This month’s open thread. Topics this month? What should a conservative contrarian be writing op-eds about that avoids strawman arguments, and getting facts wrong? What do you really think about geoengineering? Tracking the imminent conclusion of the Nenana Ice Classic (background)?
Usual rules apply.
Ah, the links smarten themselves. Now I know – I’d been trying to insert the tags myself.
Re #32 Kevin McKinney says Killian, #9, Eric S., #26–
What I hear in #9 is basically “tend your garden, and if you do it sustainably all will be well.” Sorry, I don’t think so.
This is truly disappointing. I have never said anything close to that. Once upon a time, I thought an ally had finally arrived at RC. Alas, not so. You cannot, will not, give up your latte, so cling to non-solutions.
You were once (seemingly) on the outside of the Peanut Gallery looking in. Not so. Challenge your ego (i.e. the CCL) and that ended in a quick hurry. This is a study in ego vs. solutioneering. Well, fear, more accurately. It is darned hard to imagine an entirely different future after 10k years of the same basic gradient. When I called out CCL, you turned. Oh well. As I have said far too many times already, the biggest problem we have in solving our problems is the solutions all involve people.
In past conversations with K, I ‘ve been unable to get real detail on this marvellous world which will follow…
Calling what you do not, and are not willing to, understand a lack of details is both dishonest and a classic case of rationalizing. Not to mention, you can find such info in multiple ways: Search this forum. Search on PermOccupy. Search on Regenerative Governance. Go to my Facebook profile.
Not wanting to know is not failure to exist. For our readers, I will explicate some basic tenets of simplicity aka permaculture design aka regenerative systems.
1. Simple.
2. Place-based. I lierally cannot tell you what *you* must do. I don’t even know where you live. However, eve cursory reading on permaculture will give anyone a fair idea.
3. I have said innumerable times it **must** include egalitarian decision-making. It must include some form of regenerative design (permaculture should be the umbrella for anyone who understands these things, but there are others, such as Holistic Management, which has significant flawas, but can get you pointed in the correct direction.
4. If you can’t be bothered to understand true sustainability, you simply do not want to. It’s VERY simple math. To put it entirely too simply, there is literally no resource on this planet that does not require very careful management with so many people on the planet. ANY physical resource has limits. Most physical resources are finite. Use them, they are gone. ****This alone should send caution bells ringing so loud you can barely think****, but snce you are part of CCL and unwilling to listen to critique of CCL, you clearly do not underwstand this.
4b. Sustainability is using resources so that whatever you are doing, you can do forever, excepting the curve balls the universe throws, like asteroids, all the hydrates releasing, aliens enslaving us all, God flooding the planet, etc.
Any other definition of sustainability is absolute bullpucky. This is where the rubber hits the road, and this is where groups like CCL live so they can keep what they have and not have to engage in the deep change needed.
5. I have told you many times, find the graphic. I would post it here if I knew how to post pictures. I do not.
ALL the answers lie in the natural world, including, and especially, First Nations indigenous groups.
Consequently, while I remain interested in permaculture und so weiter, I have little faith in K’s dream.
The greater sadness for you to imagine it does not already exist. It does. I am not dreaming, I am describing. Bizarre you do not yet realize that.
Particularly unconvincing to me is the reformation of human nature implied by the apparent lack of militarism of any sort in K’s imagined future. Rather ironic in that regard that he accuses me of expecting a different result from the same actions…)
Ah, but I am aware of non-militaristic history for humans, thus… Find out about Caral-Supe in Peru. Existed in the same era as the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
More so, I watch as humans gather in times of crisis. Why would we not when the crisis is possible extinction? The problem is not what humans will or won’t do, it’s making them aware of the nature of the problem. Your CCL buddies do not understand nor accept this, so they push carbon limits. For the record, I was pushing Fee and Dividend long before you ever mentioned it here. The difference is that I understand it as a band aid, you believe it a solution. Worse, I understand the unintended consequences of F&D: We’re saved! We’ve priced carbon! Let’s go use a bunch of carbon celebrating. People think a freaking ligh bulb change is enough, how do you think they’ll react to F&D? EV’s are trumpeted all over the planet. Why? They ENABLE the current paradigm.
It’s also a bit confusing to compare K’s latest screeds with the earlier sunny allegation that Trump’s election wasn’t a problem since it had unleashed a wave of activism that would move the country a bit closer to a sane climate policy.
Now that same activism is useless,
You are being intentionally obstuse, it seems. I said **sixties style** activism was pointless. If that activism were going into electing a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington congress, that would help. If that activism were directed at disengagement from a system that cannot beget regenerative systems, that would be great. If it was focused on building community, that would help. To the extent it is focused on anti-Trump, it just makes everyone look like children.
I have not said any different. The key is, an activated American public can be directed to better ends. A couch-sitting electorate is useless.
…the result of persistently asking ‘the wrong questions.’ Perhaps if K’s points were made a bit more specifically and clearly, this unworthy one wouldn’t be still languishing in the outer darkness, despite years of opportunities to profit by K’s enormous wisdom.
Sad little puppy. You have been given what you need many times. open your eyes. Use it.
Now, stop making excuses. Grow a garden, start a neighborhood council/general assembly and start tackling things in your neighborhood rather than waiting for the city to do it. Start to assert that sharing is good, that what is in the neighborhood is for the neighborhood to manage, not the city, not hte county, not the state, not the Feds, unless invited in – and so long as any effect does not extend beyond your neighborhood.
See a city-wide problem the city isn’t/can’t handle? Start a city council/general assembly and tackle it.
Same for the watershed(s) you inhabit and the bio-region.
Claim the Commons where you can, then where you must. Deend it, peacefully.
Create networks that crisscross the bio-region as the Amazonians did. Over time, clai mthe full Commons, and let the old system die off as you do.
They call it simplicity for a reason, ya goofball.
> TTT “the one I saw on the net that sounds reasonable is …”
Link to your sources so people can look at where you’re getting the ideas you post.
Thomas, I’m afraid you’re not making it any easier for yourself.
Hank Roberts:
I ain’t tellin’. I will only say it was quite an experience for a growing boy.
40
Many of the issues Fred Magyar refers to are addressed in the paper’s 2,000 word discussion section which I urge him to read with greater care.
The application to coral cooling was adduced by UNEP coral conservationists in several of the forty-odd papers that have cited the Climatic Change paper he has linked . Many of these are listed and linked in the comments sections under the posted slideshow and video .
As the the biological changes arising from changes in the euphotic zone are indeed complex, more publications on the marine and lacustrine biology and limnology of hydrosls may be expected-
The slideshow and citation list link is differernt from the one Fred Magyer listed, which is to the unpaywalled Climatic Chane paper alone
Both are on and in the comments following the ‘Bright Water’ Youtube channel that serves as the subject’s web page:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpotupJanKti1t1Nuj3gZA
“Stefan Rahmstorf get really serious puts his foot down “enough is enough” and cancels his NYTs subscription.”
if threre where more thsn 10 must-reads a month in the NYT- you can read ten a month without subscribing, Stefan’s action would have considerably more moral force.
50:
As an inhabitant of the Anthropocene who wants to care about more than carbon, may I beg to remind b.fagan that as Earth is mostly open water , what matters significantly is less the color of its roofs than its hydrosphere:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpotupJanKti1t1Nuj3gZA
“On the causal structure between CO2 and global temperature”
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep21691
is not difficult and offers a statistical notion of causation both in modern times and in paleodata. In addition, there is an analysis of the AMO and the PDO suggesting neither is that important.
52 Killian; it’s a language worldview thingy mate.
It can’t really be taught, it has to be caught.
Basically those who criticize you for speaking up like Kevin, Eric, Mike, Wodger, Hank, Wussell, and Malware are not arguing against what you [or I] say – but arguing against what they BELIEVE you’re saying and mean –
Two very different things. The latter being very common in a House of Big Egos. It REPRESENTS, to them, a direct personal threat!
or iow the lights are out because there’s nobody is home.
— —
New book out by Clive Hamilton – Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the Anthropocene
https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/popular-science/Defiant-Earth-Clive-Hamilton-9781760295967
QUOTING:
We continue to plan for the future as if climate scientists don’t exist.
Our best scientists tell us insistently that a calamity is unfolding, that the life-support systems of the Earth are being damaged in ways that threaten our survival.
Yet in the face of these facts we [ and Real Climate scientists and participants just ] carry on as usual.
This bizarre situation, in which we have become potent enough to change the course of the Earth yet seem unable to regulate ourselves, contradicts every modern belief about the kind of creature the human being is.
It is true that grasping the scale of what is happening requires not only breaking the bubble but also making the cognitive leap to “Earth system thinking” – that is, conceiving of the Earth as a single, complex, dynamic system.
Beyond the science, the few alert to the plight of the Earth sense that something unfathomably great is taking place, conscious that we face a struggle between ruin and the possibility of some kind of salvation.
So today the greatest tragedy is the absence of a sense of the tragedy.
The indifference of most to the Earth system’s disturbance may be attributed to a failure of reason or psychological weaknesses; but these seem inadequate to explain why we find ourselves on the edge of the abyss.
Yet the bookshops are regularly replenished with tomes about world futures from our leading intellectuals of left and right in which the ecological crisis is barely mentioned.
They prognosticate about a future from which the dominant facts have been expunged, futurologists trapped in an obsolete past.
It is the great silence.
Quotes from:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/05/the-great-climate-silence-we-are-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss-but-we-ignore-it
52 Killian – here’s something you can keep believing in safely and wholeheartedly without others blaming you for it.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
Obviously, with hindsight, I should put my shared missives here based on psychology cognitive sciences business know how and mathematics into widdle comics. ;-)
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
#39 Greg Guy: no, that is not what the article says.
#53 Hank, thank you again for your reply.
This has been always in my mind since I was a kid as I said but I’m not really looking for the answer per se. I just remember it from time to time. I thought if I brought it up here somebody would recognise it right the way. I thought it was that easy. So the last time I looked it up in the net was a couple of years ago. I really don’t remember where. I tried again but I’m not sure if this was it. It doesn’t say anything infrared light. … It may well be my alternate reality though. :-(
[———————– Due to the increasing light, the molecules of water begin to liven up. This requies energy which is drawn directly from the surrounding air. When there is frost on the ground in the early morning the temperature is fairly constant. When the light starts to increase the temperature drops. The energy required to change the state of water from ice to liquid is termed the “latent heat of liquification” and is drawn directly from the surrounding air. Dew starts to evaporate and this also requires energy. This is termed the “latent heat of vapourisation”. I hope this helps. Sam ]
Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/temperature-begins-to-fall-at-dawn.7408/
“Victor keeps posting along with several other denier drop kicks day after day after day.”
Uh, excuse me, Thomas, but YOU are the one who keeps posting day after day after day — often more than once a day. I post rarely nowadays — only when absolutely necessary.
I should let this go, I know. But:
“You cannot, will not, give up your latte…”
Don’t drink it, as a rule. Yeah, I know, it’s a metaphor. Odds are, you don’t live much simpler than I do. And it’s certain you don’t know much about my life.
“Challenge your ego (i.e. the CCL)…”
Nope. It’s not about me. It’s about climate sanity.
“Calling what you do not, and are not willing to, understand a lack of details is both dishonest and a classic case of rationalizing. Not to mention, you can find such info in multiple ways..”
Once upon a time, I asked you exactly this. I got a flow-chart graphic, which, while a interesting, was rather short on detail. And I’d already been to your Facebook profile then.
You seem, on the surface at least, to want to communicate. Why, then, go ballistic when someone tells you your message isn’t getting through to them? Maybe it’s my fault, as you insist so stridently, but still, if you want to communicate, one would think you’d keep trying.
“The greater sadness for you to imagine it does not already exist. It does. I am not dreaming, I am describing.”
Yes, in glowing generalities.
“More so, I watch as humans gather in times of crisis. Why would we not when the crisis is possible extinction?”
Because for a great many humans, the default response is to make sure that the ‘other’ goes first… and because the real damage precedes its obvious manifestation. The damage is being done now. Too many fail to see it, focused as they are on illusions of wealth or holiness.
“The difference is that I understand [CCL] as a band aid, you believe it a solution.”
No. I believe that it is a helpful step in the present reality. I don’t think there is “a” solution.
“Now, stop making excuses…”
Though you were the guy who couldn’t tell me what to do. And clearly, you don’t know what I’m actually doing now, either.
Perhaps you should lose some of the ego. You are not omniscient.
David B. Benson says
That was a very good read. Enjoyed their comments about the AMO and the PDO.
Here is one I read last night that I also found interesting.
62 Hank Roberts, ah yes. Hanks SOP. As deep as a puddle of dew on a sunny morning.
You’re right where you belong Hank, irrelevant!
Thomas inter alia:
In 2011, at Steven Pinker’s suggestion, Edge.org asked the following as its annual Edge Question:
“What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?”
Biologist and blogger PZ Myers considered “algebra”, but then chose the mediocrity principle:
IOW, you’re not all that.
It’s a hard lesson to learn about oneself, as I can attest; but essential if you’re resolved not to fool yourself. Even if you’re perfectly happy to fool yourself, you should know that you are the easiest person to fool, and assume you’re not fooling anyone else.
Russel #58 – thanks and understood about the watery surface, I watch out my window as the ice forms and melts on Lake Michigan every winter as a reminder.
(small aside on climate communication – most people probably mentally assign the 2°C global target to mean 2° in their locale, ignoring the fact that land temperature changes are hidden in that averaged surface change of a water planet. Then here in the USA, they’re minimizing further by assuming local 2° F instead.)
My interest in the passive cooling innovations in #50 are not as a large-scale geoengineering tool, but for reducing energy expenditure and improving air quality, especially in dense urban environments. Global geoengineering scares me because a large artificial cooling technology will never include an ability to coordinate in advance with unexpected large volcanic eruptions. Plus, as others mention, the ocean pH would still be suffering.
If this paint or plastic film can really reduce temperatures under a roof, maybe the number of air conditioners Dr. Curry has advocated for can be reduced by better passive cooling instead. That the relatively small surface area involved is dumping some of the heat directly to space is just a minor bonus. If rooftops on Chicago homes and apartments had this back in 1995, some lives might have been saved as the elderly poor in top-floor apartments may have been able to cool down each night as the roof pulled out heat from below during the killer heat wave. As urban areas get bigger and denser in developing nations, paint and plastic sheet could help in reducing overall power demand on weak grid systems.
70 bfagan
You seem to have missed the point– I have not published anything on ” paint or plastic film” because virtually all materials of use in covering urban roof surfaces cost vastly too much to cover substantial water features, urban or otherwise.
In order to work water conservation must cost less than the water it saves. In the case of resevoirs, ponds and other water features of hectare or larger dimensions , this means methods that fall within the roughly 50 to 500 dollar range of water costs encountered in agricultural use in both advanced and undeveloped nations.
Take a look at the banner graph at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpotupJanKti1t1Nuj3gZA
and you will see why economic necesssity has focused our research on the practicality of developing neither paint, nor films (winds rapidly displace oil slicks) or floating textiles or balls. All have proven to in general cost more than the water they save.
This leaves only one material in the running for development: the only thing cheaper than water is air and it ol=nly takes a part per milllion by volume of it to double the albedo of water.
Speaking of cognitive toolkits:
http://bartonlevenson.com/ISK/ISK.html
JCH #67 — Another Liang paper!
An interview with Paul Hawkin about “Drawdown”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2017.1314995
with 80 solutions for global warming.
69 Mal Adapted
Gosh well thanks for sharing Mal. I was speaking to Killian. What’s that got to do with you? Besides nothing that is.
Now, of course people choose to contribute what they feel is relevant on forums for all kinds of personal motivations, and you are no different. But to me the question is one of RELEVANCE.
So, instead of the content of your post, would you tell me something or speak about something I do not already know or don’t already know how to practice and do it already?
Are you suggesting perhaps that you believe that I am “fooling myself”?
If so be specific and do tell what you imagine that is, and why I should pay your beliefs and opinion any heed whatsoever that that relates to myself.
Or was it really just a general statement about “fooling ourselves” is so easy, and that that applies to everyone here, including yourself and you were motivated to share that well worn idea with the world again?
Then again, what I think it is is merely another example where commenters here totally ignore the content of what people share on this space for years and play the Man instead.
It’s called ad hominem Mal … it’s a fallacy. And yet very common in this space for years. Suck it up mate. Stop fooling yourself you have any special (relevant) insights about myself worth repeating out loud. :-)
Clarification about “and play the Man instead.”
That’s not accurate enough. What the resident trolls do here is play their internalised image of “the Man” that only exists insides their heads.
That image is a mythological being, a fantasy that’s not real.
Patently unscientific, irrational and presumptuous.
False Beliefs are like that.
And yet Mal posts a mini-treatise “addressed to me” about how easy it is to fool one’s self?
I think that’s pretty funny. And very self-serving and haughty.
Denial (on any subject) is like that. Go research that if choose not to accept my word on it at face value.
50 bf
My house air conditioning is not working. The house has a lot of south facing windows, which are great most of the time here in the PNW – helps heat the house on sunny winter days.
.
But now summer is coming. I’ve been thinking that if I could find a paint that I could paint the outside (exterior) of the glass a reflective color (probably white) it might help keep the place cooler. BUT it needs to be easily removed in the fall when the solar gain will be helpful. Any suggestions? Doubt I can add awnings (the best solution) due to HOA rules.
.
There are exterior films such as these, but they’re expensive:
https://www.windowtint.com/collections/exterior-window-films/products/exterior-deluxe-natural-window-tinting-film-20-vlt
Simon_C @22: I’m talking about mechanical Direct Air Capture (DAC) using moisture, pressure, or temperature swing filters that capture CO2 from the air. These could be modular units (think shipping container size) that are placed where renewable energy, environmental conditions, and a sequestration site is available. Other techniques like ocean fertilization should be researched. It’s all hands on deck time.
Mal Adapted @24: SRM is relatively cheap, measuring only in the billions of dollars a year. DAC is measured in $/ton of CO2 captured and sequestered. While academic papers have pegged the cost of DAC at ~$500/ton, that is not correct. With further R&D and if built at large scale, DAC could cost in the $50/ton range, but let’s assume $100. At 10GT/year, that’s $1 trillion/year. Actually it will be more, since we need 10GT of DAC ON TOP OF getting our net emissions to zero, so call it 2GT/year. Oh, and things will get worse faster than predicted, so lets make it 4GT/year (that’s how much we currently emit every year). So for $4 trillion/year ($2 trillion if we’re lucky) we can get atmospheric CO2 concentrations headed in the right direction… a bargain!
Erik Lindeberg @48: The current cost of point-source carbon capture is in the $60 to $100+/ton range. However, new technologies, like from our portfolio company Inventys, promise to lower that to $30/ton and even less in the years ahead. As I mention above, academic studies say that DAC will cost ~$500/ton but that is not correct. I have met with companies that have plans for getting the cost of DAC well below $100/ton, assume a fair amount of R&D funding. On that note, the US should be putting hundreds of millions of dollars into DAC research now. It’s a cheap insurance policy (actually, it’s not insurance at this point… we are going to need it!).
#66 Kevin McKinney, you are stooping to outright dishonesty. As if the following were not posted:
Not wanting to know is not failure to exist. For our readers, I will explicate some basic tenets of simplicity aka permaculture design aka regenerative systems.
1. Simple.
2. Place-based. I literally cannot tell you what *you* must do. I don’t even know where you live. However, eve cursory reading on permaculture will give anyone a fair idea.
3. I have said innumerable times it **must** include egalitarian decision-making. It must include some form of regenerative design (permaculture should be the umbrella for anyone who understands these things, but there are others, such as Holistic Management, which has significant flawas, but can get you pointed in the correct direction.
That you don’t understand, or, more accurately, intentionally leave out, the depth and breadth of permaculture (now more and more referred to as regenerative practices, with things like agroforestry, etc., mixed into it), and these collective practices’ ability to do everything we need to do to both adapt and mitigate, is bald-faced dishonesty.
As if I’m supposed to do a two-week certification for you here…
4. If you can’t be bothered to understand true sustainability, you simply do not want to. It’s VERY simple math. To put it entirely too simply, there is literally no resource on this planet that does not require very careful management with so many people on the planet. ANY physical resource has limits. Most physical resources are finite. Use them, they are gone. ****This alone should send caution bells ringing so loud you can barely think****, but since you are part of CCL and unwilling to listen to critique of CCL, you clearly do not understand this.
ARe you no longer part of CCL? It seems to make little difference in your willingness to listen or learn, if so.
4b. Sustainability is using resources so that whatever you are doing, you can do forever, excepting the curve balls the universe throws, like asteroids, all the hydrates releasing, aliens enslaving us all, God flooding the planet, etc.
Any other definition of sustainability is absolute bullpucky. This is where the rubber hits the road, and this is where groups like CCL live so they can keep what they have and not have to engage in the deep change needed.
5. I have told you many times, find the graphic. I would post it here if I knew how to post pictures. I do not.
ALL the answers lie in the natural world, including, and especially, First Nations indigenous groups.
I suppose there’s no knowledge in this world about how some indigenous groups live/have lived? You know nothing of the terraforming done in the Americas in the pre-Columbian era? Nothing of the vast networks in the Amazon, e.g.?
Let end with: It seems like nothing to you but gossamer. That is because you simply cannot understand what you are reading, or can’t accept it, or both.
Funny, ain’t it, that in recent days some fancy-pants activist type was writing about how we need egalitarian networks from the micro to the galactic level! A bit overdone, sure, but his tongue was firmly in cheek, I’m sure, but he basically lifted exactly what my graphic states and what I have said here more than once: Fractal egalitarian governance. Hmmm… I said it in 2011. Think he really did steal the idea? It’s been on the web since 2012.
But, heck, that’s not a detail. Permaculture has no details. Carbon farming, zero. (Been pushing natural carbon sequestration for how many years here? I think since probably 2010..?)
It’s not a mirage, not some ethereal, barely heard words on the moor, dude, it’s just that you can’t grasp simplicity.
You want details up close and personal? Call a permaculture designer to educate you, or help you with your home/neighborhood/city. That’s the only way you can get the details YOU need.
Alastair McDonald #47 – You’ve given us another of your posters to view. I think you have some errors, such as ref #7, which I think is a reprint of Brooks’ earlier second edition published in 1970, long before the ice core data and GCM results were available. In addition, that paper by Seager and Battisti used a model of climate in which the sea-ice area was proscribed, not calculated (Seager et al. 2002). Reading Hu et al. (2010) suggests that cutting off the flow thru the Bering Strait leads to a stronger AMOC, thus warmer climate around the Atlantic, which would seem to imply the opposite of the abrupt warming at the start of the Bölling–Alleröd as SL rose. That does not preclude the effects of later fresh water flooding as the large lakes trapped behind the Canadian glaciers was released into the waters which eventually impinged on the THC sinking in the high latitude North Atlantic/Arctic.
The sinking waters of the THC are associated with the edge of the sea-ice, where the water is near freezing and the location of that boundary would surely change, as you suggest. However, the appearance of surface melt ponds changes the albedo of sea-ice such that the strong albedo feedback you claim would likely be muted, as we are witnessing in recent Arctic climate. I would suggest that sea-ice over the sub-polar North Atlantic would be very seasonal and would tend to break up due to storms, thus such sea-ice likely have little impact on albedo during the summer months.
RSS TLT for the start of 2017 mirroring UAH TLT.
The RSS April anomaly is given as +0.39ºC. As per UAH, this is up on March (+0.35ºC) but below Jan & Feb (+0.41ºC & +0.44ºC). April 2017 is the 5th warmest April on record (after 1998 +0.86ºC, 2016 +0.78ºC, 2010 +0.50ºC, 2005 +0.47ºC – all El Nino years) and the 53rd warmest of all months in the record. (The UAH order was identical but 52nd warmest on full record.)
The first four months of 2017 thus average +0.40ºC, the 4th warmest start to a year on record (after 2016 +0.83ºC, 1998 +0.68ºC, 2010 +0.55ºC and ahead of 2002 +0.38ºC. 2007 +0.38ºC, 2004 +0.33ºC, 2003 +0.31ºC, 2015 +0.30ºC). (UAH, with the exception of 2005 replacing 2002 in the list, was identical in ordering.)
This reinforces the view that 2017 has kicked off remarkably “scorchio!!”
mike @20,
You ask “MAR at 6: Could this be the new normal?”
With the NH growing season now in full bud, both 5-week and 9-week averages of the annual MLO CO2 rise (see graphic maintained here (Usually two clicks to ‘download your attachment’.) have now dipped below 2ppm, and that with little assistance from La Nina condictions.
April CO2
April 2017: 409.01 ppm
April 2016: 407.42 ppm
Daily CO2
May 6, 2017: 410.01 ppm
May 6, 2016: 407.65 ppm
It could be worse! I think that’s the first month average over 409. Jumped right over the 408 integer, but I expect we will back into a 408 month sometime later this year.
Mike
I do not doubt Kevin is intelligent, but I am certain he simply does not want to understand. I have posted about the solutions for many years here. Things I used to be a lone voice on (here, at least, and with some exceptions over the years) are now mainstream. How can he claim permaculture has no detail? Agroforestry, food forestry, water management, applying principles derived from natural systems after long years of study.. is any of this lacking in detail? The Rodale study I have mentioned over and over went on for 30 years. I wrote in 2008, and shared here, a view of energy as localized vs. continuing with a large grid. This was long before it was common theme among activists. it was hardly unknown, but few were suggesting we do away with utility-scale energy in 2008. I even proposed a way to pay for it.There’s a governance model, a means of regenerating the planet, a new economic paradigm, a plan for expanding regenerative communities globally in an extremely short time period (Regenerative Community Incubators.)
There is a positive side to Kevin’s inability to understand that simplicity is, surprise!, simple. As I wrote recently elsewhere, this is one of the barriers to adopting simplicity: We are so used to solving complexity with complexity, it is very difficult to see how simplicity could possibly be the way forward. People generally, and the more educated and science- and/or tech-oriented a person is, the harder it seems to be. (This is just my observation.)
So, we get to talk about this. A good, after all.
It’s not just wrapping one’s head around simplicity, though. People really don’t want to give up those lattes, metaphorical and real. The knee-jerk response to simplicity is not a soft one, it’s like you tasered them. It’s visceral. It’s hard to get a person to understand a thing when their entire lives depend on them not understanding/accepting it, to coin a phrase.
Then there’s the brainwashing. Sorry, but a thing made with finite materials is unsustainable, period. Yet, when you tell people solar panels and wind generators are unsustainable, they simply do not believe it. Sunlight and wind are inexhaustible, after all! (So, yes, there’s also straight up ignorance involved.) But that is what they hear and see all around them: Renewable energy! It’s a massive fraud because there is simply no way the people making and pushing these things don’t know they are going to run out of resources to make them. of course they do. Ah, but endless substitution. That’s the way out.
Nope.
Economics has a huge share of the blame for the faulty reasoning of the learned and unlearned. Sigh…
Lacking in detail?
Anyone remember my proposed World Simulation? Still a great idea! And lots of detail!
You can argue the merits of my solutions suite (including elements originated by many others, obviously), but to call it without detail is argumentative at best. And that’s being kind.
How do we transition to simplicity given such a pervasive fear of doing so? i honestly think people mean it when they say they’d rather the world burn than experience simplicity.
And this is among people who understand there’s a problem and sincerely want to do something about it.
I got chills, they’re multiplying, and [we’re] losing control…
Blast from the past I: Household vs The Grid
Blast from the past II: World Simulation
First iteration of Regenerative Governance, @ 2011-12.
Sorry for the lack of details. ;-)
Can someone explain (if anyone understands) why Michigan and much of the Northeast is so cold right now? This article describes an “omega block”, but doesn’t seem to explain the causation: https://www.wunderground.com/news/atmospheric-clog-omega-block-cooler-east-midwest. I speculated on Twitter that it was something like the pattern Jennifer Francis has described, where warming of the Arctic has reduced the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the equator, weakening the jet stream. Ryan Maue suggested that I look instead at convection over the Western Pacific warm pool.
The reason I would like to know is that I am sticking my fingers in my ears and pretending I didn’t read Thomas in #35 and #36.
“This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years. ”
http://www.thegwpf.com/another-arctic-ice-panic-over-as-global-temperatures-plummet/
Germany gets 85% of energy from renewables April 30:
…days like April 30 will become “completely normal” by 2030…
http://reneweconomy.com.au/graph-of-the-day-germanys-record-85-renewables-over-weekend-60743/
https://twitter.com/AgoraEW/status/859429660584812544
…& 40% for the month of March:
https://energytransition.org/2017/04/march-was-a-record-month-for-renewable-power-in-germany/
Martin Smith @73.
You quote the words of Christopher Booker who is incapable of describing anything serious about AGW being in deep deep denial about its existence.
The TLT satellite data Booker claims shows “no further warming” in its latest 19-year trend (latest 228 months) actually does have a warming trend of +0.075ºC/decade. This warming trend is not statistically significant due to the big wobbles in TLT data.
The trend over the previous 19-year period, which Booker implies showed a warming trend (as he talks of “no further warming”) also had a warming trend (+0.115ºC) again not statistically significant. (A 19-year period comprising the end of this earlier period and the beginning of the most recent period shows a stronger warming trend (+0.16ºC to +0.21ºC) with the trend of some TLT data records for this overlaping period being just statistically significant.)
Over the most recent 19 years, the surface global temperature records which Booker chooses to ignore show both a strong warming trend (+0.19ºC/decade) and, as the wobbles are are smaller than in the TLT satellite data, statistical significance. This surface warming trend for the latest 19-year period is actually stronger than the previous 19-year period surface warming trend (+0.135ºC).
I think this demonstrates rather well the level of incompetance Booker provides the world with his pronouncements of AGW.
Martin, your source is an English major, no scientific credentials.
In 1998 like in 2016 we had an El Nino. The temperature in 1998 took a good leap and then the increase slowed. It didn’t decline after the El Nino but slightly increased to set a record again in 2010. In 2016 we experienced another leap that began in 2014. This year without an El Nino were expected to be somewhere between 2014 and 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPSIvu0gQ90
Expect the upward trend to continue, especially if we have another El Nino.
#73–“This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years. ”
Er, no, it doesn’t. Or rather, it wouldn’t if it were even true.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
And for the globe:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1998/plot/uah6/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend
Christopher Booker couldn’t recognize the truth if it mugged him at noon on the high street–and emailed him a selfie of the whole thing.
Killian, again–
K, I’d *love* to understand. That’s why I keep bugging you for info.
Yes, I can get information on permaculture. However, what I see reflects *the practice of permaculture using the products of industrialized society*–ie., cheap, high-quality steel tools, sometimes manufactured materials, almost always manufactured fibers and clothing–and then there are the issues of health care and medecine, plus (since we are talking about a population of billions) things such as sanitation, education, and, yes, security.
(I’m not saying these can’t be done sustainably, but currently such needs are met with a pretty heavy dependence on tech–so if that’s abandoned, what kinds of labor costs are implied?)
In short, while I find the ideas of permaculture intriguing and potentially very useful, I have not yet seen anything that comes close to explaining just how billions of people are going to live in the permaculture world. I’d love to believe they could, and Scott has at least provided some numbers that suggest that maybe we could grow enough food.
But how do we distribute it, or redistribute people such that it’s all ‘local’–presumably meaning an ox cart ride away?
What about fiber? In pre-Industrial times, most of the female half of the population spent a good portion of their time spinning fiber and weaving cloth. Do we go back to that? And do we have enough land to produce natural fiber and food, too? What about distributing the fiber?
And I hate to harp on it, but what about steel? There’s lots of iron in the Earth’s crust, of course, but it’s a finite resource just as much as, say, lithium or neodymium. So do we or don’t we get to use it in this infinitely sustainable world our Simple Living friends advocate for? I think it makes quite a difference.
And that’s the real issue. K, you trash renewables, and pooh-pooh political resistance to the current highly destructive regime, on the grounds that the first is not truly sustainable, and the second is merely pouring energy uselessly into a doomed system, the crash of which is more to be welcomed than feared anyway, since it brings us closer to that Simple World.
That’s great if this were a game. But it’s survival. Renewables are doing more than anything else right now to actually bend the emissions curve downward–which is our top immediate priority, or should be. And political realities are the main immediate obstacles to bending it faster.
So to *abandon* two such extremely important efforts in the struggle to survive is a very big ‘ask’–and that is why I for one want a very specific picture painted before I bite.
What specifically do you think this world would look like, K, and how specifically can we get there without losing a large chunk of the global population? Don’t slough off such questions and then tell me I’m lazy. You’re the one trying to make the sale–if I may be permitted such a crass commercial metaphor.
Thomas:
One wonders how Thomas knows whether he’s fooling himself or not, and if he’s ever suspected he might be.
Thomas, one more time: it’s not about you.
For the sake of completeness, it’s not about me either.
I keep seeing articles that imply the 2C limit is still achievable. But then I look back and find that the concensus on what the CO2 concentration limit is, for a chance of 2C, is 450 ppm CO2e. As we’re at something over 485 ppm CO2e now, why do some scientists still think that the 2C limit is achievable?
BTW, I’m not advocating for no action but I think we need to accept that 2C is now blown and plan for at least that. I don’t see any usefulness in pretending that 2C is achievable, when we should be planning mitigation AND adaptation strategies.
K 84: a thing made with finite materials is unsustainable, period.
BPL: Please name something made with infinite materials.
M 86: “This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years. ”
http://www.thegwpf.com/another-arctic-ice-panic-over-as-global-temperatures-plummet/
BPL: What part of “each of the last three years was successively the warmest on record” do you not understand?
KIA:
These are expensive times. Actually they always have been, we’ve just been accumulating a bill in arrears.
The arrears will accumulate until the transition to a carbon-neutral global economy is accomplished. The longer we delay collective intervention in the “free” energy market, the higher private losses will mount, as installments are paid one way or another even as fossil-fuel profits flow unabated.
Some Americans, in Baton Rouge for example, have recently paid more than they bargained for; and several hundred South Asians, for another, have paid with death by heatstroke (global warming, duh) in the last few years. You may find yourself paying, when the beachfront real estate you invested in 15 years ago is condemned due to sunny-day flooding. Regardless, people who obtain little if any benefit from your energy consumption or mine will pay disproportionately, whether they can afford to or not. Doesn’t seem fair, does it.
OTOH, the sooner we implement a federal revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment, the sooner the carbon-neutral transition will be complete and the installment payments capped.
What are we waiting for? You tell me, Know It All.
Erica #85 It is true that Michigan and the northeast U.S. have been unusually cold recently because of an omega block. Blocks are slow moving, persistent weather circulations in the mid to upper troposphere that feature a very wavy jet stream with strong north/south extensions. They occur in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. Forecasters name them by appearance, although there are no strict definitions that I am aware of.
In the case of omega blocks in general, the pattern resembles a giant version of the Greek letter “omega”. The jet stream makes a strong equator-ward excursion into a deep trough or closed eddy circulation, eastward over a strong poleward-jutting ridge, and then into another deep trough or eddy. The current North American omega pattern features two eddies, and the eastern one is generally positioned over southeast Canada. This configuration results in a flow of cold air from northeast Canada across the still-frozen Hudson Bay, and into the northeast U.S. (There is an even stronger block over the Atlantic that is bringing unusually warm weather north into Greenland.)
The reasons for the development and placement of blocks are complex, and are also an area of active research. Nobody really knows why this particular block formed when and where it did. The research of Jennifer Francis generally concerns the development of a strong blocking pattern in the Winter months. Some current research describing the current pattern (wavenumber 6-8)can be found here doi:10.1038/srep45242
It’s somewhat technical, but you may recognize the names of the lead authors.
me @78… my comment to Mal Adapted @24 dropped some zeros along the way. We need a minimum of 10GT of negative emissions and I doubled that to 20GT (not 2GT) and to protect against things getting worse faster, I suggest we remove 40GT/year (not 4GT), which is what we emit now. The cost figures are correct if DAC costs $100/ton ($1T per 10GT).
82 MA Rodger says:
7 May 2017 at 11:46 AM
mike @20,
You ask “MAR at 6: Could this be the new normal?”
Real Answer: MAR does not know OR MAR is not willing to publicly state what he really thinks/judges to be the case based on the current state of the data and evidence and the enormous background scientific knowledge about PPM, the atmosphere, and the volume of emmissions.
Note to Mike – 1) Maybe you should have defined “normal” for him?
2) consider not asking such questions of MAR (or RC scientists). Doing the same thing over and over again …… etc.
Maybe ask RC scientists re the recent Arctic summary report posted here what is the scientific basis in that Report of the declaration of an ice free arctic summer not occurring until the late 2030s?
Do they accept or reject that prognosis? And why?
On what possible basis known to scientific man could the summer sea ice extent survive (ie Sept/Oct 15%+) until the late 2030s (that another 20+ years from now) given what we know already and could see with our own eyes were one to look?
Now that is an excellent series of questions. Don’t you think Mike? :-)