Using the latest statistical techniques, we can now predict, to the minute, when global warming will kill you (accurate to +/- 17 minutes).
Recently, Mr Tamino wrote an article, called “Global Warming: How Long Do We Have Left?”.
As you all know, Mr Tamino is an overly optimistic, sort of person.
I can assure you, that he took no delight, in telling everybody that they would all be dead by the year 2045. This is when we will exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit.
He even tried to soften the blow, by saying that you might get a couple of years more.
The only way to avoid total disaster, apparently, is to do exactly what Mr Tamino tells you to do.
I don’t want to rain on Mr Tamino’s parade, but I noticed that he made a small mistake, in his calculations for the end of the world.
He forgot to take into account, the fact that different regions of the world, have different warming rates.
That is ok for some regions, but we have bad news for Region 1 (from 90N to 48N).
So Far, More Heat Waves Do Not Mean More Heat Deaths
By Christopher Joyce
NPR.org, August 26, 2018 · More Americans die from the effects of heat than of any other form of severe weather, and this summer has seen one heat wave after another. Some places in the U.S. and elsewhere have recorded their highest temperatures ever. In fact, the average temperature around the planet over the past four years has been the highest ever recorded, and nine of the 10 hottest years were all in this century. (The other was 1998.)
All of this would suggest that more people must be experiencing heat-related illness or death. But it’s more complicated than that.
Americans may be getting smarter about heat
In the U.S., in fact, heat-related illness appears to be declining.
A team of researchers led by Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard University, studied heat-related deaths in 105 U.S. cities from 1987 to 2005. They found that the risk of death from heat declined significantly even at very high temperatures.
“The population has become more resilient to heat over time,” the authors concluded….
One thing we all know is a difficulty of doing good science is that it is, by its very nature, always lagging the physical world. Ittakes time to become aware of issues and/or changes, takes time to measure, time to analyze and time to publish. Even then, what is published is often not readily available.
Is there any interest in doing a charrette-type exercise here on this forum to “update” the most recent IPCC-ish numbers with more real time numbers, i.e., with numbers representing work published since the last IPCC?
I know I get frustrated seeing a million different numbers for everything. E.g., is SLR currently tripling? Has it gotten even faster? What is the current best guess, the high end, the extreme? We’d be talking huge error bars, of course, but with all the studies each of us are aware of, we should be able to get some degree of consensus on an informal current state-of-the-art that doesn’t require waiting for the next IPCC report which will be 2 years or more out of date the moment it is published.
Al Bundysays
KillingInaction: Like I said, small bodies of water, probably quite shallow. Like I said, huge chunks of the far north turn into a big shallow swamp in the summer.
AB: Hmm, you’re almost there! Now, do you imagine that those “lakes” have large quantities of dry ground surrounding them (as your first sentence insinuates) or could it be that those lakes are close together (as your second sentence insinuates)? Go look at the links Hank posted. You’ll see bazillions of lakes that are quite close together.
————
Nigel: Anyway my point is its not too late to do some good. Surely you realise this? :)
AB: Yep. Tis like smoking. Being diagnosed with emphysema means that it is MORE imperative that you stop smoking.
Nigel(to Carrie): I have shown you an article on political interference. There’s evidence this applies to the summary for policy makers, not the modelling.
AB: Carrie quoted Dr Mann, who spoke of reticence. That reticence is because the republicans and their allies are watching scientists’ work and will knife any scientist who doesn’t exhibit the proper reticence.
Nigel: Killian @307, I have never referred to the holocaust,
AB: I did. Which reminds me of the Warsaw uprising. From Wiki: A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties were probably less than 150, with Stroop reporting only 16 killed. Nevertheless, it was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that the uprising was doomed and their survival was unlikely. Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said that the motivation for fighting was “to pick the time and place of our deaths.”
Or, the folks who took out the hijackers on the third 9/11 plane.
Or Nemesis and others like him, who choose to be responsible on a personal level while knowing (believing) that the ship is going to sink. He knows he’s not the pilot of anything other than himself. (Yeah, but there will be lots of flotsam for folks to cling to and from which the survivors will rebuild.)
—–
Sheldon Walker: I don’t really expect to win.
AB: I think your global warming contour map is grand. Well done! A suggestion: call it a graph instead of a map.
wilisays
nigelj wrote: “…This could cause massive sea level rise … So some of this may be locked in, although I prefer not to be too pessimistic about it.”
For someone who, as far as I’ve seen, usually backs up his positions with good science, this surprises me a bit. Perhaps you could clarify.
• What was the sea level the last time we were anywhere near this level of CO2, no to mention CO2e?
• Do you think we have a good chance of stopping the increase in GHGs (from direct anthropogenic sources, and now from feedbacks) in the near future (next couple of years) and then that we will be able to rapidly bring them down below the upper limit of what they have been throughout the Holocene (~300 ppm CO2e)?
• If not, how high do you think CO2e is likely to go before it peaks?
• Are you aware (I’m sure you are) of the recent studies that have concluded that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is now in an inevitable death spiral?
• How do your answers to any of these questions jibe with your optimism that we will not have “massive sea level rise”? Because from here it looks rather…irrational. But I probably missed something (haven’t been following every syllable of the recent discussion).
Perhaps there is some definition of that phrase “massive sea level rise: that I missed that could make your optimism look more reasonable?
Thanks ahead of time for your thoughtful reply and clarification.
Carriesays
There’s no El Nino nor La Nina at present right?
Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
Week beginning on August 19, 2018: 406.84 ppm +2.37 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 404.47 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 383.57 ppm +2.33 ppm/year
Last updated: August 26, 2018 https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Whistling dixie
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, to “whistle dixie” is “(to engage) in unrealistically rosy fantasizing”. Usually, it’s used in a negative way…”Don’t just whistle Dixie”, for example, means “Don’t sit on your ass wasting time”.
Here are a couple of K-12 climate education tools about earth’s energy balance, could you try them out and give feedback?
A video:
calacademy.org/educators/earths-delicate-energy-balance
And an interactive, showing how changes in albedo change the earth’s temperature:
scied.ucar.edu/earths-energy-balance
Carriesays
356 Hank Roberts, interesting. August 26, 2018 · More Americans die from the effects of heat than of any other form of severe weather, and this summer has seen one heat wave after another. Some places in the U.S. and elsewhere have recorded their highest temperatures ever. In fact, the average temperature around the planet over the past four years has been the highest ever recorded
Then comes a paper from 2005, 13 years before. A decade before the last four years, and before recent years run of heatwaves globally.
Besides that the USA is not the whole world nor the only nation of importance where people die from heat stress. So I wonder if there is anything to learn at all about heatwave mortality across the world today in that paper. Except that it is good to drink lots of clean water (if you have it) and to stay cool using FF powered Air conditioners (but tough if you are one of the 90% of people on the planet do not have such luxuries.)
Carriesays
357 Killian says: “Crowd-sourced current conditions? and recent papers”
imo a good idea that’s on the right track in essence but involving the wrong kind of people and on the wrong site. I’d prefer the sharps in the climate science academic world to band together and form a Global Union of Concerned Climate Scientists. Create a NFP entity, a Patreon fundraising account, a Bank Account and a Square Account to directly accept C/card donations too, with a board of Emeritus professors. (and do not ignore the Chinese who are based in China!!!!)
Then have them to organize specialty groups of climate scientists review/parse recent published papers in specific fields, collate major bodies annual summaries eg NASA state of the climate, summarize all those in comparison with the last IPCC reports assumptions and track WTF is going on. Then doing an annual Status Update …. while spending every penny they have left over to advertise that knowledge globally and specifically target key recalcitrant politicians / national Parties with an education campaign.
Maybe communicated by an annual An Inconvenient Truth Doco Series.
When I said “Somebody at another website”, I was NOT talking about Tamino.
Hank Roberts @ 346
Hank, your faith in Tamino is misplaced.
Tamino tried to duplicate my global warming contour map.
He actually did a reasonable job.
He then generated a temperature series, and plotted it on his version of my contour map.
It showed a slowdown.
He claimed, that because of how he had generated the temperature series, that there couldn’t be a slowdown.
I congratulated him for simulating a slowdown.
He wouldn’t let me make any more comments on his website, after that.
If you generate a temperature series, and it shows a slowdown (by a simple linear regression), then can not turn around and claim that it is not a slowdown, because it was artificially generated.
Otherwise all simulations are invalid.
Because you are NOT allowed to just pick the simulations that match what you want.
My global warming contour maps, simply color code the results of linear regressions.
If my contour maps are not valid, then linear regressions are not valid.
Linear regressions are probably the most common statistical procedure used in science.
Do you really want to argue that linear regressions are not valid?
You said,”I think your global warming contour map is grand. Well done! A suggestion: call it a graph instead of a map.”
You are right. I often wish that I had called it a “rate of change” graph.
Because that is what it is. I can make a “rate of change” graph from any time series. I normally do temperature, but I could just as easily do ice area.
There was a reason that I called it a contour map. On a “normal” contour map, the lines show points of equal height (or elevation).
On a global warming contour map, the lines are formed by the boundary between different coloured areas. They show the points of equal warming rate.
But this is lost on most people.
I think that your suggestion is a good one. I will consider re-branding as a “rate of change” graph.
By the way, it is amazing how many people can’t “understand” a global warming contour map, when it shows something that they don’t like.
nigeljsays
Wili @359, no I admit our chances of getting CO2 below current levels are incredibly slim. Wild optimism on my part. Hobbits are more likely to be walking on this earth somewhere.
Having said that, technology that sucks CO2 out of the air is more advanced and affordable that I thought, plus there are natural sinks that can be developed. It would all at least help meet Paris goals.
Sheldon Walker,
Did you even bother to read Tamino’s post? Or are you just more comfortable dealing with straw men? It is not a question of when “we all die”. It is a question of when the sufficiently severe that global gdp is severely impacted. And it is not simply a matter of local temperature, but also the increased severity of storms, drought… You could look all this stuff up, but have more fun generating your silly-assed, information-free plots.
Solving Global Warming is easy
========================
I have written a fictional story, which explains how we can solve the problem of global warming.
The story is meant to be funny, and a bit silly (like Monty Python).
Although it is written in a light-hearted way, there is a serious message hidden in the story. Is global warming really going to be as bad as the merchants of doom, claim?
Continuing the blather @340, and considering only the sea-ice-feedback (which still leaves the snowcover-feedback & black-carbon-on-snow/ice forcing up for consideration).
While Pistone et al (2014) calculate a sea-ice-feedback in 2011 of less-than 0.21Wm^-2, this value is not the concern. Rather it is the underestimation of that value within IPCC GCM estimates and specifically not the underestimation in 2011 (whose impact will now be evident in the Arctic) but any increase in that underestimation through coming decades. This increase alone would be the sole reason for the IPCC underestimating their projected future global temperatures due to Arctic sea ice feedbacks.
Pistone et al do calculate the 2011 underestimation as they calcuate the value employed within GCMs as being 0.076Wm^-2 (0.11Wm^-2 per ºC of AGW) or 36% of the 0.21Wm^-2 feedback-maxiumum. We can probably assume the feedback-maximum value has not increased since 2011 as ice levels (NSIDC SIE & SIA) have not significantly reduced through the June-Sept period since 2011, and so can consider the 2018 feedback-maximum remains at 0.21Wm^-2. Yet in terms of global temperature, AGW has progressed both in the real world and in the GCMs. Thus the 2018 sea-ice-feedback within the GCMs will have increased as a proportion of the sea-ice feedback-maximum to perhaps something like 50%, meaning a maximum underestimation of 0.1Wm^-2.
So the question is whether or not that underestimation will increase or decrease in coming decades.
Here we need to visit the much-troubled AR5 Chapter 12 Section 12.4.6.1 ‘Changes In Sea Ice Cover’. I say “much-troubled” as the text is a review less of the future of Arctic sea ice cover and more an account of possible explanations for why the models appear to be underestimating Arctic sea-ice loss. (The spectacular melt season of 2012 would have loomed large in the authors’ reckonings.) Perhaps most stark is the cited recalibration of CPM Arctic sea ice projections performed by Mahlstein & Knutti 2012 which assumes a linear relationship (that is evident within the GCMs) between global temperature and September Arctic Sea ice to determine the global temperature corresponding to an ice-free Arctic September (below 1Mkm^2) as +2.5ºC above pre-industrial (+1.9ºC above 1980-1999). Thus RCP2.6 which reaches +2.0ºC above pre-industrial could be expected to avoid ice-free Septembers. Yet the linear relationship suggests levels far below the levels shown by the GCMs. (The reported 56% ice loss value would equate to 3.5Mkm^2 SIE although Fig 12.28b appears to be showing a value nearer 4.5Mkm^2. I assume this is not some grand balancing act with Fig SPM.7b which manages to show 2.5Mkm^2)
So we can conclude by suggesting that the late 21st century GCM projections of September Arctic sea ice for RCP2.6 show perhaps some 2Mkm^2 more ice than indicated by other methods. And that overestimation of ice would suggest underestimation of ice loss double the underestimation seen currently, this the sort of increase that will impact the calculation of future temperature projections. (It will not be reasuring to note that under those undesirable stronger AGW scenarios this underestimation will diminish, eventually to zero, as models projecting zero ice cannot contain any underestimation.)
To be continued…
Carrie-aka-Thomas @360.
If the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 = 11Gt(C) and the Atmospheric Fraction is 46% (the average for the period 2001-16), we should be expect an annual CO2-rise of 2.4ppm/yr. Myself I think the Af is perhaps lowering at 43% suggesting 2.2ppm/yr.
The ENSO index is presently showing an El-Nino-neutral state but the influence of ENSO on CO2-rise is not immediate so the ENSO state of relevance is from some 8 months ago when there were La-Nina-neutral conditions. These conditions are presumably why the average CO2-rise over the last 5-weeks sits at 1.7ppm/yr and over the last 9-weeks at 1.8ppm. (See graphic here (usually 2 clicks to whistle up your attachment). Whether the very recent slow decline in the annual CO2 cycle and resulting higher annual CO2-rises mark the end of the La-Nina-neutral influence is far from certain. I am in agreement with Mike @345 – “Not enough data yet to do much more than raise an eyebrow.”
Recently, Mr Tamino wrote an article, called “Global Warming: How Long Do We Have Left?”.
As you all know, Mr Tamino is an overly optimistic, sort of person.
I can assure you, that he took no delight, in telling everybody that they would all be dead by the year 2045.
Assuming I’ve parsed that last sentence accurately, Mr. Walker should realize how many of us know he’s lying, since we also frequent Tamino’s blog. For newcomers, here’s what Tamino actually said:
Bottom line: at the rate we’re going, we’ll hit extremely bad, possibly intolerable, probably between 2040 and 2045. Maybe a couple years later, maybe a couple years earlier, but it’s not far away. Most of you reading this will still be around when it happens. Your kids will be. We’re headed for a cliff and it’s not far away.
where extremely bad is defined as “GMST rise of 1.5 degrees C since 1900”, not as “everybody would all be dead”. This is in contrast to the current dangerous warming of 1.1 degrees:
We have already reached dangerous levels. The heat waves throughout the northern hemisphere this summer have cost plenty, to the economy, in human suffering, ill health, even lives lost. The wildfires in California this year were much worse than they would have been without global warming. Just last year we set a new record for the total cost (adjusted for inflation) of billion-dollar climate-related disasters. They cost the U.S. over $300 billion.
While the families of people killed by, for example, last year’s hurricanes Harvey and Maria may feel Tamino’s assignment of comparative adjectives for the relative costs of 1.1 and 1.5 degrees of warming are understated, Walker’s own subjective assignments are his to make. He’s even allowed to deploy the strawman fallacy as a clumsy rhetorical tactic, and be justifiably derided for it. That doesn’t give him the right either to lie about what someone else says, or to mock the high costs already paid by AGW’s victims, even though their personal tragedies may be perfectly tolerable to him. I seldom call for RC commenters to be boreholed, but his is an exceptionally boring brand of denial.
And HadCRUT has now reported for July 2018 with an anomaly of +0.59ºC, a little up on June’s +0.58ºC and the third warmest anomaly for the year so far. (Previous 2018 months range from +0.63ºC to +0.53ºC.)
It is the 6th warmest July in HadCRUT (for GISTEMP it was 3rd, BEST 2nd, NOAA 4th, for the satellite TLT records, July was 4th in UAH & 3rd in RSS) below 1st-placed July 2016 (+0.74ºC), 2015 (+0.70ºC), 1998 (+0.67ºC), 2017 (+0.65ºC) & 2010 (+0.61ºC) with a bit of a drop to 7th placed July 2015 (+0.54ºC).
July 2018 is the 67th warmest anomaly on the full all-month HadCRUT record. (In GISTEMP it was =44th warmest anomaly, BEST 77th, 58th in NOAA.)
A graphic of monthly anomalies for the last few years is maintanied here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
In the HadCRUT year-to-date table below, 2018 sits 6th (It was 3rd in both GISTEMP & BEST, 4th in NOAA.)
Table ranked by average of Jan-to-July anomalies.
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.90ºC … … … +0.80ºC … … … 1st
2017 .. +0.74ºC … … … +0.68ºC … … … 3rd
2015 .. +0.70ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.62ºC … … … +0.56ºC … … … 5th
1998 .. +0.61ºC … … … +0.54ºC … … … 7th
2018 .. +0.58ºC
2002 .. +0.56ºC … … … +0.50ºC … … … 12th
2014 .. +0.56ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 4th
2007 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.49ºC … … … 13th
2005 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … … 6th
2013 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.51ºC … … … 8th
Victorsays
341 Victor says:
re 309 Kevin McKinney:
KM: OK, I found the source of the claim that Victor dismisses out of hand, ie. that:
The costs of achieving nearly universal
access to electricity and clean fuels for cooking and heating are projected to be between USD 72 and 95 billion per year until 2030 with minimal effects on GHG emissions (limited evidence, medium agreement).
It comes from the Global Energy Assessment (2012), the SPM for which you may read here:
My initial reaction: “Oy! More endless reams of jargon to plow through.”
But true to my word, I did manage to slog through much of it, and as promised here is my response.
First I’m confused by the need for yet another long and tedious assessment, as though the IPCC version wasn’t long and tedious enough. The two documents look suspiciously similar, so what was the point?
Once again we see calls for action in a wide variety of areas, but nothing much in the way of practical suggestions for implementing any of these strategies in the real world. Especially amusing is item 9:
“9. Socio-Cultural Changes as well as Stable Rules and Regulations will be Required: Crucial issues in achieving transformational change toward sustainable future include non-technology drivers such as individual and public awareness, community and societal capacities to adapt to changes, institutions, policies, incentives, strategic spatial planning, social norms, rules and regulations of the marketplace, behavior of market actors, and societies’ ability to introduce through the political and institutional systems measures to reflect externalities. Changes in cultures, lifestyles, and values are also required. Effective strategies will need to be adopted and integrated into the fabric of national socio-cultural, political, developmental, and other contextual factors, including recognizing and providing support for the opportunities and needs of all nations and societies.”
That’s quite a list! Anyone have any idea at all on how such an ambitious scheme could possibly be implemented outside of a major world revolution? Led by whom, I wonder? Equally amusing is the opening salvo under Summaries, part 2:
“2. An Effective Transformation Requires Immediate Action: Long infrastructure lifetimes mean that it takes decades to change energy systems; so immediate action is needed to avoid lock-in of invested capital into energy systems and associated infrastructure that is not compatible with sustainability goals.”
Seems to me we are already locked in. So how are we going to unlock? And what sort of “Immediate Action” is going to do the trick in time? A “price on carbon”? So far NO action at all on that one. As though such a scheme is likely to be sufficiently effective in any case. Mandated solar and wind energy projects? Mandated by whom? Something of the sort is being done in Germany, but they have thus far not been able to reduce their carbon emissions, and the fossil-fuel-based Nordstream project seems to be moving full steam ahead.
A bridge recently collapsed in Italy and suddenly every world leader is being reminded of all that crumbling infrastructure worldwide. Well if that’s going to be a priority, along with all the other issues these politicians must deal with, including a breakdown in the world economy, the need to finance wars all over the place, restoration of welfare state benefits, etc., then how in the world is “Immediate Action” on Climate Change going to become a priority? Isn’t this really all about lip service and feel-good politics? It’s so easy to read all this and agree on how important it is, yet when it comes to even thinking about how to actually accomplish any of this, “immediately” or at any time at all, a hopeless paralysis is sure to set in.
As for the paragraph I quoted regarding “access to electricity and clean fuels” etc., the IPCC version is quite different from the GEA version. The IPCC stresses the need to assist billions of impoverished peoples in attaining access to “modern energy sources,” and simply assumes that any such project will have no affect on CO2 emissions, which sounds on its face absurd.
The GEA version is much more practical, and does actually make some sense in that it invokes a need to wean billions of people living on the margins from the use of cook stoves burning biomass and black-soot producing charcoal, a major source of deadly pollution. But their solution veers very far from the IPCC goal of supplying these people with “modern energy sources,” an incredibly challenging task that would take decades if possible at all. The GEA is far less ambitious: find a way to provide the with modern cook stoves. Fossil fuel based, natch, but what the Hell, it would be an improvement. Yes it would. But once again, how is even this far more modest goal going to be achieved? How is ANY of it going to be achieved?
It is NOT going to be achieved. None of it. As should be obvious to anyone attempting to digest these ponderous texts (not to mention the “experts” who produced them), so liberally laced with wishful thinking.
Fred Magyarsays
Killian @ 351 says
But…
“What the scientists hope to do is to help nature along a bit if they can, and that is to do all we can to repopulate, help the corals, after the big carbon dioxide increase is over and it starts to come down,” he says.
Well, while I’m sure the corals will be happy to get any help they can… Based on what we know about past ocean acidification events such as what occurred during the PETM, that big carbon dioxide increase could take quite a while to be reabsorbed… Like a lot longer than all of previous human attempts at building and maintaining civilizations.
In a study published in the latest issue of Paleoceanography, the scientists estimate that surface ocean acidity increased by about 100 percent in a few thousand years or more, and stayed that way for the next 70,000 years. In this radically changed environment, some creatures died out while others adapted and evolved. The study is the first to use the chemical composition of fossils to reconstruct surface ocean acidity at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of intense warming on land and throughout the oceans due to high CO2.
“This could be the closest geological analog to modern ocean acidification,” said study coauthor Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “As massive as it was, it still happened about 10 times more slowly than what we are doing today.”
Bold mine.
I’ve spent about 35 years diving on coral reefs myself. The problem as I see it at least a triple whammy of ocean warming, ocean acidification and the incredible rates of current change. Here’s a link to the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal page on the basics of ocean acidification and how it affects marine organisms that build their structures out of CaCo3.
Nigel, from your sucking-oil-from-atmosphere link: Crucially, the lowest-cost design, optimized to produce and sell alternative fuels made from the captured carbon dioxide,
AB: Hmmm, I wonder if folks might change their minds about bio/synfuels? Especially since a well-designed engine not only has no non-CO2 emissions but also cleans every bit of polluted air that passes through it. Better than an EV.
I consider death to be “extremely bad, possibly intolerable”. You apparently do not.
You have accused me of mocking “the high costs already paid by AGW’s victims, even though their personal tragedies may be perfectly tolerable to him”.
That qualifies as one of the most despicable statements, that I have seen in a long time.
How is presenting scientific and mathematical evidence, “mocking victims”.
My graphs use temperature series, which are created by climate scientists. I apply a mathematical procedure, to turn the temperature series into a “rate of change” graph.
Which part of “scientific evidence”, don’t you understand.
Mr. Know It Allsays
361 – me
I watched the first video. Not bad, but it needs a disclaimer that says the CC theory is complicated and controversial and that to understand the theory you have to understand the math and science behind it, which requires some college level science and math courses.
If you can’t do the math, you’re not doing science – you’re doing something akin to beliefs or religion. Schools should be turning out scientists, not believers. ;)
jgnfldsays
@377
Shel…
“Which part of “scientific evidence”, don’t you understand.”?
Which part of evidence needing to be peer reviewed, published, and further haggled over in the science literature before being accepted as “scientific evidence” don’t you understand? You may be very proud of your graphical programming. But I know of no reference to it in the scientific, peer reviewed literature.
OK. First, WG III didn’t ‘assume’ the conclusion, they were reporting it as the result the GEA report reached. (Admittedly, the citation was not clear, probably because the SPM is already a ‘summary of a summary’.)
Second you are wrong on three specific fronts:
1) “No possibility of progress on electric access”– It’s not easy, of course, but progress is in fact being made:
“…the proportion of population with access to electricity has more than doubled between 2000 and 2016…. n 2016, the absolute number of people living without electricity dropped below the symbolic threshold of one billion.”
2) “NO progress on carbon pricing”– And yet, “The number of carbon pricing initiatives implemented or scheduled for implementation has almost doubled over the past 5 years, reaching 51 in 2018.”
3) “No progress on German emissions”– Well, they aren’t going to make their 2020 of 40% below 1990 levels, it’s true, but they are in fact more than 25% below 1990 now. So clearly, your claim that they haven’t reduced emissions is just flat wrong. (And part of the German emissions struggle was combining an already ambitious target with the decision post-Fukushima to abandon nuclear generation.)
(And since Germany was apparently cited as a particular case of the futility of efforts to cut emissions, I’d point out further that the EU considered as a whole is apparently going to make its Kyoto targets, and that’s an economic bloc comparable to the US.)
Really, if you’re going to make these sorts of assertions with such apparent certainty, I’d suggest you fact-check before you hit “submit”. I know only too well that it’s tempting to think you know already, but isn’t it a bit galling when you discover you didn’t, after all?
Carriesays
Beyond Avg Global Means to where people actually live – on the land – 56 nation’s annual averages are already at +1.4C and above in 2017
You have accused me of mocking “the high costs already paid by AGW’s victims, even though their personal tragedies may be perfectly tolerable to him”.
That qualifies as one of the most despicable statements, that I have seen in a long time.
How is presenting scientific and mathematical evidence, “mocking victims”.
Mr. Walker, you lied by claiming Tamino had said everybody would be dead by 2045, when what he really said was that the effects of a further 0.4 degree C warming would be “extremely bad, possibly intolerable.” And you mock the lives AGW has already taken, by plainly implying that only the death of everybody would be extremely bad, possibly intolerable.
Look, we get that you think climate science is some kind of stalking horse for ‘warmists’ with ulterior motives; that’s abundantly clear from your incorrigible, incompetent efforts to deprecate the costs of AGW with statistical mathturbation. You are already a notorious “lukewarmer”, a species of AGW-denier, and what you are doing isn’t illegal (nor do I believe it ought to be); so I won’t bother with further evidence of your real motives here. I have just two questions for you:
1) Why expose yourself to excoriation and scorn by telling such easily disproved lies?
2) How many deaths due to anthropogenic climate change do you feel are tolerable?
If you can’t do the math, you’re not doing science – you’re doing something akin to beliefs or religion. Schools should be turning out scientists, not believers. ;)
Hmm, how’s this: “molecules of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere backscatter solar energy re-radiating from the earth’s surface: therefore, as more fossil carbon is anthropogenically transferred to the atmosphere, average global surface temperature rises”? Is that ‘science’? I didn’t use any math, except maybe for the comparative words ‘some’, ‘more’, ‘average’ and ‘rises’.
Admittedly, I haven’t personally measured the radiative properties of atmospheric carbon. I’m willing to bet Mr. IAT hasn’t either. In light of my own scientific training, however, it would be perverse of me not to accept, albeit tentatively and provisionally, the peer-reviewed reports of those who have. The rest is merely the ineluctable working out of simple physics, enough of which I have personally verified. Why does Mr. IAT accept anything as true? If he really takes no one’s word for anything, he’ll have to recapitulate all of science since Archimedes! If he believes nothing is true, OTOH, how does he decide to risk venturing out of doors?
Schools should turn out scientifically meta-literate citizens, who can tell the difference between genuine and fake science 8^|. Scientists will distinguish themselves regardless.
Killiansays
The energy in a layer of the Arctic Ocean has doubled, equaling the energy to melt 80cm of ice.
Shorter: create an artificial data set with some random variation around a significant trend. Run SW’s sciency analysis, and discover “slowdowns” that don’t exist in the data.
Using information from climate models, the team determined the deadline for starting climate action to keep global warming likely (with a probability of 67%) below 2°C in 2100, depending on how fast humanity can reduce emissions by using more renewable energy. Assuming we could increase the share of renewable energy by 2% every year, we would have to start doing so before 2035 (the point of no return). If we were to reduce emissions at a faster rate, by increasing the share of renewable energy by 5% each year, we would buy another 10 years.
“What the scientists hope to do is to help… the corals, after the big carbon dioxide increase is over and it starts to come down,” he says.
Well, while I’m sure the corals will be happy to get any help they can… Based on what we know about past ocean acidification events such as what occurred during the PETM, that big carbon dioxide increase could take quite a while to be reabsorbed… Like a lot longer than all of previous human attempts at building and maintaining civilizations.
I’m sure he’s aware. But only fools and monsters would suggest we do nothing and rock weathering to do the trick. Remember: We could, were we not overall a bunch of crazed addicts, get back to sub-300 ppm in twenty years.
That said, many of my more pessimistic moments come when thinking of ocean acidification. As the oceans go, so go the planet.
Killiansays
371 MA Rodger said Carrie-aka-Thomas @360.
Stop being an ass. But for the fatalism, their styles are completely different – unless Thomas found an acolyte. Dipshittery should be bore holed.
Killiansays
Re #355 Hank Roberts said A team of researchers led by Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard University, studied heat-related deaths in 105 U.S. cities from 1987 to 2005.
Two thousand effing five? What is he, a denialist scientist? Utterly ridiculous. Garbage in, garbage out. I.e., from a crap premise comes crappy conclusions.
Cherry picking…. or what?
Killiansays
Re #357 Al Bundy said AB: Carrie quoted Dr Mann, who spoke of reticence. That reticence is because the republicans and their allies are watching scientists’ work and will knife any scientist who doesn’t exhibit the proper reticence.
Oh, grow up. The reticence is built into the process and the nature of the responsibility. Imagine being Oppenheimer.
Occam’s applies.
Nigel: Killian @307, I have never referred to the holocaust,
AB: I did.
Had nothing to do with you. nigel is just comically inept at times.
Carriesays
Cool Dudes
Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming.
Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’. Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’.
Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.
Right-wing nationalism’s links to climate change denial are a relatively unresearched topic, but Environmental Sociology recently published an article where Hultman and his research colleagues show the connections between conservatism, xenophobia, and climate change denial, through a study in Norway https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/tme/centres/ceforced/Pages/default.aspx
Why would you bother discussing anything rational, intelligent, empathetic or ethical with xenophobes and bigots?
Carriesays
No more Forced responses? All good. Resident elders here would be wise to understand the following article and the serious issues it raises.
Luke warm denialism of the weak willed, so often displayed on pro-agw/cc websites cannot, will not, drive the genuine structural global change needed address global warming and reversing GHG emissions.
Meanwhile, the mainstream environmental movement continues to focus on “green” consumerism and incremental change. Got an SUV? Trade it in for an electric car. Don’t use that plastic straw, use this compostable one instead.
At best, those actions delay the widespread transformation we need by lulling us into a false sense of security. At worst, they continue a cycle of high-emission consumption. Feel bad about your cross-country flight to California? Pay to plant some trees.
The power of the Tamino piece on how much time we have lies in having a rather sober, just-the-facts-ma’am type person stating that the situation is alarming.
Centuries? Incremental change? I think the consensus is approaching, “Uh, no.”
Dan H.says
Hank @ 355,
Sometimes claims must be put in their proper perspective. Yes, some places in the U.S. have recorded their highest temperatures ever. However, comparing 2018 to previous years shows no significant increase. In fact, the data actually shows a significant decrease. Here is how this year compares to the past 20 summers with regards to all-time high temperatures.
Comparing to other “heat wave” years, even these numbers are paltry.
1988: 271
1954: 190
1936: 792
In reality, it is more complicated. While the average temperature is setting new records highs, summer heat is not.
Fred Magyarsays
Killian @ 389 said:
I’m sure he’s aware. But only fools and monsters would suggest we do nothing and rock weathering to do the trick. Remember: We could, were we not overall a bunch of crazed addicts, get back to sub-300 ppm in twenty years.
While I do agree with your point about fools and monsters, and doing nothing. I have to admit to a deep admiration for your optimism with regards what may or may not be possible, for returning to sub-300 ppm of atmospheric CO2 levels within a 20 year time frame.
However, extraordinary claims still require some extraordinary evidence! There is nothing that I have come across in the scientific literature from a very wide range of fields that leads me to believe, such is even remotely possible. Even assuming that it were, there is nothing to indicate we we have the collective will to embark on that path!
I am for example aware of coral scientists who are working to genetically engineer symbiotic algae that live within the tissues of coral polyps to make them less likely to be expelled by the corals during ocean heat waves thus reducing coral bleaching events and I think this is absolutely fantastic work!
Unfortunately the entire exercise becomes moot if the corals can’t continue to build up their CaCo3 structures due to reductions in ocean pH!
So forgive me for being a tad pessimistic on the probability that we will somehow find a way to reverse the current trends in ocean acidification in any meaningful time frame. But hey, 70,000 years is but a blink of an eye in terms of the geologic record… Here’s some good music, enjoy!
“OK. First, WG III didn’t ‘assume’ the conclusion, they were reporting it as the result the GEA report reached. (Admittedly, the citation was not clear, probably because the SPM is already a ‘summary of a summary’.)”
V: If so, this was very poor reporting, as the GEA version is very different from what they proposed.
KM: Second you are wrong on three specific fronts:
1) “No possibility of progress on electric access”– It’s not easy, of course, but progress is in fact being made:
“…the proportion of population with access to electricity has more than doubled between 2000 and 2016…. n 2016, the absolute number of people living without electricity dropped below the symbolic threshold of one billion.”
V: The above has nothing to do with any policies initiated by the IPCC or the UN, but is the logical result of continuing economic development. Moreover, in most cases increasing access to electricity means increasing consumption of fossil fuels. And if you hold out some hope that solar or wind power might make a difference, consider that 1. electric lighting is needed at night, not during the hours when solar energy would be available; 2. refrigeration cannot depend on irregularly available power sources, as food would soon spoil without continual access to electricity. So any concerted effort to provide underprivileged populations with the sort of electrical power that could make a difference would be counter-productive as far as climate change mitigation is concerned.
KM: 2) “NO progress on carbon pricing”– And yet, “The number of carbon pricing initiatives implemented or scheduled for implementation has almost doubled over the past 5 years, reaching 51 in 2018.”
V: When James Hansen continually reminds us of how important it is to “put a price on carbon” it’s easy to assume that has not as yet happened. It’s nice to learn that it has, at least to some limited extent. But it’s hard to see how putting a price on carbon is going to make that much of a difference if an adequate supply of alternative sources of power are not in place in sufficient quantity and widely available. In many cases all it means is that prices will go up in a wide variety of areas, including electricity, heating, transportation, food, etc. And unless the tax is high enough to literally destroy the fossil fuel industry, the scheme won’t matter much anyhow.
KM: 3) “No progress on German emissions”– Well, they aren’t going to make their 2020 of 40% below 1990 levels, it’s true, but they are in fact more than 25% below 1990 now. So clearly, your claim that they haven’t reduced emissions is just flat wrong. (And part of the German emissions struggle was combining an already ambitious target with the decision post-Fukushima to abandon nuclear generation.)
V: German emissions are increasing in recent years, largely because of the need to maintain fossil fuel sources to provide continuity when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow. Whatever savings they might have achieved is nothing compared to the unrealistic goals that have been set. And those goals are not likely to make much difference anyhow, as Hansen and many other climate scientists have argued.
KM: (And since Germany was apparently cited as a particular case of the futility of efforts to cut emissions, I’d point out further that the EU considered as a whole is apparently going to make its Kyoto targets, and that’s an economic bloc comparable to the US.)
V: I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now I’d imagine most European leaders are more focused on infrastructure maintenance (thanks to that Italian bridge collapse) than CO2 emissions. And infrastructure maintenance is going to require LOTS of CO2 based energy.
KM: Really, if you’re going to make these sorts of assertions with such apparent certainty, I’d suggest you fact-check before you hit “submit”. I know only too well that it’s tempting to think you know already, but isn’t it a bit galling when you discover you didn’t, after all?
V: Spare me the snide remarks, as they could equally apply to you. But let me ask you: do you honestly believe that “we” could possibly turn things around to the point that the coming catastrophe you fear could be averted, that the seas would cease to rise, that temperatures would abate, that serious heat waves would be no more, that the glaciers would stop melting, that the impending collapse of the West Antarctic sea shelf could be halted?
Global Warming: How Long Do We Have Left?
Using the latest statistical techniques, we can now predict, to the minute, when global warming will kill you (accurate to +/- 17 minutes).
Recently, Mr Tamino wrote an article, called “Global Warming: How Long Do We Have Left?”.
As you all know, Mr Tamino is an overly optimistic, sort of person.
I can assure you, that he took no delight, in telling everybody that they would all be dead by the year 2045. This is when we will exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit.
He even tried to soften the blow, by saying that you might get a couple of years more.
The only way to avoid total disaster, apparently, is to do exactly what Mr Tamino tells you to do.
I don’t want to rain on Mr Tamino’s parade, but I noticed that he made a small mistake, in his calculations for the end of the world.
He forgot to take into account, the fact that different regions of the world, have different warming rates.
That is ok for some regions, but we have bad news for Region 1 (from 90N to 48N).
https://agree-to-disagree.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Map-Date-of-Death-Region-1.png
With Mr Tamino’s help, I have created a colour coded map of the world, which shows the outlook for the different regions of the world.
Region 1 (90N to 48N) – Red – Already dead
Region 2 (48N to 30N) – Orange- Not feeling very well
Region 3 (30N to 14N) – Yellow – Don’t take out a long term contract for Sky TV
Region 4 (14N to Equator) – Light green – Slightly under the weather
Region 5 (Equator to 14S) – Dark green – Have been better
Region 6 (14S to 30S) – Aqua – Not feeling too bad
Region 7 (30S to 48S) – Blue – Never been better
Region 8 (48S to 90S) – Purple – Feeling great, but it is very cold, and I can’t feel my feet
People who don’t want to know when they are going to die, should not read this article. You have been warned.
https://agree-to-disagree.com/global-warming-how-long-do-we-have-left
potholer54’s advice on How to Argue with Assholes
aka Deniers, know it alls, Citizen Scientists and the “look it up” brigade who refuse to quote quotes and their sources for their claims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YezbREhH_Eg
And especially watch for the subtle change of claim while you’re questioning them and then responding back to you. :)
More methane. Yay. From cyanobacteria. Yay.
Crap.0
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/08/25/398958
Re #340: No idea what happened w that post.
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=639858585
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1307392/
Crowd-sourced current conditions?
One thing we all know is a difficulty of doing good science is that it is, by its very nature, always lagging the physical world. Ittakes time to become aware of issues and/or changes, takes time to measure, time to analyze and time to publish. Even then, what is published is often not readily available.
Is there any interest in doing a charrette-type exercise here on this forum to “update” the most recent IPCC-ish numbers with more real time numbers, i.e., with numbers representing work published since the last IPCC?
I know I get frustrated seeing a million different numbers for everything. E.g., is SLR currently tripling? Has it gotten even faster? What is the current best guess, the high end, the extreme? We’d be talking huge error bars, of course, but with all the studies each of us are aware of, we should be able to get some degree of consensus on an informal current state-of-the-art that doesn’t require waiting for the next IPCC report which will be 2 years or more out of date the moment it is published.
KillingInaction: Like I said, small bodies of water, probably quite shallow. Like I said, huge chunks of the far north turn into a big shallow swamp in the summer.
AB: Hmm, you’re almost there! Now, do you imagine that those “lakes” have large quantities of dry ground surrounding them (as your first sentence insinuates) or could it be that those lakes are close together (as your second sentence insinuates)? Go look at the links Hank posted. You’ll see bazillions of lakes that are quite close together.
————
Nigel: Anyway my point is its not too late to do some good. Surely you realise this? :)
AB: Yep. Tis like smoking. Being diagnosed with emphysema means that it is MORE imperative that you stop smoking.
Nigel(to Carrie): I have shown you an article on political interference. There’s evidence this applies to the summary for policy makers, not the modelling.
AB: Carrie quoted Dr Mann, who spoke of reticence. That reticence is because the republicans and their allies are watching scientists’ work and will knife any scientist who doesn’t exhibit the proper reticence.
Nigel: Killian @307, I have never referred to the holocaust,
AB: I did. Which reminds me of the Warsaw uprising. From Wiki: A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties were probably less than 150, with Stroop reporting only 16 killed. Nevertheless, it was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that the uprising was doomed and their survival was unlikely. Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said that the motivation for fighting was “to pick the time and place of our deaths.”
Or, the folks who took out the hijackers on the third 9/11 plane.
Or Nemesis and others like him, who choose to be responsible on a personal level while knowing (believing) that the ship is going to sink. He knows he’s not the pilot of anything other than himself. (Yeah, but there will be lots of flotsam for folks to cling to and from which the survivors will rebuild.)
—–
Sheldon Walker: I don’t really expect to win.
AB: I think your global warming contour map is grand. Well done! A suggestion: call it a graph instead of a map.
nigelj wrote: “…This could cause massive sea level rise … So some of this may be locked in, although I prefer not to be too pessimistic about it.”
For someone who, as far as I’ve seen, usually backs up his positions with good science, this surprises me a bit. Perhaps you could clarify.
• What was the sea level the last time we were anywhere near this level of CO2, no to mention CO2e?
• Do you think we have a good chance of stopping the increase in GHGs (from direct anthropogenic sources, and now from feedbacks) in the near future (next couple of years) and then that we will be able to rapidly bring them down below the upper limit of what they have been throughout the Holocene (~300 ppm CO2e)?
• If not, how high do you think CO2e is likely to go before it peaks?
• Are you aware (I’m sure you are) of the recent studies that have concluded that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is now in an inevitable death spiral?
• How do your answers to any of these questions jibe with your optimism that we will not have “massive sea level rise”? Because from here it looks rather…irrational. But I probably missed something (haven’t been following every syllable of the recent discussion).
Perhaps there is some definition of that phrase “massive sea level rise: that I missed that could make your optimism look more reasonable?
Thanks ahead of time for your thoughtful reply and clarification.
There’s no El Nino nor La Nina at present right?
Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
Week beginning on August 19, 2018: 406.84 ppm +2.37 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 404.47 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 383.57 ppm +2.33 ppm/year
Last updated: August 26, 2018
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Recent Global CO2
May 2018: 408.97 ppm +2.60 ppm
May 2017: 406.37 ppm
Last updated: August 7, 2018
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html
Whistling dixie
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, to “whistle dixie” is “(to engage) in unrealistically rosy fantasizing”. Usually, it’s used in a negative way…”Don’t just whistle Dixie”, for example, means “Don’t sit on your ass wasting time”.
It comes from the popular southern song, Dixieland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNtMpPFM7M0 :-)
Here are a couple of K-12 climate education tools about earth’s energy balance, could you try them out and give feedback?
A video:
calacademy.org/educators/earths-delicate-energy-balance
And an interactive, showing how changes in albedo change the earth’s temperature:
scied.ucar.edu/earths-energy-balance
356 Hank Roberts, interesting.
August 26, 2018 · More Americans die from the effects of heat than of any other form of severe weather, and this summer has seen one heat wave after another. Some places in the U.S. and elsewhere have recorded their highest temperatures ever. In fact, the average temperature around the planet over the past four years has been the highest ever recorded
Then comes a paper from 2005, 13 years before. A decade before the last four years, and before recent years run of heatwaves globally.
Besides that the USA is not the whole world nor the only nation of importance where people die from heat stress. So I wonder if there is anything to learn at all about heatwave mortality across the world today in that paper. Except that it is good to drink lots of clean water (if you have it) and to stay cool using FF powered Air conditioners (but tough if you are one of the 90% of people on the planet do not have such luxuries.)
357 Killian says: “Crowd-sourced current conditions? and recent papers”
imo a good idea that’s on the right track in essence but involving the wrong kind of people and on the wrong site. I’d prefer the sharps in the climate science academic world to band together and form a Global Union of Concerned Climate Scientists. Create a NFP entity, a Patreon fundraising account, a Bank Account and a Square Account to directly accept C/card donations too, with a board of Emeritus professors. (and do not ignore the Chinese who are based in China!!!!)
Then have them to organize specialty groups of climate scientists review/parse recent published papers in specific fields, collate major bodies annual summaries eg NASA state of the climate, summarize all those in comparison with the last IPCC reports assumptions and track WTF is going on. Then doing an annual Status Update …. while spending every penny they have left over to advertise that knowledge globally and specifically target key recalcitrant politicians / national Parties with an education campaign.
Maybe communicated by an annual An Inconvenient Truth Doco Series.
Hank Roberts @ 323
When I said “Somebody at another website”, I was NOT talking about Tamino.
Hank Roberts @ 346
Hank, your faith in Tamino is misplaced.
Tamino tried to duplicate my global warming contour map.
He actually did a reasonable job.
He then generated a temperature series, and plotted it on his version of my contour map.
It showed a slowdown.
He claimed, that because of how he had generated the temperature series, that there couldn’t be a slowdown.
I congratulated him for simulating a slowdown.
He wouldn’t let me make any more comments on his website, after that.
If you generate a temperature series, and it shows a slowdown (by a simple linear regression), then can not turn around and claim that it is not a slowdown, because it was artificially generated.
Otherwise all simulations are invalid.
Because you are NOT allowed to just pick the simulations that match what you want.
My global warming contour maps, simply color code the results of linear regressions.
If my contour maps are not valid, then linear regressions are not valid.
Linear regressions are probably the most common statistical procedure used in science.
Do you really want to argue that linear regressions are not valid?
nigelj @ 334
You said, “So why would I bother to read the long, complex, and not intuitively obvious discourse on your website?”
Because you wanted to know the truth.
The truth does not always fit into a small, simple package.
Of course, if you don’t want to know the truth, feel free to ignore my website.
Al Bundy @ 358
You said,”I think your global warming contour map is grand. Well done! A suggestion: call it a graph instead of a map.”
You are right. I often wish that I had called it a “rate of change” graph.
Because that is what it is. I can make a “rate of change” graph from any time series. I normally do temperature, but I could just as easily do ice area.
There was a reason that I called it a contour map. On a “normal” contour map, the lines show points of equal height (or elevation).
On a global warming contour map, the lines are formed by the boundary between different coloured areas. They show the points of equal warming rate.
But this is lost on most people.
I think that your suggestion is a good one. I will consider re-branding as a “rate of change” graph.
By the way, it is amazing how many people can’t “understand” a global warming contour map, when it shows something that they don’t like.
Wili @359, no I admit our chances of getting CO2 below current levels are incredibly slim. Wild optimism on my part. Hobbits are more likely to be walking on this earth somewhere.
Having said that, technology that sucks CO2 out of the air is more advanced and affordable that I thought, plus there are natural sinks that can be developed. It would all at least help meet Paris goals.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611369/maybe-we-can-afford-to-suck-cosub2sub-out-of-the-sky-after-all/
Sheldon Walker,
Did you even bother to read Tamino’s post? Or are you just more comfortable dealing with straw men? It is not a question of when “we all die”. It is a question of when the sufficiently severe that global gdp is severely impacted. And it is not simply a matter of local temperature, but also the increased severity of storms, drought… You could look all this stuff up, but have more fun generating your silly-assed, information-free plots.
Solving Global Warming is easy
========================
I have written a fictional story, which explains how we can solve the problem of global warming.
The story is meant to be funny, and a bit silly (like Monty Python).
Although it is written in a light-hearted way, there is a serious message hidden in the story. Is global warming really going to be as bad as the merchants of doom, claim?
https://agree-to-disagree.com/solving-global-warming-is-easy
Please tell me what you think.
‘Apocalyptic threat’: dire climate report raises fears for California’s future – Statewide assessment, which comes amid summer of extreme wildfires, warns of deadly cost if climate change is not stopped
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/california-climate-change-report-wildfires-jerry-brown
CALIFORNIA’S FOURTH CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT
http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/state/docs/20180827-StatewideSummary.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNtMpPFM7M0
Continuing the blather @340, and considering only the sea-ice-feedback (which still leaves the snowcover-feedback & black-carbon-on-snow/ice forcing up for consideration).
While Pistone et al (2014) calculate a sea-ice-feedback in 2011 of less-than 0.21Wm^-2, this value is not the concern. Rather it is the underestimation of that value within IPCC GCM estimates and specifically not the underestimation in 2011 (whose impact will now be evident in the Arctic) but any increase in that underestimation through coming decades. This increase alone would be the sole reason for the IPCC underestimating their projected future global temperatures due to Arctic sea ice feedbacks.
Pistone et al do calculate the 2011 underestimation as they calcuate the value employed within GCMs as being 0.076Wm^-2 (0.11Wm^-2 per ºC of AGW) or 36% of the 0.21Wm^-2 feedback-maxiumum. We can probably assume the feedback-maximum value has not increased since 2011 as ice levels (NSIDC SIE & SIA) have not significantly reduced through the June-Sept period since 2011, and so can consider the 2018 feedback-maximum remains at 0.21Wm^-2. Yet in terms of global temperature, AGW has progressed both in the real world and in the GCMs. Thus the 2018 sea-ice-feedback within the GCMs will have increased as a proportion of the sea-ice feedback-maximum to perhaps something like 50%, meaning a maximum underestimation of 0.1Wm^-2.
So the question is whether or not that underestimation will increase or decrease in coming decades.
Here we need to visit the much-troubled AR5 Chapter 12 Section 12.4.6.1 ‘Changes In Sea Ice Cover’. I say “much-troubled” as the text is a review less of the future of Arctic sea ice cover and more an account of possible explanations for why the models appear to be underestimating Arctic sea-ice loss. (The spectacular melt season of 2012 would have loomed large in the authors’ reckonings.) Perhaps most stark is the cited recalibration of CPM Arctic sea ice projections performed by Mahlstein & Knutti 2012 which assumes a linear relationship (that is evident within the GCMs) between global temperature and September Arctic Sea ice to determine the global temperature corresponding to an ice-free Arctic September (below 1Mkm^2) as +2.5ºC above pre-industrial (+1.9ºC above 1980-1999). Thus RCP2.6 which reaches +2.0ºC above pre-industrial could be expected to avoid ice-free Septembers. Yet the linear relationship suggests levels far below the levels shown by the GCMs. (The reported 56% ice loss value would equate to 3.5Mkm^2 SIE although Fig 12.28b appears to be showing a value nearer 4.5Mkm^2. I assume this is not some grand balancing act with Fig SPM.7b which manages to show 2.5Mkm^2)
So we can conclude by suggesting that the late 21st century GCM projections of September Arctic sea ice for RCP2.6 show perhaps some 2Mkm^2 more ice than indicated by other methods. And that overestimation of ice would suggest underestimation of ice loss double the underestimation seen currently, this the sort of increase that will impact the calculation of future temperature projections. (It will not be reasuring to note that under those undesirable stronger AGW scenarios this underestimation will diminish, eventually to zero, as models projecting zero ice cannot contain any underestimation.)
To be continued…
Carrie-aka-Thomas @360.
If the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 = 11Gt(C) and the Atmospheric Fraction is 46% (the average for the period 2001-16), we should be expect an annual CO2-rise of 2.4ppm/yr. Myself I think the Af is perhaps lowering at 43% suggesting 2.2ppm/yr.
The ENSO index is presently showing an El-Nino-neutral state but the influence of ENSO on CO2-rise is not immediate so the ENSO state of relevance is from some 8 months ago when there were La-Nina-neutral conditions. These conditions are presumably why the average CO2-rise over the last 5-weeks sits at 1.7ppm/yr and over the last 9-weeks at 1.8ppm. (See graphic here (usually 2 clicks to whistle up your attachment). Whether the very recent slow decline in the annual CO2 cycle and resulting higher annual CO2-rises mark the end of the La-Nina-neutral influence is far from certain. I am in agreement with Mike @345 – “Not enough data yet to do much more than raise an eyebrow.”
Sheldon Walker:
Assuming I’ve parsed that last sentence accurately, Mr. Walker should realize how many of us know he’s lying, since we also frequent Tamino’s blog. For newcomers, here’s what Tamino actually said:
where extremely bad is defined as “GMST rise of 1.5 degrees C since 1900”, not as “everybody would all be dead”. This is in contrast to the current dangerous warming of 1.1 degrees:
While the families of people killed by, for example, last year’s hurricanes Harvey and Maria may feel Tamino’s assignment of comparative adjectives for the relative costs of 1.1 and 1.5 degrees of warming are understated, Walker’s own subjective assignments are his to make. He’s even allowed to deploy the strawman fallacy as a clumsy rhetorical tactic, and be justifiably derided for it. That doesn’t give him the right either to lie about what someone else says, or to mock the high costs already paid by AGW’s victims, even though their personal tragedies may be perfectly tolerable to him. I seldom call for RC commenters to be boreholed, but his is an exceptionally boring brand of denial.
And HadCRUT has now reported for July 2018 with an anomaly of +0.59ºC, a little up on June’s +0.58ºC and the third warmest anomaly for the year so far. (Previous 2018 months range from +0.63ºC to +0.53ºC.)
It is the 6th warmest July in HadCRUT (for GISTEMP it was 3rd, BEST 2nd, NOAA 4th, for the satellite TLT records, July was 4th in UAH & 3rd in RSS) below 1st-placed July 2016 (+0.74ºC), 2015 (+0.70ºC), 1998 (+0.67ºC), 2017 (+0.65ºC) & 2010 (+0.61ºC) with a bit of a drop to 7th placed July 2015 (+0.54ºC).
July 2018 is the 67th warmest anomaly on the full all-month HadCRUT record. (In GISTEMP it was =44th warmest anomaly, BEST 77th, 58th in NOAA.)
A graphic of monthly anomalies for the last few years is maintanied here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
In the HadCRUT year-to-date table below, 2018 sits 6th (It was 3rd in both GISTEMP & BEST, 4th in NOAA.)
Table ranked by average of Jan-to-July anomalies.
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.90ºC … … … +0.80ºC … … … 1st
2017 .. +0.74ºC … … … +0.68ºC … … … 3rd
2015 .. +0.70ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.62ºC … … … +0.56ºC … … … 5th
1998 .. +0.61ºC … … … +0.54ºC … … … 7th
2018 .. +0.58ºC
2002 .. +0.56ºC … … … +0.50ºC … … … 12th
2014 .. +0.56ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 4th
2007 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.49ºC … … … 13th
2005 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … … 6th
2013 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.51ºC … … … 8th
341 Victor says:
re 309 Kevin McKinney:
KM: OK, I found the source of the claim that Victor dismisses out of hand, ie. that:
The costs of achieving nearly universal
access to electricity and clean fuels for cooking and heating are projected to be between USD 72 and 95 billion per year until 2030 with minimal effects on GHG emissions (limited evidence, medium agreement).
It comes from the Global Energy Assessment (2012), the SPM for which you may read here:
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-Energy-Assessment/GEA-Summary-web.pdf
My initial reaction: “Oy! More endless reams of jargon to plow through.”
But true to my word, I did manage to slog through much of it, and as promised here is my response.
First I’m confused by the need for yet another long and tedious assessment, as though the IPCC version wasn’t long and tedious enough. The two documents look suspiciously similar, so what was the point?
Once again we see calls for action in a wide variety of areas, but nothing much in the way of practical suggestions for implementing any of these strategies in the real world. Especially amusing is item 9:
“9. Socio-Cultural Changes as well as Stable Rules and Regulations will be Required: Crucial issues in achieving transformational change toward sustainable future include non-technology drivers such as individual and public awareness, community and societal capacities to adapt to changes, institutions, policies, incentives, strategic spatial planning, social norms, rules and regulations of the marketplace, behavior of market actors, and societies’ ability to introduce through the political and institutional systems measures to reflect externalities. Changes in cultures, lifestyles, and values are also required. Effective strategies will need to be adopted and integrated into the fabric of national socio-cultural, political, developmental, and other contextual factors, including recognizing and providing support for the opportunities and needs of all nations and societies.”
That’s quite a list! Anyone have any idea at all on how such an ambitious scheme could possibly be implemented outside of a major world revolution? Led by whom, I wonder? Equally amusing is the opening salvo under Summaries, part 2:
“2. An Effective Transformation Requires Immediate Action: Long infrastructure lifetimes mean that it takes decades to change energy systems; so immediate action is needed to avoid lock-in of invested capital into energy systems and associated infrastructure that is not compatible with sustainability goals.”
Seems to me we are already locked in. So how are we going to unlock? And what sort of “Immediate Action” is going to do the trick in time? A “price on carbon”? So far NO action at all on that one. As though such a scheme is likely to be sufficiently effective in any case. Mandated solar and wind energy projects? Mandated by whom? Something of the sort is being done in Germany, but they have thus far not been able to reduce their carbon emissions, and the fossil-fuel-based Nordstream project seems to be moving full steam ahead.
A bridge recently collapsed in Italy and suddenly every world leader is being reminded of all that crumbling infrastructure worldwide. Well if that’s going to be a priority, along with all the other issues these politicians must deal with, including a breakdown in the world economy, the need to finance wars all over the place, restoration of welfare state benefits, etc., then how in the world is “Immediate Action” on Climate Change going to become a priority? Isn’t this really all about lip service and feel-good politics? It’s so easy to read all this and agree on how important it is, yet when it comes to even thinking about how to actually accomplish any of this, “immediately” or at any time at all, a hopeless paralysis is sure to set in.
As for the paragraph I quoted regarding “access to electricity and clean fuels” etc., the IPCC version is quite different from the GEA version. The IPCC stresses the need to assist billions of impoverished peoples in attaining access to “modern energy sources,” and simply assumes that any such project will have no affect on CO2 emissions, which sounds on its face absurd.
The GEA version is much more practical, and does actually make some sense in that it invokes a need to wean billions of people living on the margins from the use of cook stoves burning biomass and black-soot producing charcoal, a major source of deadly pollution. But their solution veers very far from the IPCC goal of supplying these people with “modern energy sources,” an incredibly challenging task that would take decades if possible at all. The GEA is far less ambitious: find a way to provide the with modern cook stoves. Fossil fuel based, natch, but what the Hell, it would be an improvement. Yes it would. But once again, how is even this far more modest goal going to be achieved? How is ANY of it going to be achieved?
It is NOT going to be achieved. None of it. As should be obvious to anyone attempting to digest these ponderous texts (not to mention the “experts” who produced them), so liberally laced with wishful thinking.
Killian @ 351 says
Well, while I’m sure the corals will be happy to get any help they can… Based on what we know about past ocean acidification events such as what occurred during the PETM, that big carbon dioxide increase could take quite a while to be reabsorbed… Like a lot longer than all of previous human attempts at building and maintaining civilizations.
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/3172
Modern Ocean Acidification Is Outpacing Ancient Upheaval, Study Suggests
Rate May Be Ten Times Faster, According to New Data
Bold mine.
I’ve spent about 35 years diving on coral reefs myself. The problem as I see it at least a triple whammy of ocean warming, ocean acidification and the incredible rates of current change. Here’s a link to the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal page on the basics of ocean acidification and how it affects marine organisms that build their structures out of CaCo3.
https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/ocean-acidification
Nigel, from your sucking-oil-from-atmosphere link: Crucially, the lowest-cost design, optimized to produce and sell alternative fuels made from the captured carbon dioxide,
AB: Hmmm, I wonder if folks might change their minds about bio/synfuels? Especially since a well-designed engine not only has no non-CO2 emissions but also cleans every bit of polluted air that passes through it. Better than an EV.
Mal Adapted @ 373
I consider death to be “extremely bad, possibly intolerable”. You apparently do not.
You have accused me of mocking “the high costs already paid by AGW’s victims, even though their personal tragedies may be perfectly tolerable to him”.
That qualifies as one of the most despicable statements, that I have seen in a long time.
How is presenting scientific and mathematical evidence, “mocking victims”.
My graphs use temperature series, which are created by climate scientists. I apply a mathematical procedure, to turn the temperature series into a “rate of change” graph.
Which part of “scientific evidence”, don’t you understand.
361 – me
I watched the first video. Not bad, but it needs a disclaimer that says the CC theory is complicated and controversial and that to understand the theory you have to understand the math and science behind it, which requires some college level science and math courses.
If you can’t do the math, you’re not doing science – you’re doing something akin to beliefs or religion. Schools should be turning out scientists, not believers. ;)
@377
Shel…
“Which part of “scientific evidence”, don’t you understand.”?
Which part of evidence needing to be peer reviewed, published, and further haggled over in the science literature before being accepted as “scientific evidence” don’t you understand? You may be very proud of your graphical programming. But I know of no reference to it in the scientific, peer reviewed literature.
#374, Victor–
OK. First, WG III didn’t ‘assume’ the conclusion, they were reporting it as the result the GEA report reached. (Admittedly, the citation was not clear, probably because the SPM is already a ‘summary of a summary’.)
Second you are wrong on three specific fronts:
1) “No possibility of progress on electric access”– It’s not easy, of course, but progress is in fact being made:
“…the proportion of population with access to electricity has more than doubled between 2000 and 2016…. n 2016, the absolute number of people living without electricity dropped below the symbolic threshold of one billion.”
https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/the-sustainable-development-goals-report-2018.html
2) “NO progress on carbon pricing”– And yet, “The number of carbon pricing initiatives implemented or scheduled for implementation has almost doubled over the past 5 years, reaching 51 in 2018.”
https://www.carbonpricingleadership.org/who/
3) “No progress on German emissions”– Well, they aren’t going to make their 2020 of 40% below 1990 levels, it’s true, but they are in fact more than 25% below 1990 now. So clearly, your claim that they haven’t reduced emissions is just flat wrong. (And part of the German emissions struggle was combining an already ambitious target with the decision post-Fukushima to abandon nuclear generation.)
(And since Germany was apparently cited as a particular case of the futility of efforts to cut emissions, I’d point out further that the EU considered as a whole is apparently going to make its Kyoto targets, and that’s an economic bloc comparable to the US.)
Really, if you’re going to make these sorts of assertions with such apparent certainty, I’d suggest you fact-check before you hit “submit”. I know only too well that it’s tempting to think you know already, but isn’t it a bit galling when you discover you didn’t, after all?
Beyond Avg Global Means to where people actually live – on the land – 56 nation’s annual averages are already at +1.4C and above in 2017
Temperature Anomalies by Country 1880-2017 – video graphic
https://www.flickr.com/photos/150411108@N06/43350961005
Lies, damned lies and statistics? Depends how one tells the story of what those Statistics actually mean in the real world.
3368 “Please tell me what you think.”
Thumbs up! Good job.
Sheldon Walker:
Mr. Walker, you lied by claiming Tamino had said everybody would be dead by 2045, when what he really said was that the effects of a further 0.4 degree C warming would be “extremely bad, possibly intolerable.” And you mock the lives AGW has already taken, by plainly implying that only the death of everybody would be extremely bad, possibly intolerable.
Look, we get that you think climate science is some kind of stalking horse for ‘warmists’ with ulterior motives; that’s abundantly clear from your incorrigible, incompetent efforts to deprecate the costs of AGW with statistical mathturbation. You are already a notorious “lukewarmer”, a species of AGW-denier, and what you are doing isn’t illegal (nor do I believe it ought to be); so I won’t bother with further evidence of your real motives here. I have just two questions for you:
1) Why expose yourself to excoriation and scorn by telling such easily disproved lies?
2) How many deaths due to anthropogenic climate change do you feel are tolerable?
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
Hmm, how’s this: “molecules of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere backscatter solar energy re-radiating from the earth’s surface: therefore, as more fossil carbon is anthropogenically transferred to the atmosphere, average global surface temperature rises”? Is that ‘science’? I didn’t use any math, except maybe for the comparative words ‘some’, ‘more’, ‘average’ and ‘rises’.
Admittedly, I haven’t personally measured the radiative properties of atmospheric carbon. I’m willing to bet Mr. IAT hasn’t either. In light of my own scientific training, however, it would be perverse of me not to accept, albeit tentatively and provisionally, the peer-reviewed reports of those who have. The rest is merely the ineluctable working out of simple physics, enough of which I have personally verified. Why does Mr. IAT accept anything as true? If he really takes no one’s word for anything, he’ll have to recapitulate all of science since Archimedes! If he believes nothing is true, OTOH, how does he decide to risk venturing out of doors?
Schools should turn out scientifically meta-literate citizens, who can tell the difference between genuine and fake science 8^|. Scientists will distinguish themselves regardless.
The energy in a layer of the Arctic Ocean has doubled, equaling the energy to melt 80cm of ice.
Yay.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2178160-a-warm-water-time-bomb-could-spell-disaster-for-arctic-sea-ice/
> Sheldon Walker … scientific …
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
Proof that the recent global warming slowdown is statistically …
https://wattsupwiththat.com/…/proof-that-the-recent-global-warming-slowdown-is-stati…
Jan 12, 2018 – Guest analysis by Sheldon Walker …… debunked here: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/01/13/sheldon-walker-and-the-non-existent-pause/.
Shorter: create an artificial data set with some random variation around a significant trend. Run SW’s sciency analysis, and discover “slowdowns” that don’t exist in the data.
“We hope that ‘having a deadline’ may stimulate the sense of urgency to act for politicians and policy makers,” concludes Dijkstra. “Very little time is left to achieve the Paris targets.” (from EGU website)
https://www.egu.eu/news/428/deadline-for-climate-action-act-strongly-before-2035-to-keep-warming-below-2c/
Using information from climate models, the team determined the deadline for starting climate action to keep global warming likely (with a probability of 67%) below 2°C in 2100, depending on how fast humanity can reduce emissions by using more renewable energy. Assuming we could increase the share of renewable energy by 2% every year, we would have to start doing so before 2035 (the point of no return). If we were to reduce emissions at a faster rate, by increasing the share of renewable energy by 5% each year, we would buy another 10 years.
” If the risk tolerance is tightened to 5%, the Point of No Return (PNR) is brought forward to 2022 for the 2K target and has been passed already for the 1.5K target. “
https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/9/1085/2018/esd-9-1085-2018.pdf
Re #375 Fred Magyar said Killian @ 351 says
But…
“What the scientists hope to do is to help… the corals, after the big carbon dioxide increase is over and it starts to come down,” he says.
Well, while I’m sure the corals will be happy to get any help they can… Based on what we know about past ocean acidification events such as what occurred during the PETM, that big carbon dioxide increase could take quite a while to be reabsorbed… Like a lot longer than all of previous human attempts at building and maintaining civilizations.
I’m sure he’s aware. But only fools and monsters would suggest we do nothing and rock weathering to do the trick. Remember: We could, were we not overall a bunch of crazed addicts, get back to sub-300 ppm in twenty years.
That said, many of my more pessimistic moments come when thinking of ocean acidification. As the oceans go, so go the planet.
371 MA Rodger said Carrie-aka-Thomas @360.
Stop being an ass. But for the fatalism, their styles are completely different – unless Thomas found an acolyte. Dipshittery should be bore holed.
Re #355 Hank Roberts said A team of researchers led by Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard University, studied heat-related deaths in 105 U.S. cities from 1987 to 2005.
Two thousand effing five? What is he, a denialist scientist? Utterly ridiculous. Garbage in, garbage out. I.e., from a crap premise comes crappy conclusions.
Cherry picking…. or what?
Re #357 Al Bundy said AB: Carrie quoted Dr Mann, who spoke of reticence. That reticence is because the republicans and their allies are watching scientists’ work and will knife any scientist who doesn’t exhibit the proper reticence.
Oh, grow up. The reticence is built into the process and the nature of the responsibility. Imagine being Oppenheimer.
Occam’s applies.
Nigel: Killian @307, I have never referred to the holocaust,
AB: I did.
Had nothing to do with you. nigel is just comically inept at times.
Cool Dudes
Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming.
Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’. Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’.
Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2018.1488516
Funny hey?
Right-wing nationalism’s links to climate change denial are a relatively unresearched topic, but Environmental Sociology recently published an article where Hultman and his research colleagues show the connections between conservatism, xenophobia, and climate change denial, through a study in Norway
https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/tme/centres/ceforced/Pages/default.aspx
Why would you bother discussing anything rational, intelligent, empathetic or ethical with xenophobes and bigots?
No more Forced responses? All good. Resident elders here would be wise to understand the following article and the serious issues it raises.
The 1.5 Generation – My generation is radically remaking climate activism. Will it be enough?
By Eric Holthaus on Aug 22, 2018
My generation, the millennials, will never know a time when climate change wasn’t a grave threat.
https://grist.org/article/courage-and-bolt-cutters-meet-the-next-generation-of-climate-activists/
Luke warm denialism of the weak willed, so often displayed on pro-agw/cc websites cannot, will not, drive the genuine structural global change needed address global warming and reversing GHG emissions.
Meanwhile, the mainstream environmental movement continues to focus on “green” consumerism and incremental change. Got an SUV? Trade it in for an electric car. Don’t use that plastic straw, use this compostable one instead.
At best, those actions delay the widespread transformation we need by lulling us into a false sense of security. At worst, they continue a cycle of high-emission consumption. Feel bad about your cross-country flight to California? Pay to plant some trees.
Incremental change is not going to help on a planet that’s accelerating toward a carbon-fueled nightmare within our lifetimes. It’s not about “saving the planet,” as it was in the days of Earth First! It’s about saving all of us.
https://grist.org/article/courage-and-bolt-cutters-meet-the-next-generation-of-climate-activists/
The power of the Tamino piece on how much time we have lies in having a rather sober, just-the-facts-ma’am type person stating that the situation is alarming.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/global-warming-how-long-do-we-have-left/
Centuries? Incremental change? I think the consensus is approaching, “Uh, no.”
Hank @ 355,
Sometimes claims must be put in their proper perspective. Yes, some places in the U.S. have recorded their highest temperatures ever. However, comparing 2018 to previous years shows no significant increase. In fact, the data actually shows a significant decrease. Here is how this year compares to the past 20 summers with regards to all-time high temperatures.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records
2018: 26 (so far)
2017: 13
2016: 23
2015: 22
2014: 3
2013: 28
2012: 193
2011: 129
2010: 31
2009: 31
2008: 12
2007: 104
2006: 79
2005: 41
2004: 18
2003: 55
2002: 207
2001: 31
2000: 114
1999: 38
1998: 120
Comparing to other “heat wave” years, even these numbers are paltry.
1988: 271
1954: 190
1936: 792
In reality, it is more complicated. While the average temperature is setting new records highs, summer heat is not.
Killian @ 389 said:
While I do agree with your point about fools and monsters, and doing nothing. I have to admit to a deep admiration for your optimism with regards what may or may not be possible, for returning to sub-300 ppm of atmospheric CO2 levels within a 20 year time frame.
However, extraordinary claims still require some extraordinary evidence! There is nothing that I have come across in the scientific literature from a very wide range of fields that leads me to believe, such is even remotely possible. Even assuming that it were, there is nothing to indicate we we have the collective will to embark on that path!
I am for example aware of coral scientists who are working to genetically engineer symbiotic algae that live within the tissues of coral polyps to make them less likely to be expelled by the corals during ocean heat waves thus reducing coral bleaching events and I think this is absolutely fantastic work!
Unfortunately the entire exercise becomes moot if the corals can’t continue to build up their CaCo3 structures due to reductions in ocean pH!
So forgive me for being a tad pessimistic on the probability that we will somehow find a way to reverse the current trends in ocean acidification in any meaningful time frame. But hey, 70,000 years is but a blink of an eye in terms of the geologic record… Here’s some good music, enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMwxwRA9Xr8
Cambrian Explosion
Cheers!
What has Carrie been reading ? –
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2018/08/cliche-showers-forecast-for-labor-day.html
380 Kevin McKinney says:
“OK. First, WG III didn’t ‘assume’ the conclusion, they were reporting it as the result the GEA report reached. (Admittedly, the citation was not clear, probably because the SPM is already a ‘summary of a summary’.)”
V: If so, this was very poor reporting, as the GEA version is very different from what they proposed.
KM: Second you are wrong on three specific fronts:
1) “No possibility of progress on electric access”– It’s not easy, of course, but progress is in fact being made:
“…the proportion of population with access to electricity has more than doubled between 2000 and 2016…. n 2016, the absolute number of people living without electricity dropped below the symbolic threshold of one billion.”
V: The above has nothing to do with any policies initiated by the IPCC or the UN, but is the logical result of continuing economic development. Moreover, in most cases increasing access to electricity means increasing consumption of fossil fuels. And if you hold out some hope that solar or wind power might make a difference, consider that 1. electric lighting is needed at night, not during the hours when solar energy would be available; 2. refrigeration cannot depend on irregularly available power sources, as food would soon spoil without continual access to electricity. So any concerted effort to provide underprivileged populations with the sort of electrical power that could make a difference would be counter-productive as far as climate change mitigation is concerned.
KM: 2) “NO progress on carbon pricing”– And yet, “The number of carbon pricing initiatives implemented or scheduled for implementation has almost doubled over the past 5 years, reaching 51 in 2018.”
V: When James Hansen continually reminds us of how important it is to “put a price on carbon” it’s easy to assume that has not as yet happened. It’s nice to learn that it has, at least to some limited extent. But it’s hard to see how putting a price on carbon is going to make that much of a difference if an adequate supply of alternative sources of power are not in place in sufficient quantity and widely available. In many cases all it means is that prices will go up in a wide variety of areas, including electricity, heating, transportation, food, etc. And unless the tax is high enough to literally destroy the fossil fuel industry, the scheme won’t matter much anyhow.
KM: 3) “No progress on German emissions”– Well, they aren’t going to make their 2020 of 40% below 1990 levels, it’s true, but they are in fact more than 25% below 1990 now. So clearly, your claim that they haven’t reduced emissions is just flat wrong. (And part of the German emissions struggle was combining an already ambitious target with the decision post-Fukushima to abandon nuclear generation.)
V: German emissions are increasing in recent years, largely because of the need to maintain fossil fuel sources to provide continuity when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow. Whatever savings they might have achieved is nothing compared to the unrealistic goals that have been set. And those goals are not likely to make much difference anyhow, as Hansen and many other climate scientists have argued.
KM: (And since Germany was apparently cited as a particular case of the futility of efforts to cut emissions, I’d point out further that the EU considered as a whole is apparently going to make its Kyoto targets, and that’s an economic bloc comparable to the US.)
V: I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now I’d imagine most European leaders are more focused on infrastructure maintenance (thanks to that Italian bridge collapse) than CO2 emissions. And infrastructure maintenance is going to require LOTS of CO2 based energy.
KM: Really, if you’re going to make these sorts of assertions with such apparent certainty, I’d suggest you fact-check before you hit “submit”. I know only too well that it’s tempting to think you know already, but isn’t it a bit galling when you discover you didn’t, after all?
V: Spare me the snide remarks, as they could equally apply to you. But let me ask you: do you honestly believe that “we” could possibly turn things around to the point that the coming catastrophe you fear could be averted, that the seas would cease to rise, that temperatures would abate, that serious heat waves would be no more, that the glaciers would stop melting, that the impending collapse of the West Antarctic sea shelf could be halted?