Fall is here (in the northern hemisphere at least), along with articles about the impact of climate change on autumnal colors. LandSat9 successfully launched to continue an almost 50 year long series of remote sensing (since 1972!), and the World Economic Forum has proposed and Earth Operations Center to monitor greenhouse gases and climate change. Please stick to climate science topics, and remember that (most) other commenters are real people.
From the previous UV:
Yet, that is what the paper says. A climate forcing ultimately comes down to the amount of energy kept in the system over the point of balance in/out, no?
Yup: The acceleration of cryosphere melting of various types, the overall acceleration of global temps since 2016 and the H2O. and exhibited in the recent large increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather..
I don’t think you addressed my concerns effectively, so I’m still quite alarmed.
I ask the RC scientists to please quickly do a post on this paper.
Killian says 1 Oct 2021 at 5:11 AM (on tipping points first order principles logic etc)
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/unforced-variations-sep-2021/comment-page-2/#comment-796300
Thanks very much for that. Well said imho. Really clear. Easy to read. I understand what you’re saying. Much appreciated. Cheers.
related info links
original discussion topic links
Earth is dimming due to climate change
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-earth-dimming-due-climate.html
(full paper)
Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL094888
‘Less than 1% probability’ that Earth’s energy imbalance increase occurred naturally
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-probability-earth-energy-imbalance-naturally.html
Published: 28 July 2021
Anthropogenic forcing and response yield observed positive trend in Earth’s energy imbalance
Satellite observations (2001–2020) reveal a significant positive globally-averaged TEEI of 0.38 ± 0.24 Wm−2decade−1, but the contributing drivers have yet to be understood.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24544-4
recent James Hansen comments https://twitter.com/DrJamesEHansen/with_replies
Global warming acceleration can be traced to decreased aerosols.
reemergence of CH4 growth contributes to growth of greenhouse climate forcing, but cannot cause the doubling of Earth’s energy imbalance.
That indicts aerosols, but it’s a screwy way to do science. We should measure the aerosol climate forcing.
Thanks for your kind comments.
I am aware of Hansen, et al’s, comments on aerosols. I do not think that precludes the issues raised. If, say, 4.0W/m2 of the 5.0W/m2 happened from 2015 to 2017 would it even be measurable instrumentally yet as temps? There is the infamous 10 to 30 yr lag to consider.
Excellent post Killian. Much appreciated.
Not sure which you mean, but cheers!
4.0W/m2 is a massive change that would be apparent within a few years. Recall the various numbered Representative Concentration Paths that were used in the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report (e.g. RCP2.6) The number refers to the amount of radiative forcing in the year 2100, in W/m2. So, having an extra 4W/m2 added in a few years would amount to jumping from the recent forcing of about 2W/m2 to 6W/m2, and hitting it now rather than waiting until 2100. The extra retained heat would be pouring into the upper levels of the ocean and the atmosphere. Global oceanic heat content, SST, and mean surface temperature would be rising very rapidly, compared to previous rates of change. These are all fairly well measured – a lot better than earthshine. Yes, it would take a while for the extra heat to translate into the cryosphere and the deeper levels of the ocean. But if there had been a 4W/m2 jump from 2015 to 2017, we’d know about it in 2021.
Sorry… dumb typing. 0.4 and 0.5, not 4.0 and 5.0.
Killian,
I will ignore all but your reply to my question as to the hiding=place of that 8Zj which would be the annual consequence of a climate forcing of +0.5Wm^-2 acting before it begins to reach any significant equilibrium. (This assumes the measured reduction in albedo can be treated as a climate forcing, which, despite all your protestations, it cannot.)
You insist it has hidden away by either melting ice into the oceans or by evaporating water into the atmosphere. Could that be true?
If this were land ice melting, we would see a significant increase in sea level rise. The annual additional melt would amount to an extra 84mm of SLR. That’s annually. So in the absence of any such change in the SLR of recent years, we can expect that any melting from that 8Zj/yr would be sea ice which doesn’t result in SLR.
But the volume of Arctic sea ice averages about 15,000 Gt and there would be very roughly a similar amount in Antarctica. Let’s say the cryosphere comprises 40,000 Gt sea ice at any point in the year, roughly. Has that altered greatly in recent years? That 8Zj/yr would be melting 25,000 Gt per year which is rather a lot.
So we can safely conclude that there is no significant portion of the 8Zj/yr being disappeared by ice melt.
That leaves water evaporating into the atmosphere driving the increase in “frequency and intensity of extreme weather.”. We are again talking big numbers., If the evaporation were direct from the oceans, we would expect 8Zj of evaporation to drop sea level by 12mm. And there has been no reversal of SLR in recent years.
Then maybe the land ice melting is exactly balanced by the ocean evaporation. and that’s why we see no massive change in SLR. But hang on!! That would mean 3,500Gt of extra water vapour in the atmosphere, I would reckon a sudden jump of 17% in average global humidity would have been spotted.
Now I don’t guarantee that my decimal points have always behaved themselves in this matter but I’m sure if they haven’t somebody would “be kind and please, please, please tell me I have completely gotten this wrong by several orders of magnitude.”
But if the decimal points are all in order, the question remains. Where has all Killian’s 8Zj gone in the last year? I can’t see it outside so think, Killian!! Have you checked it’s not been dumped at the back of the garage? Or is it behind the sofa?
I will ignore all but your reply to my question as to the hiding=place of that 8Zj
Why? That makes no sense. If I am missing something then I guarantee you there are other posters/Dear Readers who are, too. What reason do you offer for just blowing us off? We’re in a goddamned emergency!
You insist it has hidden away…
I begin to see the problem: You don’t like being questioned. Ego? Really? What ACTUALLY HONEST QUESTION, you responded, it didn’t seem to answer my concerns, so i responded to your question with suppositions.
So far, so good. Nice, normal conversation. Then you seem to decide to take my response personally or think I am being argumentative or some other nonsense. No, I either missed something in your response or just didn’t see it as fully accounting for the effects stated in the paper.
PLEASE understand this: We have no more time for egos. Discuss or don’t. Leave the rest off to the side.
You insist it has hidden away
I insisted nothing. Why mischaracterize my comments? Why so sensitive?
The annual additional melt would amount to an extra 84mm of SLR. That’s annually.
Additional energy retained bc of reduced albedo from 2014/15 to 2017 would manifest in cryospheric losses within 4 years? That does not seem likely, does it?
So we can safely conclude that there is no significant portion of the 8Zj/yr being disappeared by ice melt.
My question is not regarding your math or knowledge, but the one thing you have not addressed: The time frames. The paper and the two articles I read do not give us a % for the amount of albedo change over the period discussed except to state most of it occurred in the last three years of the period studied. The rest of the period was characterized as very gradual. For me, that implies something like during ’15, ’16 and ’17 something on the order of 0.35 to 0.4 of the stated 0.5 increase due to reduced albedo occurred. As I said above, I seriously doubt 4 years is enough time for that energy to be distributed globally in such a manner as to so immediately impact the cryosphere.
Where is the lag in your analysis? You don’t address it at all. In fact, your wording suggests you are treating the 0,5 increase as averaged over the full period of the study, but that absolutely is NOT what the paper says.
Where has all Killian’s 8Zj gone in the last year?
I am addressing serious issues. I have pointed out issues with your analysis that are either things you need to address more effectively or that I am simply not getting, but for you to attempt to diminish the issues raised as “Killian’s ~~~” is completely inappropriate.
These are the most serious times humanity has ever faced. Please act like it.
Killian,
You ask why in your comment up-thread I ignore “all but your reply to my question as to the hiding=place of that 8Zj.” And you unintentionally provide the answer. It is because the rest of your up-thread comment “makes no sense.”
I do see you are now asking about “The time frames.” You evidently are a bit confused on this matter. So let’s run through why there is a time lag between the application of a climate forcing and the resulting climate change. And then work through to show why the reduced Earthshine isn’t hiding behind the sofa.
Why is there a time lag between Climate Forcing and Climate Change? If a climate forcing, say a +0.5Wm^-2 forcing, is quickly applied to the planet. That would result in an energy imbalance of 8Zj per year which is a lot. If 8Zj were used for a single purpose, it is enough to melt 25,000 cu km of ice, evaporate the top 12mm of the oceans or raise the temperature of the atmosphere by +2ºC which is all massively dramatic. But that doesn’t happen because the big big player when trying to heat up the planet is the oceans. 8Zj would result in the oceans warming by an average of just +0.001ºC.
Without the oceans, a climate forcing would act (along with feedbacks) on a far far shorter time scale – years rather than decades and centuries (although some of the feedbacks are also slow).
It is because the oceans are such a dominant part of the planet’s heat capacity that Ocean Heat Capacity has often been argued as being a better measure of AGW than Surface Air Temperature.
What does OHC show us? OHC is a lot more difficult to measure than SAT but the last two decades have been nailed down pretty well. The top half of the oceans (0-2000m) show us most of what there is to see. Fig 2 on this NCEI webpage shows the OHC anomaly rising from 60Zj to 260Zj over the period 2000-20, an average ΔOHC of +10Zj/y. It also suggests an acceleration in ΔOHC through the period, roughly from +8Zj/y 2000-10 to +12Zj/y 2010-20.
OHC shows us the rate of global warming and suggests it has accelerated through the last two decades.
And the TOA energy imbalance? A direct measurement of energy fluxes at the Top Of Atmosphere has been a real challenge but recently calibration problems have been addressed enough to allow the likes of this graphic showing Cumulative Planetary Heat Uptake 2000-16 (graph sourced from this NASA CERES webpage rise in EEI of 170Zj, a rate of ΔEEI = +10.6Zj/y but again with an apparent acceleration with 2000-08 running at +7.5Zj/y and 2008-16 running at +14Z/y.
(But note that this is not a measure of net climate forcing. It is a measure of the imbalance resulting from a forcing. Some would argue that it can be regarded as the residual of a forcing but that is a big leap.)
And where does the ‘Earthshine’ albedo measurement fit into all this? The attempts to measure Earth’s albedo from the Earthshine reflected back from the moon is an interesting project but I would be very cautious with interpreting Goode et al (2021) (which I note is now appeared from behind the paywall). The paper goes miles beyond reporting its own findings and even suggests a denialist agenda. It is within this ‘miles beyond’ stuff that the ‘flipping in the last 3 years is found.
The reduction in albedo is not a climate forcing but is an important element in Earth Energy Imbalance. Shiny clouds do reflect sunlight back into space but they also block space-bound IR. CERES measures both and if you read Raghuraman et al (2021) ‘Anthropogenic forcing and response yield observed positive trend in Earth’s energy imbalance’ (it was linked up-thread so you may have read it already) you will see that they “attach an estimate of 0.20 Wm−2decade−1” to the trend 2001-20 (which seems low). That would indicate an increase over the period of 6Zj/y. With the imbalance reported as averaging 1Wm^-2 over the period (which seems far too high to me) that suggests it rose from 13Zj/y in 2001 to 19Zj/y in 2020.
So the actual numbers presented in Raghuraman et al (2021) do require a bit of head-scratching but it does show a dramatic trend stretched over the last two decades. But note there is no sign of anything dramatic over the last three years which is more moonshine than earthshine.
It is because the rest of your up-thread comment “makes no sense.”
Bull. You didn’t even address the key point in either of your first posts. Your extroardinarily conservative approach to climate science is the issue, not the questions I asked. FYI, a sincere question always makes sense.
You clearly are not a teacher.
I do see you are now asking about “The time frames.”
I am not “now” asking, I did from the jump. Despite all the words above, you still have not answered. Your pedantry WRT to the science is causing you to ignore what is asked for:
To rephrase my questions thus far:
Would a large increase in W/m2 from ’15 to ’17 show up in the noticeable climatic effects and measurements by 2100? If so, to what extent? Over what time period would the full effects manifest in temps and changes in weather?
You still have not answered in a manner that is meaningful to a layperson – and possibly not at all – so please let someone else give it a try.
You evidently are a bit confused on this matter.
No. I simply do not know. There is a difference between not knowing and being confused.
MAR, this is extremely confusing. I think I pointed out to you on a previous similar comment (you replying to…KIA??) that the terminology usage is just too imprecise to follow. And it’s not just you; I just looked at a NOAA piece which has similar issues:
Well, no. The basic laws of thermodynamics tell us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So
(1) Incoming Energy – The Energy In The Fricken’ Climate System! = Outgoing Energy
Let’s look at the language again:
“When forcings result in incoming energy being greater than outgoing energy, the planet will warm (positive RF). ”
Again, no. CO2 has no effect on the incoming energy… it doesn’t tell the Sun to boost output. It changes TEITFCS by retaining more energy than was being retained in the initial equilibrium state. So, incoming stays constant, retained increases and output decreases. (And yes, changes in albedo could be construed that way, but it’s a stretch on the word “incoming”. Ice reflects incoming radiation, and black soot absorbs incoming radiation. And the reflected radiation is “outgoing” anyway.)
I could go on but this brings me to a particular question about your (MAR) paragraph on TOA. I couldn’t access the publications you mentioned, but this wording has me puzzled:
“But note that this is not a measure of net climate forcing. It is a measure of the imbalance resulting from a forcing. Some would argue that it can be regarded as the residual of a forcing but that is a big leap.”
What is a measure of net climate forcing? Use your case of “If a climate forcing, say a +0.5Wm^-2 forcing, is quickly applied to the planet.”
zebra,
You apparently are getting rather frustrated by some mistaken understanding of very basic stuff. You then add some non-trivial considerations into the mix.
Basic Stuff
Energy In = EI,
Energy Out = EO,
The Energy In The Fricken’ Climate System = TEITFCS
Changes in TEITFCS = ΔTEITFCS
Thus the NOAA quote is saying correctly:-
EI – EO = ΔTEITFCS
You are saying something different:-
EI – EO = TEITFCS
And you appear to agree that while ΔCO2 can have no effect on the solar input, EI, it does impact EO both directly through reducing IR emissions that exit to space and indirectly, this including changes in albedo.
Non-Trivial Stuff
That leads on to consideration of Radiative Forcing. (The “publications” I cite up-thread you are unable to access – the links both work fine for me but it may be an issue with ‘hot’ linking. This is the URL to the webpage https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/science/ ) Your quote from the NOAA is on a page which also says Climate Forcings can also be called “Climate Drivers”. And in that paragraph they tabulate the “Radiative Forcing Relative to 1750”. The tabulated values are evidently not the same as the imbalance in planetary energy which in 2011 would be something close to 1Wm^-2 while the tabulated value is given as 2.28Wm^-2.
The 1Wm^-2 imbalance can be considered as the left-overs of the 2.28Wm^-2 Net Forcing, with the 1.28Wm^-2 difference having been equalised by the global warming since 1750. Simplistically, I don’t have a problem with this.
But I also see this being used in a less than simplistic manner (usually by denialists trying to demonstrate a very low ECS). While the climate is in imbalance and warming strongly, using the imbalance to infer a precise level of residual Net Forcing is in my eyes crazy.
To use an analogy. It would be like using the half-distance time of a long-distance runner to infer the time to complete the course when ☻ The hills on the course could be all at the end (or the energy to raise the globe from 14ºC to 15ºC may be significantly different to the energy required to raise it from 15ºC to 16ºC) and ☻ The runner may well be planning a sprint finish (or the processes are not all about heating bits of hard-to-reach planet, as feedbacks do not operate like that and some, like for example, cooling tropical clouds disappearing, cannot be treated as though they did).
But the definition of a Forcing is a ‘systems’ thing. They act external to the ‘system’. There are things that will be happening which they are not external to the ‘system’ and so are not forcings. Thus in this matter, a change in albedo isn’t a forcing, just as the change in outward IR isn’t a measure of forcing.
killian,
I have concluded that you are unable to grasp what I attempt to explain but I continue this interchange because it amuses me.
You ask about the impact of a large “a large increase in W/m2 from ’15 to ’17” (presumably the impact of a climate forcing of perhaps +0.5Wm^-2 applied in the years 2015-17, although the measured reduction in albedo which you insist occurred 2015-17 is fantasy and if it did occur would not be a forcing).
The full impact would depend on the ill-defined value of ECS and perhaps half of that would appear in the first decade. If ECS=+3ºC, SAT would be [(0.5/3.7) x 3 x 50% =] +0.2ºC within the decade and most of +0.4ºC within the century. I think the decadal impact would be more evident than the 2100 impact although the wobbles of SAT would mean a part-decade may not be adequate for conclusive evidence.
But we don’t have to wait a full decade to spot the existence of such a forcing if we look beyond SAT. Such a large step-change in climate forcing would quickly feature in OHC & TOA EEI, unless of course the resulting extra 8Zj/y entering the climate system is actually hiding behind the sofa.
I note, after looking at Palle et al.’s article, that they only choose the CERES measurements, out of all the satellite measurements. This makes me think of cherry-picking. They don’t list their digital data; it doesn’t seem to be available as supplemental information on the web, at least not that I could find. And a finding of significance p < 0.06 normally wouldn't get into the literature; you want to have at least p < 0.05, if not p < 0.01. So, I can't say they're wrong, but I am at least suspicious of their methods. I note that they were saying the same thing in 2004, when they had far less data. It seems awfully like they have a predetermined conclusion and want to find evidence to fit it.
There's not doubt that ice-albedo feedback exists. But I'm not sure this study does anything to confirm it. And I have already seen people–deniers–citing this kind of result to say it's not fossil fuels, it's the albedo! As if albedo changed spontaneously on its own.
Zebra says MAR is talking nonsense about radiative forcing. Yet I googled MARs statements about “The difference between incoming and outgoing radiation is known as a planet’s radiative forcing (RF) etc,etc” and they are straight from NOAA climate website as below. Doesn’t look like nonsense to me. Its Zebra who I often find very confusing.
https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/primer/climate-forcing
by 2100….. good god…. I meant 2021.
Killian,
The anthropogenic forcing that is causing AGW has been with us for over a century but it significantly ramped-up in power at a particular point in time. From 1960 the annual increase in anthropogenic forcing trebling to about +0.4W^m-2/decade. Yet if you examine SAT data, it isn’t until 20 years later that the impact of such a forcing appeared above all the wobbles and wiggles of the SAT data. Of course, the actual wobbles and wiggles were not particularly helpful so it would not always be such a lengthy wait. But it does show it would be entirely possible to hide a +0.5W^m-2 increase in AGW behind the sofa for 5 years, even with today’s improved SAT data and improved attribution. A 2016 +0.5Wm^-2 increase in forcing would appear as something like a +0.1ºC in SAT by 2021.
But if you have been paying the slightest attention to my repeated comment up-thread, you would be aware that OHC data is far more sensitive and less wobbly than SAT data. This sensitivity is well illustrated with this web page which shows graphics of both SAT & OHC ‘alongside’ each other.
If today’s EEI were subject to a +0.5Wm^-2 forcing applied 2015-17 (which it was not), we would expect to see OHC rising ~50% faster post-2017 than pre-2017. So the rolling 12-month average 0-2000m OHC plot in that web page OHC graph which is showing a pretty constant average of 11 Zj/yr increase 2008-20 would have seen 2017-20 an increase of, say, >6 Zj/yr above previous rises. So after 3 years that should yield at least a consistent deviation, by 2020 amounting to some 20Zj and thus greater than any of the wobbles seen in the rolling-averaged data.
Thus my comment at the bottom of last month’s UV thread saying ” the rate of ΔOHC shows no sign of any acceleration through the last dozen years or so.”
I believe the correct concluding comment in such circumstance is “quae prius demonstrata”.
MA Rodger,
I would really like to discuss the second part of your comment, but we don’t agree on the basics. Let’s use Es for the system energy.
Before we messed with it, the system was in equilibrium… Es was a constant. (I assume you agree.)
So your equation
Ein – Eout = delta Es would reduce to
Ein – Eout = zero
But if that were the case, Es itself would be zero, because where would the energy come from?
So, since the planet was not a ball of frozen water and gases in 1750, it must be the case that Es was not zero, and my equation
Ein – Eout = Es
is the correct one.
If you disagree, you have to explain why, not just make an assertion. If you agree, we can move on to what forcings and feedbacks and all that stuff mean.
zebra: “ MAR, this is extremely confusing. I think I pointed out to you on a previous similar comment that the terminology usage is just too imprecise to follow. [you say] “Ein – Eout = delta Es [but in a steady state this] would reduce to Ein – Eout = zero. But if that were the case, Es itself would be zero, because where would the energy come from [so] my equation Ein – Eout = Es is the correct one”
Piotr: Good one, zebra! Let’s do not stop there. Say:
Zebra has $10,000 in his bank account. Each month he pays bills for $1000, and deposits (or earns in interest) $1000.
– MARodger: Delta of his account =0.
– Zebra: But if that were the case, the account balance itself would be zero, because where would the $10,000 come from? Therefore, zebra continues, my equation: $1000 (in) – $1000 (out) = $10,000 (my bank balance) is the correct one!
– Killian: “ MAR does not like to play with non-experts. Simple questions confuse him. ;-)”
Piotr: Huh? Attempt at sarcasm??? A mere day after you dressed down MARodger for using (a very mild) irony:
“[MAR saying that perhaps the missing heat is behind a sofa] is completely inappropriate. These are the most serious times humanity has ever faced ”
Do as I lecture you, not as I do?
Having to append this here due to threading limits:
I have concluded that you are unable to grasp what I attempt to explain but I continue this interchange because it amuses me.
No, you do it because you’re a rude wanker when you choose to be. You have always done this. It is nothing new.
Both Zebra and Reality had trouble following your response. Being a teacher is very useful for learning to self-evaluate. In general, if a student or a few don’t “get” ypur lesson, they need support. If a significant number of students don’t “get” your lesson, you failed to geach effectively.
You have not answered my question. You have answered the questions you wanted to answer based on your biases, but when answering questions ir really is not effective to respond to your inner diaogue in lieu of… answering the question.
Climb out of your creaky ivory tower and learn to hear and respond to what is asked.
The full impact would depend on the ill-defined value of ECS and perhaps half of that would appear in the first decade.
By Jove, he’s done it! Hallelujah! Half in a decade would mean not overly noticeable after just four years, I’d think… which was my contention all along. I understand far more than you think I do, but, sadly, you think if one can’t do the math they understand little. That is a logical fallacy you really should address so you stop wasting my time.
although the wobbles of SAT would mean a part-decade may not be adequate for conclusive evidence.
As I concluded in all my great lack of ignorance. However, you say there *should* have been something climbing out of the noise if this increase occurred. However, you are working from an incorrect premise. Neither I nor the paper said 0.5 in three years, it’s 0.5 over 20 years, with the majority in the last three. Just from the language used I would guess that at 4 or so, but that’s just a guess based solely on language usage.
Now, please pay attention: The response I asked for is what, after multiple posts, you finally provided. I repeat: Don’t answer the question you want to answer, answer the question asked. And when one STARTS OFF saying they don’t have the math background, don’t flood them with math. Get it? Put another way, when you ask someone to buy you paint who says they are colorblind and they return with the wrong color, don’t turn to them and bitch them out for being colorblind. It just makes you look like the putz you too often are.
I.e., trying to shame me over math is LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
@mar:
” The reduction in albedo is not a climate forcing but is an important element in Earth Energy Imbalance. Shiny clouds do reflect sunlight back into space but they also block space-bound IR. ”
ms:
Albedo is clearly a negativ radiative forcing(RF) of ~ 100W/m².
The decreasing albedo is mainly positiv feedback on a warmer atmosphere. (Less clouds, snow & ice.)
The net effect( short wave reflection + long wave absorption of clouds(CRE) = -19W/m².
I’ve been explaining that to you for weeks – at least a dozen times. But there is an ignoramus sitting deep down in his tiny privat borehole …listening only to his own words.
macias shurly,
The Earth energy balance is shown with 100Wm^-2 of insolation being reflected back into space. On this we agree.
But you do present some problems with the words you use. This 100Wm^-2 reflected energy is not a “forcing”, as is its measured 0.5Wm^-2 reduction which is a component of “feedback” and by definition “feedback” is not “forcing.”
You again quote from Wild et al (2019) that the clear-sky radiation budget derived from CERES data globally averages -19Wm^-2 less than the all-sky global budget.
Again we do not disagree
….
Where we are at odds is on pretty-much everything else you’ve been spouting multiple times (maybe a dozen times, although that number sounds rather high) since you began this nonsense over at SkS.
Perhaps there is one aspect of your crazy assertions that is worth addressing here – the actual nature of that -19Wm^-2. which may appear at face value to be a potential AGW “Get Out Of Jail Free” card so it perhaps deserves some explanation, again.
With the annual increase in AGW forcing running at something like +0.04Wm^-2/year, -19Wm^-2 looks big. Cloud fractions are indeed very important for the climate. The likes of Randell et al (1984) gave voice to the impact of cloud when saying ” A mere 4% increase in the area of the globe covered by low level stratus clouds would be sufficient to offset the 2-3 K predicted rise in global temperature due to a doubling of CO2.” while Schneider et al (2019) conclude that AGW cloud feedbacks at 1,200ppm would reduce low-latitude ocean stratocumulus clouds cover and “trigger a surface warming of about 8 K globally and 10 K in the subtropics.”
These numbers suggest the -19Wm^-2 is a gross underestimation, but that should be seen as an alarm call rather than a point of encouragement.
The -19Wm^-2 was calculated within an analysis to assist in CMIP5 modelling. It does not mean that an increase in the average cloudiness of planet Earth would result in significant global cooling as that would depend on the type of the cloud that was increasing, its location and the conditions required to create it. Yet you insist all this is irrelevant.
Your grand scheme of diverting 1,335 cu km/year of river water back onto land to increase evaporation and thus humidity and thus the cloud fraction over land is simply bonkers (and off-topic on this thread). Your idea is that a +1% increase in cloud over land would pro rata result in a -0.07WM^-2 global cloud forcing, a value great enough to reverse AGW if the land cloud fraction were to increase 1% year-on-year as you propose. Yet this ignores (among a ton of other impossible problems) the pro rata increase in humidity you envision as required for the increase in cloud. That +1% humidity over land would result in something like +0.2Wm^-2 globally and entirely overwhelm any cooling effect from your extra cloud.
So that “Get Out Of Jail Free” is actually a ticket to somewhere even more unpleasant.
@mar
Wikipedia is really made to provide everyone with basic knowledge – from talented primary/elementary school students to poorly remembered (pseudo) scientists. You just have to be able to read and enter the right topic in the search mask.
The question here is: — why did you fail — ???
a – no talent ?
b – can not read ?
c – unable to enter the right topic ?
d – can not find the search mask ?
e – all together ?
Talking about basic stuff like albedo, radiativ forcing and global radiation balance you claim :
– Albedo is not a radiative forcing
– Albedo do not depend on the wavelenght
So please be so kind and read the topics, before you leave tons of thin-minded crap here and elsewhere.
—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing
!!! * Forcing due to changes in albedo !!!
See also: Albedo, Bond albedo, and Cloud albedo
A fraction of incident solar radiation is reflected by clouds & aerosols, oceans and landforms, snow & ice, vegetation, and other natural & man-made surface features.
The reflected fraction is known as Earth’s bond albedo (R), is evaluated at the top of the atmosphere, and has an average annual global value of about 0.30 (30%).
The overall fraction of solar power absorbed by Earth is then (1-R) or 0.70 (70%).[25]
Atmospheric components contribute about three-quarters of Earth albedo, and clouds alone are responsible for half. *
—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
Surface albedo is defined as the ratio of radiosity Je to the irradiance Ee (flux per unit area) received by a surface.[1] The proportion reflected is not only determined by properties of the surface itself, but also by the !!! spectral !!! and angular !!! distribution !!! of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface.
—
mar says: – ” These numbers suggest the -19Wm^-2 is a gross underestimation, but that should be seen as an alarm call rather than a point of encouragement. ”
ms: – This number simply means that water(vapor) is the strongest GHG (+28W/m²),
– but cloud albedo is still much stronger(-47W/m²)
Your explanations indicate that you have not understood at all what CRE(cloud radiative effect) means.
That saves the rest of the communication. – thanks
macias shurly,
Basic stuff indeed. It is good to see that someone as stupid as yourself has mastered the alphabet all the way to ‘e’. Well done you!!
I don’t think there is much point in correcting the more-substantive gibberish you have served up here. It is all very basic stuff but evidently way above your understanding so explanation would be counter-productive.
@mar
thank you – that is the most pathetic answer one could expect from the most pathetic know-it-all here among the existing commentators.
If you should notice the loss of your IQ – or let`s say – the remaining 8mg of your brain-lard – just look under the sofa or behind the garage.
…or maybe have a look here back to one of your own comments:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/05/why-is-future-sea-level-rise-still-so-uncertain/comment-page-2/#comment-791801
9 JUN 2021 AT 8:16 AM
mar says:
” So perhaps the actual point of the Matthias(shurly) proposal is that humanity could boost the cooling effects of land evaporation. If such boosting were significant and remembering ‘what goes up must come down’, this would likely come with some big changes in climate, changes whose impacts may well rival AGW itself. ”
— If that’s where you find again most of your IQ – go straight back to the sofa and put it under your pillow – maybe that will help …shurly
https://climate-protecion-hardware.webnode.com/english/
macias shurly,
Are you now presenting yourself as being one-&-the-same as the wondrous Matthias Schürle who astounded us with with such ridiculous nonsense back in May?
And did that lead anywhere useful? Why do you expect your misguided ideas will have better results second time around?
Having just returned from the pub, I will look properly at your linked page at a more appropriate time to see if it really does provide the prospect of “thicker potatoes and farmer. Income.”. Maybe it will clear up some of the ridiculous nonsense you have been trying to set out previously and down this thread. But maybe it won’t.
macias shurly (aka Matthias Schürle, aka coolmaster),
I have now had a look at your web-page and it does not show any improvement on the arguments which have to-date been conclusively dismissed by commenters such as myself here at RealClimate and also at SkS.
…..
Concerning your assertion that you can reverse sea level rise by extracting 1,335 cu km of river water annually and somehow storing it in some undescribed storage: this is nonsense until the storage of what would be 13,350 cu km/decade is described.
Concerning the assertion that extra cloud will reverse AGW: evaporation over land is today roughly 70,000 cu km annually. You propose this could be ramped up by an extra 1,335 cu km annually with your diverted river water to thus increase (with the ocean evaporation contribution) the intensity of the 110,000 cu km/y water cycle over land by 1% or so annually. There is evidence that shows a wetter land surface does increase evaporation but your assertion that an annual 1% increase in cloud over land would thus cool the planet by more-than AGW is warming it; this is simple nonsense.
I know you base it on the value of today’s Cloud Radiative Effect presented by Wild et al (2019) (& described succinctly here and shown in more detail b Calisto et al 2014)y but you profoundly misinterpret/misuse the CRE concept.
I have attempted multiple times to correct you but have failed to get my message across. Let me run through some of the explanations presented to you.
♣ You laud Wikithing as a ‘first-stop’ for “basic knowledge” and Wikithing has a page for CRE. It provides a rather ancient value of CRE=-13Wm^-2 (so cooling) but goes on to say “These numbers should not be confused with the usual radiative forcing concept.” It points out that today’s total greenhouse effect is mostly caused by water vapour (which you propose to increase) and that this water-vapour-contribution to warming is boosted by cloud. Thus, while CRE demonstrates a cooling, the impact of clouds overall is warming. And if we add the associated water vapour (as you propose) it is very very warming.
♣ Simplistic calculations based on the impact of additional water vapour (at +7%/ºC) and ECS roughly being trebled by the water vapour feedback to suggest a 1% increase in the atmospheric water cycle for a third of the planet would boost AGW warming by +0.12Wm^-2 and not the -0.07Wm^-2 cooling as you insist.
♣ AQUASTAT present number showing humanity is already diverting 3,000 cu km/y of water onto land, twice the volume proposed by you, yet AGW continues apace.
♣ You web-page sports a graphic of relative humidity 1973-2020 from HadSDH. The data also shows the rise in specific humidity over land and sea running at about 1% per decade. While this is perhaps a third of the 1%/y over land so the effect could be argued as masked by AGW, If you plot the HadSDH specific humidity data for land against, say, the NOAA annual land temperatures, the fit is remarkably good with high humidity years also being hot years, so no hint of any cooling from this extra water in the atmosphere.
All the data shows you are wrong to see CRE as a way of cooling the planet. What else can be said?
@mar
In view of your lack of basic knowledge about albedo and radiative forcing, you are hardly suitable to judge my climate protection strategy … nevertheless you try again and again – and again you contradict yourself.
mar: – Concerning your assertion that you can reverse sea level rise…until the storage of what would be 13,350 cu km/decade is described.
ms: – You probably skipped sentences like these on the website:
…to replenish soil moisture and groundwater reserves…
…for rewetting of moors, wetlands and forests with an even greater total potential are shown…
& – Globally there are 4.5 million km² lakes and equally large areas of 4.5 million. km² moors and wetlands. With 1335km³ / year their level increases by 15cm.
The largest lake, the Caspian Sea (371000km²) is currently losing 11-23cm / year. Lake Aral and Lake Baikal alone have lost ~ 1335km³ in the last 40-50 years.
Below the 90 million km² of agriculture and forests you can raise the groundwater level by an average of 15 cm with ! 10 x slr.
20% more global soil moisture = ~ 1335km³.
If you then run out of storage space after 20 years, go to the deserts and subtropics. There are larger aquifers and groundwater catchment areas up to 500-1000m! deep, – often almost empty.
In addition, you did not notice that in my concept – the retained 1335km³ should initially only be stored ! seasonally in order to transform them into “artificial rain”, evaporation and clouds on site when clouds have the greatest cooling effect.
On the NH these are the weeks or months before or after June 21, when the days are long and the nights are short and when the incoming solar radiation is ~ 5 times as much as in the winter half-year.
I’m not a meteorologist, but I would bet my ass that water & evaporation in dry and hot weather predominantly leads to beautiful cumulus and thunderclouds – perfectly cooling down the global summers.
I have already pointed out to you in earlier comments that your data from Aquastat do not make any statements as to whether the water consumption of 3000km³ for irrigation is covered by groundwater – or flowing water.
While groundwater abstraction (e.g. for agriculture) often leads to a drying up of the surrounding forests and nature , – increased retention of flowing waters leads to year-round “relaxed sea- & groundwater levels” and less water scarity.
mar: – “Concerning the assertion that extra cloud will reverse AGW:…
…It points out that today’s total greenhouse effect is mostly caused by water vapour (which you propose to increase) and that this water-vapour-contribution to warming is boosted by cloud. Thus, while CRE demonstrates a cooling, —
??? — the impact of clouds overall is warming.” ???
ms:
You are completely wrong here, because you are only looking at the greenhouse effect of the clouds and completely suppressing their albedo (which has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect).
https://ramanathan.ucsd.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/460/2017/10/brt18.pdf
5.3.2 Global cloud forcing: do clouds heat or cool the planet?
The five-year global mean energy budgets for clear and cloudy regions are illustrated
in Figure 5.4. Clouds reduce the absorbed solar radiation by 48 W m−2(Cs =
−48 W m−2) while enhancing the greenhouse effect by 30 W m−2 (Cl = 30 W m−2),
and therefore clouds cool the global surface–atmosphere system by 18 W m−2(C =
−18 W m−2) on average. The mean value of C is several times the 4 W m−2 heating
expected from doubling of CO2 and thus …
!!! Earth would probably be substantially warmer without clouds. !!!
It is clear that water vapor is the most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect) and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%.
This is due to the fact that a constantly large amount of water vapor of ~ 11-12000km³ has lingered in the atmosphere for millions of years and is responsible for this huge proportion of the greenhouse effect with increasing or decreasing earth temperature according ~ to CCF.
!!! But if I evaporate 1335km³ on June 21st – this amount is removed from the atmosphere after ~ 8.5 days due to the short residence time of water vapor – even if this comparatively short residence time of the H²O is extended by the fact that my 1335km³ is increased to precipitate again over any area of land.
Even such a large volume can only give a brief feedback, but does not act as a constant GHG radiative forcing.
To put it in a picture:
A mighty water column with the volume of ~ 12400km³ (the temperature determines the volume and not the other way around, as you claim) determines the radiative forcing of the WV greenhouse effect – and not the total amount of flow / intensity of evapotranspiration (influx) and Precipitation (runoff).
Higher values than > 38W / m² for global evaporation over land area therefore improve ! always:
– the energy transport from the earth’s surface towards space,
– the cloud formation and
– counteract the sinking rH (which is a cloud killer), and which I estimate on a missing volume of ~ 160km³ in the atmosphere, which is caused by rapidly expanding deserts. (dry areas get drier).
Gavin described the water vapor feedback and its complicated GH effect here over 15 years ago: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
Conversely, your theory would mean that any less of future evapotranspiration would cool the earth.
??? – So desertification, forest fires, deforestation of (rain) forests, drainage of moors and wetlands, urban sealing, canalization of rain water & rivers, pumping out the groundwater aquifers, heat records — WELCOME – ???
P.S. — Water is life – is scarce – and you yourself are 75% water.
don`t fade away !
macias shurly (aka Matthias Schürle, aka coolmaster),
Most amusing.
On the issue of preventing SLR by the storage of all this water on land, you set out a catalogue of what you seem to consider as likely candidate storage sites. Many of these are entirely impractical. Thus, you can pour water onto moorland & wet lands (indeed this happens naturally when it rains) but how would you prevent it pouring off again (as it does after it rains)?
Of course, lakes are more helpful as they are flat so the water is more easily impounded. And the assessment of the global lake area is something in excess of 4 million sq km, about a quarter in big lakes over 1,000 sq miles and a similar area in tiny little lakes. But if you start raising the level of the world’s lakes by a significant amount as a replacement for SLR, there are then problems with Lake Level Rise which are just as disastrous as SLR. Just thinking of the lakes close to me here, as they become used year-on-year to impound more and more water, to prevent the Lake level Rise flooding you would have to pipe the river under them and pump the impounded water up into them.
It also raises the scale of the task of pumping this water out over summer months. As the water is being pumped out in increasing volumes each summer, globally 1,335 cu km increase each year, this quickly becomes a major engineering challenge. And once these reservoirs of impounded water are pumped out, sourcing the water to getting them topped up each year with these annually increasing volumes is another difficulty.
I have been involved with discussions of land storage to prevent SLR in the past but the discussions were usually in the “”what if” category. Nobody involved was driven by the conviction that it was actually a solution to SLR, nobody except you.
…
And just to continue to be annoying, on the issue of reversing AGW with extra cloud, there is in one respect a meeting of minds but I will set that out elsewhere. In the meantime may I offer this graphic for your attention which (as with the AQUASTAT graphic) rather convincingly shoots your fox.
IMO, MAR, you hit the fox squarely–only problem is it was already well and truly dead, dead, dead.
And rotten, actually.
ma rodger: – “On the issue of preventing SLR…”
ms: – An old, blind and toothless beaver apparently has more talent for holding back water than you do. YOU – as the chief of the fire brigade, you will neither find the hydrant in the event of a fire nor will you know what to do with the water if the cellar is full.
During a La Niña event, rainfall in the tropics is higher over land and lower over ocean, causing sea levels to drop because more water is stored on land.
This could be proven during the strong La Niña 2010/11 when the sea level fell because a relatively large amount of water was temporarily stored on land due to heavy rainfall over Australia, northern South America and Southeast Asia.
Since between 2005 and 2014 the rate of sea level rise due to steric and eustatic influences caused by ice melt was still around 3 mm / year, the La Niña-related drop in sea level between 2010 and 2011 was even around 5 mm / year (8mm deviation) .
So your stupid drooling was refuted by Mother Nature 10 years ago at the latest. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-satellites-detect-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas
You simply ignore centuries of continent drainage and water scarcity.
SLR has only 2 main drivers.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS.pdf
page 53
44 GMSL change is driven by warming or cooling of the ocean (and the associated expansion/contraction) and
45 changes in the amount of ice and water stored on land.
mar. – “…on the issue of reversing AGW with extra cloud…”
ms: – You can safely put your Calisto graphs in your dog’s bowl. Maybe your dog (without glasses) will mistake it for a sausage … and fry it.
Why should Prof. M. Wild & M. Calisto have the CRF on the radar better in 2014 than in 2021?
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter_07.pdf
Ch.7.2.1
…that without clouds, 47W m-2 less solar radiation is reflected back to space globally (53 ± 2 W m-2 instead of 100 ± 2 W m-2 , while 28 W m-2 more thermal radiation is emitted to space (267 ± 3 W m-2 instead of 239 ± 3 W m-2 19).
As a result, there is a 20 W m-2 radiative imbalance at the TOA in the clear-sky energy budget, suggesting that the Earth would be warm substantially if there were no clouds.
Your attempts to dissolve the net CRF of -19W / m² down towards zero over latitude or seasonal fluctuations are ridiculous.
Here you can also see the CRF of low, medium and high clouds:
https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2004-11/dong.pdf
So you didn’t hit my fox, but instead, as usual, shot yourself in the knee.
macias shurly (aka Matthias Schürle, aka coolmaster),
You ask <i"Why should Prof. M. Wild & M. Calisto have the CRF on the radar better in 2014 than in 2021?"
The quote you then provide from IPCC AR6 WG1 sec 7.2.1 may have been published in 2021 but the information it presents it describes as “Adapted from Wild et al. (2015, 2019)” while the paper Calisto et al (2014) which you wish to tear up and flush down the toilet is referenced elsewhere in section 7.2.1.
The question is not whether Wild et al (2019) presents things not set out in Calisto et al (2014). The question is whether Wild et al (2019) overturns anything set out in Calisto et al (2014). I don’t see anything overturned. Perhaps if you consider it otherwise, you should point specifically to what it is you are talking about within these papers.
(And, of course, if scientific work did operate with a “Use By” date, providing the slides from a presentation dating back to 2004 would be quite bizarre. And this 2004 work towards a CRE climatology does appear to ignore the high warming clouds which (and I am no expert) appear not to be a part of the clear sky/all sky dichotomy.)
The information provided by Calisto et al (2014) fig 7 when adapted to show the net CRE shows that the lion’s share of the global 19Wm^-2 CRE is an ocean effect. The CRE over land is quite minor, providing <10% of the global total. And sadly for your grand scheme of saving the planet (which would end up warming the planet through elevated levels of atmospheric water vapour) it is this much-diminished land CRE being targeted for enhancing.
And if you want to advance this interplay, you do need to come up with something that is evidence-based and not unsupported assertion.
@mar
Apparently, you haven’t even read the 2014 Calisto paper you cited. It merely describes:
Cloud radiative forcing intercomparison between fully coupled CMIP5 models and CERES satellite data.
They only examined the relatively large differences in net CRF between satellite-measured CERES data (-18W / m²) and some models (e.g. HadCM3 with -28.9W / ²) –
and IPCC, Prof. M. Wild, M. Calisto and colleagues have therefore used AR6 to estimate CRF close to -19W / m².
You could have found the same graphs from Calisto linked on my website: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-018-4413-y
other links there on the website show:
Recent studies show the strong influence of additional or absent water and evaporation rates on cloud formation, temperature and radiation balance etc. in the observed regions.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00245/full
The latest results (Published-online: 27 Oct 2021) for land / ocean ERF can be found at:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/aop/JCLI-D-21-0302.1/JCLI-D-21-0302.1.xml
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/34/23/full-JCLI-D-21-0302.1-f9.jpg
There is also a lot of information on water storage on land and SLR in the network.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/water-stored-on-land-stopped-recent-sea-level-rise-being-up-to-22-higher
But I guess you are and will remain a (color-)blind, vain foolish talker, …and tell your guide dog(@Kevin McKinney) that he is a guitar-playing Chihuahua guide dog – and NOT a fox terrier.
macias shurly (aka Matthias Schürle, aka coolmaster),
I did inform you in my last comment that “if you want to advance this interplay, you do need to come up with something that is evidence-based and not unsupported assertion” but a few links to random graphics etc doesn’t even begin to fulfill that requirement.
I will conclude this interchange (or at least my participation in it) by sharing with you what these comments from you have reminded me of. I am reminded of an interesting 2005 OP addressing the definition of ‘bullshit’.
MA Rodger, Are you familiar with the story Frankfurt told about how his little essay became a “very small book”? He said the publisher approached him about turning it into a book. When he complained to the publisher that he didn’t think it would be feasible because the essay was quite short, the publisher replied, “You’d be surprised what we can do with fonts and margins.”
For this reason, I have thought about purchasing the book as a pinnacle piece of absurdist art.
Killian
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
I interprete climate issues in terms of my own learnings and experience from other technical and scientific issues as I aloso do with doctors and the health system to my great advantage as far as I can judge it.
And further when it comes to environment and life sciences., and you do not quite fall into the system there., apparently lacking those further horizons of higher education for comparishion, reference, help, and control.
Your riding of rather one and only one solution and mission makes me more and more suspicious that you are not really and adequately qualified, rather someone who studied and learnt especially how to interfere and propagate and sell by knowing how to just give that impression.
A Quacksalver, we call that.
Is that really so?
“Your riding of rather one and only one solution”
You are an ignorant ankle-biter. That “one and only one” solution is comprehensively, globally, systemic. All those words and never a lick of sense in them.
I truly hate with a deep abiding passion people like you who do nothing but make ignorant, uneducated attacks on climate solutions out of nothing more than spite.
You belong in jail, you damned fool, for attempts to impede the climate response.
#EcoNuremberg for solutions obstructionists. You’re no better than climate denialists.
@ Kilolian
Thanks for your self assessment, that will be studied carefully and taken as our basis for correct calculation of your due fees and taxes!
Honesty and openness is your best polic of yourself it seems.
Go play. We need serious people. You are not one.
Killian
This seems to be wrong.
“A climate forcing ultimately comes down to the ammount of energyn kept in the system over the point of balance in/ out. No?”
That understanding rerduces climate to or confuses climate with energy and plus temperature.
Whereas climates may be both chill and hot according to Köppens climate definitions, that are not obsolete. Quite on the contrary, they are quite fruitful definitions!
Antropogene, Negative climate forcings might well be thinkable, for instance by the burning of fossile sulphur..
Try not to administer the climate or this website from a laymans and a “freshmans” and idiotic, uneducated standpoint or with provincial, ideological blinkerss., will you.
Why do you think I had to discuss drunken sailors and what we shall do with them early in the morning?
Sorry, Sock Puppet (how is it your comments go from normal English to indecipherable babble?), but I *do*, exactly, choose, and counsel others to also, speak of these topics in such a way kay persons can understand it,
The balance of of heat vs energy of the planet is not a distinction that matters to them, It matters to scientists for whom the specifics of DOING research and experiments depend on being very careful with these terms, but for laypersons dealing with the endpoint of it all: Heating or not heating – these are distinctions without a difference.
Unlike you, I know exactly what I mean to say. And when I don’t, I say so.
Bye, Felicia. You’re back on ignore.
Ladie4s and Gentleme
To all and everyone
We took up the boat today and had it on land, prepared it for the winter, and I had a plastic bag of Vitis vinifera from our sunny wall for lunch. No time for easting but as we came home, they all did taste clearly Diesel.
I have had it before, when they grow in the roses, Rosa Villosa that smells Balsam and late summer all over, they really get the “bouquet” of that.
So it is not to be laughed of and denied that “vino” is quite especially sensditive to which Chateau and environment and on the meter that is french, not even in feet and handwidths.
It is an obscure sort where we did it historically correct and stole the clones, but it comes out near to a Muscal biancho a petites grains.
Apples plums and ribes are not near to being that sensitive to local odeurs. They rather have their own and strong characters.
I don’t know what the answers are but fwiw the phys.org article says
“The Earth is now reflecting about half a watt less light per square meter than it was 20 years ago”
and
“That’s the equivalent of 0.5% decrease in the Earth’s reflectance. Earth reflects about 30% of the sunlight that shines on it.”
so that seems like a small change, but do they mean 30 less 0.5 =29.5% or do they mean a decrease of 0.5% of 30% which equals only 0.15 off 30% = 29.85% ???
there they talk about light, reflection, whereas in the paper they then talk about climate forcing in the conclusion:
“The two-decade decrease in earthshine-derived albedo corresponds to an increase in radiative forcing of about 0.5 W/m2 which is climatologically significant..”
and
” The albedo shows a decline corresponding to a net climate forcing of about 0.5 W/m2″
PLus generally earthshine compare ell with CERES, howeveragain in the conclusion it says:
“The CERES data show an even stronger trend of decreasing global albedo over the most recent years,”
In 3.3 saying:
“while for CERES data, 2001–2017, the decrease of about 1.5 W/m2 is significant at the level of 0.06. We note that the CERES data shows no trend after the first two years (2001 and 2002) until the sharp downturn beginning in 2015. ”
also in this earlier paper up to 2014, by same authors they noted albedo was quite stable.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL068025
and in that paper they also say :
“Now the changes in albedo are straightforwardly translated into changes in reflected energy flux at the TOA in W/m2 (see Pallé et al. [2004] for details).”
It would be nice if someone could answer Killians understandable queries in a straightforward manner. Maybe explain the above “conclusions” in simple english, and explain if there is or isn’t anything of import in this, and why that is so.
I sure do not comprehend it. To me (and suspect others) it’s confusing how they shift terminology (eg from light reflection to energy flux/climate forcing jargon) and obviously I and others do not understand the math of it.
Thanks very much.
MAR does not like to play with non-experts. Simple questions confuse him. ;-)
Killian
A fool can ask more than 10 wise men can answer.
Their being fools or not so wise at all may simply come from that their questions, that they feel are quite simple and should be easy to answer, are actually very clumsy, unqualified and foolish and hardly solvable or comprehensible as such.
When I think it over, I come to think that , rather this can explain why so many fools are so foolish , stupid, ignorant and unqualified.
Asking the right questions and stating the questions and the problems on possible solvable form is quite an art, that takes both training, experience, and intelligence.
Think it over pleace.
Does anybody read your posts? I do Responding to anything I post is waste of your time – particularly when you are posting in opposition to something I know to be factually accurate… which has been typical. But, hey, you do you.
(I am an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher if you want lessons or editing. I charge too fair prices.)
Does anybody read your posts? I don’t.
Fixed it.
Genosse:
There are many tricks to make people read.
If I wite: @ all and everyone About Killian,.. I can be very sure that Killian will get it and read it.
I was especialoly trained for secret service from WW2 veterans in that service, as a youngster (For the case of any WW3), and could check it up and train on it in several ways
afterwards, by traveling through and behind the iron curtain and have contact by reliable people there, who rather sustained all what we had learnt about having to live also behind the iron curtain and cross the closed boarders..
And got high thanks from 2 of them long afterwards. I helped them to flee.
And further really in relation to our own civil service in the case of that fameous one- party- state, the dictatorship of dilettantism. when BIG ARSH! is sitting in the high chair.
They are surely members of the fameous Party with P. That makes it easy.
I could get B..A. (d/o) to lift off from his chair and out the big door with head first and arsh very soon after, many times.
And all kinds of further closed societies and burglar- shops. The more closed and hierarchic, uniformed, secret, doped, shaved, perfumed, the easier.
And learnt in Praha Ceskoslovensko at the University there, that SENSOR behind the iron curtain shall only have rat- poison in cheapest paper, sent to him by express registered mail. That, he eats! And dies slowly and painfully. It works each time as it surely did in the CSSR.
It is the psychology and physiology of peoples republics , burglars nests, and any further kinds of secret, stabbern, stupidity in charge.
Piet Hein (Danish philosopher and poet) Andre Bjerke (N. d/o) who also was banned and embargoed for a while, Vaclav Havel, and Umberto Eco have all published on it. On the psyche of the blind chief or “hon.” editor & owner of the national, progressive media monopoly.
I have written ” Arrrrrr beierrrr… rrrrraaaaa ogipraxxisss!” = the workers in praxis. That goes right into the automatic filter is sorted aside, and gets eaten by a highest secret anonymeous deputy..
Or “NN is a son of a bitch”, in every second sentence, given that NN , a son of a Bitch, is in charge anywhere.
Or just mention sniffdogs and urine tests, and write “…rrrrrraaaaaa!” in a sentence next by. That scratches and hurts deeply in the nerves..
That “ra” is vulgar plural in a very holy and tense word, the workers.
It takes chemists (Due analytical logics and trai9ning) you see, not English Teachers who are often some of the more stupid, to look right through things and down under the surfaces of the enclosures and describe what really is inside there.
And people are so honest in my direction.
Your ego is getting the better of your judgment. E.g., the above is all I read of that post. Literally any post addressed to me I know is going to be full of stupid bullshit, so I don’t read them. You established your pattern REALLY quickly because you have been very consistently a crap contributer to any issue I discuss here.
Some people lie easily and often in one way or another, but I am not one of them. When I say I don’t read your posts, that is exactly what I mean.
Genossin
Your disadvantage then is that orher people read it, understand and think and laugh behind your back..
We have stung and poisoned and worn down national and soviet unions that way before.
It works each time, slowly and painfully.
That Iron Curtain is symptomatic and not so healthy.
0,5% = 0,5W/m² because albedo of incoming solar short wave = 100W/m² in the global energy balance. 100W/m² : 340W/m²(solar constant) = ~0,3 earth albedo https://climate-protecion-hardware.webnode.com/_files/200000026-4921049212/all_clearsky-1.png?ph=02adf5ae1c
MS: 0,5% = 0,5W/m² because albedo of incoming solar short wave = 100W/m² in the global energy balance.
BPL: Total incoming energy is 340 W m-2, so the actual difference in the balance would then be 0.15%.
We are talking about an albedo that has decreased by 0.5%, which equates to a radiative forcing of + 0.5W / m².
In general, reflection & reflectivity is probably not your strength.
So we can add Albedo to the list of climatological concepts that the troll macias shurly is incapable of understanding.
MS: In general, reflection & reflectivity is probably not your strength.
BPL: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! You don’t know much about me, do you?
@mar – you will never understand albedo because you claim that albedo is not wavelength dependent:
” Firstly, within the deleted comment @95 (still visible to commenters), you state that “albedo is … depends primarily on the wavelength of the light that hits the body/molecule.” This is not correct. The reflected light is pretty-much independent of wavelength being no more than “bluish”. ”
https://skepticalscience.com/search.php?t=c&Search=albedo
MS: The reason a green tree appears green to most human eyes is – they absorb blue and red wavelengths through chlorophyll and reflect the green. (primary school)
But Neanderthal cavemen (@BPL) and privat *** 2.3mm/yr/yr *** borehole owners like you will shurly sit in the dark – discussing light/clouds/&colors – until the end of the story. – ridiculous – !
To clarify for those wondering, the troll marcias shurly, as well as telling us all that trees have green leaves solely because they reflect green light (if you didn’t know, that is the reason), he was also trying to link to an interchange over at SkS where he appeared as the commenter Coolmaster and spouted forth crazy nonsense without a pause until he was “recused” from commenting at SkS. Further craziness can be found here at RC briefly in the Sept UV thread as well as in the Crank Shaft.
Ray,
We could make the word “shurly” the center of a new neopagan religion. Then we could have a…
You can see it coming, can’t you?
…A SHURLY TEMPLE!
(Rimshot)
MS: But Neanderthal cavemen (@BPL) and privat *** 2.3mm/yr/yr *** borehole owners like you will shurly sit in the dark – discussing light/clouds/&colors – until the end of the story.
BPL: Thank you, Macias. It’s nice of you to remember that Homo neanderthalensis was MORE encephalized than modern Homo sapiens, with an encephalization quotient of 7.3 compared to the modern 7.2.
BTW, the adverb you want is “surely.” “shurly” isn’t a word.
Hmm, perhaps “shurly” should be a word?
Definition candidates?
shurly is shurly a word –
i guess you don`t know what a word IS
PS one of those papers I read it also says they convert “albedo light/reflection” data from both methods (Earthshine and CERES) into W/M2 units in order to equally compare the two sets of results (on the same yardstick) – Why I don’t know but that’s what they said.
PPS it’s mystifying why straight answers to questions are so hard to come by at times and/or end up in the mud so often. Oh well, mine is not to reason why …..
Yeah… there was a thread on this on Twitter, but it couldn’t get answered there, either.
I figure the deafening silence is either because this is really bad news or it’s junk science. I’d REALLY like to know which. MAR clearly thinks it’s junk, but who can tell what he actually said about it? He’s really got to figure out that whole explain-it-to-6-year-old thing.
PPPS one of the authors of Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Koonin
which is odd?
Yes, and perhaps why MAR cited it as possible denialism. I don’t see how saying climate is reducing cloud-effect albedo can be interpreted as denialism, though.
You should never listen to color-blind persons – talking about albedo !
https://skepticalscience.com/search.php?t=c&Search=albedo
Yes, the colour of things in addition to their darkness / brightness, plays quite a role for how much they are heated in direct sunshine. And the earth is quite colourful
“Albedo” is maybe a too unspecific term if that is not extra calibrated and the result is wanted in Watts / sq.meter, in sunshine.
But it is obvious and so well known from classical photography with densitometry, from general spectrophotometry and from astronomy, that I can hardly believe that it has not been conscidered.
Looki at .5 / 1350 That is a change of 0.0003703 is 0. 37 promille. I woulod say quite at the limit of what can be taken serious in that kind of fluctuating turbulent noisy systems .
If really measured so accurately, then it is extreemly stable and perhaps beyond what I will believe in.
Hr. Kohlenstoffberg,
Your ideas about albedo are not quite as hair-raising as those of our pathetic, unhappy co-commentator MA Rotger, but they also have serious flaws:
C:
” Yes, the colour of things in addition to their darkness / brightness, plays quite a role for how much they are heated in direct sunshine. And the earth is quite colourful
“Albedo” is maybe a too unspecific term if that is not extra calibrated and the result is wanted in Watts / sq.meter, in sunshine. ”
MS:
1. the color of things IS their brightness or darkness. Take a black&white picture of a colored area with suitable film material and you will get a gray value that you can classify between black (0) and white (1).
2. The (earth) albedo is a factor e.g. 100W / m²: 340W / m² = 0.3
therefore it has no unit, although the reflected W / m² can easily be calculated if the incident light energy is known in W / m².
Not the light intensity, but the spectral wavelength distribution of the light and the shape of the surface (smooth / rough) can change the albedo. (a fact that Mr. Rotger just cannot believe & understand)
3. The albedo (but also the knowledge about it) remains unspecific as long as it is not specified. For the third time, therefore, the same link here – there you can specify extensively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
You can find another clear work on the topic here:
https://elib.dlr.de/100350/1/Bachelorarbeit_VeraGebhardt.pdf
The earth’s albedo is difficult to measure because it changes its value every nano-second. When a cloud with a = 0.5 covers the surface of the sea (0.1), it has a cooling effect – 3 seconds later over ice or a light sandy beach, the same cloud has a warming effect.
For example, a cloud can also reflect short-wave light, which is directed upwards through the albedo, downwards again. So it’s like guarding and counting a whole sack of fleas.
Defined over all irradiating wavelengths (0.1nm – 100km) and measured over very long (oceanic) periods of time, the albedo forms a linear function with the earth temperature, if all other influences remain the same. After all, it also defines the proportion of energy that is absorbed.
As a Kohlenstoff-expert, you can certainly tell me whether CO² molecules have an albedo – or not – think about it.
Belatedly, on the ‘possible denialism’ issue–there’s a subspecies of denialist whose business it is to use research to create FUD on the climate issue. The prototype–or maybe archetype–is probably ‘notrickszone’, although Milloy’s ironically aptly named “junk science” site is another notable example. There are lots of freelancers doing the same think less formally on Twitter and other platforms.
So, if that sort of person sees a paper that says that albedo changes are contributing to warming, they will look for a sentence that sounds as if such changes are solely or largely driving warming. (They don’t, and won’t, ask what might be driving the albedo changes, because they don’t care. Their principle is “ABC”–Anything But Carbon–and there is zero regard for, or interest in, anything that might go by the name “objective truth.”) They will then highlight, hype, or excerpt that sentence, (usually) repeating it numerous times in order to drive the message home and to get maximum possible exposure.
I’m not sure, because this is in part an ongoing Gish Gallop and it just gets hard to remember let alone keep track, but I think I may have seen that very paper so used on Twitter in the last couple of months.
Reality Check,
Koonin appears as a co-author for all this series of research. I assume this is because he is considered to have proposed the method (which he apparently did “in a 1991 paper”) and possibly not because he today contributes significantly to the work.
Regarding the study of Earthshine, I had failed to find reference on-line to any 1991 paper in which “Steven E. Koonin described its modern potential” as claimed. I had assumed this was because it was some conference paper but it occurred to me that even if it was a conference paper, that first published paper in this series attempting to realise this “potential” should have given reference to it, if the 1991 paper was real. So I had a proper look at that first published paper and there is the reference, not a 1991 paper and with Koonin but a co-author – Flatté et all, (1992) ‘Global Change and the Dark of the Moon’.
Good morning Al (UTC),
(Or do you prefer MAR? In which case my apologies)
“Koonin appears as a co-author for all this series of research. I assume this is because he is considered to have proposed the method”
Perhaps it’s more because Steve Koonin is now something of a celebrity in certain “skeptical” quarters?
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/tag/steve-koonin/
Jim Hunt,
Good morning (UTC).
As his vacuous book published this Spring suggests, Koonin is certainly trying hard to brand himself as a main-player in the denialist swamp with his three main qualifications for this position being his job in the Obama administration (gained because he knew the appointed Energy Secretary, Prof Chu), his professor’s chair (in Urban Science not climatology, again with associations to that Prof Chu ) and his ability to spout nonsense on demand.
His colours are now very firmly nailed to the denialist mast, yet academia usually tries to rise above the personal and will go that extra mile in ignoring such problematical associations.
Yet these papers describing work on Earthshine to identify planetary albedo exhibit some poor scientific content as well as seemingly ignoring its own symptoms of denialism. Thus, while discussion of the implications of changing albedo would be perhaps expected from a team trying to promote the significance of its work (as all research teams are want to do), for some reason they do thump out too much of a denialist agenda. Their consideration of Svenmark even back in 2001 was inappropriate, and they continue with it in 2021. The use of the word “hiatus” is ill-advised. The cursory PDO discussion as a driver of albedo change is entirely inappropriate. The paper also manage to down-play net AGW forcing 1998-2017.
While this could all be explained by poor science, it could also suggest a team riven with denialist input.
(And MAR is here probably less confusing for other thread-browsers.)
Denying Darwin is not to be sceptic.
they are less aware of that over there in the states.
regarding comments – work on Earthshine to identify planetary albedo …… consideration of Svenmark ….. poor science … denialist input…..and more
Thx for the info. Seriously. It’s better late than never. What I do not understand is why information like this is overlooked/ withheld in responses to genuine questions about the efficacy / value / import of the earthshine paper the first time round? (but mine is not to reason why, so, it doesn’t matter. )
While I may not instantly get the implications, there’s enough info there for me and others on RC to look up and be wary/circumspect about the paper’s conclusions and the PR reports.
It also begs the question how such pr material ends up on a Phs.org website but I think I worked that out long ago, it’s par for the course unfortunately. ie NEVER trust a journalistic article explaining the value or credibility of the latest science/academic paper to hit the presses.
I was told RC was created for this very reason, as a trusted venue to ask questions, seek knowledge etc., here to help in overcoming such shortcomings in media reporting (or confusing complex papers) about Climate Science. What does show up is great, I have wondered about all the lost opportunities too but that’s a waste of time too and doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. :)
aha, that makes sense. thank you.
Regarding the reducing albedo issue. The article states “The Earth is now reflecting about half a watt less light per square meter than it was 20 years ago, with most of the drop occurring in the last three years of earthshine data…”
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-earth-dimming-due-climate.html
But the graph in the same article doesn’t show anything like most of the drop occurring in the last three years. It clearly looks like a gradual drop over about 20 years. Is the articles claim about the last three years a misprint? Or what?
Questions and Answers
I’ve been answering some questions lately, and it seems to me that there are certain answers that people have a hard time accepting. The first is:
“It depends.”
The problem with that, of course, is that it requires the questioner to do a better job of constructing the question. Now, just above, I have critiqued both MAR and NOAA for imprecise and confusing language. But it works both ways; if you want the answer to a complicated question, you have to demonstrate that you understand the answers to simple questions… that means knowing what the words mean and what the underlying principles are. And you have to be precise and consistent in using those words.
So, what is the question? Is it:
“Holding all other factors constant, will a one-time permanent reduction in planetary albedo result in a level of energy in the new climate system equilibrium state that is higher than it was in the previous equilibrium state?” ?
C’mon, people, do you really need MAR to answer that for you?
But if the question is
“Given the complexity of the climate system and the potential for changes that affect the conversion and retention of incoming radiant energy in various forms, how much will a given one-time permanent reduction in planetary albedo change the level of climate system energy in the new equilibrium state from the level in the previous equilibrium state?”
…we come to the other answer people don’t like:
“It’s the models, stupid.”
I think MAR should just stick to coming up with some basic numbers… that’s interesting/valuable to me because I am too lazy to do it myself. But beyond that it becomes speculation until you plug things in to the models.
Honestly, my impression really is that people are picking up on permafrost methane and albedo changes and such so they can have something to OMG worry about… other than the upcoming election, when this could all become moot, because depending on how it goes, we might indeed end up pulling all that FF out of the ground and burning it. Just sayin’.
Sorry, zeb, ol’ friend, ol’ pal, but gotta dissergree! That there is yer whay and it ain’t ever’body’s way, no way, no how. As a teacher m’self of some two decades acrossed four differnt dis’plines and ev’ry age poss’ble, one thing ya gotta do is hear with yer ears open, an’ that connected with yer mind and that open so’s ya know what the person is *really* askin’.
If ya cain’t do that, ya cain’t teach worth a goldarn. The ‘parently ‘pocryphal quote from that jokin’ joker Feynman about exsplainin’ things to a 6-year-old? You freakin’ bet’cha.
Expectin’ non-experts in yer field to unnerstan’ yer jibberdy-jabble is foolish an’ arr-o-gant. An’ jes’ mean, frankly, Shirley. (But ya doesn’t has to call me Johnson!) Jes’ b’cause a person ain’t had yer learnin’ doesn’t mean they ain’t got smarts up the wazoo, frien’. Spoke clearly enough, many right smart peoples is runnin’ round this world an’ able to git what yer cookin’, but widout yer experiences. So, ya should be kind an sy it to ’em so’s they can git the idea of the thing, and then theys can sit at the table with the a-dults and help solve a thing er two. (Usin’ the “royal” you in all the above.)
It ain’t about percission, it’s ’bout commun’cation. I tells my students ever day don’t be worryin’ ’bout perfection first ’cause that’ll slow ya down; jes git yer idea from yer head to t’others hea and you done did 100 per-cent of what ya needed to do.
If you cain’t hear the questin’ bein’ asked, yer the problem.
(It behooves the patronizers among us to remember the science is getting pretty clear on what success really is: Luck,)
@ all and everyone
Here we have it again, Plain English,/ Englisher Platt over there in the states.
And he shall be a teacher. His paid duty if legally qualified and employed and paid, is to give it in Harward,or Berkeley or just in a very few other responsible and valid dialects and forms, and not along with his own private regrettable mother with her silly talking “tounge”.
To be a son of a bitch hardly qualifies anyone.
=========000
En Hund og ei Bikkje, a Hound and a Bitch. = Canis familiaris Masculinum and Femininum. = viking language abroad after they fucked over those islands and got worshipped by those mothers for that.
Shakespeare took it and wrote it.
Denmark Sweden and England is lacking masculinum and femininum article and conjugation. All other responsible languages have got it.
Thus, it is reasons to believe that the Danes came and did it first.
Carbo, I can’t honestly say I have “no idea” what you are talking about. Clearly, something about linguistics and the phrase “son of a bitch” (which, however, I have no interest in pursuing backwards up the thread.)
But I can say I have very little idea *why* you are talking about it. Your whimsy can be charming, but quite often it is very confusing indeed.
Well, it is rather for Hr.Killian, who tells now that he is an egli9sh foreign teacher.
Then he ought to know that term and that role in Shakespeares “a midsummer night`s dream” .
……..and its origin indeed. A Hound and a Bitch comes from en Hund og ei Bikkje.
I wrote “Gasgushers” that was corrected to guzzers. on behalf of the natives over there in the states.
By people who cannot recall the word and write it wrong. For me it is elementary obvious. Knowing both Gausdal and Geysirs and gosh and gustav and gufs & cetera. It is a widely used onomatopoeticon, maybe even Sanskrit.
Further, I am teasing everyones Englischer Platt / Plain English, that is next to Eliza Doolittles fameous “Talkin`”
Mr Killian gave us a long example of that. So I countered by even more tricky words for him.
A new PNAS study concludes that ice melange needs to be included in models – determining how fast ice-shelfs retreat.
“The simulations indicate that thinning of the ice mélange by 10 to 20 m is sufficient to reactivate the rifts and trigger a major calving event, thereby establishing a link between climate forcing and ice shelf retreat that has not been included in ice sheet models. Rift activation could initiate ice shelf retreat decades prior to hydrofracture caused by water ponding at the ice shelf surface.” https://climatestate.com/2021/10/03/discovery-mechanism-of-ice-melange-thinning-suggests-antarcticas-ice-sheets-could-retreat-faster
Current estimates on SLR may happen decades earlier – accelerated climate impacts, perhaps comparable with a hockeystick trend.
Thus, adequate management of climate impacts will become a dominant task – for instance involving:
– Moving of people from flood prone coasts
– Management of critical coastal infrastructure
– Cleanup
– Higher dikes
– Uptick in crime (Impacts may result in more people with financial troubles)
– Influx of migrants
– Food and water issues
– Health issues
Told ya so.
Of course you did. But only after I told you so.
Actually, pontificating is easy and one has quite a large chance of being substantially correct.
But backing one’s beliefs with data and math takes work.
Perhaps you should try apples to apples. What were scientists saying to their spouses and other intimates back in those days?
So, let me see…. you want me to do your job AND my job while you do only yours? Hardly seems fair. I don’t pontificate, I analyze, and I do it really, really, really well in pretty much any subject area, so…
You do your research and I’ll do my original thinking and best-in-class analysis, eh?
Or perhaps you’d like to match your list of innovative ideas and concepts you’ve come up with against mine, since I only “pontificate” and don’t, you seem to think, actually DO anything.
Also, when you’ve sold everything to put your money where your mouth is, move your family 9k miles and start up a program to teach people regenerative skills, then maybe you can talk.
I point out that I’ve been right about things because nobody fucking listens and I hope at some point the list will be so overwhelming they won’t be able to stupidly stick the goddamned heads in the sand when I say something.
My post was a commentary on boastfulness, with a dash of, “Other folks’ work is usually not as easy as it appears from the outside”.
Since you missed the point (which had nothing to do with me other than linking us as amateurs so as to compare us both to the professional you are dismissing.), I restate:
Yes, you and I can comment but passing peer review takes time and effort. I would guess (and it is just a guess) that 1/4 of the regs here have “records of accuracy” at least as good as yours.
I’d also guess we’re in general agreement on “scientific reticence”. That’s the other crummy side of this coin.
I didn’t miss the point. You did. You’re falling in with all the idiots here who have said for 6 years now I am speaking boastfully or egotistically because they’re too goddamned lay and biased to actually THINK.
I will say it again. I am a layperson. I cannot point to papers and articles in science publications. I can only point to my record. The things I have analyzed and come to conclusions about are no different than scientists citing their work. Are Schmidt, Mann, et al., supposed to never reference the work they have done? That’s just stupid, is it not?
That is all I am doing. I am pointing to a long, and ever getting longer, list of analyses that have been as accurate or more accurate than, well, pretty much anyone I know of. I do this in the hopes people will listen.
If you are stupid enough to join the Peanut Gallery, then, please, do enjoy yourself in that shithole. Otherwise, do not insult me with this bullshit in the future.
@ all and everyone here
Question: What shall we do with that obviously drunken sailor early in the morning,…..?????
Some suggestions:
1. Lock ‘im in the hold with the Captain’s daughter.
2. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
3. Chuck ‘im in a longboat till he’s sober.
Anything but learn, eh, jgnfld?
I’d say show me your list of predictions, scenarios and socio-economic-political innovations to save us all from the Perfect Storm but, gee, you don’t *have* one.
Who is most likely to attack innovations? Those who 1. cannot understand them and 2. those who have never made any.
Thanks, Chris. That adds a lot of clarity to the interview w/ Dr. Rignot, which I saw first, and which was my introduction to the term “ice melange.”
This seems like a promising finding scientifically, although in the climatic respect not so much.
Some well deserved recognition for climate scientists!!!!
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/summary/
Yes , that will be really interesting.
I somehow pondered on the same problems during the same years, so it may have been “lying in the air” and have made my practical solutions, by reducing it to what I can possibly tackle.
Then I am curious to meet the climate- surrealists again here in Oslo. They have closed down their tavern meetings for 2 years now because of Corona.
How will they tackle those nobel prices also?
Maybe I can go there and help them if their meetings are opening again?
Great article about attribution science…that anti-scientific method/climate change deniers here (KIA, Victor, etc.) won’t read or understand of course:
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-attribution-science-linking-climate-extreme.html
“(KIA, Victor, etc.) won’t read or understand of course:.”
But, you’re still going have to endure his “expert” opinion. Lol
Where can I find my eraser to take care of those pesky ancient ideas about uranium and fossil carbon being “forms of energy?” Who or what (eg. “military-industrial complex”) came up with that idiocy. Of course, they are instead forms of matter. So what is the matter? Oh yes, we are still in the New Dark Age. Cooking life on earth seems to be “economical.”
@ Solar Jim
Have you ever heard of potencial energy?
I need no think in terms of ugly military – industrial complexes in order to find or to think of or to make the use of potencial energy. It is as common and as practical and useful as that.
The Copernicus ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for September with a global SAT anomaly of +0.40ºC, the highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date and a up on the August anomaly of +0.31ºC. (The Jan-Aug 2021 monthly anomalies sat in the range +0.06ºC to +0.33ºC.)
Sept 2021 is the 2nd warmest Sept on the ERA5 record behind 2020 (+0.43ºC) and ahead of 2019 (+0.38ºC), 2016 (+0.36ºC), 2017 (+0.28ºC), 2015 (+0.27ºC) & 2018 (+0.20ºC).
September 2021 is the 24th highest anomaly in the all-month EAR5 record.
The first nine months of 2021 averages +0.24ºC and is the 6th warmest start-to-the-year on the ERA5 record. For the full calendar year to climb into 5th spot above 2018 wound require the 2021 Oct-Dec monthly anomalies to average above +0.32ºC while to retain 6th spot above the El Niño-boosted 2015 wound require the 2021 Aug-Dec monthly anomalies to average above +0.22ºC.
…….. Jan-Sept Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.40ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.35ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th
2018 .. +0.25ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 5th
2021 .. +0.24ºC
2015 .. +0.19ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 6th
2010 .. +0.16ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 7th
2014 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.11ºC … … … 8th
1998 .. +0.08ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 15th
2005 .. +0.08ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 9th
2007 .. +0.06ºC … … … +0.04ºC … … … 13th
2013 .. +0.05ºC … … … +0.07ºC … … … 10th
And ENSO-neutral for the last 3 months, at that–though prior it was Nina, so you might expect some uptick. But the last Nino month was September of 2019.
https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php
But they’re calling a 70-80% chance of renewed Nina this winter.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
Moderators. off-topic. Can we get the “Others Opinions” links back? The new format has a clean look, and I guess it’s nice to be able to share content on Plurk, but I used your list as my route to quick check-ins on Open Mind, Eli Rabett, and Then Then There’s Physics etc. Can you find room?
R.Creager
I tend to agree. They are very torerant and I am not ex- communicated yet, but on such websites we meet people where we share interests and experience just of that kind “other opinions”. It is often difficult to mix it into the suggested and given categories in a way that can be defended. The “off topic” file is important in order for us to be on topic also.
Dan Salkovitz: Great article about attribution science…that anti-scientific method/climate change deniers here (KIA, Victor, etc.) won’t read or understand of course:
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-attribution-science-linking-climate-extreme.html
V: Thanks for the link to this very interesting publication, Dan. I did in fact read it. And you are right, I don’t understand it. Perhaps you could help me out with the following excerpt:
“Attribution studies then run identical climate models under two scenarios. In the first, greenhouse gas concentrations are kept constant at some level from the past before humans started burning fossil fuels, and the climate model is run over, say, a 150-year period. This is called the “counterfactual world”—the world that might have been. For the second scenario, the climate model goes back in time again, plugging in the actual greenhouse gas concentrations for each year as they increased over time. By comparing the results from the two modeled scenarios, scientists can estimate how much human emissions from fossil fuel activity have shifted the odds. Statistical methods are then used to quantify the differences in severity and frequency of the event.”
What I don’t understand is the difference between the “counterfactual” model and the model where “the actual greenhouse gas concentrations” are “plugged in.” It looks to me as though the author is assuming ahead of time that “the actual greenhouse gas concentrations” are responsible for the rising temperatures so often associated with “anthropogenic climate change.” But isn’t that what attribution studies are designed to test? If the rising temperatures are not primarily driven by greenhouse gas emissions after all, as so many skeptics have argued, then the comparison between the “counterfactual world” and the real world of extreme weather events is pointless, no? After all, the extreme weather could be due to natural variability, as so many skeptics have argued.
This looks very much to me like a circular argument, where the evidence for attribution is based on an attribution already assumed ahead of time. In other words, the author’s attribution of greenhouse gases to extreme events caused by rising temperatures is based on the prior assumption that greenhouse gases are responsible for the rising temperatures, thus ruling out any other possible cause.
So Dan. Since you understand this paper and I don’t, please explain where I’ve gone wrong.
Q: But isn’t that what attribution studies are designed to test?
A: Nope
Victor,
Try laying off with the rhetorical devices, and you might be taken a bit more seriously.
You actually think you understand it better than Dan, and even better than the authors, because you claim you can see the (alleged) circularity of their logic and (supposedly) they can’t. You might as well come out and admit to your misplaced confidence rather than pretend to be humble.
Try reading it again – this time, with a genuine desire to understand,
It’s not that hard, unless you are saddled with preconceptions and a barely concealed desire to misunderstand.
Victor wrote:
“It looks to me as though the author is assuming ahead of time that “the actual greenhouse gas concentrations” are responsible for the rising temperatures so often associated with “anthropogenic climate change.”
No, the author does not have assume this ahead of time, unless you think that CO2 can absorb radiation is an assumption and that we have a decent understanding of how much it absorbs at different wavelengths. If you think that this is assumptions you claim that physics science is only assumptions and that make it hard to discuss anything.
The counterfactual world is then a model in which you try to include external changes are included e.g. solar radiation, solar cycle, deforestation, aerosol pollution …… Can you then explain the warming? You may argue that there may be other factors that we do not know about and that this invalidates the experiment. If that is your argument then you are arguing that we can not know anything because there is always unknown factors.
You can correlate the temperature timeseries with a billion other measurements and perhaps you will find a correlation. Given that this may be random you will either have to give a causal relationship or you may claim that this is none of your concern and that other should look into that.
Then at least the “counterfactual” world is turned into the model “real world” by adding measured greenhouse gas concentrations. To repeat myself you still do not assume that the greenhouse gases warm the Earth, only how it changes the radiation.
Then you can always discuss if the feedbacks and properties respond correctly to the change in radiation, but that has nothing to do with the assumptions.
The
A simple explanation for you: When any experiment or model is run, it is done with a control. (Sadly this is another example of you not having learned the scientific method.) In this case, with and without actual greenhouse gas concentrations. With the result being seeing the effect of greenhouse gas forcings when added.. There is no assumption. You run the experiment or model and see what the results are. One way or the other.
Ah, so you’ve read the paper. You just didn’t understand it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3adcbEwSM
It appears that you haven’t understood the entire point of these attribution studies. It is not to say whether CO2 is responsible for the current warming. This is simply an established fact to all but the most blinkered, idiotic denialist. The goal of the studies is to show that the observed phenomena are much more likely in a warming world than they would be in a pre-industrial world. That is, they seek to show that what would be a nearly inconceivable occurrence is precisely what we expect for this “new normal”.
Dan will speak for himself, no doubt, but since you asked…
You think you see circular reasoning, but in fact there are two questions in play. First, the question you have in mind:
Second, the question the attribution researchers have in mind:
To the researchers, question #1 was decisively answered decades ago. They’re not interested in rehashing what some folks like to call “settled science.” (Yeah, I know, Popper. “Whatevs.”)
You disagree, which is unfortunate. But until you learn a little intellectual humility, there’s little more we can do for you.
Ironically, it is the Victors of the world that really boosted my confidence in the science of global warming over the years. Their inability to read a simple paper and discuss it on its own merits shows how empty their arsenal is. I mean, the arguments for the science of global warming are convincing enough already, but to me they are given much more weight by the work of people like Victor, who happily and unknowingly reveal the idiocy of denialism, over and over and over, all wrapped up with misplaced smugness.
(By “simple”, I don’t mean simple to write, BTW; I mean simple to read and understand.)
The models don’t assume that CO2 causes warming, they explicitly calculate the additional energy retained in the system by the infrared radiative properties of CO2(the greenhouse effect), water vapor(positive feedback), cloud formation(positive or negative feedback, depending on density, altitude, time of day, season, etc), They model the weather, and in the increasing CO2 model, the additional energy alters CAPE, absolute humidity, polar tropical temperature gradient, jet stream velocity, Raleigh wave amplitude and group velocity etc. All the differences in the two models affect weather patterns, and statistically significant differences in extreme weather have been caused by chains of events leading back(through mathematical calculations) to increased CO2 – I.E. attribution.
You’re misinterpreting the intent of attribution studies. They are not intended to prove or demonstrate that CO2 is responsible for warming. That’s not actually a question in the real world. They’re intended to quantify the contributions of different physical forcings to the total warming over time.
Sadly your spot on comment will go right over his head because it does not jive with his pre-conceived, anti-science agenda/ignorance. And it would mean he would have to admit to being wrong which he can’t since he is too insecure and coward to do so even after being shown and proven wrong time and time again.
Gentlemen:
I found a quote from the fameous Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“If people never did silly things then nothing intelligent would ever get done!”
In that way, Victor contributes to it.
Watt Is A Joule?
I was trying to play Socrates earlier with MA Rodger; I guess he doesn’t want to admit he was even a little wrong. But I think this is a good illustration of my usual theme about clarity/precision of language, and dialogue requiring that people start on the same page, so I will give it a new comment.
I have been criticizing the claim that “energy in equals energy out” in various writing. I make the claim that, if we use Es for the energy in the climate system, then
Ein = Eout + Es
To demonstrate this, let us begin with a cold Earth orbiting an inert mass (the Sun). What passes for “the climate system” is a frozen surface covered with frozen water and gases.
At T-zero we turn on the Sun, and it produces radiant energy that is absorbed by the climate system (Ein); some is converted to thermal energy and latent heat (Es), giving us the climate system as we understand it today, with water and atmosphere. In addition, radiant energy is produced that goes to space (Eout) from the planet.
Let’s say that between T-zero and T-one, Ein is 100J, Eout is 80J, so that Es = 20J.
Subsequently, we conclude that Es is remaining constant by various measures like GMST; let’s say that between T-one and T-two, Ein is 100J and Eout is 100J. That would mean that between T-zero and T-two,
Ein = 200J, Eout = 180J. Then, by zebra’s formula, Es = 20J. The climate is stable.
Now, just to cover all the bases, let’s turn off the sun. So between T-two and T-three, Ein = zero, and let’s say the planet radiates 5J to space.
Then, between T-zero and T-three, we have Ein = 200J, Eout = 185J. That would yield Es = 15J… a colder climate with more ice, and so on.
It seems that zebra’s formula is correct after all. So what about MAR’s claim that Ein – Eout = delta Es?
I will pause to see if MAR or anyone can now understand what my issue is with that construction, given my hint.
I have no particular stake in this discussion, but it would be helpful if everyone made it clear when they are talking about energy and when they are talking about energy per unit time. “Total energy in” is not a useful concept unless it is on a per year or per second basis. Changes in total earth energy also require a time unit. Total energy in the system does not.
Obviously, context often implies a temporal unit, but it’s worth being clear when there is already confusion.
TWOE, my point exactly. That’s why I used units (Joules) in my equation. Piotr perhaps doesn’t understand the difference between Joules and Watts.
– zebra: “ Watt Is A Joule?”
– Piotr: ” Watt Is NOT A Joule”
– zebra: “Piotr perhaps doesn’t understand the difference between Joules and Watts.”
…. and continues to describe as “ correct” his equation: Ein- Eout = Es, where the left side of the equation is in Watts, and the right side is in Joules …
– the same zebra, earlier: “I think this is a good illustration of my usual theme about clarity/precision of language, and dialogue”
Oh yes – hard to think of a better illustration of the clarity/precision of [your] language and the value of the resulting dialogue … ;-)
Zebras equation as originally stated in discussions with MAR never specified any units. This coming from a Zebra who lectures everyone about the need to be precise and properly define things. And his equation is useless and impossible to solve.
zebra,
Your attempt at a Socrates act began up-thread with you finding fault with the equation presented by NOAA:-
which you asserted was wrong as it should be:-
To this I responded that your version was flat wrong as obviously:-
Your subsequent response up-thread was that ” if that were that case (that E[in] – E[out] = zero), E[system] itself would be zero, because where would the energy come from?
I had assumed, indeed would have bet money on it, that the response provided by commenter Piotr using the analogy of a bank account would be enough for the penny to drop, but evidently not.
So let me try.
If the sun sparked into life 3.603.000.000 years ago, is the total solar energy absorbed by planet Earth over that period less the energy radiated by planet Earth out into space actually equal to the total energy content of the climate system? If it were, how would you calculate it? And once you reach an answer, what on Earth has it got to do with Radiative Forcing or Incoming Energy or Outgoing Energy in today’s climate system?
MAR, I asked you to explain how my equation is wrong rather than just asserting it, but all you have done is assert it once again.
It’s a very simple physics equation, and I’ve taken you through a simple case with numbers… that’s what we do in physics, right, before we make things more complicated? But instead of just acknowledging the obvious correctness, so we can move on to the interesting discussion about Forcings (as I suggested above), you try to evade the question.
I would expect better from someone with your actual physics background.
By the way, why don’t you apply your delta-Es version to my example and see what happens.
Zebra: “MAR, I asked you to explain how my equation is wrong rather than just asserting it, but all you have done is assert it once again.”
that’s because what you call an “assertion” we call “explaining“, Unfortunately to a subject that cannot or will not follow it. MAR tried at least twice, I have tried twice, others tried it too – all to no avail, in fact you seem to strengthen your faith that your equation
E_in -Eout =E_s is correct. But it is wrong and for MANY reasons:
1. variables on the left are different than on the right. E_in, Eout are energy fluxes, Es is an energy pool (reservoir).
2. as a result of p. 1, the units do not agree – on the left side of your eq. are Watts, on the right side are Joules, That’s why to your “ Watt is a Joule?” I have answered “Watt is NOT a Joule?”
3. what happens if E_in < E_out? You get NEGATIVE energy of a system???
4. The only way to address P.1 and 2 is to INTEGRATE E_in -Eout iver time from the beginning of the time to the present. The process of the integration WOULD change W in J, but the so modified equation would be USELESS – we don't have data of E_in – E_out over the many billions of years that would be needed to calculate E_s.
5. Even if we had the billions? trillions? of high-accuracy data points needed in p.4 – the mountain of the data would have given birth to a mouse of applications.
Radiative budgets don't use E_s – they are interested only in its CHANGES (in analogous way to temperature anomaly used instead the actual temperature ), and this difference is not calculated as Es(t2) – Es(t1), but by current difference between E_in and E_out.
To sum it up, your equation is wrong, your claims that you are right and others are wrong – is wrong, and one could fix you equation by integrating the left side over time – but could not possibly have enough data over many billions of years to do so, and even if we did – it would not produce anything we would not already know, since it is the
Delta E_s= E_in – Eout
which we are interested in.
So much for your “playing Socrates” and your goal of ” clarity/precision of language, and dialogue “. To paraphrase the classics, from 16 sec. .
“You may be asking questions, Mr. Zebra, but you are no Socrates!”
Jesus wept this Zebra guy is frustrating. Nobody has said his frigging equation is wrong. Just that its useless as far as the radiative forcing issues goes.
zebra,
There is no denying that I do struggle with this interchange. I cannot fathom whether I am faced with blazing stupidity. with a pedant intent on a last-ditch defense of the indefensible or a commenter turned troll.
Frankly I have reached the point where I now refuse to continue with it on your terms.
So I will remind you what I last wrote. I told you “I had assumed, indeed would have bet money on it, that the response provided by commenter Piotr using the analogy of a bank account would be enough for the penny to drop, but evidently not.”
And that comment from Piotr up-thread ran:-
So zebra, do you understand what is being said here? Let me translate:-
But at this point you try to make out that as the 10,000 wouldn’t have been there when the bank account was first opened, that incoming cash can only ever refer to every last penny transferred into the bank account since it was created with initially a zero balance.
I have pointed out to you the impracticalities of such analysis-from-the-year-dot as well as highlighting the use of the word ‘incoming‘ which is surely inappropriate to use for something including events of 4,6 billion years ago.
zebra, it was is not ‘assertion’ that was presented to you. It was reasoned argument. If you find fault in that reasoned argument, demonstrate that fault and do refrain from the stupidity/pedantry/trolling.
MAR, allow me to translate:
But what’s important here is that the interchange going on pretty well illustrates my original point, which was about sloppy language. Neither you nor Piotr has been able to articulate what exactly the phrase I quoted… “Energy in equals energy out”… actually means.
Piotr seems to think that the term “energy” has unit of watts, so the people at NOAA are saying that “watts in equals watts out”. You, in your attempt to make your case, are now using the word incoming. WTF does “incoming” mean? What are the units of “incoming”… is it joules or is it watts? Are you with Piotr on this?
But if NOAA meant “the rate of energy input”, why didn’t they just say that? Probably because… even if they are not explaining it very well… they understand the physics; “energy” is measured in joules, not watts. If you and Piotr think that watts in = watts out, you obviously don’t understand.
(So far, the only person who got this right is TWOE, who apparently caught the point of my cutesy title, which is that the phrase requires qualification and/or elaboration, and the units have to be correct.)
If you want to use an analogy, let’s use an actually relevant case from physics.
I used to be pretty good at (gas) welding. If you gave me two small metal plates, I could make a neat little wiggly weld in a few seconds. From the perspective of the plates, that meant a very high rate of ‘incoming’ energy. It resulted in an elevated temperature and a phase change.
But then, when I pulled the torch away, the ‘outgoing’ energy of the system radiated away at a much lower rate; the weld solidifying and the temperature dropping took quite a bit longer.
So, sorry, watts in does not equal watts out.
I invite anyone who wishes to clear up the meaning of “energy in equals energy out” to give it a shot.
Dudes, give it a rest.
1) Energy in=Energy out implies that the system is in equilibrium
2) If you are looking at energy–that is joules (or ergs, or…). Power is the time derivative of energy, Joules/sec. To get energy from power, you integrate wrt time over some interval.
3) If you are looking at areal energy density, that is joules per unit area–that is what is relevant when looking at radiation from the Sun or from Earth at Top of Atmosphere
None of this is controversial or deep or illuminating.
Regarding zebras comments on energy in / energy out etc, etc. I do basically agree with what Piotr and MAR have said. I’m a layperson and so I haven’t commented on the science behind this, but I want to add a few things about how Zebra frames things and the strange logic he uses and the confusion he has caused me and apparently just about everyone else.
Zebra says “But if NOAA meant “the rate of energy input”, why didn’t they just say that?”
My understanding is the conventional, accepted notation for energy in and energy out in climate discussions is watts (joules per second). I’ve read this terminology used many times, so I don’t see any lack of clarity by NOAA, or need for them to have specifically stated units. And it would be absurd for them to have just used joules. So when Zebra posts an equation saying says Ein – Eout = E system I assume ( as others seem to do) that he logically means watts in – watts out = energy in the system. He certainly didn’t specify otherwise. Surely if he is going against the accepted norms, he should have done this?
Clearly Zebras equation taken at face value like this is nonsensical because like people say its using different units on each side of the equation (joules versus watts), and is confusing pools of energy with fluxes. My initial thought when Zebra first criticised MARs post was that Zebra was being absurd, because clearly watts in – watts out would not equal the massive level of energy in the oceans.
Now Zebra seems to be saying no, he is using joules on BOTH sides of the equation and people should be using joules. I presume this is over some huge length of time because what else could it be? But this is even more absurd because like people have pointed out its not possible to practically calculate this, and it has no practical use in the climate forcing issue. So I’m just confused as to what his point is and on what basis he thought NOAA would use joules on both sides of the equation? Because it wouldn’t make any sense to do so.
zebra,
Your welding analogy – let’s see how it works if we put some numbers on it.
In a 15ºC garage are a couple of tiny steel blanks, 10mm x 10mm x 2mm. Together they have a mass of 3g and a surface area of 0.00036 sq m. They would thus be warmed by their environment at a rate of 390 watts per sq m = 0.14W. That would be enough to raise the temperature of the blanks by 0.1ºC in a single second but the blanks are also radiating back into the garage at the same rate. So Ein = Eout. ΔE = 0.
These equations can be expressed in various units, in watts or watts per sq m and they can be averages. And if a specific period is being considered, they can be expressed in joules.
(You have actually given enthusiastic agreement with all this up-thread but likely that was due to you not reading the full comment and actually agreed solely to part of the comment.)
In normal circumstances, no issues arise with the dimensions used in these equations.
But then you arrive.
And the tiny blanks are subjected to a welding torch of 1,600W power, expertly applied for 1 second such that the two tiny blanks receive the full monty and their temperature rises to 1,288ºC. For that second, ΔE = +1,600W. Or +1,600j if you prefer. Or +4.44M W/sq m.
Our welded blanks now begin to cool, losing 56J in the following second, cooling by 35ºC to 1,253ºC and then by diminishing amounts as it cools further – after a minute cooling at just 5W having cooled to 715ºC and by half-an-hour to 300ºC and cooling at 0.03W, just 1ºC per minute. And after two hours we can declare the two welded blanks to be back at room temperature.
Through that 2hr period, Ein = 1,600j (from the welder) + 1,000j (from the surroundings) = 2,600j, an average of 0.36W or 1,000W/sq m. And through the period, Eout dropped from 56W down to 0.14W, totalling 2,600j and again averaging 0.36W.
So for the 2hr period Ein = Eout. ΔE = 0.
The concept of total ‘system’ energy is open to definition as ‘systems’ are conceptual entities not ‘real’ entities. Thus our blanks contain thermal energy which varies by 1.6j/ºC and also they contain chemical energy, 17kj, which would have been imparted when the iron ore was smelted and would be released if the garage were to burn down at a high enough temperature. And perhaps with steel blanks being movable items, its position on the surface of a spinning planet tens-of-millions of miles from the barycenter of the solar system may be worth considering.
What is included and excluded from the ‘system’ energy requires definition and this account of energy would need to be expressed as joules although, however it were defined, calculating ‘system’ energy from the sum of all the incoming & outgoing energy Es = ∑(Ein – Eout) (this all likewise expressed in joules) would appear an impossible challenge.
Zebra: ” Neither [MAR] nor Piotr has been able to articulate what exactly the phrase I quoted… “Energy in equals energy out”… actually means.”
We don’t have to – since we are discussing YOUR claim that ” E_in – E_out= Es”.
Zebra: ” Piotr seems to think that the term “energy” has unit of watts“.
Only in the Zebra’s head. In the real world (Realclimate.org) I have falsified the Zebra’s equation, by pointing that the units of energy FLUXES on the left side (Watts) can NOT be = the units of energy POOL (Joules) on the right side. How ELSE have you understood my response to you: “Watt is NOT a Joule” ????
Zebra: WTF does “incoming” mean?
It TF means: “incoming energy flux“. See any radiative balance graph e,g, Trenberth et al. – it is the sum of the arrows entering the Earth. Note the units there.
What ELSE have you expected? The flux INTEGRATED over last 4.6 billion years? ;-)
Zebra: “But if NOAA meant “the rate of energy input”, why didn’t they just say that?”
Because they tried to keep it simple for the laypeople, so they used a “shorthand”. Obviously they did not anticipate Zebra. Then again “Nobody ever expects the Realclimate Zebra!”
Zebra: ” If you want to use an analogy, let’s use an actually relevant case from physics.I used to be pretty good at (gas) welding. I could make a neat little wiggly weld in a few seconds etc..
That’s a terrible analogy. The point of any analogy is to SIMPLIFY complicated interactions to the minimum that still retains the behaviour we wanted to illustrate, Preferably using a situation anybody can relate to. That’s what I have done with my simple banking analogy: with E_in represented by the payments in, E_out the payments out and your Es – being the bank balance.
Unable to falsify my argument within my analogy (i.e. failing to show that in the banking version: Ein-Eout IS ALSO = Es ) you offered instead your substandard analogy. Substandard, because it fails most of the conditions of a good analogy:
– relatability: most readers has/had a bank account, most of us do not weld
– superfluous material (who cares whether you were good at welding, what’s the significance of informing us that you used gas welding- using non-gassy one would make difference? would making untidy large straight weld alter the discussed processes?)
– most importantly – you changed the subject – instead of proving your equation: Ein-Eout = Es, you triumphantly proved what nobody questioned – that sometimes? often? Ein … is NOT = Eout: [Zebra]: “So, sorry, watts in does not equal watts out.
Duh?
P.S. All the above only because you “have critiqued [MAR, NOAA, me and others] for imprecise and confusing language.” and supposedly you do it to promote …”clarity/precision of language, and dialogue “, all the while humbly stating that you only “were trying to play Socrates” here.
I am in basic agreement with Piotr, MAR, etc.
What is wrong with your equation is that we started by talking about radiative forcing, which is a flux – the rate at which energy arrives (or leaves) over time, per unit area.
So, E (in) and E (out) are not amounts of energy (which could be measured in Joules) They are rates of energy gain or loss, measured in Watts. The difference is delta Es, the rate at which the system is gaining or losing energy. To get the total amount of energy that the system has gained or lost over time, you have to integrate that delta Es over the time period involved.
That said, I agree that wording it as “Incoming Energy – Outgoing Energy = Radiative Forcing” is confusing: witness this whole discussion. I’d prefer “Incoming Energy Flux – Outgoing Energy Flux = Radiative Forcing.”
John, I just saw your comment after finishing my reply to MAR. And this is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to instigate. So let us have a real “disagreement” that may further refine the language. You say:
“The difference is delta Es, the rate at which the system is gaining or losing energy.”
The problem is that delta Es is not a rate, it is defined as the actual change in the system energy, Es. To determine that change in Es, we would still have to integrate over time. That’s the point I’ve been trying to get people to realize.
So, as I said to MAR, my formula is perfectly correct for the experiment to which it is applied. And if we apply MAR’s formula to my experiment, if we understand all E’s to be in joules, it gives us exactly the same result… delta Es = Es at T-three.
Now let’s consider your definition for RF, which is in watts. It seems to me that when I turn on the sun in my experiment, that would qualify as RF, because the radiant energy absorbed by the climate system results in a change of the system state. So, the IOF is constant, and as the temperature rises, OEF increases, until we reach equilibrium and the system state remains constant. At this point, and only this point, it would be reasonable to say that “OEF equals IOF”.
But this is not at all obvious to a member of the general public who reads the NOAA publication with the headline Energy In = Energy Out and other imprecise and misleading language. If you recall in this (or the methane thread?) Geoff complaining about the inconsistent usage of “warming”; I didn’t respond but I certainly agreed… we shouldn’t be surprised that people get confused about the different types of forcings and feedbacks and so on.
And, if everyone would get on the same page to start, maybe it would be possible to come up with some more accessible explanations for those things.
John Pollack (also Ray L)
John, I got interrupted by company as I was writing; I assume you got the typo…should be IEF.
But following up I think I would have to disagree about your definition of Radiative Forcing. My understanding is that it is the constant output of the Sun after we turn it on that is considered a RF. Whereas, as I said, IEF-OEF is constantly changing until equilibrium is reached.
To repeat my original point for Ray as well: Here we have a group of people who have been immersed in the subject for some time who are unable to even agree about what we are disagreeing about, primarily because the language is being used loosely and inconsistently.
So I will again invite anyone to help create a consistently structured definition of things.
-I turn on the sun and it produces a consistent flow of 100W to the previously frozen planet.
-I define that as a radiative forcing because it changes the state of the climate system. And the planet is also now radiating to space at a rate (watts) which is continuously increasing. (agree/disagree?)
-We reach equilibrium, meaning that we observe no further changes in the CS. And we should then also detect the planet radiating a constant 100W to space, right?
-But wait… the sun is still turned on, and it is still sending that 100w. What should we call that 100W?? That’s not a rhetorical question; I’m really not sure.
-Now we turn off the sun. The planet continues to radiate into space, and the system state is changing. What is the rate of that radiation in watts? Anyone? Is it a constant rate? Is it properly defined as a “negative forcing”?
My observation so far from thinking about this is that the sun’s constant radiation qualifies the sun as a “source”. But the earth’s constant 100w output at equilibrium is dependent on that input, and so is the constant value of the energy (joules) contained in the CS, which was accumulated during the pre-equilibrium period.
Well, I hope someone is willing to undertake the exercise, because I would like to have a consistent way to explain this stuff to the hypothetical “sincere-student-not-a-troll”. You can’t answer the complicated questions if you can’t answer the simple ones.
Zebra, fuck the Socratic pretenses. Where are you going with this? So far, I cannot see that anything you are arguing about actually matters worth a cow’s fart. What matters is the following:
In equilibrium, Energy_in=Energy_out.
When Energy_in exceeds Energy_out, the planet warms.
When the reverse is true, the planet cools.
And that is energy–Joules–absorbed and radiated by the entire planetary system.
If you are talking about power–Joules/sec–then warming is Power_in – Power_out integrated over some time interval.
If you are talking about areal power density–the integral is then over the surface area of the planet AND time.
That is all there is to it. There is no there there. Can we please got on to discussing something more illuminating?
Zebra: “To determine that change in Es, we would still have to integrate over time. That’s the point I’ve been trying to get people to realize.”
And the people tried to get zebra to realize that his equation Ein – Eout – Es
is UTTERLY POINTLESS, since can’t possibly know all the values of Ein – Eout required to integrate the left side over 4.6 BILLION of years.
And even if we knew Ein and Eout over the last 4.6 bln of years, integrated them to obtain the single number – today’s “Es” – what would be the value of knowing it, how does it advance our understanding of the current and future climate system?
The NOAA text that has caused all the sound and fury of Zebra was simple:
if the radiative forcing is > 0, then Earth warms,
if it is <0 then Earth cools.
A since we reduced the outgoing radiation by emitting GHGs – the Earth warms. Warmer Earth increases outgoing radiation until it becomes again equal to the incoming radiation.
That's it. No need to know the total amount of energy in the system (Es), o need for build the time machine to integrate radiative forcings over last 4.6 bln years to calculate that Es, no need to "create a consistently structured definition of ” a … number we can’t possibly compute and we are not sure what we would use for if we could, and no need for Zebra switching on and off the Sun for a greater rhetorical effect.
“ Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity “, eh?
Ray Ladbury,
I’m not “arguing” any of that, in fact I’m trying to get people to say it. It seems that you too are not reading very carefully. (But I guess my Socratic schtick worked since I got you to say it?)
I am “arguing” that these basic concepts are not being conveyed clearly to the general public. I can’t count how many times I have said exactly that this is the issue, but instead of replying to that, people seem only interested in rambling on about some imagined flaw in my equations.
So Ray, seriously, what should I tell the sincere-student (not troll) a “forcing” is? And is the energy radiated by the sun a forcing when the system is at equilibrium? Remember, the NTSS does not already know the answer, so your response should be calibrated to educate, rather than to impress the people who already do.
Piotr
Piotr, you quote yourself saying:
zebra: “So you are still saying that my equations needs “fixing”, and that we need to integrate to determine joules, even though my equation is already in joules.
Not true – the left side of your equation is “Radiative Forcing” I, quote:
I just looked at a NOAA piece which has similar issues: “Incoming Energy – Outgoing Energy = Radiative Forcing”. Zebra Oct. 3
And radiative forcing is Watt m^-2, or if applied to the entire planet in Watts.
You, of course, know that perfectly well , because JUST BELOW the end of your Oct. 3 quote from NOAA, NOAA has a
table with ….. “Radiative Forcing Relative
to 1750 (Wm^-2)“
“Wm^-2 “, that: is NOT “ already in joules“, And since Zebra knew perfectly well that the left side is in W not in J, this makes it a deliberate lie, done to safe his face.
But you didn’t stop there – you accuse others of what you have just done:
“You still can’t bring yourself to say “OK zebra, we were wrong to say that your equation is dead wrong.” Zebra, Oct. 15
The Lady doth project too much…
John, I assume you will see just above that I have worked out what I was looking for. I need to think through the various details.
But, you are exactly correct that I see energy as more accessible. That comes from teaching students who were almost certain never to take another physics course beyond that required/elective introduction. And it taught me that “regular folks” can learn concepts, and reason with them, if you present the subject as something involving concepts and reason, rather than memorizing factoids and algorithms. Regular folks may not be very good at the latter, or (justifiably) see it as pointless and uninteresting for them.
For climate, if you think about it, explaining watts requires you to explain joules, right? So why not take the opportunity to give your “student” a foundation that can help them think things through for themselves, if they go on to read more?
What I would really like to see, though, is better graphics and animation. NOAA has done some of that, and I think my water tank analogy would be a good subject for some young employee with the skills and the software.
MA Rodger
You haven’t illustrated anything with your calculations… perhaps, if anything, you support my position. But perhaps you think you are being clever by using a one-second time interval? “Oooh, I’ll just fool zebra because I can slip in watts.” Sure, MA, pure rhetorical genius.
***
So you say this…
and this
…which is exactly correct. (But then, unfortunately, you include lots of obfuscatory factoids.)
But it seems you (and Piotr) may be the ones with reading issues, not me. I said:
So I have indeed provided a (simplified) definition for my climate system, and for my welding example as well, because I said:
So I clearly specified the characteristics defining the system state in both cases. Other characteristics have no bearing on the discussion.
***
Now, you and Piotr seem to have a bizarre argument in common. You say that my equation is “dead wrong” because we can’t measure and calculate the value of the sun’s emissions over the time interval T-zero to T-one. Really, really, crazy, guys.
Is it then also the case that PE = mgh is “dead wrong” if we can’t measure the mass of an object or its height above the Earth’s surface???
***
For Piotr specifically, I am now thinking maybe you have less-than-perfect vision or other reading impairment? I said:
Did you maybe miss that J at the end of the numbers? What do you think that means? These are my equations; when I say joules I mean joules. You want to tell me that they are “wrong” because they are not some other equation? Again, kind of crazy. Maybe my analysis needs to be refined, but you have to find the problem in what I actually say, not talk about other stuff.
***
And this from Piotr (with apparent agreement from MAR) is particularly telling:
Well duh, Piotr. If you took the time to read carefully before starting your incoherent ranting, you would have understood that…. that’s exactly what I was/have been complaining about!
People who are specialized and have advanced education/degrees very often have no clue about how to communicate with the general public. That doesn’t make them bad people, but it often results in the “student” ending up more not less confused, as we can observe from some of the (non-troll) questions here and in other comment threads.
I’m trying, as I said in my two replies to John, to find a consistent explanation with consistent definitions for people with maybe at most some basic exposure to physics. These are the people you think should be able to improve their understanding from “shorthand”???
Zebra is complaining that NOAA simplify an issue for laypeople.
Zebras complaint is just plainly idiotic. What is he suggesting? That NOAA make things complicated for laypeople??? There is clearly something wrong with the way Zebra thinks. He may not intend to be a troll, but he is effectively a troll .
Zebra: “ Now, you and Piotr seem to have a bizarre argument in common. You say that my equation is “dead wrong” because we can’t measure and calculate the value of the sun’s emissions over the time interval T-zero to T-one. Really, really, crazy, guy
We didn’t question practicality of measurements over “the time interval T-zero to T-one.” , genius. What we questioned was the availability of the radiative flux data over the one, very specific, time interval ” that from t-zero = 4.6 bln yrs ago to t-one = today. Which is the time interval required if we used your equation to calculate your “Es”. And we were quite specific about this time interval:
MAR: [oct. 11]: “for something including events of 4,6 billion years ago.”
Piotr, [Oct.11] “The only way to [fix zebra’s equation] is to INTEGRATE E_in -Eout over time from the beginning of time to the present. The process of the integration WOULD change W in J, but the so modified equation would be USELESS – we don’t have data of E_in – E_out over the many billions of years that would be needed to calculate E_s.”
But please, do lecture me on my “vision or other reading impairments”, and my and MAR’s argument as being: “ Really, really, crazy“.
Zebra,
Thanks for the correction above. I agree that delta Es is not a flux, and doesn’t fit into a flux formulation of forcing.
I also agree that it isn’t always easy to understand the jargon, and it could be improved. I like this part of Piotr’s quote:
“if the radiative forcing is > 0, then Earth warms,
if it is <0 then Earth cools.
A since we reduced the outgoing radiation by emitting GHGs – the Earth warms. Warmer Earth increases outgoing radiation until it becomes again equal to the incoming radiation."
I think that "forcing" relates back to perturbation theory, which is a familiar concept to physicists (and meteorologists – I saw it a lot in school) It's an impulse of some sort that is pushing the system away from its former state – in this case defined as climate equilibrium in terms of radiative flux. It could be positive or negative. An example of the latter would be the effect of a large volcanic eruption. Maybe there is a better term than "forcing" for explanations intended to laypeople.
Your formulation in terms of energy (Joules) seems consistent, but I don't see the utility of it, or the conceptual ease. The main difficulty I had was that to make it work, you have to be careful about the time period that you're talking about. It has to be defined if you want to know the system energy change. If it's a long period, you have to consider factors such as geothermal heat. If it's short, you need to consider annual cycles, ENSO, etc. In addition, the time period under consideration would affect what the "climate system" should consist of. My first choice might be something like "all the stuff that is subject to a net energy change after an annual cycle is subtracted out." That would leave out much of the deep ocean and the ground beneath the annual cycle depth. However, that would neglect the geothermal energy component that could be melting and lubricating ice sheets from the bottom, thawing the lower levels of permafrost, methane clathrates, etc. that I would want to consider parts of the climate system when considering climate change.
The flux formulation is simple in that all you have to worry about to put an amount on the forcing is the imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
I also don't understand why you find much utility in the "energy in the climate system" as a fundamental quantity to be solved for. In thermodynamic terms, it doesn't tell me much about the climate. I have to know how the energy is distributed, and how much of it can be converted to work by, say, thermal gradients. While I would expect that if the system energy increases, GMST would also increase, it doesn't tell me where the energy would go otherwise, and what sorts of climate change it would drive in what amounts and what speed. Those are the sorts of things that I am interested in, and why I care about "forcing" as a simple way to conceptualize the magnitude of the expected change.
zebra,
You are evidently out of your depth here, which is odd as it is not at all complicated until you start at it with your strange grasp of the matter.
You response to my comment up-thread is to agree with it except the “obfuscatory factoids” which presumably are the things you don’t agree with or, more likely, don’t understand. As you say, there are “lots of obfuscatory factoids” (it is quite a lengthy comment) and from your response it is evident that the vast majority of what was presented to you is entirely over your head.
You need to get a grip. You are effectively trolling here.
For other thread-browsers, my apologies for failing to convert some of the temperatures in the garage welding example from K to C.
John Pollack,
Thanks for a rational discussion.
I don’t know if you saw my other comments to you, but I am only interested in the joule approach because it seems to inform the watts approach. I am trying to get a narrative of what is happening that is both correct and accessible to more people. I don’t want to calculate anything, and I completely agree that it gets complicated. But the statement… “positive RF means warming”… is not an explanation. Nor is Win – Wout = RF an explanation of what is happening. They are simply facts. They don’t help people understand the more complicated stuff.
I really don’t know why there is such reluctance to address this example to flesh out the terminology. My questions seem very simple. (I am now accepting your statement Watts in – Watts out = RF (in Watts).) Note that I am saying RF = 100W.
D’OH!
My subconscious physics-teacher/poet finally shouted loud enough for me to hear:
It’s not like money in the bank
But rather
Water in a tank
Much as I dislike analogies, the classic “tank of water with a drain pipe at the base” is what I would use to explain this in a more rigorous way for the layperson.
Unlike the money or NOAA’s “applying a pushing force”, it incorporates the codependency of the watts and joules we have spent so much time discussing. The PE of the water and the energy of the CS are essential components of the dynamics we observe. Conservation of energy is not ignored. And you don’t even have to have taken calculus to ‘get it’… to visualize or relate to experience.
Of course, things are more complicated than the analogy, but some specific aspects of forcing could also be illustrated… e.g. albedo on the input pipe, and CO2 on the output. Not sure how to incorporate phase changes, but something to think about.
I want to thank John Pollack for demonstrating what a constructive scientific discussion is supposed to be like, and I would like to observe that he helped me figure it out by asking questions rather than just starting to lecture/pontificate.
Zebra,
I have seen your recent comments upthread. I do note that you have expressed your example in watts, now, and I appreciate it. It seems like a good start, to me.
I would refer to the output of the sun as “solar irradiance.” It is certainly the source of the energy (leaving out for now whatever internal geothermal energy the planet possesses.) In your example, it acts as a positive forcing when you turn the sun on, and a negative forcing when you turn it off. Initially, when the sun is turned off, the planet radiates back out at 100w. This would decline, quickly at first, slowly later on, as the energy in the CS is depleted.
In considering simplification, I am wondering if you started with energy, rather than fluxes, because you thought laypeople understood energy better? I’m not sure it’s the case. My scientific understanding of what “energy” refers to goes back to physics. Without physics, “energy” is rather undefined, and could even be confused with so-called psychic energy. In any case, I do agree that it is important to have descriptions that are both scientifically accurate and also accessible to laypeople.
Zebra: “Much as I dislike analogies”
…says Zebra, introducing his ….THIRD analogy in the same discussion…
And what an analogy it is:
the classic “tank of water with a drain pipe at the base” [which] incorporates the codependency of the watts and joules. The PE of the water and the energy of the CS are essential components of the dynamics we observe. Conservation of energy is not ignored. .
The undefined acronyms (those laypersons surely will know them), the meaningless
logorrhea: “ essential components of the dynamics we observe, and the triumph of the opinion over falsifiable argument. Zebra’s “ usual theme about clarity/precision of language, and dialogue” strikes again.
Don’t tell me how tremendous your analogy is – show me, by pointing which parts of your tank analogy represent Ein, Eout and Es from your equation. This is what I got so far:
– The NOAA webpage you are critiquing has the formula: “ incoming energy – outgoing radiation = radiative forcing” and the units are given as Wm^-2. So your tank in addition to the drain, needs also an input pipe. With that now we have:
– Ein is the flow rate in (in litres/min),
– Eout is the flow rate out (in litres/min),
– Es is the volume of water in the tank (in liters)
1.NOAA says that when flow rate in = flow rate out, then volume in the tank stays the same
2. Zebra says that it is confusing and incorrect, because Es-Ein should be = Es, i.e.
that the difference between the flow rate in and out is equal … volume of the water in the tank.
3.MAR, me and others pointed out that it is wrong because:
– the units do not agree (left side: l/min, right side: l)
– that if at any time flow rate out > flow rate in – you would have NEGATIVE volume of water in the tank.
-and that the only way to calculate Es (the volume of the water in tank) from the flow rates in and out, would be to integrate the flow rates in and out over the time ALL THE WAY TO THE TIME WHEN the tank was empty.
Which for a tank would be time consuming, but at least potentially doable; for the Earth – the last time Es was even close to 0 would be at least 4.6 bln yrs ago, and we don’t have the radiative fluxes data over most of the time.since. Hence the equation is totally USELESS.
And why would anybody bother with integration of flow rates over long times, when they could take out a measuring stick and measure the volume of the water in the tank.
Sadly, the behavior of my so-called “aggressive growth” fund over time is a pretty good RL illustration–near equilibrium of $in and $out, with $system largely unchanged.
Sorry to hear it, Kevin. In fact, it could be worse – unless your $ are inflation adjusted, because of the inflation reducing your E_in – you may be in a negative territory.
But you can take solace in the knowledge that your misfortune may help others:
– you have just given me an idea for an additional argument against famous Zebra equation:
E_in – E_out =E_s :
namely, if E_in<Eout then the zebra's system would have ….NEGATIVE energy (E_s <0). Take that, the Laws of Thermodynamics !
@ Zebra
Your Es is what we call Enthalpy in physical chemical energy.
We assume permanence or conservation of energy axiomatic, and if Eout is not equal to E in, the delta E may be positive or negative. Looking at this argument, I see that , the Enthalpy written Delta H is the negative delta E
That is, if you set off gunpowder, it has a high negative Enthalpy.
If on the other hand the sun shines and a lot of stones are weathered, photosynthesis makes sugar and oxygen from water and CO2 by a grain of salt also and that biomass is storet into fossile fuel, the world will have had a positive enthalpy. E-out must have been less than E-in.for the conservation of energy.
Lavoisier & al ( His Al was his very beautiful and scilled wife Marie-Anne) found out about Le Chaleur and defined the unit “æcaloriøøøøø..” called calories (who are not so easy to get rid of for natural reasons) and by other experimental calibration it is called joule.
Materials in chemical glasses and containers may show very high negative enthalpy when heated, Runaway effects may start and it blows or blasts up.. But for common cooking of egs or potatoes, the enthalpy is slightly positive and not dangerous, with a typical change of chemical and physical properties in the materials, as a permanent and irreversible result.
@ Dr Zebra’
‘
I see below that this is also commented on.
One Watt is a newtonmeter per second. A watt hour or kilowatt hour is energy, and what costs your skirt. Just as Megajoule.
Watts itself cost nothing. You create megawatts if you swing a sledgehammer, remember work is force times way, and hit precicely in milliseconds on the bedrocks. Try quicly with finger afterwards on that spot, You get burnt!
Do it at nigtht, it lights up by several electronvolts in time.
Radar antennas sende out sharp BANGs in mega and gigawatts by just a diesel for power. Only a few taxpayers pay for it.
Newton is Force according to F= m a, the force or weight you ptactically feel by holding a stone weighing one hectogram in hand, and todays joule unit is what bangs and makes a mark in the floor or on your shiny car, if you drop that stone from 1 meter heighth.
The a for acceleration is practically 10, but exactly 9.8 m/ sek^2, the acceleration of gravity on earth.
But you can make a tremendous lot of watts that costs you nothing, simply by knowing how to use a sleggtehammer on the rocks.
They send away pulses in giga and terawatts the same way with a Radar simply by knowing how, driven only by a little diesel or a connection to the net. Those very short pulses are not so large in terms of joules either.
James P. Joule was quite clever. He mounted a propellar on axis down into a calorimeter with syrup and turned that propellar by a wirecord over 2 wheels with a heavy mass in pounds hanging in the other end, that sank in inches in the gravitational field. “AHA! Yes really!” he said, noted and published the results, and got fameous for that.
Its like when you wind up the spring or wind up the weighty load of a classical clock mechanism that will work further automatically for days and even say ding dang. You must invest a certain work in terms of joules or watt- seconds each time.
I had to learn all that in school in order to get to my rights. Others are obviously quite more privileged.. .
We can guarantee that the original joules were not what they are today because the meter and the kilogram were not yet taken serious.
Our resident Very Stable Genius: “the author is assuming ahead of time”
The lady doth …. project too much. “The authors” are not assuming anything of the sort – as in any scientific study, they compare one dataset with that of the CONTROL – the two models are IDENTICAL except for one input – the former has historic conc. of CO2 and the control has CO2 kept constant at pre-industrial levels. Since the ONLY factor differs the models – therefore all the differences in the output can be attributed to that factor, thus proving the causation, and quantifying the effect.
VSG: “If the rising temperatures are not primarily driven by greenhouse gas emissions after all, as so many skeptics have argued, then the comparison between the “counterfactual world” and the real world of extreme weather events is pointless, no?”
Wrong again, if the temperature was NOT driven by CO2 – then there would be NO DIFFERENCE in the output of the model and the control. Thus any non-zero DIFFERENCE between model and control – quantifies the impact of CO2 emissions on the climate, which is important scientifically and provides important information to the politicians and the people who elect them. Proving what the claims by the “so many” Victors are worth – an icing on the cake.
If, on the other hand, they “ assumed ahead of time“, as the so many Victors have done, that CO2 CANNOT significantly affect temperature – and DELETED (or set to insignificant levels), the part of the code, where CO2 is absorbing outgoing IR radiation, then the modelling would be indeed pointless” and
the reasoning circular ….
I am waiting for things
Maybe they do not wake up so early over there in the States.
The Google and Internet have announced that they shall deny denialism especially to get into their Youtubes.
The surrealists in Oslo a Pelles Pizza, the Climate- pizza has been closed down now for practically 2 years, so I could not follow them.
I have made new andc radical findings overnight on Gusts and Ghosts and Gosh and Guff, Geist Ghosts, and Gauss, Gausdal and Gas- gusters /goshers. And Geysirs. Perhaps even of Gustav and Au- gustus.
It may be Sanskrit.
Se also Gas and Chaos.
And would like to discuss that with Dr. E. Poet.
There is a lot of Guff-Gosh.-Gusts- Gauss-.. Gas- Chaos .. in the climate.
[b]Eric Rignot: Sea level rise there is a distinct possibility it could go faster[/b] https://climatestate.com/2021/10/06/eric-rignot-sea-level-rise-there-is-a-distinct-possibility-it-could-go-faster/
Interesting article. We know that there was a period of rapid sea level rise during the last interglacial,
and we are near if not past a critical point this time around. We don’t even know the exact mechanism the last time. Will we figure it out before it’s too late? At least we know that linear projections from recent polar ice loss are too low.
Rignot:
Not knocking planetary exploration, but this seems–misguided. Mars, fine, but Antarctica, PLEASE!
Indeed, someone should brief the current NASA administration, and pitch the idea to Elon Musk, since he already deploys Earth satelites.
Zebra: “ I was trying to play Socrates earlier with MA Rodger; I guess he doesn’t want to admit he was even a little wrong. But I think this is a good illustration of my usual theme about clarity/precision of language, and dialogue requiring that people start on the same page, so I will give it a new comment […] ”
C’mon Zebra – could you be more pretentious? Making an ignorant, full of yourself claims, assuming that every climatologist got it wrong, but you didn’t – is not consistent with Socrates’ humility (“I know that I know nothing”). Neither is your projecting your inability to admit your ignorance – onto MAR and others. You are not “a little wrong“, you are almost completely wrong (see blow). Watt is NOT a Joule. And your writing is the antithesis of the “clarity/precision of language“,
Case in point – your latest post, in which you confuse fluxes with pools (or rates and standing stock). Units in your equation do not agree: your formula Es= Ein – Eout translates into [J]= [W]- [W].
What your “demosntarion” in reality does can be expressed as
Es = ∫ -4.5bln yrs 0 (Ein – Eout) dt
or if this does not display:
Es = INTEGRAL (from -4.5bln yrs to 0 yrs) of [(Ein – Eout) dt]
Except that such formula would be COMPLETELY USELESS – since we don’t have that data with anywhere near the time resolution that would be needed to intergrate (Ein – Eout) over the last 4.5 bln yrs WITH ANY reasonable accuracy. In addition, we don’t know the initial (4.5bln yrs ago) Es, other that it was NOT Es=0 since your hypothetical demonstration, has very little in common with the actual evolution of the Solar system,
And NO radiative model of the current, or future, climate uses your
Ein – Eout = Es, but as MAR patiently tried to explain to you, to no avail, Ein – Eout = Delta E.
And Delta E=0 simply means a steady state, i.e. the Earth’s Es is not changing, NOTthat as you want: Es=0.
Your contribution to this group is not, as you grandiosely envision, bringing the clarity/precision of language – but the opposite: wasting everybody’s time on trivial discussions- marred by undisciplined logic, unstated absurd assumptions, poor definitions, paternalistic attitude toward others, and last but not least – meaningless conclusions. A tale told by a zebra, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Piotr. Thanx for the explanation. Zebra tries to oversimplify science issues. The hubris and dunning kruger is strong in that one.
Not to mention the supercilious presumption regarding writerly clarity and pedagogical skill.
There has been quite a bit of healthy scepticism about fusion power in these threads. To add to that, it appears that the popular scientific press has fallen for a number-fudging exercise. (Some of you might already know about this, but it was news to me, so I thought I would share it.)
Gains in fusion are often reported in terms of Q-factors, which is the ratio of energy out vs energy in. It appears that Q-plasma (energy in and out at the level of the plasma) is routinely reported in place of Q-total (energy in and out at the systems level). That is, the power needed to get the plasma experiment up and running and maintain it is ignored, and so is the inefficiency in converting the resulting heat back into electricity.
So they are a lot further off than they are pretending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
“In these threads.”
This particular thread is supposed to be about “climate science topics.” I hope that we can avoid another case of tangled threads, and you will post this over in Forced Responses.
Okay, noted. Sorry about that. I’d move it if I could. Can I repost and have this deleted?
Dr T W O Entropy
Be sure to write the right budget here.
What matters is the central and critical frunction and task, the most critical device construction or machine that will decide problem understood or solved, fusion reactor that “breaks even” yes or no.
And not the very lab and institutions around it.
The research and experimental situation around it before that is made, will not be there in the eventually responsible commercial solution.
We can mention very many research and experimental situations where that is so and has been so.
For myself, I have often struggled hard to find it out in the test- tube before I scream EVREKA! and recommend investments in a very chemical factory that will surely “break even” and work. And my very workshop and lab around it is my normal life situation that costs in any case but that also serves other purposes, and that may suffer indeed for it when I am absent minded to solve the problem. But that does not count if I only can scream EVREKA!. now and then.
Also, the art of taking one transistor or one Op.Amp, solder it up on Magpie- nest level on brass nails in the desk and try out the core and trickiest function first before I scream EVREKA, run naked through town and make heaven and earth swinginjg with it. First then, I can draw and itch a princhard and make a very factory or a fashionable “box” with buttons for it .
Unqualified science and inventors do the opposite. They make the box first, the outer surfaces, spray it with the secret warnish, put on a label with LOGO and advertize it and invite loose money to buy shares and invest in my ingenious invention. And then I must invent what is to be inside of that Box or very factory. or take up loans and make up a “Firm” for it first with nothing functoning to have inside of that “firm”.
Being aware of that, I can show to a few results and verry ingenious inventions of mine, and I am not broke after all, despite of having got no subventions from the Royal Industrial Research fund.
One can wonder really if that is the way they work. I am suspicious of that, but I cannot say that for sure.
Elon Musk looks responsible. He published a youtube afterwards with “How not to land a space rocket”. .
Elemental summer: A season of change
Living with extremity as the new normal
by Joëlle Gergis
When my article was published, I received an email from an IPCC colleague in a far-flung corner of the world. It was a climate scientist’s #MeToo moment:
I’ve been deeply depressed since the meeting in Singapore… I almost lost my position here at the university because I could not care less about work knowing that we seem to be doomed. I just wanted to sleep and do nothing… I then realized I was depressed and…on a kind of autopilot, just doing the mere essential (of course that also included fulfilling the IPCC deadline in January) but everything looks black and void…and then I read your article, and I realize that I am not the only one in despair given how little time we have to make radical changes, and realizing that people are not keen at all to do so. I still worry, it’s still on my mind most of the time, but I can function somewhat normally now. I wonder how many of us feel like that, and are able to actually say it?
https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/elemental-summer-a-season-of-change/
Witnessing the unthinkable By Joëlle Gergis
The scientists show that this revision now means that 2°C of global warming is likely to be reached sometime around 2040 based on our current high-emissions trajectory. The implications of this are unimaginable – we may witness planetary collapse far sooner than we once thought.
Recently, I shared a statistic with my climatology students as I explained the latest mass-bleaching event: 99 per cent of the world’s tropical coral reefs will disappear with 2°C of global warming. This future no longer feels impossibly far away, it’s happening before our eyes.
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2020/july/1593525600/jo-lle-gergis/witnessing-unthinkable
The great unravelling: ‘I never thought I’d live to see the horror of planetary collapse’
It breaks my heart to watch the country I love irrevocably wounded because of the Australian government’s refusal to act on climate change
by Joëlle Gergis
Increasingly I am feeling overwhelmed and unsure about how I can best live my life in the face of the catastrophe that is now upon us. I’m anxious about the enormity of the scale of what needs to be done, afraid of what might be waiting in my inbox. Something inside me feels like it has snapped, as if some essential thread of hope has failed. The knowing that sometimes things can’t be saved, that the planet is dying, that we couldn’t get it together in time to save the irreplaceable. It feels as though we have reached the point in human history when all the trees in the global common are finally gone, our connection to the wisdom of our ancestors lost forever.
As a climate scientist at this troubled time in human history, my hope is that the life force of our Earth can hang on. That the personal and collective awakening we need to safeguard our planet arrives before even more is lost. That our hearts will lead us back to our shared humanity, strengthening our resolve to save ourselves and our imperilled world.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/15/the-great-unravelling-i-never-thought-id-live-to-see-the-horror-of-planetary-collapse
Bringing together climate science and Australian history, Sunburnt Country tells many stories about how Australia’s weather and climate has varied over the last thousand years and is likely to change over the next century.
https://www.mup.com.au/blog/spotlight-sunburnt-country-by-joelle-gergis
What concerns me is that we may have already pushed the planetary system past the point of no return. That we’ve unleashed a cascade of irreversible changes that have built such momentum that we can only watch as it unfolds.
There is one and only one solution: Rapid, intentional, planned regenerative simplicity. Building out infrastructures takes decades. Simply not using something anymore can be done in a moment. A farm can transition to regenerative practices in a year and see full benefits within five with no loss of income or production along the way when well-planned. Twenty years is about four times more time than we actually need, but add 15 years for humanupidity – human stupidity.
All the estimates that such-and-such is not enough to get to zero carbon and get negative are based on economic BAU. They are not based on reducing consumption 80-95% for the top 10~20% global consumers. (I think it was Prof. KA) who recently used the 95% number for the highest consumers, but may have been someone else.) More and more analyses from around the world are coming to the same conclusion I did long ago.
If total human emissions reduces by 80%, it makes if easy to get to negative emissions.
I’d appreciate it if someone would quantify for us what an 80% drop in emissions would mean in terms of +/- ppm/year compared to the average now of +2.6ish/year. (Using the 10% atmos./90% ocean rule of thumb, that would mean @ 26ppm equivalent goes into the oceans every year?)
K: There is one and only one solution: Rapid, intentional, planned regenerative simplicity. Building out infrastructures takes decades. Simply not using something anymore can be done in a moment. . . . All the estimates that such-and-such is not enough to get to zero carbon and get negative are based on economic BAU. They are not based on reducing consumption 80-95% for the top 10~20% global consumers.
BPL: Killian continues to think we can reduce consumption 80-95% for the top 10-20% of global consumers, and do it in less than one generation. Anyone else here immediately think of the phrase “batshit crazy?”
It looks pretty crazy to me when people can’t even be bothered to post about climate solutions (or lack thereof) in Forced Responses rather than Unforced Variations when it costs nothing and takes almost no effort.
@JohnPollack, having read the article myself I had to seriously consider in which thread it belonged.
My view was the issues raised are Coupled (?) and difficult to separate into neat and tidy Boxes.
In this case what rose to the top of importance to me was the scientific content being presented and the judgments being made about that, so I posted the Ref here in UV.
I was curious what others might see in it. Unfortunately the Physical Science content in the article I saw has been hijacked by distractions, side tracks, personal issues or misunderstood instead of seeing/discussing the science aspects. Maybe Killian was the only one to read the article, given he alone has quoted from it?
What science aspects, one may ask? I noticed the following points:
1) The author was one of the “lead authors involved in consolidating the physical science basis for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report”
2) Points to her credibility, expertise, likely intimate insights of the science in the AR6 and it’s implications, and direct personal knowledge of what her peers conclude of the AR6 today as well (that may bleed through her prose for the public).
3) I’ve gained terrifying insight into the true state of the climate crisis and what lies ahead.
Yes, parts of her article do at times cross over into the solutions/inaction side of the issue, as well as how she feels about the implications of the AR6 WGI report and the direct connection to recent events in her country.
But predominantly I saw a narrative form of the science in the AR6, what it is saying to us all. Plus Gergis also offers an interpretation what that means while making comparisons analogies to recent lived experience and recent specific local data points. This adds meaning and understanding – of how the public should be interpreting that dry AR6 science report, it’s Data and Visualizations. (imo at least)
I’m aware scientists tend to ‘argue’ these kinds of conclusions among each other. They may reject her evaluations here, still she’s entitled to a pov given her position. More importantly I posit that Data presented as Narrative is as valid as Data presented as Data. Yes?
It’s also possibly/probably (as per modern Cognitive Science) her narrative is more easily understood by Joe Public. So not only valid, possibly more effective as a communication conveying the facts and the meaning of scientific findings. Yes?
Nevertheless, I may be wrong here, but in my defense, I offer up the following extracts of her scientific observations – aka Unforced Variations:
4) As a climate scientist … witnessing an irreversible loss.
5) during our nation’s hottest and driest year on record saw the last of our native forests go up in smoke
6) Recovering … lies beyond the scale of human lifetimes…. inter-generational damage.
7) recording-breaking ocean temperatures triggered the third mass bleaching event of the GBR – The largest living organism on the planet is dying.
8) a certain level of destruction is now inevitable
9) may have already pushed the planetary system past the point of no return
10) unleashed a cascade of irreversible changes that have built such momentum that we can only watch as it unfolds
11) the clearest signal yet that our planet’s climate is rapidly destabilising
12) the Earth as we now know it will soon no longer exist
13) becoming harder to maintain a sense of professional detachment from the work that I do (a critical insight into the difficulties of being a climate scientist today the public needs to be aware of – this is a very serious business – not taken lightly)
14) humanity is facing an existential threat of planetary proportions ( – that is about the scale of the threat – including putting Data into human terms and human scale – and that now it is all about being an existential threat Yes?)
15) The truth is, everything in life has its breaking point. …the planet’s equilibrium has been lost; … watching on as the dominoes begin to cascade. – (narrative / analogy explaining the Data?)
16) With just 1.1C of warming…. unimaginable levels of destruction of its marine and land ecosystems in the space of a single summer. More than 20% of our country’s forests burnt in a single bushfire season; Australia could warm up to 7C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 …… and more ( again the Scale and Speed of impacts vs T change, explaining the Data compared to 2020 human experienced reality ?)
17) Researchers …concluded “under a scenario where emissions continue to grow, such a year would be average by 2040 and exceptionally cool by 2060.”
18) Soon we will be facing 50C summer temperatures in our southern capital cities … increasingly forced to shelter in our homes …. coronavirus lockdown of 2020 will feel like a luxury holiday. ( again analogy – explaining the Data compared to 2020 human experienced reality ?)
19) Climate disruption is now a part of the lived experience … of planetary collapse unfolding.
20) we are the generation that is likely to witness the destruction of our Earth ( obviously a conclusion based on, informed by the science in the AR6 and other Data and observations – yes?)
Of course Gergis is only one of many thousands of climate scientists and yet what she says must have some currency being a Lead Author of the AR6, e.g.:
” all I can do is try to help people make sense of what the scientific community is observing in real time.” and
” we are losing the battle to protect one of the most extraordinary parts of our planet.” and
“everything the scientific community is trying to do to help avert disaster is falling on deaf ears” and
“processing information purely on an intellectual level simply isn’t enough.” and
“I am feeling overwhelmed” and
“I’m anxious about the enormity of the scale of what needs to be done…”
When high end highly qualified experienced climate scientists are personally struggling with the implications of their own work, struggling with the implications of the AR6, the output of the science, the data and the impacts of that in the physical world and communities, then I think that is something really important to know about.
Imagine if they all had to quit because it became too much to handle? I think this potentially critical aspect raised in the article is very much a Science issue and not a Solutions issue. It is being raised publicly by a working climate scientist after all, and not some cranky alsoran on twitter.
Of course, that’s only my non-expert pov, YMMV cheers all the best to all.
BPL. Yes I think that plan of huge and rapid reduction in consumption is crazy. It would be very destabilising and is so unlikely to happen given how materialistic people are. I’ve said it before and Joseph Tainter is also sceptical of such an idea. I posted a link on that last month. It also wouldn’t reduce total global emissions by 80% because low income people do contribute about half of emissions, depending on what study you read. I do think rich people should do what they can to reduce emissions. I’m not defending the status quo as such! Just trying to look at the feasibility of such plans.
And you have never once stated anything other than your opinion, ‘”Can’t be done!” You say you are looking at the feasibility but offer nothing germane to support anything you say on this matter. Quit repeating, “It can’t be done!” It’s childish. If you want to speak on teh topic put some flesh on it other than, “It would be hard!”
You don’t, and never have, usefully addressed any of my points as to why this is the only pathway available to us that 1. can be done in time to minimize long-tail risks, 2. that addresses all facets of the multi-faceted emergency, 3. moves us to reduced emissions and drawdown, 4. addresses issues of social equity, 5. can be done by anyone, anywhere, 6. requires no new tech, 6b. does not risk collapse and extinction by waiting for pipe dreams that are currently not in place and will not be, if ever, for decades, 7. reintegrates humanity with Nature, etc.
And the best you can offer os CAN’T BE DONE! IT’S TOO HARD!
I remain disgusted with this constant immoral and unethical, groundless failed, flailing attempts to discredit analyses and opinions for no better reason than you have internet access and are scared of degrowth as a future.
Go bark your damned obstructionist drivel at Kevin Anderson, who is saying the same goddamned things I am and see what his response to you is. Stop following me around this site with that same bullshit, empty mantra.
Agreed. Of course we have to reduce consumption, especially of material resources, and do so as fast as possible. But I think K is being unrealistic.
See, the thing is that people seem to be more materialistic as they accumulate material possessions. So the question arises–how much of this is inate to human nature and how much is due to the particular economy we have created. In our culture we have single individuals and families accumulating absurd amounts of wealth. Jeff Bezos or the Walton family and all their descendants could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every second and never even touch their principal.
It seems to me that there could be other alternatives that would be easier on the environment as well as more conducive to human happiness and well being. I think a lot of people would accept less material wealth if you offered them a life with greater human connection and meaning. Whatever comes out on the other side of this crisis is going to look vastly different from what we have now. Maybe we should devote some time to thinking about what we want it to look like.
@Killian
Peraps you should calm down ideologically and try and see it as physiology and psychopharmacology. That rabid consumption and exponensial growth of it until it ends in cathastrophy…. is very similar to heavy addiction in several ways.
Sudden withdrawal is then characterized by heavy nervous and painful abstinence symptoms. And suggestions or threat of the same is fought fiercefully.
I think that simply explains it, and some peoples intense psychological fear of it.
By this model, you can perhaps also conscider a therapy or formula of cure and treatment. But the patient must be willing, is n`t it?
BPL. Yes agreed also. Killian is just utterly unrealistic.
Carbomontanus on the drug of high consumption. Agreed, and there are also other psychological things standing in the way of humanity reducing its levels of consumption. For example New Scientist did a great article “33 reasons why we cant think clearly about climate change” easily enough googled. While this is climate change the same impediments apply to the consumption issue.. One of the 33 reasons is titled “the Ancient Brain” about how our physical brain hasn’t evolved much in thousands of years and prioritises immediate threats not longer term problems. Pulling out so much demand from the economy so quickly could also cause a huge economic depression.
This is why I think grand plans to rapidly reduce consumption by 90% look unrealistic. That doesn’t mean SOME level of change is impossible of course. I am pretty much retired and was on a very high income but I do live reasonably modestly myself, so I’m not saying these simplification ideas are all stupid, but plans need to be realistic and take consideration of human psychology and impacts on the stability of the economy.
BPL: Agreed. Of course we have to reduce consumption, especially of material resources, and do so as fast as possible. But I think K is being unrealistic.
I don’t know why this point continues to need to be repeated, but “realistic” has nothing to do with it. It’s risk analysis and that suggests that we have no choice if we seek to avoid ever higher risks for collapse and extinction.
Try, try, try to stop ignoring/glossing over this point and address it. “Can’t be done!” is not a legit response. Stop repeating it,
Perhaps you should calm down ideologically and try and see it as physiology and psychopharmacology. That rabid consumption and exponensial growth of it until it ends in cathastrophy…. is very similar to heavy addiction in several ways.
Sudden withdrawal is then characterized by heavy nervous and painful abstinence symptoms. And suggestions or threat of the same is fought fiercefully.
I think that simply explains it, and some peoples intense psychological fear of it.
You think? Hmmm… maybe that’s why I have said for a long time climate change is not the problem, it is a symptom of the problem: Resource abuse/addiction.
Good for you on finally figuring that out.
BPL continues to post pointless attacks devoid of context and blaming the wrong person. The post I responded to was not about climate science, genius, but about a SCEINTISTS RESPONSE TO climate change.
Once a troll, always a troll, it seems.
If anyone claims we can reduce consumption 80-95% for the top 10-20% within one generation, I would like them to put forward a step by step process of how we can do that. I’m not going to dismiss it as impossible, but I cannot immediately see a way to do it. I’m not even sure how to decrease my own carbon footprint 80-95%, and I make an effort to minimise consumption. Much of my carbon footprint is due to the fact that I exist and live in a Western country with high living standards and high emissions. I suspect even if I were to sell all energy intensive appliances, sell my house, buy a smallholding, and live as a subsistence farmer, I wouldn’t lower my footprint by that much purely because I live in the UK.
Saying the solution is something like regenerative governance is like saying the solution to winning a football match is to score more goals than your opponents. It is true, but not very useful without a feasible method of how to do it.
Luckily, history and experience tells us that forces of love, creativity, and hope get stronger in times of disaster cathastrophy and sorrow.
Unluckily this is of very little comfort when things are accutely going on.
But I belive that it is important to know of this, and to be aware of and consciously seek up those forces, else they get no chanse work.
Thanks. Great essay. This bit struck a chord with me, given my own experience of the Black Summer :
Researchers who conducted an analysis of the conditions experienced during our Black Summer concluded “under a scenario where emissions continue to grow, such a year would be average by 2040 and exceptionally cool by 2060.”
Finally, in 2021, we’re seeing he kind of Climate change analysis i have been calling for all these long years.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/climate-change-risk-assessment-2021/summary
Yes. I think it is good summary (as in readable), timely, but I still wonder will it have legs, make a difference, change anyone’s mind with the power to make a difference in any govt policy/direction soon enough. eg this part…
The governments of highly emitting countries (the wealthy developed world incl China) have an opportunity to accelerate emissions reductions through ambitious revisions of their NDCs, significantly enhancing policy delivery mechanisms, and incentivizing rapid large-scale investment in low-carbon technologies. This will lead to cheaper energy and avert the worst climate impacts.
because the implications of remaining deaf to this is dire (surely?)
That being said, it is not a peer reviewed synthesis paper, nor equivalent to a thorough analysis by a IPCC working group team. imo, only a qualified climate scientist/s would be able to dig into the refs to see how valid their sources and analysis findings are. Not as comprehensive as an IPCC report. But the AR6 WG2 doesn’t arrive until post COP 26 in Fed 2022. Not much use that. Above my pay grade, however anecdotally what CH cover I have recently seen similar in various papers, reports, commentary. But I have not seen a push by other climate scientists promoting or supporting this Chatham House report since it landed either.
So, how credible is this report? I do not know. Buyer beware.
ref Reality Check says
27 Sep 2021 at 10:04 AM
Recently I mentioned cascading risks in the near future. quoting this Chatham house report https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/forced-responses-sep-2021/comment-page-2/#comment-796192
and in particular the section from the Chatham house report:
04 Cascading systemic risks
A negative and compounding feedback loop is likely, involving shifting weather patterns and ecosystems, increased pests and diseases, heatwaves and drought, driving unprecedented food insecurity and migration – all with far reaching consequences.
The direct risks and impacts described in the previous chapters are the initial physical and socio-economic consequences of changes in climate. Systemic risks stem from the consequence of those direct impacts – materializing as a chain, or cascade, of impacts – compounding to impact a whole system, including people, infrastructure, the economy, societal systems and ecosystems.
Figure 19 summarizes the central estimates of the major global direct impacts of climate change in 2040, and how they could initiate cascading systemic impacts. (68 below)
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/climate-change-risk-assessment-2021/04-cascading-systemic-risks
to 2040 … the Kyoto Protocol began in 1997 with emission reduction goals to get us to 2020, where we are today … boy, didn’t that 20 years go by fast!
I think the immediate extremes today, and near future scenarios in this CH report are what is being overlooked – understated too much in discussions, in emphasis, the media and totally misunderstood (or ignored, side-stepped?) at most Govt political levels. To me I think too much emphasis focus has been on the Net Zero by 2050 goals by those with a public profile in climate action.
While many climate scientists, climate related institutions and other experts are active in the public domain calling for action at COP26 rarely have I seen them raising these short term Cascading systemic risks and compounding feedback loops! as a “primary motivational urgency factor” in calling for action by Govts at COP26.
And yet I do see many science papers / analyses of these very kinds of feedback loops and impacts will be seriously and directly affecting People everywhere and more broadly global human economic wellbeing systems long before the big climate feedback loops start to push the climate system boundaries into extremely serious global “tipping points” such as WAIS SLR Amazon basin.
But imv climate scientists raise these long term future impacts / tipping points, then in the same breath minimize them as being far ahead 2100 next century, and being too hard to know be certain how bad they will be or when they will start. (why mention them if immediate action is what they are calling for?)
These big distant feedbacks tipping points don’t readily connect at a cognitive feeling level in people (as per many science papers/reports) While many scientists govts etc tend to ignore/overlook these “in your face” immediate, short term implications that will be affecting people’s lives this decade now today, and the next decade before 2040 – and climate scientists generally know this is going to happen right? – at individual human and regional levels they know this will be devastating or even catastrophic for hundreds of millions of people in the short term, yes?
eg “Physical risk events from heatwaves, wildfires, floods and droughts are of particular concern because of their potential to impact food security, energy and water infrastructure, as well as lead to business defaults on a scale that the insurance industry would be unable to cope with.”
These cascading type events rapid feedbacks are already occurring now. If more people, the media, business and politicians were aware of these imminent cascading risks maybe more would be taking the issue and COP26 much more seriously and urgently? Yet I really do not know for sure.
note: 68
The expert elicitation exercise consisted of using semi structured interviews and a template systemic risk diagram. Experts were asked to identify the exposures and vulnerabilities, direct hazards and impacts that could initiate and mediate a cascade of systemic risks, as well as the human and natural systems that could transmit and amplify the impacts. Through the exercise, 70 experts contributed 44 diagrams, ranging from regionally specific to global in scope, which have been aggregated in the six discrete systemic risk category diagrams presented in this chapter.
But imv climate scientists raise these long term future impacts / tipping points, then in the same breath minimize them as being far ahead 2100 next century, and being too hard to know be certain how bad they will be or when they will start. (why mention them if immediate action is what they are calling for?)
These big distant feedbacks tipping points don’t readily connect at a cognitive feeling level in people (as per many science papers/reports)
Yes. Thus the call for risk-based framing of climate.
– zebra: “ Watt Is A Joule?”
– Piotr: ” Watt Is NOT A Joule”
– zebra: “Piotr perhaps doesn’t understand the difference between Joules and Watts.”
…. and continues to describe as “ correct” his equation: Ein- Eout = Es, where the left side of the equation is in Watts, and the right side is in Joules …
– the same zebra, earlier: “I think this is a good illustration of my usual theme about clarity/precision of language, and dialogue”
Oh yes – hard to think of a better illustration of the clarity/precision of [your] language and the value of the resulting dialogue … ;-)
@ Pjotr
Could`nt you tell him that Watt is joule/ sec and Joule is Watt* sec ?
It is the difference of energy and effect and that the expensive Kilowatt hours are joules.
You have much worse misconsceptions going around like ” Mass is Energy according to Einstein”, … and “Pressure is energy, thus Vacuum is also energy. Vacuum.- energy!” I have met that from presumably
In such swamps, Denialism does thrive. Thus drain those typical folklores first.
Carbomontanus: ” Could`nt you tell him that Watt is joule/ sec and Joule is Watt* sec ?”
Zebra’s problem is not with the definition, but with understanding what it means – here
that any equation that has Watts on the left side and Joules on the right side – cannot possibly
be correct. And that system’s energy cannot be negative. And that the only way to save his equation
would be by integrating the right side over time – which is utterly useless because we don’t have the billions years worth of data to carry it out.
And when questioned – zebra projects his ignorance and his inability to prove his point onto others, using patronizing to others, and self-aggrandizing, tone. So no, I don’t think that “telling him that Watt is joule/ sec” would change anything.
@ Zebra
Did you get that?
@ Pjotr
I have an article on it from 1970
“The conscept of Proportio by Gallilei, compared to physicians later use of defining- equations to describe physical relations.”
Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift nr 3/4 1970.
I wrote it under Cannabis and it was ingenious, got into press, taken serious by many.
The situation is for stones falling from the leaning tower in Pisa that
S1/S2 = t1/t2^2 where S is distance and t is time, according to Gallileo.
Two generations later at the time of Huyghens and Newton they began to write the same as:
S= 1/2 at^2 .
This is a paradigmatic shift, probably from Renaissnce into Baroque or maybe from catholic to protestantic submission. Or from mediterranean to north sea submissions and ways of grasping and discussing it.
I later use an example as a chemist. On E = mV^2 where “freshmen” tell us that Mass is Energy
but that fameous equation does not tell us that at all.
And show to a candle of wax in the church or in the lab, = exactly one Candela! = A Fameous scientific example.
Lit the candle and take a cool glass of water. Hold that glass a bit above the candle, and dew will settle on it.
Explain……!
Then hold the same glass dried off down into the light flame.. Pure black carbon normally called “Soot” will sette on it.
Explain….!
Discuss, …..
……. And what about the air?
That given, presumably pure candle wax is neither pure carbon nor pure water., neither does it consist of it. And the presumably pure air is neither of all that.
Thus never forget the flame, the CANDELA in its purest form, that causes all this.
Look into it, find it out, tell us the truth of what is that, discuss and explain that . first…..
=========000
What is what? What causes what and what is the consequence of what? what follows what?
I had to study Harward logics, that told that anythintg is equal to itself and to nothing else.
Thus, what is equal to what? when we write U= R . i and PV= nRT? which is the new way and not the old Gallilean proportio conscept, it is new definitory equations of what is what.
@ Zebra:
What about you, zebra, did you get it? Yes! or No!
I am having trouble getting what some of these comments are replying to, with the little boxes.
But since I gave an equation with joules on both sides, I think I get that Piotr is having a conversation with himself inside his own head.
And I think that you are not getting that I want to educate regular people, so writing lots of words to show off my knowledge, and trying to impress people with arcane convoluted language and references that can’t be evaluated, is not my idea of what the moderators call “using your time online to maximum efficiency. ” That’s your schtick.
But, as they say, “chacun a son gut”. (Ooooh, see how I mixed two languages to pretend I am being clever, even though it may not really mean anything?)
@Zebra
The format or file is running out here..
On what is what, and what is it, and on what is that:
I have a personal history there. I can remember looking into a very pure laminated stream of water from the watercock in the kitchen, asking my mother: “What is water?”
Her reply was quite more obscure, that I had to ask science and the experts and read the books about it.
No wonder why I became a chemist. Lord Rayleigh has discussed those water- jetsm and their sensitivities and surface tensions.
But I discussed one CANDELA, another fameous scientific conscept and EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYP.
the candle light flame is also a streaming and fast running process, that keeps a very smooth and clear and distinct shape.
It is examples of convergence and coherence., of CHOSMOS different from CHAOS.
It may also oscillate ande it may “soot”, explain,…..
Occasionally I got with me an old greek conscept. “The form that rests in moovement!” where resting and moovement seems to be contra- intuitive, but it is very often the case and what is on in Nature and reality.
We, ourselves within our own skin and furs are a fameous example of that sort. Matter goes in the one way and out the other in high tempo and the form remains.
And it is discussed as areas of self- sustaining and auto- catalytic lower entrophy in a main universal fielde of ever increasing entropy.
We are also discussing cyclic processes and metabolisms. There energy and matter goes rapidly through but the form of the process remains.
Get it from that side and from that point of wiew, study and train on such EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS first, ….. OBSERVE…….
Then the smogs and the dirts of your soul may vanish and clear up so that the fameous Higher Spiritual light and sun of true wisdom is allowed to fall down over you and to light up your very soul.
Simply take to proper autentic Alchimia, That may help.
And never claim Mastership and begin to teach common people before that true and only autentic, chosmic light of higher wisdom and REALIA has come over you and occured to you..
Litt: Aristoteloes Metafrisica 1 chap. 1 on wisdom and experience, Mastership and slavery, and what is what and what is the difference of that.
I’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest with the questions I’ve raised regarding the attribution study cited by Dan. Here’s a sampling from some of the responses:
Øyvind: No, the author does not have assume this ahead of time, unless you think that CO2 can absorb radiation is an assumption and that we have a decent understanding of how much it absorbs at different wavelengths.
V: Yes, we know CO2 can absorb radiation — the question is how much? I.e., how sensitive is the climate system to CO2 concentrations?
Dan: A simple explanation for you: When any experiment or model is run, it is done with a control. (Sadly this is another example of you not having learned the scientific method.) In this case, with and without actual greenhouse gas concentrations. With the result being seeing the effect of greenhouse gas forcings when added.. There is no assumption. You run the experiment or model and see what the results are. One way or the other.
V: Sorry Dan, but I know very well what a control is; however, this particular control is not based on solid evidence but an assumption, i.e., the assumption that the effects of CO2 on the climate are well understood. Of course, as you very well know, “the physics” of climate change remains controversial, with a great many reputable scientists diverging from the so-called “consensus” view.
Ray Ladbury: It appears that you haven’t understood the entire point of these attribution studies. It is not to say whether CO2 is responsible for the current warming. This is simply an established fact to all but the most blinkered, idiotic denialist.
V: Well that goes to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? Sorry Ray, but science and dogma are not the same. Science is pursued through disinterested research informed by evidence and logical inference. Dogma is a belief system defended by ad hominems and insults, tactics at which you excel.
Ray: The goal of the studies is to show that the observed phenomena are much more likely in a warming world than they would be in a pre-industrial world.
V: “A warming world,” yes. We know the world has been warming. The question is: why? And with what effect? The problem behind this attribution study, along with so many others, is that there are two very different issues uncritically treated as one. First, can certain extreme events be attributed to the fact that the world has been warming? Second, can the warming in question be attributed to rising CO2 levels? Each deserves an attribution study of its own, but all too often, as in this instance, the two very different issues are uncritically treated as one.
If rising global temperatures are indeed responsible for the extreme events we’ve been witnessing recently, that tells us NOTHING about what’s caused those temperatures to rise. NONE of these events can be considered evidence supporting the widely held assumption that either the events themselves or the rising temperatures assumed to have prompted them are due to any particular cause. That’s another issue entirely. If you happen to believe, thanks to YOUR interpretation of “the physics,” that CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels are responsible, fine. But nothing we’ve learned about these extreme events per se could possibly be considered evidence for such a conclusion. Such a notion could only be crudely patched in as an assumption, as is the case in this attribution study, which conflates two very different issues with misleading results.
You haven’t stirred up a hornet’s nest. That would imply you had raised some disconcerting issues. No one is troubled by what your post. Bored, maybe. Exasperated, perhaps. Stirred up, no.
All you have done is expose your lack of understanding, and various people have – with extraordinary patience – responded.
And despite their patience, you have still not tried to understand their comments, or the paper itself.
“V: Sorry Dan, but I know very well what a control is; however, this particular control is not based on solid evidence but an assumption, ”
Sorry Victor but you still do not know how science is conducted. Or what a control is at all. Hint: We know about thermodynamics and conservation of energy. BTW, the control is considering the effects without greenhouse gases. Scientists then test to see what causes an effect beyond the control. In this case, greenhouse gases. Again, you need to read and understand what a control actually is. It all goes back to your willful failure and laziness to understand the scientific method, all just to gain attention.
How’s that explanation for the stratosphere cooling going? You don’t explain it because it completely destroys your agenda.
V: “the physics” of climate change remains controversial
BPL: Not to anybody who understands it.
There we have it again, the lack of subject. What about “I find the physics … controversial.”
That would be for him to state the problem on solveable form And that is what he cannot or does not dare to or is unwilling to, is not aquainted to. .
It seems to be a lifestyle or a deep aspect of his character.
Didn’t you know? If a student gets a science question wrong in an exam, he can always argue it is controversial. I mean, he and the teacher disagree, so that’s controversial, right?
We live in the age of free-floating opinion, just when we need rationality more than ever.
Yes, Sir!
Weaktor: “We know the world has been warming. The question is: why?”
As I said, only the most blinkered, idiotic denialists fail to see the evidence demonstrating beyond doubt that CO2 is responsible for the warming trend.
Weaktor: “We know the world has been warming. The question is: why?”
Ray Ladbury says
12 OCT 2021 AT 7:31 AM
“As I said, only the most blinkered, idiotic denialists fail to see the evidence….”
Chuck: Ahem! Cough, cough! Hey Weaktor! It’d be nice if you could take a subtle hint.
(It’d be even nicer if the MODERATORS could take a subtle hint and borehole this fruitcake.)
Victor says
11 OCT 2021 AT 4:53 PM
I’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest with the questions I’ve raised regarding the attribution study cited by Dan. Here’s a sampling from some of the responses:
Victor, your delusions are a symptom of a larger problem.
In 15 years from now 2036
New science report about the near-term future climate of Texas. From the Office of the State Climatologist.
– The expected average temperature in 2036 will be about 3 degrees warmer than the average over the second half of the last century.
– The number of 100-degree days in the state will double over the next couple of decades.
– By 2036, extreme rainfall is expected to be 30-50% more frequent than the 1950-1999 average, causing more flooding
– More intense droughts will result from higher temperatures and increased variability in the amount of annual rainfall.
– For some parts of the Texas coast, the storm surge risk may double by 2050 due to sea level rise and more intense hurricanes.
https://texas2036.org/texas-will-face-more-extreme-weather/
To wit climate scientist Prof Andrew Dessler Texas A&M says:
It seems unlikely that anything humans could do would have much of an impact on the 2036 climate.
https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1447731141549727750
Sounds grim. Sounds like a climate crisis, a state of emergency, long before 2050 or 2100 arrives.
Is anywhere safe?
“Sounds grim. Sounds like a climate crisis, a state of emergency, long before 2050 or 2100 arrives.
Is anywhere safe?”
Sounds that way to me too. I’m thinking the estimates in SLR have been way off as well. At the rate of melting of places like Greenland accelerating and the WAIS collapsing I don’t see how we don’t get exponential SLR BEFORE 2100.
It is no wonder I am too old for this now and why I increasingly feel like a dinosaur. “The time has come,” the walrus said ….
In our new study, published in Nature Climate Change, we used machine-learning approaches to assess, classify and map more than 100,000 peer-reviewed studies on climate impacts.
Our findings show that the influence of human-caused warming on average temperature and rainfall can already be felt for 85% of the world’s population and 80% of the world’s area.
The results also highlight an “attribution gap” between countries in the global north and south, due to a relative lack of research on climate impacts in less-developed countries.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-what-100000-studies-tell-us-about-climate-impacts-around-the-world
… so much hath changed in so little a time what is to become of us? How I miss the 1970s especially the music and the climate back then.
“… so much hath changed in so little a time what is to become of us? How I miss the 1970s especially the music and the climate back then.”
We’re living in a completely different world now and I absolutely hate it. I agree about the climate and music of the 70’s. I was there in Colorado enjoying both.
Any guesses as to the future of wildfires in the West? It looks like they’re never going to stop.
The fireflies… I really miss the fireflies.
Dan: Sorry Victor but you still do not know how science is conducted. Or what a control is at all. Hint: We know about thermodynamics and conservation of energy.
V: Good for you, Dan. Good to learn you know something.
Dan: BTW, the control is considering the effects without greenhouse gases. Scientists then test to see what causes an effect beyond the control. In this case, greenhouse gases.
V: Yes. The assumption being that the difference between a world with greenhouse gas emissions and a world without them is the difference between normality and disaster. Yet there is nothing in this paper other than that difference to support such a conclusion. It is simply taken for granted. Why not compare a world with and without personal computers? Prior to the development of such devices global temperatures were much cooler. There is your “control.” Afterwards they began to rise. Does that mean the steady rise in personal computer use is responsible for the catastrophic effects now so often attributed to rising temperatures? Maybe so. What do YOU think?
Dan: Again, you need to read and understand what a control actually is. It all goes back to your willful failure and laziness to understand the scientific method, all just to gain attention.
V: And you need to develop some critical thinking skills.
Dan: How’s that explanation for the stratosphere cooling going? You don’t explain it because it completely destroys your agenda.
V: “. . . until about 1995 the stratospheric temperature record shows a persistent decline, ascribed by some scientists to the effect of heat being trapped by CO2 in the troposphere below. However, this temperature decline ends around 1995–96, and a long temperature plateau has since then characterised the stratosphere. Thus, the stratospheric temperature ‘pause’ began 5–7 years before a similar ‘pause’ commenced in the lower troposphere.” “State of the Climate 2018,” Ole Humlum — https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/04/StateofClimate2018.pdf
JEBUS, The Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy? Seriously? They don’t even get the cause of stratospheric cooling right! Both stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming are due to the presence of greenhouse gasses. It is just that the temperature warms with altitude in the stratosphere, but cools with altitude in the troposphere. You know you can look this shit up, right?
The scribbling-out of a “State of the Climate” by Humlum (the troll links to the 2018 version) is an annual event. His 2020 effort explains the TLT temperature increase since 1979 with the following bullshit:-
Regarding the bullshit from Humlum quoted by the troll, the lower stratospheric temperature TLS being discussed is from UAH and yields a linear trend 1979-to-date of -0.27ºC/decade over the full period and a -0.07ºC/decade trend 1995-to-date. This difference is due to the impact of the 1982 El Chichon eruption & the 1991 Pinatubo eruption which, in the short term, raised stratospheric temperatures in a spikey wobble but afterwards leaving the stratosphere significantly cooler.. (This cooling has a bigger impact on the trend than the warming spikes. Without the spikes, the linear trend is still -0.21ºC/decade.)
The RSS TLS record is even more non-linear with the 1979-to-date TLS record showing a -0.21ºC/decade while the 1995-to-date shows -0.026ºC/decade with a 2sd CI of.+/-0.024.
This is wobbly data but there is cooling for all to see, excepting the Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy.
V: Why not compare a world with and without personal computers? Prior to the development of such devices global temperatures were much cooler. There is your “control.” Afterwards they began to rise. Does that mean the steady rise in personal computer use is responsible for the catastrophic effects now so often attributed to rising temperatures?
BPL: And again, Victor fails to understand what’s going on. He thinks the comparison was “before CO2 rose, temperature was this high, and afterwards it was this high, so CO2 must have caused the increase.” The actual comparison, of course, was “let’s simulate the physics of climates with and without the CO2 increase.” He still thinks climate scientists are relying on statistics rather than radiation physics.
Sigh. Stop and think for a second instead of just regurgitating. Again, if climate change was natural, the stratosphere would be warming. It is not. Even since 1995.
@ Victor
“V: and you need to develop some critical thinking scill”
Critical thinking and behaviours ls not class struggle civil war, class warfare. Matter is not created and anihilatede by contra- diction. That wew or religion is the soviet science and DDR State- religion.
We dislike it. That is the wide soviet plains, the flat earthers. We live at much more vertical and steep national environment
Both the SSSR and the US failed in their bold and sure efforts to flatten Afganistan. No wonder really.
Frank Lunz , a fameous spin- doctor, told and instructed the GOP to proceed that way against James Hansen Gro Harlem Brundtland and Al Gore..
Frank Lunz later deserted from that mission.
When will you?
Ray Ladbury: As I said, only the most blinkered, idiotic denialists fail to see the evidence demonstrating beyond doubt that CO2 is responsible for the warming trend.
V: Yet the attribution paper in question makes no mention of any such evidence. If the author were as convinced as you are on this point there would have been no need for an attribution study involving greenhouse gases, since their effect on temperature could be taken for granted. The study could then have focused exclusively on the relation between global temperatures and climate-related disasters.
“Yet the attribution paper in question makes no mention of any such evidence.”
Right. Because it’s not about establishing already-firmly established basics.
It’s about assessing how climate change is modifying the probabilities of certain events. For which you need the counterfactual with which to make comparison.
(Again.)
Yo, Vic! You are complaining about how work you can’t understand is laser-focused on answering your questions.
At least you provide entertainment. But make no mistake: 10,000 of you doesn’t measure up to the great value a grocery store bagger provides to society. (And yes, I am in awe of baggers. They easily do what many of the rest of us suck at: they spread joy.)
Oh Victor. Attribution studies are not designed to demonstrate the reality of AGW. That boat sailed long since. Which is also why they don’t discuss the evidence for AGW (any more than studies about topics in evolution don’t need to go over the well-recognized evidence for evolution).
Maybe you could start with the title of the paper, think about what it means, and go from there.
@ Victor
I do not think you should administer other peoples essays,letters, and “papers” either in order to get your rights and carry out your mission.
My analytical hypothesis or formula understandeing of you more and more becomes that we should rather try and find out who owns you and who pays you and from where you are expecting to get your rents. The way that we read and interprete old zombies of the late soviet union walking around and performing. Very fix ideas, we also call it.
Thus it comes when one shows immune to civil horizons of orientation and behaviours.
Carbomontanus. IMHO Victor is probably a left wing concern troll worried about climate mitigations effects on poor people (carbon taxes, potential electricity price increases etc) so he attacks the science. If the science can be discredited no need for mitigation.
I base this on various bits and pieces of what he has posted, and his peculiar website. He might be writing for a left wing lobby group but I don’t know. Victor is also a crank.
Please do not interpret this the wrong way. I’m politically moderate myself, and I’m not anti left wing and clearly most climate denialism comes from the right of politics. But to every rule there is an exception!
Might be relevant : Overconfident idiots and why incompetence breeds certainty.
https://thinkingispower.com/overconfident-idiots-why-incompetence-breeds-certainty/
I don’t think it’s just the Dunning-Kruger effect, though that’s a large part of it.
I suspect he gets a dopamine hit every time he thinks he is one step ahead of someone else in understanding the issues, and it doesn’t take much at all for him to draw that conclusion (because of the DK effect), so he has developed an addiction for pointing out non-existent problems in papers he doesn’t understand. He also interprets all negative responses as proof that he has raised serious issues and caused consternation, reinforcing his belief in the importance of his mission.
If people tell him THAT he is stupid, he ticks one up on the ad hominem column, and takes it as proof that he is right, and he feels smug for being so thick-skinned. If people tell him WHY he is stupid, he makes no attempt to understand what they’ve said, and he doesn’t quite have the insight to realise that he’s less on top of the arguments than anyone else on these threads, so he trots out an ill-considered rebuttal that is laced with DK-smugness, and he perversely takes that exchange as proof that he is right, too, getting yet another dopamine hit. If people engage with the content of his posts, they get nowhere because he is not actually interested in the reality being discussed, only the exchange of empty words. If they don’t engage in the content, he thinks it is because they can’t find a counter-argument, and he feels smug because he has had the last word. If people express great confidence in noting his idiocy, this confidence is taken as proof that they have joined a cult of belief, because the idea that he might have been wrong all these years is beyond his reach.
I’ve not seen him actually engage in a single good-faith discussion, and don’t believe he is capable of one, or wants one. It’s frustrating to watch, but it’s interesting in the way that a car crash is interesting.
Denialism is his “preciousss”.
GISTEMP have posted the numbers for September, GISTEMP with a global SAT anomaly of +0.92ºC, up on the August anomaly of +0.81ºC and equaling July as the highest anomaly of the year-to-date. GISTEMP 2021 monthly anomalies sit in the range +0.64ºC to +0.92ºC.
September 2021 is the =2nd warmest September in GISTEMP, behind September 2020 (+0.99ºC), equaling 2019 (+0.92ºC) and ahead of 2016 (+0.90ºC), 2014 (+0.87ºC), 2015 (+0.85ºC), 2018 (+0.80ºC), 2013 (+0.77ºC) & 2017 (also +0,77ºC). Sept 2021 sits as the =34th highest anomaly in the all-month GISTEMP record.
The first nine months of 2021 averages +0.82ºC and is the 7th warmest start-to-the-year on the GISTEMP record. For the full calendar year to climb to 6th spot in GISTEMP above 2018 wound require the 2021 Sept-Dec monthly anomalies to average above +0.93ºC & to drop below 2014 into 8th would require Sept-Dec to average below +0.51ºC.
…….. Jan-Sept Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. + 1.06ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. + 1.05ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. + 0.96ºC … … … +0.98ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. + 0.93ºC … … … +0.92ºC … … … 4th
2015 .. + 0.83ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. + 0.83ºC … … … +0.85ºC … … … 6th
2021 .. + 0.82ºC
2010 .. + 0.75ºC … … … +0.72ºC … … … 8th
2014 .. + 0.74ºC … … … +0.75ºC … … … 7th
2007 .. + 0.70ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 11th
2002 .. + 0.66ºC … … … +0.63ºC … … … 15th
2005 .. + 0.66ºC … … … +0.68ºC … … … 10th
1998 .. + 0.66ºC … … … +0.61ºC … … … 17th
Another small win ….
Academic Peter Ridd has lost his “all or nothing” high court appeal against James Cook University, after he was sacked for breaches of the university’s code of conduct relating to public commentary about the Great Barrier Reef which the university said denigrated a colleague.
At first instance he was awarded $1.2m compensation by the federal circuit court for the dismissal but this was overturned by the federal court on appeal.
Ridd’s employment was terminated by JCU in May 2018 for what it said was “serious misconduct” under the university’s enterprise agreement.
In 2017, Ridd told Sky News (Murdoch NewsCorp in Australia) that although scientists “genuinely believe that there are problems with the reef … I think they’re emotionally attached to their subject” and “you can no longer trust their stuff”.
Argument centred on whether intellectual freedom should be qualified by a requirement to “afford respect and courtesy to others … in one’s field of competence” under the university’s enterprise agreement.
In unanimously dismissing the appeal, the high court held that the intellectual freedom protected by the enterprise agreement was not “a general freedom of speech” and subject to code of conduct constraints.
Ridd was employed by the university for 27 years and had been ranked by ResearchGate within the top 5% of researchers globally.
The rightwing (neoliberal/libertarian) thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs on Wednesday announced that Ridd will become a fellow of the IPA to lead a new research program entitled the Project for Real Science.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/13/peter-ridd-loses-all-or-nothing-high-court-appeal-over-sacking-from-james-cook-university
Hr. R.Check
I have tried to understand the Great Barrier Rief situation.
The max temperatures and temjperature swing situation in the Persian golf and the red sea is very much higher and there are coral reefs elsewhere at high sea that are known to be rather in order, so I have wondered whether local industrial and agricultural waste an pollution and intense tourism and overfishing rather may nexplain the australian great barrier rief situation.
A further general hypo- thesis is that the Australians are bluddy brittes and Irishmen who could not behave at home and were not hanged for it, , but pardoned, tied up and shipped to Australia and New Zealand and given a chanse to start a new and better life there. And that this may explain a loot of it.
But along with Mendels law of inheritage, such backgrounjds and bloody behaviousr tend to smooth out in 3 generations. because of genetic diversity even in the bluddy british population.
King Donald Grozny is an example of exeptionally strong dominant genes.
But, I believe that we should quite consequently keep the local and global, recent use of very potent herbicides and pesticides in mind also for such events like the great barrier reef bleachings.
there are coral reefs elsewhere at high sea that are known to be rather in order….
None that I know of. There are some in better condition than the worst impacted sections of the GBR yes, but in good order? Don’t think so. They may last longer than the GBR does but the outcome will be the same I expect.
Do you suppose expert scientists have also “tried to understand the Great Barrier Rief situation.” for many decades already? Look them up if you’re interested. eg https://www.coralcoe.org.au/ https://www.arc.gov.au/news-publications/media/research-highlights/great-barrier-reef-has-lost-half-its-corals — https://www.aims.gov.au/ as well as https://gcrmn.net/2020-report/
the GBR is the most obvious (most studied) canary in the coal mine example for the world’s corals due to it’s diversity and size covering multiple climate zones of Tropical – Sub-Tropical waters. Marine scientists have not ignored impacts of runoffs of chemicals, fresh water and soils, nor ignored the impact of crown of thorns starfish.
The current destruction rate of the GBR can only increase because it is being driven by sustained ocean acidification (weakens corals, slows recovery regrowth) and coral bleaching from heatwaves in the water. The prognosis is almost all will be destroyed by 2040-2050 +/- that is debatable of course, but the consensus is strong and the causes and end result is clear.
Marine scientists are now removing thousands of living samples of corals from the GBR to be placed into aquarium storage like it’s a museum or a ‘seed bank’ for corals. The experts at ‘the coal face ‘ (excuse the pun) are saying it’s a goner. While still working hard to find solutions, such as breeding hardier corals.
But the scientists cannot replace what used to be there, just as we cannot replace what used to be the Amazon as it was 50 years ago.
Red Sea and Gulf of Aden – The average absolute decline in hard coral cover between the first survey and the last survey at these sites was 4% which, in relative terms, means that these sites had 13.6% less hard coral. The average maximum absolute decline in hard coral cover was 20.5%, which equates to 57% less hard coral
https://gcrmn.net/2020-report/
and
The report included data from 73 countries and found that since 2010, almost all regions suffered a decline of average coral cover.
It also found 14 per cent of the world’s coral was killed in the space of a decade between 2009 and 2018, attributing it primarily to rapid or sustained anomalous rises in sea surface temperature.
Hardest hit were corals in South Asia and the Pacific, around the Arabian Peninsula, and off the coast of Australia, more than 300 scientists in the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network reported.
https://www.firstpost.com/world/global-warming-wipes-out-14-of-worlds-coral-reef-in-9-yrs-extent-of-damage-why-it-matters-10026801.html
The Great Barrier Reef has experienced five mass bleaching events – 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020 – all caused by rising ocean temperatures – Bleaching in 2008 and 2011 was caused by an influx of freshwater. (before that there had been none. )
https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/coral-bleaching/bleaching-events.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/07/great-barrier-reefs-third-mass-bleaching-in-five-years-the-most-widespread-ever
Peter Ridd was saying the scientists were inflating the impacts and being emotionally hysterical. He now works at a ‘libertarian’ right wing climate science denying think tank.
@ R.Check
Do I have to make it even more clear…..
The Australians and New Zealanders were bluddy brittes that were in exess and could not behave and compeat at home, who were not chopped / hanged at the Tower and given to the Ravens there on site…..
…….but were pardoned for humanitarian reasons and bundled together and shipped to “Australia” for imperial reasons and kindly given a new chanse there.
We expect them to behave legally along with reality and Nature then, and if not….????….!
James Cook was chopped on his further voyages, but he left after him a University in Australia that we expect to behave.
The Parkers radio telescope in New South Wales could behave, and could serve quite pioneering, clean and exellently during the Apollo missions., take that as a good example will you?
But are the Australians as qualified as that on the Great Barrier Reef?
There, I really have my doubts.
I’m not sure why you think that the forced transportation of British criminals to some of the colonies that became Australia affects the current state of Australian science. Do you think that transportation of British criminals to colonies that are now part of the USA affects the way science is now practiced in the USA?
Do you have a basis for thinking that Australian research on the Great Barrier Reef is of poor quality? Or that non-Australians working on Great Barrier Reef research are also producing substandard work?
And it’s the Parkes, not Parkers radio telescope, near the town or Parkes in central New South Wales. It is still in operation, though it was also used for radio communications during the Apollo lunar missions, and carried most of the video of the first moon walk.
And to clarify, Captain James Cook was killed in what is now part of the USA and I’m not sure that it can really be said that Cook “left after him”. a university. James Cook University was founded in 1970, 200 years after James Cook first visited Australia.
@ prl
To your first question, Yes!
Proof: The republican war on science.
For the rest, thanks for your kind correctures.
I could have been more precise, The ghost or the Aura or the smell of Captain Cook left behind it a University in Australia.
Could you expand on how it is that British transportation of convicts to colonies in what is now the USA, which ceased in 1776, influences the current Republican war on science?
And can you say why it is you think that research on the Great Barrier Reef is of low quality?
Also, to add, New Zealand was never a British (or anyone else’s) penal colony.
A ten-year doubling? Gee, who would’a thought it….
50C+ days doubles in the last decade. Act to do nothing more than tread water by 2050? Yeah, good luck with that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58494641.amp
I sent an e-mail to professor Goode (cloud albedo paper) and have received a response. Out of respect, I have asked if I may post it here and will do so if he agrees. A very straightforward and clear response.
Dear Prof. Goode,
I apologize for the intrusion, but I and other layperson discussing your, et al., paper at RealClimate.org (Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, et al.’s blog) are having a hard time understanding the issue of just what the 0.5W/m2 means.
In the paper you say the additional anthropogenicically attributed energy absorbed by the planetary system was 0.6W/m2 over the 20 years up to 2017.
Then you state over the same time cloud albedo was static, or implied to be possibly slightly increasing, but in just the years from 2015 to 2017 lower cloud albedo allowed an *additional* nearly 0.5W/m2.
Is this correct so far? That would mean over those 20 years total increased energy over non-anthropogenic causes (forcings?) into the Earth system was 1.1W/m2?
I understand the 3-year increase might have been anomalous, but if this is a permanent or recurring shift in the system wouldn’t that potentially mean we will be experiencing a near-doubling of the rate and potential impacts of climate change?
I beg you for an “explain it to a 6-year-old” level of response should you have the time and inclination to respond.
Thank you for your time and trouble.
Sincerely and concerned,
Killian
BTW… the albedo changes in both the Goode paper and in studies by Ceres appear to be in line with model results. I’m not sure why you’re suggesting this represents an increase in the potential impacts of climate change.
1. I doubt that is true. Perhaps you are misunderstanding something about the new paper?
2. If that is true, I find it exceedingly odd that other papers suggested a drop in albedo over the last 20 years up to 2017 and that virtually all of it would be in just the last 3 years of that 20. Are you sure that = “in line with…?”
3. Are you really saying albedo up to 2017 was expected to double the W/m2 that otherwise was expected to occur?
4. I don’t see any way an increase of 0.5W/m2 is *not* alarming. Please explain why that does not qualify as alarming to you.
Hi Killian, I base this on discussion about the paper among climate scientists on Twitter. One of them showed the albedo feedback forcing among models, and what was observed in the studies was in the middle of the spread. Keep in mind that models don’t try to reflect year-to-year variation, so there’s no reason to expect them to reflect the 3-year spike.
The reason I’m not alarmed is that this seems to be in line with expectations, so it likely doesn’t show additional forcing.
But, of course, neither of us are sufficiently intimately familiar with the details to be certain!
“I base this on discussion about the paper among climate scientists on Twitter. ”
Links would be appreciated.
Couldn’t find the conversation. I thought I had bookmarked it.
That said, I don’t think it’s surprising that it’s in line with models, since temperature increases are in line with models.
In the global radiation balance albedo is clearly a negative radiative forcing (RF) of ~ 100 W / m².
The decreasing albedo is mainly positive feedback( Wm-2 °C-1 ) on a warmer atmosphere. (Less clouds, snow, and ice.)
This represents an increase in RF and is added to the potential impacts of GHGs.
Here is the comment from Goode. I have bolded and italicized a key sentence that I am not sure I fully understand. I sought clarification, but he didn’t go any further with it.
1. 1750 to 2000? Did he mean 2020 since the paper covers to 2017?
2. Is he saying current W/m2 is thought to be 1W/m2 overall and that this paper pushes that to 1.5?
It is extremely, meaningfully telling only one person responded to an author’s clarification in favor of ad nauseam posting of opinions and personal attacks.
Several issues arise when discussing global warming historical data and extrapolation, with the most important of these being most often ignored; a dangerous mental myopia. What happens to the northern hemisphere, crops, urban heatwaves, droughts, mortality et al, when ice volume, our AC unit, is insufficient to cool civilization’s heat engines and incoming solar radiation? Next, what happens when those “watts” have nowhere to go but Greenland? In addition to a predictable large spike in wet bulb driven mortality, crop losses, famine, migration towards the poles, degassing of oceans, increased methane emissions, wildfires, superstorms (long list), we can assume a rapid loss of Greenland ice and unexpected rapid rise in sea level, further driving migration, impacting destination infrastructure and leaving toxic, flooded hazmat zones behind, further impacting loss of biodiversity; the ecological services, like plankton’s O2 production, we rely on. There are unanticipated knock-on effects; i.e, the role of O2 in maintaining ozone levels, preventing immune deficiencies due to solar radiation. Also, the role of methane oxidation in reducing O2 and O3 levels. As the class mentioned in my bio reminds folksl]; on our present course all life will be extinct in well under a decade. The quadratic equation – or model – isn’t difficult if you include real-world trends and threats. I used to do modeling for NASA and Stanford physicists and because I’ve written a lot of software I can get a pretty accurate curve; something the IPCC has yet to accomplish.
Fraig Mead,
I didn’t bother with the link to you “bio” which got a little too involved but do you really mean “all life will be extinct in well under a decade”? So before 2031 arrives this planet will become a lifeless damp rock? Procaryotes all gone as well as eucaryotes? That is a pretty dramatic turn of events you are projecting with your “pretty accurate curve.”
New paper: “Unprecedented threats to cities from multi-century sea level rise”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2e6b
It’s becoming a roar: Net Zero 2050 is just plain delusional.
So glad I’ve had to argue with so many of you on this.
/sarc
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/10/13/nations-nowhere-close-to-halting-catastrophic-climate-change
Oh dear. More ad hominems, insults, accusations, etc. If it buzzes like a hornet’s nest, swarms like a hornet’s nest, stings like a hornet’s nest then it must be a hornet’s nest. Not that this bothers me in the least. After all this time I’ve become immune.
Bottom line: the “attribution study” in question is an attempt to attribute certain extreme events to something called “climate change.” But as we hear so often these days, from so many quarters, “the climate is always changing.” So climate change isn’t really the issue, is it? By using this term, the author, like so many others, including scientists who should know better, only muddies the waters. As a result, the author conflates two very different issues: 1. the effects of warming temperatures; 2. the effects of rising CO2 emissions.
Even if rising temperatures can be shown to have either caused or exacerbated certain extreme events, that has NO bearing in itself on the effects of rising CO2 levels. And no, I am not being “paid off” to say that. It’s a matter of simple logic. Thus the notion that we can learn something by contrasting the “contrafactual world” without CO2 with the real world in which CO2 levels have been steadily rising is based on a false dichotomy. And by the way, nowhere does the author invoke “the physics” to claim that rising CO2 levels are a significant cause of global warming. The effect is simply assumed, the implication being that, after you’ve taken all other possible causes into account, the only one remaining is the rise in CO2 levels. What else could be causing it? A classic fallacy: the argument from ignorance.
What caused temperatures to rise from 1910 to 1940? What caused them to fall from 1940 to 1979? What caused them to plateau from 1998 through 2015? What caused any of the numerous risings and fallings in global temperatures over literally billions of years, well before the advent of fossil fuels, or human beings for that matter?
Weaktor,
The thing is that climate science provides answers to pretty much all of the questions you’ve asked. You simply refuse to accept that 1) the climate is complex; and 2) that the evidence has to be interpreted with statistical analysis. As a result, while the answers are there, you have neither the moral courage nor the ability to accept and understand them. I cannot comment on whether your intelligence is up to the task or not, mainly because you haven’t exhibited enough evidence of intelligent analysis to provide a basis for such a judgment.
@ Victor
It also occurs to me more and more that you seem to be lacking certain enlightment and training from facultary level on how the world is put tugether, and thus, what can possibly cause what and what can rater be derived or deduced from what, so one does not have to poke an enormeos lot of “documednted” or listed , “true or real” data that are not internally dependent and connected, in order to interprete new and unknown things or to control wether truth is presented about trivial and known things.
Personally I do not live that way and never could. My very capacity of poking lectures and “data” in detail. has allways been too small for that.
The easiest example is how we describe and remember a pure circle. One can map it in minute details on the tenth of millimeters in x,y dimentions all the way around and list up all those irrarional numbers. But the easier way is to know about the compasses and its use. Then you can list only 3 data numbers, X,Y of the center, and its Radius. That is how to rather think in terms of a function and a formula which is dramatically faster cheaper and better, and it will rule further for any circle, and you can check up quicly whether given circles are accurate. enough.
That is the levels of higher wisdom and mastership in contrast to stupidity and slavery.
And where does your logics come in, that you mentioned above?
My personal theory and basic understanding of whether rising CO2 levels are significant to global warming is directly connected to and rooted in quite other horizonjs of experience and knowledge, such as if you have an isolated electrical lead and the fuse breaks at 10 Amps, the lead sqare area is one sq millimeter, should you put a thick carpet or pillow over it? And what does the temperatures and heat in the electrical newtwork , that can easily be checked up by hand, tell abour safety, right dimensioning, and your electricity costs?
I can even control and derive that very system from the conductivity of copper metal.
Logics and experience “Logical empiricism” ….. tells me that this is directly connected to the climate dispute.
And further, Why should I allways examine carefully each year that the inner cover and masonry of porous low conductive fireproof material in my stove is in order, and how can I repair it without having to pay a penny, if broken and fallen down?
Again, that is quite directly my “model” thinking and theory of “climate” through proper Logics.
So I do not have to ask the experts further on that or to remember anything further I can simply compare it with very wide horizons of energy , temperatures, and isolation. I have it dramatically easier that way, and can allow myself to be quite rude to the experts if they deny the same.
And my logics is not hurt, my very logics live a much easier and healthier life if better trained and invested.
My beliefs can also then be invested rather where they are due and appropriate, to what they rather are good fror. To seek knowledge, and to give both hope and strength, for instance. My beliefs are not frustrated so often and need no thick and strong defence all the time, . when rather set on more due natural tasks. of what my beliefs are really good for.
Thus you see, your very lifestyle and civil war against myriads of stinging whasps is a deep, paradigmatic and facultary syndromic consequense of your basic dogmatic and axiomatic belief and reference- anchor points, that also gets quite dependent of alternative conscepts of reason and of logics your typical way..
Victor, in the real world informed by an understanding of the physics and the evidence, it is recognized that CO2 is largely responsible for the post-industrialization warming. By showing that warming is the likely cause of certain events, it is this implicit that anthropogenic CO2 is the underlying driver.
They don’t need to invoke the physics or anything else, any more than a paper on evolution has to invoke genes etc. when discussing natural selection.
The fact that you REALLY don’t want to recognize this is your issue. You can make your failed arguments until you’re blue in the face or your typing fingers blister, and it won’t change the high level of confidence we have in the role of CO2 in climate and thus the anthropogenic origin of the recent warming,
“What caused them to plateau from 1998 through 2015?”
Even you should be able to work out the answer to this misguided question. Including it in your list of supposed mysteries only makes you look silly. Your failure to abandon a talking point long after it’s been proven false (or in this case was self-evidently ridiculous all along), and your desire to cling to any factoid that seems to support your fantasy world are the main reasons people respond to you in a way that you choose to call “ad hominem”.
Your trolling would be more effective if you were a bit more discerning in your choice of denialist messages. You don’t seem to be able to filter them at all.
Is there any denialist claim that even you think is silly?
Oh, dear, Victor. You’ve decided that it’s true that “the climate is always changing” but you’ve forgotten that knowledge was brought to you by the climate scientists that you don’t believe otherwise! Of course, if you go back 50 years, those scientists had recently established that the climate IS always changing, not simply in hiatus since the last Ice Age ended. Before 1970 climate was treated as a stable feature (by all but a few.) It was taught in geography, not something subject to dynamic analysis. All you needed was a long enough data set, maybe 30 or 50 years, and you’d know how the climate would act in any given spot.
Climate scientists were looking into the reasons for the changes, but still debating whether it was actually cooling or warming. However, the warming group was gaining evidence. Some, such as Dr. Manabe, the recent Nobel Prize winner, were already proposing tests that would allow us to attribute temperature changes to causes such as greenhouse gases or fluctuations in solar output by what is now referred to as “fingerprinting,” since different causes leave different evidence in the climate system that can be, and are, observed.
Isn’t it marvelous how all of this was “up in the air” in a perfect stage of uncertainty 50 years ago? There had recently been a little cooling, and you could logically argue that there wasn’t any problem, or any particular need to attribute climate changes to anything. But those scientists wouldn’t leave well enough alone. They refined their models, took observations, and looked into past climate history. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas levels kept climbing, and so did surface temperatures. Things were going mostly as predicted by the improving climate models. Now it’s so much harder to take the minor inconsistencies that can always be found in real life observations, and blow them up into convincing discrepancies from a now well-established understanding of how rising greenhouse gas concentrations contribute to surface warming, stratospheric cooling, and leave many other climate fingerprints. Now, it’s a nightmare of rising temperatures, emerging problems, and scientists actually using those models to figure out how fast new problems are likely to pop out from behind the statistical “noise.”
Logically, it might be the case that this is all some kind of elaborate nightmare, and you’ll wake up to see that the calendar is 1971 and that scientists are now talking about how climate is always changing, but not making scary statements about how fast it’s happening, or what drastic changes will be needed to make it stop heating up. You’ll be able to pick up that black phone receiver, really dial somebody’s number, and tell about a very strange, bad dream that you had. You might even be able to go down to the filling station, buy a tank full of gasoline at 29.9 cents a gallon, and go visit them in person. Happy motoring!
V: nowhere does the author invoke “the physics” to claim that rising CO2 levels are a significant cause of global warming. The effect is simply assumed
BPL: Gee, I wonder why?
No, one paper will not, cannot and should not address questions extensively considered over decades in the literature.
THAT would ‘ muddy the water’–so much as to preclude publication, I expect.
Focus!
Victor please note ad hominems are only ad hominems if they are not true. If reality is used to explain a behavior it is not an ad hominem.
Ray Ladbury: JEBUS, The Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy? Seriously? They don’t even get the cause of stratospheric cooling right! Both stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming are due to the presence of greenhouse gasses. It is just that the temperature warms with altitude in the stratosphere, but cools with altitude in the troposphere. You know you can look this shit up, right?
V: Gentlemen who prefer what? Where does THAT come from? Juvenile epithets of this sort say a lot more about you, Ray than anyone else. Why embarrass yourself? As for the rest, maybe one of the “experts” regularly commenting here can explain what Ray is getting at. I’m clearly too stupid to make head or tails of it.
MA Rodger: The scribbling-out of a “State of the Climate” by Humlum (the troll links to the 2018 version) is an annual event. His 2020 effort explains the TLT temperature increase since 1979 with the following bullshit:
V: Humlum is a highly qualified climate scientist (see his Wikipedia profile) with many peer-reviewed papers to his credit, who regularly produces extensive, balanced, and highly detailed reports on the state of the climate, replete with references to peer reviewed sources and totally free from the sort of invective regularly spewed here,
Ray Ladbury: The thing is that climate science provides answers to pretty much all of the questions you’ve asked. You simply refuse to accept that 1) the climate is complex; and 2) that the evidence has to be interpreted with statistical analysis. As a result, while the answers are there, you have neither the moral courage nor the ability to accept and understand them. I cannot comment on whether your intelligence is up to the task or not, mainly because you haven’t exhibited enough evidence of intelligent analysis to provide a basis for such a judgment.
V: Yes, the climate is complex. Yet the mainstream view you advocate is simple: “climate change” and the extreme weather events stemming from it are driven almost exclusively by rising CO2 levels. Can’t get much simpler than that.
As far as statistical analysis is concerned, statistics can be extremely misleading unless tempered by healthy doses of critical thinking. One such instance is treated in some detail here: http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-8-tale.html
Another example: http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2021/05/thoughts-on-climate-change-part.html
As far as my intelligence is concerned, you’ve made it abundantly clear that anyone challenging your take on the climate is by definition unintelligent, so your assessment isn’t worth much. I’m intelligent enough to have been the salutatorian of my high school class, winner of the Bausch and Lomb science award, recipient of several scholarships, including the offer of a graduate fellowship at Harvard (turned down in favor of a similar offer from UCLA), not to mention earning Masters and Ph.D. degrees from major institutions and publication in several peer reviewed journals, thank you.
Interesting. I always thought you had the tell-tale sentence structure and vocabulary of someone who used to have much better cognition.
“Yet the mainstream view you advocate is simple: “climate change” and the extreme weather events stemming from it are driven almost exclusively by rising CO2 levels.”
That is a bald face lie. And that is not hyperbole. Please cite even one example that says that extreme weather events are “exclusively” due to rising CO2. I dare you to find even one peer reviewed climate scientist who says that. When you have no facts, you now resort to making up lies. What a true coward. And then read the science about “forcings”.
Bet you won’t even apologize or correct your lie either. Cowards are too insecure to admit to being wrong.
John Pollack (Oct. 15): about the Zebra Equation: Your formulation in terms of energy (Joules) seems consistent
Err, I think you are too generous, John. The left side of his formulation:
Ein- Eout = Es eq. (1)
is symbolic representation of the left side of Eq. 2 from the NOAA web page Zebra criticized here.:
Incoming Energy – Outgoing Energy= Radiative Forcing eq. (2)
since Radiative Forcing on that very same webpage has units Watt m^-2, after application to the entire Earth, Ein- Eout would reduce to Watts, while right hand side Es is in Joules. So much for unit consistency.
John: “ but I don’t see the utility of it, or the conceptual ease. The main difficulty I had was that to make it work, you have to be careful about the time period that you’re talking about. It has to be defined if you want to know the system energy change. If it’s a long period, you have to consider factors such as geothermal heat. If it’s short, you need to consider annual cycles, ENSO, etc. ”
Except it can’t be done. At least without a fundamental change in eq. (1) that Zebra’s already REJECTED:
the right-hand side of eq. 1 is Es ,or in his words The Energy In The Fricken’ Climate System! .
To calculate Es from this eq. 1, one would have to integrate radiative forcing OVER the entire time SINCE Es was last time = 0. Meaning, at the very least, from before the Sun and Earth formed 4.6 bln years ago.’
Unfortunately for Zebra we DON’T and we WON’T have the Radiative Forcing data over the vast majority of the last 4.6 billion years. Not mentioning that even if we did, we would have to somehow subtract the nonradiative sources of energy that are known to have been important early on (the potential energy from accretion and then density stratification of the Earth, kinetic energy of the asteroid impacts and of a Mars-size planet impact that created the Moon).
And that’s why MAR and me have been saying that EVEN if we fixed the left side of Zebra’s equation by integrating Watts over time thus converting them into Joules – eq. 1 would still be completely useless since we don’t and won’t have the data needed to calculate todays Es from integration of radiative .forcing over 4.6 bln yrs.
And we can’t integrate it over MUCH shorter and therefore possibly doable, time-scales, because that would have required Delta Es on the right side, and this has been firmly rejected by Zebra:.
“Before we messed with it, the system was in equilibrium…. Es was constant. So your equation Ein – Eout = delta Es would reduce to Ein – Eout = zero. But if that were the case, Es itself would be zero, because where would the energy come from? So, since the planet was not a ball of frozen water and gases in 1750, it must be the case that Es was not zero, and my equation Ein – Eout = Es is the correct one. ;-)
Zebra Oct. 5: to MAR:
To sum up, the famous Zebra equation is confusing, poorly defined, the left side is wrong (“Radiative Forcing (Wm^-2) ” is NOT in Joules) and even if we corrected it by integration over time – it would still be useless since we won’t have the necessary data to calculate it.
And we can’t do integration over short in which we might have the data, because then we would have to use Delta Es INSTEAD of Es , and Zebra has explicitly REJECTED this, in fact it was having “Es” instead of “Delta Es” that separated the Correct One (Zebra) from the Incorrect One (MAR).
Quite right Piotr. Paraphrasing and summarising. Zebra indisputably criticised the NOAA radiative forcing equation and said his equation was the correct equation. But as you guys pointed out his equation cant be solved to a useful degree of accuracy.
It looks to me that rather than admit his blunder, he made various excuses and side steps that 1) he belatedly ‘claimed’ his equation used joules on both sides 2)his equation was just to “inform” the radiative forcing issues and 2) he claimed you could measure the output of the sun over 4.5 billion years (good luck doing that with any accuracy)
I’m not saying Zebra is wrong about everything he posts on this website and I’m on his side on some issues, but he confuses people. If experts are confused how on earth can he communicate effectively with non experts?
He accuses people of being wordy, (including me specifically in the past), but look how many words he has used on this page all because he didn’t define the terms of his equation, properly understand the issues, and consider that NOAA were right all along.
Some scientific (?) analysis regarding ….. Killian says 11 Oct 2021 at 10:07 AM quoting:
All the estimates that such-and-such is not enough to get to zero carbon and get negative are based on economic BAU. They are not based on reducing consumption 80-95% for the top 10~20% global consumers. […] If total human emissions reduces by 80%, it makes if easy to get to negative emissions. etc etc etc
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/10/unforced-variations-oct-2021/#comment-796608
and the many responses to that above.
I submit … “A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies” http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15301/
A Nature Energy article JUNE 2018 Official URL: https://rdcu.be/SOJx (open access)
Energy modelling; Socioeconomic scenarios
and a recent commentary with refs
There are very few emission scenarios with a strong focus on reducing energy consumption. The most prominent is probably the LED scenario (article above)
So let me present you an alternative approach, with a strong focus on energy equality: Here, the Global North must reduce its energy footprint per cap. by 65 % until 2030, while the Global South must reduce its footprint by 10%, which would still mean less energy consumption per cap. than in the North.
This is compatible with an approach that is formulated in this brilliant paper on “decent living with minimum energy” – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512 (open access)
[…] the Global North must lead the way by drastically reducing its energy consumption within this decade & thereby reducing its fossil CO2 emissions by 90% until 2030. [All LED data can be found here:ref]
Comment: “We make a similar point in our analysis of the ensemble of 1.5C scenarios (including LED) in the 2018 IPCC report in terms of the regional energy demand reduction assumptions:”
Published: 25 January 2021 – Plausible energy demand patterns in a growing global economy with climate policy NATURE Article Gregor Semieniuk et al – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00975-7
Kevin Anderson
With few exception those of us developing scenarios, running GCMs, analysing mitigation, implementing policies & reporting on them, have normalised our (& our friends/family) energy profligate & hi-CO2 lifestyles. So no surprise we ignore equity & marginalise low-demand scenarios.
all from https://twitter.com/LasseClimate/status/1449003775436410881
Isn’t this another classic example of stretched/poor thinking habits, such as Compartmentalization, Cognitive Dissonance, Confirmation Bias, and the effects of being Reality Blind? Ideas being dismissed out of hand instead of being rationally considered in Context based on actual scientific driven data and facts?
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
I think it is. Slightly O/T however my focus here is the attention to or dismissal of available research and knowledge / alternative framing (and the bigger picture.) The above concepts if possible would tend to impact the available Carbon Budgets, short and longer term GHG emissions and temperature swings, the “carefully calibrated future scenarios etc. upon which everything else rests – iow all part of the AR6-WGI report?
Would they not .. well maybe not. But the existence of implied broad based assumptions of what is and is not “possible” in this world surely underpins much of the WG1 and that is undeniable. Yes/No?
V: But as we hear so often these days, from so many quarters, “the climate is always changing.”
TWOE: LOL, no. From one quarter.
I’d like to share two links, if that is okay from the mods:
From the Guardian, a neat summary of the situation. I’d love to hear from the experts where the Guardian team have got it right and where they have been over-alarmist or under-alarmist.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/oct/14/climate-change-happening-now-stats-graphs-maps-cop26
From the Australian public broadcaster (ABC), a minor story about a comedian trying to embarrass our Prime Minister on the subject of climate change. Please share the story. He responds to public opinion.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-16/times-square-billboard-ads-shame-australia/100544834
TWOE says: “I’d love to hear from the experts where the Guardian team have got it right and where they have been over-alarmist or under-alarmist.”
Wildfires, heat waves, droughts, crop failures, floods, etc have occurred throughout all of history. Many of the worst examples occurred hundreds of years ago, or at least long before CO2 concentrations were much above pre-industrial levels. Natural disasters are always alarming when they occur, right? What is different today? Today we have instant “news” reports from every location on earth so we hear instantly about every disaster anywhere on the planet – the constant bombardment of horrific weather news terrorizes us; and those who are in power can use that terror to control us and gain monetary and political power. Because of this, it is wise to be skeptical of the solutions they offer.
TWOE said he wanted to hear from the experts. Not an idiot fool.
Many of the worst examples occurred hundreds of years ago? … bollocks, many of the worst ever examples have occurred in the last couple of decades. Ignorance and denial of reality cannot define what the facts are.
Natural disasters are always alarming when they occur, right? … that is besides the point. It is irrelevant how people feel about natural disasters – FEELINGS do not determine whether or not they are actually worse than ever, happening at an ever increasing rate or not. Feelings do not cut it. Reality does. The Facts do.
What is different today? …. hundreds of years ago there was less than 1 billion on the planet versus the intensity of supporting 8 billion people today in larger regional populations and cities running Just In Time delivery schedules. The forests had not entirely been clear felled. The biosphere, species, and nature had not entirely been destroyed then. The global temps were lower, extreme heat and drought and floods less extreme.
EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT TODAY especially the quality of Science and the knowledge it offers even to idiots …. the only thing that hasn’t changed is for some people’s ability to remain as dumb as dirt.
…. the only thing that hasn’t changed is for some people’s ability to remain as dumb as dirt. ….. and some peoples ability to be manipulative lying frauds and sociopaths.
RC. True words. The passion some people have for the libertarian, very small government, ultra conservative ideology seems to turn them into liars and idiots. This alone suggests their ideology is suspect. imho.
KIA: Natural disasters are always alarming when they occur, right? What is different today?
BPL: The frequency and intensity.
RC and BPL:
Historical flood record written in stone. High Water (HW) recorded on stone wall. Highest is in 1342 and gets lower with time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Magdalene%27s_flood#/media/File:M%C3%BCnden_Hochwasserst%C3%A4nde_Packhof.jpg
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Magdalene%27s_flood
Source of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_Europe
Deforestation of Europe has been ongoing for thousands of years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_forest_in_Central_Europe
Hurricanes occur today exactly as in the past:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes#Climatological_statistics
Souce:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes
On calling others “fools”, do so at your own risk:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A22&version=KJV
On heat waves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Heat_waves_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1757_heatwave
Deadliest wildfires – most in the 1800s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#Ten_deadliest_wildfires/bushfires
Deadliest blizzards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#Ten_deadliest_blizzards
Deadliest tornadoes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#Ten_deadliest_tornadoes
Deadliest tropical cyclones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#Ten_deadliest_tropical_cyclones
Deadliest famines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#Ten_deadliest_famines
Deadliest droughts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_droughts
Those are the facts. Just the facts, ma’am:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4LPkmGO5Cc
A rock in a stone wall is not Planet Earth nor the planetary systems at play. Wikipedia isn’t a comprehensive science it’s a tool. Tools can be used well and misused. Cherries grow on trees and can be picked by hand. Records were made to be broken. Records a world of observations do not make. That’s just the facts ma’am. You silly small minded dumb as dirt little 3yo tyrant.
TWOE said he wanted to hear from the experts. Not an idiot fool.
Here’s a free imaginary metaphorical shovel … keep digging! LOL :)
“Most people are not only comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anybody who points it out.”
Plato et al with a shrug
Oh please let me play your childish little mind games Mr Killed in Action. (Yes I’m bored today, very bored, so here goes.)
Here is a painting of Hann. Münden in the 16th century the 1500s – with the Fulda river to the back right flowing towards the viewer, and the Werra river flowing form the left towards the confluence of the two in the foreground making it the Weser River.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hann._M%C3%BCnden#/media/File:M%C3%BCnden_1584_Franz_Hogenberg_cropped.jpg
In this painting the Packof building is positioned to the right side of the town in the foreground facing the river (near those boats at the corner)
Here’s a modern photograph of Hann. Münden ; with the Fulda river in the foreground and the Werra river to the left
https://hann.muenden-erlebnisregion.de/en/adventure-region/culture-sights
Here again is the “Packhof” in Hannoversch Münden showing the HW mark for 1342, the 14th century, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Magdalene%27s_flood#/media/File:M%C3%BCnden_Hochwasserst%C3%A4nde_Packhof.jpg
You can locate that here via Google Maps … the Packhof
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Packhof/@51.418779,9.648794,550m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x47bb307bef515241:0xad7b32e292eaaf68!2sPackhof!8m2!3d51.4187911!4d9.6509876!3m4!1s0x47bb307bef515241:0xad7b32e292eaaf68!8m2!3d51.4187911!4d9.6509876
It is Located on the bank of the Werra river about 400 metres (yards) from the confluence of the two tributaries becoming the Weser River. Notice the nature of the rivers in Google maps. Compare that with the 16th century painting.
Here is a better birds eye view of the rivers today https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4118172,9.6412051,4034m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4
So please 1) explain what is different today, and back in the 1900s, 1800s, 1600s and so on AFTER that 1342 flood in regard the the broader landscape, Drainage, farming, the River ISLANDS, river depths, the towns buildings suburbs, the Bridges, waste water reticulation, storm water drains, flood mitigation runoff flows, built works and so on in and surrounding and UPSTREAM of Hannoversch Münden.
Then please 2) explain how those differences have effected and changed the Flood Levels at the Packhof relative to the Precipitation Records since 1342.
And 3) what was the death toll and the total economic damage estimates of the 1342 Flood to Hannoversch Münden and surrounding areas.
and noting also
” The results of the erosion can still be noticed today. The volume of the eroded soil during this short incident (a few days) is determined to be more than 13 billion metric tons,[2] a volume that is washed away under normal climate conditions over a period of 2,000 years.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Magdalene's_flood
Please Mr Brilliant Clever Dick now also 4) explain using FACTS what changes in the landscape occurred in the rivers specifically in and surrounding Hann. Münden as a result of that massive erosion in 1342. By how many feet was the surrounding areas and banks of the rivers lowered due to that erosion?
Mmmm, what’s that – You don’t know? Maybe you could seek some Funding to carry out the necessary Scientific and Historical Research required to answer these questions. Because frankly my dear, Wikipedia and your opinions do not cut it as credible scientific output aka FACTS.
Meanwhile during the spectacular 2002 European floods this RECORD was SET … Dresden received significant damage when the Elbe River reached an all-time high of 9.4 meters (30.8 feet). More than 30,000 people were evacuated from various neighborhoods throughout the city and some of the city’s cultural landmarks were considered to be at risk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_European_floods#Germany
It easily beat the 1342 Elbe river flooding record by ooodles more. Germany was the hardest hit, with over two-thirds of the flood’s total losses – total economic damage estimates exceeded 15 billion Euro, of which 15% was insured – When the rainfall moved northeast to the Bohemian Forest and to the source areas of the Elbe and Vltava rivers, the results were catastrophic …. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_European_floods
Back in the Ignore Box he goes.
If he wants to argue mental concepts at 20 paces like this it would be useful if he at least came armed.
You must realize there is no right or wrong here, no? Any attempts at guessing future events should be considered, at best, educated guesses.
TheWarOnEntropy,
It’s a wide-ranging Guardian article you link-to with it covering heatwaves, floods, wild fires and crop failure (and I note in a rather Euro-centric manner). But it does kick-off discussing global temperature which is perhaps worth chewing over, given you make no specific inquiry in your comment.
I would suggest that the “Projected to increase by +1.5ºC” dates shown are wrong being out by roughly 4 years.
The War On Entropy: (Quoting yours truly) “What caused them to plateau from 1998 through 2015?”
Even you should be able to work out the answer to this misguided question. Including it in your list of supposed mysteries only makes you look silly. Your failure to abandon a talking point long after it’s been proven false (or in this case was self-evidently ridiculous all along), and your desire to cling to any factoid that seems to support your fantasy world are the main reasons people respond to you in a way that you choose to call “ad hominem”.
V: “It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims.” “Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown” — https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2938
List of authors: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka & Neil C. Swart
There’s been a long long list of studies designed to “prove the hiatus false” going back several years. Each managed to come up with a different “explanation,” each claimed its “explanation” to be definitive. As I see it, the most recent are no more convincing than the rest — but that hasn’t prevented true believers from accepting each and every dubious attempt as the last word on the matter as soon as it was proposed. NONE of the above has managed to alter the data in any significant manner, not even the most recent, by Karl et al., whose “corrections” had little effect on 21st century readings. Trend lines including the recent spikes in temperature due to two recent extreme El Ninos are misleading as they post-date the 1998-2015 period, when temperatures did indeed plateau.
TWOE: Your trolling would be more effective if you were a bit more discerning in your choice of denialist messages. You don’t seem to be able to filter them at all.
Is there any denialist claim that even you think is silly?
V: What’s undoubtedly silly is the epithet “denialist.” Wide use of this term gives the game away as far as I’m concerned, as it reveals the insecurity of “climate change” advocates. Real scientists should have no use for language of that sort. The notion that climate change skeptics can be compared to holocaust deniers is both absurd and deeply offensive, not only to skeptics, but the holocaust victims themselves and their families.
To answer your question, yes I do find many arguments offered by skeptics to be unwarranted if not absurd: the claim that rising temperatures are necessarily good for the environment; the claim that unusually high CO2 levels are a good thing since CO2 is “plant food”; the notion that the existence of a snowball disproves AGW; the claim that James Hansen predicted that the West Side Highway would be underwater by now (based on a misleading news report); the claim that the relatively small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere proves that any rise in CO2 levels would necessarily be harmless; the notion that climate change advocates represent some sort of left-wing conspiracy or that they are motivated by the prospect of collecting millions from government grants.
V: The notion that climate change skeptics can be compared to holocaust deniers is both absurd and deeply offensive, not only to skeptics, but the holocaust victims themselves and their families.
BPL: They are denying scientific reality, and doing so in a way such that, if people listen to them, vast numbers of innocent people will die. In that respect, they are very much like Holocaust deniers. People who deny are deniers. Get over it.
Climate change is definitely affecting fall colors. In Greece, the new fall color is white:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoG4gyS7gA
Ditto for Pakistan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKh9L61iG-8
Same situation across much of the western USA:
Utah:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P88ek7s1Fb0
South Dakota:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZzxpaI1ups
Wyoming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjQCc2_xlDY
Colorado:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-DdNy0QjZk
Same for Idaho, Montana, etc. Be safe, winter has arrived early this year – be prepared.
Vacuous crap cluttering up the page.
Nope. It’s weather. That’s what makes climate records – the subject of this website. Thus it is relevant, unlike your comment.
It’s interesting weather: From the USA, to China, to Greece, to Pakistan and more – early winter snow – why did it occur so early in so many places?
Bulldust. Weather forecast videos on snowstorms lasting a few seconds, with about one sentence of commentary adds nothing to this page, and is just spam that wastes peoples time. Your crap makes all Americas look stupid. If this was my website your comment would be bore holed in a nano second. Add something of substance or go away.
See my reply to Paul P below. Hope this helps. MKIA
Help me out here since you are a know-it-all. What is the word for a single piece of information or data point that rhetoricians often employ in debate? Colloquially it’s called cherry-picking but since you are so smart you should know …. never mind, I looked it up … it’s called anecdotal data.
Yes, Paul, you are right. It is cherry picking. It is unacceptable when a denier does it, but when a single hurricane, a single flood, a single rain event, a single drought, a single heat wave, a single cold spell, occurs it is fully acceptable to attribute that single event to AGW because THAT fits the narrative.
I hope this helps you to understand the current debate – as a know-it-all, helping others is my goal.
As Ray says below, check out this behavior called La Nina, which we may be entering. What a La Nina will do (much like a complementary El Nino) is subsume much of climate variation for a year or two, and thus create extremes in temperature or precipitation depending on the geographical location.
So Mr. Know-It-All, I hope to see you adding your smarts to the natural climate variability literature, since you apparently have much to offer.
Well, ya see, there’s this thing called La Nina…
You know, you can look this stuff up.
Well, (northern hemisphere) winter is approaching and KIA has noticed that it’s starting to get cold.
I forgot one – China – the new fall colors are white and white:
https://watchers.news/2021/10/12/sudden-drop-in-temperatures-leads-to-early-snow-in-parts-of-china/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iwXTAbGR1Y
KIA: China – the new fall colors are white and white
BPL: Appropriately, in China, white is the color of mourning.
Brain KIA – I forgot one – China – the new fall colors are white and white
you also forgot that:
– “part of China” is tiny tiny part of the “global”
– “weather” is only a tiny part of “climate” (a couple days vs. ~30 year average)
– that two fractions of a percent multiplied by each other became even tinier percentage
– and that all that has been explained to you dozens? 100s? 1000? times before
Part of your memory loss is that you … don’t remember that you have a terrible memory and therefore
you “discover” anew the same “argument” again, and again, and again, and that you forget all the
humiliations of having such basic things explained to you every time you have tried the same “argument” in the past. Sad, really.
Victor: “ But as we hear so often these days, from so many quarters, “the climate is always changing.””
Would these be that same “so many quarters” that would say that because wildfires have been happening for millions of years before humans, then the guy with two gas cans and a lighter could not have possibly started the forest fire?
And the same “so many quarters” that claim that children killed in school shooting are actors, because as everybody knows – humans were killing each other long before there were any firearms ?
War on Entropy: From the Guardian, a neat summary of the situation. I’d love to hear from the experts where the Guardian team have got it right and where they have been over-alarmist or under-alarmist. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/oct/14/climate-change-happening-now-stats-graphs-maps-cop26
V: Well I’m no expert but . . . “alarmist” is a huge understatement as far as the Guardian is concerned. For several years now they’ve taken every opportunity to hype “climate change” as the ultimate threat to the future of civilization as we know it, not to mention the future of all those polar bears, walruses and assorted fauna worldwide. Almost all the examples provided in this report represent current situations – and admittedly this has been an unusually active year for natural disasters. As for long-term trends, they are far more focused on future projections than evidence drawn from events in the past. A very different picture emerges when we consult reviews of past events reported from scientific studies:
Well as I say I’m no expert, but I’m always willing to rely on the findings of real experts . . . so: Here for example is a rundown of “Global deaths from natural disasters, 1900 to 2019”: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
This report enables you to view the data from a variety of different types of disaster. Just click on the link to “Add disaster category” and select the type of disaster that interests you. Then click on the X at the upper right. In NONE of the categories covered by the Guardian article do we see anything close to a trend.
Here’s more information from the National Weather Service: https://fournews-assets-prod-s3b-ew1-aws-c4-pml.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2017/08/Recorded-flood-fatalities-in-the-US-1940-2016.jpg Once again no trend.
Here’s a graph representing global drought evidence from 1982 through 2012: https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fsdata.2014.1/MediaObjects/41597_2014_Article_BFsdata20141_Fig5_HTML.jpg?as=webp Drawn from the following paper as published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata20141
Can you see a trend? I can’t.
Sorry Victor, not interested in your take on things at all, except as a somewhat sad psychological phenomenon. No doubt you have found some cherry-picked factoids, but since I know the cherry-picker in this case, I’ll pass.
I’ll start thinking about the detail of your posts when you address the many issues with what you’ve already posted, starting with your 1998 nonsense. Trying to converse with someone who has a proven track-record of embracing fallacy with florid DK-smugness is not worth my time or anyone’s time.
You should spend some time learning about the notion of statistical power, as a common theme to your nonsense is not realising when you are making an unreasonable demand of the data, and not knowing when it is statistically legitimate to draw an inference. You err on both sides, with comic excess.
IMHO Victor is not an innately low intelligence or stupid person, but he just isn’t that bright either. Or he doesn’t act in a bright way. The reason we don’t see an increase in global deaths due to natural disasters in recent decades is OBVIOUSLY because things like flood protection, emergency services and health care is constantly improving. Surely this would have occurred to Victor? This masks any increase in deaths due to climate change.
The problem is that improvements in things like health services are unlikely to keep up with the pace of climate change, especially in tropical countries where temperatures are already very high. There is a point where heatwaves will become very lethal when higher temperatures are combined with higher than normal absolute humidity and there is no easy solution to this. There is a point where flood protection will become very expensive. This is what scientists are screaming at you denialist / sceptical people.
“Surely this would have occurred to Victor?”
I’m not so sure. I think that all factoids go through the same primary cognitive filter before he processes them further: does it support the denialist position? That tells him whether or not to consider the thought further. I suspect he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
Yes that sounds right. Its a form of confirmation bias. I did a few papers in psychology at university (needed some extra credits). I find the whole thing endlessly fascinating. Agree with your other comment up the page on dunning kruger.
“The reason we don’t see an increase in global deaths due to natural disasters in recent decades is OBVIOUSLY because things like flood protection, emergency services and health care is constantly improving.”
Isn’t this effect at least partially balanced by an increase in population in already vulnerable areas? An example would be Florida. Compare Miami around the time of the 1926 great Miami hurricane to around the time of 1992’s hurricane Andrew. The raw damage numbers show the latter was far more costly than the former which is primarily due to increased wealth and the fact there is more stuff to destroy. This is also why it is much easier to get multi billion hurricane losses now than 50 years ago. If you want to investigate trends in natural disaster monetary losses or death tolls, you have to start by normalising the losses/deaths to account for trends in population, wealth, and for insured/economic loss, inflation, otherwise any trend analysis is meaningless.
There is a similar issue with UK flooding. It is possible (likely) that destructive flooding has become more likely due to climate change, but at least initially it is messy to pull that out from the raw data, because things like population increase and the modern day thing of developers buying cheap land on floodplains to build housing estates for profit is also embedded in the figures. Tewksbury cathedral remains dry when the surrounding land is flooded because it was built on a local high spot, They weren’t stupid 900 years ago when it came to constructing important buildings. They don’t seem to bother about things like that these days, it’s all about profit and externalising consequences.
Quote: “The raw damage numbers show the latter was far more costly than the former which is primarily due to increased wealth and the fact there is more stuff to destroy.”
Partly true. Another YUUUUGE factor is inflation. It would take $15 today to buy what $1 would today. That’s based on inflation rate, but for buildings and infrastructure it may be even worse.
https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1926
Should have written: “It would take $15 today to buy what $1 would buy IN 1926.”
V: Here’s a graph representing global drought evidence from 1982 through 2012… Can you see a trend? I can’t.
BPL: Here’s one representing global drought evidence from 1948 through 2010. Can you see a trend? I can.
http://www.ajournal.co.uk/pdfs/BSvolume13(1)/BSVol.13%20(1)%20Article%202.pdf
Ladies and Gentlemen
On thinking
We have 2 gentlemen here, some would call them laymen, but they seem to stay out as people who are lacking essencial elements of higher learnings known as Bachelor one.
At the door of the Aula at the University in Uppsala, it stands written
At tänka er storartat. At tänka rätt er högare.
To think is grandious. To think right is higher!
We had the same written written on our middle- school flag slightly different in Norwegian, “To think is good. To think right is better”. And my father wondered and asked: “To think right, what is that?”
Permit me to name those 2 special Gentlemen d/o both so sure and proud of their thinking. But obviously not learnt and educated on it, so they rather run over into narrow minded populism. Victor and Killian. Mr Knowitall seems to be on vacation.
And what shall we do with the drunken sailors?
@ Killian:
Having invented or discovered thought and consciousness and thus having the monopoly and personal patent on it is quite pretencious.
The MOTTO Upstairs at the University of Upsala and for the swedish Royal Society Kungliga akademin is perhaps meant as a medicine against such grandious claims that are rather characteristic of Madness and of fanatism.
To be aware of oneself and ones thinking is a human archetyp, “Je pense donc je suis..” But avoid claiming personal or national or tribal or professional or bloody monopoly on it. Given your ability to think, better go to Uppsala for instance, where you better can invest and edeucate that high or grandious special talent of yours. .
I find again and again and again that those who lack that certain Baccalaureus 1 inauguration and common wide- spectred training for the higher studies and for possible mastership regardless of trade or art, they are so quite especially proud of and fond of their own thinking and quite surely also 0ld members of that grand old Party with P.
Their thoughts seem to be rather a bloody element from ancient on, on which they claim monopoly.
Wherefore their thinking is mostly not right however high and grandious. Because that special archetypic experience is hormonal and not spiritual and not scientific.
That drunken sailor however “high” and self- confident is rather quite uncritical and performing with blinkers.
Having invented or discovered thought and consciousness and thus having the monopoly and personal patent on it is quite pretencious.
And, no, I didn’t read beyond that asinine statement.
The irony of you making such a statement after all your rambling, barely intelligible, often incomprehensible (and I am far from the only person who has raised this issue with you on these fora), rants, is truly incredible. There are exactly two people on these fora who tell others what thinking is, and only one who constantly spouts about their supposed academic achievements, and those are you and zebra. Zebra, at least, has a clear agenda re their pedantry – I do not use the term pejoratively here – in trying to clarify discussions, even if needlessly too often. You? You serve no purpose here that I can fathom. You offer nothing not already offered by others, and given your incomprehensibility, less than even Victor.
As for me somehow claiming to tell the world how to think, that’s an extremely poor assessment of my words here. I do, in fact, advocate that there are *varied* ways of thinking, of doing analysis, of approaching issues. I have been as clear as it is possible to be in stating those who best know ecosystem functions have the least number of seats at the table and this must change because an ecological, Earth-first, regenerative systems-first approach, perspective and way of problem-solving is vital for our long-term success. That is not telling people HOW to think, which is completely individual from person to person, but what needs to be included, and take primacy in, the process of reintegrating with Nature.
it’s disturbing you object to this and it raises the issue of just what your, obviously tortured intellectually, agenda is. And that you perceive this as somehow telling others how to think rather than saying people who think this way need to have their voices heard just shows how confused your thinking and communication are.
Whatever hair is up your ass, pull it out and get on with the job of saving the planet. Stupidly, childishly, undeservedly, pointlessly nipping at my heels all the time is (as many here used to do but have thankfully learned to put their energies into more productive efforts) the opposite of understanding our problems and acting in such a way as to solve them.
These are serious times for serious people and you are showing you are not one of them.
Our futures are in the balance. Act like it.