Climate adaptation steams forward with an accelerated speed that can be seen through the Climate Adaptation Summit in January (see previous post), the ECCA 2021 in May/June, and the upcoming COP26. Recent extreme events may spur this development even further (see previous post about attribution of recent heatwaves).
To aid climate adaptation, Europe’s Climate-Adapt programme provides a wealth of resources, such as guidance, case studies and videos. This is a good start, but a clear and transparent account on how to use the actual climate information for adaptation seems to be missing. How can projections of future heatwaves or extreme rainfall help practitioners, and how to interpret this kind of information?
The role of climate information
My general impression from the said meetings on climate adaptation and other sources is that it is assumed that the regional climate information is in place, and using it is a little like plug-and-play. One example is the ECCA 2021 Climate Adaptation solutions on YouTube provided by ERA4CS.
The use of climate information is discussed in a recent Podcast about “CORDEX-Africa”, where Dr. Chris Lennard from the University of Cape Town takes us through different aspects of climate change adaptation. His South African research group (CSAG) has some valuable lessons to tell.
The use of climate information is not straightforward, however, and a concern is that neither organisations such as the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), nor the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) have had a prominent presence in the said high-level summits, despite the strong reliance on downscaled results in both climate adaptation and climate services.
A vast collection of data
Nevertheless, Climate-Adapt does refer to data and climate indices from Copernicus C3S, which offers an impressive collection of data. The sheer scale of the data gathering and observations was underscored in a recent general assembly with invited prominent speakers (Gavin among them – recordings of the seminar are available through this YouTube playlist).
Still, it’s hard to find a comprehensive guide or a handbook on how to actually use the data and what not to do with it. Computer calculations are not the same as observations, and global climate models are no ‘digital twin’ of the real world – so the question is how to interpret the numbers.
Regional climate information for society
In a nutshell, impact researchers and the adaptation community need to use the best information in the right way. Data and information are not the same thing.
The good news is that there are some initiatives on climate change adaptation which involve climate scientists such as the Infrastructure and Climate Network (ICNet Global). Also the European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA) is relevant with collaborative programmes on the Arctic, high-impact events, changes to the hydrological cycle and sea level.
More emphasis on methods and tools than actionable information
There may also be some practices within the climate science community that provide obstacles to climate change adaptation. For outsiders of the climate science community, a recent CORDEX white paper doesn’t appear to address issues really relevant to climate change adaptation, despite a new emphasis on “Regional Climate Information for Society” (RIfS) and “Lighthouse Activities” (“My Climate Risk”).
Some of the headlines from the CORDEX white paper are ‘Smaller domains with finer resolution’, ‘Increasing complexity’ and ‘Exascale computing’. Such activities may in time enhance our understanding of regional climate risks, but it’s difficult to see how they enhance the capacity of society in terms of climate change adaptation right now. After all, there is some urgency in getting on with climate adaptation.
Finer resolution makes sense if the aim is to improve the representation of small-scale processes in the climate models, such as convection. But from a practitioner’s point of view, it would be fairly trivial to get information on fine resolution – the weather statistics doesn’t change all that much over small distances, and if it does, it’s probably due to systematic geographical effects which can be predicted through statistical means.
Different choices give different answers
For climate adaptation, we want to know what local consequences we can expect from a continued global warming. The global climate models (GCMs) are not designed to provide such details, as they typically compute wind, temperature and humidity on scales of about hundred kilometers.
The GCMs are nevertheless useful for climate adaptation, since the local climate often depends on the ambient large-scale conditions. Local consequences can be estimated through a strategy known as ‘downscaling’.
Downscaling can be defined as the procedure of adding new relevant and reliable information to GCM results, such as how the local response depends on the large-scale conditions that GCMs are able to reproduce, and how local geographical conditions play a role.
There are two main approaches to downscaling, (1) dynamical downscaling, involving regional climate models (RCMs), and (2) empirical-statistical downscaling (ESD). Both are supposed to be included in CORDEX, although CORDEX’s main emphasis seems to be on RCMs.
Sources of additional information
The source of new information in ESD is the historical data and mathematical theory concerning their statistical properties (hence ’empirical-statistical’). For RCMs, new information is introduced to the GCM simulations with finer resolution and more detailed representation of the surface.
There appears to be several different perspectives on the issues concerning downscaling, and it’s likely that we do not always understand each other within this discipline. For sure, there are lots of different opinions and approaches regarding downscaling, which also may give different answers.
Common limitations of RCMs
Results from RCMs are frequently different to observed climate, and so-called bias-adjustment is often required to correct for systematic biases in RCM simulations of temperature and rainfall.
An important difference between ESD and bias-adjustment is that the latter doesn’t involve the dependency between large spatial scales, that are well reproduced by GCMs, and local details. Bias-adjustment is also a controversial solution.
The reasons for systematic biases in RCMs are unclear. One may be that RCMs are often physically inconsistent with respect to the driving GCMs, which may involve different outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) at the top of the atmosphere over the same atmospheric volume. This is also what we should expect from different rainfall patterns and cloud climates being simulated by the GCM and RCM, which imply differences in the vertical energy flow.
The atmospheric humidity within the same volume of air may also differ in the RCM and the GCM, and they often use different parameterisation schemes to represent small-scale processes, and usually different accounts of surface processes and aerosols.
Different kinds of information
Another point is that the average rainfall over a grid area of ~10 × 10 km2, typically provided by an RCM, is expected to have different statistical properties to rain gauge data collected with cross-sections of the order of centimetres. Hence, the RCM results do not strictly represent the same aspects as those observed in the rain gauges.
RCMs nevertheless have great value in the context of experiments and studies of how different phenomena respond to different boundary conditions, such as convection or how heatwaves are exacerbated by low soil moisture. They can also add value when used to address specific research questions or test hypotheses concerning regional climatic aspects.
A comprehensive downscaling approach
One question is whether the caveats with RCMs affect their ability to simulate climate change. It could be that all the members in the traditional Euro-CORDEX RCM ensemble have systematic biases with the same sign. A more comprehensive approach to downscaling can ensure more robust results, which involves combining RCMs and ESD.
RCMs and ESD have different strengths and weaknesses, which is a good reason for why it’s important to bring them together to overcome the said limitations. For instance, both ESD and RCM assume stationarity – the former through downscaling dependencies, and the latter through upscaling of unresolved processes (‘parameterisation schemes’).
Moreover, RCMs and ESD add information on regional scales based on different and independent sources. The probability that both are wrong the same way is smaller than either one of them being wrong. Furthermore, they both complement and support each other. RCMs offer descriptions that are not available from ESD, such as fluxes and a complete coverage.
A combination of results from both RCMs and ESD means adding more information to the equation, and hence enhancing our understanding of how robust the results are and what measure of uncertainties is present.
Robust information when downscaling applied to large number of GCMs
It is important to ask exactly what information is needed for climate adaptation and exactly how it is used. For instance, relying on results from a single dynamical downscaling exercise with one simulation by an RCM and a GCM is clearly unwise, because if we chose another GCM/RCM simulation to downscale, we would get a different answer.
In fact, involving only a small set of driving GCMs (n < 30) is likely to give misleading results because of a pronounced presence of stochastic fluctuations (“natural variability”) and ‘the law of small numbers’. This is true even if the models themselves were perfect. It’s a bit similar to having too small statistical samples.
With ESD, it’s possible to downscale large multi-model ensembles of GCMs because ESD doesn’t require as much computational power as the RCMs. ESD is usually computationally cheap and can often be carried out on a laptop while an RCM often requires high-performance computers (HPC).
Most climate services seem to be limited to one approach
Many national climate services are presently providing regional climate information entirely on the Euro-CORDEX RCM ensemble, which excludes ESD. We can get some idea of the use of local climate projections solely based on RCMs from Climate-Adapt:
Copernicus C3S also presents downscaled results only based on RCMs, which in my opinion may give misleading information because of the reasons stated above.
It is also unfortunate that there are two separate CORDEX white papers, one written on RCMs and another on ESD, because they may reinforce “silo thinking” within the downscaling community. Such a limited representation is like inviting guests for a big dinner and only serving potatoes.
My point is that it’s important to include both ensembles of RCMs as well as ESD applied to large multi-model ensembles, in order to get robust and the best information about how local climates may change in the future.
Another point is that climate adaptation should not only involve this linear downscaling chain, but also a “bottom-up” approach with sensitivity analysis and stress testing. The latter may not be scientific, but may still provide useful input to adaptation strategies.
Quality and reliability can be enhanced through scientific debate
I think we need more scholarly discussions and more scientific debate about the use of downscaled climate information because we have an increasing responsibility for providing decision-makers with the best guidance on how to use it. Hopefully there will be more debates after the pandemic.
Such professional debates should include climate scientists, the adaptation community, and practitioners. This question is relevant for the said climate change adaptation summits, and for this reason, it is important that scientists from organisations such as Copernicus C3S, NASA, WCRP/CORDEX are present at such meetings and give key note presentations about the state of the science on modelling and downscaling. Also, best practices could be summarised in handbooks on how to use downscaled projections.
I also think there also needs for more discussions within the downscaling community, and I recently published a discussion paper in the journal GMD which I hope can stimulate some debate about downscaling and climate adaptation (critical comments are encouraged – interactive public discussion until 03 Sep). Debates about downscaling should be maintained and evolve over time. One topic to discuss further could be protocols for evaluation of the regional climate information.
We should expect to learn continuously as we go along, as models improve over time with development in computer capacity. Also there is continuously new data coming in from observations and new cases of extreme events. Hence, climate adaptation should be regarded as a moving target and the debates should be expected to be ongoing.
jgnfld #44,
wiki:
So you have illustrated my issue very nicely. I show a set of plots..
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/53794/plotting-several-2d-functions-in-a-3d-graph
..that anyone with basic statistical knowledge would recognize as some kind of frequency distributions, with varying degrees of dispersion or skewedness, and different means, and instead of answering my question, you go off on some abstract definition debate.
Ostensibly, the role of people regularly commenting here is to be unofficial ‘tutors’, to help the ‘students’ develop understanding. But that means actually listening to the student; that’s why I always say respond to trolls as if they were sincere students, because the trolls will just run away when asked to explain their position, and expose themselves.
I’m being a ‘good student’ here; I’m telling you where I’m at in my understanding of the terminology, and asking for an example that works at that level. The ‘good teacher/tutor’ should be able to respond in kind.
@ Benestad
You write intitially on how to use the actual climate information
I am quite satisfied with it, even if I am no social or political “decision- maker”. I am more a decisionmaker for myself, and if I am able to understand those “guidelines for decisionmakers”, then I conclude that they are relevant, useful, and comprehensible, when they seem so even for me.
For instance, they sustain and valuate wide horizons of my learnings and experience, which is allways useful.
And secondly, I will be able to judge whether our politicians and higher authorities on the matter, our “decisionmakers” are observant and online with the UN and our scientific civilization.
So my further question will be, why is that so for me, and why is that not so for everyone everywhere. And can anything be done with that?
That becomes my next important question and duty.
For instance, we are going to have parliament election now, and I will have to talk with the youngsters and children about what that is, why we allways ought to participate there, and how we can orientate and make up our minds for it. Not which party they ought to vote on. The official and political parties orientation and relations to enviromental, global cooperation and integrity, and orderly scientific climate aspects and questions for instance, will then be of high importance and relevance for how we decide and vote..
This is more or less Greta Tunbergs program also, as far as I can judge her, and an interesting question for me then, is why I solidly recognize and accept that opinion, being of quite another generation.
There I belive, things can be done and ought to be done, enlight and educate people and especially youngsters who are sensitive and mooveable, able to develop and to change their minds, to become proper, lucky, and successful citizens.
“skilled and qualified voters and consumers” they say in school, being the very purpose of it all. They should also have mentioned skilled and qualified workers..
@ Kilian#30
“Some of us DO get it… but very few…”
Well we know now, that in this case
(r)evolution = to reproduce your spirit in many different ways and channels.
– it`s your selection (i give you 5)
@nigelj#34
” What water management changes? Because until you articluate a practical plan, with calculations you have no idea if it would make a significant difference to sea level rise. ”
I want to change ~2,7% (1335km³ = 3,7mm SLR) of annual global river discharge into additional global evaporation between 60°N-60°S.
I calculated it three times for you in:
Why is future sea level rise still so uncertain? — #61
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/05/why-is-future-sea-level-rise-still-so-uncertain/comment-page-2/#comment-791803
If you don’t understand that artificial irrigation = artificial clouds,
it won’t help you to explain that the “amunas” mentioned in # 30 of an ancient Indian Hydrology is a technique of sowing water and reaping it months later. A very cheap, because one-time investment / construction, which is just as valuable in drought as during flood events to distribute the power of the water.
Your concerns about the water ecology are resolved by the controlled extraction exclusively above the low levels of the rivers.
A global society that has more water all year round will then also be able to use the opportunity to harvest and store the heat of the summers in order to turn it into ice with a heat pump during the winters, which is then used to cool the summers.
@Ray Ladbury # 42
” Well, Jeeesus Christ, another artist ”
Yes I know, that Jesus was an artist.
But my name sounds more like Mesias and if you want I explain *the end of art history* to you.
But be careful – I`m not a metal – but a mental weapon of massive destruction.
If you had asked me 40 years ago when i was a painter: what the best (and natural) sun protection is – it would have taken me 3 seconds to tell you that it was the clouds and another 3 seconds to tell you that snow & the polar ice caps took second place occupy.
… while 40 years later you & the climate science still haven’t figured it out.
In addition to painting, I have invented strange machines in the last few years (like Leonardo da Vinci back then – one of my great idols, by the way).
First water-cooled LED lights – then water-cooled PV panels, which in combination represent a heating system with negative emissions (CO²).
https://www.lumen-laden.de/products/coolmac-300-1500w-grow-chamber/
So in this our solar system – I am the one who designs and manufactures the coolest and most energy efficient light.
I call it light-heat coupling and can also use it to cool my apartment in summer, while in winter I generate strawberries and heat from wind and solar power.
Please explain to us your suspected negative side effects of a cloud in the summer sky – in times of drought – I’m curious – and answer you with a 20 year old painting from the turn of the millennium.
https://www.artists24.net/50247-macias555:j-disches-alphabet-malerei-in-zeiten-der
In the painting you can see a cloud with a hole – is that about the 3% global cloud cover that we have lost in the sky during the last decades?
Seems to relate directly to adaption issues.
Increasing probability of record-shattering climate extremes
E. M. Fischer ✉, S. Sippel and R. Knutti
Recent climate extremes have broken long-standing records by large margins. Such extremes unprecedented in the observational period often have substantial impacts due to a tendency to adapt to the highest intensities, and no higher, experienced during a lifetime. Here, we show models project not only more intense extremes but also events that break previous records by much larger margins. These record-shattering extremes, nearly impossible in the absence of warming, are likely to occur in the coming decades.
from conclusions
There is still a tendency in society to respond and adapt to the maximum event experienced during one’s lifetime (as measured in the observational record or documented in historical archives) but not more9–11. If events of similar magnitude reoccur several years later, impacts may be substantially smaller39,40 as society had time to at least partly adapt. We show that taking into account the warming rate is vital for adaptation decisions. However, in practice, this is challenging particularly in regions such as the Midwest United States where the trend in hot extremes is small, potentially because the forced warming trend is temporarily suppressed by internal variability. Such a suppressed trend may contribute to an unusual quiescent phase or disaster gap41, increase the probability of being followed by a record-shattering extreme and at the same time lead to a lack of adaptation efforts and thus in combination to a serious systematic underestimation of the risk record-shattering events in the near future.
full paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9.epdf?sharing_token=FfHt4Qg1fTmqnR-A-XzmAtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N6Yuew3iuRTLGOjd_Ux5EzrTm2tb8OcTIQKlBoec41iE68QR0o6q59s4_5FNZ7DTqBMFNCwy91ct1-BlrIIAkv9_CU82c49btPHrKQyzJL3rjjn2bdovydysiNQsTTDNU%3D
Author on Twitter https://twitter.com/erichfischer/status/1419680012282863621
Maybe adaption at a society wide level is impossible?
The Economist dated july 24th – 30th has an article “No Safe Place” on climate change adaptation , and interesting articles on the implications of a 3 deg c world, floating wind turbines, and a new “green” air conditiing system.
https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2021-07-24
#16 Ray Ladbury says: “However, there may be others who do indeed find your little paradox interesting–mainly because they, like you, do not understand extreme value statistics.” Is Ray Ladbury trying to tell folks that statistics from the past have no meaning?
Ray Ladbury needs to understand that of the 50 states in the union, 25 states have record highs temperatures from the period 1930-1937.
Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia & Wisconsin adds up to 25 states whose record HIGH have all occurred between 1930 & 1936.
OK, Ray Ladbury, here are the states who set records & he cannot answer why the records set for High temperatures in these 25 states occurred between 1930 & 1936. Ray Ladbury will not be able to answer why and how these 13 states listed below had their record highs occur BEFORE 1930 & 1936, such as; Alaska, California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia & Washington.
The above in formation came from this source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records
A total of fourteen states set record highs in 1936 that obviously still stand. They occurred from July 5th to August 10th although July 10th has four of the records for high temperature in include Maryland which tied the record set in July 3, 1898 of 109°F, the rest that set records that year are New Jersey, Penn. & Virginia.
In the very remote chance that this comment sees the light of day on this site, it will be interesting to read the ad hominem attack that Ray Ladbury will launch against me.
#23 Barton Paul Levenson says: “BPL: Yes, KIA, records stand until they’re broken. I think you’ll find that heat records are now being broken twice as often as cold records, so your example is, like so many of your examples, cherry picking.”
This is one record that still stands after 108 years that is a real thorn in the side of the anthropogenic global warming true believers, such as the ones who frequent this site. In 2015 we visited the actual place where this record had been set 108 years ago. The Greenland Ranch (Death Valley), California is 190 feet below sea level. California’s Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States and it is only 85 miles from North America’s lowest point, Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, at 282 feet below sea level.
“In consequence, in the determination of the WMO World Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes (Cerveny et al. 2007a,b), the new official highest temperature recorded on the planet is 56.7°C (134°F) and was measured on 10 July 1913 at Greenland Ranch (Death Valley), California (Court 1949; Roof and Callagan 2003). The new African highest temperature is now 55.0°C (131°F), recorded on 7 July 1931 at Kebili, Tunisia, according to Service Meteorologique, Tunis, Tunisia”.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/94/2/bams-d-12-00093.1.xml
Is it cherry picking to recognize the that the new African highest temperature is now 55.0°C (131°F), recorded on 7 July 1931 at Kebili, Tunisia, & that occurred 90 years ago in what we are now being told is a planet on fire?
#31 Ray Ladbury says: “The point I am making is that which statistic you choose matters. If you choose a statistic that doesn’t change much or changes slowly when the distribution changes, then you will be insensitive to that change.”
I do not need Excel to generate however many normally distributed numbers that I want to be able to understand what follows, even if Ray Ladbury seems to have a real problem in dealing with reality.
Alaska’s all-time cold record turns 50 January 21, 2021 Winter snow blankets the Jim River and Prospect Creek valleys in northern Alaska, where an official thermometer registered Alaska’s all-time low of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit on Jan. 23, 1971.
https://news.uaf.edu/alaskas-all-time-cold-record-turns-50/
Fort Yukon (originally, Gwich’in: Gwicyaa Zhee; translation: “house on the Flats”) is a city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2000 census the population was 595. Fort Yukon is the hometown of Alaska Congressman Don Young. It is served by Fort Yukon Airport. The highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska occurred in Fort Yukon on June 27, 1915, when it reached 100 °F (38 °C). It is located 8 miles (13 km) north of the Arctic Circle, at the confluence of the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers and in the middle of the Yukon Flats.
http://www.citywideinformation.com/?cityname=Fort%20Yukon,%20Alaska#cityhistory
Some addition and subtractions gives us this to wonder about; 1971-1915=56. What was the polar vortex doing in the 56 years that separate the two records for hot and cold in Alaska?
55 Reality Check
There is still a tendency in society to respond and adapt to the maximum event experienced during one’s lifetime (as measured in the observational record or documented in historical archives) but not more9–11. If events of similar magnitude reoccur several years later, impacts may be substantially smaller39,40 as society had time to at least partly adapt. We show that taking into account the warming rate is vital for adaptation decisions.
(Anyone hear an echo…? Science repeating the layman… again.)
Yes, planning for less than the worst case in an existential threat scenario is… an existential threat. Ergo, long-tail risk-based Climate Science presentation *and* long-tail risk-based Climate Change planning, please.
However, in practice, this is challenging particularly in regions such as the Midwest United States where the trend in hot extremes is small, potentially because the forced warming trend is temporarily suppressed by internal variability. Such a suppressed trend may contribute to an unusual quiescent phase or disaster gap41, increase the probability of being followed by a record-shattering extreme and at the same time lead to a lack of adaptation efforts and thus in combination to a serious systematic underestimation of the risk record-shattering events in the near future.
Again, why the existential threat should be the basis of policy/mitigation.
Sadly, there is a massive component missing: Extremes can trigger phase changes. Leaving this out leaves the planning with the existential threat unaddressed.
Maybe adaption at a society wide level is impossible?
No. Most of the world lives much closer to the bone than the people posting here. The perspective that we cannot change fast enough is driven by a false perspective; they really mean highly industrialized nations cannot change quickly. Since 70% of the world lives quite simply in comparison, the shift for them will be quite small, and for quite a few non-existent in a very real sense. They already grow much of their own food even in places where most of their land is used to grow food for the rich, wasteful countries.
What is impossible is for the rich, highly industrialized countries to exist in their current forms in a regenerative future. Analysts get this bass-ackwards: The rich will fall and their systems fail creating massive crises, but the poor will mostly just stumble a bit.
“J Doug Swallow says…..”
Absolutely nothing worth reading.
It’s long past time for the RC comment moderators to install an automatic redirect to The Bore Hole function.
JDS, #57– yada
JDS, #58– yada
JDS, #59– yada
@57-59 johnswallow…
All-time records tell us basically nothing about distribution parameters. That is simple fact.
@ Hr. M. Schürle, 54
I see you are discussing with Genosse Killian on primary principles and entities & cetera. The best physical conscept for it is A-TOMOS taken in its greek meaning, that if divided or made smaller, ceases to exist and gets trans- formed into one or more other things or substances. Albeit by consequent permanence of matter and of energy.
Another very fruitful conscept is REALIA along with Platon, but with some extra practical definitions.
I use the idea of anything REAL that is totally beyond human power and mandate to correct or to change or to moove on. That is really quite common in everyday life.
Certain natural constants for instance, and basic laws or rules of reality, that you better conscider and take for serious and utilize and set on.
Ohms law for instance for the electrical systems, it eases understanding and work on it quite dramkatically.
Further, F = m a and the sub -sequent sledgehammer or car- collision law Ft = mV.
If that mass is permanent and theta becomes short enough and that Velocity is conscioderable, the Force will become enormeous.
Thus I can, with a hammer and a chisel, make even steel squit like butter. The pressure = force per area under the sharp and small chisel edge is way higher than any pressure next to the strongest dynamite going off.
(I once tried with a coin in a 40 Tons hydraulic press. It became flat and did squeeze out. And found later that by handpower I can easily do the same on an anvil with a 1 Kg hammer in just one hit. just Think of that, 40 tons by hand easily.)
Such things are typical REALIA, quite easily found and studied in daily life, and can be measured an calculated on, built on, and argued by.
REALIA may also be uncomfortable and quite painful, thus often feared, hated, and denied.
Think of the situation when your car has lost its grip on the slippery road and you get totally over into REALIA, quite unable to do or correct anything with it. You can only say ” OBSERVE…!”
Thus better get aquained to REALIA in time and foresee it , adjust for it in time, it may soon become too late at any time. If you enter the curve like a devil, you will fly out of the curvfe like an angel. But if you enter like an angel, you can drive out again of the curve like a devil. All due to irreducible, material realities and primary principles in space and time.
I hate people discussing and enjoining others of primary principles, entities, and realities, being obviously not qualified for it.
They may even refuse it, deny it, hate it, and run away from any discussion of REALIA.
@BPL#48 –
Climate science is art – and art is climate science.
Everybody is an artist.(Joseph Beuys+)
Artificial clouds maybe a subject, that bring both things together.
Skills of climate science mixed with professional creativity. Where is the problem.
CRE / Clouds radiative effect = -19W/m².
More than five times the radiative forcing agreed in Paris. As mentioned earlier, clouds are by far the best protection against excessive solar energy.
Since the annual increase in radiative forcing has now reached ~ 0.037W / m², it actually only needs an increase of 0.2% of the global cloud cover. That in turn will not be achieved by drying out the continents, but rather by irrigating them sensibly if necessary and filling up water reservoirs over the land areas as best as possible – everywhere!
Imagine that all the scientists and experts in virology, pandemic and pharmacy explain to you every day how dangerous the new coronavirus is – how it looks and works – but then it does not occur to them to tell you how best to protect yourself and also fail(not even try) to develop an effective vaccine.
Carbonmontanus: For instance, we are going to have parliament election now, and I will have to talk with the youngsters and children about what that is, why we allways ought to participate there, and how we can orientate and make up our minds for it.
RtW: I’m sorry, but no.”Just change human nature” is not a winning strategy.
I spoke about eliminating districts. We should also consolidate voting. Voting can be by a proxy of, say, ten. You and nine other loons who met on the internet (or, shockingly, in real life) pick the best and smartest loon among you to debate and vote.
The 10%ers have meetings where they mix with those who have different opinions.
There can be another level or two, but at the core democracy should be additive, not subtractive. That somebody got 50.01% should not result in disempowering the 49.99%.
Can dig deeper if folks like…
Matthias Schürle @54,
I asked about your management plan for reducing sea level rise by utilising ground water storage and you have responded with something about irrigation and evaporation and clouds to reflect heat. This is a total non sequiter so is not very helpful.
I find is diabolically hard to figure out what you are saying about anything, so I will have a try at it, thinking of what it must logically mean if it is to actually work:
The first part of your plan appears to be to reduce the rate of sea level rise by diverting water from rivers and store that water on the land by building storage facilities like artificial lakes, and/ or somehow pump it into the ground water table. This sound ok in principle, but I would say the cost would be horrendous for a very small reduction in sea level rise. This is not 3mm in total this happens every year. You provide no COSTS to ally my suspicions and no calculations of how much water you could draw from rivers without excessive depletion to see if your plan would have significant impact on sea level rise. It may not be that much water relative to sea level rise. I know that where I live many rivers are already at minimal levels so you simply cannot take that much more.
The second part of your plan appears to be to use the same water from rivers to essentially over irrigate crops to induce additional evaporation to increase cloud cover to reflect heat. Again this requires a lot of infrastructure and you provide no COST ESTIMATES to know if its worth the effort compared to other mitigation options. And the water you extract from rivers to irrigate crops and which evaporates you cannot also use to store permanently on land.
And you are just diverting water that is already ends up in the oceans where it evaporates so that its over the land where it evaporates so that the surface area is more spread out, but whether this would change clouds significantly is anybodies guess, especially bearing in mind that cloud formation is ultimately reliant on aerosols as well as evaporation. So it gets complicated. And manipulating clouds could have serious unintended consequences that you have not analysed. But do keep working at it, while telling us how useless the scientific community are.
By the way theres plenty of other suggestions on climate change mitigation and adaptation options on the forced responses page.
Matthias Schürle @54, addendum. And obviously any artificial lakes or other land based water storage would need to be enclosed in. I’ve just sketched things out briefly.
@52
Well gee… I taught/tutored stats–including basic intro level–for decades. Never got that particular response!
JDS 57: Ray Ladbury needs to understand that of the 50 states in the union, 25 states have record highs temperatures from the period 1930-1937.
BPL: You appear to have responded to Ray without reading his post. His point, which sailed over your head as usual, was that extreme value statistics are the WORST way to examine trends. Your telling point is much less significant than you think it is.
Killian still dares to stand up and fight, but for how long?
Comical Ali dared to the bitter end and even beyond that.
____________
Contrary to what most people have learnt to believe….
…Intuition…experience… reason… and knowledge….
has a collective and social history opposite and contrary in times evolution to the same on personal and idividual level.
:/I repeat/:
Intuision is not very old and arcaic and thus obsolete & inferiour. Quite on the contrary, it was invented and marketed by Bergson in the early XXieth century.
Trial and error and survival of the fittest is definitely older, invented and marketed by Darwin.
But Reason “le raison!” was invented and marketed by the French, by Descartes quite much earlier than both Bergson and Darwin.
Then Knowledge is very much older tyhan all of this in human history.
Knowledge was first recommended and shown to by the Snake in Paradice, and after that we are damned due to take to our tiny brains and struggle with it.
ERITES SICCVT DEVS, SCIENTES BONVM & MALVM .. he said.
And only that was forbidden in the very Garden. It was the tiny little privilege of the chief gardener. They were even allowed to perfrorm in his uniform, but not to take to reason.
After having taken to reason, they reallized immediately up and down and back and forth of themselves, were quite scared, and ran into the bushes where they tied up figue- leaves in order to hide their “shame”.
___________
I looked back into A.Næss Logikk og metodelære, on obvious or evident entities or statements, Killians primary or first principles.
Killian quite obviously never absolved that Cambridge, Harward, and Royal Frederiks school of thought and scientific systematics, thus relates rather to the alternatives given by Thinktank, Heartland and CATO institutes, and the soviet Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald (that is taken down now).
I translate from Næss on obvious entities and principles:
“..but one of the most con- sequent and probably most shattering discoveries of
humanity is that they cannot agree on what is obviously evident or not!….
… and as an example, the so called non Evklidean geometries give the most fameous examples of the discovery that an axiomatic system, that was generally axepted as evident, namely Evklids geometry, can be replaced by another that “contradicts” the first, and without absurdity showing up….
…One must remember that if chains of arguments are having the form “if A so B, and thus if B so C & cetera…, and then that B and C & cetera, that is derived from A, may be quite more sure than A.
For instance that the so called laws of nature can be more certain and sure than the theories and primary premises that are made in order to explain or argue for them.
Example, the laws of light refraction may be more certain than the theories of light.””
This is alian and ridiculous to those who were esoterically brought up by Thinktank, different from the Universities of Harward, Berkeley, Cambridge, Praha, Copenhagen, Uppsala, and Oslo.
I could also referre to W.van Orman Quine, but I have a better compendium on that put together by Prof Føllesdal in Oslo, that is unluckily astray at the moment, else I would have shown you how and why.
We had a lecture on argument and evidence at PHILOSOPHICUM in Oslo under MAGISTER J.Medbøes CATETER, and I dared to rise my hand and mention the US constitution that states “We hold theese principles to be evident..”
(Gosh…. he took that and went into spin….)
When shall we get “Dr” Killian off the rocker by other means than to
:/Put him in the longboat until he`s sober/: (3t)and
:/shave him on his …. with a rusty razor/: (3t) and to
:/put him to bed with the captains daughter/: (3t)
Early in the mornig
???
______
A. Einstein has a scolarship for lecturing in Praha. And went to Prof. Max Planc, wondering on gravitation. Planc said:
“Hr. Einstein, all who wondered about gravitation went mad. On one hand it is especially simple, but on the other hand it totally incomprehensible, cannot be resolved or dissolved into more primary principles. I warn you!”
Einstein hovever lived in a flat where he could look over into an asylum for mad people. Probably his own son who was schizophrene there.
So he said to himself: “No- one inside there bother about gravitation, so I dare to do it!”
That decision luckily came out as the general theory of relativity, where gravitation is resolved and dissolved, to not to be a primary principle, but as a complex principle set together by space time moovement energy and matter.
The Higgs boson is the last we learnt about it.
Zebra, It appears that at least one term you are not understanding is “statistic”. I am discussing statistics as numerical measures describing a large set of data. The mean is a statistic describing the central tendency of a distribution; the standard deviation and variance are both statistics describing the width. Life expectancy or infant mortality are statistics that pertain to the health of a population.
However, not all statistics are equally good for understanding the aspect(s) of the data in which one is interested. This could be for mathematical reasons–the mean of a Cauchy distribution does not exist (it diverges to infinity), but the median and mode are good measures of the central tendency of a Cauchy.
Likewise, in many countries, money spent per capita on health care is a good statistic that correlates with the health of a population. However, it fails to correlate in the US because our private-payer health care system is grossly inefficient and because health providers view American consumers as domesticated animals to be fleeced at will. In this case, there are confounding variables that result in per capita health expenditures not to correlate with well being.
So, what I am saying is that since we are interested in climate CHANGE, we need a statistic that is sensitive to the change in the distributions of temperatures. So, if you would take a moment and perhaps learn some statistics, you would understand why taking a particular spot and citing a record temperature from the past is either stupid or disingenuous. You would also understand why the arguments about the “pause” were specious. There will always be a “pause” in record-setting after a new record, and the longer the data series, in general, the longer will be the pause.
Climate data are statistical. You have to understand the statistics to understand them.
J. Doug Swallow,
As they say in the American South, “Bless your little heart!”
While I would love to engage and show you while you are wrong, all you have done is re-assert your previous arguments with new examples. As I have previously shown why your arguments were specious, you’ve given me nothing to engage.
Also not that nothing I have said is an “ad hominem” argument. I have certainly insulted you, and I will undoubtedly do so again, but an insult is NOT an ad hominem. An ad hominem has the structure: “JDS is an idiot, so you should disregard what he says.”
Instead, what I have done is show you why you are wrong and then pointed out that this makes you an idiot. Quite a different thing.
What a pity that your love for logical fallacies does not extend beyond their copious use to actually identifying and understanding them.
@ 54
I have looked through your website, and I cannot follow much of it.
Your ideas about water definitely need to be improoved.
I recommend the idea that was stated by Gavin Schmidt, that it is a condensing greenhouse gas. That reality gives many of its essencial vital and geophysical properties.
When sun comes and it gets warmer, it evaporates and works quite efficiently as an invisible greenhouse gas along with the others, and gives a strong positive feedback to the effects of CO2 and CH4. But when it is warm and moist enough, Kumulus-clouds build up and give a white parasol- effect. Sunshine is diffusely shown back to space. And then rain is pouring down that brings the chill of BIG BANG down to earth and down to the sea and cools the situation. That is 2 negative feedback effects also of the same water. And a 3rd negative feedback is white snow.
Water is a thermo- static element in really more than one respect.
The natural law that rules for the dewpoints dependence of temperature is Claussius Clappeyrons law, that you better seek up on Wikipedia and learn about.
The dewpoint curve (Taupunkt on Wikipedia) crosses one bar at 100 celsius and follows further exactly the steam endgine boiler vapour pressure function of temperature. The same gives dangerous vacuum in the boilers at temperatures below 100C
Then Daltons law, the gas- pressure of one gas does not interfere with the gas pressure of the next gas in the same room unless they react chemically. The pressures superpose and add, and all follow boyles law to a first approximation. Both separately and alltogether.
A hotter environment will quite necessarily give more percipitation and… more clouds also, all in all. But where and where not? That is not so certain.
Rumors of less clouds in recent years and that being the real reason for global warming,… I do simply not believe it. Because it contradicts Aristoteles`”What goes up must come down!” and it can only come down again via cloud formation. So clouds will be more. It further conflicts Clausius- Clappeyrons law, the law of vapour pressure and dewpoint dependance of temperature.
Necessary chill to that can be guaranteed higher up as long as BIG BANG is there all around us all the time keeping only 3 Kelvin at the moment.
Water has saved us and water will save us further,… but at which temperatures?
That will be decided mainly by the atmospheric CO2- content, and are we all going to thrive well in those temperatures?
I am getting quite priviliged in many respects because of AGW here in Norway, but that hardly rules worldwide. Many lands and situations are obviously disturbed and handicappede by it allready.
Ice, snow, glaciers, and chill are very valuable resources, allthough quite disturbing and uncomfortable and destructive also for many at the same time. But drought, lack of moisture and water and chill, seems to be worse according to what people tell.
That event in Westfalen recently of too much water,… well that threat can be climbed away from in that landscape..
An old story from the weather forecast tells: Where is the winter? It is here, but not right here by us now!
And why does n`t it rain? … It`s raining of course, but not right here!
28 – CCHolley
“And glacier ice mass has been rapidly declining since the 1950s.”
Partly correct – the ice has actually been in decline since the end of the last ice age when, we are told by scientists, Northern Hemisphere ice sheets thousands of feet thick began melting.
Just out of curiosity, what did the Antarctic ice sheets do during the last ice age? Was the cold period world-wide or was it just northern hemisphere?
57, 58, 59 – J Doug Swallow
Good points! How can all those records survive for 100+ years in a warming world caused by increasing CO2? How can we have anywhere near historically “normal” night-time low temperatures with all that CO2 in the atmosphere preventing radiation of heat to space? I don’t know how that can be. The world does seem to be warming, but the correlation to CO2 is not perfect. Fact is, the world has always warmed and cooled long before humans, SUVs, and fossil fuels came on the scene. That doesn’t mean CO2 theory is not true, but it does cast legitimate doubt.
RE. Mr.Know Nothing @75
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Glacier retreat from the last glaciation period stopped roughly 8,000-10,000 years ago. Correspondingly, sea levels stopped rising. The current ice loss and resulting sea level rise started with industrialization.
Mr. Know Nothing once again shows he really does know nothing.
Both hemispheres experienced lower temperatures and increases in ice during the last period of glaciation. There was less ice, however, in the southern hemisphere because there is less land to hold that ice.
BTW, we are currently still in an ice age, however, currently we are in an interglacial period.
More of Mr. Know Nothing’s ignorance.
This has been explained ad nauseam, but Mr. Know Nothing would prefer to remain ignorant and rehash denier memes to cast doubt. Mr. Know Nothing is amoral and rather than learn the science, would rather screw future generations.
Misleading or a lie, nights are warming faster than days exactly because of less heat loss to space.
From the EPA:
Nationwide, unusually hot summer days (highs) have become more common over the last few decades. The occurrence of unusually hot summer nights (lows) has increased at an even faster rate. This trend indicates less “cooling off” at night.
If the climate were completely stable, one might expect to see highs and lows each accounting for about 50 percent of the records set. Since the 1970s, however, record-setting daily high temperatures have become more common than record lows across the United States. The decade from 2000 to 2009 had twice as many record highs as record lows. (note: record lows occur at night.)
It does not cast legitimate doubt. Only a fossil fuel shill or ignorant fool would make such a claim. Sure the world has warmed and cooled in the past when there has been changes in forcing–explainable changes at that. Long term warming as we are now experiencing cannot occur without such a change in forcing. Increasing CO2 creates increased forcing–measurable fact. And currently there is no other explanation–no other identifiable change in forcing. That is a scientific fact. Physics is physics.
Mr. KIA @75 —- The Antarctic continental shelf shows signs of being glaciated well out into what is now the Southern Ocean. The glacial state, i.e., high stand, was global.
As pointed out many times, extreme values can be misleading. Carbon dioxide is a global warming gas.
“Carbon dioxide is a global warming gas.”
Yes, but it isn’t warming the globe uniformly. Currently I think the Arctic is warming faster than most other regions, right?
This new website format is nice. We just need like and dislike buttons. :)
Killian: Anyone hear an echo…?
Rt2: Yes! Thank you for finally joining Ray, Nigel, Mike, Scott, and so many others in recognizing the truth.
Welcome, newbie.
#70 Barton Paul Levenson says: “His point, which sailed over your head as usual, was that extreme value statistics are the WORST way to examine trends. Your telling point is much less significant than you think it is.” What do you and Ray Ladbury ‘think’ about this graph of what the current satellite readings are telling folks who will listen to other sources other than the ones that they invent?
UAH Global Temperature Update for July, 2021: +0.20 deg. C
August 2nd, 2021
The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for July, 2021 was +0.20 deg. C, up from the June, 2021 value of -0.01 deg. C.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Killian: The rich will fall and their systems fail creating massive crises, but the poor will mostly just stumble a bit.
RtW: That’s what I like about you, occasionally you pause the insults and self-aggrandizement and let something useful slip out. Well done!
I dunno. Robots work 24/7/362-or-so. That dryland farmer with 1/3 the land his/her mom/dad had? And the climate is 1/2 as friendly?
I think Bezos wins and the dirt poor stick farmer can go pound the sand his land is turning into.
Of course, we the people can choose a different outcome. With a different set of rules Bezos can go pound sand
#60 I can see the many differences being drawn between the rich and the poor societies and within societies. I too recognize that Extremes can trigger phase changes, and/or drive tipping points. Also, highly industrialized nations cannot change quickly is a fact. More than that they clearly do not want to and will not, no matter what. iow it’s REALIA?
REALIA – real things or actual facts, especially as distinct from theories about or reactions to them.
OK, I’ll play along with the linguistics of #64, but discuss in context of this RC article from my perspective – i.e. it’s doomed from the start – because robust regional climate information does not exist, and will not come into being anytime soon enough to be useful.
Because robust global climate information does not exist,
And because the UNFCCC and the IPCC ‘systems’ are deeply flawed and therefore failures – i.e. not fit for purpose. This is an ‘actual fact’ in my view, Realia.
Replicating such methodologies (collectivizing study results and their inbuilt assumptions) then applying them to a Regional level vs global is irrational. If I was really outspoken, I’d say it’s plum stupid – because it’s doomed to fail too.
Now that the IPCC scientists have done their ‘work’ meetings i.e. Talk Fests are now being had where incompetent unqualified unintelligent at times rank stupid politicians are arguing with said scientists as to what can and cannot be said in the latest series of AR6 IPCC reports.
This is an artistic rendering of that Realia
https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/sw/files/Ripple_cartoon.png
This ‘process’has been repeated five times already, for 3 decades, and failed…. staring everyone in the face – still most refuse to see this REALIA (what a nice term)
The systems established in the early 1990s have failed. The undeniable proof, the ‘actual facts’ to look at are the current volume of GHG emissions and the ongoing destruction of ecosystems which would have otherwise drawn down some of the excess CO2 emissions.
Then comes the undeniable (too most) increasingly dangerous impacts of global warming and climate changes… the subsequent in your face rising global and regional temperatures everywhere, ice mass loss, extreme weather events, droughts floods, wild fires, and so on… i.e. the REALIA
I’ll repeat a few recent quotes to emphasis the point and offer up some food for thought. The scientific process should not be stopped where Math no longer plays a role. (That’s me talking)
The key was to have a “bold conjecture” to test it against reality and abandon it and construct another if it didn’t match the observable facts.
This was the progress of scientific knowledge, said Popper. Not a matter of certainty or absolute truth, but of what “worked” in the real world.
Popper famously wrote: “Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.”
In other words – and I think this is a key insight – you can be rational without being certain.
But there is a problem. Philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn explored how scientists actually behaved, and found that they did not meet Popper’s ideal of rational behaviour. They clung to their theories long after anomalies and problems had emerged.” […] end quotes
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/24/trust-the-science-is-the-mantra-of-the-covid-crisis-but-what-about-human-fallibility
Here’s some Realia to absorb. Climate Scientists are as Fallible as everyone else can be. But a Collective of Politicians seem to be the most Fallible of all.
Therefore, I conclude, the core issues of what confronts humanity is not scientific but purely Philosophical now. (in my opinion)
Humanity, society, nations, everyday people, including climate scientists and politicians, could be rational without being certain. Collectively we choose not to be. No, we must wait for that next scientific study or IPCC working group report to be published so we can be More Certain.
Then wait for the next one and the …… what you resists, persists.
But isn’t REALIA saying it way past time for a reality check. Yes? Of course many would disagree and find many faults to argue about. That’s fine. Argue, find fault and disagree.
a correction for #74: We hold these truths to be self-evident …
Not principles, not actual facts, not reality, but the opinions and beliefs of the wealthy ruling elites of the day about various things … the one percenter’s marketing and spin for the masses.
You know what they say about building upon weak foundations?
A minor point perhaps, but still a valid point in my view. It all depends on how people choose to look at it. Same as it all depends on how people look at the COP26 meeting, and the ones coming after it. But especially how those who create public opinion decide to look at it. The tens of thousands of published climate science and economics papers and IPCC Reports are irrelevant.
Sorry, my last comment was about #71 I dared to rise my hand and mention the US constitution that states “We hold theese principles to be evident..”
64:
Please try to understand this: A principle is not a rock. It has no physicality to be reduced to sand, atoms or molecules or nuclei or protons or…
I’m a little tired of trying to make sense of your posts; is it that you don’t understand, can’t express yourself well, or both? Very hard to tell.
I teach English as a Foreign/Second Language if you would like to improve your comprehension and clarity. (Really.)
71:
Until you improve your language skills, there is no use in reading your posts nor responding to them. Again, I have taught communicative English for over 15 years. I do not mean to insult you, but between your lack of language skills and the esoteric nonsense I *can* discern, you are unreadable. I suspect that would not change even if your English were perfect based on what is discernable.
#75 When you see “Mr. Know It All Says” you know it will be specious nonsense, and in this we are not disappointed. Where is the borehole when it is needed?
Carbomontanus @ 64,71 &74. Good comments. Fyi Killlian probably means the 12 principles of permaculture:
https://ethical.net/ethical/permaculture-principles/
I like the principles “capture and store energy” and “use and value renewables.” This provides a principled mandate for wind, solar, and hydro power ( and batteries.)
28 – CCHolley
“And glacier ice mass has been rapidly declining since the 1950s.”
Mrkia: Partly correct – the ice has actually been in decline since the end of the last ice age
RtW: Why did you remove the primary word, “rapidly”?
Yep, for long periods of time, including much/most/all(?) of the Holocene planetary ice slowly declined. Who cares?
Kind of like when you get hit by a bus…
…going 0.1 miles per hour as it stops to pick you up. By your ‘logic’ this scenario is identical to stepping in front of the crosstown express.
re: 75. ” Fact is, the world has always warmed and cooled long before humans, SUVs, and fossil fuels came on the scene.”
Fact is, as you have been told over and over and over again yet you fail to learn, that we know well what caused climate variations long before humans: natural variations such as the sun and orbital mechanics among others. What you disingenuously (for the umpteenth time) neglect of course is that those natural variations can in no way alone explain the warming in recent decades. That can only be explained with the additional forcings from manmade greenhouse gases. You have been told this many times. Yet you ignore the fact. How much more disingenuous and scientifically ignorant can you be? You seriously never should have graduated high school with your complete lack of knowledge about how science is conducted and with such cognitive dissonance. Your constant repetition of lies speaks volumes about how poorly you learned critical thinking. A failure from when you were brought up. Quite seriously.
JDS 58: Is it cherry picking to recognize the that the new African highest temperature is now 55.0°C (131°F), recorded on 7 July 1931 at Kebili, Tunisia, & that occurred 90 years ago in what we are now being told is a planet on fire?
BPL: Yes, it is. Apparently you don’t understand what “cherry picking” means.
July 30, 2021 – Audio and Transcript.
As a slew of extreme weather events hits the headlines, the evidence of climate disruption is undeniable. Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of The New Climate War warns we are headed for dangerous thresholds of climate disruptions beyond the reach of adaptation to cope.
He joins host Steve Curwood to talk about the links between extreme weather and human-forced climate change, why sea level rise could be counted in the dozens of feet by 2100, and how an unchecked climate emergency imperils human civilization.
https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=21-P13-00031&segmentID=3
quoting MM: “And so when we put it all onto adaptation, we’re putting it on the poorest and those with the least resources. So yes, we need to provide resources, especially to those frontline communities, so that they can deal with the impacts that we are already dealing with. And likely things will get somewhat worse, but we can prevent the worst impacts from playing out. And that means there has to really be an emphasis on mitigation, because no amount of adaptation is going to allow us to flourish as a civilization in the face of an additional half a degree, one degree Celsius warming of the planet. Dangerous climate change has arrived. If we continue down this road, it will become not just dangerous, but truly catastrophic and disastrous to human civilization. “
JDS 59: Ray Ladbury seems to have a real problem in dealing with reality.
BPL: Says the guy who absolutely refuses correction on the simplest physical facts.
@ 75 Hr. Knowitall
In my schoolbook, there was maps of glaciation also in south America on Terra del fuego an onwards, told to be due to ice- age.
Your race and blood may be less aquainted to this and thus infreriour, being not yet enlighted and qualified and entitled for the discussion of this, from your arbitary unløuckily inferiour and provincial public school.
Whereas ice age with obvious examples and proofs in common environments and in everyday life is compulsary to me.
It is obvious and elementary given by large morraines, glacio- fluvial sediments and “rolling stones” and grinded granite rocks that come up from the sea and where we bathe in the summer. That bedrock and soil reality is even carefully marked by previous, early H.Sapiens, who documented petroglyphs on it as soon as possible.
So, do you really know it all?
Darwin with his Beagle went through Terra del Fuego by Canal de Biagle and took very good notice of it . And brought it to Linnaenan society and to Queen Victoria and to the British Museum in London, where it is documented.
Stop the class warfare against Darwin ande never ignore him..
The same Darwin was also lookiing for the missing link, and could bring 2 daring men from T. del fuego further with him on the Beagle.
They were as good as any.
They learnt easily both English language and manners, and were dressed up in pants and skirts and fine hats on board, and showed especially good at climbing the rig and tackeling the roaps, wherev the English were inferiour.
They also showed really due manners and conversations at the table in the roof,… and thus could be introduced to Queen Victoria at Buchinghanm palace.
Where they also really could behave exept for one detail:
They refused to wear shoes or boots of any kind, claiming that they would loose their ground contact then.
Q. Victoria found that quite in order and even better, because of her very fine floors and carpets.
But on deck and in the rig you better perform barefooted as in Terra del fuego at any time, so you dont loose the grip and stumble in the rubbish and ropes on the slippery deck at storm, but grasp where you are setting your feet and on what.. .
Darwin also visited the King of Tasmania, and found no missing link. He found only typical Homo Sapiens everywhere. Being a very qualified and sceptical orderly systematic biologist also on that question.
No wonder. Darwin himself was the missing link,…..
… the very typical ape and solidly bastard neanderthal, and was correctly pictured in his time as such one.
This has also been clearly shown afterwards by Swante Pääbo at the Planc Institute in Leipzig.
MS 65: Climate science is art – and art is climate science.
BPL: Up is down. Black is white. Ignorance is strength.
KIA 75: the ice has actually been in decline since the end of the last ice age
BPL: Not true. The interglacial peaked 8,000 years ago, and we were cooling (and the ice growing) until the industrial revolution started. Don’t spread lies.
PLUS … More from Michael E Mann: On the limitations of the latest Models, the limits to Adaption, on Impacts, Thresholds, Tipping Points and more. About fear and worry which can keep a climate scientist awake at night.
The impacts have become, again, so profound, that we can see that these weather events, these extreme weather events that are playing out right now across the Northern Hemisphere this summer, have no precedent as far back as we have records. Now, this study, this recent study that, you know, argues that we’re likely to see even more and more record shattering weather extremes. Ironically, that study makes use of climate models that don’t completely capture some of the dynamics in the real world that are responsible for some of the events that we are seeing. [..]
And this particular impact is not well captured in current generation climate models. It involves processes that aren’t very well captured by the models. So the (current/latest) models, if anything, are actually underestimating the impact that climate change is already having on these extreme weather events. [..]
But you know, you’ve underscored something else which is very important here, which is our perception. Our perception does have thresholds, and impacts have thresholds. You know, at a certain point a flood is so bad that it breaks the dams, it rises over the levees. And so there are these thresholds, where when an event becomes extreme enough, it becomes so hot, for example, that human beings simply can’t be outside without suffering severe health impacts.
As these events become more extreme, we start to exceed some of these sort of societal and sort of behavioral thresholds. And so all of a sudden, we’re talking not just about an extreme heat wave, but a deadly heat wave. All of a sudden, we’re not just talking about a terrible flooding event, but the worst flooding event that China has ever seen. And it feels like we’ve gone through some sort of threshold in the way climate change is proceeding.
But it turns out, even if climate change proceeds smoothly, the impacts and the responses to it can go through these abrupt thresholds. And that’s one of the things that we fear, because there are potential climate tipping points that we worry about, like when the ice sheets give way, and the collapse of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheet becomes unstoppable. That’s a threshold, and then, you know, we are subject to meters of sea level rise, and there’s nothing we can do about it anymore. There are these potential tipping points that we are nearing. But there are also tipping points in our ability to adapt to the changes that we’re witnessing, in our adaptive capacity and in our resilience, and that’s something that we really have to worry about.
end quotes
https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=21-P13-00031&segmentID=3
OK then. So that’s Prof Michael E Mann talking there, not a nobody like myself.
Is James Hansen An Idiot?,
This is for Ray L, jgnfld, BPL.
Ray #31 says:
In my earlier response to Ray, I misspoke; I said “Mann” when I was really thinking of Hansen et al 2012. The thing is, Hansen did indeed present an analysis based on extremes. Now, I found that paper very useful, because it discussed the issue of baselines, and made the connection between the numbers and what is happening physically. So, sorry, guys, but I don’t think Hansen is an idiot, or trying to fool me, or picking the worst way to do statistics.
In considering the JDS nonsense specifically, again, it has nothing to do with “extreme value theory”. It would be just as meaningless to cite the mean values of ‘regions’ only based on arbitrary political boundaries.
In general, the point stands: If you respond with handwavy abstractions and can’t even supply a concrete exposition of your reasoning or physics-based rebuttal to their claims, and demand the same from them, the trolls have won… they have created the impression that throwing numbers and undefined words around counts as scientific discourse.
I refer you again to the picture worth thousands of words:
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/53794/plotting-several-2d-functions-in-a-3d-graph
If I want to “look at a distribution”, and “changes in a distribution”, I would create exactly such a plot. Vertical axis is frequency, right-hand is time, and left-hand is whatever metric we are examining.
What’s the problem? I am not like Victor, claiming that eyeballing is as good as doing the math, but it seems like a good place to start for the public with even a superficial knowledge of statistics. You can look at extremes and means and the shape of the curves, and use those as a starting point for describing what is happening physically. What’s the problem?
jgnfld, #69–
The response you received was, I’m afraid, all too characteristic.
#75: Mr. Keeps It Asinine does it again.
Next…
I will always remember a fictional description, which I roughly quote here:
“Artists are just like the rest of us, only moreso.” (many of us do have outsized egos, otherwise we wouldn’t presume to choose such a vocation)
I take issue with one artist claiming authority; I am also an artist, and I have immense respect for the group of top climate scientists who post the articles here and provide a forum. I do wish they’d stop the endless arguments regardless of who is right and wrong, that clutter up this comment section and obscure useful material. However, I understand that moderation of a lively bunch of (mostly) intelligent egotists who like to see their opinions in print is a thankless and time consuming job.
On the whole, artists are pretty good at communication about climate change, but artists who condemn their hosts – who are excellent scientists and communicators – are neither useful nor correct contributors.
If you want better content, help provide it!
@Ray Ladbury
Thank you! You are one of the reasons I keep coming back, pithy and true, as usual.
(don’t mean to insult several others who keep us honest, amongst whom are BPL and others I have no doubt forgotten in this moment)
No insult taken. Thank you. :)