@Chris #251,
Got a good laugh from your post and link. I certainly hope you were not trying to be serious. Couldn’t be a better example of wilfully ignoring the obvious if one was a standup comedian.
yes, a little grouchy, but that’s ok. I can/will try to be serious. It does not always work out well. Sometimes better to ask questions or use humor to help people think things through. Not your cup of tea.
I added the comments app #173 that you linked, looks fine and works on other websites, but not here yet. Too bad, you might want to hush me, I would not hush you, but I would hush Victor. Concern trolls spinning the science and working on doubt manufacture are a complete waste of time imho. I would love to have that stuff gone. Oh, well…
Did you read the two posts on Tamino? I am interested in your take on them. I recall (perhaps mistakenly) that you think Tamino is a credible source.
My serious take on things is the similar as in these two Tamino posts. I think the current trend of heat records for the past 12 months is more then ENSO. Tamino appears to be moving slowly toward a similar conclusion.
On CO2, the Tamino post is very good imho. It deconstructs/delinks the “noise” of IEA and other emission reports from a serious consideration of the AGW situation by paying attention to the important number: ghg accumulation in the atmosphere. That is where the rubber hits the brakes, if you catch my drift.
plants are not nearly as efficient at harvesting solar energy (for our subsequent use) as we are when we use solar panels. For corn, we get about a quarter watt per square meter compared to about 40 with a solar panel.
That would work out if your desired end product is electrons.
If your desired end product is food, stay with agriculture.
zebrasays
BPL @ 247,
If we define the arable fraction as the fraction neither in severe drought nor drenched (an overestimate, as some well-watered land is otherwise unsuitable), it is simple to show that under global warming, the arable fraction goes to zero with time.
Great sense of humor, BPL. You can’t show any such thing, whether simply or complicatedly. Dry land can be irrigated; wet land can be drained. Humans have been there, done that, all over the world, with much less tech and energy than we have now.
Try a new definition for “arable”. If you think about it, humans have made all kinds of land “arable”– terraced mountainsides, for example.
Cui bono? Thought you would like the perennials. If the “crop” benefiting a natural ecosystem bothers you, perhaps you won’t. Same carbon sink either way.
S.B. Ripmansays
Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin
Too soon? I estimate >99% chance of an annual record in 2016 in @NASAGISS temperature data, based on Jan-Mar alone
2:17 PM – 15 Apr 2016
Does anyone else feel that the above tweet by Gavin is inexplicably weak? Do they wish he would, rather than playing guessing games with numbers, use the public platform he has to speak out loudly and forcefully about the danger facing our country? Is it wrong to ask that a scientist employed by and for the American people should, when our government is failing to act as it should, issue constant red-flag warnings?
The tweet should have read as follows: “Based on Jan-Mar alone, I estimate >99% chance of another annual temp record in 2016. These escalating temperatures are a clear and present danger to our American way of life. The policy-makers in government need to get in gear immediately. We scientists cannot make it any clearer: things are getting dire.”
[Response: That’s way more than 140 characters. – gavin]
Thomassays
232 Digby Scorgiehen asks: I suppose I should be asking: By how much should our emissions drop before we see a noticeable change in CO2 levels?
The figure I keep hearing is by 10% year on year of the current global output of all GHGs from all sources and not just of CO2 – then it will take a decade more likely two before a change in atmospheric CO2 levels is noticeable. Under COP21 agreement total emissions will keep increasing to 2030 or later.
Of course such numbers means that the biggest historical emitters like the US et al need to pull back by 20% (?) reductions year on year – which isn’t going to happen – and so do the math and see where it leads as the climate scientists, GCMs, economists, and energy use experts suggest.
Nemesissays
Addendum to my last comment #249:
Just to give you a real live picture about ocean temperature and CO2 release:
“Does anyone else feel that the above tweet by Gavin is inexplicably weak?”
No. It’ll send the blogosphere into a distracted frenzy as it is. It will burn up their energy talking bs about it and spreading the ‘news’ further. Maybe even someone in congress will get to hear what Gavin Nasa/giss have to say for a change rather than acting like the 3 monkeys.
Digby Scorgiesays
MA Rodger @250
Okay, I had a look at the exchange between Dan H and Patrick, and also at Gavin’s response. If I understand correctly then, a reduction in emissions of 60 to 70% would result in my possibility (2): CO2 levels remain roughly unchanged.
A smaller reduction in emissions (Gavin mentions 10 to 40%) results in possibility (1): CO2 levels continue increasing but at a slower rate.
A larger reduction, presumably 80 to 90%, results in CO2 levels declining.
Do I have this right?
Thomassays
239 zebra For example, if people were convinced that severe local flooding was “caused” by CO2, that would be enough to get them to change, in combination with other arguments.
Such arguments and obvious connections have already been made re extreme weather events and didn’t seem to make much a difference – ‘conservatives”deniers’ ‘pseudo-skeptics’ et al cannot see AGW even when it is pointed out to them. It’s a cognitive issue not a scientific proof one, imo. Most psychologists and cognitive scientists agree. In fact there is an overwhelming ‘consensus’ about it. The data don’t matter.
Show your calculations if you want that kind of credibility. You know that the number of data points it takes to say there’s a likely trend depends on the variability of the data set, and 12 months is awfully short. If you believe you can detect a trend in the data, show your work.
Tamino does show his work, and doesn’t claim more than he can show.
Scott Stroughsays
CD @257
Sure perennials are great. But the idea of using solar panels to make sugar to feed to cows when cows eat grass, is almost as ridiculous and inefficient as growing corn and soy to feed cows when cows eat grass.
There are a thousand ways to spin the obvious. The current models of production of animal products is ridiculously harmful not only to AGW, but also many environmental factors as well. It is so ridiculously inefficient that one can think of a multitude of equally ridiculous schemes better. But the one solution that actually has the potential to sequester carbon through the LCP is simply stop growing the excess corn and grow grasses instead. A cow has a rumen. It can live off things we humans can’t digest. It is ridiculous to think a bison might sequester carbon but a cow cant if managed to graze the same way. Equally ridiculous to think cows need human digestible foods like corn to survive.
That’s why I figured it was a joke made to highlight how foolish overproduction of corn is.
Nemesissays
@Hank Roberts, #246
” 12 months is awfully short”
But you can add 2014 and 2016 (according to Gavin Schmidt), so you have 36 months already.
Richard Caldwellsays
Scott: Like it or not we are geoengineering the planet now and have been for thousands of years.
Richard: Yep, but in the modern vernacular, folks tend to use the word for non-carbon geoengineering. I find that usage clearer though less precise.
Scott: (prairie soils) hold many orders of magnitude more soil carbon,
Richard: Yep. That’s why houses here in Nebraska used to be made of sod. Perhaps we should be encouraging the destruction of forests and their replacement by grasslands? Killing off the Amazon might be just the thing!
——————
Edward: We here in Iowa and Illinois already had doses of “wetter.” It was bad every time.
Richard: Yep. The Missouri River keeps trying to take out Omaha in the spring nowadays. What used to be easy and naturally handled now requires planning and effort. You DON’T need snowpack, but you need EITHER snowpack OR a dam, and snowpack was free. You DON’T need moderate rain, but you DO need EITHER moderate rain OR grand drainage bulldozed into your farm, and moderate rain was free.
—————
Thomas: talking seriously about the “new reality” until after there’s an ice free summer arctic
Richard: Yep. It’s too bad this year’s El Nino probably isn’t going to do the job. I’ll be cheering for a massive melt this time, and perhaps a full job within a decade or so. We NEED the Arctic sea ice to die sooner than later.
On coal, yeah, it’s all Titanic deck chair shuffling. We want to reduce emissions, so we send our coal elsewhere, so the numbers don’t “count”. China wants to reduce emissions, so they are planning on doing less manufacturing, which only means said manufacturing will happen in Vietnam et al. As if the atmosphere cares a whit. It ain’t consumption that matters, but production.
———-
Edward: By treaty, the Great Lakes are off limits for providing water to anywhere else.
Richard: Irrelevant. The discussion was about US citizens dying in the street of starvation. As if those treaties wouldn’t be rewritten.
On China, so what if they start starving? That just means Nebraska’s corn gets more valuable. Besides, crop prices have little affect on the supermarket. Corn is $0.50 an ear at the grocery, but only $3.50 a bushel (50 ears). Double the price of corn, and corn prices for [wealthy] consumers barely budge.
On worldwide agricultural collapse: the world is very large. Collapse happens ONLY in discrete areas. Thus, the laws of averages ensure the world’s food supply remains fairly stable, and the laws of supply and demand serve to either destroy the last elephant habitat or not. Until THEY all die, humans are safe. And until They (other humans) all die, We (Nebraskans) are safe. As suppliers, shortages are GREAT!
———–
Chuck: Drought/ Flood/ drought/ flood…. what’s not to like? We’ll adjust.
Richard: “Survivable” and “desirable” are not synonyms. By pretending they are, you probably lost much of the great value that was in Robin’s post.
Chuck: “losing its sprawl” = Depletion
Richard: Nope. “Depletion” speaks to a reduction to zero, which isn’t in the cards. The Ogallala is a renewable resource for Nebraska and bits and pieces of other states. That we’ve used it improperly doesn’t mean it’s being depleted. The Ogallala is in FINE shape IF one looks at it as a renewable resource. That the current [fossil-style] use can’t be maintained, well, that just means more profit for Nebraska! “We can’t keep doing it wrong.” does not mean “We can’t do it right.” The Ogallala *CAN’T* be depleted.
Chuck: Gimme a break! “Where it belongs?” What did it do, break out of jail a million years ago, so now via Climate Change we’re just “putting it back where it belongs?”
Richard: The center of the US used to be a shallow sea centered in Nebraska. Then, the rockies wore down and the sea filled in, leaving an aquifer centered in Nebraska. That aquifer overflowed, leaving harvestable fossil water in Kansas and other places. We’re left with fossil (overflow) water in Kansas and renewable water in Nebraska. So call it “belongs” or whatever, Nebraska’s water is renewable, Kansas’ isn’t. You can’t change subsurface topography. It is what it is.
—————
Hank votes: Please, be simpler and clearer, or find a standup venue appropriate to the comedy.
Richard: Mike, I vote the other way. You crack me up. This venue is perfect for your brand of humor. “Warm regards” LOL
—————
Barton: it is simple to show that under global warming, the arable fraction goes to zero with time.
Richard: Yes, it is “simple”.
Chuck Hughessays
The 10th century, when the Vikings were carrying out raids across Europe and the Song dynasty took power in China, was the wettest in the records ahead of the 20th, according to the researchers in Sweden, Germany, Greece and Switzerland.”
Comment by Victor — 19 Apr 2016 @
Of course for this to be accurate you must know the Viking’s Vector, Victor.
Thomassays
(Satire alert)
A word about the hysteria over the El Nino this year. It is nothing more than natural variation, obviously. I am so grateful to the Heartland Institute, Tol, Curry, and the WUWT crowd for showing the world how the hiatus/pause meant that Global Warming was over years ago now and the entire edifice of the IPCC collapsed due to their fictitious GCM projections.
And here’s the proof, if you still dare not to believe the wisest heads on earth – in the middle of a major El Nino event at least 24,108 sq klms of the Great Barrier Reef has NOT been affected by any bleaching this summer. So there! :-P
A huge win for the ‘skeptics’ in anyone’s language – 24 thousand sq kilometers!!!
Of course there is the other 93% of the GBR that was bleached, but hey, that’s only some clever numbers being spat out of a statistical computer so it doesn’t count much, if at all.
@262 Digby Scorgie,
They problem with your math is that ecosystems are self adjusting complex systems. They is no way to assure the biological systems will continue at the rate they are now once a larger reduction of 80 to 90%, or that it will result in CO2 levels declining. They might. Or more likely they will simply level off at a new balance. They even could still continue to rise.
At the current time the natural ecosystems are pretty unlikely to be enough for drawdown even at zero fossil fuel emissions. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t be used, but it will take a change in management.
It much like watching the growth of a forest. For a while the growth means more biomass. But it doesn’t take long for the forest to saturate and then the decay from the leaf litter decay roughly equals out to the new growth.
The increases in carbon sequestration we see now in the terrestrial biosphere are related to the CO2 fertiliser effect. In other words more biomass. But it won’t be long at all after emissions stop that this fertiliser effect will stop too. It’s self adjusting. As soon as emission stop then soon will it stop as the maximum biomasses for those biomes that are adjusting saturate.
However, there is another part of the carbon cycle that is much more stable, sequesters carbon at a much higher rate, and will not saturate before atmospheric levels draw down. This is called the Liquid Carbon Pathway. It does not follow the The Roth C model. Instead of saturating, it does the opposite, actually increasing the the rate of sequestration the more that already has been sequestered.
BUT the only way we can see those benefits takes changing agriculture worldwide. It simply won’t happen by itself.
Scottsays
@267 Richard Caldwel
You said, “Yep. That’s why houses here in Nebraska used to be made of sod. Perhaps we should be encouraging the destruction of forests and their replacement by grasslands? Killing off the Amazon might be just the thing!”
I have heard this really poor logic frequently. Can you explain your logic? If you agree Nebraska grasslands and their soils used to be massive soil carbon pumps and held huge quantities of carbon, why would restoring them have anything at all to do with the Amazon Rain forest?
Don’t you think the obvious solution is to grow Nebraska adapted species in Nebraska instead of Brazil? Or are you purposely trying to fail. Do I try to grow bananas in Nebraska? Of course not. So why this obsession with silly logic?
Chris Dudley made the same mistake actually, only he wants to chemically make sugar from solar panels just to avoid the obvious solution of growing prairie where there was prairie!
Right now we grow corn in Nebraska, but is corn so sacred we will all die if we only grow as much as we need instead of purposeful over production? The economics of a properly managed grassland are far far more profitable, and sequester carbon too….in Nebraska…..but cutting down a rain forest to grow pasture is almost as stupid as cutting down a rain forest to grow corn and soy. Silly
Mike Robertssays
To Digby and others, my take is that there is a “natural” level of GHG sources and sinks that eventually even themselves out. We perturb that by extraction of fossil fuels and land use changes, including agriculture. This results in a continual increase in GHG levels in the atmosphere – sinks and sources change, of course, but the net is an increase. The Paris agreement includes a desire to get to zero carbon (no anthropogenic emissions) in the second half of this century. Zero carbon is a good idea because it would ensure that no extra emissions occur and that GHG levels would no longer rise. The implication is that GHG levels would continue to rise until we get to zero carbon. So let’s not hope that a 70% (or some other) reduction in emissions would stabilise CO2e concentrations in the atmosphere. As long as we add extra, some of that extra will accumulate in the atmosphere and continued warming would ensue.
It suggests that short term stabilization may be possible with a 50% cut but long term stabilization would take a 100% cut.
Thomassays
270 Scott Strough “It much like watching the growth of a forest. For a while the growth means more biomass. But it doesn’t take long for the forest to saturate and then the decay from the leaf litter decay roughly equals out to the new growth.”
Um I am not so sure that’s accurate across the board. It’s my understanding the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere is greater in mature/old growth forests with the greater wood mass because they are capable to draw down much more CO2 due to their size / energy capacity to do so if healthy (a push bike vs a truck). The leaf litter, bark loss, old limbs etc is very minor part of the cycle. iow I don’t think forests can ‘saturate’ in their capacity to draw down carbon – but not sure. (sorry no refs, my ancient memory that may well be incomplete – worth checking?)
zebrasays
@Thomas 263,
No offense, but you seem to misinterpret my comment, which I think is pretty clear if you read carefully.
If you believe CO2 is causing flooding then how are you a Denialist?
Killiansays
Re: #33 Kevin McKinney said
#32–“You’ve just said putting ourselves at the brink of collapse was a good thing.”
Er, no, I didn’t.
I said that there was a robust record of increasing agricultural productivity via innovation, and quoted what Beddington had to say about that.
Yeah, you did, andwithno caveat. An unqualified statement is what it is. There was no “revolution,” there was a series of mistakes tat have helped lead us to the brink of disaster.
You conflated 4 specific innovations into one ‘revolution’
I conflated nothing. It’s a system. You know this, or should. They cannot be seen in isolation, particularly with regard to long-term effects. Wondering who peed in your Wheaties.
then blamed it for water pollution ‘the world over’, then equated that with “putting ourselves at the brink of collapse.”
Yup.
Of course chemical pollution of waterways is a problem. But increasing agricultural productivity is also a necessity–and there’s good evidence that it is possible.
Yes, it is. I teach people to do exactly that. Without your innovations.” Your innovations *are* driving us to the brink. That you may think more of similar are a good thing is frightening. We need exactly the opposite. Rather, the spread and expansion of innovations in simplification – mostly just rediscovering old knowledge and applying it with modern knowledge to enhance the depth of our understanding. Terra preta being a good example.
We face tough choices, no way around that.
Yes, to do less. Not so tough, really. We need no new innovations to achieve sustainability.
You think that’s fast? I’ve posited hereabouts we could get all the way to sub-300 ppm in as little as 20 years.
I still posit it.
Thomassays
FOR SALE ON EBAY 150 CLIMATE SCIENTISTS GOING CHEAP – WILL WORK FOR FOOD AND BOARD
Do you need a cutting edge scientist to work in your climate related research field?
Will you be obtaining research grants in your science dept from the new COP21 agreements thru the UN?
Then there’s no time to waste, pick up one of these top grade atmospheric, meteorology, hydrology, antarctic research, geology, soils, marine, reef, biology, chemistry, fauna and flora research scientists who are about to be out of a job.
The Govt has to balance it’s budget somehow – after all they did lose the $billions coming in from the carbon tax/ets and mining taxes they repealed. Apparently we no longer need climate scientists in Australia. Each one comes with 4 sets of white lab coats, a pair of work boots and an akubra hat better than James Hansen’s.
How long this will last though is anyone’s guess. I certainly wouldn’t expect it to continue once CO2 levels start dropping back to reasonable levels.
Forests are more of a moderating effect, smoothing out the highs and lows of climate change. Grasslands because they sequester carbon in a different way can actually have a forcing effect.
Digby: The emission numbers are as solid and dependable as VW computer emission tweaks for evaluating how we are actually doing. I think you cannot believe the emission numbers generally. There are a number of ways to game this international system for apportioning carbon emissions. I expect most countries to game this system for economic advantage. I think the MLO or other hard measures of CO2 level is the best way to evaluate how our species is actually doing and that does not look good. I think the real annual increase rate is now up around 3 ppm per year. CO2 level is not just rising, the rate of increase in the rise has been rising. It has only sped up so far, little or no sign of a change that suggests our species has actually done something to change the trajectory.
I watch the rips and dips in actual ppm to get a sense of how we are actually doing. ENSO is probably good for 2 ppm, but I think that discounting AGW by discussion of ENSO is like arguing over whether it would be better to electrocuted or die in gas chamber. ENSO is real. If we ever see catastrophic runaway global warming, it will likely start in an El Nino year. There is a lot of rocket science in global climate, but reasonable evaluation of AGW is not necessarily rocket science. I think it is possible to suss out the trends in a subtle evaluation/overview method that is more like good journalism than geophysics. Geophysicists will disagree. Good for them.
Daily MLO CO2 has fallen from record 409.3 and is now in the 407 range. I don’t know mechanics of that. Maybe the weakening EN event? Or just noise. You have to weigh that against other hard numbers like global temp and the spatial concentration of heat on the planet. The overall global temp number continues to set records, now at 11 months in a row, if I am not mistaken. Maybe we will break that streak with weakening EN. I hope so because as Gavin said so eloquently about Feb temp: “Wow.”
The concentration of heat in far global north is a big concern for me. I don’t think we should be confident at all about the impact of that much heat in the far north. Way too many big temp features in the north like the ice cover albedo, the carbon sink in permafrost, the methane clathrates etc. We are poking the climate system with a stick. How dumb is that?
“Over the last decade, the United States embraced energy efficiency and higher fuel economy standards, causing almost double-digit declines in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But since the last drop in 2012, that trend has gone in the opposite direction for the second time in a row, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, which tracks emissions across the entire country.
In 2014, the newest year for which data is available, emissions grew a percentage point from 2013, according to the report released Friday. Emissions climbed due to increasing fuel demand for residential and commercial sector heating, as well as a growing use of fuel for vehicles. Industrial production also increased across various sectors, causing some slight growth in industrial sector emissions. The fact that emissions increased in 2014 is particularly concerning since the report also updated 2013 figures showing that the U.S. emitted more than it had originally reported.
This is also significant for the national and international arena because inventories like these are the prime tools countries use to monitor their emissions individually and globally. What’s more, this new data comes a week before hundreds of leaders officially sign the Paris agreement that calls on nations to reduce emissions to prevent further global warming.”
back to mike thoughts: Record-setting heat here in the Pacific NW. I have never had to set the house up to maximize cooling in April before. Supposed to cool off tomorrow and back to old school maritime NW weather pattern for a couple of days, but the old school weather pattern is really gone now. Have meeting with the city here in a couple of days to discuss ground and rain water management in a warming planet. That should be interesting.
Ruducing land devoted to grain while keeping up the beef production leads to a big carbon sink and wilderness restoration. It’s an energy argument which may be what you are missing.
You got me wrong there. I aim to restore prairie. The panels can go anywhere (including desert) and require much less land area for the same amount of milk, eggs and meat than grain production.
It’s always helpful to put what you believe into a Google search.
What you know from memory is only as good as the last time it was up to date.
As the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”
For everything since your last memory update, check Google.
Nemesissays
Again, in terms of ocean heat:
” 20.2.2016 – Ocean heating doubles
The ocean is taking heat. That’s the conclusion of a new study that finds that Earth’s oceans now absorb heat at twice the rate they did 18 years ago. Around half of ocean heat uptake since 1865 has taken place since 1997, researchers also report online January 18 in Nature Climate Change…”
Ocean heating DOUBLED within the last 18 years. When will the oceans start to become a net carbon source?
Richard Caldwellsays
Scott: cutting down a rain forest to grow pasture is almost as stupid as cutting down a rain forest to grow corn and soy.
Richard: Yep, and the bracketing of sarcasm with “Perhaps” and an exclamation point is easily missed. (Maybe I should use more emoticons?) What will we do if our messing with the atmosphere and turning chunks of the Amazon into McDonalds hamburger generators ends up destroying it? Rainfall in the Amazon is recursive. Instead of rain to land to runoff to river to ocean you have rain to roots to leaves to atmosphere to rain. What happens when rain becomes more single-pass? Well, rainfall drops almost in half, and…
Your point about (other) grasses maybe being a better use than corn for Nebraska is very valid. Once cellulosic ethanol ramps up, we might turn large swaths of our nation into “ethanol ranges”, where nature lives in harmony occasionally interrupted by the robotic harvesting of meat and fuel.
Thomas, your logic is good, but it excludes fire. Our atmospheric CO2 levels might be “artificially” low due to the increase in underbrush and crowding due to fire suppression. Plus is CO2 like candy? Yummy and easy for an ecosystem to digest, but you end up diabetic and flabby? Dunno. Anyway, I think much of the vaunted drawdown of CO2 by land-based biosphere might just be the lag between increased growth and increased fire, especially since global warming increases conditions conducive to fire, and the resulting intense fires are more likely to kill off mature trees that in the olden days would survive.
Everybody, please note that my “Nebraska/USA wins” comments are seriously tongue-in-cheek. “I’ve got mine and who cares about everybody else” is using an obviously inferior moral stance to promote a higher view.
Theosays
Re Thomas @ 277: At the risk of starting election plays, there is much more future economic value in climate change adaptation, than having hundreds of granted scientists debating whether climate change is real. Better to clear the deck, discard denials and re-employ those with adaptation skills.Then if some of the rejects are actually good at assessing the climate, get them employed by the Weather Bureau, where they belong. This “sacking” should really be taken as a backhanded complement to the Turnbull government for recognising that climate change is real and that Australia should position itself to take advantage of the adaptation industry it will create.
(Haha, and then to make sure, that it is proceeding as predicted, we have just approved the largest coal mine)
Thomassays
278 Scott Strough thanks. PS on ‘grasses’ carbon sequestration. A year or so ago there was research that confirmed switching from the predominant variety of sugar cane planted out in Aus. could double or triple (?) the amount of carbon able to be sequestered long term in soils with no neg affect on production or sugar content. By also implementing other positive farming practices such as recycling the baggass back into the soil or using it as a renewable energy source globally broad acre sugar cane production could contribute significant net co2 mitigation from it’s positive draw down effect. It would be logical to suspect that some specific ‘prairie’ grasses varieties may have similar advantages over others as well? refs:
Sugarcane the champion crop at carbon sequestration http://epubs.scu.edu.au/esm_pubs/782/ http://cargoroadwines.com.au/sba/pdf/BioCCS-plantstones.pdf
Theosays
In March UV @296, I asked:
So if March behaves and comes in with the others, then surely if April begins to look good, we can start celebrating? Gloat with our family and friends, that we were right after all? Maybe incite some mobbing of WUWT? Nobel Price for James ?
Just last Monday, our local TV weather man carefully suggested, that we seem to be in a bit of a warm spell this April, with many locations in NSW recording Min and Max up to 4 degrees higher. But soon we will have that cold change and fall back in line with winter . . .
So are we there yet? Should I still prepare that drone for Watt’s office or are we just going to shame him into oblivion?
And again, no doubt, with satellites doing their minute by minute live recording, our Gavin would already know April, but he would not be allowed to “wow” what he sees, until the official release. Now that things are hotting up, maybe they should have a weekly release of Satellite data only?
S.B. Ripmansays
No. 258 (Response by Gavin):
Sorry, should have suggested a “tweet storm.” Elizabeth Warren made the news with one today.
To have one coming from a climate scientist would double the storminess of it.
Might even make the 6:00 news. They’re always looking for something attention-getting.
Digby Scorgiesays
Chris Dudley @254, Thomas @259
I conclude that a dip of a few percent in emissions will have no discernible effect on the Keeling curve.
Scott Strough @270
It’s not my maths, mate. I’m just trying to interpret what the climate scientists are saying.
Mike Roberts @272
Yes, I do understand that a large cut in emissions is needed immediately, but that eventually we really have to get down to zero. My take-home message is that there would have to be a marked drop in emissions (10 to 20%?) before we see the Keeling curve start deviating from its current trajectory.
mike @279
I too have a jaundiced opinion of emissions calculations. From all the responses to my original innocent little question, I deduce that there would have to be a marked change in the way global society functions before the Keeling curve takes any notice. Fudging the emissions calculations might mislead people that we’re on the right path, but if we really were on the right path we should see big changes in our way of life.
Thomassays
274 zebra, I have no idea what you are trying to say to me. I thought what I said was clear even if you may not agree with my conclusion about it. I was not talking about or to you personally but generally addressing why the ‘data’ or simple local connections do find root in some people ie conservatives agw skeptics in general.
If you believe CO2 is causing flooding then how are you a Denialist? If you mean more flooding more often in some locations then I don’t know. Nor why you’re asking me that question.
Overall I generally agree your previous comment: My objection to the hyperbole is that it is counterproductive…… Arguments to deal with climate change have to be valid at a local level to have any effect.
Part of the problem is that straight talking based on the ‘data’ and good science and reasonably confident forecasts gets judged incorrectly as hyperbole, when it isn’t. It isn’t what scientists, eco-warriors or agw proponents people say, so much as what some people hear and how they process that themselves.
iow the truth hurts some people and they take it personally and as an attack upon their intelligence, opinions and worldview. It doesn’t take much to turn an advanced civilized nation into a net importer of food or their citizens to begin to starve. There’s Germany in the 40s, Russia and China several times, the US during the dust bowl period, Iraq’s oil for food program, Syria after a 5 year drought then 5 years of civil war, Fiji and Vanuatu are two record breaking category 5+ cyclones.
The people in every US State which imports it’s food from other US states would begin to starve the moment that food transfer stopped. Past history of co-operation is a very bad predictor of future behaviour when it comes to people under severe stress. Syrians are fighting Syrians, and Koreans have been angry at other Koreans for 65 years now. Everyone is happy sharing food and wine at weddings. No so during the divorce. I call this logical common sense regarding known human behaviour. Not hyperbole nor hysterics but some basic caution at jumping to assumptions that do not necessarily follow.
Thomassays
correction: ….do not find root in some people
Scottsays
CD @280,
You said, “But where’s the beef? If you trade between grain and grazing you get less beef or less forest.”
Only if you insist on continuing to raise animals on grain. If you convert the corn and soy fields to prairie, they will support even more beef production actually. Livestock fatten faster on grain, but yields per acre are higher on properly managed grasses. However, I don’t propose more beef production. I propose as surplus area becomes available, rewilding. But you don’t just go from cornfield to wild prairie. You need to restore that land with well managed livestock to replace lost ecological niches. Once the ecosystem recovers, the wildlife will generally return, or can be reintroduced where appropriate. Also about 1/2 of the current grazing land in the US is overgrazed. Overgrazed land supports far fewer animals than properly grazed land. So by simply avoiding overgrazing the current grazing lands could easily double the livestock they support. Since we don’t want to double the livestock, that means more habitat for wildlife.
One can play with the numbers all day long. The only way you run short is by growing corn and soy to feed livestock..that’s what causes a pressure to deforest. End that practise by removing the subsidies, market manipulation, and regulatory burden propping up that inefficient system and then an actual ecologically sound replacement will be pressured by market forces alone. Bingo, grasslands restored and about 1/2 the cropland in the US becomes more profitable growing grass than growing corn and soy. And what does grass do through the Liquid Carbon Pathway? Sequester large quantities of carbon per acre. There are case studies where changes in management like this sequestered long term 17 tons CO2 per hectare per year. That adds up real quick when you are talking such large acreage.
@hank 282,
ERMM ACTUALLY…. That’s what I said @278. Currently a net sink. Not likely to remain a net sink for long. Once a new balance is reached, you’ll end up with roughly net 0. But CO2 is rising now. We are not in balance. So forest sequestration in biomass is also rising…temporarily. Sources are in my previous posts.
Phil Lsays
Hank Roberts #282: The first hit I found at your Google search is an article by Sherwood Idso.
Interesting that Idso is busy trying to overturn both the climate science consensus and forest science consensus.
Here’s a link to Dr. Werner Kurtz (Natural Resources Canada – Canadian Foreest Service) discussing the carbon balance in forests. He is an IPCC WG3 author, and I believe he represents the scientific consensus on carbon sequestration in forests (at least the disturbance-driven boreal forest). http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/forests/video/13557
Dan H.says
Killian,
You do realize that the dramatic phase out of “fossil fuels” as postulated by Ben Sovacool used examples of moving from coal to natural gas and nuclear. While this would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it is not without its own opposition.
Killiansays
Re: MLA CO2/Keeling
The peak each year is short, but I find the extremes in climate science more informative than the averages in that they can give a hint of all hell breaking loose if not misinterpreted. NASA, et al., focus on the yearly averages, but so long as what you are using you use consistently, it serves as a consistent comparison.
We hit 109. That’s a big deal because even the peak is really just a weekly average. What’s interesting is I have not noticed so many large multi-day/week long excursions from the “sine wave”, so to speak, of the yearly record as I have seen this winter. Not sure it means anything as I wasn’t looking. Still, makes one wonder if there aren’t some large, short-term releases going on we don’t know how to monitor yet.
Anywho, upshot? We already hit 109. That’s at least evidence toward something more than EN at play right now. Another month to go, so let’s not get too excited yet, but bear in mind monthly average rise from April to May seems to typically be just under 1 ppm. April is looking to come in some where in the 407’s, so mid to high 408 in May would be where it should be. We get up over 409 significantly for a while over the next month, I’d be worried. Low 9’s, maybe just noisier than expected?
That is really a measurement question. With OCO-2 on orbit, it may be possible to separate contributers to the curve in such detail that you could discern that.
zebrasays
@thomas 290,
First part: I really have no interest in nitpicking about language so I will try once more to clarify but that’s it.
Climate scientists are overly formal about attribution of specific extreme events to climate change. But those events– not things like the mean global temperature– are where the greatest potential exists to engage laypeople. As long as scientists are holding out for a 100-year time series before they will connect the Texas floods to changing atmospheric physics, minds will not change. Some minds may not change anyway, but they certainly will not be changed by grandiose claims of a doom that people can’t relate to at all.
Second part: I don’t know if that last paragraph is a quote or what– please use blockquote or quotation marks. But in any event, the US today is nothing like any of the examples you cite. This has been covered by me and better by others with more detail. We have all the resources and technology we need to feed the population, even under extreme conditions.
> Phil L
Note that what YOU get with a Google search will differ — from what you get yesterday or tomorrow, and from what anyone else gets.
When you get a denial site at the top, delete your cache, sign out of Google and try again. You may be in a “Google bubble” showing you “more of what you like” — or more of what you dislike and looked into, they confuse the two.
When I suggest a search it doesn’t mean what you see at the top is recommended. I recommend searching. Period. Look this stuff up.
Scott #228,
This type of management may interest you.
https://slashdot.org/journal/2621427/explanatory-note-for-better-home-through-chemistry
@Chris #251,
Got a good laugh from your post and link. I certainly hope you were not trying to be serious. Couldn’t be a better example of wilfully ignoring the obvious if one was a standup comedian.
Who’s on first? ;)
Hi Hank at 246
yes, a little grouchy, but that’s ok. I can/will try to be serious. It does not always work out well. Sometimes better to ask questions or use humor to help people think things through. Not your cup of tea.
I added the comments app #173 that you linked, looks fine and works on other websites, but not here yet. Too bad, you might want to hush me, I would not hush you, but I would hush Victor. Concern trolls spinning the science and working on doubt manufacture are a complete waste of time imho. I would love to have that stuff gone. Oh, well…
Did you read the two posts on Tamino? I am interested in your take on them. I recall (perhaps mistakenly) that you think Tamino is a credible source.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/noaa-hottest/
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/co2-status-report/
My serious take on things is the similar as in these two Tamino posts. I think the current trend of heat records for the past 12 months is more then ENSO. Tamino appears to be moving slowly toward a similar conclusion.
On CO2, the Tamino post is very good imho. It deconstructs/delinks the “noise” of IEA and other emission reports from a serious consideration of the AGW situation by paying attention to the important number: ghg accumulation in the atmosphere. That is where the rubber hits the brakes, if you catch my drift.
Cheers,
Mike
Digby #232,
Here is a script that stabilizes at 400 ppm. Takes about a 60% instantaneous cut followed by a tail of reductions. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/07/unforced-variations-july-2014/comment-page-1/#comment-569743
CD posted a link that says:
That would work out if your desired end product is electrons.
If your desired end product is food, stay with agriculture.
BPL @ 247,
Great sense of humor, BPL. You can’t show any such thing, whether simply or complicatedly. Dry land can be irrigated; wet land can be drained. Humans have been there, done that, all over the world, with much less tech and energy than we have now.
Try a new definition for “arable”. If you think about it, humans have made all kinds of land “arable”– terraced mountainsides, for example.
Next?
Scott #252,
Cui bono? Thought you would like the perennials. If the “crop” benefiting a natural ecosystem bothers you, perhaps you won’t. Same carbon sink either way.
Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin
Too soon? I estimate >99% chance of an annual record in 2016 in @NASAGISS temperature data, based on Jan-Mar alone
2:17 PM – 15 Apr 2016
Does anyone else feel that the above tweet by Gavin is inexplicably weak? Do they wish he would, rather than playing guessing games with numbers, use the public platform he has to speak out loudly and forcefully about the danger facing our country? Is it wrong to ask that a scientist employed by and for the American people should, when our government is failing to act as it should, issue constant red-flag warnings?
The tweet should have read as follows: “Based on Jan-Mar alone, I estimate >99% chance of another annual temp record in 2016. These escalating temperatures are a clear and present danger to our American way of life. The policy-makers in government need to get in gear immediately. We scientists cannot make it any clearer: things are getting dire.”
[Response: That’s way more than 140 characters. – gavin]
232 Digby Scorgiehen asks: I suppose I should be asking: By how much should our emissions drop before we see a noticeable change in CO2 levels?
The figure I keep hearing is by 10% year on year of the current global output of all GHGs from all sources and not just of CO2 – then it will take a decade more likely two before a change in atmospheric CO2 levels is noticeable. Under COP21 agreement total emissions will keep increasing to 2030 or later.
Of course such numbers means that the biggest historical emitters like the US et al need to pull back by 20% (?) reductions year on year – which isn’t going to happen – and so do the math and see where it leads as the climate scientists, GCMs, economists, and energy use experts suggest.
Addendum to my last comment #249:
Just to give you a real live picture about ocean temperature and CO2 release:
http://tinyurl.com/hxrzkml
http://tinyurl.com/jp4zsp6
“That’s way more than 140 characters. – gavin”
LOL
“Does anyone else feel that the above tweet by Gavin is inexplicably weak?”
No. It’ll send the blogosphere into a distracted frenzy as it is. It will burn up their energy talking bs about it and spreading the ‘news’ further. Maybe even someone in congress will get to hear what Gavin Nasa/giss have to say for a change rather than acting like the 3 monkeys.
MA Rodger @250
Okay, I had a look at the exchange between Dan H and Patrick, and also at Gavin’s response. If I understand correctly then, a reduction in emissions of 60 to 70% would result in my possibility (2): CO2 levels remain roughly unchanged.
A smaller reduction in emissions (Gavin mentions 10 to 40%) results in possibility (1): CO2 levels continue increasing but at a slower rate.
A larger reduction, presumably 80 to 90%, results in CO2 levels declining.
Do I have this right?
239 zebra For example, if people were convinced that severe local flooding was “caused” by CO2, that would be enough to get them to change, in combination with other arguments.
Such arguments and obvious connections have already been made re extreme weather events and didn’t seem to make much a difference – ‘conservatives”deniers’ ‘pseudo-skeptics’ et al cannot see AGW even when it is pointed out to them. It’s a cognitive issue not a scientific proof one, imo. Most psychologists and cognitive scientists agree. In fact there is an overwhelming ‘consensus’ about it. The data don’t matter.
> I recall (perhaps mistakenly)
Show your calculations if you want that kind of credibility. You know that the number of data points it takes to say there’s a likely trend depends on the variability of the data set, and 12 months is awfully short. If you believe you can detect a trend in the data, show your work.
Tamino does show his work, and doesn’t claim more than he can show.
CD @257
Sure perennials are great. But the idea of using solar panels to make sugar to feed to cows when cows eat grass, is almost as ridiculous and inefficient as growing corn and soy to feed cows when cows eat grass.
There are a thousand ways to spin the obvious. The current models of production of animal products is ridiculously harmful not only to AGW, but also many environmental factors as well. It is so ridiculously inefficient that one can think of a multitude of equally ridiculous schemes better. But the one solution that actually has the potential to sequester carbon through the LCP is simply stop growing the excess corn and grow grasses instead. A cow has a rumen. It can live off things we humans can’t digest. It is ridiculous to think a bison might sequester carbon but a cow cant if managed to graze the same way. Equally ridiculous to think cows need human digestible foods like corn to survive.
That’s why I figured it was a joke made to highlight how foolish overproduction of corn is.
@Hank Roberts, #246
” 12 months is awfully short”
But you can add 2014 and 2016 (according to Gavin Schmidt), so you have 36 months already.
Scott: Like it or not we are geoengineering the planet now and have been for thousands of years.
Richard: Yep, but in the modern vernacular, folks tend to use the word for non-carbon geoengineering. I find that usage clearer though less precise.
Scott: (prairie soils) hold many orders of magnitude more soil carbon,
Richard: Yep. That’s why houses here in Nebraska used to be made of sod. Perhaps we should be encouraging the destruction of forests and their replacement by grasslands? Killing off the Amazon might be just the thing!
——————
Edward: We here in Iowa and Illinois already had doses of “wetter.” It was bad every time.
Richard: Yep. The Missouri River keeps trying to take out Omaha in the spring nowadays. What used to be easy and naturally handled now requires planning and effort. You DON’T need snowpack, but you need EITHER snowpack OR a dam, and snowpack was free. You DON’T need moderate rain, but you DO need EITHER moderate rain OR grand drainage bulldozed into your farm, and moderate rain was free.
—————
Thomas: talking seriously about the “new reality” until after there’s an ice free summer arctic
Richard: Yep. It’s too bad this year’s El Nino probably isn’t going to do the job. I’ll be cheering for a massive melt this time, and perhaps a full job within a decade or so. We NEED the Arctic sea ice to die sooner than later.
On coal, yeah, it’s all Titanic deck chair shuffling. We want to reduce emissions, so we send our coal elsewhere, so the numbers don’t “count”. China wants to reduce emissions, so they are planning on doing less manufacturing, which only means said manufacturing will happen in Vietnam et al. As if the atmosphere cares a whit. It ain’t consumption that matters, but production.
———-
Edward: By treaty, the Great Lakes are off limits for providing water to anywhere else.
Richard: Irrelevant. The discussion was about US citizens dying in the street of starvation. As if those treaties wouldn’t be rewritten.
On China, so what if they start starving? That just means Nebraska’s corn gets more valuable. Besides, crop prices have little affect on the supermarket. Corn is $0.50 an ear at the grocery, but only $3.50 a bushel (50 ears). Double the price of corn, and corn prices for [wealthy] consumers barely budge.
On worldwide agricultural collapse: the world is very large. Collapse happens ONLY in discrete areas. Thus, the laws of averages ensure the world’s food supply remains fairly stable, and the laws of supply and demand serve to either destroy the last elephant habitat or not. Until THEY all die, humans are safe. And until They (other humans) all die, We (Nebraskans) are safe. As suppliers, shortages are GREAT!
———–
Chuck: Drought/ Flood/ drought/ flood…. what’s not to like? We’ll adjust.
Richard: “Survivable” and “desirable” are not synonyms. By pretending they are, you probably lost much of the great value that was in Robin’s post.
Chuck: “losing its sprawl” = Depletion
Richard: Nope. “Depletion” speaks to a reduction to zero, which isn’t in the cards. The Ogallala is a renewable resource for Nebraska and bits and pieces of other states. That we’ve used it improperly doesn’t mean it’s being depleted. The Ogallala is in FINE shape IF one looks at it as a renewable resource. That the current [fossil-style] use can’t be maintained, well, that just means more profit for Nebraska! “We can’t keep doing it wrong.” does not mean “We can’t do it right.” The Ogallala *CAN’T* be depleted.
Chuck: Gimme a break! “Where it belongs?” What did it do, break out of jail a million years ago, so now via Climate Change we’re just “putting it back where it belongs?”
Richard: The center of the US used to be a shallow sea centered in Nebraska. Then, the rockies wore down and the sea filled in, leaving an aquifer centered in Nebraska. That aquifer overflowed, leaving harvestable fossil water in Kansas and other places. We’re left with fossil (overflow) water in Kansas and renewable water in Nebraska. So call it “belongs” or whatever, Nebraska’s water is renewable, Kansas’ isn’t. You can’t change subsurface topography. It is what it is.
—————
Hank votes: Please, be simpler and clearer, or find a standup venue appropriate to the comedy.
Richard: Mike, I vote the other way. You crack me up. This venue is perfect for your brand of humor. “Warm regards” LOL
—————
Barton: it is simple to show that under global warming, the arable fraction goes to zero with time.
Richard: Yes, it is “simple”.
The 10th century, when the Vikings were carrying out raids across Europe and the Song dynasty took power in China, was the wettest in the records ahead of the 20th, according to the researchers in Sweden, Germany, Greece and Switzerland.”
Comment by Victor — 19 Apr 2016 @
Of course for this to be accurate you must know the Viking’s Vector, Victor.
(Satire alert)
A word about the hysteria over the El Nino this year. It is nothing more than natural variation, obviously. I am so grateful to the Heartland Institute, Tol, Curry, and the WUWT crowd for showing the world how the hiatus/pause meant that Global Warming was over years ago now and the entire edifice of the IPCC collapsed due to their fictitious GCM projections.
And here’s the proof, if you still dare not to believe the wisest heads on earth – in the middle of a major El Nino event at least 24,108 sq klms of the Great Barrier Reef has NOT been affected by any bleaching this summer. So there! :-P
A huge win for the ‘skeptics’ in anyone’s language – 24 thousand sq kilometers!!!
Of course there is the other 93% of the GBR that was bleached, but hey, that’s only some clever numbers being spat out of a statistical computer so it doesn’t count much, if at all.
Refs:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/survey-confirms-worst-ever-coral-bleaching-great-barrier-reef
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-20/great-barrier-reef-bleaching/7340342 http://www.globalcoralbleaching.org/
And no wonder there is a total lack of credibility in these agw/cc ideological scientists and their eco-nazi media reporting. For way back on 28 Mar 2016 they were claiming it was 95% – like how wrong were they again – the losers!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-95-per-cent-north-section/7279338
@262 Digby Scorgie,
They problem with your math is that ecosystems are self adjusting complex systems. They is no way to assure the biological systems will continue at the rate they are now once a larger reduction of 80 to 90%, or that it will result in CO2 levels declining. They might. Or more likely they will simply level off at a new balance. They even could still continue to rise.
At the current time the natural ecosystems are pretty unlikely to be enough for drawdown even at zero fossil fuel emissions. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t be used, but it will take a change in management.
It much like watching the growth of a forest. For a while the growth means more biomass. But it doesn’t take long for the forest to saturate and then the decay from the leaf litter decay roughly equals out to the new growth.
The increases in carbon sequestration we see now in the terrestrial biosphere are related to the CO2 fertiliser effect. In other words more biomass. But it won’t be long at all after emissions stop that this fertiliser effect will stop too. It’s self adjusting. As soon as emission stop then soon will it stop as the maximum biomasses for those biomes that are adjusting saturate.
However, there is another part of the carbon cycle that is much more stable, sequesters carbon at a much higher rate, and will not saturate before atmospheric levels draw down. This is called the Liquid Carbon Pathway. It does not follow the The Roth C model. Instead of saturating, it does the opposite, actually increasing the the rate of sequestration the more that already has been sequestered.
BUT the only way we can see those benefits takes changing agriculture worldwide. It simply won’t happen by itself.
@267 Richard Caldwel
You said, “Yep. That’s why houses here in Nebraska used to be made of sod. Perhaps we should be encouraging the destruction of forests and their replacement by grasslands? Killing off the Amazon might be just the thing!”
I have heard this really poor logic frequently. Can you explain your logic? If you agree Nebraska grasslands and their soils used to be massive soil carbon pumps and held huge quantities of carbon, why would restoring them have anything at all to do with the Amazon Rain forest?
Don’t you think the obvious solution is to grow Nebraska adapted species in Nebraska instead of Brazil? Or are you purposely trying to fail. Do I try to grow bananas in Nebraska? Of course not. So why this obsession with silly logic?
Chris Dudley made the same mistake actually, only he wants to chemically make sugar from solar panels just to avoid the obvious solution of growing prairie where there was prairie!
Right now we grow corn in Nebraska, but is corn so sacred we will all die if we only grow as much as we need instead of purposeful over production? The economics of a properly managed grassland are far far more profitable, and sequester carbon too….in Nebraska…..but cutting down a rain forest to grow pasture is almost as stupid as cutting down a rain forest to grow corn and soy. Silly
To Digby and others, my take is that there is a “natural” level of GHG sources and sinks that eventually even themselves out. We perturb that by extraction of fossil fuels and land use changes, including agriculture. This results in a continual increase in GHG levels in the atmosphere – sinks and sources change, of course, but the net is an increase. The Paris agreement includes a desire to get to zero carbon (no anthropogenic emissions) in the second half of this century. Zero carbon is a good idea because it would ensure that no extra emissions occur and that GHG levels would no longer rise. The implication is that GHG levels would continue to rise until we get to zero carbon. So let’s not hope that a 70% (or some other) reduction in emissions would stabilise CO2e concentrations in the atmosphere. As long as we add extra, some of that extra will accumulate in the atmosphere and continued warming would ensue.
This may be of interest: look under the Stabilization tab of https://www.co2.earth/step-3-stabilization-basics
It suggests that short term stabilization may be possible with a 50% cut but long term stabilization would take a 100% cut.
270 Scott Strough “It much like watching the growth of a forest. For a while the growth means more biomass. But it doesn’t take long for the forest to saturate and then the decay from the leaf litter decay roughly equals out to the new growth.”
Um I am not so sure that’s accurate across the board. It’s my understanding the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere is greater in mature/old growth forests with the greater wood mass because they are capable to draw down much more CO2 due to their size / energy capacity to do so if healthy (a push bike vs a truck). The leaf litter, bark loss, old limbs etc is very minor part of the cycle. iow I don’t think forests can ‘saturate’ in their capacity to draw down carbon – but not sure. (sorry no refs, my ancient memory that may well be incomplete – worth checking?)
@Thomas 263,
No offense, but you seem to misinterpret my comment, which I think is pretty clear if you read carefully.
If you believe CO2 is causing flooding then how are you a Denialist?
Re: #33 Kevin McKinney said
#32–“You’ve just said putting ourselves at the brink of collapse was a good thing.”
Er, no, I didn’t.
I said that there was a robust record of increasing agricultural productivity via innovation, and quoted what Beddington had to say about that.
Yeah, you did, andwithno caveat. An unqualified statement is what it is. There was no “revolution,” there was a series of mistakes tat have helped lead us to the brink of disaster.
You conflated 4 specific innovations into one ‘revolution’
I conflated nothing. It’s a system. You know this, or should. They cannot be seen in isolation, particularly with regard to long-term effects. Wondering who peed in your Wheaties.
then blamed it for water pollution ‘the world over’, then equated that with “putting ourselves at the brink of collapse.”
Yup.
Of course chemical pollution of waterways is a problem. But increasing agricultural productivity is also a necessity–and there’s good evidence that it is possible.
Yes, it is. I teach people to do exactly that. Without your innovations.” Your innovations *are* driving us to the brink. That you may think more of similar are a good thing is frightening. We need exactly the opposite. Rather, the spread and expansion of innovations in simplification – mostly just rediscovering old knowledge and applying it with modern knowledge to enhance the depth of our understanding. Terra preta being a good example.
We face tough choices, no way around that.
Yes, to do less. Not so tough, really. We need no new innovations to achieve sustainability.
#200 Chris Dudley said Thomas #194,
Some think things could progress rapidly. http://m.phys.org/news/2016-04-fossil-fuels-phased-worldwide-decade.html#jCp
You think that’s fast? I’ve posited hereabouts we could get all the way to sub-300 ppm in as little as 20 years.
I still posit it.
FOR SALE ON EBAY 150 CLIMATE SCIENTISTS GOING CHEAP – WILL WORK FOR FOOD AND BOARD
Do you need a cutting edge scientist to work in your climate related research field?
Will you be obtaining research grants in your science dept from the new COP21 agreements thru the UN?
Then there’s no time to waste, pick up one of these top grade atmospheric, meteorology, hydrology, antarctic research, geology, soils, marine, reef, biology, chemistry, fauna and flora research scientists who are about to be out of a job.
The Govt has to balance it’s budget somehow – after all they did lose the $billions coming in from the carbon tax/ets and mining taxes they repealed. Apparently we no longer need climate scientists in Australia. Each one comes with 4 sets of white lab coats, a pair of work boots and an akubra hat better than James Hansen’s.
Find a pre-loved climate scientist that’s right for you here: http://people.csiro.au/
controversial plan to cut more than 400 jobs from CSIRO remains on the table
https://cpsu-csiro.org.au/
Refs:
plans to slash 350 staff overall asap
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/new-csiro-document-reveals-scale-of-planned-cuts-to-climate-programs-20160322-gnodtg.html
a “clean cut” of up to 120 staff in the Oceans and Atmosphere Division.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-04/csiro-should-shed-120-climate-scientists-email-say/7297042
CSIRO scientist says Tasmania’s warm summer gives glimpse to climate future
Felicity Ogilvie reported this story on Wednesday, April 20, 2016
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4446749.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/19/george-brandis-says-climate-science-not-settled-but-csiro-should-act-as-if-it-is
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-20/csiro-changes-risk-losing-millions-in-grants-scientists-say/7343750
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2016/04/climate-science-australia-job-cuts-redundancies-csiro
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/inner-south/emails-reveal-csiro-job-losses-could-focus-on-worldleading-aspendale-climate-research-site/news-story/d400f017d98281fe9637017e9c9247fc
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/world/australia/cape-grim-climate-change-research.html?_r=0
New CEO Larry Marshall, a Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist who returned to Australia in January 2015 to take charge of CSIRO
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/opinion/australia-turns-its-back-on-climate-science.html
@Thomas,
Actually for the most part forests are a net sink now, in large part due to the CO2 fertilization effect.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080910/full/news.2008.1092.html
http://geo.appstate.edu/sites/geo.appstate.edu/files/Radialgrowthrateincreases.pdf
How long this will last though is anyone’s guess. I certainly wouldn’t expect it to continue once CO2 levels start dropping back to reasonable levels.
Forests are more of a moderating effect, smoothing out the highs and lows of climate change. Grasslands because they sequester carbon in a different way can actually have a forcing effect.
http://blogs.uoregon.edu/gregr/files/2013/07/grasslandscooling-nhslkh.pdf
Digby: The emission numbers are as solid and dependable as VW computer emission tweaks for evaluating how we are actually doing. I think you cannot believe the emission numbers generally. There are a number of ways to game this international system for apportioning carbon emissions. I expect most countries to game this system for economic advantage. I think the MLO or other hard measures of CO2 level is the best way to evaluate how our species is actually doing and that does not look good. I think the real annual increase rate is now up around 3 ppm per year. CO2 level is not just rising, the rate of increase in the rise has been rising. It has only sped up so far, little or no sign of a change that suggests our species has actually done something to change the trajectory.
I watch the rips and dips in actual ppm to get a sense of how we are actually doing. ENSO is probably good for 2 ppm, but I think that discounting AGW by discussion of ENSO is like arguing over whether it would be better to electrocuted or die in gas chamber. ENSO is real. If we ever see catastrophic runaway global warming, it will likely start in an El Nino year. There is a lot of rocket science in global climate, but reasonable evaluation of AGW is not necessarily rocket science. I think it is possible to suss out the trends in a subtle evaluation/overview method that is more like good journalism than geophysics. Geophysicists will disagree. Good for them.
Daily MLO CO2 has fallen from record 409.3 and is now in the 407 range. I don’t know mechanics of that. Maybe the weakening EN event? Or just noise. You have to weigh that against other hard numbers like global temp and the spatial concentration of heat on the planet. The overall global temp number continues to set records, now at 11 months in a row, if I am not mistaken. Maybe we will break that streak with weakening EN. I hope so because as Gavin said so eloquently about Feb temp: “Wow.”
The concentration of heat in far global north is a big concern for me. I don’t think we should be confident at all about the impact of that much heat in the far north. Way too many big temp features in the north like the ice cover albedo, the carbon sink in permafrost, the methane clathrates etc. We are poking the climate system with a stick. How dumb is that?
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/19/3770317/greenhouse-emissions-higher/
quote from that:
“Over the last decade, the United States embraced energy efficiency and higher fuel economy standards, causing almost double-digit declines in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But since the last drop in 2012, that trend has gone in the opposite direction for the second time in a row, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, which tracks emissions across the entire country.
In 2014, the newest year for which data is available, emissions grew a percentage point from 2013, according to the report released Friday. Emissions climbed due to increasing fuel demand for residential and commercial sector heating, as well as a growing use of fuel for vehicles. Industrial production also increased across various sectors, causing some slight growth in industrial sector emissions. The fact that emissions increased in 2014 is particularly concerning since the report also updated 2013 figures showing that the U.S. emitted more than it had originally reported.
This is also significant for the national and international arena because inventories like these are the prime tools countries use to monitor their emissions individually and globally. What’s more, this new data comes a week before hundreds of leaders officially sign the Paris agreement that calls on nations to reduce emissions to prevent further global warming.”
back to mike thoughts: Record-setting heat here in the Pacific NW. I have never had to set the house up to maximize cooling in April before. Supposed to cool off tomorrow and back to old school maritime NW weather pattern for a couple of days, but the old school weather pattern is really gone now. Have meeting with the city here in a couple of days to discuss ground and rain water management in a warming planet. That should be interesting.
Warm regards all
Mike
Scott #256,
But where’s the beef? If you trade between grain and grazing you get less beef or less forest. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160419/ncomms11382/full/ncomms11382.html
Ruducing land devoted to grain while keeping up the beef production leads to a big carbon sink and wilderness restoration. It’s an energy argument which may be what you are missing.
Scott #271,
You got me wrong there. I aim to restore prairie. The panels can go anywhere (including desert) and require much less land area for the same amount of milk, eggs and meat than grain production.
Thomas is right, per current research.
Scott Strough is posting based on outdated information.
https://www.google.com/search?q=co2+update+large+tree+old+forest
It’s always helpful to put what you believe into a Google search.
What you know from memory is only as good as the last time it was up to date.
As the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”
For everything since your last memory update, check Google.
Again, in terms of ocean heat:
” 20.2.2016 – Ocean heating doubles
The ocean is taking heat. That’s the conclusion of a new study that finds that Earth’s oceans now absorb heat at twice the rate they did 18 years ago. Around half of ocean heat uptake since 1865 has taken place since 1997, researchers also report online January 18 in Nature Climate Change…”
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ocean-heating-doubles
Ocean heating DOUBLED within the last 18 years. When will the oceans start to become a net carbon source?
Scott: cutting down a rain forest to grow pasture is almost as stupid as cutting down a rain forest to grow corn and soy.
Richard: Yep, and the bracketing of sarcasm with “Perhaps” and an exclamation point is easily missed. (Maybe I should use more emoticons?) What will we do if our messing with the atmosphere and turning chunks of the Amazon into McDonalds hamburger generators ends up destroying it? Rainfall in the Amazon is recursive. Instead of rain to land to runoff to river to ocean you have rain to roots to leaves to atmosphere to rain. What happens when rain becomes more single-pass? Well, rainfall drops almost in half, and…
Your point about (other) grasses maybe being a better use than corn for Nebraska is very valid. Once cellulosic ethanol ramps up, we might turn large swaths of our nation into “ethanol ranges”, where nature lives in harmony occasionally interrupted by the robotic harvesting of meat and fuel.
Thomas, your logic is good, but it excludes fire. Our atmospheric CO2 levels might be “artificially” low due to the increase in underbrush and crowding due to fire suppression. Plus is CO2 like candy? Yummy and easy for an ecosystem to digest, but you end up diabetic and flabby? Dunno. Anyway, I think much of the vaunted drawdown of CO2 by land-based biosphere might just be the lag between increased growth and increased fire, especially since global warming increases conditions conducive to fire, and the resulting intense fires are more likely to kill off mature trees that in the olden days would survive.
Everybody, please note that my “Nebraska/USA wins” comments are seriously tongue-in-cheek. “I’ve got mine and who cares about everybody else” is using an obviously inferior moral stance to promote a higher view.
Re Thomas @ 277: At the risk of starting election plays, there is much more future economic value in climate change adaptation, than having hundreds of granted scientists debating whether climate change is real. Better to clear the deck, discard denials and re-employ those with adaptation skills.Then if some of the rejects are actually good at assessing the climate, get them employed by the Weather Bureau, where they belong. This “sacking” should really be taken as a backhanded complement to the Turnbull government for recognising that climate change is real and that Australia should position itself to take advantage of the adaptation industry it will create.
(Haha, and then to make sure, that it is proceeding as predicted, we have just approved the largest coal mine)
278 Scott Strough thanks. PS on ‘grasses’ carbon sequestration. A year or so ago there was research that confirmed switching from the predominant variety of sugar cane planted out in Aus. could double or triple (?) the amount of carbon able to be sequestered long term in soils with no neg affect on production or sugar content. By also implementing other positive farming practices such as recycling the baggass back into the soil or using it as a renewable energy source globally broad acre sugar cane production could contribute significant net co2 mitigation from it’s positive draw down effect. It would be logical to suspect that some specific ‘prairie’ grasses varieties may have similar advantages over others as well? refs:
Sugarcane the champion crop at carbon sequestration
http://epubs.scu.edu.au/esm_pubs/782/
http://cargoroadwines.com.au/sba/pdf/BioCCS-plantstones.pdf
In March UV @296, I asked:
So if March behaves and comes in with the others, then surely if April begins to look good, we can start celebrating? Gloat with our family and friends, that we were right after all? Maybe incite some mobbing of WUWT? Nobel Price for James ?
Just last Monday, our local TV weather man carefully suggested, that we seem to be in a bit of a warm spell this April, with many locations in NSW recording Min and Max up to 4 degrees higher. But soon we will have that cold change and fall back in line with winter . . .
So are we there yet? Should I still prepare that drone for Watt’s office or are we just going to shame him into oblivion?
And again, no doubt, with satellites doing their minute by minute live recording, our Gavin would already know April, but he would not be allowed to “wow” what he sees, until the official release. Now that things are hotting up, maybe they should have a weekly release of Satellite data only?
No. 258 (Response by Gavin):
Sorry, should have suggested a “tweet storm.” Elizabeth Warren made the news with one today.
To have one coming from a climate scientist would double the storminess of it.
Might even make the 6:00 news. They’re always looking for something attention-getting.
Chris Dudley @254, Thomas @259
I conclude that a dip of a few percent in emissions will have no discernible effect on the Keeling curve.
Scott Strough @270
It’s not my maths, mate. I’m just trying to interpret what the climate scientists are saying.
Mike Roberts @272
Yes, I do understand that a large cut in emissions is needed immediately, but that eventually we really have to get down to zero. My take-home message is that there would have to be a marked drop in emissions (10 to 20%?) before we see the Keeling curve start deviating from its current trajectory.
mike @279
I too have a jaundiced opinion of emissions calculations. From all the responses to my original innocent little question, I deduce that there would have to be a marked change in the way global society functions before the Keeling curve takes any notice. Fudging the emissions calculations might mislead people that we’re on the right path, but if we really were on the right path we should see big changes in our way of life.
274 zebra, I have no idea what you are trying to say to me. I thought what I said was clear even if you may not agree with my conclusion about it. I was not talking about or to you personally but generally addressing why the ‘data’ or simple local connections do find root in some people ie conservatives agw skeptics in general.
If you believe CO2 is causing flooding then how are you a Denialist? If you mean more flooding more often in some locations then I don’t know. Nor why you’re asking me that question.
Overall I generally agree your previous comment: My objection to the hyperbole is that it is counterproductive…… Arguments to deal with climate change have to be valid at a local level to have any effect.
Part of the problem is that straight talking based on the ‘data’ and good science and reasonably confident forecasts gets judged incorrectly as hyperbole, when it isn’t. It isn’t what scientists, eco-warriors or agw proponents people say, so much as what some people hear and how they process that themselves.
iow the truth hurts some people and they take it personally and as an attack upon their intelligence, opinions and worldview. It doesn’t take much to turn an advanced civilized nation into a net importer of food or their citizens to begin to starve. There’s Germany in the 40s, Russia and China several times, the US during the dust bowl period, Iraq’s oil for food program, Syria after a 5 year drought then 5 years of civil war, Fiji and Vanuatu are two record breaking category 5+ cyclones.
The people in every US State which imports it’s food from other US states would begin to starve the moment that food transfer stopped. Past history of co-operation is a very bad predictor of future behaviour when it comes to people under severe stress. Syrians are fighting Syrians, and Koreans have been angry at other Koreans for 65 years now. Everyone is happy sharing food and wine at weddings. No so during the divorce. I call this logical common sense regarding known human behaviour. Not hyperbole nor hysterics but some basic caution at jumping to assumptions that do not necessarily follow.
correction: ….do not find root in some people
CD @280,
You said, “But where’s the beef? If you trade between grain and grazing you get less beef or less forest.”
Only if you insist on continuing to raise animals on grain. If you convert the corn and soy fields to prairie, they will support even more beef production actually. Livestock fatten faster on grain, but yields per acre are higher on properly managed grasses. However, I don’t propose more beef production. I propose as surplus area becomes available, rewilding. But you don’t just go from cornfield to wild prairie. You need to restore that land with well managed livestock to replace lost ecological niches. Once the ecosystem recovers, the wildlife will generally return, or can be reintroduced where appropriate. Also about 1/2 of the current grazing land in the US is overgrazed. Overgrazed land supports far fewer animals than properly grazed land. So by simply avoiding overgrazing the current grazing lands could easily double the livestock they support. Since we don’t want to double the livestock, that means more habitat for wildlife.
One can play with the numbers all day long. The only way you run short is by growing corn and soy to feed livestock..that’s what causes a pressure to deforest. End that practise by removing the subsidies, market manipulation, and regulatory burden propping up that inefficient system and then an actual ecologically sound replacement will be pressured by market forces alone. Bingo, grasslands restored and about 1/2 the cropland in the US becomes more profitable growing grass than growing corn and soy. And what does grass do through the Liquid Carbon Pathway? Sequester large quantities of carbon per acre. There are case studies where changes in management like this sequestered long term 17 tons CO2 per hectare per year. That adds up real quick when you are talking such large acreage.
@hank 282,
ERMM ACTUALLY…. That’s what I said @278. Currently a net sink. Not likely to remain a net sink for long. Once a new balance is reached, you’ll end up with roughly net 0. But CO2 is rising now. We are not in balance. So forest sequestration in biomass is also rising…temporarily. Sources are in my previous posts.
Hank Roberts #282: The first hit I found at your Google search is an article by Sherwood Idso.
Interesting that Idso is busy trying to overturn both the climate science consensus and forest science consensus.
Here’s a link to Dr. Werner Kurtz (Natural Resources Canada – Canadian Foreest Service) discussing the carbon balance in forests. He is an IPCC WG3 author, and I believe he represents the scientific consensus on carbon sequestration in forests (at least the disturbance-driven boreal forest).
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/forests/video/13557
Killian,
You do realize that the dramatic phase out of “fossil fuels” as postulated by Ben Sovacool used examples of moving from coal to natural gas and nuclear. While this would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it is not without its own opposition.
Re: MLA CO2/Keeling
The peak each year is short, but I find the extremes in climate science more informative than the averages in that they can give a hint of all hell breaking loose if not misinterpreted. NASA, et al., focus on the yearly averages, but so long as what you are using you use consistently, it serves as a consistent comparison.
We hit 109. That’s a big deal because even the peak is really just a weekly average. What’s interesting is I have not noticed so many large multi-day/week long excursions from the “sine wave”, so to speak, of the yearly record as I have seen this winter. Not sure it means anything as I wasn’t looking. Still, makes one wonder if there aren’t some large, short-term releases going on we don’t know how to monitor yet.
Anywho, upshot? We already hit 109. That’s at least evidence toward something more than EN at play right now. Another month to go, so let’s not get too excited yet, but bear in mind monthly average rise from April to May seems to typically be just under 1 ppm. April is looking to come in some where in the 407’s, so mid to high 408 in May would be where it should be. We get up over 409 significantly for a while over the next month, I’d be worried. Low 9’s, maybe just noisier than expected?
Time… a hard master.
Asked Gavin this but does anyone else know of a fieldwork based estimate of 3 m sea level rise by 2050? http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2016/04/12/405089.htm
[Response: No. It turns out to have been a single person’s ‘feeling’ about 50 years from now. Not based on anything. – gavin]
Scott #292,
So we slaughtered more head before we started feeding grain? I don’t think so but I’d be interested in a study on this.
Digby #289,
That is really a measurement question. With OCO-2 on orbit, it may be possible to separate contributers to the curve in such detail that you could discern that.
@thomas 290,
First part: I really have no interest in nitpicking about language so I will try once more to clarify but that’s it.
Climate scientists are overly formal about attribution of specific extreme events to climate change. But those events– not things like the mean global temperature– are where the greatest potential exists to engage laypeople. As long as scientists are holding out for a 100-year time series before they will connect the Texas floods to changing atmospheric physics, minds will not change. Some minds may not change anyway, but they certainly will not be changed by grandiose claims of a doom that people can’t relate to at all.
Second part: I don’t know if that last paragraph is a quote or what– please use blockquote or quotation marks. But in any event, the US today is nothing like any of the examples you cite. This has been covered by me and better by others with more detail. We have all the resources and technology we need to feed the population, even under extreme conditions.
> Phil L
Note that what YOU get with a Google search will differ — from what you get yesterday or tomorrow, and from what anyone else gets.
When you get a denial site at the top, delete your cache, sign out of Google and try again. You may be in a “Google bubble” showing you “more of what you like” — or more of what you dislike and looked into, they confuse the two.
When I suggest a search it doesn’t mean what you see at the top is recommended. I recommend searching. Period. Look this stuff up.
Look it up carefully. Beware the Google bubble.