This month’s open thread. Carbon budgets, Arctic sea ice minimum, methane emissions, hurricanes, volcanic impacts on climate… Please try and stick to these or similar topics.
Reader Interactions
358 Responses to "Unforced variations: Oct 2017"
alan2102says
#275 Kevin McKinney 22 Oct 2017: “Thanks for bringing Chairman Xi’s remarks into the forum. I think it’s pretty clear that China is using the climate issue to further its role as world leader”
They are using everything to further their role as world leader. They are self-interested and they have plenty of pride. But the important things are: 1) they are not SOLELY self-interested, and 2) their self-interest is not being advanced at the expense of others. Rather, they are interested in development and uplift of the entire Eurasian continent and beyond, and they are advancing their interests in a way that benefits those around them. Win-Win.
The Chinese are advancing a “community of shared future for all humankind”:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-03/20/c_136142216.htm
Commentary: “A community of shared future for all humankind”
— a Chinese concept winning U.N. recognition
“BEIJING, March 20, 2017 (Xinhua) — The Chinese concept of building
‘a community of shared future for all humankind’ was on Friday
incorporated into a U.N. Security Council resolution” end quote
Significantly, they are actually demonstrating by their actions this belief, rather than merely mouthing a platitude.
By way of the One Belt One Road initiative, and other initiatives which build infrastructure and promote development in places where it is most desperately needed, they are demonstrating a new world-centric spirit: collectivism over individualism, cooperation over competition, peer-to-peer over domination, mutual benefit over exploitation. In short: WIN-WIN.
Their work in Africa is illustrative. The recent completion of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway is inspiring, and an example of what the West should have been doing for many decades. And by the way they do not wring their hands about “overpopulation” or whine about our having exceeded our “carrying capacity”. They proceed to DO the difficult work that needs to be done to expand carrying capacity and support the population that we have and will have.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeypBc94Un8
How is Africa positioned in China’s global strategy?
CGTN – Published on Oct 8, 2017
Victor Gau at 4:50: because of Chinese engagement, Africa has become a “continent of great hope; from a forgotten continent to a continent with huge growth potential… China’s practice is simple and elegant, which is to treat every African country as an equal, treat them as brothers and sisters… focused on economic development, particularly infrastructure and connectivity. That brings more hope for Africa emerging as a great continent of growth opportunities”
That is as opposed to the behavior of the West toward Africa over the past few centuries — a sickening litany of destruction, mass murder, shameless exploitation and looting, etc., which continues up to this day.
China is now the light unto the world, the city on the hill, showing a new and better way, and helping all to ascend. They are becoming what America was supposed to be, before it failed.
#271 nigelj 22 Oct 2017: “Mal Adapted pointed out…the slide towards non sustainability started with cereal farming and is somewhat locked in now.”
Locked in now?! Jeezuz. What an outlandish suggestion. We strip-mine the soils for a century or more, never lifting a finger to replace what was removed, and then we imagine that unsustainability is “locked in now”?!
alan2102, nigelj said “somewhat locked in now”. It seems you are eager to misinterpret his presumably intentional vagueness as being unambiguous; as though ‘locked in now’ were clearly defined, and asserted without qualification.
Why is that, alan2102? Are you bothered by other commenters’ express unwillingness to be more definite than the available data can justify? Do you have additional verifiable data bearing on sustainability that you’re not disclosing? Are you a trained haruspex, perhaps? Or are you simply uncomfortable until you’ve made up your mind about the future state of the world, whether or not your conclusion is supported by evidence?
Coaltracker’s July update on the global coal pipeline. The bad news is that there is still a lot of capacity in the pipeline–the better part of a thousand gigawatts.
The good news is that far more builds have been shelved than are being constructed, and more shelved than there are at all of the pre-construction phases combined. Even better, the trends show declining construction numbers, and increasing ‘shelved’ numbers. Pre-construction phases are all in decline, too, except for the permitting phase, which had an uptick.
Good natured jokes (self-deprecation and funny cracks) and a good sense of humour are great levelers Steve. Try it one day. :-)
The only thing that actually matters is what do you conclude Steve. That’s your judgement and your opinion and it’s the only thing you have any control over. You may naturally of course conclude that you are right. You’re entitled to that opinion of course. And you may back that up with your selected ‘verifiable facts’ and per reviewed articles to your hearts content.
That’s how it works, right? Meanwhile do try not to be so broadly condescending of Scott’s attitude and his significant total contribution here including many refs to soils research and peer reviewed articles.
It’s not my job to point them or anything else out to you. I have a day job already mate. :-)
nigeljsays
Enhanced soil carbon sinks look very plausible to me, and the potential seems at least ‘large’ judging by evidence of soil depths etc.
But its surprising nobody has done a study quantifying how many emissions could potentially be sequestered in the soil. Without this, its hard to know how many resources humanity should put into the issue, and what proportional part it may play in dealing with emissions.
We know areas of land use, historical information on depths of soils already achieved, and could probably take a reasonable conservative stab at how much improved framing could improve the situation and encourage more of this root fungus. It would be a big job but not impossible.
I doubt soil sequestration would be quick enough to help with stopping emissions getting above 2 degrees but it could draw down emissions once they have reached net zero, and possibly quite a lot. But you have to come up with numerical estimates over time etc.
One suspects there would be limiting factors on depth of soil but we dont really know. Some soils are 20 metres deep and this is over huge lengths of time, and possibly they could go deeper. The issue is it might be incredibly slowly and that may be the ultimate limiting factor for practical purposes.
Consider: Cover cropping mimics grasslands, speeds up succession, sequesters carbon.
And mycelium!
nigeljsays
Killian, coming back to something previously discussed. I said roughly that “regenerative design appears to me to be use every tool available to attain perfect sustainability forever”. You said I was stupid and lying and putting up a straw man.
I based my definition on piecing together statements you have made about “use all the tools in the tool box”, “if we dont change our ways humanity faces extinction” (which implies you are concerned about very long time frames) and your constant criticism that some of my proposals are not perfectly sustainable.
So for you to to say I was stupid, or lying about you, or putting up a straw man is just completely unfounded.
alan2102says
#302 Mal Adapted 24 Oct 2017: “alan2102, nigelj said “somewhat locked in now”. It seems you are eager to misinterpret his presumably intentional vagueness as being unambiguous; as though ‘locked in now’ were clearly defined, and asserted without qualification. Why is that, alan2102? Are you bothered by other commenters’ express unwillingness to be more definite than the available data can justify? Do you have additional verifiable data bearing on sustainability that you’re not disclosing?”
OK, I will take “somewhat locked in now” to be ambiguous. I will ignore the “locked in now” part, and focus on “somewhat”. Please hold forth. Tell me more about how the slide toward non-sustainability started with cereal farming and is SOMEWHAT locked-in now. Feel free to disclose additional verifiable data on UNsustainability that you have not previously disclosed, but that you have implied exists by virtue of your phrase “locked in”.
I have my own ideas about how things are “locked in”. In a nutshell: they are “locked in” if we continue to behave like complete fucking idiots and lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells, refusing to lift a finger to do the most fundamental things necessary to have a snowball’s chance at sustainability. In that case, we are indeed locked in to a very grim future, or perhaps no future. However, and very fortunately, some of us — those emerging as global leaders — do NOT behave like complete fucking idiots and lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells. How cool is that?
nigeljsays
China seems to me like basically a constructive global player right now, judging by their actions. It’s also hard to see any great military threat, unless you are a conspiracy theorist although theres certainly issues in their actions in the south china sea, but they seem to some extent symbolic to me. The economist.com has done some balanced, informative articles on China and Xi Jinpeng.
Shame about the very repressive human rights, but no country is perfect. History is so influential in power structures. A read of Chinas history shows how diverse chinese culture is between regions, and the difficulties they had unifying things and this has lead to very central autocratic leadership. Fortunately it has led to mostly benevolent dictatorships, and their structure of government and succession suggests there’s a good chance this will continue
China is leading by example with renewable energy, possibly for various reasons.People are proud everywhere, and China was once a leading power in various technologies, so like any human society they might want to get some of that back, and so possibly this is part of their reason for interest in renewable energy. That’s a healthy motive if its correct.
Zhang et al (2017) ‘A global moderate resolution dataset of gross primary production of vegetation for 2000–2016’ provides some easy-access numbers that may assist thoughts on the wobbles in atmospheric CO2. Table 3 shows annual Vegitation Gross Primary Production and a drop of 1.72Gt(C) 2015-16, a drop that would have boosted atmospheric levels by some 0.8ppm over the period 2015-16. The measured CO2 level 2015-16 jumped by 3.4ppm, 1.2ppm above the average annual rise for recent years.
But a word of caution. While that might assist in closing gaps in our reckoning, the increase in GPP given for the period 2000-16 totals 6Gt(C) which exceeds the 3Gt(C) increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the period (FF + LUC). It seems measured data is showing that one gap can be mainly closed, while showing another gap arriving. So I think it remains early days in quantifying which are the bits of the biosphere that are (so far) helping by happily gobbling up our CO2 for us.
And finally for September (although we still await BEST) HadCRUT4 have posted their anomaly for Sept at +0.56ºC, on HadCRUT the coolest month so far for 2017 by some way. The previous mounths sat in the range +0.87ºC to +0.64ºC. This is significantly different to NOAA & GISS for September which showed much smaller reductions. (See graph here – usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’.)
For HadCRUT, 2017 is the 7th warmest Sept on record after Sept 2015 (+0.80ºC), 2016, 2014, 2005 & 2009. For GISS & NOAA Sept 2017 was the 4th warmest.
For all months, Sept 2017 is the 81st warmest anomaly on HadCRUT (=41st for NOAA & =34th for GISS).
It looks certain that the full HadCRUT annual anomaly for 2017 will end up in third spot, as the remainder of the year now would have to average above +1.05ºC to claim top spot, would have to average +0.92ºC to claim second and would have to drop below +0.10ºC to fall to fourth. (This is also the likely outcome for NOAA & while 2nd remains the probable GISS outome.) The following table is ranked by the Jan-Sept averages.
Other than this new paleo ocean temp analysis indicating there are zero true analogs for current conditions and processes. Fine. I’ve stated for years my belief there was none, so no surprise.
Other than that, our absolute measurements are what matter. It is not as 8f these new data, if accurate, cause an adjustmet to current temps, right?
What am I missing?
Killiansays
Soils are one of several keys to carbon concentrations, and mycorrhizae(sp?) play a key role in making that key work to lock away carbon.
“Shortly after Trump announced the pullout, stats from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal confirmed that coal is on a tear, with 1600 plants planned or under construction in 62 countries. The champion of this coal-building binge is China, which boasts 11 of the world’s 20 largest coal-plant developers, and which is building 700 of the 1600 new plants, many in foreign countries, including high-population countries such as Egypt and Pakistan that until now have burned little or no coal.”
This is what alan2102 calls China “the light of the world”. He’s correct – China IS lighting the world: WITH COAL! :)
Mr. Know It Allsays
Are there any regularly updated satellite views of the polar regions on the internet where we could see the extent of the ice?
David B. Bensonsays
At the current rate of increasing the Keeling curve we are headed toward a future climate state resembling the mid-Pliocene with its increased temperatures and much higher sea stand. Here is a brief writeup:
“I am writing Scientific Reticence and the Fate of Humanity in response to a query from the editor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics who handled Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms.”
However, and very fortunately, some of us — those emerging as global leaders — do NOT behave like complete fucking idiots and lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells. How cool is that?
How real is that? I’m afraid I’m unable to replicate your finding. In any case, ‘complete fucking idiots’, ‘lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells’ and ‘cool’ are colorful descriptions, but are not intersubjectively verifiable.
BTW, are you really including yourself among “those emerging as global leaders”?
The scientific literature undercuts ocean thermal energy conversion and does the climate aspiration of mankind a disservice. It looks at OTEC through the upwelling lens rather than the heat pipe prism. Rather than potentially adding to global warming as suggested here it would cool the ocean surface and rather than having no chance of being implemented on a massive scale as is suggested here it can produce as mush as 25 terawatt of climate mitigating energy.
We entrust heat pipes with the thermal integrity of our computers and expensive electronics equipment.
You can do better than that, Hank. I can do better than that, myself. I could post a whole gish gallop link-dump of anti-China stuff. What matters, however, as I’ve argued previously, is the trajectory, which I believe to be clear, taking the top view.
This is what alan2102 calls China “the light of the world”. He’s correct – China IS lighting the world: WITH COAL! :)
Heh. Even when Mr. IAT and I superficially agree on something, he’s gotta play hard core AGW-denier here at every opportunity. He deploys the “but what about China” meme. From An idiot’s guide to whataboutery (not redacted in original):
So, do women get a lot of whataboutery online?
Yes, but to be fair, everybody does…anyone taking the position that the west should do something – indeed anything – to tackle climate change will inevitably encounter the words, “But what about China?”
And what’s the correct response to that?
I don’t think you can go wrong with, “If China was slamming their c**k in the door would you start unfastening your belt?”
Feel free to disclose additional verifiable data on UNsustainability that you have not previously disclosed, but that you have implied exists by virtue of your phrase “locked in”.
Not my phrase, and it isn’t my job to explain ‘null hypothesis’ to you either. FWIW, though, the mediocrity principle may clarify a few things for you. Or maybe not. Meh.
Killiansays
#325 David B. Benson said At the current rate of increasing the Keeling curve we are headed toward a future climate state resembling the mid-Pliocene with its increased temperatures and much higher sea stand.
I suspect the ecosystem of the time was intact. Ours is not. We win. Er… lose. That is, with little hysteresis and a broken, some might say chaotic, ecosystem, seems logical it could be significantly worse in the end.
use the tools “verbatim” and the date range for recent imagery
Killiansays
#309 nigelj said -1+1
I said roughly that “regenerative design appears to me to be use every tool available to attain perfect sustainability forever”. You said I was stupid and lying and putting up a straw man.
I based my definition on piecing together statements you have made
Nope. I have never spoken of a perfect sustainability while making numerous statements that would indicate sustainability could not be “perfect” because use your damned head. When have I ever said anything like nothing should ever change?
You are, intentionally, imo, conflating a realistic, workable definition of sustainability and the process of design, maintenance and adaptation. No infrastructure or agricultural system a human makes is going to last forever without management and adjusting to changing climate, etc., not to mention simple entropic processes.
If you really cannot sort this out from what you like to pretend I have said, then you do not belong in the conversation. If you are, as I strongly believe, being exceedingly dishonest (others here have no problem parsing my comments, by comparison), then you don’t belong here.
humanity faces extinction” (which implies you are concerned about very long time frames)
How do you know? Consider rates of change are accelerating, then go learn about exponential and chaotic systems.
your constant criticism that some of my proposals are not perfectly sustainable.
I have not criticized them, I have criticized you for not understanding they are not sustainable and for not applying risk assessment properly in all cases.
So for you to to say I was stupid, or lying about you, or putting up a straw man is just completely unfounded.
I fixed it for you: So for you to to say I was stupid, or lying about you, or putting up a straw man is completely accurate.
But it’s not about you, so let me put some actual content in here.
1. It is said a permaculture design is never finished. One can imagine very many reasons for this. A few:
– Nature does stuff. One must deal with this.
– Humans aren’t good at making permanent stuff.
– Needs change.
– Climate changes, even without us making it all far worse.
– Populations rise and fall.
Etc. There is no such thing as perfect sustainability. I don’t talk about finished, static systems ever. None of my statements, ever, support your Straw Man. A threshhold can move. I speak of threshholds of sustainability, not static states of sustainability for a reason.
This list could be a book in length, I’d wager, but all you really need to know to not make such a vapid claim against someone else’s words is this: Isht happens.
I hope everyone reading this will take this point to heart: We are never really finished; we’re merely lucky enough for rates of change to sometimes be slow enough to have time for a nap, or a walk in the woods, metaphorically speaking.
nigeljsays
Killian @343, thanks, but you don’t seem to realise what you say from one day to the next, or have a single clue what anything you say really means.
Killiansays
Regreening the planet could equal cutting all oil burning. Hmmm… And they will have badly underestimated, not knowing Pc, et al.
David B. Benson @325/326,
The mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) 3 million years ago is certainly an interesting lesson for us. Yet I’m not sure we tackle it properly. One tiff such discussion can generate (and one that can raise passions) is how much CO2 was there during the mPWP? And a missing piece of discussion seems to be the mechanisms that raised CO2 levels causing the mPWP and why temperatures were then reduced ending the mPWP.
On CO2 levels, we get the likes of Hayward et al (2016) saying “atmospheric CO2 concentration is estimated to have ranged between 350 and 450 p.p.m.v.” citing a list of rather old references. (This is pretty much repeating IPCC AR5 which timidly gives credence to each and every data point of every study shown in AR5 fig 5.2a) So what was it? 350ppm? 400? 450?
Myself, I am more inclined towards the idea that CO2 was likely not above 400ppm, as set out in Zhang et al (2013) (not cited by Haywood et al) which shows only error bars topping 400ppm.We have to go all the way back to 14 million years ago to find a central point topping 400ppm. (The icea of a sub-400ppm mPWP has in the past led to very robust reactions from some who are entirely convinced by the idea of a 400+ppm mPWP.)
And the impact of a 400ppm CO2 climate (plus or minus) cannot be bandied about without a proper understanding of the mechanisms involved. Thus we could/should be talking of the closing of the Panama sea link, the opening of Drakes Passage, the idea of a supercharged AMOC that led to increased rainfall freshening of the Arctic Ocean and this allowed the formation of pack ice. And somewhere in that, the mechanism that elevated CO2 levels. I have found Haug & Keigwin (2004) ‘How the Isthmus of Panama Put Ice in the Arctic’ an interesting starter-read. And the implications for the modern world of higher levels of CO2 relative to the mPWP (potentially significantly higher levels) even if only for a century or two; these do bear serious consideration.
(I note in the comment you link to @326, you there link to the abstract of Lunt et al (2007) [full paper] who find an enhanced AMOC but no significant ice-sheet effect resulting from the closure of the Panama sea link.)
KIA proffers Lawrence Solomon as source for the ‘coal on a tear, renewables in the tank’ attempt at meme creation. The presentation may be a bit more upscale than Breitbart, but the ingredients in the actual dish are largely unchanged:
Lest I be accused of pure ad hominey (quasi-neologistic pun intentional), note that Mr. Solomon’s cited source was Coal Tracker, whose statistics in context provide a very, very different picture than he himself paints. For example (and in addition to the link I already posted above, to a different CT summary sheet), this ‘Jan. ’16-Jan. ’17 delta by country’ table shows that the ‘tear’ in coal is composed predominantly of cancellations.
IOW, there was ~ 600 GW less coal capacity in the pipeline at the beginning of 2017 than there had been at the beginning of 2016. Yet Solomon finds a way to spin this as ‘coal on a tear’. Hard to understand how that can be anything but a deliberate attempt to mislead his readers.
But wait! There’s more!
He also notes that RE investment was down, and paints that as a looming collapse in spending, throwing in a gratuitous but essentially meaningless jab at supposed ‘funny money.’ What he failed to note was that despite investment being down a bit, actual RE capacity additions were *up*! In fact, 2016 saw the largest annual increase on record:
So, quite literally, in 2016, less money was more RE (especially solar and wind)–a pretty clear macro-indicator of the decline in RE cost. You’d think that a commentator trying to pass as a serious analyst might deign to note that costs had declined so significantly, wouldn’t you?
Then again, you’d think that a commentator trying to pass as a serious analyst wouldn’t project that a service whose costs have decreased significantly relative to the competition would see declining demand.
“Are there any regularly updated satellite views of the polar regions on the internet where we could see the extent of the ice?”
Pretty sure this has been mentioned numerous times already, but yes. Many met services track extent and area both, updating on a daily basis. This content is conveniently aggregated at Neven’s Sea Ice blog (graphs pages).
Quick sitrep: After record-low extents dominated the first several months of 2017, a cool and cloudy summer helped preserve ice cover enough that the annual low was only 8th-lowest for daily minimum extent or 7th for the monthly value (per NSICD data). However, the Actic fall has been relatively warm, ice growth has been slow, and extent is once again tracking below 2 SD (though not yet at record low levels).
The WMO GHG Bulletin upgated to 2016 is getting media coverage of varying quality. The guts of the report reproducing the NOAA ESRL Annual GHG Index (in climatological-speak) is the whopping annual increase in anthropogenic forcing (+0.053Wm^-2) resulting from the 2015-16 record annual rise in CO2 levels, these having been boosted by the El Nino to add a forcing of +0.046Wm^-2 (up from +0.031Wm^-2). Methane showed a decline (down from +0.005 to +0.003) while N2O & ‘others’ remained at a constant 0.003Wm^-2 & 0.001Wm^-2 respectively. The rolling 5-year averages for anthropogenic forcing increase 1950-to-date is plotted out here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’). The 2016 annual values appended within the graph of the last 5 annual data cobbled on the end of the 5-year averages was literally off-the-chart (thus requiring a re-scaling exercise).
#275 Kevin McKinney 22 Oct 2017: “Thanks for bringing Chairman Xi’s remarks into the forum. I think it’s pretty clear that China is using the climate issue to further its role as world leader”
They are using everything to further their role as world leader. They are self-interested and they have plenty of pride. But the important things are: 1) they are not SOLELY self-interested, and 2) their self-interest is not being advanced at the expense of others. Rather, they are interested in development and uplift of the entire Eurasian continent and beyond, and they are advancing their interests in a way that benefits those around them. Win-Win.
The Chinese are advancing a “community of shared future for all humankind”:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-03/20/c_136142216.htm
Commentary: “A community of shared future for all humankind”
— a Chinese concept winning U.N. recognition
“BEIJING, March 20, 2017 (Xinhua) — The Chinese concept of building
‘a community of shared future for all humankind’ was on Friday
incorporated into a U.N. Security Council resolution” end quote
Significantly, they are actually demonstrating by their actions this belief, rather than merely mouthing a platitude.
By way of the One Belt One Road initiative, and other initiatives which build infrastructure and promote development in places where it is most desperately needed, they are demonstrating a new world-centric spirit: collectivism over individualism, cooperation over competition, peer-to-peer over domination, mutual benefit over exploitation. In short: WIN-WIN.
Their work in Africa is illustrative. The recent completion of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway is inspiring, and an example of what the West should have been doing for many decades. And by the way they do not wring their hands about “overpopulation” or whine about our having exceeded our “carrying capacity”. They proceed to DO the difficult work that needs to be done to expand carrying capacity and support the population that we have and will have.
See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeypBc94Un8
How is Africa positioned in China’s global strategy?
CGTN – Published on Oct 8, 2017
Victor Gau at 4:50: because of Chinese engagement, Africa has become a “continent of great hope; from a forgotten continent to a continent with huge growth potential… China’s practice is simple and elegant, which is to treat every African country as an equal, treat them as brothers and sisters… focused on economic development, particularly infrastructure and connectivity. That brings more hope for Africa emerging as a great continent of growth opportunities”
That is as opposed to the behavior of the West toward Africa over the past few centuries — a sickening litany of destruction, mass murder, shameless exploitation and looting, etc., which continues up to this day.
China is now the light unto the world, the city on the hill, showing a new and better way, and helping all to ascend. They are becoming what America was supposed to be, before it failed.
alan2102:
alan2102, nigelj said “somewhat locked in now”. It seems you are eager to misinterpret his presumably intentional vagueness as being unambiguous; as though ‘locked in now’ were clearly defined, and asserted without qualification.
Why is that, alan2102? Are you bothered by other commenters’ express unwillingness to be more definite than the available data can justify? Do you have additional verifiable data bearing on sustainability that you’re not disclosing? Are you a trained haruspex, perhaps? Or are you simply uncomfortable until you’ve made up your mind about the future state of the world, whether or not your conclusion is supported by evidence?
Coaltracker’s July update on the global coal pipeline. The bad news is that there is still a lot of capacity in the pipeline–the better part of a thousand gigawatts.
The good news is that far more builds have been shelved than are being constructed, and more shelved than there are at all of the pre-construction phases combined. Even better, the trends show declining construction numbers, and increasing ‘shelved’ numbers. Pre-construction phases are all in decline, too, except for the permitting phase, which had an uptick.
https://endcoal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/PDFs-for-GCPT-July-2017-Regions-MW-comparison.pdf
Good natured jokes (self-deprecation and funny cracks) and a good sense of humour are great levelers Steve. Try it one day. :-)
The only thing that actually matters is what do you conclude Steve. That’s your judgement and your opinion and it’s the only thing you have any control over. You may naturally of course conclude that you are right. You’re entitled to that opinion of course. And you may back that up with your selected ‘verifiable facts’ and per reviewed articles to your hearts content.
That’s how it works, right? Meanwhile do try not to be so broadly condescending of Scott’s attitude and his significant total contribution here including many refs to soils research and peer reviewed articles.
It’s not my job to point them or anything else out to you. I have a day job already mate. :-)
Enhanced soil carbon sinks look very plausible to me, and the potential seems at least ‘large’ judging by evidence of soil depths etc.
But its surprising nobody has done a study quantifying how many emissions could potentially be sequestered in the soil. Without this, its hard to know how many resources humanity should put into the issue, and what proportional part it may play in dealing with emissions.
We know areas of land use, historical information on depths of soils already achieved, and could probably take a reasonable conservative stab at how much improved framing could improve the situation and encourage more of this root fungus. It would be a big job but not impossible.
I doubt soil sequestration would be quick enough to help with stopping emissions getting above 2 degrees but it could draw down emissions once they have reached net zero, and possibly quite a lot. But you have to come up with numerical estimates over time etc.
One suspects there would be limiting factors on depth of soil but we dont really know. Some soils are 20 metres deep and this is over huge lengths of time, and possibly they could go deeper. The issue is it might be incredibly slowly and that may be the ultimate limiting factor for practical purposes.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/oct/18/clifi-a-new-way-to-talk-about-climate-change
> China is now the light unto the world, the city on the hill, showing a new and better way
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/08/china-manufacturing-and-quality-fade-the-101.html
#295 Scott Strough said Steve
soil…. glomalin… grasslands…
Consider: Cover cropping mimics grasslands, speeds up succession, sequesters carbon.
And mycelium!
Killian, coming back to something previously discussed. I said roughly that “regenerative design appears to me to be use every tool available to attain perfect sustainability forever”. You said I was stupid and lying and putting up a straw man.
I based my definition on piecing together statements you have made about “use all the tools in the tool box”, “if we dont change our ways humanity faces extinction” (which implies you are concerned about very long time frames) and your constant criticism that some of my proposals are not perfectly sustainable.
So for you to to say I was stupid, or lying about you, or putting up a straw man is just completely unfounded.
#302 Mal Adapted 24 Oct 2017: “alan2102, nigelj said “somewhat locked in now”. It seems you are eager to misinterpret his presumably intentional vagueness as being unambiguous; as though ‘locked in now’ were clearly defined, and asserted without qualification. Why is that, alan2102? Are you bothered by other commenters’ express unwillingness to be more definite than the available data can justify? Do you have additional verifiable data bearing on sustainability that you’re not disclosing?”
OK, I will take “somewhat locked in now” to be ambiguous. I will ignore the “locked in now” part, and focus on “somewhat”. Please hold forth. Tell me more about how the slide toward non-sustainability started with cereal farming and is SOMEWHAT locked-in now. Feel free to disclose additional verifiable data on UNsustainability that you have not previously disclosed, but that you have implied exists by virtue of your phrase “locked in”.
I have my own ideas about how things are “locked in”. In a nutshell: they are “locked in” if we continue to behave like complete fucking idiots and lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells, refusing to lift a finger to do the most fundamental things necessary to have a snowball’s chance at sustainability. In that case, we are indeed locked in to a very grim future, or perhaps no future. However, and very fortunately, some of us — those emerging as global leaders — do NOT behave like complete fucking idiots and lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells. How cool is that?
China seems to me like basically a constructive global player right now, judging by their actions. It’s also hard to see any great military threat, unless you are a conspiracy theorist although theres certainly issues in their actions in the south china sea, but they seem to some extent symbolic to me. The economist.com has done some balanced, informative articles on China and Xi Jinpeng.
Shame about the very repressive human rights, but no country is perfect. History is so influential in power structures. A read of Chinas history shows how diverse chinese culture is between regions, and the difficulties they had unifying things and this has lead to very central autocratic leadership. Fortunately it has led to mostly benevolent dictatorships, and their structure of government and succession suggests there’s a good chance this will continue
China is leading by example with renewable energy, possibly for various reasons.People are proud everywhere, and China was once a leading power in various technologies, so like any human society they might want to get some of that back, and so possibly this is part of their reason for interest in renewable energy. That’s a healthy motive if its correct.
Zhang et al (2017) ‘A global moderate resolution dataset of gross primary production of vegetation for 2000–2016’ provides some easy-access numbers that may assist thoughts on the wobbles in atmospheric CO2. Table 3 shows annual Vegitation Gross Primary Production and a drop of 1.72Gt(C) 2015-16, a drop that would have boosted atmospheric levels by some 0.8ppm over the period 2015-16. The measured CO2 level 2015-16 jumped by 3.4ppm, 1.2ppm above the average annual rise for recent years.
But a word of caution. While that might assist in closing gaps in our reckoning, the increase in GPP given for the period 2000-16 totals 6Gt(C) which exceeds the 3Gt(C) increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the period (FF + LUC). It seems measured data is showing that one gap can be mainly closed, while showing another gap arriving. So I think it remains early days in quantifying which are the bits of the biosphere that are (so far) helping by happily gobbling up our CO2 for us.
And the ‘glitch’ I reported @297 is now solved so this graph of weekly CO2 increases (1997-99 & 2015-17) – usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’ is now up-to-date again.
Ooops! Bad link to Shang et al (2017). Try here.
Enjoyed Gavin’s interview on London Real. Streamed from youtube.
#289 nigelj said -1+1ys:
Nige, I’m going to leave in this space every intelligent comment you make in this post:
Later, will tear you a new one. Class time. Gotta go.
How the World Bank keeps poor nations poor
Its policy of eco-imperialism forces renewables on a reluctant but largely helpless developing world
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/how-the-world-bank-keeps-poor-nations-poor/
CFACT has one upped Thomas in the verifiable facts department with a faux present tense interview with Sir Karl Popper, who died in 1994
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/10/latest-news-from-dead-philosophers.html
And finally for September (although we still await BEST) HadCRUT4 have posted their anomaly for Sept at +0.56ºC, on HadCRUT the coolest month so far for 2017 by some way. The previous mounths sat in the range +0.87ºC to +0.64ºC. This is significantly different to NOAA & GISS for September which showed much smaller reductions. (See graph here – usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’.)
For HadCRUT, 2017 is the 7th warmest Sept on record after Sept 2015 (+0.80ºC), 2016, 2014, 2005 & 2009. For GISS & NOAA Sept 2017 was the 4th warmest.
For all months, Sept 2017 is the 81st warmest anomaly on HadCRUT (=41st for NOAA & =34th for GISS).
It looks certain that the full HadCRUT annual anomaly for 2017 will end up in third spot, as the remainder of the year now would have to average above +1.05ºC to claim top spot, would have to average +0.92ºC to claim second and would have to drop below +0.10ºC to fall to fourth. (This is also the likely outcome for NOAA & while 2nd remains the probable GISS outome.) The following table is ranked by the Jan-Sept averages.
…….. Jan-Aug Sept .. Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.87ºC … … … +0.80ºC … … …1st
2015 .. +0.72ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … …2nd
2017 .. +0.71ºC
2010 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.56ºC … … …4th
1998 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.54ºC … … …6th
2014 .. +0.57ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … …3rd
2005 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … …5th
2002 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.50ºC … … …11th
2007 .. +0.52ºC … … … +0.49ºC … … …12th
2009 .. +0.50ºC … … … +0.51ºC … … …10th
2013 .. +0.50ºC … … … +0.51ºC … … …7th
Other than this new paleo ocean temp analysis indicating there are zero true analogs for current conditions and processes. Fine. I’ve stated for years my belief there was none, so no surprise.
Other than that, our absolute measurements are what matter. It is not as 8f these new data, if accurate, cause an adjustmet to current temps, right?
What am I missing?
Soils are one of several keys to carbon concentrations, and mycorrhizae(sp?) play a key role in making that key work to lock away carbon.
Aargh…. hee’s the link.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171003111814.htm
298 – BPL (Breitbart is neo-Nazi news.)
299 – KM
301 – alan2102 (China is the light of the world.)
If you don’t like Breitbart, perhaps this is better:
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-paris-is-dead-the-global-warming-deniers-have-won
“Shortly after Trump announced the pullout, stats from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal confirmed that coal is on a tear, with 1600 plants planned or under construction in 62 countries. The champion of this coal-building binge is China, which boasts 11 of the world’s 20 largest coal-plant developers, and which is building 700 of the 1600 new plants, many in foreign countries, including high-population countries such as Egypt and Pakistan that until now have burned little or no coal.”
This is what alan2102 calls China “the light of the world”. He’s correct – China IS lighting the world: WITH COAL! :)
Are there any regularly updated satellite views of the polar regions on the internet where we could see the extent of the ice?
At the current rate of increasing the Keeling curve we are headed toward a future climate state resembling the mid-Pliocene with its increased temperatures and much higher sea stand. Here is a brief writeup:
Here’s the writeup link;
http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/561/back-future
Scientific Reticence: a DRAFT Discussion
26 October 2017
James Hansen
“I am writing Scientific Reticence and the Fate of Humanity in response to a query from the editor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics who handled Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
(smile)
#324
Yes!
You mean to say you didn’t know it already Mr know it all?
alan2102:
How real is that? I’m afraid I’m unable to replicate your finding. In any case, ‘complete fucking idiots’, ‘lazy shiftless ne’er-do-wells’ and ‘cool’ are colorful descriptions, but are not intersubjectively verifiable.
BTW, are you really including yourself among “those emerging as global leaders”?
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
I don’t know, but see this Nature News item: Ageing satellites put crucial sea-ice climate record at risk, and also this AGU blog post: The Important Weather Satellite You Haven’t Heard Of, both dated today.
O 316: Its policy of eco-imperialism forces renewables on a reluctant but largely helpless developing world
BPL: You forgot to mention the Jews, the Vatican, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, and the Reptoids.
KIA: “China is lighting the world… with coal!”
BPL: http://bartonlevenson.com/ChinaAndIndia.html
Lawrence Solomon? Just a tiny little bit better than Delingpole, Mr KIA:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/16/world-going-slow-coal-misinformation-distorting-facts
For consideration.
The scientific literature undercuts ocean thermal energy conversion and does the climate aspiration of mankind a disservice. It looks at OTEC through the upwelling lens rather than the heat pipe prism. Rather than potentially adding to global warming as suggested here it would cool the ocean surface and rather than having no chance of being implemented on a massive scale as is suggested here it can produce as mush as 25 terawatt of climate mitigating energy.
We entrust heat pipes with the thermal integrity of our computers and expensive electronics equipment.
Why would we do less for the planet?
#307 Hank Roberts 24 Oct 2017:
“alan: China is now the light unto the world, the city on the hill, showing a new and better way
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/08/china-manufacturing-and-quality-fade-the-101.html”
You can do better than that, Hank. I can do better than that, myself. I could post a whole gish gallop link-dump of anti-China stuff. What matters, however, as I’ve argued previously, is the trajectory, which I believe to be clear, taking the top view.
Mr. IAT:
Heh. Even when Mr. IAT and I superficially agree on something, he’s gotta play hard core AGW-denier here at every opportunity. He deploys the “but what about China” meme. From An idiot’s guide to whataboutery (not redacted in original):
I won’t pretend I can improve on that response.
alan2102:
Not my phrase, and it isn’t my job to explain ‘null hypothesis’ to you either. FWIW, though, the mediocrity principle may clarify a few things for you. Or maybe not. Meh.
#325 David B. Benson said At the current rate of increasing the Keeling curve we are headed toward a future climate state resembling the mid-Pliocene with its increased temperatures and much higher sea stand.
I suspect the ecosystem of the time was intact. Ours is not. We win. Er… lose. That is, with little hysteresis and a broken, some might say chaotic, ecosystem, seems logical it could be significantly worse in the end.
You can use the Polar view site http://www.polarview.aq/ but it would show you why making sense of the images needs some processing. Processed data available https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
https://www.google.com/search?q=satellite+views+of+the+polar+regions&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYov61i5fXAhVjyFQKHVFbAZsQ_AUICygC&biw=1185&bih=857
https://www.google.com/search?q=satellite+views+of+the+polar+regions&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYov61i5fXAhVjyFQKHVFbAZsQ_AUICygC&biw=1185&bih=857
use the tools “verbatim” and the date range for recent imagery
https://www.google.com/search?q=satellite+views+of+the+polar+regions
use the tools “verbatim” and the date range for recent imagery
#309 nigelj said -1+1
I said roughly that “regenerative design appears to me to be use every tool available to attain perfect sustainability forever”. You said I was stupid and lying and putting up a straw man.
I based my definition on piecing together statements you have made
Nope. I have never spoken of a perfect sustainability while making numerous statements that would indicate sustainability could not be “perfect” because use your damned head. When have I ever said anything like nothing should ever change?
You are, intentionally, imo, conflating a realistic, workable definition of sustainability and the process of design, maintenance and adaptation. No infrastructure or agricultural system a human makes is going to last forever without management and adjusting to changing climate, etc., not to mention simple entropic processes.
If you really cannot sort this out from what you like to pretend I have said, then you do not belong in the conversation. If you are, as I strongly believe, being exceedingly dishonest (others here have no problem parsing my comments, by comparison), then you don’t belong here.
humanity faces extinction” (which implies you are concerned about very long time frames)
How do you know? Consider rates of change are accelerating, then go learn about exponential and chaotic systems.
your constant criticism that some of my proposals are not perfectly sustainable.
I have not criticized them, I have criticized you for not understanding they are not sustainable and for not applying risk assessment properly in all cases.
So for you to to say I was stupid, or lying about you, or putting up a straw man is just completely unfounded.
I fixed it for you: So for you to to say I was stupid, or lying about you, or putting up a straw man is completely accurate.
But it’s not about you, so let me put some actual content in here.
1. It is said a permaculture design is never finished. One can imagine very many reasons for this. A few:
– Nature does stuff. One must deal with this.
– Humans aren’t good at making permanent stuff.
– Needs change.
– Climate changes, even without us making it all far worse.
– Populations rise and fall.
Etc. There is no such thing as perfect sustainability. I don’t talk about finished, static systems ever. None of my statements, ever, support your Straw Man. A threshhold can move. I speak of threshholds of sustainability, not static states of sustainability for a reason.
This list could be a book in length, I’d wager, but all you really need to know to not make such a vapid claim against someone else’s words is this: Isht happens.
I hope everyone reading this will take this point to heart: We are never really finished; we’re merely lucky enough for rates of change to sometimes be slow enough to have time for a nap, or a walk in the woods, metaphorically speaking.
Killian @343, thanks, but you don’t seem to realise what you say from one day to the next, or have a single clue what anything you say really means.
Regreening the planet could equal cutting all oil burning. Hmmm… And they will have badly underestimated, not knowing Pc, et al.
https://inhabitat.com/greening-the-earth-could-fight-climate-change-as-efficiently-as-cutting-fossil-fuels/
David B. Benson @325/326,
The mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) 3 million years ago is certainly an interesting lesson for us. Yet I’m not sure we tackle it properly. One tiff such discussion can generate (and one that can raise passions) is how much CO2 was there during the mPWP? And a missing piece of discussion seems to be the mechanisms that raised CO2 levels causing the mPWP and why temperatures were then reduced ending the mPWP.
On CO2 levels, we get the likes of Hayward et al (2016) saying “atmospheric CO2 concentration is estimated to have ranged between 350 and 450 p.p.m.v.” citing a list of rather old references. (This is pretty much repeating IPCC AR5 which timidly gives credence to each and every data point of every study shown in AR5 fig 5.2a) So what was it? 350ppm? 400? 450?
Myself, I am more inclined towards the idea that CO2 was likely not above 400ppm, as set out in Zhang et al (2013) (not cited by Haywood et al) which shows only error bars topping 400ppm.We have to go all the way back to 14 million years ago to find a central point topping 400ppm. (The icea of a sub-400ppm mPWP has in the past led to very robust reactions from some who are entirely convinced by the idea of a 400+ppm mPWP.)
And the impact of a 400ppm CO2 climate (plus or minus) cannot be bandied about without a proper understanding of the mechanisms involved. Thus we could/should be talking of the closing of the Panama sea link, the opening of Drakes Passage, the idea of a supercharged AMOC that led to increased rainfall freshening of the Arctic Ocean and this allowed the formation of pack ice. And somewhere in that, the mechanism that elevated CO2 levels. I have found Haug & Keigwin (2004) ‘How the Isthmus of Panama Put Ice in the Arctic’ an interesting starter-read. And the implications for the modern world of higher levels of CO2 relative to the mPWP (potentially significantly higher levels) even if only for a century or two; these do bear serious consideration.
(I note in the comment you link to @326, you there link to the abstract of Lunt et al (2007) [full paper] who find an enhanced AMOC but no significant ice-sheet effect resulting from the closure of the Panama sea link.)
The Heartland Institute Red Team playbook recently leaked to the press has already been parroted by the usual suspects, here and abroad
KIA proffers Lawrence Solomon as source for the ‘coal on a tear, renewables in the tank’ attempt at meme creation. The presentation may be a bit more upscale than Breitbart, but the ingredients in the actual dish are largely unchanged:
https://www.desmogblog.com/lawrence-solomon
Lest I be accused of pure ad hominey (quasi-neologistic pun intentional), note that Mr. Solomon’s cited source was Coal Tracker, whose statistics in context provide a very, very different picture than he himself paints. For example (and in addition to the link I already posted above, to a different CT summary sheet), this ‘Jan. ’16-Jan. ’17 delta by country’ table shows that the ‘tear’ in coal is composed predominantly of cancellations.
Total
Announced: -239,202 MW
Pre-permit development: -212,125 MW
Permitted: -68,593 MW
Subtotal, Announced + Pre-permit + Permitted -519,920 MW
Construction: -65,518 MW
Shelved: 377,242 MW
Cancelled: 249,613 MW
IOW, there was ~ 600 GW less coal capacity in the pipeline at the beginning of 2017 than there had been at the beginning of 2016. Yet Solomon finds a way to spin this as ‘coal on a tear’. Hard to understand how that can be anything but a deliberate attempt to mislead his readers.
But wait! There’s more!
He also notes that RE investment was down, and paints that as a looming collapse in spending, throwing in a gratuitous but essentially meaningless jab at supposed ‘funny money.’ What he failed to note was that despite investment being down a bit, actual RE capacity additions were *up*! In fact, 2016 saw the largest annual increase on record:
http://www.irena.org/DocumentDownloads/Publications/IRENA_RE_Capacity_Statistics_2017.pdf
So, quite literally, in 2016, less money was more RE (especially solar and wind)–a pretty clear macro-indicator of the decline in RE cost. You’d think that a commentator trying to pass as a serious analyst might deign to note that costs had declined so significantly, wouldn’t you?
Then again, you’d think that a commentator trying to pass as a serious analyst wouldn’t project that a service whose costs have decreased significantly relative to the competition would see declining demand.
KIA, #324–
“Are there any regularly updated satellite views of the polar regions on the internet where we could see the extent of the ice?”
Pretty sure this has been mentioned numerous times already, but yes. Many met services track extent and area both, updating on a daily basis. This content is conveniently aggregated at Neven’s Sea Ice blog (graphs pages).
https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
Quick sitrep: After record-low extents dominated the first several months of 2017, a cool and cloudy summer helped preserve ice cover enough that the annual low was only 8th-lowest for daily minimum extent or 7th for the monthly value (per NSICD data). However, the Actic fall has been relatively warm, ice growth has been slow, and extent is once again tracking below 2 SD (though not yet at record low levels).
The WMO GHG Bulletin upgated to 2016 is getting media coverage of varying quality. The guts of the report reproducing the NOAA ESRL Annual GHG Index (in climatological-speak) is the whopping annual increase in anthropogenic forcing (+0.053Wm^-2) resulting from the 2015-16 record annual rise in CO2 levels, these having been boosted by the El Nino to add a forcing of +0.046Wm^-2 (up from +0.031Wm^-2). Methane showed a decline (down from +0.005 to +0.003) while N2O & ‘others’ remained at a constant 0.003Wm^-2 & 0.001Wm^-2 respectively. The rolling 5-year averages for anthropogenic forcing increase 1950-to-date is plotted out here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’). The 2016 annual values appended within the graph of the last 5 annual data cobbled on the end of the 5-year averages was literally off-the-chart (thus requiring a re-scaling exercise).