” If a scientist consistently writes inflammatory screeds for right-wing rags while couching their rhetoric in a veneer of professional courtesy in scientific circles, I find it very hard to take their science seriously.”
How many dull dishonest decades more mut pass before Ray begins to worry about inflamatory screeds in left wing journals ?
No one has ever accused Naomi Klein or the UCS of beiing unnecessarily bipartisan.
A. Phillipssays
I’d love to hear informed, or expert opinion on this, from the Alaska Climate Research Center’s ‘Temperature Changes in Alaska’ page:
Considering just a linear trend can mask some important variability characteristics in the time series. The figure at right shows clearly that this trend is non-linear: a linear trend might have been expected from the fairly steady observed increase of CO2 during this time period. The figure shows the temperature departure from the long-term mean (1949-2009) for all stations. It can be seen that there are large variations from year to year and the 5-year moving average demonstrates large increase in 1976. The period 1949 to 1975 was substantially colder than the period from 1977 to 2009, however since 1977 little additional warming has occurred in Alaska with the exception of Barrow and a few other locations. The stepwise shift appearing in the temperature data in 1976 corresponds to a phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase. Synoptic conditions with the positive phase tend to consist of increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies.
And I expect that it will not be a pig’s nose, with or without cosmetics, but a camel’s, edging under the edge of the developing world tent.
Each to his own, but you’d better hope I’m right–and that the camel is not too dilatory about pushing further.
SecularAnimistsays
Russell wrote: “… inflamatory screeds in left wing journals … the UCS …”
The fact that you refer to the Union Of Concerned Scientists as “left wing” says all that needs to be said about your views. That’s the other side of the coin that holds denial of science to be a “conservative” virtue.
Ray Ladburysays
Russell,
Naomi Klein is not a climate scientist.
If you would care to point out an example of a partisan screed–concerning climate SCIENCE–in a left wing journal, I’d be happy to give you my opinion.
I can point to numerous examples of, e.g. Dick Lindzen, making rhetorical points in the Wall Street Uninal that he would never dare make among actual scientists.
P.S. I also don’t consider Emma Thompson a climate scientist.
Thomas O'Reillysays
Are you saying that the current mass migration is not being caused by Climate Change? – Yes.
There was an extended drought, true. It started some issues true. It was already a stressed nation on all kinds of yardsticks, and clearly more vulnerable to any CC effects eg more severe drought.
However, what we are seeing now could rationally be seen as preview of what the effects of CC would most likely look like though I suspect they will be far worse than the current mass migration.
My hypothetical future would have the everyday people on the borders with guns and pitch folks keeping the refugees out – there would be no “welcome campaigns” – because Europe would already be as stressed as Syria was in 2010 before the civil war. Not that my guesses make any difference to anything.
Ray Ladburysays
Chuck Hughes,
Sorry, just a work-a-day physicist who works too many days to give a blog the attention it deserves. I share humble contributions and not-so-humble opinions here at Tamino’s Open Mind and various other oases of reason.
And I also occasionally tilt at windmills in right-wing fever swamps.
Thomas O'Reillysays
A little comic relief to keep the spirits up.
I posted a link to new mining industry advert recently – A Rational Fear: ‘coal is amazing’ ad reworked as not so ‘good for humanity’ – video
Mike,
The role of the climate science community is:
1)To advance understanding of Earth’s climate
2)To provide sufficient guidance to policy makers to bound risk and plan mitigation efforts
The community has come through on both of these tasks admirably. It is the policy makers and the voters who have failed, because they either are not interested in or do not know how to use the information provided. It is not the fault of climate scientists that the average American voter is an ignoramus who seeks to elect representatives even dumber than they are.
I think it is very late for the climate science community to recognize its special responsibilities
OK, just whom do you regard as “the” climate science community? Do you imagine “it” can speak with a single voice? If you’re calling for individual scientists to issue strident alarm calls, who do you have in mind? What, specifically, should they say stridently?
Ray:
“If you would care to point out an example of a partisan screed–concerning climate SCIENCE–in a left wing journal, I’d be happy to give you my opinion.”
get real, Ray- n what century did you stop reading The Nation , The Guardian , New Scientist and Science for the People ?
Forty five years after Earth Day is kind of late to start denying that politics happens.
I wish Ray & Steve would engage their sense of the sardonic before respectively observing :
‘ Naomi Klein is not a climate scientist’
‘ Naomi Klein isn’t a scientist ‘
Is that supposed to change everything, or undo a decade of deliberate ‘framing ‘ ?
Or does it objectively reflect on the uncritical acceptance of her representations by outfits as egregiously ( We’re talking Podesta) political as the UCS?
I know whereof I speak from having made uncommon cause with Henry Kendall on environmental emergency response when occasion demanded.
the ground state of scientific bipartisanship is evidently to shun its existence.
Glen Reesesays
#52 A. Phillips says:
8 Sep 2015 at 5:30 AM
” I’d love to hear informed, or expert opinion on this, from the Alaska Climate Research Center’s ‘Temperature Changes in Alaska’ page:”
Re. Nonlinearity: A linear trend in CO2 only produces a linear temperature increase in the absence of multiplier (feedback) effects. Decreased Arctic albedo and increased atmospheric water vapor are examples of multiplier effects that guarantee an accelerated temperature rise. There are others, some potentially very scary, such as release of frozen methane hydrates.
Re. Variance: The ocean ends up with most of the extra heat trapped by CO2, and the atmosphere holds very little. There are continual exchanges of heat between the oceans and atmosphere, resulting in relatively large swings in atmospheric temperature from small changes in ocean surface temperature. Periodic and aperiodic oscillations of heat exchanges occur over periods of months and years (e.g. el Nino and la Nina cycles) that guarantee variation in temperatures over space and time. The long-term trend, however, is up.
Glen Reesesays
I forgot to mention the CO2 saturation effect, which also guarantees nonlinearity over the long term; as saturation is approached, it takes ever-increasing CO2 levels to accomplish the same temperature rise. That’s a negative feedback, but we ain’t there yet.
Richard Caldwellsays
Up until now the climate “realists” have adamantly refused to investigate and explore geo-engineering. I believe that’s because they’re scared that even mentioning geo-engineering’s existence might cause too many people to conclude that a hard-left policy is not the “only” way to go. So, I challenge the good people of RealClimate to actually stand up for their supposed axioms:
First and foremost, the debate MUST consider worst-case, best-case, and bounded reasonable-case scenarios for various paths. Given non-geo-engineering, the worst case scenario is relatively unbounded. We could all fry as natural tipping points flip and methane and CO2 pours into the atmosphere at levels far beyond any human capacity to emit CO2. The 2C limit appears to be based on a reasonable expectation that such tipping points probably won’t flip at that level, given no response by humanity to prevent tipping points.
To me, that’s insane. When somebody hijacks an airplane, say a flight re-routed to Washington DC, then one might say, “Given that NO action will happen, either the White House or Congress will most likely be severely damaged or destroyed. But we KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that given such information, people will NOT sit in their seats. They WILL storm the cockpit. They WILL fight. And the plane will either be saved or crash in a field in Pennsylvania.
The same applies to geo-engineering. Climate science is advancing by leaps and bounds. The TRUTH IS OUT THERE and we WILL find it quite soon, but only if we open our minds.
Republicans simply ignore the science in its entirety. That won’t last long. Being totally stupid just doesn’t work for more than a half century or so. Democrats also ignore and suppress the science, but only half the science. They contend that since “The Best is the Enemy of the Good”, one should NEVER allow discussion of the Good.
I disagree. One MUST explain the Good in full. One must explore the Good in full. So, IF we choose to pump CO2 up beyond what will release feedbacks without geo-engineering (which very possibly could be in the year 2000), then what should we do?
Yet, I don’t see folks on RealClimate advocating a serious exploration of geo-engineering. Why? It sounds like a petulant holding-of-breath. “We MUST all die unless we do it MY way.” I disagree. The Best Case scenario for geo-engineering is zippo damage other than ocean acidification. Anybody disagree?
So I challenge all these folks who trumpet 95% human death rates to actually explore the science. What’s the Worst Case Scenario for a geo-engineered future, given that the USA has over 50% of the world’s military capacity? What’s the Best Case Scenario? What’s the reasonable spread?
Anybody?
Richard Caldwellsays
I’ll start. Geo-engineering generally means restricting solar radiation, which limits photosynthesis. For every 0.1% reduction in solar radiation, 0.1% of crop yields can be expected, and 0.1% of carbon sinks will probably disappear. Not good, but surely manageable.
Vendicar Decariansays
Significant cooling of the pacific this week.
Blob may not persist to winter, May bring rain to California.
Killiansays
Chuck Hughes said Is this anything like, “Nobody saw it [crash] coming,” in which any number of people did?…”
Comment by Killian — 1 Sep 2015
Killian, I know you’re a bright fellow and I was using “everybody” in the colloquial sense…
In anticipation of which I said, “just checking…,” so I think we’re covered.
Having said that I would like your opinion on “abrupt SLR.” How “abrupt” do you think it might be?
Preface/epilogue: I am saying this here in case you find the length unwieldy or the content nonsensical: Thank you, after all these years, for asking.
My opinions on pretty much anything are based on full systemic thinking, as I think you know, so to lay it all out, that’s a lot. Also, since I look at patterns rather than numbers most of the time, I have no maths to support what I say, per se. This, I think you might also already know. Just prefacing…
IPCC puts it at 1 meter by the end of the century. I personally think that’s a tad bit conservative. What say you? If salt water is able to penetrate the underbelly of Greenland, say within the next 5 to 10 years I’m thinking all bets are off. Then there’s the WAIS… along with several amplifying feedbacks that climate models may not have figured in. Am I in the ballpark?
That and more. There literally is no good news other than the possible slow in growth of emissions due primarily to wind and solar expansion. (But that is building out infrastructure that ensures a higher level of consumption than is sustainable and locks it in for a biblical generation,i.e. 40 years, thus is suicidal as a solution.) Everything is falling apart faster and faster, **as expected** if you’ve ever looked at a bifurcation graph. Given what we see, there is absolutely no way we are at the first bifurcation. We may be at the third or fourth or fifth or sixth. Just being at the second-tothird is a serious problem.
This is the kind of thinking that is ignored by commenters here, and, so far as I can tell, scientists somewhat. Why? they do not start with risk assessment, so they do not start with bifurcations. I do. If I assume we are absolutely at the first bifurcation, which we cannot possibly be given the changes we see, then *anything else* is already approaching suicidal. Look at the small boxes on that graph. By the fourth bifurcation (ASI Area began around 1953. then we had an easily noticeable decline during the entire period of the satellite record, then 2005, then ’07, then ’10, then ’12…) What are the chances the climate system is at bifurcation 1, or 2? I doubt 2 or 4! But even if at 2 or 3, **look at the chart.**
I don’t have maths, I have connections, correlations and logic. You asked, so I am giving you what you asked.
Add to that things like melting permafrost, increases in river flow into the AO, discovering bottom melt dominates ice conditions, that warm water is flippin’ every where: In the Arctic (from various routes), at Greenland glacial fjords, all around Antarctica; that plankton are crashing and that once stressed they maintain the state that will lead to destruction of the food chain… OMG! Really, we should base our best guess on science only, and that is *always* 1 to 2 years behind?
I do not fault our scientists for being scientists, I fault them for not realizing we are in the middle of a potential ELE, and the *potential* of that alone means we have to act differently than in the past. Mann, et al., have their paper on mid-centuryish issues, so we are getting their. Hansen seems to live in a perpetual state of insight and continues to propose accurate hypotheses. (I am not listing others for brevity.)
Anywho… we need to look at the fact that the Antarctic is in the state it is in. How does *that* not indicate multiple bifurcations passed? Wasn’t supposed to be losing mass at all for decades, if not a century just a few short years ago. Now, 10 ft. in as short a time as this century? And this not from kooks (like me, who said same years ago?), but serious bleeping climate scientists?!
How did I know?
Purdy simple pardner: I look at patterns in systems, not data. If the Arctic and almost all the glaciers were melting, if the permafrost was melting, how in the name of all that is holy and unholy could Antarctica hold out a hundred years? No way. Could not. And, of course, now we know of the see-saw between north and south, and so much more.
(What about the ice sheet over England and far western Europe that seems to have disappeared in less than a century? What about the recent Hansen, et al., finding that temps, CO2, etc., over other interglacials support the idea there really is enough CO2 already for a lot of SLR?)
Really, this is how I know things. It is never about data; it is always about patterns when looking over long time periods, and that is what a permaculturist does. It is what chaos theory suggests we pay attention to. So, y’all can have your data, I’ll take the trends and the whole of the data, not a select few strings of it. It’s an all or nothing proposition for someone like myself. There is no distinction between the steps, the music, and the dancer if you want to truly understand the dance.
And think of all the data streams I haven’t included so far…
But, pulling it all together is this thought, oft repeated here, never seriously taken up by others that I recall: When in the history of this planet, other than Chicxulub, has everything been degraded at the same time planet-wide? ****There is no corollary.**** Our models don’t include a Chicxulub-like change, yet *that* is our closest corollary. Even with other apparent quick changes, they tend to be regional and have specific causes, e.g. Lake Agassiz.
This time? Everything is degraded. There is no potential *natural* natural hysteresis I am aware of.
So, to finally actually answer you, don’t buy any real estate within 35 – 40 ft of the ocean (SLR + storm surges) if you want your grandchildren to still have a fair chance of still living in it in 2100.
I actually think it could be far worse. Doublings of rates of ice melt of 6-10 years are already being measured in some parts of the system. (Don’t ask me to search them out at 3:30 AM. Hansen, et al. is one, iirc.) I used a spreadsheet a couple months ago to extrapolate. At 5 years doublings of rates of melt…. there is no ice left by 2100.
Policy should never be based on good scenarios, but the worst case. The worst case is, oh, $%@#!
That’s what the patterns say.
Minimum? Well, heck, given the consensus was saying centimeters when I was saying 1M, definite, 3M could happen, and now the science says 3+M in 100 years is possible? I’d say all bets are off. Don’t buy any land along the lower Mississippi. If we don’t hit 10 ft. by 2100, I’ll eat my long-buried hat. Our grandchildren can settle the bet. Just not along the lower Mississippi. Or Florida. or Long Island. Or…
Now, I have stayed out of the whole “collapse” debate (there seems to be an odd correlation of such debates ranging on unless I am part of them) because nobody will listen. A paper this year did a perfunctory run of a scenario I’d been asking for, here, for years: What if we could not only slow, but reverse emissions and get atmospheric to pre-industrial levels? They found everything stabilized, even the ice.
******I have said this was possible, and should be studied, for years.*******
Now, this study just dropped levels. It did not try to model HOW. but the takeaway is *if* we do, we **survive** with a normal climate, less any losses thus far.
OMG, what a motivator this should be! Attention? ZERO.
Finally, back in 2008 I conceptualized a way to model global responses to climate. All the pieces, in a variety of separately licensed products, existed already. I have tried repeatedly to get someone interested in building this model. We can model the way through this mess and remove the guesswork.
Thanks for that–stimulating! It’s a decent overview of a lot of developments, though with (IMO) a few eyebrow-raisers sprinkled in, and a bit of a ‘gee-whiz, this is all happening so fast’ slant that fails to credit an awful lot of hard, slogging work done in technological, entrepreneurial, and political realms.
@56 – TOR – I hope you will reconsider your position that the current global migration is not caused by climate change. To some extent, this whole question of causation is a red herring. The disruptions that are expected with global warming are expected to create and exacerbate conditions around the world and trigger migration of climate refugees. If you start breaking down the current global situation of displaced persons, you may be able to attribute the cause to local political issues, to specific details like Somalia’s lack of food infrastructure, or Assad’s inability to respond appropriately to the influx of Syrians to the city who were driven off their lands by drought conditions. On and on, if we break down the global issue into small enough parts, we can miss the big picture. The big picture is that our species is creating a global natural disaster that will displace a lot of humans and cause extinction of many species.
This website indicates the number is 38 million. I have read bigger numbers, like 50-60 million elsewhere. In any case, the numbers are larger than they have been in the recent past.
This is a forest v. trees issues. If you look at the global situation, the forest, you may decide that global warming is a potent driver of human displacement. And, as expected, our governments are poorly equipped/advised/inclined to respond. Govt’s like Assads will do little or nothing and civil war will follow. Some Europeans who are currently feeling the pressure of climate refugees will open their homes to refugees. Other Europeans will greet the climate refugees with baseball bats. This is the range of human response.
It’s unfortunate that the international treaties that establish refugee status identify political basis for refugee – discrimination, violence, genocide – but make no specific allowance for a climate refugee status. This means that each country is expected to house and support its “climate migrants”. This situation has little or no international basis for discussion and response. So, imagine the situation of Bangladesh. As sea level rises and people flee from their subsistence lives on the shoreline and enter the urban environments in the region, how do you think this will go?
I think it will take about 4-5 years from the point of large migration to a situation such as we currently see in Syria/Iraq.
If you are focused on trees, the situation can be presented as failure of Bangladesh to create the flood control infrastructure of a country like Holland. It’s a local problem, created by local political decisions and policies. This approach is a recipe for large scale disaster. We have a global climate migration process that is already started and will build. Some years/decades will be worse than others. This will give the denialists, the supporters of the status quo the ability to damp down global responses to a global problem. Some individuals and groups will benefit on a short term basis from this situation. This is how the sixth great extinction builds momentum.
@59 – Ray – I think the situation is more complicated than you suggest in this post.
First – I guess we will have to agree to disagree about how well the scientific community has done with the tasks that you outline. I think the scientific community (like most members of our species) is prone to look at change and expect a linear progression. Some individuals with a genius for prediction will create projections based on exponential progression. If you need to understand the failures of linear projections, think about the business plans of AT&T, Bell Telephone. While these companies were planning how to deliver more dial tone in wires so that people could keep taking to each other, the world evolved to use of telephonic infrastructure for the internet, moved their communications to wireless devices, etc.
I think the scientific community has largely relied on linear change models. This works well on large systems for quite a while, until an abrupt change occurs and the evidence starts to build indication that exponential change is underway. Think AMOC disruption or loss of arctic sea ice. The consistent low projections from the scientific community are evidence of linear thinking imho. The thinkers who start to consider the possibility of exponential change will come up with projections like Wadhams. My guess is that the actual loss of arctic sea ice will occur to match Wadhams’ projections more closely than the more mainstream projections. Given the gravity of the consequences, it is incumbent on the scientific community to speak in support of the “scary” projections even if they do so in qualified terms because the policy makers will not understand and respond to more nuanced scientific analysis. And the stakes are pretty high.
Ray, can you cite a couple of examples of advice from scientific community to the policy makers where the SC erred on the high side of climate change impact?
Finally, the issue of elections. Don’t get me started. The US socio-economic system does a very good job of preventing elections from being meaningful events. We do get to see that Donald Trump will provide baseball bats to “real americans” if/when a migration leads to the US borders.
@61 – mal – yes, good questions. I only hope that the global scientific community can/will be swayed to see that they have special roles and responsibilities in our current situation. It will be/is very hard for the SC to speak effectively. What happens, happens. I am simply trying to trigger some larger thinking by individuals in the SC about those roles and responsibilities. I think it is very hard to follow in the footsteps of Dick Cheney ans suggest that a 1% chance of disastrous outcomes is sufficient basis for drastic actions, but global warming is not Iraq. This is a tough situation and I don’t have the answers. I have some thoughts and questions about our collective situation.
I think that the SC should treat outlier projections like Wadhams, Shakhova, McPherson respectfully instead of being too reactive, too eager to prove the outlier projections to be false rather than understanding outlier projections as important considerations for the policy makers.
I wholeheartedly agree investigate and explore or at a minimum engage.
Ray Ladburysays
Linear thinking? Bullshit! The projections for sea-level rise, ice melt, etc. are driven by models that incorporate known forcings, etc. If they too conservative, it is because there are feedbacks or other physics not currently understood. You cannot simply change the models. You have to have some evidence and understanding of the new physics.
Where have climate scientists erred on the worst-case side–many times on climate sensitivity, Hansen’s recent paper on sea level rise. That isn’t really the point. The role of scientists is to look at the evidence and see where it leads. Developing bounding risks is not the work of engineers, planners, actuaries… At present they are being hindered in their essential role by politicians who consider any sort of worst-case analysis to be “alarmism”, and by a public that is too busy consuming crap to want to consider the consequences of their actions.
RC: I don’t see folks on RealClimate advocating a serious exploration of geo-engineering. Why? It sounds like a petulant holding-of-breath. “We MUST all die unless we do it MY way.”
BPL: Why do you hate Ray Bolger?
RC: I disagree. The Best Case scenario for geo-engineering is zippo damage other than ocean acidification.
BPL: Right. We lose the ocean, a billion people lose their primary food source, and eventually, the ocean emits hydrogen sulfide. You think that’s okay?
Ray Ladburysays
Russell, I read none of the above publications. I don’t have time. I do read The Economist, Wa Post, occasionally the NY Times and I listen to NPR.
Here’s a clue, Russell. To some of us, this isn’t a political issue. It’s a matter of getting to the best understanding possible of Earth’s climate with current evidence available. Do join us on planet Reality sometime, won’t you?
Can you cite a couple of examples of advice from scientific community to the policy makers where the SC erred on the high side of climate change impact?
If the SC has done a good and somewhat accurate job of estimating impact and designing accurate models, then some of the projections should be on the high side, right? Maybe look for a bell curve type of pattern with the most common estimates near reality and outliers on either side, right? If there are almost no respected and thoughtfully considered/treated outliers on the high side, doesn’t this show that the science is being damped down in a systematic way?
If the impacts and models consistently underestimate the events on the ground as they unfold, then I would argue that SC has not done a good job with the basic science or with the task of advising the policy makers. Per your tasks listed @59.
Ray Ladburysays
Richard Caldwell,
All of the geoengineering proposals I have seen involve fairly complicated processes–e.g. seeding the oceans with iron to cause algal blooms or dumping H2SO4 into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight or putting sun shades into orbit to block incoming solar radiation.
The first problem I see with these is time scales. The effects of the geoengineering last years, while those of CO2 last centuries. Fe fertilization of the oceans certainly is not sustainable on a timescale of centuries, and a couple of centuries of H2SO4 aerosols raining out of the sky probably isn’t going to do fragile ecosystems much good. A sun shade lasts at most decades before turning to powder due to radiation.
More fundamentally, all the geoengineering solutions I’ve heard of involve processes with the largest uncertainties in climate models (e.g. aerosols). So, it would seem that you are proposing to give up on mitigating climate change by turning the knob we understand best (CO2 content)and instead turn the knobs we least understand (e.g. aerosols, biosphere feedbacks, etc.). And since the short timescale of effectiveness of the geoengineering efforts means we’d be doing them over and over again, we could do lasting damage literally before we know it. Does that sound like a good idea to you?
Now, we may well wind up resorting to geoengineering. We may have no choice. However, I’d certainly like to start with limiting greenhouse gas emissions to at least buy time to understand the processes involved a whole helluvalot better.
Ray Ladburysays
Mike,
I already gave the example of climate sensitivity. Some estimates are certainly on the high side. Some on the low side. I think some of the drought studies have also been a bit on the high side to date.
Studies of tropical storms have run the gamut–some suggesting stronger and more frequent storms, some stronger and less frequent and some showing little effect. To date the data are mixed–little effect in the Atlantic (where wind shear is important) but more effect in the Pacific.
Hell, just today, there was a study that again raised the possibility of a Gulf Stream shutdown–definitely an alarming if not alarmist suggestion.
Look, your question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how science is done. Scientists don’t look at the studies done by their peers and say–oh, my result is alarmist…I’d better tone it down. They look for what the evidence will support.
Part of the problem is that studies of the effects of climate change are fricking hard. There are a few no-brainers–ice will melt and sea levels will rise. Many of the questions are very difficult, though. They have to do with how plants respond to conditions of elevated temperature and changes in rainfall, how we mitigate those changes, what is and is not feasible and so on. We don’t know many of the answers yet. However, anyone who takes comfort in that lack of a bound on risk is an idiot.
“You have to have some evidence and understanding of the new physics.”
The physics dictates heat is trapped in the biosphere by greenhouse gases and will remain there for as long as 1000 years. It also says there are only two things that can be done with that heat, convert it to another form or move it to some place benign. It also says that place has to be colder.
The abyss, if not benign, is the largest cold sink on the planet and where the heat can do the least damage. In the process of moving it there carbon free energy can be produced.
The sea level benefits to this are, the heat is no longer available to melt ice and at 1000 meters it causes half the thermal expansion.
The hiatus is evidence this kind of heat movement reduces atmospheric warming.
To the best of my knowledge this effect isn’t incorporated in the models and I submit the time for fiddling with the models has past. It is time to produce the kind of energy Nature has shown will mitigate the problem.
I only hope that the global scientific community can/will be swayed to see that they have special roles and responsibilities in our current situation. It will be/is very hard for the SC to speak effectively.
Hope all you want, but you don’t seem to realize that ‘the SC’ has no mouth and cannot speak. Scientists can only speak as individuals, subject to their perception of the risks to their credibility; or through the professional societies they belong to, subject to the bylaws of those organizations. You have been linked to numerous examples of individuals and organizations who have spoken. It is now up to every citizen to pay heed to their words, and demand action from the policy makers we ostensibly elect. That will require every citizen to confront the obstructionism of parties with interests in maintaining BAU, with the full awareness that they are not swayed by science! Why don’t you come up with a plan to defeat the alliance of “conservative” ideology and fossil-fuel $billions? I’m sure we’d all love to hear it!
Response of Atlantic overturning to future warming in a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice sheet model
Geophysical Research Letters
DOI: 10.1002/2015GL065276
Gradual onset and recovery of the Younger Dryas abrupt climate event in the tropics
Nature Communications 6, Article number: 8061 doi:10.1038/ncomms9061
Ray, your problem is that the pesky natural history persists in being so stubbornly linear- every successive cry of public alarm since Al first deployed that term in 1988 has invoked exponential warming from feedback loops in successive generations of models to assert that multiidegree warming would materialize in a century or less.
The feedbacks are plain vanilla physics but GCM’s are not material objects, and inertial feedbacks seems to be giving the modelers divergence problems.
So here we are four decades ,five AR’s , and three year 2100 surface delta T projection walkbacks later, and the trend is still in the linear regime.
Nobody wants to talk about all the books the IPCC’s reversion to the existing mean has left on the remainder tables- ‘Six Degrees of Warming” is somewhere in the middle of the pile .
So here’s a stright question : in which of the eight remaining decades of this century do you expect to see the first 10% increment of the delta T needed to get to + 1.5, or+ 2.5 or +4.5 C by 2100?
Note that I’m not asking you to speculate on the 6 degree or 10 worst case scenarios that have been inflicted on TV audiences in the name of ‘framing.’ the Precautionary Principle.
Hank yes, the late great Henry was USC president when he wrote this :
Quenching The Wild Wells Of Kuwait · Richard L. Garwin – Henry W. Kendall – Nature – Vol. 354 – Issue 6348 – 1991 – pp. 11-14.
Chuck Hughessays
I’ll start. Geo-engineering generally means restricting solar radiation, which limits photosynthesis. For every 0.1% reduction in solar radiation, 0.1% of crop yields can be expected, and 0.1% of carbon sinks will probably disappear. Not good, but surely manageable.
Comment by Richard Caldwell — 9 Sep 2015
You need to get this through your head Richard….. Geo Engineering got us in the mess we’re in today. Humans have been geoengineering for the last 10,000 years and look what it’s accomplished. How you are able to imagine that humans can now engineer our way out of this is beyond me.
It’s time for you to change tack. You’re headed in the wrong direction.
siddsays
Matthews, 2015 DOI:10.1038/NCLIMATE2774 on national carbon debts and credits
“This Letter presents a new way to quantify historical inequalities among nations using carbon and climate debts, defined as the amount by which national climate contributions have exceeded a hypothetical equal per-capita share over time.”
The largest creditors are India (-75.6,-141.5), Indonesia(-14.2,-27.6), Bangladesh(-12.8,-21.4). The largest debtors are US(100.3,202.7), Russia(27,64.7) and Japan(15.9,25.3). The numbers are in gigatonne CO2 since 1990 and 1960.
sidd
In the supplementary, they look at consumption based estimate, which helps China quite a bit. Fig S3.
Digby Scorgiesays
Some of the above comment touches on politics. This reminds me of an idea for a political campaign that I had in the shower the other day (where else can one have interesting ideas?). It can be applied in any democratic country with an election due:
Obtain photos of three of your favourite deniers. Show them sitting next to each other with hands over eyes, ears and mouth respectively. Underneath write the caption: “See no climate change, hear no climate change, speak no climate change”.
#81–I’d add to that the problem that the effects of both climate change and geoengineering either are, or would likely be, spatially inhomogenous. So climate change may be devastating for, say, central India yet relatively benign for Great Slave Lake in Canada’s north. (Or not, those are made up examples–pure illustration.) The same could well be true for geo-engineering.
That raises the specter of international disagreement over what, or whether, geoengineering should be attempted. Gwynn Dyer considered that issue at some length in “Climate Wars.”
To me, geoengineering is not an answer to the predicament we face. Even without factoring in climate change and ocean acidification, humans are causing the Sixth Extinction event. So, in the unlikely event that geoengeering was tried and was successful, it wouldn’t get us out of trouble. However, as others have mentioned, geoengineering would have to go on for a very long time, if it could be done and didn’t cause any other problems (though Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway offer a scenario in their short book on collapse). As many scientists have said that we needed to have started reducing emissions years ago, I think it’s too late for geoengineering, given the likely lead times for effective schemes. If it isn’t already too late, every year makes that less likely to be true.
There is no better scenario than constant renewable energy with sufficient capacity to replace all fossil fuels, that reduces atmospheric temperature, sea level rise and storm surge in the course of production and can sequester CO2 as a consequence of transportation to market and can deliver twice the annual requirement for potable water for every person on the planet in the course of use.
I concur with the author of the linked piece who says, “most people can make smart decisions when faced with risk—they just need to have it explained to them the right way.”
They will not take my word for it.
But if the climate scientists give them hope, I have faith the public will make the right choices.
SecularAnimistsays
Richard Caldwell wrote: “Up until now the climate ‘realists’ have adamantly refused to investigate and explore geo-engineering.”
That is completely false.
The National Academy Of Sciences “investigated and explored” the two main geoengineering strategies (carbon dioxide removal and albedo modification) and issued detailed reports in February 2015.
The complete reports and a summary are available as free PDF downloads from the link below:
Note that the NAS uses the term “climate intervention” rather than “geoengineering” because, according to the NAS report committee leader Dr. Marcia McNutt, “we felt ‘engineering’ implied a level of control that is illusory.”
SecularAnimistsays
Richard Caldwell wrote: “climate ‘realists’ have adamantly refused to investigate and explore geo-engineering … that’s because they’re scared that even mentioning geo-engineering’s existence might cause too many people to conclude that a hard-left policy is not the ‘only’ way to go …”
“Hard-left policy” ???
This nonsense is what we called “red baiting” back in the day.
It seems pretty anachronistic now, but from time to time it is still used by those who like to equate the fossil fuel industry with “capitalism” and pretend that other energy sources are somehow “leftist”.
In fact, the “only way to go” is to phase out fossil fuel use as rapidly as possible, replacing it with carbon-free energy sources.
Which is no more a “hard-left policy” than replacing horses with cars.
Richard Caldwellsays
SA, your link says, “Until now, there has been limited research into albedo modification strategies. However, it is becoming clear that research is needed to determine if albedo modification could be a viable climate response in the future.”
That’s exactly what I’m saying, though that depends on how one defines “the future”. Arctic sea ice is perhaps the first major tipping point, and it will flip within a decade or two. We will be faced with a big decision. Do we try to save the sea ice, or do we simply withstand the weather disruptions and “natural” carbon emissions such a drastic change will likely cause? Do you think the weather disruptions from a lack of sea ice or from geoengineering would be worse? There will be no keeping our ice cap without geoengineering. I’d hate to have a blue Arctic Ocean and little clue about whether to or how best to turn it white again.
Ray: it would seem that you are proposing to give up on mitigating climate change by turning the knob we understand best (CO2 content)and instead turn the knobs we least understand (e.g. aerosols, biosphere feedbacks, etc.)
RC: The existence of chemotherapy isn’t a good reason to keep smoking, but cancer’s existence is a good reason to conduct research into new forms of chemotherapy. I completely agree that Job1 is to brake hard on carbon emissions.
Ray: And since the short timescale of effectiveness of the geoengineering efforts means we’d be doing them over and over again, we could do lasting damage literally before we know it.
RC: I think the short timescale is a benefit. It’s a lot easier to change course when you get to start the experiment over every year. Plus, the ocean will continue to draw down atmospheric CO2, so (assuming we’re not idiots who choose to continue chain-smoking) geoengineering efforts would phase out fairly rapidly. We might end up on chemo for less time than we smoked.
Kevin: international disagreement over what, or whether, geoengineering should be attempted.
RC: For sure. Perhaps the US and friends will try and Russia will bomb the infrastructure. Surely any country which happens to suffer bad weather will claim damages. It’s not a pretty picture, but does it beat a blue Arctic Ocean?
Chuck: How you are able to imagine that humans can now engineer our way out of this is beyond me.
RC: As you said, we do NOT have the option to not start geoengineering. That decision was made 10,000 years ago via farming, and doubled-down on during the industrial revolution. I’m simply saying we should do our geoengineering in as informed a manner as possible. And no, I gave no opinion as to whether we’ll succeed or crash and burn. What about you? Do you think we should continue to geoengineer in ignorance? (I can see the benefits. Removing all options can focus us on CO2 reduction)
Richard Caldwellsays
BPL: Why do you hate Ray Bolger?
RC: Only before the curtain was pulled. After he started talking the truth, he made a lot of sense. I kinda doubt your curtain will ever be pulled. Where’s Toto when you need him?
BPL: Right. We lose the ocean, a billion people lose their primary food source, and eventually, the ocean emits hydrogen sulfide. You think that’s okay?
RC: You forget that jellyfish are edible. I’ve never read anything which claims that the total calories available in an acidic ocean will be lower than today’s. Personally, I’d compare it to getting an antibiotic-resistant infection in your legs. Is it “OK” to cut off your legs? It’s certainly NOT OK to pretend that leaving the curtain in place is the best action. Remember, my plan of action is to do EXACTLY AND COMPLETELY everything you would do, PLUS research geoengineering. Got any problem with that? Any improvement? Anything at all? (Here’s where you post links to science about acidic ocean productivity, or let the crickets chirp.)
Chuck Hughessays
Remember, my plan of action is to do EXACTLY AND COMPLETELY everything you would do, PLUS research geoengineering. Got any problem with that? Any improvement? Anything at all? (Here’s where you post links to science about acidic ocean productivity, or let the crickets chirp.)
Comment by Richard Caldwell — 11 Sep 2015
Richard, you tend to either put aside or ignore the fact that Human Geoengineering got us into this mess in the first place. We’ve been geoengineering the planet for the last 10,000 years and now we’re screwed. Do you really think we’re gonna sprinkle some “magic fairy dust” into the atmosphere and fix it???
Your problem is you don’t like the solution…. STOP EMITTING CO2 NOW! That doesn’t appeal to many people and you’re one of them. Scientists KNOW what to do. We all know what to do. We’re just not gonna do it until it’s far too late. We do not possess the political will to get it done.
“RC: For sure. Perhaps the US and friends will try and Russia will bomb the infrastructure. Surely any country which happens to suffer bad weather will claim damages. It’s not a pretty picture, but does it beat a blue Arctic Ocean?”
Non-contentiously, and to further the discussion, I suspect that if you are correct that the Arctic sea ice tipping point does “flip within a decade or two” that may be too soon for geo-engineering to avert. (That’s not terribly out of line with the expectations of most modelers, who seem to project an ice-free minimum sometime between 2030 and 2050.)
A decade is probably not long enough to reach consensus on the desirability of the goal and specific technique(s), to put in place financing arrangements, do design and technical development, and finally implement at scale. Two decades might not be too much, it seems to me.
It seems more probable that the loss of late summer sea ice will occur as a ‘wake up’ call first.
Still, I do think that the ‘moral hazard’ argument against geo-engineering research is falling behind events, and that the probability of being forced into trying some form of GE is growing–and that therefore, research into the same is rather more to be encouraged than heretofore.
Re “Let them eat jellyfish,” I must observe that cake has a much higher calorie density:
” If a scientist consistently writes inflammatory screeds for right-wing rags while couching their rhetoric in a veneer of professional courtesy in scientific circles, I find it very hard to take their science seriously.”
How many dull dishonest decades more mut pass before Ray begins to worry about inflamatory screeds in left wing journals ?
No one has ever accused Naomi Klein or the UCS of beiing unnecessarily bipartisan.
I’d love to hear informed, or expert opinion on this, from the Alaska Climate Research Center’s ‘Temperature Changes in Alaska’ page:
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
This has been picked up by contrarian bloggers – any comments welcome.
“I expect Paris COP will be a failure or only a pig with lipstick that will never be implemented as agreed…”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/09/unforced-variations-sept-2015/comment-page-1/#comment-635703
And I expect that it will not be a pig’s nose, with or without cosmetics, but a camel’s, edging under the edge of the developing world tent.
Each to his own, but you’d better hope I’m right–and that the camel is not too dilatory about pushing further.
Russell wrote: “… inflamatory screeds in left wing journals … the UCS …”
The fact that you refer to the Union Of Concerned Scientists as “left wing” says all that needs to be said about your views. That’s the other side of the coin that holds denial of science to be a “conservative” virtue.
Russell,
Naomi Klein is not a climate scientist.
If you would care to point out an example of a partisan screed–concerning climate SCIENCE–in a left wing journal, I’d be happy to give you my opinion.
I can point to numerous examples of, e.g. Dick Lindzen, making rhetorical points in the Wall Street Uninal that he would never dare make among actual scientists.
P.S. I also don’t consider Emma Thompson a climate scientist.
Are you saying that the current mass migration is not being caused by Climate Change? – Yes.
There was an extended drought, true. It started some issues true. It was already a stressed nation on all kinds of yardsticks, and clearly more vulnerable to any CC effects eg more severe drought.
However, what we are seeing now could rationally be seen as preview of what the effects of CC would most likely look like though I suspect they will be far worse than the current mass migration.
My hypothetical future would have the everyday people on the borders with guns and pitch folks keeping the refugees out – there would be no “welcome campaigns” – because Europe would already be as stressed as Syria was in 2010 before the civil war. Not that my guesses make any difference to anything.
Chuck Hughes,
Sorry, just a work-a-day physicist who works too many days to give a blog the attention it deserves. I share humble contributions and not-so-humble opinions here at Tamino’s Open Mind and various other oases of reason.
And I also occasionally tilt at windmills in right-wing fever swamps.
A little comic relief to keep the spirits up.
I posted a link to new mining industry advert recently – A Rational Fear: ‘coal is amazing’ ad reworked as not so ‘good for humanity’ – video
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/sep/08/rational-fear-coal-is-amazing-ad-debunked-video
Mike,
The role of the climate science community is:
1)To advance understanding of Earth’s climate
2)To provide sufficient guidance to policy makers to bound risk and plan mitigation efforts
The community has come through on both of these tasks admirably. It is the policy makers and the voters who have failed, because they either are not interested in or do not know how to use the information provided. It is not the fault of climate scientists that the average American voter is an ignoramus who seeks to elect representatives even dumber than they are.
AIC:
You got me 8^)! I must’ve had a senior moment.
Mike:
OK, just whom do you regard as “the” climate science community? Do you imagine “it” can speak with a single voice? If you’re calling for individual scientists to issue strident alarm calls, who do you have in mind? What, specifically, should they say stridently?
A somewhat optimistic overview of climate change politics and how progress has been made:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/sunniest-climate-change-story-ever-read.html
Naomi Klein isn’t a scientist, Russell @2:13 AM
Ray:
“If you would care to point out an example of a partisan screed–concerning climate SCIENCE–in a left wing journal, I’d be happy to give you my opinion.”
get real, Ray- n what century did you stop reading The Nation , The Guardian , New Scientist and Science for the People ?
Forty five years after Earth Day is kind of late to start denying that politics happens.
I wish Ray & Steve would engage their sense of the sardonic before respectively observing :
‘ Naomi Klein is not a climate scientist’
‘ Naomi Klein isn’t a scientist ‘
Is that supposed to change everything, or undo a decade of deliberate ‘framing ‘ ?
Or does it objectively reflect on the uncritical acceptance of her representations by outfits as egregiously ( We’re talking Podesta) political as the UCS?
I know whereof I speak from having made uncommon cause with Henry Kendall on environmental emergency response when occasion demanded.
the ground state of scientific bipartisanship is evidently to shun its existence.
#52 A. Phillips says:
8 Sep 2015 at 5:30 AM
” I’d love to hear informed, or expert opinion on this, from the Alaska Climate Research Center’s ‘Temperature Changes in Alaska’ page:”
Re. Nonlinearity: A linear trend in CO2 only produces a linear temperature increase in the absence of multiplier (feedback) effects. Decreased Arctic albedo and increased atmospheric water vapor are examples of multiplier effects that guarantee an accelerated temperature rise. There are others, some potentially very scary, such as release of frozen methane hydrates.
Re. Variance: The ocean ends up with most of the extra heat trapped by CO2, and the atmosphere holds very little. There are continual exchanges of heat between the oceans and atmosphere, resulting in relatively large swings in atmospheric temperature from small changes in ocean surface temperature. Periodic and aperiodic oscillations of heat exchanges occur over periods of months and years (e.g. el Nino and la Nina cycles) that guarantee variation in temperatures over space and time. The long-term trend, however, is up.
I forgot to mention the CO2 saturation effect, which also guarantees nonlinearity over the long term; as saturation is approached, it takes ever-increasing CO2 levels to accomplish the same temperature rise. That’s a negative feedback, but we ain’t there yet.
Up until now the climate “realists” have adamantly refused to investigate and explore geo-engineering. I believe that’s because they’re scared that even mentioning geo-engineering’s existence might cause too many people to conclude that a hard-left policy is not the “only” way to go. So, I challenge the good people of RealClimate to actually stand up for their supposed axioms:
First and foremost, the debate MUST consider worst-case, best-case, and bounded reasonable-case scenarios for various paths. Given non-geo-engineering, the worst case scenario is relatively unbounded. We could all fry as natural tipping points flip and methane and CO2 pours into the atmosphere at levels far beyond any human capacity to emit CO2. The 2C limit appears to be based on a reasonable expectation that such tipping points probably won’t flip at that level, given no response by humanity to prevent tipping points.
To me, that’s insane. When somebody hijacks an airplane, say a flight re-routed to Washington DC, then one might say, “Given that NO action will happen, either the White House or Congress will most likely be severely damaged or destroyed. But we KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that given such information, people will NOT sit in their seats. They WILL storm the cockpit. They WILL fight. And the plane will either be saved or crash in a field in Pennsylvania.
The same applies to geo-engineering. Climate science is advancing by leaps and bounds. The TRUTH IS OUT THERE and we WILL find it quite soon, but only if we open our minds.
Republicans simply ignore the science in its entirety. That won’t last long. Being totally stupid just doesn’t work for more than a half century or so. Democrats also ignore and suppress the science, but only half the science. They contend that since “The Best is the Enemy of the Good”, one should NEVER allow discussion of the Good.
I disagree. One MUST explain the Good in full. One must explore the Good in full. So, IF we choose to pump CO2 up beyond what will release feedbacks without geo-engineering (which very possibly could be in the year 2000), then what should we do?
Yet, I don’t see folks on RealClimate advocating a serious exploration of geo-engineering. Why? It sounds like a petulant holding-of-breath. “We MUST all die unless we do it MY way.” I disagree. The Best Case scenario for geo-engineering is zippo damage other than ocean acidification. Anybody disagree?
So I challenge all these folks who trumpet 95% human death rates to actually explore the science. What’s the Worst Case Scenario for a geo-engineered future, given that the USA has over 50% of the world’s military capacity? What’s the Best Case Scenario? What’s the reasonable spread?
Anybody?
I’ll start. Geo-engineering generally means restricting solar radiation, which limits photosynthesis. For every 0.1% reduction in solar radiation, 0.1% of crop yields can be expected, and 0.1% of carbon sinks will probably disappear. Not good, but surely manageable.
Significant cooling of the pacific this week.
Blob may not persist to winter, May bring rain to California.
Chuck Hughes said Is this anything like, “Nobody saw it [crash] coming,” in which any number of people did?…”
Comment by Killian — 1 Sep 2015
Killian, I know you’re a bright fellow and I was using “everybody” in the colloquial sense…
In anticipation of which I said, “just checking…,” so I think we’re covered.
Having said that I would like your opinion on “abrupt SLR.” How “abrupt” do you think it might be?
Preface/epilogue: I am saying this here in case you find the length unwieldy or the content nonsensical: Thank you, after all these years, for asking.
My opinions on pretty much anything are based on full systemic thinking, as I think you know, so to lay it all out, that’s a lot. Also, since I look at patterns rather than numbers most of the time, I have no maths to support what I say, per se. This, I think you might also already know. Just prefacing…
IPCC puts it at 1 meter by the end of the century. I personally think that’s a tad bit conservative. What say you? If salt water is able to penetrate the underbelly of Greenland, say within the next 5 to 10 years I’m thinking all bets are off. Then there’s the WAIS… along with several amplifying feedbacks that climate models may not have figured in. Am I in the ballpark?
That and more. There literally is no good news other than the possible slow in growth of emissions due primarily to wind and solar expansion. (But that is building out infrastructure that ensures a higher level of consumption than is sustainable and locks it in for a biblical generation,i.e. 40 years, thus is suicidal as a solution.) Everything is falling apart faster and faster, **as expected** if you’ve ever looked at a bifurcation graph. Given what we see, there is absolutely no way we are at the first bifurcation. We may be at the third or fourth or fifth or sixth. Just being at the second-tothird is a serious problem.
http://mathewpeet.org/science/chaos/chaos.jpg
This is the kind of thinking that is ignored by commenters here, and, so far as I can tell, scientists somewhat. Why? they do not start with risk assessment, so they do not start with bifurcations. I do. If I assume we are absolutely at the first bifurcation, which we cannot possibly be given the changes we see, then *anything else* is already approaching suicidal. Look at the small boxes on that graph. By the fourth bifurcation (ASI Area began around 1953. then we had an easily noticeable decline during the entire period of the satellite record, then 2005, then ’07, then ’10, then ’12…) What are the chances the climate system is at bifurcation 1, or 2? I doubt 2 or 4! But even if at 2 or 3, **look at the chart.**
I don’t have maths, I have connections, correlations and logic. You asked, so I am giving you what you asked.
Add to that things like melting permafrost, increases in river flow into the AO, discovering bottom melt dominates ice conditions, that warm water is flippin’ every where: In the Arctic (from various routes), at Greenland glacial fjords, all around Antarctica; that plankton are crashing and that once stressed they maintain the state that will lead to destruction of the food chain… OMG! Really, we should base our best guess on science only, and that is *always* 1 to 2 years behind?
I do not fault our scientists for being scientists, I fault them for not realizing we are in the middle of a potential ELE, and the *potential* of that alone means we have to act differently than in the past. Mann, et al., have their paper on mid-centuryish issues, so we are getting their. Hansen seems to live in a perpetual state of insight and continues to propose accurate hypotheses. (I am not listing others for brevity.)
Anywho… we need to look at the fact that the Antarctic is in the state it is in. How does *that* not indicate multiple bifurcations passed? Wasn’t supposed to be losing mass at all for decades, if not a century just a few short years ago. Now, 10 ft. in as short a time as this century? And this not from kooks (like me, who said same years ago?), but serious bleeping climate scientists?!
How did I know?
Purdy simple pardner: I look at patterns in systems, not data. If the Arctic and almost all the glaciers were melting, if the permafrost was melting, how in the name of all that is holy and unholy could Antarctica hold out a hundred years? No way. Could not. And, of course, now we know of the see-saw between north and south, and so much more.
(What about the ice sheet over England and far western Europe that seems to have disappeared in less than a century? What about the recent Hansen, et al., finding that temps, CO2, etc., over other interglacials support the idea there really is enough CO2 already for a lot of SLR?)
Really, this is how I know things. It is never about data; it is always about patterns when looking over long time periods, and that is what a permaculturist does. It is what chaos theory suggests we pay attention to. So, y’all can have your data, I’ll take the trends and the whole of the data, not a select few strings of it. It’s an all or nothing proposition for someone like myself. There is no distinction between the steps, the music, and the dancer if you want to truly understand the dance.
And think of all the data streams I haven’t included so far…
But, pulling it all together is this thought, oft repeated here, never seriously taken up by others that I recall: When in the history of this planet, other than Chicxulub, has everything been degraded at the same time planet-wide? ****There is no corollary.**** Our models don’t include a Chicxulub-like change, yet *that* is our closest corollary. Even with other apparent quick changes, they tend to be regional and have specific causes, e.g. Lake Agassiz.
This time? Everything is degraded. There is no potential *natural* natural hysteresis I am aware of.
So, to finally actually answer you, don’t buy any real estate within 35 – 40 ft of the ocean (SLR + storm surges) if you want your grandchildren to still have a fair chance of still living in it in 2100.
I actually think it could be far worse. Doublings of rates of ice melt of 6-10 years are already being measured in some parts of the system. (Don’t ask me to search them out at 3:30 AM. Hansen, et al. is one, iirc.) I used a spreadsheet a couple months ago to extrapolate. At 5 years doublings of rates of melt…. there is no ice left by 2100.
Policy should never be based on good scenarios, but the worst case. The worst case is, oh, $%@#!
That’s what the patterns say.
Minimum? Well, heck, given the consensus was saying centimeters when I was saying 1M, definite, 3M could happen, and now the science says 3+M in 100 years is possible? I’d say all bets are off. Don’t buy any land along the lower Mississippi. If we don’t hit 10 ft. by 2100, I’ll eat my long-buried hat. Our grandchildren can settle the bet. Just not along the lower Mississippi. Or Florida. or Long Island. Or…
Now, I have stayed out of the whole “collapse” debate (there seems to be an odd correlation of such debates ranging on unless I am part of them) because nobody will listen. A paper this year did a perfunctory run of a scenario I’d been asking for, here, for years: What if we could not only slow, but reverse emissions and get atmospheric to pre-industrial levels? They found everything stabilized, even the ice.
******I have said this was possible, and should be studied, for years.*******
Now, this study just dropped levels. It did not try to model HOW. but the takeaway is *if* we do, we **survive** with a normal climate, less any losses thus far.
OMG, what a motivator this should be! Attention? ZERO.
Finally, back in 2008 I conceptualized a way to model global responses to climate. All the pieces, in a variety of separately licensed products, existed already. I have tried repeatedly to get someone interested in building this model. We can model the way through this mess and remove the guesswork.
PLEASE somebody…
#62, S.B. Ripman–
Thanks for that–stimulating! It’s a decent overview of a lot of developments, though with (IMO) a few eyebrow-raisers sprinkled in, and a bit of a ‘gee-whiz, this is all happening so fast’ slant that fails to credit an awful lot of hard, slogging work done in technological, entrepreneurial, and political realms.
Is it finally time for you all to incorporate CH4 into the models Gavin? If are we are to have accurate view of Real Climate?
http://m.rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/20140451
Russell is a troll. Don’t feed the trolls.
@56 – TOR – I hope you will reconsider your position that the current global migration is not caused by climate change. To some extent, this whole question of causation is a red herring. The disruptions that are expected with global warming are expected to create and exacerbate conditions around the world and trigger migration of climate refugees. If you start breaking down the current global situation of displaced persons, you may be able to attribute the cause to local political issues, to specific details like Somalia’s lack of food infrastructure, or Assad’s inability to respond appropriately to the influx of Syrians to the city who were driven off their lands by drought conditions. On and on, if we break down the global issue into small enough parts, we can miss the big picture. The big picture is that our species is creating a global natural disaster that will displace a lot of humans and cause extinction of many species.
http://www.internal-displacement.org/publications/2015/global-overview-2015-people-internally-displaced-by-conflict-and-violence
This website indicates the number is 38 million. I have read bigger numbers, like 50-60 million elsewhere. In any case, the numbers are larger than they have been in the recent past.
This is a forest v. trees issues. If you look at the global situation, the forest, you may decide that global warming is a potent driver of human displacement. And, as expected, our governments are poorly equipped/advised/inclined to respond. Govt’s like Assads will do little or nothing and civil war will follow. Some Europeans who are currently feeling the pressure of climate refugees will open their homes to refugees. Other Europeans will greet the climate refugees with baseball bats. This is the range of human response.
It’s unfortunate that the international treaties that establish refugee status identify political basis for refugee – discrimination, violence, genocide – but make no specific allowance for a climate refugee status. This means that each country is expected to house and support its “climate migrants”. This situation has little or no international basis for discussion and response. So, imagine the situation of Bangladesh. As sea level rises and people flee from their subsistence lives on the shoreline and enter the urban environments in the region, how do you think this will go?
I think it will take about 4-5 years from the point of large migration to a situation such as we currently see in Syria/Iraq.
If you are focused on trees, the situation can be presented as failure of Bangladesh to create the flood control infrastructure of a country like Holland. It’s a local problem, created by local political decisions and policies. This approach is a recipe for large scale disaster. We have a global climate migration process that is already started and will build. Some years/decades will be worse than others. This will give the denialists, the supporters of the status quo the ability to damp down global responses to a global problem. Some individuals and groups will benefit on a short term basis from this situation. This is how the sixth great extinction builds momentum.
@59 – Ray – I think the situation is more complicated than you suggest in this post.
First – I guess we will have to agree to disagree about how well the scientific community has done with the tasks that you outline. I think the scientific community (like most members of our species) is prone to look at change and expect a linear progression. Some individuals with a genius for prediction will create projections based on exponential progression. If you need to understand the failures of linear projections, think about the business plans of AT&T, Bell Telephone. While these companies were planning how to deliver more dial tone in wires so that people could keep taking to each other, the world evolved to use of telephonic infrastructure for the internet, moved their communications to wireless devices, etc.
I think the scientific community has largely relied on linear change models. This works well on large systems for quite a while, until an abrupt change occurs and the evidence starts to build indication that exponential change is underway. Think AMOC disruption or loss of arctic sea ice. The consistent low projections from the scientific community are evidence of linear thinking imho. The thinkers who start to consider the possibility of exponential change will come up with projections like Wadhams. My guess is that the actual loss of arctic sea ice will occur to match Wadhams’ projections more closely than the more mainstream projections. Given the gravity of the consequences, it is incumbent on the scientific community to speak in support of the “scary” projections even if they do so in qualified terms because the policy makers will not understand and respond to more nuanced scientific analysis. And the stakes are pretty high.
Ray, can you cite a couple of examples of advice from scientific community to the policy makers where the SC erred on the high side of climate change impact?
Finally, the issue of elections. Don’t get me started. The US socio-economic system does a very good job of preventing elections from being meaningful events. We do get to see that Donald Trump will provide baseball bats to “real americans” if/when a migration leads to the US borders.
@61 – mal – yes, good questions. I only hope that the global scientific community can/will be swayed to see that they have special roles and responsibilities in our current situation. It will be/is very hard for the SC to speak effectively. What happens, happens. I am simply trying to trigger some larger thinking by individuals in the SC about those roles and responsibilities. I think it is very hard to follow in the footsteps of Dick Cheney ans suggest that a 1% chance of disastrous outcomes is sufficient basis for drastic actions, but global warming is not Iraq. This is a tough situation and I don’t have the answers. I have some thoughts and questions about our collective situation.
I think that the SC should treat outlier projections like Wadhams, Shakhova, McPherson respectfully instead of being too reactive, too eager to prove the outlier projections to be false rather than understanding outlier projections as important considerations for the policy makers.
Warm regards to all.
Richard Caldwell 68,
Thermodynamic geoengineering: a fourth way
I wholeheartedly agree investigate and explore or at a minimum engage.
Linear thinking? Bullshit! The projections for sea-level rise, ice melt, etc. are driven by models that incorporate known forcings, etc. If they too conservative, it is because there are feedbacks or other physics not currently understood. You cannot simply change the models. You have to have some evidence and understanding of the new physics.
Where have climate scientists erred on the worst-case side–many times on climate sensitivity, Hansen’s recent paper on sea level rise. That isn’t really the point. The role of scientists is to look at the evidence and see where it leads. Developing bounding risks is not the work of engineers, planners, actuaries… At present they are being hindered in their essential role by politicians who consider any sort of worst-case analysis to be “alarmism”, and by a public that is too busy consuming crap to want to consider the consequences of their actions.
RC: I don’t see folks on RealClimate advocating a serious exploration of geo-engineering. Why? It sounds like a petulant holding-of-breath. “We MUST all die unless we do it MY way.”
BPL: Why do you hate Ray Bolger?
RC: I disagree. The Best Case scenario for geo-engineering is zippo damage other than ocean acidification.
BPL: Right. We lose the ocean, a billion people lose their primary food source, and eventually, the ocean emits hydrogen sulfide. You think that’s okay?
Russell, I read none of the above publications. I don’t have time. I do read The Economist, Wa Post, occasionally the NY Times and I listen to NPR.
Here’s a clue, Russell. To some of us, this isn’t a political issue. It’s a matter of getting to the best understanding possible of Earth’s climate with current evidence available. Do join us on planet Reality sometime, won’t you?
Ray – respectfully, please,
Can you cite a couple of examples of advice from scientific community to the policy makers where the SC erred on the high side of climate change impact?
If the SC has done a good and somewhat accurate job of estimating impact and designing accurate models, then some of the projections should be on the high side, right? Maybe look for a bell curve type of pattern with the most common estimates near reality and outliers on either side, right? If there are almost no respected and thoughtfully considered/treated outliers on the high side, doesn’t this show that the science is being damped down in a systematic way?
If the impacts and models consistently underestimate the events on the ground as they unfold, then I would argue that SC has not done a good job with the basic science or with the task of advising the policy makers. Per your tasks listed @59.
Richard Caldwell,
All of the geoengineering proposals I have seen involve fairly complicated processes–e.g. seeding the oceans with iron to cause algal blooms or dumping H2SO4 into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight or putting sun shades into orbit to block incoming solar radiation.
The first problem I see with these is time scales. The effects of the geoengineering last years, while those of CO2 last centuries. Fe fertilization of the oceans certainly is not sustainable on a timescale of centuries, and a couple of centuries of H2SO4 aerosols raining out of the sky probably isn’t going to do fragile ecosystems much good. A sun shade lasts at most decades before turning to powder due to radiation.
More fundamentally, all the geoengineering solutions I’ve heard of involve processes with the largest uncertainties in climate models (e.g. aerosols). So, it would seem that you are proposing to give up on mitigating climate change by turning the knob we understand best (CO2 content)and instead turn the knobs we least understand (e.g. aerosols, biosphere feedbacks, etc.). And since the short timescale of effectiveness of the geoengineering efforts means we’d be doing them over and over again, we could do lasting damage literally before we know it. Does that sound like a good idea to you?
Now, we may well wind up resorting to geoengineering. We may have no choice. However, I’d certainly like to start with limiting greenhouse gas emissions to at least buy time to understand the processes involved a whole helluvalot better.
Mike,
I already gave the example of climate sensitivity. Some estimates are certainly on the high side. Some on the low side. I think some of the drought studies have also been a bit on the high side to date.
Studies of tropical storms have run the gamut–some suggesting stronger and more frequent storms, some stronger and less frequent and some showing little effect. To date the data are mixed–little effect in the Atlantic (where wind shear is important) but more effect in the Pacific.
Hell, just today, there was a study that again raised the possibility of a Gulf Stream shutdown–definitely an alarming if not alarmist suggestion.
Look, your question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how science is done. Scientists don’t look at the studies done by their peers and say–oh, my result is alarmist…I’d better tone it down. They look for what the evidence will support.
Part of the problem is that studies of the effects of climate change are fricking hard. There are a few no-brainers–ice will melt and sea levels will rise. Many of the questions are very difficult, though. They have to do with how plants respond to conditions of elevated temperature and changes in rainfall, how we mitigate those changes, what is and is not feasible and so on. We don’t know many of the answers yet. However, anyone who takes comfort in that lack of a bound on risk is an idiot.
Ray Ladbury 77
“You have to have some evidence and understanding of the new physics.”
The physics dictates heat is trapped in the biosphere by greenhouse gases and will remain there for as long as 1000 years. It also says there are only two things that can be done with that heat, convert it to another form or move it to some place benign. It also says that place has to be colder.
The abyss, if not benign, is the largest cold sink on the planet and where the heat can do the least damage. In the process of moving it there carbon free energy can be produced.
The sea level benefits to this are, the heat is no longer available to melt ice and at 1000 meters it causes half the thermal expansion.
The hiatus is evidence this kind of heat movement reduces atmospheric warming.
To the best of my knowledge this effect isn’t incorporated in the models and I submit the time for fiddling with the models has past. It is time to produce the kind of energy Nature has shown will mitigate the problem.
Mike:
Maybe, but if so he’s our troll 8^D!
Hope all you want, but you don’t seem to realize that ‘the SC’ has no mouth and cannot speak. Scientists can only speak as individuals, subject to their perception of the risks to their credibility; or through the professional societies they belong to, subject to the bylaws of those organizations. You have been linked to numerous examples of individuals and organizations who have spoken. It is now up to every citizen to pay heed to their words, and demand action from the policy makers we ostensibly elect. That will require every citizen to confront the obstructionism of parties with interests in maintaining BAU, with the full awareness that they are not swayed by science! Why don’t you come up with a plan to defeat the alliance of “conservative” ideology and fossil-fuel $billions? I’m sure we’d all love to hear it!
Russell, this Henry Kendall?
http://www.ucsusa.org/about/ways_to_give/Henry-Kendall-Society.html
for Mike: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/box-10-2-figure-1-l.png
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/07/new-studies-deepen-concerns-about-a-climate-change-wild-card/
Response of Atlantic overturning to future warming in a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice sheet model
Geophysical Research Letters
DOI: 10.1002/2015GL065276
Gradual onset and recovery of the Younger Dryas abrupt climate event in the tropics
Nature Communications 6, Article number: 8061 doi:10.1038/ncomms9061
Ray, your problem is that the pesky natural history persists in being so stubbornly linear- every successive cry of public alarm since Al first deployed that term in 1988 has invoked exponential warming from feedback loops in successive generations of models to assert that multiidegree warming would materialize in a century or less.
The feedbacks are plain vanilla physics but GCM’s are not material objects, and inertial feedbacks seems to be giving the modelers divergence problems.
So here we are four decades ,five AR’s , and three year 2100 surface delta T projection walkbacks later, and the trend is still in the linear regime.
Nobody wants to talk about all the books the IPCC’s reversion to the existing mean has left on the remainder tables- ‘Six Degrees of Warming” is somewhere in the middle of the pile .
So here’s a stright question : in which of the eight remaining decades of this century do you expect to see the first 10% increment of the delta T needed to get to + 1.5, or+ 2.5 or +4.5 C by 2100?
Note that I’m not asking you to speculate on the 6 degree or 10 worst case scenarios that have been inflicted on TV audiences in the name of ‘framing.’ the Precautionary Principle.
Hank yes, the late great Henry was USC president when he wrote this :
Quenching The Wild Wells Of Kuwait · Richard L. Garwin – Henry W. Kendall – Nature – Vol. 354 – Issue 6348 – 1991 – pp. 11-14.
I’ll start. Geo-engineering generally means restricting solar radiation, which limits photosynthesis. For every 0.1% reduction in solar radiation, 0.1% of crop yields can be expected, and 0.1% of carbon sinks will probably disappear. Not good, but surely manageable.
Comment by Richard Caldwell — 9 Sep 2015
You need to get this through your head Richard….. Geo Engineering got us in the mess we’re in today. Humans have been geoengineering for the last 10,000 years and look what it’s accomplished. How you are able to imagine that humans can now engineer our way out of this is beyond me.
It’s time for you to change tack. You’re headed in the wrong direction.
Matthews, 2015 DOI:10.1038/NCLIMATE2774 on national carbon debts and credits
“This Letter presents a new way to quantify historical inequalities among nations using carbon and climate debts, defined as the amount by which national climate contributions have exceeded a hypothetical equal per-capita share over time.”
The largest creditors are India (-75.6,-141.5), Indonesia(-14.2,-27.6), Bangladesh(-12.8,-21.4). The largest debtors are US(100.3,202.7), Russia(27,64.7) and Japan(15.9,25.3). The numbers are in gigatonne CO2 since 1990 and 1960.
sidd
In the supplementary, they look at consumption based estimate, which helps China quite a bit. Fig S3.
Some of the above comment touches on politics. This reminds me of an idea for a political campaign that I had in the shower the other day (where else can one have interesting ideas?). It can be applied in any democratic country with an election due:
Obtain photos of three of your favourite deniers. Show them sitting next to each other with hands over eyes, ears and mouth respectively. Underneath write the caption: “See no climate change, hear no climate change, speak no climate change”.
And may the best candidate win!
#81–I’d add to that the problem that the effects of both climate change and geoengineering either are, or would likely be, spatially inhomogenous. So climate change may be devastating for, say, central India yet relatively benign for Great Slave Lake in Canada’s north. (Or not, those are made up examples–pure illustration.) The same could well be true for geo-engineering.
That raises the specter of international disagreement over what, or whether, geoengineering should be attempted. Gwynn Dyer considered that issue at some length in “Climate Wars.”
http://hubpages.com/hub/Climate-Wars-A-Review
Richard,
To me, geoengineering is not an answer to the predicament we face. Even without factoring in climate change and ocean acidification, humans are causing the Sixth Extinction event. So, in the unlikely event that geoengeering was tried and was successful, it wouldn’t get us out of trouble. However, as others have mentioned, geoengineering would have to go on for a very long time, if it could be done and didn’t cause any other problems (though Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway offer a scenario in their short book on collapse). As many scientists have said that we needed to have started reducing emissions years ago, I think it’s too late for geoengineering, given the likely lead times for effective schemes. If it isn’t already too late, every year makes that less likely to be true.
Climate scientists undermine their own science by avoiding the best case scenario
There is no better scenario than constant renewable energy with sufficient capacity to replace all fossil fuels, that reduces atmospheric temperature, sea level rise and storm surge in the course of production and can sequester CO2 as a consequence of transportation to market and can deliver twice the annual requirement for potable water for every person on the planet in the course of use.
I concur with the author of the linked piece who says, “most people can make smart decisions when faced with risk—they just need to have it explained to them the right way.”
They will not take my word for it.
But if the climate scientists give them hope, I have faith the public will make the right choices.
Richard Caldwell wrote: “Up until now the climate ‘realists’ have adamantly refused to investigate and explore geo-engineering.”
That is completely false.
The National Academy Of Sciences “investigated and explored” the two main geoengineering strategies (carbon dioxide removal and albedo modification) and issued detailed reports in February 2015.
The complete reports and a summary are available as free PDF downloads from the link below:
http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/public-release-event-climate-intervention-reports/
Note that the NAS uses the term “climate intervention” rather than “geoengineering” because, according to the NAS report committee leader Dr. Marcia McNutt, “we felt ‘engineering’ implied a level of control that is illusory.”
Richard Caldwell wrote: “climate ‘realists’ have adamantly refused to investigate and explore geo-engineering … that’s because they’re scared that even mentioning geo-engineering’s existence might cause too many people to conclude that a hard-left policy is not the ‘only’ way to go …”
“Hard-left policy” ???
This nonsense is what we called “red baiting” back in the day.
It seems pretty anachronistic now, but from time to time it is still used by those who like to equate the fossil fuel industry with “capitalism” and pretend that other energy sources are somehow “leftist”.
In fact, the “only way to go” is to phase out fossil fuel use as rapidly as possible, replacing it with carbon-free energy sources.
Which is no more a “hard-left policy” than replacing horses with cars.
SA, your link says, “Until now, there has been limited research into albedo modification strategies. However, it is becoming clear that research is needed to determine if albedo modification could be a viable climate response in the future.”
That’s exactly what I’m saying, though that depends on how one defines “the future”. Arctic sea ice is perhaps the first major tipping point, and it will flip within a decade or two. We will be faced with a big decision. Do we try to save the sea ice, or do we simply withstand the weather disruptions and “natural” carbon emissions such a drastic change will likely cause? Do you think the weather disruptions from a lack of sea ice or from geoengineering would be worse? There will be no keeping our ice cap without geoengineering. I’d hate to have a blue Arctic Ocean and little clue about whether to or how best to turn it white again.
Ray: it would seem that you are proposing to give up on mitigating climate change by turning the knob we understand best (CO2 content)and instead turn the knobs we least understand (e.g. aerosols, biosphere feedbacks, etc.)
RC: The existence of chemotherapy isn’t a good reason to keep smoking, but cancer’s existence is a good reason to conduct research into new forms of chemotherapy. I completely agree that Job1 is to brake hard on carbon emissions.
Ray: And since the short timescale of effectiveness of the geoengineering efforts means we’d be doing them over and over again, we could do lasting damage literally before we know it.
RC: I think the short timescale is a benefit. It’s a lot easier to change course when you get to start the experiment over every year. Plus, the ocean will continue to draw down atmospheric CO2, so (assuming we’re not idiots who choose to continue chain-smoking) geoengineering efforts would phase out fairly rapidly. We might end up on chemo for less time than we smoked.
Kevin: international disagreement over what, or whether, geoengineering should be attempted.
RC: For sure. Perhaps the US and friends will try and Russia will bomb the infrastructure. Surely any country which happens to suffer bad weather will claim damages. It’s not a pretty picture, but does it beat a blue Arctic Ocean?
Chuck: How you are able to imagine that humans can now engineer our way out of this is beyond me.
RC: As you said, we do NOT have the option to not start geoengineering. That decision was made 10,000 years ago via farming, and doubled-down on during the industrial revolution. I’m simply saying we should do our geoengineering in as informed a manner as possible. And no, I gave no opinion as to whether we’ll succeed or crash and burn. What about you? Do you think we should continue to geoengineer in ignorance? (I can see the benefits. Removing all options can focus us on CO2 reduction)
BPL: Why do you hate Ray Bolger?
RC: Only before the curtain was pulled. After he started talking the truth, he made a lot of sense. I kinda doubt your curtain will ever be pulled. Where’s Toto when you need him?
BPL: Right. We lose the ocean, a billion people lose their primary food source, and eventually, the ocean emits hydrogen sulfide. You think that’s okay?
RC: You forget that jellyfish are edible. I’ve never read anything which claims that the total calories available in an acidic ocean will be lower than today’s. Personally, I’d compare it to getting an antibiotic-resistant infection in your legs. Is it “OK” to cut off your legs? It’s certainly NOT OK to pretend that leaving the curtain in place is the best action. Remember, my plan of action is to do EXACTLY AND COMPLETELY everything you would do, PLUS research geoengineering. Got any problem with that? Any improvement? Anything at all? (Here’s where you post links to science about acidic ocean productivity, or let the crickets chirp.)
Remember, my plan of action is to do EXACTLY AND COMPLETELY everything you would do, PLUS research geoengineering. Got any problem with that? Any improvement? Anything at all? (Here’s where you post links to science about acidic ocean productivity, or let the crickets chirp.)
Comment by Richard Caldwell — 11 Sep 2015
Richard, you tend to either put aside or ignore the fact that Human Geoengineering got us into this mess in the first place. We’ve been geoengineering the planet for the last 10,000 years and now we’re screwed. Do you really think we’re gonna sprinkle some “magic fairy dust” into the atmosphere and fix it???
Your problem is you don’t like the solution…. STOP EMITTING CO2 NOW! That doesn’t appeal to many people and you’re one of them. Scientists KNOW what to do. We all know what to do. We’re just not gonna do it until it’s far too late. We do not possess the political will to get it done.
Have yourself some jellyfish.
“RC: For sure. Perhaps the US and friends will try and Russia will bomb the infrastructure. Surely any country which happens to suffer bad weather will claim damages. It’s not a pretty picture, but does it beat a blue Arctic Ocean?”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/09/unforced-variations-sept-2015/comment-page-2/#comment-635818
Non-contentiously, and to further the discussion, I suspect that if you are correct that the Arctic sea ice tipping point does “flip within a decade or two” that may be too soon for geo-engineering to avert. (That’s not terribly out of line with the expectations of most modelers, who seem to project an ice-free minimum sometime between 2030 and 2050.)
A decade is probably not long enough to reach consensus on the desirability of the goal and specific technique(s), to put in place financing arrangements, do design and technical development, and finally implement at scale. Two decades might not be too much, it seems to me.
It seems more probable that the loss of late summer sea ice will occur as a ‘wake up’ call first.
Still, I do think that the ‘moral hazard’ argument against geo-engineering research is falling behind events, and that the probability of being forced into trying some form of GE is growing–and that therefore, research into the same is rather more to be encouraged than heretofore.
Re “Let them eat jellyfish,” I must observe that cake has a much higher calorie density:
http://www.seaturtle.org/ghays/reprints/Doyle_etal_JEMBE_2007.pdf
http://static.diabetesselfmanagement.com/pdfs/DSM0506_038.pdf
http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/energy/kj-to-kcal.htm