This is Hansen et al’s end of year summary for 2009 (with a couple of minor edits). Update: A final version of this text is available here.
If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?
by James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1a, was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1b, was 0.49°C (0.88°F) warmer than in the period of climatology.
Figure 1. (a) GISS analysis of global surface temperature change. Green vertical bar is estimated 95 percent confidence range (two standard deviations) for annual temperature change. (b) Hemispheric temperature change in GISS analysis. (Base period is 1951-1980. This base period is fixed consistently in GISS temperature analysis papers – see References. Base period 1961-1990 is used for comparison with published HadCRUT analyses in Figures 3 and 4.)
The global record warm year, in the period of near-global instrumental measurements (since the late 1800s), was 2005. Sometimes it is asserted that 1998 was the warmest year. The origin of this confusion is discussed below. There is a high degree of interannual (year‐to‐year) and decadal variability in both global and hemispheric temperatures. Underlying this variability, however, is a long‐term warming trend that has become strong and persistent over the past three decades. The long‐term trends are more apparent when temperature is averaged over several years. The 60‐month (5‐year) and 132 month (11‐year) running mean temperatures are shown in Figure 2 for the globe and the hemispheres. The 5‐year mean is sufficient to reduce the effect of the El Niño – La Niña cycles of tropical climate. The 11‐year mean minimizes the effect of solar variability – the brightness of the sun varies by a measurable amount over the sunspot cycle, which is typically of 10‐12 year duration.
Figure 2. 60‐month (5‐year) and 132 month (11‐year) running mean temperatures in the GISS analysis of (a) global and (b) hemispheric surface temperature change. (Base period is 1951‐1980.)
There is a contradiction between the observed continued warming trend and popular perceptions about climate trends. Frequent statements include: “There has been global cooling over the past decade.” “Global warming stopped in 1998.” “1998 is the warmest year in the record.” Such statements have been repeated so often that most of the public seems to accept them as being true. However, based on our data, such statements are not correct. The origin of this contradiction probably lies in part in differences between the GISS and HadCRUT temperature analyses (HadCRUT is the joint Hadley Centre/University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit temperature analysis). Indeed, HadCRUT finds 1998 to be the warmest year in their record. In addition, popular belief that the world is cooling is reinforced by cold weather anomalies in the United States in the summer of 2009 and cold anomalies in much of the Northern Hemisphere in December 2009. Here we first show the main reason for the difference between the GISS and HadCRUT analyses. Then we examine the 2009 regional temperature anomalies in the context of global temperatures.
Figure 3. Temperature anomalies in 1998 (left column) and 2005 (right column). Top row is GISS analysis, middle row is HadCRUT analysis, and bottom row is the GISS analysis masked to the same area and resolution as the HadCRUT analysis. [Base period is 1961‐1990.]
Figure 3 shows maps of GISS and HadCRUT 1998 and 2005 temperature anomalies relative to base period 1961‐1990 (the base period used by HadCRUT). The temperature anomalies are at a 5 degree‐by‐5 degree resolution for the GISS data to match that in the HadCRUT analysis. In the lower two maps we display the GISS data masked to the same area and resolution as the HadCRUT analysis. The “masked” GISS data let us quantify the extent to which the difference between the GISS and HadCRUT analyses is due to the data interpolation and extrapolation that occurs in the GISS analysis. The GISS analysis assigns a temperature anomaly to many gridboxes that do not contain measurement data, specifically all gridboxes located within 1200 km of one or more stations that do have defined temperature anomalies.
The rationale for this aspect of the GISS analysis is based on the fact that temperature anomaly patterns tend to be large scale. For example, if it is an unusually cold winter in New York, it is probably unusually cold in Philadelphia too. This fact suggests that it may be better to assign a temperature anomaly based on the nearest stations for a gridbox that contains no observing stations, rather than excluding that gridbox from the global analysis. Tests of this assumption are described in our papers referenced below.
Figure 4. Global surface temperature anomalies relative to 1961‐1990 base period for three cases: HadCRUT, GISS, and GISS anomalies limited to the HadCRUT area. [To obtain consistent time series for the HadCRUT and GISS global means, monthly results were averaged over regions with defined temperature anomalies within four latitude zones (90N‐25N, 25N‐Equator, Equator‐25S, 25S‐90S); the global average then weights these zones by the true area of the full zones, and the annual means are based on those monthly global means.]
Figure 4 shows time series of global temperature for the GISS and HadCRUT analyses, as well as for the GISS analysis masked to the HadCRUT data region. This figure reveals that the differences that have developed between the GISS and HadCRUT global temperatures during the past few decades are due primarily to the extension of the GISS analysis into regions that are excluded from the HadCRUT analysis. The GISS and HadCRUT results are similar during this period, when the analyses are limited to exactly the same area. The GISS analysis also finds 1998 as the warmest year, if analysis is limited to the masked area. The question then becomes: how valid are the extrapolations and interpolation in the GISS analysis? If the temperature anomaly scale is adjusted such that the global mean anomaly is zero, the patterns of warm and cool regions have realistic‐looking meteorological patterns, providing qualitative support for the data extensions. However, we would like a quantitative measure of the uncertainty in our estimate of the global temperature anomaly caused by the fact that the spatial distribution of measurements is incomplete. One way to estimate that uncertainty, or possible error, can be obtained via use of the complete time series of global surface temperature data generated by a global climate model that has been demonstrated to have realistic spatial and temporal variability of surface temperature. We can sample this data set at only the locations where measurement stations exist, use this sub‐sample of data to estimate global temperature change with the GISS analysis method, and compare the result with the “perfect” knowledge of global temperature provided by the data at all gridpoints.
| 1880‐1900 | 1900‐1950 | 1960‐2008 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meteorological Stations | 0.2 | 0.15 | 0.08 |
| Land‐Ocean Index | 0.08 | 0.05 | 0.05 |
Table 1. Two‐sigma error estimate versus period for meteorological stations and land‐ocean index.
Table 1 shows the derived error due to incomplete coverage of stations. As expected, the error was larger at early dates when station coverage was poorer. Also the error is much larger when data are available only from meteorological stations, without ship or satellite measurements for ocean areas. In recent decades the 2‐sigma uncertainty (95 percent confidence of being within that range, ~2‐3 percent chance of being outside that range in a specific direction) has been about 0.05°C. The incomplete coverage of stations is the primary cause of uncertainty in comparing nearby years, for which the effect of more systematic errors such as urban warming is small.
Additional sources of error become important when comparing temperature anomalies separated by longer periods. The most well‐known source of long‐term error is “urban warming”, human‐made local warming caused by energy use and alterations of the natural environment. Various other errors affecting the estimates of long‐term temperature change are described comprehensively in a large number of papers by Tom Karl and his associates at the NOAA National Climate Data Center. The GISS temperature analysis corrects for urban effects by adjusting the long‐term trends of urban stations to be consistent with the trends at nearby rural stations, with urban locations identified either by population or satellite‐observed night lights. In a paper in preparation we demonstrate that the population and night light approaches yield similar results on global average. The additional error caused by factors other than incomplete spatial coverage is estimated to be of the order of 0.1°C on time scales of several decades to a century, this estimate necessarily being partly subjective. The estimated total uncertainty in global mean temperature anomaly with land and ocean data included thus is similar to the error estimate in the first line of Table 1, i.e., the error due to limited spatial coverage when only meteorological stations are included.
Now let’s consider whether we can specify a rank among the recent global annual temperatures, i.e., which year is warmest, second warmest, etc. Figure 1a shows 2009 as the second warmest year, but it is so close to 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 that we must declare these years as being in a virtual tie as the second warmest year. The maximum difference among these in the GISS analysis is ~0.03°C (2009 being the warmest among those years and 2006 the coolest). This range is approximately equal to our 1‐sigma uncertainty of ~0.025°C, which is the reason for stating that these five years are tied for second warmest.
The year 2005 is 0.061°C warmer than 1998 in our analysis. So how certain are we that 2005 was warmer than 1998? Given the standard deviation of ~0.025°C for the estimated error, we can estimate the probability that 1998 was warmer than 2005 as follows. The chance that 1998 is 0.025°C warmer than our estimated value is about (1 – 0.68)/2 = 0.16. The chance that 2005 is 0.025°C cooler than our estimate is also 0.16. The probability of both of these is ~0.03 (3 percent). Integrating over the tail of the distribution and accounting for the 2005‐1998 temperature difference being 0.61°C alters the estimate in opposite directions. For the moment let us just say that the chance that 1998 is warmer than 2005, given our temperature analysis, is at most no more than about 10 percent. Therefore, we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that 2005 is the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.
Figure 5. (a) global map of December 2009 anomaly, (b) global map of Jun‐Jul‐Aug 2009 anomaly. #4 and #2 indicate that December 2009 and JJA are the 4th and 2nd warmest globally for those periods.
What about the claim that the Earth’s surface has been cooling over the past decade? That issue can be addressed with a far higher degree of confidence, because the error due to incomplete spatial coverage of measurements becomes much smaller when averaged over several years. The 2‐sigma error in the 5‐year running‐mean temperature anomaly shown in Figure 2, is about a factor of two smaller than the annual mean uncertainty, thus 0.02‐0.03°C. Given that the change of 5‐year‐mean global temperature anomaly is about 0.2°C over the past decade, we can conclude that the world has become warmer over the past decade, not cooler.
Why are some people so readily convinced of a false conclusion, that the world is really experiencing a cooling trend? That gullibility probably has a lot to do with regional short‐term temperature fluctuations, which are an order of magnitude larger than global average annual anomalies. Yet many lay people do understand the distinction between regional short‐term anomalies and global trends. For example, here is comment posted by “frogbandit” at 8:38p.m. 1/6/2010 on City Bright blog:
“I wonder about the people who use cold weather to say that the globe is cooling. It forgets that global warming has a global component and that its a trend, not an everyday thing. I hear people down in the lower 48 say its really cold this winter. That ain’t true so far up here in Alaska. Bethel, Alaska, had a brown Christmas. Here in Anchorage, the temperature today is 31[ºF]. I can’t say based on the fact Anchorage and Bethel are warm so far this winter that we have global warming. That would be a really dumb argument to think my weather pattern is being experienced even in the rest of the United States, much less globally.”
What frogbandit is saying is illustrated by the global map of temperature anomalies in December 2009 (Figure 5a). There were strong negative temperature anomalies at middle latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, as great as ‐8°C in Siberia, averaged over the month. But the temperature anomaly in the Arctic was as great as +7°C. The cold December perhaps reaffirmed an impression gained by Americans from the unusually cool 2009 summer. There was a large region in the United States and Canada in June‐July‐August with a negative temperature anomaly greater than 1°C, the largest negative anomaly on the planet.
Figure 6. Arctic Oscillation (AO) Index. Positive values of the AO index indicate high low pressure in the polar region and thus a tendency for strong zonal winds that minimize cold air outbreaks to middle latitudes. Blue dots are monthly means and the red curve is the 60‐month (5‐year) running mean.
How do these large regional temperature anomalies stack up against an expectation of, and the reality of, global warming? How unusual are these regional negative fluctuations? Do they have any relationship to global warming? Do they contradict global warming?
It is obvious that in December 2009 there was an unusual exchange of polar and mid‐latitude air in the Northern Hemisphere. Arctic air rushed into both North America and Eurasia, and, of course, it was replaced in the polar region by air from middle latitudes. The degree to which Arctic air penetrates into middle latitudes is related to the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index, which is defined by surface atmospheric pressure patterns and is plotted in Figure 6. When the AO index is positive surface pressure is high low in the polar region. This helps the middle latitude jet stream to blow strongly and consistently from west to east, thus keeping cold Arctic air locked in the polar region. When the AO index is negative there tends to be low high pressure in the polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid polar air into middle latitudes.
Figure 6 shows that December 2009 was the most extreme negative Arctic Oscillation since the 1970s. Although there were ten cases between the early 1960s and mid 1980s with an AO index more extreme than ‐2.5, there were no such extreme cases since then until last month. It is no wonder that the public has become accustomed to the absence of extreme blasts of cold air.
Figure 7. Temperature anomaly from GISS analysis and AO index from NOAA National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center. United States mean refers to the 48 contiguous states.
Figure 7 shows the AO index with greater temporal resolution for two 5‐year periods. It is obvious that there is a high degree of correlation of the AO index with temperature in the United States, with any possible lag between index and temperature anomaly less than the monthly temporal resolution. Large negative anomalies, when they occur, are usually in a winter month. Note that the January 1977 temperature anomaly, mainly located in the Eastern United States, was considerably stronger than the December 2009 anomaly. [There is nothing magic about a 31 day window that coincides with a calendar month, and it could be misleading. It may be more informative to look at a 30‐day running mean and at the Dec‐Jan‐Feb means for the AO index and temperature anomalies.]
The AO index is not so much an explanation for climate anomaly patterns as it is a simple statement of the situation. However, John (Mike) Wallace and colleagues have been able to use the AO description to aid consideration of how the patterns may change as greenhouse gases increase. A number of papers, by Wallace, David Thompson, and others, as well as by Drew Shindell and others at GISS, have pointed out that increasing carbon dioxide causes the stratosphere to cool, in turn causing on average a stronger jet stream and thus a tendency for a more positive Arctic Oscillation. Overall, Figure 6 shows a tendency in the expected sense. The AO is not the only factor that might alter the frequency of Arctic cold air outbreaks. For example, what is the effect of reduced Arctic sea ice on weather patterns? There is not enough empirical evidence since the rapid ice melt of 2007. We conclude only that December 2009 was a highly anomalous month and that its unusual AO can be described as the “cause” of the extreme December weather.
We do not find a basis for expecting frequent repeat occurrences. On the contrary. Figure 6 does show that month‐to‐month fluctuations of the AO are much larger than its long term trend. But temperature change can be caused by greenhouse gases and global warming independent of Arctic Oscillation dynamical effects.
Figure 8. Global maps 4 season temperature anomalies for ~2009. (Note that Dec is December 2008. Base period is 1951‐1980.)
Figure 9. Global maps 4 season temperature anomaly trends for period 1950‐2009.
So let’s look at recent regional temperature anomalies and temperature trends. Figure 8 shows seasonal temperature anomalies for the past year and Figure 9 shows seasonal temperature change since 1950 based on local linear trends. The temperature scales are identical in Figures 8 and 9. The outstanding characteristic in comparing these two figures is that the magnitude of the 60 year change is similar to the magnitude of seasonal anomalies. What this is telling us is that the climate dice are already strongly loaded. The perceptive person who has been around since the 1950s should be able to notice that seasonal mean temperatures are usually greater than they were in the 1950s, although there are still occasional cold seasons.
The magnitude of monthly temperature anomalies is typically 1.5 to 2 times greater than the magnitude of seasonal anomalies. So it is not yet quite so easy to see global warming if one’s figure of merit is monthly mean temperature. And, of course, daily weather fluctuations are much larger than the impact of the global warming trend. The bottom line is this: there is no global cooling trend. For the time being, until humanity brings its greenhouse gas emissions under control, we can expect each decade to be warmer than the preceding one. Weather fluctuations certainly exceed local temperature changes over the past half century. But the perceptive person should be able to see that climate is warming on decadal time scales.
This information needs to be combined with the conclusion that global warming of 1‐2°C has enormous implications for humanity. But that discussion is beyond the scope of this note.
References:
Hansen, J.E., and S. Lebedeff, 1987: Global trends of measured surface air temperature. J. Geophys. Res., 92, 13345‐13372.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997‐31022.
Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947‐23963.
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, and M. Medina‐Elizade, 2006: Global temperature change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 103, 14288‐14293.
I must say that I find this article amazing in the British understatement sense. Firstly, it is clear from the graphs of the complete GISS data in figure 1 and of the HadCRUT and GISS data in figure 4 that the past decade remains special among the last decades. The trend is suddenly clearly quite flat – it is difficult to say whether it is in fact rising or falling but it is flat. This is not commented on in the entire article – only a rather desperate and not very interesting wish to get the past year as the second warmest. So it is not at all surprising that the public is feeling that global warming has stopped. It has and your data show it. Secondly, it is also amazing that this article fails to make any reference to UAH (or RSS) MSU satellite data. These data have their own pros and cons but give a much better global coverage and less need to revert to extreme methods such as assing measurements to boxes where no measurements have been made(!) They clearly show the same thing, the past decade was essentially flat. If you start at 2000 (an unusually cool year) you get a very slow warming of about 0.5 C per century. If you start in 2001 you actually get cooling. Thirdly, the Arctic Oscillation Index discussion is very interesting. Why did not that appear many years ago? Suddenly an explanation is presented why so many winters in the last decade in northern Europe have been so warm. This row of warm winters is probably the one most important reason for people to have believed in AGW. No serious climate scientist would have believed that, of course, the change was far too rapid and extreme. But the scientist have remained essentially dishonestly SILENT on this question and left the public to their own misleading imagination and in the grip of unserious activist journalists, presumably for the “good cause”. Not surprising then that in this winter when people have became aware that winters can still be severe and cold, that they have started to seriously doubt AGW and climate science in general.
Finally, a question that could prove important in the future. For how long must the global temperature remain flat (but with noise, of course) until you accept that the trend has been broken? Another 5 years, 10 or perhaps 20? This time is important since it gives us a measure of when the current model-measurement relation can be falsified. And stating the number of years in advance makes the test much more valuable.
“So explain me how anything I can do NOW will have the slightest influence on the welfare of people living in 50 years”
Ah, an interesting question, usually used as an excuse for inaction. But if everyone uses the same excuse, nobody will do anything. What we actually need is for everyone to act, since it is only in aggregate that our efforts can be made felt.
Think of it as a vote in an election. Alone, your vote means almost nothing. But if nobody voted, democracy would not exist. Together, millions of votes represent the will of the people – and can have a significant impact on the world.
I can’t speculate about what happened in China 50 years ago – but I do know that certain past decisions in other countries have turned out very badly. For example, if Chernobyl had never happened, or had not been used as a rallying cry for anti-nuke protesters, then perhaps now coal would be marginalised as an energy source, and replacing it completely would be a small matter of adding a few extra wind turbines and reactors. Ah, what might have been. We don’t really profit from looking back with regret, but we would be very foolish not to learn the lessons that history can teach.
re 494: can you prove it won’t stop or slow people migrating?
Why would they migrate?
One reason is that they can’t grow enough food. Have a look at the border countries of an African nation with famine.
What do you think those people in camps on foreign land are? Tourists?
“Bangladesh will need to develop adaptive strategies for sea level rise”
Like invade another country.
Of course, they don’t have much in the way of an army, but pakistan has nuclear weapons.
Gilles,
Sorry, I’m not interested in pursuing this further. I thought you were asking an honest question; I tried to provide answers. It seems clear at this point that you’re not going to accept anything I say, but just want to waste my time asking more and more questions, with the firm intention of ignoring any answers I give.
RS: the solubility of co2 is INVERSELY proportional to temperature. If SSTs in the tropics are increasing then the proportion of co2 dissolved into those waters declines
BPL: This is only true at equilibrium. At present acidity is increasing despite increasing temperatures because partial pressure in the atmosphere is increasing faster.
Re: 362 Richard Steckis says…
“You bring up the good old ocean acidification crock.”
Not a crock.
Science 20 November 2009:
Aragonite Undersaturation in the Arctic Ocean: Effects of Ocean Acidification and Sea Ice Melt
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;326/5956/1098?
Vol. 326. no. 5956, pp. 1098 – 1100
DOI: 10.1126/science.1174190
(excerpt)
“…the effects of decreased CO32– concentrations on marine organisms may place some species at risk (3, 4). For either aragonite or calcite, the two types of CaCO3 produced by marine organisms, the saturation state of CaCO3 () is expressed by the product of the concentrations of CO32– and Ca2+ in seawater relative to the stoichiometric solubility product at a given temperature, salinity, and pressure. Waters with > 1 are favorable to forming CaCO3 shells and skeletons, but waters with < 1 are corrosive, and in the absence of protective mechanisms, dissolution of CaCO3 will commence. In surface waters, is lower in high-latitude oceans than tropical or temperate oceans (4, 5) because colder water absorbs more CO2 and this reduces CO32–. Therefore, apart from intermittent upwelling of undersaturated subsurface water as observed along the North American coast (6), surface waters are expected to become undersaturated ( < 1) first in high-latitude oceans as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase. The Southern Ocean is predicted to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite-type CaCO3 (aragonite is more soluble than calcite) by 2030 (7) and the North Pacific by 2100 (8). Model simulations of the Arctic Ocean predict will decrease because of freshening and increased carbon uptake as a result of sea ice retreat and that Arctic surface waters will become undersaturated with aragonite within a decade."
see also:
"Impacts of ocean acidification on marine fauna and ecosystem processes"
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/3/414?ijkey=8989c8d0e180bb4b74761b23e57e19cbf111963d&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2008 65(3):414-432; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsn048
"Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) is altering the seawater chemistry of the world’s oceans with consequences for marine biota. Elevated partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) is causing the calcium carbonate saturation horizon to shoal in many regions, particularly in high latitudes and regions that intersect with pronounced hypoxic zones. The ability of marine animals, most importantly pteropod molluscs, foraminifera, and some benthic invertebrates, to produce calcareous skeletal structures is directly affected by seawater CO2 chemistry. CO2 influences the physiology of marine organisms as well through acid-base imbalance and reduced oxygen transport capacity. The few studies at relevant pCO2 levels impede our ability to predict future impacts on foodweb dynamics and other ecosystem processes. Here we present new observations, review available data, and identify priorities for future research, based on regions, ecosystems, taxa, and physiological processes believed to be most vulnerable to ocean acidification. We conclude that ocean acidification and the synergistic impacts of other anthropogenic stressors provide great potential for widespread changes to marine ecosystems.”
Steven: “The trend is suddenly clearly quite flat ”
Incorrect.
There is no significant difference in the trend for the last 10 years from the trend predicted by the role of AGW.
The ***trend*** is ***up***.
The ***error*** in the trend determination is ***high***.
Because 10 years isn’t long enough to determine a trend.
Giles: “i just said : I don’t understand why cutting MY fossil fuel use now will influence in any way that of chinese or indian people in 50 year”
Because reducing CO2 now will mean that there will be a lesser change in the climate the world will encounter in 50 years time.
The poorest will ALWAYS come out worse in any change. The poorest live in China and India (and Africa).
Therefore they will be better off if you do your part to reduce CO2 production by humans.
This is not rocket science.
Completely fed up (507): I agree that ten years is short given the “noise”. But when looking for a trend change you have no choice but to look at recent data. See RSS data plotted during the last decade at http://klimatet.jorsater.se/#post12. It looks quite flat to me! Certainly, it does in no way support a continued trend anymore than it does a flat trend. Maybe you missed my point and end – suppose THAT an underlying trend change has ocurred – when will everybody agree that is has done so judging from the measurements?!
[Response: But maybe it started again last Tuesday? If the uncertainty in the trend is large you simply can’t conclude anything. – gavin]
Gilles asks: “OK, let consider the whole water : What could the 500 millions Chinese people have done 50 years ago to change YOUR life now ?”
Instituted birth control earlier. Avoided the cultural revolution, which retarded Chinese economic and and cultural development. Kept riding bicycles. Instituted pollution controls. Practiced responsible water and soil management. Opened up to the West earlier. Allowed Internet freedom.
Want more?
in other , more scientific words : what is the correlation length and time in the way different people live in the world ?
We are still living with political mistakes made at the end of the US civil war, WW I, WW II, the colonial era. Tobacco is now a global health scourge, even though it was almost banned by the Spanish crown in the 16th century. I use calculus on a daily basis–the product of a 17th century mind. As Faulkner said, “The past isn’t over. It isn’t even past.”
“and how do you insure the fuels that you don’t burn now will never be extracted in the future ?”
By finding alternative energy sources so that fossil fuels are not needed and by educating people about the consequences of burning fossil fuels.
The fuel you burn today will release CO2 that will be around for hundreds to thousands of years. The full consequences of that added CO2 will not manifest for decades to centuries. So it is quite possible your children could live in a world where environmental conditions worsen steadily toward a complete collapse they can do nothing to avoid. I guess the question is whether you want your children to die cursing your name with their last breath.
” It looks quite flat to me! ”
That doesn’t mean the trend is flat.
You’re picking two points and going “but they look flat between them”.
You’re not even picking 10 years of data: you’re picking 2 years worth of data 10 years apart.
Steven Jorstater, do you understand what a complicated process it is to turn the spectral measurements made by a satellite into a lower troposphere temperature? It is hardly straightforward, and the result is hardly free of error. If your “trend” is present in only one dataset, it ain’t significant.
Here is an exercise for both you and Tilo. Model your temperature data as a linear mean with gaussian noise around that mean–that gives you 3 parameters. Now assume that SOMEWHERE there is a change in that trend, that can be modeled via a second linear trend–that gives this new model 7 parameters–2 slopes and intercepts, 2 noise standard deviations and a date that best fits the change. Determine these parameters using a likelihood fit and calculate the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). If the likelihood for the 7 parameter is not a factor of ~55 better than your linear trend, the linear trend will have superior predictive power. In other words, your additional parameters will give you no additional information. Be sure to report back!
Gilles, do you make your obedience to the law conditional upon other people following it, too? Your ethical choices in areas such as marital fidelity, telling the truth, not causing distress to others by inadvertence, etc.?
No?
So if you do the right thing in these areas just because it is the right thing, why would you do harm to the environment just because it’s convenient and “everybody else is doing it?”
Steven J., we are not constrained to argue only from statistical fits of temperature and CO2.
There’s a highly detailed understanding of the physical mechanisms involved. The predictions of warming follow mostly from this: and they’ve been looking very good. Yes, the 2000s look flat–but they were also very, very warm. The statistics are such that the second fact is a good deal more significant than the first.
Me, post 486: 1.5 million people displaced, two nuclear reactors affected, billions in real estate impacted… no big deal, right?
Septic Matthew, post 498: “Are you sure that they can’t build levees? Levees are not unknown in the Netherlands, along the central US rivers like the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, and their tributaries, and in the California central valley. Levees at least 6 feet tall, 20 feet broad and covered in trees are not unknown. By 2030 there ought to be plenty of evidence whether that forecast of a 27 inch rise by 2060 is realistic, and the building of any necessary levees can be started.
More problematical by far are Calcutta, Bangladesh and Venice.”
They may be able to do something in some areas, but you’re talking substantial expense to do it (look at the cost of the work going on in the Gulf post-Katrina). And again, this is just one very small part of the global coastlines that will be impacted. We may save coastal Florida at great expense, but what about the rest of our coastlines? How much expense would it take to either armor and levee our coasts, or relocate populations along them? And the US is a wealthy country, many other coastal countries (and areas like you name like Calcutta)will not have the wealth and resources to do that.
I thank all people who took some time to answer me. Unfortunately , I think it is becoming kind of dialogue of the deaf, where I’m asking an explanation of how what I do now will change the life of further , distant, generations, with some explanation why I don’t think it will, and I am answered basically “How DARE you being so selfish as not to think about future generations ” . I think few people have realized that to avoid putting CO2 in the atmosphere, it is not enough to spare fuel now : you also have to prevent ANYBODY IN THE FUTURE to burn it. actually all the fuel available now will be burnt anyway in the next 100 years, so basically sparing it now will only delay a little bit it’s use , but not change anything in its contribution to the total CO2 in 2100. But depriving future generation of left fossil fuels would probably be for them much more a problem than a solution.
What really matters is the use of the extra 1000 or 2000 GtC of coal – although this coal is NOT YET discovered, NOBODY KNOWS where it is,and whether we ever can extract them, and who and where they will be used – if they are used. Just look at the differences between the scenarii to understand that. So it’s simply very unlikely that the fact that they are burnt or not in the course of the XXIth century depends strongly on the way we use now conventional resources.
Actually my best guess is quite different of IPCC scenarii , at the moment. I think basically that non-conventional resources will never be extracted at the pace IPCC is predicting. Conventional reserves correspond approximately to the lowest B1 scenario (although the repartition of fossil fuels is quite different). Already the oil seems to peak much earlier than predicted, and the theories that it will be massively replaced by coal is probably imaginary as well – CTL is much too expensive to be produced at comparable rate. Peak oil will plunge the world in the deep recession for centuries -aggravated when natural gas, then coal will peak at their turn- I think the situation BPL describes will happen, although may be not so rapidly that he imagines. Just taking conventional reserves give approximately 550 ppm CO2 in 2100. You may think it is still too much, but I don’t think we can reasonably do less – or more. And I think that mankind is basically able to cope with that. The true mess is that we don’t have real alternatives to fossil fuels, so that the civilization is gradually condemned to decline. I really think that the global temperature will be a minor problem compared with the decline of fossil fuels, for an obvious reason : the standard of living is obviously much more dependent on the fossil consumption than on the average temperature of your country. Just compare a rich Italian with a poor Norway guy, a rich guy in Arizona with a poor guy in Illinois, and even a rich Indian with a poor german. So that’s really a strange thing to think that cutting fuel consumption to avoid some degrees more is a good bargain – and the failure of Copenhaguen is just the evidence of how weird this idea is. My prognosis is that mankind will never cease to extract as much fuel as possible to feed it’s inextinguishible thirst for energy – but that Nature will limit it very soon to “reasonable” values. We’ll already see in ten years how things go, I think ;).
SM — baloney. Look at the discussion of flood risk around the Sacramento River and the problems with levees now, and estimated costs. This is a huge problem.
Levee failure will introduce salt into groundwater in a major agricultural area. When the floodwater is removed, much of the salt will remain. This irreversible result of a failure is a big worry in the planning process.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Sacramento+River+levee+flood+sea+level
“Unfortunately , I think it is becoming kind of dialogue of the deaf, where I’m asking an explanation of how what I do now will change the life of further , distant, generations, with some explanation why I don’t think it will”
Well, the response is really “you think wrong”.
Not “how DARE you think selfishly”.
But if a persecution complex gets you through the day, feel free.
“you also have to prevent ANYBODY IN THE FUTURE to burn it.”
Wrong: we don’t prevent anybody from burning dung in a fire.
It’s just that there’s not many dung-fuelled cars around any more.
Because we’ve got better than dung to burn and we developed technology to avoid having to do so.
And you’re assuming that in 100 years, someone will come along with your mindset and decide to burn that coal.
Why would they?
Gilles – I think you’re a WUM which is why I haven’t engaged with you so far, but I hope these useful comments answer your questions
“I thank all people who took some time to answer me. Unfortunately , I think it is becoming kind of dialogue of the deaf, where I’m asking an explanation of how what I do now will change the life of further , distant, generations,”
What /we/ do now, collectively, will determine climate impact. What /you/ do, on your own, is meaningless, but since we are /all/ individuals we either act, collectively, selfishly and do not solve the problem, or act, collectively, to reduce emissions, deforestation etc. and attempt to solve the problem. I think that is clear.
“I think few people have realized that to avoid putting CO2 in the atmosphere, it is not enough to spare fuel now : you also have to prevent ANYBODY IN THE FUTURE to burn it.”
I think that /anyone/ who’s spent /any/ effort on climate policy realises this. The entire object of the execise is to leave the coal and tar sands in the ground, and the forests intact. That is the object of mitigation policy (as opposed to climate science). I should point out that Realclimate is largely about climate science, not mitigation policy.
“actually all the fuel available now will be burnt anyway in the next 100 years, so basically sparing it now will only delay a little bit it’s use , but not change anything in its contribution to the total CO2 in 2100. ”
This is incorrect. The object of the execise would be to LEAVE THE FUEL in the ground. To do this, obviously, you need clean alternatives, or CCS (which burns the fuel but buries the CO2)
“But depriving future generation of left fossil fuels would probably be for them much more a problem than a solution. ”
Incorrect. You understand neither the cost of the problem, nor the cost of the solution. Read ‘The Stern Review’
“What really matters is the use of the extra 1000 or 2000 GtC of coal – although this coal is NOT YET discovered, NOBODY KNOWS where it is,and whether we ever can extract them, and who and where they will be used – if they are used.”
Read IEA World Energy Outlook 2009. There is more than enough KNOWN coal, oil, gas and non-conventional resource to take us a long way past 450ppm CO2. Or google “Known coal reserves” which leads to
http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-is-coal-found/
“It has been estimated that there are over 847 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that there is enough coal to last us over 130 years at current rates of production. In contrast, proven oil and gas reserves are equivalent to around 42 and 60 years at current production levels”
“Just look at the differences between the scenarii to understand that. So it’s simply very unlikely that the fact that they are burnt or not in the course of the XXIth century depends strongly on the way we use now conventional resources.”
I have no idea what you are talking about here. And the word is “scenarios”, not “scenarii”
“Actually my best guess is quite different of IPCC scenarii , at the moment.”
Your best guess is based on your own ignorance (as already displayed by comments like “this coal is NOT YET discovered, NOBODY KNOWS where it is”). The IPCC scenarios are based on known economic drivers. I’d take the economists who contributed to the IPCC plus the IEA economists who wrote the WEO 2009 over your ‘best guess’.
“I think basically that non-conventional resources will never be extracted at the pace IPCC is predicting.”
What does the IPCC predict about non-conventional resources.
“Conventional reserves correspond approximately to the lowest B1 scenario (although the repartition of fossil fuels is quite different).”
This statement is completely untrue. It is based on nothing more than your ferbile imagination.
“Already the oil seems to peak much earlier than predicted,”
Define ‘much earlier’. The IEA say peak oil will not occur between now and 2030. The IEA is the World’s leading authority on global energy. What are your qualifications, exactly?
“and the theories that it will be massively replaced by coal is probably imaginary as well – CTL is much too expensive to be produced at comparable rate.”
What evidence do you have for this? CTL is economic in South Africa. What EVIDENCE (which is different from your ‘feeling’) do you have that CTL would not be economic in the USA and China?
“Peak oil will plunge the world in the deep recession for centuries -aggravated when natural gas, then coal will peak at their turn”
What evidence do you have for this utterly ridiculous claim? What evidence do you have that a range of technologies, including solar, wind, tidal, nuclear and biomass cannot produce energy at the necessary scale?
“I think the situation BPL describes will happen, although may be not so rapidly that he imagines. Just taking conventional reserves give approximately 550 ppm CO2 in 2100.”
This statement is NOT TRUE. Just taking conventional reserves takes us far inexcess of 550ppm as the IEA have set out, clearly, in WEO 2009. Read it.
“You may think it is still too much, but I don’t think we can reasonably do less – or more.”
We /can/ do less (though I don’t think we will). We will do more, if we do nothing now. There is 130 years of coal left. We pass 550ppm, on a BAU, before 2050. Even if we to fix emissions at current levels (and NO ONE believes that will happen) we’ll get there in under 60 years.
“And I think that mankind is basically able to cope with that.”
Do you? Good. What evidence do you have for that? What degree of GDP loss could mankind live with?
“The true mess is that we don’t have real alternatives to fossil fuels”
Not true
“so that the civilization is gradually condemned to decline.”
Not true. Your assumption is that we don’t have the ability to innovate and develop new forms of energy. This is demonstrably false, as the invention of nuclear (to pick a tech at random) over the last 50 years shows.
“I really think that the global temperature will be a minor problem compared with the decline of fossil fuels, for an obvious reason : the standard of living is obviously much more dependent on the fossil consumption than on the average temperature of your country.”
This is true, right up until the point climate change has wrecked agricultural production world wide, and you starve to death.
“So that’s really a strange thing to think that cutting fuel consumption to avoid some degrees more is a good bargain”
You’re argument is that fossil fuels are going to run out and this will kill us all. So we should burn them quicker. My argument is that fossil fuels are going to run out, and in the meantime do enormous damage to the environment, so we should move, as quickly as possible to alternatives.
Your arguement appears to be that alternative sources of energy are impossible. This arguement is based on no evidence whatsoever.
” – and the failure of Copenhaguen is just the evidence of how weird this idea is.”
This, I agree with. Current economics forces us to increase consumption. It cannot does not cost future environmental degradation properly, and it can’t deal with resource depletion.
” My prognosis is that mankind will never cease to extract as much fuel as possible to feed it’s inextinguishible thirst for energy”
This is probably true
” – but that Nature will limit it very soon to “reasonable” values.”
This is false.
” We’ll already see in ten years how things go, I think ;).”
You predicting peak coal in the next 10 years?
I’ll give you a prediction. In 10 years time global CO2 emissions will be higher than they are today and there will be ample coal reserves, and demand for coal, to keep them going to 2050 at least.
Hopefully, over the next 10 years, record investment in clean technology will lead to major breakthroughs, particularly in solar, that offer alternative energy sources that mean, if we chose to limit CO2 emissions, we can.
And I’ll give you one further prediction. Irrespective of the damage done by climate change, human society will continue (probably with a very much smaller population, or at least a very much smaller ‘rich’ populatuion) and, when they run out of fossil fuels, they will have the innovative capacity to find alternatives.
We aren’t heading for extinction. We might undergo population crash.
Comment to Ray Ladbury (512): You miss the point completely. I asked the question at the end how many years of a new trend are required before you believe in it. Your answer seems to be – almost never! Not very scientific… And yes, I think I have an idea of the difficulties in the calibration of the satellite data having worked with the calibration of Space Telescope data for a couple of years. Measuring surface temperature of a globe with something like 1% coverage seems harder… Besides, as I wrote, the flatness is seen in the the GISS data as well.
Comment to Kevin McKinney (514): “There’s a highly detailed understanding of the physical mechanisms involved”. Yes, and I am Santa Claus! It is exactly this unscientific overbelief in largely untested models and the underlying physics that I react against. Climate models have essentially never been tried in different parameter spaces (compared to the present one) and compared with real data and thus the credibility must necessarily remain low until that is done [please reconstruct the Little Ice Age or the end of the real Ice Age as a SIMPLE exercise]. There are some parameters that are poorly known and most likely a number are unknown. The CO2 by itself is possibly quite straightforward but the nonlinear feedback processes simply aren’t as you all know. Anything from land use, cloud sensitivity and space interaction remain at best obscurely understood. Complex numerical models of this kind typically contains so many parameters and are sensitive to them all that getting only one wrong may be catastrophic for the result. There is a famous parallel example in astronomy regarding Supernova 1987 A. Stellar models, vastly more trained and better understood than climate models since there are many well observed stars with widely different parameters (ages, metallicities, masses etc.) that they have been trained on, all predicted that a precursor of a supernova should be a red giant star. Before 1987 A no precursor had ever been observed. When it blasted off in nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, a well mapped region, the precursor could be identified. It was – blue! Not surprising, within a few months after the event papers started to appear indicating that blue supernovae were indeed possible. Post fact – models can always be adapted. Science advances by disbelief rather than belief. I think that on these pages we all want to understand the climate, don’t we? Let’s do science then and not religion!
[Response: Fine, but why then do you have a dogmatic belief that climate models are untested? This is not true. They predicted the response of the climate to Pinatubo before that impact was seen, they predicted warming from the 1980s before it occurred, they correctly predicted that the original CLIMAP ocean temperatures for the last glacial maximum would be revised down with better data, they predicted that the original MSU data which showed cooling were wrong (and they were) etc. – gavin]
Gilles, You seem to be resisting learning what the consequences of warming are. Yes, it is likely that the worst consequences will occur for your children and grandchildren than for you. I do not understand why that means YOU should not care. I care, and I don’t even have children!
Your prognosis is based on nothing beyond your own opinion–no research, no learning, no deep analysis. If this is really the best you can do, then fine. I personally would not be satisfied with it. I would want to understand the world around me.
Comment by Steven Jörsäter — 22 January 2010 @ 12:48 PM
Further to this post, it seems that a lot of folks are really missing the boat on the entire climate model history of development, challenges met, present limitations, etc. Over and over, we hear various anecdotes of other model failures, these used as analogies to climate models. I’m a fan of analogy but it only works in the simplest of cases, for portraying something that can be substantially conveyed without need for detail.
Steven, without picking on you on in particular but just as the most recent example, you say,
“Climate models have essentially never been tried in different parameter spaces (compared to the present one) and compared with real data and thus the credibility must necessarily remain low until that is done…”
But climate models have faced exactly these things you describe, some of them long ago. It’s not flattering to you and it’s counterproductive to discussion when you make such an assertion. In its general features, your assertion is one of the most tired and exhausted misunderstandings found on this site. You need to be much more specific if you’re going to effectively attack models.
Now I’m going to be entirely redundant and post a hint as to where you might be able to derive an argument worth pursuing:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm
Steven Jorsatter: Try here:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/30Years.html
“On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html
Friday, 22 January, 2010
How denialists assist with climate science. Doesn’t help them much though.
Silk
”
What /we/ do now, collectively, will determine climate impact. What /you/ do, on your own, is meaningless, but since we are /all/ individuals we either act, collectively, selfishly and do not solve the problem, or act, collectively, to reduce emissions, deforestation etc. and attempt to solve the problem. I think that is clear.”
That’s only an unproved statement. Just repeating it again doesn’t prove it more. Kyoto was supposed to “do something”, and it has really done nothing. Do you believe in facts, or in theology?
”
I think that /anyone/ who’s spent /any/ effort on climate policy realises this. The entire object of the execise is to leave the coal and tar sands in the ground, and the forests intact. That is the object of mitigation policy (as opposed to climate science). I should point out that Realclimate is largely about climate science, not mitigation policy.”
That’s true, this debate should rather take place on TheOilDrum for instance.
There is a very simple way of leaving all the fuels in the ground : live like during Middle Age. Very simple.
The tough issue is to keep the current standard of living without fuels. You seem to think there is no fundamental problem to do that. The only thing is that there is absolutely no fact proving it’s possible. The current countries without (or almost) fuels are Afghanistan, So malia, Chad, Haiti (you sure have seen recently some pictures of the latter on the news). And it is so obvious that development is impossible without fuels that all developing countries are excluded from restricting their fuel consumption. Why do that, if they are not necessary ?
“This is incorrect. The object of the execise would be to LEAVE THE FUEL in the ground. To do this, obviously, you need clean alternatives, or CCS (which burns the fuel but buries the CO2)”
I agree. You could also need Santa claus or some fairies. That doesn’t prove they exist.
““But depriving future generation of left fossil fuels would probably be for them much more a problem than a solution. ”
Incorrect. You understand neither the cost of the problem, nor the cost of the solution. Read ‘The Stern Review’”
Right. I don’t understand the Stern review. It seems it compares to different solutions : a situation with GDP A, with X fossil fuels and a climatic cost C, giving a A-C benefit. and a situation A , with much less Y fossil fuel, and a mitigation cost D, giving a A-D benefit. As D<C, it concludes : the best choice is the second one.
But for me that's silly. If we can produce A with only Y fuels instead of X, it means we have improved energy efficiency by X/Y. Fine, but the rightl thing to do is to produce A*X/Y with X fuels ! Of course you will find again the climatic cost C , but the net benefit will be A*X/Y – C, that you can verify is much larger than any of the previous values. Because it is much more interesting to use energy efficiency to produce MORE wealth with the same amount of energy than THE SAME wealth with less energy – it would be stupid not to consume the energy left, since they produce much more wealth than even the climatic cost.
"
Read IEA World Energy Outlook 2009. There is more than enough KNOWN coal, oil, gas and non-conventional resource to take us a long way past 450ppm CO2. Or google “Known coal reserves” which leads to
http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-is-coal-found/
“It has been estimated that there are over 847 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that there is enough coal to last us over 130 years at current rates of production. In contrast, proven oil and gas reserves are equivalent to around 42 and 60 years at current production levels”
That's exactly what I said. Have you ever computed the amount of CO2 this would produce ? more than 450 ppm, but less than 550 . Now compare the extra cost to go from 450 to 550 ppm; and compare it with the cost NOT extracting this coal.
"“Just look at the differences between the scenarii to understand that. So it’s simply very unlikely that the fact that they are burnt or not in the course of the XXIth century depends strongly on the way we use now conventional resources.”
I have no idea what you are talking about here. And the word is “scenarios”, not “scenarii”"
Actually the right italian plural is scenari, but ok for scenarios.
You don't have any idea of what I'm talking about? I'm talking about the amount of coal you must burn to reach dangerous levels of CO2. What is a dangerous level of CO2 for you, why, and which amount of coal do you have to burn to reach it ?
"
Your best guess is based on your own ignorance (as already displayed by comments like “this coal is NOT YET discovered, NOBODY KNOWS where it is”). The IPCC scenarios are based on known economic drivers. I’d take the economists who contributed to the IPCC plus the IEA economists who wrote the WEO 2009 over your ‘best guess’.
"
You mentioned 850 billions t coal or so. Compare to the answer you gave to the above question, the amount of coal you need to burn to reach dangerous levels.
And what would you bet for the oil production in 2020 based on the IEA and IPCC scenario ? I think I'd like to bet with you.
"
“Conventional reserves correspond approximately to the lowest B1 scenario (although the repartition of fossil fuels is quite different).”
This statement is completely untrue. It is based on nothing more than your ferbile imagination.
"
That's very, very easy to settle : it's just a comparison between two numbers : the total amount of carbon in proved reserves, and the amount of carbon burnt in the most conservative B1 scenario (taking into account that everything has not been burnt in 2100 but you can still extrapolate the fuel consumption with an exponential decrease).
Do you want to do the exercise or do you want me to give you the answer ?
"
“Already the oil seems to peak much earlier than predicted,”
Define ‘much earlier’. The IEA say peak oil will not occur between now and 2030. The IEA is the World’s leading authority on global energy. What are your qualifications, exactly?
"
just an average scientist. What would you bet for the oil production in 2020 ? which countries do you think are able to raise their production to reach this goal ?
"
What evidence do you have for this? CTL is economic in South Africa. What EVIDENCE (which is different from your ‘feeling’) do you have that CTL would not be economic in the USA and China?
"
it's produced indeed, but just evaluate how much per capita.
"
What evidence do you have for this utterly ridiculous claim? What evidence do you have that a range of technologies, including solar, wind, tidal, nuclear and biomass cannot produce energy at the necessary scale?
"
first all these energies but biomass produce electricity, and electricity does not replace oil where it is irreplaceable, mainly in transportation. The evidence I have is just that each burst of the barrel price above current 80 $ has been followed by a severe recession – including the present one. If you think it was only due to subprimes and some foolish bankers, just wait for some years …till the next oil shock in fact. You will then better judge how "ridiculous" is my claim.
This statement is NOT TRUE. Just taking conventional reserves takes us far inexcess of 550ppm as the IEA have set out, clearly, in WEO 2009. Read it.
YOU read it please ! and read also Hansen, even him admitted that (though he thinks 550 ppm is still too much).
“And I think that mankind is basically able to cope with that.”
Do you? Good. What evidence do you have for that? What degree of GDP loss could mankind live with?
mankind can live like in Middle Age. Actually it has done it. So you can basically divide the GDP by 100, approximately (but of course not exactly in the way we live now; but you may now that still a lot of people are living approximately like that, even now).
"“The true mess is that we don’t have real alternatives to fossil fuels”
Not true
"
If it is not true, why do we admit that we should not restrain developing countries to use fossil fuels ? why do they refuse to develop without increasing their fuel consumption? do you think they are stupid ?
BTW, do you know how to produce without fossil fuels : concrete, steel, all kind of metals, plastics, paintings, insulators, glass, glues, fertilizers, medicines, solvents, semiconductors, etc… many of them being rather useful for all alleged "alternatives" to fossil ?
“so that the civilization is gradually condemned to decline.”
Not true. Your assumption is that we don’t have the ability to innovate and develop new forms of energy. This is demonstrably false, as the invention of nuclear (to pick a tech at random) over the last 50 years shows.
Nuclear produces only 15 % of the world electricity, 5% of the total energy. And if you want it to produce more, you will have only 10 years of reserves – breeding reactors are awful to master and are politically very sensitive. And again, it produces only electricity, and you don't make everything with it – beginning with the above list.
“I really think that the global temperature will be a minor problem compared with the decline of fossil fuels, for an obvious reason : the standard of living is obviously much more dependent on the fossil consumption than on the average temperature of your country.”
This is true, right up until the point climate change has wrecked agricultural production world wide, and you starve to death.
"
I predict that the decline of fossil fuels will be the primary issue for agriculture, starting with the price of fertilizers and fuel for engines.
"
You’re argument is that fossil fuels are going to run out and this will kill us all. So we should burn them quicker. My argument is that fossil fuels are going to run out, and in the meantime do enormous damage to the environment, so we should move, as quickly as possible to alternatives.
"
Of course we SHOULD if they would exist ! I say that they don't really exist. I never said we must burn them quicker. I said it would be stupid not to use what we can easily extract from the ground. The rest will be too difficult anyway.
"
Your arguement appears to be that alternative sources of energy are impossible. This arguement is based on no evidence whatsoever.
"
I just look at facts.
And isn't YOUR argument that we will never be able to face some degrees more on the Earth? what EVIDENCE do you have of that?
"
” We’ll already see in ten years how things go, I think ;).”
You predicting peak coal in the next 10 years?
"
No – but peak oil will be enough to reduce first energy consumption per capita, then total energy consumption (around 2025 following my estimates).
"I’ll give you a prediction. In 10 years time global CO2 emissions will be higher than they are today and there will be ample coal reserves, and demand for coal, to keep them going to 2050 at least."
It's possible, but it won't be enough to produce more than 550 ppm.
"
And I’ll give you one further prediction. Irrespective of the damage done by climate change, human society will continue (probably with a very much smaller population, or at least a very much smaller ‘rich’ populatuion) and, when they run out of fossil fuels, they will have the innovative capacity to find alternatives."
That's plainly contradictory, if you mean by "alternative" something as efficient as fossil fuels = why should the population decrease then? If it's not as efficient, that's basically what I'm saying, and we are heading not for extinction – I think that mankind can survive some billions years yet – but for gradual decline, and eventually total extinction of the industrial civilization.
Gilles,
Peak oil is upon us. We have no choice but to change our energy infrastructure. The question is whether we rely on cheap and very dirty coal or go with cleaner, sustainable energy sources that will require significant research to develop and integrate into a coherent whole.
Climate science is trying to tell us something very important that shifts the balance of this equation. It tells us that there is a not insignificant risk that further reliance on fossil fuel could permanently change our planet’s climate–the climate upon which the infrastructure of civilization depends.
There is precisely one habitable planet that humans are likely to ever set foot on, Gilles. That is Earth. I would contend that we ought to have a little trepidation about carrying out an uncontrolled experiment on that planet–particularly when all the science tells us it’s a very bad idea.
Steven Jorstater,
First, a climate trend becomes clear with about 30 years of data–that’s a definition based on statistics. After 15 years, it becomes enticing, but it is not definitive. Is that OK with you, or do you want us to make a special exception for you?
As to your experience on telescopes, there is a really, really big difference between calibrating a purpose-built detector to perform the mission it was designed to perform and extracting a signal from an instrument that was never designed to measure that parameter. The GISS and HADCRUT algorithms are comparatively much simpler.
Now as to your assertions about models, all I can say is BULLSHIT! To contend that stellar models are better understood than climate models is simply laughable, and saying that climate models have not been validated is either astoundingly ignorant or mendacious.
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
And frankly, I find your accusation that the entire scientific community–not just the climate scientists–is deluding itself to be insulting.
So, Steven, next time you want an ego boost from throwing your buzzwords around, maybe you should pick a site that isn’t so full of real scientists who will see through your bullshit like the thin gruel that it is.
#524 Tim: Interesting reference.
However, it appears that the impact of system changes are still not adequately discussed. A station’s temperature readings are not only dependent on sensor type (mercury vs. some electronic type), but also on how well the sensor is protected against direct sunlight, IR-radiation from the ground, rain and winds.
A standard Stevenson screen (a.k.a. cotton field screen) is naturally ventilated (in most cases), so on a cloudless day with very light winds its temperature reading can be a couple of degrees higher than it should be. If the screen is dirty, the heating can be several degrees. These errors are strongly diluted of course whenever there are clouds or moderate winds, and they disappear at night.
U.S. introduced screens with forced ventilation apparently in the 1980’s. This eliminates the solar heating errors. That results in a cooling of the readings. If this system change can be corrected for, I do not know. It is a very complex issue, dependent on cloud and wind conditions on each station.
Globally, forced ventilation screens have not become dominant for cost reasons – they require electric power. Power is a major issue on most automatic weather stations. Also a desire to maintain a standard has been important for climatological reasons, even if the standard is less accurate. A completely new level of interest in climatology has also motivated improvements of thermometer screen maintenance, so there are more freshly painted and clean screens in the network. Some cooling bias is introduced.
Several national weather services have carried out comparisons involving different screen types but not much has been published. There was even an extensive and carefully organized test arranged by the WMO/CIMO (Commission on Instruments and Methods of Observation). Data was collected from tens of commercial screen types installed side-by-side. Unfortunately funding was cut before a final report was finished.
Overall it is a minor error of measurement. Recent data is a little cooler than it should be, by less than 0,1 degC.
Gavin in #433,
Turns out that was not a useful link in any case. It had average data rather than annual. Still, I was surprised to see Gabon missing since it is stable and prosperous. I’m interested in fig. 9 and the explanation for the regions that have not warmed. Could the Falkland and Benguela Currents help to explain what is seen there? But the missing data might be important to what is seen in fig. 9 as well.
Ray, if you admit that peak oil is upon us, then you admit that there is a big flaw in IEA predictions, and so in IPCC scenarios, because none has predicted such an early peak in oil production. That is a true issue : why did they mistake so much ? I think that’s because they tool their scenarios from economists, who don’t know about physical constraints, and have been used to think that growth is just an economic question, and that we can feed it with any kind of energy at any price. That’s -in my mind- profoundly erroneous. Growth is linked to the availability of increasing amount of CHEAP energy, not only energy. That’s not true anymore with oil.
“We have no choice but to change our energy infrastructure.” That’s true if we refuse absolutely to become poorer (which is understandable anyway). It is not obvious at all that it’s possible, but your sentence shows that you wouldn’t like become poorer,and probably nobody would like it too. But it means ALSO that it is very unlikely that we would willingly not extract fossil fuels we can access in the ground : meaning concretely that you close a coal mine, a gas or an oil well, although they still hold a lot of this treasure. And it is very unlikely that what YOU spare now won’t be used by anybody else in the world- for instance these people in Bengladesh you are very much concerned about, that REALLY NEED THEM, even with a very efficient energy system. So what I try to explain is what you consider as “conservation” is just a change in repartition, in space and maybe in time, and that all the easily accessible fuel, includind 850 Gt coal, will be much probably consumed anyway, for the very same reason that drives your “we must change our energy system” – because that’s in human nature not liking getting poorer.
Now on the consequences of this burning, I’m still skeptical; I really think that fossil fuels produce CO2 and that CO2 may produce warming. I think that climate scientists may be a little be too confident about the strength of heavy computations and the epistemological value of “look, great, we can fit the data”. Actually many wrong models can fit data. The real strength of a model is its predicting power. I still wait for a strong – not too obvious, meaning significantly different from what other models would predict – prediction to be confirmed by observations AFTER it has been done. Before that, I remain cautious on the exact value of climate sensitivity. So my present status is : I think that the three pillars of the AGW speech are : uncertain climate models, unlikely fossil fuels, and unreasonable economics.
Gilles, Until the price spike in 2008, NOBODY but the Club of Rome was predicting peak oil in the near term. Even now, it is difficult to predict whether we are upon it or whether we’ll hit the wall in a couple of decades. However, Peak Oil is not the end of fossil fuels. Coal remains plentiful–and very dirty. And after that we have oil shale and tar sands. And if you think humans would just give up on energy consumption even if the fossil fuels were gone, you clearly have not spent any time in India or Africa or Indonesia, where entire forests are disappearing to make charcoal.
And given that your understanding of the climate models, energy and economics are all founded on the single pillar of your own ignorance, you will forgive me if I don’t take it too seriously.
“530
Gilles says:
23 January 2010 at 2:46 AM
Ray, if you admit that peak oil is upon us, then you admit that there is a big flaw in IEA predictions, and so in IPCC scenarios,”
Why?
Peak oil doesn’t mean “can’t get out more oil”, it merely means that the rate at which you can get oil out cannot increase with demand.
And as anyone who’s done ANY reading on free markets knows, when demand rises but supply cannot match that rise, prices go up.
What’s happened to oil prices, Gilles?
Earth Changes —->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7I_eFoIk64
Re:531 Ray Ladbury says:
23 January 2010
“Gilles, Until the price spike in 2008, NOBODY but the Club of Rome was predicting peak oil in the near term.”
Au contraire, mon ami! Some of the first proponents of the concept, C.J.Campbell, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), http://www.peakoil.net/ has conventional oil peaking ~2008. (We were seeing this chart in 2004)
http://www.aspo-ireland.org/contentFiles/newsletterPDFs/newsletter100_200904.pdf
Scroll to oil and Gas production Profiles
see also:
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
A lot of us were onto peak oil before 2008.
See: http://dieoff.org/ for the more grim scenarios following the peak in peak oil.
Completely Fed Up says: 23 January 2010 at 10:54 AM
“Peak oil doesn’t mean “can’t get out more oil”, it merely means that the rate at which you can get oil out cannot increase with demand.”
Indeed and that will need to be repeated, ad nauseam.
But the situation is even worse, in the medium to long term. Production will begin trending downward, not so terribly long from now.
The collision between rising demand and declining production is going to be truly spectacular.
There will be beneficiaries of that collision, of course. Folks with large production royalty shares are going to harvest a lot of money in years to come. I’m not sufficiently versed in economics to say if they’d do better trickling this revenue over many decades versus grabbing it as quickly as possible as a side effect of thoughtless behavior. The reality of human nature indicates there will be an astonishing acceleration in cash flow when production/demand curves truly cross.
We had an endowment of petroleum that– if it had been used wisely, with combustion as a temporary measure– would have made a wonderful ladder for us to climb up and away into the future. We’ve wasted it, to the point it’s easily conceivable we’re going to have a needless lot of bother and aggravation.
FWIW, the Arctic is below average for this time of year, having cooled about 15C in the past 3 weeks: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It isn’t unusual for the Arctic temp to swing up and down 15C-20C during fall, winter, and spring, but it is intriguing that it has cooled while simultaneously sending all that cold air to northern Europe and Asia.
Re:530 Gilles & 531 Ray Ladbury, 23 January 2010
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me you both perceive peak oil and peak coal to mean nearing the end of the supply. Nothing could be further from the truth. Peak oil simply means the peak in global oil production. Every year following the peak oil companies will produce less oil than the year before. Most likely long plateaus in production will follow the peak as new technology enhances recovery.
Something else to remember, originally M. King Hubbert was referring to conventional oil, oil drilled up out of the ground. Now we have unconventional oil like Alberta tar sands, deep, offshore oil, oil shale and coal to liquids as potential sources of unconventional oil. We have methane clathrates as a source of natural gas. We also have potential oil and gas finds in the Arctic coming as the Arctic ice sheet melts. Much of this is unaccounted for in setting a date for peak oil. Sometimes it is recognized and the charts see the peak out 20 years. Whatever, it’s an illusion to think that just because oil (or coal) has peaked we’ll be seeing a whole lot less produced anytime soon.
As we cross the peak demand will increase. Remember it will be a plateau for some years as new production is spurred by rises in price. Therefore prices will be higher. And then demand destruction will ensue and demand will drop. And then the price. The economy goes nuts. We just went through such an episode. Peak oil had nothing to due with the price rise, except perhaps in some people’s heads.
Another aspect of the economy flattening the peak in peak oil will be the emergence and application of new energy producing technology. But in aggregate alterative energy won’t replace demand for fossil fuel. It will supplement it as population pressure and the revolution in rising expectations has more people seeking a better life.
There will be more fossil fuel energy combined with alternative energy until as alternative energy becomes more available and cheaper there is more of that available than high priced fossil fuel. The peak in peak oil will be flattened for years as heavy demand is softened and alternative energy supplants the use of fossil fuels.
But we almost certainly will not stop using fossil fuels until they have reached practical limits in recovery, many decades from now. Thus we won’t be looking at the end of emissions for decades as humanity strives to support its addiction to a material world. Peak oil will not be the silver bullet. The only thing that will attenuate emissions is government intervention –
a carbon tax or cap and trade. Even that will simply be seen as a cost of doing business. Some sorts of sequestration technologies including Biochar could help downstream. But again, no silver bullet.
Fossil fuel would have to be outlawed to prevent global warming. Right now, does anyone in a sober moment actually think this will happen?
All this is to say, DO NOT count on peak oil or peak coal to end our emissions crisis and thus our greenhouse gas warming problem.
As Al Gore answered one day, “There’s enough coal left in the ground to fry the planet.”
The only answer is to willfully leave the stuff in the ground. I suspect we’ll have a taste of the reason why this coming summer and fall.
http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/
Gilles (#530) says: “I still wait for a strong – not too obvious, meaning significantly different from what other models would predict – prediction to be confirmed by observations AFTER it has been done. Before that, I remain cautious on the exact value of climate sensitivity.”
Take a look at the link in #527.
#501 (Steven Jorsatter) and subsequent comments (e.g., #523)
If the temperature of a given year is lower than the temperature the previous year then, yes, it would be technically correct to say that the earth cooled during that year. However, this information is not useful if one’s purpose is to predict what the Earth’s temperature will be 100 years from now. For that, one needs 30 – 50 years of data for reasons explained by BPL in 523 (22 January, 5:39 PM)
Analogy: The fact that you have just descended into a valley doesn’t mean that you’re not heading toward the mountains.
Steven (#501): Do me a favor and analyze the data for yourself. Google GISTEMP, find the file with the annual global mean surface-ocean index, enter the mean annual data of 1970-2009 in the spreadsheet software of your choice, make a chart, and add a linear trendline. You will see that the trendline almost exactly matches the 2009 data point. No surprise here: the first half of 2009 was in the wake of a La Nina event, and the second half was the onset of an El Nino event, and the two effects canceled each other in the annual mean. What this little analysis shows you is that global warming in the early 2000s was ahead of schedule due to some persistent El Nino events. Global warming is exactly where it’s supposed to be. There is no stalling of global warming at all.
Ray, I am surprised that you are so little informed about the peak oil community. As reminded by Tim Jones, peak oil has been rather precisely predicted to happen between 2005 and 2010 by Campbell and Lahérerre in 1998 in Scientific American, in their seminal paper “The End of Cheap Oil”,
http://dieoff.org/page140.htm
These predictions have been repeated by a lot of people like Matt Simmons, whereas official agencies predicted BAU continuous growth.
There is a lot of references, but just have a look on 2006 predictions
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/3/104458/751
compared to 2009 situation
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5979
Completely Fed Up : I’m totally aware that peak oil means an increase of price, of course. I’m just saying that the peak of production has never been predicted to occur so early by IEA and EIA, and hence by IPCC scenarios. It’s understandable that an intergovernmental agency can not tell something else than another one – but if one is mistaking, the other will too. Basically enconomists seem to have forgottent the other half of the basic law of offer and demand, that is the demand is decreasing when prices go up ! it’s often said that the elasticity of oil is very low – but it’s not vanishing. And a low elasticity just mean that the prices will climb to the sky when the resource is depleting – and they just did it.
But if peak oil is now, it means that we won’t extract much more than the conventional resources, around 150 Gtep left, and probably that will be the same for coal, not more than 800 GtC. taking into account that the exhaustion won’t be completed in 2100 , this give a maximum concentration of CO2 around 575 ppm, as has been shown by Hansen.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GB003142.shtml
(the authors considered that this is already a dangerous level, but it is comparable with the lowest B1 scenario – I have some doubt about the real “danger” of such a concentration. And I have still more doubts that the effort needed to cut further the coal use to stay below 450 ppm , meaning practically cutting all power almost everywhere in the world, would produce less harm that the GW of 2°C -assuming GCM are correct of course.
Tim Jones, I admit the my statement about Peak Oil coming as a surprise was a bit of an exaggeration. However, Club of Rome started making noise about it in 1972! Imagine how things might have been different if we’d listened. Although somewhat pessimistic about abilities to find future reserves, they were only off by a couple of decades. Not bad for a simple model.
And yes, I know that consumption doesn’t stop at the peak. However, the exponential rise in consumption of petroleum does, while the exponentially rising demand for energy does not! From a greenhouse point of view, coal is an even bigger nightmare than oil, particularly if we are talking about extracting a liquid fuel for transport from it.
Known extractable coal reserves are about a teratonne. That’s about enough to double CO2 content in the atmosphere by itself–even if more than half the CO2 goes into the ocean. And what is more, this would likely happen in ~50 years or so. I don’t think Peak Oil or Peak Coal will save us, or Peak Oil Shale or Peak Tar Sands for that matter.
These pages of analysis that make exactly two points:
(a) The fluctuations in temperature being analyzed are small relative to uncertainties associated within the primary data and those arising from arbitrary choice of the model to distill them to draw an argued conclusion.
(b) Whether one concludes that 2005 is slightly warmer than 1998 or vice versa depends on the choice of model.
Any healthy science would infer, correctly, that any conclusion that depends on an arbitrary choice of an analytical model and, in any case is scarcely outside of experimental error (if that) is not a conclusion worth arguing about.
But climatology is not a healthy science. It is politicized from top to bottom, and therefore everyone on both sides is selecting models to manipulate the data to get the answer that they want about conclusions that are not worth having, all while politicians declare the “science settled”. No wonder climatology is doing such damage to the public perception of scientists and science.
The facts are clear. Today’s temperatures are not higher (and may be lower) than temperatures created by natural variation in the Medieval, Roman, or Minoan periods. Even this statement is not worth arguing over, as it is correct enough given errors involved. Further, even this variation is negligible compared to the variation that we know can naturally occur, as undisputed records in the Pliocene, Miocene, and Pleistocene establish.
And none of this is relevant to the issue at hand: Will human CO2 release create a new regime in climate behavior? It is conceivable that humankind’s generation of CO2 will overwhelm natural variation, even though it is quite clear that existing models that credit CO2 as a climate “forcer” are essentially unsustained by an analysis of the historical past, especially in the Pleistocene and Pliocene. Again, this disfunctional field cannot even get this discussion right (meaning, one cannot see a thread of Aristotelian logic that moves from data to conclusion).
Re:542 Ray Ladbury says:
23 January 2010
“Known extractable coal reserves are about a teratonne. That’s about enough to double CO2 content in the atmosphere by itself–even if more than half the CO2 goes into the ocean. And what is more, this would likely happen in ~50 years or so. I don’t think Peak Oil or Peak Coal will save us, or Peak Oil Shale or Peak Tar Sands for that matter.”
Both of us are trying to make clear that living in climate la la land because peak fossil fuels will solve all our problems is
grasping at straws to justify business as usual. …as if peak oil was going to solve ANY problems. Peak oil is one of the whammies of a double whammy coming out of burning hundreds of millions of years worth of ancient sunshine.
Oh, good God, CO2’s GHG properties are well-known physics.
You might as well be arguing against gravity.
[edit]
Sean says: 23 January 2010 at 10:10 PM
What was that all about? No questions, no contribution of information, just a casserole of expired talking points. It looked like something generated by a machine, for Pete’s sake.
Come to think of it, it really does look artificial. But it does not pass the Turing test.
Ray, actually things have changed since 1970. The energy efficiency has indeed improved. Nuclear energy has been developed. Peak oil should have occurred maybe 10 years ago if nothing would have been done. But the gain has been only a shift in a peak – modest shift after all. Because the real message of Club of Rome was that an endless growth is impossible, and that any exponential curve will catch up any limit in a few growth times – the growth(doubling) time correponding to +2%/yr being only 35 years. Basically, it means that the period of growth cannot exceed a few centuries, meaning that we are more or less at the peak. The question is where is PRECISELY this peak? now? in 50 years ? in 100 years, which would assume a further 10 times increase of our energy consumption ?
I’m just stating that all indicators, starting with peak oil, show that the global peak of civilization is much more likely to be close that distant, and that it is merely ignored in IPCC scenarios.
I agree on your teratonne or so of extractible coal , actually of easily extractible fossil fuels since oil and gas wouldn’t add so much. I agree on the doubling of CO2. I disagree it would happen in 50 years, since it would require an unreasonable growth rate of coal consumption. I disagree that this is an “nightmare”, since I am not aware of a real catastrophe associated with a doubling of CO2. 20 cm sea level rise ? moving by a few 100 km to the south in climate equivalent ?
for 100 years, the climate has already warmed by almost one degree, and fossil fuels have multiplied by 10 the average consumption per capita (and still more in developed countries). What has been the most important factor in the all-day life between these two ?
Different countries differ currently by order of magnitudes in their fuel consumption AND by several degrees (more than 10°C I guess) in their average temperature. So it is an obvious thing to seek for the correlation between the standard of living and these two factors. Compare Sweden,Italy, Illinois, California, North Korea,South Korea, Western Germany and Eastern germany : do you see a correlation of life with climate, or with fuel consumption ? Honestly ?
How can you imagine that decreasing the fossil consumption by a factor 2 , 3 or 4 could be done at no cost, with no harm, or at least with much less consequences than an increase of 1 or 2 °C more ? I can’t see the scientific and rational argument behind this; all the facts I know just show the exact opposite. So I may be ignorant and stupid, but I just ask for an explanation.
Sean: existing models that credit CO2 as a climate “forcer” are essentially unsustained by an analysis of the historical past, especially in the Pleistocene and Pliocene.
BPL: I take it you’re not familiar with any of the work of Lasaga, Berner, Walker, Hays or Kasting on the carbonate-silicate cycle.
In the meantime, try here:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
Pay special attention to the ones that deduced their figures from paleoclimate data. See also:
Knutti, R. and G. Hegerl 2008. “The equilibrium sensitivity of the earth’s temperature to radiation changes.” Nature Geoscience 1, 735–743. [3 K, 2.0-4.5]
Giles: “Completely Fed Up : I’m totally aware that peak oil means an increase of price, of course. I’m just saying that the peak of production has never been predicted to occur so early by IEA and EIA”
And Peak Oil isn’t “peak production”.
Look, you say English isn;t your first language, but this has been repeated again and again and AGAIN.
Peak oil isn’t peak production.
Peak oil is not peak production.
When peak oil is past, you haven’t necessarily reached peak production.
Peak production and peak oil are not the same.
Sean:
“Any healthy science would infer, correctly, that any conclusion that depends on an arbitrary choice of an analytical model”
But that is not the correct inference.
Your climate model isn’t going “look, we fit the graph and the temperatures are going up”.
Your climate model is going “these are the factors that affect the temperature and this is how we think they will change in the future”.
When that future becomes the past, you no longer have to guess which way the factors changed: you have seen the change.
Just like Hansen’s 88 model had a pinatubo-like eruption not at the time and strength of the real one that happened, but when it HAD happened, the EXACT SAME MODEL could be rerun with the actual eruption in the place it was and the strength it was and guess what?
It turned out pretty accurate.
A scientist would not make your mistakes, Sean.