#34 Arun
Sceptics don´t mention that ocean upper 700m warming since 1970 has been found to be higher than what previously thought:
“Using satellite altimetry observations and a large suite of climate models, we conclude that observed estimates of 0–700 dbar global ocean warming since 1970 are likely biased low…
These adjustments yield large increases (2.2–7.1 × 1022 J 35 yr−1) to current global upper-ocean heat content change estimates, and have important implications for sea level, the planetary energy budget and climate sensitivity assessments”. http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2389.html
Well, as a patriotic (if ex-pat) Canadian, I have to object! Also, I must point out that Harper seems poised for punishment at the hands of the Canadian electorate long before 240 can be achieved:
Further to my own (as yet unmoderated) comment–NB., Mr. Harper has a year to turn things around:
The 42nd Canadian federal election is tentatively scheduled for October 19, 2015,[1][2][3][4] in accordance with the Canada Elections Act[5] which requires that a general election be held on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election,[6] to elect members to the House of Commons of the 42nd Canadian parliament. This does not diminish the power of the Monarch, or her representative in Canada, the governor general, to call an election at any time.[5] Calling an election early is conventionally done on the advice of the prime minister.
In other words–for those not hep to the ways of a British-style parliamentary democracy–Mr. Harper can call an election earlier if he wishes, but he can’t make it any later.
I wonder–and it’s pure speculation–to what extent the climate change issue plays into the Government’s unpopularity. They’ve demonstrated a thorough lack of sincerity on the issue–one meriting, IMO, the term ‘hypocritical.’ (Partly that’s because the Canadian public is rather more convinced of the seriousness of the problem than their cousins in the US, UK or Australia–polls have therefore made it impolitick for the Cons to actually say what they think about the issue. Nevertheless, they aren’t fooling anyone on the issue these days.) They’ve only compounded the issue by their exacerbation of a bad Canadian tradition by which government attempts to ‘manage’ government scientists and their freedom of speech:
The NOAA linked expanding sea Ice to global warming… I have already done that. Melting Land ice lowers the Salinity level of the nearby ocean water. This water freezes quicker and at higher temperatures…If you don’t believe study the change in Salinity levels. Okay, I admit it, I am shooting from the hip but it does make a lot of sense…
Canadians are so polite, I’m sure they’d genuinely welcome Maryland back into the maple syrup producers club. And just think how having a venue for year round cross country sky training will boost Canada’s performance at the Barcelona Winter Olympics. New building methods and textiles make a colder Canada something to celebrate as a challenge well conquered. And nothing could better nourish the Russian soul than a longer winter. This bare-chestedness has to be curtailed, it’s unrussian. Balanced against food self-sufficiency in Africa, it ends up looking like win-win-win.
BojanDsays
I’ve read about 1990 being a baseline year to align GCM’s hindcasts and measurements in many blogs now, but source for this rule was never given. Nor have I found it myself. I’m starting to suspect that this is not a convention per se but a consequence of some more general convention. Can somebody help me out, please!
Russellsays
The Salt Talks may yet prove of relevance to the Climate Wars.
DPsays
Re posts #53 and #56 that assume that a colder world would increase African food production. The historical evidence seems to suggest the opposite. During cold periods desertification increases, in warm periods it’s deserts shrink.240 not good for Africa.
Thomassays
John @55. It is true that salt lowers the freezing point, so fresher water is easier to freeze. But the bigger effect is that warmer saltier water is underneath, and the fresher water layer near the surface being less dense prevents this warmer water from rising towards the ice/ocean surface. So this reduces melting of the seaice from below.
Steve Fishsays
Re- Comment by Thomas — 10 Oct 2014 @ 8:34 PM, ~#60
Hi Thomas. Consider the condition in which the bottom of the ice extends well into the warmer, but heavier layer.
Steve
jim Larsensays
56 Chris D talks of the glories of geoengineering temperatures downward.
Ecosystems crash.
Year round snow in Canada = ice age.
Once you remove the CO2, it’s gone. Geoengineering with no reasonable and quick stop button sounds like a bad idea.
Jim (#62) demonstrates his ignorance of the underlying information in this thread. As pointed out by Hansen (Storms of my Grandchildren p. 229) “A few geologists continue to speak as if they expect Earth to proceed into the next glacial cycle, just as it would have if humans were not around. That glacial period would begin with an ice sheet developing and growing in northern Canada. But why would we allow such an ice sheet to grow, and flow, and eventually crush major cities, when we could prevent it with the greenhouse gases from a single chlorofluorocarbon factory? Humans are now “in charge” of future climate. It is a trivial task to avoid the negative net climate forcing that would push the planet into an ice age (moving conditions toward the left in figure 30). But it is not an easy task to find a way to stop the growth of atmospheric greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide (which moves conditions toward the right in figure 30), as we have been discussing.”
The danger Jim suggests is preposterous. Hansen is of course correct. However, a business case may temper the difficulty he sees in removing carbon dioxide. The acre of of land between the salt water and the sea strand cannot be bought or sold, the point of the song “Scarborough Fair.” However, that land could be sold if the salt water receded. The value of that new land could very likely pay for the necessary effort to clean up the atmosphere and then adjust it to a new level which would deliver that new real estate. Thus, adjustments in either direction should be considered.
Mitchsays
The biggest problem for any geoengineering, including the current inadvertent geoengineering from huge atmospheric CO2 injections, is that there are winners and losers. The same is true for compensative geoengineering. Some one will get a worse climate.
As long as we’re talking about climates to shoot for–I prefer the 14000 yr bp climate, where there were huge lakes in the US intermountain west. Lakefront property and good trout fishing for everyone in Nevada!
Seansays
Why are online comments a “wicked problem”?
And are you to blame?
Sunday 12 October 2014 – It’s a wicked problem, says social technologist Suw Charman-Anderson. That is, the lack of civility online when people leave comments.
We tend to blame the poison on so-called “trolls”. But does blaming others overlook our own role in reducing standards of online discourse?
In a two part series, Future Tense looks at the difficulties involved in fostering a genuine online discussion. And we question why so many comment threads quickly deteriorate into the banal, offensive and abusive.
Guests
Suw Charman-Anderson – Blogger, journalist and social technologist.
Lee Raine – Director of the Internet Project, Pew Research Center.
Professor Dietram Scheufele – Expert of Science Communication, University of Wisconsin.
Professor Mark Turner – Cognitive Scientist, Case Western Reserve University. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/online-comments—ep/5795478
The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies
BY Ashley A. Anderson, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele, Michael A. Xenos and Peter Ladwig. Article first published online: 19 FEB 2013 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/abstract
Seansays
The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies
Dietram Scheufele: […]
The only difference that they had across conditions was the level of
politeness with which they interacted with one another, which is really
the absolutely fascinating part about this study, that just the tone with
which we interact with one another can substantively change how we interpret
technologies or the content of the journalistic story that we just saw.
Antony Funnell: So, according to Dietram Scheufele’s study, comments do
have a tangible effect on the way we process information online. They have
the power to influence and to persuade or confuse.
And according to Professor Scheufele, his research findings have particular
implications for online science journals and also for people posting
scientific information online.
Dietram Scheufele: It’s probably a much more fascinating finding for a
scientific story that has hard facts behind them, where we know from
scientific studies if there are risks or benefits. It’s probably a little
bit less fascinating to think that reinterpretations of a news story change
for an issue like abortion or maybe Obamacare in the US, meaning an issue
where we have a lot of ideological investment, but ultimately the answers
are not as clear cut. Should we have a public option, should we have
healthcare, should we go against core American values that we’ve held
for decades? That’s one thing.
But for scientific stories it’s a whole different thing because we are
really talking about scientific facts about risks and benefits. So if
simply the tone with which we talk about an issue can change how we
interpret facts, that is really a much more powerful finding than
reinterpreting things that are ultimately based on ideology or opinions,
which are much more malleable and much more probably up to interpretation.
64 Chris D said, “But why would we allow such an ice sheet to grow, and flow, and eventually crush major cities, when we could prevent it with the greenhouse gases from a single chlorofluorocarbon factory?”
We’d let the ice sheet grow to fulfill your plan! You’ll want a good two meters or more of sea level drop for your hotels and only so much snow falls on Greenland and Antarctica. Canada has to freeze over year round. This dovetails nicely with your idea of year-round cross-country skiing in Canada. We’ll see how many Canadians and Russians vote for year round winter.
Your plan would strand assets around the world. Lots of our coastal infrastructure would have to be rebuilt. Besides, every meter of new coastline will have about a meter of lost coastline associated with it.
Your plan would have lots of the things we worry about with global warming, such as ecosystem collapse and agriculture changes.
No, going back to 280 might be a good idea, but any lower would probably be a mistake. Captcha says, “300”.
jim Larsensays
63 Chris D said, “Perhaps the sweet spot is 250 ppm.”
Could be, but your link goes to a CO2 VS temperature in Greenland page.
Ray Ladburysays
Chris Dudley,
The real reason for caution is that most geoengineering options rely on the mechanisms we don’t understand well (e.g. aerosols, clouds…) rather than the ones we understand very well (e.g. CO2 forcing). This makes such mitigation schemes extremely difficult to model and unintended consequences difficult to anticipate. I would tread very carefully before turning the only known biosphere into a high school science project.
This just the mitigation of carbon dioxide that Victor complained about put on a business plan. Just need to get a little farther along to free up the new coastal real estate. No aerosols, just GHG reduction.
The timescale is a bit longer than you assume. Assets would not be stranded, they’d be depreciated. Thus, the newly created real estate would be pure profit.
Hold the balance in northern Canada properly and everything beyond recreational will end up on the GIS or Antarctica. As Hansen points out, we’re in charge. Note that you are quoting him, not me in your response.
jim Larsensays
73 Chris D said, “Assets would not be stranded, they’d be depreciated. Thus, the newly created real estate would be pure profit.”
Buildings depreciate but beaches don’t. You still have one beach. In your plan we’d have to move all the beaches.
Glad you brought up time scale. The payback period would be hundreds to thousands of years, and we’ll have constant sea level change during the whole transition, depreciating hotels, docks and lots else. In the end we get the same amount of coast and a geoengineered unstable climate.
72– is that a typo? 205 is a lot lower than 250, but it is consistent with your Canadian scenario. You do know that year-round snow kills all vegetation, right? The cross country skiing will be pretty bleak.
patricksays
@63 Chris Dudley: Idso, Idso, & Idso (whom you link) are not climate scientists. And your facile speculations are unwarranted.
Axford et al. 2012 (DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.10.024) is not about CO2 nor meant to prove anything about it.
It’s about constraining peak insolation in the study area and shorter term abrupt changes.
“As summer insolation declined through the late Holocene, summer temperatures cooled and the local ice sheet margin expanded. Gradual, insolation-driven millennial-scale temperature trends in the study area were punctuated by several abrupt climate changes, including a major transient event recorded in all five lakes between 4.3 and 3.2 ka …”
“Seitz earned approximately $585,000 for his consulting work for R. J. Reynolds, according to company documents unearthed by researchers for the Greenpeace Web site ExxonSecrets.org and confirmed by Seitz. Meanwhile, during the years he consulted for Reynolds, Seitz continued to draw a salary as president emeritus at Rockefeller University, an institution founded in 1901 and subsidized with profits from Standard Oil, the predecessor corporation of ExxonMobil.”
The timescale is a bit longer than you assume. Assets would not be stranded, they’d be depreciated. Thus, the newly created real estate would be pure profit.
What? Depreciation is merely a loss in value spread over time, not a spell that eliminates the loss. So no, “the newly created real estate” would not be “pure profit”.
The real reason for caution is that most geoengineering options rely on the mechanisms we don’t understand well (e.g. aerosols, clouds…) rather than the ones we understand very well (e.g. CO2 forcing). This makes such mitigation schemes extremely difficult to model and unintended consequences difficult to anticipate.
And that’s with even the best of intentions. IMHO, the best arguments against GHG drawdown by geoengineering are politico-economic, just as they are for emissions reduction. Promoters of particular geoengineering schemes can be expected to direct attention away from their self-interested agendas, emphasize the benefits to “all humanity”, and ignore or minimize potential negative consequences, especially if they fall mainly on the powerless.
“Impact of mesophyll diffusion on estimated global land CO2 fertilization” http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/10/1418075111
“Here we demonstrate that current carbon cycle models underestimate the long-term responsiveness of global terrestrial productivity to CO2 fertilization.”
A rare piece of not-so-bad news.
Thomassays
Meow @76
I think what he means by depreciation, is that a business/owner can operate a property as a cash cow, draining the equity/value, by not doing maintenence, but still using it to collect rents. So a building that I know will be destroyed by sea level rise, can be allowed to gradually degrade via a lack of maintenence, but presumably it could still earn revenue as its physical state decays. So the loss due to necesary future abandonment can be reduced.
Now, In reality, it is likely that the actual loss will be due to an unpredictable as to when it will occur stormsurge, and it is unlikely building management would have a good handle on when their number is up until a couple of days before the event. So the gradual depreciation model may not in practice be followed.
patricksays
@ 51 Kevin McKinney, brassdoc: Excellent addition to great set of charts and graphics in your photobucket. User friendly platform.
Yes, 205 was a typo. Should be 250. Again, the point is that a beach can’t be owned, but the land that used to be beach can be. It is new valuable property and so can form the basis for financing the project (with some long term financing). Claims that mitigation is expensive are lacking in support if mitigation is carried out wholeheartedly. In fact, since some sea level rise seems unavoidable, the inundated property loses title, so as the oceans subsequently recede, that “recovered” real estate is also a freebee. Make that land grab and financing can be shorter term. Think of it as eminent domain without compensation. It will give developers dreams of avarice.
As Hansen points out, preventing further cooling is trivial so really it is much better to be at 250 ppm than at 350 ppm where some warming feedback may still be in play.
patricksays
Historical drama in which Dr. Kate exploits the title of a 1989 cult-film classic to remind us how we got to now–while spinning a number of plates at once–the climate plate, the science plate, the history plate, the humans plate, and the humor plate:
#75 (Patrick)–But don’t overlook the delicious irony that Sherwood Idso was co-author (with Donald Greybill) of a paper having to do with detectible CO2 fertilization of certain US trees.
It showed that fertilization by increased aerial CO2 was detectible in the rings of certain trees in the American West. (Carbon dioxide, as climate-change ‘skeptics’ have pointed out many times since, can indeed be “plant food.”)
But this gave Mann, Bradley and Hughes a research opportunity:
By correcting for that carbon dioxide effect through comparing otherwise similar trends in low- and high-elevation temperature-sensitive North American trees, it seemed we might now be able to make use of the far-longer-term western U.S. data. Indeed, when we used the corrected version of the western U.S. tree ring data in our analysis, our validation tests gave us the green light; we could indeed now meaningfully reconstruct Northern Hemisphere average temperatures over the entire past millennium.
Yes, you’ve got that right: Sherwood Idso played a pivotal role in helping Michael Mann, with co-authors Bradley and Hughes, create the ‘hockey stick’…
If the loss of value is owing to age rather than loss of location, then you can’t blame the loss on the reduction in sea level. So, the new land is indeed pure profit. Prior to sea level retreat it could not be owned.
As we saw in the discussion of the WGIII report here, the losses caused by warming are not counted in the models that show only a slight reduction in economic growth caused by mitigation that would possibly avoid 2 C of warming. Thus Jim’s insistence on trying to count losses from cooling is a bit wrong footed. But real estate law indicates that we must count the gains from sea level retreat even if losses from sea level rise must be ignored in the WGIII formalism. So, it turns out that mitigation, if carried out strongly enough, leads to a big spike in economic growth. It’s more than free, it’s profitable. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/04/mitigation-of-climate-change-part-3-of-the-new-ipcc-report/
While we may argue about a 2 C or 1.5 C limit on warming, the politically optimal concentration target is far enough below preindustrial that it pays for itself and more. Just consider what improved snow pack in the Sierra Nevada Range would mean for California agriculture. There are huge business benefits. Give yourself a few glaciers and you can laugh at drought. Every nation benefits economically except perhaps Canada, Russia and New Zealand, but even they have reasons to support this and they could also be easily bought off. The Harper and Putin governments seem quite venial, for example.
Jim’s compliant that this would somehow be unstable is bosh of course. No matter what, we’ll be holding off the next ice age with green house gases so the particular set point is not the issue.
It is said often that the preventative for malaise is the pioneer spirit. Homesteading in the Sahara provides an awful lot of that. A new bright vision of human destiny can carry climate negotiations forward. Don’t ditch the 2 C limit, but don’t be satisfied with it either.
Close but not exactly. This is about sea level retreat rather than rise. I did point out the uncompensated eminent domain aspects of sea level rise it subsequently followed by retreat, but this is more about the beach front moving seaward of the current beachfront. This allows development of land with no prior title, creating a bonanza. Blocking the view of the former development might be considered a loss for the former development, but really those buildings will be dilapidated before that happens. Redevelopment with new ABC stores between the new Waikiki beachfront hotels and the Ala Wai would likely preserve land value.
Meowsays
I think what he means by depreciation, is that a business/owner can operate a property as a cash cow, draining the equity/value, by not doing maintenence, but still using it to collect rents. So a building that I know will be destroyed by sea level rise, can be allowed to gradually degrade via a lack of maintenence, but presumably it could still earn revenue as its physical state decays. So the loss due to necesary future abandonment can be reduced.
I don’t think that’s what he meant. He said that “…the newly created real estate would be pure profit”, which suggests that depreciation is a magic spell that eliminates loss. Also, the premium value of coastal land is in its location, that is, in the land, not in the buildings. Under his scenario, coastal land will no longer be coastal, thus losing its premium. That’s someone’s loss. Finally, the OP’s underlying idea — that rich peoples’ gains from new coastline will somehow make up for poor peoples’ losses due to drought, starvation, disease, etc. — is just false. The vast majority of any profits will not be redistributed to accomplish that end.
Killiansays
42 Pete W says: Miami Florida is investing a lot of tax payer dollars to mitigate damage caused by high tides. They plan to spend $500million over 5 years on massive pump systems.
Let’s see:
3-10 ft SLR + 20+ ft storm surges equals up to 30 ft higher waters eventually. Yes, buy pumps. That will do it.
#83 KMc
CO2 a plant food? :Very rarely. With more CO2 stomata usually decrease in size and even number to save water:
Here we reconstruct a 34% (±12%) reduction in maximum stomatal conductance (gsmax) per 100 ppm CO2 increase as a result of the adaptation in stomatal density (D) and pore size at maximal stomatal opening (amax) of nine common species from Florida over the past 150 y
No indeed. You are getting onto class issues. This is just a way to pay for mitigation. The cost of mitigation, drawing down carbon dioxide, is paid for by selling the newly created coastal land, which has no prior title. Presumably China and India and California will chip in as well with glacier taxes and the Sahara will want to help out as well from its new prosperity. But, the bonanza in coastal real estate is a very obvious financing source.
Methinks it’s more than ‘very rarely,’ though yes, often the effect is as you describe in your quote. But do we really wish to quibble over this? I’m not saying that the fact that CO2 *can* sometimes act (and has acted) as fertilizer means (to quote our denialist friends) that it ‘can’t be a pollutant.’
n quite another topic, I note GISTEMP has updated. Toastiest September on record, apparently, at .77–see link above.
Jim Larsensays
84 Chris D said, “Jim’s compliant that this would somehow be unstable is bosh”
If we drop CO2 to 250 and hate the result, that means we’ll have to geoengineer with CFCs or some other compounds. Perhaps “unstable” is the wrong word, but I certainly wouldn’t call a situation where we have to re-geoengineer the planet “stable”. How about “wobbly”?
All in all your thought is interesting but highly impractical. The Saharan breadbasket would have to wait for some soil, wouldn’t it? I can’t imagine growing corn in sand.
Jim Larsensays
90 Chris D said, “is paid for by selling the newly created coastal land”
And after paying off the losses to current coastal land owners, and the moving of trees and beaches and wharfs and dockyards etc, there should be a little left.
patricksays
@84 Chris Dudley:
Your repeated pet ideas amount to jamming legitimate climate science by distraction.
The starting point of IPCC Working Group III and of the Brigitte Knopf guest post (your link) is: emissions continue to rise. The point of all the rest is to bend the the emissions curve down.
“The sooner emissions start declining, the less will depend on risky mitigation technologies in the future.”
IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5 video (9:45):
If the loss of value is owing to age rather than loss of location, then you can’t blame the loss on the reduction in sea level. So, the new land is indeed pure profit. Prior to sea level retreat it could not be owned.
The loss in value spread over time *is* from loss of location due to sea-level reduction. You introduced this very idea just upthread.
As for the rest, please show the peer-reviewed analysis supporting your idea that sea-level reduction below preindustrial would be economically beneficial, that California snowpack would be improved by lowering CO2 below preindustrial, etc., etc., etc.
I am getting into the issue of who pays for what and who receives what benefit from whom or what when.
This is just a way to pay for mitigation.
It’s not mitigation, but geoengineering. Mitigation is reducing CO2 levels to preindustrial. You’re aiming well under preindustrial.
The cost of mitigation [geoengineering], drawing down carbon dioxide [to below preindustrial levels], is [speculated to be] paid for by selling the newly created coastal land, which has no prior title.
So who sells it to whom, by what right? Please cite appropriate legal authorities. And how is the benefit of those sales distributed so as to pay for the costs inflicted on countless other people due to climate changes created by your geoengineering project?
Presumably China and India and California will chip in as well with glacier taxes
Glacier taxes? This is beyond speculation. But we do know that raising taxes on anything is a very hard sell in the U.S., anyway.
and the Sahara will want to help out as well from its new prosperity.
…if any, for which idea you have provided no evidence. Also, why would the (very poor) nations of the Sahara wish to share any potential benefit they receive with anyone else?
But, the bonanza in coastal real estate is a very obvious financing source.
The repeated assertion of a “bonanza” does not create one.
This thread looks a lot like a trial balloon for a job interview with the Freakonomics team.
CAPTCHA: Basesss comfort
wilisays
What the h is this about: “Ignoring the Arctic Methane Monster: Royal Society Goes Dark on Arctic Observational Science”
[Response: it’s mostly nonsense. At the RS meeting on sea ice a few weeks ago there were two presentations that mentioned about the Shakhova et al ‘methane time bomb’ scenario – one by Peter Wadhams which was pro and one by me which was more sceptical (in both cases it was only part of the larger presentation). Some of the more ‘out there’ supporters of Shakhova et al – many associated with AMEG- seem to be unhappy that that there was any criticism at all, and have taken to making up stories about the meeting. Claims that observations were ‘rubbished’ or that the Russians were attacked (perhaps as part of some geopolitical agenda) are just made up. The audio of the sessions is available at the RS website, and my slides are available too. There was a lot of tweeting at the time #RSArctic14 and so you can see what audience impressions were. Stoat has a good blog post on the rather odd aftermath. – gavin]
patricksays
@78 Malcolm T: Please do see the expert reaction to the study you cite–linked by John Byatt @88:
Thanks, Patrick (current #44)–
To highlight:
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h402/brassdoc/Pierrehumbertquote.png
#34 Arun
Sceptics don´t mention that ocean upper 700m warming since 1970 has been found to be higher than what previously thought:
“Using satellite altimetry observations and a large suite of climate models, we conclude that observed estimates of 0–700 dbar global ocean warming since 1970 are likely biased low…
These adjustments yield large increases (2.2–7.1 × 1022 J 35 yr−1) to current global upper-ocean heat content change estimates, and have important implications for sea level, the planetary energy budget and climate sensitivity assessments”.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2389.html
Chris D. #50–
Well, as a patriotic (if ex-pat) Canadian, I have to object! Also, I must point out that Harper seems poised for punishment at the hands of the Canadian electorate long before 240 can be achieved:
http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2014/10/liberals-continue-to-ride-high-while-ndp-move-up-cpc-moribund-at-sub-25/
Conservatives just .5% ahead of the NDP for ‘also-ran’ status. Ouch!
I’ll agree with you on this, though; couldn’t happen to a ‘nicer’ guy.
Further to my own (as yet unmoderated) comment–NB., Mr. Harper has a year to turn things around:
In other words–for those not hep to the ways of a British-style parliamentary democracy–Mr. Harper can call an election earlier if he wishes, but he can’t make it any later.
I wonder–and it’s pure speculation–to what extent the climate change issue plays into the Government’s unpopularity. They’ve demonstrated a thorough lack of sincerity on the issue–one meriting, IMO, the term ‘hypocritical.’ (Partly that’s because the Canadian public is rather more convinced of the seriousness of the problem than their cousins in the US, UK or Australia–polls have therefore made it impolitick for the Cons to actually say what they think about the issue. Nevertheless, they aren’t fooling anyone on the issue these days.) They’ve only compounded the issue by their exacerbation of a bad Canadian tradition by which government attempts to ‘manage’ government scientists and their freedom of speech:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/federal-scientists-muzzled-by-media-policies-report-suggests-1.2791650
The NOAA linked expanding sea Ice to global warming… I have already done that. Melting Land ice lowers the Salinity level of the nearby ocean water. This water freezes quicker and at higher temperatures…If you don’t believe study the change in Salinity levels. Okay, I admit it, I am shooting from the hip but it does make a lot of sense…
Kevin (#53),
Canadians are so polite, I’m sure they’d genuinely welcome Maryland back into the maple syrup producers club. And just think how having a venue for year round cross country sky training will boost Canada’s performance at the Barcelona Winter Olympics. New building methods and textiles make a colder Canada something to celebrate as a challenge well conquered. And nothing could better nourish the Russian soul than a longer winter. This bare-chestedness has to be curtailed, it’s unrussian. Balanced against food self-sufficiency in Africa, it ends up looking like win-win-win.
I’ve read about 1990 being a baseline year to align GCM’s hindcasts and measurements in many blogs now, but source for this rule was never given. Nor have I found it myself. I’m starting to suspect that this is not a convention per se but a consequence of some more general convention. Can somebody help me out, please!
The Salt Talks may yet prove of relevance to the Climate Wars.
Re posts #53 and #56 that assume that a colder world would increase African food production. The historical evidence seems to suggest the opposite. During cold periods desertification increases, in warm periods it’s deserts shrink.240 not good for Africa.
John @55. It is true that salt lowers the freezing point, so fresher water is easier to freeze. But the bigger effect is that warmer saltier water is underneath, and the fresher water layer near the surface being less dense prevents this warmer water from rising towards the ice/ocean surface. So this reduces melting of the seaice from below.
Re- Comment by Thomas — 10 Oct 2014 @ 8:34 PM, ~#60
Hi Thomas. Consider the condition in which the bottom of the ice extends well into the warmer, but heavier layer.
Steve
56 Chris D talks of the glories of geoengineering temperatures downward.
Ecosystems crash.
Year round snow in Canada = ice age.
Once you remove the CO2, it’s gone. Geoengineering with no reasonable and quick stop button sounds like a bad idea.
#59,
Perhaps the sweet spot is 250 ppm. But lush times occurred for a lower concentration than preindustrial. http://www.co2science.org/articles/V16/N20/EDIT.php
Jim (#62) demonstrates his ignorance of the underlying information in this thread. As pointed out by Hansen (Storms of my Grandchildren p. 229) “A few geologists continue to speak as if they expect Earth to proceed into the next glacial cycle, just as it would have if humans were not around. That glacial period would begin with an ice sheet developing and growing in northern Canada. But why would we allow such an ice sheet to grow, and flow, and eventually crush major cities, when we could prevent it with the greenhouse gases from a single chlorofluorocarbon factory? Humans are now “in charge” of future climate. It is a trivial task to avoid the negative net climate forcing that would push the planet into an ice age (moving conditions toward the left in figure 30). But it is not an easy task to find a way to stop the growth of atmospheric greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide (which moves conditions toward the right in figure 30), as we have been discussing.”
The danger Jim suggests is preposterous. Hansen is of course correct. However, a business case may temper the difficulty he sees in removing carbon dioxide. The acre of of land between the salt water and the sea strand cannot be bought or sold, the point of the song “Scarborough Fair.” However, that land could be sold if the salt water receded. The value of that new land could very likely pay for the necessary effort to clean up the atmosphere and then adjust it to a new level which would deliver that new real estate. Thus, adjustments in either direction should be considered.
The biggest problem for any geoengineering, including the current inadvertent geoengineering from huge atmospheric CO2 injections, is that there are winners and losers. The same is true for compensative geoengineering. Some one will get a worse climate.
As long as we’re talking about climates to shoot for–I prefer the 14000 yr bp climate, where there were huge lakes in the US intermountain west. Lakefront property and good trout fishing for everyone in Nevada!
Why are online comments a “wicked problem”?
And are you to blame?
Sunday 12 October 2014 – It’s a wicked problem, says social technologist Suw Charman-Anderson. That is, the lack of civility online when people leave comments.
We tend to blame the poison on so-called “trolls”. But does blaming others overlook our own role in reducing standards of online discourse?
In a two part series, Future Tense looks at the difficulties involved in fostering a genuine online discussion. And we question why so many comment threads quickly deteriorate into the banal, offensive and abusive.
Guests
Suw Charman-Anderson – Blogger, journalist and social technologist.
Lee Raine – Director of the Internet Project, Pew Research Center.
Professor Dietram Scheufele – Expert of Science Communication, University of Wisconsin.
Professor Mark Turner – Cognitive Scientist, Case Western Reserve University.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/online-comments—ep/5795478
The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies
BY Ashley A. Anderson, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele, Michael A. Xenos and Peter Ladwig. Article first published online: 19 FEB 2013 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/abstract
The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies
Dietram Scheufele: […]
The only difference that they had across conditions was the level of
politeness with which they interacted with one another, which is really
the absolutely fascinating part about this study, that just the tone with
which we interact with one another can substantively change how we interpret
technologies or the content of the journalistic story that we just saw.
Antony Funnell: So, according to Dietram Scheufele’s study, comments do
have a tangible effect on the way we process information online. They have
the power to influence and to persuade or confuse.
And according to Professor Scheufele, his research findings have particular
implications for online science journals and also for people posting
scientific information online.
Dietram Scheufele: It’s probably a much more fascinating finding for a
scientific story that has hard facts behind them, where we know from
scientific studies if there are risks or benefits. It’s probably a little
bit less fascinating to think that reinterpretations of a news story change
for an issue like abortion or maybe Obamacare in the US, meaning an issue
where we have a lot of ideological investment, but ultimately the answers
are not as clear cut. Should we have a public option, should we have
healthcare, should we go against core American values that we’ve held
for decades? That’s one thing.
But for scientific stories it’s a whole different thing because we are
really talking about scientific facts about risks and benefits. So if
simply the tone with which we talk about an issue can change how we
interpret facts, that is really a much more powerful finding than
reinterpreting things that are ultimately based on ideology or opinions,
which are much more malleable and much more probably up to interpretation.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/online-comments—ep/5795478#transcript
64 Chris D said, “But why would we allow such an ice sheet to grow, and flow, and eventually crush major cities, when we could prevent it with the greenhouse gases from a single chlorofluorocarbon factory?”
We’d let the ice sheet grow to fulfill your plan! You’ll want a good two meters or more of sea level drop for your hotels and only so much snow falls on Greenland and Antarctica. Canada has to freeze over year round. This dovetails nicely with your idea of year-round cross-country skiing in Canada. We’ll see how many Canadians and Russians vote for year round winter.
Your plan would strand assets around the world. Lots of our coastal infrastructure would have to be rebuilt. Besides, every meter of new coastline will have about a meter of lost coastline associated with it.
Your plan would have lots of the things we worry about with global warming, such as ecosystem collapse and agriculture changes.
No, going back to 280 might be a good idea, but any lower would probably be a mistake. Captcha says, “300”.
63 Chris D said, “Perhaps the sweet spot is 250 ppm.”
Could be, but your link goes to a CO2 VS temperature in Greenland page.
Chris Dudley,
The real reason for caution is that most geoengineering options rely on the mechanisms we don’t understand well (e.g. aerosols, clouds…) rather than the ones we understand very well (e.g. CO2 forcing). This makes such mitigation schemes extremely difficult to model and unintended consequences difficult to anticipate. I would tread very carefully before turning the only known biosphere into a high school science project.
Ray (#70),
This just the mitigation of carbon dioxide that Victor complained about put on a business plan. Just need to get a little farther along to free up the new coastal real estate. No aerosols, just GHG reduction.
Jim (#69),
Look at the timing, 205 ppm occurs back when the Sahara was lush.
Jim (#68),
The timescale is a bit longer than you assume. Assets would not be stranded, they’d be depreciated. Thus, the newly created real estate would be pure profit.
Hold the balance in northern Canada properly and everything beyond recreational will end up on the GIS or Antarctica. As Hansen points out, we’re in charge. Note that you are quoting him, not me in your response.
73 Chris D said, “Assets would not be stranded, they’d be depreciated. Thus, the newly created real estate would be pure profit.”
Buildings depreciate but beaches don’t. You still have one beach. In your plan we’d have to move all the beaches.
Glad you brought up time scale. The payback period would be hundreds to thousands of years, and we’ll have constant sea level change during the whole transition, depreciating hotels, docks and lots else. In the end we get the same amount of coast and a geoengineered unstable climate.
72– is that a typo? 205 is a lot lower than 250, but it is consistent with your Canadian scenario. You do know that year-round snow kills all vegetation, right? The cross country skiing will be pretty bleak.
@63 Chris Dudley: Idso, Idso, & Idso (whom you link) are not climate scientists. And your facile speculations are unwarranted.
Axford et al. 2012 (DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.10.024) is not about CO2 nor meant to prove anything about it.
It’s about constraining peak insolation in the study area and shorter term abrupt changes.
“As summer insolation declined through the late Holocene, summer temperatures cooled and the local ice sheet margin expanded. Gradual, insolation-driven millennial-scale temperature trends in the study area were punctuated by several abrupt climate changes, including a major transient event recorded in all five lakes between 4.3 and 3.2 ka …”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379112004209
On Sherwood Idso:
http://heartland.org/press-releases/2014/06/24/prominent-global-warming-skeptic-honored-frederick-seitz-memorial-award
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/2014/06/30/two-cornwall-scholars-to-receive-awards-at-international-conference-on-climate-change/
http://www.desmogblog.com/sherwood-b-idso
On the Cornwall Alliance: see Dana Nuccitelli’s excellent new article (October 2):
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/oct/02/global-warming-battle-for-evangelical-hearts-and-minds
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-battle-for-evangelical-hearts-and-minds.html
On Frederick Seitz: one-time “scientific advisor to the RJ Reynolds medical research program” (with links):
http://www.desmogblog.com/frederick-seitz#s2
“Seitz earned approximately $585,000 for his consulting work for R. J. Reynolds, according to company documents unearthed by researchers for the Greenpeace Web site ExxonSecrets.org and confirmed by Seitz. Meanwhile, during the years he consulted for Reynolds, Seitz continued to draw a salary as president emeritus at Rockefeller University, an institution founded in 1901 and subsidized with profits from Standard Oil, the predecessor corporation of ExxonMobil.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/05/warming200605?currentPage=5
On Craig Idso & Keith Idso [from here to the end]:
http://www.desmogblog.com/craig-idso
http://www.desmogblog.com/keith-idso
At Skeptical Science: 16 April 2014, for example:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Heartland_Logic.html
The SkS report has the added benefit of providing a look at the reality of a Heartland event.
“CO2, a tiny but essential component of the atmosphere, wields nowhere near the climatic power often ascribed to it. …CO2 is the elixir of life…
“…invoking the precautionary principle…our advice…is simply this: ‘Don’t mess with success!’ ”
http://www.co2science.org/about/position/energy.php
@12 Oct 2014 @ 5:18 PM
What? Depreciation is merely a loss in value spread over time, not a spell that eliminates the loss. So no, “the newly created real estate” would not be “pure profit”.
Ray Ladbury:
And that’s with even the best of intentions. IMHO, the best arguments against GHG drawdown by geoengineering are politico-economic, just as they are for emissions reduction. Promoters of particular geoengineering schemes can be expected to direct attention away from their self-interested agendas, emphasize the benefits to “all humanity”, and ignore or minimize potential negative consequences, especially if they fall mainly on the powerless.
IOW, business as usual.
“Impact of mesophyll diffusion on estimated global land CO2 fertilization” http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/10/1418075111
“Here we demonstrate that current carbon cycle models underestimate the long-term responsiveness of global terrestrial productivity to CO2 fertilization.”
A rare piece of not-so-bad news.
Meow @76
I think what he means by depreciation, is that a business/owner can operate a property as a cash cow, draining the equity/value, by not doing maintenence, but still using it to collect rents. So a building that I know will be destroyed by sea level rise, can be allowed to gradually degrade via a lack of maintenence, but presumably it could still earn revenue as its physical state decays. So the loss due to necesary future abandonment can be reduced.
Now, In reality, it is likely that the actual loss will be due to an unpredictable as to when it will occur stormsurge, and it is unlikely building management would have a good handle on when their number is up until a couple of days before the event. So the gradual depreciation model may not in practice be followed.
@ 51 Kevin McKinney, brassdoc: Excellent addition to great set of charts and graphics in your photobucket. User friendly platform.
http://s1108.photobucket.com/user/brassdoc/library/?sort=3&page=1
How about this/these:
http://static.skepticalscience.com/graphics/24_AWC_Raymond_Pierrehumbert.jpg
http://skepticalscience.com/nsh/#
http://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?c=9
http://www.skepticalscience.com/97-hours-of-consensus-caricatures-quotes-from-97-scientists.html
http://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php
Jim (#74),
Yes, 205 was a typo. Should be 250. Again, the point is that a beach can’t be owned, but the land that used to be beach can be. It is new valuable property and so can form the basis for financing the project (with some long term financing). Claims that mitigation is expensive are lacking in support if mitigation is carried out wholeheartedly. In fact, since some sea level rise seems unavoidable, the inundated property loses title, so as the oceans subsequently recede, that “recovered” real estate is also a freebee. Make that land grab and financing can be shorter term. Think of it as eminent domain without compensation. It will give developers dreams of avarice.
As Hansen points out, preventing further cooling is trivial so really it is much better to be at 250 ppm than at 350 ppm where some warming feedback may still be in play.
Historical drama in which Dr. Kate exploits the title of a 1989 cult-film classic to remind us how we got to now–while spinning a number of plates at once–the climate plate, the science plate, the history plate, the humans plate, and the humor plate:
http://marvelclimate.blogspot.com/2014/10/our-climates-excellent-adventure.html
From retweet by Gavin.
#75 (Patrick)–But don’t overlook the delicious irony that Sherwood Idso was co-author (with Donald Greybill) of a paper having to do with detectible CO2 fertilization of certain US trees.
Yes, you’ve got that right: Sherwood Idso played a pivotal role in helping Michael Mann, with co-authors Bradley and Hughes, create the ‘hockey stick’…
http://hubpages.com/hub/Michael-Manns-The-Hockey-Stick-And-The-Climate-Wars-A-Summary-Review
#76,
If the loss of value is owing to age rather than loss of location, then you can’t blame the loss on the reduction in sea level. So, the new land is indeed pure profit. Prior to sea level retreat it could not be owned.
As we saw in the discussion of the WGIII report here, the losses caused by warming are not counted in the models that show only a slight reduction in economic growth caused by mitigation that would possibly avoid 2 C of warming. Thus Jim’s insistence on trying to count losses from cooling is a bit wrong footed. But real estate law indicates that we must count the gains from sea level retreat even if losses from sea level rise must be ignored in the WGIII formalism. So, it turns out that mitigation, if carried out strongly enough, leads to a big spike in economic growth. It’s more than free, it’s profitable. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/04/mitigation-of-climate-change-part-3-of-the-new-ipcc-report/
While we may argue about a 2 C or 1.5 C limit on warming, the politically optimal concentration target is far enough below preindustrial that it pays for itself and more. Just consider what improved snow pack in the Sierra Nevada Range would mean for California agriculture. There are huge business benefits. Give yourself a few glaciers and you can laugh at drought. Every nation benefits economically except perhaps Canada, Russia and New Zealand, but even they have reasons to support this and they could also be easily bought off. The Harper and Putin governments seem quite venial, for example.
Jim’s compliant that this would somehow be unstable is bosh of course. No matter what, we’ll be holding off the next ice age with green house gases so the particular set point is not the issue.
It is said often that the preventative for malaise is the pioneer spirit. Homesteading in the Sahara provides an awful lot of that. A new bright vision of human destiny can carry climate negotiations forward. Don’t ditch the 2 C limit, but don’t be satisfied with it either.
Thomas (#79),
Close but not exactly. This is about sea level retreat rather than rise. I did point out the uncompensated eminent domain aspects of sea level rise it subsequently followed by retreat, but this is more about the beach front moving seaward of the current beachfront. This allows development of land with no prior title, creating a bonanza. Blocking the view of the former development might be considered a loss for the former development, but really those buildings will be dilapidated before that happens. Redevelopment with new ABC stores between the new Waikiki beachfront hotels and the Ala Wai would likely preserve land value.
I don’t think that’s what he meant. He said that “…the newly created real estate would be pure profit”, which suggests that depreciation is a magic spell that eliminates loss. Also, the premium value of coastal land is in its location, that is, in the land, not in the buildings. Under his scenario, coastal land will no longer be coastal, thus losing its premium. That’s someone’s loss. Finally, the OP’s underlying idea — that rich peoples’ gains from new coastline will somehow make up for poor peoples’ losses due to drought, starvation, disease, etc. — is just false. The vast majority of any profits will not be redistributed to accomplish that end.
42 Pete W says: Miami Florida is investing a lot of tax payer dollars to mitigate damage caused by high tides. They plan to spend $500million over 5 years on massive pump systems.
Let’s see:
3-10 ft SLR + 20+ ft storm surges equals up to 30 ft higher waters eventually. Yes, buy pumps. That will do it.
#78
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-new-study-on-plants-and-co2/
#83 KMc
CO2 a plant food? :Very rarely. With more CO2 stomata usually decrease in size and even number to save water:
Here we reconstruct a 34% (±12%) reduction in maximum stomatal conductance (gsmax) per 100 ppm CO2 increase as a result of the adaptation in stomatal density (D) and pore size at maximal stomatal opening (amax) of nine common species from Florida over the past 150 y
(from a PNAS paper)
#86,
No indeed. You are getting onto class issues. This is just a way to pay for mitigation. The cost of mitigation, drawing down carbon dioxide, is paid for by selling the newly created coastal land, which has no prior title. Presumably China and India and California will chip in as well with glacier taxes and the Sahara will want to help out as well from its new prosperity. But, the bonanza in coastal real estate is a very obvious financing source.
Methinks it’s more than ‘very rarely,’ though yes, often the effect is as you describe in your quote. But do we really wish to quibble over this? I’m not saying that the fact that CO2 *can* sometimes act (and has acted) as fertilizer means (to quote our denialist friends) that it ‘can’t be a pollutant.’
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
n quite another topic, I note GISTEMP has updated. Toastiest September on record, apparently, at .77–see link above.
84 Chris D said, “Jim’s compliant that this would somehow be unstable is bosh”
If we drop CO2 to 250 and hate the result, that means we’ll have to geoengineer with CFCs or some other compounds. Perhaps “unstable” is the wrong word, but I certainly wouldn’t call a situation where we have to re-geoengineer the planet “stable”. How about “wobbly”?
All in all your thought is interesting but highly impractical. The Saharan breadbasket would have to wait for some soil, wouldn’t it? I can’t imagine growing corn in sand.
90 Chris D said, “is paid for by selling the newly created coastal land”
And after paying off the losses to current coastal land owners, and the moving of trees and beaches and wharfs and dockyards etc, there should be a little left.
@84 Chris Dudley:
Your repeated pet ideas amount to jamming legitimate climate science by distraction.
The starting point of IPCC Working Group III and of the Brigitte Knopf guest post (your link) is: emissions continue to rise. The point of all the rest is to bend the the emissions curve down.
“The sooner emissions start declining, the less will depend on risky mitigation technologies in the future.”
IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5 video (9:45):
http://mitigation2014.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDcGz1iVm6U
@14 Oct 2014 @ 6:47 AM:
The loss in value spread over time *is* from loss of location due to sea-level reduction. You introduced this very idea just upthread.
As for the rest, please show the peer-reviewed analysis supporting your idea that sea-level reduction below preindustrial would be economically beneficial, that California snowpack would be improved by lowering CO2 below preindustrial, etc., etc., etc.
@14 Oct 2014 6:08 PM:
I am getting into the issue of who pays for what and who receives what benefit from whom or what when.
It’s not mitigation, but geoengineering. Mitigation is reducing CO2 levels to preindustrial. You’re aiming well under preindustrial.
So who sells it to whom, by what right? Please cite appropriate legal authorities. And how is the benefit of those sales distributed so as to pay for the costs inflicted on countless other people due to climate changes created by your geoengineering project?
Glacier taxes? This is beyond speculation. But we do know that raising taxes on anything is a very hard sell in the U.S., anyway.
…if any, for which idea you have provided no evidence. Also, why would the (very poor) nations of the Sahara wish to share any potential benefit they receive with anyone else?
The repeated assertion of a “bonanza” does not create one.
This thread looks a lot like a trial balloon for a job interview with the Freakonomics team.
CAPTCHA: Basesss comfort
What the h is this about: “Ignoring the Arctic Methane Monster: Royal Society Goes Dark on Arctic Observational Science”
http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/ignoring-the-arctic-methane-monster-royal-society-goes-dark-on-arctic-observational-science/
[Response: it’s mostly nonsense. At the RS meeting on sea ice a few weeks ago there were two presentations that mentioned about the Shakhova et al ‘methane time bomb’ scenario – one by Peter Wadhams which was pro and one by me which was more sceptical (in both cases it was only part of the larger presentation). Some of the more ‘out there’ supporters of Shakhova et al – many associated with AMEG- seem to be unhappy that that there was any criticism at all, and have taken to making up stories about the meeting. Claims that observations were ‘rubbished’ or that the Russians were attacked (perhaps as part of some geopolitical agenda) are just made up. The audio of the sessions is available at the RS website, and my slides are available too. There was a lot of tweeting at the time #RSArctic14 and so you can see what audience impressions were. Stoat has a good blog post on the rather odd aftermath. – gavin]
@78 Malcolm T: Please do see the expert reaction to the study you cite–linked by John Byatt @88:
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-new-study-on-plants-and-co2/
Hmm, interesting. Is the drop in oil prices structural, or not?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loonie-oil-prices-could-fall-much-further-don-pittis-1.2799880