This month’s open thread on responses to climate change (politics, adaptation, mitigation etc.). Please stay focused on the overall topic. Digressions into the nature and history of communism/feudal societies/anarchistic utopias are off topic and won’t be posted. Thanks. The open thread for climate science topics is here.
Excellent news, Nigel, and thanks for posting. It’s refreshing to hear anything good about this business.
for Trent1492, LMGTFY:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22satellite+temperature+trend%22+denier
which finds, among much else, this answer to your question:
I have some questions that I am hoping can be answered on this site.
Q1: In those parts of the earth where the atmospheric airflows are descending, just prior to descending, is the airflow at an altitude that is subject to the Stratospheric cooling effect (caused by CO2)?
Q2: in the recent cold waves affecting parts of Europe and the US, are the temperatures actual record low temperatures, if not, what aspect of them is particularly unusual?
trent1492 @248,
The RC post updated 20th Jan 2018 you refer to is not the best source of satellite & surface temperature comparisons and certainly is not a source for comparative satellite/surface global temperature trends which your “Denier” reports as “only 0.125C per decade”.
Scaling the graphs provided at that RC post yields anomalies of +0.58ºC to +0.49ºC for the 2017 global surface temperatures and anomalies of +0.54ºC to +0.41ºC for 2017 TMT temperatures (both anomaly base period ~1980-99). The TMT satellite records are measuring altitudes with various weightings from the surface up to 25km (way past the troposphere which contains our weather and halfway up to the top of the stratosphere which under AGW is cooling rather than warming) and averaging about 6.5km which is in the upper half of the troposphere, normally.
A very simplistic trend calculation using the 2017 temperature and plotting from an assumed zero point of 1990 (mid-way through the anomaly base period) yields trends of +0.21ºC/decade to +0.18ºC/decade for the surface measurements, and +0.19ºC/decade to +0.14ºC/decade for the various satellite measurements. These results are a little higher than those obtained from using more sophisticated means (eg OLS) which negotiate the various wobbles-along-the-way but the data used (and method) is sound.
Note that the actual 2017 data does almost certainly yield these higher values from the simplistic analysis. (Thus for UAH TMT(v6.0) data the 2017 average anomaly of +0.31ºC (base 1981-2010)/21.5 years = +0.145ºC/decade while using all the monthly data and putting a linear trend through all the wobbles provides a trend value of just +0.0915ºC/decade.)
So it is not immediately apparent from the RC post what “only 0.125C per decade” refers to. I think it is probably not TMT data but a particular one of the more usual TLT data sets with trends calculated using OLS.
Up to a year-or-so ago, the trend shown by UAH TLT(v5.6) was +0.155ºC/decade and RSS TLT(v3.3) was +0.135ºC/decade. (Of course, RSS was therefore the choice of any serious denier.) There was a significant altitude weighting difference between these two data sets (averaging UAH 2.5km, RSS 4.2km).
But the up-to-date versions now both have similar altitude profiles (averging 4.2km) but still providing greatly different trends with RSS TLT(v4.0) showing a trend of +0.192ºC/decade (see this RSS trend browser tool) and UAH TLT(v6.0) +0.128ºC/decade. It is this UAH TLT(v6.0) which your “Denier” is probably referring to.
The use of UAH without any mention of RSS is, of course, cherry-picking. Both now measure the same altitude range so there is no reason remaining for them not to provide similar results. And of the two, UAH has a history of showing trends that have needed correcting upwards due to errors identified by non-UAH researchers. This should be no surprise given the main authors of the UAH satellite data are Roy Spencer and John Christy, both of them premier-league climate change deniers.
@ Ray Ladbury,
Phosphorus is a problem only because industrial ag ignores the function of carbon in soils. We have NPK and occasionally Ca replacing the function of a properly managed and integrated farm system the recycles all minerals and nutrients in a similar way as in natural ecosystems.
Sorry, but it is analogous to substituting a blow up sex doll for a wife. There is no respect for life and its many complex interactions. Just not enough to even hope to think a NPK fertilizer and some pesticides can replace the animal life on a farm from the lowly worm and multitudes of beneficial insects all the way up to livestock and everything in between.
Well it turns out that a properly managed farm has no need for phosphorus. The phosphorus levels will increase yearly naturally without inputs. Not only that but the high carbon soils full of living things with lock onto that phosphorus and prevent its leaching.
And guess what? This solution for phosphorus that prevent the catastrophic failure of all farming due to running out of mined phosphorus? It also prevents the failure of farming projected at less than 60 years from now due to erosion and soil degradation!
http://theconversation.com/how-the-great-phosphorus-shortage-could-leave-us-all-hungry-54432
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/
Two problems one solution.
Oh but wait, it is carbon we are talking about here. We are after all carbon life forms! So it just so happens that if we solve those two problems above, soil degradation and phosphorus depletion, we also sequester 5-20 tonnes CO2/ha/yr indefinitely into the liquid carbon pathway deep in the soil. So it solves AGW too if done on enough agricultural land.
Three problems one solution.
Oh but wait, there must be some downside right?
Wrong. Regenerative ag has no downside excepting that it makes obsolete and replaces the antiquated unsustainable ag systems we use now. And now you know why it is stalled. Neo-Luddites protecting their obsolete systems. However, unlike the original Luddites, these Neo-Luddites have the money and power to manipulate governments and markets so they can protect their obsolete and inefficient systems, preventing the natural replacement with more modern sustainable systems. They are protecting their buggy whips!
#253 Lawrence McLean said I have some questions that I am hoping can be answered on this site.
Q1: In those parts of the earth where the atmospheric airflows are descending, just prior to descending, is the airflow at an altitude that is subject to the Stratospheric cooling effect (caused by CO2)?
Q2: in the recent cold waves affecting parts of Europe and the US, are the temperatures actual record low temperatures, if not, what aspect of them is particularly unusual?
All the earmarks of yet another denier. That will make many of you very happy judging by your enthusiastic engagement of climate trolls here.
Let’s hope I am wrong on both counts.
Killian, like I keep telling you no till farming, biochar, etc has no hope of significantly reducing emissions over the next 20 years, and is more of a useful longer term project, hence the need for renewable energy as the priority. Latest in depth research below shows this:
https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-018-2142-1#Tab2
Quote “Taken together, these elicitation results suggest very modest opportunities for soil carbon management to contribute to California’s climate mitigation agenda as well as underlying uncertainties.”
Just as a reminder:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2fgn3xZDtkI/TPZP8nfohvI/AAAAAAAADBk/QPWQhPsGlt0/s1600/MannersSTRIP%28web%29.jpg
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2fgn3xZDtkI/TQOwDkqaV7I/AAAAAAAADCc/Vmg6uwhEi3o/s1600/CancunSTRIP%28web%29.jpg
Nigelj 257,
Show me on the paper you posted the LCP (liquid carbon pathway)… which represents up to 40% of the total products of photosynthesis under the right conditions. Oops you can’t. Because that whole study is talking about biomass production and the “biomass model” of rates of decay and what remains in agricultural soils. Generally they use the improved Roth C model to calculate these numbers.
As I have mentioned to you multiple times you must look at the sources of these studies to see if the even include the newly discovered LCP resulting from symbiosis with glomalin producing mycorrhizal fungi fed exclusively by way of root exudates instead of the processes of decay calculated in the Roth C models.
If they have not included these then the conclusions drawn have nothing what so ever to do with regenerative agriculture, and instead are only valid results for industrial agriculture.
As most people would understand, industrial agriculture is not very good at all at sequestering carbon long term in the soil. Quite the opposite. Those methods are mostly just reducing the loss of soil caused by industrial ag, rather than actually creating new carbon rich soil as regenerative ag accomplishes.
The real numbers repeated over and over again on all parts of the planet are in the range of 5-20 tonnes CO2/ha/yr and do not stop at any biomass “saturation” point. Unlike industrialized ag, the rates increase over time rather than decreasing over time.
http://www.amazingcarbon.com/PDF/JONES-LiquidCarbonPathway(July08).pdf
http://amazingcarbon.com/PDF/JONES-LiquidCarbonPathway(AFJ-July08).pdf
http://geoflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Glomalin-Soil-Aggregates-and-CO2-Injection-into-Soil-Paper-1.pdf
Please look closer at postings like these. It is part of the Merchants of doubt obfuscation campaign resisting change from industrialized ag to regenerative ag.
@258 “Just as a reminder”
Reminder about what, for whom?
Meanwhile
Mar 23, 2018, 2:45 pm
The small coastal village of Newtok, Alaska has secured more than $15 million in funding to begin relocating households to safer ground inland. The funding is part of the $1.3 trillion spending bill signed Friday.
This amount, however, is still just a fraction of what’s required to relocate the whole village.
Located along the banks of the Ninglick River, the land on which the community of roughly 350 people lives has been eroding away since the late 1950s. They have been trying to relocate since 1994 but securing funding has remained elusive and the effects of climate change — sea level rise, stronger storms, and melting permafrost — have made the situation increasingly urgent. …
https://thinkprogress.org/newtok-alaska-gets-relocation-funding-35b4434242a6/
Lawrence McLean, #253–
Oh, what the heck.
Q1: In those parts of the earth where the atmospheric airflows are descending, just prior to descending, is the airflow at an altitude that is subject to the Stratospheric cooling effect (caused by CO2)?
Short answer: No, descending flows do not come from the stratosphere:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell
Q2: Q2: in the recent cold waves affecting parts of Europe and the US, are the temperatures actual record low temperatures, if not, what aspect of them is particularly unusual?
That’s not an easy question to answer, because behind the well-covered cold extremes, there was a lot of spatial and temporal variation. Put simply, while the news was mostly of record cold, there were lots of places and times not fitting the dominant narrative.
For the US, a convenient and authoritative source is NOAA. Here’s what December, January and February looked like.
December:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201712
January:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201801
February:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201802
(For context, there are something like 12,000 reporting stations in the US, so in a month the maximum possible number of records would be 12,000 x 31 = 372,000 per category. I’m assuming that the NOAA numbers include the Cooperative Observers Network sites; if not, then those numbers would be reduced to the ~1600 stations of the LCD network, and potential records would be 49,600 per category per month.)
So, in terms of record low and high temperatures, January was indeed unusually cool overall, but not as much so as February (or even December) was warm. Not only did February have the steepest ratio of warm-to-cold records (or vice-versa, in the case of January), it also had the highest ratio of records to potential records.
I guess my takeaway would be that 1) January was unusually cold, but not perhaps as extreme overall as some perceived it to be*; and 2) a weather story got missed by mainstream news in February.
*For instance, the coldest monthly mean state ranking was 15-coolest (Louisiana), while Arizona actually had its second-warmest January ever.
January monthly state rankings: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201801
Footnote to the footnote in my previous comment:
In February, no less than 9 states (including the Southeast from Alabama to North Carolina) had record-warm monthly means, and no state in the east (in a swathe extending southwest from Maine to Ohio to Louisiana) was less than 6th-warmest:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201802
That’s kind of remarkable, actually.
***Please do not post previous; the formatting is a mess.****
#257 nigelj said my ignorance is my shield. Peanuts!
Killian, like I keep telling you, I cannot understand regen ag because i refuse to learn things like permaculture, agroforestry, rotational ggrazing, or, frankly, anything that matters to this discussion, BUT I am certain I am correct. Because ignorance is bliss, and I am utterly blissful.
Therefore, I look to the worst possible examination of regenerative ag for guidance because it supports my preconceptions while telling us absolutely *nothing* about how regenerative agriculture actually works. So, in the following study we see the equivalent of a car being torn apart into motor, chassis, transmission, and wheels, suspension, etc., in order to show us how far and how fast a car can take four people in a given time frame.
Because I am not in any way prepared for these conversations, yet, cannot resist nipping at Killian’s heels, and his alone. After all, Scott Strough advocates exactly the same kinds of agriculture, but I ****never**** Straw Man, insult, attack or any way perturb HIM.
*I*, Killian, say, let those with eyes see for themselves what a ridiculous “study” this is:
Carbon cycle experts. Not regenerative design experts, not permaculturists, not any kind of person who DOES this work, but analysts poring over studies that are as flawed as this one. Said experts separated out the components of a regenerative system to get the anti-Frankenstine of ag studies, as in the analogy above.
I am fine with non-scientists engaging in analysis of what knowledgeable scientists do. This is how policies are made. I am uncharitable to non-expert scientists doing supposed “research” that is a sham and calling it authoritative or even useful in any way. If these unqualified scientists wanted to work WITH regenerative ag practitioners to measure what they **do**, rather than creating a caricature of that, great. That is NOT what happened here.
This is unethical claptrap.
Four practices you will *not* find used in isolation on any sensible farm, homestead or community seeking to call itself regenerative. Like I said, the anti-Frankenstein. Tell you what, let’s have those people separate nigelj into his component parts and see if that makes him any smarter. That’s what this “study” did.
Again, why would any think these should be used separately? This is shameful and dangerous work. It misleads, it misrepresents and it simply chooses to destroy a process then claim to measure its effectiveness. We are at a point his kind of arrogance can no longer be accepted. These people are deeply ignorant of what they purport to study.
Scott S., #255–
The first statement has to be true, because there are examples of successful long-term cultivation without the use of artificial fertilizers.
But how is that second statement possible (conservation of matter and all that?) Is phosphorus advected in somehow from surrounding biomass? And would that be an ecosystem service, if so?
And what about time scales? Do you mean, for instance, that soils exhibiting depletion profiles characteristic of industrial agriculture show increases for some period of time when cultivated regeneratively, then gradually equilibrate?
Carbon and nitrogen are one thing, given atmospheric abundances. But phosphorus? If it’s increasing, it’s got to be coming from somewhere, right?
I believe this section would be enhanced if Hank, BPL and MA Rodger remained in their ‘peanut gallery section’ on UV to continue their obsessive fight to the death against all those nasty bad *deniers* like Victor and KIA and DDS and the rest of the dunderheads there.
Only intelligent on-topic submissions to FR are acceptable as per Gavin’s posting rules:
This month’s open thread on responses to climate change (politics, adaptation, mitigation etc.). Please stay focused on the overall topic. Digressions into the nature and history of communism/feudal societies/anarchistic utopias are off topic and won’t be posted.
and
Please note that if your comment repeats a point you have already made, or is abusive, or is the nth comment you have posted in a very short amount of time, please reflect on the whether you are using your time online to maximum efficiency.
Just hoping beyond all hope to keep the ground rules straight as a die and Enforced on Forced Responses – let’s do it for Michael Mann, shall we?
The three issues underlying the vague Paris target
HadCRUT4 has some significant flaws.
It’s simple: cut carbon pollution as much and as fast as possible.
(and that includes carbon pollution from agriculture, fertilizers, cement and natural landscapes and vegetation land use etc. Gosh even Regenerative Agriculture backed by stricter Govt Regulations and Policy settings globally in 1st world nations especially will CUT carbon pollution too you know! Because every straw combines to break the camels back, not only one!)
Can you chew gum and walk at the same time? I can. It’s not rocket science – it’s common sense and logic at work together.
A second issue is that over the oceans, HadCRUT4 uses sea surface temperatures, which haven’t warmed quite as fast as air temperatures directly above the ocean surface. There’s also a third issue – what’s the start date from which we want to stay below 1.5 or 2°C warming?
Taken all together, these three issues could mean that we’ve already warmed 0.2–0.3°C more than estimated in the Millar study, which would mean a significantly smaller carbon budget.
(and then there is this cracking science advice – an out of control massive surge in CO2 from natural sources globally during 2015-2016 – https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-pinpoints-cause-of-earth-s-recent-record-carbon-dioxide-spike now THAT IS NOT IN ANY OF THE GCSMs nor IPCC projections in any RCP scenario that’s for certain!!! An extra 2.5 gigatons more carbon in under 2 years out of a 10GtC annual budget!
Meanwhile Stefan Rahmstorf (@rahmstorf)
Thanks Chris. Policy implications not so big, imho. Whoever is right, in either case we need to hit the brakes on CO2 emissions as fast as we can. If the optimist study is right we might stop warming at 1.5 °C, if not the best we can hope for is ~2 °C, and coral reefs are gone.
March 21, 2018
Gosh, even Stefan finally comes to the party!
If governments decide that based on the Millar paper they have a larger carbon budget and can thus afford to act less quickly, that would be an incorrect and dangerous interpretation.
see https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/mar/28/climate-scientists-debate-a-flaw-in-the-paris-climate-agreement
O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,
Paris Agreement Climate Change Targets Are Unattainable says Friends Of Science – Calls For A Review Of The Science In Light Of US Policy And New Findings
https://www.pollutiononline.com/doc/paris-agreement-climate-change-targets-are-unattainable-science-in-light-policy-and-new-findings-0001
Scott Strough @259
The published research paper I linked to involved talking to dozens of experts and its reasonable to assume they considered liquid carbon pathways.
The report says that no till farming practices, use of biochar, increased compost and crop cover together “do” in fact sequester about 5 – 20 tons of carbon a year. Have another read of it.
They go on to say this will only make a very modest difference to reducing atmospheric C02 over Paris accord time frames at the end of their paper. This is the main issue I raised.
As far as I’m concerned this level of soil carbon is still valuable, and will of course continue longer term and ADD UP. Regenerative farming has plenty of other benefits as well.
My point was really that Killian has made big claims about what soil carbon can do very short term. He mostly objects to use of renewable energy, because it uses too many finite resources, and thinks we can rely on soil carbon. I was simply quoting some research that suggests he is being a bit over optimistic or “skyrockety”.
Please also not that you would have to demonstrate in detail where the research I quoted is wrong, and not just rubbish it.
Killian @263
You put words in my mouth, which is ironic because you always complain people do this to you.
You rubbish the research study I linked to, but haven’t shown in detail any significant flaws in the study.
You accuse the scientists involved of being non experts and not qualified, without providing any proof of this.
You claim the study is unethical to consider various agricultural methods would be used in isolation. Except they never suggested they would be used in isolation and even with them all added together on one farm, they say the ability to sequester soil carbon over paris accord timeframes is very modest.
You accuse me of attacking regenerative agriculture, when I have repeatedly stated I support it.
For the record I think its still worth doing this soil carbon sequestration but it appears to have rather limited benefit by 2050, but its self evident that it will start to add up beyond this, and that is still very important.
Sigh.
Kevin McKinney: Thank you very much for your reply to my questions and the time you spent for my interest is most appreciated, your information is exactly what what I wanted to know.
By the way Killian is totally wrong regarding me as a denier. I have made occasional comments on this site over many years, and, he should research my commentary before making accusations.
Not being a climate scientist I try to keep my interaction to a minimum so as not to interfere and cause noise on this site. Nevertheless I am very interested and try to make sense of what is happening to the climate.
Cheers, Lawrence
264 Kevin McKinney says:
“But how is that second statement possible (conservation of matter and all that?) Is phosphorus advected in somehow from surrounding biomass? And would that be an ecosystem service, if so?”
And yet people here repeatedly get their noses out of joint over Killian when he complains about their abject ignorance on the topic, and yet keep making daft comments about it. If I was Killian I’d throw a metaphorical brick at you all for such foolish comments never-ending.
For almost 50 years now Permaculture has been proving there is no need for added chemical based Phosphorus in soils or to plants.
Now Scott is asked “Is phosphorus advected in somehow from surrounding biomass?” This boggles my mind. Use the tools available please. https://scholar.google.com
https://permaculture.com.au/rural-regeneration-good-things-happen-in-small-places/
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-11-02/permaculture-regenerative-not-merely-sustainable/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1099-145X(199803/04)9:2%3C179::AID-LDR276%3E3.0.CO;2-R
Only after self-educating yourself THEN ASK the people who know far more than you do some well reasoned logical questions.
My unasked for advice is to stop complaining about people who point out your own level of ignorance, get totally frustrated by that and your conscious inability to hear what has been said here for years or to research the references by a handful like Killian and Scott.
This should not be a kindergarten level discussion forum.
@264 Kevin,
Yes that is correct. The phosphorus does need to come from somewhere and yes again it is one of many ecosystem services found in a fully functional natural soil biome.
There are a few ways this is accomplished initially. Top on the list is rock eating bacteria and fungi releasing it from the mineral substrate in a process called weathering. (Yes weathering is primarily a biological process rather counter-intuitive to its name) This phosphorus would leach quickly away though without the additional biology in the soil locking it up. That is gradually released to the plants in a process called mineralization. (Yes mineralization is primarily a biological process too, despite its name)
There are also plants specializing in scavenging deep into the soil profile to return leached phosphorus to the upper layers. And even some plants with exudates from their roots that help with weathering for nutrients not bioavailable. Even those plants that cant extract phosphorus from solid rock almost always forms symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and the fungi do it and trade this to the plant in exchange for sugars and proteins in root exudates.
This is why industrial ag don’t have even close to the potential for carbon sequestration. If the plant has all the phosphorus it needs without needing to trade for it with AMF, then the LCP is mostly or even in some cases entirely shut down. The soil begins to degrade as the whole chain of life dependent on this symbiosis dies.
More info here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3810610/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946601/
http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/156/3/1050
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1574-6941.2011.01043.x
Remember the LCP (liquid carbon pathway) to long term sequestered carbon in the soil is dependent on glomalin producing AMF symbiosis.
More info on Glomalin can be found here:
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1144429.pdf
http://geoflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Glomalin-Soil-Aggregates-and-CO2-Injection-into-Soil-Paper-1.pdf
However the simple answer for the laymen is that using chemical fertilizers causes an ecological cascade effect in the soil, thus causing shortages of the very nutrients added by chemical fertilizers. That locks you into using more and more chemical fertilizers as the natural systems that were providing plants with nutrients degrade further and further. And now since it is not biological, the fertilizer is subject to leaching, making the problem even worse. It’s not so different from chemical drug use addiction. But since Mycorrhizal fungi have multiple functions in the soil, including the sequestration of carbon and global cooling too….a negative chain of events results which further increases AGW when they die or go dormant.
It could take years and years for the soil to recover if simply left fallow. However, Most regenerative ag systems make allowances for recovery of the ecosystem services found in fully functional soil biomes. We have tricks to jump start the process. Things like compost tea which have very little actual NPK ratings in themselves, but do have large quantities of the symbiotic life found in the soil food web is one way. Direct inoculation of soil microorganisms like rhizobia and mycorrhizal fungi is another.
The important part to remember unlike chemical fertilizers, these are required less and less over time , rather than more and more in NPK ferts. Eventually no more inputs are required.
“When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber.” -USDA
SC 265: I believe this section would be enhanced if Hank, BPL and MA Rodger remained in their ‘peanut gallery section’ on UV to continue their obsessive fight to the death against all those nasty bad *deniers* like Victor and KIA and DDS and the rest of the dunderheads there.
BPL: I believe all sections would be enhanced if you would take a permanent vacation.
Killian, being the best is the enemy of the good.
I may have left a comma out of that sentence.
#268 nigelj said Scott Strough @259
The published research paper I linked to involved talking to dozens of experts and its reasonable to assume they considered liquid carbon pathways.
No, it’s not. Some of this is relatively new, but more importantly, these “experts” almost certainly are not what someone like, or Scott, might consider an expert in this area. This, in an odd sense given how long many of the soil management practices have been known, is an emerging area of knowledge for science. As we see, carbon cycle does not equal carbon farming and certainly does not equal any kind of regenerative design.
So, you can choose to listen to architects telling engineers how to do their jobs, or vice-versa, or you can listen to actual experts, Believe me, you gain no legitimacy telling us how wrong we are in our area of expertise.
#268 nigelj said They go on to say this will only make a very modest difference to reducing atmospheric C02 over Paris accord time frames at the end of their paper.
Because they say so.
My point was really that Killian has made big claims about what soil carbon can do very short term.
I have made no claims, I have presented the results of basic math and what is *possible.* To call this “claims” is like calling climate models predictions… or claims.
He mostly objects to use of renewable energy
Lie.
Last on nigelj’s love of poor, bias-confirming science:
The top three fields of expertise among respondents are biogeochemistry
Non-experts in regenerative soil building.
soil science
Non-experts in regenerative soil building.
and the carbon cycle.
Non-experts in regenerative soil building.
Not one of their experts was a apparently a permaculturist, agroforester, etc., or in any way a regenerative systems expert.
This is a good example of hubris.
He claims, falsely, that the methods are combined in one example. This is incorrect. He appears to be misconstruing “pooled estimates” to mean use of all of them on one farm. Hopefully, he learns to read soon.
Further, this isn’t even a study, it’s a survey. They did not *do* any physical science. They sent out questionnaires and analyzed the answers. And asked the wrong people.
Best graph ever to show the continuous CO2 increase year after year after year. The atmospheric CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa at the end of March 2018, where essentially at the mid-May levels in 2017
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2231.0;attach=99154
Original Source: http://folk.uio.no/roberan/RobbieAndrew.shtml
For a (weak) La Nina year the CO2 YoY rise in this graph is quite ominous.
Also note the fat 2016 section across the entire year (and into January 2017) – where the El nino stopped about May 2016 (?)and went Neutral. Compare that extreme year with other years. Note how 2017 increase above 2016 was fairly avg except for mid-late April.
And that only two times in the last decade has the CO2 readings at a point in time been below the previous years. Therefore dismissing high CO2 growth because it is only an “El Nino” is distorting the impacts of it, for all that CO2 from 2016 has simply raised the bar higher and it will remain higher with that year’s CO2 remaining in the atmosphere and the oceans for centuries now.
Once the Growth spurt occurs, no matter the source of that CO2, FF emisisons, cement, agriculture, major droughts, bush fires, and the very serious extreme +6GtC burst from the tropics in 2015/2016 as reported by Nasa, be it during a year or a month, or a week, it does not disappear by magic.
I’m so old I remember when we were talking about when we would break the 400 ppm barrier. The last time it was only 400 ppm was around late Oct 2015.
One concern is whether available cheap clean energy would be a disaster, speeding the current great extinction even faster.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/laser-and-particle-beams/article/road-map-to-clean-energy-using-laser-beam-ignition-of-boronhydrogen-fusion/8BE057DC1BC9E0A588FB3ABAA993078C
A Wired Climate = Weird Weather In March!
https://watchers.news/2018/03/30/deadly-storms-massive-hail-hit-parts-of-bangladesh-nepal-bhutan-and-india/
the current forecast where I live in N. Ireland for next Monday thru Wed. is for a 48 hour blizzard with temps dipping to a feels like -11’C .. . What’s been happening in the Bering may have a bearing on our unbelievable outlook ..
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=323.0;attach=99159;image
Heat wave roasts parts of Asia, as monthly records topple in 7 countries
At least seven countries set monthly high temperature records at the end of March, according to national weather authorities and tracking by Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist with MeteoFrance.
According to the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang blog, the worst of the heat was parked on top of Pakistan, which saw its hottest weather for so early in the season. On March 30, the temperature in Nawabshah, in Sindh Province, hit 45.5 degrees Celsius, or 113.9 degrees Fahrenheit. This beat the old monthly record of 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit, which was set in March of 1991. …
https://mashable.com/2018/04/03/severe-heat-wave-asia-monthly-records/
from Nanjing, China… yep, it’s been ridiculous here as well. The cherry blossom is out, and the past few days have felt almost like midsummer – 99% humidity, at over 30C. It’s meant to be gentle spring sunshine, perhaps in the low 20s.
I don’t have a news story to share with you but it’s obscenely cold in the northern plains for early April. It’s 9f, windy, and snowing right now in northeastern South Dakota. Twice this week we’re flirting with both record lows for the date and record low maximum temps for the date. I blame all the displaced cold air from the Arctic being shunted down our way. It’s been colder than average for several weeks and looks to remain so for at least another week.
I am beginning to become concerned we may see major crop failures in the Plains and Midwest this year. The forecast for the next 10 days shows snow and cold *worsening* across the northern tier of the US — it is literally an equivalent to the Day After Tomorrow relative to the Aprils we have seen since the 1800s. This is seriously BEYOND
In fact, North America may still be pre-peak SWE, possibly impending in next few days…!
https://ccin.ca/home/sites/default/files/snow/snow_tracker/na_swe.png
Hemispheric SWE has now risen to about 50% above 98-11 average measurements (4,300KM^3 vs ~2,800 KM^3).
https://ccin.ca/home/sites/default/files/snow/snow_tracker/nh_swe.png
Must be that natural variation again.
At the dawn of the Internet Age, a Carl Sagan 1995 quote from The Demon-Haunted World
Killian @275
You imply the research paper I quoted is old and out of date, but it was published only weeks ago.
You imply the experts dont know anything about organic farming as a technology. This is not relevant, as the article was about measuring rates of growth of soil carbon and only soil scientists can really do this.
If they were researching farming techniques they would have talked to farmers (hopefully)
Killian @276
You complain the article says it will only make a very modest difference to reducing atmospheric C02 over Paris only “becaue they say so”. In other words is just opinion with no substance.
There’s quite a lot more to it actually. The researchers talked to about a dozen soil science experts, who gave their views, reviewed extensive literature and field trials, so we have quite a good assessment of current knowledge of how much carbon per unit time and per hactare can be sequestered with all the various farming techniques discussed. This was the whole point, to get the views of multiple people and not cherry pick just one expert.
They then calculated what would happen if this done over a limited area and if it was also fully scaled up to all of californias farmland ( a very ambitious target). They then looked at what atmospheric carbon this would draw down against Californias goals over the Paris time frame period. This is just a maths exercise ( if a bit headache inducing).
The result is that carbon sequestrations draws down about 10% of emissions required at best, which is pretty modest (especially given Californias emissions goals themselves are limited in scope). Having said that, 10% is in my view still well worth the effort, and my main point is just that we cant overly rely on this form of negative emissions, and will will still need renewable energy, and reduced carbon footprints.
Killian @277
Killian complains the experts in the study I quoted were “Non-experts in regenerative soil building.” Irrelevant, as it was about measuring quantities of soil carbon, not farming techniques. So the right people to talk to are scientists. No disrepect to farmers intended.
Killian says “He claims, falsely, that the methods are combined in one example. This is incorrect. He appears to be misconstruing “pooled estimates” to mean use of all of them on one farm. Hopefully, he learns to read soon.”
You miss the point. The study evaluated the methods separately to quantify each. Look at the carbon sequestration of each method and add it together its still small. If crop land faming uses all the methods combined, its still a modest result less than 10% draw down of emissions.
“Hopefully, he learns to read soon.”
You like to try to belittle people, insult them and humilate them. Its just so pathetic.
You say “it isn’t even a study, it’s a survey”. So what? In what way are surveys bad things? Is this something else not permitted in your world? It surveyed the right people in a position to evaluate and quantify soil carbon.
Barton Paul Levenson @273
“BPL: I believe all sections would be enhanced if you (systemic causation) would take a permanent vacation.
I agree totally.
274 Hank Roberts says: “Killian, being the best is the enemy of the good.” Relax Hank. You won’t ever be accused of that.
273 Barton Paul Levenson does do the best he can. I appreciate his tiring efforts. Anything on climate change policy Barton, as per climate change (politics, adaptation, mitigation etc.)?? One url even, no? Well feel free to stick to being off-topic if you must – it’s not my job to be a Hall Monitor.
Now
where’sthat Michael Mann quote that wasn’t posted (found it)According to Mann, these changes will only become more intense and difficult to adapt to, unless the world economy is transformed to no longer depend upon fossil fuels.
“We have to fight for the role of objective science in policy-making,” said Mann
“I think people have awakened in the past few weeks to the fact that people still have a voice,” said Mann. “We need to hear your voices.”
Mann called upon audience members to shift the conversation on global warming, bypassing the fight against climate-change denial with informed discussions about best solutions.
“This is really an ethical obligation that we have not to destroy the planet,” he said. “We will need leadership in the U.S.”
https://www.athensnews.com/news/campus/speaker-at-ou-takes-aim-at-climate-change-denial/article_b1af5ca2-35d5-11e8-8234-b3926e0e9f84.html
Yes, that is what M Mann, a founder of RC said recently.
By-Pass the Deniers/Denial part and focus on best solutions. (?) I was stunned myself.
Maybe he might write an article on that right here on RC and expand on his thoughts and ambitions and strategies among friends.
Maybe this fits here better than the links on UV: then again who knows, it probably will not in many people’s ‘brains’.
George Lakoff: How Brains Think: The Embodiment Hypothesis
https://youtu.be/WuUnMCq-ARQ?t=1h24m51s
And then you have a conservative worldview and a conservative view of democracy. It’s in the American government, they’re right there. You can see it right out there and it’s all over Europe and it’s spreading and it’s so on.
And then this has to do with the fact how is it spreading? It’s spreading through language, why? Because in frame semantics, what Fillmore discovered is that every word in every language fits a frame.
It’s defined in terms of roles and a frame, every word in every language fits some frame. It could be a metaphorical frame. It could be a simple image schema frame. It could be a complex frame but every single word fits a frame.
So if you say a word that fits a conservative frame, you’re activating that frame and making it stronger. So conservatives try to get their language into public discourse.
They learned how to do this because when they went to school and studied business, they took a marketing course, and they learned how people really think. The people who are liberals tend not to do that. They usually don’t take marketing courses.
They usually take political science, sociology, public policy, economics or law. They work by enlightenment reason which is does no frames, no metaphors, none of this stuff like repetition that says if you say something once, people should reason to the right conclusion. Right? It never works.
But they keep on doing it because it is part of their brains. They assimilate – in both conservatives and progressives – assimilate things to what’s already there in their brains. That is one of the problems with progressives who have learned enlightenment reason and who can’t assimilate things like metaphor and frames and the kind of use of language into their brains, and the same with conservatives who cannot see global warming. It doesn’t make any sense to them. Okay?
And this is a very important thing to understand because these ideas come up in business, they come up in education, they come up in every area of life. That’s what the book on Whose Freedom? is about. It shows any domain of life you pick, these things will come into it. And they’re everywhere and they’re there because this is how brains really work.
DSC 286: Barton Paul Levenson does do the best he can. I appreciate his tiring efforts. Anything on climate change policy Barton, as per climate change (politics, adaptation, mitigation etc.)?? One url even, no? Well feel free to stick to being off-topic if you must – it’s not my job to be a Hall Monitor.
BPL: Then quit acting like a hall monitor.
284 nigelj, why ignore a gift horse?
See and slowly read 259 Scott E Strough:
Including the closing point that direct articulates your biggest problem here: “Please look closer at postings like these. It is part of the Merchants of doubt obfuscation campaign resisting change from industrialized ag to regenerative ag.”
Some advice? Slow down. Do more research and cross check multiple times the papers focus constraints and variations to other studies. Ask more questions make less declarations. Don’t be possessive the rightness of papers you quote and perhaps have misunderstood.
And do reduce the noise to signal ratio eg 285 and every comment you make to Killian. Beware the subtle biased self-centered manipulations of others that can affect one emotionally and massage the ego.
Don’t believe the comments made on forums and blog sites. It’s never the whole story of what’s going on the other side of someone’s computer screen. I think your a good guy but possibly extremely naive and gullible.
287 Dr. Systemic Causation comment may need a little clarification as to why it matters and how it relates.
OK, so switch the word “conservative” in each instance into “climate science denial”.
This is really easy to do and apply across the board. Learn this and act on it 24/7/365.
Dr. Systemic Causation @287
Yes liberals and the climate science community could make more use of marketing techniques, but it needs a lot of care and selection on what you use. Marketing can be deceitful and minipulative, and it would be a huge mistake to have anything like that associated with climate science.
You will never convince everyone no matter what you do. The core denialists are utterly fixed and very political in their world views, and this applies to climate science and other things. Is still very important to challenge them so the virus doesn’t spread of course.
#270 Lawrence McLean said By the way Killian is totally wrong regarding me as a denier. I have made occasional comments on this site over many years, and, he should research my commentary before making accusations.
I made no accusation: “All the earmarks of yet another denier… Let’s hope I am wrong on both counts.”
As opposed to, “Here’s another denier. I doubt I am wrong,” e.g.
I am very interested and try to make sense of what is happening to the climate.
Good. Let’s hope so.
April 2018 NH Temperature Anomaly Forecast
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2278.0;attach=99232;image
> Dr. Systemic Causation
Is this Thomas again?
Tho’ he formats like Killian,
and snarks like both.
Always nice to see a new porcupine join the mosh pit.
Systemic Causation @289
Thanks for the response.
“Please look closer at postings like these. It is part of the Merchants of doubt obfuscation campaign resisting change from industrialized ag to regenerative ag.”
Yes of course theres always the risk of science being funded or undertaken by some special interest group, but you havent provided any proof in respect of the research paper I quoted on california and soil carbon. Literally you have just waved your arms, made personal comments about me, and demonstrated nothing.
The study I mentioned involved the views of dozens of scientists. To this extent it was like a meta study. It’s rather hard to believe all those scientists are in the pay of “industrial agriculture” or have some huge bias. In addition, some of their work was based on field trials so is hardly just opinion.
The study I quoted also had a bibliography of about 40 research papers.
Remember how would you feel if I did the same about a paper finding positive things about organic farming and accused it of being biased, or an attack on established farming systems, and accused you of being gullable?
Show me published research that finds regenerative farming can draw down very substantial CO2 over the next 20 – 40 years. Go on Im making this easy for you. Make sure it relates specifically to this exact question. Im open minded, I would love to see evidence of a significant effect.
Of course regenerative agriculture has a range of benefits, and should get more promotion and government support for those regardless of the emissions issue. However Im a very sceptical person, and far from gullable, and if anyone makes big claims about what regenerative agriculture can do in terms of emissions, show me hard evidence please.
285 – nigelj
I think SC is trying to see what he can get away with before Gavin gives him another smack down like he did last month. :)
Let’s try some mitigation science. Would it be possible to use a linear electromagnetic rail gun either located on the moon or the earth to shoot rocks to a geo-synchronous orbit over the ocean and keep doing that until the mass is large enough to pull the ocean water up toward this mass so that sea levels away from that location actually go down? Essentially building a new moon for beneficial gravitation effects? I’ll bet BPL or someone can whoop out the old F=GMm/r^2 and tell us how much mass we’d need to do any good. :)
#292 Killian: You are wrong regarding my motivation. I have been doing my bit against climate change denial for many years.
In case anyone is interested as to my motivation for the questions I asked. I am trying to figure out why it is getting so dry in some places. Where I live seems to one of those places. When rain does come, it is of very short duration with high intensity. The rains mostly washes over and does little to improve soil moisture. I thought that perhaps the pattern affecting the climate where I live may be similar to that causing intense mid-latidude cold spots. The common pattern being very low humidity air. Even with increased levels of CO2 and overall global warming, those areas with very low humidity will still get very cold when the night is long enough.
It seems that global warming is causing rainfall to increase in regions that were always “rainy” and drying out elsewhere. Another pattern that seems to be happening is that weather patterns are stalling. All bad for places like much of inland South Eastern Australia.
Scott Strough, #272–
Thanks for a helpful and detailed reply. (I’m grateful that you don’t share SC’s somewhat jaundiced view of the practice of asking questions! (#172.)) I’ve added the links to the file I have of LCP/regenerative ag-related info.
Lawrence McLean, #270–
Glad I found the information you wanted. It was an interesting exercise for me, in that while I was highly aware of how warm the *state* was in February (and how cold in January!), I hadn’t realized quite how much of a heat wave it was at the national/regional level. Interesting, I think, how little note seems to have been made of it in the media generally, especially after all the hoo-hah around the January cold snap.
Hank, #294–
Taking things at face value, SC is from Northern Ireland, Thomas from Australia, and Killian (last I heard) in the USA, so no. But “porcupine” seems apt. Not sure which part of this lyric applies best… but maybe the bit musicians call the ‘bridge.’
#296, KIA–
Points for imagination, but I’m thinking prob’ly not a great idea, since geostationary orbits are necessarily equatorial, and the loss of ice mass near the poles should mean that SLR is greater in equatorial regions already… just off the top of my head. But let’s have a look, following the Hank R. playbook…
[searching…]
Yep, looks like that is about right, considering Figures 2 & 3 in Nicholls & Cazenave (2010), at least:
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/envs501/downloads/Nicholls%20%26%20Cazenave%202010.pdf
As usual with geoengineering, it seems we’d do much better trying to mitigate emissions.
>geoengineering
Oh, I expect we’ll see a proposal for a “huge sunshade/solar collector” to sit next to Goresat/Triana/DSCOVER at the easy parking spot between us and the Sun, sometime soon. Just a little extra shade …..
https://2gu2tg1gtr2i1gliog3epcq3-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/We-own-the-sun.jpg
Hat tip to: https://www.kiterocket.com/can-bitter-truths-energy-political-cartoons-inspire-people-go-solar/
298 – Kevin
Thanks for the reply. In your link, figure 2 indicates that sea levels around California went down by about 1 mm/year from 1992 to 2009 – oh yes, that’s what it shows. Judge Alsup could use that information. :)
Here’s another idea – get the rocks off the floor of the ocean – thus increasing the volume of the tub. We could just pile the rocks on land – building sea walls perhaps! No need to launch them into orbit. :)
But, if we did make an artificial moon, using the equation F=GMm/r^2, and knowing that r of a geo-synchronous orbit is roughly 1/10 r of earth-moon, we can see that a mass ~ 1/100 of the mass of the moon will result in the same force as the earth-moon system. The trick is to find the best location to build the new moon to get best gravitational advantage. Gotta calculate how long before orbital decay becomes a concern before implementing this one.