Absolutely nothing of consequence happening today in climate news. Can’t think of what people could discuss…
Reader Interactions
251 Responses to "Unforced Variations: June 2017"
Killiansays
Russell, don’t talk about being a man when you intentionally mislead with your queston in the forst place. You are doing nothing but propaganda. Shame on yiu for fake questions, moving goal posts, and immoral/unethical communication.
I answered the questiin you asked. Stuff your straw man and ask the questions you actually want answered
Thomassays
#196 Lyn – See pgs 6 & 7 of the nature article – “Reliability of model variability estimates” that section may help.
eg Our analysis is unlikely to reconcile divergent schools of thought
regarding the causes of differences between mo del led and observed
warming rates in t he early twenty-first century. Howe ver, we have
shown that each hypothesized cause may have a unique statistical
signature. These signatures should be exploited in improving
understanding. Although scientific discussion about the causes of
short-term differences between modelled and observed warming
rates is likely to continue, this discussion does not cast doubt on
the reality of long-term anthropogenic warming.
To me the paper is like detailed discussions about the nature of quarks inside atoms. While the article and commentary on Breitbart is basically like this: “Hey dude, look at that lump of mud. Ha ha ha. So funny dude!”
I have a question relating to the contributors of this website:
Gavin Schmidt
Michael Mann
Rasmus Benestad
Ray Bradley
Stefan Rahmstorf
Eric Steig
David Archer
Ray Pierrehumbert
Are any of the these contributors banned from that propaganda site run by A. Watts?
Alastair McDonaldsays
Lynn,
It seems that at last someone is admitting that the models are wrong!
I presented a poster at EGU 2016 which explains Santer’s Tropical Lapse rate problem and how it is caused by ignoring the fact that absorption only takes place in the boundary layer.
Of course, such a fundamental error is very (impossibly) difficult for the experts involved to accept. You only have to look at the blog post by Prof Halpern where he shows that the transmission between 600 rcm (reciprocal centimeters) and 750 rcm is zero for both 280 ppm and 560 ppm CO2, and claims that shows CO2 is not saturated! Well it is nearly saturated over that band, which is what Dr. Koch showed.
There is another recent paper which hints at the models being flawed: The Holocene temperature conundrum. That can also be explained if you accept that CO2 is nearly saturated and so climate sensitivity is low i.e. during the Holocene climate was driven by solar isolation not CO2. How CO2 affects the climate is by heating the surface air which alters the planetary albedo by melting ice sheets and increasing cloud cover by encouraging evaporation of water vapour.
Alastair McDonaldsays
Lynn,
I would just like to add that what I proposed in my previous post is equivalent to a new paradigm for radiative transfer in the climate models, and that this paradigm shift provides a simple explanation for the other issue you mentioned, the hiatus.
This new paradigm states that rather than the TOA (top of the atmosphere) energy balance being maintained by changes to the outgoing long wave radiation (which is saturated), it is mainly maintained by changes to the outgoing short wave radiation, i.e. albedo.
The hiatus happened because the Antarctic sea ice extent, (largely unnoticed) increased during the 21st Century. At the same time the Arctic sea ice extent was decreasing with the result that the overall global albedo did not change. Of course, the question then arises why did the Antarctic sea ice expand? The answer is that since the effect of CO2 is at the surface, rather than distributed throughout the troposphere, then the surface of the Antarctic ice shelves melted supplying fresh water to the sea ice edge. That fresh water froze at higher temperature and so extended the sea ice. (No doubt other factors were also involved.)
I am pointing this out as it is further evidence that this new paradigm is correct.
However, there is still one unanswered question, which I have not yet heard asked. Why did the Antarctic sea ice suddenly retreat at the start of September last year? It is still about 10 M sq km less than the previous minimum on a daily basis. See: this chart and click on Antarctica. But that does explain why global temperatures have remained high despite El Nino ending, and may resume their steep upward trend!
But, I fully expect strong resistance to these ideas, as with any new paradigm.
THE REALITY OF A SMALL HOUSEHOLD THERMOACOUSTIC REFRIGERATOR
R. Starr, P.K. Bansal, R.W. Jones, B.R. Mace
The Department of Mechanical Engineering
The University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand
1996
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the thermoacoustic refrigeration cycle and how it can be applied to real world uses, particularly its use in household refrigeration systems. The commercial viability of this technology is determined by comparing it to a vapour compression system. The paper has two goals: to determine practical applications where thermoacoustic refrigeration may prove a strong rival to current methods, and to determine what future developments are required for this technology to be of commercial value.
Oh, and from those search results, there’s this company (Google search limited to past year) that claims they have ‘patented’ (their air quotes) thermoacoustic refrigeration and seeks investment to bring it to market.
Hmmmm …. deserves an investigative report on the technology and why it didn’t come in to widespread use when freon went out.
And, yeah, there are always going to be dead ends, blind alleys, and ripoff alternatives offered as “green” when something turns out to have problems, as HCFCs turned out to be greenhouse gases. Markets fail when there are opportunities to promote cheap but destructive alternatives not yet ruled out by law, regulation, or common decency.
Dave clarified that companies have to internalize the cost of this environmental externality and create sufficient storage facility to take care of down time and run the incinerators to ensure that HFC-23 is not released in the atmosphere.
“It is noted that some HCFC–22 producers, even in the developed world, are not handling the HFC–23 in the most professional manner,” the statement said.
As per Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment, the move will potentially check emissions of HFC-23 equivalent to 100 million tonnes of CO2 over the next 15 years.
“With this domestic legislation to control the emissions of HFC-23, India is sending a strong signal to the world that it is serious about the climate change issue,” said CSE deputy director general Chandra Bhushan.
CSE stressed that with this move India has also told the world that it will control emissions of HFC-23 on its own—without any financial support from developed countries.
Scott Nuddssays
RE: 188 – Fire due to environmental regulations
From the article linked:
Kirkham also recommended that the government encourage councils to retrofit sprinklers in tower blocks. But the (conservative) government saw this as an unnecessary burden and suggested instead that it be left to the fire industry to “encourage their wider installation”.
This was a tragic missed opportunity, according to Sibert. “If the building had been provided with sprinklers then that fire, if it started in the kitchen, would never have got out of the kitchen and nobody except the firefighters who would have gone there to mop up would have known about it.”
Sprinklers were retrofitted in a similar tower at Callow Mount in Sheffield two years ago at a cost of £1,100 per flat. The Fire Brigades Union claims there has never been a multiple death in a building fitted with sprinklers.
Mal has just embraced the srongest endorsement of the Precautionary Principle since Dick Cheney set forth his 1% possibility criterion for bombing nations he thought might harbor terrorists.
Evidently the Precautionary Principle is non-partisan. Dick Cheney is cordially invited to snort my taint, regardless.
The Risky Business project is about putting dollar figures on the risks AGW poses to the US economy. An early payoff of the savvy reinvestment of fossil-fuel profits in public disinformation, was to persuade receptive US voters that AGW is a partisan “environmental” issue, rather than an economic Tragedy of the climate Commons; IOW, a looming diseconomy affecting literally everyone on Earth one way or another. The RB numbers make that erroneous linkage obvious IMHO, by documenting the mounting economic burden of AGW borne by Americans.
The residents in that tower block had been pointing out that the fire precautions were inadequate and a catastrophe was inevitable, but their warnings were dismissed. I have been arguing that the climate models are inadequate and that a catastrophic abrupt warming is inevitable, but I too am being scorned!
200
Profuse as this author’s flames, profanity, and comments explicitly or implicitly impugning the motives of others, and erroneous, specious, or otherwise misleading assertions may be , he remains too much of a bore for celebration in a blog chronocling idiocy , inanity , ideology and horsefeathers in the Climate Wars.
fwiw a rapid high % of solar/wind roll out in South Australia combined with sudden unexpected closures of “private” coal fired power stations, within an interconnected national grid highlighted the limits of WWS alternatives during high demand / crisis shock periods – eg grid damages shutdowns due to storms. The issue is sometimes called “dispatchability” of electricity when it’s needed during high demand periods vs production.
Lot’s of blame was thrown all round – at the end of the day it appears to be the original neglecting of a mandate of any kind of back up storage capacity in the original renewable targets (projects) encouraged by Govts for years.
So now in Australia there is a default new expectation that a some form of storage capacity for renewable must be a part of all projects. The fed govt has thrown $2.5bln (?) at a new snowy river hydro pumped storage unit to increase reliability. The SA state govt is building their own new gas fired unit under their ‘public’ control to switch it on vs the ‘privatised’ market regulator, and Elon Musk and many others local and overseas are now engaged in offering quotes / tenders for back-up Battery Storage systems to add to the Grid systems.
This is one unique example of missteps with renewable rollouts, I expect other nations have their own special characteristics but the essential need for storage capacity is a critical necessity already to ensure energy security (including during extreme weather events).
It’s solvable but at what added unexpected unplanned costs?
and fwiw since the “carbon tax/ets” was repealed here 4 years ago, electricity prices have more than doubled due to “market forces”. Includes shutting down of 3 older coal fired stations in a year, gas being exported at premium prices with no retention rule subsequently pushing up local prices and insufficient supply for power stations next year.
iow “disruption” effects are everywhere to be seen and usually are interconnected. Politics and common sense planning is not keeping up imho.
I doubt Dr Mann has ever stated or considered that 405 ppm CO2 is/was a safe limit. What he stated in the article you linked to was
Furthermore, the notion that two degrees C of warming is a “safe” limit is subjective.
However, I’m interested to know Dr Mann’s thoughts about what he wrote then, given the level of CO2 is frequently above that level he thought would offer us a chance of staying below 2C. I’ve heard him many times suggest that there is room for hope, following the Paris agreement but CO2 levels are now destined to go way past 405 ppm. Does he believe that there is any reasonable chance that the temperature anomaly could be limited to 2C?
Given that he thought, in 2014, that some parts of the world were already seeing dangerous impacts, what does he think now?
Given that he thought, in 2014, that some parts of the world were already seeing dangerous impacts…
Like the 2003 European heatwave, or the 2010 Russian heat/fire outbreak, or the Australian drought, or the California drought, or the Middle Eastern drought, or numerous extreme precip events, some of which were relatively harmless and some of which cost billions of dollars and a few more lives, or…?
Well, enough, perhaps. My perspective is that the ‘dangerous impacts’ experienced so far this millennium amount to (un)comfortably more than 100,000 premature deaths and $100 billion. Better informed estimates generally seem to run higher… though there don’t seem to be many that really try to do a comprehensive count. Well, attribution is hard, not least in cases like that of Syria, where the causality involved is quite complex. How many of the nearly half million dead and more than 13 million refugees/internally displaced persons should go under the climate change heading, if we were to try and keep track?
I have a problem with your M&M analogy. Where it differs from physics is that the two people eating the red M&Ms immediately emit another M&M for each one they eat and that these emitted M&Ms go bouncing around the room. Some of these find their way back onto the conveyor belt and when the situation reaches steady state, the number of red M&Ms entering on the conveyor equals the number leaving on the conveyor belt.
Your graphs reflect the fraction of the photons that arrive at a point in the gas column unmolested CO2 molecules. But having arrived at that point and having been absorbed, the photon gets re-emitted in a random direction. When the system reaches equilibrium, the same number of photons will leave the gas column as enter. So no matter how long the tube filled with CO2 was used by Angstrom, and no matter what the gas pressure, the amount of IR energy leaving the tube would equal the amount of IR entering the tube. Now if Angstrom had used an IR camera to determine what fraction of the photons were able to make the trip without being absorbed and were available for creating an image of the IR source, then his analysis would have made more sense.
Al Bundysays
Thomas,
Don’t you remember about a year ago I was talking about an engine that would allow for the construction of a 100MPGe biofuel large sedan? I mentioned the agricultural system as well, but I don’t think I mentioned the forestry revolution, nor all the rest.I don’t know what silly name I was using at the time, but I’m rather easy to track within this site. By the way, my real name is “Doc”. Whom do you think I should reveal my stuff to once it’s protected? I’m thinking Barton. He hates me and is honest, which sounds like a winning combination…
David Rank served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1990 to 2017. The opinions expressed here are his own.
This month, I resigned from the State Department’s Foreign Service, stepping down as the senior U.S. diplomat in China and ending a 27-year career. I served five presidents — three Republicans and two Democrats — and, like my colleagues throughout the Foreign Service, took pride in the tradition of loyal, nonpartisan service. I also took seriously my oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and the obligations that came with representing the American people.
When the administration decided to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change, however, I concluded that, as a parent, patriot and Christian, I could not in good conscience be involved in any way, no matter how small, with the implementation of that decision….
Al Bundy was the protagonist of an American sitcom, “Married with Children,” from a couple of decades ago. Ted Bundy, of course, was a prolific serial killer.
and Lightning Hybrids’ X-prize candidate “100 MPG hydraulic-biodiesel hybrid car … Available in 2010”
page is 404, saved at the Internet Archive. Alas.
ABM 204: absorption only takes place in the boundary layer.
BPL: Quantum mechanics stops working above the boundary layer? News to me.
Good point, I should have written net absorption only takes place in the boundary layer. In other words, diurnal warming of the atmosphere which is the result of net absorption, does not occur above the boundary layer.
Mal Adaptedsays
Our host:
Eli,
even if there are a few days a year above 37 C web bulb, places (like the Ganges Valley) become uninhabitable
Yes, I don’t think this point is fully appreciated.
That ESRI site of Vinny’s is nifty, and horrifying. Evidently, even under RCP4.5 (peak emissions in 2040), most of coastal and insular S and SE Asia and the wet tropics of Africa and the Americas will be practically uninhabitable by 2050.
I don’t know about all y’all, but I’m planning to still be alive in 2050. We are cursed, to live in such interesting times.
“In a nationally representative survey, 74.4 percent of respondents identified as Republicans said they believed that climate change is really happening. But only 65.5 percent said they believed in global warming. In contrast, 94 percent of Democrats replied “yes” to both questions.”
Taking a broad brush avg number, the survey is suggesting a mean average of up to 80% of mainstream Americans agree/believe that global warming and climate change is really happening. This majority opinion / science based world view is not reflected across the media, online discussions, the WH or Congress. A mostly ‘silent majority’ maybe?
Andrewsays
Re: Tony #221
Obviously I can’t speak for Dr. Mann, but (also obviously) he must be fully aware that we have blown past the 405ppm threshold.
Hence, we will find ourselves in a situation of >2C average global warming compared to pre-industrial sometime around 2036, if Dr. Mann’s estimate for ECS is roughly correct. And 1.5C should be reached around 2026, which is less than ten years from now. By then not only climate scientists, but I would think a large part of the global population will be fully aware of the dangerous consequences of global warming and the urgency of public policies to reduce carbon emissions – thanks in a large part to Dr. Mann, James Hansen and many other vocal figures in the climate science community.
“Given that he thought, in 2014, that some parts of the world were already seeing dangerous impacts, what does he think now?”
I am curious too, and would appreciate an “update” article by Dr. Mann. It’s always good to know how deep a hole we have already dug ourselves in.
Killiansays
#230 Mal Adapted said Our host:
Eli,
even if there are a few days a year above 37 C web bulb, places (like the Ganges Valley) become uninhabitable
Yes, I don’t think this point is fully appreciated.
“It’s the extremes, stupid.” Me. to self, 2011. Thus, “It’s the food supply, stupid.” – Me, to self, 2011, seconds later, after years of thinking energy or more general rapid climate changes were the primary concerns. Food is going, folks. We can’t keep having all these extremes in multiple locations and expect food supply to stay stable. I’m askeered to look at grain stocks…
I don’t know about all y’all, but I’m planning to still be alive in 2050. We are cursed, to live in such interesting times.
Not so much. My son, however, would be in his prime, and I’d likely have a grandchild or two, so motivation is high.
HadCRUT4 has posted for May at +0.66ºC, down from +0.74ºC in April and +0.87ºC in March. It is the third warmest May on record after 2015 (+0.71ºC) and 2016 (+0.69ºC) and ahead of 2014 (+0.61ºC) and 2010 (+0.59ºC). May 2017 is the 38th warmest month on the full record.
The start of 2017 remains the second warmest Jan-to-May on record with an average equalling the warmest average calendar year.
If you accept diurnal variation as a proxy for net absorption, since the quantum mechanical effect of absorption is to heat the air, then you can see from Fig. 2 that most of the net absorption occurs below 850 mb and that above 500 mb the tiny amount of net absorption slowly increases showing that it is the result of the absorption of solar not terrestrial radiation.
Of course this regions where there is a low diurnal range may correspond to the regions where LTE prevails, but that does imply that the boundary layer is not in LTE.
BTW, I am defining the boundary layer as the region where net absorption occurs.
Lawrence Colemansays
205 Alastair. Just looking at the long term graph of the past 2000 yrs of global CO2 with sea level rise and global temp clearly shows what’s about to happen. The obvious hockey stick of CO2 leading the way and SLR now clearly accelerating upwards in unison with global temp. The difference post industrial rev to now of CO2 is breathtaking 275-410ppm in 200 years. What the graph shows is that global temp will now take off like never before and keep going up until the planet establishes a new paradigm most likely without humans. It is merely copying a purely physical and mathematic equation. Within the next 30 +years temp will rapidly accelerate at near the same rate as CO2. Even if CO2 were to somehow plateau it would make absolutely zilch difference to the rise of global temp and SLR.
Don’t overlook the wood for trees. See things as they are happening. Whether we have an el-nino state or otherwise is irrelevant.
Lawrence Colemansays
off topic: Looks like Einstein is vindicated again by Washington Uni establishing a negative mass liquid for I believe the first time. Proving Einstein and Bose’s hypothesis once and for all. Go Einstein… never doubted him for a quantum second.
Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
Wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to what is felt when wet skin is exposed to moving air. It includes temperature and atmospheric humidity and is measured by covering a standard thermometer bulb with a wetted cloth and fully ventilating it.
The researchers calculated that humans and most mammals, which have internal body temperatures near 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, will experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at wet-bulb temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more, said Matthew Huber, the Purdue professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who co-authored the paper that is currently available online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….
233 Kilian. Agreed! we are cursed to live in these fascinating times. My son is 11 so I have a vested interest in the future if this planet. All you can do is educate your offspring to st least be climate change ready. He already knows s lot about CC and I am prompting him to improve his math grades to a view to a career in CC adaptation. Cheers!
This coming week should be an interesting one for Arctic ice-watchers. It is the time when exceptional melt seasons begin to show their hand and this melt season there are quite a few jokers in the pack.
The usual Sea Ice Extent (JAXA daily data plotted here as an anomaly – usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’) shows the crazy excursions during 2016 (a lot less Sea Ice Extent due to a very early melt season and a very late freeze season but with the height of the melt not as big as some expected and leaving a lot of ice in-place at the height of te melt).
What was perhaps different with 2016 was that (according to PIOMAS but not so convincing with CryoSat) both the melt season and the freeze season saw big drops in Sea Ice Volume. Add in the jokers – less melt ponds, more snow cover, stressed/weaker ice pack, the volume perhaps more concentrated in areas that melt out – and the height of the 2017 melt season could go any-which-way.
Akselsays
I have a question about the climate physics:
An increase in CO2 leads to more warming. That is known since Arrhenius and Tyndal.
More warming leads to a lot of feed-backs, some feed-backs lead to more CO2 (ie wildfires) and some leads to lower albedo (ie decreasing ice at the poles).
In short, can you say that basically the global warming is caused by only two factors:
1) increasing greenhouse gasses and 2) decreasing albedo?
alan2102says
https://www.indy100.com/article/forest-city-china-air-pollution-town-trees-liuzhou-stefano-boeri-climate-change-paris-agreement-7809736
China is building first ‘forest city’ of 40,000 trees to fight air pollution
June 2017
snip
Designed by Stefano Boeri, who you might remember also designed two vertical skyscraper ‘forests’, the city is currently under construction in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province. Once completed, the new city will reportedly host 30,000 people and – thanks to the abundance of trees and plants – will absorb almost 10,000 tons of CO2, 57 tons of pollutants per year and produce approximately 900 tons of oxygen annually. The city will achieve these rather impressive figures thanks to roughly a million plants from over 100 species, as well as 40,000 trees being planted in facades over almost every surface imaginable.
#233: “It’s the food supply, stupid. …. Food is going, folks. We can’t keep having all these extremes in multiple locations and expect food supply to stay stable.”
Mebee. Mebee not.
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/how-the-great-food-war-will-be-won/
How the Great Food War Will Be Won
January 12, 2015
By Jonathan Latham, PhD
By conventional wisdom it is excellent news. Researchers from Iowa have shown that organic farming methods can yield almost as highly as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, from Berkeley, California, have reached a similar conclusion. Indeed, both findings met with a very enthusiastic reception.
[…snip…]
The big idea that industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that only they can produce enough for the future population (Peekhaus 2010). Thus non-industrial systems of farming, such as all those which use agroecological methods, or SRI, or are localised and family-oriented, or which use organic methods, or non-GMO seeds, cannot feed the world.
To be sure, agribusiness has other PR strategies. Agribusiness is “pro-science”, its opponents are “anti-science”, and so on. But the main plank has for decades been to create a cast-iron moral framing around the need to produce more food (Stone and Glover 2011).
[…snip…]
The real food crisis is of overproduction
Yet this strategy has a disastrous foundational weakness. There is no global or regional shortage of food. There never has been and nor is there ever likely to be. India has a superabundance of food. South America is swamped in food. The US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are swamped in food (e.g. Billen et al 2011). In Britain, like in many wealthy countries, nearly half of all row crop food production now goes to biofuels, which at bottom are an attempt to dispose of surplus agricultural products. China isn’t quite swamped but it still exports food (see Fig 1.); and it grows 30% of the world’s cotton. No foodpocalypse there either.
[…snip…]
Even some establishment institutions will occasionally admit that the food shortage concept — now and in any reasonably conceivable future — is bankrupt. According to experts consulted by the World Bank Institute there is already sufficient food production for 14 billion people — more food than will ever be needed. The Golden Fact of agribusiness is a lie.
Eric Swansonsays
RSS just released their latest Lower Troposphere (LT) v4 series with a paper in J. Climate. Here’s a commentary from Zeke Hausfather:
“new method finds a global-mean land diurnal cycle that peaks later in the afternoon, leading to improved agreement between measurements made by co-orbiting satellites. The changes result in global-scale warming (global trend (70S-80N, 1979-2016) = 0.174 C/decade), ~30% larger than our previous version of the dataset (global trend, (70S-80N, 1979-2016) = 0.134C/decade). This change is primarily due to the changes in the adjustment for drifting local measurement time. The new dataset shows more warming than most similar datasets constructed from satellites or radiosonde data.”
Hot, hot, hot. It’s not a streak, it’s the new normal and we are not going to like the new normal.
How did this happen? Something to do with increase in CO2 in atmosphere.
Normal Is Over, an award-winning documentary that looks for SOLUTIONS to climate change, species extinction, resource depletion, and the widening gap between rich and poor.
The screening will start at 7 p.m. at the Internet Archive and will be introduced by Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, followed by a Q & A session, with Renee Scheltema, filmmaker, investigative journalist, and two other panelists to be announced.
What: Film Screening: Normal Is Over
When: Monday, July 17, 2017. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and screening starts at 7 p.m.
Where: Internet Archive Headquarters
300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118
Russell, don’t talk about being a man when you intentionally mislead with your queston in the forst place. You are doing nothing but propaganda. Shame on yiu for fake questions, moving goal posts, and immoral/unethical communication.
I answered the questiin you asked. Stuff your straw man and ask the questions you actually want answered
#196 Lyn – See pgs 6 & 7 of the nature article – “Reliability of model variability estimates” that section may help.
eg Our analysis is unlikely to reconcile divergent schools of thought
regarding the causes of differences between mo del led and observed
warming rates in t he early twenty-first century. Howe ver, we have
shown that each hypothesized cause may have a unique statistical
signature. These signatures should be exploited in improving
understanding. Although scientific discussion about the causes of
short-term differences between modelled and observed warming
rates is likely to continue, this discussion does not cast doubt on
the reality of long-term anthropogenic warming.
To me the paper is like detailed discussions about the nature of quarks inside atoms. While the article and commentary on Breitbart is basically like this: “Hey dude, look at that lump of mud. Ha ha ha. So funny dude!”
iow what created the conditions in the futuristic movie Idiocracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
imo Breitbart and Delingpole are best ignored and avoided as a total waste of time. A slow read of the Paper contents can only help.
I have a question relating to the contributors of this website:
Gavin Schmidt
Michael Mann
Rasmus Benestad
Ray Bradley
Stefan Rahmstorf
Eric Steig
David Archer
Ray Pierrehumbert
Are any of the these contributors banned from that propaganda site run by A. Watts?
Lynn,
It seems that at last someone is admitting that the models are wrong!
I presented a poster at EGU 2016 which explains Santer’s Tropical Lapse rate problem and how it is caused by ignoring the fact that absorption only takes place in the boundary layer.
Of course, such a fundamental error is very (impossibly) difficult for the experts involved to accept. You only have to look at the blog post by Prof Halpern where he shows that the transmission between 600 rcm (reciprocal centimeters) and 750 rcm is zero for both 280 ppm and 560 ppm CO2, and claims that shows CO2 is not saturated! Well it is nearly saturated over that band, which is what Dr. Koch showed.
There is another recent paper which hints at the models being flawed: The Holocene temperature conundrum. That can also be explained if you accept that CO2 is nearly saturated and so climate sensitivity is low i.e. during the Holocene climate was driven by solar isolation not CO2. How CO2 affects the climate is by heating the surface air which alters the planetary albedo by melting ice sheets and increasing cloud cover by encouraging evaporation of water vapour.
Lynn,
I would just like to add that what I proposed in my previous post is equivalent to a new paradigm for radiative transfer in the climate models, and that this paradigm shift provides a simple explanation for the other issue you mentioned, the hiatus.
This new paradigm states that rather than the TOA (top of the atmosphere) energy balance being maintained by changes to the outgoing long wave radiation (which is saturated), it is mainly maintained by changes to the outgoing short wave radiation, i.e. albedo.
The hiatus happened because the Antarctic sea ice extent, (largely unnoticed) increased during the 21st Century. At the same time the Arctic sea ice extent was decreasing with the result that the overall global albedo did not change. Of course, the question then arises why did the Antarctic sea ice expand? The answer is that since the effect of CO2 is at the surface, rather than distributed throughout the troposphere, then the surface of the Antarctic ice shelves melted supplying fresh water to the sea ice edge. That fresh water froze at higher temperature and so extended the sea ice. (No doubt other factors were also involved.)
I am pointing this out as it is further evidence that this new paradigm is correct.
However, there is still one unanswered question, which I have not yet heard asked. Why did the Antarctic sea ice suddenly retreat at the start of September last year? It is still about 10 M sq km less than the previous minimum on a daily basis. See: this chart and click on Antarctica. But that does explain why global temperatures have remained high despite El Nino ending, and may resume their steep upward trend!
But, I fully expect strong resistance to these ideas, as with any new paradigm.
https://www.google.com/search?q=acoustical+refrigeration
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1343&context=iracc
Twenty years goes by like nothing …
Oh, and from those search results, there’s this company (Google search limited to past year) that claims they have ‘patented’ (their air quotes) thermoacoustic refrigeration and seeks investment to bring it to market.
http://www.coolsound.us/
Hmmmm …. deserves an investigative report on the technology and why it didn’t come in to widespread use when freon went out.
And, yeah, there are always going to be dead ends, blind alleys, and ripoff alternatives offered as “green” when something turns out to have problems, as HCFCs turned out to be greenhouse gases. Markets fail when there are opportunities to promote cheap but destructive alternatives not yet ruled out by law, regulation, or common decency.
China, I recall, was gaming the HCFC compensation system by producing and then being paid to destroy those gases .
Y’all remember this tskandal? https://www.google.com/search?q=china+gaming+hcfc
India:
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/pcdsZqTYUi1lK7Naby2YVN/India-to-eliminate-use-of-HFC23-by-2030.html
RE: 188 – Fire due to environmental regulations
From the article linked:
Kirkham also recommended that the government encourage councils to retrofit sprinklers in tower blocks. But the (conservative) government saw this as an unnecessary burden and suggested instead that it be left to the fire industry to “encourage their wider installation”.
This was a tragic missed opportunity, according to Sibert. “If the building had been provided with sprinklers then that fire, if it started in the kitchen, would never have got out of the kitchen and nobody except the firefighters who would have gone there to mop up would have known about it.”
Sprinklers were retrofitted in a similar tower at Callow Mount in Sheffield two years ago at a cost of £1,100 per flat. The Fire Brigades Union claims there has never been a multiple death in a building fitted with sprinklers.
Need links to a few sea level calculators (page down), or some science fiction climaterror images?
http://www.tor.com/2017/06/19/what-the-world-of-the-hunger-games-teaches-us-about-global-warming/
Russell:
Evidently the Precautionary Principle is non-partisan. Dick Cheney is cordially invited to snort my taint, regardless.
The Risky Business project is about putting dollar figures on the risks AGW poses to the US economy. An early payoff of the savvy reinvestment of fossil-fuel profits in public disinformation, was to persuade receptive US voters that AGW is a partisan “environmental” issue, rather than an economic Tragedy of the climate Commons; IOW, a looming diseconomy affecting literally everyone on Earth one way or another. The RB numbers make that erroneous linkage obvious IMHO, by documenting the mounting economic burden of AGW borne by Americans.
US Ahead of Paris Agreement Goals:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/us_on_track_to_reduce_co2_emissions_even_without_paris_accord_comments.html
Russel,
The residents in that tower block had been pointing out that the fire precautions were inadequate and a catastrophe was inevitable, but their warnings were dismissed. I have been arguing that the climate models are inadequate and that a catastrophic abrupt warming is inevitable, but I too am being scorned!
X, the unknown: Maybe you’d like us to withdraw from the 1949 Geneva Conventions as well?
BPL: How does that follow from anything I said?
ABM 204: absorption only takes place in the boundary layer.
BPL: Quantum mechanics stops working above the boundary layer? News to me.
ABM: Of course, such a fundamental error is very (impossibly) difficult for the experts involved to accept.
BPL: Probably because it’s wrong.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/06/cli-fi-books-for-the-summer-solstice/
Ted? Al? Bundy:
Belief that uncertainty is your friend is fatuous.
200
Profuse as this author’s flames, profanity, and comments explicitly or implicitly impugning the motives of others, and erroneous, specious, or otherwise misleading assertions may be , he remains too much of a bore for celebration in a blog chronocling idiocy , inanity , ideology and horsefeathers in the Climate Wars.
187 Hank Roberts, re WWS energy supply and http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114 et al., Caldeira, et al.
fwiw a rapid high % of solar/wind roll out in South Australia combined with sudden unexpected closures of “private” coal fired power stations, within an interconnected national grid highlighted the limits of WWS alternatives during high demand / crisis shock periods – eg grid damages shutdowns due to storms. The issue is sometimes called “dispatchability” of electricity when it’s needed during high demand periods vs production.
Lot’s of blame was thrown all round – at the end of the day it appears to be the original neglecting of a mandate of any kind of back up storage capacity in the original renewable targets (projects) encouraged by Govts for years.
So now in Australia there is a default new expectation that a some form of storage capacity for renewable must be a part of all projects. The fed govt has thrown $2.5bln (?) at a new snowy river hydro pumped storage unit to increase reliability. The SA state govt is building their own new gas fired unit under their ‘public’ control to switch it on vs the ‘privatised’ market regulator, and Elon Musk and many others local and overseas are now engaged in offering quotes / tenders for back-up Battery Storage systems to add to the Grid systems.
This is one unique example of missteps with renewable rollouts, I expect other nations have their own special characteristics but the essential need for storage capacity is a critical necessity already to ensure energy security (including during extreme weather events).
It’s solvable but at what added unexpected unplanned costs?
and fwiw since the “carbon tax/ets” was repealed here 4 years ago, electricity prices have more than doubled due to “market forces”. Includes shutting down of 3 older coal fired stations in a year, gas being exported at premium prices with no retention rule subsequently pushing up local prices and insufficient supply for power stations next year.
iow “disruption” effects are everywhere to be seen and usually are interconnected. Politics and common sense planning is not keeping up imho.
200 Al Bundy – I am confused – what’s this about?
Andrew
I doubt Dr Mann has ever stated or considered that 405 ppm CO2 is/was a safe limit. What he stated in the article you linked to was
However, I’m interested to know Dr Mann’s thoughts about what he wrote then, given the level of CO2 is frequently above that level he thought would offer us a chance of staying below 2C. I’ve heard him many times suggest that there is room for hope, following the Paris agreement but CO2 levels are now destined to go way past 405 ppm. Does he believe that there is any reasonable chance that the temperature anomaly could be limited to 2C?
Given that he thought, in 2014, that some parts of the world were already seeing dangerous impacts, what does he think now?
Like the 2003 European heatwave, or the 2010 Russian heat/fire outbreak, or the Australian drought, or the California drought, or the Middle Eastern drought, or numerous extreme precip events, some of which were relatively harmless and some of which cost billions of dollars and a few more lives, or…?
Well, enough, perhaps. My perspective is that the ‘dangerous impacts’ experienced so far this millennium amount to (un)comfortably more than 100,000 premature deaths and $100 billion. Better informed estimates generally seem to run higher… though there don’t seem to be many that really try to do a comprehensive count. Well, attribution is hard, not least in cases like that of Syria, where the causality involved is quite complex. How many of the nearly half million dead and more than 13 million refugees/internally displaced persons should go under the climate change heading, if we were to try and keep track?
I have a problem with your M&M analogy. Where it differs from physics is that the two people eating the red M&Ms immediately emit another M&M for each one they eat and that these emitted M&Ms go bouncing around the room. Some of these find their way back onto the conveyor belt and when the situation reaches steady state, the number of red M&Ms entering on the conveyor equals the number leaving on the conveyor belt.
Your graphs reflect the fraction of the photons that arrive at a point in the gas column unmolested CO2 molecules. But having arrived at that point and having been absorbed, the photon gets re-emitted in a random direction. When the system reaches equilibrium, the same number of photons will leave the gas column as enter. So no matter how long the tube filled with CO2 was used by Angstrom, and no matter what the gas pressure, the amount of IR energy leaving the tube would equal the amount of IR entering the tube. Now if Angstrom had used an IR camera to determine what fraction of the photons were able to make the trip without being absorbed and were available for creating an image of the IR source, then his analysis would have made more sense.
Thomas,
Don’t you remember about a year ago I was talking about an engine that would allow for the construction of a 100MPGe biofuel large sedan? I mentioned the agricultural system as well, but I don’t think I mentioned the forestry revolution, nor all the rest.I don’t know what silly name I was using at the time, but I’m rather easy to track within this site. By the way, my real name is “Doc”. Whom do you think I should reveal my stuff to once it’s protected? I’m thinking Barton. He hates me and is honest, which sounds like a winning combination…
Doc
—excerpt—-
By David Rank June 23 at 8:20 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-i-resigned-from-the-foreign-service-after-27-years/2017/06/23/6abee224-55ff-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html
David Rank served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1990 to 2017. The opinions expressed here are his own.
Al Bundy was the protagonist of an American sitcom, “Married with Children,” from a couple of decades ago. Ted Bundy, of course, was a prolific serial killer.
For that matter, McGeorge Bundy was a JFK/LBJ administration staffer involved with the Viet Nam war.
and Lightning Hybrids’ X-prize candidate “100 MPG hydraulic-biodiesel hybrid car … Available in 2010”
page is 404, saved at the Internet Archive. Alas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090223112803/http://www.lightninghybrids.com:80/index.html
In #215 barton wrote
ABM 204: absorption only takes place in the boundary layer.
BPL: Quantum mechanics stops working above the boundary layer? News to me.
Good point, I should have written net absorption only takes place in the boundary layer. In other words, diurnal warming of the atmosphere which is the result of net absorption, does not occur above the boundary layer.
Our host:
That ESRI site of Vinny’s is nifty, and horrifying. Evidently, even under RCP4.5 (peak emissions in 2040), most of coastal and insular S and SE Asia and the wet tropics of Africa and the Americas will be practically uninhabitable by 2050.
I don’t know about all y’all, but I’m planning to still be alive in 2050. We are cursed, to live in such interesting times.
Climate change label leads to climate science acceptance
Date: June 21, 2017 Source: Cornell University
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621103214.htm
“In a nationally representative survey, 74.4 percent of respondents identified as Republicans said they believed that climate change is really happening. But only 65.5 percent said they believed in global warming. In contrast, 94 percent of Democrats replied “yes” to both questions.”
Taking a broad brush avg number, the survey is suggesting a mean average of up to 80% of mainstream Americans agree/believe that global warming and climate change is really happening. This majority opinion / science based world view is not reflected across the media, online discussions, the WH or Congress. A mostly ‘silent majority’ maybe?
Re: Tony #221
Obviously I can’t speak for Dr. Mann, but (also obviously) he must be fully aware that we have blown past the 405ppm threshold.
Hence, we will find ourselves in a situation of >2C average global warming compared to pre-industrial sometime around 2036, if Dr. Mann’s estimate for ECS is roughly correct. And 1.5C should be reached around 2026, which is less than ten years from now. By then not only climate scientists, but I would think a large part of the global population will be fully aware of the dangerous consequences of global warming and the urgency of public policies to reduce carbon emissions – thanks in a large part to Dr. Mann, James Hansen and many other vocal figures in the climate science community.
“Given that he thought, in 2014, that some parts of the world were already seeing dangerous impacts, what does he think now?”
I am curious too, and would appreciate an “update” article by Dr. Mann. It’s always good to know how deep a hole we have already dug ourselves in.
#230 Mal Adapted said Our host:
Eli,
even if there are a few days a year above 37 C web bulb, places (like the Ganges Valley) become uninhabitable
Yes, I don’t think this point is fully appreciated.
“It’s the extremes, stupid.” Me. to self, 2011. Thus, “It’s the food supply, stupid.” – Me, to self, 2011, seconds later, after years of thinking energy or more general rapid climate changes were the primary concerns. Food is going, folks. We can’t keep having all these extremes in multiple locations and expect food supply to stay stable. I’m askeered to look at grain stocks…
I don’t know about all y’all, but I’m planning to still be alive in 2050. We are cursed, to live in such interesting times.
Not so much. My son, however, would be in his prime, and I’d likely have a grandchild or two, so motivation is high.
ABM 229,
No, net absorption takes place above the boundary layer, too. You’re just wrong.
HadCRUT4 has posted for May at +0.66ºC, down from +0.74ºC in April and +0.87ºC in March. It is the third warmest May on record after 2015 (+0.71ºC) and 2016 (+0.69ºC) and ahead of 2014 (+0.61ºC) and 2010 (+0.59ºC). May 2017 is the 38th warmest month on the full record.
The start of 2017 remains the second warmest Jan-to-May on record with an average equalling the warmest average calendar year.
… … ..Ave Jan to May … Annual ave … ..Annual ranking
2016 … … +0.93ºC … … +0.77ºC … … … … … 1st
2017 … … +0.77ºC
2015 … … +0.69ºC … … +0.76ºC … … … … … 2nd
2010 … … +0.62ºC … … +0.56ºC … … … … … 4th
1998 … … +0.60ºC … … +0.54ºC … … … … … 6th
2002 … … +0.59ºC … … +0.50ºC … … … … … 11th
2007 … … +0.59ºC … … +0.49ºC … … … … … 12th
2014 … … +0.54ºC … … +0.58ºC … … … … … 3rd
2005 … … +0.53ºC … … +0.55ºC … … … … … 5th
https://maps.esri.com/globalriskofdeadlyheat/#
Impressive data visualization
Barton,
You wrote
“ABM 229,
No, net absorption takes place above the boundary layer, too. You’re just wrong.”
Thanks for getting back to me. I have checked up on the diurnal variation in temperature and found this paper:Seidel et al., 2005 Diurnal cycle of upper-air temperature estimated from radiosondes.
If you accept diurnal variation as a proxy for net absorption, since the quantum mechanical effect of absorption is to heat the air, then you can see from Fig. 2 that most of the net absorption occurs below 850 mb and that above 500 mb the tiny amount of net absorption slowly increases showing that it is the result of the absorption of solar not terrestrial radiation.
Of course this regions where there is a low diurnal range may correspond to the regions where LTE prevails, but that does imply that the boundary layer is not in LTE.
BTW, I am defining the boundary layer as the region where net absorption occurs.
205 Alastair. Just looking at the long term graph of the past 2000 yrs of global CO2 with sea level rise and global temp clearly shows what’s about to happen. The obvious hockey stick of CO2 leading the way and SLR now clearly accelerating upwards in unison with global temp. The difference post industrial rev to now of CO2 is breathtaking 275-410ppm in 200 years. What the graph shows is that global temp will now take off like never before and keep going up until the planet establishes a new paradigm most likely without humans. It is merely copying a purely physical and mathematic equation. Within the next 30 +years temp will rapidly accelerate at near the same rate as CO2. Even if CO2 were to somehow plateau it would make absolutely zilch difference to the rise of global temp and SLR.
Don’t overlook the wood for trees. See things as they are happening. Whether we have an el-nino state or otherwise is irrelevant.
off topic: Looks like Einstein is vindicated again by Washington Uni establishing a negative mass liquid for I believe the first time. Proving Einstein and Bose’s hypothesis once and for all. Go Einstein… never doubted him for a quantum second.
op. cit.
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100504HuberLimits.html
http://www.trbimg.com/img-59535864/turbine/la-1498634334-65pui36knf-snap-image/800/800×450
233 Kilian. Agreed! we are cursed to live in these fascinating times. My son is 11 so I have a vested interest in the future if this planet. All you can do is educate your offspring to st least be climate change ready. He already knows s lot about CC and I am prompting him to improve his math grades to a view to a career in CC adaptation. Cheers!
This coming week should be an interesting one for Arctic ice-watchers. It is the time when exceptional melt seasons begin to show their hand and this melt season there are quite a few jokers in the pack.
The usual Sea Ice Extent (JAXA daily data plotted here as an anomaly – usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’) shows the crazy excursions during 2016 (a lot less Sea Ice Extent due to a very early melt season and a very late freeze season but with the height of the melt not as big as some expected and leaving a lot of ice in-place at the height of te melt).
What was perhaps different with 2016 was that (according to PIOMAS but not so convincing with CryoSat) both the melt season and the freeze season saw big drops in Sea Ice Volume. Add in the jokers – less melt ponds, more snow cover, stressed/weaker ice pack, the volume perhaps more concentrated in areas that melt out – and the height of the 2017 melt season could go any-which-way.
I have a question about the climate physics:
An increase in CO2 leads to more warming. That is known since Arrhenius and Tyndal.
More warming leads to a lot of feed-backs, some feed-backs lead to more CO2 (ie wildfires) and some leads to lower albedo (ie decreasing ice at the poles).
In short, can you say that basically the global warming is caused by only two factors:
1) increasing greenhouse gasses and 2) decreasing albedo?
https://www.indy100.com/article/forest-city-china-air-pollution-town-trees-liuzhou-stefano-boeri-climate-change-paris-agreement-7809736
China is building first ‘forest city’ of 40,000 trees to fight air pollution
June 2017
snip
Designed by Stefano Boeri, who you might remember also designed two vertical skyscraper ‘forests’, the city is currently under construction in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province. Once completed, the new city will reportedly host 30,000 people and – thanks to the abundance of trees and plants – will absorb almost 10,000 tons of CO2, 57 tons of pollutants per year and produce approximately 900 tons of oxygen annually. The city will achieve these rather impressive figures thanks to roughly a million plants from over 100 species, as well as 40,000 trees being planted in facades over almost every surface imaginable.
Boeri’s site:
https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/vertical-foresting-en/
Vertical ForestING – is a worldwide trend, generated by the first Vertical Forest built by Boeri Studio in Milan, in 2014…
#233: “It’s the food supply, stupid. …. Food is going, folks. We can’t keep having all these extremes in multiple locations and expect food supply to stay stable.”
Mebee. Mebee not.
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/how-the-great-food-war-will-be-won/
How the Great Food War Will Be Won
January 12, 2015
By Jonathan Latham, PhD
By conventional wisdom it is excellent news. Researchers from Iowa have shown that organic farming methods can yield almost as highly as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, from Berkeley, California, have reached a similar conclusion. Indeed, both findings met with a very enthusiastic reception.
[…snip…]
The big idea that industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that only they can produce enough for the future population (Peekhaus 2010). Thus non-industrial systems of farming, such as all those which use agroecological methods, or SRI, or are localised and family-oriented, or which use organic methods, or non-GMO seeds, cannot feed the world.
To be sure, agribusiness has other PR strategies. Agribusiness is “pro-science”, its opponents are “anti-science”, and so on. But the main plank has for decades been to create a cast-iron moral framing around the need to produce more food (Stone and Glover 2011).
[…snip…]
The real food crisis is of overproduction
Yet this strategy has a disastrous foundational weakness. There is no global or regional shortage of food. There never has been and nor is there ever likely to be. India has a superabundance of food. South America is swamped in food. The US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are swamped in food (e.g. Billen et al 2011). In Britain, like in many wealthy countries, nearly half of all row crop food production now goes to biofuels, which at bottom are an attempt to dispose of surplus agricultural products. China isn’t quite swamped but it still exports food (see Fig 1.); and it grows 30% of the world’s cotton. No foodpocalypse there either.
[…snip…]
Even some establishment institutions will occasionally admit that the food shortage concept — now and in any reasonably conceivable future — is bankrupt. According to experts consulted by the World Bank Institute there is already sufficient food production for 14 billion people — more food than will ever be needed. The Golden Fact of agribusiness is a lie.
RSS just released their latest Lower Troposphere (LT) v4 series with a paper in J. Climate. Here’s a commentary from Zeke Hausfather:
Major correction to satellite data shows 140% faster warming since 1998
probably doesn’t matter much, but:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0768.1
“new method finds a global-mean land diurnal cycle that peaks later in the afternoon, leading to improved agreement between measurements made by co-orbiting satellites. The changes result in global-scale warming (global trend (70S-80N, 1979-2016) = 0.174 C/decade), ~30% larger than our previous version of the dataset (global trend, (70S-80N, 1979-2016) = 0.134C/decade). This change is primarily due to the changes in the adjustment for drifting local measurement time. The new dataset shows more warming than most similar datasets constructed from satellites or radiosonde data.”
Hot, hot, hot. It’s not a streak, it’s the new normal and we are not going to like the new normal.
How did this happen? Something to do with increase in CO2 in atmosphere.
Warm regards
Mike
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