To come this month: Arctic sea ice minimum, decisions from the IPCC scoping meeting on a report focused on the 1.5ºC target, interesting paleo-climate science at #ICP12 and a chance to stop arguing about politics perhaps.
Usual rules apply.
Climate science from climate scientists...
Re: Hank Roberts 16 Sep 2016 at 5:34 PM, ~#170
Hi, Hank. The much preferable Comments pop-up is still not working for me, and you said that yours was working. Just to be clear, the pop-up is a detached window (not a tab) with no graphics, toolbars, sidebar, or other controls, and especially no page boundaries every 50 comments that the search function doesn’t cross. It is a single long text-only file that uses minimal memory. Is this what you are getting? Firefox on a PC. Steve
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter11.pdf
Final Draft (7 June 2013) Chapter 11
IPCC WGI Fifth Assessment Report
Definition here:
Rob Dekker @195
I see what you mean. It’s not so much the plausibility of the redefinition that bothers you, as the fact that due process was not apparently followed. Well, you could always e-mail the IPCC directly and ask them straight out what happened.
> comments pop-up
Works fine for me.
This one: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/09/unforced-variations-sep-2016/#comments
Things to try if it isn’t working
Erase your browser cache, and restart the browser — usual first thing to try.
Create a new computer login userid and try with a default unmodified browser (iCab, Safari, Chrome, whatever you haven’t used before)
Hank said :
That draft report still gives contradicting definitions of “nearly ice free”.
One definition is on page 11-36 as you quoted “less than 1 x 10^6 km^2 for at least five years”.
Another one is on page 11-4 and reads like this :
which (“less than 1 M km^2”) is the original definition.
For example, the report is dated June 7, 2013, which is 9 months AFTER the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) was approved (Sept 26, 2012) :
http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session36/p36_doc3_approved_spm.pdf
So we KNOW that the addition of “5 consecutive years” in the SPM and the Technical Summary is NOT caused by this draft report that you reference here.
So the question still stands :
WHEN exactly was this change in definition made, WHO changed it, under WHICH IPCC procedure, and WHY does it not show up in the “changes” document from the Stockholm session ?
InsideClimate News reported Sept 9 that a climate denialist was the speaker at the only session on climate change at the Northeast Public Power Association’s annual conference:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08092016/climate-change-denial-northeast-public-power-association-neppa-solar-and-wind-steve-goreham-global-warming
“Nobody said the third industrial revolution would be easy.”–Courtney St. John and Steve Hargreaves, on Nexus Media:
https://nexusmedianews.com/the-battle-over-energy-progress-3b61398c8875#.vfzgnji8c
I read this article on CleanTechnica. My sentiments exactly. The denialist speaker at the utility conference:
http://www.stevegoreham.com/
There was in fact a presentation on solar by Con Ed at the conference:
http://www.neppa.org/index.php/training-education/events/annual-conference
Re #200 Scott Strough said in my honest opinion it needs to be scale-able to any size operation and profitable at every level.
Are you talking about outcomes or transition? The above has zero to do with endpoints, and will not exist at the endpoint, ipso facto.
That’s all I had time to read, but the conversation is meaningless without clarifying this, anyways. Will come back later.
First of all, I am a permaculturist. I am well aware of regenerative practices. However, since you the term Luddite I am concerned there are limits to your use of the term regenerative. Regenerative generally is used as a replacement for and extension of permacultue. There is nothing Luddite about it.
Where limits are concerned, perhaps you are not taking them seriously enough, and perhaps are not understanding the full systemics involved in climate, resources and biosphere degradation since you talk of profit and large-scale agriculture. The latter, like utility-scale power generation, are features of imbalance aka socioeconomic stratification and top-down governance. Neither of those is compatible with sustainable aka permacultural aka regenerative systems.
Since this conversation rests on my first post, I will leave this for now to see what your response is to the first.
Re: Hank Roberts, 19 Sep 2016 at 9:39 PM, ~#204
Hank, your link doesn’t produce the pop-up on my FireFox with the cache disabled (ctrl + shift + R) or deleted, or on a different computer with a different browser. The pop-up is a detached pop-up window with no controls, no graphics, no sidebar and no page boundaries. It is text only. Steve
Short comment: Our politicians don’t fiddle while the earth burns. They (most of them) say they are doing everything they can to stop global warming, but in reality they are pouring gasoline on the fire, and at a steadily growing rate. They are not open denialists, but covert denialists.
@Killian, #208
“… features of imbalance aka socioeconomic stratification and top-down governance. Neither of those is compatible with sustainable aka permacultural aka regenerative systems.”
Ouh, yes, yes, yes, and I really like that, gnahaha, it’s do or die- well then, good luck, beloved Empire 3:-)
@ Killian 207 & 208,
You are all over the place with your comments. So I am not sure how to respond. I’ll try though.
I use “regenerative agriculture” to describe any method of agriculture that uses biological means to restore soil health, biodiversity and regenerate (sequester) carbon long term into the soil. Permaculture does that. Some but not all certified organic methods do that. Almost no methods relying on inputs of NPK fertilizer and pesticides do that (with a few rare exceptions). Almost no traditional subsistence agriculture does that (with a few rare exceptions).
The problem of course is that ~97% +/- of arable land in agriculture is being managed by either high inputs and/or very primitive traditional subsistence methods resulting in the degradation of soils instead of the regeneration of soils.
In order to talk about agriculture as an AGW mitigation tool, it is required to change that % completely around to about 97% +/- regenerative. This means it needs to be scale-able and appropriate for both industrialized nations where the farms can be 100’s or even 1000’s of hectares as well as developing nations dominated by smallholders 1 hectare or less. Up until very recently that was an “unsolvable wicked problem”. It could be done by smallholder permaculturists, but there wasn’t any way to scale it up. So it was appropriate for certain situations, but not nearly enough land area to be considered a significant AGW mitigation tool without completely restructuring all society and civilization. In other words, we couldn’t possibly get it done within the 50-100 +/- years time frame we need to avoid civilization collapse. This lead many researchers to confidently proclaim using agriculture as a significant AGW mitigation tool was not possible.
However, things have changed dramatically since then. Due to advancements in science and appropriate technology, it is now possible for the farmer to practice regenerative Ag at any scale large or small. However, the infrastructure, regulatory, subsidy, and institutional environment to support this change is still locked into the older high input and/or subsistence models with Luddite like stubbornness. So the change while happening, is still happening too slow to be a significant AGW mitigation tool.
My comments here have been directed at proposing a way to break that deadlock and make the change rapidly enough to have a significant effect on AGW within a decade or less.
I saw the problem reported by Mr. Fish, in that the Comment’s pop up window link below each article now returns only the first page of comments instead of the previous behaviour when it resulted in a single minimalist page with all comments, refreshingly devoid of eye candy or tracking links from social media.
Jason Box is a wonderful person, I really like him. And he is talking about really profound things:
Emotion, a fundamentally flawed economic system (that externalizes the damage done) and Injustice.
Listen to this young guy, who tells it 100% like it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiVg0IhZf70
> and WHY does it not show up in the “changes” document
Stoat’s on the case:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2016/09/20/dark-deeds-of-definitions/
Ah, I see what y’all are talking about now.
Click that line that should put all the comments into a single popup field, and instead get 1-50 and
” 1 2 3 … 5 Next »
Leave a Reply”
And NOAA has also now posted for August with an anomaly of +0.92ºC, the hottest August on record & the 8th warmest anomaly in the full record.
The average anomaly for 2016-to-date is running at +1.015ºC, just a smidgeon above the average for the last 12-months of +1.009ºC and still running above the average for the last calendar year (also presently the record calendar year) of +0.90ºC. Thus the remainder of 2016 would have to average above +0.66ºC to gain the ‘warmest calendar year’ accolade. (The most recent year with last 4 months’ average below +0.66ºC was 2012.) Only three of the last 20 months are not top 20 anomalies. I reckon that makes it “mucho scorchio!!!”
The anomalies for 2015/16 and their rankings within the full record are as follows:-
2015 … 1 … 0.82ºC … = 23rd
2015 … 2 … 0.88ºC … = 12th
2015 … 3 … 0.90ºC … = 10th
2015 … 4 … 0.77ºC … = 33rd
2015 … 5 … 0.86ºC … = 17th
2015 … 6 … 0.88ºC … = 12th
2015 … 7 … 0.80ºC … = 25th
2015 … 8 … 0.87ºC … .. 16th
2015 … 9 … 0.92ºC … = 8th
2015 .. 10 … 0.99ºC … .. 6th
2015 .. 11 … 0.96ºC … .. 7th
2015 .. 12 … 1.12ºC … .. 3rd
2016 … 1 … 1.05ºC … .. 5th
2016 … 2 … 1.20ºC … .. 2nd
2016 … 3 … 1.23ºC … .. 1st
2016 … 4 … 1.08ºC … .. 4th
2016 … 5 … 0.88ºC … = 12th
2016 … 6 … 0.90ºC … = 10th
2016 … 7 … 0.86ºC … = 17th
2016 … 8 … 0.92ºC … = 8th
“Click that line that should put all the comments into a single popup field, and instead get 1-50”
Yeah, what’s up with that (colloquialism collision accidental)?
Last Week
September 11 – 17, 2016 401.33 ppm
September 11 – 17, 2015 397.30 ppm
looks like 4.03 ppm increase for the past week. Ugly number.
Warm regards,
Mike
Digby @ 203 :
“Well, you could always e-mail the IPCC directly and ask them straight out what happened.”
For something so fundamental as a change in definition of “nearly ice free”, which is spread widely through the IPCC documents (2 changes in the Summary for Policy Makers, 2 more in the Technical Summary and a dozen places in the WG1 full report, Which email address could I use ?
Is there a web site where I can find updates on atmospheric CO2-eq estimates, and how it changes over time?
I know about https://www.co2.earth/ although monthly estimates are more than I am looking for, a sometime in the last year update for CO2-eq is sufficient.
“looks like 4.03 ppm increase for the past week. Ugly number.”
Warm regards,
Mike
Looks like 4.03 ppm will be an ever increasing number as we go forward. I can just imagine what our CO2 increases will look like in another 10 years as the feedbacks continue to ramp up.
A couple of questions: If the world population is increasing at 1% per year, what’s 1% of 7.5 Billion or whatever the number ends up being in 10 more years?
How long will it take Greenland to add a foot or two of SLR at the rate it’s currently melting? Any rough estimates?
Thanks
I’m sure, all of you have heard of the disruption of the QBO:
” NASA: The quasi-biennial oscillation is disrupted by geoengineering aerosols” (interesting title^^)
http://atmospheres.gsfc.nasa.gov/uploads/science/slides/201403_07_lg.jpg
See also eg:
” One of the earth’s most regular climate cycles is disrupted”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2016/quasibiennialoscillation
What might the implications of a disrupted QBO be? Any idea?
Chuck,
“If the world population is increasing at 1% per year, what’s 1% of 7.5 Billion or whatever the number ends up being in 10 more years?” About 8.3 billion in 10 years.
“How long will it take Greenland to add a foot or two of SLR at the rate it’s currently melting? Any rough estimates?” Very roughly, about 3 centuries for 1 foot, if the rate stays the same (unlikely). I could be wrong, though. :)
Re 212 Scott Strough said @ Killian 207 & 208, You are all over the place with your comments. So I am not sure how to respond. I’ll try though.
I’m not. Keep that in mind.
I use “regenerative agriculture” to describe any method of agriculture that uses biological means to restore soil health, biodiversity and regenerate (sequester) carbon long term into the soil.
Using regenerate here in place of sequester is an unnecessary confusion. I’d avoid it. Sequestration is not all we must do. We must massively reduce consumption. Do that, all else follows because the only way to do that is regenerative, simple systems. Do regenerative, save the world.
My comments here have been directed at proposing a way to break that deadlock and make the change rapidly enough to have a significant effect on AGW within a decade or less.
See above. Regenerative Ag can take care of from 40-100% of current additive emissions. Reducing consumption then gets us reducing atmospheric GHG’s. Add in things like afforestation, reforestation, restoration of degraded lands, etc., we pull down more. All that needs to happen to eliminate industrial ag (which you cannot do regeneratively, btw, since regenerative must include, by definition, sustainable), anyway, so…do simplicity/regenerative systems, solve all the problems.
But that means you have to do governance, too:
Regenerative Governance
https://www.facebook.com/183237338284/photos/pb.183237338284.-2207520000.1474615050./10150485879558285/?type=3&theater
222 Chuck Hughes said “looks like 4.03 ppm increase for the past week. Ugly number.”
Warm regards,
Mike
Looks like 4.03 ppm will be an ever increasing number as we go forward.
Not likely unless CH4 feedbacks are kicking in hard. Remember, we expect a 2ppm bump due to El Nino’s. If we don’t enter another El Nino soon, then we should return to 2.3~2.5/yr. I think people forget we’ve essentially have had two years of EN because we warmed into the beginnings of an EN in ’14-’15, then hit the jackpot in ’15-’16. That’s a lot of heat. More heat means more emissions.
Now, if we have had a significant temp regime jump, meaning a new floor for heat, then we may get elevated ongoing emissions, but I don’t see why that wold be doubling from 2.ish to 4.ish. I think we’re just waiting for the effects of the EN to dissipate. Takes time for that much energy to move about. I suspect a goodly bit is in or will be in the Arctic bringing us more lows in ASI next summer.
K at 226: I agree with you, I don’t think we have jumped to an annual 4 ppm rate, but I think we are probably at around 3.1 per annum now. I don’t think we are going to see anything like 2.5 or below as a baseline rate. Also, keep in mind that when we look at a noisy weekly number right now we are comparing two weeks in two consecutive years that both had El Nino impact, so the differential is likely independent of EL bump, but I could be wrong about that. The major point to consider with this comparison is that these short time frame numbers (anything smaller than decade) has noise. Annual numbers are noisy. and they get noisier as you shorten time frame from there down.
The big picture is the trend and the trend is clear. CO2 in atmosphere continues to rise at a disastrous rate and I see nothing to suggest that the rate of increase is slowing, in fact, it is going up (if you look at the decadal, less noisy numbers). Trying to read the next decadal rate from a few years is a fool’s errand because there is too much noise and too many variables – especially whether our species chooses to address global warming and aggressively decarbonize or whether we proceed with BAU or BAU Lite. I am not optimistic about aggressive decarbonization even though I think it is the obvious solution. As our pulse of carbon changes the planet’s carbon cycle, all the variables become less predictable. We are poking the beast each year that we bump in a couple or three ppm.
Read’m and weep.
dailies:
Daily CO2
September 20, 2016: 400.62 ppm
September 20, 2015: 397.32 ppm
3.3 ppm, very noisy number
mlo per co2.earth
Cheers,
Mike
Concerning the QBO disruption that Nemesis mentions above. Does anybody really understand the QBO to begin with? The original theory was developed by the contrarian Richard Lindzen and it really is a limited model if you dig into it. For example, he never could derive the rather obvious period (28 months) of the QBO.
The latest papers still assert that “the continuing difficulties in obtaining a realistic QBO in GCMs suggest that other mechanisms may also play an important role in the QBO”
We are working this topic at my blog and at Baez’s Azimuth Project math/physics forum. This is my concise derivation which starts from the same point as Lindzen but seems to take the right path instead of the detour that Lindzen ended up going down.
http://contextEarth.com/compact-qbo-derivation/
Four key observations allow this derivation to work
1. Coriolis effect cancels at the equator and we apply a small angle (in latitude) approximation to capture any differential effect.
2. Identification of wind acceleration and not wind speed as the measure of QBO.
3. Associating a latitudinal displacement with a tidal elevation via a partial derivative expansion to eliminate an otherwise indeterminate parameter.
4. Applying a seasonal aliasing to the lunar tractive forces which ends up perfectly matching the observed QBO period.
Get a solid model for QBO in place and only then can you start to reason about anomalies and disruptions that occur. IMO shouldn’t make assertions regarding the source of the latest disruption unless we can agree on the nominal QBO behavior.
@Killian,
AHA I figured it out! (I think) You are a permaculture design advocate. Not just the elements of permaculture relating to agriculture, but all the various other “culture” elements of permaculture. I would simply just say that while your design ideas may or may not work (I haven’t seen them), most certainly there is room for other designs besides yours.
When you start telling people yours is the only possible way, all it does is become an off-putting annoyance to many.
I take the complete opposite approach. Rather than try to force the whole world to conform to my ideas, I try to adapt regenerative agriculture to their economic, political, cultural and societal context. This way they can be adopted with the least amount of social and economic disturbance. I see no reason to design something that never gets used. But if I can design something a farmer can use and improve his personal situation at the same time as he becomes one of millions mitigating AGW, then maybe he will be motivated to take the effort to learn and implement that change. Then we actually have a chance to get this done before the unsustainable systems we have in place now collapse worldwide civilization.
If future generations want to take it the rest of the way to your vision of what utopia should be, that’s for them to decide. My only goal is to give them a future in which they actually have a choice.
Re https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/how-long-does-it-take-antarctica/
Chris Turney: Testing the Ocean Bipolar Seesaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BzLYL-MRjk
It’s not really clear to me how the data presented fits into current perspectives. But something which needs probably more accounting, at 36 mins in: Theory, “AMOC shutdown of deep water formation in the North Atlantic, possibly through freshwater pulse causes warming of the southern Ocean, almost in synchrony. Then goes on to present a scenario in which changes are observed, and modelled without AMOC shutdown.”
While above RC article notes changes in Antarctica take a thousand years to manifest (?) in the south, it might seem it could be faster through atmospheric teleconnections? No?
> For something so fundamental as a change in definition of “nearly ice free”
Well, “ice free” in this context has always meant a condition that will happen
“during summertime” — not one that will happen through the following winter.
Do you believe they should spell that out too?
Would it be a fundamental change in the definition if they did include “during summertime” from now on?
Or should we wait until — it’ll come — there’s no ice around the North Pole through the winter?
Greenland will have melted by then too, probably.
The thing about drawing lines in the sand is, the next higher tide will erase the line you consider so important.
Same with climate change.
Rob Dekker @220
I googled “ipcc contact address” and obtained the postal address of the IPCC secretariat in Switzerland, a phone number, a fax number, and the e-mail address “IPCC-Sec@wmo.int”. Go for it!
Karen Street @221.
I’m not aware of any website providing CO2(e) values for recent years/months per se. An up-to-date value for forcing from GHGs is given by the US EPA (graphed but with a link to a table of annual figures for each GHG). Converting from RF to CO2(e) would require totting up the various GHG forcings and a calculation: CO2(e) = 275 x e^(RF(total)/5.4).
Nemesis and Paul, there is a recent discussion about QBO here: https://robertscribbler.com/2016/09/19/giant-gravity-waves-smashed-key-atmospheric-clock-during-winter-of-2016-possible-climate-change-link/
Mike Roberts says:
23 Sep 2016 at 12:10 AM
Chuck,
“If the world population is increasing at 1% per year, what’s 1% of 7.5 Billion or whatever the number ends up being in 10 more years?” About 8.3 billion in 10 years.
“How long will it take Greenland to add a foot or two of SLR at the rate it’s currently melting? Any rough estimates?” Very roughly, about 3 centuries for 1 foot, if the rate stays the same (unlikely). I could be wrong, though. :)
Thanks Mike! I’ve been saying that I don’t think the human population will reach 9 billion due to food shortages, disease, famine and the like. But, if we’re increasing our population that quickly I guess it could happen. And I really can’t see how it would take 300 years for Greenland to add a foot of SLR. I’m pretty sure the IPCC estimates for SLR by the end of this century are off by quite a bit.
Professor James White points out some ‘chilling’ possibilities for ‘Rapid Climate Change’. I haven’t heard too many talking about this but I would like to hear a few opinions from anyone here at RC who knows more about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vWNDNW4BA
Mike said Also, keep in mind that when we look at a noisy weekly number right now we are comparing two weeks in two consecutive years that both had El Nino impact, so the differential is likely independent of EL bump, but I could be wrong about that
Both had impact does not equal both had EN’s, however. I think there’s more recent heat in the system than perhaps is being fully considered, but that doesn’t equal two EN’s. Also, we have no real evidence the increases we see are from CH4 vs. CO2, so the short-term effects should not be surprising in any way.
All that said, it is hard to know what tipping points will come, or what they will manifest as, for that matter. Have we heated the Arctic enough that it not much matters what the coming heat addition is, in a sense? What I mean is, if we hit the point where the melting of the permafrost and clathrates becomes widespread enough, they will become major contributors, or at least reach points of no return. That latter is the more likely in the short term.
Once again, it all comes down to this: Where is the hysteresis? I see none to speak of that can put a brake on things. We have been the forcer, now we must be the hysteresis.
Wish us luck on that.
But, yes, all this compounds, so 4 ppm bump this year with bottom water temps at, near or above zero over clathrates, with ecosystems falling apart all over the planet, with them trying like heck to shift to survive, etc., maybe a 4 ppm bump does more damage at this particular juncture than at any before or, perhaps, after.
I’m not convinced we won’t see a mid-2.0’s ppm rise in ’17, 18, 19, but it’s not something I’d put even a dollar on.
Thanks for taking up this work. I had grown tired of doing it some time ago, but I think it helps keep rates of change in the forefront of people’s minds.
Re 229 Scott Strough said @Killian,
AHA I figured it out! (I think) You are a permaculture design advocate.
That’s like saying an engineer is an engineering advocate. It’s nonsensical.
Not just the elements of permaculture relating to agriculture, but all the various other “culture” elements of permaculture.
This, too, is nonsensical. There is nothing about the application of permaculture ethics, principles or design process that is in any way situation-dependent. That is, there is no such thing as agricultural permaculture vs. urban permaculture vs. whatever other nonsnese is running around your head. When you hear terms that approximate these you are either 1. talking to someone with a limited understanding or 2. to someone speaking colloquially/using the easiest jargon to get an idea across.
By the way you wrote this, it seems you are the former. You need to let go of this misconception. The ethics, principles and design process do not change dependent on what you are doing. Besides, separating agriculture from all else is beyond nonsense. One cannot separate the elements of the system if one wishes to heal or preserve the system.
I would simply just say that while your design ideas may or may not work (I haven’t seen them), most certainly there is room for other designs besides yours.
No, there isn’t. First, this has nothing to do with “my designs.” Anybody can attempt to design anything they wish, any way they wish. That is not at issue. What does matter is whether one is solving problems sustainably or not, and there is no system superior to permaculture for that. However, all disciplines, approaches, modes, methods, etc., can be applied under the overriding guidance of permaculture to achieve regenerative design.
I would never tell someone not to use biodynamics in their garden or on their homestead, etc., but you cannot use bio-dynamics to do community design. Permaculture can solve problems at both scales… or any scale.
When you start telling people yours is the only possible way, all it does is become an off-putting annoyance to many.
Bite me. If I had wanted to say that, I would have. What is off-putting is someone like yourself, who should be an ally, turning into enemy because of your own limited understanding. You telling me what permaculture is, e.g., or what it can or cannot be applied to.
You can present ANY type societal issue to a permaculturist and find a suitable solution. That is true of no other design philosophy or practice. You may not like the answers you get – such as the massive farms you think can be kept around despite the fact they are inherently unsustainable. I tell you they cannot remain and you attack permaculture. Foolish. Typical.
I take the complete opposite approach. Rather than try to force the whole world to conform to my ideas,
Laughing at you, dude… There is nothing about permaculture that forces anything to conform, nor anyone. Since you do not understand permaculture, you falsely characterize it, and me, and become a hypocrite in the doing. You are, in fact, saying “my way” is the “wrong way.” You are a hypocrite.
What is true, is whatever it is you THINK you are doing, it is not regenerative. That’s just a word you’ve started tossing around without understanding it.
I try to adapt regenerative agriculture to their economic, political, cultural and societal context.
No, you don’t. You pretend to. How do I know? Because one of the principles of permaculture is to let design emerge, to never force solutions onto sites. This is what you are *claiming* you do, but if you dismiss effective strategies because of your bias, you are starting from a point of forcing solutions. While permaculture really does leave solutions to emerge, really does state solutions are site/situation-specific, you’re just claiming it. If you really did that, you wouldn’t try to claim or imply that permaculture, and I, do the opposite.
I see no reason to design something that never gets used.
Huh? What isn’t getting used?
If future generations want to take it the rest of the way to your vision of what utopia should be, that’s for them to decide.
You are lost in your own imaginings. What utopia? What is wrong with your head? Your only goal seems to be to lie to people. People like you who claim permaculture (“regenerative” used in the way it is today colloquially as a level of development beyond stasis arose out of the permaculture community) while also insulting it due to your own ignorance do nobody a service. Hopefully, your claims of doing designs are B.S. because you will be doing some absolutely inappropriate designing with your attitude and failure to understand systems.
FYI, what I state as necessary future conditions have little to do with permaculture, per se, but the solutions are found in significant portion via permaculture. E.g., small communities is taught in permaculture as a form found in sustainable communities, but there is nothing in the ethics. principles or design process that says cities are not allowed. Common sense and observation tells us this, not permaculture. This is the only form we find in actual sustainable communities. There is no city, no massive farm anywhere on the planet that can claim to be sustainable, let alone regenerative. Even most well-known permaculture-based/-influenced sites are not because they are negotiating with the present, choosing to fall short in order to achieve other goals, such as outreach.
This is essentially what you are *trying* to say so insultingly, that you are being pragmatic and using permaculture to take people as far as they are willing to do. Well, duh! That’s exactly what you do as a permaculture designer: You design what the client wants, hoping to take them as close to regenerative as you can given their limited understanding. It’s almost impossible to take a client of today and get them to commit to a fully regenerative design. That is not a fault of permaculture design, it is a limit of the paradigm.
We’ll see if you learn from this, but it never happens with people who enter a conversation with a negative bias. You are clearly someone who was exposed to permaculture and failed to get what was going on. Don’t feel badly, you are in a very large group of people.
Regardless of the size of the “project”, permaculture guides you to achieve it.
Can you design a city of ten million using permaculture? Yes. Will it be sustainable, let alone regenerative? No. Why? Because despite using the best practices to do so, that scale, in and of itself, is inherently unsustainable and non-regenerative. The resources needed from outside a city of that population to keep it functioning, particularly over lifetimes, is massive, and far beyond this planet’s ability to maintain. This has nothing to do with permaculture, but everything to do with understanding resource limits, rates of use, thermodynamics, etc.
212 Scott: Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I think we are in a situation where the horse has bolted and we are just now closing the gate. The agricultural recommendations you propose is only possible if we have a dramatic reduction in global population. There is really not a lot you can do with 7.3billion humans teeming all over the place. Placing people in cities is not a solution if Aleppo is any indication for the future. I have thought LONG AND HARD about this situation for many years and I’m afraid we are too far down the path to our imminent destruction to do anything meaningful at this stage of the game. The arctic regions are locked into a vicious +ve death spiral cycle, so is the combined ocean/land temperature trajectory. I am very pragmatic about the situation. We are just too uncivilised and spiritually blind to even acknowledge the situation for what it is let alone will be in the next few short decades. We are not (and never have been or ever will be) the guardians of the planet but rather a mere deadly pathogenic parasite upon it’s surface. What guts me and you as well I’m assuming is that there are people who do understand, who do instinctably walk softly upon it’s surface, who know our purpose in life. But we are up against the worse type if ignorance imaginable… “There are non so blind as those who do not wish to see.” So Scott I’m focussing my energies on adaptation for as long as we’ve got.
@Paul Pukite, #228
Thanks for reply! Erm, sorry, but about your article you refer to: It’s way beyond my mathematical skills :-) Anyway, you say, it’s impossible to know any implications of a disrupted QBO, as we don’t know enough about it yet, right? Maybe there isn’t any unusual behaviour of the QBO? According to you, we don’t know yet, right? I saw your new article at http://contextearth.com/2016/09/24/qbo-disruption/ as well. My takeaway so far is this: “a temporary forcing stimulus”. I heard about some possible implications for european weather (winters might get milder even more for instance). I will follow that discussion at your website, maybe others can contribute to it also. Thanks again!
@wili, #234
Thanks for the link! I’ve seen the article some days ago already. I am somewhat surprised, that you refer to Robert Scribbler, as most of the pros call him “alarmist” (some websites don’t even allow refering to him at all). I don’t think so, others call him “lukewarmer”, hahaha.
@237 killian,
Take a break from your rant Killian. You are way out of line, personally insulting, and self contradictory.
“Permaculture can solve problems at both scales… or any scale.”
but later
“There is no city, no massive farm anywhere on the planet that can claim to be sustainable, let alone regenerative.”
So which is it? You can design your regenerative permaculture systems for any scale? Or there are scales where the systems you design break down?
IMHO I don’t think it matters. I never claimed there was a scale permaculture could or couldn’t work at. Nor am I trying to change the world’s societal and cultural systems. My only goal is to show how agricultural soils worldwide can be regenerated by sequestering Carbon in them and mitigating AGW and at the same time actually increasing yields of food and fiber per acre. I’ll leave it to future generations to decide if they prefer cities and large farms or permaculture villages. (or more likely a blend of both where appropriate) And I damn sure never attacked permaculture. Nor will I even now. Just because you personally like to come on forums and rant about off topic, doesn’t necessarily mean permaculture is as wacko and wooish as you make it appear with your silly self contradictory extremist trolling. I happen to think permaculture is a big advancement over the unsustainable systems most the planet is using now. Probably should be included wherever appropriate. But I stop short of calling it a magic silver bullet.
Whether or not permaculture can be scaled up to support large cities with large farms is irrelevant. Regenerative Agriculture most certainly can be scaled up to do both and I have provided examples of this many times that included documented case studies.
@238 Lawrence Coleman,
You said, “The agricultural recommendations you propose is only possible if we have a dramatic reduction in global population.”
No actually the recommendations I propose would increase yields of food and fiber per acre. Even better, by increasing soil formation instead of degrading the soil, the acres capable of food production would increase gradually over time too. So not only would you increase yields per acre, you would also increase the potential arable acreage by creating arable land from marginal land. Hopefully we won’t need it and can rewild some areas instead. But either way it can not only support the current population of the planet, but even support a potentially larger future population without destroying the last few fertile wilderness areas left. Your faulty premise makes your pessimistic conclusion equally faulty. Be glad. It’s a good thing.
However, I also am somewhat pessimistic myself as well. Not because we can’t do it, but because I think we probably won’t.
Can you say “uh, oh, what if ….?”
What if we get a bloom, from climate change, of the microorganisms that put bromine into the atmosphere?
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/atmospheric/research/veryshortlivedsubstances/index.html
Let’s sneak another interesting, forensic peek into the belly of the beast:
” US National Security Policy for Climate Change Seeks Security for Corporate-Controlled Assets
Nick Buxton, co-editor of ‘The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations Are Shaping a Climate Changed World,’ says the military’s prime concern is the continuation of its global imperial footprint”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXhYjikWfzI
Yes, it is hard, if not impossible, to fight clean wars, we can’t have both, dirty politics and a clean environment, muhahaha- do or die. Cheers to the military-industrial complex 3:-)
Addendum to my last comment, #242
You know, the military-industrial complex is the main cause of global, anthropogenic climate change. Now they talk about “War on climate change”, hahaha. “War”, that’s EXACTLY their language. But you know, you can not fight a “war” on climate change, you can only fight wars on people.
I tell you one thing:
They can not win that war. Mother Nature will kick their asses, their fate is sealed.
another sensitive indicator:
http://earth.com/news/climate-change-driving-birds-1000-miles-north-nest/
Let’s see if this occurs for five consecutive years, anyone care to bet?
Recent statement from Ralph Keeling.
“Is it possible that October 2016 will yield a lower monthly value than September and dip below 400 ppm? Almost impossible. Over the past two decades, there were four years (2002, 2008, 2009, and 2012) in which the monthly value for October was LOWER than September. But in those years, the decrease from September to October was at most 0.45 ppm – which would not seem to be enough to push October values below 400 ppm this year. The monthly value for October will therefore almost certainly also stay above 400 ppm and probably will be higher than 401 ppm. By November, we will be marching up the rising half of the cycle, pushing towards new highs and perhaps even breaking the 410 ppm barrier.”
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2016/09/23/note-on-reaching-the-annual-low-point/
from Carbon Brief coverage of 1.5C conference:
Dr Elmar Kriegler, vice-chair of sustainable solutions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who presented on the latest scientific literature regarding the emissions reductions needed to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The first step to reducing emissions down to zero is to reverse the trend of increasing emissions, noted Kriegler. Once emissions peak, he asked whether we can then reduce emissions fast enough to meet the 1.5C limit.
Dr Elmar Kriegler from @PIK_Climate “We need to go to zero emissions eventually, but first we need to reverse the increase” #1point5
Mike says: Kriegler and Keeling are talking about the thing I am watching: the inexorable climb in CO2 saturation of the atmosphere. I think Kriegler is wrong to talk about zero emissions as an eventuality, zero emissions or a carbon negative status is an urgent need. We are poking the beast.
Dear Friend,
We’re floored. In a crushing blow to scientific integrity, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) board just announced that it will continue to accept sponsorship from Exxon, one of the world’s leading funders of climate change denial.
This news is disappointing — and perplexing. By making this decision, the AGU board has ignored the pleas of 300 prominent climate scientists, hundreds of AGU members, and 56,000 petition signers.
The AGU decision also renders the organization’s own sponsorship policy meaningless, since the policy explicitly bars AGU from receiving funds from companies that disseminate misinformation about science. You know it and I know it — Exxon certainly fits the bill! Somehow, AGU hasn’t gotten the message.
Understanding Sea Level Rise, p4: ice sheet dynamics and (13) melting feedbacks – a background to 21st century SLR acceleration http://www.bitsofscience.org/sea-level-rise-ice-sheet-dynamics-melting-feedbacks-acceleration-7295/
Keep Calm and Drill On – Broadcast: 27/09/2016
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2016/s4546534.htm
short story about Norway, oil price, oil exports, $50/tonne carbon taxes, mass melting glaciers, (see dark snow), ZERO winter sea ice 2016, cheapest teslas on the planet, and new exploration in the Berants sea inside the arctic circle … and competing conflicting goals aka hypocritical balancing acts.
also about the other thread “The Snyder Sensitivity Situation”, news reports already coming out re Gavin et al
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-27/climate-study-under-fire/7881740
The research, conducted by Galaxy with 2000 participants, also found 77 per cent of people now accept that global warming is happening and 60 per cent agree with the science that it is caused by human activity, both notable increases from the organisation’s previous figures.
CEO John Connor says this return to public sentiment last seen strongly in 2008
Respondents cited unprecedented bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, droughts, heatwaves, animal and plant extinction, melting of polar ice caps, environmental refugees and rising sea levels as reasons for their concern.
Based on focus groups, the Climate Institute also links concerns about global economic uncertainty with the embraced potential of the renewable energy industry, concluding “people are worried about the future and they can see that this makes sense”.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/support-for-worldleading-action-on-climate-change-skyrockets-according-to-new-poll-20160925-grnzs8.html
@Thomas, #246
Corruption will never end. It’s all about “grab it all or die trying”. I gave up all illusions a long time ago and I feel much better since. They will only learn through real pain.