In combined GHCN/ERSSTv4, Jan-Oct 2016 was 0.98 C above the 20th century average, while 1998 was 0.68 C above the 20th century average. That’s an increase of 0.3 in 18 yrs.
Extrapolated out to 2100, that 0.3 C/18 years as a constant rate of increase would lead to a 2100 temperature 2.6 C above the 20th century average (or 2.8 C above the 1880 baseline). If the 20th c. average winter temperature in York was 3 C, we would expect it to be warmer than 5 C in 2100, comparable to London or Swansea. London and Swansea have palm trees (admittedly, pretty ratty ones).
Obviously, this is a lousy way to predict the 2100 global temperature, and global temperatures can’t be downscaled in this manner, but the major El Niño to major El Niño global temperature rise is easily consistent with 2 C global warming by 2100.
witterssays
May I propose that if any single contributor posts 3X in a row, we stop it all there? Are we rational inquirers or what?
patricksays
#49 Thomas: > thanks for the opportunity
An excellent start. This site can spoil you. Don’t let it.
patricksays
Dec.2–“American Mayors Pledge Climate Leadership In Response To United States Presidential Election.”
Eric Swanson #41, also Kevin M, Mal A, BPL, and others,
Come on people. There are basic principles that are not debatable, and there are the inside baseball details and nuance of how things work, and then there is what we should care about, which is how to politically achieve a reduction in CO2 production .
The answer is not our individual favorite fetish, but “all of the above” and anything else people can come up with in the future.
Eric, it is absolutely possible for strong government intervention to create a functional Free Market, for any particular product. It happens more in Europe, perhaps, but it happens.
Kevin, if people only buy on price, explain iPhones?
Mal, of course externalities exist… but nobody cares that they are externalities. Back in the day, “environmentalists” just pointed out the unpleasant effects of pollution and people got it. This is a much more difficult sell, and abstract terminology and calculations will get zero traction.
Back to Eric: I’ve given the example over and over of establishing a Free Market for electricity by prohibiting the “utility” from producing or retailing electricity. By itself, this doesn’t solve the problem; you also need to disincentivize CO2 production, which can happen by eliminating subsidies, subsidizing renewables, regulation of emissions, and yes, taxing at some level of the production chain.
Sorry, but this will be some complicated legislative sausage-making, not a magic simple solution. It’s very much like Obamacare– even if the Republicans do some damage in the next few years, the camel’s nose is in. And likewise with renewables and EV and other technology, as the result of not very glamorous detail work by the Obama administration.
DS 26: you have not covered the externalizing of costs
BPL: Very true, and that’s what makes this stuff relevant to this site.
Externalities. I.
In an ideal free market (not that such a thing exists, any more than an ideal gas does), a transaction is a free trade between a buyer and a seller, and the Libertarian ideal, as articulated by Murray Rothbard, is that the state should not interfere with “capitalist acts between consenting adults.”
But suppose Jones Power sells electricity to Smith Lighting, a free transaction unfettered by the government, but Jones Power is burning coal and the emissions are simply let out into the air? And people downstream of the plume get sick and even die? The costs are all borne by the people downstream, and they did not agree to the transaction. This is an “externality,” a cost (or benefit) accidentally imposed on a third party by a market transaction. This is one of the ways a pure free market fails. You need some kind of government intervention at this point.
There are three main ways the government can intervene to stop, or at least reduce, the poluution from Jones Power. I will list them from most to least “statist,” to use the Libertarian term.
1. Impose 37,000 pages of new regulations in the Federal Register, have inspectors at the plant, measure the emission, declare what kind of machinery Jones Power needs to use, etc., etc. The down side is that this is an economically inefficient way to do things, may misuse resources, and has the maximum interference by the government. The up side is that it works.
2. Tax the emissions. This raises the cost of production, which means, all else being equal, that less will be produced. “Anything taxed is produced in lesser quantity.” By taxing the emissions specifically, Jones Power is free to find the cheapest way to reduce emissions they can, whether by capturing CO2, replacing coal with gas or even wind/solar, etc. The down side is that companies can be slow to act, and as with regulation, will try to save money by cheating. Another is that the right-wing press will scream about “new taxes, new taxes!” The up side, again, is that this works. Germany uses effluents taxes to control river pollution, although the system is imperfect in that they let one river be used freely for dumping (see if you can guess which one).
3. Cap and trade. Declare that only so much emission will be allowed in a given year, then sell permits to emit so much. Let companies trade the permits on an open market. A company that can’t afford to retrofit this year can buy permits from a company that retrofitted early and doesn’t need all its permits. Downside: this is morally objectionable as a “license to pollute.” Upside: You can reduce the cap each year, slowly enough to let technological advance and switching to other industries handle it, and as with the other two methods, it works. This is how the US controlled sulfate emissions and greatly reduced its acid rain problem.
T 29: What is it about you BPL that you have to be so immature and make up stuff about other people that is not true or even close to true?
BPL: You honestly aren’t aware that you do this to others here, including me, all the time–are you? You simply don’t see it when you’re the one doing it.
z 38: I think in the end you contradict your early suggestion that government should leave the economy alone– absent strong government intervention, you never see a free market as described.
BPL: That is not MY suggestion, and I completely agree that free markets per se don’t exist outside of vigorous antitrust. I was saying that the free market as described by free marketeers has no government intervention. Such things do arise naturally when all you have are a large number of small buyers and sellers–cf the US 1780-1820. But in the long run they don’t last, because the system produces winners and losers, and the winners try to consolidate.
ES 41: Looks like you believe Economics 101. But, markets are never in equilibrium. Your example of apples (an agricultural commodity) fails to note that there’s seasonal supply, but demand can occur all year. . . [long list of other complications]
BPL: Looks like you never took Economics 101, or you’d know that all this is already well known–see, especially, the “cobweb” pattern for agricultural products. I was describing very basic stuff to get the ball rolling.
ES: My conclusion is that the concept of “free” markets is an illusion that exists due to the ignorance of the general public. . .
BPL: And my conclusion is that if it’s an illusion it’s an extremely useful one. It’s a good empirical description of how many markets do, in fact, work, verified by millions of observations described in centuries worth of research. Your denial of it is exactly like that of climate deniers talking about climatology, and for the same reason–you see an ideological conspiracy behind it all:
ES: . . .which are made to believe that a growing economy is good for them, while all the growth goes to increase the wealth and power of a few.
BPL: I’m sure they are. Which has nothing to do with whether the basic description is accurate or not. BTW, market systems do not have to be growing.
Dec. 2, 2016
Exxon Can’t Take the Heat, Backs off Support for Major Scientific Society
SAN FRANCISCO – Climate scientists and advocates are welcoming news that embattled oil giant Exxon Mobil will not sponsor this year’s conference of the American Geophysical Union, the largest organization of earth scientists in the world. Exxon has sponsored the conference every year since at least 2001. The announcement from the AGU was published as an update on the organization’s leadership blog.
“This is a victory for science over money. No longer is Exxon Mobil buying AGU’s social license to greenwash its attacks on climate science and policy,” said Dr. Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and MIT and member of AGU. “But this is a victory for AGU scientists, not AGU itself. To this day, AGU’s leadership refuses to face the facts laid before them – either on Exxon Mobil or on other corporate sponsors like Chevron, who continue to ride on the coattails of AGU’s integrity. We now call on the AGU board to review its sponsors to ensure that our Union is adhering to its own sponsorship policies and maintaining the highest standards of scientific integrity. In our current political climate, these values have never been more important.”
Alan Millarsays
MA Rodger says:
3 Dec 2016 at 6:00 AM
Alan Miller @20.
“You assume rather too much.
As described, the figures are presented to ‘allow comparison with the 1997-99 El Nino years.’ If you want to read “an alarming warming trend” into these figures, that is your concern. However, a word of caution – 2015-16 being El Nino years with the El Nino almost as powerful as 1997/98, it would be no great surprise for 2016 to replace 1998 as the warmest calender year on record as El Ninos greatly elevate TLT temeratures, far more than with surface measurements.”
I am not assuming anything. I am just stating a fact that Real Climate itself said would show the models as inaccurate at the 95% level.
i.e. If you went 18 years without a new significant record year (breaking the previous record by at least 0.1C) then you could be 85% certain the IPCC models were wrong.
‘Tis the season for a reality check , on the intercomparison of econometric & climate models of the prices of vital commodities, like Partridges and Pear Trees.
Mike, yes, Tamino posted on the topic of CO2 atmospheric growth but wrote, “There’s still the possibility of faster rise since about 2010, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in that conclusion.” I take this to mean that there still isn’t enough data to be able to say with confidence that CO2 growth has accelerated. It wouldn’t surprise me but I think all we can do is speculate on that. However, that soil respiration paper deserves a read.
Charles Hughessays
Chrstopher says:
2 Dec 2016 at 9:39 PM
“PaulS, your data is all under water. SLR for past 200 years has measured at 18cm/century pre AGW.
I look at Portland Maine, but suite yourself and look at the record for the entire east coast. 1-2-3mm/year is typical except south louisiana where subsidence exceeds SLR.”
I’m no expert but I would say, ‘The past is not prologue’. Nothing we’ve experienced in the past can possibly prepare us for what’s coming. If you’re looking at recent history (200 years) to support the idea that SLR can’t happen rather quickly, wait till a few major glaciers shake loose from Antarctica and Greenland.
patricksays
“Tech designer schools Facebook, creates fake news detector in an hour.”
Domain classifications include: Fake News: Sources that fabricate stories out of whole cloth with the intent of pranking the public. Satire: Sources that provide humorous commentary on current events in the form of fake news. Extreme Bias: Sources that traffic in political propaganda and gross distortions of fact. Conspiracy Theory: Sources that are well-known promoters of kooky conspiracy theories. Rumor Mill: Sources that traffic in rumors, innuendo, and unverified claims. State News: Sources in repressive states operating under government sanction. Junk Science: Sources that promote pseudoscience, metaphysics, naturalistic fallacies, and other scientifically dubious claims. Hate Group: Sources that actively promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination. Clickbait: Sources that are aimed at generating online advertising revenue and rely on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching pictures. Proceed With Caution: Sources that may be reliable but whose contents require further verification.
If there are any sites you recommend adding or removing…[see:]
BS Detector: I think this is important, starting with the response to Facebook by the self-agency of Self Agency. Daniel Sieradski has real credibility on the thing at hand (namely, sorting out disinformation) and I think climate science keepers should begin now to integrate their common intelligence with Self Agency by installing and using BS Detector–and provide feedback as needed to Self Agency. Sieradski states the size of the project (at time of interview) in the interview.
climatefeedback.org is very important and doing most exemplary work, but BS Detector is needed too. It’s a fast-action disinformation alert.
There’s disinformation and there’s disinfo-con: namely, the idea that you can’t tell the difference. Daniel Sieradski says the opposite. He stands up against the con in disinfo-con. He’s had a lot of practice, esp with conspiracy theories. He keeps learning, and he’s the right person at the right time.
Thomassays
BPL’s ‘Economics’
On Paltering … A successful palterer will try to avoid being untruthful in each of his/her utterances, but will nonetheless put together a highly misleading picture based on selective reporting, half-truths, and errors of omission.
Quoting from: Brooke Harrington (ed.), Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 38-54.
“Yet although we can thus distinguish truth telling from lying, numerous statements are, intriguingly, neither lies nor truth tellings. Rather, they make up a universe of morally and socially problematic statements and propositional actions in which one or more of the elements of the genuine lie is missing, but in which one or more of the elements of authentic full-bore truth telling is missing as well.
Our goal in this chapter is to explore this area of “less than lying” and to focus in particular on the widespread practice of fudging, twisting, shading, bending, stretching, slanting, exaggerating, distorting, whitewashing, and selective reporting.
Such deceptive practices are occasionally designated by the uncommon word paltering, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as acting insincerely or misleadingly.
Although the intended effect of a palter is the same as that of a lie, both the dictionary definition and everyday usage of related ideas make a palter somewhat troublesome while still less than a full-fledged lie.”
Coauthored by RICHARD ZECKHAUSER is Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at the John F. School of Government, Harvard University. A pioneer in the field of policy analysis, he conducts conceptual and policy studies using decision analysis and microeconomics. His most recent (coauthored) books are Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples ….
Alan Millar @62.
You are a real star.
Up front you tell us “I am not assuming anything,” even though you actually explain yourself @17 by saying you do assume things.
And just in case we are under the illusion that you are a one-trick-troll, @62 you misrepresent the words of one of our hosts. Well done you!
Let us set out how you do that, this misrepresentation being the full substance of your comment @62 and not related to the things raised by you @17 or my reply @37 which are presumably now water under the bridge, which is something trolls probably get rather bored with.
The 2008 RealClimate post you reference presented a graph alongside the following description:-
This figure shows the cumulative distribution of waiting times for new records in the models starting from 1990 and going to 2030. The curves should be read as the percentage of new records that you would see if you waited X years. The two curves are for a new record of any size (black) and for an unambiguous record (> 0.1ºC above the previous, red). The main result is that 95% of the time, a new record will be seen within 8 years, but that for an unambiguous record, you need to wait for 18 years to have a similar confidence. As I mentioned above, this result is dependent on the magnitude of natural variability which varies over the different models. Thus the real world expectation would not be exactly what is seen here, but this is probably reasonably indicative.
So we should consider this 95% 8-year/18-year return rate “reasonably indicative” of the surface temperature record.
Ans what do we see in the surface record, say GISS LOTI (appropriate given the author of the post)?
From the record year of 1998, the next record is 2005 (seven years later), itself bested in 2010 (three years later), followed by 2014 (four years) & 2015 (one year).
And regarding the ‘unambiguous’ records, 1998 was such a record lasting sixteen years to 2014 which itself lasted one year to 2015.
So the 2008 RealClimate post has passed muster.
What does not pass muster is the Alan Millar comment @62. What is meant by “If you went 18 years without a new significant record year (breaking the previous record by at least 0.1C) then you could be 85% certain the IPCC models were wrong.”??? Does anybody have a clue what the idiot is blathering on about??!!
zebrasays
BPL #59
“as described by free marketeers”
Et tu, Barton?
Dude, you and I are “free marketeers”. That’s why I obsessively jump in to correct the misuse of the term, which the laissez-faire-teers have so successfully co-opted. Anyway…
You do realize that regulation only works when it works, right? Regulation is what gave us the SUV, although its continued popularity is probably down to the fact that 40% of the US population is obese, and of that group only half even realize it.
I will repeat my point from #55– it’s “all of the above”, and it’s about changing attitudes/perceptions to change the paradigm.
We’ve actually been through all of this previously, in the transition from horses to automobiles, and gaslight to electricity, and machine tools driven by belts and waterwheels to electric motors, and so on. It didn’t happen overnight, and it was influenced by anti-competitive factors like what I mentioned to you earlier.
“Kevin, if people only buy on price, explain iPhones?”
Never said they ‘only buy on price.’ I said that, ceteribus partibus, they are sensitive to price.
Personally, I don’t have an iPhone, because it is too expensive, despite its other attractions. Possibly I’m biassed in that regard, but I’m also clearly ‘not-buying’ on price.
But that’s just anecdotal. There are enormous amounts of real evidence demonstrating that price sensitivity is a Real Thing. A more-or-less random example:
If you are writing out of frustration, I certainly sympathize. This whole discussion is incredibly dumb–as you would expect, since it originating in a comment which was essentially denial of a behavior which is not only well-studied over a period of centuries now, but also an everyday reality which is constantly observed by all of us.
I wouldn’t have bothered to reply–I’m currently scrolling over most of Thomas’s posts, so prolix and unfocussed are they. But I felt that his contentions WRT CF&D, which failed on multiple counts, really couldn’t be allowed to stand unrebutted.
Note that, while this is a “tax” in that both sides of the ledger are administered via the tax system–collections via specific levies on carbon-heavy commodities, and disbursements via income tax credits (which are structured progressively)–the money collected is in fact returned to the economy directly, making the tax revenue-neutral.
Actually, it is slightly revenue-negative, making the net effect a tax *cut*. Of course, that’s the government revenue perspective: from the perspective of individual tax payers, it may be a cut or an increase, depending upon carbon usage and income. In practice, the poor–assuming they pay taxes–experience a net gain under the tax.
When (and if, though there seems little chance now of it falling through) the national Canadian carbon tax comes into force, we’ll see how that works on the scale of a G8 national economy (and, very interestingly, one tightly linked to a much larger G8 economy which will not be taking such a step soon.)
For a skeptical but not foolish take on the BC tax, see David Roberts (who, BTW, seems to be a writer worth a look on matters climate related):
If you went 18 years without a new significant record year (breaking the previous record by at least 0.1C) then you could be 85% certain the IPCC models were wrong.
You forget that the IPCC models model surface temperature, not satellite temperature (which is an estimate of way up in the troposphere somewhere).
2016 will easily exceed 1998 by more than 0.1℃ on the surface (which is where palm trees grow btw).
Killiansays
Guess this is considered Earth System Sensitivity, but still can’t help but say I told ya so. There was no way, even seven or eight years ago, that climate sensitivity could be as low as thought at the time.
Williams paid for the lease and created an energy company, and she has an energy plan: #KeepitintheGround. She and her husband created an energy company, Tempest Exploration Company, LLC, to manage this lease and future leases with the goal of “scientific and educational exploration additional energy sources might be developed from these lands.”
Boy, do I get tired of the argument about the rise of CO2. I thought we had settled that earlier this year. You can look back in the unforced variations threads for all the discussion.
The level of CO2 in atmosphere is rising and the rate of increase is rising. People seem to like Tamino for stats on this so I gave one link. It is not the only tamino link on CO2 rise and rate of increase. Here are some others:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/state-of-the-climate-earths-temperature/
“The world is finally recognizing the need to reduce our emissions of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases). But so far, its atmospheric concentration continues to rise at an ever-increasing pace. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels at the rate we’re going, we’ll be destined to pass that 2°C threshold which is believed to be the “critical limit” for dangerous climate change. If we don’t stop soon, how much danger we’ll face from going far beyond the 2°C limit is something we really don’t want to find out.”
“What have we done with our 30 years’ warning? The necessary solution is clear, and has been all along: slow, and eventually halt, the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We know their concentration is still increasing, but at what rate? Is the rate of rise at least slowing?
Unfortunately, no. It’s speeding up.”
Mike Roberts at 68: you have been involved in the comments thread at Tamino where this is discussed. Do you need another source or will Tamino suffice?
Another noisy daily number, deep breath, control your fear:
Daily CO2
December 4, 2016: 404.36 ppm
December 4, 2015: 400.43 ppm
3.93 ppm increase.
I read tamino and pay attention. I read Crowther and pay attention. I can also read the writing on the wall. As I have been saying for a year, the CO2 sat numbers suggest carbon sink functions are changing because global emissions numbers are down, but CO2 sat numbers continue to rise and the rate of increase is rising.
Nov monthly avg should be out in any day. I am looking for 402.9, a flat month that we should see with transition from EL to LN. I think the number is going to be higher than that. The elevation in that number suggests changes, but it could be delay in EN/LN transition. I have to be patient and wait and watch the numbers, but there really is no question that the underlying rate is increase is rising.
Read’m and weep, brothers and sisters.
Mike
Eric Swansonsays
BPL @60 wrote:
“And my conclusion is that if it’s an illusion it’s an extremely useful one. It’s a good empirical description of how many markets do, in fact, work, verified by millions of observations described in centuries worth of research. Your denial of it is exactly like that of climate deniers talking about climatology, and for the same reason–you see an ideological conspiracy behind it all:”
The concept of liberal political economics only goes back some 200 years to a period of much lower populations with much smaller “ecological footprints” for individuals. Before then, markets were heavily controlled by governments thru taxes and government concessions, etc. I think it’s been learned that such “free market” systems tend toward monopolies run by oligarchs who have no concerns other than profit. The “robber barons” of the late 19th century US and the present crop of oligarchs in Russia come to mind.
You shoot yourself in the foot in your previous discussion of approaches to externalites, given options which lead immediately to methods which are intrusive market interventions. Cap and trade destroys the producers’ ability to maximize profits and reduces the value of undeveloped resources claimed by a company, which subverts the fundamental goal of all corporations. Other methods, such as emissions control(s) and limits on the number of leases for oil, coal or gas, represent direct market intervention, not free trade. Free markets may work locally or within a national context, but only within a legal framework which prevents coercion, corruption and fraud. Regulation is a basic necessity for your “free trade” to work and differences between governments provide numerous opportunities for the unscrupulous to evade regulations and the laws within any nation by cross border operations.
Barton Paul Levenson on externalities: thanks BPL, good to know we can count on you 8^). The concept is key to understanding the cause of AGW and the rationale for carbon pricing.
BPL:
There are three main ways the government can intervene to stop, or at least reduce, the poluution from Jones Power…
2) Tax the emissions…The down side is that companies can be slow to act, and as with regulation, will try to save money by cheating.
It’s true that all realistic emissions-abatement policies are more or less susceptible to cheating. One of the reasons many economists prefer carbon taxes to regulations or cap-and-trade systems is that a well-designed carbon tax would be the most efficient way to achieve rapid CO2 emissions reduction, cheapest to administer and hardest to game. In the US, an optimum carbon tax would be collected from fossil fuel producers at the source (mine, well or port-of-entry) by the IRS, relying on its experience with excise taxes and its powerful enforcement apparatus.
Another [downside] is that the right-wing press will scream about “new taxes, new taxes!”
This is why “revenue-neutral” carbon taxes have better political prospects than those that go into the general fund. Jim Hansen-style fee-and-dividend proposals call for the collected fees (i.e. taxes, duh) to be rebated, minus administrative costs, to American households in equal monthly per-person dividend payments. That means those who use more fossil carbon than the average would pay those who use less, ensuring the political support of the payees 8^)! It would provide additional incentive for both payers and payees to use still less, and it would address some objections that carbon taxes are regressive: while lower-income people spend relatively more of their income on energy costs than wealthy people do, I’ve not aware (if anyone is I’d appreciate a link) that poor people spend more on energy in total. Setting the tax per tonne of fossil carbon initially at the low end of social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates, and raising it gradually as carbon-neutral energy supplies increase and prices decline, may help overcome political resistance also.
As I’ve said previously here and elsewhere, a domestic carbon tax should be paired with a Border Tax Adjustment (BTA) or tariff on imported goods tied to their embodied fossil carbon; there is expert agreement that WTO rules allow them in some forms. A BTA would help American manufacturers stay competitive, discourage them from moving their production (and their emissions) offshore, and encourage our trading partners to follow our lead. A BTA is potentially more complex to administer than an upstream carbon tax, so its costs would be relatively higher. Proceeds from the BTA would be added to those from the domestic carbon tax to be rebated, enhancing the measure’s political palatability.
Due to the deep distrust in our government’s budgetary process that unites just about all Americans 8^(, it’s important that all phases of collection and distribution be fully transparent, so the simpler the better. Once again, a good — effective, efficient and fair — carbon tax is harder to design than a bad one, but it’s not impossible. Yes, it seems highly unlikely that our Congress, dog help us, can enact one. A guy can dream, though.
Since nothing I’ve said about carbon taxes here is my own idea, I’ll refer all questions to my links and especially to the Carbon Tax Center, and resist saying anything more myself.
Lawrence Colemansays
I’ve been reading about high latitude soil respiration since the article appeared in science daily. Since it is the higher latitudes that have experienced the greatest warming over the last 50 years,( up to 4C higher than the long term mean) and since they have stored vastly more organic matter than the rest of the world, this is a process that will keep accelerating no matter what we do.
We still have the CO2 + C02e emitted by us over at least the past 50 or so years to still impact the carbon cycle. As it is, anthro CO2 might be ‘appearing’ to stabilise yet the ‘natural?’ CO2 concentrations are still accelerating. OH is the atmosphere is dropping thanks to increasing rates of anthro CO. Thus CH4 would be taking longer to oxidise into CO2 and causing more damage than previously considered. Not withstanding the monster of CH4 from clathrate sources is now wide awake. Am I in the minority who sees this as a perfect storm in every front. Or are some just afraid to look at it from a wholistic standpoint?.
Christopher wants figures to base his future actions around. There are way too many variables at play and interactions between variables and nowhere enough research dollars to even get a slightly accurate long term prognosis. All indications are that the IPCC’s predictions are almost meaninglessly conservative. It’s like trying to appreciate the complex beauty of a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle when you have only managed to assemble 50 pieces. I’ve read James Lovelock and Ghia is more than prepared to wipe the slate clean if that means life can start the evolutionary process from square one at some point in the distant future again. Do we expect anything less with a teeming monoculture of 7.5 billion homo sapiens sucking all the life out of the biosphere???.
Tony Weddlesays
Scott Adams claims to accept the concensus but really seems to be a denier, whoops, skeptic. This blog post claims to put some reasoning behind why it’s hard for the non-science to get a handle on climate change. His reasoning seems flawed to me (e.g. GW didn’t morph to CC and models aren’t needed to understand the effect of GHGs). Maybe climatefeedback can sort him out?
Charles Hughessays
I think the escalation we’re seeing in the refugee crisis both in Europe and the United states can be linked to Climate Change. I also think the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and other advances in right wing politics can also be connected to immigration and the movement of people away from the mid latitudes to more Northern regions. Probably all due in part to a rapidly changing climate. I don’t know if anyone else is connecting the dots with these events but I suspect we’re seeing the beginnings of that “oh shit!” moment we’ve all been expecting to see with Climate Change. If the election of Trump isn’t that moment I don’t know what is, and without the refugee crisis I don’t think our current political situation would have happened the way it has. From my perspective it all seems to be fear driven and fueled by the depletion of resources and drought and military conflict.
If this is the beginning of ‘social unrest’ due to Climate Change I expect it will get worse in the coming years.
November 2016: 403.64 ppm
November 2015: 400.24 ppm
3.4 ppm increase in month on month. I was watching for increase of 2.9 ppm that would be similar to the month on month from April 1999 when rise from a non-EN month was compared with an EN month and came in flat at 2.35 ppm. The rest of 1999 monthly averages fell under 2 ppm because review of a LN year with same month the year before in EL trend was significantly elevated. I can post the monthly averages for the years if anyone wants to see the raw data. It’s available from NOAA/ESRL et al. I cut and paste the data to spreadsheet so that I can do simple formula work with the data. I am willing to send my spreadsheet to anyone who wants to save a few steps.
So far, no flat month and fall-off pattern developing. We continue to see monthly average increases in excess of 3 ppm over the EN-elevated monthly number from previous year. Current increase rates should be near or under 2 ppm because of the EL bump and recession of same. Not happening yet, we remain in 3 plus ppm increase monthly average. Ugly numbers.
My concern is with state changes brought on by elevated CO2 numbers and related temps. Crowther’s study and rsults fit that concern with a cyclical EN heat wave (not just EN, AGW exacerbated by EN and random weather fluctuations) potentially creating a significant new source of CO2 to the atmosphere.
I think we are on track to post 3.36 ppm increase for 2016 annual rate. This also puts on a trajectory that could post April/May monthly average numbers in the 411 ppm range. We should drop into 409.5 range for those months if the EL bump ever disappears.
CO2 in atmosphere continues to rise and the rate of that rise is not static, it is rising. The rate of increase continues to rise as it has now for decades. Our species emissions numbers are down according to global reports and CO2 numbers continue to rise and are picking up speed. You can take it to the bank, amigos y amigas.
Warm regards,
Mike
Mike
nigeljsays
BPL is right about economics. We do at least have some knowledge about how the economic world operates and can predict some things. Predicting long term trends is hard because human behaviour is complex and not always rational, and economies have complex influences and different structures.
A genuinely free market would be defined as very minimal government of just property law, this is as close as you can practically get. A genuinely free market has no capital controls, no reserve banks trying to control inflation, no government safety laws, no environmental laws as all these things impose on freedom of market activity.Free markets may or may not have monopolies. Please note Im not advocating a totally free market, just defining one.
A non free market, or regulated market has some influence from reserve banks, fiscal policy, or government rules and regulation and maybe government ownership. It may have protectionist trade policies. The regulation may be light handed or more extensive.
Things like the laws of supply and demand basically hold true in genuinely free markets but also semi regulated markets. Government influence modifies the results but these things are known issues and can be calculated.
Probably the real question is whether genuine free markets are desirable or whether governments and / or reserve banks should try to influence things. In my opinion a genuinely free market is close to the rule of the jungle and would be a disaster. The question is really exactly how governments regulate markets properly.
2016 is projected (via robertscribbler) to be +4.5ppm on 2015 or 490ppm CO2-equivalent (CO2e) which is an ‘increasing growth rate’
“the direct warming influence of CO2 on climate has increased by about 50% since 1990.”
Vendicar Decariansays
7 -“Secular Libertarians leap to the conclusion that the state should butt out of the economy altogether; that unfettered use of the free market will quickly produce an ideal state of affairs.”
Yes. This is also why farmers should get out of the business of biology and simply acquire what the free market which is nature, provides to them.
The free market that is the natural environment is maximally productive isn’t it?
Farms do nothing but distort the natural economy raise prices, and make food less available.
Vendicar Decariansays
67 – “There is a theory that intelligent people are supposed to be able to handle complex issues. I:m not sure how true that is.”
What does that say about the American people’s inability to select a hones, rational leader who isn’t mentally ill and a congenital liar?
Vendicar Decariansays
52 – “May I propose that if any single contributor posts 3X in a row, we stop it all there? Are we rational inquirers or what?”
I propose that in any election recount, in any precinct, if the total number of ballots issued do not match the total number counted then the precinct should be excluded from the recount.
Oh wait. That is already the law.
Nevermind.
PaulSsays
Christopher #31,
SLR for past 200 years has measured at 18cm/century pre AGW.
There are several things wrong with this statement. A trend taken over the past 200 years is not pre-AGW. It substantially includes the period dominated by AGW influence. Even if you assume the 19th Century to be pre-AGW there is actually a likely significant anthropogenic influence on late 19th Century SLR through black carbon emissions.
You’ve provided no reference for the claim either. The only papers I’m aware of that reconstruct back 200 years are a series by Jevrejeva and team. In Jevrejeva et al. 2008 and Jevrejeva et al. 2014 I find respective trends of 1.4mm/yr (1803-2002) and 1.2mm/yr (1811-2010) across the most recent 200 years in the record. The splits between first and second century are 1mm/yr (1803-1902), 1.95mm/yr (1903-2002), -0.15mm/yr (1811-1910), 2mm/yr (1911-2010). So it seems the most recent century – the one strongly influenced by AGW – has a much higher rate of SLR.
I look at Portland Maine, but suite yourself and look at the record for the entire east coast.
That’s not suiting myself, I said look globally. There are other regions of the planet which have current SLR rates of about 10mm/yr. There’s too much variability to assume one region can represent the entire world over just 30 years.
11 inches is not 24
And the past is not the future.
The NOAA Portland SLR data points to 11 inches of SLR between 2000 and 2100.
No, it doesn’t. The trend in that location over some period of time points to the trend in that location over that period of time and nothing more.
…accelerate at 0.5mm/decade that would yield SLR of 8mm/year in the last decade of the century and 21 inches of SLR by 2100. I can see that as possible. But we are still shy of 2 feet.
Are you really going to quibble on 3 inches with such a crude extrapolation? How about 0.6mm/yr/decade, 0.7mm/yr/decade? Or 25% increase per decade?
How do I convince my audience that this is going to happen.
You could say the reason – physics. What is going to happen specifically will depend on scenario – what economic decisions humans make – and on system responses to our influence. It’s not set in stone that 2 feet will happen by 2100 but it is entirely plausible. You could look at projections of individual contributing factors to SLR under various scenarios, with uncertainties, to better familiarise yourself – download http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/docs/ar5_wg1_ch13sm_datafiles.zip
Barton, you wrote: ‘A real “supply curve” is rarely this straight and this simple, but this gives the general idea. Supply rises with price.’
A real supply curve is never that straight. You may supply more apples to the market if the price goes up, but there is a limit to how many apples you can supply no matter what the price.
Moreover, there is another person you did not mention who will take your apples from you and take them to market for you and everyone else who produces apples. He can do that more efficiently than you since he has a large truck and sales outlets in many towns. He then gets himself a monopoly in apples and can set a sales price well above your cost price which is all he is willing to pay you. In a free market there is always at least one person willing to do that.
Maybe Dec will be the flat month when last year’s EN bump drops the yr on yr increase number down under 3 ppm, maybe close to 2 ppm. Last couple of days have been under 3 ppm on the noisy daily avg number.
Daily CO2
December 6, 2016: 403.65 ppm
December 6, 2015: 401.18 ppm
2.47 ppm
If Dec is the flat month, then the Dec monthly avg number needs to be around 404.9.
Looking back at 2016, the real jump in CO2 increase showed up in February at 3.76 ppm, since that time we have a couple of months in 4 plus range (April and June) and the rest in strong 3 plus ppm range. Maybe we won’t see the flat month and apparent slowdown in rate of increase show up with Feb 2017 numbers. Should happen since 2016 has a EN bump and emissions are down, etc. Feb 2017 would be somewhat encouraging if it comes in around 406 flat or below.
Wait and see
Mike
Thomassays
Just in: (a belated PS & Xmas gift)
After the global financial crisis , a group of economics students at Manchester university wondered why their curriculum was totally divorced from what was happening in the real economy.
The students formed an economic reform movement called the Post-crash economics society. And they’ve now published a book called The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts
Beautifully written and packed with wisdom, it is a book for anyone who cares about the future of our societies, beginning, I hope, with professional economists themselves. This may be the most important economics book of the decade.’
Mark Buchanan, physicist, former editor of Nature and New Scientist and author of Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us about Economics
‘Historians, one day, will study the mesmeric capacity of economic doctrine to override the public’s faculty of rational judgement in favour of an unquestioning faith in the experts, in the face of the overwhelming evidence that they have got absolutely everything completely wrong. This research will engender the same sense of disbelief, I am convinced, that we feel today for the high mediaeval dogma that the sun must go around the earth because God ordained it so. This book will then be recognised as a turning point.
It is an eloquent, quietly passionate, but above all knowledgeable statement of the simple fact that the emperor is naked‘
Alan Freeman, Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University and Research Fellow of Queensland University of Technology, Australia
‘The economics profession has failed disastrously in recent decades, first by failing to warn of the dangers of a bloated and poorly regulated financial sector and then through an obsession with mathematically refined, but practically useless, modelling exercises.
It should be read not only by those seeking to understand how policies driven by the alleged needs of ‘the economy’ have failed, but also by economists who want to understand why their pronouncements are increasingly regarded with distrust and disdain.’
John Quiggin, Australian Laureate Fellow in Economics at the University of Queensland
Utterly compelling and sobering.
Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge and Author of Economics: The User’s Guide
If war is too important to be left to the generals, so is the economy too important to be left to narrowly trained economists…This book demonstrates just why that matters and offers thought-provoking ideas on how to go about it.
Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times
A rousing wake-up call to the economics profession to re-think its mission in society, from a collective of dissident graduate students.
Lord Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a Fellow of the British Academy in History and Economics
Every economist and citizen should get a copy.
Vince Cable, former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Rahmstorf S (2007)
A semiempirical approach to projecting future sea-level rise.
Science 315:368–370
Global Sea Level Linked to Global Temperature
Vermeer and Rahmstorf
PNAS Dec 22, 2009
“For future global temperature scenarios of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment
Report, the relationship projects a sea-level rise ranging from 75 to
190 cm for the period 1990–2100.”
Rahmstorf used a SLR dataset for 1880 to 2001 and calculated a constant for acceleration of 3.4mm/year for every degC increase in global temperature. He then multiplied this by the IPCC predictions for global temp scenarios and calculated 75 (2.4ft) to 190cm (6.2ft) SLR for the period 1990 to 2100.
Rahmstorf says:
– “Large uncertanties exist…”
– “our capability for calculating
future sea-level changes in response to a given
surface warming scenario with present physics based
models is very limited…”
– “the computation of the link between the
driver and the response from first principles
remains elusive.”
CSIRO states, “Pfeffer et al. (2008) have argued that a rise in excess of 2 metres is “physically untenable,” and that a maximum rise of 0.8 metres (near the upper end of the IPCC AR4 projections) is more plausible.” http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_proj_21st.html
CSIRO is limiting upper range of SLR to 2.6 feet.
Global sea levels are rising at 3mm/year. There is little or no acceleration in the rate of SLR. 3mm per year gains roughly 10 inches by 2100. The press has picked up the predictions made by Vermeer and Rahmstorf in 2009 and are repeating the prediction of 2-6 feet of SLR by 2100. The facts do not support this conclusion.
The first paper you link to is available in full here. The second paper (from the same authors Curran & Curran and Sept 2016 so 5 months newer) unfortuantely appears to be still paywalled. I say ‘unfortunate’ because its abstract contains very ambiguous comment.
Abstract
The declining ability of the Northern Hemisphere biosphere to sequester carbon from the atmosphere is shown to be having an impact on the current rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations equivalent to adding the annual man-made emissions from China. If this trend continues, then global emissions will have to decline even faster than previously thought.”
China’s emissions are some 2.9Gt(C), some 30% of the global total. It is a big number, equal to 1.3ppm if it ended up stuck in the atmosphere. But what are Curran & Curran actually saying this 2.9Gt(C) is equal to? It is as clear as mud & it is surely irresponsible to bandy around such a big number without a proper description of what is meant by it.
17 Alan Millar,
In combined GHCN/ERSSTv4, Jan-Oct 2016 was 0.98 C above the 20th century average, while 1998 was 0.68 C above the 20th century average. That’s an increase of 0.3 in 18 yrs.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2016/10/supplemental/page-2
Extrapolated out to 2100, that 0.3 C/18 years as a constant rate of increase would lead to a 2100 temperature 2.6 C above the 20th century average (or 2.8 C above the 1880 baseline). If the 20th c. average winter temperature in York was 3 C, we would expect it to be warmer than 5 C in 2100, comparable to London or Swansea. London and Swansea have palm trees (admittedly, pretty ratty ones).
Obviously, this is a lousy way to predict the 2100 global temperature, and global temperatures can’t be downscaled in this manner, but the major El Niño to major El Niño global temperature rise is easily consistent with 2 C global warming by 2100.
May I propose that if any single contributor posts 3X in a row, we stop it all there? Are we rational inquirers or what?
#49 Thomas: > thanks for the opportunity
An excellent start. This site can spoil you. Don’t let it.
Dec.2–“American Mayors Pledge Climate Leadership In Response To United States Presidential Election.”
http://www.c40.org/blog_posts/american-mayors-pledge-climate-leadership-in-response-to-united-states-presidential-election
Eric Swanson #41, also Kevin M, Mal A, BPL, and others,
Come on people. There are basic principles that are not debatable, and there are the inside baseball details and nuance of how things work, and then there is what we should care about, which is how to politically achieve a reduction in CO2 production .
The answer is not our individual favorite fetish, but “all of the above” and anything else people can come up with in the future.
Eric, it is absolutely possible for strong government intervention to create a functional Free Market, for any particular product. It happens more in Europe, perhaps, but it happens.
Kevin, if people only buy on price, explain iPhones?
Mal, of course externalities exist… but nobody cares that they are externalities. Back in the day, “environmentalists” just pointed out the unpleasant effects of pollution and people got it. This is a much more difficult sell, and abstract terminology and calculations will get zero traction.
Back to Eric: I’ve given the example over and over of establishing a Free Market for electricity by prohibiting the “utility” from producing or retailing electricity. By itself, this doesn’t solve the problem; you also need to disincentivize CO2 production, which can happen by eliminating subsidies, subsidizing renewables, regulation of emissions, and yes, taxing at some level of the production chain.
Sorry, but this will be some complicated legislative sausage-making, not a magic simple solution. It’s very much like Obamacare– even if the Republicans do some damage in the next few years, the camel’s nose is in. And likewise with renewables and EV and other technology, as the result of not very glamorous detail work by the Obama administration.
DS 26: you have not covered the externalizing of costs
BPL: Very true, and that’s what makes this stuff relevant to this site.
Externalities. I.
In an ideal free market (not that such a thing exists, any more than an ideal gas does), a transaction is a free trade between a buyer and a seller, and the Libertarian ideal, as articulated by Murray Rothbard, is that the state should not interfere with “capitalist acts between consenting adults.”
But suppose Jones Power sells electricity to Smith Lighting, a free transaction unfettered by the government, but Jones Power is burning coal and the emissions are simply let out into the air? And people downstream of the plume get sick and even die? The costs are all borne by the people downstream, and they did not agree to the transaction. This is an “externality,” a cost (or benefit) accidentally imposed on a third party by a market transaction. This is one of the ways a pure free market fails. You need some kind of government intervention at this point.
Exteralities II.
There are three main ways the government can intervene to stop, or at least reduce, the poluution from Jones Power. I will list them from most to least “statist,” to use the Libertarian term.
1. Impose 37,000 pages of new regulations in the Federal Register, have inspectors at the plant, measure the emission, declare what kind of machinery Jones Power needs to use, etc., etc. The down side is that this is an economically inefficient way to do things, may misuse resources, and has the maximum interference by the government. The up side is that it works.
2. Tax the emissions. This raises the cost of production, which means, all else being equal, that less will be produced. “Anything taxed is produced in lesser quantity.” By taxing the emissions specifically, Jones Power is free to find the cheapest way to reduce emissions they can, whether by capturing CO2, replacing coal with gas or even wind/solar, etc. The down side is that companies can be slow to act, and as with regulation, will try to save money by cheating. Another is that the right-wing press will scream about “new taxes, new taxes!” The up side, again, is that this works. Germany uses effluents taxes to control river pollution, although the system is imperfect in that they let one river be used freely for dumping (see if you can guess which one).
3. Cap and trade. Declare that only so much emission will be allowed in a given year, then sell permits to emit so much. Let companies trade the permits on an open market. A company that can’t afford to retrofit this year can buy permits from a company that retrofitted early and doesn’t need all its permits. Downside: this is morally objectionable as a “license to pollute.” Upside: You can reduce the cap each year, slowly enough to let technological advance and switching to other industries handle it, and as with the other two methods, it works. This is how the US controlled sulfate emissions and greatly reduced its acid rain problem.
T 29: What is it about you BPL that you have to be so immature and make up stuff about other people that is not true or even close to true?
BPL: You honestly aren’t aware that you do this to others here, including me, all the time–are you? You simply don’t see it when you’re the one doing it.
z 38: I think in the end you contradict your early suggestion that government should leave the economy alone– absent strong government intervention, you never see a free market as described.
BPL: That is not MY suggestion, and I completely agree that free markets per se don’t exist outside of vigorous antitrust. I was saying that the free market as described by free marketeers has no government intervention. Such things do arise naturally when all you have are a large number of small buyers and sellers–cf the US 1780-1820. But in the long run they don’t last, because the system produces winners and losers, and the winners try to consolidate.
ES 41: Looks like you believe Economics 101. But, markets are never in equilibrium. Your example of apples (an agricultural commodity) fails to note that there’s seasonal supply, but demand can occur all year. . . [long list of other complications]
BPL: Looks like you never took Economics 101, or you’d know that all this is already well known–see, especially, the “cobweb” pattern for agricultural products. I was describing very basic stuff to get the ball rolling.
ES: My conclusion is that the concept of “free” markets is an illusion that exists due to the ignorance of the general public. . .
BPL: And my conclusion is that if it’s an illusion it’s an extremely useful one. It’s a good empirical description of how many markets do, in fact, work, verified by millions of observations described in centuries worth of research. Your denial of it is exactly like that of climate deniers talking about climatology, and for the same reason–you see an ideological conspiracy behind it all:
ES: . . .which are made to believe that a growing economy is good for them, while all the growth goes to increase the wealth and power of a few.
BPL: I’m sure they are. Which has nothing to do with whether the basic description is accurate or not. BTW, market systems do not have to be growing.
http://climatetruth.org/press/releases/2016/12/2/scientists-climatetruthorg-and-natural-history-mus/
MA Rodger says:
3 Dec 2016 at 6:00 AM
Alan Miller @20.
“You assume rather too much.
As described, the figures are presented to ‘allow comparison with the 1997-99 El Nino years.’ If you want to read “an alarming warming trend” into these figures, that is your concern. However, a word of caution – 2015-16 being El Nino years with the El Nino almost as powerful as 1997/98, it would be no great surprise for 2016 to replace 1998 as the warmest calender year on record as El Ninos greatly elevate TLT temeratures, far more than with surface measurements.”
I am not assuming anything. I am just stating a fact that Real Climate itself said would show the models as inaccurate at the 95% level.
i.e. If you went 18 years without a new significant record year (breaking the previous record by at least 0.1C) then you could be 85% certain the IPCC models were wrong.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/
Perhaps statistical probability should now be ignored.
Thomas, are you an AGU member?
https://eos.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/01-Dec_magazine.pdf
Don’t know if this has already been reported here but it looks like this will push humanity over the edge:
Global warming is beyond the “point of no return”, according to the lead scientist behind a ground-breaking climate change study.
“The full impact of climate change has been underestimated because scientists haven’t taken into account a major source of carbon in the environment.
Dr Thomas Crowther’s report has concluded that carbon emitted from soil was speeding up global warming.
The findings, which say temperatures will increase by 1C by 2050, are already being adopted by the United Nations.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/donald-trump-climate-change-policy-global-warming-expert-thomas-crowther-a7450236.html
‘Tis the season for a reality check , on the intercomparison of econometric & climate models of the prices of vital commodities, like Partridges and Pear Trees.
Noisy number, but still:
Daily CO2
December 3, 2016: 404.42 ppm
December 3, 2015: 400.38 ppm
4.04 ppm
waiting on Nov monthly average.
Nobody should be frightened by these numbers. Just data to review.
Cheers
Mike
There is a theory that intelligent people are supposed to be able to handle complex issues. I:m not sure how true that is.
Some Final Thoughts to be ignored and twisted out of all semblance to what they actually are.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/11/trump-carbon-and-the-paris-agreement/comment-page-4/#comment-664077
Mike, yes, Tamino posted on the topic of CO2 atmospheric growth but wrote, “There’s still the possibility of faster rise since about 2010, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in that conclusion.” I take this to mean that there still isn’t enough data to be able to say with confidence that CO2 growth has accelerated. It wouldn’t surprise me but I think all we can do is speculate on that. However, that soil respiration paper deserves a read.
Chrstopher says:
2 Dec 2016 at 9:39 PM
“PaulS, your data is all under water. SLR for past 200 years has measured at 18cm/century pre AGW.
I look at Portland Maine, but suite yourself and look at the record for the entire east coast. 1-2-3mm/year is typical except south louisiana where subsidence exceeds SLR.”
I’m no expert but I would say, ‘The past is not prologue’. Nothing we’ve experienced in the past can possibly prepare us for what’s coming. If you’re looking at recent history (200 years) to support the idea that SLR can’t happen rather quickly, wait till a few major glaciers shake loose from Antarctica and Greenland.
“Tech designer schools Facebook, creates fake news detector in an hour.”
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.3878672/tech-designer-schools-facebook-creates-fake-news-detector-in-an-hour-1.3878682
Domain classifications include: Fake News: Sources that fabricate stories out of whole cloth with the intent of pranking the public. Satire: Sources that provide humorous commentary on current events in the form of fake news. Extreme Bias: Sources that traffic in political propaganda and gross distortions of fact. Conspiracy Theory: Sources that are well-known promoters of kooky conspiracy theories. Rumor Mill: Sources that traffic in rumors, innuendo, and unverified claims. State News: Sources in repressive states operating under government sanction. Junk Science: Sources that promote pseudoscience, metaphysics, naturalistic fallacies, and other scientifically dubious claims. Hate Group: Sources that actively promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination. Clickbait: Sources that are aimed at generating online advertising revenue and rely on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching pictures. Proceed With Caution: Sources that may be reliable but whose contents require further verification.
If there are any sites you recommend adding or removing…[see:]
http://bsdetector.tech/
BS Detector: I think this is important, starting with the response to Facebook by the self-agency of Self Agency. Daniel Sieradski has real credibility on the thing at hand (namely, sorting out disinformation) and I think climate science keepers should begin now to integrate their common intelligence with Self Agency by installing and using BS Detector–and provide feedback as needed to Self Agency. Sieradski states the size of the project (at time of interview) in the interview.
climatefeedback.org is very important and doing most exemplary work, but BS Detector is needed too. It’s a fast-action disinformation alert.
There’s disinformation and there’s disinfo-con: namely, the idea that you can’t tell the difference. Daniel Sieradski says the opposite. He stands up against the con in disinfo-con. He’s had a lot of practice, esp with conspiracy theories. He keeps learning, and he’s the right person at the right time.
BPL’s ‘Economics’
On Paltering … A successful palterer will try to avoid being untruthful in each of his/her utterances, but will nonetheless put together a highly misleading picture based on selective reporting, half-truths, and errors of omission.
Watch Out for Paltering: Techniques to Spot a Lie Hidden With the Truth http://lifehacker.com/watch-out-for-paltering-techniques-to-spot-a-lie-hidd-1787480207
Quoting from: Brooke Harrington (ed.), Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 38-54.
“Yet although we can thus distinguish truth telling from lying, numerous statements are, intriguingly, neither lies nor truth tellings. Rather, they make up a universe of morally and socially problematic statements and propositional actions in which one or more of the elements of the genuine lie is missing, but in which one or more of the elements of authentic full-bore truth telling is missing as well.
Our goal in this chapter is to explore this area of “less than lying” and to focus in particular on the widespread practice of fudging, twisting, shading, bending, stretching, slanting, exaggerating, distorting, whitewashing, and selective reporting.
Such deceptive practices are occasionally designated by the uncommon word paltering, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as acting insincerely or misleadingly.
Although the intended effect of a palter is the same as that of a lie, both the dictionary definition and everyday usage of related ideas make a palter somewhat troublesome while still less than a full-fledged lie.”
Coauthored by RICHARD ZECKHAUSER is Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at the John F. School of Government, Harvard University. A pioneer in the field of policy analysis, he conducts conceptual and policy studies using decision analysis and microeconomics. His most recent (coauthored) books are Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples ….
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/paltering.pdf
Alan Millar @62.
You are a real star.
Up front you tell us “I am not assuming anything,” even though you actually explain yourself @17 by saying you do assume things.
And just in case we are under the illusion that you are a one-trick-troll, @62 you misrepresent the words of one of our hosts. Well done you!
Let us set out how you do that, this misrepresentation being the full substance of your comment @62 and not related to the things raised by you @17 or my reply @37 which are presumably now water under the bridge, which is something trolls probably get rather bored with.
The 2008 RealClimate post you reference presented a graph alongside the following description:-
So we should consider this 95% 8-year/18-year return rate “reasonably indicative” of the surface temperature record.
Ans what do we see in the surface record, say GISS LOTI (appropriate given the author of the post)?
From the record year of 1998, the next record is 2005 (seven years later), itself bested in 2010 (three years later), followed by 2014 (four years) & 2015 (one year).
And regarding the ‘unambiguous’ records, 1998 was such a record lasting sixteen years to 2014 which itself lasted one year to 2015.
So the 2008 RealClimate post has passed muster.
What does not pass muster is the Alan Millar comment @62. What is meant by “If you went 18 years without a new significant record year (breaking the previous record by at least 0.1C) then you could be 85% certain the IPCC models were wrong.”??? Does anybody have a clue what the idiot is blathering on about??!!
BPL #59
“as described by free marketeers”
Et tu, Barton?
Dude, you and I are “free marketeers”. That’s why I obsessively jump in to correct the misuse of the term, which the laissez-faire-teers have so successfully co-opted. Anyway…
You do realize that regulation only works when it works, right? Regulation is what gave us the SUV, although its continued popularity is probably down to the fact that 40% of the US population is obese, and of that group only half even realize it.
I will repeat my point from #55– it’s “all of the above”, and it’s about changing attitudes/perceptions to change the paradigm.
We’ve actually been through all of this previously, in the transition from horses to automobiles, and gaslight to electricity, and machine tools driven by belts and waterwheels to electric motors, and so on. It didn’t happen overnight, and it was influenced by anti-competitive factors like what I mentioned to you earlier.
1
Chrstopher says:
1 Dec 2016 at 7:08 PM
I found this:
station 183: Portland (Maine) 1984 to 2014 trend: +3.04 plus or minus 1.05 mm/yr
You can also check the AVISO trend map – 1993 to January 2016:
http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Map_MERGED_Global_AVISO_NoGIA_Adjust.png
The trends off that part of Maine look like yellow misted with orange, so 2.5 mm/yr plus something.
“Kevin, if people only buy on price, explain iPhones?”
Never said they ‘only buy on price.’ I said that, ceteribus partibus, they are sensitive to price.
Personally, I don’t have an iPhone, because it is too expensive, despite its other attractions. Possibly I’m biassed in that regard, but I’m also clearly ‘not-buying’ on price.
But that’s just anecdotal. There are enormous amounts of real evidence demonstrating that price sensitivity is a Real Thing. A more-or-less random example:
http://rady.ucsd.edu/docs/events/gardete.pdf
If you are writing out of frustration, I certainly sympathize. This whole discussion is incredibly dumb–as you would expect, since it originating in a comment which was essentially denial of a behavior which is not only well-studied over a period of centuries now, but also an everyday reality which is constantly observed by all of us.
I wouldn’t have bothered to reply–I’m currently scrolling over most of Thomas’s posts, so prolix and unfocussed are they. But I felt that his contentions WRT CF&D, which failed on multiple counts, really couldn’t be allowed to stand unrebutted.
Here’s what CF&D can look like in the real world:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/business/does-a-carbon-tax-work-ask-british-columbia.html?_r=0
Note that, while this is a “tax” in that both sides of the ledger are administered via the tax system–collections via specific levies on carbon-heavy commodities, and disbursements via income tax credits (which are structured progressively)–the money collected is in fact returned to the economy directly, making the tax revenue-neutral.
Actually, it is slightly revenue-negative, making the net effect a tax *cut*. Of course, that’s the government revenue perspective: from the perspective of individual tax payers, it may be a cut or an increase, depending upon carbon usage and income. In practice, the poor–assuming they pay taxes–experience a net gain under the tax.
When (and if, though there seems little chance now of it falling through) the national Canadian carbon tax comes into force, we’ll see how that works on the scale of a G8 national economy (and, very interestingly, one tightly linked to a much larger G8 economy which will not be taking such a step soon.)
For a skeptical but not foolish take on the BC tax, see David Roberts (who, BTW, seems to be a writer worth a look on matters climate related):
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/2/13491818/carbon-taxes-british-columbia-experiment
#62 Alan Millar:
You forget that the IPCC models model surface temperature, not satellite temperature (which is an estimate of way up in the troposphere somewhere).
2016 will easily exceed 1998 by more than 0.1℃ on the surface (which is where palm trees grow btw).
Guess this is considered Earth System Sensitivity, but still can’t help but say I told ya so. There was no way, even seven or eight years ago, that climate sensitivity could be as low as thought at the time.
Well…
Soils a Climate Danger (yet still the solution.)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/15/1526759/-New-climate-activism-Buying-fed-oil-gas-leases-on-public-land-to-KeepitintheGround
Boy, do I get tired of the argument about the rise of CO2. I thought we had settled that earlier this year. You can look back in the unforced variations threads for all the discussion.
The level of CO2 in atmosphere is rising and the rate of increase is rising. People seem to like Tamino for stats on this so I gave one link. It is not the only tamino link on CO2 rise and rate of increase. Here are some others:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/state-of-the-climate-earths-temperature/
“The world is finally recognizing the need to reduce our emissions of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases). But so far, its atmospheric concentration continues to rise at an ever-increasing pace. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels at the rate we’re going, we’ll be destined to pass that 2°C threshold which is believed to be the “critical limit” for dangerous climate change. If we don’t stop soon, how much danger we’ll face from going far beyond the 2°C limit is something we really don’t want to find out.”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/global-warning/#comment-95400f
“What have we done with our 30 years’ warning? The necessary solution is clear, and has been all along: slow, and eventually halt, the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We know their concentration is still increasing, but at what rate? Is the rate of rise at least slowing?
Unfortunately, no. It’s speeding up.”
Mike Roberts at 68: you have been involved in the comments thread at Tamino where this is discussed. Do you need another source or will Tamino suffice?
Another noisy daily number, deep breath, control your fear:
Daily CO2
December 4, 2016: 404.36 ppm
December 4, 2015: 400.43 ppm
3.93 ppm increase.
I read tamino and pay attention. I read Crowther and pay attention. I can also read the writing on the wall. As I have been saying for a year, the CO2 sat numbers suggest carbon sink functions are changing because global emissions numbers are down, but CO2 sat numbers continue to rise and the rate of increase is rising.
Nov monthly avg should be out in any day. I am looking for 402.9, a flat month that we should see with transition from EL to LN. I think the number is going to be higher than that. The elevation in that number suggests changes, but it could be delay in EN/LN transition. I have to be patient and wait and watch the numbers, but there really is no question that the underlying rate is increase is rising.
Read’m and weep, brothers and sisters.
Mike
BPL @60 wrote:
“And my conclusion is that if it’s an illusion it’s an extremely useful one. It’s a good empirical description of how many markets do, in fact, work, verified by millions of observations described in centuries worth of research. Your denial of it is exactly like that of climate deniers talking about climatology, and for the same reason–you see an ideological conspiracy behind it all:”
The concept of liberal political economics only goes back some 200 years to a period of much lower populations with much smaller “ecological footprints” for individuals. Before then, markets were heavily controlled by governments thru taxes and government concessions, etc. I think it’s been learned that such “free market” systems tend toward monopolies run by oligarchs who have no concerns other than profit. The “robber barons” of the late 19th century US and the present crop of oligarchs in Russia come to mind.
You shoot yourself in the foot in your previous discussion of approaches to externalites, given options which lead immediately to methods which are intrusive market interventions. Cap and trade destroys the producers’ ability to maximize profits and reduces the value of undeveloped resources claimed by a company, which subverts the fundamental goal of all corporations. Other methods, such as emissions control(s) and limits on the number of leases for oil, coal or gas, represent direct market intervention, not free trade. Free markets may work locally or within a national context, but only within a legal framework which prevents coercion, corruption and fraud. Regulation is a basic necessity for your “free trade” to work and differences between governments provide numerous opportunities for the unscrupulous to evade regulations and the laws within any nation by cross border operations.
A Trump spokesperson has proposed a revolutionary approach to model parametrization, replacing Bayesian priors with Twitter statistics.
Barton Paul Levenson on externalities: thanks BPL, good to know we can count on you 8^). The concept is key to understanding the cause of AGW and the rationale for carbon pricing.
BPL:
It’s true that all realistic emissions-abatement policies are more or less susceptible to cheating. One of the reasons many economists prefer carbon taxes to regulations or cap-and-trade systems is that a well-designed carbon tax would be the most efficient way to achieve rapid CO2 emissions reduction, cheapest to administer and hardest to game. In the US, an optimum carbon tax would be collected from fossil fuel producers at the source (mine, well or port-of-entry) by the IRS, relying on its experience with excise taxes and its powerful enforcement apparatus.
One of the more readable summaries of the advantages of an upstream, national carbon tax is J. Calder 2015, chapt. 3 in Implementing a US Carbon Tax: Challenges and Debates.
BPL:
This is why “revenue-neutral” carbon taxes have better political prospects than those that go into the general fund. Jim Hansen-style fee-and-dividend proposals call for the collected fees (i.e. taxes, duh) to be rebated, minus administrative costs, to American households in equal monthly per-person dividend payments. That means those who use more fossil carbon than the average would pay those who use less, ensuring the political support of the payees 8^)! It would provide additional incentive for both payers and payees to use still less, and it would address some objections that carbon taxes are regressive: while lower-income people spend relatively more of their income on energy costs than wealthy people do, I’ve not aware (if anyone is I’d appreciate a link) that poor people spend more on energy in total. Setting the tax per tonne of fossil carbon initially at the low end of social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates, and raising it gradually as carbon-neutral energy supplies increase and prices decline, may help overcome political resistance also.
As I’ve said previously here and elsewhere, a domestic carbon tax should be paired with a Border Tax Adjustment (BTA) or tariff on imported goods tied to their embodied fossil carbon; there is expert agreement that WTO rules allow them in some forms. A BTA would help American manufacturers stay competitive, discourage them from moving their production (and their emissions) offshore, and encourage our trading partners to follow our lead. A BTA is potentially more complex to administer than an upstream carbon tax, so its costs would be relatively higher. Proceeds from the BTA would be added to those from the domestic carbon tax to be rebated, enhancing the measure’s political palatability.
Due to the deep distrust in our government’s budgetary process that unites just about all Americans 8^(, it’s important that all phases of collection and distribution be fully transparent, so the simpler the better. Once again, a good — effective, efficient and fair — carbon tax is harder to design than a bad one, but it’s not impossible. Yes, it seems highly unlikely that our Congress, dog help us, can enact one. A guy can dream, though.
Since nothing I’ve said about carbon taxes here is my own idea, I’ll refer all questions to my links and especially to the Carbon Tax Center, and resist saying anything more myself.
I’ve been reading about high latitude soil respiration since the article appeared in science daily. Since it is the higher latitudes that have experienced the greatest warming over the last 50 years,( up to 4C higher than the long term mean) and since they have stored vastly more organic matter than the rest of the world, this is a process that will keep accelerating no matter what we do.
We still have the CO2 + C02e emitted by us over at least the past 50 or so years to still impact the carbon cycle. As it is, anthro CO2 might be ‘appearing’ to stabilise yet the ‘natural?’ CO2 concentrations are still accelerating. OH is the atmosphere is dropping thanks to increasing rates of anthro CO. Thus CH4 would be taking longer to oxidise into CO2 and causing more damage than previously considered. Not withstanding the monster of CH4 from clathrate sources is now wide awake. Am I in the minority who sees this as a perfect storm in every front. Or are some just afraid to look at it from a wholistic standpoint?.
Christopher wants figures to base his future actions around. There are way too many variables at play and interactions between variables and nowhere enough research dollars to even get a slightly accurate long term prognosis. All indications are that the IPCC’s predictions are almost meaninglessly conservative. It’s like trying to appreciate the complex beauty of a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle when you have only managed to assemble 50 pieces. I’ve read James Lovelock and Ghia is more than prepared to wipe the slate clean if that means life can start the evolutionary process from square one at some point in the distant future again. Do we expect anything less with a teeming monoculture of 7.5 billion homo sapiens sucking all the life out of the biosphere???.
Scott Adams claims to accept the concensus but really seems to be a denier, whoops, skeptic. This blog post claims to put some reasoning behind why it’s hard for the non-science to get a handle on climate change. His reasoning seems flawed to me (e.g. GW didn’t morph to CC and models aren’t needed to understand the effect of GHGs). Maybe climatefeedback can sort him out?
I think the escalation we’re seeing in the refugee crisis both in Europe and the United states can be linked to Climate Change. I also think the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and other advances in right wing politics can also be connected to immigration and the movement of people away from the mid latitudes to more Northern regions. Probably all due in part to a rapidly changing climate. I don’t know if anyone else is connecting the dots with these events but I suspect we’re seeing the beginnings of that “oh shit!” moment we’ve all been expecting to see with Climate Change. If the election of Trump isn’t that moment I don’t know what is, and without the refugee crisis I don’t think our current political situation would have happened the way it has. From my perspective it all seems to be fear driven and fueled by the depletion of resources and drought and military conflict.
If this is the beginning of ‘social unrest’ due to Climate Change I expect it will get worse in the coming years.
And by the way:
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/33456/20161205/massive-rift-antarctic-ice-shelf-spotted-nasa-photograph.htm
November CO2
November 2016: 403.64 ppm
November 2015: 400.24 ppm
3.4 ppm increase in month on month. I was watching for increase of 2.9 ppm that would be similar to the month on month from April 1999 when rise from a non-EN month was compared with an EN month and came in flat at 2.35 ppm. The rest of 1999 monthly averages fell under 2 ppm because review of a LN year with same month the year before in EL trend was significantly elevated. I can post the monthly averages for the years if anyone wants to see the raw data. It’s available from NOAA/ESRL et al. I cut and paste the data to spreadsheet so that I can do simple formula work with the data. I am willing to send my spreadsheet to anyone who wants to save a few steps.
So far, no flat month and fall-off pattern developing. We continue to see monthly average increases in excess of 3 ppm over the EN-elevated monthly number from previous year. Current increase rates should be near or under 2 ppm because of the EL bump and recession of same. Not happening yet, we remain in 3 plus ppm increase monthly average. Ugly numbers.
My concern is with state changes brought on by elevated CO2 numbers and related temps. Crowther’s study and rsults fit that concern with a cyclical EN heat wave (not just EN, AGW exacerbated by EN and random weather fluctuations) potentially creating a significant new source of CO2 to the atmosphere.
I think we are on track to post 3.36 ppm increase for 2016 annual rate. This also puts on a trajectory that could post April/May monthly average numbers in the 411 ppm range. We should drop into 409.5 range for those months if the EL bump ever disappears.
CO2 in atmosphere continues to rise and the rate of that rise is not static, it is rising. The rate of increase continues to rise as it has now for decades. Our species emissions numbers are down according to global reports and CO2 numbers continue to rise and are picking up speed. You can take it to the bank, amigos y amigas.
Warm regards,
Mike
Mike
BPL is right about economics. We do at least have some knowledge about how the economic world operates and can predict some things. Predicting long term trends is hard because human behaviour is complex and not always rational, and economies have complex influences and different structures.
A genuinely free market would be defined as very minimal government of just property law, this is as close as you can practically get. A genuinely free market has no capital controls, no reserve banks trying to control inflation, no government safety laws, no environmental laws as all these things impose on freedom of market activity.Free markets may or may not have monopolies. Please note Im not advocating a totally free market, just defining one.
A non free market, or regulated market has some influence from reserve banks, fiscal policy, or government rules and regulation and maybe government ownership. It may have protectionist trade policies. The regulation may be light handed or more extensive.
Things like the laws of supply and demand basically hold true in genuinely free markets but also semi regulated markets. Government influence modifies the results but these things are known issues and can be calculated.
Probably the real question is whether genuine free markets are desirable or whether governments and / or reserve banks should try to influence things. In my opinion a genuinely free market is close to the rule of the jungle and would be a disaster. The question is really exactly how governments regulate markets properly.
For ‘CO2 Mike’
ANNUAL GREENHOUSE GAS INDEX (AGGI)
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/aggi.html
2016 is projected (via robertscribbler) to be +4.5ppm on 2015 or 490ppm CO2-equivalent (CO2e) which is an ‘increasing growth rate’
“the direct warming influence of CO2 on climate has increased by about 50% since 1990.”
7 -“Secular Libertarians leap to the conclusion that the state should butt out of the economy altogether; that unfettered use of the free market will quickly produce an ideal state of affairs.”
Yes. This is also why farmers should get out of the business of biology and simply acquire what the free market which is nature, provides to them.
The free market that is the natural environment is maximally productive isn’t it?
Farms do nothing but distort the natural economy raise prices, and make food less available.
67 – “There is a theory that intelligent people are supposed to be able to handle complex issues. I:m not sure how true that is.”
What does that say about the American people’s inability to select a hones, rational leader who isn’t mentally ill and a congenital liar?
52 – “May I propose that if any single contributor posts 3X in a row, we stop it all there? Are we rational inquirers or what?”
I propose that in any election recount, in any precinct, if the total number of ballots issued do not match the total number counted then the precinct should be excluded from the recount.
Oh wait. That is already the law.
Nevermind.
Christopher #31,
SLR for past 200 years has measured at 18cm/century pre AGW.
There are several things wrong with this statement. A trend taken over the past 200 years is not pre-AGW. It substantially includes the period dominated by AGW influence. Even if you assume the 19th Century to be pre-AGW there is actually a likely significant anthropogenic influence on late 19th Century SLR through black carbon emissions.
You’ve provided no reference for the claim either. The only papers I’m aware of that reconstruct back 200 years are a series by Jevrejeva and team. In Jevrejeva et al. 2008 and Jevrejeva et al. 2014 I find respective trends of 1.4mm/yr (1803-2002) and 1.2mm/yr (1811-2010) across the most recent 200 years in the record. The splits between first and second century are 1mm/yr (1803-1902), 1.95mm/yr (1903-2002), -0.15mm/yr (1811-1910), 2mm/yr (1911-2010). So it seems the most recent century – the one strongly influenced by AGW – has a much higher rate of SLR.
I look at Portland Maine, but suite yourself and look at the record for the entire east coast.
That’s not suiting myself, I said look globally. There are other regions of the planet which have current SLR rates of about 10mm/yr. There’s too much variability to assume one region can represent the entire world over just 30 years.
11 inches is not 24
And the past is not the future.
The NOAA Portland SLR data points to 11 inches of SLR between 2000 and 2100.
No, it doesn’t. The trend in that location over some period of time points to the trend in that location over that period of time and nothing more.
…accelerate at 0.5mm/decade that would yield SLR of 8mm/year in the last decade of the century and 21 inches of SLR by 2100. I can see that as possible. But we are still shy of 2 feet.
Are you really going to quibble on 3 inches with such a crude extrapolation? How about 0.6mm/yr/decade, 0.7mm/yr/decade? Or 25% increase per decade?
How do I convince my audience that this is going to happen.
You could say the reason – physics. What is going to happen specifically will depend on scenario – what economic decisions humans make – and on system responses to our influence. It’s not set in stone that 2 feet will happen by 2100 but it is entirely plausible. You could look at projections of individual contributing factors to SLR under various scenarios, with uncertainties, to better familiarise yourself – download http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/docs/ar5_wg1_ch13sm_datafiles.zip
Related to #70
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook
no comment
There are a couple of papers in the RMetSoc’s Weather about how CO2 is increasing now we have passed Peak CO2!
Indications of positive feedback in climate change due to a reduction in Northern Hemisphere biomass uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.2715/full
“An estimate of the climate change significance of the decline in the Northern Hemisphere’s uptake of carbon dioxide in biomass”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.2762/full
Authors: Curran and Curran.
Barton, you wrote: ‘A real “supply curve” is rarely this straight and this simple, but this gives the general idea. Supply rises with price.’
A real supply curve is never that straight. You may supply more apples to the market if the price goes up, but there is a limit to how many apples you can supply no matter what the price.
Moreover, there is another person you did not mention who will take your apples from you and take them to market for you and everyone else who produces apples. He can do that more efficiently than you since he has a large truck and sales outlets in many towns. He then gets himself a monopoly in apples and can set a sales price well above your cost price which is all he is willing to pay you. In a free market there is always at least one person willing to do that.
Maybe Dec will be the flat month when last year’s EN bump drops the yr on yr increase number down under 3 ppm, maybe close to 2 ppm. Last couple of days have been under 3 ppm on the noisy daily avg number.
Daily CO2
December 6, 2016: 403.65 ppm
December 6, 2015: 401.18 ppm
2.47 ppm
If Dec is the flat month, then the Dec monthly avg number needs to be around 404.9.
Looking back at 2016, the real jump in CO2 increase showed up in February at 3.76 ppm, since that time we have a couple of months in 4 plus range (April and June) and the rest in strong 3 plus ppm range. Maybe we won’t see the flat month and apparent slowdown in rate of increase show up with Feb 2017 numbers. Should happen since 2016 has a EN bump and emissions are down, etc. Feb 2017 would be somewhat encouraging if it comes in around 406 flat or below.
Wait and see
Mike
Just in: (a belated PS & Xmas gift)
After the global financial crisis , a group of economics students at Manchester university wondered why their curriculum was totally divorced from what was happening in the real economy.
The students formed an economic reform movement called the Post-crash economics society. And they’ve now published a book called
The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts
Audio interview
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-econocracy/8100638
http://www.post-crasheconomics.com/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/we-need-to-rethink-economics/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/31/econocracy-split-britain-experts-ordinary-people-economics
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/31/econocracy-split-britain-experts-ordinary-people-economics
https://environmentaljusticetv.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/the-econocracy-the-perils-of-leaving-economics-to-the-experts/
*twinkle*
Selected endorsements
Beautifully written and packed with wisdom, it is a book for anyone who cares about the future of our societies, beginning, I hope, with professional economists themselves. This may be the most important economics book of the decade.’
Mark Buchanan, physicist, former editor of Nature and New Scientist and author of Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us about Economics
‘Historians, one day, will study the mesmeric capacity of economic doctrine to override the public’s faculty of rational judgement in favour of an unquestioning faith in the experts, in the face of the overwhelming evidence that they have got absolutely everything completely wrong. This research will engender the same sense of disbelief, I am convinced, that we feel today for the high mediaeval dogma that the sun must go around the earth because God ordained it so. This book will then be recognised as a turning point.
It is an eloquent, quietly passionate, but above all knowledgeable statement of the simple fact that the emperor is naked‘
Alan Freeman, Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University and Research Fellow of Queensland University of Technology, Australia
‘The economics profession has failed disastrously in recent decades, first by failing to warn of the dangers of a bloated and poorly regulated financial sector and then through an obsession with mathematically refined, but practically useless, modelling exercises.
It should be read not only by those seeking to understand how policies driven by the alleged needs of ‘the economy’ have failed, but also by economists who want to understand why their pronouncements are increasingly regarded with distrust and disdain.’
John Quiggin, Australian Laureate Fellow in Economics at the University of Queensland
Utterly compelling and sobering.
Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge and Author of Economics: The User’s Guide
If war is too important to be left to the generals, so is the economy too important to be left to narrowly trained economists…This book demonstrates just why that matters and offers thought-provoking ideas on how to go about it.
Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times
A rousing wake-up call to the economics profession to re-think its mission in society, from a collective of dissident graduate students.
Lord Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a Fellow of the British Academy in History and Economics
Every economist and citizen should get a copy.
Vince Cable, former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
FOREWORD by Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England, offers his reflections on the book and the challenge of democratising economics more broadly.
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526110138/
Intro extracts:
http://d2yvuud5fila0c.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/30125805/Econocracy-Introduction.pdf
A nice way to finish off.
All I am saying, the press has picked up the 2-6feet of SLR by 2100 meme and are repeating it. Sources and notes listed below.
The NASA and CSIRO graphs contain the sea level data back to 1880. Especially note the current unprecedented fall in sea levels recorded by NASA.
The current rate of SLR yields 10 inches by 2100.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/downloads/CSIRO_GMSL_1880_2015.pdf
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8418150
Rahmstorf S (2007)
A semiempirical approach to projecting future sea-level rise.
Science 315:368–370
Global Sea Level Linked to Global Temperature
Vermeer and Rahmstorf
PNAS Dec 22, 2009
“For future global temperature scenarios of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment
Report, the relationship projects a sea-level rise ranging from 75 to
190 cm for the period 1990–2100.”
Rahmstorf used a SLR dataset for 1880 to 2001 and calculated a constant for acceleration of 3.4mm/year for every degC increase in global temperature. He then multiplied this by the IPCC predictions for global temp scenarios and calculated 75 (2.4ft) to 190cm (6.2ft) SLR for the period 1990 to 2100.
Rahmstorf says:
– “Large uncertanties exist…”
– “our capability for calculating
future sea-level changes in response to a given
surface warming scenario with present physics based
models is very limited…”
– “the computation of the link between the
driver and the response from first principles
remains elusive.”
CSIRO states, “Pfeffer et al. (2008) have argued that a rise in excess of 2 metres is “physically untenable,” and that a maximum rise of 0.8 metres (near the upper end of the IPCC AR4 projections) is more plausible.”
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_proj_21st.html
CSIRO is limiting upper range of SLR to 2.6 feet.
Global sea levels are rising at 3mm/year. There is little or no acceleration in the rate of SLR. 3mm per year gains roughly 10 inches by 2100. The press has picked up the predictions made by Vermeer and Rahmstorf in 2009 and are repeating the prediction of 2-6 feet of SLR by 2100. The facts do not support this conclusion.
Alastair B. McDonald @98.
The first paper you link to is available in full here. The second paper (from the same authors Curran & Curran and Sept 2016 so 5 months newer) unfortuantely appears to be still paywalled. I say ‘unfortunate’ because its abstract contains very ambiguous comment.
China’s emissions are some 2.9Gt(C), some 30% of the global total. It is a big number, equal to 1.3ppm if it ended up stuck in the atmosphere. But what are Curran & Curran actually saying this 2.9Gt(C) is equal to? It is as clear as mud & it is surely irresponsible to bandy around such a big number without a proper description of what is meant by it.