‘may be’ in 3, 10 or 50 years… or in 500-5000+ before the ‘sky is falling’ devastating events directly linked to climate occur. If some of the forecasts, models were even close to accuracy to date I would feel differently.

I do not deny there are climate related changes I just don’t see any evidence their impact is anywhere near the professional researchers’ forecasts/models on their impact as well as being ‘off the charts’ different than has happened in the past 100-1000+ years.

But a larger question is “suppose various anthropogenetic actions (e.g., chiefly environmental pollution and pollutants originating in human activity like anthropogenic emissions of sulfur dioxide) are causing global warming?”. What are they, who is doing it, and what do we do about it? The first thing one must do is recognize that this is a global problem and that therefore the actions of any one country has an effect on the overall climate depending upon its population and actions. Many in the United States focus intensely upon reducing carbon emissions in the U.S. when of course the U.S. is only 5% of the world population. We are however responsible for a disproportionate part of the global carbon footprint; we contribute about 12%. The good news is that the U.S. has dramatically reduced its share of the global carbon footprint over the past 20 years and doing so while dramatically increasing our GDP (up until the 1st Half of 2022).

Many factors have contributed to the relative reduction of the U.S. carbon footprint. Chief among these are much more efficient automobiles and the switch from coal-driven electric generation plants to those driven by natural gas, a much cleaner fossil fuel.

While the U.S. is reducing its carbon footprint more than any other country in the world, China has dramatically increased its carbon footprint and now contributes about 30% of the carbon expelled into the atmosphere. China is also building 100 coal-fired plants!

Additional facts, verified by multiple sources including SNOPES, the U.,S. government, engineering firms, etc.:
• No big signatories to the Paris Accord are now complying; the U.S. is out-performing all of them.
• EU is building 28 new coal plants; Germany gets 40% of its power from 84 coal plants; Turkey is building 93 new coal plants, India 446, South Korea 26, Japan 45, China has 2363 coal plants and is building 1174 new ones; the U.S. has 15 and is building no new ones and will close about 15 coal plants.
• Real cost example: Windmills need power plants run on gas for backup; building one windmill needs 1100 tons of concrete & rebar, 370 tons of steel, 1000 lbs of mined minerals (e.g., rare earths, iron and copper) + very long transmission lines (lots of copper & rubber covering for those) + many transmission towers… rare earths come from the Uighur areas of China (who use slave labor), cobalt comes from places using child labor and use lots of oil to run required rock crushers... all to build one windmill! One windmill also has a back-up, inefficient, partially running, gas-powered generating plant to keep the grid functioning! To make enough power to really matter, we need millions of acres of land & water, filled with windmills which consume habitats & generate light distortions and some noise, which can create health issues for humans and animals living near a windmill (this leaves out thousands of dead eagles and other birds).

• So, if we want to decrease the carbon footprint on the assumption that this is what is driving the rise in the sea levels (see POV that sea levels are not rising at: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRChoNTg) and any increase in global temperature, we need to figure out how to convince China, India and the rest of the world from fouling the air with fossil fuels. In fact, if the U.S. wanted to dramatically reduce its own carbon footprint, we would immediately begin building 30 new nuclear electrical generating plants around the country! France produces about 85% of its electrical power from its nuclear-driven generators. Separately, but related, do your own homework on fossil fuels (e.g., oil) versus electric; especially on the big-time move to electric and hybrid vehicles. Engineering analyses show you need to drive an electric car about 22 years (a hybrid car about 15-18 years) to breakeven on the savings versus the cost involved in using fossil fuels needed to manufacture, distribute and maintain an electric car! Also, see page 14 on the availability inside the U.S. of oil to offset what the U.S. purchases from the middle east and elsewhere, without building the Keystone pipeline from Canada.

Two 4-5-minute videos* on the climate change/C02/new green deal issue, in my opinion, should be required viewing in every high school and college; minimally because it provides perspective and data on the ‘other’ side of the issue while the public gets bombarded almost daily by the ‘sky is falling now or soon’ side on climate change!

* https://www.prageru.com/video/is-there-really-a-climate-emergency and
https://www.prageru.com/video/climate-change-whats-so-alarming

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42

scvblwxq1 at 10:11 AM on 30 October, 2022

The Earth has feedback systems like clouds and rain and storage system like the deep ocean that can maintain the temperature of the Earth when Solar input increases for a time but Solar irradiance increases it will eventually increase the temperature. The Sun is by far the major source of heat to the Earth, radioactivity contributes a small amount but CO2 at best is only moving the heat around.

Here in Cleveland we have had 161 days colder than average and 136 days warmer than average, using the Weather Underground average daily temperatures, which suggests cooling supporting Dr. Zharkova Grand Solar Minimum.

https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/oh/cleveland/KCLE

Solar irradiance has increased greatly since 2020, warming the Earth even more than the 50 years of high irradiance reported by Dr. Penza. https://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/data/tsis_tsi_24hr/

We have 4.5 million people dying each year from moderately cold weather-related causes, mainly from strokes and heart attacks caused by the cold, while only about 500,000 are dying from heat-related causes and most of them were also from moderate heat.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext

Half the energy we produce goes to heating. We live in heated houses, work in heated buildings, drive around in heated cars, wear lots of warm clothes and shoes much of the time so we probably don't appreciate how cold it is. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/we-need-to-rethink-the-way-we-heat-ourselves-heres-why/

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42

nigelj at 11:04 AM on 29 October, 2022

scvblwxq1.

Your solar theory of the recent warming period since the 1970's is wrong. There is only a very poor correlation between surface warming and solar irradiance over the last 50 years. Solar irradiance increased early last century until about 1960, then levelled off or fell slightly for about 30 years, then fell sharply from about 30 years ago to presently, but warming steadily increasing over that same total 50 year time frame. So you have a poor level of correlation.

skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

If global warming over the last 50 years was being caused by fluctuations in solar activity, you would expect a near perfect correlation between solar activity and warming over that 50 years, because the effects of solar irradiance on surface temperatures are reasonably instantaneous. Instead we see a very low level of correlation if any.

Fluctuations in solar irradiance over the last 50 years have also been quite small in terms of WM2, and not enough to account for the quantity of warming measured. So nothing in the way of causation.

With the climate issue the devil is in the detail like this. The fact that solar irradiance is generally a bit higher than 100 years ago doesn't explain the recent warming trend when you look into the details. Thats why we have climate scientists to look at the details.

The grand solar minimum during the little ice age is suspected of contributing to that cool period, but the little ice age only affected part of the northern hemisphere, temperatures dropped only about a degree c and over hundreds of years. So a similar thing now would clearly do very little if anything to offset the predicted 3 - 5 degrees of warming this century and 8 degrees of warming over 2 - 3 centuries. A grand solar minimum, If it actually happens, is clearly not going to save use.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42

scvblwxq1 at 04:23 AM on 27 October, 2022

An article in the Astrophysical Journal, 937:84 2022 October 1 'Total Solar Irradiance during the Last Five Centuries' shows that the enerigy the Earth receives from the Sun has been at its highest level for the last 50 years over the last 500 years. This is where the global heating is coming from and the warming oceans, which have 70 times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, are releasing their CO2, like a warmed bottle of soda.

The Sun has entered a Grand Solar Minimum that will last from 2020-2053 and will result in significant global cooling that may threaten global farmland crop production.

'Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling" by Valentina Zharkova, Temperature (Austin) 2020;7(3): 217-222

from the article:

In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020-2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during the Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature...more

Permitting: America’s next big climate conundrum

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

David-acct @9,

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

So I welcome good reasons to improve my understanding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Skeptical Science

One Planet Only Forever at 06:29 AM on 15 September, 2022

Thomas Bevins @112,

It is not clear what you are specifically referring to when you say "Of course there are studies related to the most obvious, the sun and global warming. The Sun's effect on the oceans, the ocean's effect on the glaciers, and so on... There is a lot of talk that such normalization procedures have increased global warming although most of this site seems to be skeptical of this claim and does not agree."

This site specifically presents reasons to doubt "unjustified beliefs", which is different from having a "healthy skeptical curiosity that leads to constantly improving justified understanding".

Perhaps the most appropriate, but not the only, Sun related presentation is the Number 2 Most Used Climate Myth "Its the Sun" (Number 2 on the thermometer at the top left-hand side of the SkS pages).

And, indeed, SkS presents many other well presented reasons to doubt the robust diversity of myths (unjustified beliefs) that many people encounter and can be tempted, out of personal interest, to incorrectly believe "must be" valid claims.

As for the splitting open of the earth's crust, indeed, should something happen that opens a large gash in the Earth's crust the consequences for life on the plant could be significant. But that has not happened. The actions of humans are clearly understood to be the most harmful current impacts on life on this planet.

Some say a massive asteroid striking the planet could open such a gash. Even if a large asteroid strike did not open a gap in the crust, the results of such an impact could significantly harm life on this planet. But right now it certainly appears that the collective actions of callous self-interested humans is adding up to be as bad as a large asteroid hitting the planet ... don't worry about an asteroid ... try to learn how to help limit the harm done by callous self interested humans ... learn the difference between "unjustified beliefs" and "justified understanding".

How not to solve the climate change problem

Bob Loblaw at 04:50 AM on 25 August, 2022

scvblwxq1:

Yes we know that solar output has been decreasing. But this purported "cooling" just isn't happening, Things are warming up, instead. Maybe there is some other factor involved?

If you think we're heading towards another glacial period (within the current ice age), you're worrying about something that would not happen until the distant future.

If you think that warming is going to be good for us, you need to think again.

Please take discussions of these arguments to the appropriate thread, as indicated by the links I have provided.

It's the sun

MA Rodger at 22:04 PM on 3 August, 2022

cgfree59 @1301,
The best initial assessment of any work by the Connolly brothers or Willie Soon is to assume it is yet another pile of their usual nonsense (I was much surprised recently seeing an NSIDC blog actually citing one of their papers for real!!) and given the lengths they go in obfuscating and misdirecting folk, this is not entirely a falacious use of an ad hominem argument.

There are responses to this particular serving of nonsense Connolly et al (2021) 'How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate' (thus a layman's efforts or a reply from the numpties themselves to a criticism of press coverage of their paper) but I do not see anything here at SkS.

The conculsions of Connolly et al (2021) are to assert that the IPCC is premature with its conclusions as it ignores certain estimates of TSI and thus solar forcing which provide radically different results to the global warming attribution reached by the IPCC.

"Different TSI estimates suggest everything from no role for the Sun in recent decades (implying that recent global warming is mostly human-caused) to most of the recent global warming being due to changes in solar activity (that is, that recent global warming is mostly natural)."

You could expend time and effort trawling though Connolly et al (2021), picking out the obfuscation and misdirection they employ but the crux of it is the crazy method they use. That is they the employ blind curve-fitting of their preferred solar-caused climate forcing onto some crazy NH temperature estimates and only after this first-step into the lunatic asylum do they then get to attributing the left-overs of any temperature trends to anthropogenic forcings.

So the results are pure nonsense.

Further a rather telling observation is that of these TSI estimates which they claim are being ignored (TSI High Variability Estimates all plotted out in their Fig 3), only two would allow any naive correlation between rising global temperature with TSI through the all-important "recent decades."
One of these two exceptional TSI estimates was scaled from a postage-stamp-size graphic in Ammann et al (2007), a paper which contradicts the muppets in that it concludes:-

"Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, the impacts of greenhouse gases have dominated since the second half of the last century.

The second is cherry-picked TSI estimate is from yet another tiny graphic (Fig 5b of Egorova et al 2018) in turn the trace being based on Muscheler et at (2016) which employs proxy data to create estimates of TSI, so not a precise method you would want to put much faith in.

The numpties offer no comment on such an obvious problem with their grand thesis, that it has such a narrow and less-than-reliable basis for the singularly important calculation within their account. Such an omission is a sign that you have strayed from reasonable analysis and entered the lunatic asylum.

Taking the Temperature: a dispatch from the UK

One Planet Only Forever at 08:17 AM on 26 July, 2022

Fixitsan @42 (and other comments),

Thank you for accepting that averaging larger amounts of data provides a clearer indication of long-term trends like the impacts of increasing CO2 levels. That understanding leads to awareness that the surface temperature impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere is best seen by the trend of the global 30-year moving average (the global version of the one for CET presented on the Wikipedia page I linked to @40). Also, the 30-year ‘global average’ is understandably the better indication of the trend than any regional 30-year average.

I have more to share regarding CO2 and temperatures. But the following will hopefully help explain the comments I will make.

We appear to agreed that many people appear to be uninterested in putting the effort into pursuing the most logical explanations for the ever increasing evidence of what is going on. Learning requires a willingness to change your mind based on ‘new information and evidence’. It can require giving up on developed (status quo) beliefs and actions (no matter how popular, profitable or enjoyable they are).

The following 6 minute BBC Reel item “The psychology behind conspiracy theories” is informative. Watch it. Think about it. Then watch it again. Then seriously consider the possibility that you are resisting learning for some reason(s).

When there is a lot of evidence, as there is regarding climate science (especially since the first IPCC Report in 1990), the understanding still improves as additional evidence is obtained. But the fundamental understanding developed by 1990 is very unlikely to change ‘statistically significantly’ due to new evidence. And the observations you make regarding CET are not ‘new evidence’ (btw, Why is your focus on anything other than what the CET 30-year average trend since 1990 indicates?)

Many other comments have been helpful (they really are), but I will only refer to a few of them.

Bob Loblaw @47 provides a great overlay of the history of CO2 levels and global average surface temperature (GAST). But the 30-year moving average temperature line looks even more like the CO2 line.

You can use the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator to see the 30-year GAST trend for the GISS v4 (the temperature dataset Bob Loblaw used). Choose GISTEMPv4 and set the follow: Start date = 1880; End date = 2023; Moving average = 360 months (30 years). The GISTempv4 30-year moving average increases between 1920 and 1950, and after 1965 (note that there is no ‘levelling off’ in a 600-month moving average). What is happening in the CET is similar. But local conditions can be understood, and expected, to vary relative to the global trend. The term ‘vary’ leads to the next points.

Many variables affect the GAST. It isn’t just the CO2 levels. Increased CO2, primarily due to fossil fuel use, is known to be ‘the major factor’. However, additional variables affecting GAST are already well understood (with more being learned – because – well that’s science for you). They include:

Aerosols (see nigelj @45)

Other ghgs in the atmosphere, not just CO2

ENSO (el Nino, la Nina)

Solar radiation levels

Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles

In addition to variables affecting GAST, there are other factors affecting local climates including:

ENSO (it affects regional climates as well as being large enough to affect the GAST)

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation AMOC

The AMOC is weakening due to Global Warming. That could mean cooler winters in the CET region even with increased Global Warming due primarily to increased CO2, due primarily to human activity (primarily fossil fuel use).

So ... it is not wrong to say “Increased CO2 = increased GAST”. All that needs to be understood is that CO2 due to fossil fuel use is only the primary part of the 'increasing GAST and resulting Climate Change' problem.

Closing with a brief bit about the future of the Maldives due to increasing GAST. Reviewing the Climate Central Map of “Land projected to be below annual flood level in 2050” (a detail you missed or misunderstood when commenting about bridges near Edinburgh) you can see that only ‘most of the Maldives’ will be expected to be annually flooded by 2050 (using the default settings). More of the Maldives would be annually submerged in subsequent decades. Mind you, with the default settings, even by 2100 there are still little bits of the Maldives above the annual flood level. A related understanding is that people playing marketplace games can make 'very bad bets'.

A related understanding is that people playing marketplace games can make 'very bad bets', like investing in fossil fuelled pursuits, or buying in the Maldives (like the unfortunate people on Kona, the Big Island, Hawaii who chose to buy property and live in areas that are now under lava).

Taking the Temperature: a dispatch from the UK

Fixitsan at 02:31 AM on 23 July, 2022

Bear in mind (this weakens my argument because it is disrespectful to the Met) that the Met pulled out of the lucrative business of long range weather forecasting (of vital importance to farmers everywhere, because getting it right at planting time can be worth 15% moire profit), because their moderate level of accuracy was surpassed by a more superior method which included solar and cosmic activity, while previously the Met Office had stated they did not think the sun affected the UK's climate.

Surely, climate only exists because of the sun.

No sun, no climate, and no climate change.

I say that with confidence as someone who firmly believes climate stability is a pseudo religious belief, and, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the multivariant input based climate of the earth should ever see those variable parameters stabilise, ever, due at least to the fact that they all feedback into one another in various ways and particularly crucially, with different rates of change.

Stability is an impossibility and as far as I'm concerned the expectation of climate stability is a fools errand

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 02:02 AM on 9 June, 2022

Macquigg,

I applied to Citizendium but they have not sent me anything after a week. On mature reflection, I do not have time to explain reactor safety to the entire internet. I try to respond to people who post obviously false information on this website.

I have already stated above that Thor Cons' response to radioactivity in the paper is deliberately false. Obviously you do not understand the facts of the case.

In the abstarct of Krall et al 2022 it says:

""the intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMRs suggests that most designs are inferior to LWRs with respect to the generation, management, and final disposal of key radionuclides in nuclear waste." (my bold)

This means all the radionuclides in the reactor i.e. the fission products and the reactor components rendered radioactive by neutron bombardment from high neutron leakage. The paper states clearly that reactor developers have not reported the amount of reactor components that become radioactive. The paper then claims that the reactor components are a major part of the waste chain and must be calculated. Obviously all radioactive waste has to be disposed of.

This calculation should have been done by reactor designers but they have been negligent and not provided this data. Why have the designers hidden this damaging information?

According to you, Thor Cons' response is "All fission reactors produce essentially the same amount of fission products" (my bold). Thor Con deliberately ignors the entire point of the PNAS paper. The extra waste is the irradiated steel and other reactor components. Where I was raised that is deliberate falsifacation. It is not my problem that you do not understand the quotes you post.

In your discussion on Citizendum poster Lyle Elhaney posts a long comment claiming that iron does not become radioactive under neutron bombardment. He concludes:

"Other materials - some do become radioactive when drenched with neutrons for an extended time. One would need to know what materials to analyze what happens."

Krall et al 2022 now tell us. The other materials cause a great deal of problems. For one example, ⁵⁸Ni is present in large amounts in the 316 steel and is converted into radioactive ⁵⁹Ni. There are other problematic isotopes formed. Analyizing the iron alone deliberately minimizes the problem. The comment should be updated to reflect that peer reviewed scientists think this is a big problem.

Roger Bloomquist states:

"There are small concentrations of activated structural elements like cobalt. These typically have half-lives of years, not multiple decades"

The ⁵⁹Ni mentioned above as one of the major isotopes formed in the irradiated 316 steel has a half life of 72,000 years. Since it will have to be isolated for over 10 half lifes to decay that is over a million years. Where I live that is way more than "years". Bloomquists post is false and should be deleted. A new post stating that the radioactive steel will have to be stored for over a million years should be put in its place.

Nuclear designers have been claiming since 1950 that nuclear power will be cheap and safe. They have failed to produce on their promises. You are obviously new to this conversation. I suggest that you carefully read Abbott 2012 (referenced on citizendium) which gives 15 reasons why nuclear power can never produce more than 5% of all power and Lyman 2021 "Advanced" isn't always better (white paper from the Union of Concerned Scientists). I spent two weeks reading Lyman and several hours reviewing it for these posts so I am unsympathetic to your using an hour reading Krall et al. 2022.

Neither you nor Thor Con has addressed my point that there is not enough beryllium to build out more than a few Thor Con reactors. I would like to see how they calculate that a disposable reactor that only lasts 4 years can compete on price with a wind generator or solar farm. I note that they claim only that they can produce electricity as cheaply as coal while wind and solar today are cheaper than coal.

Nuclear power is uneconomic and the materials to build the reactors do not exist.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #22

One Planet Only Forever at 12:45 PM on 7 June, 2022

Recent posts at SkS, including this week’s News Roundup, provide great information and examples of the need for a broad integrated (systemic) perspective when learning about climate science and the challenges of getting the collective of humanity to collaborative converge to learn to achieve the required rapid changes to limit harm done by developed and developing human activity and help those who need assistance now and in the future.

I will start with the SkS re-post of the Yale Climate Connections article Driving with electricity is much cheaper than with gasoline. The article provides a detailed presentation of the cost advantage of electric personal vehicles. But, because of its focus on only a small part of the bigger picture, it does not mention the more important consideration that even electric vehicle use needs to be limited to limit the power demand. Because all power demand causes harm (as the deniers of the need to stop burning fossil fuels constantly point out regarding renewable energy production and use). People should be “dramatically reducing non-essential personal vehicle use”. By all means switch to electric vehicles. But limit personal vehicle use, including taxi or other ‘personal ride services, to essential travel. And make changes to limit “essential travel”. Note that even using public transit consumes energy. And consuming energy, even renewable electricity, is not harm free.

Another example of the narrow perspective problem (a problem highlighted in the ‘convergent’ set of articles opening this week’s Recent Research), is the recent BBC News story Drought-stricken US warned of looming 'dead pool'. This article is narrowly focused on the water shortage and electricity generation limits due to the water shortage in the SW US. The article mentions the ‘temporary’ water use restriction measures. And the recommended actions include building new dams and building household roof-top solar powered machines that will extract water from the air. What is missed is the need to fundamentally change how people live to reduce power and water demand. People should not grow things in yards that need ‘extra water - more than naturally would occur’. They should stop non-essential water use. That would maximize water to be used efficiently to grow food (far more essential than water used to have pretty yard plants). Another consideration is that reservoirs behind dams result in loss of water through evaporation. In warm dry climates, water stored for later use or power generation should be kept in ways that minimize evaporation losses (not is sprawling lakes).

A different example of the difficult of narrow focused articles or, more correctly, the problem of people reading items in isolation with a narrow focus is the Guardian article We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist (Katharine Hayhoe). This article mentions that harmfully misleading narrow-minded claim by pseudo-economists like HSBC’s Stewart Kirk that future problems caused by people benefiting from unsustainable harmful pursuits can and should be discounted (marginalized, ignored) because future generations can deal with it (and more importantly the harmed people of the future can’t vote today and would have a hard time suing those who harmed them). The morally rational understanding is that the people who benefit from a harmful action should be the only ones to suffer the harm of the harmful action (the classic medical harm done to patients, or risk of harm, to best help patients). So if there is required future adaptation due to climate changes the current generation needs to build sustainable adaptations that will protect future generations from the future potential harm (it is unjust to leave it to future generations to adapt, if they can).

In We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist (Katharine Hayhoe) it is also correctly declared that unless dramatic, but technically feasible, changes happen it is likely that the future of humanity will be irreparably seriously harmed. That relates to the recent BBC News article Why is climate 'doomism' going viral – and who's fighting it?. Katharine Hayhoe correctly declares the massive harm likely to be done unless dramatic changes are made starting today. That can be considered to be a statement that triggers doomism. But the bigger story is to know that ‘doomism’ is a step in learning about important required changes like the need to stop climate change impact harm. This is well presented by Kimberly Nicholas PhD in her 2021 book “Under the Sky We Make”. She lists the stages of learning about climate change What she calls radical climate acceptance) as: Ignorance, Avoidance, Doom, All the feel(ing)s, and Purpose. The feelings that follow the Doom stage include righteous anger at all those who have been harmfully misleading through the past 30 years.

And that brings things to the wider understanding of the harmful misleading group of characters that is well presented in the SkS re-post of the Yale Climate Connections article Preserving democracy is part of preserving the planet. That systemic socioeconomic-political problem is described by Eve Darian-Smith in the following quote:

Political and industrial leaders collude to extract wealth from the land and its people, without regard for sustainability.

Industries effectively capture and control state agencies assigned to regulate them.

Politicians, their parties, and affiliated media use campaign contributions and advertising from these industries to build and maintain messaging operations that dis-inform the public and otherwise obstruct democratic oversight, including free and fair elections.

They do this by playing on nationalistic fears and animosities to gain and retain power.

This nationalism at home is combined with isolationist foreign policies.

Nationalism and isolationism lead to anti-environmentalism out of resistance to global environmental concerns.

This combination of ultranationalism, isolationism and anti-environmentalism intensifies systemic environmental racism in these countries.

That can be understood to be a version of the harmful misleading actions described by the Propaganda Model that Edward S. Herman developed and presented, along with Noam Chomsky, in Manufacturing Consent (Book and documentary from decades ago).

There is lots for people to learn to be angry about and be motivated to act helpfully contrary to the interests of people who choose to try to evade learning to be less harmful and try to benefit more from being more harmful. And children who learn that leaders among their ancestors tried to keep people from learning to be less harmful and more helpful should be expected to express the most righteous anger.

Go Greta! Same Go(es) for all the other younger people (and the young at heart with an open curiosity to learn new things like all children are born with) who are justifiably angry (the ones who have learned to move beyond the awareness of their potential Doom due to the lack of concern by elders and a lack of helpfully well-directed narrow laser-like focused anger among elders who should know better - elders who should be focused on limiting the influence and impacts of people who do not care to learn to be less harmful and more helpful).

Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans

Irivlin at 13:31 PM on 13 May, 2022

Respectfully, I believe we're all missing the point.

I don't care if global warming is occurring and I care even less if it's human activity that the culprit. If we don't like CO² (I like CO², because it increases crop yields in a hungry world), then either live like a caveman and don't use fossil fuels or go nuclear (my preferred option). Clearly solar and wind are not the answer. Insulation and self denial are not the answer. These just assist in reducing energy. (Improving the aerodynamics of a car is pointless, if there's no engine).

We need less people on the planet and - most of all - less politicians)

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

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

Santalives @40/41,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wilddouglascounty at 15:05 PM on 12 January, 2022

15 Eclectic:

Global warming is a measurement that tracks one effect of an increased amount of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere. The reason it is always important to take causality back to greenhouse gases is for the same reason we take the cause of an enhanced performance back to the ingested steroids instead of attributing that enhanced performance to the improved statistics that that performer has now.

If it were increased solar activity that was warming the planet say 1.5 degrees Celsius, you would have to look at the physics of the increased radiative output of the sun, just we look at the physics of increased heat retention provided by greenhouse gases, and calculate how the sun, not greenhouse gases or other components of the energy balance created the net increase.

We know quite a bit about the physics of solar irradiation and its warming component in the energy balance equation, just as we know quite a bit about the physics of greenhouse gas heat retention in that same equation, right? Both could cause the exact same amount of global warming, but the physics of both, being different and testable, are distinguishable, which is why we have concluded that the GW should have an "A" in front of it, not an "S" right?

CO2 is not the only driver of climate

Daniel Bailey at 09:27 AM on 6 April, 2021

Sigh. If only people would stop checking their cerebral cortex at the border to Denierstan: people live in the troposphere, not the thermosphere.

I know they both start with "t", but that's all they have in common.

From NASA scientist Martin Mlynczak:

"There is no relationship between the natural cycle of cooling and warming in the thermosphere and the weather/climate at Earth’s surface. NASA and other climate researchers continue to see a warming trend in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere closest to Earth’s surface."

https://climatefeedback.org/false-claims-coming-ice-age-ecosystem-unreliable-news-sites-blogs-social-media-accounts/

"Observations have shown that solar flare activity on the surface of the Sun is in the quiet phase of its continuing 11-year cycle. This causes cooling of the thermosphere—a layer of the atmosphere that starts 65 miles above the surface—and will not cause noticeable cooling at the surface"

https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/metros-claims-of-coming-mini-ice-age-have-no-basis-in-reality/

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/09/27/the-chill-of-solar-minimum/

Please surprise us by demonstrating some actual skepticism.

It's planetary movements

Daniel Bailey at 02:45 AM on 30 March, 2021

"there is no effect on our climate"

Likeitwarm, while the Sun can influence the Earth’s climate it isn’t responsible for the warming trend we’ve seen over the past few decades. The Sun is a giver of life; it helps keep the planet warm enough for us to survive. We know subtle changes in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun are responsible for the comings and goings of the ice ages. But the warming we’ve seen over the last few decades is too rapid to be linked to changes in Earth’s orbit, and too large to be caused by solar activity.

One of the “smoking guns” that tells us the Sun is not causing the recent warming of Earth’s surface and ocean comes from looking at the amount of the Sun’s energy that hits the top of the atmosphere. Since 1978, scientists have been tracking this using sensors on satellites and what they tell us is that there has been no upward or downward overall trend in the amount of the Sun’s energy reaching Earth.

A second smoking gun is that if the Sun were responsible for global warming, we would expect to see warming throughout all layers of the atmosphere, from the surface all the way up to the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). But what we actually see is warming at the surface and cooling in the stratosphere. This is consistent with the warming being caused by a build-up of heat-trapping gases near the surface of the Earth, and not by the Sun getting “hotter.”

Scientists have quantified the warming caused by human activities since preindustrial times and compared that to natural temperature forcings.

Changes in the sun's output falling on the Earth from 1750-2011 are about 0.05 Watts/meter squared.

By comparison, human activities from 1750-2011 warm the Earth by about 2.83 Watts/meter squared (AR5, WG1, Chapter 8, section 8.3.2, p. 676).

What this means is that the warming driven by the GHGs coming from the human burning of fossil fuels since 1750 is over 50 times greater than the slight extra warming coming from the Sun itself over that same time interval.

https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/#fig-2-3

The reality is, over the past 6 decades of significant global warming, the net energy forcing the Earth receives from the Sun had been very slightly negative. As in, the Earth should be cooling, not warming, if it was the Sun driving the observed warming of the past 6 decades. Does this mean the Sun is dimming? No. Over the centuries, the Sun’s output waxes and wanes between more active periods of time, like during the 1950s and 1960s, and periods when it is very quiet for decades like in the1600s (called a Grand Solar Minimum). However, the difference between the more active periods and the quieter periods isn’t very great and is not by itself long enough or great enough to propel Earth’s climate into either a runaway heating (like happened on Venus) or into an “snowball Earth”. Overall, the Sun has increased its output by roughly 10% per billion years of its life.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/14/is-the-sun-causing-global-warming/
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-incoming-sunlight

"brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century"

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05072

What this means, in plain English: the warming caused by the greenhouse gas emissions from the human burning of fossil fuels is 6 times greater than the possible decades-long cooling from a prolonged Grand Solar Minimum.

Even if a Grand Solar Minimum were to last for a century, global temperatures would still continue to warm. Because the Sun is not the only factor affecting global temperatures on Earth.

The human forcing is now the dominant forcing of climate, dwarfing all natural forcings combined. Even that from the Sun.

It's planetary movements

MA Rodger at 21:19 PM on 29 March, 2021

Likeitwarm @Elsewhere,

You link to comment presented in Semi (2009-unpublished) 'Orbital resonance and Solar cycles' specifically p48 which says:-

The "wave" of approximate period of 934* years, which could also probably be anti-correlated with Sun spin rate, seems to match the climatologic events of Medieval optimum and Global warming, and also the Little Ice age of Maunder minimum, and similar periods in earlier ages (fig. 81)...
If this is right, now the Solar activity could drop a little, but will approach a larger maximum arround year 2050, not disturbed by the peak anomally, and then drop to a next little-ice-age arround 2400 AD. The time-lag between the spin rate change and activity change is still uncertain...

The periods of low scalar angular momentum (and higher Solar activity) roughly correspond to human civilization thriving: 1450BC Egypt, 600BC Greece, India and China, 200AD Rome and China, 1200 Medieval optimum (population growth in Europe), 2000AD (present "technical boom"). The periods of high scalar angular momentum (and lower Solar activity) correspond to crisis periods of human civilization.

According to this connection**, the current warming rate should slow down a little now, but will grow to local maximum arround year 2040, from which point it should drop to next little ice age arround year 2430 and to next warming arround year 2900. [**This referring to the paper's Fig 81 which plots the scalar sum of angular momentum of 9 planets and Sun with the climatologic data from Moberg et al (2005) which presents a 200-year NH hockeystick.]

This is all about a "wave" in the Scalar sum of Angular momentum and the page also presents a NOTE saying:-

NOTE: It was remarked, that Scalar sum of Angular momentum is a nonsense, which it is...

I think I would have to agree with this NOTE. Angular momemtum is considered maintained in a closed system and any heat-related effects that may work beyond a close system (the sun loses 130 trillion tons of mass a year through nuclear fusion) wouldn't make a great deal of difference to that, processes which themselves may show variation but again not significantly even if the sun's position relative to the solar-system's barycrentre were a factor (which Semi [2009-unpublished] asserts is when peak Scalar Sum of Angular Momentum occur).
Further to the NOTE, Semi (2009-unpublished) also does not set out this as an overall finding as it is unmentioned in either the abstract or conclusions.

Of course, that does not stop the swivel-eyed denialists. I note one of the two papers referencing Semi (2009-unpublished), Holmes (2018) 'Thermal Enhancement on Planetary Bodies and the Relevance of the Molar Mass Version of the Ideal Gas Law to the Null Hypothesis of Climate Change ' is cites Semi (2009-unpublished) as apparently showing "Yoshimura is in evidence throughout the climate system, and in proxy records, on all time-scales," (Yoshimura [1978] being cited to support a 55-year barcentric solar-system cycle but with zero actual mention of Earthly climate in that paper).

Solar Cycle Length proves its the sun

Hans Petter Jacobsen at 06:10 AM on 23 February, 2021

Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum (SSH) published their papers 'Solar Activity and Svalbard Temperatures' and 'The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24' early in 2012. According to SSH, their Solar Cycle Model can, based on the length of a solar cycle, predict the mean temperature in the next solar cycle for some northern regions. Later the same year I programmed their Solar Cycle Model. I got the same results as they did with their implementation of the model. When the model was run with temperature series for the northern region up to and including solar cycle 23, the results satisfied the statistical test used by SSH. A closer examination with hindcasting (backtesting) revealed that the model predicted the temperatures well until the mid-1970s, but not thereafter. I wrote about this in December 2012 here at Skeptical Science in the blog post 'Solar Cycle Model fails to predict the recent warming'.

In their papers, SSH made some specific predictions for temperatures in solar cycle 24, which had just started in 2012. In 2014 I discussed the Solar Cycle Model with the lead author Solheim on a Norwegian discussion forum. He stressed that we have to wait till solar cycle 24 has ended before we can evaluate the model's predictions for that cycle. Now it has ended. The temperatures in solar cycle 24 were higher than in the previous cycle, not colder as predicted by SSH. See more details in comment 22 in the blog post I wrote here at SkS.

Solar Cycle Model fails to predict the recent warming

Hans Petter Jacobsen at 23:53 PM on 20 February, 2021

When I wrote this blog post in December 2012, the temperatures measured so far in solar cycle 24 were much higher than SSH (Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum) predicted with their solar cycle model in [1] and [2]. In 2014, I wrote about the failure of their model on a Norwegian discussion forum. Solheim, the lead author of the two articles, participated in the discussion afterwards. He defended his model. He stressed that we have to wait till solar cycle 24 has ended before we can evaluate the model's predictions for that cycle. It ended in November 2019, so now we have the answer. The average temperatures in solar cycle 24 became much higher than SSH predicted with their model.

In [1], SSH predicted that the average temperature on Svalbard in solar cycle 24 would be between 1.5 and 5.5°C colder than it was in solar cycle 23. According to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the average temperature at Svalbard Airport Longyearbyen increased by 1.7°C from solar cycle 23 to 24. According to Berkeley Earth, it increased by 1.0°C at a location inland, not far from Longyearbyen.

In [2], SSH predicted that the average temperature in a northern region including Iceland and Norway would drop by at least 1°C from solar cycle 23 to 24. According to Berkeley Earth it rose by 0.3°C on Iceland and by 0.7°C in Norway including Svalbard.

Figure 1 in the blog post shows how the HadCRUT3 temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fit with the predictions of the solar cycle model. Then solar cycle 24 had just started, and the blue star for solar cycle 24 showed the temperatures measured so far in that cycle. Now the blue star can be replaced with a blue circle showing the average temperature in solar cycle 24. That is done in the Updated Figure 1.

The Solar Cycle Model with the HadCRUT4 temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere

Updated Figure 1: The observed and the predicted mean temperatures in solar cycles up to and including cycle 24.

The original Figure 1 used the HadCRUT3 temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, just as SSH did in [2]. Met Office has replaced the HadCRUT3 temperatures with the HadCRUT4 temperatures. The Updated Figure 1 therefore uses the the HadCRUT4 temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Updated Figure 1 shows the same for the northern hemisphere as the examples do for Svalbard, Iceland and Norway. The temperatures in Solar Cycle 24 became much higher than they were in the previous cycle. Not colder as predicted by SSH.

See the blog post Solar Cycle Model failed totally when predicting colder temperatures for more information and more plots.

The lead author Jan-Erik Solheim and his two co-authors are members of the Scientific Advisory Board in an organization run by climate deniers in Norway. Some months ago Solheim wrote on their web site (in Norwegian) that solar cycle 25 has started. He did not mention his failed predictions for solar cycle 24. On the contrary, he wrote about the connection between solar activity and the climate, about the little ice age caused by low solar activity, and that it will be exciting to see if low solar activity in this century will cause a colder climate. He has obviously not learned from his failed predictions for solar cycle 24.

References

1. Solar Activity and Svalbard Temperatures
Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum.

2. The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24
Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum.

There's no empirical evidence

gzzm2013 at 00:58 AM on 25 January, 2021

198 topics and none of them directly address the problem of particulate pollution. Anyone that has been to a number of big cities has noticed the large problem of air pollution by particulates.

Particles in the atmosphere cause scattering of incoming radiation, so the amount of solar radiation that impact the earth's surface is affected, either incoming or outgoing. This means that higher elevations receive more solar radiation including ultraviolet or UV radiation. So why doesn't greater exposure to solar radiation result in higher air temperatures with elevation? The answer is that very little of the atmosphere is heated directly by absorbing solar radiation. As any chemist will explain to you, air is mostly vacuum, void. Instead, most incoming solar radiation is either scattered in the atmosphere or passes through it and is absorbed by the earth. This is why the ground is often warmer than the air surrounding it.

Therefore, what warms the air, is the direct contact with the ground and liquid surface of the ocean, the interface. Solar radiation (e.g. light) will pass through the air.

Temperatures decrease with distance from the earth's surface.

So another factor to be considered is the absorbtion of solar energy by the earth's surface that is clearly changing (in color, material composition, etc) by human activity and natural activity.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1

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

Negelj

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

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

Michael Sweet/ Negelj

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

Response to Moderator

See some of my publications for information only:

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

2.1.2 Water vapour

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

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

▲Mn = Rn – AEn – ROn - Dn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W = c’ x Tw2

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

3.2.4 What is global warming part of the trend?

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

2.2.1 Uncertainty on “Climate Sensitivity Factor”

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

Climate's changed before

Hal Kantrud at 05:07 AM on 19 October, 2020

"n 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.'"

But even from the Antarctic ice data it looks like a gradual rise began about 7000 years ago. This could correlate with the increased use of the high-carbon content grassland soils for cultivation of annual crops such as small grains and also for pasturage.

"During periods of previous pandemics, reforestation of formerly cultivated lands have drawn down atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enough to measurably lower global temperatures."

I see no dips in atmospheric CO2 following any of the world's worst pandemics. "Reforestation" probably means abandonment of cropland where forests once stood, where weeds and annual grasses quickly become dominant. So this perhaps accounts for the lack of dips. I doubt if large scale abandonment of cropland occurred in fire-derived ecosystems like grasslands where forests did not originally exist as these areas would be the first to be returned to agiculture or for domestic livestock by the survivors. Unlike grasslands, forests are shallow rooted and store little carbon, other nutrients, or water underground, so I would think long-term effects of reforestation on atmospheric CO2 would be quite low.

"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."

Thought I read where regular changes in Earth's axis of rotation ("wobble") may also be involved here.

"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."

Whew! Now you are saying that Amerindians had more land under cultivation and overgrazed more acreage than European man?

"it demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began."

I agree with that, but believe the recent upward blip was caused as much by convesion of New World grasslands to cropland as it was by the industrial hydrocarbons used to accompish that task.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42

One Planet Only Forever at 02:08 AM on 19 October, 2020

nigelj,

I agree with your assessment and would add that a significant part of the problem is that 'Future people' will be the ones to suffer from what 'current day people' do that they can understand, but resist understanding, are causing harmful consequences for 'future people'.

This harmful misunderstanding, or resistance to learning to be less harmful and be more helpful, is an expected result of the human made-up artificial games of competition for impressions of superiority relative to Others. Those games have boosted the tendency for humans to be selfish rather than helpful, and developed the belief that 'Harm Done is justified by Benefit Obtained or Money Made'.

An insidious aspect of the current socioeconomic-political environment is that the more harmful someone can get away with acting the more competitive advantage they can have over more caring and considerate people - including people in the general population who do not need to care about the harm done by their purchasing or vote choices or the choices of how they will enjoy their lives.

Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is only helpful if the economic-political games are Dominated or Governed by requirements to eliminate harm done, with related constant learning by everyone, especially by people in leadership roles in everything (business, politics, social institutions). Without that Helpful Governing, the "Invisible Hand of Competition" is bound to be Very Harmful.

The solution requires systemic changes that make consideration of impacts on Others, including future generations, an essential part of the evaluation of acceptability of an activity. And the pursuers of benefit should not be the ones to determine the harm done by their actions.

People hoping to benefit from an activity can be biased against ensuring that no harm is done. They may even try to claim that what they want to benefit from is acceptable by comparing their perception of the benefit obtained to their perception of harm done and as long as there is a Net-Positive it must be acceptable. They ignore the undeniable understanding that unsustainable harmful activity must be eliminated in order for sustainable improvements to be developed. That type of selfish evaluation insidiously makes it appear as if "Harm Done is justified by the Benefit Obtained by the people benefiting from the harm being done".

Harmful activity will likely always have a competitive advantage, including the way it can get people to make-up evaluations that justify continuing the unsustainable harmful activity. Those incorrect justifications for actions harmful to future generations include 'discounting the underestimated costs of future impacts' and comparing that 'level of harm done to the future of humanity' to over-stated costs of eliminating the harm being done.

The measure of acceptability needs to be "No Harm Done". And that understanding is resisted because the current developed ways of living are very unsustainably harmful. That understanding illuminates the reality that the socioeconomic-political systems that have developed need to be significantly changed in order for sustainable improvements to develop.

Profit and popularity have failed miserably as means of developing sustainable improvements. In fact, games of popularity and profit have made it harder to limit the harm done by human activity. And being able to get away with misleading marketing, especially in politics, is the major impediment to humanity developing a sustainable improving future.

As a final note I would add that fossil fuels should be kept in reserve for a real future emergency, like keeping people warm after something like a tragic asteroid impact, or using a little bump of CO2 to get through a future period of significant reduced solar energy input.

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.

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."

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Models are unreliable

Deplore_This at 01:23 AM on 4 July, 2020

@scaddenp 1187

Thank you for your response. To answer your question here this is an example of scientists who disagree with the IPCC’s conclusion on GCMs:

“GCMs are important tools for understanding the climate system. However, there are broad concerns about their reliability:

GCM predictions of the impact of increasing carbon dioxide on climate cannot be rigorously evaluated on timescales of the order of a century.

There has been insufficient exploration of GCM uncertainties.

There are an extremely large number of unconstrained choices in terms of selecting model parameters and parameterisations.

There has been a lack of formal model verification and validation, which is the norm for engineering and regulatory science.

GCMs are evaluated against the same observations used for model tuning.

There are concerns about a fundamental lack of predictability in a complex nonlinear system.

There is growing evidence that climate models are running too hot and that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is at the lower end of the range provided by the IPCC. Nevertheless, these lower values of climate sensitivity are not accounted for in IPCC climate model projections of temperature at the end of the 21st century or in estimates of the impact on temperatures of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The IPCC climate model projections focus on the response of the climate to different scenarios
of emissions. The 21st century climate model projections do not include:

a range of scenarios for volcanic eruptions (the models assume that the volcanic activity will be comparable to the 20th century, which had much lower volcanic activity than the 19th century

a possible scenario of solar cooling, analogous to the solar minimum being predicted by Russian scientists

the possibility that climate sensitivity is a factor of two lower than that simulated by most climate models

realistic simulations of the phasing and amplitude of decadal- to century-scale natural internal variability

The climate modelling community has been focused on the response of the climate to increased human caused emissions, and the policy community accepts (either explicitly or implicitly) the results of the 21st century GCM simulations as actual predictions. Hence we don’t have a good understanding of the relative climate impacts of the above or their potential impacts on the evolution of the 21st century climate.”
-— Judith Curry, the former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at my alma mater
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2017/02/Curry-2017.pdf

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

CD at 08:42 AM on 21 June, 2020

I noticed that one of the proposals of this article is more solar power. Yet solar power decreases the Earth's albedo and thereby increases local surface warming. This warming (even without CO2 greenhouse emisions) can be as high as 1 degC as I note here - climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/06/14-surface-heating.html

In thermodynamics there is no such thing as a free lunch. All human activity warms the planet. So what is the plan? Go back to prehistoric living and get everyone to live in a cave?

It's the sun

John Hartz at 01:44 AM on 28 January, 2020

Recommended supplemental reading:

Four graphs that suggest we can’t blame climate change on solar activity by Gareth Dorrian & Ian Whittaker, The Conversation UK, Jan 24, 2020

The high and low points for climate change in 2019

One Planet Only Forever at 01:57 AM on 28 December, 2019

Responding to swampfoxh's string of comments regarding religion and the poor.

There is a diversity of ways to be religious. Many of them are very helpful. And some of them are harmful. That awareness leads me to try to correct harmfully incorrect generalizations about religion related to climate science. And, as a thoughtful human, I feel obliged to respond to callous dismissive comments made related to the undeniably Good Human objective of helping the poorest (an essential aspect of almost every spiritual religion).

Undeniably, people use a diversity of ways to fight against the expanded awareness and improved understanding of the required corrections of what humans have developed, particularly, but not exclusively, the corrections that climate science has exposed are required for humanity to have a long and improving future. Only some of those people claim to be acting as members of a spiritual religious group. And not all religious people act that way or are impressed by those people.

Everyone can expand their awareness and improve their understanding that helping achieve and improve on things like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is what life needs to be all about. Human activity should be governed and limited by objectives of correcting harmful actions and promoting helpful actions.

Almost every religion has established beliefs that support the achievement of the SDGs. But many religious groups have been infected by a twisted capitalist, colonialist, status pursuing attitude and related non-spiritual religiously held beliefs. And a scientific approach is not necessarily better.

That understanding needs to be increased. There is much Good in religious people and their beliefs. People ideologically holding harmful faith beliefs are a serious problem.

Harmful faith in Science includes: “Science enables people to do as they wish with dominance and control over nature - living artificially apart from the robust diversity of life rather than as a sustainable part of the robust diversity of life - only caring about other life that can be directly useful to a human's developed way of living.” That ideology can be the basis for absurd claims like: “Technological breakthroughs will be the answer to the climate challenge (that was created by desired technological breakthroughs); Have faith that the future generations will brilliantly artificially overcome any challenges and create a sustainable better future that has little need for non-artificial living, or other living things; Glory be to Technology from Science.”

There is also the potentially far more harmful faith in Economics: “Worshipping the belief that people being freer to believe whatever they want in pursuit of their personal interests will naturally develop Good Results” with the related damaging “Idolizing of the impressions developed by winners of competitions for popularity and profit” and the related false belief that “Everybody is fully deserving of whatever circumstances they are born into and end up with”.

Some religious people will agree that science will allow humans to thrive in domination and control of everything - As God Intended (at least the portion of humans who end up winning the power to dominate and control everything).

Religions in pursuit of dominance and control harmfully push their members to 'convert, overpower or eliminate' Others. And example of their harmful tribal actions include fighting against equality for women and a related dislike for the SDGs. And some fight against acknowledging that there are a diversity of ways of recognizing the Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice because they believe that their celebration of Christmas must be the dominant one, the only legitimate celebration of the NH Winter Solstice.

Simplistically declaring 'religion' to be a problem regarding climate science is harmfully incorrect. The problems are all of the things people do without being governed or limited by expanded awareness and improved understanding applied to help achieve the SDGs and other Objectives required for humanity to have a better future. The pursuit and application of science without that governing objective can be very harmful. And the pursuit of popularity and profit without that governing objective is undeniably very harmful.

It would be helpful for people to expand their awareness and improve their understanding of religion, (and science, economics and politics) and apply that knowledge to achieve the SDGs. And it is very unhelpful to express a callous misunderstood generalization about religious people, who generally correctly want to help the less fortunate, in the same string of commenting that includes a repugnant expression of disinterest in helping the least fortunate sustainably improve to better living 'because they missed out - too bad - so sad for them - fake tears flowing if required to look as if caring was involved' (my paraphrased playback of the comment “My point is: since the unfortunates outnumber the fortunate about 5 to 1, how can the climate stand to tolerate the "outlaw species" assault on nature while the rest of us sit around our solar powered homes, etc, and expect to turn around global warming's dangers? I'm sorry the unfortunate missed the boat, but they will just have to do without”).

Helping the less fortunate sustainably live better will probably have to include allowing them to benefit the most from fossil fuels during the correction of what has developed, during the rapid ending of global fossil fuel use. But the objective still needs to be global total impact limited to the required total limit (1.5C), meaning the more fortunate ones currently enjoying fossil fuels need to be the ones to suffer the loss as “They lead the required rapid correction”. And Religious People are very likely to support that understanding, more than those with a faith in Science to magically solve the future problem of failing to limit the impacts, and undeniably more that those who have faith that the developed economic systems will solve the problem they created and have made worse through the past 30 years of full awareness, but denial, of the problem being created.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

MA Rodger at 23:56 PM on 26 December, 2019

Dave Evans @84,

The Wattsupian nonsense from Nov 2018 you ask about doesn't appear to have been de-bunked but the major slight-of-hand employed by the denialist-&-nonsense-author Angus MacFarlane has been de-bunked by SkS.

The Nov 2018 nonsense purports to itself de-bunk Peterson et al (2008) which is the main evidence base for the OP above. [The co-authors seem to have been overlooked by the OP above who call it Peterson 2008.] In directly challenging Peterson et al, the Wattsupian denier reclasifies 20% of the surveyed papers cited by Peterson et al (14 of the 66 re-assessed with 5 Peterson et al citations not assessed) and thus attempts to convert the result from 7 'cooling', 20 'neutral' and 44 'warming' into 16 'cooling', 19 'neutral' and 36 'warming'. This is not greating different and certainly does not support the contention that there was a scientific global cooling concensus during the 1970s.

To provide more fire-power, the Wattsupian denilaist adds extra citations to the survey - two which he found for himself (again not a level of evidence that would change the Peterson et al result) and an additional 117 papers gleaned from an earlier denialist attempt to debunk Peterson et al. It is only with this extra denialist fire-power from 2016 that anything like the number of citations can be obtained to overcome the Peterson et al result. This 2016 nonsense has been debunked in a two-park SkS post here & here.

The general nonsense in this 2016 denialist blather is possible best summed up by the denialistical use of the 1974 CIA document which considers the global food supply and within this considers climate as potentially a major factor. Global cooling is presented as a potential increase in risk to an adequate global food supply. There is no 'consensus' being waved that global cooling is expected. Instead they cite HH Lamb but ignore Lamb's view at that time in the mid-1970s that "On balance, the effects of increased carbon dioxide on climate is almost certainly in the direction of warming but is probably much smaller than the estimates which have commonly been accepted." As this may sound itself a little 'denialist' to modern ears, I should all that the 1977 book containing this quote had added into its 1984 preface:-

"It is to be noted here that there is no necessary contradiction between forecast expectations of (a) some renewed (or continuation of) slight cooling of world climate for some years to come, e.g. from volcanic or solar activity variations; (b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter; and this followed in turn by (c) a glaciation lasting (like the previous ones) for many thousands of years.” [my bold]

The evidence-base for the CIA document is set out in its Annex II is based on the work of one scientist, Reid Bryson who did continue to find it beyond his abilities to accept the idea of AGW as a problem that needed tackling. So even though the 1974 CIA document runs with global cooling, a worst-case scenario, there is no scientific consensus backing it up.

The other study cited by the 2016 nonsense is Stewart & Glantz (1985) which talks of an emerging AGW-warming consensus but itself analyses the conclusions of a 1978 study on climate projection to the year 2000. This 1978 study would presumably have been advised by any 'cooling' concensus had such a thing existed in the mid-1970s. So their conclusions will be of interest:-

"The derived climate scenarios manifest a broad range of perceptions about possible temperature trends to the end of this century, but suggest as most likely a climate resembling the average for the past 30 years.- Collectively, the respondents tended to anticipate a slight global warming rather than a cooling. More specifically, their assessments pointed toward only one chance in five that, changes in average global temperatures will fall outside the range of -0.3°C to +0.6°C, although any temperature change was generally perceived as-being amplified in the higher latitudes of both hemiipheres."

So here the 1970s view was more towards 'warming' than 'cooling' although I note the 'warming' opinion prevailed as warming 1975-2000 was +0.5°C.

And today we see nothing but blather in that Nov 2018 Wattsupian whittering. It is ever thus there on the remote planetoid Wattsupia.

Underground temperatures control climate

LKL at 11:26 AM on 19 December, 2019

I just encountered a new one: 'cosmic rays are increasing due to decreased solar activity, and this is increasing tectonic activity and warming the earth from below

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 15:47 PM on 14 December, 2019

'Boiling water reactors with a full core of fuel rods will contain about 44 tonnes of zirconium.Pressurised water reactors will contain about 29.5 tonnes of zirconium...zirconium is the 20th most abundant element in the earth’s crust...There are good reserves of zircon sand in many countries including South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Australia, Ukraine, Peru, India, China and the United States.' World reserves are over a billion tons, and non-nuclear uses are about 15 percent.

https://www.reuters.com/article/zirconium-nuclear/factbox-nuclear-industry-and-zirconium-idUSLN78747920090423

With about forty tons per reactor every four years, and about 450 reactors making 4% of the world's energy, multiply by 25 to cover total world energy use, and the industry has about eight thousand years before it is forced to consider recycling, or using alternatives. ( Silicon carbide is considered a good option, but I'm not going to calculate when we'd run out of silicon and carbon.) As shown above, hafnium supply is included with zirconium - in fact, other users of hafnium rely on the nuclear industry for the difficult separation process, and would have much greater costs without it. Alternative materials for control rods include boron. 'Global proven boron mineral mining reserves exceed one billion metric tonnes, against a yearly production of about four million tonnes.' Rare earth elements such as europium are also used. They're not actually that rare, but they are difficult to separate from each other ( like zirconium and hafnium ), and they're often present in thorium ores. Thorium is classed as radioactive, which it is slightly, and therefore is difficult to get mining permits for. If it is eventually used as fuel - it's about five hundred times more abundant than uranium 235, with about the same energy content of 19,000 kwh per gram - more rare earths would be available as a by-product.

Zirconium is actually produced in reactors - it makes up about ten percent of fission products - but not in quantities worth processing. Other, much rarer, elements are also present, though. India is already looking at palladium, rhodium and ruthenium recovery. Some of these metals, which are very useful catalysts and alloying agents, are worth thousands of dollars a kilo. Reserves of rhodium in spent fuel will soon be greater than in ores, and some of those ores are in conflict zones in Zaire, where they are exploited by child labour to finance civil war. 'After 5 years cooling the specific activity of Rh obtained from nuclear fuels is less than a millicurie a gram, and after a few decades, irrelevant.' Technetium is an unstable element not found in nature, but its radioactivity is low - the half life is over 200,000 years, with emission of a low energy beta particle, an electron. Technetium is chemically almost identical to rhenium, which is essential for high-temperature alloys in turbine blades and the like, but Tc is about half as heavy.

Beryllium is not used in any current reactor, or in any presently being assessed for licensing in the USA or Canada, including proposed molten salt designs.

Abbot sees all sorts of problems in expanding an industry which already makes ten percent of the world's electricity - over fifty percent in some countries - but none of significance in moving from fossil fuels (85% of our energy) to his preferred option, concentrating solar ( about 0.01% ). The technology for CSP has been around for as long as nuclear, but the people who actually install power systems have ignored it.

CO2 was higher in the past

MA Rodger at 20:05 PM on 7 December, 2019

Livinginawe @98,
You pose an interesting thought (which I think can be addressed on-topic).

In essence, I don't think mankind's could ever become saviour of a living world by boosting atmospheric CO2 levels.

If we look tens-of-thousands of years into the future, there is talk (eg see this Wikithing page, although the reference it makes Berger & Loutre (2002) is not as defininte) that in 50,000 years time the world will face an ice age that will not be dodged by our emissions. By that time the impact of our emissions on the atmosphere would be much diminished. But an ice age does not of itself reduce the amount of carbon about. Rather it sucks it out of the atmosphere into oceans and frozen soils.
While these dips in CO2 could soon make life for C3 plants very difficult, C4 plants can survive at atmospheric CO2 levels well below 100ppm. And there are also aquatic plants which maybe even benefit from colder waters enriched by CO2.

Over the longer term, hundreds-of-millions of years, the increase in solar strength will increase rainfall and thus increase rock weathering drawing down carbon into the geology via the slow carbon cycle(as this NASA web-page terms it) while the release of carbon back from geology via volcanic activity is presumably fixed and will not respond enough to compensate. Thus the 60,000Gt(C) on the planet will more-&-more become trapped in the geology (currently about 10,000Gt(C) is in trapped in rocks) and atmospheric CO2 levels will drop.
The works of man so-far have release ~700Gt(C) from FF with perhaps 1,500Gt(C) of FF reserves and so they don't amount to anything significant in the grand scheme of things.
Mind, as the sun warms the planet creating a wetter world which draws down more CO2 into the rocks, that loss of CO2 will cool the world and act as a brake on the process. The loss of CO2 would be something like 500My of the strenghening sun, so after that sort of time period the wetter climate would have no CO2 'brake'.

Over the last 50My we have seen atmospheric CO2 levels drop but that atmospherc loss of perhaps ~5,000Gt(C) was probably driven by the Himalayas being weathered down in the wet climate of the tropics with a feedback of lost CO2 cooling the climate and drawing further CO2 into the oceans (where most of the planet's carbon resides today). So the rate of loss of atmospheric CO2 over the Cenozoic era probably shouldn't be projected into the future with any confidence.

Climate Scientist reacts to Donald Trump's climate comments

MA Rodger at 06:17 AM on 26 November, 2019

prove we are smart @21,

The muppet in the video simply combines a number of weak or falacious argument to support his grand "there is no AGW" delusion.

The first bit of it is feeding off this weblog at denialist site http://joannenova.com.au. There are genuine reasons for adjusting temperature data but the usual nonsense from denialists is that such adjustments are fake, or at least they are fake when the raw data is more favourble to their delusions.

The Mayor of Glen Innes featured in the denialist video says nothing about what data is used to establish AGW. I'm sure if the number of +40ºC daily maximums was how to measure AGW, we would have debunked that particular denialist argument many times before.

The Glen Innes Annual Max data for the period 1907-2012 doesn't show any significant warming trend, although when combined with the Annual Min data, the Annual Average data 1907-2012 does. And over the period 1975-2012 the Average data is running at +0.15ºC/decade although the noise reduces the statistical significance (+/- 0.12ºC/decade at 2sd). The Annual Max also shows a reasonable warming trend but the noise makes it statistically insignificant at 2sd +0.12ºC(+/-0.21)/decade.

And the various reports of cold winters are not incompatible with AGW although it is wise not to listen to other swivel-eyed climate deniers unless you are happy broadcasting fake news. So the blather about a cold winter ahead for the UK is nought but blather. "Claims that the UK is set to face the chillest winter in a century and even a white Christmas have been dismissed by the Met Office."

And arguing against a swivel-eyed loon in full flow isn't for the faint hearted. Unless you have history with the guy, or you can succinctly debunk his nonsense, I would suggest you let this Rowan Dean make a fool of himself. He appears not to always be careful with what he spouts. For instance, I see last year that he proclaimed that "A growing number of scientists now believe solar activity is the real culprit behind so-called climate change." This is the sort of nosense that can be addressed assertively. "A growing number of scientists"? What are their names? Put up or shut up!!

It's a 1500 year cycle

Eclectic at 01:33 AM on 8 November, 2019

Alan Lowey @28 ,

the sun's energy absorbed by the Earth is approx 1.1x10^17 watts (based on TSI times 71% absorption times Earth-cross-sectional area).

Tidal energy (lithosphere and oceans) dissipated into heat, is calculated (Na & Lee, 2014 ) as approx 3.5x10^12 watts. So roughly the same as world total electrical generated power. And roughly a third of the heat generated by the radioactivity of the Earth's core. And roughly 1/30,000 th of the solar radiational heat absorbed by the earth's surface.

The core heat rising to the surface is so tiny (for climate calculations) that it is usually ignored. And the ocean tide heating effect is even smaller than the core heat loss.

I do not understand how you can say: "tides dissipating heat ... is much greater than solar radiance combined with AGW." You seem to have gotten that back to front. Or were you meaning a comparison with that fraction of extra heating produced through the greenhouse action of human-caused CO2/methane/etcetera? Yet even there, your "tidal" heat is at least a couple of orders of magnitude too small.

CO2 lags temperature

szponiasty at 23:50 PM on 5 November, 2019

So basically you are admitting, that there is influence on earth by the cosmos after all? "Several factors have affected past climate change, including solar variability, volcanic activity and changes in the composition of the atmosphere." yet you have on the "conspiracy theories" meter on the left most of them proven even by you facts? :D

It's the sun

richieb1234 at 22:21 PM on 7 October, 2019

This quote from BBC is misleading. The full quote is:

"The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase."

That's a pretty fair description of the situation in 2004, when the BBC article appeared. The professor they quote is also right to state that solar activity in the past 60 years exceeds any period of time in the last millennium.

I suggest you find a skeptic quote that actually does incorrectly atribute recent rises in global average temperature to increases in solar activity. The BBC quote doesn't.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

MSMITH at 08:29 AM on 12 July, 2019

Michael Sweet:

I need to respond immediately to one thing: "In general I do not discuss radioactive waste or problems that radioactivity causes because nuclear supporters do not care how many people they kill with radioactivity."

I care very much that the death rate from nuclear power, at all levels of the process, from mining to final disposal is much less than that of other technologies. This has been mentioned early. But I would never accuse you of not caring (for example) about the number of people killed during erection of a wind turbine, nor would I accuse you of not caring about the number of people who die falling off a roof maintaining a solar panel.

I therefore consider it a misrepresentation of my position. You imply by your statement the following:

1.) The death rate from nuclear is higher than all other sources of power.

2.) Nuclear supporters know this.

3.) Nuclear supporters choose nuclear anyway, for some other reason.

Number 1 is demonstrably false. Number 2 are therefore rendered irrelevant.

"Personally attacking other users gets us no closer to understanding the science."

You are, however, correct that I did not mention transuranics. But my statement did say "on the order of natural uranium." Yes, transuranics are there, but as there has been no study that has detected any increase in death rates due to radiation exposure on the order of natural background radiation

From the Radiation in Everyday LIfe by the IAEA:

"There are many high natural background radiation areas around the world where the annual radiation dose received by members of the general public is several times higher than the ICRP dose limit for radiation workers. The numbers of people exposed are too small to expect to detect any increases in health effects epidemiologically."

So, if we have been unable to detect the health effects from doses several times higher than the limit for people working in the nuclear power industry, does it not stand to reason that health effects from doses of about 10% of that limit would also be undetectable?

"Nuclear supporters hope to have breeder reactors in 2050 which is too late."

No it's not. For the first 700 - 900 years or so, the radioactivity in spent fuel is dominated by the Sr-90 and Cs-137 I mentioned earlier. If somebody was worried about the dose due to transuranics, storage for even 100 years, followed by reprocessing at that point, provides adequate protection from that portion of the dose that comes from transuranics.

"I note that you have provided no citatioins even to nucear industry propaganda."

As stated in the beginning of my first post, I would establish facts and then support those that you did not agree with. As much of what I said comes from many years of study, from textbooks and in-depth coursework, and from references, it would be useless to go to great lengths to provide adequate references to something that you acknowledged openly.

But now that it's been questioned, I will respond to specifics:

"(90% of current reactors face serious flooding issues which they have not addressed)"

As we are talking about expansion of nuclear power, it makes sense to talk about new designs, not current designs. And specifically, since I did in fact mention SMR in reference to the Clinch River site, we'll simply mention that the flooding issue for the NuScale SMR is simply n/a. The reactor sits in a below-grade pool of water, and requires no power to remain in a safe condition. Flooding is literally not a concern.

And that's not my position. It's the NRCs position. They have accepted that the NuScale reactor needs no AC or DC power to remain safe, which of course is what killed Fukushima, and which all of the flooding concerns ultimately hinge upon.

"It is easy to say a location is suitable without considering the suppy of cooling water,"

A nuclear plant needs about as much cooling water as a coal plant. Replacing a coal plant with a nuclear plant uses the same water a coal plant was using.

"local population, availabiity of land,"

Site boundary sized Emergency Planning Zone. Those words mean something. They literally mean that I could place an SMR facility to replace of a coal plant and not need to worry about evacuations, or off-site dose, and not even worry about zoning, as it stays zoned for industrial.

Again, as reference, Here is the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Clinch River site.

It's the sun

Eclectic at 22:12 PM on 10 July, 2019

ThirdStone @1266 ,

the ratio of area of a disc (receiving sunshine) to the area of a sphere is 1:4 and hence the division by 4

The scientists look very carefully at sun activity, and find that the 11-year cycle of solar activity is too slight to produce noticeable cyclic fluctuation in climate. Or did you have some other factor in mind?

"Cosmic Rays" are a failed hypothesis for climate change, and can be dismissed. A triple fail, because (A) CR effects appear non-existent for the period (since mid-20th Century) that CR levels have been measured directly, and (B) likewise the paleological (proxy) measurements of CR variation show no appreciable link to climate changes, and (C) the 2016 experiments at CERN show negligible CR effect on cloud nucleation (negligible in comparison with the nucleation from marine-origin particles). As they say: Cosmic Rays were a "Nice Try" as an idea for climate influence, but when tested against reality, they were a major fail not just on one way but on three separate ways of testing.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 02:10 AM on 15 June, 2019

DPeppigrass,

It looks like your post will not be deleted by the moderator even though it has no citations to peer reviewed studies to support your wild claims. You have two posts. I will address the second one first. They are long posts with many factual errors so my response is necessarily long.

In your second post you start with several links to long youtube videos of nuclear industry propaganda. I do not have time to waste watching them. Please cite peer reviewed written sources so they can be checked.

You then have a long screed on the topic of radiation safety. I note that I have extensive training and experience using radioactivity while you have claimed no experience or training beyond your reading on the internet. In general, I do not debate radiation safety with nuclear supporters because they do not care about reactor safety or how many people they kill. It is thus a waste of my time to discuss safety.

However, for other readers I have this reference from the French Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the IRSN) .

“At the present stage of development, IRSN does not have all the necessary data to determine whether the systems under review [generation IV reactors] are likely to offer a significantly improved level of safety compared with Generation III reactors”.

The claims you parrot about “safe” generation IV reactors are simply propaganda from the nuclear industry.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nuclear Industry claims their new designs are safer so that they can reduce safety factors to make more money. There is no factual basis for the claim the reactors are really safer. This is generation IV of nuclear reactors because the first 3 generations were not safe as advertised and were too expensive.

In your first post you start out calling “citation needed” for Abbotts claim that “nuclear reactors must be placed "away from dense population zones, natural disaster zones, and near to a massive body of coolant water" It takes a lot of brass to call for a peer reviewed paper to provide citations when your post contains none. Let us examine these issues.

It is illegal to locate nuclear reactors in cities. In light of the safety issues cited above it is unlikely that rule will change in the foreseeable future. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.

You are suggesting that it is OK to locate nuclear reactors on top of earthquake faults, in flood zones and in locations that are likely to be inundated by sea level rise. I do not think anyone will agree with you. Your claim strongly supports my claim above that nuclear supporters do not care about the safety of the reactors they build. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.

You claim “ the third one in particular does not really apply to Molten Salt Reactors which can rely on air cooling or on relatively modest amounts of cooling water.”

Reading your link and your discussion it appears that you have confused the amount of water needed in an emergency to shut down the reactor and the amount of water that is needed every day for normal operation. The nuclear designers claim without evidence that their designs can do an emergency shutdown with little water or air cooling. Your calculations may indicate how much water that is. According to you, for normal operations the reactors must remove approximately 1.1 GWth at all times. That can only be done with massive amounts of water. Air cooling is too expensive and inefficient for normal use. Your claim that massive bodies of water are not needed is false. This error demonstrates that you have no idea how a nuclear plant works. In spite of the fact you do not know how the plants work you lecture us what we should think. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.

Abbott correctly describes the footprint of a nuclear plant to counter incorrect industry propaganda that nuclear plants only occupy a small area.

You say “I'd love to hear anyone come up with a theory of how an MSR could produce a hazardous radioactive gas cloud (in all seriousness, e.g. I'm waiting for a chemist to speak up about what would happen if a supersonic jumbo jet mysteriously aims itself directly at the below-grade reactor, and then let's say it had a water-based cooling system that now pours uncontrollably onto the exposed salt.”

Fortunately, I am a professional chemist. In the scenario you describe the water coming in contact with the extremely hot salt would instantly cause a steam explosion that would destroy the facility. In the explosion a lot of hydrogen gas would be generated from the highly reducing salt solution. This would cause a hydrogen explosion. Massive amounts of fallout would be released into the environment. Since the industry does not want to build an expensive containment building the explosion would be uncontained. This supports my claim of lack of care about safety.

Abbott describes how many reactors would need to be built to illustrate the size of the problem. Since only a handful of reactors are currently built each year the rate of building would have to increase by a factor of about 100.

You say “the usual debate over nuclear power is not whether we should build 15,000,000 MW of nuclear capacity, but whether we should build any whatsoever”. Abbott discusses building only 1500 reactors at the end of his paper.

If less than 1500 reactors were built than almost all power would have to come from wind and solar. In a renewable world the most valuable energy is peak power on windless nights. Baseload is not valuable at all. It would be much more cost effective to build out more renewable or storage. We would not need to worry about radiation safety, nuclear waste or weapons proliferation.

You say “Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?” No, Abbott means entropy. You obviously did not take college chemistry or physics. Heat and energy are similar. Entropy is complicated but for this discussion it is similar to randomness. As heat increases the drive to increase randomness increases. This causes materials to corrode, crack and fail much faster. The problem is especially bad for MSR’s because the salt is also especially corrosive. Alloys that can withstand the heat and corrosion of MSR”s, for example in the valves that control the salt solution, have not been found. They may not exist. The reactors you favor cannot be built until after the alloys for the valves are discovered. This is another example of something you are lecturing us about that you do not understand at all.

You say” My God, is that a citation? Great, now I have to go look at it to see if it has merit. I need to go to sleep momentarily.” Abbott provides citations for all his claims. If I were moderator I would warn or ban you for making game of citations. Where did you get your PhD in reactor design that you are qualified to determine if the citation has merit??? Since you have proven that you do not understand how reactors work, how will you determine if the citation has merit?

If an airplane crashes it does not cause hundreds of thousands of people to be removed from their homes and businesses. In any case, for only two faults the Boeing 300 airliner was grounded until they fix the problem. If that standard was applied to reactors all the reactors in the world would be shut.

You say “anyone who wants to make nuclear reactors cheaper must necessarily also make them less complex; good Gen IV designs are simpler than Gen III.” For myself, I would prefer that reactors were made safer and not cheaper. If your priority is profits for the nuclear industry that is your choice.

Nuclear is uneconomic. The total costs for a new wind or solar plant including the mortgage is less than the costs of operation and maintenance without a mortgage of a nuclear plant. Industry claims of greater inherent safety are not supported by data. You rely entirely on industry propaganda to support your argument.

State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019

RedBaron at 06:44 AM on 10 June, 2019

@swampfoxh,

You asked, "I don't get the points about c3 and c4 grasses nor the subordination of trees-to-grass as a less carbon effective sequesterer"

Most trees and some grasses are C3. but warm season grasses are C4. Since the C4 pathway is at least 5-10 times more efficient at photosynthesis, those plants primary productivity of products of photosynthesis start out many times greater baring other limiting factors. One of the main limiting factors in temporate grasslands is winter. So the solution that evolution came up with is a biodiverse mix of C4 and C3 grasses and forbs that each have a season they are dormant and a season they become dominant or co-dominant. This extracts by far the most solar energy and converts the most CO2 to sugars and proteins as compared to the more primitive forest ecosystems. (temperate forests produce almost no photosynthesis from fall all the way through winter and early spring while grasslands do produce photosynthesis with C3 cool season grasses and forbs) So the grasslands start out by fixing much more CO2 to begin with.

Then we consider where the bulk of that fixed carbon is stored. In a forest it is mostly stored above ground in woody biomass and leaves. A large amount is also stored in the top O-horizon of the soil. Almost all this stored carbon will ultimately be returned to the atmosphere as CO2 and methane by fire and/or the processes of decay though. A climate scientist would call this short cycle carbon. A soil scientist calls it labile organic matter. It really isn't sequestered long term in any geological timeframe. (or at least most of it isn't)

In a grassland we have much more primary productivity, but much less biomass storage as compared to forests. So the century's old question became what happened to all the rest? We sort of knew somehow it ended up as soil, because grasslands soils, particularly the Mollic epipedon, are many many times thicker and hold hundreds of times more carbon than most forest soils per acre on average. (there are some notable exceptions) But even that didn't quite add up. This is where the new research is beginning to reveal these questions.

What we term the LCP is actually a biochemical pathway whereby CO2 first becomes fixed by photosynthesis, then becomes stored in the plants as sugar rich compounds and basic proteins forming sap, then flows downward through root exudates to feed symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi in trade for weathered and scavenged nutrients otherwise not bioavailable to the plant, metabolised into soil glues called "glomalin" to form a network of structured tunnels and pore spaces in the soil, which ultimately forms humic polymers tightly bound to the soil mineral substrate that creates new fertile soil.

Climate scientists call this sequestered long cycle carbon to differentiate it from short cycle stored carbon in woody biomass. According to Dr Christine Jones in total approximately 40% of the total products of photosynthesis can follow this pathway under appropriate conditions and as it decays into soil about ~79% +/- of that carbon stays put rather than returning to the atmosphere as CO2. (again under appropriate conditions) Soil scientists call this stable carbon. However, the products of photosynthesis that are used by the grass to make above ground biomass also decay right back into CO2 much like the forests' above ground biomass. That's the labile carbon again. Well over 90% of labile carbon returns to the atmosphere as CO2 and methane on average. (with a few notable exceptions)

So it is critical to understand that difference between what soil scientists call labile carbon and stable carbon or what climate scientists call short cycle and long cycle carbon. Grasslands take hundreds of times more short cycle carbon and divert it to long cycle carbon as compared to most forests. (with a few notable exceptions)

You then asked, "Also, what is the proportional value of phytoplankton in this "sequestration" activity? And what is the impact of the recent news that some 40% of phytoplankton have disappeared from the world's oceans since 1952?"

Frankly this does actually scare me. As a retired marine engineer I know that anyone who fails to respect the power of the ocean risks death. ANYONE and EVERYONE. As a metaphor, you seriously do not want to be around when Poseidon releases the Kraken. As you can probably tell, this causes my normally rational brain to short circuit into irrational fear. And I seriously do love the ocean! But it is ingrained in me that much through many trials and tribulations that we are absolute fools to mess with the ocean ecosystems as we are currently. It's the one thing actually powerful enough to cause human extinction.

Back to rationality for a second though. I am not a marine researcher. Once years ago as a marine engineer on a research vessel I rubbed elbows with marine researchers occasionally, but I am not nor ever have been a marine scientist of any sort, not even amateur. Given that, I'll tell you what I have read over the years. One of the key things to remember is that most the ocean sequestration is focused around shallow seas and coastal areas with saltwater marshes and mangrove forests sequestering from 50-90% of biomass into stable forms. This is indeed one of those notable exceptions mentioned above. Also it is 2 to 35 times more carbon sequestration than even deep ocean phytoplankton!

Understanding Coastal Carbon Cycling by Linking Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches

Some of that carbon came from the upland grasslands too though. Because those humic polymers that are tightly bound to the soil mineral substrate will generally stay bound when the soil erodes and floods coastal areas then settle out as silts.

You asked, "are you taking the position that animals grazing the Great Plains helped create the soil there ?"

Yes. A resounding unequivocal yes! They co-evolved and the animals are every bit as important as the microbiome and the plants.

Now for agriculture we can mimic this relationship if we understand how it functions. A cow is not a bison nor an antelope, but if we manage it correctly we can mimic that ecosystem function and use it to create soil too. But in order to do that you must first understand the function of the vast herds in a grassland/savanna/open woodland biome.

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

Climate's changed before

John Hartz at 00:09 AM on 5 June, 2019

I accidently deleted the following comment. My bad.

TVC15 at 19:59 PM on 4 June 2019

Is there an easy answser for this question being asked by a climate denier?

And as you know, nature's impact on climate can and has been EXTREME prior to man, and man's industrialization. How do you account for that?

So far from what I've learned from you guys is Earth's orbit, solar output, the sun being cooler, greater volcanic activity, rock weathering, surface ice albedo, massive amounts of Dinosaur gas? (sorry guys I had to toss that in for grins)

Are there other factors I missed?

Thanks!

Should a Green New Deal include nuclear power?

william at 05:56 AM on 17 April, 2019

Nuclear power is relatively safe as long as we have our present economy and infrastructure but we seem to be in the final phase of an exponential growth curve. In the real world of biology, these end in a vertical graph — straight down. Under these conditions, the finance and infrastructure no longer remains to manage these devices and they are likely to all go critical and melt down. This will result in areas around the plants which are no go areas of high level radioactivity. Anyway, on a practical level, even now, wind and solar are financially feasible to replace fossil fuel and energy storage systems are improving by leaps and bounds. We probably do not need nuclear. https://mtkass.blogspot.com/2018/12/energy-storage.html

Climate's changed before

TVC15 at 12:16 PM on 5 April, 2019

This is the craziest Gish Gallop I've ever seen. Yes it's one of the deniers I deal with.

Please refute the facts, instead of simply launching emotional diatribes.

1. Is CO2 not .04% of atmospheric gases?

2. Is man made CO2 not 5% of atmospheric CO2?

3. Does water vapor not absorb IR energy over bandwidths 30X that of CO2?

4. Is water vapor not .4-1% of atmospheric gases?

5. Can one accurately compare over time temperature measurements estimated or measured by four different methods?

6. Why don't the "temperature plots vs time" show the error bars for the methods used for temp measurement? (comparing "proxy temps" to digital, satellite proxies, and mercury thermometer measurements should immediately disqualify any scientific comparison).

7. Why did temps not fall in the Great Depression when CO2 production fell 60%? (atmospheric CO2 has a half life of 3 years, not the very long periods suggested)

8. Why did temps fall in ww2? Was the Battle of the Bulge and Stalingrad fought in tropical climates?

9. How can the 1930s be the hottest decade on record when the AGW crowd says temps have continually increased since then?

10. Why has Miami and New York not flooded?

11. Why has there not been worldwide droughts?

12. What happened to the "times without snow"? Tell that to everyone in the US this year.

13. Why are temps falling?

14. Are we not at the beginning of a prolonged solar minimum, similar to the Mauder minimum?

15. Why did the earth not end and temps reach the boiling point of water when CO2 levels were 10X what they are now?

16. What is the contribution of solar activity and sun spots to temps?

17. What is the contribution of the orbit of the earth around the sun?

18. What is the contribution of volcanic activity?

19 If the "warming" models from 20 years ago are wrong, why are they correct now?

20 How did they measure multiple temp points at remote areas of the ocean and polar regions 200 years ago?

21. Have all the locations of temps measured over time been consistent geographic points? (Of course not- there has not been one consistent data point until the last twenty years).

22. Why were temps warmer during the Roman Empire when CO2 levels were half what they are today?

CO2 provides all the carbon that is the building blocks for ALL ORGANIC LIFE on this planet. Every carbon atom in your body that makes up all of the carbon compounds in your body were once CO2. It is not surprising that the death cult of AGW would seek to reduce or eliminate a molecule equally important as water or oxygen for life on earth.

The "optimal" CO2 for plant growth is 900-1100 ppm. We need a lot MORE CO2, not less. Due to higher CO2 levels, plant life has increased over the last 30 years, providing a greening of the planet and higher crop production. Do you want to reduce plant life and cause famines?

The temperature evolution after 2016 suggests hotter future

nigelj at 10:43 AM on 27 March, 2019

Thinkingman, Foster and Rhamstorf did an exercise depicted here removing el nino / la nina, the solar cycle and volcanic activity from the temperature record and the so called 'pause' after 1998 completely disappears. So why would you need to consider some new and questionable 60 year cycle?

The temperature evolution after 2016 suggests hotter future

Bob Loblaw at 10:42 AM on 19 March, 2019

The 80-year period for climate cycles was riniging bells, and I managed to find a bit of support to the idea:

"On the basis of 200 years of data, Willett (1964) notes that sunspot activity, as indicated by the Zurich relative sunspot number (Fig. 48), has cyclic variations of 80 and 11 years, with the latter being composed of alternating maxima of high and moderate intensities (the double sunspot cycle).
(Sellers, W.D., 1965, Physical Climatology, U Chicago Press, p221)

The reference to Willett is H.C. Willett, 1964 "Evidence of Solar-Climatic Relationships", pp123-51, in Weather and our Food Supply, Iowa State University, Ames.

Mind you, I first read that when Sellers' book was not much more than a dozen years old. It is, shall we say, a bit dated now.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Eclectic at 14:54 PM on 17 March, 2019

Gribble @53 ,

you refer to a paper by Nikolov & Zeller (2016). Essentially, N & Z have performed a "curve-fitting exercise", and have not used basic physics. Their ideas are pseudo-science.

Similar ideas were put forward by Gerlich & Tscheuschner ["G &T"] about a decade ago, and were shot down in flames. [Refer to discussion at "Science of Doom" and elsewhere.] Also check SkS's Most Used Climate Myths number #63 , accessed via top left corner of this page (mostly about G & T , see "intermediate version" with well over a 1000 comments, though all prior to 2015, and largely concerning thermodynamic laws ~ a fertile area of misunderstanding, especially by people who repeatedly confuse semantics with physics).

You should also note some publication of ideas by "Volokin & ReLlez" [= Nikolov and Zeller spelt backwards].

(B) Is there an inverse relationship between solar activity and [global] warming? The short answer is: No .

Welcome to Skeptical Science

gribble.eric3 at 13:32 PM on 17 March, 2019

I have added a link to a paper that states that there is an inverse relationship between solar activity and warming. Reduced activity causes atmospheric shrinking and the increased density causes warming (Just like the coolant circulating around in your refrigerator). Attached is the link.

https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/New-Insights-on-the-Physical-Nature-of-the-Atmospheric-Greenhouse-Effect-Deduced-from-an-Empirical-Planetary-Temperature-Model.pdf

Has this paper been adequately rebutted. If the paper has substance the inverse relationship suggested here between solar activity and warming would explain why no correlation has been observed.

EV’s: Crucial to Reducing CO2 Emissions

Evan at 01:51 AM on 9 February, 2019

KateAllatRaIPM@10 Earth's orbit varies in 20,000, 40,000, and 100,000 year cycles. This is too slow to explain warming that is occurring at a rate of 0.1-0.2C/decade.

Volcanoes cause warming by emitting CO2 over time periods of 1000's of years. No volcanoes have been seen doing that over the recent 800,000-year ice-records. But you correctly mention volcanoes as a possible source, which they were in the deep past, which means that you should accept that they cause warming through CO2 emissions. They are simply not a problem now because there have not been any large eruptions in the last million years or so.

NASA watches the sun very, very closely, because it can be a problem for their satellites and astronauts. In the satellite era NASA has not recorded any solar activity that could account for the current warming.

Because you accept that volcanoes can cause warming, and because the link between volcanoes and past warming is CO2, then you should appreciate why human CO2 emissions are linked to the current warming by looking at the following graph. Over 400,000 years of ice-core data CO2 goes up and down in a very narrow range of 180-300 ppm. In the last 60 years CO2 has risen 100 ppm, and it is rising 2.5 ppm/year. This is much much faster than volcanoes can emit CO2.

We are the problem.

It's the sun

AFT at 09:18 AM on 6 January, 2019

Hello Michael — indeed, as a layman observer, I perceive that the battle started at "it's not warming", moved to "it's warming but not us", and is indeed now at "it's not that bad" or "not worth the cost to mitigate".

No, I cannot point to any recent "stored up past solar activity" arguments, I was reacting to those arguments that appeared on this thread.

It's the sun

michael sweet at 21:18 PM on 5 January, 2019

AFT,

My feeling is that the "skeptics" have given up. 10 years ago they argued that it was not warming. Now most of them say they have always said it was warming but the warming will not be bad. They also argue that it will crash the economy to take action even though all peer reviewed studies say it will be beneficial.

Not very many people argue that it is past solar activity stored up. Can you link an example of a serious argument? Scientists have identified the sources of heat. During El Nino some stored heat is released while more heat is stored during La Nina. Longer term storing of heat is global warming. Can you link an example of someone claiming a war of statistics?

It's the sun

AFT at 11:29 AM on 5 January, 2019

I discovered this site about a month ago and have been working my way through several of the articles and thousands of comments. The comment traffic on this article has been quite light since mid 2017. Have the skeptics given up this argument?

My layman's absorption of all this is the following (expressed in my layman's language) — it seems that any argument along the lines of "it's current solar activity (of some variety)" is devastated by the broad array of evidence... less incoming radiation being measured, less outgoing radiation measured, nights warming faster than days, winters warming faster than summers. I think I get that, let me know if I missed or mistated something.

Does this array of evidence Is also work against the varieties of "it's past solar activity stored up and now being released", or could such forcings be consistent with the previously stated evidence? Or does that devolve into a war of statistics?

Thanks in advance.

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Philippe Chantreau at 12:49 PM on 4 January, 2019

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00552-1 is where the acutal Stein paper is located.

I'll elaborate on the Stein et al (2017) paper since it is relevant to Arctic sea ice. Lowisss13 did not refer to the paper itself but to a blog post about the paper. A few things are surpsising in the blog post. There is a graph of sea ice that I could not locate anywhere in the paper. The blog post mentions solar activity but the paper has very little about that, only a mention of obliquity in the conclusion section. It uses a fairly novel proxy analysis and ther eare inconsitencies with already existing work. The authors are very careful to qualify the scope of the results. They point to summer sea ice coverage in conditions significantly warmer than today and ascribe it to major differences in the AMOC, not solar activity.

Here is part of their conclusion:

"Finally, we have compared the Arctic sea ice conditions of the LIG and simulated future climate projections for 2100 and 2300, based on two different IPCC scenarios2, the RCP4.5 (583 ppm CO2eq) and the RCP6 (808 ppm CO2eq) (Fig. 8). Both scenarios show a severe reduction in sea ice coverage in the late summer, i.e., summer sea ice concentrations are significantly lower than those of the LIG. With increasing atmospheric CO2, however, the reduction of sea ice in the central Arctic Ocean is more rapid and disproportionately high in comparison to its margin. Whereas the mid-LIG summer sea ice concentrations were still around 60 to 75% in the central Arctic Ocean, but only around 20% or less along the Atlantic-Water influenced Barents Sea continental margin, nearly ice-free conditions might be reached in the entire Arctic Ocean in 2300. The number of ice-free summer months is increasing with higher atmospheric CO2. Under these high CO2 concentrations, the winter sea ice may start to melt as well (Fig. 8). Furthermore, the higher obliquity during the LIG (Supplementary Table 6) may suggest an insolation forcing during the LIG, whereas for the climate scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP6 the additional heat fluxes are induced by increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere."

Not much ground for optimism there.

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Lowisss13 at 04:40 AM on 4 January, 2019

WOW! You're all so agressive!!!

Please keep your mind open.

-Recovery is maybe not the right term to use at these point. In my eyes, the last decade is more a stabilisation on term of arctic sea ice extend. There is always an stabilisation before a change of slope in an oscillation.

psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png

You all seem to see a strait line in the graphic of ''Arctic sea ice volume anomaly from PIOMAS''. For me it's a curve or rather the 1/4 of an oscillation.

Here's one source of reflection:

notrickszone.com/2017/03/02/new-paper-indicates-there-is-more-arctic-sea-ice-now-than-for-nearly-all-of-the-last-10000-years/

-Yes, 30 is the ''magic'' number in term of statistic. But considering the long climatic history of earth, we should consider a sample of 30 years, 30 centuries, 30 milleniums, etc. If you study the climat of the last century, 30 years is effectively more than sufficient. But the point is to determine what's the best gap of time to consider for climate variability.

-Solar activity is slowing and sunspot # 24 was smaller than expected. Now they have made a prediction for the next sunspot:

www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07690-0

Small Solar Activity variation can have huge effect on earth climate.

To me it's sound logical considering the size of the sun vs the size of the earth.

arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0706/0706.3621.pdf

Co2 is certainly part of the climate change. But at what level?

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Eclectic at 09:44 AM on 3 January, 2019

Lowisss13 @103 ,

you seem to be trying to pull Michael Sweet's leg.

You offer some vague fluffy rhetorical comments, but you offer nothing based on factual evidence & scientific understanding.

Perhaps you could start by showing the (alleged) significant reduction in solar activity [ TSI ] which you claim has caused a reduction in arctic temperatures and hence a long term "sea ice recovery".

Then demonstrate all the other factors which you say are proving all the scientists wrong. Or will you retreat into another dose of empty rhetoric?

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Lowisss13 at 05:04 AM on 3 January, 2019

To Michael Sweet

Excuse me Michael but I have a little problem with your logic. You said that a decade of relative stability is not enough to contredict the mathematical models. But you refer to the 70 years as a ''long term decline''. Excuse me, but 70 years, it's a blink of an eye compare to the climatologic history of the planet. It's a very short term. With all the datas on climatologic history of the earth, how can you be so convinced about the accuracy of the models? All in nature is related to cycle, oscillation, pulsation and variation. Linearity is pretty rare in nature and climatology is not an exception!

I was a believer (10 years ago), but now I have to admit that I'm Skeptical. Mainly because of the cyclic behavior of the earth. For me, the question is not to determine if climat change exhist, it does. The question is; What part the human activity is responsible of. In my point of view, just a few.

And with the actual low solar activities cycles, Arctic sea ice should continue to recover. But it's just my point of view!!!

Little Ice Age? No. Big Warming Age? Yes.

nigelj at 05:41 AM on 19 December, 2018

The following graph is a reconstruction of solar irradiance (derived I believe from sunspot activity) from 1600 to approx. 2015. It's from the Sorce website and the sorce satellite system has been monitoring solar irradiance directly for about a decade now.

Solar irradiance does appear to have been generally lower during the little ice age, but it's only a rather approximate correlation just eye balling it. Solar irradiance increased from 1900 - 1980 and has been falling slightly since then, so shows no correlation with the modern global warming period.

Little Ice Age? No. Big Warming Age? Yes.

Sunspot at 02:10 AM on 19 December, 2018

There are two important points about the relationship between Global Warming and Solar Activity. Lots of deniers, for some reason, claim that Global Warming is caused by increased Solar Activity, but we know that the sun has been slightly "cooler" than normal for the past few decades, so obviously this explanation for the recent warming is eliminated. But the important part of the story is that the sun is doing us a temporary favor, and being kind to us as we continue to pile on the CO2 blankets. But this will not last, and the return of an active, occasionally angry sun will just add to the heat. Which won't help at all...

Climate's changed before

Philippe Chantreau at 04:18 AM on 14 December, 2018

Ed says earlier in the thread "changes in solar behavior, volcanism, impacting comets and meteors, seismic activity, and who knows what else would be tough to rule out."

Certainly not for recent times. None of these is a factor in the changes we are currently experiencing. Solar activity is actually lower now than it was in the late 20th century (see related threads where PMOD data can be found). Comets and asteroid strikes have a way of getting noticed. Even tiny nuclear weapon tests in North Korea can be detected by our seismological equipment. "Who knows what else" seems to be falling in the category of cosmic rays and Leprechauns (see applicable thread, except for Leprechauns), rather surprising from one who claims an extensive scientific background.

Perhaps, like a lot of other people, Ed has difficulty accepting that we humans are responsible for a truly geological scale event. Going up in total atmospheric CO2 content by a 100 ppm within the 2ish decades since I started teaching weather for pilots is simply astounding, and a lightining fast geological freak event. Anyone who doesn't see that has a problem with quantitative thinking. Human activity releases about 100 times more CO2 per year than all volcanoes together (see applicable thread). If all of a suddent we started witnessing that kind of volcanic activity, year after year, there would be absolutely no doubt about its scope, consequences, and the urgency of the situation.

Climate's changed before

michael sweet at 06:34 AM on 13 December, 2018

Ed,

You say "It seems like changes in solar behavior, volcanism, impacting comets and meteors, seismic activity, and who knows what else would be tough to rule out." Fortunately, scientists have been working hard on these questions for the past 100 years. They have been able to make the difficult observations you have apparently missed. Looking at all the data we see that, in fact, scientists have shown that CO2 was responsible for almost all of past catastrophic climate change.

Read the references that the moderator linked to find out how all this is known.

I note that you have cited zero scientific reports in your post.

Climate's changed before

Ed the Skeptic at 05:56 AM on 13 December, 2018

The "science" statement here seems incredibly overly bold and lacking in sufficient supporting scientific corroberation.

"GHGs, principally CO2 have controlled most major climate changes"?

That seems like quite a leap of faith. It seems like changes in solar behavior, volcanism, impacting comets and meteors, seismic activity, and who knows what else would be tough to rule out.

The accompanying video appears to address a strawman argument in that skeptical references to prior climate change, specifically warming are not to argue that "therefore current warming must also be natural" but rather that it may be natural, or at least mostly natural.

On the skeptics' side an opposing science versus myth scenario plays out, where an AGW argument is offered that "it must be anthropogenic since the current/recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and/or rate." Well, that just isn't true, is it?

The claim appears to assume high confidence in our understanding of all the various ocean systems' natural heat cycles with periods ranging in scale from decadal, to multidecadal, to century scale, and millennia scale. But aren't we now just beginning to learn about the various systems and cycles of ocean heat transport?

The science claim appears to also assume high confidence in our understanding of various natural albedo cycles and feedbacks, and also of multiple cyclic and random solar behavior, and also geomagnetic influences.

If Earth's natural climate response includes a combination of various natural cycles of various periods, then shouldn't we be having a very careful comprehensive look to identify ALL of such cycles, and then very thoroughly analyze ALL of them jointly rather than just dismiss each in turn for failing to fully cause recent observed behavior?

How do we know that what we've recently witnessed in the observed temperature record isn't mostly just the result of a so-called perfect storm scenario, a coincidence of multiple cyclic peaks? If we cannot know that, then how can we know that equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 isn't a benign or even beneficial 1.5°C, not the claimed 3°C?

That is the point of referring to proxy temperature records that indicate greater magnitudes of temperature and greater rates of temperature change. It is to say, hold on amigo, maybe we best not jump to such a bold conclusion prematurely; cause there's likely a lot we still don't know concerning climate, and so shouldn't we take some more time to be sure we comprehensively understand nature before calling the international 911 climate change SWAT team?

It appears to me that this particular myth-busting is premature.

The next 20-30 years of observations may prove highly informative, one way or the other. If needed, we can pretty easily pump aerosols into the atmosphere while we ramp up nuclear power plants and renewables. No?

Party on and be excellent to each other my brothers! And sisters, if there be any of the finer gender here. :)

Climate science comeback strategies: Al Gore said what?

Eclectic at 09:41 AM on 28 November, 2018

JP66 @11 ,

A/ Yes you are quite right, we should assess things coolly and logically, and not be swept away by a few tiny pieces of evidence (like cherry-picking a handful of leaves from a large forest). There is a vast wealth of evidence ~ consilient evidence ~ supporting the mainstream climate science . . . and there is almost none supporting the "denialist" viewpoint. The denialists have rhetoric, and not much else.

B/ As you are already aware, I'm sure, the hugely significant difference between the previous changes in temperature during the Holocene, and the present day global temperature . . . is that of rate of change. At present, the surface temperature is climbing vertically like a Hornet on afterburners (excuse the mild hyperbole!). And it is still climbing rapidly. This is a vastly different situation from the slow & slight changes during the so-called Holocene Optimum and during the 5,000 years since then.

C/ It's a good idea to step back and look at the bigger picture. Coming out of the last glacial stage (and speaking in broad terms) there was a 10,000-year gradual rise of temperature of roughly 5 degreesC (and there was also a 1,000-year wiggle in the middle of that, named the Younger Dryas). Then came a rather flat period of about 5,000 years, which some call the Holocene Optimum. Following that, for 5,000 years has been a slow fall of temperature . . . until now. Just as seen in the level Holocene Optimum, we also see during the declining past 5,000 years ~ various minor bumps and minor troughs (named the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval, the Little Ice Age, etcetera etcetera). These small wiggles are very small, and came and went slowly (and they are so small in amplitude of rise/fall, that is is difficult to exactly define their start and finish).

D/ The more important point is : what caused these previous minor wiggles during the Holocene? There's only a limited number of candidates ~ minor variations in solar output (on a multi-decadal scale); occasional major volcanic activity; long-cycle oceanic overturning currents; etcetera. Climate changes when something causes it to change. It doesn't change for no reason. (And I am sure you also know of the ultra-long cycle of Milankovitch.). This is why the denialists are talking arrant nonsense, when they say that the recent warming [say from 1800 or 1850] is just "a rebound from the Little Ice Age" ~ they seem to forget that there must be an actual cause for change.

JP66 . . . against the overall picture, the overall evidence . . . it is very difficult to find anything to get excited about, in fjord depths. (If I have mis-read that, then I would be grateful if you would explain the significance.)

JP66 , if you wish to question the general world data being correct/incorrect ~ you should read & discuss at a more appropriate thread. [And a Spoiler Alert : the denialists have got that wrong as well!]

Discussing climate change on the net

Eclectic at 21:43 PM on 27 November, 2018

Art Vandelay, your "question" presents a false dichotomy ~ as I am sure you are aware! (judging by your implicit humorous wording).

But I think there was recently an American survey showing something of that sort, where the "expected" difference was surprisingly small and even slightly reversed in some respects. Yes, a survey difficult to interpret . . . and possibly representing American Exceptionalism a.k.a perversity wrt climate science (I do expect that the rest of the world might show less strangeness, but I haven't seen related surveys which could confirm that).

Unfortunately, fixing the climate problem requires top down action. Even converting half of each national population to a cave-dwelling zero-emission lifestyle (were that even possible) would be quite inadequate for appreciable success.

Success requires political action "at the top" to really speed up the transfer to zero-nett-CO2-emission energy usage. That needs a sufficiently large voter bloc of concerned citizens, to overcome the present denialism and "capture by lobbyists & financial donors", which inhibits sensible statesmanlike activity by politicians.

So in the end, it matters very little who flies more or who has more solar roof panels.

Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised

Eclectic at 22:40 PM on 26 November, 2018

Josbert @150 ,

again my apologies : your written English is 99+% acceptable. The judgment of "perfect fluency" (in anyone) is difficult to make without extensive verbal conversation ~ and even then it is easy to miss certain lacunae in the communication, and to assume that a full and perfect communication has occurred. My own (native) English is I hope 99.9% acceptable, but is rarely perfect ~ and you will note that I "overread" my own typo ["mount"]. A typo which you and most readers would not notice or would laugh off as a trivial mistake . . . but I ought to proofread my typing more carefully, because just sometimes a typo error might lead a non-native speaker to go off on a tangent, searching for some unexpected meaning (in a complex scientific topic) and thereby waste his time & mental effort. That sort of thing is a discourtesy to the reader.

(Please do not laugh too much, at my ignorance of Dutch ~ I know only the name Zwarte Piet and a handful of words . . . words which are actually Norddeutsch.)

Josbert, in writing your own articles on Greenhouse Effect, it would I suspect be better to avoid mention of Stratospheric Cooling ~ it is a technicality which is not directly relevant to Climate Change and planetary surface warming. Nevertheless, you yourself ought to be familiar with it, because it is one of the "markers" which confirm that the modern Global Warming derives from rising CO2 (and not from increased solar activity or changed cloud patterns or the "natural variability" of multi-decadal oceanic overturning currents, etcetera).

How exactly do molecules convert photonic energy to kinetic energy? I do not know. Somehow the photonic energy is absorbed and changed into rotational or vibrational energy within the molecule (usually a tri-atomic or larger molecule). Some of this extra energy may be imparted to a colliding molecule such as nitrogen oxygen argon H2O etcetera . . . or vice versa. Here we are getting into Quantum Mechanics, where our understanding of reality falls short : where subatomic particles are "twists of nothing", and photons of such-and-such wavelength have zero dimension.

@151 : CBDunkerson's post #110 has the Trenberth basic energy fluxes, but 15-micron figures are complex and also depend on atmospheric altitude and time of day/night.

Solar cycles cause global warming

michael sweet at 08:33 AM on 21 November, 2018

Ed,

Googling "Solar Cycle Activity" gives a number of hits that describe solar cycle 24 as the weakest in a century. That means that you would expect the solar forcing would be smaller than usual, probably around 0.1C (my estimate). The peak was in 2014.

We observe that 2014 was the hottest year recorded at that time and was the hottest year without an El Nino (now 2017 holds that record). The effect of the sun is often delayed for a year or two. 2015 and 2016 also set heat records.

It seems to me that it was fortunate the solar cycle was so low or we would have roasted even more than we did 2014-2016. Hopefully politicians will do something before it is too late.

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #45

MA Rodger at 02:21 AM on 17 November, 2018

Lorenz-was-RIGHT @2,

The idea that a winter can "very cold because of the sunspot dearth" has been proposed by Lockwood et al (2010) but this was firstly a statistical finding so not every year with low sunspot numbers will be cold and secondly it is certainly not a global or even a northern hemsphere statistic but relates to a particular location (the study applied to Central England).

The hypothesis is that low sunspot numbers can result in a more wobbly and static jetstream which in turn can result in a certain location being subjected to freezing arctic winds for weeks on end. The flip-side of this is that other areas will be subjected to warm southern winds for weeks on end.

As you say that the "very cold winter" proposal comes from a 'skeptical guy', it might be worth also pointing to Lockwood et al (2017) who conclude on this matter "The latest science indicates that low solar activity could indeed increase the frequency of cold winters in Europe, but that it is a phenomenon that is restricted to winter and is just one of a complex mix of factors" with Lockwood stressing in an accompanying release "This study provides little solace for the future, as we face the challenge of global warming. Solar activity appears to be declining at present, but any cooling effect that results will be more than offset by the effect of rising carbon dioxide emissions, and provides us with no excuse for inaction."

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #45

Eclectic at 21:12 PM on 16 November, 2018

LorenzWR @2 ,

I read that the NASA (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) global data show that October 2018 global temperature was +0.99 degreesC above the 1951-1980 reference period [so about +1.77 degreesF ]. (This does not include the poles.)

The other American Agency ( NCDC/NOAA ) not yet released the October figures . . . but they report that the September 2018 was for Northern Hemisphere +0.91 degreesC [ +1.64 degreesF ] above their reference period (they use 20th century average, I gather). This was the 4th hottest September on record (tying with 2017).

Interestingly perhaps, the charts show Canada and Uzbekistan as colder than usual ~ which may be some consolation to your friend.

In the end, we'll just have to wait a few months, and see what the Northern Hemispheric winter delivers. But the world temperature has been climbing steeply for 40+ years, and shows no sign of easing off (because the underlying cause of the warming is continuing unabated).

Your friend should pay less attention to sunspots, and more to the actual heat being radiated from our sun (which has been fairly steady over the past five 11-year cycles of solar activity). If he thinks somehow that solar magnetic flux and cosmic ray intensity are significant players in influencing climate changes . . . then he is very poorly informed, and needs to educate himself.

Overall for the upcoming Northern winter ~ if your friend were betting on a horserace, then I reckon (in view of September/October) that your friend's horse is trailing the field badly as they make the final turn. But it's only over when it's over. And unless it actually falls, his horse must have an outside chance. But we must remember there are another 30+ winters to be run, until mid century ~ and your friend will eventually have empty pockets by then.

An alternative to propping up coal power plants: Retrain workers for solar

Doug_C at 03:02 AM on 7 September, 2018

The thing about solar is it's an intermittent power source, not producing electricty during the night or when skies are overcast. Which means to maintain constant flow with a solar and other intermittent alternative power production you need grid scale power storage.

So not only will transitioning coal workers to solar production create jobs in sustainable energy, the more solar you build into your grid, the more jobs and economic activity will be created in grid level power storage technology.

Grid scale storage can take several form, the most applicable being redox-flow batteries which require a large scale to be economic.

How three battery types work in grid-scale energy storage systems

Flywheel power storage is also a mature technology, the more people that are trained and working in solar, wind, geothermal, etc.. the more investment there will be in all phases of sustainable energy production.

Flywheels power storage

Using that energy in a much more stable, sustainable and energy dense form is also about to become much more practical and appealing to consumers. With the development of lithium metal batteries that use a solid polymer instead of a flammable liquid for an electrolyte the risk of catastrophic release of energy with lithium batteries has effectively been removed. They also have more energy density that current lithium ion batteries meaning vehicles will have more range, one of the big shortfall of current electric vehicles.

The future is going to be electric in a big way or there is going to be no future. President Trump's approach to energy production and support of the coal sector is just one more instance of his retreat to a past that no longer exists. And probably never did.

With the technology we currently have, work forces like the coal sector are far better off being retrained and employed in a sector that does have a future and a far more justifiable social license.

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29

dinahlynns at 11:29 AM on 22 July, 2018

I’m a.m. new to this site and new to the age of global warming. I have read many many comments and I have done much research on my own. I am not a scientis, yet. As a matter of fact my education is in criminal justice and accounting. Why am I looking for a switch? For the very reason this site exist. There are many unanswered questions. Now please forgive my lack of scientific numbers, charts and graphs. But let me explain it in layman terms, or at least try. From the very second earth was created climate change began. But not until the 1700’s has humans became a variant. Again this is from the point of view of someone who wants to become a volcanologis/climatologist. We need to understand as much about what affects the earth in hopes to replicate it on, let’s say Mars. Between the degree earth is tilted on its axis, volcanic activity and external forces our climate has warmed and cooled. We can hopefully all agree on this. And creatures of all sorts, to include plants, has survived it. CO2 is needed to grow plants. Yes 7th grade earth science stuff. And if my reasearch is accurate please tell me when I’m off and direct me to a more accurate site, the earth’s tilt goes in cycles about roughly every 40,000 years. Right now we are at a 23.5 degree tilt going to a 24.5 degree tilt in about 10,000 years. Again HS science stuff. And the other major factor is volcanIc activity. Then comes into play are ocean currents, jet stream, solar output, external forces such as comets. So right now we are in a warming trend naturally. Ok now we factor in humans and the industrial revolution. now our wonderful planet has survived despite everything that’s been thrown it’s way. So wouldn’t a more accurate assessment be that humans are destroying the environment and not so much climate change? The climate is always changing and the environment has always found a way to thrive. With that in mind, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say what humans are doing in fact is destroying the very thing we need to survive? Climate will change whether or not humans survive. World population is set to double in the next 20 years. We are fighting to protect the environment now. What will doubling the world population do to our now taxed environment. The earth will continue long after humans. And the environment will always survive climate change. Question is what do we do to ensure there’s a viable environment for years to come? I am sorry I am not up to all of the scientific verbiage. I hope to one day be well versed. And yes I have actually done years worth of researching. It’s kind of like performing an audit, except instead of numbers I’m auditing the earth.

Now with that said, the reason I want to be hopefully a volcan climatologist. If we do not properly understand earth, we can not carry it forward as we explore the habitation on another planet. I can give many scenarios how volcanoes have shaped the earth. How the sun has shaped the earth. But I want to learn more. And that is my objective here today.

I was stationed at Andersen AFB, Guam when Mt Pinatubo erupted. So I can and do have appreciation the power of our earth.

Wally Broeker: Father of “Global Warming”, in a Warning to his Granddaughter

phil at 10:18 AM on 23 June, 2018

why am I a denier if in 1100 ad, Eric the red discovered Greenland and it was green ? the earth was 3-5 degrees f warmer than today and co2 was ten to 12 times higher also according to ice core data,,,,obviously it was not from mankind as fossil fuel burning did not occur until industrial revolution around 1700 ad,,,,,,,I suggest solar activity is the driver ,,,we just came out of a mini ice age and thats why it seemed like the north pole was melting away ,,,but lets be serious and not succumb to fear pandering by psuedo scientists,,,,it goes very deep ,but I will refrain from the politics starting with the 1967 iron mtn report

Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

nigelj at 18:48 PM on 1 June, 2018

Billev #6, Greenland has been farmed for centuries and still is now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greenland#Agriculture_and_forestry

"We appear to be experiencing the same sort of climate change that humans have previously experienced;"

Climate change is quite different now. Reconstructions show temperatures over the last decade are higher than during the medieval warm period and in fact higher than the last 10,000 years. The recent warming is driven primarily by greenhouse gases, solar activity has been falling slightly for the last 50 years, and the specific way the earth is heating can only be explained by the greenhouse effect.

I think you know this, and this is why your comments are so lame. You obviously have no real enthusiasm for your own beliefs, and certainly have no evidence to back them up.

Trump administration refuses to consider that 97% of climate scientists could be right

nigelj at 07:04 AM on 30 May, 2018

Human activity is warming the climate. Get the debate back to basics:

CO2 absorbs IR energy, we are burning fossil fuels, CO2 is increasing, the world is warming, and solar activity is stable. Like Ubrew says the probability of warming being natural is almost infinitely remote.

The rest is confusion, detail, and noise.

America might also think of its southern border. Climate change is very probably going to increase illegal border crossings. Latin America and Mexico are considered at moderately high risk from climate change.

Because of the huge influence of the fossil fuel and business as usual lobby, the science will always be infested with dissenting voices. Despite this, the IPCC has had a pretty consistent message, because its so strong and well researched even the doubters can't silence it.

Video: The Myth of the Mini Ice Age

nigelj at 07:07 AM on 18 May, 2018

According to little ice age on wikipedia, scientists are not entirely sure what caused the little ice age, and it has been linked to the solar cycle, an unusually extended period of volcanic activity and ocean processes. Maybe its some combination. However the point is making predictions of even a slight cooling influence is absurd.

American conservatives are still clueless about the 97% expert climate consensus

nigelj at 10:34 AM on 14 April, 2018

NorrisM @19

If I can add my two cents worth. I don't see how you can get from high confidence in 100% human attribution of warming, to a medium consensus. The IPCC doesn't publish any result unless theres a strong consensus among the review team.

I look at the basics of the science behind this. There are only so many natural things that can plausibly cause a warming trend, including changes in solar energy output, big sustained changes in volcanic activity, possibly cosmic ray trends (still rather contentious) and longer term ocean cycles. Since the late 1970's the atmosphere has warmed, and theres no evidence these factors are currently causing a warming trend in recent decades. For example solar irradiance has been essentially flat.

When you eliminate the possible and plausible natural causes, you are left with burning of fossil fuels and the greenhuse effect. Various characteristics of how the atmosphere has warmed since the 1970's also point towards CO2, called greenhouse fingerprints.

Now nobody will claim 100% certainty, because its impossible to be 100% certain all data sets on these factors are 100% perfect, but when the IPCC says good confidence or high confidence it means the data sets and research are certainly good quality. Putting it another way, when they say high confidence, this is science speak for saying it would be very unwise to ignore what we are saying.

I don't think its wise to base your information on potential future sea level rise on just one single research paper on the past geological record, actually. You would need to review everything published on the issue, and even then past information is of limited value and so is only part of the picture and needs caution. Having said that it's an interesting paper, so thanks.

The underlying premise of the Rowling paper is not based on past history where ice volumes were three times presnet day volumes. They mention this in passing, but focus their main attention on the last interglacial (130 - 115 K ago), where ice volumes are similar to today, and note that when temperatures were approximately 1 - 1.5 degree above pre industrial averages, sea level rose about 7 metres total, at between 2.6 - 0.92 M century, (0.7M on average). They say there were probably shorter periods of more rapid sea level rise.

It needs to be noted we are ar risk of warming the climate more than 1 - 1.5 degree. Unless I'm missing something in the article, we are therefore at risk of more than 7 metres total sea level rise, and probably faster rates per century.

Their end conclusion is about 0.8 metre of sea level rise is likely by the end of this century, with 2 metres as the upper limit - but less likely. This is presumably assuming a worst case emissions scenario, and this is of course entirely a possible scenario.

I do not see your 0.4 M number in the study, and it may be assuming slower emissions growth and low sensitivity of how ice sheets respond. Anyway its a middle range estimate of some sort, and personally I wouldn't count on it.

There's nothing here to cheer about or be complacent about. Plenty of evidence points towards rates of ice loss being likely towards the pessimistic end of this scale such as recent behaviour of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets .

On climate change, zero-sum thinking doesn't work

nigelj at 07:22 AM on 6 April, 2018

Dan_the_Engineering_Man @5

You compalin the article is politically biased, however its not biased. Because it's a simple fact that polls do actually consistently show republicans more sceptical of climate science than democrats.

You say republicans dont want to destroy the planet. Strawman argument as nobody has accused them of that. However it's a fact thar the current republican administration has downgraded numerous useful Obama era environmental protections in this article, and so they are damaging the planet whether they intend to or not.

You say trees dont grow above the tree line because CO2 is heavier than air. Nothing to do with temperatures at high altitudes, precipitation, soils, shading effects then? In fact CO2 is detected at high altitudes with measuring devices in weather baloons etcetera.

You appear to say there is climate change because Chinas industrial machine generates CO2 emissions. This conflicts with your previous two incorrect statements that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, and doesn't exist "above the tree line".

It's probably also worth noting that while China produces more total emissions than America, America has higher emissions than China on a per capita basis.

You complain about Chinas industrial machine and it's affects on the west. Now I'm going to agree the issue needs watching carefully, but you totally fail to see the other side of the issue, that it has given the western world numerous low cost consumer products.

You think China will become a giant industrial monopoly, but that isn't happening, because rising wages in China are already slowing its industrial growth, and its shifting manufacturing to other countries like vietnam and bangladesh etcetera. Its implausible to believe any one country would dominate manufacturing, and you have more to fear from multi national corporate monopolies.

You say the Waste Energy Heat from this massive uncontrolled industrial monster in China, is carried to the North Pole by Trade Winds and is melting the arctic. You provide no evidence of this, and research studies conslusively show heat generated directly by industry and transport is insignificant in global warming as in this article.

You say global warming is caused by the suns energy. This would require an increase in the suns energy, but it's been decreasing in recent decades as in this article.

This is just a relatively quick response to your comments. Have to agree with PC that no engineer would seriously generate the nonsense in you post.

Explainer: The polar vortex, climate change and the ‘Beast from the East’

scaddenp at 14:29 PM on 31 March, 2018

Alchemyst, given your earlier comments expressing doubts about modelling, I am surprized at you pushing a modelling paper. I am a little curious as to how you found it but yet missed any the 2014 reviews of arctic influence. No matter – the paper in question (Ineson et al, 2011) was written showing some modelling support for hypothesis of low solar activity contributing to the then recent cold winters. The corollary of this view is that anomalous jet stream behaviour (present in those events) should have eased when the sun returned to active mode. It did not – anomalies continued right up to this year. Furthermore, if the solar is the dominant influence, (as opposed to a contributing factor), then the 2018 tree ring study of jet stream behaviour should be also revealing the link – it does not.

Overland et al 2015 has a discussion of arctic – jet stream linkages which I found very helpful. It notes solar (citing Ineson et al) among other possible influences (ENSO, QBO, AMO etc). However, the evidence is increasing pointing towards the loss of ice in the arctic basins as the dominant cause of recent anomalous jet stream variability. The tree ring study by itself put any "Its just a natural cycle" explanation in doubt.

Interestingly, the model effect from solar changes in Ineson et al affecting the jet stream variability is the decrease in equator-polar temperate gradient.

"This temperature change is directly attributable to the decrease
in ozone heating associated with ultraviolet irradiance, which
is important at these levels11. This signal peaks in the tropics
and corresponds to a relative decrease in the pole-to-equator
temperature gradient. This response is reproduced in our model
(Supplementary Fig. S1) with significant cooling of about 2 K near
the tropical stratopause. Geostrophic balance requires that the
diminished polewards temperature gradient is matched by a weak
easterly wind anomaly in the subtropical zonal mean circulation
in the upper stratosphere"

Sea-ice loss does exactly the same thing.

As this article clearly states, the science is still young but it certainly cannot be dismissed.

Arctic was warmer in 1940

Anne-Marie Blackburn at 06:25 AM on 30 March, 2018

Hello Napin, welcome to Skeptical Science! Your question is an interesting and important one because what we choose to do as a society depends on our understanding of the problem we’re facing. If we don’t understand the problem properly we might make decisions that fail to address it. So how can we make sure the information we’re given is correct?

One of the first steps we can take is to check the source of the information. In the case of the claim that Arctic temperatures were warmer in the 1940s, the author is Christopher Monckton and his article was published on the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) website. Christopher Monckton is not a climate scientist and the SPPI is not a scientific publication. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the information is incorrect but it does mean we have to evaluate his claims carefully. If we look at his graphs on Arctic warming we notice a few things. First, there is no reference given for the graphs so it’s not possible to check whether they’re reliable. Without access to the data so that we can produce our own graph, we can’t say that this graph is accurate.

In the case of the second graph, it seems that Monckton is only looking a small selection of weather stations. It’s hard to tell because he hasn’t provided a reference to the data in question. As Robert writes in his article, Monckton doesn’t seem to an analysis that covers the whole of the Arctic. In other words, Monckton has cherry-picked a few weather stations that support his argument rather than looking at all the evidence. In the case of the third graph Monckton once again fails to provide a reference so we face the same problem as with the two other graphs. Also the graph ends just after the year 2000 so it misses out a lot of the recent warming.

So I think we have good grounds to question Monckton’s claims at this point, especially as no scientific institution agrees with him. But more broadly there are things we can do to protect ourselves against misinformation. This is important because it can help us assess the validity of all claims made about a scientific topic. Skeptical Science has produced an online course which highlights the ways in which misleading arguments are constructed. Once we understand what to look for it becomes easier to spot misinformation. For instance, Monckton implies that since Arctic temperatures have changed naturally in the past, then current warming must also be natural and we don’t need to worry about CO2 emissions. This is not a scientific position. Climate has changed in past because of a number of factors - variations in solar activity, the Earth’s orbit around the sun, volcanic activity, changes in atmospheric composition, including CO2 levels, etc. We can only understand current and future climate change by looking at what’s happening now. Past climate change can help us make predictions about what will happen in the future, but it tells us nothing about the causes of current change.

If you’d like to learn more about the various ways misleading information is used, you might be interested in our online course, which can be found here. Week 1 and Week 6 are particularly useful. Also John Cook and some fellow scientists have published a recent handbook in which you might find useful information. I hope I have answered your question and if there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

Explainer: The polar vortex, climate change and the ‘Beast from the East’

Alchemyst at 04:35 AM on 30 March, 2018

Daniel Baily at 11 54 16 march

It appears that there is an explanation for the cold winters in western europe and it appars to be linked to sunspots, or their abscence

https://phys.org/news/2011-10-link-solar-winter-weather-revealed.html

Scientists have demonstrated a clear link between the 11-year sun cycle and winter weather over the northern hemisphere for the first time.

They found that low solar activity can contribute to cold winters in the UK, northern Europe and parts of America. But high activity from the sun has the opposite effect.
The study helps explain why the UK has been gripped by such cold winters over the last few years: the sun is just emerging from a so-called solar minimum, when solar activity is at its lowest.
'Our research establishes the link between the solar cycle and winter climate as more than just coincidence,' says Dr Adam Scaife from the UK's Met Office, one of the study's authors.
The findings, published in Nature Geoscience also raise the tantalising possibility that the regularity of the solar cycle might help weathermen predict cold winter weather over the northern hemisphere.
'We've been able to reproduce a consistent climate pattern, confirm how it works, and quantify it using a computer model. This isn't the sole driver of winter climate over our region, but it is a significant factor and understanding it is important for seasonal to decadal forecasting,' says Scaife.
Up until now, researchers have only managed to see a weak link between solar activity and winter weather: when the sun is less active, we're more likely to see weak westerly winds during the winter in the northern hemisphere. This pattern suggests that easterly winds could bring cold weather from the continent to the UK.
But scientists have struggled to incorporate these ultraviolet (UV) signals into climate models.
Now, new satellite measurements from NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) have revealed that differences in UV light reaching the Earth during the 11-year solar cycle are larger than previously thought. The satellite, launched in 2003, is the first ever to measure solar radiation across the entire UV spectrum.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-link-solar-winter-weather-revealed.html#jCp

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #11

Eclectic at 21:55 PM on 24 March, 2018

NorrisM @19 , with your permission, I will jump into the fray also — with an overview.

Judith Curry's recent articles on sea level rise exhibit typical Curryism. She provides, at first glance, an impressively erudite summation of the field of (modern) sea level rise. It is a complex area. She quotes from the IPCC and and other sources, and in effect she states that somewhere in the region of 40 - 60% of recent MSL rise is clearly anthropogenic (from AGW).

But there are three facets of Curryism here :

1. Although the mainstream scientists know that around 100% of modern rapid global warming is caused by human activity (including more than simply CO2 effects) . . . this fact does not suit public acknowledgement by Dr Curry and her agenda. Her clientele wish to hear that only a very minor part ( or none !! ) of global warming is caused by CO2 emissions — and to hear that AGW itself is a very small and temporary effect and will never amount to more than a limited inconvenience. (And preferably hear that today's slight/insignificant warming is merely the result of "natural variability" . . . such as a 1000-year or 2400-year cycle, or the AMO and/or a Stadium Wave and/or due to ABC [Anything But Carbon] ).

Dr Curry therefore presents her case in a way that implies that the very reasonable conclusion of 40 - 60% human attribution for sea level rise, must (by implication) point to AGW being far less than 100% human . . . and that therefore the mainstream scientists have gotten it wrong about warming. Curry is happy to strongly hint, but never state that explicitly.

2. Another typical Curryism, is her careful avoidance of the bigger picture. Readers who read her without making any effort to notice what she has avoided saying, will feel that she is giving a fair, balanced and dispassionate presentation. But taking a longer historical view of sea level, one sees that Curry is restricting her comments to the narrow case of the recent century or so (and she prefers to draw the focus toward 1950 and later). In that narrow window it is indeed possible to make a defensible case that cycles [however dubious] plus contributions from solar variability, the AMO, volcano eruptions, or other natural variability . . . can explain around half of [recent] sea level rise.

But on the multi-century / multi-millennial scale, her explanations are twaddle.

3. NorrisM, you may also notice how very carefully Dr Curry delineates the various time-segments through the 20th Century up to 2017. And she wishes to suggest validity of the post-1998 "Pause" in surface temperatures (and to minimize or not even mention the continuing oceanic heating). And she places the last few years of high spike in surface temperature, in a separate post-Pause category . . . caused by the "super-Nino" (without acknowledging that it's an ongoing warming problem, not just an El Nino fluctuation).

All very selective, all very denfensible in a court of law . . . yet at the same time rather obviously intended to mislead the unwary reader.

NorrisM, if you have time, take a further read through the comments columns at the foot of Dr Curry's articles. I confess to finding them quite entertaining — I usually skim through the repetitive nonsense coming from most posters there. But yes you are right, JCH is usually fairly well on the ball, if rather short-tempered. Nick Stokes is always worth reading, and provides genuine science. And there is the admirable calmness of JimD as he continually puntures the nonsense of posters like "ABC" Ellison and the slightly less crackpot-ish Javier. All good fun, but sadly illustrating the insanity of some of the tolerably intelligent sections of the human population.

Also entertaining, NorrisM, is the way that on Curry's Climate Etc, the denialists who are scientifically/mathematically literate "medium crazies" have to keep turning around and putting down the "ultra-crazies" who come out repeatedly with way-off-planet ideas (ideas which are nevertheless still extremely common in the common ruck of denialists). You hardly ever see that with the posters at WhatsUpWithThat . . . where craziness & anger run rampant continuously.

Explainer: The polar vortex, climate change and the ‘Beast from the East’

MA Rodger at 21:36 PM on 16 March, 2018

Jonbo69 @3,

I would suggest there is a vast level of complexity in what you ask but it can be knocked into shape.

The complexities of Polar Vortex-Solar Minimum linkage has been utilised by some denialists to create anti-AGW messages. So, for instance, this post at denialist site TheHockeySchtick rests on three published papers which are not entirely relevant or conclusive or credible.
Such denialist posts are often response to messages linking intense cold snaps of winter to our planet's atmospheric circulations that are evidently being impacted by AGW. Thus the likes of this report of an AAAS meeting results in the deniosphere responding with the likes of this nonsense at the planet Wattsupia.

The complex variability of the Polar Vortex is in no way solely associated with solar output. Indeed, it is a relatively minor player. Thus Kim et al (2014) add the helpful concluding comment with solar activity the tail-end-Charlie of the list of possible factors:-

"(N)ote that Arctic sea-ice loss represents only one of the possible factors that can affect the stratospheric polar vortex. Other factors reported in previous works include Eurasian snow cover, the Quasi Biannual Oscillation, the El-Nino and Southern Oscillation and solar activity. Systematic consideration of these factors would extend our understanding of climate variability, possibly leading to the improved seasonal forecast Nonetheless, the relative contributions of each factor have not been systematically examined. As these factors may be interrelated, they may not control the stratospheric polar vortex independently. These issues must be examined further in future works.

Linkage between Polar Vortex and Solar Minimum is more a subject of research (eg Maycock et al (2015), Chiodo et al 2016) because the regional impact of Grand Solar Minimums is missing from the standard climatological assessment. Yet these papers make no startling claims and are setting the solar-minimum-effects within future AGW which is probably why denialists wouldn't dream of touching them with a barge-pole.

What role did climate change play in this winter’s US freezes, heat, and drought?

nigelj at 09:47 AM on 3 March, 2018

Argus @23,

The sun is shining less now than 20 years ago. Refer to "its the sun" under climate myths at the left hand side of the page. So quite obviously the warming arctic and decreasing ice can't be attributed to solar activity.

Natural fluctuations have always occured, but that obviously doesn't mean they are always particularly strong, or that humans can't have an influence.

I don't know about other people, but I try to be a "climate realist".

Flaws of Lüdecke & Weiss

Doug_C at 09:48 AM on 18 January, 2018

It's a question of relative radiative forcings acting on the Earth's land surface, oceans and atmosphere.

The periods of deep glaciation in recent geological times that have covered a large part of the Northern Hemisphere in thick ice sheets and dropped global temperatures for thousands of years are likely the result of the Milanchovitch Cycles which can reduce the amount of Solar irradiation at northern latitude. These are on the order of a few tenths of a watt per meter squared and act over thousands of years in a dry process of more snow and ice cover lasting longer and reflecting more sunlight back into space dropping temperatures and drawing down more carbon dioxide cooling things even more creating more snow and ice cover which reflect more sunlight cooling things further. It's a feedback loop than when most of the continents are near the Equator can cover almost all of the Earth in ice.

The radiative forcing from the changes we have made in atmospheric CO2 alone are almost +2 watts per meter squared, we have totally swamped the natural focrings that have resulted deep glaciation periods.

There almost certainly will be no transition to a glaciation period due to the human release of CO2 alone. The Solar Cycles are also not that significant in relation to the forcings of atmospheric CO2 in recent times, once again in the range of a few tenths of a watt per meter squared.

Even a prolonged Solar Minimum is not going to result in a cooling trend on the Earth's surface now, it will only result in a slowing of global warming as long as the positive radiative forcing from carbon dioxide emissions and other human activities greatly exceed the possible negative forcings from Solar Cycles.

And the overall trend in Solar activity is not a decrease in Solar irradiance, it is an increase. The Sun puts out far more energy now than it did say 500 Mya for instance.

Appealing to the Sun to save us as papers like LW17 do seem far more religious to me than scientific.

Flaws of Lüdecke & Weiss

nigelj at 07:18 AM on 18 January, 2018

Ruddimans ideas are quite compelling. By some estimates we have already released more than enough CO2 to prevent or hugely delay the next ice age. We could still have a colder than normal period, but it only takes a couple of degrees to stop the full advancement of continent sized ice sheets. We don't need to release any more CO2.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/12098431/Global-warming-delays-next-ice-age-by-50000-years.html

I gather the research in the main article deconstructs 200 yeas of solar irradiance data into its component curves and one of these correlates with recent decades of higher temperatures? But even if this is the case, which appears in doubt, a correlation doesn't prove a great deal by itself. Changes in solar activity like this don't appear to have much effect, and the overall recent decadal trend is falling solar activity.

The 'imminent mini ice age' myth is back, and it's still wrong

Doug_C at 16:31 PM on 10 January, 2018

This sounds more like economic predictions than hard science to me.

Guessing how the interactions of a massive ball of plasma under the influence of gravity, intense magnetic fields and incredible heat at the core where fusion is taking place constantly is not like a pendulum over long periods of time. The Sun is a dynamic evolving system which means that it is not the same as it was even hundreds of years ago and it is much different now than it was millions of years ago. At some point it will not even be recognizable as our Sun.

And its output is progressively increasing, though over the scale of hundreds and thousands of years this is not that significant.

It is just as valid to assume that we could see a period of increased solar activity and a positive radiative forcing of the Earth than a deep minimum.

Ice ages do not come about as a result of radiative forcings of the Sun, they are the result of long term changes in the orbital dynamics of the Earth, the eccentricity of the eliptical orbit, the axial tilt and precession of the earth as it wobbles on its axis.

These forcings are tiny compared to what human created forcings have done in the last 150 years and require thousands of years to take a mostly ice free Northern Hemisphere and turn it into one covered by thick ice sheets that reached as far as south of the Great Lakes in North America.

This has been completely swamped by the effects alone of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide being introduced into the carbon cycle by human activity. There will be no ice age as long as we burn fossil fuels and if we keep burning as much as we are now even a record solar minimum like the one we just had will only slow the process of global warming as the article states.

With the coincidence of a deep solar minimum and a strong La Nina a few years ago the Earth should have seen a record low average yearly temperatures. We did not, they were still in the upper levels of temperature records.

This seems to me to be just one more attempt to deny valid evidence of global warming.

The 'imminent mini ice age' myth is back, and it's still wrong

nigelj at 08:15 AM on 10 January, 2018

So in other words we know that a certain level of change in solar irradiance causes a certain change in temperature, and its quite small compared to CO2. So a solar minimum would be weak.

But the predicted so called coming "grand solar minimum" is just a guess. We don't really know the exact causes and periodicity of these cycles, and they appear random, so we are guessing that because solar activity increased from about 1600 to the 1970s, it 'might' be time for a decline of some sort, - like an economic downturn. This is just pure presumption. It could equally stay flat for decades to come, or even increase reinforcing agw.

US government climate report looks at how the oceans are buffering climate change

nigelj at 06:42 AM on 1 January, 2018

Zippi62 @7

"Why do we look for deep ocean heat today, when our current ocean surface warming trend is less than what it was between 1911 and 1941?"

Because the warming since the 1980's is significant and outside the boundaries of natural variation, and evidence shows its driven by CO2 and not natural factors.

The warming period between 1911- 1941 was only 30 years long, so still just within the boundaries of natural variation, so not hugely significant. It was due to a combination of CO2 emissions, high solar activity, and low volcanic activity. The period was a coincidence of multiple factors all at one time, so very non typical.

It's cosmic rays

citizenschallenge at 13:09 PM on 23 December, 2017

https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/cosmic-ray-theory-of-global-warming-gets-cold-response
Danish theorist’s latest paper overstates the effects of solar activity in climate change, critics say.
Tim Wallace reports.

__________________

https://gizmodo.com/no-supernovae-arent-changing-earths-climate-1821439511
No, Supernovae Aren’t Changing Earth’s Climate
Ryan F. Mandelbaum

_________________

https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2017/12/22/galactic-cosmic-rays/

Galactic cosmic rays

It's cosmic rays

citizenschallenge at 06:51 AM on 22 December, 2017

He's baackk,

H. Svensmark, M. B. Enghoff, N. J. Shaviv, J. Svensmark. Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei. Nature Communications, 2017; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02082-2

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171219091320.htm

December 19, 2017
Source:
Technical University of Denmark
Summary:
The study reveals how atmospheric ions, produced by the energetic cosmic rays raining down through the atmosphere, helps the growth and formation of cloud condensation nuclei — the seeds necessary for forming clouds in the atmosphere.

Henrik Svensmark confidently broadcasts and hundreds of astroturfers are busy spreading the word: "Finally we have the last piece of the puzzle explaining how particles from space affect climate on Earth. It gives an understanding of how changes caused by Solar activity or by super nova activity can change climate." says Henrik Svensmark, from DTU Space at the Technical University of Denmark, lead author of the study. Co-authors are senior researcher Martin Bødker Enghoff (DTU Space), Professor Nir Shaviv (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), and Jacob Svensmark, (University of Copenhagen).

===========================

Links to serious critiques of this paper and ther authors claims would be appreciated.

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46

One Planet Only Forever at 14:22 PM on 20 November, 2017

nigelj,

The suggestion that Saskatchewan does not have adequate renewable power sources is highly suspicious.

The total population of Saskatchewan is 1.16 million. And a large part of the energy consumed in Saskatchewan is for oil and gas production, an activity that has to be terminated so that makes its energy demand irrelevant (those energy demands are real but they need to disappear in the sustainable future).

The indicated percentages of solar may also be skewed by including the almost unpopulated Northern half of the province which indeed has lower levels of sunlight, especially in the depths of winter. But Saskatchewan also includes many of Canada's sunniest locations as confirmed by the 'Current Results' website summary of Sunniest Places in Canada. The southern area of Saskatchewan where the vast majority of the population lives is quite sunny.

And Southern Saskatchewan is reasonably windy, though perhaps not at the speeds required to optimize wind generation. But then optimum is only the ideal. Power generation is power generation, even if it isn't optimal.

Of course the final criticism of the claim that Saskatchewan lacks non-reneweable energy capability is that electricity storage systems are being ignored when that claim is made. Storage may be more expensive than getting away with burning fossil fuels. But sustainable renewable energy supply systems should not be cost-compared to damaging unsustainable energy systems.

I do however support adding CCS to recently built fossil fuel burning power plants. Proper CCS locked away (not assisting in the extraction of new fossil fuels for burning), can be better than a new gas burning power station, even after considering the power lost to collect and store the CO2. But converting the coal burnet to be a gas burner with CCS would be better. And even if a gas burner with CCS needs to be shut-in before 2050 the lower return on investment is irrelevant since the 'costs' are only a small part of the massive debt owed to the future generations by what the current generation and their predecessors got away with doing.

Reflections on the politics of climate change

RedBaron at 08:57 AM on 12 November, 2017

Well Chris,

Interesting smattering of almost every denialist talking point known! You certainly came to the right place though! Because here we have very detailed rebuttles to all of them!

I will just point you to the most important and what just happens to be last on your list; your claim that we don't know the warming is human caused. The evidence is here. To give you the cheap and easy explanation though, basically follows like this:

By the Natural cycles and natural trends like obital wobbles and solar activity combined with ocean currents, volcanos etc.... We should be cooling

We are warming instead

The factors causing the warming are either directly human caused like CO2 emissions or reinforcing feedback loops we started like water vapor increases and reduced albedo due to melting ice.

Thus you are right. We are not 100% responcible for global warming. The actual % is higher than 100%, because otherwise we would be on the long slow decrease in temperatures towards a gaciation period.

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