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

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Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

lchinitz at 00:05 AM on 4 May, 2024

Hi all,

In a previous thread I tried to convince people that this site needed to address a specific topic. I don't think I managed to do that, but I'd like to try again here.

The topic title would be something like "The Cure is Worse than the Disease." The argument to be addressed is that advocates of changes to address GW do not ever address the negative effects those changes would have, especially on less affluent people who could not pay more for gas to get to work, energy to heat their homes, food that is more expensive due to transportation costs, etc.

The response would need to include those negative effects in a cost/benefit analysis, and yet still (likely) conclude that changes need to be made.

I'm raising this again because I just saw this same argment made, again, by George Will in the WaPo, quoting an article in the WSJ. A few clips:

Will article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/01/rising-threat-nuclear-war-annihilation/
"A recent peer-reviewed study of scientific estimates concludes that the average annual cost of what the excitable U.N. secretary general calls “global boiling” might reach 2 percent of global gross domestic product by 2100."

WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/follow-the-science-leads-to-ruin-climate-environment-policy-3f427c05

This is behind a paywall, but the first paragraph sort of lays out the argument. "More than one million people die in traffic accidents globally each year. Overnight, governments could solve this entirely man-made problem by reducing speed limits everywhere to 3 miles an hour, but we’d laugh any politician who suggested it out of office. It would be absurd to focus solely on lives saved if the cost would be economic and societal destruction. Yet politicians widely employ the same one-sided reasoning in the name of fighting climate change. It’s simply a matter, they say, of “following the science.”

So the basic argument here is that climate change is not a big enough threat to warrant the cures being proposed, and that any reasonable analysis would show that to be the case. Apparently those cures lead to "societal destruction."

I think we should rebut that. To be clear, this is different from the "It's not bad" rebuttal. That one says "yes it is bad." What is needed here is an analysis that says (1) yes there will be pain involved in making changes to address GW, but (2) that pain is justified by the badness that will result from not making those changes.

If I am able to get anyone to agree that this makes sense, I'd like to work on it with anyone else interested.

How extreme was the Earth's temperature in 2023

nigelj at 07:08 AM on 18 April, 2024

Some explanations for the unusual global warming levels in 2023:

James Hansen thinks the anomalously high global surface temperature in 2023 are due to AGW + El Nino + Aerosols reductions. I can't find the related commentary, and have to go by memory, but Hansen suggests that the quite abrupt reductions in shipping aerosols in 2023 added to reductions in industrial aerosols over the last ten years warmed the oceans and this energy comes out after a time delay and it all came out in 2023. Perhaps someone has the details of his suggestion and comments on its credibility.

El ninos release ocean heat that has been building up. I note that the high sea surface temperatures are in the northern oceans are away from the centre of el nino activity.

From NASA: Five Factors to Explain the Record Heat in 2023. But what caused 2023, especially the second half of it, to be so hot? Scientists asked themselves this same question. Here is a breakdown of primary factors that scientists considered to explain the record-breaking heat ( I have cut and pasted the key statements only):

The long-term rise in greenhouse gases is the primary driver.
The return of El Niño added to the heat.
Globally, long-term ocean warming and hotter-than-normal sea surface temperatures played a part.
Aerosols are decreasing, so they are no longer slowing the rise in temperatures.
Scientists found that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcanic eruption did not substantially add to the record heat.

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152313/five-factors-to-explain-the-record-heat-in-2023

From PBS News: ‘We’re frankly astonished.’ Why 2023’s record-breaking heat surprised scientists. A range of factors including general warming due to human-caused climate change, the El Niño climate pattern, record-low Antarctic sea ice and others — contributed to 2023’s record-breaking heat, but they don’t tell the full story. Schmidt said more work has to be done to fully understand why the year was so hot.

“In 2024, we’ll be seeing whether this persists or whether it kind of goes back to a normal pattern,” he said. “And that will be kind of telling as to whether 2023 was just a very unusual combination of things that all added up to what we saw, or whether there’s something systematically different going forward.” (Seems like good comments to me)

www.pbs.org/newshour/science/were-frankly-astonished-why-2023s-record-breaking-heat-surprised-scientists#:~:text=A%20range%20of%20factors%20%E2%80%94%20including,the%20year%20was%20so%20hot.

From Copernicus:

Some alternative suggestions on 2023 warming including changes in regional wind patterns over the northern parts of the oceans bringing heat to the surface:

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

(This is not a reference to el nino, but to other changes in wind patterns to the north. For me it raises the question of caused the changes in wind patterns)

Clearly there is no definitive answer yet on why 2023 was so unusually warm ( ditto 2024 thus far). As scientists say next years data will help illuminate the causes.

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

nigelj at 05:10 AM on 4 April, 2024

William @ 38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doug Bostrom at 03:27 AM on 28 March, 2024

There's a lot of "inside baseball" language in play involved with meta-climate discussion, Two Dog.

"Climate change denial" seems to have become shorthand for "climate science denial" and "climate change denial." Both phenomena have rich factual basis.

There is still to this day a shrinking population of folks who don't believe Earth's climate and climate-mediated systems are changing at what current and paleoclimate data indicate are unusually rapid rates. This would be "climate change denial" as labeled on the tin.

Meanwhile another population are focused on what is still slightly more fertile ground, that of calling into question the scientific community's (geophysicists in this domain, specifically) competence of understanding the controlling processes of Earth's climate. This is "climate science denial.'

While often uttered in a context of emotional heat and frustration, "climate change denial" and "climate science denial" are not fundamentally emotive but rather are descriptive language attached to facts.

Both species of denial face what will prove an insurmountable common challenge: consilience. By example, biologists are observing phenonena that would demand answers from geophysicists focused on Earth's climate systems. As it happens, geophysicists already had substantially useful explanations for what biologists are seeing in the natural world. This is retail level consilience. One of the purposes of our weekly climate-related academic research listing is to help people to see consilience on anthropogenic climate change, understand the overall perspective of experts having connection to matters influenced by climate— which includes numerous disciplines not directly connected with geophysics.

if one follows climate research output and its present concerns, it's plain to see we're quite far past the "huge unknowns" stage with respect to the geophysics of climate. The accidental perception of "huge unknowns" in climate geophysics is a mark of the success of climate science deniers in the public square. It's a product of what we might clinically term "synthetic ignorance," a feeling of not knowing what we actually know perfectly well enough, thanks to calculated practice in public messaging.

Is every stripe on every graph we see 100% about us? No. Certainly the climate change we see today is influenced by "natural variation," on the time scale we're concerned with a matter of dithering around a mean. However, numerous and broad secular trends we're seeing not only in direct geophysical attributes of climate but myriad other features having climate as a major controlling variable find reliable explanation and predictive power in one naturally evolved feature of Earth, namely the planet's human population and culture— and how we've powered ourselves by liberation of energy from fossil fuels. We can hypothesize elaborate mechanisms for system-wide changes of the type we're seeing but scientific parsimony asks "why invent where no invention is necessary?" The dominant rationale for such invention seems to lie outsiide of scientific practice.

As to greening, greening enthusiasts should note that this phenomenon is accompanied by loss of albedo for a variety of reasons. Loss of albedo is not something we need at this juncture. It's also notable that for "climate change deniers" of all stripes, greening is a powerful contradiction of the basis of preferred beliefs.

The U.S. has never produced more energy than it does today

One Planet Only Forever at 12:04 PM on 20 March, 2024

I understand every part of the re-posted article. But it is not clear how this presentation helps increase awareness or improve understanding of the leadership (Business and Political) actions that need to become more popular to ‘produce’ the changes of attitude and action of the collective US population so that the US is clearly understood to be responsibly doing its part, and being a leader, in the undeniably essential global effort to, at least, meet the globally agreed Paris Agreement objectives.

That said,

I agree with wilddouglascounty #3. ‘Producing energy’ correctly applies to ‘making energy available for human consumption’.

And, along the lines of nigelj’s point that ‘producing energy’ is understood shorthand, I offer the following detailed description: Energy production = Human actions to convert natural energy sources into 'consumable/usable energy products'.

All that said,

I would add that an often ‘missed, or dismissed, understanding’ is the importance of pursuing ‘sustainable energy production and consumption’. The history of action, and a lack of corrective action is an action, by misleading leaders has ‘produced’ and ‘continues to grow’ tragic consequences for the future of humanity due to the production of ‘substantial amounts of unsustainable consumption (not just energy consumption)’.

Note that ‘consumer desires to benefit from fossil fuel use’ are the ultimate ‘product‘ pursued by fossil fuel profiteers. And recently leaders of Exxon and Saudi Aramco have blamed consumers for being ‘the problem’, not misleading leaders (undeserving wealthy, powerful and influential people).

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #26 2023

Eclectic at 09:38 AM on 2 January, 2024

Just Dean @11 :

Yes, the Osman study shows a slightly different "shape" to the subsequent millennia following the Holocene Optimum of (very roughly) 7,000 years ago. And yes, that is of innate interest, but it makes little difference with respect to the rocket-like rise of global temperature which is progressing during the current industrial era.

In golfing metaphor, it is the consideration of how past holes were played . . . compared with where the ball is sited right now ~ and what we need to do playing the ball right now.

With or without climate models, we know enough about the angle of the grass slope & the wind's strength/direction, to make a reasonable judgement on how to strike the ball. Lack of Will, is our problem.

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

prove we are smart at 23:49 PM on 28 December, 2023

Ok, I believe in keeping an open mind with most things these days.

RH@2, I agree, it wasn't a "review". You know, I will often just click on various parts of a video, to be sure I have the right tone of it- judging a book by its cover,I learnt long ago.

Nigelj@3 Sorry you only lasted 4minutes longer, I suppose that was a lot considering you said " I already know the downsides of EVs, and I doubt some motor repair mechanic will add anything."

By the way, the "you" in my moniker is for any replies I read on this blog site- I have learnt a lot following yourself and others replying to many with inaccurate info.

I reckon at least you got the patronising, piss-taking, swearing and taking ages to get to point right with JC If you could have toughed it out,( I'm sure against your better judgement) we might have agreed with some of his observations and disagreed..

I"m not agaist EV cars, far from it but a smart person can check out many sources of info and recheck again from others to get the big picture and not a green washed fervour towards the complicated issue of EV cars.evse.com.au/blog/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-an-internal-combustion-hybrid-and-electric-car-emit/

"We need more renewable wholesale electric to support clean electric cars. This is where some detractors have valid points when they argue that electric cars are shifting the problem."www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-statistics/electricity-generation

Every electric car is forcing these electricity generators to work harder. In Australia thats 68% worth from fossil fuels. There is a lot to do and time is running out-( a familiar comment) for us as we are already behind the 8 ball. www.drive.com.au/news/electric-car-battery-recycling-australia-environmental-harm/

These and a few other issues are mentioned by our smart arse mate Mr Codogan-don't ask him about EV fires.. In truth, I believe hybred cars are better during this transition, ask Mitsubishi and Toyota-at least for Australia,www.drive.com.au/news/electric-vehicles-worse-for-environment-than-petrol-cars-report/

You wrote.."There is a group of people on the hard left of politics and academia who dislike EVs (and sometimes wind and solar power) because they are the product of the capitalist society and industrial society and because rich people drive them and profit from their manufacture. You see this in internet discussions sometimes.

While unrestrained greed and laissez faire capitalism is not my thing, their reasoning seems shallow and emotive. It is a fallacy of perfectionism - where a perfect, implausible socio- economic utopia is prioritised, and more realistic attainable compromise solutions are discarded."

Your talking to a guy who has worn many hats, and speaks simply because of all the fake people and their entitled behavior, here is another one, see if you can stomach the guy and tell me are his facts correct?..www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiRzpKWshwU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most people don’t realize how much progress we’ve made on climate change

One Planet Only Forever at 07:41 AM on 7 December, 2023

There is reason to continue to be skeptical regarding the rate of progress on the undeniable need for corrections of many ‘harmful popular profitable developments’ to limit the harm done to future generations by ‘most fortunate people’ today.

Things are undeniable worse today than they should have been. The following quote describes actions that caused less correction to occur than could have and should have happened.

“After years of inaction despite constant warnings from climate scientists, hopes had been high for a breakthrough in climate agreements in 2009, leading up to the U.N. summit — known as COP15 — in Copenhagen.

But just a few weeks before that event began, a hacker broke into a server at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and released a tranche of climate scientists’ stolen emails. Though there was no indication of wrongdoing in those emails, some phrases taken out of context, combined with the then-unusual nature of the public release of private email correspondence derailed the Copenhagen summit, which was ultimately widely considered a failure.

Climate science denial and policy obstruction thrived in the ensuing years (after the theft of East Anglia emails and misleading promotion of them prior to COP . That was exemplified by an incident in which then-Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, brought a snowball to the floor of the Senate in February 2015, because he apparently believed that winter snow proved that global warming was a hoax. (it doesn't)”

Inhofe was likely promoting a misleading marketing scam. And the ‘liking to benefit from making things as bad as can be gotten away with’ crowd is still at it today.

This recent NPR item “Oil firms are out in force at the climate talks. Here's how to decode their language” (linked here) exposes that those who resist harm reduction efforts rely on science, the science of misleading marketing. See the NPR item “U.N. climate talks head says "no science" backs ending fossil fuels. That's incorrect" (Linked here) which includes the following: “...al-Jaber responds to Robinson's suggestion with this incorrect statement: "I respect the science, and there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5 [degrees Celsius]." That is my basis for stating that the beneficiaries of being more harmful ‘love the science ... of misleading marketing’.

As presented in the first NPR item the Oil (and gas) firms have developed misleading marketing abuses of the following terms (watch out for how they are abused):

Low carbon and Lower carbon (no admission of the need to meet the Paris objective)

Unabated fossil fuels (abated gets a free pass even if it isn’t a significant abatement)

Net-zero (relies on the magic of actions that suck carbon out, or relies on the harm of their actions, providing fossil fuels that ‘other harmful people burn’, being perceived to be net-zero)

Reliable. Affordable and ‘secure’ energy (questionable claims made using these terms – all dismissive of harm done.

The worst claims are the one about reducing perceptions of poverty - without mentioning that is accomplished via unsustainable and harmful actions – which means that no real reduction of poverty has occurred, just fleeting impressions that things have improved.

At a glance - Evidence for global warming

nigelj at 05:44 AM on 2 December, 2023

I don't think PP is a denialist. Have seen his comments at RC. We sometimes just get on edge and jump to the conclusion that anyone who says "flat trend" is a denialist because its a common denialist talking point.

We know the oceans as a whole have warmed considerably since the 1980s. But then you do have a few areas with cooling like the cold blob in the nothern atlantic.

I'm eyeballing Paul Pukete's graphs of the equatorial pacific and at best I can only see a very slight warming trend from around 1970 - 2022. I mean it does look flat or near flat, so I looked for an explanation and this is interesting. I have highlighted the main pargraphs only:. It seems to be consistent with what PP is saying.

Part of the Pacific Ocean Is Not Warming as Expected. Why? BY KEVIN KRAJICK |JUNE 24, 2019

State-of-the-art climate models predict that as a result of human-induced climate change, the surface of the Pacific Ocean should be warming — some parts more, some less, but all warming nonetheless. Indeed, most regions are acting as expected, with one key exception: what scientists call the equatorial cold tongue. This is a strip of relatively cool water stretching along the equator from Peru into the western Pacific, across quarter of the earth’s circumference. It is produced by equatorial trade winds that blow from east to west, piling up warm surface water in the west Pacific, and also pushing surface water away from the equator itself. This makes way for colder waters to well up from the depths, creating the cold tongue.

Climate models of global warming — computerized simulations of what various parts of the earth are expected to do in reaction to rising greenhouse gases — say that the equatorial cold tongue, along with other regions, should have started warming decades ago, and should still be warming now. But the cold tongue has remained stubbornly cold.
Why are the state-of-the-art climate models out of line with what we are seeing?

Well, they’ve been out of line for decades. This is not a new problem. In this paper, we think we’ve finally found out the reason why. Through multiple model generations, climate models have simulated cold tongues that are too cold and which extend too far west. There is also spuriously warm water immediately to the south of the model cold tongues, instead of cool waters that extend all the way to the cold coastal upwelling regions west of Peru and Chile. These over-developed cold tongues in the models lead to equatorial environments that have too high relative humidity and too low wind speeds. These make the sea surface temperature very sensitive to rising greenhouse gases. Hence the model cold tongues warm a lot over the past decades. In the real world, the sensitivity is lower and, in fact, some of heat added by rising greenhouse gases is offset by the upwelling of cool water from below. Thus the real-world cold tongue warms less than the waters over the tropical west Pacific or off the equator to the north and south. This pattern of sea-surface temperature change then causes the trade winds to strengthen, which lifts the cold subsurface water upward, further cooling the cold tongue.

news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/06/24/pacific-ocean-cold-tongue/

At a glance - Evidence for global warming

nigelj at 06:17 AM on 29 November, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer to the best of my understanding:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TWFA at 15:37 PM on 27 October, 2023

Yes, Michael, and I can confidently predict that an even more powerful hurricane will someday top that one even if we are carbon neutral or dead, on the other hand I can state with equal confidence that at some time in the past a more powerful one hit Acapulco as well, there is no way one can prove that the one yesterday was "of greater force than any previously occuring in the East Pacific Ocean".

Do you even realize how rediculous such a claim appears to be? Chance and time alone disqualify such a statement just as vastness and time assure there is life elsewhere in the universe, but neither can be proved without evidence. A CQ or TV signal of Hitler opening the '36 Olympics coming from Vega would be evidence, but proving something never happened, or something that but for reality would have otherwise happened, is extremely difficult, sort of like proving Schrödinger's cat to be alive or dead without opening the box. Until such time as we can open that box a larger hurricane in Acapulco in either the past or future will both exist and not exist.

But moving on, one of the problems I have with all the models I have seen is that they appear to have been adjusted or tweaked to global surface temperature observations, which is not necessarily a flaw in their creation but possibly a failure in their useful application, and it seems to me that there must be some other data set those models could be run against, with and without the anthroprogenic forcing, basically turning it on and off and looking for the same results on a different sample set, which would clearly show the model works elsewhere, and possibly everywhere.

Is it the lamp or the light bulb? Screw in another bulb from another lamp and see what happens, if it comes on it was the bulb, if still off it might be the lamp or both bulbs... unless the one you screwed in was hot, in which case it is the lamp. Pretty simple truth table, if the atmosphere and planet is heating up, so should the temperatures at 20,000' or 40,000', or even deep ocean temperatures, there should be plenty of data available at least for the former, weather balloons and PIREPs, it should track the models just as well and if not we would need to know why.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #42 2023

Doug Bostrom at 05:30 AM on 20 October, 2023

Thank you for the steer, Dean! The NAS report is of exactly the type we like to include.

The "purpose and methods" boilerplate could use some updating. Especially it doesn't mention at all our "government/NGO" section, added a couple of years ago. Marc Kodack handles that part of the weekly compilation and it's entirely manual. With "final assembly" happening on Wednesdays, a Tuesday release date ends up as a bit of a squeaker as to whether an item will get in the same week's review.

As well, it's possible to have a clean miss; a glance at Marc's bio shows how well suited he is for this work, but it's a big world emitting a constant Niagara of material for consideration. It's undoubtedly the case that more eyes would help, if they can be harnessed properly. We have the UI parts in place to widen our net by soliciting community input but that will need process methods and additional labor to support without descending into chaos. Fingers crossed, we may arrive there.

In the meantime, we're delighted to accept suggestions here and in the case of the NAS report we'll make sure it's in next week's edition even if it doesn't surface directly for Marc.

(The academic portion has evolved as eyeball review/select/categorize from a torrent of jounal RSS feeds, typically about 700 items per week, with automated metadata collection and formatting.)

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #41 2023

nigelj at 09:24 AM on 14 October, 2023

Davz @1

"Solar and wind power is not the answer purely down to cost. In the uk there is currently approx 12 thousand wind generators supplying between 5% to 20% of requirements dependant on velocity of the wind. Much of the energy created is lost as there is little requirement for energy at night.To save the energy would require a significant investment in batterie. "

Some wind power is wasted at night but it's the same with gas and coal fired power, so its a weak reason to criticise wind power. However if demand is low at night some wind generators (and gas generators etc) are typically switched off so not much power is wasted. So no batteries are needed. You have been told this several times before.

"The uk would need approximately 100,000 wind generators and batteries, this will cost a minimum of triple the UK's Gdp, completely unaffordable for the UK and completely unaffordable for the consumer, facts that completely ignored by not just environmentallists, climate change evangelists but also govt, who are just waking up to the reality, hence the govt postponing the transition to Ev's"

The average cost of wind turbines is about 1 million pounds so you need 100,000 equals 100 billion pounds. The Uks gdp each year is 2.2 trillion pounds and triple this is 4.6 trillion pounds. Its very difficult to believe batteries would cost over 4 trillion pounds and you provide no evidence they would.

Another alternative is to rely on an overbuild of wind power, so rely purely on wind power with no battery backup. This means you have to assume 12,000 generators operating at the the lowest wind velocity thus providing only 5% of power. To provide 100% of power this is about 200,000 wind turbines, so this is a total cost of 200 billion pounds. This is far less than 4.6 trillion pounds, even allowing for cost escalation, other grid infrastructure like transmission lines, etc, etc.

So your numerical claims just dont look credible.

In reality you would actually combine some level of overbuild of the wind power and some battery backup.

The government is more likely postponing the transition to Ev's because they are a right wing conservative government, and such governments globally have a track record of doing as little as possible about climate change.

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

Markp at 20:47 PM on 5 September, 2023

Scientists are human beings like everyone else, and while that explains much of the disagreement one can find among scientists on all sorts of topics, when people like Clauser come along and speak outside of their area of expertise, flatly contradicting the work of the majority of those directly involved specifically in that field, as in this case climate science, it really makes you wonder what motivated them to do that.

Honesty is important for everyone involved on the subject of climate science and global warming, of course, including those in the mainstream. The characerization of the IPCC here, for example, is so glowing, one might think it was written by the IPCC itself "one of the world’s greatest scientific bodies. It is composed of the world’s foremost climate scientists, who every 5 to 8 years devote tremendous amounts of time and effort to author reports summarizing the latest climate science research, without any remuneration whatsoever. The IPCC reports are in fact the world’s best source of accurate and valuable climate science information."

In fact, the IPCC is arguably not a scientific body: the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" is, as the name implies, a governmental body, where scientists volunteer their work but must in a way "compete" with political appointees from 195 UN nations to haggle over messages delivered to policymakers. It is well known that those political agents have rejected and softened language in statements proposed by scientists numerous times, when that language was deemed problematic for their individual nations.

But it goes further than that. The IPCC in fact has been criticized, not only by cranks like Clauser, but by its own contributors as well as other, reputable scientists in the climate science field, for being far too cautious, particularly in their characterization of the speed and severity of the effects of climate change from global warming. Being on the "right" side of this debate between the mainstream climate science "community" and people who are clearly climate deniers, should not mean that those defending what scientists have discovered need be deniers themselves of the many errors and misinformation that has been produced by organizations like the IPCC.

Papers such as "What Lies Beneath; The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk" by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, and "Faster Than Expected; The IPCC's Role In Exacerbating Climate Change" by Kyle Kimball, are a good start for those interested in examining clearly documented errors and pattern-forming cases of inaccuracy on the part of the public messages delivered by the IPCC.

It is one thing to be an outright climate denier. It is another to be one who so stridently opposes the outright frauds and fakes that one refuses to admit, and even attempts to hide or gloss over the real problems that do exist within what people call the climate science "community" and those various organizations responsible for gaining insight and finding solutions for humanity to fight what may someday soon be legally recognized as the ecocide perpetrated by numerous energy companies when they were warned numerous times by scientists of the need to swiftly switch to alternate fuels, and chose to bury, manipulate and deny that science in order to focus on business as usual and the maximization of shareholder value.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Bob Loblaw at 22:53 PM on 29 August, 2023

I will not try to say "one last point" - perhaps "one additional point".

The figure below is based on one year's worth of one-minute temperature data taken in an operational Stevenson Screen, with three temperature sensors (same make/model).

The graph shows the three error statistics mentioned in the OP: Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Bias Error (MBE), and the standard deviation (Std). These error statistics compare each pair of sensors: 1 to 2, 1 to 3, and 2 to 3.

The three sensors generally compare within +/-0.1C - well within manufacturer's specifications. Sensors 2 and 3 show an almost constant offset between 0.03C and 0.05C (MBE). Sensor 1 has a more seasonal component, so comparing it to sensors 2 or 3 shows a MBE that varies roughly from +0.1C in winter (colder temperatures) to -0.1C in summer (warmer temperatures).

The RMSE error is not substantially larger than MBE, and the standard deviation of the differences is less than 0.05C in all cases.

This confirms that each individual sensor exhibits mostly systematic error, not random error.

Error statistics - three temperature sensors

We can also approach this my looking at how the RMSE statistic changes when we average the data over longer periods of time. The following figure shows the RMSE for these three sensor pairings, for two averaging periods. The original 1-minute average in the raw data, and an hourly average (sixty 1-minute readings).

We see that the increased averaging has had almost no effect on the RMSE. This is exactly what we expect when the differences between two sensors have little random variation. If the two sensors disagree by 0.1C at the start of the hour, they will probably disagree by very close to 0.1C throughout the hour.

RMSE - three temperature sensors

As mentioned by bdgwx in comment 47, when you collect a large number of sensors across a network (or the globe), then these differences that are systematic on a 1:1 comparison become mostly random globally.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

David-acct at 08:15 AM on 4 August, 2023

Michael - Nigrelj partially answered your question on how to drill into the EIA data

using the link - right side column "chart options"

Chose frequency - daily or hourly

Date range type - choose custom

Number of days - less than 30 days will provide the hourly - longer than 30 will only display daily

Select balancing authority - click on any grid - ERCOT/ MISO / PJM / SWPP or any other grid.

Hope that helps you learning how to navigate the real time source data.

A baseball player can look at the box score printed in the sports section of the newspaper (on line these days) and tell you what happened every inning. Same thing with the EIA electric generation by source report. Once you learn how to read the source data, you will have a greatly improved grasp of what is actually happening, and far less easily fooled by the activists representations. Hope that helps.

Wildfires are not caused by global warming

Scott at 00:16 AM on 26 July, 2023

Something is not adding up here. The diagram from the IPCC shows the area of wild fires increasing (for the Western US). Yet research published by the Royal Society shows the opposite (globally) and I give a link to the article:

doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345

"Analysis of charcoal records in sediments [31] and isotope-ratio records in ice cores [32] suggest that global biomass burning during the past century has been lower than at any time in the past 2000 years."

"The availability of satellite data now allows a more consistent evaluation of temporal patterns in area burned. Thus, from an analysis based on MODIS burned area maps between 1996 and 2012, Giglio et al. [35] present some rather notable outcomes. In contrast to what is widely perceived, the detected global area burned has actually decreased slightly over this period (by 1% yr−1). A more recent global analysis by van Lierop et al. [36], based primarily on nationally reported fire data supplemented by burned area estimates from satellite observations, shows an overall decline in global area burned of 2% yr−1 for the period 2003–2012."

In particular in Europe there has been a gradual declining trend in area burnt since 1980: Wildfire occurrence (a) and corresponding area burnt (b) in the European Mediterranean region for the period 1980–2010. Source: San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. [37].

Wildfire occurrence (a) and corresponding area burnt (b) in the European Mediterranean region for the period 1980–2010. Source: San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. [37].

Given that the concern should be for GLOBAL CO2 why is the emphasis on wild fires in the Western US? I'm beginning to suspect that the IPCC is a political body with a political agenda to push.

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

wilddouglascounty at 15:01 PM on 24 July, 2023

The term "climate change" has buried the lead for too long, so it's time to correct this. When Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire were not voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, it was not because of Home Run Change, it was because of Performance Enhancing Drugs. And everyone who watches baseball knows that.

When the severity and frequency of extreme weather increases, the sea level rises and gets more acidic, wildlife populations move and wildfires abound, it is not because of Climate Change. It's because fossil fuel use that has changed the atmospheric and oceanic chemistry, allowing it to store more heat, changing the climate. Everyone who watches the weather needs to be reminded of that, too.

It's time to stop using euphemisms that don't explicitly connect the changing climate to fossil fuel use so that folks understand in the same way that folks understand the role of performance enhancing drugs in sports. Everyone needs to be reminded of the role fossil fuels has in climate change, just as they know about the role of performance enhancing drugs in turbocharging the natural talents of the users. Whenever discussing any of the things related to Climate Change we should make that link explicit by using phrases like:

- Fossil fuel induced Climate Change

- Increased greenhouse gases from Fossil Fuel use

- Climate Change caused by Fossil Fuel use

- Changed atmospheric chemistry through the widespread use of fossil fuels

and the like. And if someone says that you're politicizing the weather, tell them that this isn't just political; it's based on overwhelming scientific evidence. Refer them to the IPCC or skepticalscience websites if they are still deniers, and change the focus to how to become more energy efficient first, replace fossil fuel use with renewables second, and nurture local ecosystems third. We don't have a choice but to make things super-clear if we are to have a chance to turn the ship away from almost unimaginable disasters for future generations.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

daveburton at 01:45 AM on 14 July, 2023

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

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

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

does cheese consumption cause death by bedsheet entanglement?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CO2 vs plant growth, C3 & C4

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

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

https://ourworldindata.org/famines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AR6 on floods

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

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

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

U.S. very wet and very dry

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

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

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

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

Here's a similar study about wheat:

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

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

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

daveburton at 07:39 AM on 6 July, 2023

Rob wrote, "that greening is now turning into 'browning.'"

Well, here's what AR6 shows:

Some people point to that little orange box and say that greening has ceased. That reminds me of the folks who say that the it's not as warm as the 2015-16 El Nino, so warming has ceased.

Philippe wrote, "There is probably a better thread for this argument,"

I agree. I was just trying to address OnePlanet's remark about a "locked in" CO2 level.

Philippe wrote, "There is only one factor that truly controls how green any region can be: water availability."

That's a common misconception. Elevated CO2 levels greatly improve plants' water use efficiency (WUE) and drought resilience. That's why elevated CO2 is especially beneficial for crops when under drought stress. It has been heavily studied by agronomists. Here's a paper about wheat:

Philippe wrote, "The experiences that have shown a CO2 fertilization effect were done in very controlled conditions and involved extremely high concentrations (800 ppm and up)."

That's incorrect. All major crops have been studied, and all benefit from elevated CO2. It is true that the greatest benefits accrue at 1000 ppmv or higher, but even modest CO2 increases significantly improve crop yields.

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

This study evaluated pine trees:

Idso, S., & Kimball, B. (1994). Effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on biomass accumulation and distribution in Eldarica pine trees. Journal of Experimental Botany, 45, 1669-1672.
Pine trees grown at varying CO2 levels

As you noted, the effect is greatest with CO2 >800 ppmv, but, as you can see, even a much smaller CO2 increase has a substantial effect.

Rob wrote, "This entire paragraph is patently absurd and completely fabricated."

It is 100% factual, Rob. I'm surprised that you didn't already know it.

These figures are from that same AR6 Table 5.1 excerpt which I already showed you:

average CO2 removal rate in the 2010s = 2.7707 ppmv/yr
average CO2 removal rate in teh 2000s = 2.3481 ppmv/yr

These figures are from Mauna Loa:

average CO2 level in the 2010s = 399.91 ppmv
average CO2 level in the 2000s = 378.84 ppmv

(399.91-378.84) / (2.7707-2.3481) = 49.86

So a 50 ppmv increase in CO2 level accelerates the natural removal rate by about 1 ppmv/year.

49.86 / 2.1294 = 23.42 ppmv increase yields a +1 PgC removal rate increase.

I encourage you to do the calculations yourself for any other time period of your choice.

If you have the natural removal rate as a function of CO2 level (which we do), it is trivial to simulate the CO2 level decline if emissions were to suddenly cease. I wrote a little Perl program to do it; email me if you want a copy.

Rob wrote, "if true, the oceans would just continue to suck up all the atmospheric CO2 and we'd live on a frozen planet."

That's incorrect. The system progresses toward equilibrium, which is below 300 ppmv, but not zero.

Rob wrote, "rather that starting from a prior where all the published science is getting it wrong, and making stuff up... you don't have the requisite training to fully grasp the topic"

Rob, it's not necessary to resort to ad hominem attacks. I'm happy to document things that are surprising to you. You need but ask. Everything I've written is well-supported.

Rob wrote, "take some time to fully familiarize yourself with Henry's Law."

Due to the temperature dependence of Henry's Law, a 1°C increase in temperature slows CO2 uptake by the oceans by about 3%. But a 50% (140 ppmv) rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerates CO2 uptake by the oceans by 50%. That's the main reason that ocean uptake of CO2 continues to accelerate.

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

michael sweet at 07:27 AM on 6 July, 2023

Dave Burton:

I note that the last time Carbon dioxide was over 400 ppm the sea level was more than 20 meters higher than current sea level.

Your sea level graphs are obviously flawed. A simple eye ball look at the data from the Battery in New York shows that at the start of the time period the data is above the fit line and at the end of the time period the data is way above the fit line. That means that the line does not fit the data and some sort of curved line is needed because the rate of sea level rise is increasing over the time period you chose.

In addition, you have cherry picked two single locations to do your calculations without justifying your choice.

Fortunately, Tamino did an analysis of sea level rise before he stopped posting analysis. (Tamino is a professional statistical data analyzer who has published on sea level rise). He analyized "the data for every tide gauge station in region 3 which had at least 360 months’ data (at least 30 years), at least 120 months of which (10 years of which) are since the year 2000 — after all, we do want to know what’s happening now. That leaves 10 stations". Since he used all the available data his data is not cherry picked like yours is.

Here is one of his graphs of the rate of sea level rise on the East coast of the Gulf of Mexico:

sea level rise

We see immediately that sea level rise does not follow a straight line but varies over the 100 year time from of analysis. Of particluar interest is the dramatic increase in sea level rise since 2010.

The dramatic increase in sea level rise observed since 2010 holds true for an analysis of the entire globe. Your analysis using a linear fit is simply incorrect and cherry picked.

I note that the rate of rise since 2010 is more than double all the previous rates.

We would expect that if the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere remains above 400 ppm that the sea level will rise 20 meters plus. The question is only how fast the sea will rise. We see the rise is rapidly increasing every year now. Your linear fit deliberately hides the observed rise.

I note that the change in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has rapidly increased over the past 50 years so one would expect the sea level change to rapidly increase over that time period. Including the data back to 1900 with a linear fit just hides the recent rapid increase in sea level rise.

Does anyone know how Tamino is doing?

Wildfires are not caused by global warming

One Planet Only Forever at 07:46 AM on 2 July, 2023

PollutionMonster @9,

Regarding 'attribution of Canada's current wildfires to human caused climate change', the following Carbon Brief article may help you: "Media reaction: Canada’s wildfires in 2023 and the role of climate change"

The article states that:

"No attribution studies have so far made a climate connection with the ongoing wildfires in Canada.

But previous studies have looked at the link between climate change and other extreme weather events. One study found that climate change made a 2020 Siberian heatwave at least 600 times more likely. This heat broke temperature records and led to wildfires.

Additionally, the IPCC said that wildland fire has been “identified as a top climate-change risk facing Canada”.

The interactive map below displays a 2020 review of scientific studies finding that climate change is increasing the risk of wildfires globally."

The bolded words in the quote are links to additional information in the article. Read the article to access those links. And read the entire article. It includes additional information you may find helpful in your attempts to help others learn to better understand this issue.

Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation

peppers at 00:56 AM on 19 June, 2023

infant mortality Hi gentlemen. Rob, I start my logic from our worlds increase from 1 to 8 billion people. I dont know of anywhere this is made up or in dispute. I then premise that this describes mankinds addtional use of resources, including increased use that has elevated Co2. I will pause there until we are agreeing these premises are in agreement, but I will hint that this is a remarkable change in approaching this topic. If we do not agree that our population has rocketed up from 1 to 8 billion ( 8 billion reached November 22, 2022 ) in 200 years, after never going over 1 billion in the prior 180,000 years of human history, then we cannot really go to the next step of my ideas (thx).

Eclectic, hi. I understand infant mortality to be the measurement of human suffering over the large picture. That is how it is posed. I know it sounds off base and we should discuss cancer or heart disease, etc. But infant mortality has been the real beast to our existence. 50% in roman times, peaking to 62% I think in south american in 800AD. It has been at 50% in many place on earth into the mid 1800's. Today it is under 1% in the US, and about 4.35% globally with the third world locations providing the offsets of up to 8.5%. I posted a chart earlier on this thread.

Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, the eradication of infant mortality, the leap of our lifespans and the shear amount of people who now live to be an adult produces a chart that is an exact mirror to the hockey stick chart used to show our rise in Co2.

I hesitate to go further, but I will hazard it. If you see what I am referring to, much like the rise of people on earth to 8 billion; there is no going back. The world is different. The world is already different and there is no going back and the United Nations estimates we will continue to increase to just about 9.5-10B around the end of this century and then it will taper off on increasing.

I have not explored expectations of any decline but if it is expected I would imagine it would involve several hundreds of years. And only find a moderating level of some kind and not return to 1B.

CO2 is not the only driver of climate

piotr at 03:11 AM on 9 May, 2023

@Bob Loblaw

Not directly. I was just wondering on Nasa's Martin Mlynczak statement to Grand solar minimum "and will not cause noticeable cooling at the surface". Yeah, not globally, except the overall temperatures may decrease a bit in statistics too. But it noticeable cooled large parts of the nothern hemisphere, like big vulcanic eruptions can cause for few years and did in even the last 150 years too -> global mean temperatures decrease up to 1.5°C, besides some areals warmed then too.

So what is Martin Mlynczak talking about? The past 10.000 years where up and downs in global mean temperature like +/- 2°C for dozen decades, even for nearly 2000 years - as we can reconstruct with little data-points.

Overall my main questions is the concerning how plausible is the reconstruction of earthly temperatures over thousands of years just with indirect data besides modern technology with thousend parameters, stations around the globe and on every time (even in grown urban places, which totally heat up just being sealed ground and overcrowded for decades). modern observation for like 30 years am totally cool with, but the rest is a large extrapolation of indirect measurement and got "worse" at we strife further away in time.

Just imagen if we would have high technology measurements like today in for example 6000 BC to 5500 BC, then we would see global warming for at least 0,5 - 0,8 °C over aproxx 1-200years similar like today and we knew that for some areas or changing habitats like sahara desert, but not excessive like modern data amount. btw. its also stated there were same co2 ppm levels as pre-industrial times.

i think its "fascinating" to have data from million years ago, when no modern human lived and we think to "know" how life was back then, globally, just by knowing some single fragments and feeding supercomputers with, which try hart to simulate complex features like climate or even local weather to be back then. Im a big fan of astronomy since my child days and read about the fist extrasolar-findings back in the days. but thats much more extreme, as we can never proof for real, even if its pretty possible to conclude a habital place somewhere on a planet just by reconstruction of the atmosphere, despite being back in time maybe million years ago. its hilarious to say "we found a possible earthlike planet!".

Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

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

Evan @6,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote from “Discussion - Implications for cumulative GHG emissions”

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

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

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

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

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

Quotes from the “Conclusion” of the research article:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not bad

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #7 2023

One Planet Only Forever at 06:31 AM on 19 February, 2023

I agree that the highlighted IISD Report “Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector” is a robust helpful evaluation of the important, but limited scope of, climate impact aspects of fossil fuel activity. In addition to climate impacts, there are other types of harm to consider. And all harms considered, including potential harms like leaks and spills, fossil fuels from oil sands can be more harmful than coal-fired electricity generation (especially if the coke waste from upgrading heavy crude gets burned).

The future of humanity needs more people to ‘want to learn to be less harmful and more helpful’. That is an ‘eternal need’ because of the potential for misleading marketing to successfully impede learning about what is harmful and unsustainable (keeping people from learning how to be less harmful and more helpful at developing sustainable improvements).

The misleading marketing problem is the misleading promotion of Positive and Negative perceptions (beliefs) in pursuit of superiority, popularity and profit. Focusing on positive perceptions excuses harm done or distracts from learning about harm (Canadian band The Northern Pikes said it well: She ain’t pretty she just looks that way). And it is also harmful to promote negative perceptions about improved understanding and actions that are more helpful, limit and repair harm done. Creating unjustified fear and anger regarding learning to be less harmful and more helpful is easy when something perceived to be personally desired or beneficial (those positive perceptions) would have to be given up (like people declaring “You Can’t Make Me” when confronted with increased awareness and improved understanding that would make them less harmful and more helpful ‘If they were willing to learn and change their mind and actions for Good Reason’).

And there is lots of evidence today proving the success of political groups that abuse misleading ‘positive and negative’ marketing (not just the case of Alberta leadership touting the goodness of CCS and Blue Hydrogen while prompting Albertans to fear and be angry about the required rapid transition away from fossil fuel use).

The highlighted report “Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector” relates to the Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023 that is Story of the Week in News Roundup #5. The actions of Canada’s leadership, especially the leadership in Alberta, are why the Hamburg 2023 Outlook indicates that there is a ‘very low' likelihood that Canada will achieve its current Paris Agreement NDCs which, btw, need to be significantly ratcheted up if limiting impacts to 2.0 C max is to be plausible (figure 6 on page 92, but note that the figure does not indicate how helpful the NDCs are. Russia is shown to very likely meet its NDCs because the Russian NDCs are easier to achieve because they are very far below what is required).

The Hamburg 2023 Outlook painstakingly presents the understanding that it is not plausible that impacts will be limited to 1.5 C. And Canada’s anti-leadership on the matter is a significant part of the problem (pursuing short-term gain and excusing it by claiming things like ‘Everybody else is doing it ’ and ‘It would be foolish not to try to maximize the benefit obtained from a harmful natural resource exploitation opportunity’. Those attitudes are worse than the Tragedy of the Commons attitudes).

Attempts to excuse or put a positive spin on the harmful actions, and claiming that actions to reduce harm done are ‘harmful or foolish, and to be feared and be angry about’, are a systemic developed problem. The developed systems and institutions produce harmful results and a lack of helpful action. They will not responsibly limit and repair harm done.

That connects to the Greta Thunberg Oped that John Hartz @1 pointed to. CCS in Canada is different from the CCS in the Iceland example that Greta talks about. The Iceland operations removes Carbon from the atmosphere and locks it away. That type of operation is needed because keeping impacts below 1.5 C is no longer plausible. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is now necessary to bring the peak impact level back down to 1.5 C as rapidly as possible. CCS for fossil fuel combustion and Blue Hydrogen production used for fossil fuel production is a temporary measure at best. But Canadian leadership, especially in Alberta, try to claim their CCS and Blue Hydrogen are helpful sustainable improvements. They fully expect to continue to operate and export fossil fuel feed stock far past 2050. They need a longer future for exporting oil sands stuff to make the investments in CCS and Blue Hydrogen appear to be good investments. The business community seem to know those investments are ‘bad bets’. That is why government subsidy is required.

The case of misleading marketing about CCS is well presented in the IISD report. But is more to be understood regarding Hydrogen. Blue Hydrogen is not great Hydrogen. It is better than Grey Hydrogen. But Green Hydrogen is the type of Hydrogen with a future. More importantly, the way the hydrogen is produced, its colour code, is not the only consideration. How the hydrogen is used also matters. Using it as a fuel source to displace fossil fuel use is the required and sustainable use. Using it to produce fossil fuels is harmful, no matter what colour it is (no matter how it is obtained).

The following are two key statements from the IISD Report:

“As of September 2022, only 30 commercial CCS projects are operating across all sectors around the world, capturing 42.5 Mtpa. This falls far short of the IEA’s (2009) previous target of 300 Mtpa by 2020. Most proposed projects have been withdrawn: of the 149 CCS projects anticipated to be storing carbon by 2020, over 100 were cancelled or placed on indefinite hold (Abdulla et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). In the United States, despite significant industry and government investment in the technology, more than 80% of proposed CCS projects have failed to become operational due to high costs, low technological readiness, the lack of a credible financial return, and dependence on government incentives that are withdrawn (Abdulla et al., 2020). Of those projects that are operating globally, 73% of the carbon captured is used for EOR (Robertson & Mousavian, 2022).”

"The opportunity cost of investing in CCS and the risk of stranded assets for Canada’s oil and gas sector will intensify as global climate ambition ratchets up and demand for oil and gas declines. Ultimately, addressing emissions in the oil and gas sector will be critical in the short term, but scaling up alternative energy systems to allow a smooth shift away from oil and gas production will be essential for long-term, economy-wide decarbonization.”

The Hamburg Outlook robustly presents that what needs to happen will not happen without significant systemic change. The future of humanity will continue to be more seriously harmed as long as leaders can become/remain popular by being misleading: Promoting a focus on positive perceptions to impede increased awareness of harm done and promoting negative perceptions about the actions that achieve the required limit of harm done and repair of excessive harm done (more than 1.5 C impacts due to a lack of responsible leadership actions – excused because of the popularity of claims like ‘all leaders are behaving harmfully irresponsibly’ and ‘others are the problem’).

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

John Hartz at 05:05 AM on 16 February, 2023

John, Baerbel, Ken & Doug:

I have been sifting and winowing through the internet for more than a decade now to identify quality news articles about manmade climate change and related matters.* During this time, I have seen a signifigant growth in debunking articles generated by journalists, scientists, blog authors, and others.

One such article was posted just two days ago. It is:

Myth-buster: Why two degrees of global warming is worse than it sounds by Daisy Simmons, Climate Explained, Yale Climate Connections, Feb 13, 2023

In the context of the rebuttal update initiative described in the OP, I thought it would be interesting to see which of the Skeptical Science (SkS) rebuttals Simmons' article best pairs up with. It appears that would be the SkS rebuttal, #3 It's not bad.

Having said the above, the existing SkS rebuttal, #3 It's not bad covers almost the complete universe of climate science. Therefore, the best Advanced version of the rebuttal would in essence be the most recent scientific report of the IPCC.

My basic recommendation re this ball of wax is to slice and dice the the SkS rebuttal, #3 It's not bad into distinct chunks.

___________________

*The first SkS "Bi-Weekly News Roundup" was posted on Nov 16, 2012.

Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits

peppers at 21:41 PM on 30 January, 2023

Thanks for all the input. Ill go over all of this in time.

Micheal, California's 44M have 2.5 times the rate for electricity than Washington States 8M. Nothing amusing there.

Forever, with the sentiment that unhealthy fuels should carry higher costs to diminish theri use, why does California apply doubling electricity costs to cover State programs of exploring and implimenting alternative sources, among covering other programs of wildfires and subsidies to the poor? Of which these policies increase their poor. They are not encouraging the healthiest sources of power at all, and it is punitive in nature to the common working citizen, such as my renters.

I was too general on the nuclear. There is enough uranium in the sea for thousands of years, but it is impractical in many ways to imagine the increased accidents and security needed for thousands more reactors. maybe not all power, but a small reactor outside each city, like so many nuclear subs. They are claming huge strides in safety and reuse of all waste, etc.

Nigelj, no we should not bury our heads in the sand. Something must be done. But in lieu of finding a real actionable solution, punishing the populous to hope to reduce global emissions 7% (if we achieve cutting our use in half) from the US is a bit doomy. As another said, if we settle on that we do not pursue more strongly an actual working solution. For now we need a backup when night comes, or the wind dies or snowpack is slow that year. We can work to lower needing fossil fuel to 1/3 of the time is the hieght of these goals. They are not worth doing as I see it, just to do something.

And 7% is the amount of new consumers added to the world every year, as we passed 8B on November 22,2022, and will find 9B in 2037. Thats one a and a half times the California population added each year, spread across and increasing the energy use in every global area and zone. The US will add California's population again within 35 years.

My 3 year old's day school is packed and Im not going to consider that this is the problem. This is what many of these solutions are based in, that the peoples behaviors are the problem. They should suffer. I am not fatalistic; im interested in the pie in the sky, or the 'pennecillin' solution to be found that will address this. Its actually, in my opinion, the only way. I do not have a moments thought it will not be found.

I have also told I have been a landlord for decades and how do I have a 3 year old! Yes Ill be throwing him a ball at 18 from my walker!

Thanks all. Best D

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #4

One Planet Only Forever at 04:13 AM on 30 January, 2023

The following CBC News item helps understand the challenges of getting people to learn about the harmful consequences of fossil fuel use, especially the climate change impact consequences.

Why don't we talk about acid rain and the ozone hole anymore? Scientists debunk misinformation

There are significant differences between the 'globally acted on and considered to have been reasonably resolved SO2 and Ozone issues' and the climate change harm of fossil fuel use. In addition to the 'immediate potential negative impact on influential people of a failure to address the problem' a major difference is the amount of 'developed perceptions of prosperity and superiority' that have to be given up to address the problem. However, there are other important things that can be learned from how each issue was addressed.

The SO2 (acid rain) problem was a developed problem that was impacting the environment that influential people, including large groups of voters, could identify with and potentially experience. But even the undeniable harm done did not motivate rapid correction everywhere. Some European nations led the transition to reduced SO2 emissions, including 'low sulphur' and 'ultra-low sulphur' diesel. Other nations, including the USA and Canada delayed implementing the harm reduction technology because of the competitive trade advantages of the lower cost of not leading the transition. That delay also kept cleaner diesel engines developed in the nations leading the transition from being import competition because they would not run as well on the dirtier fuel. But the major difference from the climate change challenge is that 'more harm done' was acceptable while technology development occurred to reduce the problem. And a critical difference is that sulphur emissions did not have to be 'almost entirely eliminated'. Also, removal of sulphur from the atmosphere is not required.

The ozone problem, like the SO2 problem, was also allowed to 'take some time to be solved'. And a major difference from the climate change challenge is that only a small part of the global economy was impacted by the required corrections of what had developed. The global agreement regarding the mitigation of the ozone problem was able to wait for new technology to develop. Also, the rate of harmful ozone impacts did not have to be brought to 'net-zero'. And actions were not required to remove harmful excess ozone impacts.

The climate change challenge requires the ending of a developed activity that is a massive part of the global socioeconomic system. And there is the added potentially unpopular requirement for the people who benefited most from the current accumulated problem to pay for removing excess harmful impacts. There is no time to wait for 'new cheaper technology to be developed' ('waiting for cheaper alternatives to be developed' through the past 30 years has developed the current undeniably harmful reality). The currently developed technology for removing CO2 needs to be built and be operating today. However, only technology that is well understood to have minimal 'other' negative impacts should be built and operated, even if cheaper alternatives are available.

For the climate change challenge, and so many other matters that matter to the future of humanity, the measure of acceptability of what has been developed and the alternatives needs to be 'essentially harmless'. Compromising the pursuit of being as harmless as possible 'because of other considerations' will fail to develop sustainable solutions. That reality is a major impediment to efforts to increase awareness and understanding of the climate change challenge. The science is solid. But it requires a lot of developed preferences and perceptions of status to be given up.

Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits

peppers at 02:00 AM on 30 January, 2023

HI Forever (again!) and Micheal,

We do need to reduce co2 emissions.

Forever, correct at 61% from fossil, 19% nuclear and 20% alternatives from the Dept of Energy. I am a proponent of the nuke, based on outcomes of that becoming much cleaner, using own waste and the liquid salt as coolant being safer.

I did not look in to deregulating, but I see the outcomes of different types of fuel based on my observations over 45 years of landlording. Running electric heaters as opposed to natural gas is 5 times more expensive. $35 of NG heats a month of $170 electric heat in an apartment.

When I critique this article it is in the ways we fool ourselves that we are operating in achievable or useable terms. It takes 3 years of co2 ( of the replaced gas car) to make a Tesla, 2 to 3 years based on location and use factors. The diesel mining of the lithium, aluminum being 8 times more emitting than making steel, same plastic in the car, etc.

The main push is faith. That these processes will get better. But more than faith, this delves in to propaganda as well. Few to none of these things will address the issue except to cause more spending and higher bills. Tell me we are just hopeful these things will later address the situation and Ill see it as an honest communication to me.

But switching to electric can allow a larger bite of alternatives, when they can come in to play. Thats all that is being said. And many times the cost is supposed to be sucked up I guess. As if people have this money.

I also see this power beaming, aiming sunlight from orbit to power stations on earth. 24/7 is the key. THAT would be a wonderful use of money and tech. And the new nuke... All better than setting groups of people against other groups down here on earth.

Micheal, probably the most useful things on this list of ten are the 5 items of insulation, double pane windows and etc. We can afford to want that in the US, if we dont care to feed anyone else with those funds. We are at 15.6 per capita on emissions in the US and China emits twice what we do. But they are 4 times larger, meaning thier per capita is 7.5. If we could come to match thier per capita we would affect the co2 total 7% globally.

That does not strike me as fatalistic. It makes me want to aim efforts to things that will properly solve this. And as important, not have us fracture and fight and lecture on another on this.

Thanks tons, D

Renewable energy is too expensive

michael sweet at 08:12 AM on 8 January, 2023

Max Green,

This argument against renewables is very old. It was originally raised around 2005. Mark Jacobson and his team at Stanford did a detailed Peer-Reviewed analysis that showed that all the materials for a compeltely renewable energy system were available except for rare earth metals needed for the wind turbines. Since then, wind turbines have been developed that do not use rare earth elements in their turbines. In addition, the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels have become much more efficient that Jacobson estimated so that even less metal will be used. I note that large amounts of metal are now being used to drill for fossil fuels.

Reading your popuilar magazine article I see that the Simon Michaux reference is just to a seminar he presented, not even a conference poster. Seminars are sim[ply his opinion of things he has no experience in, unreviewed by anyone. He states that a lot of materials are needed. For one thing he calculates that:

"Globally, 15,635,478 Hornsdale-type stations will need to be built across the planet and connected to the power grid system just to meet a 4-week buffer system"

Jacobson et al 2022 in an extermely detailed, peer reviewed analysis, finds that only 4-8 hours of buffer system are required. Other energy researchers find similar results as Jacobson. Why should I pay attention to an unreviewed talk to graduate students by someone who has no experience with the topic and that calculates 150 times more storage than the peer reviewed literature?

If you look at all the materials needed for a total renewable energy system in the future there are issues with some materials. If you do the same calculation for a fossil system there are some materials that will run out. If you demand 100 times the required materials for the renewable system than are actually needed than it makes the renewable system look bad.

Simon Michaux is simply full of BS.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #52 2022

MA Rodger at 20:45 PM on 5 January, 2023

michael sweet @4,

This document 'Global warming in the pipeline' by Hansen et al does appear to need some rewriting in my view.
It explains it is the first of a pair (the second being 'Sea Level Rise in the Pipeline') and together they are perhaps akin to Hansen et al (2016) 'Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous' which was more a discussion document than a piece of science. But given 'Global warming in the pipeline' starts off with our understanding of the greenhouse effect back in the 1800s, its audience is probably not climatologists, so not a discussion document, although it does get a bit 'detailed' in places where a good understanding of climatology is required.

At 48 pages, it covers a lot of ground and as-yet I haven't read very far through it, down to page 12 which covers the assessment of ECS. But it does read a little odd.

The Abstract tells us that "improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fastfeedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO2"

The first thing that I felt odd was reference to Hansen et al (1984) 'Climate sensitivity: analysis of feedback mechanisms' but without a sign that this was such an old paper. The tempersture rise from the LGM used to calculate the ECS in Hansen et al (1984) is said to be +3.6°C, a value said to yield ECS=2.5 to 5°C. For me, that +3.6°C temperature increase is way below that usually quoted elsewhere for the post-LGM temperature rise.

And 'Global warming in the pipeline' indeed then presents higher estimates of the temperature rise from the LGM: +6.8°C (± 0.8) in Osman et al (2021), +5.9°C (± 0.3) in Tierney et al (2020) and +5.8°C (± 0.6) for land SAT from Seltzer et al (2021).

These are in keeping with values I've seen in literature for recent decades which usually sit +5°C to 6°C, perhaps the +6.8°C (± 0.8) in Osman et al (2021) a little higher than normal while some of those lower values have also persisted.

And using such LMGR temperature increases, 'Global warming in the pipeline' then calculates ECS concluding "Thus, while the LGM-Holocene climate change implies ECS =3.3-5.1°C for 2×CO2, the PGM-Eemian implies ECS ~ 4-6°C. We conclude ECS is at least approximately 4°C and is almost surely in the range 3.5-5.5°C."

What goes unsaid is that the literature used to source LGMR the temperature rise from the LGM also developes ECS values with ECS = 2.2°C to 4.3°C in Tierney et al (2020) (Fig 4 from this paper below, the R_AE accounting for 'mineral dust forcing') with Seltzer et al (2021) concurring with the central value of this, 3.4°C. For 'Global warming in the pipeline' to ignore these ECS values is entirely unscientific as we now have two values for ECS derived from LGMR which are at odds with each other.

Tierney et al (2020) Fig 4

And the use of the PMG-Eemian temperature rise to calculate an ECS value is a novel and perhaps rather too adventurous as I don't know of such a use previously. 'Global warming in the pipeline' references Rohling et al (2017), a long paper which does not itself address ECS.

So that is not a good start for a work which presents such startling findings.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

MA Rodger at 21:01 PM on 27 December, 2022

The source of the 77.5 t(CO2)/acre quoted @258 is shown in the link @366. It is not a figure for annual sequestration (which is evidently being expected @358 and which would be a few percentage points of this 77.5t figure) but total sequestration. And I think it is too low. It is derived from cocoa plantations so a figure which may not be representative of replanted global woodlands.

In numbers I am more familiar with, 77.5t(CO2)/acre is (as the link says) 191.6t(CO2)/ha or [x100/3.664=] 5,200t(C)/sq km.

Over the period 2010-19, there has been 53M ha of lost tropical forest (according to OurWorldInData). And since AD1850, the figure given is 1,400M ha. The Global Carbon Project give budgets showing estimated emissions from land-use-change (this mainly due to deforestation) as 13Gt(C) for 2010-19 and 203Gt(C) since AD1850. These numbers suggest a carbon sequestration intensity for natural woodland of 24,500t(C)/sq km or 14,500t(C)/sq km, the former figure tropical, the latter perhaps global. These numbers are far greater than that given in the #366 link.

We can dodge calculating the annual uptake by considering how many sq km of forest would need to be planted to draw down today's annual CO2 emissions (which would be necessary to stabalise GHG forcing). That would be roughly 500,000 sq km or 0.3% of global land, or 0.5% of the 100M sq km global productive land, annually. Note that globally 38M sq km is currently forested, and a similar amount would be naturally scrub or grassland so also not very useful for sequestering our CO2. Thus the potential for land available to sequester our FF CO2 emissions would be somewhere near 25M sq km and such a level of replanting would provide sequestration for perhaps 50 years of our FF emissions at present levels of FF-use.

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

nigelj at 10:12 AM on 27 December, 2022

Bob Loblow @64,

"Shouting "my free speech was censored/suppressed/violated" if a web service refuses to allow it is not my idea of "free speech"."

I agree with you if you mean the website is refusing to allow people to post any comments at all, or refusing to allow abusive, or off topic comments. Websites are as you say privately owned and totally entitled to do that, and it doesnt suppress opinion which is the essence of what matters.

But what about the website refusing to allow comments or opinions that they just dont like, for example climate denialist comments, warmist comments, comments that promote creationism or that criticise evolution, or that express hatred, or are are factually innacurate, (eg the world is flat or covid has only killed 20,000 people globally) ? They are entitled to do that if they want, but to me that is suppressing free speech. Its intruding a long way into what opinions are allowed, and is censorship that goes right against the liberal world view. Although I might make an exception for the covid claim on grounds that blatant lies like that can fool some gullable people and end up killing lots of people.

I'm trying to get some sense of where you think the line in the sand should be drawn on moderation of what people post. I confess I'm having some trouble deciding just how far websites should go with that form of moderation, although I did try to express what I think above thread and it leans towards minimal moderation. Yes its their business if they are privately owned, but to me that is not the point.

"Shouting "my free speech was censored/suppressed/violated" when someone else says something against what you said is also not my idea of "free speech"."

Agree totally. See this all the time, unfortunately. I constantly challenge these people and point out they are confusing things and their claim is illogical.

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 10:22 AM on 1 November, 2022

Here are two large international studies that show that deaths caused by excess cold substantially exceed deaths caused by excess heat.

e have 4.5 million people dying each year from moderately cold weather-related causes, mainly from strokes and heart attacks caused by moderate cold, while only about 500,000 are dying from heat-related causes and most of them were also from moderate heat.
RTICLES| VOLUME 5, ISSUE 7, E415-E425, JULY 01, 2021
'Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modeling study'
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
"Globally, 5 083 173 deaths (95% empirical CI [eCI] 4 087 967–5 965 520) were associated with non-optimal temperatures per year, accounting for 9·43% (95% eCI 7·58–11·07) of all deaths (8·52% [6·19–10·47] were cold-related and 0·91% [0·56–1·36] were heat-related)."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext

Here is another recent study that found that the excess death caused by cold exceeded those caused by heat.
ARTICLES| VOLUME 398, ISSUE 10301, P685-697, AUGUST 21, 2021
Estimating the cause-specific relative risks of non-optimal temperature on daily mortality: a two-part modeling approach applied to the Global Burden of Disease Study
Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
"Acute heat and cold exposure can increase or decrease the risk of mortality for a diverse set of causes of death. Although in most regions cold effects dominate, locations with high prevailing temperatures can exhibit substantial heat effects far exceeding cold-attributable burden."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01700-1/fulltext

Permitting: America’s next big climate conundrum

nigelj at 06:45 AM on 13 October, 2022

OPOF @1. Good points / questions.

"3. Why aren't new generation facilities being built immediately adjacent to, or on the property of, the soon to be moth-balled power generation facilities (where the transmission infrastructure already exists)? Likely because the developed marketplace of popularity and profit resists that."

I remembered reading about this recently. Some progress is being made according to this commentary although its on already mothballed sites: "In a Twist, Old Coal Plants Help Deliver Renewable Power. Here’s How."

www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/climate/coal-plants-renewable-energy.html

No, a cherry-picked analysis doesn’t demonstrate that we’re not in a climate crisis

Eric (skeptic) at 23:14 PM on 8 October, 2022

Clausius-Clapeyron means that with global warming the atmosphere can hold more water vapor. Whether it does hold more water vapor depends on a surprisingly complex set of factors. Drought intensification is a simpler case. C-C means there almost always be more evaporation and will often (not always) be more transpiration.

Short term rainfall is a much more complex case. I have found no trend in US 1 hour to 6 hour rainfalls in 500+ stations over 70 years. However as rainfalls get progressively longer (6 instead of 1) there are consistently more increasing trends and fewer declining trends. That's also why we almost never see a new 1 or 5 or 10 minute rainfall record. C-C has essentially zero influence at the very short term. But C-C definitely has more influence at the longer durations which is why we see new 24 hour (and longer) all-time records being set like with Harvey. But Harvey brings up an important point, the water vapor has to come from somewhere and it came a warmer gulf of Mexico. That much is quite obvious.

There are changes in regional tornado climatology. I have yet to do that analysis and it will be a bit difficult with relatively rare events. But overall in the US EF-3 and EF-4 tornadoes are declining, EF-5 are statistically flat. There are flat statistics for winter and generally declining statistics for warmer months, but fewer declines 1990-present than 1950-present. In short, complicated and dependent on time periods affected by natural cycles. Easy to cherry pick.

My Atlantic hurricane analysis found a notable uptick in >= 120 knot storms. I set that threshold to avoid the small numbers problems using categories. RI is interesting, someone needs to write a paper with a new definition because the old definition (>= 30 knots increase in 24 hours) is true for 60% of Atlantic hurricanes. The increase in RI from warmer oceans shows up most strongly at >= 40 knots in 24 hours. Ian met that threshold. But there's also an increase in rapid weakening over water. Over land weakening is expected and I exclude all such cases. Globally Ryan Maue's data shows fewer hurricanes but the average hurricane in stronger. Also have to be careful not to cherry pick intervals.

Overall I agree with the article above that there are many other impacts that need to be considered. That's particularly true if we are going to decide how to rationally spend money on impact mitigation.

New study more than triples estimated costs of climate change damages

One Planet Only Forever at 12:20 PM on 13 September, 2022

The NOAA document regarding the use of discount rates for Coastal System Restoration that nigelj linked to may be a good case study for an Economics course. It contains examples of potentially incorrect thinking (excuse making in the Era of Excuses) like the following:

"The social rate of time preference is the rate at which society is willing to substitute present for future consumption of natural resources. The federal opportunity cost of capital and the rate of productivity growth are commonly used as proxies for the social rate of time preference. The argument for using the federal opportunity cost of capital as a proxy for the social rate of time preference is that in the absence of the public project, the federal government could put the funds to productive use reducing the national debt. When using the federal cost of capital, the generally accepted practice is to apply the effective yield on comparable-term Treasury securities (e.g., 20-year Treasury bonds for a study with a 20-year analysis timeframe). During the decade of the 1990s, the average 10-year Treasury bond rate was 6.01 percent whereas inflation averaged 2.88 percent. Thus, the real rate of interest on Treasury bonds was roughly 3.13 percent during the 1990s (Bellas and Zerbe 2003).

Social policy is also concerned with an equitable distribution of consumption over time. Based on this premise, the rate of productivity growth can be used as a proxy for the social rate of time preference. This policy reflects the opportunity cost argument that the incremental or marginal benefit to the country generated by the public project should grow as fast as the productive capacity of industry. From 1990 to 2003, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.96 percent (BEA 2004). Thus, using productivity over that period as the basis of the discount rate generates a roughly 3.0 percent rate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recommends using the social, or consumer, rate of time preference for discounting interim service losses and restoration gains when scaling compensatory restoration (NOAA 1999).

NOAA has adopted a 3.0 percent discount rate as a proxy for the social rate of time preference. When discounting restoration and assessment costs, NOAA recommends that trustees use the rates on U.S. Treasury securities issued for a comparable term relative to the analysis period."

The fundamental flaw is using past economic statistics to evaluate a 'never before faced situation' - the need to evaluate the acceptability of a portion of global humanity benefiting in ways that are unsustainable and harmful to Other Humans (especially the future generations) and Other life. The understanding that GDP is a poor measure of progress is a growth industry producing a diversity of corrections to the flawed GDP (and other financial measures) way of evaluating progress.

Ethically it is simply unacceptable for a person to benefit from actions that harm another person. A person can personally benefit from an action where they are the only potentially harmed person. And a group can benefit in a similar fashion as long as all members of the group equitably benefit and suffer consequences. But it is not acceptable for some members of the group to inequitably benefit from harm done to other members of the group. That is pretty fundamental to Legal Judgments. But the ways that pursuits of increased GDP can make up excuses for more harm being done are understandably unethical, yet likely Legal (really think about that).

The case of climate change impacts is an evaluation of the harm done by human actions that a portion of the current global population inequitably benefit from. And any indications of GDP (or poverty and misery reduction, the real measure of progress) based on the harmful burning up of non-renewable resources are not sustainable. So it is a 'poor excuse' to use past measures of economic growth to discount future costs that are imposed on Others.

In addition, it is flawed 'excusing' to use a discount rate for this 'global novel' developed problem. And climate change impacts due developed human activity are a global novel problem. Never before has such an extensive integral part of developed human activity needed to be stopped because it was learned, well after the activity was very popular and profitable, that it was globally unsustainable and threatened the future of humanity. Damage to the Ozone layer was addressed, sort of, because it was understood to be a near term threat to even the rich people. And nuclear weaponry was a similar global humanity threat, but it was not as pervasive in global human activity as harmful unsustainable fossil fuel use (at least above ground nuclear weapons testing was stopped). Fossil fuel use needs massive excusing to evade the harm to the rich and powerful (and their faithful fans) that is undeniably required by the undeniably understood need to limit the harm done to the future of humanity.

And all of that is without accounting for the additional misery and suffering caused by fossil fuel use, the climate change harm that Others experience due to fossil fuel use as well as other harms due to fossil fuel use.

And all of that is said without adding the 'ethical externalities' of impacts on other life that currently do not economically get accounted for but are harmed by fossil fuel activity. Those impacts to other life include, but are not limited to, climate change impacts.

A narrow-minded view of economics can produce tragic consequences for the future of humanity as a sustainable part of the robust diversity of life on this amazing planet. A comprehensive concern for limiting harm done and developing sustainable improvements for humanity exposes how 'harmfully incorrect the current developed ways of living of most of the supposedly most advanced, most superior, humans are' rather than excusing those unsustainable ways of living.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 22:32 PM on 4 September, 2022

The graph with the concave blue line and the convex red line is actually a good cartoon of what actually happened to the electricity emissions of France and Germany, the exemplars of the 'Mesmer plan' accelerated reactor buildout, and the 'Energiewende' attempt to decarbonise with mainly wind and solar. French electricity emissions, and fossil fuel use, plummeted, and are still among the lowest in Europe, even though at the moment, the nuclear industry is only running at 34% of its capacity. Germany started later, its emissions have gone down much more slowly, it's still producing on average 3 to 4 times as much CO2 as France, and there's no guarantee that the reduction curve will get steeper - at the moment, it's not looking good, with mothballed coal plants being started up to replace the Russian gas that's supposed to be 'firming' solar and wind. Peak power production over the last 24 hrs was 69 GW, close to the full capacity of either solar, 65 GW, or wind, 64 GW. But solar averaged only about 11 GW, and wind only 14 GW. German nuclear, unlike French, has been running at 98% capacity all day. The batteries that will supposedly back variable renewables are nowhere to be seen. Pumped hydro makes an appearance for just four hours, at from 2 to 11% of demand. Meanwhile, the 'brown coal', of which Gemany is the world's largest user, continues to be the largest single source of electricity, as it has been for the last thirty years.app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

There's no tropospheric hot spot

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

Cedders @33,

And having had a read of that PDF...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

sekwisniewski at 21:01 PM on 11 August, 2022

The following paper lists all material requirements that would be necessary if we tried to grow nuclear power 10x. It assumes expansion based on the Ringhals NPP (3xPWR, 1xBWR, Gen II) and considers the whole lifecycle from mining to disposal in a geologic repository. It appears there would be no fundamental limitation to construct reactors and repositories, although six materials might be of concern relative to the current production rate (bentonite, fluorite, indium, fluorspar, manganese and gadolinium). The main constraint of an LWR expansion would be the supply of fresh fuel (UOX) as uranium, especially at a high enough concentration, is a finite resource. There are ways to significantly increase energy extracted from fresh uranium in LWRs via higher burn-ups, reenrichment of tails, twice-through recycling (MOX), heavy reflector, improved self-breeding, but, ultimately, in the long run we would need to find a way to build and fuel reactors that don’t rely on fresh uranium. (Obviously, the stock of radioactive materials requiring long-term isolation can't grow infinitely either.) In any case, it seems unlikely we are going to globally hit those hard limits of uranium supply soon, given that most of reactors are quite old and the rate of new constructions is insufficient to replace them. Moreover, LWRs built today are Gen III+, so they are more efficient with fuel than Gen II considered in the study.

A Preliminary Assessment of Raw Material Inputs that would be Required for Rapid Growth in Nuclear Generating Capacity,
OECD/NEA, Paris (2011).

Record rain in St. Louis is what climate change looks like

Bob Loblaw at 05:23 AM on 3 August, 2022

macquigg:

"Atmosphere holds more water" is too simplistic to evaluate water cycle changes. It's true that warmer air hold more water vapour, which is likely to lead to increased evaporation, but that also means that somewhere, at some time, there will be more precipitation, too. Globally, evaporation = precipitation on any reasonably long time scale (months), and the question becomes one of "how does the local balance change?".

Most land areas receive more precipitation than they lose in evaporation. Oceans are the opposite. Proof? Rivers draining from land to ocean. A lot of global variations in vegetation are explained by climate classifications that include some sort of water balance considerations (precipitation minus evaporation). The classic is the Koppen system.

Soil moisture for agriculture can decrease even if local precipitation increases - if local evaporation increases even more. So "more precipitation" does not necessarily mean "wetter" from a soil perspective. And for agriculture without irrigation, when rain falls is critical. As the old story goes, farmers always complain about rain. Too much; not enough; not at the right time.

For municipal uses, storage can help with seasonal and annual variability, but it can't make up for long-term expectations that want to use more water than is available from the long-term average.

Very local predictions from global climate models are hard to do, but Michael Sweet has pointed you to some possible sources of information.

Taking the Temperature: a dispatch from the UK

Fixitsan at 23:21 PM on 23 July, 2022

Another national newspaper, this time the Kelpies and Forth Bridge could end up under water in 28 years time. The Kelpies are these things

https://www.scottishcanals.co.uk/destinations/the-kelpies/

30 metres high, 28 years, =1071 mm per year ...3mm PER DAY....are they smoking drugs ?

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/international/climate-change-could-see-kelpies-and-forth-bridge-under-water-2050-1401090

No it's not drugs, it's fearmongering, and the raising of awareness with the unexpected consequence that kids are demotivated at school due to anxieties about the future.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #28 2022

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

Doug,

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

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

Quote at the end of Case 1 evaluation:

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

Quote in Discussion:

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

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

The following quote in the Discussion is also questionable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That leads to the same conclusion as my original comment:

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

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26

One Planet Only Forever at 03:08 AM on 6 July, 2022

Thanks for the ‘continuing to be’ well-curated collection of news items.

"Exxon CEO says no new gas cars globally by 2040, goes wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing about CO2" was particularly interesting. It contains many examples of ‘discourses of climate (action) delay’. And a particularly annoying one is presented in the following quote about continued fossil fuel production and use:

“Exxon, in this case, was only responding to “consumer demand” and still responds to consumer demand, selling oil because there are buyers for it. Woods foresees continuing to meet that demand and considers Exxon the savior for people around the world who are “living in energy poverty.”

The “energy poverty” term was also recently used by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. See the last part of the following CTV Calgary News video where Kenney accuses politicians who would maintain and increase carbon fees at this time are ‘driving Canadians into energy poverty to forcing them to use less’.

CTV Calgary News video “Albertans to get more inflation belief”.

I am developing a more detailed comment about this for the SkS item “Skeptical Science tackles 'discourses of climate delay' and 'solutions denial'”. The main point of my comment will be that the reality is that many 'higher-status supposedly superior people' have over-developed hedonistic gluttonous desires for energy consumption. Their energy use far exceeds what 'people in poverty' need to develop to live a basic decent life.

Skeptical Science tackles 'discourses of climate delay' and 'solutions denial'

One Planet Only Forever at 11:31 AM on 23 June, 2022

Thanks for the encouragement to participate in developing an item regarding the Alberta Oil Sands. My initial reaction was to get started. Then I thought about it in more detail.

I live in Alberta. So I am very familiar with the messaging used by Alberta leaders. But my passion is pursuing increased awareness and understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals and the importance of achieving all of them and improving on them. Limiting climate impacts is a major interest because rapid climate change makes it harder to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Unsustainable activities, not just fossil fuel use, can misleadingly appear to be helpful. But ‘impressions of improvements’ obtained due to harmful unsustainable activity will not stand up to closer inspection (they are just mirages). The actions cannot continue to be beneficial into the distant future. And, undeniably, humanity should be striving to constantly pursue sustainable improvements through the 100s of millions of years that this amazing planet is likely to be habitable for humans. From that perspective it is fairly obvious that consumption of resources, anything short of full recycling is consumption, and accumulating harmful effects cause long lasting damage to future generations.

As a result of my passion I have learned that reduction of consumption is essential to Sustainable Development. I have also learned that this is not a new understanding. A diversity of versions have been presented through the ages. But they were less popular and ignored or attacked by those of higher status who were uninterested, or threatened, and resisted the understanding.

The recent CBC News item “Internal DND study calls green technology minerals 21st-century 'oil weapon'” exposes that transitioning the developed, and continuing to grow, over-consumption of energy and resources to ‘zero-carbon’ would create different over-consumption and harm. Though the article is about the harm of conflict over the ‘Green transition resources’, it exposes the unsustainability of the resource consumption and consumption growth in a ‘green system’ future.

Back to the “Carbon intensity threshold for Canadian oil sands industry using planetary boundaries: Is a sustainable carbon-negative industry possible?”item you linked to @11. It provides a great set of references. And I liked seeing that Planetary Safe Boundaries as a basis for the evaluation. Also, it appears that past impacts by Canada are accounted against Canada’s share of the Global Carbon Budget. But I would question the way that a portion of Canada’s Carbon Budget gets assigned to the Oil Sands. Taking the level of impact it developed to as a starting point for the proportioning of Canada’s Carbon Budget would be harmfully incorrect. The oil sands were expanded and their total impacts increased after it was well understood that ghg emissions needed to be reduced. Dividing Canada’s Carbon Budget based on 2005 impact levels would be better, but still potentially harmfully incorrect. The requirement is to rapidly end fossil fuel harm, not maximize the benefit some people can obtain by getting away with exceeding the 1.5C impact based getting a bigger share of a National Carbon Budget (and that ‘discourse of delay’ by hiding significant harm within a national total allowance would apply to many nations on many issues).

Also, Canada is a major food producer. And it is well understood that food production, particularly the industrial type of production, will be a significant cause of carbon impacts far into the future. And those impacts need to be properly accounted for in the National Carbon Budget, no discounting of future impacts allowed. Also, global food production is far more important to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals than global energy production is. So Food trumps Energy in the priorities for Carbon Budget.

But the major question I have regarding the paper is that it concludes that there may be a carbon-negative way of exploiting Oil Sands and suggests that Blue Hydrogen is a potential solution. That appears to be part of the ‘discourse of climate delay’ problem.

The real issue is the need to end, not reduce the rate of, harm done by the use of buried ancient hydrocarbons. There are many more harms to be considered, not just the climate change impacts of using the ancient buried hydrocarbons as fossil fuel.

A concluding thought leading me to lack interest in an item targeting the Alberta, Canada, Oil Sands us that there are many potentially more harmful aspects of the global fossil fuel system than Alberta Oil Sands.

So, based on that, I would be more interested in helping prepare a more globally applicable item regarding claims made by beneficiaries of any portion of the global ‘fossil fuel use’ system that they deserve credit for suggesting that ‘their portion of the fossil fuel use system’ will be ‘net-zero’ by 2050 (or sooner, or later). It could be brief. The main point would be that the global objective, from the perspective of the future of humanity (the most important perspective because all of future humanity is by far the largest portion of humanity to be considered), would be to keep the peak of climate change impacts from fossil fuel use below the Safe Planetary Boundary of 1.5 C. That objective would be supplemented by, starting now, implementing significant measures to draw CO2 levels back down. The current generation owes the future generations CO2 levels of 350 ppm or lower. That would minimize the surprises and challenges for the future generations and make it easier to achieve Sustainable Improvements.

However, tragically, reducing the already excessive level of harmful impact cannot undo many results of the harm already done to the future of humanity by the irresponsible over-development of harmful consuming activity. A blunt point from that perspective is that it is impossible to use fossil fuels without adding to the harm that the current generation must attempt to correct for the benefit of the future generations. Part of the fossil fuel system being ‘net-zero’ is irrelevant since it is highly unlikely, nothing is impossible, that the end use of fossil fuel can be made to be ‘harm free’.

I would also be interested in helping to prepare an item regarding claims that Blue Hydrogen is a legitimate alternative to Green Hydrogen. By its fundamental nature, Blue Hydrogen would almost certainly be more harmful than Green Hydrogen. And it is technologically possible to produce Green Hydrogen so a more harmful temporary transition system is not necessary.

And the Blue Hydrogen item would link to an item that evaluates the merits of Green Hydrogen rather than the alternative of having the renewable power that produces Green Hydrogen be part of the electric grid system to more rapidly displace fossil fuel generated electricity. That item about Green Hydrogen would include the harm of the Hydrogen system and the relative energy inefficiency resulting in Green Hydrogen needing to be restricted to essential energy needs are least harmfully met by Green Hydrogen.

As a final point, I would be pushing to see the following as part of all of the items developed: The most important action is reducing energy, and other, consumption that exceeds what is needed for all humans, especially all future humans, to live a decent life on this one amazing planet with its limits on consumption and harmful impacts.

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

Eclectic at 00:23 AM on 13 April, 2022

Quite right , Rayates55 . Although SkepticalScience is a website primarily and almost exclusively oriented to the scientific aspects of climate change, nevertheless you will find occasional articles on the psychological aspects of science denialism. Politics, in the sense of partisan politics is hardly touched upon. And if you hail from the USA, you know how toxic & insane the partisan politics can be ~ about science, epidemics, vaccines, and you-name-it-whatever . . . including public toilets !

So in the practical area of influencing the various legislatures, SkepticalScience is not a participant.

Rayates55 , your scope at this website is therefore very minimal for discussing the political science aspects. But this very thread may be your opportunity to make a brief contribution to such a topic.

Please start the ball rolling, with your own summary of the important points which you feel would be of practical use !

( My own thoughts are that the political world will gradually ramp up its corrective actions, as the technological capabilities slowly improve ~ and as, decade by decade, the worsening situation stimulates voters to demand more action. So, not very fast. And if anything good is to come from the recent/current coronavirus pandemic - plus the atrocities of the Ukraine War [happening in Europe, not Africa] - then it may be that national governments will pay more attention to "resiliency" of local energy supplies & food production & manufacturing. )

Rayates55 , the floor is yours. I am all ears, for your insightful ideas.

The Climate Shell Game

jan at 13:08 PM on 31 March, 2022

@ OPOF and Nigelj

Gents, whether you like it or not - you will not change the fact that Emissions or GDP per capita is only an imaginary value and another inaccurate and unnecessary indicator, which has nothing to do with the division of the country's emissions / economic output.
The global community's strategy must include tools to measure emission reductions and sanctions for non-compliance. The mandate should also be at the UN level. However, there is no such thing.
The UN does not need to consider the existence of one person in Canada who behaves wisely and his neighbour across the street who does not act responsibly. This is what Canada should address as a low-level entity responsible for reducing emissions as a country. But the country must take responsibility, which creates "wealth" associated with emissions through its activities.
Another factor in your inaccurate consideration is that GDP in relation to emissions is a misleading figure. GDP generally does not include issues of companies that have HQ (registration) in a given country, but do business globally and thus generate emissions in other countries as well. Therefore, the responsibility for such emissions should lie with the HQ of the company and thus the country in which the HQ is registered. After all, there is GNP for this purpose. And this is how emissions should be recalculated as well. This would add to the reality that may not be felt again by the G7 / G20 countries.
Because many western countries have moved production over the last 22 years, not only to China (mainly), but also to other Asian and African countries.
The last mistake is to divide countries into developed and developing countries. By which metric:
- UN / DESA WESP? (there is also third level - transition)
or
- IMF?

Gents, you really only deal with your feelings here. No hard data. You bend the data into absurd indicators that this world will not cure. And praise each other for buying EV. Rename yourself to the EVs and RES fan club. But I haven't found a single reasonable opinion on feasible emission reductions based on IPCC reports. If you do not understand, there is no time for games.

Addressing the Climate Crisis: ~~Evolution or~~ Revolution¹

One Planet Only Forever at 04:19 AM on 15 March, 2022

Here is my response to what swampfoxh wrote @74 (in the context of other responses and all the other comments on this thought provoking OP).

Regarding animal agriculture, I support corrections of all food production, distribution, and consumption aligned with the understanding that harmful unsustainable ways of food production need to be ended. It is especially important to correct the developed types of production and consumption that have already caused phosphorous and nitrogen impacts to exceed safe planetary boundaries (see Planetary Boundaries). It is also important to limit waste and ensure that all people receive at least basic decent nutrition, preferably from maximized local food production (refer to the compendium of climate impact related solutions presented in Project Drawdown).

Upon reflection it appears that serious important questions are raised by the way that swampfoxh chose to try to focus attention on the matter Rights (in spite of the content of my first comment on this topic @3, and all subsequent comments).

The (sort of) quick response is:

Fossil fuelled development can produce perceptions of prosperity and superiority. And the competitive for pursuit of higher status (admiring and aspiring to be like the highest status) can develop harmful misunderstandings in attempts to develop and prolong harmful activity. Undeserved status would be lost by a correction of what has developed and a correction of the direction of development (away from fossil fuel use).

A correction to limit the harm of climate change impacts will cause loss of developed status. The more rapid the correction, the more significant the losses will be. And it now appears, based on Figure 2, that significant losses will have to happen in the remaining lifetime of many people who fought to delay the correction. Their fight against change, their fight against correction of harmful developed misunderstandings, has created the need for more rapid correction. That has motivated increased resistance to learning in people who would prefer to have the losses happen to Others, especially the future generations who have no influence today. They make excuses that the future will always be better for everyone. And they make related demands that they not suffer any loss of their status relative to others due to required corrections, claiming things like ‘everybody’s perception of prosperity needs to constantly improve fro the current developed starting point, like a marathon racer who wants to start 20 miles into the race, because that is where they are when the race starts.

Rights are an ethical matter that gets harmfully compromised by political game players. The harmful socioeconomic game players who have significant political influence can become the least ethical people, using the power of misleading marketing to promote and prolong harmful misunderstanding.

Poverty in the midst of Plenty is the result of systems that create cases of people who do not deserve the circumstances they experience. Many of the lower status do not deserve their lower status. And many of the higher status do not deserve their higher status.

A different response is:

It is a misunderstanding to believe that people who were less able to develop the more harmful, less sustainable, fossil fuelled ways of living (mistakenly perceived to be more advanced or superior) have ‘missed the bus’. It is also unacceptable to declare that the people enjoying the ride on the ‘harm-full bus’ must not have their level of enjoyment limited or governed externally by others. It is not right to declare that the ones on the ‘Harm-Full Bus’ have the right to be more harmful than Others. And it is not right to declare than others cannot develop to harmfully joy-ride like the ones already on the ‘Harm-Full Bus’.

And helpful people should not have to try to undo or repair the harm done by people on the ‘harm-full bus’. However, until the Harm-Full Party Bus is safely kept from harmfully compromising leadership actions, all possible helpful hands are required to build the power to limit the harm done - no more bystanders or people ‘just focused on the science’, because those type of people are part of the harm problem by not being as helpful as they could be.

Competitors who are willing to try to benefit from something harmful that others may not notice as harmful (like sports cheaters) or try to benefit from a harmful misunderstanding (including unethical rules or unethical enforcement of rules) can mistakenly develop the belief that ‘everyone is like they are’. That can create a mind-set that can be easily tempted to spiral down into more harmful misunderstanding.

Less fortunate people have more excuse for being less aware of how to avoid being harmful to others. More fortunate people have less excuse. And the legitimacy of the highest status, like the wealthiest 10%, should be evaluated based on the understanding that they all have ‘little excuse for maintaining harmful misunderstandings’.

Disclosure: I have lived for decades in Alberta, a major region of origin of harmful fossil fuelled misunderstanding. I have tried to be less harmful, engineering was a good fit for that, and more helpful to others (a diversity of volunteer activities are part of that). My abilities, combined with those focuses, appear to have enabled me to rise into the top 10% of income earners in Alberta. I may have been able to achieved a higher status, but I was not interested in compromising my ethical perspective in pursuit of that.

A detailed response regarding my perspective on the issue follows:

Constant learning from a constantly improving ethical perspective is an important part of the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of how to be less harmful and more helpful to others. And that expanded ethical perspective includes consideration for all other life, humans do not stand apart from nature, now and into the future, constantly learning to correct, and make amends for, developed harmful misunderstandings and related actions.

Everyone learns and develops their motives and perspective from the environment they are born into and grow up in. A lack of diversity of experience, including a lack of natural experiences, can develop a harmfully limited perspective. And that developed limited perspective can resist learning how harmful the things that are perceived to be beneficial actually are. Too much focus inside a man-made socioeconomic-political environment of competition for survival and superiority relative to others can develop intensely held harmful misunderstandings.

Ethical fairness of what is being evaluated is determined by considering the system and its results from versions of the following perspective: The system is fair and just if I end up experiencing any of the diversity of individual circumstances that the system could potentially produce (consider the history of European colonial conquest from that perspective, and extend that thinking into the future).

That evaluation justifiably determines that systems that produce poverty in the midst of plenty need correction. It also establishes the understanding that a person who acts in ways that harm others does not deserve credit for helping ‘a different sub-set of others’. A person who ‘helps some people’ in ways that ‘harm other people’ is harmful. And that individual-based understanding can be extended to groups of people. A group or nation is not Collectively Good if some of its members are helpful pursuers of being less harmful while other members of the group or nation pursue benefit in harmful ways.

A fundamental ethical point is understanding that each person born should not have ‘advantages or special rights and privileges’ due to where and when they are born or who their parents and ancestors are. That understanding is often attempted to be denied by the promotion of harmful misunderstandings regarding ‘perceptions of status’ (like believing that a ‘special sub-set of the population’ deserve to be the first and only ones on a bus). A related point is that a person who has attained higher status relative to others by benefiting from harmful actions does not ‘deserve the ability to be harmful because they can afford it or can legally win attempts to penalize them for the harm they benefit from’. Harmful laws and harmful application of laws have been developed, proving that all Rule of Law is not Ethical Law and Order. Harmful laws and enforcement are often developed to defend and excuse harmful people who have become wealthier or more powerful through harmful means.

That context leads to ethical questions of how fair and just it is for someone to declare that:

They were the first to benefit from a harmful unsustainable activity and therefore must not be corrected, but others who have not developed to live that way must not be allowed to develop to be like that.

They have developed to be the most harmful pursuer of personal interest and must not be corrected, but others who have not developed to live that way must not be allowed to develop to be like that.

Because they were born into a group that had developed perceptions of higher status relative to others through actions that are now understood to be harmful and that were/are excused and defended by harmful misunderstandings, they must not be corrected, but others who have not developed to live that way must not be allowed to develop to be like them.

Applying that thinking to climate change impacts, what swampfoxh states @74 can be understood to be arguing for the right to continue to be more harmful than Others are allowed to be.

Applying a different perspective, what swampfoxh argues @74 is no reason for nations like China or India to forego their development. There is lots of coal and oil to burn. It is clearly inexcusable for people in nations with a history of benefiting from harmful actions to demand that they have the exclusive Right to maintain their harmfully obtained benefits, insisting that others who have been less harmful and have less developed ways of living must not develop to be like them.

I will use Canada (representing the Western developed nations), the nation I was born in about 60 years ago and continue to live in, as the example to reinforce the point. The following compares per person emissions from 1960 (World Bank data) between Canada - USA and the BRIC nations. The average atmospheric CO2 levels are provided in brackets to indicate harm already done primarily by western nations (with 280 ppm as the understood level before those impacts:

Yr (ppm) Canada - USA: Brazil – Russia – India - China
1960 (317) 10.8 - 16.0:   0.65     12.1        0.27      1.2
1970 (326) 16.0 - 21.1:   1.0    18.1    0.35      0.94
1980 (339) 18.1 - 20.8:   1.6   25.1    0.45      1.5
1990 (354) 15.1 - 19.4:   1.3       14.6        0.64    1.9
2000 (369) 16.8 - 20.5:   1.8     10.2        0.89    2.6
2010 (389) 15.7 - 17.4:   2.0   11.1        1.4    6.3
2018 (410) 15.5 - 15.2:   2.0       11.1        1.8       7.4 latest World Bank values
2020 (412) Canada 16.8 (= 637 Mt / 38 million): China approx 10 (like Canada was in 1960)

There is ample coal and oil for China and India to develop to match the pattern of high emissions per person for 60 years. What is their motivation to not do that? Why wouldn’t they follow the examples set by the more developed nations? The argument by swampfoxh @74 would deservedly be laughed away.

And, revisiting my comments about how averaging things can obscure what needs to be seen, why wouldn’t every region of China and India develop to match what the region of Alberta/Saskatchewan in Canada has currently developed to be? The combined population of Alberta and Saskatchewan is 5.6 million (4.4 + 1.2) with emissions impact rates of 60 tonnes per person (potentially increasing if the rate of extraction and export of fossil fuels, especially Western Canada Select - diluted bitumen - is increased). It is important to note that that high rate of impact does not count the additional harm done outside of Canada to process the exported product into final products for burning. What is exported, WCS, is heavy sour crude. Upgrading it to the quality of other globally traded oil products before export would result in more emissions in Canada (that understanding indicates that the federal government shares the blame with the provincial governments for exporting more harmful products to make Canada’s numbers look better).

I am fairly proud of a lot of actions taken by Canada's leadership on matters of corrections of harmful developed misunderstandings, but not regarding climate change.

Addressing the Climate Crisis: ~~Evolution or~~ Revolution¹

One Planet Only Forever at 07:08 AM on 10 March, 2022

nigelj,

You appear to misunderstand my perspective. The staring point is the very robust evidence-based understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals, Planetary Boundaries evaluations, and other things like them.

I suggest that you learn about the SDGs before dismissing them as unachievable or harmful with a misinterpretation that they are just some form of perpetual and sustainable "green growth". The SDGs were developed from the learning that occurred via the Millennium Development Goals and further understanding, like climate change science, that developed since the development of the MDGs. The Age of Sustainable Development MOOC is the comprehensive presentation of the basis for the SDGs. It is also presented in a book of the same name if books are more appealing to you.

The Planetary Boundaries is developed understanding that is related to the SDGs. The current understanding is that there is no longer time to wait for the developed systems to 'naturally', in their own time-frame, decide to change to produce less harmful results.

And Project Drawdown, and the related book Drawdown, provides many evidence-based corrections of 'expert opinion based' misunderstandings about 'modern' food production.

And the 2020 Human Development Report fairly comprehensively presents all of this, with a major focus of climate change matters because failing to limit the magnitude of climate change impacts harmfully compromises achieving the development of lasting improvements. Waiting for the people benefiting from harmful pursuits of perceptions of 'improved living and supriority' to realize they need to stop being so harmful is no longer an option.

I am learning and promoting the diversity of understandings associated with the only viable potentially eternally improving future for humanity on this planet.

Any expert opinions that appear to claim that that is not achievable, or that the identified corrections are harmful, should be seen as a version of resistance to learning about the harmful lack of sustainablity of what has developed (wasteful consumption of resources producing accumulating harmful waste and a reduction of available resources due to a lack of recycling).

And I say the higher status people need to change their ways of living to be the examples of ways of living that others can aspire to develop towards without the total impacts being unsustainable. And those changed ways do not need to be reduced consumption, just changes of consumption. However, I also accept that it is helpful for the higher status to participate in the global economy by helping less fortunate people instead of exclusively pursuing 'more of what they want for themselves', like the example Evan linked to in his comment @56. However, Government intervention by taxing the 'reluctant to help' among the wealthy is also a solution. And it is clear that some actions like Carbon Fee and Rebate would not occur through the chosen actions of helpful wealthy people.

The fundamental understanding is that competitive pursuits of superiority will produce harmful results as the harmful and undeserving among the higher status pull the power levers available to them, especially the misleading marketing ones, to promote and excuse harmful misunderstandings about the ways of living that they benefit from and enjoy. And those harmful examples set by the more harmful people cause the added harm of inspiring lower status people to strive to develop to be more harmful like the examples they see being set by higher status people.

It is undeniable that the competition for superiority promoting and excusing harmful misunderstandings has created the evidence of its harmful unsustainability and the need for significant rapid corrections. This understanding was globally acknowledged 50 years ago at the 1972 Stockholm Conference. The resistance to many of the identified required corrections through the past 50 years, especially the destructive resurgence of libertarian capitalism (Reagan-Thatcher nonsense like 'Freer Markets and less Governing is Better' and 'trickle-down benefits of the rich getting richer' ) has developed the requirement for a more dramatic correction now. The problems of harmful undeserved perceptions of prosperity, advancement, and superiority are bigger now and continue to get worse.

Saying 'things will eventually work out' won't achieve an effective limitation and correction of the harm done. That kind of talk is unacceptable from an Engineer's perspective, and a business leader perspective, and a medical professional perspective, and a professional accountant perspective, and a professional housing framer perspective, and a professional bricklayer perspective ...

The developed systems of competition for perceptions of superiority can be seen to resist limiting harm done, and even be seen to fight to be able to be more harmful. And powerful fights against external governing develop. The competition often produces increasingly harmful results unless there is external helpful thoughtful governing that effectively limits the risks of harm done. The lack of success of that type of external governing through the past 50 years has been a tragedy in many ways. More tragic is the ways that many people fight to defend and ignore the harm done by harmful misunderstanding, selectively highlighting what they see as 'benefits developed'.

The reality is that the benefits developed based on harmful misunderstandings and actions will make things worse until those misunderstandings about prosperity and advancement become too hard to maintain, which will happen too late on many matters that matter to the future of humanity.

Poverty perceived to be alleviated by fossil fuel use or other harmful developments, like harmful modern day unsustainable agriculture, are clear examples of that problem. Lasting poverty reduction has not occurred if harmful unsustainable actions are required to maintain the illusion.

The incessant promotion of harmful misunderstanding is the reason for the now undeniably required dramatic correction of many perceptions of superiority, not just the Coal Barons significantly losing perceptions of superiority.

The problem of growth in a finite world

One Planet Only Forever at 12:48 PM on 3 March, 2022

Dear Peter,

I have quickly reviewed the Intro and Conclusion of the paper and skimmed the contents, my standard way of starting to read a Report. I have yet to do a full reading, but I will.

I will open this response by confirming that we appear to be aligned regarding measures that will help limit population growth and the importance of limiting the total global population.

I will start by presenting the context of my perspective which is always open to improvement. But it is based on a significant amount of experience and learning. My name on this site reflects that perspective.

Awareness of the bigger picture is needed when looking at any part of the bigger picture. And for humans the bigger picture is the need for human activity to be governed (limited) to not harm Others or future humans, including not harming their ability to live a decent a life. And people will naturally be tempted to aspire to the examples set by the portion of the population that has developed the impression of being the highest status. That is important understanding since this planet is likely to be habitable for more than 100 million years. Sustaining humanity through that long period (almost forever) is the big picture. Many developed human activities are inconsistent with that understanding. And they would be inconsistent with sustained living on any other planet. The unsustainable nature of what has developed is not new. The growing awareness and understanding of the growing magnitude of the harmful unsustainability of what has developed is what is new.

Total Harmful Impacts of the Total Global Population are a developed problem that requires the development of solutions. The Sustainable Development Goals are a fairly comprehensive presentation of the solution that is open to further improvement.

We appear to be aligned regarding actions that would help limit global population. What you mention are understood parts of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Millennium Development Goals. Those sets of goals are steps in the constantly increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and unsustainable. The pursuit of sustainable development understanding became a global coordinated collaborative effort 50 years ago with the Stockholm Conference.

It appears that the efforts to identify and limit harmful developments also sparked some harmful resistance to learning to be less harmful, particularly in the supposedly superior, more advanced, nations. But the resistance to that learning also appears to be strong among the supposedly superior, more advanced, portions of many less developed nations. And people who develop their thinking inside systems that promote smaller shorter-term perspective can struggle to see the bigger picture beyond their developed worldview. And, indeed, a part of the problem is the development of political groups that appeal for support by opposing, or not supporting, abortion and family planning. Some of them argue for 'abstinence' as the solution. But that is like arguing that 'not living' is a solution to the 'total climate change impacts of the total population' problem.

So we may also be aligned regarding the need to identify and try to reduce the popularity of political groups that would act in those less helpful ways. That would be good since it appears that 'these days' the political groups that are less supportive of measures to limit population growth are also less supportive of measures that would limit the climate change impact growth. And they also appear to be less supportive of actions that would limit or correct many developed harmful activities. They appear to be opposed to almost all the Sustainable Development Goals, one issue at a time (they even oppose limits on plastic use – the next globally acknowledged problem needing a global agreement to correct).

That brings me to a point I wish to make regarding something I noticed in the paper: “Emissions = Population x GDP/capita x Energy/GDP x Emissions/Energy”. That presentation can make it difficult to see the important need for superiority and advancement to be recognized as "reduced energy use per person" and "reduced harm done by the energy that is used" (because any use of technologically produced energy has the potential to produce harmful results).

I offer the following sequence of changes as a way to more comprehensively present the issue (guided by Einstein's advice to keep things simple, but not too simple):

"Emissions = Population x GDP/capita x Energy/GDP x Emissions/Energy + (a similar evaluation of all Other Emissions causing activity)".

That corrects for the over-simplification of only focusing on energy. However, fugitive emissions related to natural gas extraction, processing and transport also need to be counted. So Emissions/Energy is too simplistic. It could miss impacts associated with energy use that need to be counted. A more comprehensive statement would be:

“Global Warming Impacts = Population x GDP/capita x Energy/GDP x Global Warming Impacts/Energy + (a similar evaluation of all Other Global Warming Impact causing activity)”

That captures Evan's accurate point that many other things, particularly agriculture, cause global warming impacts that result in climate change. I noticed that the paper includes awareness of land use impacts on global warming. So the above would appear to be aligned with the understanding presented in the paper.

But there is also more harm done by energy use and agriculture than the climate change impacts. So a more comprehensive "Bigger Picture" presentation of the issue is:

“Total Harm Done = Population x GDP/capita x Energy/GDP x (Total Harm Done)/Energy + (a similar evaluation of all Other Harmful Impact causing activity)”

Now we get to the simple crux of the over-simplification that can be understood to apply to all of above presentations. The simplest way to present the above appears to be:

"Total Harmful Impacts = The sum of the harmful impacts attributable to each person"

That leads to understanding that there will be a diversity of degrees and types of harm that would be hidden by averaging the impacts of a group of people. And, as Evan also accurately points out, everyone wants a better life for themselves, their children, and others they identify closely with. So people can be expected to aspire to live like the people who they identify as being more advanced, more superior. And there is ample evidence that the current norms for identifying superiority and advancement, like the measure of GDP per capita, are harmfully misleading. People have been working to correct that misunderstanding about what deserves to be considered superior or more advanced, how to measure improvement, for a while now. The 2020 Human Development Report points out some of the efforts to correct that harmful developed misunderstanding.

That also leads to understanding that the people with the highest amount of harm attributed to their actions need to be the focus of efforts to limit harm done (Rule of Law works best when it is done this way). And it leads to understanding that people who act in ways that cause harm are not made acceptable by Other people acting to undo or adapt to the harm that is done. Reducing harm done requires the harm to be ended and, as much as possible, it requires those who benefit from the harm done to do what is required to undo the harm done.

Averaging the per capita impacts of a nation helps compare nations to identify which nations should be most focused on for harm reduction. But per capita does not identify the people within a nation who should be the focus of harm reduction efforts. As an example, immigrants into Australia may have remained as lower than average impacting people, which means their addition to the population actually disguises the increased harm done by the more harmful members of the population.

That brings me to my concluding point.

It is fundamentally unacceptable for a person to benefit from something that Other people will be harmed by, or be at risk of harm from. And regarding climate change impacts, it is unacceptable for people to be benefiting from creating the impacts even if Others are acting to reduce the impacts. And an averaging of a group of people can be harmfully misleading by hiding what the different people in the group have done.

Achieving Sustainable Development, developing a truly lasting future for humanity that can be improved by the development of truly sustainable improvements, can legitimately maintain or increase GDP per capita. Achieving those goals is likely to result in a lower peak population than would otherwise develop. And the per person impacts of that smaller total population would be lower. But to achieve that the harmful developed activities need to be identified and corrected.

The fundamental rule of "Do No Harm - Help Others" needs to be governing the actions of people. Everyone self-governing that way would be great. But that is a fantasy world. And the lack of that rule governing what has developed to date has produced an significant need for corrections, particularly corrections of the ways that the supposedly more advanced and supposedly superior people, who everyone looks up to and aspires to be like, live their lives.

That is the fundamental understanding I will be applying, and have been applying, to the reading of the paper, or any other presentation of thoughts. It is not the norm ... but it would be helpful if it became more of the norm.

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

Eclectic at 10:12 AM on 20 February, 2022

Santalives, the good Prof. Kilty and some others, have pointed out flaws with the containment and sensor readings situation, plus some heavy hints about why the experiment ~ even if redesigned ~ would be a waste of time.

Speaking of which . . . did you want to try Ball Three ?

Something, anything at all, which disproves the consensus climate science? For years I have been hoping there might be such disproof. Never found any. But perhaps you are the Einstein genius who can discover it? Best of luck with your search !

It's albedo

blaisct at 07:28 AM on 20 February, 2022

MA Rodger @112
Before I answer your question on whether there is something other than AGW causing global warming. Let me clarify that I am not a skeptic on Anthropical Global Warming, AGW, I firmly believe that man’s activities are causing AGW. The paper Dubal & Vahrenholt expressed doubt that the 20 years of CERES data showed significant evidence of GHG caused AGW and that clouds were the significant factor. How is cloud cover related to AGW? The Skeptical web site seems to be committed to evaluating theories. Here is the answer to your question:
The data I have looked at (below) suggest that AGW is not cause by one thing but a series of interactive events starting with land albedo and ending with ocean/land albedo and relative humidity (not specific humidity) in the middle. You will see (below) that this cycle of events is a known cycle in weather and that man’s activities have interfered with the cycle to cause AGW. For lack of a better name, I will call the cycle of events the “Low Humidity Albedo Cycle”, LHAC. The LHAC cycle back in the 1700-1800 (with low man-made albedo change) was:
Event 1: Over land on sunny days the temperature rises and the relative humidity, RH, drops through the day no matter what the albedo of the land is. How much the RH drops depends on availability of water from liquid water evaporation or plant transpiration. If no water is added to this daily event the specific humidity, SH, will remain constant while the RH drops. With water available the RH does not drop as much and the SH increase. The energy fueling this event (sunny days) depends on the albedo and latitude of the land, the lower the albedo and the closer to the equator the stronger this event. Clouds greatly dampen this event.
Event 2: The air above this land is hot and dryer and it rises all day long, creating a plume of rising hot low humidity air. That plume of air moves with the prevailing winds usually to the east in a circling pattern due to the Corellas effect.
Event 3: This hot low RH air is hungry for water. If this air finds clouds it eats away at them until the air is saturated with water, this process cools the air and raises the SH and RH. If this hot low RH air does not find a cloud it can cool as the pressure drops at the higher altitudes or it can serve as a deterrent to cloud formation. In all cases it reaches saturation.
Event 4: With fewer clouds more sun can reach the earth and warm the land and oceans, this is the final albedo decrease event. This last albedo event is the strongest because the change in albedo in the greatest with no clouds in the way of direct sun light. The warmer oceans store some of this energy and evaporate more water - find cold air and make more clouds.
This natural LHAC cycle of event will remain stable if the albedo and moisture availability remain constant. Let’s take each event and look at its contribution to the total AGW since 1880:
Event 1: Since 1700-1880 man has made some small changes in land use albedo but a large change in the land area. Most of these albedo changes came along with a decrease in moisture availability. UHI’s are most noted, with albedo changes between 0 and 0.2 depending on what the city replaced. I don’t have a source for the average, I will assume 0.05 average albedo change. The urban area has increased to about 3% of the earth’s land mass for all cities. I have no trouble doubling that to 6% for all man-made structures, rural + urban, they all have lower albedos and generate heat. Go to any city at Climate data and you can find the daytime data for temperature vs RH, in the morning the RH is high and as the day progress the temperature rises and the RH drops sometimes to 40% RH or lower, this is a normal psychometric thermodynamic process. Figure 1 is an example of daily RH from Beijing and is typical of most cities (just focus on the day time).

Figure 1

The change in albedo flux of all the earth’s cities is estimated at 0.08W/m^2 (assuming 177W/m^2 sun to the city, 50% cloud cover, 0.05 albedo change, 3% of land mass cities). Even if we make larger assumptions, we still can’t get to the 2.2W/m^2 we are looking for to account for all the AGW since 1880 or the 1.3 W/m^2 in Dubal & Vahrenholt . These cities can have daily temperature rise of up to 8’C. A large part of this temperature rise is due to the psychometric rise, PR, in temperature while the RH drops at a constant energy input (albedo). Looking at temperature anomalies, SH, and RH all plotted together vs time, Figure 2, we see they are all correlated (Temp and SH positively, and Temp and RH negatively).

Figure 2

If PR were not occurring on a global basis the RH and SH would both have a positive slope. Using the psychometric chart in @106 we can get the average temperature rise per % RH of -0.15 ‘C/%RH. The slope of the RH data in (2) is 0.16%RH/decade, for the 40 years of the chart this is 0.6% change in RH, giving a PR temp rise of 0.1’C for the 40 years vs the 0.7’C observed, small but not insignificant. This hot low RH air has no W/m^2 flux as it leaves the UHI; but, the hot low RH air has potential energy gain in getting saturated with water. Let’s add the crop/pasture land albedo changes to the UHI's. Globally the change since 1880 from virgin land to crop/pasture was about 6% with little change in albedo (Global albedo change); but, with low moisture change. The most notable of these changes was the deforestation of the Amazonian rain forest to make crop and pasture land Amazonia report (and @106). Amazonia report showed that in despite of an increase in albedo from rain forest to crop/pasture the temperature increased, the RH deceased, the cloud cover decreased, and the rain decreased. Classic example of psychometric temperature and RH behavior. Most likely all of this global 6% increase in crop/pasture land is producing hot low RH air just like the UHI’s. Combining the UHI and crop/pasture land changes we get 9% of the earth’s land mass producing more hot low RH air than 1880.
Event 2: This hot low relative humidity air rises and goes downwind from the UHI or changed crop/pasture land. The picture from (6) shows the extent of the UHI plume from Chicago, Il.

Figure 3

This is a computer model tuned with real data and calculates the extent of the plume to be 2 to 4 time the area of the UHI. The model also predicts the shape of the plume, rising to where some clouds could be. Using 3 times as the average extent of the plume we now get 27% of the land mass (7.8% of the earth) being affected by plumes like the one in Figure 3.
Event 3: Cloud destruction/prevention is the closest target for the hot low RH plume; but, if clouds are not available the lower pressure will saturate it or it will mix with cooler air. When this plume of hot low RH air increases its RH to 80% it is no longer is a threat to clouds or cloud prevention. Clouds and RH observations are that almost no clouds can form below 60% RH and significant reductions will occur below 80% RH.

Figure 4

Data shown in the figure 4 shows a 41%/decade decrease in clouds over 40 years. Dubal & Vahrenholt Figure 9 show about 0.57%/decade decrease, this data can be correlated to Figure 2 RH data and get 2.7% change in cloudiness/change in RH (R^2 =0.63). Not the best correlation but shows there is a relationship.
Event 4: The reduce cloud cover exposes more land and ocean to the sun. This land and ocean are located in the middle 75% of the earth where the cloud cover is about 50% vs about 60% for the whole earth, also assuming albedo of clouds is 50%. The sun’s flux to this exposed area is the cloud free flux of 342 W/m^2 (1367/4). Dubal & Vahrenholt suggest this energy is split 85% over ocean (0.05 albedo) and remainder over land (0.15 albedo). Using 40%/decade cloud cover for 2 decades of CERES data we get -1.6W/m^2 change in incoming SW [ 342W/m^2*0.8% cloud cover change*(85% *(1-0.05)+(1-80%)*(1-0.15))]. A little greater than the -1.3 W/m^2 observed; but close enough to show that the LHAC theory is plausible.

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

Santalives at 15:17 PM on 18 February, 2022

Hi Evan, interesting analogy the ball. Knowing the ball will fall does not mean you know why? Do you subscribe to Newton or Einstein theory of gravity? It's an interesting off topic discussion as now Einstein's theory is being challenged. But back to climate science if someone does an experiment that shows c02 is not as powerful a GHG as currently assumed, how do you process that information,.. Re evaluate your theory or ignore it as your assumption is its settled science so we should not be studying it. Here is such an experiment. www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=99608. I am hoping we have some real insights to this, has anyone replicated it? Have the numbers been plugged into the climate models to, assess the Impacts. I am not niave and remember the cold fusion scam that sucked in the whole world at the time. But i have been disappointed that most of the responses, on this site seem to confirm the deniers claims that Climate change advocates won't debate, won't accept new data and attack the messenger rather then message.

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

Evan at 12:02 PM on 18 February, 2022

Santalives@25

Yes, some science is settled. When Apple decides how to make the iPhone14, I don't think they will entertain debates about the science of how semiconductors works. Your iPhone works because it is based on settled science. Maybe the iPhone 20 will be based on some new methods, but companies like Apple rely on using settled science to make neat gadgets.

Hold a ball in your hand. Open your hand. What will happen?

As you noted about Einstein, you cannot "prove" it will fall, but you know it will fall. Would you bet against the ball falling? Only if you're foolish. You can go into a lab day after day after day and show that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Day after day you get the same result. You can't "prove" that the next day CO2 will cause heating when illuminated by infrared radiation, but after the millionth experiment you declare this settled science.

So this is my last comment to you, because you are being led astray by slick-sounding arguments. There is settled science. It is contained in reference books that engineers use to design all the things that make our society run. Yes, there are advancements. Yes, sometimes the reference books contain errors. But by in large a scientist is one who develops new science. Engineers are the ones who apply settled science to make things.

If you believe that no science is ever settled, does that mean you will spend time reading papers that say the Earth is flat and that the Sun orbits the Earth? What self-respecting astronomy journal would publish an article questioning whether we really know if the Earth orbits the sun and if it's spherical?

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

Bob Loblaw at 07:24 AM on 5 January, 2022

The way I think of it is that a "weather event" is not really a single item. A heat wave is a higher-than-something temperature, and it carries with it an area of coverage and a length of time. It can be unusual or unexpected if it exceeds previous high temperatures, or if it covers a larger area than normal, or lasts longer than normal.

And "normal" itself has a geographical characteristic - temperatures that are normal in one place (and one time of year) may not be "normal" in another location or time of year.

All components of that "heat wave" may be subject to the effects of a globally warmer climate. "Attribution" needs to look at all aspects of that "event", and assess the probability that it would have happened in a climate that has not warmed.

For a simpler example, what about flooding? Let's say that a region has planned and built for river flooding up to 10 m above normal water levels. This has protected the region for decades, but then under a warmer climate there is heavier rainfall, and an 11 m flood overtops the protection and the region is flooded.

We can ask, "which metre of flood water caused the protection to fail? There are several possible answers, all of which could be argued with at least some success:

The obvious answer is "all of them". Take away any single metre of flood water, and we're back to only 10m and the protection works.

The next obvious answer is "the last one". The first 10m did not cause a problem, it was only the last one.

The first problem with this answer is that you then have to ask "which factor caused that last metre of flood water?". Which means needing to determine the source of all of the metres of flood, from the first to the last. Which gets you back to "what caused 11 m of flooding?"

The second problem with that answer is that the last metre would not have overtopped the protection if any the previous 10 metres of flood had not already happened. Why should it get the blame?

So, finally, we get to another possible answer: the flood was caused by the 1 metre of flood water that was never there before. It does not matter if it was the first metre during that event, somewhere in the middle of the event, or the last metre added to the flood water during that event. In the past, there was one factor that was not present, and all the other factors that have been around for ages never managed to exceed 10 m. The problem was caused when the new kid on the block added another metre of flood water to the mix.

So, in this case, I think we can safely say that the 11 m flood was the result of climate change (precipitation in the thought experiment). But we still need to accept that something unusual might have happened without climate change, so the attribution is done on the basis of probabilities. We're 99% sure that the flood would not have happened if it were not for climate change.

...and I think that an essential part of the climate change message is pointing out that we are already seeing the effects. It is not a feature of the imagined future - it is now.

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

MA Rodger at 19:33 PM on 4 January, 2022

wilddouglascounty @1,

I'm not familiar enough with the game of baseball to discuss a "last individual baseball hit" but if this were the game of cricket, the analogy of an increased incidence of extreme weather would perhaps be analogous to a batsman hitting more sixes which would be a contribution to an overall increase in the steroid-taking batsman's batting average, the overall increase being analogous to the changing climate.

So in the analogy we can see the batting average increasing with the steroid-taking and we can see within that performance, the rise in the number of almost-sixes, the rise in actual sixes and the times now in which the ball sails clean out of the stadium. A statisitcal assessment can thus be made.

Note that your posed question "Did the increased batting average cause the (baseball) player to hit that ball further, or was it the steroids?" was answered by you within your analogy as you say "Now it is the steroids which caused the change, just as a jump in the amount of greenhouses in the atmosphere has caused an increase in extreme weather events that cumulatively changes the climate, right?"

It's albedo

Bob Loblaw at 02:19 AM on 28 December, 2021

blaisct @ 106:

Although it has been almost two weeks since your post, and others have commented, I wish to respond to one statement you have in your opening paragraph. You state:

My understanding has been expanded to include: AGHs hotter temperature will reduce humidity and thus reduce cloud cover, expose more earth surface to the sun thus reduce earths albedo; therefor, albedo vs time for AGHs may not be flat.

The "hotter temperatures will reduce humidity" does not follow. If air temperature increases and absolute humidity does not change, then yes, relative humidity will decrease, but we have no a priori reason to expect this to be the case.

I suggest that you review the use of differnt terms for "humidity", which can get quite confusing at times. Wikipedia has a decent page covering this.

A warmer atmosphere is expected to increase evaporation, which will add water vapour to the atmosphere. This cannot go on indefinitely, and globally we expect a new equilibriium where increased evaporation is matched by increased precipitation. At this new equilibrium, we expect global absolute humidity to be higher, and global relative humidity to be roughly the same as now.

Spatial variation will almost certainly be different, and exactly how cloud cover will respond has uncertainties, but it is not as simple as you describe.

Usually, the incorrect assumption you will see in the comments here goes along the lines of "more evaporation = more cloud". This is also far too simplistic. The balance between temprature, evaporation, cloud formation, and precipitation is a complex and delicate one.

It's albedo

coolmaster at 23:46 PM on 13 September, 2021

@GPWayne:

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

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

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

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

@Moderation response: "last warning"

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

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

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

That was my last warning to you...

It's albedo

coolmaster at 09:19 AM on 10 September, 2021

BL@78

BL: you double-down on your claim of a strong cooling effect for clouds. Let's examine some actual science.

I have already sent you the current science in this regard. The graphics for the global radiation balances all_sky, clear_sky, land & ocean were created and published by Prof. Dr. Martin Wild / ETH Zurich. He is a very nice person and lead author of the IPCC AR6 WGI Chapter 7: The Earth’s energy budget, climate feedbacks, and climate sensitivity. (Chapters 7.2.1 and 7.4.2.4.3 are relevant for our topic.)
You will not find our topic much more actual and precise anywhere, and if you continue to have doubts about the strong cooling influence of clouds - you should contact with Prof. Dr. M. Wild directly.

BL: summary diagrams are summary diagrams - not detailed models."
You will surely see that a slr volume of 1335km³ / year has to be distributed globally and that I therefore use global, summarizing radiation balances.

Using the posted information in the explanatory file on land use and irrigation,

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00245/full

you also have the opportunity to observe my claims about irrigation, cloud formation, precipitation, temperature, radiative forcing etc. on a more regional level.

BL: ...it condenses to form cloud, but this is not always the case. ...So will this "extra" moisture cause more clouds? Maybe. Maybe not.
You have provided no scientific justification for this claim, or references to suitable scientific publications to support it. You are completely wrong here. You claim that there is some kind of rest room for water vapor in the atmosphere. Could you please prove that.
99,999% of atmospheric water vapor will form a cloud before it return as precipitation. Dew e.g. is also considered to be a form of precipitation.

BL: As a consequence of increasing evporation, the location where the evaporation occurs will also see less thermal energy transfer to the atmosphere, so temperatures are also affected.
Yes Sir - that´s what I mean. More latent heat flux = less sensible(thermal as you say) heat flux. H²O in the air will form clouds - dry and hot air in the atmosphere will kill them. Soil and air temperatures will decrease - and that's exactly what I intend to do with my strategy. You should also know that the extra amount of 1% precipitation/irrigation/evaporation is planed to released predominantly in spring / summer allways into a relatively unsaturated, dry and hot clear_sky atmosphere, which most closely corresponds to a drought period or desert.

Intensification of the global hydrological cycle is a robust feature of global warming, BUT at the same time, many land areas in the subtropics will experience drying at the surface AND in the atmosphere. This occurs due to a ! limited water availability ! in these regions, where the cloudiness is consequently expected to decrease.

Your speculations about different clouds, with their different effects on the albedo and SW / LW radiation effects, are not conducive to the discussion and are unimportant for my assessments. In a dry, hot, sunny high pressure atmosphere, I guess at least that mostly convective fair-weather clouds or thunderclouds (cumulus or c.-nimbus) will arise.

1% more precipitation / evaporation will not have a major impact on the general cloud pattern. The natural regional variability of the amount of precipitation is often 200mm or more between dry and humid years. Since 9mm more or less per year will regionally cause no noticeable changes in the cloud regime. Maybe there will be 3-4 rainy days/year instead of increasing hours of sunshine.
BL: Coolmaster's diagrams are nice pictures that help illustrate a few aspects...
Again - these diagrams are not mine. They are calculated by professionals of IPCC experts. You have no clue about the difference between water- & air cooling, heat capacity & efficiency. That's your problem - not mine.

CO2 is not increasing

the Inspector at 09:00 AM on 8 July, 2021

As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!

Thank you for the membership, i have followed the mauna loa curve for years and wondered what the yearly dip in co2 increase is caused by.

This year the curve is straight up for the first time ever and i found a correlation; China.

Since 2020 i have taken dayly screenshots of the "windy" website which monitors the co2 levels globally and focussed on china's dayly output, in short it showed increased activity just before the chinese new year celebration ( 12 feb to 26 feb ) and continues during the celebrations because of the pandemic demand for products.

Mauna loa is directly downwind of china by some days and is in effect monitoring China's co2 output.

You can check this out for yourselves on the "windy.com" and the noaa mauna loa co2 graph websites.

Here is a link to my 3 youtube video's titled; "co2 levels explained"on youtube, it has all the info combined to show the relationship in detail on a day by day basis;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbjnbw_npY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IYQZu-XwOc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7szFJD9nAFM

Another significant indicator is the dip in 2008 which stopped China's output for two months in the mauna loa graph.

Thank you; the Inspector.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Planet Only Forever at 04:01 AM on 11 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @18 and 23,
I have the following perspective to add to the responses provided by Philippe and Nigel.

Be careful. You may be presenting a defence similar to claims that atrocious things, like slavery and racism, unjustly prolonged by previous generations were done "at a time when people did not know better".

Reading evidence based presentations like "A People's History of the United States", by Howard Zinn, exposes that what people today often fail to understand is that better understanding did exist but failed to be "Beneficial to the wealthy and powerful" and as a result it failed to be "Popular".

Also, claims of the Boon to humanity from fossil fuel use is misleading. There is very little lasting benefit for humanity from this burst of harmful unsustainable human activity. Many technological developments did not occur because of the use of fossil fuels. In fact, a focus on benefiting from fossil fuel use significantly distracted effort from other potentially less harmful and more sustainable developments. And the easy access to power has allowed far more harm to be done by humans than the harmful climate change impacts. Any perceptions of advancement that depends on cheaper higher artificial energy use is destined to fail to continue in the future. The perception so ending poverty are a particularly galling case. Any part of that perception that relies on fossil fuel use or comparably cheap energy use has no future. Sustainable development limits the need for artificial energy and requires all the artificially generated energy to be obtained sustainably, which include not using up non-renewable resources and requires no lasting accumulating harm to be done by the energy production, distribution or use.

In spite of global wealth rising far faster than global population there continues to be horrid inequity and injustice. Getting richer and more powerful clearly does not mean getting better. Note that at the time of slavery there was a very long period of time where the unacceptability of slavery was understood, but popularity of profit and other benefits traumatically prolonged the activity. And the worst part of the end of slavery in Europe was that in the end the rich people decided that their peers who were wealthier because of slavery would be financially compensated when the forced end of slavery happened, with no compensation give to those who had been enslaved and were now disadvantaged by the socioeconomic-political system and on their own.

I strongly urge everyone to be better informed about what is harmful and what is sustainably helpful.

Read "The Age of Sustainable Development", by Jeffrey D. Sacks, or take the MOOC of the same name. It is not new. It is the result of continued pursuit of increased awareness of the harm being done by human development.

Read the first global recognition of the harmful unsustainability of human actions that was recognized globally as early as 1972 at the Stockholm Conference.

Claiming "Exxon didn't know better" fails to admit that they were not "responsibly thoughtfully doing what the most responsible and thoughtful people were aware of and doing at the time".

The “Fog of misleading marketing compromised democracy, consumerism and capitalism” is like the Fog of War, a lousy excuse for horrible things being done.

Exxon had been on a more helpful leadership track in the 1970s. But something changed in the 1980s (Reagan/Thatcherism was a significant result of that change). And Exxon's approach to climate science appears to have changed at that time as well. The timing of Reagan/Thatcherism looks like a reaction to the growing awareness and understanding of harmful human developments that needed to be corrected, a fearful aggressive misleading marketing response to the increasing awareness and improving understanding that things needed to change and government action was required to make it happen. It was a reaction to the realization that the Free Competition for superiority in systems like Capitalism causes problems it resists correcting (popular and profitable things are hard to correct). And that realization meant that some wealthy powerful people would not maintain their developed sense of status. And the required corrections and potential for wealthy people to be losers would be in many industries like chemical and food companies, not just fossil fuels.

More than a decade ago, the understanding developed that a rapidly increasing Price on Carbon along with other Government actions to curtail fossil fuel use, including actions to encourage renewable energy system implementation and development of improved renewable energy systems.

The questions become things like:

Was Exxon's messaging leading the promotion of that helpful understanding?

Or was Exxon pushing misleading marketing like claiming that corrective action to limit harm should not happen until there was "More certainty" regarding the need for the corrections? That is the way the current system has developed so harmfully and so harmfully resists correction.

Did Exxon promote a significant and rapidly increasing Price on Carbon along with other Government actions to more rapidly end the use of fossil fuels? Or did they promote the idea that a fixed certain "Price on Carbon" could be determined by an economic evaluation comparing benefits that would have to be given up today to reduce the harm done to future generations, with the future harm discounted (see my comment @17)?

Did Exxon executives do what the law of the USA regarding Publicly Traded corporations requires them to do - “whatever they can get away with to maximize shareholder wealth”? Exxon could have been sued by shareholders if they acted to educate about the need to reduce fossil fuel use. That is an example of the harmful flaws that have developed in the Freer competition for superiority that so many wealthy people, and people who want to be like that, will excuse and defend.

Raising awareness and improving understanding regarding harmful activity and how to limit harm done should not be done by misleading marketing. But misleading marketing that achieves that objective is helpful in spite of perceptions of harm done. Without “Dramatic attention getting” the issue would be something people are less aware of and less understanding of. As for “getting more people to support the actions” ... Leadership compromising awareness and understanding and delaying required corrections in order to appeal to more people is Harmful Unsustainable Leadership. The sooner that type of Leadership fails to be influential the better the future for humanity will be.

Perceptions of success and progress based on unsustainable activity, especially harmful activity, are delusions no matter how popular or profitable they are at the time. And undeserving wealthy powerful people have been masters of harmful delusion, misleading marketing, throughout history. That is what needs to change. And that means a deserved loss of status for many high status people rather than “excuses, appeasement and delays trying to maintain undeserved perceptions of superiority” that compromise what is understood to be required to limit harm done so that humanity can have a sustainable improving future on this one amazing planet that may be the only planet that humans can be certain of being able to sustainably live on for many millions of years into the future.

The unjustified lack of leadership through the past few decades by the wealthiest and most powerful on the transition to rapidly ending the accumulating harm done by fossil fuel use is a travesty. The wealthy and powerful cannot claim they were “unaware”. They also have little ability to claim uncertainty about the magnitude of impact. The fact that fossil fuel use was unsustainable needed no research. Burning up non-renewable resource has no potential in the future of humanity. It was only ever a temporary ability for some to benefit in ways others never would be able to. Even now people try to argue that the less developed portion of the human population should not be allowed to use fossil fuel energy at the level that the Supposedly more Advanced, higher status, portion of the population still do (30 years after clear indications of the need to end fossil fuel use). And using Bob Loblaw’s concern “what if I am wrong?”, the 1.0C of warming already experienced is producing harmful climate changes impacting many people, especially the poorest. And that warming is less than the low end of the 1.5C to 4.5C warming due to a doubling of CO2.

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

One Planet Only Forever at 05:07 AM on 9 June, 2021

Bob Loblaw,

I will definitely check out The Authoritarians, reading the complete book. A shorter read on Authoritarianism is On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder.

There are many other helpful references including How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley. Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind, also presents important understanding, however, I suggest being skeptical of his recommendations regarding how to deal with them. Harmful people should not be engaged by compromising efforts to limit harm done.

I have read many books laying out reasons for the tragic ease of obtaining popular support for harmful Nationalism, Authoritarianism and Capitalism.

The key is Governing to limit harm done based on the constant pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful. Some people will responsibly self-govern that way. But many people develop temptations to not self-govern that way. And harmful wealthy people maintain and increase their status relative to others through misleading marketing and appealing beliefs in systems that are actually unjust and unfair, especially if awareness and understanding of what is harmful is not diligently pursued.

Any socioeconomic-political system can be compromised by harmful pursuits of status "Winning". But misleading marketed Capitalism and Free Market Consumerism is potentially very harmful because the harmful stuff can become popular and profitable which makes it seem even more justified and excusable. And Capitalism has a fundamental need for constant expansion which is a serious problem on a finite planet. The Capitalist free market requires significant effort to identify and limit harm being done. And history proves that the participants in the system will not do that very well. A clears example is the stagnation of opportunity for the middle and lower classes in the USA since the 1970s in spite of massive increases in perceptions of total wealth. And very little of the economic activity that generated those perceptions of wealth are sustainable. And much of the activity is harmful.

A nasty climate impact example of unjustified justification and excusing is the way some people try to compare "their evaluation of the Benefits that would be lost if the Harm to future generations was reduced" with "their evaluation of the Harm done to future generations, with the future harm done discounted because that is what you can do with future harm". Having an MBA, I appreciate the merits of net-present-value obtained by discounting future costs and revenue when comparing investment alternatives. But I understand that methodology should not be applied to cases where a person or group benefits at the expense of others, especially future generations. Even Stern's use of a low discount rate is likely inappropriate. Harm done is not justified by benefits obtained that way.

An even nastier reality of those Benefit-Harm evaluations is that the people doing them claim that whatever Status Quo has developed has to be maintained and improved on, even though the wealthier people who benefit form harm done deserve a loss of status. And they over-state the Benefits that have to be given up, including ignoring the activity in the alternative economy. And they understate the harm that will be done. Then they discount that low-balled harm because it happens in the future they will likely not experience.

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

Micawber at 03:04 AM on 8 June, 2021

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

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

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

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

One Planet Only Forever at 12:28 PM on 26 May, 2021

I admire Ben Santer for being uncompromising when it comes to the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is really going on, especially the application of that improving knowledge to help limit harm done.

It is tragic when a helpful uncompromising person like Ben Santer needs to end their association with an institution because that institution appears to be harmfully compromised.

More tragically, far worse than Koonin presenting in LLNL has happened far more often in the US Senate and House of Representatives. There have been many more absurd presentations in those institutions regarding climate science. In addition to the silly snowball by Inhofe, I remember reading a transcript of M. Crichton's presentation. Part of Crichton's presentation was that any science with a range of results that varied by 400% should not be taken seriously. He was a little unclear but appeared to be referring to the range of warming of 1.5C to 6.0C for a doubling of CO2. Being clearer about what he was talking about, that the low end value of 1.5C was a concern and that the 6.0C would be a catastrophe, would have exposed the absurdity of the claim made regarding the 400% variation of results.

And even more tragic is the way that giving absurd or misleading claims and beliefs the appearance of legitimacy because of Free Speech can cause people to compromise better understanding of what is going on and how to limit harm done. Centrists, moderates and pragmatists need to learn to be less compromising when it comes to understanding how to limit harm done. They need to be uncompromisingly willing to be unpopular and even support unprofitable actions that will limit harm done.

As a professional engineer I had to be unpopular and take positions that were unprofitable on many occasions, thankfully supported every time by the institution (the consultancy business) I worked for, even when my determinations about what was required or acceptable (to limit the potential for harm) seriously disappointed a client.

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

MA Rodger at 23:54 PM on 23 May, 2021

Regarding wood chips, this 2015 CarbobBrief post may be useful. The global woodchip market has grown since 2015, from 25Mt/yr to 45Mt/yr in 2020 according to Statistica but is still dwarfed by total wood production which measures globally perhaps something like 6,000Mt/yr of extracted biomass. The potential energy from such global timnber extraction is roughly 20% of global Primary Energy if all wood were turned to energy & ignoring energy imputs (Global Primary Energy 600 exajoules, wood 20Gj/t), but burning it all you would have no wood for other purposes or would have to collect it from where it becomes a recycled waste product.

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

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

Nick Palmer @3,

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

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

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

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

Recommended reading:

Human Development Report 2020 which is the latest annual report regarding Human Sustainable Development.

Jeffrey D. Sach's "The Age of Sustainable Development" or take the MOOC of the same name. The book (and MOOC) present the evidence-based understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals and are updated by the HDR 2020.

Review the Sustainable Development Goals to see that the Green New Deal is aligned with what all Leadership should be pursuing (in spite of the developed popularity and profitability of not limiting the harm done by human competition).

Also, look at the 1972 Stockholm Conference that was a clear start to global leadership collectively raising awareness of the harm done by insufficiently restricted competition for superiority.

Finally, check out “The Planetary Boundaries” evaluation by the Stockholm University - Stockholm Resilience Centre that is a key part of all of the above.

The awareness and understanding from that reading and learning makes it undeniable that a lot of what humans have developed is harmful and unsustainable. In particular, systemic pressure for "more to exploit to obtain more benefit – always needing More" is expanding impacts beyond the real limits for humanity on this planet. And expanding beyond this planet’s limits, expanding to the Moon or Mars or mining asteroids, before figuring out how to sustainably live on this planet is not a sustainable solution.

Based on the planetary boundaries evaluation the expansion pressures have already clearly exceeded the planetary boundaries for Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Genetic Diversity. And pressures for maintaining undeserved unsustainable perceptions of status (expectations based on the developed high consumption, wasteful, harmful impact ways of living) will undeniably result in impacts clearly exceeding the Climate Change boundary of human civilization sustainability. A Moderate centrist compromising response is no longer an option, but will be pushed for by those who have only cared to benefit as much as possible by delaying the reduction of harm done as much as they can get away with for as long as possible – Now they claim to like the Moderates but they still hope to win more extreme delays – more harm done.

Reducing harm done includes reducing the diversity of injustice and inequity that develops when people compete for popularity and profit in games where results are based on impressions. People freer to believe what they want and do as they please produce more harmful results because getting away with behaving and excusing being more harmful is a competitive advantage.

Any perceived advancement or improvement that is the result of activity that is unsustainable is understandably unsustainable and a little unfair to have a limited portion of humanity benefit (only the least fortunate should benefit that way, but even that needs to be understood to be unsustainable), and is also understandably undeserved if the activity is harmful (harmful activity is undeniably unsustainable). That applies equally to perceptions of status for those who are more fortunate and perceptions that the less fortunate have been helped develop an improved life.

The failure of the systems that produced the problems to effectively correct things, and the ways the systems develop resistance to correction, requires corrective systemic change, including Government intervention and action, to limit the harm done. Thirty years ago the climate change impact corrections would have been modest and the total harm done would have been serious and unfair but not tragic. Today the harm done and required corrections are tragic and dramatic. Without significant government intervention to limit the harm done, the required corrective actions in 10 more years is almost certain to be catastrophic corrections to the incorrectly over-developed human activity and perceptions of advancement. And the accumulated harm done by then is very likely to be also be catastrophic. And the current system will make the less fortunate suffer the most. And that is not Hyperbole.

But I agree that Government action should be limited to blocking the pursuit of unsustainable harmful activity, not choosing winners, just identifying harmful pursuers of benefit, blocking their harmful tactics, and penalizing them to make amends for harm done. Ultimately, to be sustainable, energy systems will have to be 100% renewable. And reducing energy consumption is undeniably a significant part of the solution. Reducing energy demand will reduce the amount of harm done by energy generation while the harmful unsustainable energy generation is sustainably replaced. That means that any new new energy system that gets built, like nuclear or “fossil fuel with CCS”, would be shut down as early as possible by rapidly developing the sustainable renewable systems built to replace them even if the renewable options are more expensive. And reduced per-person energy demand, particularly by the wealthiest, will more rapidly end the need for harmful unsustainable energy generation. Of course, the Be Harmless limit also applies to renewable energy systems – no Green Washing.

Lack of interest in investigating to discover and stop harmful unsustainable activity is a serious problem. Grandfathering (systemic gender bias is also a problem) harmful activity and protecting any wealth that was obtained from harmful activity is also a problem. Those aspects of the developed systems need to be diligently ended and kept from re-emerging in the competition for superiority which will always be part of human interaction. It would be great for that competition to be striving to be superior by being Less Harmful and More Helpful to Others and the Environment everyone shares.

A lot of changes of the Global Status Quo are required to develop a robust diversity of humanity in a diversity of sustainable socioeconomic political systems that are constantly adapting to be improved sustainable parts of the robust diverse environmental reality that humanity requires for sustainable survival on this one amazing planet. That required result will not be developed without thoughtful, unselfish, Government Interventions in the “games of competition for superiority”.

Wealth should be deserved by not being Harmful, and by being Helpful to Others without expecting a return benefit. That is part of the understanding behind the Sustainable Development Goals. Claims that some Help is delivered by the Harmful acquisition of wealth need to be challenged. Harm done is not justified by benefits obtained. A harmful version of Utilitarian beliefs excuses harmful actions because “someone benefits”. It is one of the most harmful beliefs ever developed. It leads to misunderstandings like the claims that the harmful unsustainable economic development that has occurred has reduced poverty. Any perceptions developed by unsustainable harmful activity are not sustainable.

People perceived as "shooting themselves in the foot" may be far more helpful and less harmful than people who do not see that the socioeconomic political system they have developed a liking for produces harmful unsustainable "impacts on the environment of the only planet that humanity is sure to be able to survive and thrive on” and ruins societies with injustice and inequity.

Social and environmental harm that is the result of human competition makes developed perceptions unsustainable. Popularity and profitability can be lousy measures of Merit and Worth when harmful unsustainable beliefs and actions are allowed to survive and thrive.

SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw

One Planet Only Forever at 12:42 PM on 11 May, 2021

Evan, I try to learn as I try to help other people understand what is happening. I appreciate your attention to my comments, and your feedback.
I have a few more suggestions for your consideration starting with the last point you made in your comment @16 (potentially only my comments “Regarding 10 years of temperature data being a sufficiently long time to provide a degree of technical rigour” affect what you have presented in your See-Saw item).

I find it helps to expose people to the fuller record of basic data like CO₂ levels and Global Average Surface Temperature. That can help them see how unusual or unnatural the recent values are and that CO₂ and Temperature are related. That is why I recommend looking at the history of Temperature and CO₂ data:

back to 1880 for the surface temperature which shows that one of the biggest See-Saws was a warm bump in the 1940s that many “global warming - climate change” doubters mistakenly believe was Globally warmer than now because it was very warm in parts of the USA (And some people experienced that or knew someone who was alive back then similar to your “Winter recollections”).

back to 1979 for the satellite data (to see that, though satellite temperatures are not the surface temperature, the pattern of temperature is similar)

and back 800,000 years for CO₂ levels, like the animation by NOAA that allows the details of recent decades to be seen along with the final full length record. It shows that:

several 100 to 120 ppm changes happened in the previous ice-ages

the high level of CO₂ of 300 ppm was only reached once in all that time, until recently

for the past 4000 years the CO₂ level has been between 270 and 280 ppm.

CO₂ levels are now at 420 ppm, 140 above the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, and continues to increase, and indeed an increase of 100 ppm since 1960.

The higher recent rates of warming do indeed over-whelm the impressions of the See-Saw. However, the magnitude of the warming is more important. Even if the decade rate was only 0.10 degrees C, eventually the warming would be clear in spite of the larger swings of the See-Saw.

Regarding how people will perceive a message

There is a diversity of awareness, understanding and perspective. Not everyone will see things the way you intend.

You asked: “Many people feel a difference in winters now than during their childhood (1970's or earlier). Can you tell how old I am? :-)”

What I can tell is how far North you likely live. You are likely part of the small portion of humanity who live north of, or near to, 60 degrees N latitude. The arctic regions have warmed faster than the rest of the global surface. People may legitimately recollect that Northern winters were different decades ago. But global average warming since the 1960s is far less than 1 degree C with non-arctic areas warming less than the average (and there is more warming at night than the daytime. So, people in non-arctic areas may not recall a difference. I was born before 1970 and have lived between 50 an 55 degrees N. In spite of my bias of being aware of the warming and climate change that has occurred, I cannot claim a clear recollection that winters were significantly different when I was younger. So there are likely many people who do not have a legitimate recollection that winters were different decades ago.

Regarding 10 years of temperature data being a sufficiently long time to provide a degree of technical rigour

I do agree you may want to reconsider what you say about the adequacy of a 10 year set of temperature data.

As KR suggests, unless the data has had significant variable influences like ENSO and volcanic impacts scrubbed out of the data, which raises questions about how those impacts are “scrubbed out”, temperature data sets longer than 20 years may be needed to avoid unintended interpretations.

I spent a little time learning about “decades of temperature data using the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator. I looked at the Trend values for sets of 10 years in the GISTEMPv4 and UAHv6.0 TLT data starting in 1979 (everyone can do this to verify the results):

The Satellite data set shows a negative trend for the decades starting in 1987, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

There are also many decades where the Positive Trend is less than 1/10th of the 2 sigma range of variability starting in 1980, 1986, 1997, 1999, and 2005 (decades with almost no clear warming, like the set starting with 1997 being 0.015 +- 0.445 degrees C per decade meaning a value range from -0.430 to +0.460, or 2005 being 0.005 +- 0.376 meaning -0.371 to +0.381).

In the Surface Temperature data set only the decade starting in 1987 had a negative trend. There were no decades with a positive trend that was less than 1/10 of 2 sigma.

This may explain why the likes of Dr. Roy Spencer focus on their satellite data manipulations and try to claim the superiority of that data over surface temperature data. That run of values from 1997 through 2005 was a long period of being able to claim that the warming had appeared to have ended even though CO₂ levels continued to increase (the UAHv6 data set trend for the 19 year period of 1997 to 2015 is negative. In the UAHv5.6 data set the longest negative Trend was for the 11 years 1998 – 2009, and in the RSSv4 TLT data set the longest negative trend is the decade starting with 2003). So shorter sets of data, rather than the fuller story, can be the “Friend” of the likes of Dr. Roy Spencer (and updated manipulations of the data can also be “Friendlier to the likes of Dr. Roy Spencer.).

A final point about presenting decade averages

I do like the presentation of the averages of the 70s, 80s, 90, 2000s, 2010s when a graph cannot be shown. And I agree that such a presentation is not improved by adding earlier decades. But I also consider a “moving average” presentation to be better, but it needs to be Graphed (referring to the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator works). The moving average values can’t be described in words the way the decade averages can be. However, the discrete decade averages are a 120 month "moving average" with the data points being every 10 years (on a graph the decade averages would be points in the middle of each decade). As you can see from the investigation I summarized above, any set of 10 years of data can be a Decade average. And when those averages are done for each new month of data the series of points will look like a line (note that Dr. Roy Spencer presents a 13 month moving average because that makes it easier to present the data points. They go on the middle point of the data set – no need to set the graphic up to present a 12 month average between the middle two months of a 12 item data set).

SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw

Evan at 22:28 PM on 6 May, 2021

KR thanks for your comments. Because I am not a climate scientist, but I am a chemical engineer, my role is to understand what the experts are saying and then find ways to communicate that message effectively and accurately to non-technical people. One of my goals is to be as consistent as possible with the messaging I hear from the professionals, which you also appear to be.

Whereas I agree technically with what you're saying, what I heard James Hansen say in 1988 is that the warming signal had emerged from the background noise, which was still present in the early 1970's. I hear you saying that James Hansen was able to make his statements because he knew how to remove from the temperature signal the effect of transients, such as ENSO, PDO, volcanoes, ect. I concede that point, but to the casual observer, what they hear is that the 80's were hotter than the 70's. What we commonly hear now is that since the 1970's each successive decade has been hotter than the previous decade. This is the message that I think resonates with people who are really trying to understand what's happening, and not just endlessly argue the points. Considering that globally averaged atmospheric temperatures are increasing about 0.2C/decade, and that the effect of ENSO is to create a transient with a maximum of about 0.2C over a few years, 10 years seems like a suffiiently long time to provide a degree of technical rigour, yet short enough that people can grasp the immediacy of the problem. I can only assume that this is why we hear reports of the trends of decadal, average temperatures

If I try to present all of the nuances, then the presentation also becomes more difficult to follow. Therefore, whereas I concede the point you're making, materially I think it is accurate and consistent with the messaging from climate scientists that the warming signal is clearly seen if we look at the decadal temperature trends.

The choice is clear: Fair climate policy or no climate policy

Postkey at 21:08 PM on 11 April, 2021

'This' may invalidate the 'choice'? 'We' have ten years? “ . . . our best estimate is that the net energy
33:33 per barrel available for the global
33:36 economy was about eight percent
33:38 and that in over the next few years it
33:42 will go down to zero percent
33:44 uh best estimate at the moment is that
33:46 actually the
33:47 per average barrel of sweet crude
33:51 uh we had the zero percent around 2022
33:56 but there are ways and means of
33:58 extending that so to be on the safe side\
34:00 here on our diagram\
34:02 we say that zero percent is definitely\
34:05 around 2030 . . .\
we\
34:43 need net energy from oil and [if] it goes\
34:46 down to zero
34:48 uh well we have collapsed not just
34:50 collapse of the oil industry
34:52 we have collapsed globally of the global
34:54 industrial civilization this is what we
34:56 are looking at at the moment . . . “
Louis Arnoux. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxinAu8ORxM

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.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021

SunBurst at 13:52 PM on 15 March, 2021

MA Rodger @24

Given a fair chance, I believe I can clear up most of your concerns about my claims, and maybe even a few things you never quite understood. It would, however, take an open mind on your part and recognize the possibility that not all of the cardinal laws of modern "climate science" are consistent with fundament laws of phyics. Probably the most far-reaching inconsistency between fundamental physics and climate science is the assumption of an earth in perfect thermal equilibrium. Now you and I both know that can't possibly be true or all of your temperature data would show a uniform temperature over the entire surface. Also, relative humidity would be 100 percent everywhere. This is the basis, however, for arguing the CO2 "control knob" theory. As you may recall, this theory relies primarily on the Clausius-Claperyon equation which assumes a uniform temperature over the entire condensed state/vapor state sample. Since the entire earth is our "sample" in this case, CO2 cannot in general be the controlling GHG unless we have a uniform temperature earth.

Despite what seems to be total absurdity in this "control knob" theory, however, it is the reason why climate science does not allow dismissal of the CO2 greenhouse effect as small compared with that of H2O. It is also the basis for lingo such as forcings, feedbacks, fast and slow feedbacks, and the somewhat comical iceball earth scenarios. It seems to me that modern climate science has gotten into a mode of thinking that needs correction!

At this point, I have probably discussed these issues as much as I dare. In fact, I expect these comments will be taken down within 12 hours of when I post them. Your AGW comrades and moderators don't like to hear this kind of news about their pet theories. I've been through this many times before!

2009-2010 winter saw record cold spells

michael sweet at 16:18 PM on 13 February, 2021

John Hartz,

Reading your link and then searching a while online I see reports that the cold spell you report is the coldest in Europe in the last 10 years. I found a report that one country set a cold record in a different cold spell in the middle of January.

Going to the National Climate Data Center (USA national) they have a record temperatures page. Settting the page on global records (they do not have a European only page) I see in the last week there were 837 cold records and only 273 daily high records. In the harder to achieve monthly records there were only 12 low records in the past 7 days with only 2 high records. There was only 1 all time cold record globally in the last 7 days and no hot records.

Trying to measure a longer time in the past year there were 50,000 daily cold records and 109,000 hot records, hardly an ending of global warming. For monthly records there were 2100 cold records and 7,000 hot records. For all time records there were 32 cold records and 487 all time hot records.

In Europe last week it was cold compared to the past 10 years of hot weather. It was normal weather for 100 years ago. The denialists can only remember the past ten years so they think it is cold when it is really not. In addition, they often say record snow means it is cold. Record snow is not the same as record cold. Science predicts that in a warming world there is more precipitation. In cold areas that means more snow.

By contrast, the Summer in Winter in the USA and Canada (in March 2012) produced thousands of daily records and hundreds of all time records. In some locations the low temperature at night was higher than any previously recorded high temperatures!

Of course, regular readers of SkS are already aware of this. The NCDC records page is a good location to counter this denier myth.

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

Rob Honeycutt at 04:15 AM on 8 February, 2021

MA Rogers... Thanks for that further clarification. One thing that I always wonder is, what would the temperature structure of the planet be without GHG's? Setting aside the fact that we'd have a snowball earth, what would a pure nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere do? There would certainly be some conduction from the surface and convection off of that. I have a hard time working out the results. I'm sure someone has modeled this. I've just never heard what the results were. Perhaps understanding this would help people to better understand why trace gases have such an important effect.

Veganism is the best way to reduce carbon emissions

Klemet at 05:29 AM on 7 February, 2021

Lots of interesting stuff written here. I’ll try to join it :

@Rob Honeycutt : If I remember correctly, the IPCC base their figures and tables in their Special Report on Climate Change and Land (Chapter 5 : Food Security) on the numbers derived from the FAO and over studies like the one of Poore and Nemecek (2018) in Science. Latest FAO numbers I’ve seen puts animal agriculture as responsible for 14.5% of GHGs emissions, so I’d say that Guilhem is in the right there. I might be wrong, though.

@Eclectic : I agree with what you say, except that I don’t think that Guilhem wrote that making the vegan diet mainstream will be enough to save the world, or that’s it’s even the our best option. From what I read, Guilhem wrote that this article doesn’t sound on point with current science, and even kind of “strawman-ish” on some aspects, which I agree with. Plus, concerning the idea of achieving a worldwilde vegan of vegetarian diet, what evidence do we have that it is such a crazy idea ? Indeed, surveys seem to show that between 2014 and 2017, the number of vegans rose by 600% in the US, reaching almost 20 million people; and that’s not considering the fact that environmental considerations is only one argument for veganism, and often not the most compelling for people from what I’ve read.

But I think that we might be missing the point here, which is that this article might need some revision. I completly agree with its premice (i.e. veganism is not the best option to reduce GHGs emissions at the individual levels), but some of the things written seem very odd or downright wrong, as Guilhem pointed out.

Concerning people’s willigness to change their diet (section 2), I don’t think that the fact that people are currently willing or unwilling to give up on animal products like meat and dairy does not refute the argument that this could be the #1 option to reduce individual carbon emissions (i.e. the subject of the article and PETA's quote). And while data exist on people unwilingness to go vegan, I deem it important to complete it with recent demographic data on veganism to get the complexity of the question, as it reveals veganism as one of the biggest trends in western societies.

Concerning increased waste in vegan diets (section 3), it is something that I have never seen so far in the main reviews that we have today, such as the one from Poore and Nemecek who does talk about waste. Does this argument hold if we take into account the quantities that are produced (e.g. if less meat and dairy is produced and bought than fruit and vegetables, isn’t it normal that less waste is associated with them) ? What of taking into account the fact that a great quantity of food resources (mainly cereals) are produced to feed livestock, which could associate their waste with meat and dairy ? What proof do we have that a switch to a vegan diet would increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables (as dairy and meat are often replaced by vegans with proteins sources such as soy products) ?

Concerning GHGs emissions due to transportation (section 3), everything I’ve read on this subject says that transportation is really not the main issue when talking about GHGs emissions. As summarized by the I4CE, or stated in Weber and Matthews (2008) (for the USA), Whyne and Nicholas (2017) (for comparison between plant-based diet and “local” diet), or Sandström et al. (2018) (for Europe), transportation is but a very small part (around 10% on average) of GHGs emissions for food products, and meat and dairy are always the foods associated with the biggest GHGs emissions. Knowing that, why focusing on tropical food exclusively, like is done in the paragraph (omitting the fact that it could be a very interesting option for people in the tropics themselves) ? And what of the impact of food for livestock that is grown in other countries, such as the soy often produced in brazil to feed cattle in europe or the USA ? Also, why focusing on food transported by plane when it seems to represent only a very small percentage of the food we produce, as Guilhem pointed out ?

Concerning the capacity to shift management practices of livestock to reduce GHGs emission, I don’t think that there currently is credible evidence of strategies of extensive management that can make animal produces much better for GHGs emissions. In fact, there are studies that seem to show that extensive management could be even worse, as hinted in Clark and Tilman (2017) or Hayek and Garret (2018). That said, how does one article (the one by Zomer from 2017 that is quoted) equals to enough evidence enough for what is proposed here, when current litterature suggest overwise ? Especially when recent research seem to temper the expectation of possible offtest of animal agriculture by soil sequestration, as with the article of Godde et al. (2020) that indicates that “any sequestration is time-limited, reversible, and at a global level outweighed by emissions from grazing systems”. The Food Climate Research Network also has a nice report on the issue, that synthetize most of what has be researched to date on the issue.

As Guilhem pointed out, the focus on the article of Kim et al. (2019) in section 4 seems a bit strange. The paragraph implies that a flexitarian diet is better than a vegetarian (not vegan) diet. But the article clearly states that a full vegan diet is the best in 97% of the countries studied; even better that the flexitarian diet that is mentionned. Why not mentionning this fact ? Why suddendly switching the focus on a vegetarian diet in a post talking about vegan diets, when the article that is quoted does talk about vegan diets ? And why not mentionning the majority of the recent litterature that do indicate a vegan diet as the best diet to reduce GHGs emissions, such as Poore and Nemceck (2018), the Lancet EAT study, or even the chapter 5 of the report of the IPCC “Climate change and land” ? It’s just so weird to me; but maybe I’m missing something. I don’t think that Dana (the author) is the type of person to do misinformation, so I’ll do my best to keep my mind open on that.

So in the end, I'd suggest the following revisions :

To delete section 2 (“Are people willing to change their diets for the environment?”) , or to add it as an afterthought rather than a main argument; but I think that more data should be added to it to present the problem more globally.

To delete section 3 (“Problems with the vegan diet”), or to precise aspects concerning waste and add some more evidence-based environmental problems with the vegan diet.

To delete section 4 (“Vegan vs. Vegetarian vs. meat diets”), or to improve references to Kim et al. (2019) and add references to recent meta-analysis and reviews on the subject.

To make the article simpler and shorter, focusing on the ideas develloped by Wynes and Nicholas (2017), which I think are much more easy to understand and justify : veganism is not the best way to reduce our GHGs emissions simply because options like not having a child or ditching planes are more effective. However, while doing so, I think that credit should be given to vegan diets that it can have some other good effects on the environment than GHGs emission reduction (as stated in Poore and Nemececk 2018), as is done in section 5. The idea could be that instead of saying how "bad" a vegan diet can be as the article does right now (which I think is hard to argue with the current litterature), it would be easier to justify how good the other options are (having less children, not taking the plane, etc.). I think that this would keep the original intent, why not sounding like a hit-piece on the movie Cowspiracy (which I do not endorse).

Veganism is the best way to reduce carbon emissions

Eclectic at 00:15 AM on 2 February, 2021

Guilhem , there is much in what you say. But essentially your line of argument fails the test of practicality & timeliness, if you are pursuing a primary goal of halting the current rapid global warming. And I need hardly point out to you that AGW is heading toward colossal damage to the biosphere, with resultant cruelty to all animals not just the domesticated species used by omnivorous humans.

Stabilizing the present-day climate must take precedence. Eliminating fossil fuels is a goal reasonably possible over 30 - 50 years. In effect : in two generations of humans.

But achieving a Vegan or merely vegetarian diet worldwide, will take far more time than two generations. Can I cite a scientific study to support this contention - no - but your own knowledge of human nature & history will surely admit the truth of it. Guilhem, there is simply not the luxury of time to achieve your "Vegan ASAP" goal. Other goals must take moral priority over your desired Vegan revolution.

To aim simultaneously at AGW correction and Veganism, is to attach an iron ball & chain to the ankle of the Anti-AGW movement.

Guilhem , doubtless you have many worthy aims in this life. But if you wish to be more successful than Napoleon was, then you had best conquer one enemy at a time. And choose wisely your first enemy ~ and move fast, before your other enemies wake up and combine against you.

Veganism is the best way to reduce carbon emissions

Guilhem_S at 07:13 AM on 1 February, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for your considerations,
Guilhem

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1

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

nigelj

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up

Bob Loblaw at 12:27 PM on 16 December, 2020

John: interesting question. The Budyko-Sellers type models were one-dimensional, looking only at total horizontal energy transport between the equator and poles. (Well, essentialy from pole to pole - the northern and southern hemispheres are not exactly symmetrical.) They considered four energy fluxes:

Vertical radiation balance (absorbed solar - emitted IR) as a function of latitude. This is essentially top-of-atmosphere, but the models had no vertical dimension or resolution, so IR emissions were a function of surface temperature. (Horizontal radiation transfer can be ignored.)

North-south transport of atmospheric sensible heat: the energy transfer associated with atmospheric circulation and the temperature of the air.

North-south transport of atmospheric latent heat: energy associated with atmospheric circulation of water vapour, evaporating water at one latitude and condensing at another.

North-south transport of ocean sensible heat: ocean circulation and temperatures.

The Budyko-Sellers models used empirical equations that related energy transport to temperature, and did not explicitly have any atmospheric motion or weather. The output provides a latitude-averaged state: you can see the differences in flux and temperature as a function of latitude, but there is no east-west information.The idea is that the equator/pole differences in radiation balance (item 1) are what drives atmospheric circulation and climate differnces - energy needs to get from the equator to the poles to balance (items 2-4).

Hansen's early work, IIRC, used either one-dimensional radiative-convective models (RCM) or full three-dimensional atmospheric general circulation models (GCM).

The RCMs have only a vertical component and do full radiative transfer calculations - but for a globally-averaged state. They have no equator or pole or anything in between.The radiation transfer calculations can be very sophisticated, though.

The 3-D GCM models are like weather models (but very coarse resolution in the early days), so they include N-S changes, E-W differences, and the vertical structure of the atmosphere - and actually calculate atmospheric circulation over time. The model "climate" is the time-averaged model output, just like real climate is time-averaged weather.

So, no Hansen would not have been basing his work directly on Budyko. The modelling approach are quite different - but they all give interesting information about different aspects of climate. The earliest published work that I know of for RCMs was that of Manabe and Strickler (1964) and Manabe and Wetherald (1967), Manabe also moved from RCMs to GCMs. GCMs are loosely based on weather models.

What did 1970’s climate science actually say?

Nick Palmer at 22:23 PM on 13 November, 2020

As any one will find out when dealing with 'hard core' deniers (as opposed to the gullible majority of 'sceptics'), who repeatedly post the same misinformation even after having been corrected multiple times, it's hard not to be driven to the conclusion that they are actually deliberately using deceit and insinuation to drive their readers to certain conclusions.

In this case the desired conclusion they want their audiences to jump to is that if scientists changed their mind once before, then it's unsafe to rely on what they are saying now, particulary about science based policy that is being planned to globally make big changes.

The insinuation and deceit is in how they frame their assertion. It uses a form of the 'magnified minority' technique (here's John Cook Tweeting about it twitter.com/johnfocook/status/1314301046756384794)

The misleader will say or write something like this

'but, but, but scientists predicted an ice age in the 70s - it was in Time and Newsweek - now they've changed their minds, so how can we trust them now?'

The thing about this deceit, like the best propaganda, is that it's technically true but rests upon the ambiguities of language to mislead.

The nitty gritty of the deceit is that the word "scientist's" can be taken to mean all scientists or as few as two. It gives no idea of the relative numbers, yet the insinuation in the 'imminent ice age' meme is that all, or the majority of, scientists supported the hypothesis.

The mention of the Time and Newsweek articles, which the public are infinitely more likely to remember and be far more familiar with than the consensus scientific view in the literature at the time, is highly likely to tip the undecided 'quantum state' of the public's appreciation of the topic towards their accepting that the scientific consensus back then was different to what it actually was...

Climate's changed before

MA Rodger at 19:50 PM on 25 October, 2020

Hal Kantrud @845,

There is certainly a timelag between temperature rise and ice loss and with big ice sheets the lag can also be big (but not necessarily). The current level of AGW is put at 1ºC and the sea level rise so far at 20 or 30 cms. Yet the anticipated sea level rise per 1ºC AGW is put at 230cm over a period of a couple of millenia. But additional to that 230cm/1ºC is Greenland which maintains its ice sheet solely becuse its summit is high up surrounded by cold atmosphere. It is anticipated that somewhere between 1ºC and 2ºC of AGW, the summit of Greenland's ice will drop into an unstoppable melt-out as the summit decends into warmer atmospheres, this adding a further 600cm to sea level over perhaps ten millenia. I say "unstoppable" in that it would require a return to ice age conditions to stop the melt and build the summit back up into colder airs.

Regarding the chopping down of woodland, this is globally not New World.

Climate's changed before

Tom Dayton at 08:32 AM on 21 October, 2020

Hal Kantrud: The "Little Ice Age" (LIA) was not a glaciation in any sense. It was a brief period within which some particular regions got colder for a little while before getting warmer again, but not all of them at the same time. From the PAGES 2K study:

"Our regional temperature reconstructions also show little evidence for globally synchronized multi-decadal shifts that would mark well-defined worldwide MWP and LIA intervals. Instead, the specific timing of peak warm and cold intervals varies regionally, with multi-decadal variability resulting in regionally specific temperature departures from an underlying global cooling trend."

What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?

nigelj at 08:32 AM on 16 October, 2020

RedBaron @8

Thank's for the technical information. There's some good stuff there, but I have a few criticisms about a couple of things.

Firstly I did indeed not say cattle are 'the' problem as BL points out. Clearly many things contribute to the increase in atmospheric methane in recent decades, not only cattle. Many studies have confirmed that.

"If cattle numbers are dropping and methane levels are rising, it is a probable falsification of the hypothesis that cattle emissions were the problem."

Cattle numbers are not dropping overall globally which is obviously what matters. Both the links provided by Alan Russel and myself showed that.

"Cattle properly raised on grasslands restore degraded land, they do not "use" those limited resources, they are part of a system that generates those limited resources...."

Strawman. The statement I posted was cattle use a lot of land compared to crop farming. This is a simple fact. Nothing you have said changes that. It's something we have to consider. You appear to be looking at it from quite a narrow perspective.

But I don't disagree about the positive relationship you describe between cattle and resources. I did say I think grazing cattles on open grasslands has value. I agree cattle farming properly done can improve the land and sequester carbon, to an extent. Theres some good evidence. The trouble is so many things operate in the opposite direction. Warming causes soils to release carbon over time and also nitrogen oxides so dont get carried away with what can be achieved.

On balance I go along with lower red meat consumption for climate and other reasons. Obviously fewer cattle equals less of a methane problem. And properly managed environmentally sustainable grasslands farming requires low cattle density so probably lower numbers than currently, assuming the same area of land is used for cattle grazing. Its certainly unlikely to increase in area. This is consistent with a lower red meat diet.

That said, it seems to me that its really unlikely the entire world would go vegetarian, and some grasslands aren't very suitable for cropping or forestry, so we should clearly graze them in the most environmentally sustainable way possible as per your general prescription.

What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?

nigelj at 10:23 AM on 15 October, 2020

Alan Russel @5

Regarding your comments:

"Note that the amount of cattle in Europe and North America is actually lower than it was in the 1960's whilst India has fewer cattle than it did in the 1980s, (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QA/visualize), so their associated methane emissions have actually dropped. This is a classic bit of information that is often unknown/ignored by those pushing the line "the importance of keeping animal products – particularly red meat, such as beef, and dairy – to a minimum". Even professional scientists like Mike Berners-Lee do this."

Firstly this is a tacit admission that cattles methane emissions are a problem, and less cattle equals less of a problem.

Secondly, although the numbers of cattle have decreased in some places, the production of cattle overall globally have increased in recent decades according to your charts. The charts below also show numbers of cattle globally increasing from 1890 - 2014. If you click on things you can get the exact numbers each year.

https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production

"From what I have seen, if you're trying to eat to maximise the sustainability of society, you'd probably be best to try and focus on nutrient density, meaning that most people would probably eat more eggs, fibrous veg, fish, and meat, and less flours, cereals, added fats and oils (mostly the unsaturated ones)....."sugars, and grains, which are much lower in nutrient density and satiety than meat, and are significant contributors to the obesity and diabetes problems we face, and are also responsible for most of the agricultural monocultures and (fossil fuel dependent) fertiliser and pesticide use. Maximising nutrient density and satiety means that you need to eat less (LINK, Marty Kendall also has a lot of good information on his Optimising Nutrition site), so reducing your impact and you'd probably waste less food (http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/). "

I disagree. The core problem is expressed in this commentary:

Conversation LINK

"Meat production is highly inefficient – this is particularly true when it comes to red meat. To produce one kilogram of beef requires 25 kilograms of grain – to feed the animal ( and clearly huge areas of grass) – and roughly 15,000 litres of water. Pork is a little less intensive and chicken less still....The scale of the problem can also be seen in land use: around 30% of the earth’s land surface is currently used for livestock farming. Since food, water and land are scarce in many parts of the world, this represents an inefficient use of resources."

This just isnt sustainable with a growing population and multiple demands on uses for land. If we lived mostly on grains, fruits and vegetables we would need far less land. It should be very obvious we could get all the calories we need from much less volume of grain and vegetables etcetera than volume of meat.

The lower nutrient density of grains and vegetables doesn't matter because they require less land to farm despite us needing to eat a larger volume, and we can largely get what we need from eating them.

Diabetes is not caused by eating grains or fruits. Its caused by eating too many grains and fruits to the point it causes obesity. Vegans as a group do not appear to have diabetes problems.

Your comment neglects to mention the vast numbers of cattle fed on grains that require fertilisers.

And we dont absolutely need artificial fertilisers to grow grains for our own direct consumption, although productivity would fall.

That said, red meat is a good source of iron and protein and cattle fed just on grass doesn't require fertilisers and is quite a sustainable option in that specific sense, so there is probably a place for some level of open grasslands cattle farming. I think its actually intensive dairy farming that is the least sustainable option because its so inefficient by requiring so many grains and so much piped water and it also typically pollutes local water ways quite badly.

I think the best solution is just to reduce red meat consumption to about one half or one quarter of what developed countries typically consume. There are many reasons and its the combination that are compelling. consumption of red meat has already declined in the UK.

"The other really good thing you could do is support regenerative systems of food production ..."

Regenerative farming in general terms mostly make sense, and is supported by good evidence.

Interactive: What is the climate impact of eating meat and dairy?

nigelj at 17:38 PM on 5 October, 2020

MAR @13, I've now read 152 onwards, and yes I'm not entirely happy signing up to Slartys maths, because the loss of carbon from deforestation and degraded soil sinks could go to several places, its not proven which, although I think its likely some would end up in the atmosphere.

Fwiw, I do think a low meat diet makes sense. RB is probably right that you can get grazing land soils to sequester more carbon, but that will take time to scale up globally, so eating less meat is a practical thing that is immediately possible.

Participating in Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training

Eclectic at 14:12 PM on 18 September, 2020

Keithy ~ Google is your friend. You can very easily research for yourself the gradual development of wind turbines.

But your questions are all over the place, like Brown's cows.

Concentrate the focus of your mind. Identify the basic "heart" of what problems are worrying you. What is it that is truly bothering you?

The world is warming gradually (from a slow start in the 1800's ). For the past 50 years, the average warming rate is around 0.15 degreesC : which is super-fast, in planetary/geological terms. And this will continue for decades into the future, with increasingly unpleasant consequences for most humans (but not for a very small minority).

Governments & businesses will adapt to some extent ~ but overall they won't enjoy it. And so the intelligent thing to do is to aim to minimize the adverse effects which are heading down the line toward us.

The deniers are in favor of taking no action ~ apart from bullshitting everyone. But what say you, Keithy? (It is a fruitless waste of time mulling over whether Al Gore stirred up the deniers, or the deniers stirred up Al Gore. That's history. We have to play the golfball from where it's sitting right now.)

Keithy , what do you think should be done about the AGW situation? Ignore it and deny its existence? Run around in circles in a panic? Surely, between those two crazy extremes, there is some prudent & logical action to be taken.

Pro Truth: A Pragmatic Plan to Put Truth Back Into Politics

Nogapspermitted at 23:06 PM on 11 September, 2020

Thank you to the leadership who have the integrity to start the ball rolling and let real understanding begin. The pure scientific logic to the endless lies cannot be underestimated!

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

MA Rodger at 22:29 PM on 16 August, 2020

Preston Urka @192,
You raise the Barakah nuclear power plants and cite the "Pudding Argument" which I set out up-thread as a way to assess the usefulness of nuclear as a technology to address AGW. (Thus for nuclear, 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. If nuclear were a useful means, where are these nuclear power plants that will be preventing AGW? This given it takes considerable time to build them and we are fast running out of the carbon budget which would limit AGW.) Note the "Pudding Argument" is more than a question of how quickly a nuclear power plant can be built and be operational. And also note that (as reported by the BBC 2/8/20) Barakah1 has solely "achieved its first criticality ... an important milestone towards commercial operations and generating clean energy." It is not yet "on-line".

Perhaps the "Pudding Argument" (and nuclear's failure to meet it) requires a little clarity.
According to Wikithing, global electricity consumption was 19,500TWh in 2013, up from 12,100TWh in 2000 or an annual increase of 3.7% which would equal 721TWh/y based on the 2013 figure. (The Wikithing page also gives global final energy consumption figures which 2012-17 increased 1.6%/y or 1,800TWh/y based on 2017.)
According to IAEA-PRIS globally there are 54 reactors under construction (including the 4 Barakah reactors) with a combined capacity of 57,441MW. That would provide an additional 450TWh of nuclear (assuming a generous 90% Load Factor and ignoring old nuclear plants being shut down). With a build-time of 10 years for these new nuclear plant, this would suggest an extra 45TWh/y nuclear capacity or 6% of the growth in global electricty consumption (or 2.5% of the growth in final energy consumption). This suggests this new-build nuclear capacity would be insufficient to maintain nuclear's percentage contribution to global energy use (4% Primary so perhaps 6% Final) let alone actually contribute to reducing carbon emissions from FF use.

The conclusion is that the present-build nuclear plant are not going to make a ha'p'orth of difference to reducing carbon emissions and given any future nuclear plants yet-to-start-construction will be at least a decade in the building and that there is no sign of any significant increase in the number of such nuclear plants being considered, I cannot but conclude that the nuclear contribution to tackling AGW has failed the "Pudding Test".

The Trump EPA is vastly underestimating the cost of carbon dioxide pollution to society, new research finds

nigelj at 07:09 AM on 1 August, 2020

gseattle @2

No population growth is not the "only real problem". Its also a question of what fuel sources that population uses, obviously I would have thought. A large population using zero carbon energy is one potential solution to the climate issue. Your own link refutes your own assertion that burning fossil fuels is not a significant problem by pointing out you need large reductions in human emissions for it to show up in the data.

Of course population growth is also problem, but lets look at the actual evidence: The rate of global population growth started falling in the late 1960's due to the demographic transition. Population growth in developed countries is near zero, and some countries have a falling population eg Japan. The main population growth of significance is in Africa and parts of Asia. This stuff is easily googled.

But the point is natural processes called the demographic transition push population growth down, like increasing wealth provides security so people dont need to have such larger families, womens rights slowly improve, contraception becomes accepted. Clearly history shows the corporation's havent managed to stop those things, even if they have tried and they benefit from the creation of wealth.

Governments sometimes intervene to make population growth fall like China's notorius one child policy but there have been others. Do corporations lobby governments to oppose such policies, and do corporations pressure the media to keep population issues off their agenda? I wouldn't be surprised, but you provide no hard evidence.

But whatever the corporations have tried to do, the overall trend globally has been slowing population growth and it will almost certainly happen in African sooner or later, and there's nothing corporations will be able to do to stop this demographic transition. In fact its clearly in their interests for countries to grow their wealth.

Refer "projections of population growth" on wikipedia to review the research on where we are and where we are most likely heading.

In terms of the climate problem, population pressure obviously contributes, but at least the trends are mostly slowing,

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Eclectic at 23:32 PM on 24 July, 2020

Preston , you make a number of good points.

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

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

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

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

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

Models are unreliable

ClimateDemon at 21:53 PM on 2 July, 2020

I agree that over the past century, the state-of-the-art of modeling and simulation has grown by leaps and bounds, especially since the development of supercomputers in the 1980s. They have been valuable tools for research and development in general, not just climate science. It should be noted, however, that such models are meant to aid scientists in their understanding of certain phenomenon, possibly identifying causes and even making short-term general predictions. They are NOT meant for government use to generate long-term predictions (which no model can do reliably), and use them as a basis for carbon taxes and regulations.

In order for a model to accurately predict climate change, it must take into account the dynamics of atmospheric fluid motion, realizing that the atmosphere is not in thermal equilibrium. [If it were in thermal equilibrium, there would be a uniform temperature and humidity over the entire surface with no winds nor storms.] This involves solving the time-dependent equations of mass balance (equation of continuity), momentum balance (Navier-Stokes equation), and energy balance which is what is done in the climate General Circulation Models. This is a set of partial differential equations that are first order in time which are generally solved in time by some type of finite difference method given the initial conditions. Note that the terms "forcings" and "feedbacks" aren't even in the vocabulary. Therefore, if there is H2O vapor in the air, its greenhouse effect is accounted for in the energy balance equation. If there is CO2 in the air, its greenhouse effect is also accounted for in the same energy balance equation. The contributions from the H2O greenhouse warming will, of course, be much greater than those of the CO2 warming, but there is nothing to indicate that CO2 has any "control knob" effect.

The only model that predicts AGW and the CO2 control knob is the one used by Lacis et. al. 2010, the staff here at SkS, or wherever AGW is preached. This is a highly oversimplified, zero dimensional model in which the earth's temperature is represented by a single scalar value T, and the H2O vapor concentration is determined by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation at temperature T. This means that the entire globe is rigidly held to this one fixed value of temperature and corresponding value of humidity, which we know is false. Furthermore, it assumes (through the Clausius-Clapeyron equation) that H2O in its vapor state and condensed states are in constant thermal equilibrium with each other, which is also false. At this point, AGW advocates generally understand the (invalid) argument as to how CO2 becomes the controlling GHG even though it is much weaker than H2O vapor, so I won't repeat it here. In general, those who preach the doctrine that a non-condensable GHG can only be a “forcing” and a condensable GHG can only be a “feedback” have been duped by the fallacies and self-inconsistencies of this “carbon-in-control” model. Another false manifestation of this model is the frozen earth scenario where all CO2 is eliminated, and as a result, there is no non-condensable GHG in the atmosphere to provide the temperature forcing needed to put H2O vapor, the stronger GHG, in the air. As a result, the entire terrestrial greenhouse effect collapses since there isn’t any of either GHG in the atmosphere, thereby leaving an iceball of an earth behind. Aside from the highly anti-intuitive nature of this prediction, it would be totally impossible to test it.

So what should we do about this CO2 control-knob theory? Do we say "It's what the science says, so we must accept it since we are scientists.", or do we do some critical thinking and say "It took several false assumptions to make the control knob argument, so there are very likely problems with it."?

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

Lawrie at 21:28 PM on 24 June, 2020

Slarty Bartfast 11 States: But this doesn't change my overall point, that sea level rise is miniscule and unmeasurable and a long way from what most media stories would imply. It is not going to submerge major cities in the next 100 years.

According to NOAA - https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php . NOAA/NESDIS/STAR provide estimates of sea level rise based on measurements from satellite radar altimeters. Plots and time series are available for TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3, which have monitored the same ground track since 1992, and for most of the altimeters that have operated since 1991, including T/P, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, ERS-2, GFO, and Envisat.

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

Since 1992 Sea levels have risen by about 80 mm and there is no evidence that the rate of increase is slowing down. Why do scientists continually need to refute the kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense emanating from people like SB?

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Preston Urka at 06:22 AM on 22 June, 2020

Some 7 years later from a very contentious discussion, I hestitate to post, but here goes!

I feel the answer to the question of "Can renewables provide baseload power?" should be "No. However, renewable energy's deficiencies can be mitigated to provide baseload power using energy storage and overbuild." - which is they way the rest of the article reads.

Storage and overbuild are mitigation strategies, not an inherent part of renewable's capabilities.

Also, it is not a great service to a reader to paint a such a rosy picture. To get to 100% renewables a major amount of work has to be done (referencing the items in the description):

for scale, https://www.iea.org/world, 23,696 TWh electricity (not total energy) in 2017

storage is at 200 GW globally, relatively small to a baseload scenario

https://www.iea.org/articles/will-pumped-storage-hydropower-expand-more-quickly-than-stationary-battery-storage

note this makes a breakdown into pumped hydro/pumped thermal/batteries/caes irrelevant - altogether very small

good news VTG, but still somewhat small - https://irena.org/newsroom/articles/2019/May/Driving-a-Smarter-Future

https://www.iea.org/fuels-and-technologies/renewables

Renewable electricity generation by source (non-combustible), World 1990-2017

geothermal is an even smaller drop at 85 TWh (0.3%) globally

solar CSP is a tiny drop at 11 TWh (0.04%)

Once we take into account overbuild of renewables, the overbuild of transmission to support previous, more storage, and demand management, it becomes a (doable) daunting task.

I also feel the point about the renewables studies are a bit too optimistic. Jacobson's paper in particular has a number of refutations with just as well-reviewed papers as his - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114 being an obvious starting point. My point isn't that 1 guy is correct and 1 guy is wrong - my point is that this is not a settled argument - and we can't bet our biosphere on optimism.

I will say that if you want to quote a source, although not as optimistic, this is a much better paper than Jacobson: https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re-futures.html

Casually reading this post I would conclude this is a done deal and we should all stop worrying about climate change. That is probably a bad message to take away.

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

nigelj at 07:55 AM on 30 April, 2020

jef @10

"All criticism of POTH fails to give hard current facts "

Not by my observation. The link I posted included several facts. Jef has to show in detail why you think its wrong, only then will people listen.

"Advocates for a renewable do not talk about after switching over electrical generation, a monumental task that insures we use up most of the afordable FFs, then we will also electricify all the work that FFs do for us more than doubling the amount of "renewable energy" needed, putting it into dream land. "

Not correct. While converting to renewables is indeed a big task, its technically and economically feasible according to numerous studies that you have not even attempted to refute.

Renewables are inevitable because sooner or later we will run out of fossil fuels. Peak oil and peak coal on wikipedia review the academic estimates and suggest we will run out in 100 - 150 years globally. Its expected that the coal rich USA will run out of economically recoverable coal in just 50 years. So renewables are inevitable, and possibly nuclear power to some extent in some places. That's another argument. The point is we need a new and clean energy grid.

"Every open area will need to be covered in solar, wind, biomass production, and every drop of FFs will be used to accomplish it, and used very rapidly due to the urgency."

No, if a country like the USA was entirely powered by solar farms it would cover less than 0.5% of the land area. Here are some credible calculations and graphics.

"With the global shutdown it is clear that we can cut all energy use in half instantly and cut further as we get smarter about it."

No it is not clear. There has been no significant change in electricity generation. There is less traffic on the roads and less air travel, but only because people are in lockdown and factories have closed. You cannot keep that up for long without severe shortages emerging. Refer to the second link I posted.

The lockdown does not prove we can reduce energy use in a dramatic and long lasting way. It does suggest that we can reduce some energy use, eg more working from home. This might remain after lockdowns are lifted, time will tell.

I do agree with Jef to the extent we must aim to reduce our energy use, but we have to be realistic about expectations. People are unlikely to be prepared to go cold in winter etc, or face supply shortages of consumer goods we take for granted these days. But people clearly are buying more energy efficient appliances, insulating homes, and some are flying a bit less and buying smaller cars. There are some realistic things we can do to be encouraged, but others look like wishful thinking to me.

"If people around the world were told the truth and understand that AGW is not a belief system that you get to believe in or not, then they would make the choice themselves to not have babies or fewer babies which would stop population growth instantly."

Yes, but it still would only have very limited benefit in terms of meeting the Paris Accord goals, because it takes time for the demographics to change as eclectic points out.

More realistic median estimates are population reaching about 10 billion by around the end of this century then slowly falling. Realistic policies might improve this a bit to maybe 9 billion people and falling more sharply. This would obviously help stop warming getting up around 5 degrees but it wont stop us getting to 2 degrees at least. And less people might consume more of the available energy and materials, in one big extravagant party, so we are reliant on some way of discouraging that.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15

nigelj at 11:50 AM on 12 April, 2020

JWRebel @2

There are far too many points and questions for me to respond to, so Ive just picked out a few that relate to things I have some knowledge of form our media.

"Nothing particularly new in this interview."

Ok maybe so, but you seem to be judging it as something meant to inform experts. It was intended more for the general public that may know virtually nothing about the issues.

"[1] Zoonotic origin. No direct evidence given for zoonotic origin"

Sounds a bit like your unsubstantiated opinion. And its an article directed at the general public not a 20 page thesis on the subject!

"[2] I have not seen anybody make a cost benefit case for social distancing. "

I have in our local media. I can't find the article but they assumed about $2 million (NZ) per human life being average earnings potential and deduced from this the government could spend $150 billion on assistance to business during a lock down, thus giving a basis to put a time frame on a lock down (all other things being equal).

"What will be the costs in human life years of the global depression we are now headed into? "

We don't know that we are heading into a global depression. The data suggests a deep recession at this stage. But I take your point, an economic recession or depression can cost lives, and obviously reduce quality of life.

My own view is that the scenario in Italy is very scary, and some level of border controls and social isolation seems very justified in my country at least (New Zealand), especially as we had a lot of tourism, but I'm not immune to the considerable economic problems lock downs bring, and their social and health implications. That is also very scary. For that reason I think lock downs have to be of limited duration, enough to buy time to strengthen health care systems, deveop a vaccine, and flatten the curve. Just so you know where I'm coming from.

"How many lives have we actually saved? "Don't forget, a 12% save rate with people on ventilators is the highest claim I've seen; it was 5% in Wuhan. If we take a one year survivor horizon, it will be even slimmer. Most of the people that didn't go to ICU would survive without hospital care (oxygen can be administered at home), so it isn't at all clear what the lives saved margin really is. "

Where have you seen your claims about ventilators? Administering oxygen at home has various logistical complications and the patient is certainly going to be infecting the whole family. But I don't really know I'm not a health care expert.

"[3] China adopted HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin +Remdesavir in their standard treatment guidelines after published clinical studies on Feb19. So did S. Korea, which had far lower mortality numbers. Yes, there are a lot more angles to this, but we seem incapable of learning from the Chinese. "

Who is we? New Zealand has copied China's lock down policy and social distancing and shortly after this rates of growth in infections started to slow and I doubt its a coincidence. Nothing much else explains it. We also used track and trace from very early on like Asian countries. Our infection rates and fatality rates are quite low comparitively speaking (easily googled).

"Do we actually know if the oral-fecal route is not important?"

This is a rather technical question for this climate website.

" Do we know whether health care itself is not a primary vector? "

I recall reading that hospitals are a major source of spread and its important to keep covid 19 patients in their own isolated wards and keep health care professionals divided into groups, and that some places are doing this.

No doubt there are things we dont know. Im not sure what you real point is. Its a new virus, the experts are dealing with it as best they can.

I have read several experts saying aerosols are a minor factor and why, and none saying they are a major factor.

"China immediately started building/dedicating facilities b/c hospitals were transmission nodes, and a third of the health care workers in Wuhan were out of commission. Interview does not mention any of this."

No it didn't. Maybe they should have, but no interview printed in the media is going to cover everything.

"[4] Vaccines. This is happy talk. Is there a vaccine for HIV or SARS? No. "

But my understanding is the Sars vaccine was cancelled because SARS fizzled out.

"Are there any virus diseases which we have been able to eradicate, barring small pox? "

Why are you asking me this? Vaccines keep measels and seasonal flu at very low levels (depending on public uptake). Dont make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Are there any vaccines against Corona viruses human or veterinarian which give more than an ephemeral protection? Do people have long-lasting antibodies to protect them against colds (Corona viruses)? No."

I read an article that although getting a corunavirus related cold does not give immunity, people who get reinfected dont have any symptoms or symptoms are at very low level as below, so its possible it may be the same with covid 19:

https://play.stuff.co.nz/details/_6145112480001

"[5] Did we do a good job protecting our health care and the most vulnerable? No. "

Again who is we? New Zealand required elderly (over 70) and vulnerable to self isolate early in the growth curve. Personally I think that is the key to the whole issue.

"Having schools shut does not significantly impact ICU demand. The entire spike in ICU demand would have to come from the risk groups. But we have shut down the economy without taking appropriate steps to quarantine the most important vector (the vulnerable), which represent virtually the entire pool (>98%) of ICU demand. 40% of deaths have come from nursing homes, globally! Not counting all those who die at home (too frail to go to ICU). These places/people should have been locked down in February, with zero people entering or exiting. Pay the staff triple overtime for staying on premise (way cheaper than Tr$6 to save all the banks and hedge funds)."

Sounds like you mean America? Young people are carriers and often asymptomatic, so surely that ultimately means it spreads at school and from there to older people? That said, I admit closing schools is a big thing and can't last indefinitely for obvious reasons.

Like I said we in NZ have isolated the elderly in home isolation early in the growth curve. However it leaves the rest home problem, although they have stopped allowing visitors from a couple of weeks ago. Most of our fatalities have been from a rest home cluster. I agree pay rest home (nursing home) staff triple the pay to stay on the premises.

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