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Unforced Variations: July 2022

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This month’s open thread. Please keep to climate-related issues, stay substantive, no abuse, no repetition, one-comment per day.

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77 Responses to "Unforced Variations: July 2022"

  1. At last, deep Deep Geo the way I have always imagined it–on mega scale depth I mean, not on gyrotrons. But the gyrotron connection provides a nice way for fusion devotees to back out while saving face. Gyrotron help wanted here.

    “Woskov’s idea to use gyrotron beams to vaporize rock sent him on a research journey that has never really stopped. With some funding from MITEI, he began running tests, quickly filling his office with small rock formations he’d blasted with millimeter waves from a small gyrotron in MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.”

    “[Deep geothermal] is a power resource that can scale anywhere and has the ability to tap into a large workforce in the energy industry to readily repackage their skills for a totally carbon free energy source.” ***

    https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628

    *** “There have been tremendous gains in renewables over the last decade, but the big picture today is we’re not going nearly fast enough to hit the milestones we need for limiting the worst impacts of climate change,” Houde says. “[Deep geothermal] is a power resource that can scale anywhere and has the ability to tap into a large workforce in the energy industry to readily repackage their skills for a totally carbon free energy source.”

    • “…geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world..”

      Okay, so generally this sounds promising, but poking holes deep into Earth may be a problem somehow?

      Similar, Vulcan Energy:

      QUOTE: The company announces that the “definitive feasibility study of the first project phase” is to be completed in the second half of 2022. In the first stage, an output of 15,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year is to be achieved. The second expansion stage, starting in 2025, envisages an annual capacity of an additional 25,000 tonnes.

      In geothermal plants, hot water is extracted from deeper layers of the earth to use its heat. In the Upper Rhine Graben, the thermal water contains lithium, which is now to be filtered out of the warm water before it is fed back into the earth. According to the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), the deep water in this region contains between 200 and 400 milligrams of lithium per litre.

      However, there is also criticism, not only from local residents who fear seismic impacts from the drilling. In October, Vulcan Energy became the target of a short-seller attack. The short-seller J-Capital accused Vulcan of deceiving its shareholders with implausible assumptions – specifically, about too high extraction rates of the brine and how much of the lithium contained in it could actually be filtered out with available processes. https://www.electrive.com/2022/01/04/vulcan-energy-secures-mining-rights-in-germany/

      Have not read serious concerns so far about seismic issues.

    • Incredible!

      Gyro…

      But, however soviettic..

      And however deep,….

      grasp that of temperature and heat also.

      However deep and howeven transcendental grades in Faraday down there, how large and wide and with how much contact in square meters or feet will there be to the possible heat in watts in that thin hole, …….

      …………and how much did that fierce “gyro” microwawe evaporation of silica alumina magnesia sandstone limestone shalestone granite greywach basaltstone… iron ore…. “mica”…. (=common solid bedrock) cost in US Dalers / dollars, or Euro? or Yen?

      or even Bitcoins?

    • “…they want to address the challenges posed by material removal over those greater lengths — in other words, can we show we’re fully flushing out the rock vapors?”

      That does sound like a pertinent question to answer, all right.

      Intriguing, in that this is in many ways a ‘drop-in’ technology. I hope their timeline doesn’t lengthen any further, though…

    • Stop calling things carbon-free that use craploads of carbon.

      Can’ we start prosecuting people yet for absolutely false information that distorts the world’s attempts to become sustainable?

    • Government policy by tractor thuggery inspired by hyperbolic claims. Great idea.

    • Climate tyrants

      As far as I can tell from the Wikipedia article, the protests aren’t about measures against climate change, but rather about measures to protect the soil from pollution by nitrogenous compounds.

      From the article:

      By 2019, The Netherlands entered a nitrogen emission crisis as the RIVM reported that the severely damaging effects of nitrogen on Dutch soil could only be halted by direct action.

      [My emphasis]

      • This is correct.

        The focus of the climate activists was/is fossil fuel subsidies and the focus of the farmers was/is their livelihood. The two protests just happen to take place simultaneously. There was some outrage over the number of arrested climate activists compared to those of activist farmers with many hinting that the climate activists should also have brought along a couple of tractors, to avoid arrest.

  3. The ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for June showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.31ºC, up on May’s +0.26ºC and the second highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +0.39ºC and lowest Feb’s +0.23ºC.
    June 2022 becomes the 3rd warmest June on the ERA5 record, below 2019 (+0.37ºC) & 2020 and above 2016 (+0.26ºC), 2018, 2021 & 2017 (+0.20ºC). June 2022 becomes 52nd highest all-month anomaly on the ERA5 record.
    In terms of the start of 2022, after six months it continues at 5th warmest.

    …….. Jan-Jun Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
    2016 .. +0.51ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 2nd
    2020 .. +0.50ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 1st
    2017 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th
    2019 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.40ºC … … … 3rd
    2022 .. +0.29ºC
    2018 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 6th
    2010 .. +0.20ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th
    2021 .. +0.19ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 5th
    2015 .. +0.17ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 7th
    2007 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.04ºC … … … 14th
    1998 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 16th

    And the numbers for RSS TLT have also been posted (but not yet loaded into their browser tool). The TLT monthly anomalies are this year waggling to a different tune than the SAT. RSS TLT sees a drop in the anomaly for June, down to +0.50ºC from May’s +0.53ºC with June sitting just above the lowest anomaly of the year-to-date. The 2022 anomalies span from April’s +0.68ºC down to Feb’s +0.496ºC.

    Graphics showing year-on-year monthly anomalies of ERA5 SAT & RSS TLT here (Graphs 2a & 2b).

  4. On CYCLOPic model behaviours and Ramakrisna religiousity in the climate dispute.

    Ladies and gentlemen:

    We ran into a fierce dispute on whether the sea- serpent does cycle 0r not, especially in the pacific ocean.

    It is time then for people to get quite more conscious about their deep EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS.

    We know from elsewhere about the carbon- cycle, the Water and the nitrogen- cycle, the Krebs- cycle, and about the Carnot- cycle, the Otto- and the Diesel- cycle.

    That is traditional words and model- conscepts ( EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS!) in order to remember that the given device or engine has to re- cycle and re- store its condition repeatedely in order to work.

    But, is this a model- theory appliciable and fruitful to any kind of thingly function and behaviour?

    Or may it rather be hard- necked CYCLOPIC supersticion. among blind believers and flat- earthers in the climateb dispute? Who know no other term or formula for moovement and material behaviour than a cycle?

    A snow or a stone- avalanche or a solid car- crash is a one- way dramatically irreversible event, it is especially no cyclic event.

    Thus it is a matter for all ye CYCLOPES in the climate dispute to look over your basic beliefs , your basic model- conscepts and experimental archetyps in a most criticalo way and rather adjust to reality.. Because very characteristic denialismm is that monocausal CYCLOPIC wiew in classic industrial 3-D x,y,z space, where the earth is flat like a factory floor or a mil. exercize campground,

    We often read that:
    “The climate has cycled before over the millenia, it has now cycled up from the little ice age and will soon cycle down again, CO2 has got notyhing to do wityh this, smile smile!”

    That is what the fameous climatecycle is created for. Thus puncture it once and forever .

    Avoid such very betraying , obvious CYCLOPIC re- cyclings of phaenomenologically incongruent, linguistic formular illusions.

    ========000

    I lookied after John Dobson again on Wikipedia, the fameous amateur astronomer who also launched a contradictory model theory to the Big Bang that he called “recycling from the beginning!” A version of Hoyles steady state model

    Dobson was in a Ramakrisna Monastery for a while and may have learnt and worshiped it there, because it is rather typical psevdo hinduism for the substitute of marxist leninism and protest against abrahamic religions both east and west…
    With all respect to Dobson and his fameous mount and sidewalk astronomy.

    But I say, Do become quite more conscious and aware of your basic model conscepts, namely your EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS, how was it shown and expained to you for the very first time before you were “dry behind your easrs “….. and even in your napkins sometimes, ,….. in order for that it should sit for lifetime,

    which it also mostly does, as your basic set of fix ideas!

    But it may have been false and wrong and perverse from the beginning..

    As for instance basically false and wrong experimental archetyps with explainations of what Air, Water Earth and Fire is for kind of reality, thus how to be approached handled discussed and treated.

    Because for instance neither of it is a cycle thus not to be treated and discussed like a cycle in most cases.

    =============000

    Puncture that certain cycle and they will have to drive on flat tired…

    • @carbonito: – ” Avoid such very betraying , obvious CYCLOPIC re- cyclings of phaenomenologically incongruent, linguistic formular illusions. ”

      — What actually circulates under the hood with you?

      … I am not at all surprised that you are interested in the deepest boreholes in the world.

  5. None of these press releases and You Tube riffs address the transport energetics ,radiative transfer hydrodynamics or phase transformation physics of vaporizing a very high aspect ratio hole through refractory silicate rock.

    They all fail to explain how or why an open “vitrified bore ” will result from vaporizing igneous rock, when the average density of silicate rock melts and the glass formed from them is lower than the density of the crystalline phases from which the melts are formed.

    Nor do they even try to explain how many megawatts of power in excess of the energy of vaporization must be provided to keep the silicate vapor hot enough to avoid condensation welding the drill string to the rock it traverses.

    Molten glass is a far cry from drilling mud in all respects, and It only takes a few meters of concrete to plug a runaway well

    • Hr Russel
      They are selling their Masters Voice and suggestions you see, without any kind of responsibility or need of grasping.

      They are irresponsible also fror any kind of budget. Such is industrialized dilettantism and national tribal socialism.

    • Russel, just a guess, but if as you say the melt products have lower density and are glassy rather than crystalline, wouldn’t that make mechanical drilling easier and less wearing on the drill?

      What popped into my mind was a cylindrical drill with the magic ray gun inside. You melt ahead of it, and drill the melted stuff which has cooled, producing a powder which can be extracted.

      Not clear on how you keep the hole open since I have no clue about the geology.

      As they said, it is an engineering problem, and whether specialists in drilling can figure it out, who knows. Given the potential benefit, it seems worth putting some rich people’s excess wealth to work to explore.

  8. GISTEMP has posted the LOTI numbers for June showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.91ºC, the =2nd highest anomaly for the year-to-date, behind March’s +1.04ºC and equaling Jan’s anomaly. April & May show the lowest anomaly of the year at +0.83ºC.
    June 2022 becomes the =top warmest June on the GISTEMP record (equal to 2020) with the preceding Junes running 2019, 2021, 2015, 2016, 2018, 1998, 2017 and 2013 (+0.69ºC) ranked 10th. June 2022 sits =40th highest in the all-month GISTEMP anomaly record.
    In terms of the start of 2022, with the first half of the year over, 2022 continues at 5th warmest.
    …….. Jan-Jun Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
    2016 .. +1.13ºC … … … +1.01ºC … … … 2nd
    2020 .. +1.11ºC … … … +1.01ºC … … … 1st
    2017 .. +0.98ºC … … … +0.92ºC … … … 4th
    2019 .. +0.97ºC … … … +0.97ºC … … … 3rd
    2022 .. +0.90ºC
    2015 .. +0.85ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 5th
    2018 .. +0.84ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 6th
    2010 .. +0.80ºC … … … +0.72ºC … … … 9th
    2021 .. +0.78ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 7th
    2007 .. +0.75ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 12th
    2014 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 8th

    These GISTEMP 2022 anomalies are a pretty good match to the ERA5 SAT reanalysis excepting Copernicus ERA5 putting the June 2019 anomaly somewhat ahead of June 2022 & 2020 (rather than just behind them).

  9. USDA report says the Dutch nitrogen policy driving the protests is to limit N2O, a GHG 300 times more potent than CO2. Search this report for GHG – it appears 12 times:

    https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Government%20Presents%20National%20Program%20to%20Reduce%20Nitrogen%20Greenhouse%20Gas%20Emissions%20in%20Rural%20Areas%20_The%20Hague_Netherlands_NL2022-0035.pdf

    Quote:
    “On June 10, 2022, the Dutch Minister for Nitrogen and Nature Policy, Ms. Christianne van der Wal, presented a plan laying out the objectives for Dutch nitrogen greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions………..Farmers in some provinces will be particularly hard hit by the area-oriented approach, and the Dutch government acknowledged “there is not a future for all {Dutch} farmers within [this] approach.” Small protests have already followed the announcement, with a larger farmer protest set for June 22, 2022 in the Province of Gelderland.”

    • From your source:

      The National Program focuses on the reduction of nitrogen deposited in soils in all areas of
      the Netherlands…

      Nitrogen deposition in soils, which is the starting point for the area-based approach of the National
      Program, can occur due to wet deposition (nitrogen ends up in the soil via precipitation) or dry
      deposition (plants or soil absorb nitrogen directly from the air, aerosols settle down to the ground).

      So while NOX is indeed a GHG, it seems quite clear that the concern is directed primarily at precisely the portion of the nitrogen emissions that *doesn’t* remain in the atmosphere and help change the climate.

  10. Parts of the UK under a extreme heat warning as temperatures forecast to soar past 40C on Monday and Tuesday, which is a good 2C above the record which was set in 2019 and before that, 2003 .

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62177458

    I live just south of the red warning but am expecting a very unpleasant start to the working week with overnight temperatures in my town not forecast to drop below 23C on Monday into Tuesday, and I don’t have air conditioning.

    • Temperatures that warm are appalling for the UK! Please take it easy and give your body time to adjust. You can expect to feel tired and sluggish. Use a fan where possible. Close up the windows in the morning, with shades and curtains down. Have plenty of ice water available. Take a cool bath or shower. Eat lightly. Digestion of high carb foods seems to produce extra heat.

      That’s how I manage without air conditioning through the summer in an area where the summers are a lot warmer than yours.

      • The UK recorded over 38C yesterday and has set a new overnight minimum record. Some places didn’t drop below 25C overnight last night. Today is the day when we will see if 40C will be reached for the first time. Thankfully much cooler weather arriving tomorrow although still above average. I have got to the point where blocking out the sun during the day and opening windows on both sides of the house in the evening has allowed me to adapt to and tolerate the heat.

        • If you have two or more windows open, a fan can aid in circulation. I live in a part of California, where the current extreme heat in the UK, is present for at least twenty to thirty days per year. I have a large 24inch circular fan mounted on one window. These fans are normally used to cool barns, and industrial workspaces and move a lot of air. Still the indoor minimum temperature is usually 1.5 to 2 C higher than the outside minimum. But it results in a very large reduction in AC energy consumption.

    • Obtain a fan that will fit in your windows. Box fans are excellent:

      Looks like they are expensive in the UK – we can buy similar fans at Walmart for $20:

      https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genesis-G20BOX-WHT-Box-inch-White/dp/B0854FY793/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=box%2Bfan&qid=1658211704&sr=8-4&th=1

      More fans, but these are not as good as the box fan above for cooling the whole house, but if your windows are not big enough you may have to use one of these:

      https://www.amazon.co.uk/box-fan/s?k=box+fan

      If you have several windows you can open, put fan in window blowing OUT. Put books or boards, etc under it to make a nice level platform to sit on. Close window on fan to keep it from falling. Put a piece of cardboard or a box etc next to fan to close off the window opening so the fan can’t recirculate the air from the outisde. If wind is blowing FROM the west, it would be best if the fan blowing out was blowing to the east so it doesn’t fight the wind. south or north would be OK too.

      Open other windows as far from the fan as possible so the air the fan pulls in thru those windows flows as far as possible in the house, cooling objects as it goes. If you have 2 or 3 windows you can put fans in, that would help.

      Turn fan on at night when outdoor temp drops below indoor temperature. Leave fan(s) on all night drawing cool air thru the house. In the morning shut windows when the sun hits them or when the outside air warms to greater than the indoor temperature. Close all windows and use as much insulation in them as possible – also using aluminum foil or paper to help reflect sunlight (turn window into a mirror). It may finally heat up so much that you have to open the windows even in the heat of the day. Until then, use the box fan (no longer in the window) to move air over your sweaty body and it will help cool you. Get a squirt bottle to wet your clothes for evaporative cooling.

      Better yet, get an air conditioner. I don’t know if this is a good one or not – don’t see a lot of choices on the UK Amazon site. Here in the US, we have many to choose from in all sizes.

      Window air conditioner would be my first choice if it can be fitted in the window:

      https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prem-I-Air-Inverter-Window-Conditioner-Control/dp/B01IF9ZP4S/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=window+air+conditioner&qid=1658212682&sprefix=%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-11

      More AC units below. The kind with hoses that go to the window are best if they have 2 hoses, but I don’t see any on the UK website – they are not easy to find in the US either. One hose or 2 hose units may be easier to install than a window AC unit depending on house construction, and your skills at carpentry.

      Window AC unit should drip condensate outdoors – the indoor type with hoses usually collects condensate in the bottom and you have to dump it – many of them leak badly so you need something under them to catch the water or it will ruin your floors. Cardboard box with plastic trash bags? Hot water heater drain pan?

      https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=window+air+conditioner&qid=1658212955&sprefix=%2Caps%2C184&ref=sr_pg_1

      Be of good cheer. Pacific NW USA had 115 degrees F last June – this year we’ve barely made it to 90 F so far.

      • I have two upstairs windows. All open downstairs windows blow inwards. This takes advantage of the chimney effect.

        • Yes, the chimney effect is powerful in multi-story buildings when the inside air is warm and the outside air is cold. Your house wants to take off like a hot air balloon. :)

    • Ken Fabian,
      As Gavin says, this is nonsense, and given the effort this Qinghan Bian, it is top-notch nonsense.
      In a previous paper Bian sets out why he is examining waste heat as a cause of AGW. Following a rambling account of the uncertainty in climate models, he presents reasons for his dismissal of greenhouse gases driving AGW in which it is plain he has problems differentiating between incremental and accumulative effects, and more..

      ” For example, in IPCC’s reports only those models satisfying a predetermined set of conditions (i.e. requirements for responses and feedbacks etc. are met) are selected and their mean of various simulations are used to compare to the actual temperature measurements (…), but still their mean values cannot get close enough to the actual observed anomalies, indicating these models’ inherent restraints and uncertainties. Additionally, this approach cannot either help to explain why or how the land and sea surface’s temperatures change. All these suggest that the global warming be poorly correlated to GHGs, leaving the debates on the root cause of the global warming continue restlessly [Ref NASA.Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet]. This is also supported by the fact that during 2014 and 2016 when the global GHG concentration stayed steadily, the globe still warmed at rapid rates. On the other hand, if GHGs really trap heat strongly and have strong forcing capabilities, then it would be possible to capture and use them in high concentration to collect heat and develop new energy sources, however, it hasn’t been seen yet.

      [I haven’t trawled the NASA web-page referenced to see if it does somehow tell us “the debates on the root cause of the global warming continue restlessly.”]
      The sole finding of Bian is effectively that mankind’s primary energy use has risen 1965-to-date as has global temperature, and as both are not far off linear, they can be ‘correlated’., apparently very closely (although I’m not sure how two linear rises can be shown to have a “very close” correlation). And this pie-eyed nonsense all goes rather pear-shaped if the same silly analysis were carried out 1900-to-date when linearity is not present.

      There is a graphic (from a href=”https://skepticalscience.com/heatflow.html”>this SkS web-page) showing the annual energy inputs into the terrestrial climate system for 2005. Solar, tidal & geological inputs are fixed (so not causes of AGW) while GHG forcing sits at +1.6Wm^-2 (not sure if this is simplistically using CO2 forcing or is +GHG-areosols) while the primary energy use in that year sits at +0.03Wm^-2. And if you crunch the numbers to equate GHG forcing with primary energy use (as opposed to just correlate like Bian), you find the energy captured by the resulting AGW equals the primary energy use in roughly a year (depending on fuel used). And after that ‘year’, the AGW warming keeps racking up, and up and up, so it is obvious which is the big daddy of AGW.

    • Well, let me critique the opening sentences…

      Pursuing GHG reductions by means of all resources and efforts has turned out no result to stop or even slow the global warming: the globe still gets warmer and warmer, especially in the recent years, at record-breaking rate almost each single year.

      Duh! Or should I say, “D’oh?” Since the rise in atmospheric GHG concentrations has not halted, that is no surprise whatever. If anything, it tends to support the mainstream science and not the thesis being put forward in this abstract.

      Additionally, no definitive relationship has been found between the warming and the atmospheric GHG concentration.

      Hey, look! It’s a Big Lie! Of course a “definitive relationship” has been. Citations to that effect are, shall we say, extremely numerous. A review article that’s relevant:

      https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.636

      The link between them even in IPCC’s report lacks support and is unconvincing.

      But not as unconvincing as making an assertion which is 1) clearly subjective in nature (“unconvincing” to whom?), and 2) totally unsupported.

    • The author is either a shill, a bot or an innumerate idiot. It’s absurd by orders of magnitude.

    • I recognised it as nonsense but wondered if it included any notably novel nonsense but no, not even that.

      Thanks for replies.

      • Waste heat is a problem primarily because it represents wasted primary energy. It can also be an issue in dense urban areas where it can contribute to the urban head island intensity. But measured globally it is a few orders of magnitude smaller than the GHG drivers.

  12. It’s the stupidity, stupid.

    The political and scientific traps of neoliberalism are many. The postwar relentless social atomization and closing of the human mind, unstoppable since Reagan took power in the name of ceaseless marketing and consumerism (“economics”) plus imperial revanchism 1980, ie. “globalization”, is coming to an end, but again, like 1914-45, this abortive process of nemesis after hubris risks ending in war, desperation, romanticism, collapse, bureaucratic apathy or fascism and totalitarian nonsense, or some combination of these.

    Among the climate activists desperation and revolutionary romanticism is so far the only popular response to the political impotence of the IPCC process and the media climate-policy hype, which is now fast collapsing like a house of cards, confronted with still no results at all concerning cuts to fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. The socalled “goals” of the Paris”agreement” (which is no agreement on anything but empty and completely insufficient lukewarm promises, or “bullshit” as James Hansen called this already in december 2015) are by now silently being buried under the usual dogmatic blabbering about “economics”/growth, war etc., while the weather extremes and their results are now beginning to destabilize and undercut global food production, heath, international production chains etc., but this is all being consciously swept under the carpet of war frenzy and economic crisis once again.

    Political realism is being consciously ignored “The fee-and-dividend method – favoured by the Tax Justice Network and other campaigners – can actually return all the income raised from a carbon tax back to the whole population, or to the lowest-income part of the population.
    The trouble is that, in the real world, few governments show signs of moving in that direction. Mann points to the Canadian carbon tax scheme, which is better than most. But most carbon taxes and prices are not progressive, and most of them are not effective in nixing fossil fuels either.” https://theecologist.org/2021/apr/08/strategies-new-climate-war

    This is inspiring desperate, symbolic and escapist activism like XR etc. https://handwiki.org/wiki/Biography:Jem_Bendell . “He specialised on relationships between NGOs and business, pointing out their potential, despite the power inequities and the way in which business agendas tend to prevail over those of the non-profit sector. (…) He also became involved in the anti-globalisation movement, later writing a United Nationsreport on the conflict between business and civil society.[5] He founded Lifeworth, a progressive professional services company mostly working with UN agencies and worked part time as an associate professor of management (NB! KJ) at Griffith Business School.
    After his time consulting for the United Nations, in 2012 Bendell joined Cumbria University and founded the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) (sic! KJ). On account of this work, the World Economic Forum (! KJ) named him a Young Global Leader.[3][6] In a 2011 TEDx talk he expanded his focus to monetary reform and complementary currencies, mentioning Bitcoin, and predicting that Facebook would launch their own currency.”

    A typical “politically correct”/liberal comme-il-faut media “protest” posterboy in the neverending age of triumphalist neoliberalism and managerial-utopian hubris since Reagan/Thatcher and the Chicago-school and the Ayn-Randians wiped out what remained of keynesianism and social liberalism, a la Greenspan/Clinton/Musk/Gates etc. It seems many all too soon forgot what was once written about the different forms of repressive tolerance https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html

    “Predicting”… the financial actions of the Facebook owners is hardly very difficult, given the right connections, which this guy undoubtly have. He smells far away of spindoctorship even if he may also have in himself elements of late-medieval flagellantism and millenniarism, albeit in a typical postmodern business-version.

    See also: http://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/1707/ “Healing capitalism…” her vrimler det med mondene moteord og ledelsessvada. “This book will be a fantastic resource for business libraries, as it records and analyses key events, issues and trends in corporate responsibility during the first decade of the 21st century. It is a sequel and companion to Bendell’s previous work, The Corporate Responsibility Movement.” Nothing less…

    His famous cult-creating article https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/4166/18/Bendell_Deep%20Adaptation%202020%20update.pdf was well critisized here:

    “Meanwhile, a variation of the theme was coming in from Jem Bendell, a business school professor at the University of Cumbria in the north of England. An expert in digital currencies, his staff web page playfully describes how it earned him the moniker ‘Professor Bitcoin’(13). Bendell’s contribution to Extinction Rebellion’s manifesto, This is Not a Drill, tells that he ‘grieved how I may not grow old’(14). The manifesto thesis for which he is now known, Deep Adaptation, anticipates ‘inevitable near-term social collapse due to climate change’ resulting in ‘probable catastrophe and possible extinction’(15). This, as he wrote on his blog, could be expected ‘in many, perhaps most, countries of the world . . . within 10 years’(16). He spelt out both the imminence and what it would look like in a roundup of where he considered the climate science stood as of 2018.

    ‘But when I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life. With the power down, soon you wouldn’t have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbours for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won’t know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death.’(17)

    Deep Adaptation was originally an academic paper that had failed peer review for lack of scholarly rigour. Bendell posted it to the web in 2018, achieving an astonishing half a million downloads within the first year. Part of his rationale leans on what he describes as ‘data published by scientists from the Arctic News’. However, Arctic News is no scholarly tome. It is a blog site that, amidst lurid illustrations, invokes the methane bomb and projects a possible global temperature rise of 10°C, by 2026, based on ‘adjusted NASA data’ heralding the ‘mass extinction of man’(18). Again, the pushback comes from within the scientific community itself. A journalist asked Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s leading climate experts what he made of Bendell’s paper. Schmidt said, and further pressed the point on his Twitter account, that it mixes ‘both valid points and unjustified statements throughout’, but is ‘not based on anything real’(19).”

    https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/08/denial-and-alarmism-in-the-near-term-extinction-and-collapse-debate/

    The scientific parts of this criticism of Bendell etc. are nescessary and well argued, albeit not without some unfounded parts, as pointed out in this article:

    https://theecologist.org/2021/apr/08/strategies-new-climate-war

    But the main problem is political: “Mann writes that nations’ Paris commitments “don’t alone solve the problem”, and that “not every nation will meet its targets”, but that nevertheless the agreement was “a monumental achievement”.” No it wasn’t. It was and is just more windowdressing and kicking the can further along into the future, and therefore it’s now creating disillusionment and stimulating trumpism everywhere. What was needed was exactly carbon fee and dividend, and it’s of course no accident that this is being met with not just ignorance and reluctance, but with outright hostility – but no arguments of course – whenever it can’t be ignored.

    The realism from Mann et al. does not hold for all the (implicated) political parts of the criticism of Bendell etc., as most seem founded in the liberalist variants of bureaucratic illusions about the possibility of “scientific” politics. But that is not science, only scientism as ideology (cfr. fx. the old text by Habermas “Technology and science as “ideology””, https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/technology_and_science_as_ideology.pdf , and fx. the polish historian Adam Schaff about history and objectivity, the french sociologist Pierre Bourdieu etc.), unconscious of it’s inescapable social and thus political roots.

    As we now know all too well from the unstoppable rise of reaganism-bushism-“transformed”-to-trumpianism in the US, and it’s putinist/authoritarian clones in Russia, Turkey, India etc., social liberalism in the US has long ago retracted to a even more ignorant and hollow historical parallel to “the cowardly escape from Hitler” of the social democrats in the weimar republic 1930-33 (Wilhelm Hoegner, leading bavarian member for SPD of the Reichstag until the party was outlawed by Hitler in march 1933, wrote a book with this title in swiss exile 1937). Biden is so to speak the ghost of the corrupt and lame-duck/helpless liberal antifascism in Germany 1923-33, while his counterparts in what remains of the republicans and other “conservatives” like Macron more resemble the german-national wing like the newspaper-tycoon Alfred Hugenberg and the chinese CP the neoliberalized maoist variant of Stalin’s affinity towards and alliance with fascism 1922-41. In to-day’s world there are no longer any churchills, there is just the farce of the politically late Boris Johnson, the vaning blairist Labour party and the sclerotic EU socialists, some vague US democrats etc. All these “leading” politicians are now either politically sidelined or open climate ignorants, some still in rare moments with a little but fast vaning greenwash of their fossil capitalism. They have all in real politics now, as usual in the name of “the least evil”, deserted the UN and IPCC, buried the Paris”agreement” (in it’s orwellian new-speak-absurdity of voluntary obligations it was never more than a sorry theatre) and are now only in the name of climate “adaptation” “including at the pump” (sic! Biden), practising headless appeasement to climate denialism under the mostly false flag of ad hoc emergency panic, to relentless american media-fascism and the offensive from oligarch fossil capital (the now texan Musk, Bezos, Sheldon Adelson and co.) and petrostate dictatorships from bin Salman to Putin.

    In any kind of democracy worth it’s name, Trump and his Proud Boys would of course have been under arrest on the 7th of january 2021. The helpless theatre now being launched for the second time, is all too late and too little, a thin shadow under the iron heel of the trumpian coup-“court”, the trumpian democrats Manchin, Synema etc., and de facto, behind all the empty proclamations, blessed by the neocon lame duck and corrupt senile president and his silly plastic stand-in Harris.

    What the socalled “scientific” consensus in climate matters is now achieving is just centrist-extremist nonsense: adaptation to a situation where any kind of parading climate-science-based “policy making” has finally all but officially been completely abandoned in the name of the “new” cold war (it’s the old imperial game, but now with hardly politically differing totalitarian actors) over the remaining ressources, and the IPCC, its fictional carbon “budgets” etc. is simply being ignored under the pretence of “postponement” (as if there was ever anything else). Anything but profit growth has always been postponed, as if that was realistic. It is the exact opposite.

    https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists

    “You dug up the astonishing statistic that China has poured more cement every three years since 2003 than the US managed in the entire 20th century. You calculated that in 2000, the dry mass of all the humans in the world was 125m metric tonnes compared with just 10m tonnes for all wild vertebrates. And now you explore patterns of growth, from the healthy development of forests and brains to the unhealthy increase in obesity and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. (…)

    It’s not good enough just to say life is better or the trains are faster. You have to bring in the numbers. This book is an exercise in buttressing what I have to say with numbers so people see these are the facts and they are difficult to dispute. (…)

    I first came across your work while I was writing a book about the Chinese environment. Time and again, you had the data that I was looking for – and it often revealed how dubious many of the official statistics were. You have been described as a “slayer of bullshit”. Is that your goal?

    I was brought up in Czechoslovakia during the era of the Soviet bloc. Having spent 26 years of my life in the evil empire, I do not tolerate nonsense. I grew up surrounded by commie propaganda – the bright tomorrow, the great future of mankind – so I’m as critical as they come. It’s not my opinion. These are the facts. I don’t write opinion pieces. I write things that are totally underlined by facts.

    You debunk overly rosy projections by techno-optimists, who say we can solve all our problems with smarter computers, and economists, who promise endless capitalist growth. In many countries, the downside of material growth now seems greater than the upside, which leads to what you call “anthropogenic insults to ecosystems”. Is that a fair summary?

    Yes, I think so. Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no (human, KJ) life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense. The options are quite clear from the historical evidence. If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone. The best hope is that you find some way to manage it. We are in a better position to do that now than we were 50 or 100 years ago, because our knowledge is much vaster. If we sit down, we can come up with something. It won’t be painless, but we can come up with ways to minimise that pain.”

    But then we must try to do that. That’s not happening now, now we have nothing but neoliberalized fascism/totalitarianism, centrist lame duck appeasement and escapism, and sleepy, lazy dogmatism, mediotic nonsense and silly entertainment. All over the place except for tiny politically powerless opposition fragments like maybe the CCL, 350.org, greens and left-wing parties here and there in Europe etc.

    Where the climate science “consensus” around the Paris”agreement” fiction goes astray in all it’s good-meaning naivism, is when you confuse and mix up natural scientific data and their interpretations with your own centrist or other liberalist etc. political ideology.

    But *natural science is not political and social science, it is not critical history, and it cannot replace or be used as an argument for any political strategy, unless falsely “objective” in the positivist tradition. There is no objective position in societal matters, that’s a bureaucratic illusion.*

    There is no politically objective, neutral position implicated from “pure” natural science, and that’s exactly where the IPCC as well as XR etc. has fallen into the neoliberalism trap, thereby helping the denialists. *Neither the laws of nature nor historical experience and the brutal facts of human existence on earth and as part of it’s nature can be escaped by liberalist political ideology/bourgeois/neoclassic/stalinist/fascist economics etc. management “theory”, spin/escatologic fantasy/new ageism/objectified climate modelling etc.* The chickens of positivism/”social” “physics” etc. are coming home to roost.

    No democrat can escape the nescessity of historically and critically, scientifically enlightened *political action.* No humans can escape nature nor politics/social interaction, even if politics have been almost totally corrupted by corporate money and silly nationalist-imperial, religious sectarianism, romantics and pathetic distortions of history etc. like in the US today. They can try to deny it, but the consequences of isolation are dire. It is stupid to be what the old greens called an idiot: an apolitical.

    It’s long overdue that leading climate scientists recognize the political criticism from James Hansen against his own stillborn child: the IPCC process with it’s obvious consensual (of course!) impotence towards oligarchic imperialism, especially as in the flawed Paris”agreement”. It’s time to listen to him and Vaclav Smil among other realists. No more liberal nonsense and corporate lameducking.

    • And the practical alternative to consensus-based agreements such as the Paris Accord would be what, exactly? Imposition of climate action by force majeure? Which of the “corrupt” national governments you pillory is going to undertake that action?

      Your council would appear essentially to be one of despair.

      I agree with you that an apolitical stance is nonsense. Politics is how policy gets done (or doesn’t!) But from thence where, precisely?

        • The *model* looks good in many respects, and I’ve been grateful that you have shared it.

          What I haven’t seen yet is a roadmap of some sort for actually getting there. And given what we all agree is an extremely urgent situation, that’s important, IMO.

          • Well, ya gotta be in the right place at the right time. This is not the place to explicate a model for a regenerative government, is it? I have previously posted that I am active on Clubhouse, I believe.

  13. I wonder if Profs. Gavin, Michael, Pierre, et al., would comment on why, given two straight LA Nina’s and maybe heading to a third, we are seeing so many high-temperature anomalies?

    This has been bugging me; I’ve seen no comment about this. I realize it might just be the whole rising tide thing, but does this phenomenon indicate we’re missing something WRT sensitivity or just missing something in the system/models?

    • I have been asking the same question, Killian. Why is no one talking about the heatwaves and the temp records being set in a La Nina cycle? My gut says that we will see some nasty heatwaves in the next El Nino cycle, but as far as I can tell, nobody wants to talk about that. I hope I am wrong. I really don’t like the heat.

      Cheers
      Mike

      • Mike asks:

        “Why is no one talking about the heatwaves and the temp records being set in a La Nina cycle?”

        Partly because climate scientists don’t understand why El Nino + La Nina cycles arise. You can’t always make assertions on behaviors that one doesn’t understand. One of the claims seen in the research literature was that AGW would make El Nino extremes stronger, yet did they also imply that the La Nina extremes would be deeper (i.e. colder)?

        The pattern I have been researching (and publishing on) for years now is that ENSO is nonlinearly-forced by a combination of seasonal impulses modulated by long-period tides (related to the extremely well-characterized impact on the Earth’s length-of-day variations). Recently, I started looking at the Indian Ocean Dipole more in depth after finding a citation that claimed the Indian Ocean equatorial winds reverse on a quarterly basis (paced by every solstice and equinox). Didn’t take much to tweak the ENSO model to match the Indian Ocean Dipole pattern to a fine detail. https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/8442/VdpJom.gif

        Yet, note the background trend — this is apart from the seasonal and tidal cycles which have a zero-sum contribution. This is how climate trends will be analyzed in the future — via a detailed discrimination of natural climate cycles from the AGW contribution.

      • Hr Mike’

        There is different opinions about this.

        Personally, I could gladly think of having it 4 deg warmer, and the sea level is no problem here. We just climb or withdraw 2-3 meters higher up on the rocks. All in all, God seems to give us all the advantades of global warming in addition to the oil and gas earnings, and hardly any of the disadvantages.

        The only thing that I fear a bit is brutal offensive scenes at our boarders and inn our harbours when the worlds population also reallizes that God is Norwegian., and giving us all the advantages hardly any disadvantages to speak of.

        Vital resources and landscapesw being misused and mistreated seems to me as more of an accute problem. But that may simply be the same deep problem.

        That situation in Ukraina is also quite obvious mis- use and false admjinistration of resources. and possibilities.

      • Well, FWIW, I’ve been pointing it out to people.

        I suspect that while most have heard of La Nina, many don’t know that it mutes high temps a bit. But they nod their heads sagely and look serious.

      • I had been thinking the same about a big El Nini, but now with the La Ninas and all the heat we’re experiencing, does it mean there’s some mechanism where latent heat is being released? Or does it indicate temps are climbing so fast that even the La Ninas we are experiencing are just that much hotter?

        I am fully convinced we are tipping. Something serious is going on. There are too many extreme things happening in too short a time; many things that were not supposed to happen for a very long time in some cases.

        All those years I warned sensitivity (yes, I know there are three types) had to be at the high end were in vain, but seemingly accurate if this rapid warming holds.

        If we do get a large EN + later in the solar cycle + increased GHG forcing +++++, we’re in some really deep doo-doo within the next five years. I am certain we’ll see a huge acceleration if that happens… on top of the one we appear to be seeing already.

        Limits to Growth may have been too optimistic.

        • Killian

          They are giving a damn and shooting like crazy in Ukraina in any case.

          I have visited the climate surrealists regularly now for some years in order to study fanatism and madness also, namely. How, and why to give a damn and who gives a damn?

          One element of it or a so called secret motive and hidden driving force, is that for people who hardly see any future…. to become ” invalids” and earn their rents and salaries, their “existance” and privileges from that for the rest of their lives.

          Roughly 100 soldiers are killed in Ukraina each day on both sides , so now after 5 monhs it becomes 15000. And then you can roughly easily count 3 times of that at least of enough
          lost and broken bones and bullet holes to earn further well in the invalide- class. with reserved seats in the Metro and so on.

          You must learn to judge people as who they are, Killian. And not dream so moralistic.

          In addition, they send a lot of obsolete inferiour weapons from both sides just in order to try it out. and boasting on both sides of their superior weapons.

          That is as much as an experimentalo war, “a proxy- war”,. and truly “a military operation” and damned no war,… as Putin and Lawrow calls it. Allthough it clearly looks like.

          I have travelled by car behind the iron curtain several times in the good old days and c0ming behind military columns that go by 20 km/ hour on the highways, in quite incredibly rusty condition, told to be the avantgarde worlds best army. And here on our side we drove with similar obsolete US material from the marshall aid, like Old GMC from WW2 and so on only twice as fast, at 40 Km/ h.

          The transistor had been invented 20 years earlier, All private radios were transistorized with cheap and light batteries, But the portable military radios went on severly expensive, heavy short lived batteries strong enough for driving our electric razors.

          And who paid for all that?

          Having red Scienhtific American Readers Digest and Popular mechanics, I suggested rather transistors and laser measuring systems and desk- computers for fire command. That was not in order for Saddam Hussein, and is not yet in order for the russians even today.

          And you expect such personel to be able to stop and to fight global warming?

          Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha….

          If only it is ugly and stupid enough, it seems good enough for war.

          Thus no reason to be further silly, proud, and ugly. There is really enough of that in the world.

        • Killian Says: **I am fully convinced we are tipping. Something serious is going on. There are too many extreme things happening in too short a time; many things that were not supposed to happen for a very long time in some cases.**

          I would love to hear some other opinions about this. I’ve been thinking that same thing this summer when I was traveling out west. St. Louis, MO just got around 10″ of rain in one downpour and now parts of Colorado are experiencing flooding not to mention the California fires and the Salt Lake in Utah is drying up. No mention of hurricanes thus far but it’s early yet but these weather events plus the dramatic heatwaves here and in Europe are troubling.

          • It is hard to tell when something in climate has really “tipped” because of the large number of ways this can be defined. Rather than getting bogged down in a definition, I would rather look at instances where the meteorology seems to underpin a change in an underlying process that produces a series of unusual records.

            Saint Louis was a large rainstorm, and a big disaster for the area. However, that amount of summer rain in the state of Missouri is not extraordinary. Holt, in northwest Missouri, holds the world record for rainfall in under an hour – 305 mm (more than 10″) -set on June 22, 1947.

            More unusual to me was the recent rain in eastern Kentucky. See the river gauge graphic
            https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=jkl&gage=whtk2 for Whitesburg, KY. It currently shows a stage over 6 feet above the previous record. Record stages dating back to 1927 are clustered between 13.0 and 14.7 feet. The cluster is due to slower rises as the river leaves its banks and spreading across the valley. Note that the gauge did not record the crest; it ceased functioning at 20.9 feet.

            Another extreme flood occurred along the South Platte River in eastern Colorado in September 2013. For example, the river gauge at Weldona recorded a crest of 19.20 feet on Sept. 14.
            https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=bou&gage=wnac2&prob_type=stage&source=hydrograph
            The next-highest crest was 11.68 feet in records dating back to 1953. This flood was a standout not only for the huge amount of water, but for the date. Floods in eastern Colorado almost uniformly occur in May and June, when mountain snowmelt runoff combines with intense thunderstorms when moist air is brought into Colorado by the circulation of a mid-latitude cyclonic storm. The next 14 highest crests on this river were in May or June.

            Both of these floods share some meteorology. The rainfall was enhanced by “monsoon” moisture originating in the eastern Pacific off Central America, streaming northeast into Arizona and New Mexico, and then northeast over the southern U.S. Rockies. East of the Rockies, the moisture is generally found in a layer between around 750-400 mb. At those levels, it can enhance thunderstorm intensity. Significant moisture from this source used to be a rare pattern east of the Rockies. It played a central role in the eastern Colorado flood, however. It also seemed to play a part the St. Louis and Kentucky floods. The moist plume is located at the north side of a subtropical high pressure system, after flowing through a gap between highs. These subtropical highs have been moving further north, earlier in the season, and more persistently.

            Normally maritime climates have also been recording extreme temperatures as these highs interact with mid latitude storm systems. This can result in a stream of very warm air to the east of the storm system, and an erosion of the marine inversion. The U.K. got it this year. The U.S. Pacific Northwest and B.C. Canada last June.

            The behavior of the boreal summer subtropical highs has undergone a rather rapid and important shift. It’s dangerous, whether you decide to classify it as “tipping” or just ordinary “climate change.”

          • You asked for some opinions about it.

            It is very smooth and normal here in the O)slofjord where I live on the Eurasian continent on 60 deg north.. I am eating early gooseberries and hope to go out for some early Mackerels in the climate. There is no droughts and no floods. Mushroms are showing up.

            I say that if they are silly enough to live over there in the states, then they can have it the way the wanted it.

            In addition to Real Climate. org I study Alice in Wonderland, Disney version and others and see that it is quite a psychedelic story from early on.

            Thus beware 0f your drugs and your dopes everyone all around here. The fameous climate surrealists of Norway seem now to sit back where they origined and came from, in their Peoples Republic behind their own and protected error- bars.

            Unluckily for themselves, they have no more Climate Pizzas at the railway square downtown Oslo with open doors, where even I could entertain them.

    • Killian and Mike,

      There is a well-known relationship between La Nina, drought, and heat waves in the North American sector. La Nina years favor drought in the mid latitudes of western and central North America. Drought leads to higher summer temperatures as more solar energy goes into heating the ground and the air above it, and less to evaporation, than usual. This extra diabatic heating also tends to stabilize the subtropical high aloft over the U.S. both west and somewhat north of its usual location. It doesn’t happen every year, but good examples are 1954 and 1988. I would include 2011-12, although El Nino had faded by the summer of 2012, because there was a multi-year drought.

      I haven’t read enough relevant research to comment usefully on what teleconnections between El Nino and summer heat waves exist on other continents.

        • Kevin McKinney,
          You mention the expectation of a “lively hurricane season” and that is certainly what the predictions for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season were showing. And the updated predictions from a month ago were all showing even more ‘liveliness’.

          But a month on and the ‘liveliness’ has yet to materialise on the Atlantic side of things with the three storms so far rather reluctant to form and ACE running at 30% of the climatology. That contrasts with the Eastern Pacific which has racked up 165% of the ACE climatology. (See numbers at Colorado State tropical storms page HERE.)
          Of the three Atlantic storms, Alex was formed from disturbances resulting from the Pacific Hurricane Agatha crossing the Central Americas but Alex was well out into the Atlantic before it formed and then quickly went post-tropical.
          And Bonnie crossed the Atlantic and Caribbean only forming into a storm a day from landfall, soon then becoming Hurricane Bonnie in the Pacific.
          Mind, the climatology shows Atlantic storms do start ‘getting serious’ about six weeks behind the West Pacific, so there is ample time for that “lively hurricane season.”

          • Yes, indeed. As several recent Atlantic hurricanes have passed directly over our house–though without damage since we’re well inland–I do hope the “liveliness* doesn’t come about this time. That roof isn’t as sturdy as it used to be.

    • Killian,
      I assuming you mean “two straight LA Nina (year)s”.

      The MEI index is showing we’ve had 25 months of La Niña conditions. This length of the La Niña is not unusual – there were 36 months back in 1998-2001. As measured by MEI, the strength of the present La Niña is increasing (although not by other measures).

      The global mean temperature (here the numbers are Copernicus ERA5 re-analysis with its 1991-2020 anomaly base) has reacted as you would expect with La Niña conditions.
      Back in 2016 with El Niño conditions, we also gained ‘scortchyisimo’ conditions with 12-month rolling SAT averages hitting an anomaly of +0.46ºC in ERA5. The La Niña conditions that followed 2017-18 saw 12-month rolling SAT dropping to +0.27ºC, rise to +0.46ºC gain under the neutral/weak El Niño conditions of 2019, since which SAT again dropped to +0.26ºC under the present strong La Niña conditions. Today, the 12-month SAT average sits at +0.32ºC.
      And with AGW running a perhaps +0.22ºC/decade, we should expect an underlying warming of +0.13ºC for the period 2016-22.

      As for record-breaking temperatures, these will be more likely to occur under El Niño conditions than under La Niña conditions, but as this graphic (from this BBC article from October 2019) shows, the big El Niño will not be the peak years for record-breaking. The two big El Niño are quite minor peaks on the graph (the 4 latest big peaks being 1988, 1994, 2003 & 2010, all El Niño years but not the big ones). And there are continuing levels of record-breaking throughout, be there El Niño, be there, La Niña.
      (Mind, in this data a record-breaker is a record-breaker. One that just squeaks it is counted the same as one that sails past the record by country miles.)

      • “I assuming you mean “two straight LA Nina (year)s”.”

        Mean exactly what I meant to say, thanks. (Doing that does make you seem smarter, fyi.)

      • MAR: The numbers are seeming pretty normal as averages.

        Me: Thanks for not answering. I’ll assume you mean to say, “The heatwaves are heatwaves and, well, they’re heatwaves.” So, again, thanks for nothing…

        FYI, the question was, given the La Nina, why are we seeing so many heatwaves?

        JPollack: “I haven’t read enough relevant research to comment usefully on what teleconnections between El Nino and summer heat waves exist on other continents.”

        Me: Yeah, it’s the breadth of them across the hemisphere that has me a bit mystified. Despite MAR once again, as ever, citing how averages are averages and are seemingly always present and so nothing really matters because, well, look at the averages being average (LOL), *something* is going on here. Maybe it’s as simple as really wonky Jet Stream, eh? But, despite the averages seeming so very average, how do temps just keep going up?

        One aspect is, of course, that La Ninas today are warmer than El Ninos of yesteryear, so maybe it’s just that simple: Warm LAs with lots of Jet Stream wonkiness.

        Then again, maybe there’s some degree of not catching the temp rise as fast as it’s actually happening? How much lag is there in SSTs and temps being reported? None? Some? A lot?

        Anywho…

    • @Killian –

      Climate projections suggest a weakening or collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) under global warming, with evidence that a slowdown is already underway. AMOC collapse can accelerate the Pacific trade winds and Walker circulation by leaving an excess of heat in the tropical South Atlantic.
      https://theconversation.com/a-huge-atlantic-ocean-current-is-slowing-down-if-it-collapses-la-nina-could-become-the-norm-for-australia-184254

  14. People are noticing the heat.

    CO2 drives it. If we want less heat, we have to reduce greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere. This has been known for decades or longer and yet our species continues to engage in activities that lead to higher levels of ghg in the atmosphere.

    How are we doing on CO2? Let me check:

    June CO2

    June 2022 = 420.99 ppm
    June 2021 = 418.94 ppm

    Going the wrong way. More heat in the pipeline. Get ready. The temps we are enjoying today will be remembered as the good old days in the near future.

    co2.earth

    Cheers
    Mike

  15. @Karen I think your quite nihilistic too long comment belongs somewhere else. All I can say is that re-stating the problems, real or perceived, the umpteenth time, does not solve them. And please, keep your offensive description of President Biden and Vice-President Harris away from here. We can debate if their policies are good or not, if they govern well or not, but not here, as it will never end and descend in puerile and misogynistic (e.g. “silly plastic” woman) arguments.

    If you think CCL can provide a good solution, go and work with them. I know the group and they seem to me a combination of New Age and religious zeal, with only one mantra, CF&D, with no understanding on how and if it will work. You cannot mention renewable energy in their lobbying sessions. That is absurd for me. No wonder they are supported by Reagan’s people, some Republicans and most probably, the fossil industry.

    And please do not offend the young activists and dismiss them as romantics. I am very proud of all the young and old activists I work with and very confident that they will manage to change the system, timely. All the young people I know are very well informed on the climate science and the policies necessary to solve the climate emergency.

    https://www.indystar.com/story/news/environment/2019/09/20/indianapolis-students-join-national-movenet-youth-climate-strike-and-miss-school/2387188001/

    We protest and lobby (in the true sense) elected officials at every level with well thought out demands. The youngsters will soon be in decision-making positions, including elected office, I am very happy about that.

    Powerless opposition like 350? Have you heard of Keystone pipeline? How about the fossil fuel divestment campaign?

    • Good points, although I have a higher opinion of CCL than you.

      We haven’t done nearly enough yet–but there’s also a strong tendency to dismiss everything that *has* been done. And if it hadn’t, our situation today would be an order of magnitude worse than it is. The only thing worse than complacency is despair.

        • I didn’t say, and didn’t intend to imply, that actions taken were “because of” CCL. (Though I suspect that their consistent lobbying hasn’t been without effect–even if that effect is being suppressed by greed and fear among the (obviously mostly craven) GOP caucus.)

  16. The UK heatwave is now over (thank God) after temperatures hit 40.3C in Linconshire, in a small village surrounded by farmland, so not a place affected by the urban heat island.

    Unfortunately I am looking at a fourth consecutive lousy harvest on my allotment. Managed to get a fair crop of potatoes, but half the brassicas got wrecked by molluscs (despite copper rings and slug nematodes), and my squash and climbing beans are taking forever to bear a crop. They are at least a month behind. I am wondering if the soil is exhausted but I apply manure every year and a slow release organic fertiliser prior to planting out, both of which should replenish nutrients, and I do crop rotation. Strangely the common weeds haven’t had a problem taking hold whenever I have got behind.

    It seems to be getting harder and harder to grow veg here in south east England. Every year has had one of these annoying locked in weather patterns which brings either soaking rain or drought. This month, hardly a drop has fallen and January to June was the driest first six months since 1976 in some places. It is as if southern England has stolen a Mediterranean climate. I need to figure out how to adapt my gardening methods to this climate because there is little point in ploughing time, effort and money into something that fails to yield.

  17. Capital Weather Gang has an article “Why the Dust Bowl was hotter than this heat wave, despite global warming” Clickbait? Matthew Cappucci does some handwaving about how the dryness of the air and land allowed it to heat up quickly.
    However, it got me wondering whether dust itself could cause more heating, whether through absorbing more sunlight or preventing radiation to space.. Any thoughts?
    Come to think of it, there are dust storms in some parts of the world somewhat regularly. Do those areas have temperatures elevated above what they would otherwise be?

    • Al, it isn’t that complicated. People forget that not all human activity is consistently negative with respect to climate.

      After the Dust Bowl, it was obvious that the unrestrained farming practices that had caused it could not continue, so more care was taken in tilling and cover crops, trees were planted to replace what had been cut down to increase acreage, and so on.

      Similar lessons have been learned about water (imperfectly in many cases of course); for 50 years or so we have been protecting and restoring wetlands instead of destroying them.

      The point is that if we were still doing that stuff from the 30’s and 50’s, our current extremes would be much worse than the Dust Bowl days as a result of the increase in climate system energy resulting from increases in GHG.

    • Nah, not really. Dust is pretty reflective (it looks bright from space–and if you are in a dust storm, it’s pretty dark). Mainly it’s the fact that dry air has a lower heat capacity than wet air. That’s why deserts are hot in the day but cool down at night–and why the Chinook wind and other katabatic winds blow warm on the downslope.

    • Yes it’s getting hotter. During the little ice age it was getting significantly cooler. The Thames froze over. Unprecedented!!! As were the dust bowl years of the 30’s. How does that signify some sort of “existential” crisis due to the burning of fossil fuels? Climate changes, live with it.

    • An excellent article but he is wrong about the peak temperature in the UK in the summer of 1976, which was 35.9C in Cheltenham on the 3rd July, not 33.1C. Doesn’t alter the point that the peak temperature in the recent extreme heatwave was well above anything in 1976.

  19. The JAXA SIE record for Antarctica has been setting daily record lows through the whole of July (as has NSIDC’s ChArctic). In terms of the timing of these daily records, the JAXA data puts 2022 into 3rd place for the number of daily record low SIEs, that with 5 months of the year yet to run.
    And SLR-wise, reports of meltiness down in Antarctic are not good to hear, even if they apply to sea ice.

    JAXA Daily Record Low SIE days
    2017 110
    2016 73
    2019 66
    2022 52 (to end of July)
    2018 14
    1986 20
    2002 20
    2001 10
    (This count of days is somewhat marred by the 1986 numbers being every second day rather than daily so is greatly under-counted here, although the crazy wobbles in the 1986 record which add to the count do look mighty odd.)