This month’s open thread on climate science topics. Dominant theme this month will probably be the release of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5ºC. The final report will be released later this week, and when it does we’ll give a brief summary. The hastag to follow on Twitter is #SR15.
re: 91. “Dan, I think this is incredibly naive. Failure to learn? He is utterly intentional and playing you all like a fiddle.”
No, someone who flaunts their ignorance is not playing anyone else like a fiddle. smh
#85 Titus (and others),
“that’s your biggest undermining problem”
I disagree. The biggest problem is that people (and I include people with whom I am very much in agreement, like Kevin) will talk (and respond to talk) about physics in the language of rhetoric– imprecisely and vaguely, and repetitively, with no interest in reaching an actual conclusion.
So, you say:
“why were the predictions so wrong”
And we are back to your original comment, where I asked you to specify what predictions you were talking about. “The” predictions is meaningless.
There were only two possible predictions:
A. An ice-free condition will be reached in September 2018.
B. An ice-free condition will not be reached in September 2018.
Except for a couple of individuals, all the scientists chose B, which is correct, not wrong.
And the article you supplied answered your question about the individuals who did chose the wrong prediction.
But, since this is a social media playground, not a place where “citizen-scientists” engage in real discussions, no doubt your silliness and Victor’s and others will continue to elicit responses, without requiring you to meet minimal communication standards– not even physics knowledge, just basic rules of language.
Titus, #85–
And the answer–not mine, but the answer in your source–hasn’t changed, either. The predictions–actually projections–were outliers in the first place. That’s why they got the ink–the spectacular always attracts attention–but by the same token, they were never likely to be the most reliable guides. Trust “2050” as a guideline because it’s founded on a much broader foundation of work.
If you really want to know something about this, I’d suggest taking some time to absorb this 2015 paper:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL066855
Short version:
1) As per Yogi Berra, predictions is hard, and especially about the future, and that’s visible in the “Methods” section describing what they had to do to homogenize data fields.
2) Nevertheless, their result is consilient with previous model-based work, suggesting that we’re getting reasonable projections, even if significant uncertainty remains.
If you’re in need of a simple way to debunk the “1970’s global cooling” nonsense:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
KIA, #something or other:
Right, can’t save the planet if it means that you lose your pet political system.
I’m a pragmatist, so I know what you are saying. Still a dangerous world, yada yada. But, seriously? Come on.
One reason why we don’t need FF:
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2016/april/14/five-jet-bio-fuels-now-approved-says-faa
And, yes, they work fine for military applications, too:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery/military-green-us-air-force-flies-on-biofuel/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-of-americas-best-fighter-jets-soar-without-oil/
Needless to say, such initiatives are currently out of favor for political reasons. The argument is cost, but that’s not the real driver; R & D always costs. And, apparently, ARA (of Panama City, FL*) would disagree on the facts:
https://www.ara.com/capabilities/advanced-biofuels-and-renewable-chemicals
And apparently, some Federal work continues, as this fairly detailed presentation from last year documents:
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/day_3_plenary_haq_aviation_overview.pdf
*One hopes ARA’s facilities survived Michaels’ wrath without too much damage… the irony of climate-change-fighting infrastructure being damaged by climate change is going to be all-too-familiar.
This is one reason why I said that the misrepresntations–no, lies–of Delinpole and Breitbart were “vile”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/us/hurricane-michael-victims.html
“Mild storm,” indeed.
It is extremely rare for any weather station to record peak winds comparable to the peak wind on the NHC advisory. Weather stations are located tens of miles apart, and the peak wind represents the theoretical maximum that could be recorded on the ground at one location, and the chance of that one location passing over a weather station instead of between weather stations is tiny. There are also the issues of how well exposed the weather station anemometers are for different wind directions, can they withstand borderline category 5 winds, and is the anemometer positioned right on the coast with onshore winds, or a few hundred meters inland where increased surface friction will reduce the mean winds. Arguably the best way to establish what wind speeds were recorded on the ground is to look at the damage, and the damage footage I have seen is consistent with a strong category 4 hurricane. Trying to make out the hurricane was minor because one station only recorded 62 kt winds is absurd, the pressure readings alongside the aftermath clearly show this was a strong major hurricane.
It should be noted that hurricane intensity is categorised by central pressure rather than peak winds, so saying that Michael was the third most intense landfalling U.S. hurricane means that it had the third lowest central pressure at landfall. Michael had a lower pressure at landfall than hurricane Andrew (1992), but has less intense winds because Andrew was a more compact storm.
Or this:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/13/us/hurricane-michael-wxc/index.html
Tell us again what a ‘mild’ storm it was.
Liars suck.
Is there a quantum physicist in the group who could write something about infrared absorbtion and emission, in the “like I’m five” explanatory mode?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/
===========
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” He continued “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Suskind, Ron (2004-10-17). Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The New York Times Magazine.
Kevin McKinney:Liars suck
AB: Impotently true because liars rule.
Trump: You’ll have to show me the scientists
AB: If that isn’t an invitation, nuttin is. YO, SCIENTISTS! Get together and stage a two week Occupy White House demonstration. That this might be Victor’s “mythical” Right Now election ought to be enough to get you guys off your, as Trump describes it, “very big political” posterior.
Can somebody please address this climate propaganda? The right wing sites and press are full of references to it, but the counterarguments are slim to none.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/first-audit-of-global-temperature-data-finds-freezing-tropical-islands-boiling-towns-boats-on-land/
Can somebody please address the “70 errors in HadCRUT4” climate propaganda? The right wing sites and press are full of references to it, but the counterarguments are slim to none.
97 CCHolley says:
re. Victor @87
Victor posts that there is no evidence of an increase in the number of hurricanes. Of course no one that I know of has predicted that warming would cause an increase in the number of hurricanes or any cyclonic storms only that they would increase in intensity due to the warmer ocean temperatures that power the storms. This is occurring.
V: “Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: “If you predict something bad will occur in 2080-2100 (worse hurricanes!) and you then claim see it in 2017 (Harvey, irma! Told you so!), that does not prove you “right” — it actually says your prediction is wildly off base.”
“Efforts to convince the public or policy makers to drastically change energy policy based on hurricanes is a fool’s errand.”
“Neither tropical cyclones globally, Atlantic hurricanes overall, US landfalls nor US normalized damage has gotten worse (that is more frequent or intense) over climate time scales. (Don’t take it from me, this is straight out of the IPCC and US government’s National Climate Assessment)”
V: This quote is supplemented by the following graph: https://theclimatefix.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/djn5vb7u8aakdeg.jpg?w=1024
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/09/20/prof-roger-pielke-jr-neither-tropical-cyclones-globally-atlantic-hurricanes-overall-us-landfalls-has-gotten-worse/
Here’s another graph from the same source, depicting Accumulated Cyclone Energy:
https://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg
V: Make of this what you will. Obviously all sources don’t agree. But please don’t accuse me of making stuff up — or lying. And no, I’m not on anyone’s payroll, I write this stuff out of the goodness of my heart, to discourage you folks from destroying the planet in a hopelessly misguided effort to “save” it.
#109 Hank Roberts,
(for those who actually read Hank’s reference)
I’m not a quantum physicist, and one of the reasons I’m not is that as a young student I accepted the problem with even Bohm’s approach.
What we experience as the “non-quantum world” has the “quantum world” as its elemental foundation. Consequently, like the forest and the trees, it is fallacious to think we can necessarily apply “real-world” characteristics to quantum elements.
So, while I support the validity of “Shut up and calculate!”, it is not something I would want to spend all my time doing.
With respect to IR absorption, conversion to other forms of energy, and then emission as IR again… it exists, by any ontological standard. The calculations have been calculated. People who don’t accept experimental evidence are not going to be swayed by “explanations”.
Hank,
It’s a quantum thing. An atom absorbs a photon if it’s of the right wav3elength. If it is, it kicks an electron up to a higher energy level. The electron is unstable there, so it eventually drops back down, and in doing that it emits another photon, in a random direction.
Does that help? I tend to ramble about this stuff.
105 – Kevin
“Produces 100% drop-in renewable fuels that mirror petroleum on performance and price while reducing green house gas emissions by over 80%…”
Is there an 80% reduction in greenhouse emissions for bio-fuels when you account for FFs used in planting/fertilizing/watering/applying insecticides/harvesting/transporting/refining the bio-fuels, and (in the case of cars) the resulting lower mpg?
On the storm, yes, it’s BAD. Mexico Beach was totally destroyed which would be expected, as almost the entire town is within 0.25 miles of the coast, and with homes built to within 100 yards of the beach. I did hear a report that said the building codes were more lax in the pan-handle area until just a few years ago making older structures more vulnerable. Google earth shows what it looked like before the storm – and you can recognize much of what is in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZiz1i8EpSk
Panama City appears to have been affected a lot less, with most stick built homes doing OK, but flimsy structures were destroyed. Severe damage is seen to trees, power poles, boat docks, boats, mobile homes, carports, big-box stores, and anything close to the beach – all to be expected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PC2kFLzOVE
Unfortunately, with humans occupying the entire surface of the planet today, no matter where a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, earthquake, landslide, flood, avalanche, winter storm, heat wave, or any other severe event occurs people will probably be affected.
#101 Dan said re: 91. “Dan, I think this is incredibly naive. Failure to learn? He is utterly intentional and playing you all like a fiddle.”
No, someone who flaunts their ignorance is not playing anyone else like a fiddle. smh
It’s not ignorance. You and all the others here have been on the hook for… years?
Carry on with the tune… my earplugs work fine.
109 – Hank
I don’t think a 5 year old can understand the science. In fact, people who have a comprehensive understanding of the math/science are probably few and far between even among scientists; although the underlying principles of radiation heat transfer are known to many.
However, this 5 minute video explains the quantum physics fairly simply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EJOO3xAjTk
I remember hating that stuff in General Chemistry about P & S orbitals back in the 70s. :)
Re: 119: The problem of course, is that your ear plugs are only your ear plugs.
Trump popularity now at 44% and rising.
LOL.
Are you beginning to realize what America really is?
What do you intend to do about it?
re: 119
“Carry on with the tune… my earplugs work fine.”
Proof from the horse’s mouth that you are not interesting in learning science at all if it does not fit your anti-science agenda. Your head is in the sand. A scientific coward. Classic. Thanks for proving my point so clearly.
John M @113/114,
You link to a JoNova web page which concerns the work of a John McLean who has written a little book about errors he has found within the HadCRUT4 data sets. In the blurb about the book we hear:-
Yet the “Main Points” listed by JoNova do not describe any such levels of “flawed data.”
If the book does actually contain evidence as important as described, that evidence should not be hidden away in a book (@ $8 a throw). JoNova report a Hadley Met Centre response to the book as well as trying to link it with the sacking of McLean’s university supervisor which happened this May, some time after McLean was a student. This all gives the impression of JoNova trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
John M, is it possible that you are John McLean? If you are, can you here set out properly the most important of your “70 errors in HadCRUT4” or the “25 findings” of your PhD thesis, the ones that are requiring to be addressed rather than just typos etc that have not been crroected?
John M, if you are not John McLean, JoNova describes six problems with HadCRUT4.
☻ 1) The first concerns effectively typos within the data. There will always be typos in massive data sets. Perhaps the Hadley Centre should expend more effort rattling out typos. But what is important is the significance of these typos to regional and global temperature estimates. There is no word on that matter. (The PhD thesis Abstract says it “leaves the quantifying of the impact of such errors to others.”) The “impact” is likely zero.
☻ 2 &6) The second and the last of these descriptions both cover identical ground. This is that the HadCRUT dataset attempts to establish a global average temperature back to 1850 when data is very scarse, especially in the southern hemisphere. The likes of GISTEMP & NOAA only run such analysis back to 1880, although BEST go back to 1850 and even provide a global land temperature analysis back to 1750 although with enormous error bars. Yet, unlike the various suggestions of JoNova & the PhD thesis, the existence of mid-1800s estimates for global temperature are not essential for the work of the IPCC.
☻ 3) This concerns two seperate issues. (a) The quality of station or specifically “criteria for inclusion.” What this refers to is not apparent despite reference being made to Jones et al (2012) On the same issue, JoNova says details of which sites are included in HasCRUT4 are not apparent (despite Jones et al contradiciting this) and likewise individual site adjustments, this last being called “the killer issue of the adjustments for site-moves” according to JoNova when discussing the reply (or lack of it) from Hadley Centre. (b) A very minor point that using the land and the ocean components of HadCRUT4 “don’t always match” and thus “contradict each other.” Golly!! Perhaps we need to have another read of Morice et al (2012)
☻ 4) The issues of urban heat islands is mashed with adjustments for a site move. This is well-trodden land and nothing new is being said. The oft-mentioned existence of “systematic error” has ever failed to materialise. Yawn!!
☻ 5) Finally, the fourth is a mash up of (1) and (2/5)
To sum up, John McLean concludes his book (as reported on Wattsupia):-
This demonstrates particularly poor judgement on the part of John McLean. Using JoNova terminology, despite all the right-wing “foggy excuses,” McLean fails to identify any “killer issues” and this is because there are actually no “killer issues” to find.
Hank,
I think quantum mechanics is kind of like the response John Von Neumann had to a student who said he didn’t understand a particular theorem: “Young man, you don’t understand mathematics. You get used to it.”
Our perceptual and reasoning evolved to deal with problems in the macroscopic world–particularly problems that had sharp teeth and claws. There is no reason why we should be able to understand a quantum realm that most of us have never experienced.
The thing is that people do best with problems they can visualize, and the responses have been interesting. Some, like Bohm or Einstein have tried to preserve a deterministic world at the micro-level through use of hidden variables–mostly without success. Others, like Mach and Heisenberg, took the “Shut up and calculate” approach.
The Copenhagen approach is a sort of half-way house. It says we can visualize the quantum world as it interacts with macroscopic measuring devices. This means that we can visualize particles when our measurements force particle-like behavior…and waves when our measurements force wave-like behavior.
It allows us to break down quantum processes into very visualizable Feynman diagrams as long as we realize that the actual process the system follows is an infinite series of different diagrams or increasing complexity and decreasing importance. And which of those processes is the “real” path the physical system follows? Answer: All of them.
And it works. Amazingly well… >25 significant figures of accuracy well. But simple it ain’t. It is so not simple that probably a 5-year-old child has a better chance of understanding it than an adult.
Fortunately, you really don’t need to comprehend all of the quantum theory to understand the physics of climate change. That is mostly thermodynamics, and mostly only the 1st law thereof.
Earth is a thermodynamic system. Energy comes in, mostly from sunlight in the visible range. The only way energy leaves is as blackbody radiation, mostly in the infrared. Greenhouse gasses take a big bite out of the outgoing IR spectrum, so that energy stays in the system, pushing temperatures higher until the energy out, even with the bites taken out by greenhouse gasses, equals the energy in.
This is the basic science. It dates from the 1850s-1870s.
There are still important details–for example, the fact that in the troposphere, gas densities are sufficiently high that an excited CO2 molecule is most likely to collie with an N2 molecule before it relaxes radiatively. This is what makes CO2 an efficient mechanism for heating the entire atmosphere. However, this is a detail–albeit a detail that can still be visualized semi-classically.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/
RE. Victor @115
Victor’s response is as usual fallacious.
As stated, no one has claimed that global warming will result in more cyclonic storms. What is known is that ocean temperatures are the power source of such storms and that since the oceans are in fact warming that they will contain more energy as a result. Whether or not this results in an overall increase in global cyclonic energy is yet to be seen either because the trend has not come out of the noise or because of the movement of cyclonic storms towards the poles and the fact that the storms may actually decrease in occurrence.
From the Climate Science Special Report Fourth National Climate Assessment:
Victor says:
Specious. None of us “folks” is proposing to destroy the planet. The goal is to provide a livable world for our children and future generations by promoting the reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases. Gases that unquestionably control the energy of the climate system. Contrary to the fossil fuel funded misinformation campaign, this can be accomplished without great burden to the world economies. See CCL’s revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend plan.
Victors *goodness of his heart* is merely selfish and arrogance. If Victor actually gave a damn he could learn the science, but he refuses to do so. He is merely an ultra conservative dupe.
#118, KIA–
Well, we weren’t talking about cars (and if we had been, “lower mpg” would be incompatible with 100% drop-in performance, so there’d be a discrancy to resolve). But all that other stuff is presumably why it’s not a 100% drop in GHG emissions.
Not of a ‘mild’ storm, it wouldn’t. High cat 4? Definitely.
As for Panama City, it’s 37 miles from Mexico Beach, and even more significantly, it’s to the west, which as anyone who’s been through a northern Gulf tornado knows, that’s the ‘good’ side to be on. (The counterclockwise circulation means that storm surge is much less of a problem to the west, and even the winds there tend to be less, due to interaction with the land surface.)
And “with most stick built homes doing OK” wouldn’t be my take on the video you linked. While you’re distancing yourself from the lies of Delingpole, who amply deserves the epithet of “ineffable toe rag” that he tried to hang on climate scientists as a group, you’re still minimizing, IMO, despite your “BAD”. This was definitely not “as expected”, unless you mean “as expected by those who warned that an exceptionally dangerous storm was coming.”
I’d also disagree with the veiled suggestions you make that the winds weren’t much, or that most damage was induced by storm surge. Storm surge was indeed terrible, but it certainly can’t account for damage documented, for instance, in Marianna, FL–as Marianna is ~70 miles inland.
Again:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/us/hurricane-michael-victims.html
Does “Toe Rag” want to make him another co-conspirator with Mike Mann?
More on Michael:
https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/10/16/hurricane-michael-update-focus-shifts-to-those-in-shelters/
And noted, the end of the Conway, SC, flooding that started with Florence:
http://www.therepublic.com/2018/10/15/sc-waccamaw-river-flooding/
GISTEMP has posted for September with an anomaly of +0.75ºC, a little down on August’s +0.77ºC and equal to June which was the lowest anomaly of the year-so-far, the highest 2018 anomaly so-far being March +0.91ºC.
It is =6th warmest September on record, below 2016 & 2014 (+0.88ºC), 2015 (+0.82ºC), 2013 (+0.77ºC), 2017 (+0.76ºC), 2018 equalling 2005.
September 2018 is =63rd warmest monthly anomaly on the full all-month GISTEMP record.
In the GISTEMP year-to-date table below, 2018 currently sits 3rd but will certainly drop to 4th by year’s-end (unless the remaining three months can manage an average anomaly above +1.05ºC, a bit of a tall ask).
…….. Jan-Sept Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +1.03ºC … … … +0.99ºC … … … 1st
2017 .. +0.91ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 2nd
2018 .. +0.81ºC
2015 .. +0.80ºC … … … +0.87ºC … … … 3rd
2014 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 4th
2010 .. +0.72ºC … … … +0.70ºC … … … 5th
2007 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.65ºC … … … 8th
1998 .. +0.67ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 11th
2002 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.63ºC … … … 10th
2005 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.67ºC … … … 6th
2013 .. +0.63ºC … … … +0.65ºC … … … 7th
120 – MKIA
In the video I linked to:
At 2:10, it says “CO2 doesn’t absorb light from the sun, it absorbs light from the earth” and says that’s because earth emits IR. However, the sun also emits IR (or near-IR), and some is attenuated by CO2 at a wavelength of ~ 1.9 and 2.5 microns. Also, H2O attenuates incoming solar IR significantly at ~ 0.9, 1.4, and 1.9 microns. Does increasing CO2 reduce slightly the incoming solar radiation? OR does increasing CO2 contribute to warming from Solar IR because of excitation at 0.9, 1.4, and 1.9 microns? Do CC models account for these effects, or do they assume incoming radiation is constant and only account for outgoing radiation? Same questions for H2O, since H2O should increase as the atmosphere warms because warm air holds more water.
http://nov79.com/gbwm/atmo.html
Who has a link to the EARTH spectral distribution curve from the surface of the earth (at the surface). I’d like to compare that to the extraterrestrial SOLAR spectral distribution curve (those are easy to find). Want to see how much, if any, overlap exists.
Where does this denier go wrong in his analysis of the physics?
http://nov79.com/gbwm/ntyg.html
Question: Is there any possibility of jamming some of the incoming solar radiation using outgoing man-made radiation transmissions?
Is Victor playing people like a fiddle? No, I think the man just doesn’t understand things like correlations, if you read his rhetoric, but he wont admit it to himself so he doesn’t move on. Hes like a stuck record, for those who remember vinyl records.
But I think plenty of climate denialists do play people like a fiddle. I have seen highly qualified people who should know better say things that are absurd, and I believe they know it, but have their reasons that could include vested interests, political or psychological reasons.
There is just nothing to prove that all climate denialists have exactly the same set of motivations.
Re #123 Dan said re: 119
“Carry on with the tune… my earplugs work fine.”
Proof from the horse’s mouth that you are not interesting in learning science at all
I have spent every day of the last 12 years reading the science. What is it you think I can learn from you arguing with fools? You rolling around with pigs, all you get is covered in mud and pig shit. But you’re the smart one, eh?
I used to go after denialist so directly I got banned and boreholed here, genius. The time for that is past. What you and all the others are doing in making every thread one long denialist diatribe, is counter-productive. Once you have the numbers to reach social tipping points and have even moved beyond that to a large majority, engaging the denialists becomes an exercise in futility.
if it does not fit your anti-science agenda.
Anti-science? How? And see previous comment. Understanding the science well enough to make accurate predictions nobody else is making is somehow anti-science?
Your head is in the sand.
Head in the sand? I’ve been warning of RAPID climate change for twelve years. Anti-science? That’s a laughably, stupidly, false statement. Have you even read Weart?
A scientific coward.
Cowardice is going against the grain, standing your ground with scientists and academics when I knew I was right, being ahead of the curve, this is how you define cowardice? Laughing at you. Literally.
Jesus… you’re making the denialists look good with this nonsense. How is telling you you are wasting your time with the lying denialist trolls anti-science? Telling you not to bother with anti-science is… anti-science?
And all this vitriol only because I said you were wasting your time? That’s a lot of ego invested in fighting trolls, Frodo.
A new low for ad hom idiocy on these pages, Dan.
Re #121 scott nudds said Re: 119: The problem of course, is that your ear plugs are only your ear plugs.
Uh… yeah… that’s how they work. You can choose to listen to the babble of the denialists and all the wasted type strokes if you wish, I scroll past them – which means scrolling past most of the thread every month these days – and spend my time on what matters: The science and solutions.
127 CC, the segment of the IPCC report you quoted cites “projections” only. I wasn’t referring to projections of future events (which may or may not take place) and neither was Pielke. What I pointed to was actual evidence contradicting the claim so widely trumpeted both in the media, and worse, by some of our leading climate scientists, that the extremely destructive hurricanes of the last two years could be attributed to “climate change,” i.e., AGW. Clearly that is not the case, and yet these not remotely unprecedented events have become the centerpiece for the latest wave of “climate change” panic, as amplified by the “fake news” media. (Though I shudder to use a term so widely attributed to Donald Trump, “fake news” actually fits quite nicely as far as current reporting on the climate is concerned, regardless of what one’s politics might be.)
“The goal is to provide a livable world for our children and future generations by promoting the reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases. Gases that unquestionably control the energy of the climate system. Contrary to the fossil fuel funded misinformation campaign, this can be accomplished without great burden to the world economies. See CCL’s revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend plan.”
If it were simply a matter of “reduction in emissions” I’d agree. It’s not. What’s being demanded is drastic cutbacks and eventual elimination of all CO2 emissions, measures that would certainly destroy at least three quarters of the world economy, if it could be implemented at all, which it cannot, for reasons that should be obvious. Your faith in the “revenue neutral” fee and dividend plan proposed by Hansen is touching evidence of your extreme naiveté. For one thing, the fees imposed would have to be so draconian as to disrupt the economies of literally every first world country along with many developing countries. For another, if those fees are offset by adequate “dividends” then there would be no incentive for anyone to change his behavior. And in any case, schemes to “save the world” through market-based incentives have been tried in the past and never worked. The power sources we all depend on are fossil fuel based and no pie-in-the-sky taxation scheme can change that. I’m all in favor of solar, wind, hydro, etc. alternatives but they are currently not anywhere nearly sufficient to do the job and additional taxes won’t change that.
Since you have some wide-eyed faith in redemption via some Utopian scheme to “save the world” via some hair brained combination of increased taxes and “market forces” then I suppose you have reason to believe there is nothing dangerous in the hysteria now being fomented so widely throughout the world. As I see it, what’s happening now is the equivalent of someone shouting FIRE in the middle of a crowded theater. Panic is very likely to ensue, with consequences that could be very dangerous indeed.
And no, I am NOT an “ultra-conservative” dupe. I have regularly voted Democrat all my adult life and in fact voted for Hillary in the last election. I’d have voted for Sanders if he’d been nominated. My politics are and always have been not only left but far left. FYI I’m in favor of nationalizing ALL the big fossil fuel companies and tossing all the corrupt CEO’s, financiers and government officials into prison. My opinions on this issue are not based on ideology but critical thinking and simple common sense.
51: Mr Know If All;
Ok if you must know in the last 2 years I changed my old Hyundai for a much lower emissions Honda city. Would have loved a Tesla mod3 but finances said otherwise. Also installed a 6.5 kW solar system on the roof with a 10kW LG battery.
Ride share to work etc etc.
I’m putting my $$ where my mouth is.
125 Ray Ledbury; Some people are just naturally gifted at visualising abstract or intangible physical or thought constructs. I come from an electronics background so visualising currents and what goes on within transistors etc kind of comes naturally to me. I also LOVE understanding and reading about the quantum mechanical rhelm. As someone who has practiced buddhism most of my life I get that everything affects everything else. Einstein was just as conversed in the microscopic as the astronomical, the difference really is not that great.
Thought my angle could lend support to yours.
Victor, #115–
RJP2 over-egged his beer there; there is in fact good evidence that “Atlantic hurricanes overall” have intensified “over climate time scales.”
I did graphs myself based on publicly-available ACE data:
Full record:
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h402/brassdoc/Annual%20Atlantic%20ACE%20values.png
But the relative paucity of data early is troublesome. So I did a “reverse cherry-pick”, by graphing a record beginning with the ‘hyperactice’ season of 1932 and the all-time ACE champion year of 1933:
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h402/brassdoc/Annual%20Atlantic%20ACE%20Values%20From%201932.png
Both show clear rising trends, though the latter is, as expected, more muted.
Plus, this GFDL (NOAA) update makes the same point:
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
“Observed records of Atlantic hurricane activity show some correlation, on multi-year time-scales, between local tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the Power Dissipation Index (PDI) —see for example Fig. 3 on this EPA Climate Indicators site. PDI is an aggregate measure of Atlantic hurricane activity, combining frequency, intensity, and duration of hurricanes in a single index. Both Atlantic SSTs and PDI have risen sharply since the 1970s, and there is some evidence that PDI levels in recent years are higher than in the previous active Atlantic hurricane era in the 1950s and 60s.”
“Existing records of past Atlantic tropical storm or hurricane numbers (1878 to present) in fact do show a pronounced upward trend, which is also correlated with rising SSTs…”
Note that those are ‘cherry-picked’ quotes: there’s a lot of nuance and caveat in this update. (Mainly, the observed correlations are not statistically significant if you correct for ‘missed hurricanes’ early in the record.)
As the report has it:
“Therefore, we conclude that despite statistical correlations between SST and Atlantic hurricane activity in recent decades, it is premature to conclude that human activity–and particularly greenhouse warming–has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity. (“Detectable” here means the change is large enough to be distinguishable from the variability due to natural causes.) However, human activity may have already caused some some changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observation limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).”
So, we can’t yet do a statistically-based attribution of increasing hurricane intensity in the Atlantic to warming–even though we *do* see that warming, and we robustly *expect* the warming to increase hurricane intensity, based on well-understood theory. Probably that will happen later this century–the “something bad will occur in 2080-2100 (worse hurricanes!)” bit.
But here’s the thing about that: while statistical “detection/attribution” will likely be quite late, that doesn’t mean that it’s in any way “wrong” today to observe that storms do seem to be intensifying, and in particular that when we see hurricanes interact with warmer-than-usual SSTs, they do just exactly what theory has long predicted.
“Trump popularity now at 44% and rising.”
No reason yet to think it’s anything but random variability–no matter how inexplicable and vexatious it may be.
Re #126 Hank Roberts said https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/
The food web appears to have been torn asunder from the bottom… Lister and Garcia attribute this crash to climate. In the same 40-year period as the arthropod crash, the average high temperature in the rain forest increased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperatures in the tropics stick to a narrow band… bugs cannot regulate their internal heat.
…after a certain thermal threshold, insects will no longer lay eggs, he said, and their internal chemistry breaks down.
You beat me to it. I literally just sat down to do so.
Who didn’t see this coming? First the photo series years ago comparing natural and GMO insect populations and the stark differences. Then the 40% plankton decrease. Then came the bee die off. Then the huge increase in mass die-offs. Then came the report on flying insects out of Germany. If, at that point, one thought it would be any different over most of the planet, well…
Non-linear. Chaotic. Cascading trophic flows.
This is why a risk-based, tipping points-focused approach to climate communication is key.
We are probably, even I must now admit, too late.
God help us.
http://humoncomics.com/art/mother-gaia.jpg
136 – Lawrence
Sounds like you are doing an excellent job. Thanks for the reply. Had to look up Honda City – I’d never heard of it – not sold in the USA. I think you mean you have a 10kWh battery, not 10kW. Sounds like a fairly large system.
We in the USA need to do a lot better on ride sharing, but we’re spoiled and don’t want to ride share, therefore our traffic is a horror – even in our small towns. Unrestricted immigration and the resulting population explosion is driving some of that horror – smart phones are making a big contribution as well.
RC should have a permanent thread so we can all post what we’ve done to help reduce CC.
139 – Kevin
Trump is popular because he’s a fighter, just like he was on the campaign trail. He’s like John Wayne – doesn’t take $#1+ off anyone. His wit is deadly to opponents – he destroyed 16 Rs in the campaign debates – cut ’em to shreds – with wit, facts, logic, and plain old common sense. Common sense is one of his biggest attractions. Another huge attraction is that he actually tries to do what he said he would do during the campaign. He’s had some successes, some failures, but he’s tried to make his promises happen. You don’t get to be a billionaire because you’re stupid – he seems stupid at times, but he isn’t. He’s a good man, loves the USA, and if you can convince him that CC is man-made, he will do something about it – that’s the other thing about him – he’s a geterdone kind of guy – a businessman, no BS, just raw, direct, and effective action. If he does do something about CC it will probably be a better solution than all the others we’ve ever heard of.
Write or call him and make your case for CC, mitigation projects, etc, it could make a difference. 202-456-1111 & whitehouse.gov/contact
A lot of folks think liberals got more votes in the 2016 Presidential election than conservatives; specifically they think Hillary did. She got almost 2.9 million more votes than Trump, but Gary Johnson, a libertarian – conservative on most issues, got 4.5 million votes. Had he not been in the race, Trump would have gotten most of those 4.5 million votes and would have won the popular vote; and he would have gained 38 electoral votes in the states that Johnson caused him to lose including: Minnesota, Maine, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Colorado and Nevada. How about them apples? The election was a landslide for conservatives – Hillary only won urban areas, so your side can get over the election now.
124 MA Rodger says: various tings I agree with completely about a ‘newbie’
John McLean (obviously recently out of JCU Townsville with an old Bach. of Architecture degree) @113/114
Where to start? I’ll keep it short. Viewed a few pages on Jo nova/wuwt and read about 25% of his PhD thesis until I couldn’t handle it anymore. Dedicated that to long term contrarian Geologist “Bob Carter” deceased out of JCU. Had John even barely touched on what he refuses to do from the start of that ‘thesis’ which was to actually Quantify the effect of his so-called “errors” in the temp data he may have gotten a low passing grade.
As it is the thesis is marginally better than sophistry at a political rally and is not representative of the usual standards produced by PhD students in any field. It’s rhetoric, it’s unsubstantiated waffle, it’s probably’s and maybe’s and notes at times one or stations in the whole world he has located as being in error … but if that was replicated by a proper “audit” and IF more were found like that then gosh it might be a problem, but it;s too complex for John McLean to do the work and so someone else had better do it. Maybe the Great barrier Reef suffered a partial “bleaching event” circa 1983/84, or perhaps in 1966 but John McLean doesn’t know .. but IF IT HAPPENED it means that all the bleaching events since 1998 were NOT UNPRECEDENTED. It’s as if no one was anywhere near the GBR in 1983/84 to notice such a thing and yet they were. Gosh even light planes and helicopters flew over the reef in those “ancient times” too. Who knew?
I do not recommend anyone read his thesis, it will likely make you cry.
Nevertheless, he notes that “no one bar his Professor supervisor” provided any assistance in preparing said “thesis”. Now sorry, but I don’t believe that assertion. I;d put my house on it that retired JCU Emeritus Professor (and good mate of Bob Carter) Dr. John Nicol, and ex-JCU professor UK ex-pat Dr John Abbott and his lovely “wife” ex-JCU academic Jennifer Marohasy (and IPA neoliberal libertarian obsessive climate science denier stalwart) and all of them enraged critics of Weather Data everywhere, all had their grubby little fingers all over that there ‘Thesis’.
It’s unscientific crap, not worth reading, and John appears by his own words is certainly not worth arguing with at all. Off with the faeries in Denialismland. He and Victor would make a great couple. I recommend a honeymoon on Hayman Island in the middle of the GBR. (oh boy)
@Killian, #140
” God help us.”
Never ever, because:
“God’s Away On Business”
https://youtu.be/W9mhsW5aWJM
But never worry, capitalism, politics and/or technology will save us for sure they told me 8)
V 135: What’s being demanded is drastic cutbacks and eventual elimination of all CO2 emissions, measures that would certainly destroy at least three quarters of the world economy
BPL: Nonsense. That’s like saying replacing horses and buggies with cars will destroy the economy. There’s nothing about fossil fuels that makes them intrinsic to a thriving economy. Nothing at all.
RE. Victor @135
Victor is wrong as usual. How can I make this any clearer? Scientists are not attributing the destructive storms to climate change. Only their increased strength and the fact that warming of the arctic is causing storms such as Harvey to stall. Storms are getting stronger due to warmer oceans (well documented), which in turn can be attributed to increased greenhouse gas forcing. The reason *global* cyclonic energy has not increased as a result is mostly due to the number of storms being less, which is exactly what Victor’s graphs show. Victor’s information is misrepresented and he apparently has a difficult time digesting any information that is contrary to his preconceived notions.
Destroying at least three quarters of the world economies? An opinion based on zero evidence. Normal for Victor.
https://11bup83sxdss1xze1i3lpol4-wpengine.
Victor shows his usual cluelessness. I’d have to assume Victor is untrained and ignorant in economics much like he is with science and statistics.
Consumers would be clearly motivated to cut usage of fossil fuels with the increased costs so that they can use their dividend for other purposes other than offsetting additional costs. Businesses would be motivated to develop and supply cheaper alternatives to satisfy demand.
British Columbia implemented a carbon fee and dividend plan in 2008 which has not hurt their economy while reducing emissions of green house gases. Although the plan is not ideal and fees have not risen high enough, it does show such a plan is workable.
No faith at all. But knowledge. Something Victor refuses to gain. Willful ignorance and arrogance is Victor’s bane. The climate system is warming. Indisputably. CO2 is a greenhouse gas controlling the energy of the climate system. Adding CO2 is raising the temperature. Indisputably. A warming planet will cause severe disruptions to civilization. The danger isn’t in false hysteria as Victor wrongly believes through his willful ignorance, but in failure to act. Action that will be far less painful than doing nothing at all.
Society accepting and dealing with AGW is nothing like shouting fire in a crowded theater. What a joke of an analogy.
ROTFLMAO
The arrogance of the ignorance.
Dupe none the less.
MKIA @131
Here is a commonly referred to spectrum of solar radiation both TOA and at the surface. You can see the absorption bands of CO2 and water vapor.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_spectrum_en.svg
Here is a designation of the earth’s energy budget. You can see that it shows 77.1 Wm^2 absorbed by the atmosphere. Yes the models account for this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
This chart shows that there is very little overlap between the inbound and outbound radiation bands. Also shows all the CO2 and H2O absorption bands. Nice chart.
https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/applications-and-investigations-in-earth-science-8th-edition-chapter-13.3-solutions-9780321957962
Your link trys to make the old argument that the greenhouse effect is saturated. Simply put, this is not true as the heat absorbed is then reradiated and reabsorbed all the way up the atmosphere until the density of greenhouse gasses is such that the radiation can escape unimpeded. Adding more to the atmosphere raises this level and in turn raises its temperature through a warmer surface to maintain energy balance.
As for jamming incoming radiation, no this is not possible–conservation of energy. Aerosols have been proposed either to reflect or absorb the sunlight both of which would reduce surface temperatures.
NOAA has posted also for September with an anomaly of +0.78ºC, a little up on August’s +0.74ºC. The anomalies of the year-so-far range from +0.85ºC to +0.69ºC. Relative to August, the September NH anomaly for both Land & Ocean recorded a rise while the SH saw a big rise in the Land anomaly but a small drop in the Ocean anomaly.
It is =4th warmest September on record (GISTEMP made it =6th), below 1st-placed 2015 (+0.93ºC), 2016 (+0.88ºC), 2014 (+0.79ºC), 2018 equalling 2017, so that’s the all the last five years at the top for September.
September 2018 is =45th warmest monthly anomaly on the full all-month NOAA record. (GISTEMP was =63rd.)
In the NOAA year-to-date table below, 2018 currently sits 4th, very likely its final position at year’s end. (To drop to 5th place, for imstance would required Oct-Dec averaging less than +0.68ºC, to climb to 3rd would require an average above +1.32ºC).
…….. Jan-Sept Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +1.01ºC … … … +0.95ºC … … … 1st
2017 .. +0.87ºC … … … +0.85ºC … … … 3rd
2015 .. +0.86ºC … … … +0.91ºC … … … 2nd
2018 .. +0.77ºC
2014 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 4th
2010 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.70ºC … … … 5th
1998 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.64ºC … … … 9th
2005 .. +0.65ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 7th
2013 .. +0.64ºC … … … +0.67ºC … … … 6th
2007 .. +0.64ºC … … … +0.61ºC … … … 12th
2009 .. +0.63ºC … … … +0.64ºC … … … 8th
Victor, #135–
“What’s being demanded is drastic cutbacks and eventual elimination of all CO2 emissions, measures that would certainly destroy at least three quarters of the world economy, if it could be implemented at all, which it cannot, for reasons that should be obvious.”
You do realize, don’t you, that this is pure hand-waving? The task is certainly formidable, as SR 1.5 recognizes, but there are many technically possible scenarios that do, in fact, provide adequate emissions reductions to give a reasonable probability of limiting warming to 1.5 C.
And no, none of them involve “destroying at least three quarters of the world economy.
Please stop making stuff up.