592 Responses to "Unforced Variations: August 2017"
CCHolleysays
re: Mr. Know It All @189
But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects. We are not sheep. We value freedom and are skeptical of anything that might make us less free. Militant leftist AGW believers would, today, destroy our national economy over AGW. They would destroy the world economy over it. Most of us are intelligent to realize that is not a good idea so we resist, we question, we are skeptical, we do not just say “BAAAA BAAAA” and roll over like people in other nations. We are more independent than most others.
I would postulate that those that believe the conservative anti-AGW propaganda garbage heavily funded by the Koch brothers are actually American sheep. Whatever.
Who are these militant leftist American AGW believers that would destroy economies over AGW? I’m sure there are some as it takes all kinds, but I sure don’t know of any. On the other hand, it is encouraging that there are a growing number of American politicians both conservative and liberal that recognize the need for action and that a market driven revenue neutral carbon fee that could actually stimulate the economy would be a good start.
Militant leftist AGW believers would, today, destroy our national economy over AGW.
Utter and complete nonsense. The real danger to our economy is climate change itself.
Even denialist Bjorn Lomborg concedes that climate change will become an economic liability (albeit much farther in the future than more reputable scholars, some of whom find that it is a net economic liability *now*.)
198 zebra says: “…and other such breathless phrases, make it really easy for the other side to misrepresent intended meanings.”
Um, apart from the obvious semantics for accuracy sakes, does it really matter how anyone says anything when the denierati will misrepresent anything and everything anyway? I seriously doubt (absence evidence) that A McD has ever been a source for Heartland, Murdoch or Lamar Smith to manipulate the public. :-)
Um, “ice-free” as far as I know & use it and as far as A McD uses the term here applies to less than 1M sq klms of basically a slush puppy state, be it in winter or summer. There’s nothing hyperbolic or extreme about the term in and of itself. It is what it is.
the latest IPCC reports in AR5 put a summer/Sept ice free arctic as not being “likely” occurring until post 2050 from memory, maybe not until post 2060. Of it’s hard to remember exactly as there are several scenarios in RCPs which is what confuses the “communication” and working out in which RCP scenario we are in the present, and next decade, and those after.
I don’t see blaming A McD for these basic unknowns when anyone speaks about next decade or 2050 “likelihoods” happening or not, and saying what they think are the present “trajectories” is a communication challenge/confusion inherent in the scientific yardsticks no matter who is doing the speaking or writing what media article.
Even the “scientists” who critiqued that TUE article by DWW did not agree in their “analysis” of what he wrote/intended his meaning to be. Unrealistic standards can never be met by anyone. Except when dealing with twits like Victor/kia and all the others infesting the internet today, asking for clarification while being even handed helps. Yeah?
Does it really matter an itoa if A McD is wrong or you don’t understand exactly what he “means”? Since CC science became known post-Hansen even the best have made mistakes and got some things right and wrong along the way in their Papers and public statements.
Impossible standards are impossible for all. thx
Thomassays
198 zebra, PS re this “and other such breathless phrases,” and this “andwe’reallgoingtodie” are both strawman fallacies and your thrust is equivalent to “fallacious rhetoric”, the very thing you’re complaining about in others (?) imo/imv/ime. (smile)
I can understand what A McD is saying, but have no idea how valid true or likely it might be. What he posits, as far as I know, is not supported by a “consensus” of climate scientists, yet that doesn’t mean he is wrong by default (yet). I can still recall when several new published papers / lead authors explaining the “pause” re oceans etc that were heavily critiqued / doubted here by RC scientists and readers only later to be accepted as the new “norm” it seems. Those papers wee about why the “models” were not adequately representing reality temps. It’s not a crime to offer up new ideas is it?
From what I can tell A McD is simply positing that may be a ‘new as yet unseen dynamic’ (?) in the arctic that will not come into play until the summer arctic sea ice is gone …. that after a decade or so there could be a “step change” that rapidly collapses the winter sea ice extent that is not as yet inputted in the climate models… and he is suggesting that is a pretty important thing to get right IF his idea/theory is correct – a theory he says needs more work and detailed analysis, and a decent Paper being published to support that notion scientifically.
Whether he is right or wrong atm, I can;t see what the problem is in putting it out there, and cannot think of a better place for it to be aired than here … when seeking some “feedback” from others in the field. And maybe he’s a total looney outlier too, but so what? James Hansen was pilloried for being making breathless dramatic extreme comments in 1988 too by many real scientists.
And for all we know there’s a new Paper coming out next month that may suggest the exact same thing as dynamic, rapid, and abrupt “step-changes” in winter sea ice extent not yet being incorporated in the current climate models – wouldn’t that be embarrassing? :-)
I recall asking a simple question if the el ninos are/could be affected by the overall increasing global warming that might make them more extreme and affect total warming even more, where they become more extreme or changed dynamics and was laughed at for being a dick here, for even asking. Two separate issues and unrelated I was “instructed” by the expert/s.
But I lol the other day when I saw that hidden away in the recent US climate report, with M Mann as a lead author, it raised the issue of potential negative feedbacks from a shift in el nino la nina cycles and intensity due to ongoing increasing global warming. Go figure, maybe I wasn;lt such a dick after all, LOL
(expressed in my words, I could have misinterpreted what that reports says, so look it up if interested in the draft 5 report yourself).
cheers and good luck. :-)
Nemesissays
@#201, #202:
Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.
Just go on believing in capitalism, believing in infinite growth on a finite planet and the system will be doomed 100%, because the economic system is never ever sustainable.
Nemesissays
The day we realize, that the economic system is not sustainable, will be a really harsh day, it will be a rude awakening. And when that awakening happens (sooner or later), the socalled “hard green” will take over and then it might be, that a tree might be more worth, than a human life, I am afraid:
The longer we are heading to the wrong direction, believing in infinite growth on a finite planet, the more rude the awakening will be and the more rude the political consequences will be.
Amen.
Thomassays
AGW/CC DENIERS and a Dysfunctional Media landscape – Why is it so?
Quoting: “How America Went Haywire” – from section: How the Right Became More Unhinged Than the Left
Just before the Clintons arrived in Washington, the right had managed to do away with the federal Fairness Doctrine, which had been enacted to keep radio and TV shows from being ideologically one-sided. Until then, big-time conservative opinion media had consisted of two magazines, William F. Buckley Jr.’s biweekly National Review and the monthly American Spectator, both with small circulations. But absent a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh’s national right-wing radio show, launched in 1988, was free to thrive, and others promptly appeared.
For most of the 20th century, national news media had felt obliged to pursue and present some rough approximation of the truth rather than to promote a truth, let alone fictions. With the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, a new American laissez-faire had been officially declared. If lots more incorrect and preposterous assertions circulated in our mass media, that was a price of freedom. If splenetic commentators could now, as never before, keep believers perpetually riled up and feeling the excitement of being in a mob, so be it.
[Hi there KIA and Victor et al – lol]
Limbaugh’s virtuosic three hours of daily talk started bringing a sociopolitical alternate reality to a huge national audience. Instead of relying on an occasional magazine or newsletter to confirm your gnarly view of the world, now you had talk radio drilling it into your head for hours every day. As Limbaugh’s show took off, in 1992 the producer Roger Ailes created a syndicated TV show around him. Four years later, when NBC hired someone else to launch a cable news channel, Ailes, who had been working at NBC, quit and created one with Rupert Murdoch.
[ I permanently disowned Murdoch as a genuine ‘Aussie’ about the same time.]
Fox News brought the Limbaughvian talk-radio version of the world to national TV, offering viewers an unending and immersive propaganda experience of a kind that had never existed before.
For Americans, this was a new condition. Over the course of the century, electronic mass media had come to serve an important democratic function: presenting Americans with a single shared set of facts. Now TV and radio were enabling a reversion to the narrower, factional, partisan discourse that had been normal in America’s earlier centuries.
And there was also the internet, which eventually would have mooted the Fairness Doctrine anyhow. In 1994, the first modern spam message was sent, visible to everyone on Usenet: global alert for all: jesus is coming soon. Over the next year or two, the masses learned of the World Wide Web. The tinder had been gathered and stacked since the ’60s, and now the match was lit and thrown. After the ’60s and ’70s happened as they happened, the internet may have broken America’s dynamic balance between rational thinking and magical thinking for good.
Before the web, cockamamy ideas and outright falsehoods could not spread nearly as fast or as widely, so it was much easier for reason and reasonableness to prevail. Before the web, institutionalizing any one alternate reality required the long, hard work of hundreds of full-time militants. In the digital age, however, every tribe and fiefdom and principality and region of Fantasyland—every screwball with a computer and an internet connection—[… Hello again Victor KIA et al …] suddenly had an unprecedented way to instruct and rile up and mobilize believers, and to recruit more. False beliefs were rendered both more real-seeming and more contagious, creating a kind of fantasy cascade in which millions of bedoozled Americans surfed and swam.
Plus a ref offered here before by yours truly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OeUINoYWsg which says the exact same things as this ~48 page article does in the The Atantic mag but in under 3 minutes. :-)
It would really nice to able to simply ignore the Unhinged but unfortunately you cannot – there is an entire for profit industry built around such BS delusions and this new age Fantasyland – now Institutional Govt and Corporate Power sustains their very existence. Congress will not ban Facebook Google or Fox News nor make any of them directly responsible for the Content.
Not yet anyway. One day this may change where enlightenment and reason and true facts will return as being the norm not the exception in reality.
DO NOT hold your breath though. ;-)
Thomassays
Mr. Know It All, please do pass on what you learn from the expert professionals about what is the best kind of solar power BATTERY SYSTEM for you to use at your home. I’m really curious how your renewable energy project progresses. Please do keep us up-to-date. Thanks Mr T.
Nemesissays
@Thomas, #207
” Usenet: global alert for all: jesus is coming soon”
WTF?! Is it already that late? Who is that guy called “Jesus” after all? Is he capitalist or communist, climate believer or climate denier? Will he bring plenty e-vehicles or will he bring more diesel SUV? Does he wear Gucci shoes or flip-flops? Where do I have to sign, to save my sinister soul?! And YES:
I regret all my sins right now 38-)
Killiansays
Re #189 Mr. Know It All said 179 – Nigel
In America where I live, I’d say most people have heard of the IPCC. Well, many young adults and children, most of whom are militant AGW believers, have probably never heard of it
Because we now live in Backwards Land.
But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects. We are not sheep.
Except… TeaPublicans and Trumpaloompas and other Authoritarians…
We value freedom
False. The illusion of freedom, meaning a Christian Caliphate is OK, but Constitutional Law is a no-no, ’cause that’s liberals taking away our guns!
and are skeptical of anything that might make us less free.
See above.
Militant leftist AGW believers
AKA sane people…
would, today, destroy our national economy over AGW.
Every action, every decision is ultimately an ecological decision. The ecology simply is, and everything you have comes from it. What is not real is what you call “economy.” That is a construct that has been twisted so far from the ecology the ecology is in the process of collapsing.
we do not just say “BAAAA BAAAA” and roll over like people in other nations. We are more independent than most others.
Independently blind follower bound up in more political rhetoric than can even be untangled, but “free” and “independent” and “skeptical.” Brilliant.
Killiansays
#192 nigelj said Killian @185 “I think maybe you are a bit clueless about risk analysis, which would be strange, but that’s the only way to understand these comments.”
I understand risk analysis well enough.
Nope. You said
…we need to take worst case scenarious seriously. In that respect we should pay attention to worst case IPCC predictions… and pay very good attention. There is some science suggesting the IPCC are a little conservative, and that is worth considering that as well.
This is not “some science,” this is an absolute fact. Nobody with any science knowledge worth mentioning questions this because the IPCC reports are **not** science reports, they are political reports on scientific info. More prosaically, they are 3 to 5 years behind cutting edge science. Using them as your worst case scenario, or for any policymaking, really, guarantees failure. The IPCC reports should be seen as background, not foreground. They provide a decent overview of the science up to three years prior to their publication.
But worst case scenarios have to at least be possible! …catastrophic change within the next 10 years… It becomes absurd
Except it has happened before.
Oops.
The worst case published papers on sea level rise have it more like 2 metres absolute maximum this century. That is bad enough, and should be a consideration in policy. There’s no compelling science that says we should go crazy and consider more.
Ah, but…
In fact, the scientists warned that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within the next 100 years. That would lead to a sea-level rise of nearly 10 feet, flooding coastlines around the world, the researchers said.
Studies have suggested that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is particularly unstable, and could collapse within the next 100 years. The collapse would lead to a sea-level rise of nearly 10 feet, which would engulf major U.S. cities such as New York and Miami and displace 150 million people living on coasts worldwide.
Just because you don’t know the risk doesn’t mean others don’t. I have on multiple occasions shared here how I am able to make such logical leaps so far in advance. I have literally listed all the things one might consider to more fully understand the global system. Since I keep getting things right, you’d think some of you might listen, but you don’t. You push back just as hard, if not harder, typically with insults.
Thankfully, you have not done that here. But, you discount the logic of risk:
But hey, 2 metres versus 3 metres. I think we are not in some sort of fundamental disagreement over the issues, and the need to pay attention to the higher risk scenarios.
Except you already said the higher risk is not probable, but it is. The study mentioned here is not the first one to find high melt rates possible. In fact, Hansen, et al., have found current localized melt rates of doublings in as little as 6 years, IIRC, and reasonable risk of global melt rates of doubling every ten or even five years. Do the math. The numbers are huge. They dwarf 2M. That’s your actual risk.
The ice sheet over Western Europe is thought to have melted in as little as 100 years in it’s final melt phase – cutting the English Channel along the way, IIRC.
“I’m not bound by numbers or reticence, and it is my *job* to be as objective as possible. The science is a lagging guide, not a leading guide. Try to remember this. It is an extremely important point.”
Well I’m not sure what you mean. Published data on temperatures, etc, will be more reliable than anecdotal experience etc.
False. Anecdotal experience informs intuitive insight and is necessary for hypotheses. Besides, we are not talking about anecdotal evidence, we are talking about analysis. You are suggesting reticence, but the evidence screams the opposite. It is easier to think of aspects of the measurements that are going faster than the mid scenarios than those that are going slower than that. The things I pay attention to are all at or exceeding the high end of modelling. Am I surprised? No. I said it would be so many times over the last ten years… because it already was and could only, logically, get worse. I have said many times, there is no hysteresis in the system. Heck, even Chicxulub left half or more of the planet undisturbed in terms of direct impact effects, thus ameliorating the ejecta somewhat and allowing whatever we directly evolved from to survive.
This is worse than Chicxulub. Let that sink in. We have left ourselves no brake to natural break to pull. We are the brake.
Science is more rigorous than gut instinct.
No. Instinct is a huge part of science.
“I think it would be wise to emphasise some things are ahead of predictions and very worrying. The IPCC should be doing this and are far too conservative and reticent. This is the ground that needs to change, not doomsday within ten years rhetoric.”
“How strange. You say only talk about published science, in essence, then say published science is just rhetoric.”
Where did I say that?
The ten years.
“The ten years is not rhetoric, it is historical fact. Given we are pushing the planet faster and harder than it has ever been before – excepting bolides – a ten year rapid change seems more like an eventuality than mere rhetoric. Regardless, it is the only sane *risk assessment.”
How can a prediction over the next ten years be “historical fact”?
Egad… no, large temp changes over short time periods is historical fact. There was a paper not long ago finding a sort of punctuated slope of change, much like evolution. It found roughly 50 percent of total temp change over time to be from very rapid shifts.
These are things you should know.
Anyway radical change in ten years just pushes credibility beyond the limits for me.
History can be tough.
“You seem to keep forgetting the key is risk, not scientific scenarios. Science informs policy, it does not create it. That is based on risk analysis.”
However I agree risk analysis is ultimately another thing separate from the science.
Not quite. There’s the risk within the science, which is where I start, then the risk to survival, which is where we get into policy.
I think it’s more of an economic and political sort of question.
Not even a little. The risk is that people will keep thinking as you do. Leave it to the politicians and owner class and you guarantee failure because they are not assessing risk to life.
…risks have to be at least possible.
The problem here is you understanding them and accepting them. They don’t care if you believe in them.
Nature bats last.
Thanks for the civility.
Adam Leasays
205: “Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common…”
Yes, their definition of freedom means the freedom to do what they want, dump the consequences onto others, then engage in victim blaming.
A lot of people largely grew out of that phase through childhood (children are naturally ego-centric), it is those who haven’t or that are hardwired sociopaths that are a major threat to humanity.
Whenever someone trots out the appeal to freedom, carefully analyse what exactrly they mean, in context of the activities they are applying the “freedom” label onto. It is very possible what they are advocating is really an abuse of freedom, dressed up as liberty.
Nemesissays
@Adam Lea, #212
Yes, the freedom to consume… until they will be consumed. Eating and being eaten. It’s an old game, it’s the game of Nature, yam yam :-)
Al Bundysays
Mr. Know It All: But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects.
Al: True. #1 (or close) in most infant mortality, worst health results, most expensive healthcare system, and lack of freedom (most imprisonment). Yes, you’re [close to] #1 in just about anything horrid. Of course, that is balanced by America being dead last in just about everything that advances the human spirit…
So, Mr. Know It All, I did no research, so surely you can destroy my hyperbole. Tell us, where are those elusive positive number ones? (My guess is you’re just spouting #2)
Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.
“I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that.” Ima lay it out from my personal PoV. TL;DR? Whatever.
I don’t know what ‘most’ climate scientists ‘believe’, but as a ‘human’ (i.e. individual of Homo sapiens) and existential autocrat, my ideological preferences are ‘consequentialist libertarian’: I want the maximum political ‘liberty’ consistent with my other values. Those have complex origins, and some are ‘social’, i.e. associated with other humans. Graduate training in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and in Economics, has helped me begin to make sense of them. More than that, I’ve learned in six decades of living that “from the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made” (Kant).
First: in my irreducibly-crooked ‘timber’ framework, we all – you too, Nemesis – construct a private utility-optimization model that subjectively assigns weights to various ‘goods’.
For example, I assign high positive weights to my own physical and financial security; slightly lower weights to my family’s; still lower weights to yours; and depending on how I’m feeling at the moment, zero or negative weights to Charles Koch’s.
Mr. Koch, OTOH, assigns high positive weights to his own physical and financial security, and because the latter enhances the former, I’m unable to achieve a state of optimum personal utility. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Next: some human timbers are more crooked than others. I’m most familiar with capitalism’s implementation in the USA. In my private optimization model, plutocratic capitalism has consequences with highly-negative social (including ‘environmental’) utility.
Yep, the Koch family has enjoyed the ‘liberty’ to extract private wealth ‘beyond the dreams of avarice’ from the ‘freedom’ the rest of us enjoy to socialize our private marginal climate-change costs; because There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Fossil Carbon Emission, therefore, other humans must pay for ours, even at the inhumane price of their homes, livelihoods or lives! Sucks, doesn’t it?!
OTOH again, among the consequent benefits of Kochogenic global warming in my private utility-optimization model are that I’m alive and hale in my seventh decade, subjectively secure, and typing this comment. Your Mileage May Vary, though I hope only WRT the last, otherwise ‘f’ right off.
Summing my position up: yes, while I’ve obtained net positive utility from it, some of American capitalism’s consequent disutilities are highly negative, even ‘horrific’ to me; but, the Kochian plutocracy has a de facto monopoly on force within our borders; and even if I walk away from Omelas, only collective intervention can comfort the miserable child. Meh, nothing’s perfect. I’ll have to settle for ‘marginally good enough’, like everyone else.
Hell, I’m wary of making things worse, aren’t you? Even (trigger warning for Marxophobes) sociopathic dictators can have ironic epigrams attributed to them:
Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone…
So: because ‘patriotism’ has high positive value on my private utility scale, I’ll work with capitalism in America until I see something I think works better in social practice. Meanwhile I’ll focus on AGW as a ‘free market failure’, hoping the visible hand can buy us time by capping the warming. Failing that, my subjective security will soon cost a lot more, and I’ll be unable to focus on the other social disutilities of plutocratic power!
In conclusion, Nemesis: YMMV. So?
Thomassays
211 Killian says: “Anecdotal experience informs intuitive insight and is necessary for hypotheses. Besides, we are not talking about anecdotal evidence, we are talking about analysis. You [nigelj] are suggesting reticence, but the evidence screams the opposite. It is easier to think of aspects of the measurements that are going faster than the mid scenarios than those that are going slower than that. The things I pay attention to are all at or exceeding the high end of modelling. Am I surprised? No.”
lol nice quick summary of reality there – True for Killian, and true for me and many others also. Then comes the pontificaters making it easier for the deniers. The emotionally triggered “handwavers” crying and complaining about others they deem as “handwavers” in the media raising the issues of the Mid-Case Worst-Case Risk scenarios. Chicken Littles they assert. Are they?
Alongside the three of these biased groups are the ‘science/data’ is everything crowd – where their focus and energy is solidly invested upon their emotionally invested desire to hold up “Science Outputs and Process” as being the absolute highest standard of profound accuracy and authority – the be all and end of truth – a worldview and obsession that’s equally capable of denying reason, rationalism, logic, anecdotal facts, and human intuitive insights of the bleeding obvious and practical common sense.
In this group are those that would (if they could) argue their whole lives away over a +/-0.0001C variation in results – while placing zero energy into actually solving the problem/causes of AGW/CC – it’s a worldview that assumes nothing is of greater importance than “science is perfect”, in their opinion – so no one else’s reasoning, logical, data points, opinion, intuition, questions, and insights are ever worth listening to – ever. Why? Because that “ain’t science” to them – it’s not gone through “peer-review” and been published! :-)
And may I add that while the IPCC reports are as described by Killian, political documents “looking backwards via the rear vision mirror” the Paris agreement places itself at least a decade plus behind the IPCC science, real world technology, and the factual in your face reality of energy use, economic growth, government and political lies.
I doubt the fifth group – the sane and balanced and knowledgeable and intelligent will win the day. But I could be wrong.
But nothing said here will amount to a hill of beans anyway. Only in the halls of concentrated power are the real decisions made. Are you personally willing and prepared to “storm the Palace gates to chop off the head of the King” if it meant that is what will be required to save the planet and humanity from global upheaval death and destruction this century? Well, are you? No, of course not. :-)
AGW/CC will not be solved by sitting around having a nice chat with Climate Scientists at a Penn State Student Cafe
Thomassays
Regarding recent comments about ASI and it’s connection with IPCC ‘projections’ in general including SLR into the future.
For a start, as per last year, Global Sea Ice Extent is still tracking at record lows in 2017 – off the scale actually see the NSDIC graph August 2017 – https://goo.gl/5Hr3oq
The Baseline for that is the 1981-2020 Median – the gray area goes out to +/- 2 standard deviations. The extent being measured goes from 100% sea ice to as low as only 15% coverage.
Almost all of 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017 record sits outside that +/- 2 standard deviations.
Despite traditional observations indicating that much of 2017 ‘cooler’ than 2016 and has been under WX conditions “favorable to ice retention” melt has been happening anyway and for the past two weeks at a very rapid rate.
Ocean temperatures are a huge driver for ice melt now. SSTs alone have been at record high this year, almost everywhere on the planet.
Yesterday’s worldview images show just how bad the conditions are on the Atlantic side of the North Pole now. Open water is visible beyond 89′ degrees North – there is not a single piece of ice more than 20km in diameter between the Pole and Atlantic ocean.
Yet the 2017 Melt has been tracking close to or lower than the 2016 SIE and at times way below the 2012 SIE.
What might be happening here, is anyone’s guess atm. But those with experience and expertise in observing the Arctic are suggesting issues like this: “Water flows and mixes with the deep. 90% of the total volume of ocean is found below the thermocline in the deep oceans. It’s not just SSTs that are record high when you take the average of the entire globe (and might now be mildly showing in the North), it’s also lower depth currents that will cause ice to thin fast(er). Note that both vertical and horizontal mixing has worryingly increased almost everywhere the past 2 decades. Enhanced thermocline mixing is one of the reasons why temperature, sharpness and depth of the equatorial Pacific thermocline (critical to the development of El Ninõ and Southern Oscillation) have changed a lot, and which is why we don’t see much of a La Niña this year.” by liefde @ASIF
So, give it a few years and I am sure there will be a new climate science paper on this subject that will provide more rigorous insights and evidence based conclusions of “what is now, and why.” What’s the hurry hey? :-)
Anyway, whatever happens in the next 2 months up in the Arctic, one things seems obvious. The ASIE is again heading towards 4mln sq klms or below. Whereas not too long ago the Arctic was predominantly made up of Multi-Year Ice some as old as 5 years+. Now it isn’t. ASIE is losing 10mln sqklms each season whereas before it was 7mln or less. The Maxima ASIE has permanently dropped by about 2mln sqklms since 1979 – but more importantly the PIOMASS and MYI has fallen far more in real terms than sea ice extent could ever show. ASIE has not been above 16mln sqklms since 1983. Nor has the Minimum been above 7mln sqklms since the early 1980s.
It will not take much of push for ASIE Minimum to fall from ~4mln sqklms down to 3mln – and then become the new normal for a while before another big push comes along and it drops again to 2mln sqklms – remembering of course the area still only needs to be filled with 15% sea ice to qualify.
It’s easy to realise that 2mln SEI could mean barely half a million sq klms, or less, of actual sea ice in Summer. Logic should be obvious that when this happens there will be next to Zero MYI left in the Arctic the next winter refreezing period. Right? And common sense should then apply that the melting of this very thin layer ice (even if Extent is above 12mln sqklms or more) the next spring/summer will see it all disappear in a flash.
The big story this year is revolving around the lack of Winter rebound in ASIE after the 2016 summer/autumn. Those who do follow the Arctic closely are somewhat befuddled, and some are still in shock – scientists and amateurs alike.
Reading between the lines what I am “hearing” is that everything has changed since the record low of 2012 only 5 years ago. There is a new normal in the Arctic it seems, and no one can yet work out how to define that new normal or describe it to others with any degree of accuracy or credibility.
Meanwhile back where I began this little missive https://goo.gl/5Hr3oq
– the Global Sea Ice Extent is magnifying this North Pole narrative x2 standard deviations loud and clear. :-)
I’m looking forward to what the published Science Papers might be saying in a few years about this period of change in the Arctic and this rapid warming in the Poles and the effects of Ocean Currents and the SSTs and Ocean Temps in general.
But I have a wish — I wish that the Climate Scientists would create a more realistic Charctic and PIOMASS that actually compared the Present with the 1880-1920 Median for a real ASIE Deviation/Anomaly (as they do for Global Temperatures.)
The current method is not telling the whole shocking truth of it, imo. Big Hat Tip for Neven’s ASIF http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net
nigeljsays
Killian @211
“…we need to take worst case scenarious seriously. In that respect we should pay attention to worst case IPCC predictions… and pay very good attention. There is some science suggesting the IPCC are a little conservative, and that is worth considering that as well.”
“This is not “some science,” this is an absolute fact. Nobody with any science knowledge worth mentioning questions this because the IPCC reports are **not** science reports, they are political reports on scientific info. ”
With respect you are splitting hairs and being pedantic, and wasting space! We are basically in agreement on this aspect anyway.
“But worst case scenarios have to at least be possible! …catastrophic change within the next 10 years… It becomes absurd “Except it has happened before.”
Examples please? And it needs to be a worst case scenario that was ruled out at the time, and of some relevance to current environmental discussion. The trouble is taking your view to its logical conclusion and humanity would never do anything at all, or alternatively surround itself with cotton wool, because everything has risks! i think we have to make a very difficult judgement between a worst case scenario and something so vanishingly implausible as to be absurd. We do it in our daily lives and the principle should apply to the planet, but obviously given its the planet with a great deal of caution. Perhaps Im splitting hairs.
“The worst case published papers on sea level rise have it more like 2 metres absolute maximum this century. That is bad enough, and should be a consideration in policy. There’s no compelling science that says we should go crazy and consider more.”
“Ah, but…In fact, the scientists warned that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within the next 100 years. That would lead to a sea-level rise of nearly 10 feet, flooding coastlines around the world, the researchers said.”
Yes but your article does not say 10 feet this century. It just says 10 feet. But as I already said, its not worth us arguing about 2 versus 3 metres for the point of this discussion and Im worried about this antarctic issue myself. My concern was more with the huge claims made by people like Wells.
“Just because you don’t know the risk doesn’t mean others don’t. I have on multiple occasions shared here how I am able to make such logical leaps so far in advance. I have literally listed all the things one might consider to more fully understand the global system. Since I keep getting things right, you’d think some of you might listen, but you don’t. You push back just as hard, if not harder, typically with insults.”
Those are big claims and I have not read many of your past posts, only read this website this year really. You are obviously intelligent enough, but I would want to see proof. I would say my own record of getting things right is certainly above average, on many issues including climate change, but I have enough self awareness to step back and know we are not so great at objectively evaluating our “own record”, and have a rosy view. I have been horribly wrong on a few things.
“But hey, 2 metres versus 3 metres. I think we are not in some sort of fundamental disagreement over the issues, and the need to pay attention to the higher risk scenarios.””Except you already said the higher risk is not probable, but it is. ”
Covered above. The science is constantly moving. The IPCC say 300 – 600 mm is likely by 2100, 1000mm is possible. Some more recent and good science now says 2 or even 3 metres is possible, but very low probability and speculative. In other words people need to open their eyes, but this not an excuse for mad out of control professors spreading doom.
What I’m getting at is this, I think. Imagine if the IPCC had made much bolder and firmer predictions, etc,etc, and was proven completely wrong on some of them. Politicians would stop taking them seriously, and even less would be done about climate change. Its a complex issue politically speaking.
“The ice sheet over Western Europe is thought to have melted in as little as 100 years in it’s final melt phase – cutting the English Channel along the way, IIRC.”
Ok but thats all pretty speculative and conditions after the ice age were different. You had a couple of big pulses of sea level rise but they reflected conditions different from those today.
But I agree, possibly rapid sea level rise is a big, big concern today, and perhaps if Wells had confinded his remarks more to this, he would have had more credibility.
In fact I would add that if there is a step change in rates of sea level rise over the next decade, and it wouldnt need to be much or need to be exaggerated, this might be the one thing that wakes the world up and gets something done about climate change. Its likely to be more scary or immediate and harder to deny for the average person, than temperatures climbing up slowly (in their view)
“I’m not bound by numbers or reticence, and it is my *job* to be as objective as possible. The science is a lagging guide, not a leading guide. Try to remember this. It is an extremely important point.” “Well I’m not sure what you mean. Published data on temperatures, etc, will be more reliable than anecdotal experience etc.”
“False. Anecdotal experience informs intuitive insight and is necessary for hypotheses.”
Sure, true, but hypothesis is only proven by carefully measured data.
“Besides, we are not talking about anecdotal evidence, we are talking about analysis. You are suggesting reticence, but the evidence screams the opposite. It is easier to think of aspects of the measurements that are going faster than the mid scenarios than those that are going slower than that. The things I pay attention to are all at or exceeding the high end of modelling. Am I surprised? ”
Well just be aware of your own potential for bias. Some critical things are indeed ahead of modelling like sea level rise a bit, and arctic ice melt, but surface temperatures are still slightly under the modelling, even including 2016.
My personal prediction, largely instinctive, but informed by what I know of the climate issue as a whole is that global temperatures will be in the lower to middle range of estimates by the time we get to 2100, rather than catastrophically high, but weather systems and sea level rise could well be more sensitive to smaller increases in global temperature than we think, so we still end up in a lot of serious trouble with serious sea level rise and more extreme weather. I think there’s some obvious evidence supporting my arm chair conclusion.
“Science is more rigorous than gut instinct. “No. Instinct is a huge part of science.”
I didnt say instinct was not a part of science. Theory often starts with instincts, but science tests instincts and needs to be merciless in those tests. Of course where questions are left uncertain we need to pay attention to the instincts of leaders in the field like James Hansen, people with very high level qualifications and experience etc, as opposed to the instincts of the “guy at the local pub”. You have probably got a good knowledge of climate change and may have some qualifications so I’m not totally dismissing your “instincts” just saying you may not be applying quite enough self scepticism at times.
“How can a prediction over the next ten years be “historical fact”?”
“Egad… no, large temp changes over short time periods is historical fact. There was a paper not long ago finding a sort of punctuated slope of change, much like evolution. It found roughly 50 percent of total temp change over time to be from very rapid shifts.”
Ok, but that is the past. Thanks for clarifying. Punctuated change in evolution seems likely to me, but is still unproven by the way. This is the Dawkins v Gould debate that is still not settled.
I realise temperatures have jumped suddenly in the past but this is under conditions peculiar to those times, as opposed to our current greenhouse gas scenario. The modelling suggests relatively even rates of change going forwards, although the (so called) pause in the 2000’s and jump in 2016 temperatures suggests to me a shift to a very pronounced step wise form of change. But are we likely to see an increase of several degrees in the next ten years, a near doomsday event? This seems incredibly unlikely. By all means talk about it but well you know my views on the issue.
I DO AGREE A LOT with your concerns and worries and share them in a general sense, but I just think we need to apply some self scepticism and not go crazy!
“You seem to keep forgetting the key is risk, not scientific scenarios. Science informs policy, it does not create it. That is based on risk analysis.”However I agree risk analysis is ultimately another thing separate from the science.” “Not quite. There’s the risk within the science, which is where I start, then the risk to survival, which is where we get into policy.”
Well ok, I agree with that. But I’m really saying much the same.
“I think it’s more of an economic and political sort of question.”
“Not even a little. The risk is that people will keep thinking as you do. Leave it to the politicians and owner class and you guarantee failure because they are not assessing risk to life.”
It is an economic and political question, but perhaps for everybody. I’m not saying leave the decision to some dictator to make on our behalf and probably get it horribly wrong. It needs appropriate technical expert input, and the final decision should be for the people as a whole.
“…risks have to be at least possible.”
“The problem here is you understanding them and accepting them. They don’t care if you believe in them.”
Well I dont accept the earth is going to become like Venus. The science says CO2 effect eventually saturates etc., basic laws of thermodynamics, and equilibrium etc. I’m not a climate scientist, so have to be guided by the experts on all that. Even if it’s possible and even though the planet is at stake, it would be vanishingly small and we are more likely to be hit by three asteriods at once. The more plausible extreme scenarios should be the basis for debate and policy formation, and last years temperatures should have been enough of a big wake up call.
Yes and thanks for your comments and taking the time.
Nemesissays
Have you ever considered this?:
Everyone of us will be dead soon, with or without climate change.
That’s the law of nature. All discussion, all debate is like a big palaver in the waiting room of Death. When Death comes, debate will be over.
So what’s that funny, religious monkey business about “growth”, about “profit”, about “progress” after all? It’s a big fuzz about nothing in the waiting room of Death.
Science says, there is only matter, tomorrow you will be gone like you’ve never ever existed. OK. But WHO tf LIVES like that? Most monkeys live, like they live forever and they consume and hoard things like hell, all in the name of “progress” and “growth”. But you take it all to the boneyard, don’t you? Yes, you do.
Isn’t it all like a funny theater? Like a comedy? Or is it a tragedy? Or both?
Let go. Forget about “profit”, forget about “growth” and “progress”. You will die soon. There is nothing more certain, than that. You think, that’s fatalistic? Well, yes, Death might be fatal. But it will set you free from hoarding funny material shit once and for all for sure. Just be aware of real reality:
In the end, you will lose every thing.
Thomassays
Another good ‘news’ ‘review’ article: Al Gore is an optimist. That’s official. […] At 69, Gore seems to pin his faith in original virtue. Just as the civil rights movement of his youth triumphed, just as gay rights “crossed a tipping point”, so it will happen with climate change.
Americans are losing their grip on reason and reality … ?
Stuck deep inside the 48 page article is this little juicy factoid, truth, truism quote:
The term useful idiot was originally deployed to accuse liberals of serving the interests of true believers further on the left. In this instance, however, postmodern intellectuals—post-positivists, poststructuralists, social constructivists, post-empiricists, epistemic relativists, cognitive relativists, descriptive relativists—turned out to be useful idiots most consequentially for the American right.
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” Stephen Colbert once said, in character, mocking the beliefs-trump-facts impulse of today’s right. Neither side has noticed, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been on the same team.
I have another wish — I wish that the Climate Scientists would create a more realistic Charctic and PIOMASS analysis that actually compared the Present with the 1880-1920 Median Baseline for a real ASIE Deviation/Anomaly (as they do for Global Temperature Anomalies)
Best to check their bona fides yourself – I have no idea how accurate the above might be – and not going to – I’m done :-)
*twinkle*
Mr. Know It Allsays
208 Thomas
Will do on the battery info. I’m guessing maybe gel cels, but we will see what the experts say. This project will be a retirement project in a few years – not going to actually do it right away.
nemesis: “Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.”
Your ignorant, baseless generalization is noted. Here’s an idea: speak for what you believe rather than demolishing straw men you attribute to others.
Solar Jimsays
Reports on methane’s Global Warming Potential (in relation to CO2) have cited various factors (such as 21, 25, 34 over 20 years, and 72, 84 over 100 years) depending on recent science and assumed lifetime. Note however, actual lifetime in today’s atmosphere is estimated at some 12 years (IPCC). Those numbers would seem to indicate a Molecular GWP, comparing methane’s radiative forcing directly to that of CO2, in the range of a couple hundred, thus possibly leading to an underestimated temperature response (as we seem to be witnessing).
Nemesissays
@Ray Ladbury, #214
” nemesis: “Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.”
Your ignorant, baseless generalization is noted. Here’s an idea: speak for what you believe rather than demolishing straw men you attribute to others.”
Aha, so you DENY, that climate scientsts (or climate deniers) believe in funny capitalism ?! FINE, that’s GOOD NEWS, then we are on the right track. My job is done, we can lay back and relax now. Congratulations and thanks for the roses.
Nemesissays
Correction:
My last comment pointed to #227, not #214.
Nemesissays
@Ray Ladbury, #227
” speak for what you believe”
No problem, I did that quite often here at realclimate.org:
I don’t believe, but I KNOW, that the capitalism paradigm of infinite growth is sheer suicide on a finite planet. We have to change the economic system, distributing goods in a just, horizontal way, not in an unjust, vertical way. And we have to abandon the sick myth, that religious consumerism is good for us.
Is that clear enough?
Nemesissays
I know, I am wasting my time. The economic system will never ever change, because there is too much funny “profit” in it.
“Profit”, yeah, hahaha 8-) I said it once and I say it again:
WHAT is the final funny “profit” of life?! THIS is the final funny “profit” of life:
“Meanwhile I’ll focus on AGW as a ‘free market failure’, hoping the visible hand can buy us time by capping the warming.”
Thanks for your honest reply. At least, you don’t attack me ad hominem, like some others here. But I don’t think, you can buy time. It’s impossible, to buy time. It’s called “faustian bargain” for a reason:
Capitalism will lose that race, there is no way, to buy time. What’s next on the “buying time” agenda? Well, socalled “geo- engineering”, I bet 8-) What capitalism calls “buying time”, is nothing, but to leave the ever growing costs to your children, grandchildren and so on ad infinitum.
The capitalism paradigm of infinite growth is sheer suicide on a finite planet. We have to change the economic system, distributing goods in a just, horizontal way, not in an unjust, vertical way. And we have to abandon the sick myth, that religious consumerism is good for us. But I don’t think, this will happen. Like zebra said:
Man is a monkey. And I don’t think, he will grow up to Homo “Sapiens”.
Nemesissays
The problem is, that capitalism is nothing, but the same mechanism, as the material, consuming fire of Natur herself:
Infinite, material consumption. Eating and being eaten.
It’s the machinery of the Cosmos, consuming itself:
This process basically can’t be changed, nor can it be stopped, it just goes on infinitely like a perfect Machine, it’s a circle, driven by desire. All we can change, is our personal relation to that machine:
Will we eat more and more, just, to be eaten more and more? Or will we calm down, trying to consume little, so we get as free as possible from that ever burning Fire of Consumption? What brought us into that mess of that Climate Heating Fire in the first place? Wasn’t it greed and ignorance? Wasn’t it that game of consuming now and paying later? Buying time? Bying happiness? Buying freedom? Bying eternal life? Buying wisdom? Buying a total delusion, that’s what the “Hindus” call “Maya”. And the price is Heat and ever more Heat. Yes, at the heart of the Universe, there is a burning Fire.
The more we consume, the more we will be consumed. There is no way around that. Look at what man has done to the planet so far and look at what he will pay for it and you know it.
Thanks for your honest reply. At least, you don’t attack me ad hominem, like some others here.
You’re welcome, but don’t get too into it. My most recent comment was more insulting, and the gloves are completely off now. There’s only so much sophomoric BS one can take once one reaches a certain age. That’s not ad hominem, BTW, as your ideas have already been considered on their merits and rejected. Usually by the time one graduates from college.
Listen to the voice of experience: it’ll take the better part of a lifetime to understand what’s really important to you; but when you do, you may finally be able to understand what’s important to other people.
Did you say you were an Aussie? You may want to move to another socialist utopia – maybe Venezuela?
Only fanatical culture warriors like Mr. IAT would call Australia or Venezuela ‘socialist utopias’ unironically. Spokespersons for the government of Venezuela are just lying.
Nemesissays
@Mal Adapted, #236
Well, don’t hesitate to put your gloves off, it’s about something, isn’t it? I’ll leave my gloves on, because it appears to get somewhat colder right now…
” There’s only so much sophomoric BS one can take once one reaches a certain age. That’s not ad hominem, BTW, as your ideas have already been considered on their merits and rejected. Usually by the time one graduates from college.”
College? Does it mean something, when it comes to the darwinian struggle for survival? Man survived aeons without “college”, but he will have to prove, if he and his “college” will survive, when water and food gets little, then, a gun in your hand might be a better tool for survival than a pen, hahaha. Remember, we are dealing with monkeys according to zebra.
But anyway, if my “ideas” have already been considered on their merits and are rejected, do I have to shut up then or stop talking about my “ideas”? That’s not really the way, I understand free speech, nor free discours. I’ll leave you with some words from Naomi Klein, who graduated from college a while ago:
” … But here is where things get complicated. There is a growing body of economic research on the conflict between economic growth and sound climate policy, led by ecological economist Herman Daly at the University of Maryland, as well as Peter Victor at York University, Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey and environmental law and policy expert Gus Speth. All raise serious questions about the feasibility of industrialized countries meeting the deep emissions cuts demanded by science (at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050) while continuing to grow their economies at even today’s sluggish rates. As Victor and Jackson argue, greater efficiencies simply cannot keep up with the pace of growth, in part because greater efficiency is almost always accompanied by more consumption, reducing or even canceling out the gains (often called the “Jevons Paradox”). And so long as the savings resulting from greater energy and material efficiencies are simply plowed back into further exponential expansion of the economy, reduction in total emissions will be thwarted…
The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume. Yet that idea is anathema to the large corporations that dominate the global economy, which are controlled by footloose investors who demand ever greater profits year after year. We are therefore caught in the untenable bind of, as Jackson puts it, “trash the system or crash the planet.”
The way out is to embrace a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning discussed above. Growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) would expand their share of overall economic activity, as would those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, would have to contract.
So when the Heartlanders react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid. It’s because they are paying attention.” :-)
Btw, I like your nickname, because it speaks for itself:
Mal Adapted.
Nemesissays
” So when the Heartlanders react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid. It’s because they are paying attention.”
See, Mal Apapted, the very same reason, why the Heartlanders “pay attention”, when it comes to critizising capitalism, is the reason, why you, zebra and many, many climate scientists, and politicians and especially multinational corporations “pay attention”, when it comes to critizising capitalism, ininite growth on a finite planet. So, this is, why I said:
Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.
So, please, let’s not get paranoid about your beloved capitalism. You know, I am no enemy of capitalism, as I am no enemy of eating and being eaten either- actually, that’s what I live, day in, day out. But I try to keep that bloody monkey business under low heat, there’s more than enough heat already.
nigeljsays
Nemesis
Interesting philosophical angle that I have considered myself many times.Yes we get too materialistic at times, I think it becomes an addiction of some kind. Capitalism has its problems, and infinite growth is obviously not possible.
But just because we all die, and the world will eventually end, or run out of easy to extract resources, or possibly get hit by an asteroid, doesn’t seem like a reason to immediately give up all material possessions, and go to living in a mud hut. I can’t follow your logic there.
Balance and moderation. Make the most of the life we have. There’s plenty that should be enjoyable.
And unless you spell out a viable completely different alternative to capitalism in some detail, you are at risk of becoming tedious. Horizontal distribution is not a detailed, viable, properly explained alternative. Its a meaningless slogan.
I would love a magical brilliant alternative to capitalism, but I cannot see one. I can only see better managed, modified capitalism with far more emphasis on looking after the environment, and a bit more of a duty towards helping the less fortunate possibly with some form of universal basic income (this idea is compatible with classical capitalism) If we do that, growth will find its natural level whatever it is.
Thomassays
226 Mr. KIA SAYS: “You may want to move to another socialist utopia…”
Thanks for your concern Mr Killed In Action. However I already know your a delusional conspiracy theory nutter living a Fantasy Land existence in the USA – The United Shonks of America. Your opinions are worthless as well as wrong.
As Mal A opines: “There’s only so much sophomoric BS one can take once one reaches a certain age.” I’ll add that a large portion of society never reach that age at any age. I have never suffered fools gladly who wish to get in my face and lord it over me with their BS. Not since primary school days. Even when they were Christian Nuns, Brothers and Priests and held all the power in the world over me.
Your stupid ignorant and childish insults do not touch me Mr KIA. You’re a total failure, even as an asshole!
(Context: Exceptions prove the rule. No need to take offense from comments or generalisations not directed at you personally. Always remember this fact – every time you are offended, it’s because you have chosen to feel that way. The nasty feeling you have is a direct consequence of your choice, not of the statement which motivated it.)
Thomassays
219 nigelj, I am genuinely curious – and thus motivated to ask about this: “But are we likely to see an increase of several degrees in the next ten years, a near doomsday event?”
Who has been saying things like this? Killian never has, and I don’t recall DWW suggesting it either in his long article – which seems to be your current topic atm. Nor has any outlier ‘climate scientist’ or enviro activist ever said such a thing either … so who? Gotta quote/ref? I’m get really confused with such points of view and wonder from where they come. thx
Will anything ever change? I doubt it, yet I still believe in ‘miracles’ and unexpected good things can happen. Let’s review the state of play in UV Aug 2017 shall we?
189 Mr. Know It All: But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects. We are not sheep. We value freedom.
Thomas replies: Oh really? How nice.
201 CCHolley: I would postulate that those that believe the conservative anti-AGW propaganda garbage heavily funded by the Koch brothers are actually American sheep.
212 Adam Lea: Yes, their definition of freedom means the freedom to do what they want, dump the consequences onto others, then engage in victim blaming.
214 Al Bundy: Of course, that is balanced by America being dead last in just about everything that advances the human spirit…
219 nigelj: Well ok, I agree with that. But I’m really saying much the same.
Thomas asks: Are you absolutely certain about that nigelj?
nigelji had said: “I think it’s more of an economic and political sort of question.”
Killian replied: “Not even a little. The risk is that people will keep thinking as you do. Leave it to the politicians and owner class and you guarantee failure because they are not assessing risk to life.”
then nigelj replies in #219: It is an economic and political question, but perhaps for everybody. I’m not saying leave the decision to some dictator to make on our behalf and probably get it horribly wrong. It needs appropriate technical expert input, and the final decision should be for the people as a whole.
Thomas comments: Good point. A high ideal. Is that the reality?
220 Nemesis: Isn’t it all like a funny theater? Like a comedy? Or is it a tragedy? Or both?
Thomas says: Aaaah, Shakespeare lives on. :-)
222 Thomas: Americans are losing their grip on reason and reality … ?
233 Nemesis: We have to change the economic system, distributing goods in a just, horizontal way, not in an unjust, vertical way. And we have to abandon the sick myth, that religious consumerism is good for us.
236 Mal Adapted: Listen to the voice of experience: it’ll take the better part of a lifetime to understand what’s really important to you; but when you do, you may finally be able to understand what’s important to other people.
Great point Mal. Now please would you and others also listen to the Voices of Experience…. and pay attention to the real facts?
America is indeed exceptional and unique. For AFAIK there is no other civilized nation on this earth, not in the OECD, not in G20, and not in the G7/8 apart from America that legally allows US based websites and their corporate and individual owners to promote, facilitate intentionally assist with and accept advertising for Profit the activities of Criminals who are knowingly engaged in the kidnapping, sex trafficking, repeated rape and the illegal prostitution of CHILDREN across the United States of America.
Not only that but whereas the DoJ FBI will act to shut down onshore and offshore websites selling illegal drugs and illegal weapons who can only sell their products once – that very same DoJ does nothing about the children who are being trafficked online for sex as often as 20 times per day – children who are both teenagers and preteens. Websites that are known to be owned by American citizens.
And that when those citizens and companies have been taken to Court to stop this modern day slavery that other Amercian Corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple and co have not only funded the legal Defense of these perpetrators but have joined as parties to argue the case in court.
And the factual evidence is that those participating in promoting this modern age slavery and human trafficking for sex to “rich white/black men” on American soil – the so-called land of the free have been deemed INNOCENT and operating a legal business by a multiplicity of State Courts of Law, State Appeals Courts, Federal Circuit courts and their Judges, Federal Circuit Appeals Court and Judges as well as the SCOTUS and it’s Judges with a lifetime tenure.
And that the despite these facts neither Senators Obama, Clinton and Sanders have done thing to stop it. The Obama White House and SoS Clinton and now the Trump White House, and the rest of the US Congress, senators and representatives one and all have not acted to stop this criminal activity and the ongoing facilitation of this evil trade for well over a decade now. McCain, Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell, all of them have done nothing and are useless and do not care.
Well, McCain was horrified ….. that the accused owners of the websites profiteering on advertising sex trafficked children (and adults too you know) dared to not show up on Subpoena to a Senate Committee hearing – how dare they do that? What an insult to the Senate and to McCain!
Like if you want to speak about being totally disconnected from REALITY and living in a Fantasy Land then McCain surely sums that up wholesale. Has he stopped the trade or passed a law to shut down the backpage.com website and hold the owners Criminally Liable as an intentional knowingly active party to Crimes against Children? NOPE! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpage
Of course, once Scott Pruit has gutted the EPA, and Lamar Smith successfully turned the US into a Christian Caliphate that wholeheartedly rejects Science, facts evidence and knowledge forever forward, where only real Bible Believing Christians qualify to Vote, or Trump has nuked the entire North Korean population or declared war on Venezuela over the same kinds of Lies as Bush did with Iraq, and Obama/Clinton did with Libya and Syria and Russia …. then maybe the “salt of the earth” will have the time to place their wise attention on the human sex trafficking of children that has and still is occurring right under their nose across the USA.
But I doubt it – Making a Profit is God on Earth – as you know that is American Culture writ large – they even say it on their bank notes – “In God we Trust” and that God is known as the Almighty Dollar.
Yes indeed, the USA is “exceptional” in every disgusting sense of what that means in reality. The same kind of crap went down in the Balkans wars, kidnapping and sex trafficking by US citizens working for the UN, for the State Dept and the US Military and for the civilian Police there. This pathological mindset for criminal behavior, abuse of Power, and for Government led cover ups of Crimes against Humanity is not a new aspect to American Culture.
And so it is that I wish that all American’s on this forum, and across all the other forums that argue incessantly about AGW/CC (in the words of Mal) may you all finally be able to understand what’s important to other people and the finally accept the historic culpability and collective responsibility that ALL Americans jointly carry (no less than all Germans for the acts of the Nazis) to get off your lazy backsides, stop making excuses for YOUR GOVERNMENTS and POLITICIANS and YOUR CORPORATIONS and YOUR BANKS and finally do something about the impact your Nation SPECIFICALLY has had and is continuing to have upon other people including your own CHILDREN as you read this (…. or as you choose to insidiously and callously simply ignore what it means and the truth of it) now today and into the future.
Like what on Earth do you imagine James Hansen’s actions to prosecute the COURT CASE of Our Children’s Trust AGAINST YOUR US Government and YOUR US CONGRESS is all about? It’s not an episode of the Simpsons or South Park – it’s real. https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/
Trump is not the cause nor the problem – the 50% of the population who voted for him are! They are untrainable and they are dangerous. Most of the the other half that voted for HR Clinton are equally dangerous and inept.
Until there is come sense and reason in the US Voter and in the Government that recognizes the wisdom and logical and rational justification for shutting down websites like Backpage, and Breitbart, and FoxNews and also deports Murdoch for running global criminal conspiracies engaged in actual crimes already proven, and WUWT, and Heller’s RealClimateScience, and JudithCurry’s and Alex Jones’ multi-million $ empire of crap, ban Christopher Monckton from getting a Visa, and ban Glen Beck on radio and tv, and ban Rush Limbaugh for life for being the RANK LIARS AND PSYCHOPATHS that they truly are, and ban all the rest of these LUNATICS and NeoNazi Fascists from public discourse then nothing is going to change regarding rational action on addressing Climate Change and Global Warming while y’all talk yourselves to death.
That’s my educated and well informed and highly experienced (and wordy) opinion. Please do not take anything I say personally.
*twinkle*
Nemesissays
@nigelji, #241
” But just because we all die, and the world will eventually end, or run out of easy to extract resources, or possibly get hit by an asteroid, doesn’t seem like a reason to immediately give up all material possessions, and go to living in a mud hut. I can’t follow your logic there.
Balance and moderation. Make the most of the life we have. There’s plenty that should be enjoyable.”
Well, I enjoy life every single day, despite climate heating, cause I have nothing to lose and no children, so, privately I am an absolute optimist. And, btw, I didn’t say anything about “to immediately give up all material possessions”, did I? Anyway, it’s interesting, how you “pay attention”, when capitalism is critizised, please see my comment #238 and #240.
” I would love a magical brilliant alternative to capitalism, but I cannot see one. ”
So, just stick to capitalism, what’s the problem? You don’t have to follow my view, just like I don’t have to follow your view.
“… growth will find its natural level whatever it is.”
Yes, I am completely sure about that.
Nemesissays
@Thomas, #244
” Aaaah, Shakespeare lives on. :-) ”
Yes, he lives on forever :-)
” Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.”
Come the end of the month, we could be in need of an update on this to see how close we are to the record.
Andrewsays
To the climate scientists and moderators:
This month’s Open Thread seems to have become – again – a semi-delirious, sickening monologue by T. One has to look very hard to find the odd comment that is even vaguely related to climate change or climate change policies.
So I am sorry to say, but I am giving up on commenting here on Real Climate for the next few months. I am still hopeful that Real Climate can be reworked into a useful website for communication between the climate science community and the general public, but in its present format, it has basically become a playground for trolls.
I understand that the workload of moderating such a website, targeted incessantly 24/7 by paid fossil fuel industry trolls, is an unfair proposition for climate scientists. I would suggest, though, that there are dedicated forum interfaces that would greatly lighten that load, such as Disqus.
The articles and the archives here at RC remain a treasure-trove of useful information, for which I am extremely grateful.
Very best,
Andrew
Dan H.says
nigelj @219,
Very nice post. While some prefer to emphasize the possible scenarios, I think it best to focus on the most likely outcomes. Not only that, but we need to look at our most probable solutions, from both an economic and realistic viewpoint. We cannot tornado-proof every home, but we can install wide-spread tornado warming systems to alert home owners. Finances are limited, just like resources, so we must use them in the most efficient manner. I am a scientist, not an economists, so I cannot put forth the best solution from an aconimal standpoint, but I still realize that we must utilize our resources most efficiently. Therefore, if as scientists, we can say that the seas will rise 1m (or 2 or 3, etc.) over the next century, then we have done our part. It should be left to others to come up with the most economical solution, with whatever additional scientific input is necessary. It may not be the solution that we think is best at solving the problem. I know that I am oversimplifying the whole situation, but if the costs of avoidance is exorbitant, compared to the costs of mitigation, mitigation will win every time. Just like the tornado warning system.
Thomassays
241 nigelj when you think you “heard” and then say things like “… doesn’t seem like a reason to immediately give up all material possessions, and go to living in a mud hut. I can’t follow your logic there.”
You can’t follow ‘his logic’ because that isn’t his/her ‘logic’ in the first place – because he/she never said that, nor anything like that.
Nemesis is not the one being illogical (even if you don;t agree or can’t follow his logic). That’s because you are the one who running on ‘logical (ie illogical) fallacies’ and not quite hearing what he/she actuall said. :-)
An easy trap to fall into when being challenged with new/different ways of seeing things that are founded upon values far different than one might be used to hearing. So what you did is called a ‘strawman’ – simply attend to his actual arguments and his expressed opinions and refs evidence given – there’s need to go that extra step and make things up he never said by putting those words in his mouth.
Mmmm, maybe Nemesis is your personal Nemesis, challenging your and others default as yet un-examined belief systems? :-)
Re: “… And unless you spell out a viable completely different alternative to capitalism in some detail..”
I can’t recall the right logical fallacy label for that – but to help by way of an analogy, one doesn’t need to, and should not be required to, create an entirely new game of football to present valid criticisms of ‘dysfunctions’ in the structure and administration of say NFL or Soccer. Simply pointing any egregiously entrenched failings (with evidence of those) is usually quite sufficient.
Similar to climate scientists who are clearly pointing out the structural and egregious failings of the current economic / life system of FF and land use. It’s not their job to reinvent nor create an entirely new economic fabric of the world and prove it’s workable before their wise advice is heeded and accepted as true regarding AGW/CC and it’s causes. Right? See? :-)
Terms little known outside of ‘economics’, govt, taxation, and sociology circles. Yet they also show up in climate science and biology. Tada~!
And Nemesis .. you have a powerful famous supporter in Dick Smith a fine businessman entrepreneur millionaire explorer and aviator and who made a fortune out of capitalism along the way. He’s been at it for a while about unbridled non-stop economic growth being the equivalent of cancer cells – that always kill the host! :-)
“It is simply endless growth and endless greed – meaning the finite wealth has to be divided between more people, and that means less for most.”
“Our growth-addicted economic system will see our children living in a world of eleven billion people, consuming and polluting more than our finite planet can withstand. It’s a path to either more and more inequality, or famine, disaster, war and collapse. Are we that stupid?” http://www.adnews.com.au/news/angry-dick-smith-forced-to-spend-1m-on-new-grim-reaper-tv-ad
Mr Smith also wants the richest one percent of the population to pay more tax!
OMG no! Bloody evil socialist totalitarian bastard! String him up from the nearest tree lest he poisons the all kiddies minds for ever!
Blah blah, bloody blah …. gosh someone has to do it, right?
re: Mr. Know It All @189
I would postulate that those that believe the conservative anti-AGW propaganda garbage heavily funded by the Koch brothers are actually American sheep. Whatever.
Who are these militant leftist American AGW believers that would destroy economies over AGW? I’m sure there are some as it takes all kinds, but I sure don’t know of any. On the other hand, it is encouraging that there are a growing number of American politicians both conservative and liberal that recognize the need for action and that a market driven revenue neutral carbon fee that could actually stimulate the economy would be a good start.
#189, KIA–
Utter and complete nonsense. The real danger to our economy is climate change itself.
Even denialist Bjorn Lomborg concedes that climate change will become an economic liability (albeit much farther in the future than more reputable scholars, some of whom find that it is a net economic liability *now*.)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jan/24/more-global-warming-worse-economy
198 zebra says: “…and other such breathless phrases, make it really easy for the other side to misrepresent intended meanings.”
Um, apart from the obvious semantics for accuracy sakes, does it really matter how anyone says anything when the denierati will misrepresent anything and everything anyway? I seriously doubt (absence evidence) that A McD has ever been a source for Heartland, Murdoch or Lamar Smith to manipulate the public. :-)
Um, “ice-free” as far as I know & use it and as far as A McD uses the term here applies to less than 1M sq klms of basically a slush puppy state, be it in winter or summer. There’s nothing hyperbolic or extreme about the term in and of itself. It is what it is.
the latest IPCC reports in AR5 put a summer/Sept ice free arctic as not being “likely” occurring until post 2050 from memory, maybe not until post 2060. Of it’s hard to remember exactly as there are several scenarios in RCPs which is what confuses the “communication” and working out in which RCP scenario we are in the present, and next decade, and those after.
I don’t see blaming A McD for these basic unknowns when anyone speaks about next decade or 2050 “likelihoods” happening or not, and saying what they think are the present “trajectories” is a communication challenge/confusion inherent in the scientific yardsticks no matter who is doing the speaking or writing what media article.
Even the “scientists” who critiqued that TUE article by DWW did not agree in their “analysis” of what he wrote/intended his meaning to be. Unrealistic standards can never be met by anyone. Except when dealing with twits like Victor/kia and all the others infesting the internet today, asking for clarification while being even handed helps. Yeah?
Does it really matter an itoa if A McD is wrong or you don’t understand exactly what he “means”? Since CC science became known post-Hansen even the best have made mistakes and got some things right and wrong along the way in their Papers and public statements.
Impossible standards are impossible for all. thx
198 zebra, PS re this “and other such breathless phrases,” and this “andwe’reallgoingtodie” are both strawman fallacies and your thrust is equivalent to “fallacious rhetoric”, the very thing you’re complaining about in others (?) imo/imv/ime. (smile)
I can understand what A McD is saying, but have no idea how valid true or likely it might be. What he posits, as far as I know, is not supported by a “consensus” of climate scientists, yet that doesn’t mean he is wrong by default (yet). I can still recall when several new published papers / lead authors explaining the “pause” re oceans etc that were heavily critiqued / doubted here by RC scientists and readers only later to be accepted as the new “norm” it seems. Those papers wee about why the “models” were not adequately representing reality temps. It’s not a crime to offer up new ideas is it?
From what I can tell A McD is simply positing that may be a ‘new as yet unseen dynamic’ (?) in the arctic that will not come into play until the summer arctic sea ice is gone …. that after a decade or so there could be a “step change” that rapidly collapses the winter sea ice extent that is not as yet inputted in the climate models… and he is suggesting that is a pretty important thing to get right IF his idea/theory is correct – a theory he says needs more work and detailed analysis, and a decent Paper being published to support that notion scientifically.
Whether he is right or wrong atm, I can;t see what the problem is in putting it out there, and cannot think of a better place for it to be aired than here … when seeking some “feedback” from others in the field. And maybe he’s a total looney outlier too, but so what? James Hansen was pilloried for being making breathless dramatic extreme comments in 1988 too by many real scientists.
And for all we know there’s a new Paper coming out next month that may suggest the exact same thing as dynamic, rapid, and abrupt “step-changes” in winter sea ice extent not yet being incorporated in the current climate models – wouldn’t that be embarrassing? :-)
I recall asking a simple question if the el ninos are/could be affected by the overall increasing global warming that might make them more extreme and affect total warming even more, where they become more extreme or changed dynamics and was laughed at for being a dick here, for even asking. Two separate issues and unrelated I was “instructed” by the expert/s.
But I lol the other day when I saw that hidden away in the recent US climate report, with M Mann as a lead author, it raised the issue of potential negative feedbacks from a shift in el nino la nina cycles and intensity due to ongoing increasing global warming. Go figure, maybe I wasn;lt such a dick after all, LOL
(expressed in my words, I could have misinterpreted what that reports says, so look it up if interested in the draft 5 report yourself).
cheers and good luck. :-)
@#201, #202:
Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.
Just go on believing in capitalism, believing in infinite growth on a finite planet and the system will be doomed 100%, because the economic system is never ever sustainable.
The day we realize, that the economic system is not sustainable, will be a really harsh day, it will be a rude awakening. And when that awakening happens (sooner or later), the socalled “hard green” will take over and then it might be, that a tree might be more worth, than a human life, I am afraid:
The longer we are heading to the wrong direction, believing in infinite growth on a finite planet, the more rude the awakening will be and the more rude the political consequences will be.
Amen.
AGW/CC DENIERS and a Dysfunctional Media landscape – Why is it so?
Quoting: “How America Went Haywire” – from section: How the Right Became More Unhinged Than the Left
Just before the Clintons arrived in Washington, the right had managed to do away with the federal Fairness Doctrine, which had been enacted to keep radio and TV shows from being ideologically one-sided. Until then, big-time conservative opinion media had consisted of two magazines, William F. Buckley Jr.’s biweekly National Review and the monthly American Spectator, both with small circulations. But absent a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh’s national right-wing radio show, launched in 1988, was free to thrive, and others promptly appeared.
For most of the 20th century, national news media had felt obliged to pursue and present some rough approximation of the truth rather than to promote a truth, let alone fictions. With the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, a new American laissez-faire had been officially declared. If lots more incorrect and preposterous assertions circulated in our mass media, that was a price of freedom. If splenetic commentators could now, as never before, keep believers perpetually riled up and feeling the excitement of being in a mob, so be it.
[Hi there KIA and Victor et al – lol]
Limbaugh’s virtuosic three hours of daily talk started bringing a sociopolitical alternate reality to a huge national audience. Instead of relying on an occasional magazine or newsletter to confirm your gnarly view of the world, now you had talk radio drilling it into your head for hours every day. As Limbaugh’s show took off, in 1992 the producer Roger Ailes created a syndicated TV show around him. Four years later, when NBC hired someone else to launch a cable news channel, Ailes, who had been working at NBC, quit and created one with Rupert Murdoch.
[ I permanently disowned Murdoch as a genuine ‘Aussie’ about the same time.]
Fox News brought the Limbaughvian talk-radio version of the world to national TV, offering viewers an unending and immersive propaganda experience of a kind that had never existed before.
For Americans, this was a new condition. Over the course of the century, electronic mass media had come to serve an important democratic function: presenting Americans with a single shared set of facts. Now TV and radio were enabling a reversion to the narrower, factional, partisan discourse that had been normal in America’s earlier centuries.
And there was also the internet, which eventually would have mooted the Fairness Doctrine anyhow. In 1994, the first modern spam message was sent, visible to everyone on Usenet: global alert for all: jesus is coming soon. Over the next year or two, the masses learned of the World Wide Web. The tinder had been gathered and stacked since the ’60s, and now the match was lit and thrown. After the ’60s and ’70s happened as they happened, the internet may have broken America’s dynamic balance between rational thinking and magical thinking for good.
Before the web, cockamamy ideas and outright falsehoods could not spread nearly as fast or as widely, so it was much easier for reason and reasonableness to prevail. Before the web, institutionalizing any one alternate reality required the long, hard work of hundreds of full-time militants. In the digital age, however, every tribe and fiefdom and principality and region of Fantasyland—every screwball with a computer and an internet connection— [… Hello again Victor KIA et al …] suddenly had an unprecedented way to instruct and rile up and mobilize believers, and to recruit more. False beliefs were rendered both more real-seeming and more contagious, creating a kind of fantasy cascade in which millions of bedoozled Americans surfed and swam.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
Plus a ref offered here before by yours truly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OeUINoYWsg which says the exact same things as this ~48 page article does in the The Atantic mag but in under 3 minutes. :-)
The Best Xmas Gift Book you could possibly buy for your “nutter / tin foil hat wearing” friends, coworkers, and family
http://www.lulu.com/au/en/shop/s-peter-davis/occams-nightmare-ebook/ebook/product-21017102.html
It would really nice to able to simply ignore the Unhinged but unfortunately you cannot – there is an entire for profit industry built around such BS delusions and this new age Fantasyland – now Institutional Govt and Corporate Power sustains their very existence. Congress will not ban Facebook Google or Fox News nor make any of them directly responsible for the Content.
Not yet anyway. One day this may change where enlightenment and reason and true facts will return as being the norm not the exception in reality.
DO NOT hold your breath though. ;-)
Mr. Know It All, please do pass on what you learn from the expert professionals about what is the best kind of solar power BATTERY SYSTEM for you to use at your home. I’m really curious how your renewable energy project progresses. Please do keep us up-to-date. Thanks Mr T.
@Thomas, #207
” Usenet: global alert for all: jesus is coming soon”
WTF?! Is it already that late? Who is that guy called “Jesus” after all? Is he capitalist or communist, climate believer or climate denier? Will he bring plenty e-vehicles or will he bring more diesel SUV? Does he wear Gucci shoes or flip-flops? Where do I have to sign, to save my sinister soul?! And YES:
I regret all my sins right now 38-)
Re #189 Mr. Know It All said 179 – Nigel
In America where I live, I’d say most people have heard of the IPCC. Well, many young adults and children, most of whom are militant AGW believers, have probably never heard of it
Because we now live in Backwards Land.
But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects. We are not sheep.
Except… TeaPublicans and Trumpaloompas and other Authoritarians…
We value freedom
False. The illusion of freedom, meaning a Christian Caliphate is OK, but Constitutional Law is a no-no, ’cause that’s liberals taking away our guns!
and are skeptical of anything that might make us less free.
See above.
Militant leftist AGW believers
AKA sane people…
would, today, destroy our national economy over AGW.
Every action, every decision is ultimately an ecological decision. The ecology simply is, and everything you have comes from it. What is not real is what you call “economy.” That is a construct that has been twisted so far from the ecology the ecology is in the process of collapsing.
we do not just say “BAAAA BAAAA” and roll over like people in other nations. We are more independent than most others.
Independently blind follower bound up in more political rhetoric than can even be untangled, but “free” and “independent” and “skeptical.” Brilliant.
#192 nigelj said Killian @185 “I think maybe you are a bit clueless about risk analysis, which would be strange, but that’s the only way to understand these comments.”
I understand risk analysis well enough.
Nope. You said
…we need to take worst case scenarious seriously. In that respect we should pay attention to worst case IPCC predictions… and pay very good attention. There is some science suggesting the IPCC are a little conservative, and that is worth considering that as well.
This is not “some science,” this is an absolute fact. Nobody with any science knowledge worth mentioning questions this because the IPCC reports are **not** science reports, they are political reports on scientific info. More prosaically, they are 3 to 5 years behind cutting edge science. Using them as your worst case scenario, or for any policymaking, really, guarantees failure. The IPCC reports should be seen as background, not foreground. They provide a decent overview of the science up to three years prior to their publication.
But worst case scenarios have to at least be possible! …catastrophic change within the next 10 years… It becomes absurd
Except it has happened before.
Oops.
The worst case published papers on sea level rise have it more like 2 metres absolute maximum this century. That is bad enough, and should be a consideration in policy. There’s no compelling science that says we should go crazy and consider more.
Ah, but…
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/antarctic-ice-shelf-could-collapse-in-100-years-scientists-warn/
And this from the AGU, itself:
http://news.agu.org/press-release/west-antarctic-ice-shelf-breaking-up-from-the-inside-out/
Just because you don’t know the risk doesn’t mean others don’t. I have on multiple occasions shared here how I am able to make such logical leaps so far in advance. I have literally listed all the things one might consider to more fully understand the global system. Since I keep getting things right, you’d think some of you might listen, but you don’t. You push back just as hard, if not harder, typically with insults.
Thankfully, you have not done that here. But, you discount the logic of risk:
But hey, 2 metres versus 3 metres. I think we are not in some sort of fundamental disagreement over the issues, and the need to pay attention to the higher risk scenarios.
Except you already said the higher risk is not probable, but it is. The study mentioned here is not the first one to find high melt rates possible. In fact, Hansen, et al., have found current localized melt rates of doublings in as little as 6 years, IIRC, and reasonable risk of global melt rates of doubling every ten or even five years. Do the math. The numbers are huge. They dwarf 2M. That’s your actual risk.
The ice sheet over Western Europe is thought to have melted in as little as 100 years in it’s final melt phase – cutting the English Channel along the way, IIRC.
“I’m not bound by numbers or reticence, and it is my *job* to be as objective as possible. The science is a lagging guide, not a leading guide. Try to remember this. It is an extremely important point.”
Well I’m not sure what you mean. Published data on temperatures, etc, will be more reliable than anecdotal experience etc.
False. Anecdotal experience informs intuitive insight and is necessary for hypotheses. Besides, we are not talking about anecdotal evidence, we are talking about analysis. You are suggesting reticence, but the evidence screams the opposite. It is easier to think of aspects of the measurements that are going faster than the mid scenarios than those that are going slower than that. The things I pay attention to are all at or exceeding the high end of modelling. Am I surprised? No. I said it would be so many times over the last ten years… because it already was and could only, logically, get worse. I have said many times, there is no hysteresis in the system. Heck, even Chicxulub left half or more of the planet undisturbed in terms of direct impact effects, thus ameliorating the ejecta somewhat and allowing whatever we directly evolved from to survive.
This is worse than Chicxulub. Let that sink in. We have left ourselves no brake to natural break to pull. We are the brake.
Science is more rigorous than gut instinct.
No. Instinct is a huge part of science.
“I think it would be wise to emphasise some things are ahead of predictions and very worrying. The IPCC should be doing this and are far too conservative and reticent. This is the ground that needs to change, not doomsday within ten years rhetoric.”
“How strange. You say only talk about published science, in essence, then say published science is just rhetoric.”
Where did I say that?
The ten years.
“The ten years is not rhetoric, it is historical fact. Given we are pushing the planet faster and harder than it has ever been before – excepting bolides – a ten year rapid change seems more like an eventuality than mere rhetoric. Regardless, it is the only sane *risk assessment.”
How can a prediction over the next ten years be “historical fact”?
Egad… no, large temp changes over short time periods is historical fact. There was a paper not long ago finding a sort of punctuated slope of change, much like evolution. It found roughly 50 percent of total temp change over time to be from very rapid shifts.
These are things you should know.
Anyway radical change in ten years just pushes credibility beyond the limits for me.
History can be tough.
“You seem to keep forgetting the key is risk, not scientific scenarios. Science informs policy, it does not create it. That is based on risk analysis.”
However I agree risk analysis is ultimately another thing separate from the science.
Not quite. There’s the risk within the science, which is where I start, then the risk to survival, which is where we get into policy.
I think it’s more of an economic and political sort of question.
Not even a little. The risk is that people will keep thinking as you do. Leave it to the politicians and owner class and you guarantee failure because they are not assessing risk to life.
…risks have to be at least possible.
The problem here is you understanding them and accepting them. They don’t care if you believe in them.
Nature bats last.
Thanks for the civility.
205: “Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common…”
Yes, their definition of freedom means the freedom to do what they want, dump the consequences onto others, then engage in victim blaming.
A lot of people largely grew out of that phase through childhood (children are naturally ego-centric), it is those who haven’t or that are hardwired sociopaths that are a major threat to humanity.
Whenever someone trots out the appeal to freedom, carefully analyse what exactrly they mean, in context of the activities they are applying the “freedom” label onto. It is very possible what they are advocating is really an abuse of freedom, dressed up as liberty.
@Adam Lea, #212
Yes, the freedom to consume… until they will be consumed. Eating and being eaten. It’s an old game, it’s the game of Nature, yam yam :-)
Mr. Know It All: But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects.
Al: True. #1 (or close) in most infant mortality, worst health results, most expensive healthcare system, and lack of freedom (most imprisonment). Yes, you’re [close to] #1 in just about anything horrid. Of course, that is balanced by America being dead last in just about everything that advances the human spirit…
So, Mr. Know It All, I did no research, so surely you can destroy my hyperbole. Tell us, where are those elusive positive number ones? (My guess is you’re just spouting #2)
Nemesis:
“I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that.” Ima lay it out from my personal PoV. TL;DR? Whatever.
I don’t know what ‘most’ climate scientists ‘believe’, but as a ‘human’ (i.e. individual of Homo sapiens) and existential autocrat, my ideological preferences are ‘consequentialist libertarian’: I want the maximum political ‘liberty’ consistent with my other values. Those have complex origins, and some are ‘social’, i.e. associated with other humans. Graduate training in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and in Economics, has helped me begin to make sense of them. More than that, I’ve learned in six decades of living that “from the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made” (Kant).
First: in my irreducibly-crooked ‘timber’ framework, we all – you too, Nemesis – construct a private utility-optimization model that subjectively assigns weights to various ‘goods’.
For example, I assign high positive weights to my own physical and financial security; slightly lower weights to my family’s; still lower weights to yours; and depending on how I’m feeling at the moment, zero or negative weights to Charles Koch’s.
Mr. Koch, OTOH, assigns high positive weights to his own physical and financial security, and because the latter enhances the former, I’m unable to achieve a state of optimum personal utility. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Next: some human timbers are more crooked than others. I’m most familiar with capitalism’s implementation in the USA. In my private optimization model, plutocratic capitalism has consequences with highly-negative social (including ‘environmental’) utility.
Yep, the Koch family has enjoyed the ‘liberty’ to extract private wealth ‘beyond the dreams of avarice’ from the ‘freedom’ the rest of us enjoy to socialize our private marginal climate-change costs; because There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Fossil Carbon Emission, therefore, other humans must pay for ours, even at the inhumane price of their homes, livelihoods or lives! Sucks, doesn’t it?!
OTOH again, among the consequent benefits of Kochogenic global warming in my private utility-optimization model are that I’m alive and hale in my seventh decade, subjectively secure, and typing this comment. Your Mileage May Vary, though I hope only WRT the last, otherwise ‘f’ right off.
Summing my position up: yes, while I’ve obtained net positive utility from it, some of American capitalism’s consequent disutilities are highly negative, even ‘horrific’ to me; but, the Kochian plutocracy has a de facto monopoly on force within our borders; and even if I walk away from Omelas, only collective intervention can comfort the miserable child. Meh, nothing’s perfect. I’ll have to settle for ‘marginally good enough’, like everyone else.
Hell, I’m wary of making things worse, aren’t you? Even (trigger warning for Marxophobes) sociopathic dictators can have ironic epigrams attributed to them:
So: because ‘patriotism’ has high positive value on my private utility scale, I’ll work with capitalism in America until I see something I think works better in social practice. Meanwhile I’ll focus on AGW as a ‘free market failure’, hoping the visible hand can buy us time by capping the warming. Failing that, my subjective security will soon cost a lot more, and I’ll be unable to focus on the other social disutilities of plutocratic power!
In conclusion, Nemesis: YMMV. So?
211 Killian says: “Anecdotal experience informs intuitive insight and is necessary for hypotheses. Besides, we are not talking about anecdotal evidence, we are talking about analysis. You [nigelj] are suggesting reticence, but the evidence screams the opposite. It is easier to think of aspects of the measurements that are going faster than the mid scenarios than those that are going slower than that. The things I pay attention to are all at or exceeding the high end of modelling. Am I surprised? No.”
lol nice quick summary of reality there – True for Killian, and true for me and many others also. Then comes the pontificaters making it easier for the deniers. The emotionally triggered “handwavers” crying and complaining about others they deem as “handwavers” in the media raising the issues of the Mid-Case Worst-Case Risk scenarios. Chicken Littles they assert. Are they?
Alongside the three of these biased groups are the ‘science/data’ is everything crowd – where their focus and energy is solidly invested upon their emotionally invested desire to hold up “Science Outputs and Process” as being the absolute highest standard of profound accuracy and authority – the be all and end of truth – a worldview and obsession that’s equally capable of denying reason, rationalism, logic, anecdotal facts, and human intuitive insights of the bleeding obvious and practical common sense.
In this group are those that would (if they could) argue their whole lives away over a +/-0.0001C variation in results – while placing zero energy into actually solving the problem/causes of AGW/CC – it’s a worldview that assumes nothing is of greater importance than “science is perfect”, in their opinion – so no one else’s reasoning, logical, data points, opinion, intuition, questions, and insights are ever worth listening to – ever. Why? Because that “ain’t science” to them – it’s not gone through “peer-review” and been published! :-)
And may I add that while the IPCC reports are as described by Killian, political documents “looking backwards via the rear vision mirror” the Paris agreement places itself at least a decade plus behind the IPCC science, real world technology, and the factual in your face reality of energy use, economic growth, government and political lies.
I doubt the fifth group – the sane and balanced and knowledgeable and intelligent will win the day. But I could be wrong.
But nothing said here will amount to a hill of beans anyway. Only in the halls of concentrated power are the real decisions made. Are you personally willing and prepared to “storm the Palace gates to chop off the head of the King” if it meant that is what will be required to save the planet and humanity from global upheaval death and destruction this century? Well, are you? No, of course not. :-)
The future is now
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/virginia-unite-the-right-rally-protest-violence
AGW/CC will not be solved by sitting around having a nice chat with Climate Scientists at a Penn State Student Cafe
Regarding recent comments about ASI and it’s connection with IPCC ‘projections’ in general including SLR into the future.
For a start, as per last year, Global Sea Ice Extent is still tracking at record lows in 2017 – off the scale actually see the NSDIC graph August 2017 – https://goo.gl/5Hr3oq
OK, that being said and obvious, look at the Charctic App here: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
The Baseline for that is the 1981-2020 Median – the gray area goes out to +/- 2 standard deviations. The extent being measured goes from 100% sea ice to as low as only 15% coverage.
Almost all of 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017 record sits outside that +/- 2 standard deviations.
Despite traditional observations indicating that much of 2017 ‘cooler’ than 2016 and has been under WX conditions “favorable to ice retention” melt has been happening anyway and for the past two weeks at a very rapid rate.
Ocean temperatures are a huge driver for ice melt now. SSTs alone have been at record high this year, almost everywhere on the planet.
Yesterday’s worldview images show just how bad the conditions are on the Atlantic side of the North Pole now. Open water is visible beyond 89′ degrees North – there is not a single piece of ice more than 20km in diameter between the Pole and Atlantic ocean.
View the new blue/slush zones and the totally melted Ice floes that suddenly developed from 1st to 10th August http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1834.0;attach=50105;image
View the DMI SST Anomaly maps for August 11th 2012, 2016 and 2017. Its clear that 2017 doesn’t have the same (warming/melting) oomph on the Atlantic side of the Arctic as occurred in 2016, and it’s not nearly as Red in the Siberian sector as it was in 2012:
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1834.0;attach=50137;image
Yet the 2017 Melt has been tracking close to or lower than the 2016 SIE and at times way below the 2012 SIE.
What might be happening here, is anyone’s guess atm. But those with experience and expertise in observing the Arctic are suggesting issues like this: “Water flows and mixes with the deep. 90% of the total volume of ocean is found below the thermocline in the deep oceans. It’s not just SSTs that are record high when you take the average of the entire globe (and might now be mildly showing in the North), it’s also lower depth currents that will cause ice to thin fast(er). Note that both vertical and horizontal mixing has worryingly increased almost everywhere the past 2 decades. Enhanced thermocline mixing is one of the reasons why temperature, sharpness and depth of the equatorial Pacific thermocline (critical to the development of El Ninõ and Southern Oscillation) have changed a lot, and which is why we don’t see much of a La Niña this year.” by liefde @ASIF
So, give it a few years and I am sure there will be a new climate science paper on this subject that will provide more rigorous insights and evidence based conclusions of “what is now, and why.” What’s the hurry hey? :-)
Anyway, whatever happens in the next 2 months up in the Arctic, one things seems obvious. The ASIE is again heading towards 4mln sq klms or below. Whereas not too long ago the Arctic was predominantly made up of Multi-Year Ice some as old as 5 years+. Now it isn’t. ASIE is losing 10mln sqklms each season whereas before it was 7mln or less. The Maxima ASIE has permanently dropped by about 2mln sqklms since 1979 – but more importantly the PIOMASS and MYI has fallen far more in real terms than sea ice extent could ever show. ASIE has not been above 16mln sqklms since 1983. Nor has the Minimum been above 7mln sqklms since the early 1980s.
It will not take much of push for ASIE Minimum to fall from ~4mln sqklms down to 3mln – and then become the new normal for a while before another big push comes along and it drops again to 2mln sqklms – remembering of course the area still only needs to be filled with 15% sea ice to qualify.
It’s easy to realise that 2mln SEI could mean barely half a million sq klms, or less, of actual sea ice in Summer. Logic should be obvious that when this happens there will be next to Zero MYI left in the Arctic the next winter refreezing period. Right? And common sense should then apply that the melting of this very thin layer ice (even if Extent is above 12mln sqklms or more) the next spring/summer will see it all disappear in a flash.
The big story this year is revolving around the lack of Winter rebound in ASIE after the 2016 summer/autumn. Those who do follow the Arctic closely are somewhat befuddled, and some are still in shock – scientists and amateurs alike.
Reading between the lines what I am “hearing” is that everything has changed since the record low of 2012 only 5 years ago. There is a new normal in the Arctic it seems, and no one can yet work out how to define that new normal or describe it to others with any degree of accuracy or credibility.
Meanwhile back where I began this little missive https://goo.gl/5Hr3oq
– the Global Sea Ice Extent is magnifying this North Pole narrative x2 standard deviations loud and clear. :-)
I’m looking forward to what the published Science Papers might be saying in a few years about this period of change in the Arctic and this rapid warming in the Poles and the effects of Ocean Currents and the SSTs and Ocean Temps in general.
But I have a wish — I wish that the Climate Scientists would create a more realistic Charctic and PIOMASS that actually compared the Present with the 1880-1920 Median for a real ASIE Deviation/Anomaly (as they do for Global Temperatures.)
The current method is not telling the whole shocking truth of it, imo. Big Hat Tip for Neven’s ASIF http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net
Killian @211
“…we need to take worst case scenarious seriously. In that respect we should pay attention to worst case IPCC predictions… and pay very good attention. There is some science suggesting the IPCC are a little conservative, and that is worth considering that as well.”
“This is not “some science,” this is an absolute fact. Nobody with any science knowledge worth mentioning questions this because the IPCC reports are **not** science reports, they are political reports on scientific info. ”
With respect you are splitting hairs and being pedantic, and wasting space! We are basically in agreement on this aspect anyway.
“But worst case scenarios have to at least be possible! …catastrophic change within the next 10 years… It becomes absurd “Except it has happened before.”
Examples please? And it needs to be a worst case scenario that was ruled out at the time, and of some relevance to current environmental discussion. The trouble is taking your view to its logical conclusion and humanity would never do anything at all, or alternatively surround itself with cotton wool, because everything has risks! i think we have to make a very difficult judgement between a worst case scenario and something so vanishingly implausible as to be absurd. We do it in our daily lives and the principle should apply to the planet, but obviously given its the planet with a great deal of caution. Perhaps Im splitting hairs.
“The worst case published papers on sea level rise have it more like 2 metres absolute maximum this century. That is bad enough, and should be a consideration in policy. There’s no compelling science that says we should go crazy and consider more.”
“Ah, but…In fact, the scientists warned that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within the next 100 years. That would lead to a sea-level rise of nearly 10 feet, flooding coastlines around the world, the researchers said.”
Yes but your article does not say 10 feet this century. It just says 10 feet. But as I already said, its not worth us arguing about 2 versus 3 metres for the point of this discussion and Im worried about this antarctic issue myself. My concern was more with the huge claims made by people like Wells.
“Just because you don’t know the risk doesn’t mean others don’t. I have on multiple occasions shared here how I am able to make such logical leaps so far in advance. I have literally listed all the things one might consider to more fully understand the global system. Since I keep getting things right, you’d think some of you might listen, but you don’t. You push back just as hard, if not harder, typically with insults.”
Those are big claims and I have not read many of your past posts, only read this website this year really. You are obviously intelligent enough, but I would want to see proof. I would say my own record of getting things right is certainly above average, on many issues including climate change, but I have enough self awareness to step back and know we are not so great at objectively evaluating our “own record”, and have a rosy view. I have been horribly wrong on a few things.
“But hey, 2 metres versus 3 metres. I think we are not in some sort of fundamental disagreement over the issues, and the need to pay attention to the higher risk scenarios.””Except you already said the higher risk is not probable, but it is. ”
Covered above. The science is constantly moving. The IPCC say 300 – 600 mm is likely by 2100, 1000mm is possible. Some more recent and good science now says 2 or even 3 metres is possible, but very low probability and speculative. In other words people need to open their eyes, but this not an excuse for mad out of control professors spreading doom.
What I’m getting at is this, I think. Imagine if the IPCC had made much bolder and firmer predictions, etc,etc, and was proven completely wrong on some of them. Politicians would stop taking them seriously, and even less would be done about climate change. Its a complex issue politically speaking.
“The ice sheet over Western Europe is thought to have melted in as little as 100 years in it’s final melt phase – cutting the English Channel along the way, IIRC.”
Ok but thats all pretty speculative and conditions after the ice age were different. You had a couple of big pulses of sea level rise but they reflected conditions different from those today.
But I agree, possibly rapid sea level rise is a big, big concern today, and perhaps if Wells had confinded his remarks more to this, he would have had more credibility.
In fact I would add that if there is a step change in rates of sea level rise over the next decade, and it wouldnt need to be much or need to be exaggerated, this might be the one thing that wakes the world up and gets something done about climate change. Its likely to be more scary or immediate and harder to deny for the average person, than temperatures climbing up slowly (in their view)
“I’m not bound by numbers or reticence, and it is my *job* to be as objective as possible. The science is a lagging guide, not a leading guide. Try to remember this. It is an extremely important point.” “Well I’m not sure what you mean. Published data on temperatures, etc, will be more reliable than anecdotal experience etc.”
“False. Anecdotal experience informs intuitive insight and is necessary for hypotheses.”
Sure, true, but hypothesis is only proven by carefully measured data.
“Besides, we are not talking about anecdotal evidence, we are talking about analysis. You are suggesting reticence, but the evidence screams the opposite. It is easier to think of aspects of the measurements that are going faster than the mid scenarios than those that are going slower than that. The things I pay attention to are all at or exceeding the high end of modelling. Am I surprised? ”
Well just be aware of your own potential for bias. Some critical things are indeed ahead of modelling like sea level rise a bit, and arctic ice melt, but surface temperatures are still slightly under the modelling, even including 2016.
My personal prediction, largely instinctive, but informed by what I know of the climate issue as a whole is that global temperatures will be in the lower to middle range of estimates by the time we get to 2100, rather than catastrophically high, but weather systems and sea level rise could well be more sensitive to smaller increases in global temperature than we think, so we still end up in a lot of serious trouble with serious sea level rise and more extreme weather. I think there’s some obvious evidence supporting my arm chair conclusion.
“Science is more rigorous than gut instinct. “No. Instinct is a huge part of science.”
I didnt say instinct was not a part of science. Theory often starts with instincts, but science tests instincts and needs to be merciless in those tests. Of course where questions are left uncertain we need to pay attention to the instincts of leaders in the field like James Hansen, people with very high level qualifications and experience etc, as opposed to the instincts of the “guy at the local pub”. You have probably got a good knowledge of climate change and may have some qualifications so I’m not totally dismissing your “instincts” just saying you may not be applying quite enough self scepticism at times.
“How can a prediction over the next ten years be “historical fact”?”
“Egad… no, large temp changes over short time periods is historical fact. There was a paper not long ago finding a sort of punctuated slope of change, much like evolution. It found roughly 50 percent of total temp change over time to be from very rapid shifts.”
Ok, but that is the past. Thanks for clarifying. Punctuated change in evolution seems likely to me, but is still unproven by the way. This is the Dawkins v Gould debate that is still not settled.
I realise temperatures have jumped suddenly in the past but this is under conditions peculiar to those times, as opposed to our current greenhouse gas scenario. The modelling suggests relatively even rates of change going forwards, although the (so called) pause in the 2000’s and jump in 2016 temperatures suggests to me a shift to a very pronounced step wise form of change. But are we likely to see an increase of several degrees in the next ten years, a near doomsday event? This seems incredibly unlikely. By all means talk about it but well you know my views on the issue.
I DO AGREE A LOT with your concerns and worries and share them in a general sense, but I just think we need to apply some self scepticism and not go crazy!
“You seem to keep forgetting the key is risk, not scientific scenarios. Science informs policy, it does not create it. That is based on risk analysis.”However I agree risk analysis is ultimately another thing separate from the science.” “Not quite. There’s the risk within the science, which is where I start, then the risk to survival, which is where we get into policy.”
Well ok, I agree with that. But I’m really saying much the same.
“I think it’s more of an economic and political sort of question.”
“Not even a little. The risk is that people will keep thinking as you do. Leave it to the politicians and owner class and you guarantee failure because they are not assessing risk to life.”
It is an economic and political question, but perhaps for everybody. I’m not saying leave the decision to some dictator to make on our behalf and probably get it horribly wrong. It needs appropriate technical expert input, and the final decision should be for the people as a whole.
“…risks have to be at least possible.”
“The problem here is you understanding them and accepting them. They don’t care if you believe in them.”
Well I dont accept the earth is going to become like Venus. The science says CO2 effect eventually saturates etc., basic laws of thermodynamics, and equilibrium etc. I’m not a climate scientist, so have to be guided by the experts on all that. Even if it’s possible and even though the planet is at stake, it would be vanishingly small and we are more likely to be hit by three asteriods at once. The more plausible extreme scenarios should be the basis for debate and policy formation, and last years temperatures should have been enough of a big wake up call.
Yes and thanks for your comments and taking the time.
Have you ever considered this?:
Everyone of us will be dead soon, with or without climate change.
That’s the law of nature. All discussion, all debate is like a big palaver in the waiting room of Death. When Death comes, debate will be over.
So what’s that funny, religious monkey business about “growth”, about “profit”, about “progress” after all? It’s a big fuzz about nothing in the waiting room of Death.
Science says, there is only matter, tomorrow you will be gone like you’ve never ever existed. OK. But WHO tf LIVES like that? Most monkeys live, like they live forever and they consume and hoard things like hell, all in the name of “progress” and “growth”. But you take it all to the boneyard, don’t you? Yes, you do.
Isn’t it all like a funny theater? Like a comedy? Or is it a tragedy? Or both?
Let go. Forget about “profit”, forget about “growth” and “progress”. You will die soon. There is nothing more certain, than that. You think, that’s fatalistic? Well, yes, Death might be fatal. But it will set you free from hoarding funny material shit once and for all for sure. Just be aware of real reality:
In the end, you will lose every thing.
Another good ‘news’ ‘review’ article:
Al Gore is an optimist. That’s official. […] At 69, Gore seems to pin his faith in original virtue. Just as the civil rights movement of his youth triumphed, just as gay rights “crossed a tipping point”, so it will happen with climate change.
He has a line at the end of the film about how, after all the “nos” have been said, there will be one final “yes” that will trump all. That didn’t sound like science. But maybe climate science needs a few preachers. And optimists.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2143599-al-gore-the-return-of-climate-sciences-preacher-man/
Americans are losing their grip on reason and reality … ?
Stuck deep inside the 48 page article is this little juicy factoid, truth, truism quote:
The term useful idiot was originally deployed to accuse liberals of serving the interests of true believers further on the left. In this instance, however, postmodern intellectuals—post-positivists, poststructuralists, social constructivists, post-empiricists, epistemic relativists, cognitive relativists, descriptive relativists—turned out to be useful idiots most consequentially for the American right.
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” Stephen Colbert once said, in character, mocking the beliefs-trump-facts impulse of today’s right. Neither side has noticed, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been on the same team.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
A highly recommended article by an educated intelligent American traditionalist born a “Republican Conservative”. It is worthy of some quiet reflection and contemplation, imo. Though Andersen is a self described “liberal atheist” (so look aghast!)
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/kurt-andersen/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Andersen
That’s all folks. My work is done. :)
I have another wish — I wish that the Climate Scientists would create a more realistic Charctic and PIOMASS analysis that actually compared the Present with the 1880-1920 Median Baseline for a real ASIE Deviation/Anomaly (as they do for Global Temperature Anomalies)
For A McD
see/research Potsdam 2008 last ice age happened in less than one year during Younger Dryas 13,000 years ago
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=635.0;attach=50207;image
more info contact
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,635.msg125037.html#msg125037
and contact Amy too.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/amy.solomon/seaice.html
Best to check their bona fides yourself – I have no idea how accurate the above might be – and not going to – I’m done :-)
*twinkle*
208 Thomas
Will do on the battery info. I’m guessing maybe gel cels, but we will see what the experts say. This project will be a retirement project in a few years – not going to actually do it right away.
Did you say you were an Aussie? You may want to move to another socialist utopia – maybe Venezuela? Looks like trouble down under:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-11/martin-armstrong-warns-australia-crossing-line-totalitarian-state
nemesis: “Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.”
Your ignorant, baseless generalization is noted. Here’s an idea: speak for what you believe rather than demolishing straw men you attribute to others.
Reports on methane’s Global Warming Potential (in relation to CO2) have cited various factors (such as 21, 25, 34 over 20 years, and 72, 84 over 100 years) depending on recent science and assumed lifetime. Note however, actual lifetime in today’s atmosphere is estimated at some 12 years (IPCC). Those numbers would seem to indicate a Molecular GWP, comparing methane’s radiative forcing directly to that of CO2, in the range of a couple hundred, thus possibly leading to an underestimated temperature response (as we seem to be witnessing).
@Ray Ladbury, #214
” nemesis: “Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.”
Your ignorant, baseless generalization is noted. Here’s an idea: speak for what you believe rather than demolishing straw men you attribute to others.”
Aha, so you DENY, that climate scientsts (or climate deniers) believe in funny capitalism ?! FINE, that’s GOOD NEWS, then we are on the right track. My job is done, we can lay back and relax now. Congratulations and thanks for the roses.
Correction:
My last comment pointed to #227, not #214.
@Ray Ladbury, #227
” speak for what you believe”
No problem, I did that quite often here at realclimate.org:
I don’t believe, but I KNOW, that the capitalism paradigm of infinite growth is sheer suicide on a finite planet. We have to change the economic system, distributing goods in a just, horizontal way, not in an unjust, vertical way. And we have to abandon the sick myth, that religious consumerism is good for us.
Is that clear enough?
I know, I am wasting my time. The economic system will never ever change, because there is too much funny “profit” in it.
“Profit”, yeah, hahaha 8-) I said it once and I say it again:
WHAT is the final funny “profit” of life?! THIS is the final funny “profit” of life:
http://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/co26-960×670.jpg
No?! You will learn it, 100%.
@Mal adapted, #215
“Meanwhile I’ll focus on AGW as a ‘free market failure’, hoping the visible hand can buy us time by capping the warming.”
Thanks for your honest reply. At least, you don’t attack me ad hominem, like some others here. But I don’t think, you can buy time. It’s impossible, to buy time. It’s called “faustian bargain” for a reason:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
Capitalism will lose that race, there is no way, to buy time. What’s next on the “buying time” agenda? Well, socalled “geo- engineering”, I bet 8-) What capitalism calls “buying time”, is nothing, but to leave the ever growing costs to your children, grandchildren and so on ad infinitum.
The capitalism paradigm of infinite growth is sheer suicide on a finite planet. We have to change the economic system, distributing goods in a just, horizontal way, not in an unjust, vertical way. And we have to abandon the sick myth, that religious consumerism is good for us. But I don’t think, this will happen. Like zebra said:
Man is a monkey. And I don’t think, he will grow up to Homo “Sapiens”.
The problem is, that capitalism is nothing, but the same mechanism, as the material, consuming fire of Natur herself:
Infinite, material consumption. Eating and being eaten.
It’s the machinery of the Cosmos, consuming itself:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Ouroboros.png
This process basically can’t be changed, nor can it be stopped, it just goes on infinitely like a perfect Machine, it’s a circle, driven by desire. All we can change, is our personal relation to that machine:
Will we eat more and more, just, to be eaten more and more? Or will we calm down, trying to consume little, so we get as free as possible from that ever burning Fire of Consumption? What brought us into that mess of that Climate Heating Fire in the first place? Wasn’t it greed and ignorance? Wasn’t it that game of consuming now and paying later? Buying time? Bying happiness? Buying freedom? Bying eternal life? Buying wisdom? Buying a total delusion, that’s what the “Hindus” call “Maya”. And the price is Heat and ever more Heat. Yes, at the heart of the Universe, there is a burning Fire.
The more we consume, the more we will be consumed. There is no way around that. Look at what man has done to the planet so far and look at what he will pay for it and you know it.
Nemesis:
You first.
Nemesis:
Feel free to forget about them yourself. I’m not going to, for reasons that aren’t your concern.
Nemesis:
So? I’m alive now. I prefer it that way, at least until death comes along. YMMV.
Nemesis:
You’re welcome, but don’t get too into it. My most recent comment was more insulting, and the gloves are completely off now. There’s only so much sophomoric BS one can take once one reaches a certain age. That’s not ad hominem, BTW, as your ideas have already been considered on their merits and rejected. Usually by the time one graduates from college.
Listen to the voice of experience: it’ll take the better part of a lifetime to understand what’s really important to you; but when you do, you may finally be able to understand what’s important to other people.
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
Only fanatical culture warriors like Mr. IAT would call Australia or Venezuela ‘socialist utopias’ unironically. Spokespersons for the government of Venezuela are just lying.
@Mal Adapted, #236
Well, don’t hesitate to put your gloves off, it’s about something, isn’t it? I’ll leave my gloves on, because it appears to get somewhat colder right now…
” There’s only so much sophomoric BS one can take once one reaches a certain age. That’s not ad hominem, BTW, as your ideas have already been considered on their merits and rejected. Usually by the time one graduates from college.”
College? Does it mean something, when it comes to the darwinian struggle for survival? Man survived aeons without “college”, but he will have to prove, if he and his “college” will survive, when water and food gets little, then, a gun in your hand might be a better tool for survival than a pen, hahaha. Remember, we are dealing with monkeys according to zebra.
But anyway, if my “ideas” have already been considered on their merits and are rejected, do I have to shut up then or stop talking about my “ideas”? That’s not really the way, I understand free speech, nor free discours. I’ll leave you with some words from Naomi Klein, who graduated from college a while ago:
” … But here is where things get complicated. There is a growing body of economic research on the conflict between economic growth and sound climate policy, led by ecological economist Herman Daly at the University of Maryland, as well as Peter Victor at York University, Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey and environmental law and policy expert Gus Speth. All raise serious questions about the feasibility of industrialized countries meeting the deep emissions cuts demanded by science (at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050) while continuing to grow their economies at even today’s sluggish rates. As Victor and Jackson argue, greater efficiencies simply cannot keep up with the pace of growth, in part because greater efficiency is almost always accompanied by more consumption, reducing or even canceling out the gains (often called the “Jevons Paradox”). And so long as the savings resulting from greater energy and material efficiencies are simply plowed back into further exponential expansion of the economy, reduction in total emissions will be thwarted…
The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume. Yet that idea is anathema to the large corporations that dominate the global economy, which are controlled by footloose investors who demand ever greater profits year after year. We are therefore caught in the untenable bind of, as Jackson puts it, “trash the system or crash the planet.”
The way out is to embrace a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning discussed above. Growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) would expand their share of overall economic activity, as would those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, would have to contract.
So when the Heartlanders react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid. It’s because they are paying attention.” :-)
https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/
Btw, I like your nickname, because it speaks for itself:
Mal Adapted.
” So when the Heartlanders react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid. It’s because they are paying attention.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/
See, Mal Apapted, the very same reason, why the Heartlanders “pay attention”, when it comes to critizising capitalism, is the reason, why you, zebra and many, many climate scientists, and politicians and especially multinational corporations “pay attention”, when it comes to critizising capitalism, ininite growth on a finite planet. So, this is, why I said:
Most climate scientists and deniers of anthropogenic induced climate change got something in common, as both believe in funny capitalism, both believe in the funny system, both believe, that infinite growth on a finite planete is possible, both don’t want to change the SYSTEM.
So, please, let’s not get paranoid about your beloved capitalism. You know, I am no enemy of capitalism, as I am no enemy of eating and being eaten either- actually, that’s what I live, day in, day out. But I try to keep that bloody monkey business under low heat, there’s more than enough heat already.
Nemesis
Interesting philosophical angle that I have considered myself many times.Yes we get too materialistic at times, I think it becomes an addiction of some kind. Capitalism has its problems, and infinite growth is obviously not possible.
But just because we all die, and the world will eventually end, or run out of easy to extract resources, or possibly get hit by an asteroid, doesn’t seem like a reason to immediately give up all material possessions, and go to living in a mud hut. I can’t follow your logic there.
Balance and moderation. Make the most of the life we have. There’s plenty that should be enjoyable.
And unless you spell out a viable completely different alternative to capitalism in some detail, you are at risk of becoming tedious. Horizontal distribution is not a detailed, viable, properly explained alternative. Its a meaningless slogan.
I would love a magical brilliant alternative to capitalism, but I cannot see one. I can only see better managed, modified capitalism with far more emphasis on looking after the environment, and a bit more of a duty towards helping the less fortunate possibly with some form of universal basic income (this idea is compatible with classical capitalism) If we do that, growth will find its natural level whatever it is.
226 Mr. KIA SAYS: “You may want to move to another socialist utopia…”
Thanks for your concern Mr Killed In Action. However I already know your a delusional conspiracy theory nutter living a Fantasy Land existence in the USA – The United Shonks of America. Your opinions are worthless as well as wrong.
As Mal A opines: “There’s only so much sophomoric BS one can take once one reaches a certain age.” I’ll add that a large portion of society never reach that age at any age. I have never suffered fools gladly who wish to get in my face and lord it over me with their BS. Not since primary school days. Even when they were Christian Nuns, Brothers and Priests and held all the power in the world over me.
Your stupid ignorant and childish insults do not touch me Mr KIA. You’re a total failure, even as an asshole!
(Context: Exceptions prove the rule. No need to take offense from comments or generalisations not directed at you personally. Always remember this fact – every time you are offended, it’s because you have chosen to feel that way. The nasty feeling you have is a direct consequence of your choice, not of the statement which motivated it.)
219 nigelj, I am genuinely curious – and thus motivated to ask about this: “But are we likely to see an increase of several degrees in the next ten years, a near doomsday event?”
Who has been saying things like this? Killian never has, and I don’t recall DWW suggesting it either in his long article – which seems to be your current topic atm. Nor has any outlier ‘climate scientist’ or enviro activist ever said such a thing either … so who? Gotta quote/ref? I’m get really confused with such points of view and wonder from where they come. thx
Ode To American Exceptionalism – Jan 24th 2017
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/01/2016-temperature-records/comment-page-2/#comment-669122
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/01/2016-temperature-records/comment-page-2/#comment-669129
Will anything ever change? I doubt it, yet I still believe in ‘miracles’ and unexpected good things can happen. Let’s review the state of play in UV Aug 2017 shall we?
189 Mr. Know It All: But Americans are different than the rest of the world – there’s a reason we’re number 1 in many aspects. We are not sheep. We value freedom.
Thomas replies: Oh really? How nice.
201 CCHolley: I would postulate that those that believe the conservative anti-AGW propaganda garbage heavily funded by the Koch brothers are actually American sheep.
212 Adam Lea: Yes, their definition of freedom means the freedom to do what they want, dump the consequences onto others, then engage in victim blaming.
214 Al Bundy: Of course, that is balanced by America being dead last in just about everything that advances the human spirit…
219 nigelj: Well ok, I agree with that. But I’m really saying much the same.
Thomas asks: Are you absolutely certain about that nigelj?
nigelji had said: “I think it’s more of an economic and political sort of question.”
Killian replied: “Not even a little. The risk is that people will keep thinking as you do. Leave it to the politicians and owner class and you guarantee failure because they are not assessing risk to life.”
then nigelj replies in #219: It is an economic and political question, but perhaps for everybody. I’m not saying leave the decision to some dictator to make on our behalf and probably get it horribly wrong. It needs appropriate technical expert input, and the final decision should be for the people as a whole.
Thomas comments: Good point. A high ideal. Is that the reality?
220 Nemesis: Isn’t it all like a funny theater? Like a comedy? Or is it a tragedy? Or both?
Thomas says: Aaaah, Shakespeare lives on. :-)
222 Thomas: Americans are losing their grip on reason and reality … ?
233 Nemesis: We have to change the economic system, distributing goods in a just, horizontal way, not in an unjust, vertical way. And we have to abandon the sick myth, that religious consumerism is good for us.
236 Mal Adapted: Listen to the voice of experience: it’ll take the better part of a lifetime to understand what’s really important to you; but when you do, you may finally be able to understand what’s important to other people.
Great point Mal. Now please would you and others also listen to the Voices of Experience…. and pay attention to the real facts?
America is indeed exceptional and unique. For AFAIK there is no other civilized nation on this earth, not in the OECD, not in G20, and not in the G7/8 apart from America that legally allows US based websites and their corporate and individual owners to promote, facilitate intentionally assist with and accept advertising for Profit the activities of Criminals who are knowingly engaged in the kidnapping, sex trafficking, repeated rape and the illegal prostitution of CHILDREN across the United States of America.
Not only that but whereas the DoJ FBI will act to shut down onshore and offshore websites selling illegal drugs and illegal weapons who can only sell their products once – that very same DoJ does nothing about the children who are being trafficked online for sex as often as 20 times per day – children who are both teenagers and preteens. Websites that are known to be owned by American citizens.
And that when those citizens and companies have been taken to Court to stop this modern day slavery that other Amercian Corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple and co have not only funded the legal Defense of these perpetrators but have joined as parties to argue the case in court.
And the factual evidence is that those participating in promoting this modern age slavery and human trafficking for sex to “rich white/black men” on American soil – the so-called land of the free have been deemed INNOCENT and operating a legal business by a multiplicity of State Courts of Law, State Appeals Courts, Federal Circuit courts and their Judges, Federal Circuit Appeals Court and Judges as well as the SCOTUS and it’s Judges with a lifetime tenure.
And that the despite these facts neither Senators Obama, Clinton and Sanders have done thing to stop it. The Obama White House and SoS Clinton and now the Trump White House, and the rest of the US Congress, senators and representatives one and all have not acted to stop this criminal activity and the ongoing facilitation of this evil trade for well over a decade now. McCain, Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell, all of them have done nothing and are useless and do not care.
Well, McCain was horrified ….. that the accused owners of the websites profiteering on advertising sex trafficked children (and adults too you know) dared to not show up on Subpoena to a Senate Committee hearing – how dare they do that? What an insult to the Senate and to McCain!
Like if you want to speak about being totally disconnected from REALITY and living in a Fantasy Land then McCain surely sums that up wholesale. Has he stopped the trade or passed a law to shut down the backpage.com website and hold the owners Criminally Liable as an intentional knowingly active party to Crimes against Children? NOPE!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpage
Of course, once Scott Pruit has gutted the EPA, and Lamar Smith successfully turned the US into a Christian Caliphate that wholeheartedly rejects Science, facts evidence and knowledge forever forward, where only real Bible Believing Christians qualify to Vote, or Trump has nuked the entire North Korean population or declared war on Venezuela over the same kinds of Lies as Bush did with Iraq, and Obama/Clinton did with Libya and Syria and Russia …. then maybe the “salt of the earth” will have the time to place their wise attention on the human sex trafficking of children that has and still is occurring right under their nose across the USA.
But I doubt it – Making a Profit is God on Earth – as you know that is American Culture writ large – they even say it on their bank notes – “In God we Trust” and that God is known as the Almighty Dollar.
Yes indeed, the USA is “exceptional” in every disgusting sense of what that means in reality. The same kind of crap went down in the Balkans wars, kidnapping and sex trafficking by US citizens working for the UN, for the State Dept and the US Military and for the civilian Police there. This pathological mindset for criminal behavior, abuse of Power, and for Government led cover ups of Crimes against Humanity is not a new aspect to American Culture.
And so it is that I wish that all American’s on this forum, and across all the other forums that argue incessantly about AGW/CC (in the words of Mal) may you all finally be able to understand what’s important to other people and the finally accept the historic culpability and collective responsibility that ALL Americans jointly carry (no less than all Germans for the acts of the Nazis) to get off your lazy backsides, stop making excuses for YOUR GOVERNMENTS and POLITICIANS and YOUR CORPORATIONS and YOUR BANKS and finally do something about the impact your Nation SPECIFICALLY has had and is continuing to have upon other people including your own CHILDREN as you read this (…. or as you choose to insidiously and callously simply ignore what it means and the truth of it) now today and into the future.
Like what on Earth do you imagine James Hansen’s actions to prosecute the COURT CASE of Our Children’s Trust AGAINST YOUR US Government and YOUR US CONGRESS is all about? It’s not an episode of the Simpsons or South Park – it’s real. https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/
Trump is not the cause nor the problem – the 50% of the population who voted for him are! They are untrainable and they are dangerous. Most of the the other half that voted for HR Clinton are equally dangerous and inept.
Until there is come sense and reason in the US Voter and in the Government that recognizes the wisdom and logical and rational justification for shutting down websites like Backpage, and Breitbart, and FoxNews and also deports Murdoch for running global criminal conspiracies engaged in actual crimes already proven, and WUWT, and Heller’s RealClimateScience, and JudithCurry’s and Alex Jones’ multi-million $ empire of crap, ban Christopher Monckton from getting a Visa, and ban Glen Beck on radio and tv, and ban Rush Limbaugh for life for being the RANK LIARS AND PSYCHOPATHS that they truly are, and ban all the rest of these LUNATICS and NeoNazi Fascists from public discourse then nothing is going to change regarding rational action on addressing Climate Change and Global Warming while y’all talk yourselves to death.
That’s my educated and well informed and highly experienced (and wordy) opinion. Please do not take anything I say personally.
*twinkle*
@nigelji, #241
” But just because we all die, and the world will eventually end, or run out of easy to extract resources, or possibly get hit by an asteroid, doesn’t seem like a reason to immediately give up all material possessions, and go to living in a mud hut. I can’t follow your logic there.
Balance and moderation. Make the most of the life we have. There’s plenty that should be enjoyable.”
Well, I enjoy life every single day, despite climate heating, cause I have nothing to lose and no children, so, privately I am an absolute optimist. And, btw, I didn’t say anything about “to immediately give up all material possessions”, did I? Anyway, it’s interesting, how you “pay attention”, when capitalism is critizised, please see my comment #238 and #240.
” I would love a magical brilliant alternative to capitalism, but I cannot see one. ”
So, just stick to capitalism, what’s the problem? You don’t have to follow my view, just like I don’t have to follow your view.
“… growth will find its natural level whatever it is.”
Yes, I am completely sure about that.
@Thomas, #244
” Aaaah, Shakespeare lives on. :-) ”
Yes, he lives on forever :-)
” Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.”
William Shakespeare, Sonet 66
Come the end of the month, we could be in need of an update on this to see how close we are to the record.
To the climate scientists and moderators:
This month’s Open Thread seems to have become – again – a semi-delirious, sickening monologue by T. One has to look very hard to find the odd comment that is even vaguely related to climate change or climate change policies.
So I am sorry to say, but I am giving up on commenting here on Real Climate for the next few months. I am still hopeful that Real Climate can be reworked into a useful website for communication between the climate science community and the general public, but in its present format, it has basically become a playground for trolls.
I understand that the workload of moderating such a website, targeted incessantly 24/7 by paid fossil fuel industry trolls, is an unfair proposition for climate scientists. I would suggest, though, that there are dedicated forum interfaces that would greatly lighten that load, such as Disqus.
The articles and the archives here at RC remain a treasure-trove of useful information, for which I am extremely grateful.
Very best,
Andrew
nigelj @219,
Very nice post. While some prefer to emphasize the possible scenarios, I think it best to focus on the most likely outcomes. Not only that, but we need to look at our most probable solutions, from both an economic and realistic viewpoint. We cannot tornado-proof every home, but we can install wide-spread tornado warming systems to alert home owners. Finances are limited, just like resources, so we must use them in the most efficient manner. I am a scientist, not an economists, so I cannot put forth the best solution from an aconimal standpoint, but I still realize that we must utilize our resources most efficiently. Therefore, if as scientists, we can say that the seas will rise 1m (or 2 or 3, etc.) over the next century, then we have done our part. It should be left to others to come up with the most economical solution, with whatever additional scientific input is necessary. It may not be the solution that we think is best at solving the problem. I know that I am oversimplifying the whole situation, but if the costs of avoidance is exorbitant, compared to the costs of mitigation, mitigation will win every time. Just like the tornado warning system.
241 nigelj when you think you “heard” and then say things like “… doesn’t seem like a reason to immediately give up all material possessions, and go to living in a mud hut. I can’t follow your logic there.”
You can’t follow ‘his logic’ because that isn’t his/her ‘logic’ in the first place – because he/she never said that, nor anything like that.
Nemesis is not the one being illogical (even if you don;t agree or can’t follow his logic). That’s because you are the one who running on ‘logical (ie illogical) fallacies’ and not quite hearing what he/she actuall said. :-)
An easy trap to fall into when being challenged with new/different ways of seeing things that are founded upon values far different than one might be used to hearing. So what you did is called a ‘strawman’ – simply attend to his actual arguments and his expressed opinions and refs evidence given – there’s need to go that extra step and make things up he never said by putting those words in his mouth.
Mmmm, maybe Nemesis is your personal Nemesis, challenging your and others default as yet un-examined belief systems? :-)
Re: “… And unless you spell out a viable completely different alternative to capitalism in some detail..”
I can’t recall the right logical fallacy label for that – but to help by way of an analogy, one doesn’t need to, and should not be required to, create an entirely new game of football to present valid criticisms of ‘dysfunctions’ in the structure and administration of say NFL or Soccer. Simply pointing any egregiously entrenched failings (with evidence of those) is usually quite sufficient.
Similar to climate scientists who are clearly pointing out the structural and egregious failings of the current economic / life system of FF and land use. It’s not their job to reinvent nor create an entirely new economic fabric of the world and prove it’s workable before their wise advice is heeded and accepted as true regarding AGW/CC and it’s causes. Right? See? :-)
and if anyone is interested about “Horizontal distribution” then there’s always google as a starting point … which provides sites such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_inequality
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/935/economics/horizontal-and-vertical-equity/
and of course
http://growthdevil.com/differences-horizontal-vertical-distribution/
and
http://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/Paper.aspx?doc=html/publications/papers/report/section_3-02.htm
or
Vertical Sharing and Horizontal Distribution of Resources: The Equity and Efficiency Trade-off by D K SRIVASTAVA Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 45, No. 48 (NOVEMBER 27-DECEMBER 3, 2010), pp. 64-70
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25764184?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Terms little known outside of ‘economics’, govt, taxation, and sociology circles. Yet they also show up in climate science and biology. Tada~!
And Nemesis .. you have a powerful famous supporter in Dick Smith a fine businessman entrepreneur millionaire explorer and aviator and who made a fortune out of capitalism along the way. He’s been at it for a while about unbridled non-stop economic growth being the equivalent of cancer cells – that always kill the host! :-)
https://www.dicksmithfairgo.com.au/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4787364/Dick-Smith-spends-1million-Grim-Reaper-ad-campaign.html
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/dick-smith-a-new-brand-of-capitalism/6020550
“It is simply endless growth and endless greed – meaning the finite wealth has to be divided between more people, and that means less for most.”
“Our growth-addicted economic system will see our children living in a world of eleven billion people, consuming and polluting more than our finite planet can withstand. It’s a path to either more and more inequality, or famine, disaster, war and collapse. Are we that stupid?”
http://www.adnews.com.au/news/angry-dick-smith-forced-to-spend-1m-on-new-grim-reaper-tv-ad
He’s not God, nor a Nobel Laureate, he’s merely Dick. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_(entrepreneur)
Mr Smith also wants the richest one percent of the population to pay more tax!
OMG no! Bloody evil socialist totalitarian bastard! String him up from the nearest tree lest he poisons the all kiddies minds for ever!
Blah blah, bloody blah …. gosh someone has to do it, right?
*twinkle*