This month’s open thread for climate science issues.
Reader Interactions
409 Responses to "Unforced Variations: Aug 2018"
Dan H.says
Nigelj,
You are correct. Must have been a fat finger error. Another error is your statement about what I am unwilling to accept. I agree that the duration of heat waves have increased, largely due to higher nightly lows. Summer daytime high temperatures have not increased, actually they have decreased, such that your prediction that the established records will fall seems unlikely to come to fruition.
Killiansays
Re Bendell,
The problem with Bendell isn’t his projections, per se, because things are going crazy and have always been higher, faster than the mid-range scenarios. We have consistently tracked high end or worse. Scientists all over keep expresing surprise. They will continue to. Being at the high end isn’t a disease or a mental health issue, it’s a legitimate analytical outcome. No, the problem with Bendell is he states as fact what is not now known to be fact, and his willingness to give up on anything like a solution. What is really quite insipid and foolish about his approach, which is nothing but a rip-off of McPherson dressed up as presenting a pathway to a soft landing through and after collapse, which is a rip-off of permaculture, is the same exact actions he says to take are what one would do to mitigate rather than merely adapt.
It’s a pointless, useless paper.
As to the permaculture rip-off, he says we should engage in resilience, relinquishment and restoration. Welllll, if you do permaculture deign aka regenerative design nee sustainability, you are building resilience by restoring and enhancing natural systems and integrating human structures into harmony with them, and we design to need, not want, which follows the principle of no waste (among others.)
How many have been talking about de-growth, simplicity, etc., via permaculture, et al., for how long?
He’s a bit of a carpetbagger, admittedly new to the whole climate things, looking to pull off what Chris Martenson did with The Crash Course: Get rich telling people the obvious.
Carriesays
44 Victor: “Extreme weather has been, and always will be, with us.”
Yes that’s true. But so what? Saying that is a nothing burger. iow meaningless without a proper context.
Not exactly the most reassuring news, (and for sure Victor will ignore this data), granted, but it’s nice to know that destroying civilization as we know it won’t matter much to Victor and others unable to grasp the nettle.
nigeljsays
Killian @41
“Thank you. Now let me remind you that a lack of volcanic activity is 1. largely random and that 2. volcanic activity *masks* the greenhouse effect? If you understand this, you should realize that, less the volcanics, what you got was, for lack of a better term, real or full climate change.”
The period of reduced volcanic activity early last century did not mask the greenhouse effect. Increased volcanic activity would have done this. Reduced volcanic activity contributed to increased solar warming because less heat energy was reflected away. All it does is add to the warming produced by CO2 emissions.
In fact, the effect of CO2 emissions during early last century were partly cancelled by fossil fuel aerosols and so the effect of CO2 on warming was small. This indeed partly cancelled or masked the effect of CO2. It was only after the 1980’s that atmospheric CO2 became concentrated enough to become the dominant factor. So you would be correct if you are referring to this.
However regardless of this aerosols and particulates issue, CO2 early last century was a partial player and couldnt have caused dramatic changes. Various research papers say the warming early last century was partly natural and partly CO2.
I’m probably being a bit pedantic, but the history is intriguing and I like getting right to the bottom of issues. CO2 concentrations now certainly have the potential to cause considerable climate change and it will only get worse. This is the main thing.
jgnfldsays
@44…
Now try doing some ACTUAL analysis rather than cherrypicking. How many new cold records versus new warm records are being set annually? The “What, Me worry” hypothesis of yours would imply that they be set equally each year. That would be mere weather. The “Me worried” hypothesis would imply more new warm records than new cold records. That observed ratio shift away from 50:50 would be actual climate.
Which do we see globally? The latter, of course. Or maybe it’s all that UHI effect from all that new paving in Death Valley. But no. It’s not. It’s real live climate change.
Many warmists like to claim that the MWP (Medieval Warm Period) was ONLY regional. As if that means that it is not important.
But what these warmists don’t realise, is that the present day global warming is ONLY regional, as well.
Can I prove that? Of course I can. I divided the earth up into 8 equal sized areas, by latitude. They were:
90N to 48N, 48N to 30N, 30N to 14N, 14N to Equator, Equator to 14S, 14S to 30S, 30S to 48S, and 48S to 90S
As you move from north to south, the warming rate decreases consistently. From +3.98, to +2.53, to +1.99, to +1.63, to +1.61, to +1.29, to +1.07, to +0.26 (all in degrees Celsius per century).
Look at the brightly coloured Global Warming Contour Maps, which show the decreasing warming rates from north to south, as colours. They go left to right, and top to bottom. Look at the legend, to see what warming rates each colour represents.
I will put full sized versions of these contour maps on my website, when I have time. Until then, enjoy the eye candy:
@Victor #44
“Extreme weather has been, and always will be, with us.”
Sure, as wasps. But if you survive with one sting each season, can you be also affimative after dozens of them during a couple of minutes ?
Fequency & stress
Bojan Dolinarsays
@Victor, #44
This is false equivalence. Record breaking cold is trying to be sold as a refutation for climate change by deniers while record breaking heat is usually portrayed as being consistent with it, ignoring occasional exception.
Astringentsays
Victor @44 – Which is the most interesting take-away from a list of ‘hottest days on record in Europe’? That hot days have happened in the past? Or that out of 43 European ‘countries’ 25 of 43 have experienced their hottest day since 2000, and 15 have experienced their hottest ever day during this decade (and the decade isn’t over).
And just scroll down a little way – European record low temperatures – all but 3 from before 2000.
I was rather amused by KIA’s and Victor’s cites of the Wikipedia weather records as ‘refutations’ of various recent records/remarkable highs/whatever. I’ve already gone on record here as asking whether there’s a bit of rhetorical excess going on with this meme, but if so, it doesn’t negate the reality that warming is clearly happening.
Which gets me back to the Wikipedia records, because if you look at them, you find an awful lot of recent dates as record highs. To wit: I took the European records–the article breaks records out by continent, and Europe has two attractive features: lots of countries, and long-running observations–imported them into Excel and did a very quick and dirty binning by decade. (Didn’t even try to do the binning right by starting with ’01’ and ending with ’00’ years.)
Interesting that the 40s show peaks in both cold & warm records–and even more so, given that those years also show as ‘bump’ in GMST datasets. But I won’t speculate about that here.
For grins and giggles, I went ahead and calculated differentials for each bin, too (i.e., ‘warm’ records minus ‘cool’ records per decade):
Weaktor again demonstrates the advantages of innumeracy when trying to pretend that nothing is wrong. I mean, we’ve had hot weather before, so what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, reality begs to differ–because what matters when discussing climate change are, well, the changes: the fact that heat waves are lasting longer, that more record highs are falling than record lows…
Ignorance and incompetence are essential skills for the denier.
AB 50: You forget that terraforming involves turning almost all CO2 into O2. Thus, it would be possible (except that transportation would be prohibitive and low gravity might result in excessive losses – I don’t know about the second)
BPL: I was talking about using the CO2 as a greenhouse gas, not turning it into O2. Turning it into O2 wouldn’t help if the temperature of the planet was still freezing.
jgnfldsays
@44
“Weather” would be if hot and cold records were set rarely (some years after Year 0 in the record) and equally.
“Climate” would be if there were a difference between the number of cold records versus hot records over time.
As @56 notes, “weather” is not what is occurring. “Climate” is what is occurring.
Nemesissays
@MA Rodger, #46
” You write of “+5°C by 2050” ”
No, I didn’t say that, I just quoted the projection of BP and Shell^^
Yeah, like I said, the oil industry is well known for it’s alarmism, isn’t it :)
Anyway, all I see is BAU all over the place, as the system is the problem, not just climate heating. And as long as I see BAU, I see global collapse, whatever temperature rise there might be.
1) I didn’t make it clear that my first decadal binning analysis was for record-warm temperatures (though I expect most readers figured it out pretty easily).
2) Also, the link was glitched, so let me repeat it for what it’s worth:
… the most striking feature of this early age of mammals is that it was almost unbelievably hot, so hot that around 50 million years ago there were crocodiles, palm trees, and sand tiger sharks in the Arctic Circle. On the other side of the blue-green orb, in waters that today would surround Antarctica, sea-surface temperatures might have topped an unthinkable 86 degrees Fahrenheit, with near-tropical forests on Antarctica itself. There were perhaps even sprawling, febrile dead zones spanning the tropics, too hot even for animal or plant life of any sort.
This is what you get in an ancient atmosphere with around 1,000 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. If this number sounds familiar, 1,000 ppm of CO2 is around what humanity is on pace to reach by the end of this century….
Nemesissays
@MA Rodger, #46, addendum to my last comment, super fresh and hot study (came out 5 minutes ago):
” 6.8.2018 – Earth risks tipping into ‘hothouse’ state: study”
… sounds familiar and reasonable to me for quite a long time.
Killiansays
Dear those who will not stop talking:
#$%#$^ said I think you need to appreciate that the melting of arctic ice and glacier ice in the early part of last century was only partly caused by CO2 concentrations of 310ppm.
Really? You mean the system is complex? Oh. My. God. I had no idea.
/s
It was caused ‘mainly’ by a warming phase of the solar cycle
So your claim is if CO2 had remained at 260 to 280 we’d have had ASI melt in 1953? Please, just shut up.
#$@@%@ said #$%#% said that much of the early 20th century ice melt could have been attributable to a lowering of volcanic activity.
No, he said it *was*, and actually indicated it as a smaller part of three forcings.
You responded that he’s wrong
No, I didn’t. You don’t understand basic English?
because volcanic activity *masks* the greenhouse effect.
Correct, so if low/no volcanic activity, the full strength of the forcing is in effect, but we are talking long-term trends, and the long term trend had begun in the 1850-ish. Then low volcanic activity allows the forcing to be expressed more fully.
Got it?
I’m confused.
Of course.
Disappear. Nip at my heels in the future, I kick first, ask questions never.
Killiansays
Just gonna tidy up this one little bit from Abbott and Costello:
The period of reduced volcanic activity early last century did not mask the greenhouse effect.
Now let me remind you that a lack of volcanic activity is 1. largely random
It comes, it goes, and the climate signal marches on. Get it? No?
and that 2. volcanic activity *masks* the greenhouse effect?
See? Volcanos reduce warming by reflection. I never said otherwise.
If you understand this, you should realize that, less the volcanics
I.e., less volcanic activity…
what you got was, for lack of a better term, real or full climate change.”
All the warming of that CO2 at that time.
And that CO2 was already 30 to 50 ppm higher than pre-industrial, depending where you count from. 260 > 310 = 50. 280 > 310 = 30.
But I am sure you’re correct that the higher solar output affecting that much more CO2 and less volcanism had no effect. That is, you must be right the CO2 was just not very important.
/sarc
Now, shush, please. Or learn the language. How about both?
Al Bundysays
Hank,
Who cares? Though my great grandchildren will be dead, they’ll die filthy rich! I WIN! You LOSE. What else matters?
(More reasonable is the thought that warm blooded animals originally evolved so as to have a blood chemistry and temperature that approximated the ancient ocean. I read that decades ago, so take it with a glass of salt water.
Carriesays
Washington Post story puts recent weather extremes in accurate climate change context
Analysis of “Climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer”
Published in The Washington Post, by Angela Fritz, Joel Achenbach on 26 July 2018
Three scientists analyzed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be ‘very high’. A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Accurate.
Report: “The brutal weather has been supercharged by human-induced climate change, scientists say. Climate models for three decades have predicted exactly what the world is seeing this summer. And they predict that it will get hotter — and that what is a record today could someday be the norm.”
Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, Institute of the Environment:
Both of these statements are correct, and collectively emphasize two important points. First, the increasing frequency and intensity of heat extremes does indeed validate model-based and theoretical predictions from decades ago. Second, those same climate models suggest that what is today an extraordinary heat event could indeed become a “typical” temperature in future summers, depending on how much additional carbon society emits in the coming decades.
Jennifer Francis, Research Professor I, Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University:
True. More intense and prolonged heatwaves are directly connected to global warming. Heavier precipitation events are linked with additional water vapor in the atmosphere, which results from higher air temperatures (warmer air can hold more water vapor) and greater evaporation from ocean and land. Longer, more intense droughts are also clearly connected to global warming, as higher temperatures dry out soils earlier in spring and allow them to heat up faster. Climate models have long predicted a general increase in these extremes, and now we can refine those predictions for particular types of events, regions, seasons, and varying background conditions (such as El Niño).
RSS is reporting July 2018 TLT with an anomaly of +0.63ºC, significantly up on June’s +0.47ºC and the highest RSS TLT anomaly for the year so far. (Previous 2018 months range from +0.42ºC to +0.56ºC.) The increased anomaly relative to June appears at all latitudes except the N Pole. The Tropics alone is the latitude that provides the ‘highest anomaly of the year-so-far’
It is the 3rd warmest July in RSS TLT (4th in UAH) below first-placed July 2010 (+0.68ºC) & 2016 and a nose ahead of 1998. July 2018 is the 28th warmest anomaly on the full all-month RSS TLT record. (In UAH it was =46th.)
In the RSS TLT year-to-date table below, 2018 sits 5th (in UAH 6th).
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.87ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 4th
2010 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.60ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.60ºC … … … +0.65ºC … … … 2nd
2018 .. +0.51ºC
2015 .. +0.49ºC … … … +0.56ºC … … … 5th
2005 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 7th
2014 .. +0.44ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 6th
2007 .. +0.43ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 10th
2002 .. +0.42ºC … … … +0.38ºC … … … 11th
2013 .. +0.40ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 9th An analysis of the first half of 2018 posted at CarbonBrief provides statistical estimates for the final calendar year ranking of the various global temperature records. It places the most likely ranking for the full 2018 year as 6th in RSS TLT and 4th for the surface records.
Al Bundy @50,
Regarding your comments about “the deliberate exclusion of feedbacks,” I assume you refer in some way to my comment @32 in which I quote the IPCC being defamed by the Bendell paper. Bendell writes of “many scientists who estimated that existing CO2 in the atmosphere should already produce global ambient temperature rises over 5°C.” but cites only Wasdell (2015) who only calculates climate sensitivity when slow feedbacks are considered as being 5°C (a value not dissimilar to Hansen & Sato (2012) although the Wasdell derivation looks somewhat controversial).
So like Bendell, your comment @50 presumably is also defaming the IPCC for “the deliberate exclusion of feedbacks,” Perhaps you can say which “feedbacks” it is you consider are being ignored by the IPCC’s “negligence” or if not the IPCC, also make clear whoever it is you are defaming.
Nemisis @66.
Surely it is plain that @45 you did write “+5°C by 2050” which is significantly different from what was said by that Independent article you referenced. I do not know of any “quoted … projection of BP and Shell” providing your “+5°C by 2050”.
Assuming I have not missed such a BP/Shell ‘projection’, the actual Shell scenarios (their Mountain & Ocean scenarios) do no more than project CO2 emissions to 2100. These are likely on average equivalent to BAU (as you say, indeed as Shell’s COE says), but converting those levels of CO2 emissions into the Independent’s “as much as 5°C by the middle of the century” is plain wring and is not the work of Shell or BP, as I explained @46. The only thing Shell says in its Mountain & Ocean scenarios on global temperature is that neither scenario conforms with the less-than-2°C AGW requirement.
The scenarios date to March 2013, so prior to COP15 and even prior to IPCC AR5’s publication, although at such a date accepting these emissions scenarios, to state “As these … Scenarios note, by 2030 we expect demand for critical resources like water, energy, and food to have risen by 40%-50%. To meet those needs without significant environmental detriment, business as usual will not be an option – we require business unusual” without some further qualification is eye-poppingly denialist.
And, the ultimate kind of denialist response that IMHO is orders of magnitude worse than the problem, because it is proposed by apparently sane well meaning people. Good Luck with that!
“Weaktor again demonstrates the advantages of innumeracy when trying to pretend that nothing is wrong. I mean, we’ve had hot weather before, so what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, reality begs to differ–because what matters when discussing climate change are, well, the changes: the fact that heat waves are lasting longer, that more record highs are falling than record lows…
Ignorance and incompetence are essential skills for the denier.”
Hehe, the funny, devastating carbon bubble is grinning at the world economy :’D It were and it is and it will always be about funny money (and power), that’s exactly the real predicament until shtf. You know, THAT’s exactly what I realized more than 30 years ago:
The permanent, ignorant, pathological run for funny money and power is the real engine that drives the system of Empire. Wherever I look I see ignorance and calculated optimism in politics and economy (plain lies and propaganda included) all my life. Do I need to remind you of the ecological (not just climatical) devastation all around us? While there’s tons of blah blah in climate conferences year after year, decade after decade, I SEE the catastrophy I foretold more than 3 decades ago unfolding before my very eyes bit by bit, hammering nail by nail into our coffin. We had the desastrous summer of 2003 and now we enjoy the even more devastating summer of 2018- TWO hundred year summers within just 15 years! We are in a La Nina status right now resp. the hottest La Nina year ever and we are looking forward to the next El Nino status right around the corner. You know what? Talk to me again when global temperature is DEcreasing instead of INcreasing and I will join the funny political/economical calculated optimism. Meanwhile have some fun with the study I refered to in my last comment above:
Rather than building from existing theories on sustainable business, this paper is focusing on a phenomenon . That phenomenon is not climate change per se, but the state of climate change in 2018, which I will argue from a secondary review of research now indicates near term social collapse . The gap in the literature that this paper may begin to address is the lack of discussion within management studies and practice of the end of the idea that we can either solve or cope with climate change. In the Sustainability Accou nting Management and Policy Journal (SAMPJ), which this paper was originally submitted to, there has been no discussion of this topic before, apart from my own co- authored paper (Bendell, et al, 2017).
Al Bundysays
Jgnfld,
I’ve got to applaud your definitions of climate v weather. Spot on, dude.
Nemesissays
@MA Rodgers, addendum to my last comment:
” The role of climate change in driving extreme weather events may actually be underestimated by these attribution studies, according to Prof Michael E Mann at Penn State University in the US. The work is good, he said, but computer models cannot yet reliably account for the complex jet stream changes caused by global warming, making the attribution studies “inherently conservative”…”
The models are “Inherently conservative”, that’s the real culprit we are dealing with. These models have been “inherently conservative” for political/economical reasons resp. because of calculated optimism for too long, not for scientific reasons. We’ll learn that through sheer pain quickly.
Nemesissays
@ MA Rodgder, 2nd addendum to my last comment
Listen to an interview with Michael Mann he’s given on 2.8.2018 about “inherently conservative” models underestimating the impacts of a changing jetstream under climate change conditions ect, if you like (starting at ~00:14):
We’ll learn through sheer pain quickly that these models are INDEED “inherently conservative”. I learned all about these “inherently conservative” models when it comes to mass die-off, especially insect die-off and what have you during decades of research- the system just don’t like real bad news, it does not like doomsday scenarios for a reason:
BLEAK projections undermine the calculated, capitalist optimism of the system.
Al Bundysays
Killian,
Please either engage your brain or quit while you’re behind. Nothing in your last post made the slightest sense. Nigelj said that increased solar output, along with reduced volcanism, and though unstated, increased CO2, resulted in melt. Pretty irrefutable. His point was that he agrees with you and your insistence that you’re wrong (because he agrees with you and you’re “the party of ‘no'”) But you go off on a truly stupid rant. Please stop embarrassing yourself – or not, since folks are rolling on the floor laughing at you. Speaking of which, you haven’t answered, “what is rust?” Seriously, though you sling insults and drivel, I try to be civil. But dude, your insistence on being stupid and offensive makes it ever so hard. Seriously, let’s have a productive conversation. Yep, I, unfortunately for me, happen to be beyond brilliant and you’re average, which is a boon, but that doesn’t preclude my learning from you. So stop the bile and contribute.
—–
Sheldon Walker,
You “prove” that the globe isn’t warming with all positive data? Here’s a hint: in order to get to zero one has to have at least one negative.
—–
MARodger,
I was speaking of ice melt. The IPCC excluded it in their estimate of sea level rise. I also was speaking of bacteriological acceleration v human emissions with regard to the carbon budget. As a holistic answer, I am saying that stubs are not acceptable when informing policy, even though they are inevitable when designing a system. You MUST make an educated guesstimate of your stubs when speaking to Others. To equate your stubs to zero is negligence.
Al Bundysays
MARodger,
Oh yeah, I’m also talking about reticence, where scientists water down their conclusions because somebody might not love them if they told the truth.
As someone who said all this a decade ago, more than a little frustrating to see people acting as if this is new analysis. Still, doesn’t hurt to finally have more scientists climbing on board and journals publishing it.
More than a bit against the grain but IMHO, should be compulsory reading for all:
DEEP ADAPTATION: A MAP FOR NAVIGATING CLIMATE TRAGEDY
And, the ultimate kind of denialist response that IMHO is orders of magnitude worse than the problem, because it is proposed by apparently sane well meaning people. Good Luck with that!
Are you talking about the paper, or the responses? Because the paper, as the author states, doesn’t offer solutions. He thinks there are none, just adaptation. Of course, the SANE response is to realize, as several papers this week point out, if it gets *that* bad, there may be no surviving it at all, so the only thing to do is mitigate, adapt until mitigated, then thrive rather than believing you can adapt to oceans full of goo.
This is OT here, though. This should be in the Forced thread, not this one.
nigeljsays
Killian @71, calculations show the quantity of CO2 early last century was too small to cause a really strong warming effect, even if there were no particulates to mask ( as in counter balance) the effect. The majority of the warming was caused by heightened solar activity and low volcanic activity and ocean cycles are also implicated. This is all established science you are now arguing with.
You don’t know when to admit you are wrong.
I have no argument with the other points you made.
“Two huge glaciers in east Antarctica have been losing mass rapidly since 2002. The finding means that our forecasts for sea level rise this century will have to be revised upward, but it’s not clear by how much. It is also further evidence that the ice in east Antarctica, which had long been thought to be stable even in the face of climate change, is in fact melting.”
I have been saying for years that the climate models are inherently conservative. Now Dr. Mann has come to similar conclusion. Some folks here can sure get their panties in a knot when you bring this up. Laugh it off if you can. Our climate situation with CO2 at 402 ppm gets everybody kinda cranky.
nigeljsays
Victor @79 proudly posts a link to EPA data as if that exhonerates his position. It doesn’t.
His position appears to be that heatwaves occured in the 1930’s, so theres nothing to worry about. Not a very insightful and useful position.
His epa data show that since about the the 1970’s heatwaves have increased, and summer average temperatures have increased in America, and climate modelling predicts it will only get worse, and worse. Perhaps until events the magnitude of the 1930s (which was pretty exceptional and normally uncommon) become common place every few years at enormous cost to crops, human health, and a perfect environment for more wild fires.
Consider that the fires in California are currently requiring the services of 14,000 fire fighters!
And then theres the possibility of a hothouse earth:
And yes others like Dan H talk away about doubts about whats more significant, the duration of heatwaves, frequency or peak temperatures of heatwaves, day or night temperatures, when enough of these things are changing to be an obvious concern without needing to nit pick excessively. One would have thought.
Al Bundysays
Nemesis,
You miss their point. They plan on jetting to the southern hemisphere each summer and your death is a feature, not a bug.
Ray Ladburysays
Really, Weaktor, you needen’t provide proof of your incompetence every time I assert it. Your track record here speaks volumes. Have you ever been right about anything?
The fact that we had a SINGLE HOT DECADE in A SINGLE COUNTRY does not negate the 40-year-and-growing trend we now experience. Again, it’s climate CHANGE, so it’s the changes that matter–the is, the trend.
Ray Ladburysays
Al Bundy,
Sigh! Maybe you should learn what science is before condemning scientists. What you are asking for are engineering or risk-assessment studies. That really is not science. Science generally doesn’t ask, “How bad will things get?” It is concerned with “What do the data allow me to say about this phenomenon?” The fact that politicians and regulators refuse to do their jobs does not mean that scientists have failed at theirs.
Al Bundy @85&86,
I asked@75 that you explain your comment @50 by confirming it was the IPCC you were defaming and by setting out the nature of their ““deliberate exclusion of feedbacks.” These of course are serious accusations you throw about. They appeared to follow on from my comment @32 which concerend the difference between ECS & climate-sensiitvity-when-slow-feedbacks-are-included.
Thank you for your reply but it is not a very satisfactory one. You confirm the IPCC is your target (presumably AR5) and do manage a succinct explanation of what you are saying is the IPCC’s deliberate exclusion of feedbacks, the two of them – ▼(1)▼” ice melt … excluded in … estimate of sea level rise” and ▼(2)▼“bacteriological acceleration v human emissions with regard to the carbon budget.”
(One could ask – is such a seemingly serious issue deserving of more than a couple of short sentences? Doesn’t it deserve more than a back-of-fag-packet response?)
▼(1)▼ Sea Level Rise is something I certainly feel the IPCC should be more robust about. Their headline projections which run to 2100 fail to capture the issue of SLR which will not peak in 2100 (as does temperature for all but BAU) but continue for centuries unless our AGW is reversed.
However, while SLR is a slow process, it is not in my understanding a significant “feedback” so not relevant to discussion of “deliberate exclusion of feedbacks.”.
And while the IPCC should, I feel, be far more robust about post-2100 SLR in their headline conclusions, they do not ignore “ice melt” but provide in the SPM the caviat that:-
“only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st century. There is medium confidence that this additional contribution would not exceed several tenths of a meter of sea level rise during the 21st entury.”
And I think it should be said that the caviat applies to BAU, a place no sane person would want us to be in 2100.
▼(2)▼ The descriptor “bacteriological acceleration” as a feedback mechanism in the carbon cycle is not one that I have met before. Are we talking the dreaded “skyrocketry”? Such a feedback presumably would not include reductions in the ocean take-up of CO2 (increasing the Atmospheric Fraction) but could include reductions in the biosphere take-up. It could also include the destruction of carbon pools in the biosphere (for instance the burn-out of the Amazon basin). If this is what you are alluding to, the IPCC would be negligent if the science had shown such happenings were a serious 21st-century possibility.
There is added to this the permafrost/clathrate CO2/CH4 sources so loved by the “skyrocketeers” but (certainly the former) not part of any “deliberate exclusion of feedbacks” by the IPCC as the SPM tells the world:-
“The release of CO2 or CH4 to the atmosphere from thawing permafrost carbon stocks over the 21st century is assessed to be in the range of 50 to 250 GtC for RCP8.5 (low confidence).”
The context of this extra 250Gt(C) of 21st century emissions is an estimated RCP8.5 cumulative CO2 emissions 2012-2100 of 5,200Gt(C) to 7,000Gt(C). The CH4 aspect of all this (and the likelihood of a Shakhova event or two from clathrates) is something beloved of the “skyrocketeers” but that certainly doesn’t make such potential events sound science.
..
And you have rather shifted your opinion since your comment @50 where you considered there were two courses of action, the “two non-negligent paths” that could be taken in the face of uncertainty. Now you are allowing only one.
Back @50 the first ‘non-negligent path’was to use “error bars.” These of course would render an analysis impotent if the “error bars” were very large. So it is not unreasonable to set out your second “path” @50 which was “to state that you don’t have an estimate at all.” But now @85 this second “path” is ajudged by you as “not acceptable when informing policy” as part of “a holistic answer” because “to equate your stubs to zero is negligence.”
..
Finally, @86 we meet from you an unascribed mode of “pure negligence” when you suggest there is science (somewhere) that is being watered down (by someone) for an audience to make the conclusions more acceptable. This, as you would expect, leads me to ask you to explain what you mean, to ask you to set out the where-&-when of these serious accusations. Myself, I think such accusations of “pure negligence” (I would call it “wilful ignorance’) could be levelled at the scientific community but (ignoring the obvious list of denialists who continue clinging-on to the scientific process) that would be back decades ago, scientific ancient history.
(In that regard, the RC Musing About Losing the Earth thread considers this same anciently historical issue.)
Al Bundysays
Victor,
Did you read your source? It was clear. The dust bowl was a man made disaster. It was clear. Record highs in recent times are twice as frequent as record lows.
Seriously, do you read your sources or do you just dig for a graph, any graph that looks non-catastrophic?
Frankly, I think you should marry Killian. You’d both enjoy a life of inane bickering.
Ray’s right. The dude seriously knows his stuff. “Ignorance and incompetence are essential skills for the denier” and you frigging QUOTE him! I just have to shake my head. Humans are, as Tamino said, proud to be stupid.
#79–Another own goal from Victor, since while the US heat index graph linked shows that there was a *huge* spike in US heatwaves in the ‘dirty thirties’, it also shows what Ray had said, which is increasing heat waves since the 1970s.
Then there’s the fact that the US isn’t the world–it’s well-known (though perhaps not well-known *enough*) that the 30s temperature spike was *not* a global phenomenon, affecting mostly North America, as this GISTEMP map for ’30-’38 shows:
Well, North America and the Russian Arctic–plus, interestingly, the area of the North Atlantic now occupied by the ‘cold blob.’ Just at a glance, I’d guess the AMOC was running extra strong just about then.
Interesting, but not terribly surprising, that graph Victor cites hasn’t been updated since 2016. It’s mostly been Pruitt’s EPA since then, after all, and it’s still Trump’s EPA. Not a priority, to say the least; much more important to facilitate the dumping of toxic chemicals hither, thither and yon.
Al Bundysays
Victor,
You crowed about the dust bowl. Well, a thought exercise: what would be the result of ANY recent year combined with no irrigation?
Duh, current average years are only survivable because we pump fossil water.
So go on. Crow about the dust bowl while ignoring current fossil irrigation. If only you and your C student peers had to pay the price of your proud stupidity without dragging the rest of us towards death. Seriously, you barely made it through high school and you think that makes you an intellectual equal to Ray?
Nigelj,
You are correct. Must have been a fat finger error. Another error is your statement about what I am unwilling to accept. I agree that the duration of heat waves have increased, largely due to higher nightly lows. Summer daytime high temperatures have not increased, actually they have decreased, such that your prediction that the established records will fall seems unlikely to come to fruition.
Re Bendell,
The problem with Bendell isn’t his projections, per se, because things are going crazy and have always been higher, faster than the mid-range scenarios. We have consistently tracked high end or worse. Scientists all over keep expresing surprise. They will continue to. Being at the high end isn’t a disease or a mental health issue, it’s a legitimate analytical outcome. No, the problem with Bendell is he states as fact what is not now known to be fact, and his willingness to give up on anything like a solution. What is really quite insipid and foolish about his approach, which is nothing but a rip-off of McPherson dressed up as presenting a pathway to a soft landing through and after collapse, which is a rip-off of permaculture, is the same exact actions he says to take are what one would do to mitigate rather than merely adapt.
It’s a pointless, useless paper.
As to the permaculture rip-off, he says we should engage in resilience, relinquishment and restoration. Welllll, if you do permaculture deign aka regenerative design nee sustainability, you are building resilience by restoring and enhancing natural systems and integrating human structures into harmony with them, and we design to need, not want, which follows the principle of no waste (among others.)
How many have been talking about de-growth, simplicity, etc., via permaculture, et al., for how long?
He’s a bit of a carpetbagger, admittedly new to the whole climate things, looking to pull off what Chris Martenson did with The Crash Course: Get rich telling people the obvious.
44 Victor: “Extreme weather has been, and always will be, with us.”
Yes that’s true. But so what? Saying that is a nothing burger. iow meaningless without a proper context.
Victor’s link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Europe_%5Bnotes_6%5D shows that only 10 countries on that list are pre-1980 – most records are after that 27 records are post-2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Africa_%5Bnotes_1%5D
more than half 9 records are post 2010
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Asia
the majority 25 records are post-2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#South_America_%5Bnotes_12%5D
6 of 8 records are post-2005
Not exactly the most reassuring news, (and for sure Victor will ignore this data), granted, but it’s nice to know that destroying civilization as we know it won’t matter much to Victor and others unable to grasp the nettle.
Killian @41
“Thank you. Now let me remind you that a lack of volcanic activity is 1. largely random and that 2. volcanic activity *masks* the greenhouse effect? If you understand this, you should realize that, less the volcanics, what you got was, for lack of a better term, real or full climate change.”
The period of reduced volcanic activity early last century did not mask the greenhouse effect. Increased volcanic activity would have done this. Reduced volcanic activity contributed to increased solar warming because less heat energy was reflected away. All it does is add to the warming produced by CO2 emissions.
In fact, the effect of CO2 emissions during early last century were partly cancelled by fossil fuel aerosols and so the effect of CO2 on warming was small. This indeed partly cancelled or masked the effect of CO2. It was only after the 1980’s that atmospheric CO2 became concentrated enough to become the dominant factor. So you would be correct if you are referring to this.
However regardless of this aerosols and particulates issue, CO2 early last century was a partial player and couldnt have caused dramatic changes. Various research papers say the warming early last century was partly natural and partly CO2.
I’m probably being a bit pedantic, but the history is intriguing and I like getting right to the bottom of issues. CO2 concentrations now certainly have the potential to cause considerable climate change and it will only get worse. This is the main thing.
@44…
Now try doing some ACTUAL analysis rather than cherrypicking. How many new cold records versus new warm records are being set annually? The “What, Me worry” hypothesis of yours would imply that they be set equally each year. That would be mere weather. The “Me worried” hypothesis would imply more new warm records than new cold records. That observed ratio shift away from 50:50 would be actual climate.
Which do we see globally? The latter, of course. Or maybe it’s all that UHI effect from all that new paving in Death Valley. But no. It’s not. It’s real live climate change.
For example, in the US even with the very cold late winter/spring that happened in some areas this year the ratio of new warm records to cold records in the past 365 days is 2:1. http://www.climatesignals.org/data/record-high-temps-vs-record-low-temps
Many warmists like to claim that the MWP (Medieval Warm Period) was ONLY regional. As if that means that it is not important.
But what these warmists don’t realise, is that the present day global warming is ONLY regional, as well.
Can I prove that? Of course I can. I divided the earth up into 8 equal sized areas, by latitude. They were:
90N to 48N, 48N to 30N, 30N to 14N, 14N to Equator, Equator to 14S, 14S to 30S, 30S to 48S, and 48S to 90S
As you move from north to south, the warming rate decreases consistently. From +3.98, to +2.53, to +1.99, to +1.63, to +1.61, to +1.29, to +1.07, to +0.26 (all in degrees Celsius per century).
Look at the brightly coloured Global Warming Contour Maps, which show the decreasing warming rates from north to south, as colours. They go left to right, and top to bottom. Look at the legend, to see what warming rates each colour represents.
I will put full sized versions of these contour maps on my website, when I have time. Until then, enjoy the eye candy:
https://i1.wp.com/agree-to-disagree.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Regions-8-equal-sized-areas-by-latitude.png
Here is the legend:
https://i0.wp.com/agree-to-disagree.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/legend.png
My website is:
https://agree-to-disagree.com
MLO shows lowest weekly growth for a long time.
Week beginning on July 29, 2018: 407.46 ppm +1.02
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 406.44 ppm
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/index.html
JULY will be near 408.56 ppm, figures not out yet.
Recent Global CO2 Trend is up, slow @ 407.90 ppm
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gl_trend.html
@Victor #44
“Extreme weather has been, and always will be, with us.”
Sure, as wasps. But if you survive with one sting each season, can you be also affimative after dozens of them during a couple of minutes ?
Fequency & stress
@Victor, #44
This is false equivalence. Record breaking cold is trying to be sold as a refutation for climate change by deniers while record breaking heat is usually portrayed as being consistent with it, ignoring occasional exception.
Victor @44 – Which is the most interesting take-away from a list of ‘hottest days on record in Europe’? That hot days have happened in the past? Or that out of 43 European ‘countries’ 25 of 43 have experienced their hottest day since 2000, and 15 have experienced their hottest ever day during this decade (and the decade isn’t over).
And just scroll down a little way – European record low temperatures – all but 3 from before 2000.
I was rather amused by KIA’s and Victor’s cites of the Wikipedia weather records as ‘refutations’ of various recent records/remarkable highs/whatever. I’ve already gone on record here as asking whether there’s a bit of rhetorical excess going on with this meme, but if so, it doesn’t negate the reality that warming is clearly happening.
Which gets me back to the Wikipedia records, because if you look at them, you find an awful lot of recent dates as record highs. To wit: I took the European records–the article breaks records out by continent, and Europe has two attractive features: lots of countries, and long-running observations–imported them into Excel and did a very quick and dirty binning by decade. (Didn’t even try to do the binning right by starting with ’01’ and ending with ’00’ years.)
Here’s the result in tabular form:
19th c 1
1900s 0
1910s 0
20s 1
30s 2
40s 3
50s 1
60s 0
70s 4
80s 2
90s 4
2000s 13
2010s 15
“Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”
Repeated the analysis for European cold records, and unsurprisingly found a very different profile:
19th c 3
1900s 0
1910s 1
20s 2
30s 2
40s 9
50s 4
60s 6
70s 1
80s 7
90s 2
2000s 1
2010s 2
Interesting that the 40s show peaks in both cold & warm records–and even more so, given that those years also show as ‘bump’ in GMST datasets. But I won’t speculate about that here.
For grins and giggles, I went ahead and calculated differentials for each bin, too (i.e., ‘warm’ records minus ‘cool’ records per decade):
19th c -2
1900s 0
1910s -1
20s -1
30s 0
40s -6
50s -3
60s -6
70s 3
80s -5
90s 2
2000s 12
2010s 13
Seems pretty illustrative to me…
Weaktor again demonstrates the advantages of innumeracy when trying to pretend that nothing is wrong. I mean, we’ve had hot weather before, so what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, reality begs to differ–because what matters when discussing climate change are, well, the changes: the fact that heat waves are lasting longer, that more record highs are falling than record lows…
Ignorance and incompetence are essential skills for the denier.
AB 50: You forget that terraforming involves turning almost all CO2 into O2. Thus, it would be possible (except that transportation would be prohibitive and low gravity might result in excessive losses – I don’t know about the second)
BPL: I was talking about using the CO2 as a greenhouse gas, not turning it into O2. Turning it into O2 wouldn’t help if the temperature of the planet was still freezing.
@44
“Weather” would be if hot and cold records were set rarely (some years after Year 0 in the record) and equally.
“Climate” would be if there were a difference between the number of cold records versus hot records over time.
As @56 notes, “weather” is not what is occurring. “Climate” is what is occurring.
@MA Rodger, #46
” You write of “+5°C by 2050” ”
No, I didn’t say that, I just quoted the projection of BP and Shell^^
Yeah, like I said, the oil industry is well known for it’s alarmism, isn’t it :)
Anyway, all I see is BAU all over the place, as the system is the problem, not just climate heating. And as long as I see BAU, I see global collapse, whatever temperature rise there might be.
Errata from my #55:
1) I didn’t make it clear that my first decadal binning analysis was for record-warm temperatures (though I expect most readers figured it out pretty easily).
2) Also, the link was glitched, so let me repeat it for what it’s worth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Europe_%5Bnotes_6%5D
As mentioned, it’s the same article cited by KIA and Victor.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/earths-scorching-hot-history/566762/
@MA Rodger, #46, addendum to my last comment, super fresh and hot study (came out 5 minutes ago):
” 6.8.2018 – Earth risks tipping into ‘hothouse’ state: study”
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-earth-hothouse-state.html
… sounds familiar and reasonable to me for quite a long time.
Dear those who will not stop talking:
#$%#$^ said I think you need to appreciate that the melting of arctic ice and glacier ice in the early part of last century was only partly caused by CO2 concentrations of 310ppm.
Really? You mean the system is complex? Oh. My. God. I had no idea.
/s
It was caused ‘mainly’ by a warming phase of the solar cycle
So your claim is if CO2 had remained at 260 to 280 we’d have had ASI melt in 1953? Please, just shut up.
#$@@%@ said #$%#% said that much of the early 20th century ice melt could have been attributable to a lowering of volcanic activity.
No, he said it *was*, and actually indicated it as a smaller part of three forcings.
You responded that he’s wrong
No, I didn’t. You don’t understand basic English?
because volcanic activity *masks* the greenhouse effect.
Correct, so if low/no volcanic activity, the full strength of the forcing is in effect, but we are talking long-term trends, and the long term trend had begun in the 1850-ish. Then low volcanic activity allows the forcing to be expressed more fully.
Got it?
I’m confused.
Of course.
Disappear. Nip at my heels in the future, I kick first, ask questions never.
Just gonna tidy up this one little bit from Abbott and Costello:
The period of reduced volcanic activity early last century did not mask the greenhouse effect.
Now let me remind you that a lack of volcanic activity is 1. largely random
It comes, it goes, and the climate signal marches on. Get it? No?
and that 2. volcanic activity *masks* the greenhouse effect?
See? Volcanos reduce warming by reflection. I never said otherwise.
If you understand this, you should realize that, less the volcanics
I.e., less volcanic activity…
what you got was, for lack of a better term, real or full climate change.”
All the warming of that CO2 at that time.
And that CO2 was already 30 to 50 ppm higher than pre-industrial, depending where you count from. 260 > 310 = 50. 280 > 310 = 30.
But I am sure you’re correct that the higher solar output affecting that much more CO2 and less volcanism had no effect. That is, you must be right the CO2 was just not very important.
/sarc
Now, shush, please. Or learn the language. How about both?
Hank,
Who cares? Though my great grandchildren will be dead, they’ll die filthy rich! I WIN! You LOSE. What else matters?
(More reasonable is the thought that warm blooded animals originally evolved so as to have a blood chemistry and temperature that approximated the ancient ocean. I read that decades ago, so take it with a glass of salt water.
Washington Post story puts recent weather extremes in accurate climate change context
Analysis of “Climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer”
Published in The Washington Post, by Angela Fritz, Joel Achenbach on 26 July 2018
Three scientists analyzed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be ‘very high’. A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Accurate.
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/washington-post-story-puts-recent-weather-extremes-in-accurate-climate-change-context-joel-achenbach-angela-fritz/
Report: “The brutal weather has been supercharged by human-induced climate change, scientists say. Climate models for three decades have predicted exactly what the world is seeing this summer. And they predict that it will get hotter — and that what is a record today could someday be the norm.”
Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, Institute of the Environment:
Both of these statements are correct, and collectively emphasize two important points. First, the increasing frequency and intensity of heat extremes does indeed validate model-based and theoretical predictions from decades ago. Second, those same climate models suggest that what is today an extraordinary heat event could indeed become a “typical” temperature in future summers, depending on how much additional carbon society emits in the coming decades.
Jennifer Francis, Research Professor I, Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University:
True. More intense and prolonged heatwaves are directly connected to global warming. Heavier precipitation events are linked with additional water vapor in the atmosphere, which results from higher air temperatures (warmer air can hold more water vapor) and greater evaporation from ocean and land. Longer, more intense droughts are also clearly connected to global warming, as higher temperatures dry out soils earlier in spring and allow them to heat up faster. Climate models have long predicted a general increase in these extremes, and now we can refine those predictions for particular types of events, regions, seasons, and varying background conditions (such as El Niño).
RSS is reporting July 2018 TLT with an anomaly of +0.63ºC, significantly up on June’s +0.47ºC and the highest RSS TLT anomaly for the year so far. (Previous 2018 months range from +0.42ºC to +0.56ºC.) The increased anomaly relative to June appears at all latitudes except the N Pole. The Tropics alone is the latitude that provides the ‘highest anomaly of the year-so-far’
It is the 3rd warmest July in RSS TLT (4th in UAH) below first-placed July 2010 (+0.68ºC) & 2016 and a nose ahead of 1998. July 2018 is the 28th warmest anomaly on the full all-month RSS TLT record. (In UAH it was =46th.)
In the RSS TLT year-to-date table below, 2018 sits 5th (in UAH 6th).
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.87ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 4th
2010 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.60ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.60ºC … … … +0.65ºC … … … 2nd
2018 .. +0.51ºC
2015 .. +0.49ºC … … … +0.56ºC … … … 5th
2005 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 7th
2014 .. +0.44ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 6th
2007 .. +0.43ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 10th
2002 .. +0.42ºC … … … +0.38ºC … … … 11th
2013 .. +0.40ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 9th
An analysis of the first half of 2018 posted at CarbonBrief provides statistical estimates for the final calendar year ranking of the various global temperature records. It places the most likely ranking for the full 2018 year as 6th in RSS TLT and 4th for the surface records.
Al Bundy @50,
Regarding your comments about “the deliberate exclusion of feedbacks,” I assume you refer in some way to my comment @32 in which I quote the IPCC being defamed by the Bendell paper. Bendell writes of “many scientists who estimated that existing CO2 in the atmosphere should already produce global ambient temperature rises over 5°C.” but cites only Wasdell (2015) who only calculates climate sensitivity when slow feedbacks are considered as being 5°C (a value not dissimilar to Hansen & Sato (2012) although the Wasdell derivation looks somewhat controversial).
So like Bendell, your comment @50 presumably is also defaming the IPCC for “the deliberate exclusion of feedbacks,” Perhaps you can say which “feedbacks” it is you consider are being ignored by the IPCC’s “negligence” or if not the IPCC, also make clear whoever it is you are defaming.
Nemisis @66.
Surely it is plain that @45 you did write “+5°C by 2050” which is significantly different from what was said by that Independent article you referenced. I do not know of any “quoted … projection of BP and Shell” providing your “+5°C by 2050”.
Assuming I have not missed such a BP/Shell ‘projection’, the actual Shell scenarios (their Mountain & Ocean scenarios) do no more than project CO2 emissions to 2100. These are likely on average equivalent to BAU (as you say, indeed as Shell’s COE says), but converting those levels of CO2 emissions into the Independent’s “as much as 5°C by the middle of the century” is plain wring and is not the work of Shell or BP, as I explained @46. The only thing Shell says in its Mountain & Ocean scenarios on global temperature is that neither scenario conforms with the less-than-2°C AGW requirement.
The scenarios date to March 2013, so prior to COP15 and even prior to IPCC AR5’s publication, although at such a date accepting these emissions scenarios, to state “As these … Scenarios note, by 2030 we expect demand for critical resources like water, energy, and food to have risen by 40%-50%. To meet those needs without significant environmental detriment, business as usual will not be an option – we require business unusual” without some further qualification is eye-poppingly denialist.
Some food for thought:
Earth risks tipping into ‘hothouse’ state: study
https://m.phys.org/news/2018-08-earth-hothouse-state.html
More information: Will Steffen el al., “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,” PNAS (2018). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115
More than a bit against the grain but IMHO, should be compulsory reading for all:
DEEP ADAPTATION: A MAP FOR NAVIGATING CLIMATE TRAGEDY
http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf
And, the ultimate kind of denialist response that IMHO is orders of magnitude worse than the problem, because it is proposed by apparently sane well meaning people. Good Luck with that!
2017 climate engineering conference:
https://ce-conference.org/news/cec17-conference-report-online
Superb summary of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s State of the Climate 2017:
https://snowbrains.com/noaa-bams-state-climate-2017/
63 Ray Ladbury says:
“Weaktor again demonstrates the advantages of innumeracy when trying to pretend that nothing is wrong. I mean, we’ve had hot weather before, so what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, reality begs to differ–because what matters when discussing climate change are, well, the changes: the fact that heat waves are lasting longer, that more record highs are falling than record lows…
Ignorance and incompetence are essential skills for the denier.”
Sorry Charlie: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-high-and-low-temperatures
@MA Rodger, #76
And again: “+5°C by 2050” NOT “my” writing, as you claim, but a quote from the “Independent” article I refered to, QUOTE:
” BP and Shell planning for catastrophic 5°C global warming…
Oil giants Shell and BP are planning for global temperatures to rise as much as 5°C by the middle of the century…”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bp-shell-oil-global-warming-5-degree-paris-climate-agreement-fossil-fuels-temperature-rise-a8022511.html
The really interesting (and yet quite understandable) bit is this:
” The discrepancy demonstrates that the companies are keeping shareholders in the dark about the risks posed to their businesses by climate change…”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bp-shell-oil-global-warming-5-degree-paris-climate-agreement-fossil-fuels-temperature-rise-a8022511.html
Hehe, the funny, devastating carbon bubble is grinning at the world economy :’D It were and it is and it will always be about funny money (and power), that’s exactly the real predicament until shtf. You know, THAT’s exactly what I realized more than 30 years ago:
The permanent, ignorant, pathological run for funny money and power is the real engine that drives the system of Empire. Wherever I look I see ignorance and calculated optimism in politics and economy (plain lies and propaganda included) all my life. Do I need to remind you of the ecological (not just climatical) devastation all around us? While there’s tons of blah blah in climate conferences year after year, decade after decade, I SEE the catastrophy I foretold more than 3 decades ago unfolding before my very eyes bit by bit, hammering nail by nail into our coffin. We had the desastrous summer of 2003 and now we enjoy the even more devastating summer of 2018- TWO hundred year summers within just 15 years! We are in a La Nina status right now resp. the hottest La Nina year ever and we are looking forward to the next El Nino status right around the corner. You know what? Talk to me again when global temperature is DEcreasing instead of INcreasing and I will join the funny political/economical calculated optimism. Meanwhile have some fun with the study I refered to in my last comment above:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-earth-hothouse-state.html
And please don’t miss this beauty:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-planet-hothouse-earth-state.html
… btw, my name is NemEsis, not NemIsis ;) , see here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis
from the “deep adaptation” paper linked above:
Jgnfld,
I’ve got to applaud your definitions of climate v weather. Spot on, dude.
@MA Rodgers, addendum to my last comment:
” The role of climate change in driving extreme weather events may actually be underestimated by these attribution studies, according to Prof Michael E Mann at Penn State University in the US. The work is good, he said, but computer models cannot yet reliably account for the complex jet stream changes caused by global warming, making the attribution studies “inherently conservative”…”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/27/heatwave-made-more-than-twice-as-likely-by-climate-change-scientists-find
The models are “Inherently conservative”, that’s the real culprit we are dealing with. These models have been “inherently conservative” for political/economical reasons resp. because of calculated optimism for too long, not for scientific reasons. We’ll learn that through sheer pain quickly.
@ MA Rodgder, 2nd addendum to my last comment
Listen to an interview with Michael Mann he’s given on 2.8.2018 about “inherently conservative” models underestimating the impacts of a changing jetstream under climate change conditions ect, if you like (starting at ~00:14):
http://culturesofenergy.com/137-michael-e-mann-the-trouble/
We’ll learn through sheer pain quickly that these models are INDEED “inherently conservative”. I learned all about these “inherently conservative” models when it comes to mass die-off, especially insect die-off and what have you during decades of research- the system just don’t like real bad news, it does not like doomsday scenarios for a reason:
BLEAK projections undermine the calculated, capitalist optimism of the system.
Killian,
Please either engage your brain or quit while you’re behind. Nothing in your last post made the slightest sense. Nigelj said that increased solar output, along with reduced volcanism, and though unstated, increased CO2, resulted in melt. Pretty irrefutable. His point was that he agrees with you and your insistence that you’re wrong (because he agrees with you and you’re “the party of ‘no'”) But you go off on a truly stupid rant. Please stop embarrassing yourself – or not, since folks are rolling on the floor laughing at you. Speaking of which, you haven’t answered, “what is rust?” Seriously, though you sling insults and drivel, I try to be civil. But dude, your insistence on being stupid and offensive makes it ever so hard. Seriously, let’s have a productive conversation. Yep, I, unfortunately for me, happen to be beyond brilliant and you’re average, which is a boon, but that doesn’t preclude my learning from you. So stop the bile and contribute.
—–
Sheldon Walker,
You “prove” that the globe isn’t warming with all positive data? Here’s a hint: in order to get to zero one has to have at least one negative.
—–
MARodger,
I was speaking of ice melt. The IPCC excluded it in their estimate of sea level rise. I also was speaking of bacteriological acceleration v human emissions with regard to the carbon budget. As a holistic answer, I am saying that stubs are not acceptable when informing policy, even though they are inevitable when designing a system. You MUST make an educated guesstimate of your stubs when speaking to Others. To equate your stubs to zero is negligence.
MARodger,
Oh yeah, I’m also talking about reticence, where scientists water down their conclusions because somebody might not love them if they told the truth.
Pure negligence.
#77 Fred Magyar said Some food for thought:
Earth risks tipping into ‘hothouse’ state: study
https://m.phys.org/news/2018-08-earth-hothouse-state.html
More information: Will Steffen el al., “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,” PNAS (2018). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115
As someone who said all this a decade ago, more than a little frustrating to see people acting as if this is new analysis. Still, doesn’t hurt to finally have more scientists climbing on board and journals publishing it.
More than a bit against the grain but IMHO, should be compulsory reading for all:
DEEP ADAPTATION: A MAP FOR NAVIGATING CLIMATE TRAGEDY
http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf
And, the ultimate kind of denialist response that IMHO is orders of magnitude worse than the problem, because it is proposed by apparently sane well meaning people. Good Luck with that!
Are you talking about the paper, or the responses? Because the paper, as the author states, doesn’t offer solutions. He thinks there are none, just adaptation. Of course, the SANE response is to realize, as several papers this week point out, if it gets *that* bad, there may be no surviving it at all, so the only thing to do is mitigate, adapt until mitigated, then thrive rather than believing you can adapt to oceans full of goo.
This is OT here, though. This should be in the Forced thread, not this one.
Killian @71, calculations show the quantity of CO2 early last century was too small to cause a really strong warming effect, even if there were no particulates to mask ( as in counter balance) the effect. The majority of the warming was caused by heightened solar activity and low volcanic activity and ocean cycles are also implicated. This is all established science you are now arguing with.
You don’t know when to admit you are wrong.
I have no argument with the other points you made.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175948-two-huge-antarctic-glaciers-are-losing-much-more-ice-than-we-thought/
“Two huge glaciers in east Antarctica have been losing mass rapidly since 2002. The finding means that our forecasts for sea level rise this century will have to be revised upward, but it’s not clear by how much. It is also further evidence that the ice in east Antarctica, which had long been thought to be stable even in the face of climate change, is in fact melting.”
Al Bundy @85
where did I claim that the globe isn’t warming?
Global Warming Contour Maps show very clearly that most of the globe is warming. But it varies from region to region. Have a look here:
https://agree-to-disagree.com/regional-warming
I have been saying for years that the climate models are inherently conservative. Now Dr. Mann has come to similar conclusion. Some folks here can sure get their panties in a knot when you bring this up. Laugh it off if you can. Our climate situation with CO2 at 402 ppm gets everybody kinda cranky.
Victor @79 proudly posts a link to EPA data as if that exhonerates his position. It doesn’t.
His position appears to be that heatwaves occured in the 1930’s, so theres nothing to worry about. Not a very insightful and useful position.
His epa data show that since about the the 1970’s heatwaves have increased, and summer average temperatures have increased in America, and climate modelling predicts it will only get worse, and worse. Perhaps until events the magnitude of the 1930s (which was pretty exceptional and normally uncommon) become common place every few years at enormous cost to crops, human health, and a perfect environment for more wild fires.
Consider that the fires in California are currently requiring the services of 14,000 fire fighters!
And then theres the possibility of a hothouse earth:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180806152040.htm
And yes others like Dan H talk away about doubts about whats more significant, the duration of heatwaves, frequency or peak temperatures of heatwaves, day or night temperatures, when enough of these things are changing to be an obvious concern without needing to nit pick excessively. One would have thought.
Nemesis,
You miss their point. They plan on jetting to the southern hemisphere each summer and your death is a feature, not a bug.
Really, Weaktor, you needen’t provide proof of your incompetence every time I assert it. Your track record here speaks volumes. Have you ever been right about anything?
The fact that we had a SINGLE HOT DECADE in A SINGLE COUNTRY does not negate the 40-year-and-growing trend we now experience. Again, it’s climate CHANGE, so it’s the changes that matter–the is, the trend.
Al Bundy,
Sigh! Maybe you should learn what science is before condemning scientists. What you are asking for are engineering or risk-assessment studies. That really is not science. Science generally doesn’t ask, “How bad will things get?” It is concerned with “What do the data allow me to say about this phenomenon?” The fact that politicians and regulators refuse to do their jobs does not mean that scientists have failed at theirs.
Al Bundy @85&86,
I asked@75 that you explain your comment @50 by confirming it was the IPCC you were defaming and by setting out the nature of their ““deliberate exclusion of feedbacks.” These of course are serious accusations you throw about. They appeared to follow on from my comment @32 which concerend the difference between ECS & climate-sensiitvity-when-slow-feedbacks-are-included.
Thank you for your reply but it is not a very satisfactory one. You confirm the IPCC is your target (presumably AR5) and do manage a succinct explanation of what you are saying is the IPCC’s deliberate exclusion of feedbacks, the two of them – ▼(1)▼” ice melt … excluded in … estimate of sea level rise” and ▼(2)▼“bacteriological acceleration v human emissions with regard to the carbon budget.”
(One could ask – is such a seemingly serious issue deserving of more than a couple of short sentences? Doesn’t it deserve more than a back-of-fag-packet response?)
▼(1)▼ Sea Level Rise is something I certainly feel the IPCC should be more robust about. Their headline projections which run to 2100 fail to capture the issue of SLR which will not peak in 2100 (as does temperature for all but BAU) but continue for centuries unless our AGW is reversed.
However, while SLR is a slow process, it is not in my understanding a significant “feedback” so not relevant to discussion of “deliberate exclusion of feedbacks.”.
And while the IPCC should, I feel, be far more robust about post-2100 SLR in their headline conclusions, they do not ignore “ice melt” but provide in the SPM the caviat that:-
And I think it should be said that the caviat applies to BAU, a place no sane person would want us to be in 2100.
▼(2)▼ The descriptor “bacteriological acceleration” as a feedback mechanism in the carbon cycle is not one that I have met before. Are we talking the dreaded “skyrocketry”? Such a feedback presumably would not include reductions in the ocean take-up of CO2 (increasing the Atmospheric Fraction) but could include reductions in the biosphere take-up. It could also include the destruction of carbon pools in the biosphere (for instance the burn-out of the Amazon basin). If this is what you are alluding to, the IPCC would be negligent if the science had shown such happenings were a serious 21st-century possibility.
There is added to this the permafrost/clathrate CO2/CH4 sources so loved by the “skyrocketeers” but (certainly the former) not part of any “deliberate exclusion of feedbacks” by the IPCC as the SPM tells the world:-
The context of this extra 250Gt(C) of 21st century emissions is an estimated RCP8.5 cumulative CO2 emissions 2012-2100 of 5,200Gt(C) to 7,000Gt(C). The CH4 aspect of all this (and the likelihood of a Shakhova event or two from clathrates) is something beloved of the “skyrocketeers” but that certainly doesn’t make such potential events sound science.
..
And you have rather shifted your opinion since your comment @50 where you considered there were two courses of action, the “two non-negligent paths” that could be taken in the face of uncertainty. Now you are allowing only one.
Back @50 the first ‘non-negligent path’was to use “error bars.” These of course would render an analysis impotent if the “error bars” were very large. So it is not unreasonable to set out your second “path” @50 which was “to state that you don’t have an estimate at all.” But now @85 this second “path” is ajudged by you as “not acceptable when informing policy” as part of “a holistic answer” because “to equate your stubs to zero is negligence.”
..
Finally, @86 we meet from you an unascribed mode of “pure negligence” when you suggest there is science (somewhere) that is being watered down (by someone) for an audience to make the conclusions more acceptable. This, as you would expect, leads me to ask you to explain what you mean, to ask you to set out the where-&-when of these serious accusations. Myself, I think such accusations of “pure negligence” (I would call it “wilful ignorance’) could be levelled at the scientific community but (ignoring the obvious list of denialists who continue clinging-on to the scientific process) that would be back decades ago, scientific ancient history.
(In that regard, the RC Musing About Losing the Earth thread considers this same anciently historical issue.)
Victor,
Did you read your source? It was clear. The dust bowl was a man made disaster. It was clear. Record highs in recent times are twice as frequent as record lows.
Seriously, do you read your sources or do you just dig for a graph, any graph that looks non-catastrophic?
Frankly, I think you should marry Killian. You’d both enjoy a life of inane bickering.
Ray’s right. The dude seriously knows his stuff. “Ignorance and incompetence are essential skills for the denier” and you frigging QUOTE him! I just have to shake my head. Humans are, as Tamino said, proud to be stupid.
#79–Another own goal from Victor, since while the US heat index graph linked shows that there was a *huge* spike in US heatwaves in the ‘dirty thirties’, it also shows what Ray had said, which is increasing heat waves since the 1970s.
Then there’s the fact that the US isn’t the world–it’s well-known (though perhaps not well-known *enough*) that the 30s temperature spike was *not* a global phenomenon, affecting mostly North America, as this GISTEMP map for ’30-’38 shows:
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h402/brassdoc/Dirty%20Thirties–global.png
Well, North America and the Russian Arctic–plus, interestingly, the area of the North Atlantic now occupied by the ‘cold blob.’ Just at a glance, I’d guess the AMOC was running extra strong just about then.
Interesting, but not terribly surprising, that graph Victor cites hasn’t been updated since 2016. It’s mostly been Pruitt’s EPA since then, after all, and it’s still Trump’s EPA. Not a priority, to say the least; much more important to facilitate the dumping of toxic chemicals hither, thither and yon.
Victor,
You crowed about the dust bowl. Well, a thought exercise: what would be the result of ANY recent year combined with no irrigation?
Duh, current average years are only survivable because we pump fossil water.
So go on. Crow about the dust bowl while ignoring current fossil irrigation. If only you and your C student peers had to pay the price of your proud stupidity without dragging the rest of us towards death. Seriously, you barely made it through high school and you think that makes you an intellectual equal to Ray?
Did climate change cause the recent Europe-wide heat wave? Did climate change cause Death Valley to have the hottest month ever reliably recorded on Earth? How about the California fires that are still burning (and … The post The Right Answer To The Wrong Question (https://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2018/08/07/the-right-answer-to-the-wrong-question/) appeared first on Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal (https://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience)