This month’s open thread.
Since there are two main topics (Advocacy and Methane bombs) buzzing around the blogo-twitter-sphere this week, perhaps those are our starters for ten… (Feel free to populate the comments with links to various commentaries – we will chime in as we find time).
All I can see is the abstract, not the figures, but this may help:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278434302000651#
Continental Shelf Research
Volume 22, Issue 16, November 2002, Pages 2409–2428
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0278-4343(02)00065-1
Gas in Marine Sediments: Contributions from the 5th International Conference orgainsed by the Shallow Gas Group, Bologna, Italy, September 1998
The bubble mechanism for methane transport from the shallow sea bed to the surface: A review and sensitivity study
Kevin,
I just updated the post with this study, which is supplemental to the discussion.
Deep Arctic Ocean warming during the last glacial cycle
doi:10.1038/ngeo1557
Source
wmar posted this on DotEarth
What is this about? Considering the source, it is probably bogus, but I would like an expert opinion.
Luciano Lepori S, Gian Carlo Bussolino, Andrea Spanedda and Enrico Matteoli C
IPCF-CNR, Pisa, Italy
”The isotope ratio C13/C12of atmospheric CO2has been measured over the last decades using mass spectrometry. From these data the fraction of fossil CO2in atmospheric CO2is straightforwardly calculated: 5.9 %(1981) and 8.5 %(2002). These results indicate that the amount of past fossil fuel and biogenic CO2 remaining in the atmosphere, though increasing with anthropogenic emissions, did not exceed in 2002 66 GtC, corresponding to a concentration of 31 ppm, that is 3 times less than the CO2 increase (88 ppm, 24 %) occurred in the last century. This low concentration (31 ppm) of anthropogenic CO2in the atmosphere is consistent with a lifetime of t(1/2) = 5.4 years, that is the most reliable value among other in the range 2-13 years, obtained with different measurements and methods. Contrary to the above findings on the concentration of fossil CO2and its residence time in the atmosphere, in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change it is stated that almost 45 % of anthropogenic emissions, corresponding to 88 ppm or 24 % of the total CO2, have remained in the atmosphere with a mean lifetime of t(1/2) = 30.5 years. On these assumptions are based both the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming and the climate models.”
Sorry.
An Internet search found that this came from Hockey Schtick, and is now rattling around the denialosphere.
Luciano Lepori S, Gian Carlo Bussolino, Andrea Spanedda and Enrico Matteoli C
IPCF-CNR, Pisa, Italy
“A paper presented at the SEVENTEENTH SYMPOSIUM ON THERMOPHYSICAL PROPERTIES finds that the lifetime and residence time of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere are only about 5.4 years, far less than assumed by the IPCC. The paper corroborates prior work by Salby, Humlum et al, Frölicher et al, Cho et al, Calder et al, Francey etl, Ahlbeck, Pettersson, Segalstad, and others which has demonstrated that man-made CO2 is not the primary driver of atmospheric CO2.”
The linked symposium was in 2009. Seems like this paper would have received more notice by now if it was legit. Wonder if they made a simple arithmetic error.
I did a search of RealClimate and found nothing about any of the authors, so apparently this one has not been covered before.
Re- Comment by prokaryotes — 14 Aug 2013 @ 8:35 AM
I followed the link you provided for Kevin McKinney in this post and there is no science there. You linked to a blog that wrote what you quoted but the statement is not referenced, in the blog, to any science in a refereed journal. Actually there is no scientific reference for this set of stated facts at all except for some vague referral to Hansen’s work at the beginning of the multipart article. This is not how science is communicated. What is said may be correct or not, there is just no way for readers to check it without referral to some actual science.
Steve
hm. Interesting attention this got:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ice+age+50%2C000+11%2C000+year
AIC @304: the “mathematical” mistake appears to be that they have mistaken the half life of a single CO2 molecule with the half life of *excess* CO2.
Possibly someone pointed that out at the conference.
Steve Fish #305
Yes, im aware of this – judging the author’s expertise based on previous content and because it’s a physical process description, which reduces the margin of error. I also believe that this is exactly how active research works, since at one point a study will weight in or someone will point out the obvious with better sources and or data.
I’ve been reminded of how methane is broken down, via hydroxyl radicals, as a partial answer to my question. This explains the undulating pattern of methane concentrations in the Arctic atmosphere, though doesn’t explain why Gavin’s response (mentioned in my question) appeared to state a different pattern from what we see in the data. A supplemental question is: can this pattern of methane concentration variation, due to how hydroxyl radicals accumulate in the Arctic atmosphere, overwhelm an hypothesised significant release of sub-sea free methane below the permafrost in the ESAS?
Chuck Hughes @ 290
“Is that a habitable temperature?”
What does ‘habitable’ mean? Look at the news. In the world’s trouble spots you see people adjusting their expectations and going about their business under pretty extreme circumstances. By 2100, no matter what happens, what life was actually like in 2013 will be for most a forgotten shadow in some mythic past. As for us, we can only see the broadest outlines of what the future might be like.
For that, see the chapter on four degrees in the book “Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas.
Grim.
Re- Comment by prokaryotes — 15 Aug 2013 @ 1:49 AM
This is not “exactly how active research works.” It does not! Even the most personal scientific interactions regarding interpretation of one’s own data or even extravagant extrapolations always involve commonly known or overt reference to the research of others. Scientific information very rarely arises de novo. Just look at any research article, scientific review, the topic starter posts here at Real Climate, or Michael Mann’s “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” book, that was written for general consumption, to see appropriate attribution. In scientific communication when further clarification or support for a statement is requested, it is a strong value that this be supplied as soon as possible.
Documentation is necessary for science to proceed efficiently and in any case it is just plain impolite not to make original and supporting information immediately available. Bloggers who do not do this cannot be easily checked and can lead readers astray because of ignorance or intent. This is how Watts and his ilk get away with twisting facts. The problem is made much worse when a blogger quotes another’s unreferenced writing because it can go “viral” and thereby become incorrect common knowledge.
Steve
> it’s a physical process description, which reduces the margin of error.
> …
> I also believe that this is exactly how active research works, …
> someone will point out the obvious with better sources and or data.
That’s the “Climate Etc.” approach, I believe.
You’re depending on the kindness of strangers.
Good luck with that.
If you change your mind about your approach, I recommend, for example:
citation
and
evidence
and, whenever it’s available, use DOI
Of course, it’s just [extreme] weather:
http://www.cntvna.com/News/2013-08/14/cms63227article.shtml
‘Dozens’ dead of flooding, and further ‘dozens’ dead from the heat. One city apparently hit 42.7 C.
They expect it will moderate soon, after weeks of heatwave.
A new study explores Climate Extremes and the Carbon Cycle,
Well, something totally off the methane stuff. It is swirling in my mind for quite some time now, but, we always hear that, in order to keep warming below 2 degrees this century, we must keep co2 at or below 450 ppm.We are currently at 400.
Yet with all the other GHG’s, I’ve heard that we have a forcing of about 470 ppm co2 equivalent. Doesn’t make this circumstance any in that we could keep warming below two degrees moot? Maybe one of the moderators might answer that, because I am very confused. What do I get wrong?
[Response: Aerosols are a negative forcing, and so taking everything into account we are still at 400 CO2 equivalent. But there are bigger uncertainties in the aerosol part. – gavin]
Thanks Gavin!
Communication: Kahan, Mike Mann, Tom (Office of Science and Technology) with a cameo by Gavin Schmidt (about minute 55)
http://www.livestream.com/scienceonline/video?clipId=pla_b73e6025-358c-4509-80a4-aeb43dfcb625
Plenary: Credibility, Trust, Goodwill and Persuasion: (from 9:15 am Aug 16 (today))
Dr. Tom Armstrong, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Dr. Dan Kahan, Yale University
Dr. Michael Mann, Penn State University
> a new study explores
Found that quote with ‘oogle on four blogs;
this is the oddest of them so far:
http://nexusnow.info/forum/index.php
Arctic Ice Imploding, Methane Releasing
Aug 16, 2013 – 7:21 PM – by Geo Watch
I sure hope some communications thesis is being written on how this stuff spreads.
Tangentially related to some of the comments and concerns above, my latest article:
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Climate-Change-How-Much-Time-Do-We-Have
Feedback welcome… no pun intended.
Kevin McKinney @ 319
Looked good what I could read of it on my iPad. The pop-up ad thingie at the bottom of your page seemed to cause all kinds of problems with your layout on scrolling: flashing, changing size, jumping around..
At least you didn’t have a slide show. I hate those things.
#320–Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience…
A tidbit: Flooding the Australian desert to grow trees might not work well:
http://science.org.au/nova/newscientist/100ns_002.htm
“…. Beneath the arid surface of Western Australia are hundreds of limestone deposits honeycombed with small holes and filled with water. Each of these deposits is teeming with life. And in each case it’s different.
… Under Western Australian law, it is illegal to drive a species to extinction ….”
Kevin,
I read some of your piece, which was good but rather long and that is why I did not read it all.
Ten years ago I was told by a senior professor that he and Wally Broeker thought we had twenty year to take action. That would mean we still have 10 years. However, the following year he told me that the Greenland ice sheet had begun to melt. Since its melting has a positive feedback, there is no way to prevent its complete melting unless we reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The +ve feedback is because as it melts its height decreases bringing the surface into warmer air, at the lapse rate of the 6.5K per 1 km. Therefore we are already too late to prevent sea level rise, unless we can find some way to reduce CO2 levels.
We can already see how a positive feedback is destroying the Arctic sea ice.
The problem is that if we say it is too late, then people think there is no point in taking action. But we should do all we can to prevent other disasters occurring, such as desertification spreading from Texas up into the Corn Belt.
Cheers, Alastair.
I am not sure this is an appropriate place to ask this question, so if you can suggest a better place that would be almost as good as an answer.
I heard somewhere that in the 19th Century an American Lady did some experiments with glass jars filled with carbon dioxide, but because she was female she was not able to publish her results and they were reported in a scientific journal by a male friend.
Does anyone have a citation for the report? I’ve tried searching with Google Scholar but I don’t really have the right keywords to find it there.
TIA,
Cheers, Alastair.
319 Kevin McKinney, your latest article is great and deserves a lot of comment. Not least for the story in which it is framed. It’s a lesson in good communication–and how one comes to it. Richard Somerville is one of the right men at the right time, and so are you.
Weather forecast for the North Pole (chance of rain, at the moment)
(or any other location you like)
http://forecast.io/#/f/90.0000,0.0000
#324, 325–Thanks, Alaistair. Hubpages powers that be would like to keep articles to 1200 words or less. That’s a struggle for me… but your comment suggests they know whereof they speak…
Patrick, thank you very much. Sure hope you’re at least half right! (Inasmuch as I agree with you about Somerville, I suppose I think you are!)
I would like to point the regarded attention of the readers and experts here to the following article about late bronze age decline of culturesn the eastern mediterranean sea due to (local?) climate shift
” Environmental Roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis”
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0071004
This has the potential of creating lots of missinterpretation and spin, what do You think.
Cheers,
Marcus
Sad to see ‘Hubpages’ promotes their “Discover More Hubs” links with big clickable pictures between your writing and the comments there — and the ones they promote are mostly denial, when I looked.
Kevin McKinney, from your reply to Mitch Allen at the Hubpages link:
By itself, that’s a succinct rejoinder to all but the most sophisticated denialist. I’m adopting it as my personal motto!
#329–Thanks for ckecking it out, Hank. I think the layout can vary depending upon platform, and they tweak it all the time.
Last few comments have been forgettable, featuring much ado about ‘flash-frozen mammoths’, which suggests Creation ‘Science’ is lurking nearby.
Some of you might like a look at this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/opinion/sunday/gorgeous-glimpses-of-calamity.html
Is this accurate?
“On our current emissions path, the main question the ECS answers is whether 9°F warming happens closer to 2080, 2100, or 2120 — hardly a cause for any celebration. Quite the reverse. Warming beyond 7F is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e. 4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here…”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/18/1232106/-New-IPCC-report-leaked-We-re-heading-toward-9F-increase-climate-impacts-are-speeding-up
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/18/2484711/ipcc-report-more-certain-global-warming-is-caused-by-humans-impacts-speeding-up/
#332–A nice piece of writing–and the images are indeed gorgeous, if disquieting. Thanks, Susan!
#333–To offer some minor-league help to the moderators, who in several cases have probably made undertakings not to comment on AR5 prior to release, I’m going to say that in my uninformed opinion the leak is apt to be accurate. But we’ll know quite soon now; September isn’t far away.
> Chuck Hughes … is this accurate?
What “this” are you asking about, Chuck?
To get a copy of the advance draft text of the IPCC report for yourself, you only have do do one thing: agree not to show it around while it’s still in draft form — because it’s not final while it’s being discussed and revised.
So what “this” are you asking about?
Is it true someone claims to have a leaked copy of some draft or other? Yes.
Is what someone claims they saw in a leaked draft the final text? No.
Is what the DailyKos piece says correct?
Let me paraphrase:
The change from five years ago is less uncertainty, same bad news. Yes.
Assuming we keep going in the direction we’re headed, our grandchildren will end up there.
Yes.
There are people who won’t be convinced by anything short of hysteria, because that’s the standard mode of discourse for everything they see from ads for everything from toothpaste to politicians. And there are those who serve that stuff up in that form because “it communicates.”
Look at the comments on the link you posted — it’s all methane emergency. Likely some paid position blogspammers, mostly real people really worried about the PR, all dumping into any convenient discussion more of the same.
So — ask yourself, what “this” do you wonder is true?
The temperature projections? Read the last IPCC report for yourself.
Remember, it’s a conservative, dated summary of science from before it was published. Notice the changes over time, few that there are, from one IPCC report to the next. Doubt decreases, details are added, same basic “this” there each time it’s published.
Shorter:
IPCC I: Uh!
IPCC 2: Uh oh!
IPCC 3: Oh!
IPCC 4: Oh! oh!
IPCC 5: Oops!
IPCC 6: Hey, who could have imagined ….?
#337–Amusing, but I’d have thought we were getting into the ‘Oh, crap!’ range here…
Captcha turns [mercenary] denialist: “never ympaidd”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MskKbrBCXGw
“If you want to take home one slide from what I have to say, I’d highly recommend this slide. And I’d like to walk you through it… The three curves here represent three possible scenarios…
(Emissions pathways to give 67% chance of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C or 3.6 degrees F above 19th century pre-industrial temperatures.)
“What it says is that there’s a certain amount of CO2 that you can have in the atmosphere and no more [to limit global warming to 2 degrees C]… it says that…it’s better to start reducing emissions right away–because then you can glide down with reductions of 3 or 4 percent per year. If you wait until 2015 before you reduce them, then, to meet this goal, you have to decrease them by about 5 percent per year. And if you’re going to procrastinate and dither (as the world has done) until 2020, then you must reduce them by this rate, here–which, economists will tell you, is essentially difficult or impossible to do…
“I didn’t draw this graph…but I named it: I call it the ‘ski slope diagram’: this is the bunny slope here, and this is the intermediate ski slope–and this red line is the double-black-diamond expert slope.”
“So that’s where the “Urgency” in my title comes from. It says this is not an issue like…tariffs…or trade agreements… This is something that…nature puts a time limit on. –Richard Somerville
For a clearer view of the slide, see minute 29:13 of the full presentation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Q271UaNPo
This is the 4th Annual Charles Keeling Memorial Lecture (11March): “The Scientific Case for Urgent Action to Limit Climate Change.” Ralph Keeling introduces Somerville, who starts with notes on Charles Keeling’s work–plus a commemorative artwork in the great hall of the National Academy of Sciences. I don’t know what the work is called, but I’d call it: what-time-it-is or how-we-got-here.
Hank, what I keep asking myself is this…. Are we really gonna drive ourselves into a wall? I don’t see any political action or will other than the President’s speech in June. North Carolina just passed legislation that states that officials cannot use the words, “Sea Level Rise” when describing the loss of coastal land. Park rangers can’t say the words “Climate Change” when talking to campers and tourists. Massive fires out West. Flooding in the East. Fires and flooding in Russia etc. At what point do people start to understand the situation? Yeah, every IPCC report gets more detailed and graphic about what we’re facing but who’s listening that has the power to do anything about it? How much time do we have before the proverbial “sh*t hits the fan?” Was James Lovelock right about his predictions a few years ago?
I’m not doing any hand wringing or talking about methane bombs and I’m really not in a panic. I’ve more or less resigned myself to the fact that the human population is not going to take this seriously no matter what the IPCC says or Al Gore or anyone else. I just can’t believe that humans are really going to allow this to continue to the point there’s nothing that can be done. I guess you could say I’m amazed and dumbfounded. If I truly understand “this” situation the way I think I do, it’s really hard to wrap my brain around. I want to make sure I completely understand and have a firm grasp of the circumstances, which is why I keep asking questions. If the IPCC says we’re headed for 9F of warming, that’s well over 2C. That means we’re gonna lose a lot of people if my understanding is correct. Thanks.
> amazed and dumbfounded
Well, yeah. It’s a stretch to understand what we’re doing.
I’m always bemused to read a new writer finding and starting to understand Catton on _Overshoot_, as for example
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2602943/
On the underlying problems, there’s good writing and thinking going back a century or more — that almost nobody’s ever read, near as I can tell.
Decent summary here:
Transgovernance 2013 Advancing Sustainability
Alexander Perez-Carmona1
Research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, Germany
10.1007/978-3-642-28009-2_3
Growth: A Discussion of the Margins of Economic and Ecological Thought
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-28009-2_3/fulltext.html#Sec22
“… Challenging economic growth started in the late 1960s, when some economists and natural scientists began to understand that the pursuit of perpetual economic growth was physically impossible. It will eventually end. Ignoring this physical impossibility, they argued, would bring a wide array of evils, that is, it would make ecological problems more intractable …”
and
“… In the list of economic assumptions nature was missing. ‘Land’ had been long since reduced to merely an input factor, deprived of all environmental functions and any traditional social meaning; and the newly re-emphasised ‘externality’ was seen rather as an exceptional case, therefore constituting a half-hearted ad hoc recognition of the sink function of nature in the economic process. As historian McNeill (2000: 335) put it: … Anglo-American economists (after about 1880) took nature out of economics’. The expansion of ecological problems was caused by the fact that economists were living in the ‘cowboy economy’ of the ‘illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior’, while humanity were rather approaching the ‘spaceman economy’ in which the earth was a ‘single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything ….”
For those who have not yet seen the 2012 state of the climate report:
http://www.ametsoc.org/2012stateoftheclimate.pdf
Especially note the discussion about the past 15 years with regards to the effect of the predominance of La Ninas, which serve to temper global average temperatures. Yet the past 10 or so years remain among the warmest recorded despite that tempering affect.
#328
Pretty fascinating article.
I see two takeaways from it:
1- Major climate change can happen regionally even without a huge influence of greenhouse gases. Nothing new there.
2- Major climate change can disrupt societies and economies. Yes, isn’t that the concern.
@335 Kevin, “The document was leaked over the weekend after it was sent to a large group of people who had signed up to review it. It was first reported on in detail by the Reuters news agency, and The New York Times obtained a copy independently to verify its contents.”
And Justin Gillis still hasn’t confused anyone yet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/science/earth/extremely-likely-that-human-activity-is-driving-climate-change-panel-finds.html?smid=tw-share
@335 There’s an 18 Aug post at Climate Progress, with this comment from Michael Mann:
“The report is simply an exclamation mark on what we already knew: Climate change is real and it continues unabated, the primary cause is fossil fuel burning, and if we don’t do something to reduce carbon emissions we can expect far more dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on us and our environment in the decades to come.”
Speaking of those who haven’t confused anyone yet.
@335 To be correct: the document, as it stands, in current form, was leaked over the weekend.
Latest issue of EOS from AGU has a “Dissenting View” article, regarding their statement on climate change, from Roger Pielke. It links to this longer statement: http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/rpt-851.pdf
He hems and haws and talks about uncertainty and how we can’t do regional modelling, so climate change isn’t as bad as people think from the global averages. And that we haven’t seen cooling in the past ten years. Standard denialist claims, but I was surprised that AGU even included him on their panel in the first place, that was producing their climate statement. He’s fairly well known for his climate change “skepticism”, after all. Eos is not the place I would have expected to find giving him a platform.
Sadly, it looks like the SORCE satellite is failing. As far as I can tell from the PMOD page it looks like there is only one other TSI measuring instrument – VIRGO on the SoHO satellite – currently in operation and that’s been up for 18 years already. Are there any solar observation missions planned for the near-future or are we in danger of a data gap here?
Paul S.,
Total Solar Irradiance Sensor is now just about buttoned up and is just waiting for a ride. It could be up there in another year or 2.
Thanks Ray, though the LASP mission page for TSIS is less optimistic than yourself, reporting launch scheduled for three years time. In any case that means we hopefully won’t get a long data gap, if any.