This month’s open thread. Pros and cons of celebrity awareness-raising on climate? The end of the cherry-picking of ‘pauses’ in the satellite data? Continuing impacts of El Niño? Your choice (except for the usual subjects to be avoided…).
Climate science from climate scientists...
Mann said. “Carbon dioxide concentrations are a lagging indicator, and they don’t accurately reflect recent trends in the more important variable — our actual carbon emissions.”
Emissions, he said, have stabilized somewhat in recent years and dropped slightly in 2015, reflecting human progress in transitioning away from a fossil fuel economy”
ok, I have time. What is the lag time between stabilized carbon emissions and a stabilization of the CO2 ppm readings at MLO?
If we truly have two years of stabilized carbon emissions then there is a time at which we should see that reflected by a change in the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is a simple experiment, right?
And of course, the big question: how are we measuring “actual carbon emissions?” The way we are measuring CO2 ppm in the atmosphere looks pretty straightforward. The numbers fluctuate, but they are kind of simple atmospheric readings.
Ray Ladbury:
Is this the same Mike who, prior to COPS21, was here berating “the climate science community” for not issuing stronger public statements in support of mitigation? If so, it sounds like he’s still harboring the same deep misunderstandings.
Uhmm, that’s “COP21” without an ‘S’.
Chuck Hughes: If scientists could factor in human nature/behavior we would have a very clear picture of where we’re headed and where we may be right now.
Richard: True. Perhaps a graph that showed changes in estimates, as opposed to the estimates themselves. In other words, in 1980, things were estimated to be 1% worse than they were estimated in 1979, in 1981, things were estimated…..
You’d end up with a plot of how the error corrections evolved, which would give us a grand guesstimate of where we might be headed, assuming our tendency to err evolves as it has in the past.
(My wording is wrong, but hopefully it’s understandable. Are we going asymptotic, still lowballing just as badly as ever, or lowballing in an ever-worsening way?)
Chuck, re your comment of 3/20 (last one)–
You’ve got to keep emissions and concentrations clearly separate or you will confuse the heck out of yourself. If it’s PPM, then you at talking concentrations (AKA mixing tatios). If you are talking gigatonnes, then you are talking emissions.
Emissions have stabilized, according to the IEA; yet concentrations have spiked regardless, very likely due to the El Nino plus general warming, with maybe an assist from an extra-bad wildfire year. (The Indonesian fires were allegedly emitting more, during their peak last fall, than the entire USA economy. Dunno if I believe that, but IIRC it was the Rconomist, whose research is better than most.)
Still admit to some nerves around the numbers we’re seeing anyway.
Mike, @ 259 The reference concerning “stalled” CO2 emissions for 2014 and 2015 is from a recent IEA report https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2016/march/decoupling-of-global-emissions-and-economic-growth-confirmed.html
Why does the DMI Arctic mean temp graph go up and down by many degrees and then almost flat-line peak Summer? And how high and how long does this need to go above zero for permafrost methane release?
Ref: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
(still trying to collect reliable event indicators)
James McDonald @288.
If you consider ice volume rather than extent/area, the thaw does not begin until after the spring equinox and the freeze kicks off before the autumnal equinox. With volume, the process is not restricted to the edges etc so is more of a pan-Arctic measure, the balance of melt/freeze across the whole ice pack.
Areal measures rely on processes that migrate to higher latitudes in the summer and back down to lower latitudes in winter. On the Pacific side, this takes the ice well outside the Arctic circle. As temperatures in those regions (eg Sakhalin) appear to hit the annual minimum as early as January, it suggests the ice extent in the Pacific is about how much the latent heat released by freezing the seas holds back the spreading ice, until with rising temperatures, even with no latent heat the ice cannot spread. I thus don’t see the equinox as acting in any systemic way on Pacific winter ice. In the high Arctic where the sun sets for the whole winter at the autumnal equinox, the situation will be much different.
Would be great to have an RC post on this new paper by Hansen et al. http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.pdf
Some plant types could increase the temperatures in Europe and China by up to 5 degrees C, according to an Aus study published online in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23418#f2 (Kala, J. et al.)
Apparently, this leads to significantly different results in CABLE and ACCESS1.3b climate models.
Ray Ladbury, I respect your opinions greatly, and would like to hear your comments on my thought experiment (above):
“So, given that “It’s worse than we thought” trounces the opposite in both frequency and magnitude, how likely is it that scientific reticence exists?”
To me, it seems you are attempting to paint scientists as universal channelers of Spock. But remember, even he had trouble suppressing his human half. Star Trek’s message may have been that it’s OK to be human, even for a scientist.
And NOBODY remembers the post where a scientific team pondered just how close to their true beliefs they could push their paper’s conclusion?? At this point, I’m refusing to carry the load. (Yeah, I’m a flawed human, too.) Would anybody else care to step up?
Chuck,
There is a difference between emissions (human caused) and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Because CO2 is long-lived in the atmosphere, any (most) emissions result in an increase in atmospheric concentration, though not quite at the same rate, because there are sinks (e.g. the oceans) that remove some of our emissions. What Mann was referring to was estimates (not measurements) of human caused emissions, which give the impression that emissions have stabilized over the last couple of years. I say “give the impression” because there always seem to be stories about misreporting of emissions or about estimates not including all human caused sources.
Anyway, human caused emissions need to drop, effectively, to zero, to stabilize atmospheric concentrations. That’s not going to happen any time soon.
Richard,
Scientists are human. Each scientist carries his/her own biases, prejudices, weaknesses and strengths. One big difference, though, is that a scientist will be very enthusiastic and curious about their field of study. They would never make it through their brutal, long slog of undergraduate, graduate and post-doc work to finally contribute to that field if they did not have these characteristics. This is what unites the practitioners of a particular field of science, and once united, together, the field fumbles slowly and inexorably toward the truth about their field. In turn, the models, techniques and body of knowledge in that field impose an orthodoxy on the practitioners.
Any given paper may be wrong. A paper that has been embraced by the field for its utility in understanding that field is unlikely to be wrong. Scientists are not infallible or 100% logical. Fortunately, the success of their enterprise doesn’t demand that they be.
Anyone commenting more than twice here should check this out http://www.amazon.com/The-Collapse-Western-Civilization-Future/dp/023116954X
#307, Theo–
Good question. As I understand it–and it does make sense–the summertime High Arctic temperatures are ‘clamped’ pretty tightly by the pervasive melting ice (and, I would think, resulting high humidity).
And even when we do get a largely ice-free Arctic Ocean (probably sometime between this summer and 2040, with the probabilities skewing later rather than earlier), we’ll still see less summer temperature variability than winter because, essentially the summer climate will be maritime while the winter one will be continental.
So, in general, once the Arctic Ocean is largely frozen (currently sometime around New Year I’d say, off the top of my head), heat flux from ocean to atmosphere becomes relatively limited, and atmospheric circulation becomes the main driver of surface temperatures. Not surprisingly, the winter temperature trend is dramatically warmer over the years–it’s a very clear instance of the “warming more in winter than in summer” facet of ‘greenhouse’ warming.
Extending this line of thought a bit, there’s some work showing that once we lose the summer ice, the winter ice may follow, and much more quickly than one might think. The blog discussion linked just below is from 2010, and provides some cites the curious may wish to follow up. (I’d like to follow up myself to see what the current state of the research on this is, but I have a long to-do list today and can’t indulge my curiousity just now.)
http://hot-topic.co.nz/gone-for-good-arctic-ocean-ice-free-all-year-by-the-2040s/
Discussion participant Bill McKibben has a new article on methane “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry” http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/
Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2681.html
These scientists say there is no analogue in the record to what we are doing to the ecoystem. I think that means we can’t predict things accurately, so why worry about it? That makes sense and fits with the global response to any problems out there on the horizon. Why risk wrecking our economy for the next couple of decades to avoid a massive extinction event that will take hundreds of years to unfold, if it ever does, right?
speaking of bad science: Hansen has gone off the rails, hasn’t he? I think this guy used to be a solid scientist, but maybe he has always been primarily an alarmist and publicity hound: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/22/sea-level-rise-james-hansen-climate-change-scientist
I think Dr. Mann set him straight when he said: “I’m unconvinced that we could see melting rates over the next few decades anywhere near his exponential predictions, and everything else is contingent upon those melting rates being reasonable.”
That really is the takeaway from a prominent scientist like Dr. Mann: Hansen is no longer a reasonable scientist.
No worries.
> McKibben
A brief quote therefrom:
Yup.
As often remarked, people have an amazing ability to find the leverage points in a situation and then push things in the wrong direction.
Invest in alternative energy — steps along the right path, even through less immediately profitable years, to get out of the bad place.
Invest in gas — steps along the wrong path, looking for a short term profit and a local optimum, using money better used elsewhere.
Kevin McKinney: As I understand it–and it does make sense–the summertime High Arctic temperatures are ‘clamped’ pretty tightly by the pervasive melting ice (and, I would think, resulting high humidity).
Richard: I agree about the ice, but I think you have it backwards with regard to humidity. Humidity = water vapor, which every denialist correctly knows is a very powerful greenhouse gas. Once the ice is gone, temperatures will spike both from reduced albedo and increased water vapor insulation. IIRC Hank brought that up a few months ago, linking to a study that said the increased humidity insulated better than an ice covering. I suspect that’s why your link says some scientists believe that once the ocean is ice-free in summer, it will inevitably become ice-free year round. I’m wondering if “in summer” means “by June 21” or at minimum.
_______
Chris Dudley,
Great link! So the brand new natural gas power plants and export facilities I’ve been railing against might have to be trash-binned even sooner than I was warning about, eh? Naw, profit is supremely important, so imagine how important not losing your entire investment is. Spew, baby spew!
If we truly have two years of stabilized carbon emissions then there is a time at which we should see that reflected by a change in the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is a simple experiment, right?
And of course, the big question: how are we measuring “actual carbon emissions?” The way we are measuring CO2 ppm in the atmosphere looks pretty straightforward. The numbers fluctuate, but they are kind of simple atmospheric readings.
Comment by mike — 21 Mar 2016
Yes. How DO we measure human CO2 emissions?
“Ice sheets can go quickly, yielding multi-meter sea level rise within a century.” ~ Dr. James Hansen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-cRqCQRc8
#296 Theo
“roert zijn staart” = “move its arse”?
Ray Ladbury: This is what unites the practitioners of a particular field of science, and once united, together, the field fumbles slowly and inexorably toward the truth about their field. In turn, the models, techniques and body of knowledge in that field impose an orthodoxy on the practitioners.
Richard: Thanks for the response! “United together” troubles me. It sounds like a perfect description of group think and enhanced peer pressure.
I’d add in “assumption of zero for unknowns”. This is classically shown by the assignment of zero to sea level rise via ice melt and the exclusion of clouds. (though I might have the examples wrong, go with my thoughts) Yep, they put in an itsy-bitsy asterisk noting that their answer is missing perhaps even MOST of the issue at hand. Stubbing is fine in a scientific sense, but it’s pure-t-stupid to communicate a half-baked conclusion to the public. Even if the error bars are larger than the estimate itself, you’ve got to fully bake anything which will be used to drive policy or public opinion. Otherwise salmonella will escape the kitchen and reach the dining table, especially in the current climate where ever so many powerful people are spreading contamination.
Which leads us to the “Boss”. Look at the Cornell paper on fracking. MIT’s industry-sponsored folks sniffled and concluded that the work was low quality. Hmm, I’m betting MIT’s folks aren’t stupid, but they came up with really really stupid conclusions. Why? James Hansen stepped out on a limb by speaking his actual mind and got slapped so hard and so constantly that maybe it influenced his decision to leave. Mann got taken to court. Gag orders abound when scientists don’t toe the Boss’ line. Gag orders in science????????? If I were a scientist and somebody told me what I could say, I’d respond, “FU”, and go on strike, speak even louder, or both. I can’t imagine ANY scientist doing otherwise, but I sure can see most any human meekly going quiet. That the gag orders have always worked, well, that speaks to reticence, eh? Threats of gag orders, potential unemployment, and/or no-promotion/tenure-for-you just might make an otherwise ethical scientist abandon her principles and get a wee bit conservative in her conclusions.
“How far can we go and still be accepted?” is a question no scientist should ever ask, but most every human always will. Fighting that human failing should be incessantly drilled into students and junior scientists. “Wow! That sounds insane. WELL DONE! Now, lets see where your thoughts lead, if anywhere.” is the proper scientific response. Errors should be celebrated, not slapped down. If you always hit the bullseye, you’ll never learn that triple twenty is a higher scoring throw.
“impose an orthodoxy”? That’s anathema to fast scientific advancement. It almost guarantees slow, incremental advance that, yes, will eventually get to the next level of truth, but it all but prevents a leap to the third level above. We simply don’t have the time to put up with orthodoxy.
I asked you to refute/concur with my contention that since the scientific community has unerringly erred on the low side even though errors “should” be equally distributed high and low, that scientific reticence is the likely cause. Though your points are all valid, I’m not sure how they address the question. Thoughts?
#322 Digby
Shakes its tail. Dutch saying indicating March misbehaving in delaying Spring.
Would love to know how March temp is going. Surely for current ‘hot’ topics, like temperature, GISS could deviate from the traditional EOM run and give us some detail as it becomes available. Pretty likely Gavin will exactly know where its going.
CH @320: How DO we measure human CO2 emissions?
BPL: From economic statistics. We know how much coal, oil, and natural gas are produced each year, how much is made into gasoline and other secondary products, and how much is burned. The rest is stoichiometry.
#319, Richard–“I think you have it backwards with regard to humidity. Humidity = water vapor, which every denialist correctly knows is a very powerful greenhouse gas.”
Yes, and I’m well aware of that, too. However, when I made that off-the-cuff remark I was thinking of several things. Notably, that the temperature is not only ‘clamped’ in the positive direction, but in the negative as well. Here, for instance, is the record for 2015:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
As you see, there’s very little excursion in either direction, with no instance of the temperature going below freezing. Yet I clearly recall overnight frost in June or July in Cochrane, Ontario, at latitude 49–and where the record low for July is -3 Celsius, and for August, -2.8. (Yes, that was a few decades back, hence in a cooler climate than today’s… but still, I’m pretty sure for blog comment purposes that there are, and have been, many instances far south of the High Arctic of larger negative temperature excursions, and that the lack of variability in the ‘north of 80’ zone during summer is pretty remarkable by the standards of continental North America.) Since we are talking about variability, I suppose I should add that Cochrane’s mean low temperature for July stands at 9.5 Celsius.
I suspect the abundant water vapor is important to this highly invariant ‘north of 80’ summer temperature regime in a couple of ways. One is that whenever there is a negative temperature forcing of some sort, the vapor will tend to condense, giving rise to fog and/or cloud–both of which are known to be frequent features of the Arctic summer. When that happens, of course, insolation is largely cut off from the surface, warming the top of the cloud but not the sea ice directly. That’s a second effect of water (though not directly water vapor of course).
Which, presumably, is why cloud seems not to enhance sea ice loss during melt season. Aficionados know that for stonking sudden ice loss, there’s nothing like a strong high pressure system and sunny skies.
I don’t want to belabor a tangential point too much–or at any rate, too much more–so I’ll just say that I imagine the water vapor in this context a stabilizing one–mostly in the direction of resisting cooling, either through the radiative forcing you mention or through the release of latent heat as I described above, but also (and, I suspect, significantly) through provision of the raw material for cloud cover to modulate the effects of insolation on the surface. In that case, the water is ‘resisting’ warming.
I doubt I have all this completely straight, and I suspect there’s much more going on than I know–it’s not something that I’ve actually, you know, studied. But now you know where the off-the-cuff remark was ‘coming from,’ so I’ll stop interrupting the discussion further.
Cochrane normals here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochrane,_Ontario
For completeness, Resolute, Nunavut (latitude 74) normals given here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute,_Nunavut
(Interestingly, I see that the Resolute July record low is only a tenth of a degree cooler than Cochrane’s.)
(Also interestingly, Alert, NU–Canada’s most northerly met station at 82 N, and considered the most northerly permanently inhabited place in the world even though it’s a ‘rotating’ population–has a considerably cooler July record low, at -6.3. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Alert is one of the dryer places in the Canadian Arctic–or maybe I’m pushing interpretation a bit.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alert,_Nunavut
(Oops . . . RC mobile? I don’t use ‘smart’ phones . . . ahe, desktop)
Thanks Killian@315 Mainly for actually responding, rather than its contents, but I added some Favs to follow up. So it is going to do the full melt sometime between now and when I am dead. IS that the most valid scientific answer? Anyway, I have had a good idea for a pretty long time, why and how the ice is melting (seems to have set its max yesterday), but could not figure out that DMI temperature wobble and it always flat lining in Summer at about the same height? Maybe DMI data fault? But you didn’t get to the main bit of my query, to get a trigger indicator for methane release. This seems to be unknown? Surely now that my laptop is a million+ times faster than that IBM 360/20 I started on, there is enough power to figure this one out? Or someone might just say that there is this-or-that et al. paper, which confirms that methane is not a early trigger. Sorry folks, but I feel disappointed . . .
Frogs in a very slowly warming pot! Surely we can do better than that.
Richard,
I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate you aren’t a scientist. Science is a very conservative enterprise. It resists change, but it rewards it. At any given time, there is a body of knowledge in a field. No one imposes it, but these are the techniques, theories, facts, etc. that at the time promise you the best chance of increasing your understanding of your field of study. And when you use these techniques and do in fact increase insight into the field, your colleagues will say “good boy,” incorporate the new insights into the body of knowledge and dismiss you as reliable but not creative. If, on the other hand, you arrive at some novel analysis that provides novel insight, your results will likely be dismissed initially and you may be branded as a maverick. If you persist and demonstrate the utility of your approach, you will be hailed as a visionary. Science is designed to work this way. You have to show your colleagues that your approach–if different from what has gone before–yields insights that could not be obtained otherwise.
In this case, the unity of purpose among practitioners of a field is a good thing, because it makes it less likely that they will reject new techniques, theories, etc. merely because they are different or unpopular. If they are useful, they will be embraced. This breaks the mindset that leads to group think.
Look, Richard. Science works. That is undeniable. I contend that it works because it does not require the rejection of human foibles, but rather harnesses them toward a desirable end.
#327, Theo–Look again, that wasn’t Killian @ 315–though I have the honor to share with him what I consider a highly auspicious initial.
I think I answered your first question pretty well. As for the second, temperature north of 80 per se has little effect on permafrost because there is very little land north of 80. You either need a wider temperature metric, or to ask about submarine clathrates. But don’t ask me in either case; I don’t know the answers even approximately.
Sorry, analysis should be analyses. Moderators please change.
“How the World’s Biggest Polluters are Two Trade Deals Away from Steamrolling Climate Protections”
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/24/how-worlds-biggest-polluters-are-two-trade-deals-away-steamrolling-climate
“CLIMATE ROADBLOCKS
Looming Trade Deals Threaten Efforts to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground”
https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/climate-roadblocks.pdf
“INTRODUCTION:
How New Trade Deals Would Give Fossil Fuel Corporations More Power
to Undermine Our Climate Protections 4
A “RIGHT” TO FRACK?
Trade Deals Would Put Fracking Restrictions in Corporate Crosshairs 8
A LIFELINE FOR OFFSHORE DRILLING?
Trade Deals Would Make It Harder to Keep Oil Rigs Out of Our Waters 13
A LICENSE TO POLLUTE PUBLIC LANDS?
Trade Deals Would Undermine Efforts to Keep Publicly Owned Fossil Fuels in the Ground 19
A TOOL TO DEFEND DIRTY PIPELINES?
Trade Deals Would Pose New Hurdles for the Movement to Halt Fossil Fuel Pipelines”
The TTP and the like are proposed treaties that would put an end to any US law that stopped GW. RealClimate should do an article on them.
Mike,
Remember that Hansen’s latest paper has a lot of co-authors, experts in their fields, including some well known names. If Hansen is off his rocker, then, by association, so are all his co-authors. Also remember that this went through peer review, which resulted in some changes. Mike Mann may be unconvinced by the argument but, so far, I haven’t seen a detailed critique by him showing just where Hansen et al may have got it wrong. I think the paper needs to be taken very seriously.
CO2 emissions is never going to be a reliable indicator with 195 groups of politicians having a vested interest. Maybe apply adjustments like ground station temperature data, cleaning and averaging with a big band of uncertainties. Best to figure out what the real lag is and use that as our indicator and then we can have lots of discussion as to who is actually doing what.
Re: #287 mike said MLO for Mar 18 2016 highest daily average on record …407.12…
Killian “unless we hit significantly over an 408.3-ish peak, the evidence for a massive CO2 bump is probably pretty meager. Said peak should be in May, BTW, not February or March or April.
I’ll get excited if we approach 409 in May.”
It’s March madness. What happens if you get excited, Killian? We can’t really get to 409 this year, can we?
If, as some are wont to speculate, the methane hydrate bomb is going off now… or, no, tomorrow… or… no, next month…
;-)
Anywho, sure, had we the beginning of an accelerated hydrate release + high temps + El Nino’s 2 ppm then we might see 409. We might see it with a big El Nino effect, too, cmbined witha bunch of heat coming out of th ocean (dancer/dance WRT l Nino/PDO, etc.)
I think Arctic melt is accelerating and there were some really weird wiggles in the CH4 from MLO this winter, and such animals are non-linear, so I think we need to take all this seriously. I have said since 2007, and will continue to say, the Arctic carbon stores are simply not going to play nice till the end of this century. They are already not doing so, imo. The real question is, just how much of a tantrum are we going to see?
I don’t think anyone has a scenario they are truly comfortable with, but if I had to pick one it would be dangerous amounts being measurable by 2050, and likely sooner. Basically, I think Hansen, et al.’s concerns are fully justified.
As for this year, the pattern the last couple years was a hiatus Jan. to Feb., then four more ppm between Feb. and May. This year, the hiatus came in Dec. – Jan and was about double the increase the last couple years over the same two months. Jan to Feb. instead saw a sizeable spike, but slowed again…. thus far…. Feb. to March. Still, March to May getting an additional 3 ppm is pretty normal and we are just below 406 right now.
So, yeah, 409 entirely possible. Might mean something if we see 409 as it would be somewhat more than 2ppm from El Nino, essentially, with emissions claimed to be flat, or it might be PDO stuff… or an already-degraded system responding to EN… or…
Perhaps this hyper-warm winter is the kickoff for an Arctic phase change?
CO2 levels have dropped since that 407 number from a few days ago. The IEA carbon emission estimates are looking solid and must be starting to kick in. CO2 at 406.07 on March 24 this year as compared to 401.08 same date last year, March does not seem hot like February did, so I think the temp spike with records past three months in a row was a fluke as folks here have argued. I am persuaded. The science is solid, things are looking good.
I scanned these articles and feel like they confirm that things are going very well:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149406
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7593/full/nature16946.html
Ray at 329: I appreciate your explanation of science as conservative enterprise. I think your presentation is spot-on. Many times people just talk past each other, using different terms, possibly slightly different spins on the same dynamics and that creates conflict and confusion. I have no disagreement about how the body of knowledge advances. I like your presentation of how science works. I think it accounts for why the ongoing corrections/improvements to the body of knowledge have relentlessly increased the rate and impact of climate change.
Mavericks and good boys. There it is.
Ray,
I agree that the “kitchen” that is science works. I also know that it is patient and takes pride in being unconcerned about what happens in the dining room. Practicality is mere engineering…”sniff”
And you still have not answered my question:
Since errors are consistently lowballs, what probability do you place on the existence of reticence that is now/will soon kill thousands/millions of people? (OK, I upped the flame) When a group’s actions inevitably lead to mass death, then insular thinking is wrong. Frankly, it is irrelevant whether science figures out Climate in 2100. The barn is burning today, and though post mortems are fun, they’re pretty useless when we’re talking about a one-time situation.
The analysis of error propensity IS science. And quite useful science at that. In fact, without it all other science is misleading until tomorrow, when that propensity inevitably shakes itself out. Nowadays, holistic analysis rules. Climate scientists’ general refusal to incorporate holistic analysis of scientists themselves is a flaw, not a feature. As you said, visionaries (like James Hansen) are rejected time and again. When one person is shown to be right 99% of the time, while others are shown to be way off 99% of the time, then equal weighting is an error. Yet another opportunity for holistic analysis. And that holistic analysis is what should be brought to the dining room. Nobody cares what happens in the kitchen. They want delicious and safe food, not half-baked salmonella-chicken surprise with the promise that tomorrow’s meal will be fully baked. Again, allowing stubbed food to be eaten is wrong. I view the exclusion of clouds and ice melt to be durn close to distributing Salmonella on purpose. What value was there in such a heinous decision? That scientists could pretend the error bars were smaller?
It sounds like you’re advocating kitchen work for the chefs’ benefit, and (not really, but inevitably the conclusion) that diners are dying is irrelevant, though perhaps, as Spock would say, “fascinating”.
Thanks again for the discussion. And yes, though I’m scientific by nature and trained in the art, I’m not a mere practicing scientist…”sniff”. I’m a visionary, an inventor, a political analyst, a writer, a sculptor, and much more. I’m well aware of how humans reject vision, and how humans see their own visionary status so staunchly that they’ll come to a site like this with zero knowledge and a demonstrated lack of talent and still argue that the experts are stupid and wrong. Now narrow that immense gulf to the one between a mediocre scientist who barely got through a third rate school and an ace… and that guy is probably gonna cling to his beliefs ever so tightly. That’s why holistic analysis is critical.
That really is the takeaway from a prominent scientist like Dr. Mann: Hansen is no longer a reasonable scientist.
No worries.
Comment by mike — 23 Mar 2016 @
I am going to go with Dr. Hansen on this one. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if his calculations have to be revised in a year or two. The only constant in this whole thing is that we’re consistently too conservative with our estimates.
On a slightly different note, something is rapidly killing off many of our hardwoods in Arkansas. The bark falls off at the base of the tree and/or the tops rot out and fall to the ground. Is anyone else seeing this happen in your area?
damn: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149406
op. cit.: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886
Recollect what else besides CO2 is of concern. The chemical industries have a lot of potential to act with responsibility:
http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature10322
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/CO2%20greenhouse.pdf
big fire in Ok and Kansas: http://robertscribbler.com/2016/03/24/hot-winds-fan-massive-unprecedented-march-wildfire-burning-40-mile-swath-through-kansas-and-oklahoma/anderson-creek-wildfire-enormous-footprint/
I think this has to be good news because plants are going to grow like crazy in the aftermath of the burn, so the regrowth will suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and with that and the reports of reduced CO2 emissions from the IEA, I think we should all watch for the CO2 ppm to drop like a rock.
MLO shows it down to 405.83 as of March 25, 2016, so the countdown has begun.
Two houses burned and a cuple of bridges out after the fire, so construction jobs are being created left and right.
Future so bright we all better get more sunblock.
RC @337: I’m a visionary, an inventor, a political analyst, a writer, a sculptor, and much more.
BPL: Modest, too.
Chuck Hughes @320.
You ask “How DO we measure human CO2 emissions?” Fossil fuel production stats can get a bit flaky at times, and they do not present the full story (FF is not all burnt & not all are included in the production stats – eg flaring), but the do provide the level of accuracy we require to assess their accumulating AGW impacts. This is rightly described as mere “stoichiometry” @325.
The emissions from Land Use Change are another significant contributor but there is a lot of guestimation within the LUC figures. So the likes of the Global Carbon Project spill a lot of ink sorting the LUC figures (The 2014 paper here – Le Quéré et al (2015) ‘Global Carbon Budget 2014’) The LUC uncertainty doubles the total uncertainty and probably saps a lot of robustness from the findings – “For the last decade available (2004–2013), E(ff) was 8.9±0.4 GtC/yr, E(luc) 0.9±0.5 GtC/yr, G(atm) 4.3±0.1 GtC/yr, (ocean)N 2.6±0.5 GtC/yr, and S(land) 2.9±0.8 GtC/yr.” Individual annual figures have the same uncertainty.
The one piece of certainty we do have is that since 1958 we have been able to provide an accurate atmospheric point measurement of CO2. This is what allows G(atm) to be measured to a couple of percent. So we do have a good measure of emissions but only after our CO2 has been released and redistributed itself around its various global hidey holes.
Additionally in recent years, we have also courtesy of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 an accurate atmospheric areal measurement of CO2 which will give us a chance to plot that CO2 during that redistribution. Although the natural carbon cycle is the biggest thing being measured by OCO-2, I’d suggest that there is enough data swirling round in those images to pick out the human part of it and so give us another measure of human emissions to rival the splendid Keeling curve.
Richard Caldwell: “Since errors are consistently lowballs…”
Hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute! You’ve yet to provide any convincing evidence that this is the case. You’ve merely cited some examples. You’ve made no effort to make an exhaustive survey or even look for counter examples. And for every example you cite, I’ve got a lukewarmer who has their favorite examples of a prediction that was on the high side. Maybe you should get together and provide counter-examples to each other. Sounds like a nice pas de deux.
I think this has to be good news because plants are going to grow like crazy in the aftermath of the burn, so the regrowth will suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and with that and the reports of reduced CO2 emissions from the IEA, I think we should all watch for the CO2 ppm to drop like a rock.
MLO shows it down to 405.83 as of March 25, 2016, so the countdown has begun.
Two houses burned and a cuple of bridges out after the fire, so construction jobs are being created left and right.
Future so bright we all better get more sunblock.
Comment by Mike — 26 Mar 2016 @
I love your sense of dark humor. That’s about the only thing keeping me sane these days is my ability to laugh at human foibles. Take our current Presidential campaign for instance… Hahaha! And just think, one of these morons could be running the show in less than a year. Oh, those silly humans! What will they think of next? Maybe bringing guns to the Republican Convention? Naaaah! Never.
damn: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149406
Comment by Hank Roberts — 26 Mar 2016 @
Yup. The math doesn’t seem to be working in favor of an ever increasing population and energy demands, if I am reading this correctly.
> Mike
> … fire in Ok and Kansas … I think this has to be good news …
> … watch for the CO2 ppm to drop like a rock.
Mike, where do you “think” the carbon burned by the wildfire came from?
It’s hard to tell if you’re trying to pull our legs here, or if you’re a sincere young person who hasn’t taken a chemistry class yet, or, I dunno.
Could you please try phrasing your statements as questions?
Then you could look for answers instead of just telling us your beliefs.
Put them into Google Scholar and see if there’s any support for what you think.
I’m always wrong if I just post what I think — or believe — without checking. There’s almost always someone’s work I don’t know about that informs me better than what I happen to think.
Hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute! You’ve yet to provide any convincing evidence that this is the case. You’ve merely cited some examples. You’ve made no effort to make an exhaustive survey or even look for counter examples. And for every example you cite, I’ve got a lukewarmer who has their favorite examples of a prediction that was on the high side. Maybe you should get together and provide counter-examples to each other. Sounds like a nice pas de deux.
Comment by Ray Ladbury — 27 Mar 2016
I think the requirement for ‘evidence’ works in both directions. Scientists are “conservative” by nature from what I understand. Politically that doesn’t seem to be working out too well. Continually underestimating our predicament doesn’t allow much time for preparation.
Related anti-science
House panel wants names of scientists involved in fetal-tissue research
http://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-1812785