Don’t ya just love the way some here seem to be getting pissed off at the numbers? There are several great opinions about what’s going on but I personally would love to hear something from the people who run this site. I don’t see how things will suddenly go in reverse simply because El Nino ended. How do CO2 levels drop?
Incidentally, I just talked to an insurance claims adjuster this morning about our roof leaking. There’s nothing wrong with the roof. We both climbed on top of the house and the shingles are fine. No loose ones and they’re glued down solid. We were talking about the severe storms and heavy rains and he was telling me about having to deny people money due to flooding and storm surge. He said the last 10 years have been increasingly worse with severe drought and severe flooding events. He hadn’t considered Climate Change until I told him to check out Munich Re. They have an entire web page devoted to Climate Change. Even the insurance folks haven’t factored in Climate Change.
Theosays
Sorry Mike, the extra .01 of CO2 was probably added by me.
The FIRE burned two thirds of my property. About 200 acres of carbon. Drew a few turtles and pissed on them to invoke rain. Me and neighbours managed to put it out just before it got near any of my infrastructure. Still a while to recover, cause I plundered all my goodies.
But someone up there must have heard my plea, but they were late and overreacted. Straight after my fire-survival party, an East coast LOW (like Sandy) travelled from Brisbane to Tasmania causing millions damage and 6 deaths. Many 1-in-100yr events were recorded on its journey. Most noticeable $ was the damage to the Sydney waterfront, King tides (SLR?) removing half their beach-front gardens including swimming pool and houses.
Would have been a real bummer, to first be mangled by fire and then have 60 millions of litres of rain dumped on that. 60km inland, I got 142mm in 24 hours.
My CO2 is at 404, still up by about 14ppm
dnemsays
#67 Victor, #81 Eric-
I can’t fault much in Dorman’s critique either. But I can sum it up in a lot fewer words than he used: “Everything Klein says is basically correct, but she doesn’t have any workable solutions. And neither do I.”
And Eric, if you read her comments about “disaster capitalism” I think she does see what is coming.
SecularAnimistsays
Chuck Hughes wrote: “I’ve noticed that when Weaktor shows up the comments thread increases by about 100. That’s just a round figure. Could be less than that.”
People love to play Whack-A-Troll. I think that’s the main reason that some people frequent these comment pages.
June 6, 2016: 407.84 ppm
June 6, 2015: 402.99 ppm (very noisy annual rate of increase 4.85 ppm)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm (I hit that one on the nose if you look at my prediction at 56)
May 2015: 403.94 ppm (less noisy annual rate of increase of 3.76 ppm)
We should see June monthly average ppm drop to around 407.0. We should see the year end with a december monthly average reading of 405.2. But let’s give that prediction an additional reduction of 1.5 ppm for loss of El Nino bump, so I think we end the year at abt 403.7 and we post an increase of around 3.5 ppm for 2016. That is not a good number. We need to be flat and heading down asap to put the brakes on the sixth major extinction event.
The rate of increase for May has dropped a little from the April number of 4.16 ppm. Maybe that is weakening el nino result?
There are not many months in the records that show an increase of 4.16 ppm over the same month a year before. You can check that by scanning down the page at the link above to look at the monthly numbers.
1997 to 1998 is the place to search at past el nino, but increase rate at that time was under 3 ppm.
I hope we will see a “pause” in the annual increase of CO2 ppm in 2017 due to the El Nino bump in 2016. If we did see a much lower rate of increase – say 2.0 ppm or less – that would be reassuring. It would mean that the increase in CO2 in atmosphere has not started to run away from us due to “natural” sources of CO2 emissions from a warmed planet. Predicting and watching the numbers in this way is largely observation of AGW in the rear view mirror. It’s not smart.
Hank calls for collective action by proxy in 46. I agree. Tamino says we need to cut our emissions quickly and by as much as possible. The target number for cut is 50% if we want to stop increase of CO2 ppm in the atmosphere. No reason to freak out, just get to work, but make sure the work you do actually reduces your carbon footprint and is not a shell game of some sort that monetizes our collective concerns abt AGW. We are prisoners in a dilemma.
Warm regards
Mike
Piotrsays
Hank Roberts, 92:
“Mike, why do you say “the rate of CO2 increase is rising” above? Why should I consider you more reliable than Tamino on this point?”
Am I missing something? Tamino’s point Hank refers to states: ” there’s no sign of any decrease in the rate (deceleration of CO2). In fact the rate seems to be increasing still (acceleration of CO2).”
Which seems to support, not contradict, Mike’s position.
Piotr
Scott Stroughsays
Thanks to all who replied to my post # 44 especially a big thanks for you all at having graciously ignored the typo and responded to the content instead.
@50 Jon When I first read your post I was astonished to be quite frank. I had no idea that to some it could be a fearful thought to restore ecosystem services to agricultural land. For me it is the continued degeneration of such a large potion of planet earth that causes me fear. The idea that people are more comfortable with the current system and fearful of regenerative agriculture is completely foreign to me. Already I have adjusted the way I frame my essays advocating agricultural restoration to include this mindset, and to help assuage fears. I am very happy you replied. I absolutely had no clue this sector of the climate science population even existed. It does explain some of the resistance I have seen though. Without your post I would still be in the dark. Thanks again.
@60 Edward
Interesting reply. Taking the low hanging fruit first obviously refers to targets or goals which are easily achievable and which do not require a lot of effort. I wonder though if you have read the parable of the low hanging fruit? Especially the end where Agrono says, “I leave it to you. If you replenish the soil and tend to the trees, it will take care of you.”
and
“I will teach my children this” he said, “that the only low-hanging fruit that they will ever find will be in the orchard of their own effort, and only after many seasons.”
Thanks for reminding me of that old wisdom. I needed that right now.
@61 Thomas Thanks for the links. I have seen a couple before but not all and I will study them further. One thing you should know though, most the links that I have already studied closely reference minor adjustments to standard BMP. (example adding a cover crop to standard no-till) And yes, that approach does bring benefits, but at a far more modest scale than actually changing the production models. In short, I agree that current systems slightly modified can help, but are not up to the task of actually being a solution. To achieve the results needed to actually mitigate AGW, you must change the production models. (like pasture cropping) http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1261 BTW, yes I have gone direct and am getting a far more positive responce. However, my concern is that “preaching to the choir” doesn’t change much outside those circles. Even climate scientists are still largely in the dark about how much the field has exploded in recent years. Even if they have heard, as of yet I have never seen those ideas put into the climate models. Various levels of emissions scenarios are all over the models, but regenerative agriculture substituted for current agriculture production models? I only see the effects of minor changes to standard BMP in the models.
@75 James thanks for your comment. You said, “It’s hard to imagine even 10% getting that kind of improvement, with 1% likely a more realistic target.”
Actually about ~1% is already at that target. Shooting so low means yes you hit the target…since we already have! But I think we certainly can improve on that! The problem is the 99% that are not even trying to hit any target at all! That does bring up an important point though. It would probably be just as hard to change agriculture as to change energy. It’s not a technology problem IMHO. It’s a people problem. People just don’t like change. I don’t see 100% changing agriculture any more than I see 0% fossil fuel emissions. What I do think could potentially happen is the powers that be finally get serious and decide a 50/50 split between the two? 40/60? or even 80/20? Whatever works out to end up as a net negative flux. Profit could be a prime motivator here. Once people understand this improves profits for the farmer, and also is a benefit to the larger general economies, both national and international, I think there is a potential to motivate. The only losers being those entities with a vested interest in the current systems that are incapable of adapting to change. Everyone else benefits.
@90 Mike You didn’t specifically address this to me but you said, “Here are two things that we can change to address the problem:
1. Immediately cut our energy consumption by at least 50%. Each and everyone of us would have to do that to make a large and meaningful impact on CO2 concentration problem.
2. Immediately mandate global changes in agriculture practice to reduce the CO2 release and maximize the CO2 sequestration through a process of restoring healthy topsoil around the world.
But, hey, what do I know?”
It’s what I advocate, all but the mandatory part. So I would say you know a lot, but not human nature. There is a big resistance, a gut reaction, to being FORCED to do something one doesn’t want to do. I propose that a better motivator is profits to cause people to enthusiastically WANT to make those changes. That’s real easy in my opinion. The current AGW unsustainable systems are being propped up by subsidies. The IEA’s latest estimates indicate that fossil-fuel consumption subsidies worldwide amounted to $493 billion in 2014. That’s 4 times what renewable energy gets. Agriculture is propped up in a more complicated way, but it basically boils down to a heavily subsidized buffer stock scheme subsidizing those unsustainable production models. In a perverse way we actually are getting what we paid for. We are subsidizing AGW, and we are getting it. As soon as we stop paying for AGW, there is a chance cooler heads will prevail.
The year three to seven average prediction (2015–2019) from the 2013 initial state shows a transition to the positive phase of the IPO from the previous negative phase and a resumption of larger rates of global warming over the 2013–2022 period consistent with a positive IPO phase. …
Piotr, quote the rest of what Tamino said there.
You know how to find it.
You’re taking “appear” as confirmation. It’s not.
Tamino’s saying it “appears” — that’s a description of how people who don’t understand statistics leap to conclusions based on appearances of charts, without the arithmetic.
When deniers rely on appearances, we tell them it’s a mistake.
It’s a mistake even for those who want to believe what their eyes are telling them.
Thomassays
I nominate 107 Scott Strough’s comments as “the post of the year”
From graphs I have seen, CO2 levels have always been projected to rise at an increasing rate in a business-as-usual scenario. Applying my aged mark-one eyeball to one such graph, I see the following acceleration:
(1) 2015 to 2035 — 65 ppm
(2) 2035 to 2055 — 85 ppm
(3) 2055 to 2075 — 110 ppm
(4) 2075 to 2095 — 150 ppm
The acceleration you’re seeing means we are not deviating from the BAU scenario — which is no surprise to me.
Thomassays
102 Theo, glad you survived!!! It was a doozy of a storm system. I was out in the thick of it at high tide 9 pm Saturday in the Tweed. We’re buying a 4WD next I’m convinced cannot do without it even in semi-rural areas now. I was very lucky not to get washed away in the car. Only got swallowed in a pothole and damaged the wheels and got a flat. The NRMA breakdown services were also flooded in and not on the roads at all. Struth Doreen. :-)
“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.”
Not as much as I used to. lol
fwiw to readers the storms down the east coast of Aus are again unprecedented – never get flooding rain or storms like that around June. Everything about it was completely foreign and unexpected and very severe.
Jon Kirwansays
To 107 (re: @50 Jon): When I first read your post I was astonished to be quite frank. I had no idea that to some it could be a fearful thought to restore ecosystem services to agricultural land. For me it is the continued degeneration of such a large potion of planet earth that causes me fear. The idea that people are more comfortable with the current system and fearful of regenerative agriculture is completely foreign to me. Already I have adjusted the way I frame my essays advocating agricultural restoration to include this mindset, and to help assuage fears. I am very happy you replied. I absolutely had no clue this sector of the climate science population even existed. It does explain some of the resistance I have seen though. Without your post I would still be in the dark. Thanks again.
First off, I’m not at all comfortable with the status quo (and, perhaps, I feel people have done unimaginable destruction already under the dominant economic and political structures.) So that’s you putting words into my mouth perhaps out of nothing more than making it convenient for you to dispose of. But wrong regardless and a strawman besides. Second, I’m only one person and I’m pretty sure I don’t represent many at all (zero others, perhaps.) Thinking otherwise just isn’t rational. So, wrong on that point. Then you missed my point entirely, besides. Global respiration rates are huge and we little understand what the future may yet bring there. On the other hand, we do know several key parts of why CO2 is rising and we know exactly how to change them. I’d like to see us act where we do well understand the mechanisms and well understand what needs changing to move accurately towards a more natural state of affairs.
Suppose someone were clawing at their arm, over and over again, until it was bleeding and sore. Then, infections start setting in, too. But the clawing keeps on happening despite the evident symptoms and the obvious fact that stopping the behavior would tend to improve the situation. In response, rather than focusing on the self-destructive behavior that certainly is an important part of the problem, a doctor understanding the fact that their patient doesn’t want to stop, says instead, “Well, we have this idea where we use germ-line recombination to modify the DNA in your body, which will act to even more rapidly heal your skin and restore your balance again.” First off, the germ-line changes are systemic, dangerous, untried, and may have many unintended consequences no matter how well motivated they might be. Second, the obvious answer is of course already at hand. Stop clawing at the arm! Start there. Then, if the problem persists or still gets worse, I might decide to hear out other ideas. I may tend to hold short of systemic, broad, and risky alternatives until other ones are considered. But still, my first thought is to stop clawing at the arm.
I do think, right now, that the global respiration system should be one of the LAST things you screw with. And at the very least, ONLY after you do the more obvious and more clearly understood steps which have understandable consequences. (Like stopping the clawing behavior, for example.) In this case, stop emitting the CO2, stop destroying forest systems and ocean ecologies, stop replacing complex interwoven and healthy ecologies with farming monocultures. We need a healthy biosphere that we aren’t consuming 50% faster than it can rebuild itself. We need the atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to stabilize and perhaps start returning to better levels than 400+ppmv. Those things are job #ONE. Let’s get that job done and then let’s see what we are left with. Maybe we can talk then.
So I don’t think I helped you understand anything at all.
The sixth extinction event is underway without help, yet, from climate change so I’m not sure why you think that reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would bring it to a halt. It sure would help not accelerate the event but it would not halt it.
alan2102says
#67 – Victor — 4 Jun 2016:
“I must now urge everyone to read Dorman’s astute, eminently reasonable and thorough critique. What’s especially important here is not simply his take on Klein’s book, but his very deep, probing analysis of the many hidden (and not so hidden) weaknesses of the climate activist program generally.”
I did not find his analysis to be “deep and probing” at all. I found it to be annoying and obtuse — the words of a man who doesn’t get it and who passionately does not WANT to get it. They were the words of a man who cannot think outside the narrow confines of technocratic specifics, and who goads and chides others (like Klein) who CAN so think. “Deep” is the opposite of what Dorman displays; he focuses entirely on superficial, easy targets for nattering complaint, failing to grasp the critical abstractions — issues of depth — that Klein is attempting to convey.
Maybe Klein fails to convey those issues well. I don’t know. I’m not defending Klein since I have not read her book. Either way, Dorman’s critique is a failure.
The fact that such a dense, stubbornly uncomprehending person is a professor — i.e. presumably a man of keen intellect — is amazing, to me; his level of intellection is a better fit in the janitorial staff. Is this what institutions of (supposed) higher learning and thought are producing these days? I guess so, and it underscores a frightening and underappreciated dimension of our predicament.
I could mention many specifics; I could demolish the essay sentence by sentence (and I had a brief impulse to do so); but I won’t. Too much effort, and no place for it here.
digby at 111. Yes, agreed. We think that bau approach will lead to increasing rates of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere and oceans. Apparently, we both think that is currently happening. Neither of us are surprised by the increasing rate of CO2 accumulation. Unfortunately, some news stories (like the emission reports or vegetation increase with higher levels of CO2, or the increased growth rate of alaskan forest in warmed environment) will lead some folks to think that we are making significant progress toward addressing AGW and they will lose sight of the most basic and important numbers: the current level of CO2 and CO2e in the atmosphere and the trend in changes of that number.
We used to go up at .73 ppm per year, then 1.5 ppm per year, then 2 something ppm per year, then recent years at 3 ppm per year. This year we are going up at about 4 ppm per year. Hank has identified that these numbers only appear to be an increase in the rate of ghg accumulation, so you know, I guess we all have a lot to learn.
that appears to be an increase of 4.85 ppm in a very noisy number, and even looks to the naked eye to be an actual increase in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere which would appear to trap more warmth and increase the temperature of the planet, but hey, what do I know?
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
That one appears to be an increase of 3.76 ppm on a still pretty noisy number. Again, it appears to be a higher rate of increase to the untrained eye.
I am going to keep watching the CO2 numbers even though it is clear that I don’t understand what they really mean. That’s a big relief, I thought the numbers looked like bad news.
These numbers only appear to be going up. Your results may vary as Theo has noted. I am going to stick with MLO and entertain myself with my inability to differentiate .73 ppm from 4.85 ppm. I gotta laugh at myself for thinking that looked like an increase.
Tony at 114: yes, we agree that this sixth great extinction is underway. If I ever said I though reducing CO2 emissions and levels would stop the SGE I misspoke. I think we can only slow the impact and rate of the event by reducing our emissions and the GHG levels.
I don’t necessarily agree with your assertion that the SGE is underway without help from climate change. Are you thinking more broadly about the changes on the planet that our species has produced as the primary trigger event of the SGE? That is my take on things: our species is a bit of a planetary blight, we reproduce at a rate that would make Malthus blush and the consequences proceed from there.
??
warm regard
Mike
Scott Stroughsays
@110 Thomas
Thanks for the links. It will take me a while to go through them all. But I will bookmark them and see what I can do.
@113 Jon,
Oh yes Jon you absolutely have helped a lot, more than you even know. You are right though, I don’t know the % that feel as you do. You are but one person. However, I have long been puzzled by certain comments from many others that didn’t make any sense to me. When I read your post, and after I got over the shock of it, the ideas you so eloquently presented sent bells ringing and lights flashing. It was an aha moment. Even when you restated your fears again for me @113 thinking I got you wrong, only reaffirmed and refined that aha moment for me. All I can tell you at this point without writing a book about it, is the collective “we” understands far better than you think, and most those issues you fear will be reduced rather than amplified by regenerative agriculture used as a carbon farming technique. I can tell that by your excellent communication skills. Far better than mine. Keep communicating please. I am learning more and more each post. Thanks.
Piotrsays
Hank, 109: “You’re taking “appear” as confirmation. It’s not. Tamino’s saying it “appears” — that’s a description of how people who don’t understand statistics leap to conclusions”
Hank, I think you may be making a mountain out of molehill in this case – I don’t think that Tamino’s “appears” is the hammer with which Tamino wallops people who don’t know statistics, but rather an indication of his _own_ caution in the matter – it may appear as rise, but given the possible El Nino effect, he_ is not prepared to call it an increase, although he feels highly confident that at least there was no decrease in the rate.
You, on the other hand, wielded Tamino as if he destroyed Mike’s claim and with it, his credibility (you have put him, in effect, on par with the climate deniers). I think this was rather uncalled for, particularly that the original paradox is still a paradox even if we replace the “increase” with the “lack of decrease”, namely: “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise”?
“I do think, right now, that the global respiration system should be one of the LAST things you screw with.”
I may be missing something here, but I don’t understand your fears about Scott’s idea. OK, global respiration fluxes are huge, and may be subject to metabolic change due to warming. Fine.
But: you aren’t meaningfully ‘screwing with’ the global system in any plausible scenario I can come up with. You are screwing with a subset of the respiration system in a (probably rather small) subset of Earth’s current or former agricultural lands. Whatever you do is in theory (and probably in practice) reversible, and it would take a while to scale up to anything meaningful anyway. During that while, you’d gain knowledge about the issues you raise, and also, honestly, whether the thing really works.
If things looked to be going badly, you’d, well, stop. Unlike the case of fossil fuel combustion, you wouldn’t yet have massively entrenched interests opposing you.
Piotr @119,
Concerning the ‘paradox’ you talk of – “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise”?
The Tamino post “CO2 Status Report” was predicated on reports of emissions being in decline, although this talk was seemingly a bullish interpretation of CDIAC’s Global Carbon Project report that fossil fuel CO2 emissions may flat-line 2013-15, a rise in 2013-14 being cancelled out by a potential fall 2014-15 – “For 2015, preliminary data indicate that the growth in E(FF) will be near or slightly below zero, with a projection of −0.6 [range of −1.6 to +0.5] %.”. The data from CDIAC’s Global Carbon Project is in truth reporting a significant rise in CO2 2013-14 due mainly to increased LUC emissions (& we await their 2015 data)). The 2013-14 increase in emissions CDIAC report are +60Mt FF & +170Mt LUC, an annual increase of 2.1% which is not so different to preceding years.
Then, if you consider the additional increase in atmospheric concentrations you would expect from that 2.1% increase, it is +0.05ppm. Single years (or a couple of years) with no increase in global emissions will not be noticeable within the wobbles in atmospheric CO2 increase that are caused mainly by ENSO.
The rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 doubled during the 1997-98 El Nino (I haven’t looked beyond that event) from 1.8ppm/yr to 3.7ppm/yr. The peak was in September 1998 which suggests the peak increase this year is yet to arrive. What that peak increase will be, I know not. Accounting for the increase in emissions since 1998 & with an airborne fraction of 45% suggests 4.26ppm/yr but tracking the emissions over recent months shows the rate tracking 0.5ppm higher than such a calculation.
I appear to have been smote by Hank’s numerology. I think it’s funny. I would love to have it turn out that Hank is right and the rate of increase is not increasing. Time will tell. I win either way. If I am right, Hank is wrong and that’s funny. If Hank is right, things are not as bad as I think they might be and I am happy.
Piotr, I’m saying this is a science site, people are expected to cite sources in the sciences for their statements about what’s happening — and it’s an equal opportunity expectation. Whatever one believes or wants to believe — just saying so without a science site has to be questioned.
I’m sure Mike’s heart is in the right place.
It’s his sources I want him to identify.
There are people making up stuff or exaggerating stuff on all sides of the climate change science.
You have to be an equal opportunity debunker in science.
Don’t just question claims you don’t want to believe. Question the ones you do want to believe. Mike said earlier he’d quit posting his daily CO2 numbers when they went down, he only posts changes going up. That’s the escalator.
Cite primary sources or known reliable secondary sources. Not second or third hand info.
Otherwise RC becomes just another opinion blog. There are plenty of those already.
Jon Kirwansays
Re: 120
From Kevin McKinney
“I do think, right now, that the global respiration system should be one of the LAST things you screw with.”
I may be missing something here, but I don’t understand your fears about Scott’s idea. OK, global respiration fluxes are huge, and may be subject to metabolic change due to warming. Fine.
But: you aren’t meaningfully ‘screwing with’ the global system in any plausible scenario I can come up with. You are screwing with a subset of the respiration system in a (probably rather small) subset of Earth’s current or former agricultural lands. Whatever you do is in theory (and probably in practice) reversible, and it would take a while to scale up to anything meaningful anyway. During that while, you’d gain knowledge about the issues you raise, and also, honestly, whether the thing really works.
If things looked to be going badly, you’d, well, stop. Unlike the case of fossil fuel combustion, you wouldn’t yet have massively entrenched interests opposing you.
I’m fine with small-scale experiments to help us learn still more. Don’t get me wrong. So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.
Besides, carbon isn’t all there is to care about. I’ve addressed myself to a few of them in every post on this issue here, so that it isn’t misunderstood that I’m only on a single issue (I’m not) and instead that I’m keeping more than a few important issues simultaneously in clear view.
Unless someone brings up something new to consider, I’ve said my piece on this.
I say that climate change hasn’t yet contributed to the current extinction event only because I’m not aware that any extinction has yet been put down to climate change (though there may be some that haven’t been proven). I recall reading some research on this exact point but you’ll have to take that as anecdotal as I don’t have a link. In any case, I expect climate change to add to our predicament but I don’t expect that even a magic solution to climate change would halt the sixth extinction event, which, I think, is your position, too.
Alfred Jonessays
Silk: Seems we are mostly on the same side. Can we focus on science questions and answers? Less mud-slinging?
AJ: But you forget the “denialist” data. If something pertains to “Others” then it inevitably pertains to almost everybody on “our” side. I’m EXTREMELY adamant about changing my mind about things as data arrives, but of the regs here, about 1% of them would change a single thought based on new data. I’ve NEVER seen BPL learn anything which doesn’t hammer his opinions solidly, and most everybody else here is similar. Such is human nature. As an example, I’ve stretched my position by perhaps a thousand percent to as come close to agreeing with BPL as I can without throwing up, and the ONLY result is BPL calling me subhuman for not being 1000% exactly agreeing with him. BPL, like most humans, is simply incapable of learning anything which doesn’t nest with his preconceived notions. Even researching opposing thoughts is blasphemy. Eemian map? MY GOD, CONSIDERING HISTORY WOULD BE SACRILEGE!!!!! He’ll ignore all data forever, just like any other denialist – and at least 99% of humans are pure denialists. Thus, this isn’t an insult to BPL, but merely an affirmation that BPL is human and as flawed as his Flying Spaghetti Monster says he is. That includes 99% of EVERYBODY here. (Pillory me at the number, but the hypothesis is solid even if hyperbole.)
Of course, if BPL would research the Eemian and form an INFORMED opinion, I’d shout his praises to his Flying Spaghetti Monster Being….
———-
Jon: We are doing nothing about population.
AJ: That’s silly. Look up birth rates. Outside of Africa, humanity is probably not even replacing itself. In any case, our birthrate is plummeting. Look up stuff before spouting, eh? And about crops and CO2 sequestration, that’s rather simplistic. Only a non-brilliant person couldn’t figure out how to sequester carbon while growing plenty of food. Since it only takes ONE brilliant person out of 7 billion to solve the issue, I’d say this is a yawner. You? (Given my take on denialism, I’d say that you could look up the IRREFUTABLE data and probably not change your opinion one iota. Prove me wrong with a comment….)
AJ: Brilliant observation. I’d expand it to not just trolls but anybody who doesn’t agree with the particular denialist involved. (Denialist = revered Real Climate Regular)
——————-
Scott: The idea that people are more comfortable with the current system and fearful of regenerative agriculture is completely foreign to me.
AJ: Why? 99% of people are for that which made them money last year. Regenerative agriculture didn’t make them diddly last year. WTF would they support it this year, especially when government programs are designed to increase profits for those who did it “correctly” last year?
—————-
Mike: entertain myself with my inability to differentiate .73 ppm from 4.85 ppm. I gotta laugh at myself for thinking that looked like an increase.
AJ: You always make me smile, even with your “lies”, which only point out how inept other folks are.
AJ 127: He’ll ignore all data forever, just like any other denialist – and at least 99% of humans are pure denialists. Thus, this isn’t an insult to BPL… etc., etc., etc.
BPL: So AJ thinks I’m an AGW denialist. Boy, here’s a guy who’s really on the ball.
Thomassays
123 Hank Roberts says: “…people are expected to cite sources in the sciences for their statements about what’s happening”
Do you have a cite for that claim Hank?
” — and it’s an equal opportunity expectation.”
Maybe that’s only your expectation Hank? I’ve never seen you give a citation for your opinions nor your 3 word slogans. :-)
“It’s his (Mike’s) sources I want him to identify.”
He did already. So what’s the problem here? If you think his ‘data’ is wrong then please provide better data/citations if you have them. MLO is still the MLO.
“Cite primary sources or known reliable secondary sources. Not second or third hand info.”
Hank please cite any sources used by Mike that you consider are not reliable. Or give it up?
imo, it’s the Moderator’s job to Moderate, and no one else’s. I, for one, am happy for it to stay that way. I also think that Mike makes a lot of rational sense. Everyone is entitled to meaningful takeaway messages gained from looking at scientific data and published papers. Science tells us what is – we decide what to think and what to do about it. Looks to me that Mike is using the science appropriately and for the purpose it was provided for in the first place. It represents to me real critical thinking from real climate science. The more the merrier. :-)
Thomassays
124 Jon Kirwan says: “Besides, carbon isn’t all there is to care about…”
Now ain’t that the truth!
127 Alfred Jones says: “That’s silly. Look up birth rates.
Good tip, you’re basically correct. The #1 driver for lower birthrates across history across all cultures is lifting people out of poverty and living on the edge of survival. A decent education is another side-effect of lower birth rates. Fair pay, a livable wage, and safe working conditions was another but they are under attack in the richest nations on earth yet again. And these things are very much directly connected to climate science and AGW and the politics of it.
My ‘cite’ is Gapminder and Hans Rosling. Global population is unlikely to get to 9 billion post 2050 sometime and then progressively decrease. It ‘depends’ because no one has a crystal ball nor predict nuclear conflagrations or common sense descending upon humanity. :-)
128 Alfred Jones.
I think I can see where you’re coming from. It’s a reasonable observation, though probably not worth mentioning to often given the backfire or boomerang effect. :-)
Some people still believe that if it wasn’t for all the ‘agw deniers’ that AGW and CO2e emissions would already be solved and being acted upon. That it is all ‘their fault’ nothing effective has yet been done.
siddsays
Mr. Alfred Jones wrote in response to Mr. Scott Strough: “99% of people are for that which made them money last year. Regenerative agriculture didn’t make them diddly last year. WTF would they support it this year, especially when government programs are designed to increase profits for those who did it “correctly” last year?”
This is an important point. Let me give you example of someone I personally know, got a couple hundred acres, land is old, worn, grows stones. Tillable sections, drenched with fertilizer and pesticide on a corn soy rotation in a good year, makes less than a convenience store clerk. In a bad year he goes in debt to the seed/fertilizer/herbicide/pesticide dealers. There are getting to be more bad years. Health benefits come thru spouse who (for now) has a job offering those. Two kids, both in school right now, college an impossible dream.
Can’t tell him to put it in pasture for five to seven, that’s what it will take to bring it back, he needs the subsidized income from goin with the flow. Can you pay him 20K US$/yr, thats all he makes (b4 tax for cryin out loud), for seven yr to try out the Rodale/Ingaham/Strough schemes ?
“King Corn” is a good movie.
sidd
Alfred Jonessays
BPL: So AJ thinks I’m an AGW denialist.
AJ: Sometimes (well, always) you make me shake my head. No, what I was saying is that I think Richard Feynman was correct when he said that the first rule is to not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. (“You” includes me) Yep, you are a denialist, I’m a denialist (who’s trying way hard to follow Feynman’s sage advice), and everybody else is also a denialist. I’m talking psychology. It has NOTHING to do with AGW. All I’m saying is that pretty much EVERYTHING folks whine about about the other side (of any issue) exactly resembles everybody on your side, too.
Oh, and either come up with that Eemian map, or a one or two sentence reason why it isn’t absolutely critical to your case.
AJ: You’ve got to tone things down, dude. The post you referred to actually talked about my having to move towards AGW catastrophic alarmism in order to even converse with you. Given that you’ve won writing awards, it is obvious that you’re not making a reading comprehension error, but that you’re just trolling for out-of-context insults.
This has to stop. I’m willing to work with you towards solutions. I follow Jesus as best I can (which ain’t grandly) so I hold no grudges. I’m under the impression that you try to follow the same dude (though for completely different reasons) so perhaps there’s some common ground there.
Frankly, to me this all boils down to my bulldogging about the Eemian versus your stonewalling about the same. So, in your opinion, am I justified in continuing to ask?
Chuck Hughessays
AJ: You always make me smile, even with your “lies”, which only point out how inept other folks are.
You say people here don’t change their minds when confronted with new evidence or better more-correct logic?
Well, I changed my mind on one issue. I had thought that a carbon tax would have to increase to infinity to cause fossil-fuel use to decline to zero. Then it was pointed out to me that the tax only had to make fossil fuel more expensive than alternatives. I changed my mind.
In the past and on other matters I’ve also changed my mind when warranted. I can’t believe I’m unique.
Yes, the question of climate change and extinction is a bit vexed, and–WRT to golden amphibians in particular–a bit confusing.
There are–were–actually two ‘golden’ species (at least): the Panamanian golden frog, which appears to be extinct in the wild but is maintained in a special refugium, as discussed in Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Sixth Extinction”, which I wrote about here:
Other is the golden *toad*, which was endemic to the cloud forest in Costa Rica. It has not been observed since 1989, and has widely been considered to have disappeared due to the effects of climate change, since biologists directly observed the drying out of the pools in which the toad’s eggs were maturing. There is, however, a hypothesis that the chytrid fungus, which has decimated so many amphibian species around the world (including the golden *frog* discussed above), may have played a role. Studies have been inconclusive, I would say.
More generally, the theoretical expectations of the threat climate change seem pretty robust. (They are explicated in the “Sixth Extinction” essay linked above, where I summarize Ms. Kolbert’s fine expositions of the ‘latitudinal gradient’, the ‘altitudinal gradient’, and the ‘species-area-relationship’, among other bioecological basics.)
But given that we don’t even know how many species there are–and probably never *will* know–observation of extinction rates isn’t really possible. Only estimation is practical. That means that we are almost certainly losing species right now that we don’t know about.
As illustrative example, consider the golden toad: it disappeared in 1989–but we only knew about it from 1964 onwards, though it must have existed over evolutionary timescales. An unfortunate corollary of all that is that it’s hard to document *as observed fact* what biologists are convinced of on robust theoretical grounds. Which means that it’s hard to convince ‘skeptics.’
“I’m fine with small-scale experiments to help us learn still more. Don’t get me wrong. So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.”
Thanks, a useful clarification.
What about the possibility of scaling up, should such small-scale projects give promising results? Hypothetical, I know, but I’m curious whether there would be any ‘alarm bells’ for you that would be associated with such a scenario?
we are not far apart. I think you misunderstand my decision-making and process for posting the increasing CO2 numbers here. I may have been less than clear at times, so I am willing to consider that possibility.
I post the numbers on a fairly regular basis. I definitely post when I see a really surprising number. I would do that whether the surprise went in up or down direction. The surprises I have seen have been all up (today is a surprising exception, it’s up, but the rate of increase is under 3ppm!). I post the context for the numbers and my understandings (or misunderstandings) of them. I am learning as I go.
Anyone is welcome to read back in the comments and make fun of me when I get it really wrong. I am fine with that. I need a good laugh as much as the next person.
All that said, I believe the following to be true and verifiable:
1. the numbers at https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2 show that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (measured in ppm) is rising.
2. the same numbers show that the rate of increase is increasing.
3. I think the science that indicates increase of atmospheric CO2 will raise global temp is settled.
4. I think it does not matter whether the increase of CO2 (and other ghg)arises from “natural” sources like warming peat, forest fires, melting permafrost etc. or are from our species burning coal, natural gas, old tires, etc. because regardless of the source of emission, the rising accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will drive global warming and ocean acidification. (in this sense, I really don’t pay too much attention to the emission reports from energy sector, when I now question falling emissions falling and rising concentration that question is some rhetorical and is posed with a hope that others might conclude that the reports are meaningless propaganda that are meant to distract from the important and real increase in ghg accumulation as measured at places like MLO).
5. I think increasing global warming and ocean acidification are bad news for a lot of species, including our own.
I am making hard number predictions about CO2 numbers in the future based on my review of the data as a good faith attempt to help folks understand the way I am reviewing the hard climate data that I see. Look at 105 or read here again:
mike says again: We should see June monthly average ppm drop to around 407.0. We should see the year end with a december monthly average reading of 405.2. But let’s give that prediction an additional reduction of 1.5 ppm for loss of El Nino bump, so I think we end the year at abt 403.7 and we post an increase of around 3.5 ppm for 2016.
I would love to be wrong about that annual number. It is not a good number.
Here is surprising number on the low side:
Daily CO2
June 9, 2016: 405.57 ppm
June 9, 2015: 403.43 ppm (noisy daily increase of only 2.14 ppm over same date)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm (ugly, less noisy 3.76 ppm increase_
McLinden and his colleagues used data from NASA’s Earth-observing AURA satellite, launched in 2002, which carries an instrument capable of measuring sulphur dioxide. The data was combined with information about wind directions and wind speeds to pinpoint sulphur dioxide sources.
“Initially, I think we maybe thought it wasn’t working when we got these huge sources in the middle of the Pacific,” McLinden recalled.
Those turned out to be volcanoes — the study found 75 of them emitting substantial amounts of sulphur dioxide, despite the fact that they were dormant and not erupting.
“Most of them hadn’t been measured before,” McLinden said. The study found that the dormant volcanoes were emitting almost 30 per cent of the sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere (with the rest being man-made), although erupting volcanoes might emit much more.
The researchers compared the sources identified by the satellite data with global sulphur dioxide inventories.
They found that many smaller sources couldn’t be detected by satellite.
“On the other hand, we noticed that conventional inventories were missing some fairly sizeable SO2 [sulphur dioxide] sources,” McLinden said.
In some regions, the inventories were off by a factor of three or more compared to the measurements.
The densest cluster of unreported emitters was in the Middle East. Further research identified where they were coming from — mostly oil and gas extraction facilities….
—- illustration caption inline:
IRAN-OIL/
…The new study suggests that oil and gas plants in the Persian that haven’t been reporting their sulphur dioxide emissions may be responsible for six to 12 per cent of man-made sulphur dioxide emissions worldwide. (Raheb Homavandi/Reuters)…
Piotrsays
Hank 125: “you need to understand the difference between a one-tail and a two-tail test. That’s statistics 101.”
Since my question wasn’t implying a two tail-test (it was either Ho: current rate >past rate, or Ho: current rate >= past rate) I am not entirely sure how the distinctions between one- and two-tailed tests is relevant here (and how does it quiestion my and mike’s grasp of elementary statistics… ;-))
Hank: “There’s no paradox involved answering “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise” – These are two entirely separate questions.”
I don’t agree – I didn’t ask about the “two separate questions” but precisely about their correlation (or actually – the paradoxixal to me lack of it) – wouldn’t you expect that if the emission rate decreased the rate of CO2 rise should, other things being equal, decrease as well?
And if they don’t – this would suggest to me that either total emissions didn’t actually decrease and/or that “the other things are not equal” – that the sinks of CO2 are weaker now than in the past.
I could also accept the answer that there might be an inertia in the CO2 system, or that the decceleration of CO2 was masked by the CO2 system in a way that Tamino’s removal of El Nino effects didn’t fully account for, but to simply dismiss it by saying that the two parts of my question are not related to each other – would require a stronger argument than just saying it is so.
“Last month saw the biggest year-over-year jump in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide on record — 3.76 parts per million. And that, reports NOAA, took May 2016 to the highest monthly levels of CO2 in the air ever measured — 407.7 ppm.
At the same time, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports the warming-driven death spiral of Arctic sea ice hit a staggering new May low (see figure). May 2016 saw Arctic sea ice extent drop “about 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) below any previous year in the 38-year satellite record.”
Mike and Hank might agree that it appears the number is going up and it appears the rate is in record territory. Beneath the appearance of agreement, Hank appears to be implying that he think CO2 increase is flat or falling. Mike is way out on the crazy limb and says, hey, dude, that number is definitely going up.
God, Hank, I hope you are right that the CO2 rate of increase is now flat or headed down becuz the great white north is in a serious heat wave and meltdown. Well… it appears the north is in heat wave and meltdown.
Hank, I intend to make fun of you for your position until you whine like a walrus in a warm blue sea or until I have to eat crow. Either way, I am going to have some fun. Crow with asparagus, sweet onions, olive oil and parmesan!
> Mike … 2. the same numbers show that the rate of increase is increasing.
How do you figure that? Where is Tamino going wrong in saying he can’t conclude that there’s an increase in the rate, from the data we have now?
None of us will be surprised if it does turn out that way.
But I haven’t seen anyone doing the arithmetic, and I’ve seen a lot of people eyeballing the curve.
Thomassays
Accurate scientific facts and quantitative statistics are obviously critically important re agw/cc and what to do about it. Some people believe that it’s these kinds of ‘facts’ that will eventually cut through and motivate the public and politicians to act accordingly. But imo (as many studies indicate) it’s more about the ‘framing’ of those facts in how people derive ‘meaning’. iow it’s not uncommon for people to see the exact same facts and yet come to very diverse, at times opposite, take away messages of what it all means. The boomerangs vs javelins article by Zhou speaks to this reality.
Or consider Lakoff’s ‘take away message’ from the field of cognitive science/linguistics which he summaries as “Reason is 98% Subconscious Metaphor in Frames & Cultural Narratives”
So I appreciate Mike’s ‘narrative’ @141 especially this comment which is what I would call part of his “take away message”
…in this sense, I really don’t pay too much attention to the emission reports from energy sector, when I now question falling emissions falling and rising concentration that question is some rhetorical and is posed with a hope that others might conclude that the reports are meaningless propaganda that are meant to distract from the important and real increase in ghg accumulation as measured at places like MLO.
Blending many known ‘facts together’ for some time I have seen the 2C UNFCCC limit as a false frame – an intentional one by the most powerful of govts to muddy the waters of the UNFCCC treaties and the work of the IPCC. IF the UNFCCC group (ie all our national govts) were truly serious and honest then there would instead be an Agreed Goal to Limit CO2/CO2e PPM in the here and now, then to drive them down into the future. Instead they have “framed” the discussions around a nebulous variable of a Global Mean Temperature Rise that is both an indefinable ‘fact’ nor specific in time to be used as a genuine goal post. Not until it’s already been smashed by all the drivers years before the 2C temperature is reached.
So for me this is a great example of how both facts and frames are used and yet are also abused with intent to ‘muddy the waters’. The facts about rising CO2ppm are in direct conflict with the ‘facts’ of what the global mean temperature is from one year to the next. The hiatus/pause bs is the kind of confusion that comes from these kinds of manipulation of ‘facts’. The general public cannot form valid ‘take away messages’ when there is such incoherent conflict in the basic facts and the messages being put out.
Kevin Anderson is one agw/cc policy expert who has called out the 2C limit by the UNFCCC at COP21 for what it is – fraudulent (my choice of word). The ‘facts’ regarding obligations ot reduce CO2/CO2e emissions does not compute with the stated Goal of limiting temp increase to below 1.5C or even 2C .. in fact the facts base don hard numbers places the UNFCCC treaty as driving the planet to closer to plus 4C than 2C.
Facts are great. Don’t leave home without them I say. The CO2 PPM at MLO and at all the others is providing accurate verifiable facts that the current “framing” that nations are making great progress in limiting GHGs is absolute total BS. Yet from the UN and Obama down the latest UNFCCC Treaty was hailed as being a great success, and the template for the future?
The next UNFCCC treaty begins to get hashed out from 2025. Will there be any summer arctic ice left by then? I seriously doubt it.
And despite any rubbery figures contained in the IEA it states in late 2015: “As the largest source of global GHG emissions, the energy sector must be central to efforts to tackle climate change but, despite signs that a low-carbon transition is underway, energy-related CO2 emissions are projected to be 16% higher by 2040. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2015/WEO2015_Factsheets.pdf
Add to that 16% all natural CO2e emission sources +/-, and the as yet unknown ‘negative feedbacks’ aka ‘tipping points’ from natural sources and one can only guess (and shudder) at what the Global CO2/CO2e PPM will be by 2040.
Keep going all you climate scientists and researchers, keep the ‘facts’ coming hard and fast. Eventually someone will be able to FRAME those Facts into a narrative that everyone can understand and be motivated by.
“Think Globally and Act Locally” is as true today as it was in the 1960s. Time is of the essence.
Jon Kirwansays
Re: 140
From: Kevin McKinney
JonK: “I’m fine with small-scale experiments to help us learn still more. Don’t get me wrong. So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.”
Thanks, a useful clarification.
What about the possibility of scaling up, should such small-scale projects give promising results? Hypothetical, I know, but I’m curious whether there would be any ‘alarm bells’ for you that would be associated with such a scenario?
I can only offer a few thoughts there.
Let me express one concern by using a current news item that is actively being discussed right now. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine just this Wednesday endorsed further research using CRISPR-Cas9 and other technologies for gene-drive technology, which ensures that its genetic code is passed on to all offspring even when doing so significantly reduces their fitness in the environment. The NAS panel pointed out that there are currently no avenues where affected communities may participate in a decision to move into field testing, adding that it also falls through the cracks of existing regulatory systems for genetically engineered organisms in the US and elsewhere. Part of the reasoning, of course, is that it could be helpful. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded some $40 million worth of research into gene-drive to help reduce the incidence of malaria and the Zika virus has, of course, also been mentioned. The idea being to use gene-drive to help extinguish the mosquito vectors involved. But there is a huge question that arises when gene-drive research reaches a field test. An organism with a gene-drive system in the wild may spread and that presents a significant associated risk. (The panel noted that there may be no boundaries to a gene-drive, once released into the environment.)
Will the current spate of news about the Zika virus stir up the kind of political pressures that might force an imprudent step? Will capital and wealth interests, wishing to harness and leverage that political momentum, turn a blind eye to the longer term risks while focusing mainly on the potential for shorter term profits?
So there’d be a lot more I’d like to know before I’d add my stamp of approval, when scaling. And it would be one step at a time, as well. No blanket permissions. I’d also want to see a healthy, effective, and vibrant political process established as it moves beyond research phases and more into significant field trials that would impact carbon on anything that is within three orders (and certainly within two orders) of magnitude of the global carbon cycle.
In one of the few cases where I know a few things, it’s not good. For example, I’ve not seen a healthy safety inspection process for US nuclear plants. Instead, what I’ve seen is entrenched and secretive collusion with INPO and the NRC, via a memorandum of agreement that they periodically sign and which keeps safety inspections out of the public hands despite Congressional intent when it set up the NRC to replace the AEC. And when the NRC set up its advanced reactor program, it set up a ‘fast track’ type of so-called “combined license” which could be easily abused, in practice. (Long stories there.)
I honestly don’t expect much better when push comes to shove and power and wealth start getting involved. So I’d be very much focused on how political and legal structures outside of the direct research itself are fashioned.
I kind of see this as a distraction, too. It mires us in a discussion about “could be’s” and “might be’s”, if the technology develops as hoped, but it probably too easily takes us away from being on-target with what we actually know about and should engage right now.
We know that we need to deal with human-caused carbon fluxes. We know we need to deal with clear cutting. We know we need to deal with destruction of ecologies and habitats. We know we need to deal with the conversion of complex ecologies into monoculture farms. We know we need to deal with population. But rather than consider all of the complexities involved, and those are indeed complex problems collectively, we instead seek simpler “push button” ideas where we can feel as though the pressure is off and that don’t have to do any of that hard work. Anything to distract us so that we don’t have to engage the work ahead.
As I wrote, “So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.”
I’m fine with learning more about the world. Cripes, I’ve been awash in new ideas that have arrived over the last few decades as climate scientists and so many associated disciplines have collectively developed new and incredible insights into our fabulous planet. We have whole new fields that deal the interfaces between spheres on Earth, such as the air-water interface or the air-forest interface. When I started reading, these fields didn’t exist. So the speed of all this arriving now is just incredible to me. Enough of the puzzle pieces have been placed down that I can almost sense the evolving picture and it drives me crazy to get more pieces. (It didn’t before, because we knew so little that it seemed hopeless to try. But that’s changed for me.) So yes, I want to learn still more.
We need to research broadly. We may need a plan B, or C, to haul out of a drawer. I certainly don’t want to have fewer tools available, if things go further awry. I’d want more.
But I also don’t want us to avoid the more immediate work ahead, either, or avoid the work we understand today and know we need to do. It may be fun to consider researching a fancy capillary pumping system to help bail water even faster out of a leaky boat, but I wouldn’t want folks to stop bailing with those buckets in the meantime. (Besides, that pump might not work as expected and instead pull water into the boat.)
So keep on bailing, but also do some research too.
Scott Stroughsays
@133 Sidd,
I can empathize with your friend more than you know. I would like to point out something though. Who do you suppose developed these regenerative systems? From Joel Salatin’s 100 acre hardscrabble farm that had so little soil left bedrock was peaking through the pastures and he had to put fence posts in concrete filled old tires because they wouldn’t stand up, to Tom Trantham literally in bankruptcy and not even given a loan to buy fertilizer and seed, to Gabe Brown having had 100% crop failures multiple years in a row and also being denied loans for fertilizer and seed, to Colin Seis having watched his whole farm burn and no possible way to recoup losses. You can go right down the list. It wasn’t scientists that developed these systems. I was worse than desperate farmers on their very last legs with no reasonable hope at all, that developed the systems, which brought them out of poverty. Then later having done the impossible, the scientists followed scratching their brows trying to figure out exactly how they did it.
I don’t recommend welfare for hard working farmers. Not at all. And there is no need for it either. Regenerative systems are orders of magnitude more profitable per acre.
Colin Seis from Australia had a particularly pithy quote:
“We try to grow things that want to die, and kill things that want to live. That is pretty much how (industrial) agriculture functions.” Colin Seis
And the USDA mini documentary film that talks about some of these new methods had a great quote as well.
“When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber.” -USDA (Author Unknown)
Nothing will “radically reduce” inputs more than an overdrawn bank account and a banker at your front doorstep escorted by the sheriff.
It’s only years later after the scientists got wind of it and started publishing their papers and case studies that it was realized this actually is sequestering far more carbon than ever thought possible in an agricultural system. And since almost 1/2 the planet in in agriculture, that if the whole standard practices changed then it would be large enough to mitigate AGW. They were not developed to mitigate AGW, they were developed as a desperate means to save the farms and the farmers from the poor house.
It just so happens that in the absence of inputs, biology takes over. And biology has had millions of years experience building fertile soils without inputs. You said it yourself, “Can’t tell him to put it in pasture for five to seven, that’s what it will take to bring it back”. So you do realize that nature can bring it back. Why do you suppose every one of those farmers claim things like “farming in natures image”, “mimicking nature”, or “listening to what the cows were trying to tell me”. Without exception every one of them had similar “aha moments”. Yeah they sound crazy now in hind site. Like a bunch of hippy dippy nature freaks. But everyone of them was a hardworking farmer and the farthest thing from it.
Recent Australia east coast storm f/up – another sign of things to come.
Sydney storm: Lessons from a tempest
extract “Wettest day on record”
Homes and public assets certainly came in for a huge hammering, not least from the the sheer volume of rainfall dumped along Australia’s coast.
“It looks like, on an area-averaged basis, eastern NSW had its wettest day on record [for the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday],” Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said. Of NSW’s 20 coastal river catchments, 19 recorded at least 70mm of rain on Sunday alone, with only the Hunter flowing into Newcastle spared.
“It think it would be highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented,” Trewin said, adding that most east coast lows generate more tightly centred storms, affecting a 200-300-kilometre range at one time. (note: versus the 2300+ Klm extent of this particular storm system down the east coast)
Trewin noted warmer than average sea-surface temperatures increased the amount of moisture available for the storm to tap, creating sub-tropical conditions quite abnormal for early winter. Indeed, sea-surface temperatures for May in the Tasman Sea were unprecedented.
(See bureau chart below of temperature deviation from the long-term averages.) http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/gpfm1c/tasm.png
Mike @141.
I disagree with your statement where you say “4. I think it does not matter whether the increase of CO2 (and other ghg)arises from “natural” sources like warming peat, forest fires, melting permafrost etc. or are from our species burning coal, natural gas, old tires, etc. because regardless of the source of emission, the rising accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will drive global warming…”
Collectively, we do have control over anthropogenic emissions. We do not have such control over any “natural” sources we stoke up thro’ our messing with the climate. Of course, collectively we have problems reacting, like the apocryphal boiling frog, but add in the appearance of natural feedbacks and the frog would need to do more than just jump to escape his fate. So the appearance of “natural sources” will matter more than burning “old tyres”.
Daily CO2
June 5, 2016: 407.51 ppm
June 5, 2015: 402.63 ppm
read’m and weep.
Mike
Comment by mike — 6 Jun 2016 @
Don’t ya just love the way some here seem to be getting pissed off at the numbers? There are several great opinions about what’s going on but I personally would love to hear something from the people who run this site. I don’t see how things will suddenly go in reverse simply because El Nino ended. How do CO2 levels drop?
Incidentally, I just talked to an insurance claims adjuster this morning about our roof leaking. There’s nothing wrong with the roof. We both climbed on top of the house and the shingles are fine. No loose ones and they’re glued down solid. We were talking about the severe storms and heavy rains and he was telling me about having to deny people money due to flooding and storm surge. He said the last 10 years have been increasingly worse with severe drought and severe flooding events. He hadn’t considered Climate Change until I told him to check out Munich Re. They have an entire web page devoted to Climate Change. Even the insurance folks haven’t factored in Climate Change.
Sorry Mike, the extra .01 of CO2 was probably added by me.
The FIRE burned two thirds of my property. About 200 acres of carbon. Drew a few turtles and pissed on them to invoke rain. Me and neighbours managed to put it out just before it got near any of my infrastructure. Still a while to recover, cause I plundered all my goodies.
But someone up there must have heard my plea, but they were late and overreacted. Straight after my fire-survival party, an East coast LOW (like Sandy) travelled from Brisbane to Tasmania causing millions damage and 6 deaths. Many 1-in-100yr events were recorded on its journey. Most noticeable $ was the damage to the Sydney waterfront, King tides (SLR?) removing half their beach-front gardens including swimming pool and houses.
Would have been a real bummer, to first be mangled by fire and then have 60 millions of litres of rain dumped on that. 60km inland, I got 142mm in 24 hours.
My CO2 is at 404, still up by about 14ppm
#67 Victor, #81 Eric-
I can’t fault much in Dorman’s critique either. But I can sum it up in a lot fewer words than he used: “Everything Klein says is basically correct, but she doesn’t have any workable solutions. And neither do I.”
And Eric, if you read her comments about “disaster capitalism” I think she does see what is coming.
Chuck Hughes wrote: “I’ve noticed that when Weaktor shows up the comments thread increases by about 100. That’s just a round figure. Could be less than that.”
People love to play Whack-A-Troll. I think that’s the main reason that some people frequent these comment pages.
May monthly average is in the books at https://www.co2.earth/
Daily CO2
June 6, 2016: 407.84 ppm
June 6, 2015: 402.99 ppm (very noisy annual rate of increase 4.85 ppm)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm (I hit that one on the nose if you look at my prediction at 56)
May 2015: 403.94 ppm (less noisy annual rate of increase of 3.76 ppm)
We should see June monthly average ppm drop to around 407.0. We should see the year end with a december monthly average reading of 405.2. But let’s give that prediction an additional reduction of 1.5 ppm for loss of El Nino bump, so I think we end the year at abt 403.7 and we post an increase of around 3.5 ppm for 2016. That is not a good number. We need to be flat and heading down asap to put the brakes on the sixth major extinction event.
The rate of increase for May has dropped a little from the April number of 4.16 ppm. Maybe that is weakening el nino result?
There are not many months in the records that show an increase of 4.16 ppm over the same month a year before. You can check that by scanning down the page at the link above to look at the monthly numbers.
1997 to 1998 is the place to search at past el nino, but increase rate at that time was under 3 ppm.
I hope we will see a “pause” in the annual increase of CO2 ppm in 2017 due to the El Nino bump in 2016. If we did see a much lower rate of increase – say 2.0 ppm or less – that would be reassuring. It would mean that the increase in CO2 in atmosphere has not started to run away from us due to “natural” sources of CO2 emissions from a warmed planet. Predicting and watching the numbers in this way is largely observation of AGW in the rear view mirror. It’s not smart.
Hank calls for collective action by proxy in 46. I agree. Tamino says we need to cut our emissions quickly and by as much as possible. The target number for cut is 50% if we want to stop increase of CO2 ppm in the atmosphere. No reason to freak out, just get to work, but make sure the work you do actually reduces your carbon footprint and is not a shell game of some sort that monetizes our collective concerns abt AGW. We are prisoners in a dilemma.
Warm regards
Mike
Hank Roberts, 92:
“Mike, why do you say “the rate of CO2 increase is rising” above? Why should I consider you more reliable than Tamino on this point?”
Am I missing something? Tamino’s point Hank refers to states: ” there’s no sign of any decrease in the rate (deceleration of CO2). In fact the rate seems to be increasing still (acceleration of CO2).”
Which seems to support, not contradict, Mike’s position.
Piotr
Thanks to all who replied to my post # 44 especially a big thanks for you all at having graciously ignored the typo and responded to the content instead.
@50 Jon When I first read your post I was astonished to be quite frank. I had no idea that to some it could be a fearful thought to restore ecosystem services to agricultural land. For me it is the continued degeneration of such a large potion of planet earth that causes me fear. The idea that people are more comfortable with the current system and fearful of regenerative agriculture is completely foreign to me. Already I have adjusted the way I frame my essays advocating agricultural restoration to include this mindset, and to help assuage fears. I am very happy you replied. I absolutely had no clue this sector of the climate science population even existed. It does explain some of the resistance I have seen though. Without your post I would still be in the dark. Thanks again.
@60 Edward
Interesting reply. Taking the low hanging fruit first obviously refers to targets or goals which are easily achievable and which do not require a lot of effort. I wonder though if you have read the parable of the low hanging fruit? Especially the end where Agrono says, “I leave it to you. If you replenish the soil and tend to the trees, it will take care of you.”
and
“I will teach my children this” he said, “that the only low-hanging fruit that they will ever find will be in the orchard of their own effort, and only after many seasons.”
Thanks for reminding me of that old wisdom. I needed that right now.
@61 Thomas Thanks for the links. I have seen a couple before but not all and I will study them further. One thing you should know though, most the links that I have already studied closely reference minor adjustments to standard BMP. (example adding a cover crop to standard no-till) And yes, that approach does bring benefits, but at a far more modest scale than actually changing the production models. In short, I agree that current systems slightly modified can help, but are not up to the task of actually being a solution. To achieve the results needed to actually mitigate AGW, you must change the production models. (like pasture cropping)
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1261 BTW, yes I have gone direct and am getting a far more positive responce. However, my concern is that “preaching to the choir” doesn’t change much outside those circles. Even climate scientists are still largely in the dark about how much the field has exploded in recent years. Even if they have heard, as of yet I have never seen those ideas put into the climate models. Various levels of emissions scenarios are all over the models, but regenerative agriculture substituted for current agriculture production models? I only see the effects of minor changes to standard BMP in the models.
@75 James thanks for your comment. You said, “It’s hard to imagine even 10% getting that kind of improvement, with 1% likely a more realistic target.”
Actually about ~1% is already at that target. Shooting so low means yes you hit the target…since we already have! But I think we certainly can improve on that! The problem is the 99% that are not even trying to hit any target at all! That does bring up an important point though. It would probably be just as hard to change agriculture as to change energy. It’s not a technology problem IMHO. It’s a people problem. People just don’t like change. I don’t see 100% changing agriculture any more than I see 0% fossil fuel emissions. What I do think could potentially happen is the powers that be finally get serious and decide a 50/50 split between the two? 40/60? or even 80/20? Whatever works out to end up as a net negative flux. Profit could be a prime motivator here. Once people understand this improves profits for the farmer, and also is a benefit to the larger general economies, both national and international, I think there is a potential to motivate. The only losers being those entities with a vested interest in the current systems that are incapable of adapting to change. Everyone else benefits.
@90 Mike You didn’t specifically address this to me but you said, “Here are two things that we can change to address the problem:
1. Immediately cut our energy consumption by at least 50%. Each and everyone of us would have to do that to make a large and meaningful impact on CO2 concentration problem.
2. Immediately mandate global changes in agriculture practice to reduce the CO2 release and maximize the CO2 sequestration through a process of restoring healthy topsoil around the world.
But, hey, what do I know?”
It’s what I advocate, all but the mandatory part. So I would say you know a lot, but not human nature. There is a big resistance, a gut reaction, to being FORCED to do something one doesn’t want to do. I propose that a better motivator is profits to cause people to enthusiastically WANT to make those changes. That’s real easy in my opinion. The current AGW unsustainable systems are being propped up by subsidies. The IEA’s latest estimates indicate that fossil-fuel consumption subsidies worldwide amounted to $493 billion in 2014. That’s 4 times what renewable energy gets. Agriculture is propped up in a more complicated way, but it basically boils down to a heavily subsidized buffer stock scheme subsidizing those unsustainable production models. In a perverse way we actually are getting what we paid for. We are subsidizing AGW, and we are getting it. As soon as we stop paying for AGW, there is a chance cooler heads will prevail.
Initialized decadal prediction for transition to positive phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
The year three to seven average prediction (2015–2019) from the 2013 initial state shows a transition to the positive phase of the IPO from the previous negative phase and a resumption of larger rates of global warming over the 2013–2022 period consistent with a positive IPO phase. …
Piotr, quote the rest of what Tamino said there.
You know how to find it.
You’re taking “appear” as confirmation. It’s not.
Tamino’s saying it “appears” — that’s a description of how people who don’t understand statistics leap to conclusions based on appearances of charts, without the arithmetic.
When deniers rely on appearances, we tell them it’s a mistake.
It’s a mistake even for those who want to believe what their eyes are telling them.
I nominate 107 Scott Strough’s comments as “the post of the year”
I’m thinking that finding some fellow travelers in agricultural groups or ‘farmers federations’ would help. Contacting the following people and asking for feedback, ideas and referrals to others interested in your field of study may help too. http://kevinanderson.info ; https://holmgren.com.au/contact/ ; http://www.ecoshock.org/ ; http://www.resilience.org/ ; http://rpauli.net/ ; Hans Rosling @ http://www.gapminder.org ; and Grant & Menzies via https://theconversation.com/what-science-communicators-can-learn-from-listening-to-people-25087
Best wishes
Mike @105
From graphs I have seen, CO2 levels have always been projected to rise at an increasing rate in a business-as-usual scenario. Applying my aged mark-one eyeball to one such graph, I see the following acceleration:
(1) 2015 to 2035 — 65 ppm
(2) 2035 to 2055 — 85 ppm
(3) 2055 to 2075 — 110 ppm
(4) 2075 to 2095 — 150 ppm
The acceleration you’re seeing means we are not deviating from the BAU scenario — which is no surprise to me.
102 Theo, glad you survived!!! It was a doozy of a storm system. I was out in the thick of it at high tide 9 pm Saturday in the Tweed. We’re buying a 4WD next I’m convinced cannot do without it even in semi-rural areas now. I was very lucky not to get washed away in the car. Only got swallowed in a pothole and damaged the wheels and got a flat. The NRMA breakdown services were also flooded in and not on the roads at all. Struth Doreen. :-)
“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.”
Not as much as I used to. lol
fwiw to readers the storms down the east coast of Aus are again unprecedented – never get flooding rain or storms like that around June. Everything about it was completely foreign and unexpected and very severe.
First off, I’m not at all comfortable with the status quo (and, perhaps, I feel people have done unimaginable destruction already under the dominant economic and political structures.) So that’s you putting words into my mouth perhaps out of nothing more than making it convenient for you to dispose of. But wrong regardless and a strawman besides. Second, I’m only one person and I’m pretty sure I don’t represent many at all (zero others, perhaps.) Thinking otherwise just isn’t rational. So, wrong on that point. Then you missed my point entirely, besides. Global respiration rates are huge and we little understand what the future may yet bring there. On the other hand, we do know several key parts of why CO2 is rising and we know exactly how to change them. I’d like to see us act where we do well understand the mechanisms and well understand what needs changing to move accurately towards a more natural state of affairs.
Suppose someone were clawing at their arm, over and over again, until it was bleeding and sore. Then, infections start setting in, too. But the clawing keeps on happening despite the evident symptoms and the obvious fact that stopping the behavior would tend to improve the situation. In response, rather than focusing on the self-destructive behavior that certainly is an important part of the problem, a doctor understanding the fact that their patient doesn’t want to stop, says instead, “Well, we have this idea where we use germ-line recombination to modify the DNA in your body, which will act to even more rapidly heal your skin and restore your balance again.” First off, the germ-line changes are systemic, dangerous, untried, and may have many unintended consequences no matter how well motivated they might be. Second, the obvious answer is of course already at hand. Stop clawing at the arm! Start there. Then, if the problem persists or still gets worse, I might decide to hear out other ideas. I may tend to hold short of systemic, broad, and risky alternatives until other ones are considered. But still, my first thought is to stop clawing at the arm.
I do think, right now, that the global respiration system should be one of the LAST things you screw with. And at the very least, ONLY after you do the more obvious and more clearly understood steps which have understandable consequences. (Like stopping the clawing behavior, for example.) In this case, stop emitting the CO2, stop destroying forest systems and ocean ecologies, stop replacing complex interwoven and healthy ecologies with farming monocultures. We need a healthy biosphere that we aren’t consuming 50% faster than it can rebuild itself. We need the atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to stabilize and perhaps start returning to better levels than 400+ppmv. Those things are job #ONE. Let’s get that job done and then let’s see what we are left with. Maybe we can talk then.
So I don’t think I helped you understand anything at all.
mike,
The sixth extinction event is underway without help, yet, from climate change so I’m not sure why you think that reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would bring it to a halt. It sure would help not accelerate the event but it would not halt it.
#67 – Victor — 4 Jun 2016:
“I must now urge everyone to read Dorman’s astute, eminently reasonable and thorough critique. What’s especially important here is not simply his take on Klein’s book, but his very deep, probing analysis of the many hidden (and not so hidden) weaknesses of the climate activist program generally.”
I did not find his analysis to be “deep and probing” at all. I found it to be annoying and obtuse — the words of a man who doesn’t get it and who passionately does not WANT to get it. They were the words of a man who cannot think outside the narrow confines of technocratic specifics, and who goads and chides others (like Klein) who CAN so think. “Deep” is the opposite of what Dorman displays; he focuses entirely on superficial, easy targets for nattering complaint, failing to grasp the critical abstractions — issues of depth — that Klein is attempting to convey.
Maybe Klein fails to convey those issues well. I don’t know. I’m not defending Klein since I have not read her book. Either way, Dorman’s critique is a failure.
The fact that such a dense, stubbornly uncomprehending person is a professor — i.e. presumably a man of keen intellect — is amazing, to me; his level of intellection is a better fit in the janitorial staff. Is this what institutions of (supposed) higher learning and thought are producing these days? I guess so, and it underscores a frightening and underappreciated dimension of our predicament.
I could mention many specifics; I could demolish the essay sentence by sentence (and I had a brief impulse to do so); but I won’t. Too much effort, and no place for it here.
digby at 111. Yes, agreed. We think that bau approach will lead to increasing rates of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere and oceans. Apparently, we both think that is currently happening. Neither of us are surprised by the increasing rate of CO2 accumulation. Unfortunately, some news stories (like the emission reports or vegetation increase with higher levels of CO2, or the increased growth rate of alaskan forest in warmed environment) will lead some folks to think that we are making significant progress toward addressing AGW and they will lose sight of the most basic and important numbers: the current level of CO2 and CO2e in the atmosphere and the trend in changes of that number.
We used to go up at .73 ppm per year, then 1.5 ppm per year, then 2 something ppm per year, then recent years at 3 ppm per year. This year we are going up at about 4 ppm per year. Hank has identified that these numbers only appear to be an increase in the rate of ghg accumulation, so you know, I guess we all have a lot to learn.
spiky day at https://www.co2.earth/
Daily CO2
June 6, 2016: 407.84 ppm
June 6, 2015: 402.99 ppm
that appears to be an increase of 4.85 ppm in a very noisy number, and even looks to the naked eye to be an actual increase in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere which would appear to trap more warmth and increase the temperature of the planet, but hey, what do I know?
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
That one appears to be an increase of 3.76 ppm on a still pretty noisy number. Again, it appears to be a higher rate of increase to the untrained eye.
I am going to keep watching the CO2 numbers even though it is clear that I don’t understand what they really mean. That’s a big relief, I thought the numbers looked like bad news.
These numbers only appear to be going up. Your results may vary as Theo has noted. I am going to stick with MLO and entertain myself with my inability to differentiate .73 ppm from 4.85 ppm. I gotta laugh at myself for thinking that looked like an increase.
We had record heat here in PAC NW a couple of days ago according to the newspaper, but no mention of global warming or CO2 levels in that story.
http://www.chronline.com/regional-record-high-temperatures-ready-to-recede/article_abde32c4-2cd3-11e6-a737-33c4d45c1ce5.html so not even an appearance of connection between those matters and the record heat.
Warm regards,
Mike
Tony at 114: yes, we agree that this sixth great extinction is underway. If I ever said I though reducing CO2 emissions and levels would stop the SGE I misspoke. I think we can only slow the impact and rate of the event by reducing our emissions and the GHG levels.
I don’t necessarily agree with your assertion that the SGE is underway without help from climate change. Are you thinking more broadly about the changes on the planet that our species has produced as the primary trigger event of the SGE? That is my take on things: our species is a bit of a planetary blight, we reproduce at a rate that would make Malthus blush and the consequences proceed from there.
??
warm regard
Mike
@110 Thomas
Thanks for the links. It will take me a while to go through them all. But I will bookmark them and see what I can do.
@113 Jon,
Oh yes Jon you absolutely have helped a lot, more than you even know. You are right though, I don’t know the % that feel as you do. You are but one person. However, I have long been puzzled by certain comments from many others that didn’t make any sense to me. When I read your post, and after I got over the shock of it, the ideas you so eloquently presented sent bells ringing and lights flashing. It was an aha moment. Even when you restated your fears again for me @113 thinking I got you wrong, only reaffirmed and refined that aha moment for me. All I can tell you at this point without writing a book about it, is the collective “we” understands far better than you think, and most those issues you fear will be reduced rather than amplified by regenerative agriculture used as a carbon farming technique. I can tell that by your excellent communication skills. Far better than mine. Keep communicating please. I am learning more and more each post. Thanks.
Hank, 109: “You’re taking “appear” as confirmation. It’s not. Tamino’s saying it “appears” — that’s a description of how people who don’t understand statistics leap to conclusions”
Hank, I think you may be making a mountain out of molehill in this case – I don’t think that Tamino’s “appears” is the hammer with which Tamino wallops people who don’t know statistics, but rather an indication of his _own_ caution in the matter – it may appear as rise, but given the possible El Nino effect, he_ is not prepared to call it an increase, although he feels highly confident that at least there was no decrease in the rate.
You, on the other hand, wielded Tamino as if he destroyed Mike’s claim and with it, his credibility (you have put him, in effect, on par with the climate deniers). I think this was rather uncalled for, particularly that the original paradox is still a paradox even if we replace the “increase” with the “lack of decrease”, namely: “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise”?
Jon K., #113–
“I do think, right now, that the global respiration system should be one of the LAST things you screw with.”
I may be missing something here, but I don’t understand your fears about Scott’s idea. OK, global respiration fluxes are huge, and may be subject to metabolic change due to warming. Fine.
But: you aren’t meaningfully ‘screwing with’ the global system in any plausible scenario I can come up with. You are screwing with a subset of the respiration system in a (probably rather small) subset of Earth’s current or former agricultural lands. Whatever you do is in theory (and probably in practice) reversible, and it would take a while to scale up to anything meaningful anyway. During that while, you’d gain knowledge about the issues you raise, and also, honestly, whether the thing really works.
If things looked to be going badly, you’d, well, stop. Unlike the case of fossil fuel combustion, you wouldn’t yet have massively entrenched interests opposing you.
Piotr @119,
Concerning the ‘paradox’ you talk of – “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise”?
The Tamino post “CO2 Status Report” was predicated on reports of emissions being in decline, although this talk was seemingly a bullish interpretation of CDIAC’s Global Carbon Project report that fossil fuel CO2 emissions may flat-line 2013-15, a rise in 2013-14 being cancelled out by a potential fall 2014-15 – “For 2015, preliminary data indicate that the growth in E(FF) will be near or slightly below zero, with a projection of −0.6 [range of −1.6 to +0.5] %.”. The data from CDIAC’s Global Carbon Project is in truth reporting a significant rise in CO2 2013-14 due mainly to increased LUC emissions (& we await their 2015 data)). The 2013-14 increase in emissions CDIAC report are +60Mt FF & +170Mt LUC, an annual increase of 2.1% which is not so different to preceding years.
Then, if you consider the additional increase in atmospheric concentrations you would expect from that 2.1% increase, it is +0.05ppm. Single years (or a couple of years) with no increase in global emissions will not be noticeable within the wobbles in atmospheric CO2 increase that are caused mainly by ENSO.
The rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 doubled during the 1997-98 El Nino (I haven’t looked beyond that event) from 1.8ppm/yr to 3.7ppm/yr. The peak was in September 1998 which suggests the peak increase this year is yet to arrive. What that peak increase will be, I know not. Accounting for the increase in emissions since 1998 & with an airborne fraction of 45% suggests 4.26ppm/yr but tracking the emissions over recent months shows the rate tracking 0.5ppm higher than such a calculation.
I appear to have been smote by Hank’s numerology. I think it’s funny. I would love to have it turn out that Hank is right and the rate of increase is not increasing. Time will tell. I win either way. If I am right, Hank is wrong and that’s funny. If Hank is right, things are not as bad as I think they might be and I am happy.
I am rooting for you, Hank.
No worries
Mike
Piotr, I’m saying this is a science site, people are expected to cite sources in the sciences for their statements about what’s happening — and it’s an equal opportunity expectation. Whatever one believes or wants to believe — just saying so without a science site has to be questioned.
I’m sure Mike’s heart is in the right place.
It’s his sources I want him to identify.
There are people making up stuff or exaggerating stuff on all sides of the climate change science.
You have to be an equal opportunity debunker in science.
Don’t just question claims you don’t want to believe. Question the ones you do want to believe. Mike said earlier he’d quit posting his daily CO2 numbers when they went down, he only posts changes going up. That’s the escalator.
Cite primary sources or known reliable secondary sources. Not second or third hand info.
Otherwise RC becomes just another opinion blog. There are plenty of those already.
I’m fine with small-scale experiments to help us learn still more. Don’t get me wrong. So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.
Besides, carbon isn’t all there is to care about. I’ve addressed myself to a few of them in every post on this issue here, so that it isn’t misunderstood that I’m only on a single issue (I’m not) and instead that I’m keeping more than a few important issues simultaneously in clear view.
Unless someone brings up something new to consider, I’ve said my piece on this.
Mike and Piotr — you need to understand the difference between a one-tail and a two-tail test.
That’s statistics 101.
There’s no paradox involved answering “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise”
These are two entirely separate questions.
Second one takes some reading, searching RC will get you there.
Try https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/how-much-co2-emission-is-too-much/
Mike,
I say that climate change hasn’t yet contributed to the current extinction event only because I’m not aware that any extinction has yet been put down to climate change (though there may be some that haven’t been proven). I recall reading some research on this exact point but you’ll have to take that as anecdotal as I don’t have a link. In any case, I expect climate change to add to our predicament but I don’t expect that even a magic solution to climate change would halt the sixth extinction event, which, I think, is your position, too.
Silk: Seems we are mostly on the same side. Can we focus on science questions and answers? Less mud-slinging?
AJ: But you forget the “denialist” data. If something pertains to “Others” then it inevitably pertains to almost everybody on “our” side. I’m EXTREMELY adamant about changing my mind about things as data arrives, but of the regs here, about 1% of them would change a single thought based on new data. I’ve NEVER seen BPL learn anything which doesn’t hammer his opinions solidly, and most everybody else here is similar. Such is human nature. As an example, I’ve stretched my position by perhaps a thousand percent to as come close to agreeing with BPL as I can without throwing up, and the ONLY result is BPL calling me subhuman for not being 1000% exactly agreeing with him. BPL, like most humans, is simply incapable of learning anything which doesn’t nest with his preconceived notions. Even researching opposing thoughts is blasphemy. Eemian map? MY GOD, CONSIDERING HISTORY WOULD BE SACRILEGE!!!!! He’ll ignore all data forever, just like any other denialist – and at least 99% of humans are pure denialists. Thus, this isn’t an insult to BPL, but merely an affirmation that BPL is human and as flawed as his Flying Spaghetti Monster says he is. That includes 99% of EVERYBODY here. (Pillory me at the number, but the hypothesis is solid even if hyperbole.)
Of course, if BPL would research the Eemian and form an INFORMED opinion, I’d shout his praises to his Flying Spaghetti Monster Being….
———-
Jon: We are doing nothing about population.
AJ: That’s silly. Look up birth rates. Outside of Africa, humanity is probably not even replacing itself. In any case, our birthrate is plummeting. Look up stuff before spouting, eh? And about crops and CO2 sequestration, that’s rather simplistic. Only a non-brilliant person couldn’t figure out how to sequester carbon while growing plenty of food. Since it only takes ONE brilliant person out of 7 billion to solve the issue, I’d say this is a yawner. You? (Given my take on denialism, I’d say that you could look up the IRREFUTABLE data and probably not change your opinion one iota. Prove me wrong with a comment….)
Secular: People love to play Whack-A-Troll.
AJ: Brilliant observation. I’d expand it to not just trolls but anybody who doesn’t agree with the particular denialist involved. (Denialist = revered Real Climate Regular)
——————-
Scott: The idea that people are more comfortable with the current system and fearful of regenerative agriculture is completely foreign to me.
AJ: Why? 99% of people are for that which made them money last year. Regenerative agriculture didn’t make them diddly last year. WTF would they support it this year, especially when government programs are designed to increase profits for those who did it “correctly” last year?
—————-
Mike: entertain myself with my inability to differentiate .73 ppm from 4.85 ppm. I gotta laugh at myself for thinking that looked like an increase.
AJ: You always make me smile, even with your “lies”, which only point out how inept other folks are.
TW 126,
I believe climate change may be listed as one of the causes for the extinction of the Brazilian golden frog a couple of years ago.
AJ 127: He’ll ignore all data forever, just like any other denialist – and at least 99% of humans are pure denialists. Thus, this isn’t an insult to BPL… etc., etc., etc.
BPL: So AJ thinks I’m an AGW denialist. Boy, here’s a guy who’s really on the ball.
123 Hank Roberts says: “…people are expected to cite sources in the sciences for their statements about what’s happening”
Do you have a cite for that claim Hank?
” — and it’s an equal opportunity expectation.”
Maybe that’s only your expectation Hank? I’ve never seen you give a citation for your opinions nor your 3 word slogans. :-)
“It’s his (Mike’s) sources I want him to identify.”
He did already. So what’s the problem here? If you think his ‘data’ is wrong then please provide better data/citations if you have them. MLO is still the MLO.
“Cite primary sources or known reliable secondary sources. Not second or third hand info.”
Hank please cite any sources used by Mike that you consider are not reliable. Or give it up?
“Otherwise RC becomes just another opinion blog.”
Is that your opinion Hank? :-)
Please note that “This is a moderated forum.” – citation from https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/about
imo, it’s the Moderator’s job to Moderate, and no one else’s. I, for one, am happy for it to stay that way. I also think that Mike makes a lot of rational sense. Everyone is entitled to meaningful takeaway messages gained from looking at scientific data and published papers. Science tells us what is – we decide what to think and what to do about it. Looks to me that Mike is using the science appropriately and for the purpose it was provided for in the first place. It represents to me real critical thinking from real climate science. The more the merrier. :-)
124 Jon Kirwan says: “Besides, carbon isn’t all there is to care about…”
Now ain’t that the truth!
127 Alfred Jones says: “That’s silly. Look up birth rates.
Good tip, you’re basically correct. The #1 driver for lower birthrates across history across all cultures is lifting people out of poverty and living on the edge of survival. A decent education is another side-effect of lower birth rates. Fair pay, a livable wage, and safe working conditions was another but they are under attack in the richest nations on earth yet again. And these things are very much directly connected to climate science and AGW and the politics of it.
My ‘cite’ is Gapminder and Hans Rosling. Global population is unlikely to get to 9 billion post 2050 sometime and then progressively decrease. It ‘depends’ because no one has a crystal ball nor predict nuclear conflagrations or common sense descending upon humanity. :-)
128 Alfred Jones.
I think I can see where you’re coming from. It’s a reasonable observation, though probably not worth mentioning to often given the backfire or boomerang effect. :-)
Some people still believe that if it wasn’t for all the ‘agw deniers’ that AGW and CO2e emissions would already be solved and being acted upon. That it is all ‘their fault’ nothing effective has yet been done.
Mr. Alfred Jones wrote in response to Mr. Scott Strough: “99% of people are for that which made them money last year. Regenerative agriculture didn’t make them diddly last year. WTF would they support it this year, especially when government programs are designed to increase profits for those who did it “correctly” last year?”
This is an important point. Let me give you example of someone I personally know, got a couple hundred acres, land is old, worn, grows stones. Tillable sections, drenched with fertilizer and pesticide on a corn soy rotation in a good year, makes less than a convenience store clerk. In a bad year he goes in debt to the seed/fertilizer/herbicide/pesticide dealers. There are getting to be more bad years. Health benefits come thru spouse who (for now) has a job offering those. Two kids, both in school right now, college an impossible dream.
Can’t tell him to put it in pasture for five to seven, that’s what it will take to bring it back, he needs the subsidized income from goin with the flow. Can you pay him 20K US$/yr, thats all he makes (b4 tax for cryin out loud), for seven yr to try out the Rodale/Ingaham/Strough schemes ?
“King Corn” is a good movie.
sidd
BPL: So AJ thinks I’m an AGW denialist.
AJ: Sometimes (well, always) you make me shake my head. No, what I was saying is that I think Richard Feynman was correct when he said that the first rule is to not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. (“You” includes me) Yep, you are a denialist, I’m a denialist (who’s trying way hard to follow Feynman’s sage advice), and everybody else is also a denialist. I’m talking psychology. It has NOTHING to do with AGW. All I’m saying is that pretty much EVERYTHING folks whine about about the other side (of any issue) exactly resembles everybody on your side, too.
Oh, and either come up with that Eemian map, or a one or two sentence reason why it isn’t absolutely critical to your case.
BPL: So AJ thinks I’m an AGW denialist.
AJ: You’ve got to tone things down, dude. The post you referred to actually talked about my having to move towards AGW catastrophic alarmism in order to even converse with you. Given that you’ve won writing awards, it is obvious that you’re not making a reading comprehension error, but that you’re just trolling for out-of-context insults.
This has to stop. I’m willing to work with you towards solutions. I follow Jesus as best I can (which ain’t grandly) so I hold no grudges. I’m under the impression that you try to follow the same dude (though for completely different reasons) so perhaps there’s some common ground there.
Frankly, to me this all boils down to my bulldogging about the Eemian versus your stonewalling about the same. So, in your opinion, am I justified in continuing to ask?
AJ: You always make me smile, even with your “lies”, which only point out how inept other folks are.
Comment by Alfred Jones — 9 Jun 2016 @
I hit the link to your website and it says, “deleted”. Instead I got this: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/
Not sure what happened.
Alfred Jones @127
You say people here don’t change their minds when confronted with new evidence or better more-correct logic?
Well, I changed my mind on one issue. I had thought that a carbon tax would have to increase to infinity to cause fossil-fuel use to decline to zero. Then it was pointed out to me that the tax only had to make fossil fuel more expensive than alternatives. I changed my mind.
In the past and on other matters I’ve also changed my mind when warranted. I can’t believe I’m unique.
Alfred Jones:
BPL:
He also thinks you’re a Pastafarian. He must be new here.
#126-129–
Yes, the question of climate change and extinction is a bit vexed, and–WRT to golden amphibians in particular–a bit confusing.
There are–were–actually two ‘golden’ species (at least): the Panamanian golden frog, which appears to be extinct in the wild but is maintained in a special refugium, as discussed in Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Sixth Extinction”, which I wrote about here:
http://hubpages.com/literature/Elizabeth-Kolberts-The-Sixth-Extinction-A-Summary-Review
Other is the golden *toad*, which was endemic to the cloud forest in Costa Rica. It has not been observed since 1989, and has widely been considered to have disappeared due to the effects of climate change, since biologists directly observed the drying out of the pools in which the toad’s eggs were maturing. There is, however, a hypothesis that the chytrid fungus, which has decimated so many amphibian species around the world (including the golden *frog* discussed above), may have played a role. Studies have been inconclusive, I would say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_toad
More generally, the theoretical expectations of the threat climate change seem pretty robust. (They are explicated in the “Sixth Extinction” essay linked above, where I summarize Ms. Kolbert’s fine expositions of the ‘latitudinal gradient’, the ‘altitudinal gradient’, and the ‘species-area-relationship’, among other bioecological basics.)
But given that we don’t even know how many species there are–and probably never *will* know–observation of extinction rates isn’t really possible. Only estimation is practical. That means that we are almost certainly losing species right now that we don’t know about.
As illustrative example, consider the golden toad: it disappeared in 1989–but we only knew about it from 1964 onwards, though it must have existed over evolutionary timescales. An unfortunate corollary of all that is that it’s hard to document *as observed fact* what biologists are convinced of on robust theoretical grounds. Which means that it’s hard to convince ‘skeptics.’
Jon K., #124–
“I’m fine with small-scale experiments to help us learn still more. Don’t get me wrong. So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.”
Thanks, a useful clarification.
What about the possibility of scaling up, should such small-scale projects give promising results? Hypothetical, I know, but I’m curious whether there would be any ‘alarm bells’ for you that would be associated with such a scenario?
Hi Hank,
we are not far apart. I think you misunderstand my decision-making and process for posting the increasing CO2 numbers here. I may have been less than clear at times, so I am willing to consider that possibility.
I post the numbers on a fairly regular basis. I definitely post when I see a really surprising number. I would do that whether the surprise went in up or down direction. The surprises I have seen have been all up (today is a surprising exception, it’s up, but the rate of increase is under 3ppm!). I post the context for the numbers and my understandings (or misunderstandings) of them. I am learning as I go.
Anyone is welcome to read back in the comments and make fun of me when I get it really wrong. I am fine with that. I need a good laugh as much as the next person.
All that said, I believe the following to be true and verifiable:
1. the numbers at https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2 show that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (measured in ppm) is rising.
2. the same numbers show that the rate of increase is increasing.
3. I think the science that indicates increase of atmospheric CO2 will raise global temp is settled.
4. I think it does not matter whether the increase of CO2 (and other ghg)arises from “natural” sources like warming peat, forest fires, melting permafrost etc. or are from our species burning coal, natural gas, old tires, etc. because regardless of the source of emission, the rising accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will drive global warming and ocean acidification. (in this sense, I really don’t pay too much attention to the emission reports from energy sector, when I now question falling emissions falling and rising concentration that question is some rhetorical and is posed with a hope that others might conclude that the reports are meaningless propaganda that are meant to distract from the important and real increase in ghg accumulation as measured at places like MLO).
5. I think increasing global warming and ocean acidification are bad news for a lot of species, including our own.
I am making hard number predictions about CO2 numbers in the future based on my review of the data as a good faith attempt to help folks understand the way I am reviewing the hard climate data that I see. Look at 105 or read here again:
mike says again: We should see June monthly average ppm drop to around 407.0. We should see the year end with a december monthly average reading of 405.2. But let’s give that prediction an additional reduction of 1.5 ppm for loss of El Nino bump, so I think we end the year at abt 403.7 and we post an increase of around 3.5 ppm for 2016.
I would love to be wrong about that annual number. It is not a good number.
Here is surprising number on the low side:
Daily CO2
June 9, 2016: 405.57 ppm
June 9, 2015: 403.43 ppm (noisy daily increase of only 2.14 ppm over same date)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm (ugly, less noisy 3.76 ppm increase_
Mike
The volcano thread is closed; this should go there, or in a new one:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/so2-pollution-satellite-detection-1.3610537
Hank 125: “you need to understand the difference between a one-tail and a two-tail test. That’s statistics 101.”
Since my question wasn’t implying a two tail-test (it was either Ho: current rate >past rate, or Ho: current rate >= past rate) I am not entirely sure how the distinctions between one- and two-tailed tests is relevant here (and how does it quiestion my and mike’s grasp of elementary statistics… ;-))
Hank: “There’s no paradox involved answering “if CO2 emissions fell – why don’t we see a decreasing rate of CO2 rise” – These are two entirely separate questions.”
I don’t agree – I didn’t ask about the “two separate questions” but precisely about their correlation (or actually – the paradoxixal to me lack of it) – wouldn’t you expect that if the emission rate decreased the rate of CO2 rise should, other things being equal, decrease as well?
And if they don’t – this would suggest to me that either total emissions didn’t actually decrease and/or that “the other things are not equal” – that the sinks of CO2 are weaker now than in the past.
I could also accept the answer that there might be an inertia in the CO2 system, or that the decceleration of CO2 was masked by the CO2 system in a way that Tamino’s removal of El Nino effects didn’t fully account for, but to simply dismiss it by saying that the two parts of my question are not related to each other – would require a stronger argument than just saying it is so.
Piotr
from Joe Romm at Climate Progress:
“Last month saw the biggest year-over-year jump in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide on record — 3.76 parts per million. And that, reports NOAA, took May 2016 to the highest monthly levels of CO2 in the air ever measured — 407.7 ppm.
At the same time, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports the warming-driven death spiral of Arctic sea ice hit a staggering new May low (see figure). May 2016 saw Arctic sea ice extent drop “about 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) below any previous year in the 38-year satellite record.”
Mike and Hank might agree that it appears the number is going up and it appears the rate is in record territory. Beneath the appearance of agreement, Hank appears to be implying that he think CO2 increase is flat or falling. Mike is way out on the crazy limb and says, hey, dude, that number is definitely going up.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/08/3785940/co2-levels-arctic-sea-ice-record/
God, Hank, I hope you are right that the CO2 rate of increase is now flat or headed down becuz the great white north is in a serious heat wave and meltdown. Well… it appears the north is in heat wave and meltdown.
Hank, I intend to make fun of you for your position until you whine like a walrus in a warm blue sea or until I have to eat crow. Either way, I am going to have some fun. Crow with asparagus, sweet onions, olive oil and parmesan!
Bon appetit
Mike
> Mike … 2. the same numbers show that the rate of increase is increasing.
How do you figure that? Where is Tamino going wrong in saying he can’t conclude that there’s an increase in the rate, from the data we have now?
None of us will be surprised if it does turn out that way.
But I haven’t seen anyone doing the arithmetic, and I’ve seen a lot of people eyeballing the curve.
Accurate scientific facts and quantitative statistics are obviously critically important re agw/cc and what to do about it. Some people believe that it’s these kinds of ‘facts’ that will eventually cut through and motivate the public and politicians to act accordingly. But imo (as many studies indicate) it’s more about the ‘framing’ of those facts in how people derive ‘meaning’. iow it’s not uncommon for people to see the exact same facts and yet come to very diverse, at times opposite, take away messages of what it all means. The boomerangs vs javelins article by Zhou speaks to this reality.
Or consider Lakoff’s ‘take away message’ from the field of cognitive science/linguistics which he summaries as “Reason is 98% Subconscious Metaphor in Frames & Cultural Narratives”
So I appreciate Mike’s ‘narrative’ @141 especially this comment which is what I would call part of his “take away message”
…in this sense, I really don’t pay too much attention to the emission reports from energy sector, when I now question falling emissions falling and rising concentration that question is some rhetorical and is posed with a hope that others might conclude that the reports are meaningless propaganda that are meant to distract from the important and real increase in ghg accumulation as measured at places like MLO.
Blending many known ‘facts together’ for some time I have seen the 2C UNFCCC limit as a false frame – an intentional one by the most powerful of govts to muddy the waters of the UNFCCC treaties and the work of the IPCC. IF the UNFCCC group (ie all our national govts) were truly serious and honest then there would instead be an Agreed Goal to Limit CO2/CO2e PPM in the here and now, then to drive them down into the future. Instead they have “framed” the discussions around a nebulous variable of a Global Mean Temperature Rise that is both an indefinable ‘fact’ nor specific in time to be used as a genuine goal post. Not until it’s already been smashed by all the drivers years before the 2C temperature is reached.
So for me this is a great example of how both facts and frames are used and yet are also abused with intent to ‘muddy the waters’. The facts about rising CO2ppm are in direct conflict with the ‘facts’ of what the global mean temperature is from one year to the next. The hiatus/pause bs is the kind of confusion that comes from these kinds of manipulation of ‘facts’. The general public cannot form valid ‘take away messages’ when there is such incoherent conflict in the basic facts and the messages being put out.
Kevin Anderson is one agw/cc policy expert who has called out the 2C limit by the UNFCCC at COP21 for what it is – fraudulent (my choice of word). The ‘facts’ regarding obligations ot reduce CO2/CO2e emissions does not compute with the stated Goal of limiting temp increase to below 1.5C or even 2C .. in fact the facts base don hard numbers places the UNFCCC treaty as driving the planet to closer to plus 4C than 2C.
Facts are great. Don’t leave home without them I say. The CO2 PPM at MLO and at all the others is providing accurate verifiable facts that the current “framing” that nations are making great progress in limiting GHGs is absolute total BS. Yet from the UN and Obama down the latest UNFCCC Treaty was hailed as being a great success, and the template for the future?
The next UNFCCC treaty begins to get hashed out from 2025. Will there be any summer arctic ice left by then? I seriously doubt it.
And despite any rubbery figures contained in the IEA it states in late 2015:
“As the largest source of global GHG emissions, the energy sector must be central to efforts to tackle climate change but, despite signs that a low-carbon transition is underway, energy-related CO2 emissions are projected to be 16% higher by 2040.
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2015/WEO2015_Factsheets.pdf
Add to that 16% all natural CO2e emission sources +/-, and the as yet unknown ‘negative feedbacks’ aka ‘tipping points’ from natural sources and one can only guess (and shudder) at what the Global CO2/CO2e PPM will be by 2040.
Keep going all you climate scientists and researchers, keep the ‘facts’ coming hard and fast. Eventually someone will be able to FRAME those Facts into a narrative that everyone can understand and be motivated by.
“Think Globally and Act Locally” is as true today as it was in the 1960s. Time is of the essence.
I can only offer a few thoughts there.
Let me express one concern by using a current news item that is actively being discussed right now. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine just this Wednesday endorsed further research using CRISPR-Cas9 and other technologies for gene-drive technology, which ensures that its genetic code is passed on to all offspring even when doing so significantly reduces their fitness in the environment. The NAS panel pointed out that there are currently no avenues where affected communities may participate in a decision to move into field testing, adding that it also falls through the cracks of existing regulatory systems for genetically engineered organisms in the US and elsewhere. Part of the reasoning, of course, is that it could be helpful. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded some $40 million worth of research into gene-drive to help reduce the incidence of malaria and the Zika virus has, of course, also been mentioned. The idea being to use gene-drive to help extinguish the mosquito vectors involved. But there is a huge question that arises when gene-drive research reaches a field test. An organism with a gene-drive system in the wild may spread and that presents a significant associated risk. (The panel noted that there may be no boundaries to a gene-drive, once released into the environment.)
Will the current spate of news about the Zika virus stir up the kind of political pressures that might force an imprudent step? Will capital and wealth interests, wishing to harness and leverage that political momentum, turn a blind eye to the longer term risks while focusing mainly on the potential for shorter term profits?
So there’d be a lot more I’d like to know before I’d add my stamp of approval, when scaling. And it would be one step at a time, as well. No blanket permissions. I’d also want to see a healthy, effective, and vibrant political process established as it moves beyond research phases and more into significant field trials that would impact carbon on anything that is within three orders (and certainly within two orders) of magnitude of the global carbon cycle.
In one of the few cases where I know a few things, it’s not good. For example, I’ve not seen a healthy safety inspection process for US nuclear plants. Instead, what I’ve seen is entrenched and secretive collusion with INPO and the NRC, via a memorandum of agreement that they periodically sign and which keeps safety inspections out of the public hands despite Congressional intent when it set up the NRC to replace the AEC. And when the NRC set up its advanced reactor program, it set up a ‘fast track’ type of so-called “combined license” which could be easily abused, in practice. (Long stories there.)
I honestly don’t expect much better when push comes to shove and power and wealth start getting involved. So I’d be very much focused on how political and legal structures outside of the direct research itself are fashioned.
I kind of see this as a distraction, too. It mires us in a discussion about “could be’s” and “might be’s”, if the technology develops as hoped, but it probably too easily takes us away from being on-target with what we actually know about and should engage right now.
We know that we need to deal with human-caused carbon fluxes. We know we need to deal with clear cutting. We know we need to deal with destruction of ecologies and habitats. We know we need to deal with the conversion of complex ecologies into monoculture farms. We know we need to deal with population. But rather than consider all of the complexities involved, and those are indeed complex problems collectively, we instead seek simpler “push button” ideas where we can feel as though the pressure is off and that don’t have to do any of that hard work. Anything to distract us so that we don’t have to engage the work ahead.
As I wrote, “So long as folks don’t then simply hang their hats there and avoid engaging or caring about the rest which we well know is needed in the meantime.”
I’m fine with learning more about the world. Cripes, I’ve been awash in new ideas that have arrived over the last few decades as climate scientists and so many associated disciplines have collectively developed new and incredible insights into our fabulous planet. We have whole new fields that deal the interfaces between spheres on Earth, such as the air-water interface or the air-forest interface. When I started reading, these fields didn’t exist. So the speed of all this arriving now is just incredible to me. Enough of the puzzle pieces have been placed down that I can almost sense the evolving picture and it drives me crazy to get more pieces. (It didn’t before, because we knew so little that it seemed hopeless to try. But that’s changed for me.) So yes, I want to learn still more.
We need to research broadly. We may need a plan B, or C, to haul out of a drawer. I certainly don’t want to have fewer tools available, if things go further awry. I’d want more.
But I also don’t want us to avoid the more immediate work ahead, either, or avoid the work we understand today and know we need to do. It may be fun to consider researching a fancy capillary pumping system to help bail water even faster out of a leaky boat, but I wouldn’t want folks to stop bailing with those buckets in the meantime. (Besides, that pump might not work as expected and instead pull water into the boat.)
So keep on bailing, but also do some research too.
@133 Sidd,
I can empathize with your friend more than you know. I would like to point out something though. Who do you suppose developed these regenerative systems? From Joel Salatin’s 100 acre hardscrabble farm that had so little soil left bedrock was peaking through the pastures and he had to put fence posts in concrete filled old tires because they wouldn’t stand up, to Tom Trantham literally in bankruptcy and not even given a loan to buy fertilizer and seed, to Gabe Brown having had 100% crop failures multiple years in a row and also being denied loans for fertilizer and seed, to Colin Seis having watched his whole farm burn and no possible way to recoup losses. You can go right down the list. It wasn’t scientists that developed these systems. I was worse than desperate farmers on their very last legs with no reasonable hope at all, that developed the systems, which brought them out of poverty. Then later having done the impossible, the scientists followed scratching their brows trying to figure out exactly how they did it.
I don’t recommend welfare for hard working farmers. Not at all. And there is no need for it either. Regenerative systems are orders of magnitude more profitable per acre.
Colin Seis from Australia had a particularly pithy quote:
“We try to grow things that want to die, and kill things that want to live. That is pretty much how (industrial) agriculture functions.” Colin Seis
And the USDA mini documentary film that talks about some of these new methods had a great quote as well.
“When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber.” -USDA (Author Unknown)
Nothing will “radically reduce” inputs more than an overdrawn bank account and a banker at your front doorstep escorted by the sheriff.
It’s only years later after the scientists got wind of it and started publishing their papers and case studies that it was realized this actually is sequestering far more carbon than ever thought possible in an agricultural system. And since almost 1/2 the planet in in agriculture, that if the whole standard practices changed then it would be large enough to mitigate AGW. They were not developed to mitigate AGW, they were developed as a desperate means to save the farms and the farmers from the poor house.
It just so happens that in the absence of inputs, biology takes over. And biology has had millions of years experience building fertile soils without inputs. You said it yourself, “Can’t tell him to put it in pasture for five to seven, that’s what it will take to bring it back”. So you do realize that nature can bring it back. Why do you suppose every one of those farmers claim things like “farming in natures image”, “mimicking nature”, or “listening to what the cows were trying to tell me”. Without exception every one of them had similar “aha moments”. Yeah they sound crazy now in hind site. Like a bunch of hippy dippy nature freaks. But everyone of them was a hardworking farmer and the farthest thing from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLDKRXPyOh4
Recent Australia east coast storm f/up – another sign of things to come.
Sydney storm: Lessons from a tempest
extract “Wettest day on record”
Homes and public assets certainly came in for a huge hammering, not least from the the sheer volume of rainfall dumped along Australia’s coast.
“It looks like, on an area-averaged basis, eastern NSW had its wettest day on record [for the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday],” Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said. Of NSW’s 20 coastal river catchments, 19 recorded at least 70mm of rain on Sunday alone, with only the Hunter flowing into Newcastle spared.
“It think it would be highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented,” Trewin said, adding that most east coast lows generate more tightly centred storms, affecting a 200-300-kilometre range at one time. (note: versus the 2300+ Klm extent of this particular storm system down the east coast)
Trewin noted warmer than average sea-surface temperatures increased the amount of moisture available for the storm to tap, creating sub-tropical conditions quite abnormal for early winter. Indeed, sea-surface temperatures for May in the Tasman Sea were unprecedented.
(See bureau chart below of temperature deviation from the long-term averages.)
http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/gpfm1c/tasm.png
from http://www.smh.com.au/environment/sydney-storm-lessons-from-a-tempest-20160608-gpery1.html
Mike @141.
I disagree with your statement where you say “4. I think it does not matter whether the increase of CO2 (and other ghg)arises from “natural” sources like warming peat, forest fires, melting permafrost etc. or are from our species burning coal, natural gas, old tires, etc. because regardless of the source of emission, the rising accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will drive global warming…”
Collectively, we do have control over anthropogenic emissions. We do not have such control over any “natural” sources we stoke up thro’ our messing with the climate. Of course, collectively we have problems reacting, like the apocryphal boiling frog, but add in the appearance of natural feedbacks and the frog would need to do more than just jump to escape his fate. So the appearance of “natural sources” will matter more than burning “old tyres”.