This month’s open thread on climate topics. Check out the new State of the Climate in 2021 report from NOAA and BAMS. A blast from the past, though yamal-age may vary…
As always, please stay civil, on topic, and limit comments to one a day.
Climate science from climate scientists...
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am having birthday today, never forget it. And I read on the net that rain is pouring down in Cezuan after 2 months of cathastrophic drought.
Pakiistan, the Indus bassin and walley is also drowning, so why worship together with all those strange provincial US flat earthers desert walkers and blind believers??
It has been raining heavily also in western Norway all the summer but maybe temporarily a bit dry on this side of the mountains. I would say it is quite normal, so what are you complaining about?
Something is not quite normal howener. We are having sweet and ripe Vitis vinifera in the sunny wall end of august allready, and there may be bitties frull at eqvinox that is the normal mark for us. I must say alltogether slightly warmer than it has been as long as I can remember.
They are making up wineries all over England.
But not everyone will agree on that. The surrealists here are predicting a quite more cool period from now on., as they have predicted for the last 15 years allready.
“Pakiistan, the Indus bassin and walley is also drowning, so why worship together with all those strange provincial US flat earthers desert walkers and blind believers??”
Please communicate your views to WUWT proprietor Anthony Watts, who could use a few prayers for the salvation of the air conditioner, on which the survival of the Worlds Most Visited Climate Blog may depend.
For the second day and night running, Chico , Califonria, was hotter than anywhere in Pakistan, with an overnight low of 40 C / 104 F
How strange that there should be no report from the well-instrumented weather station in his back yard:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/09/not-in-his-back-yard-northern.html
Yes. It fairly defies explanation, doesn’t it?
Hr Russel
I have done my best too educate and to teach at the WUWT that the earth is round and that what goes up must also come down somewhere sometimes. And of the vapour pressure and dew point curve of water. But I was EX-COMMUNICATED and etnically rinsed out there, probably because I told them the truth also about manners, politics , and religion. I made them aware that they ought not to believe and to behave like KADRE missionaries from the so-vi- ett science academy in Ljeningrad,… where the earth is flat as can be….but only om political and local national level.
“Dr” A. Watts then fell back on his Politically Progressive routine from the Party with P.. because, “I mention too much about communism” he said.
That is touchy for those secret KADRE- agent missionaries you see, if we psychoanalyze them and discuss their underwear, their true standpoints reasons and manner behaviours.. .
It looks like infiltration. There are hardly many Apparatchics in russia with their cryllic alphabet, who also lay behindv in IT technology, who hack and who infiltrate and contaminate the US politics , elections and websites. It is hard necked “nerds” and convinced revolutionary denialists within then US itself. And they are paid or expect payment from Thinktank in Chateau Heartland Michigan
who took over ther religuious DDR structures and progressive manners…
Putin has got nothing to do with it. He only smiles and says “Very fine, thank you!” when it is done volontarily for him, and his thoughts andv plans are being served that way by hardcore dia- lectic materialists within the US itself. .
UAH TLT has been posted for August with an anomaly of +0.28ºC, a bit of a drop from July’s +0.36ºC which remains the highest anomaly of the year-to-date but with August second highest, the Jan to Jun anomalies spanning +0.00ºC to +0.26ºC.
August 2022 sits as the 5th warmest August on the UAH TLT record, behind 1998 (+0.39ºC), 2016 (+0.32ºC), 2020 (+0.30ºC) & 2017 (+0.29ºC) and ahead of 2019 (+0.26ºC), 2010, 2021, 1995 and 2015, & 2001 in equal-tenth spot(+0.12ºC).
August 2022 sits =48th in the all-month UAH TLT rankings.
The high August anomaly pulls 2022 more strongly into 7th place in the year-so-far average anomaly rankings with 6th spot still a possibility. To drop to 8th would require the Sept-Dec anomaly to average below +0.08ºC. To rise to 6th would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.25ºC. 5th would require a worryingly scorchy average above +0.46ºC for the last four months.
…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.44ºC … … … +0.35ºC … … … 3rd
2020 .. +0.37ºC … … … +0.36ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.27ºC … … … +0.19ºC … … … 6th
2019 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 4th
2017 .. +0.22ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 5th
2022 .. +0.16ºC
2002 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.08ºC … … … 10th
2018 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 9th
2021 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th
2015 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.14ºC … … … 7th
Ray Ladbury:
“Aww, did we catch a chill? If so, I don’t see how that statement gave it to you. It is merely saying that we are going to have to change the behaviors that got us into this predicament to begin with.”
V: So, Ray. Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?
“Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?”
Use less mined fossil fuels by finding other methods?
Naahhh.
Saving instead of spending requires change. Losing weight requires drastic change, often. Moving from or to city requires change. Many changes are irreversible. Drilling out a cavities and filling them is economic, technological, and irreversible, for example. So your advice is to let teeth rot “naturally”, I assume.
Oh shame shame shame on us. So, Mr. jgnfld, what measures would you recommend we take to change all those spenders to savers, fatties to skinnies, tooth neglectors to dentist lovers? How about gluing yourself to a telephone pole. That should do the trick, no?
Maybe start by helping them face the fact that their behavior is self-destructive, and continue by helping them understand and believe that they do have the ability to make changes in their own lives?
Or is that too radical?
Yes up to a point. The fact that we have so many fat people in Western society most whom I suspect are not happy with their weight suggests to me that losing weight via significant lifestyle changes is very difficult to near impossible for many. Highlighting the extreme cases of individuals who have lost large amounts of weight and gone from fat to fit (analagous to those who have made extreme changes to their carbon footprint) doesn’t change the large scale picture.
Well, it’s very possible that there can be physical reasons, not just behavioral ones, for obesity. But that’s just one of the examples given illustrating the larger point about behavioral change.
Come to that, behavioral change can be very difficult with or without physiological complications; most if not all of us can point to some example in our own lives, I think, if we’re honest with ourselves. But that doesn’t mean behavioral change is impossible, much less that it’s not worthwhile.
Moderators: If you want to see friendly discourse on these threads I think it would be a Great idea to eliminate the bad actors and constant trolling by people like Victor who are constantly dragging down the discussion by posting bullshit and false information that others are forced to respond to. Many people have repeatedly pointed this out with absolutely no help from the good people who run this site. It’s not fair and it’s way past time. Something needs to be done about it.
Victor: ***V: So, Ray. Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?***
The ones that are necessary to avoid climate catastrophe, dear Weaktor.
V: So, Ray. Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?
RL; The ones that are necessary to avoid climate catastrophe, dear Weaktor.
V: And what are those, specifically, Ray? And how would you go about enforcing them?
V,
Maybe the California plan? Force everyone to buy electric cars. Tell everyone they can’t charge them. It’s Killian approved – it’s gotta be good!
KIA yeah, and before you know it, those hippy liberal socialists will be requiring functioning headlights, turn signals, brake lights, seat belts, emission controls, and inspections to make sure they all work, not to mention licensing and registration. You’d think they confuse cars with firearms, all in the name of “promoting the common welfare”.
You didn’t ask me, Victor, but when did that ever slow me down?
So rushing in, IMO the ‘top-down’ principles would be:
1) End the culture of disposability/”convenience”
2) End the culture of endless growth, replacing it with a culture of enough/satisfaction
3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)
3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)
Partially right, partially wrong. This is what comes of trying to understand what a human is by watching us from within the self-constructed rat maze-like zoo we have created for ourselves rather than from observations of regenerative indigenous communities.
That sort of myopia is killing us.
In reality, regenerative communities have absolute individual autonomy while practicing extremely high levels of cooperation. Both are “radical” in their extent from a “modern” point of view.
It matters where you put your attention. I suggest you put it here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/200906/play-makes-us-human-ii-achieving-equality
And here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
And here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/200907/play-makes-us-human-v-why-hunter-gatherers-work-is-play
And here for a conversation with anthropologist Helga Vierich. If not on Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/P9WblXXe?utm_medium=ch_room_xerc&utm_campaign=0vIh7fkq9PMM2ZU9Db7TFQ-357933
If already on Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/P9WblXXe
Cheers
Thanks for the links.
You don’t really make it clear, but I presume that the “right” part (in your view, natch) is recognizing community as a value–something our current culture largely fails to do, while the “wrong” part is the implication that there is a contradiction or tension between individualism and community? Can you clarify further?
“Radical individualism” was completely incorrect.
How so? Do you disagree that radical individualism is toxic? Or that is a feature of our current culture?
Kevin McKinney:
1) End the culture of disposability/”convenience”
V: How?
2) End the culture of endless growth, replacing it with a culture of enough/satisfaction
V: How?
3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)
V: How?
Do you really want to know, or are you merely implying that it would be difficult and so we shouldn’t bother?
I’m up to discuss potential means seriously, but not as a mere rhetorical exercise.
I think it would be naïve in the extreme to see such measures simply as “difficult.” This is the whole point of the Jordan Peterson essay I quoted previously. The reforms being demanded, including (among many others) the ones you listed, would require major transformations in the lives of literally billions of people worldwide — as implied by the measures I quoted from that IPCC report, which ordained “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” The examples you offered sound innocent enough, but the devil is in the details. How could one possibly enforce them on a worldwide basis without imposing some form of totalitarian government, backed by force?
I’d love to discuss this with you as seriously and in as much detail as you like. I’m not being “rhetorical” but practical. If you can find a way to implement these sort of changes in a peaceful, fair and democratic manner that would actually make a significant difference, then by all means share your wisdom.
Weaktor, How appropriate that you would cite Jordan Peterson as your source here, as both of you suffer from extreme Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.
This is not a matter of coercion. It is a matter of necessity if the human species wants to survive in anything like its current circumstances. Of course, if you don’t view continued human survival as a goal, all bets are off. However, there would still be the matter of fairness in leaving a livable world to the cockroaches that would succeed us as the dominant species.
The question is not one of how we “force people” to act in concert with their interests and those of their progeny, but rather how we incentivize them to do so. Promising them a better world –maybe one where the richest 3000 people don’t control 4% of global wealth or where they don’t have to choose between food and medicine or where they don’t have to work 3 jobs to support the families they never see. No doubt actuality will fall short of aspiration, but the world in 100 years is going to look very much different than our current one. That is just a fact. People might want to think about designing the world they want to live in rather than simply letting our current one develop into a hellscape.
I don’t think that the primary means of accomplishing my 3 suggested ‘top-down’ changes would be “enforcement.” Die Gedanken sind frei, right? So the prime means would lie a little closer to the primary competencies of thee and me, and indeed all laborers in the cultural vineyards. Minds must change, and that is not done by force.
Is this likely to be slow and uncertain and messy? Sure. Is there a role for some enforcement, in the forms of, say, regulations such as bans on single-use packaging, or incentivizing or even mandating various social, economic and technological changes that might be required? Likely so. (Indeed, some these exist now-for one small example, there’s a plastic bag ban in our little town.)
Unfortunately, this process isn’t going to be complete by, say, 2030. We need to be mitigating emissions in concrete ways as the culture changes hopefully in a helpful direction.
Going from horses to cars involved “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,”. My grandfather was born in the early 1880s and never learned to drive until the 20s. Even in the 60s he drove a car just like a team of horses. But he nevertheless did drive a car.
So…of COURSE there will be changes REGARDLESS of whether they are directed at working to a fossil free future or dealing with the damage from BAU. You seem to want the world to be afraid of only those changes designed to reduce damage and dislocation as opposed to those guaranteed to produce more.
Well-said–although to play Devil’s advocate just a bit, it may be a tad early to declare the horse-auto transition “irreversible.” ;-O
Nigel, Adam and Weaktor,
You are writing as if consumerism were the natural state of human beings, rather than a system imposed upon us by a culture and maintained by constant bombardment with propaganda. Humans have had consumer cultures for only the briefest of moments in our history, and even now the vast majority of humans do not live in such cultures.
Consumerism results in high rates of anxiety and mental illness. It robs us of time with our loved ones. It imposes an artificial scarcity of the things needed for life while subsidizing luxuries for the ultra-wealthy. And worst of all, it inflicts an unsustainable toll on the only planet capable of supporting life that we know of–and certainly the only one we will ever be able to access physically.
The goal is not to impose a totalitarian regime to wean people off of consumerism, but rather to liberate them from it and allow humans to live as the best version of who they really are. If that version is compatible with their continued survival, great. If not,…well extinction is the lot of every species eventually.
The thing is that Weaktor is NOT a credible source on the subject, because he stubbornly refuses to accept reality no matter what evidence is presented to him. His goal is to make the challenges seem insurmountable so that people will simply give up. His goal is to delay action until it really is too late.
Weaktor is trying to rob us of the commodity we have the least of–time. We have already been robbed of 40 years by the actions of the Fossil fool companies and their toadies.
Weaktor tells us that there is no detailed roadmap for how we get from where we are now to sustainability. While that is true, it is even more true that the longer we have to get there, the more feasible drawing such a map is.
So my prescription is to do whatever we can consistent with human well being to buy time. Do whatever we can to accelerate the pace of development of relevant technologies. Do whatever we can to develop concepts of what a sustainable society looks like so that we can ultimately select the model that most promotes human well being and happiness.
I see no reason why the process of developing a sustainable society should not ultimately result in a society that is better for the vast majority of its citizens. Certainly, the shortcomings of our current society leave vast room for improvement.
Victor appears to be arguing that climate mitigation by way of technical solutions, lifestyle changes and socio economic changes is impractical, unrealistic and would or might require a totalitarian government to make it happen. Maybe he’s partly right. I can certainly think of a few ideas people have posted on these pages and elsewhere that fit if his definition.
However other mitigation and adaptation ideas seem reasonably practical, plausible and reasonably popular and possible with democratic governmment- if we do them right and maybe compensate people as RL suggests. Some have clearly already gained traction and have the potential to make a big difference to the climate problem, even if they are not a perfect panacea.
Victor might be in danger of convincing himself that because some proposals are crazy, or ominous sounding politically, so they all are. A form of deceptive rationalisation to avoid the discomfort of making ANY changes.
Much as I am loathe to agree with Victor I do have some sympathy for his argument, although I will not go as far as saying it is impossible. However, given that we have had the perils of anthropogenic climate change and potential destructive consequences of unsustainable lifestyles published for many decades, yet there is little to no evidence change is happening on anything like the rate it needs to happen and on the scale it needs to happen over that time (highlighting some remote tiny community consisting of an insignificant percentage of the global population isn’t helpful), and if anything has gone further in the wrong direction, and given people (at least the ones I interact with on a daily basis) seem to link consumerism with identity and status more than ever, can you lay a roadmap as to how we get from the here and now to a future where we all live sustainably and responsibly.
Adam.
I agree with your observations.
You want a road map to get away from consumerism, and to get to sustainability?
I haven’t seen a feasible road map for decreasing consumerism in a fundamental sense. Our society is addicted to consumerism, it defines status as you mention and it defines perceived quality of life at the very least. Our entire jobs market depends on consumerism continuing, so trying to dismantle industrial society could have disastrous consequences especially if done rapidly. It may not be possible to change it at all. Suggest you google Joseph Tainters work.
Clearly we have road maps of a sort for substituting products with superior sustainability for products with poor sustainability, and to do recycling and these are slowly producing some results. This substitution maybe the best we can hope for.
Of course renewables will mean our energy use will decrease eventually because the build out at scale will be difficult and will have limits. But getting people to willingly reduce consumerism? ? I believe it will be token amounts at best.
Nigel, I agree that ending or at least muting/counterbalancing consumerism is a tall order. But cultures do change, particularly when environmental pressures come into play–which as Ray points out, will happen. In fact, it may already be starting. Some of the events we’ve seen this year do feel ‘different’ climate & environment-wise. Add in the Russian war, the lingering effects of Covid, the discontent we’re sensing on a near-global if not global scale, and it’s not so hard to imagine some serious bumps in the road forward.
Kevin.
The issue you raise is that people will or may move away from consumerism as climate conditions deteriorate.
If we expect people to all become vegetarians, or stop flying or cycle everywhere, or turn thermostats down low and shiver, or go without electronic gadgets and home appliances they take for granted, I believe it would require a very compelling case because these things are not a lot of fun. Right now there are many alternative strategies people point to , such as renewables, geoengineering, “DAC” or adaptation. So they feel why not do those instead? They say why should I change my habits when climate scientists fly all around the world to conferences? They say look at Chinas consumerism!
And climate change is perceived as a problem in the future or for “other people” of limited means. It might require a heatwave that kills millions to motivate people to make big lifestyle changes, but that is unlikely, and by then it will be too late to fix the problem except by geoengineering.
Which is why I push renewables and electric transport as the most practical strategy. Its not out of contempt for other strategies, or material greed on my part. I’m a person of very good financial means but I dont splurge that too much on consumerism. My views on what constitute sensible mitigation strategies are out of an understanding of human nature.
Not 100% sure what Ray Ladbury means because he ain’t too clear, but obviously we will be forced to reduce our consumerism eventually because resources are finite. But this is a different thing from reducing our consumerism as a deliberate strategy to mitigate some perceived problem, which is where I’m cynical that people would do very much.
A good book I’m reading that supports many of your comments elsewhere on this page is Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari. Really strongly recommend this book.
The Copernicus ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for August showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.30ºC, down on July’s +0.38ºC and the 4th highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +0.39ºC and lowest Feb’s +0.23ºC.
August 2022 becomes the =4th warmest Auust on the ERA5 record, below 2016 (+0.40ºC), 2019 (+0.36ºC) & 2021 (+0.31ºC), equaling 2017 and above 2020 (+0.27ºC), 2015 (+0.24ºC), 2018 (+0.21ºC), 1998 (+0.14ºC) & 2014 (+0.14ºC).
(I note the ERA5 webpage appears to lump the top 5 Augusts together as “joint warmest” although this may be a typo for “joint 3rd warmest” lumping three together.)
August 2022 becomes =56th highest all-month anomaly on the ERA5 record.
In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 5th warmest.
…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.40ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.36ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th
2022 .. +0.30ºC
2018 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 6th
2021 .. +0.22ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 5th
2015 .. +0.18ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 7th
2010 .. +0.16ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th
1998 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 16th
2014 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.11ºC … … … 9th
A year-on-year graph of ERA5 monthly anomalies is presented <a hrf="https://sites.google.com/site/housman100resultstemperarypost/home/graphs-subset1"here (Graph 2b). (Note Graph 2a awaits a rather tardy update from RSS TLT data.)
The numbers for RSS TLT have been posted up to August (although yet to be added in to their web engine) showing a global TLT anomalies for July & August of of +0.78ºC & +0.70ºC, the highest of the year so far, monthly anomalies previously spanning from +0.50ºC to +0.68ºC.
August 2022 becomes the =4th warmest August on the RSS TLT record, while July was their warmest July.
In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 7th warmest in RSS TLT but a final position from 5th to 8th by the end of the year remains entirely plausible. (In UAH TLT the plausible outcomes stretch from 6th to 8th, this due to the trend-defying UAH still ranking good old 1998 as 3rd warmest year). Given the strong ongoing La Niña which will be cooling these 2022 TLT numbers, the underlying upward trend continues,
…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.89ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.84ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.75ºC … … … 3rd
2010 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 6th
1998 .. +0.67ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 8th
2017 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.69ºC … … … 4th
2022 .. +0.60ºC
2021 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 5th
2015 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 7th
2018 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … … 9th
2014 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.49ºC … … … 10th
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62838627
Dear Gavin,
I’ve seen with interest previous posts on Real Climate regarding worst-case scenarios.
Bearing in mind that the above mentioned article is getting attention on mainstream media (or at least the BBC…) would mind spending a few minutes again on the subject and guide a layman through this “undiscovered country”?
Lowlander, the problem with these reports is that they say “it’s all connected” but then treat the individual phenomena as self-perpetuating in isolation.
First, if we keep adding energy to the system, then it is certainly possible that any of the things on the list could happen. But if you reach such a point, it would mean that there has already been serious disruption… to the climate system, and to the human system. It’s not like we will breathe a sigh of relief when there is famine and climate war and so on happening, thinking, “whew, at least the permafrost didn’t melt all that much after all!” .
As to individual phenomena continuing “even if there is no further warming”, as the article says, this to me is problematic. For example, the permafrost melting, or Greenland, is the result of energy input to the specific location resulting from complex interactions of the whole climate system.
My understanding of the consensus at this point is that if we stop adding GHG to the atmosphere, surface temperature will stabilize as the continuous increase in energy resulting from the existing levels is absorbed mostly by the oceans. But that energy isn’t located in Greenland or Siberia. So how do these phenomena “self-perpetuate”? Is it higher temperatures or back-radiation locally over those areas?
That’s my brief explanation; I’m sure others may supply more detailed analysis.
Lowlander,
In the YouTube video titled ‘Biggest Scandal in Climate Policy’ – David Spratt on Tipping Points, IPCC, IAMs and Risks, published on 1 Jul 2022, duration 0:59:51, David Spratt discusses with the group Operaatio Arktis (Operation Arctic) on a wide range of reasons why the public, policy makers and even many activists have a way too optimistic image of the state of our climate system. David Spratt says (from indicated time intervals):
0:04:35: “So in the Arctic, we’ve got a classic example of a system feedback… which means the Arctic has passed its tipping point.”
0:05:21: “And we see the same thing in the Antarctic, where one of the early IPCC reports said that they expected the Antarctic to be stable for the next one thousand years. And yet, within a decade, in 2014, we had a paper from Rignot saying some west Antarctic glaciers are already past their tipping points. So, it’s this abrupt, non-linear, difficult-to-predict aspect that makes them really challenging.”
0:06:55: “Last year, Jason Box, a glaciologist, said Greenland had passed its point of system stability, and I think there’s really good evidence for that.”
0:07:06: “If you look at the recent research, there’s a lot of work suggesting that particularly the eastern Amazon rainforest is now passed its tipping point, and is actually emitting more carbon than it is storing.”
0:07:55: “Warming is now 1.2, and it’s clear that many systems have passed their tipping points, so… which nobody wants to say, because it is politically convenient to talk about 1.5 to 2, but clearly 1.5 is, is really unsafe, because those systems will be cascading. 1.2 now is unsafe. We talk to coral reef scientists, and we said what will be safe for coral reefs? What would stop them having these ocean heatwaves, and they said, for coral reefs to be healthy, warming would have to be less than 0.5 degrees.”
0:14:30: “You say to climate scientists, can you say something absolutely, and they’ll say no, and you say, what do you think your… what in your heart… what’s your best bet, and they’ll tell you something different. So their opinions are different from what you can prove in a peer-reviewed paper.”
0:20:00: “So the IPCC reports in summary, end up understating the risks.”
0:22:00: “What scientists know and think, and what they can demonstrate in black-and-white are two different things.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRhM8si6Cw
Geoff, as I explained to Lowlander, and I believe I’ve explained to you in the past, the language here is just not correct.
These phenomena don’t exist in isolation, and you can’t make the case that they would be self-sustaining absent other energy inputs.
“Tipping point” has become this catchall phrase that means whatever is convenient for the person using it.
I doubt anyone thinks that I am an optimist about the climate, but that’s really the point… even if none of these things people want to rant about lately existed, we would still be facing catastrophic consequences if we continue to increase GHG.
Do you really think the people who ignore what’s actually happening right now are going to change their behavior because of some hair-on-fire video about the future????
zebra: – “…the language here is just not correct.”
What language? What’s “not correct”?
zebra: – “…you can’t make the case that they would be self-sustaining absent other energy inputs.”
The Earth System is not in thermal balance, driven by the Laws of Physics.
From Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Dr James Hansen, Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy, in one of their commentary communications titled Global Temperature in 2021, published 13 Jan 2022, included:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2022/Temperature2021.13January2022.pdf
The planetary thermal imbalance is driving many environmental systems towards (and perhaps beyond) their instability thresholds – so-called ‘tipping points’. Climate scientist Professor Will Steffen discusses some of these ‘tipping points’ in the YouTube video titled SR Australia – Social and Earth System Tipping Points | Prof. Will Steffen + Dr. Nick Abel, from about the 9½ minute time interval.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3WQGS9wOI
IMO, the ‘tipping points’ Prof Steffen discusses are highly inconvenient and potentially existential for human civilisation, particularly if a cascade of ‘tipping points’ ensue.
zebra: – “…we would still be facing catastrophic consequences if we continue to increase GHG.”
The atmosphere in 2021 contained GHGs with CO₂-equivalent of 508 ppm, of which 415 is CO₂ alone. https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/
Humanity has now entered climate territory not encountered for millions of years. Even if humanity ceased all further human-induced GHG emissions tomorrow (& pigs might fly), evidence/data I see suggests the Earth System is already unsafe for humanity, and for the next few decades at least, will inevitably become increasingly hotter, more hostile and disruptive for many lives and livelihoods.
zebra: – “Do you really think the people who ignore what’s actually happening right now are going to change their behavior because of some hair-on-fire video about the future????”
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (1992-2018) and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, in a Foreword to What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk, concluded with:
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/whatliesbeneath
Geoff,
None of which contradicts what I said, and some of which directly agrees with me.
If you want to discuss science, you have to be willing to learn more about those laws of physics and understand the quantitative relationships.
If we stop adding GHG tomorrow, the permafrost would not ‘melt until it is all gone and all its GHG have been released’.
Nor would Greenland ice ‘completely melt away’ and raise sea level by whatever number of feet.
And if there were no permafrost, and no Greenland ice, and we continued to add GHG, the result would still be catastrophic.
This is very basic. If you think this is not correct, please describe the physical mechanism that would yield contradictory outcomes.
zebra: – “None of which contradicts what I said…”
You still haven’t revealed: What language is “just not correct”?
zebra: – “If we stop adding GHG tomorrow…”
…which I’d suggest is an extreme hypothetical, that has an infinitesimal chance of happening anytime soon…
zebra: – “…the permafrost would not ‘melt until it is all gone and all its GHG have been released’.”
Evidence/data?
zebra: – “Nor would Greenland ice ‘completely melt away’ and raise sea level by whatever number of feet.”
Are you disagreeing with glaciologist Professor Jason Box’s statement: ““Technically now, Greenland is beyond its viability threshold…“, zebra?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/07/the-cos2-problem-in-six-easy-steps-2022-update/#comment-805978
What percentage of the Greenland Ice Sheet are you suggesting would melt & how much ice would remain, and over roughly what timeframe, zebra? Evidence/data?
Geoff,
The implication of the term “tipping point” is that the process is self-sustaining. Let’s review the basics of what’s happening with climate.
-The planet was in a state of radiative equilibrium. Energy from the Sun in = energy radiated to space.
-We (humans) increased the amount of GHG in the atmosphere.
-This resulted in radiative imbalance, because the CO2 converted outgoing radiation to thermal energy, which then accumulated in the system in various forms.
–If we stop increasing the GHG, absent some other change in input/output, the energy in the system will eventually reach a new level, where there is again radiative equilibrium. (This seems to be the part that you are missing.)
-The vast majority of that energy will be absorbed and mixed into the oceans.
-GHG are removed from the atmosphere by natural mechanisms
So the question is, what would the climate system look like at that point. The answer is, obviously, “it depends” on how much energy has accumulated over the pre-industrial level.
The problem with the “tipping point” terminology is that it implies that in the new climate, the phenomena in question have become sources of energy or radiative disruption, so that radiative equilibrium cannot be achieved until their processes are exhausted.
But melting ice in Greenland is not a source of energy; it requires an energy input. At the most, surface melting allows for some reduction in albedo by lakes and pools. That’s obviously not sufficient for a self-sustaining melt.
With permfrost, the outgassing of GHG would have to be able to replicate the effect of anthropogenic increases in order to be self-sustaining. Again, not sufficient.
For all the ice and permafrost to melt, you would need to have reached a very high climate system energy level at the point anthropogenic GHG inputs ceased. (Remember, the energy is mostly going into the oceans, not being localized where the ice is, and GHG will slowly diminish.)
So we’re back to what I have said multiple times:
That high a level would already have completely disrupted the human ecosystem… it might be why we stop emitting; war and collapse of industrial civilization.
I hope this helps your understanding.
The following may be of interest to people. Its from Carbon Brief and is excellent on climate tipping points:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change/
I believe the thing to understand is there is no perfect, precise quantifiable definition of tipping points, but this doesn’t make them any less real. Tipping points are generally defined as a rapid change to a new system state. This state might last a long time but is not necessarily permanent.
The following seems like a perfect example of a possible tipping point, one causing the arctic permafrost to enter into a new state that could persist for a considerable time even if emissions stop and global warming stops. Firstly for context we know the permafrost is melting due to the warming arctic and this also involves a positive feedback where that CO2 released reinforces the warming. Of course a positive feedback alone isnt a tipping point. But going on from there:
“For example, explains Dr David Armstrong McKay – a postdoctoral researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, focusing on modelling nonlinear biosphere-climate feedbacks – some areas of decomposition may release so much warmth (bacterial activity etcetera) that it triggers a so-called “compost bomb”. This is where the “internal heat generation becomes the main driving force for further thaw and carbon release”, he explains to Carbon Brief, “even if global warming stopped”.
“This effect could have its own tipping point, he adds:”
“In one study, a tipping point for this internal heat production occurred by the time local mean [absolute] annual air temperature reached around 1.2C, which is when organic decomposition became significant in their model. However, this process depends on how wet, insulated and organic-rich the soil is – all major sources of uncertainty – and will be localised rather than across the whole permafrost simultaneously.”
Gee, what a surprise. Not: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/01/a-bit-more-sensitive/#comment-442449
We can keep wishing that the science was neat and tidy, that we are not in a new paradigm of humanity, that the planet cannot possibly do what it is, in fact, doing… or we can realize none of this matters. Risk assessment and the precautionary principle say act, act decades ago, act quickly, act organically, act globally, and change *everything.*
If you love your children.
And it doesn’t matter if I am wrong: it is still the correct thing to do according to the risk assessment.
How long we have to see the science so consistently badly underestimate the change before we get error bars to the bad side that reflect the true worst-case scenarios, I do not know…. but I pray, figuratively, that it is not long.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario/#comment-224295
Etc.
Killian,
HJ Schellnhuber refers to the IPCC “erring on the side of least drama” in his Foreword to What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk., published in Aug 2018.
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/whatliesbeneath
The many reasons for scientific reticence in the climate field are explored in a piece by David Spratt, published on Sep 29, headlined Not on the same page: When science and politics collide in climate communication.
http://www.climatecodered.org/2022/09/not-on-same-page-when-science-and.html
IMO, it’s getting ever more difficult to deny the accumulating physical evidence that an increasing number of systems have passed their tipping points.
But will humanity act effectively in time to avoid a cascading catastrophe? It seems there’s a severe lack of confidence humanity is up to the task.
https://twitter.com/CFigueres/status/1574769636297609216
Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow climate disputants:
Things are going slower here now than we are able to think.
It never was that way in the climate. Proof: we could allways think of real things at normal speed, in the climate.
So it is the question whether Gavin Schmidt & al are still able to follow up 0r whether they have resigned and gone to sleep.
===============000
How about some good news? As usual, a blurry mix of variations and responses: I saw a new article and study about how the southern oceans absorb a lot of our global warming and then store it deep in the ocean for millenia. That seems like good news.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32540-5
“Over the last 50 years, the oceans have been working in overdrive to slow global warming, absorbing about 40% of our carbon dioxide emissions, and over 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere….
This Southern Ocean warming and its associated impacts are effectively irreversible on human time scales, because it takes millennia for heat trapped deep in the ocean to be released back into the atmosphere.”
so a lot of the heat is going right into the Southern Ocean where it will be stored for a long time. I expect this is especially good news for the global north, where most of us live.
saw a couple other “weather/climate” stories: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/siberia-massive-craters-frozen-ground-permafrost-methane-gas-explosion-rrc/ This one is about permafrost and methane explosions. The holes after explosion are very cool. I think these are also called pingos, if I am not mistaken. All this is happening in northern Russia and not many people living up there, so we can all give thanks this is happening in a distant, sparsely populated region. It’s interesting, but I am not sure it would make the news if the explosion didn’t leave these cool holes to photograph. Methane is a flow gas, of course, not a stock gas, so definitely back burner stuff.
Plus here’s a good methane news story for balance: https://omaha.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/20-million-project-will-turn-methane-into-renewable-energy-at-omaha-wastewater-plant/article_23096752-2ebb-11ed-8979-3f27447ed9a5.html
$20 million project will turn methane into renewable energy at Omaha wastewater plant! American ingenuity. So, we probably just need to help Russia build wastewater plans in the far north and start capturing the methane and using it as renewable energy. We (americans) might need to stop spending so much money arming Ukraine to kill Russians so that we can start pouring our $$ into renewable methane projects in the far north. I am going to send a message to my representative suggesting we re-order our Russian projects in this way. A lot of americans think we are getting a lot of bang for our bucks by arming Ukraine, so I don’t know if we can regroup around capturing russian methane.
Also found good news on the CO2 story:
The U.S. is experiencing a shortage of carbon dioxide and Boston beermakers are beginning to worry they won’t have enough of the gas to get their products to market.
Driving the news:
A CO2 production hub in Jackson, Mississippi, became contaminated by an extinct volcano, which cut down on an already limited supply of the gas.
https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2022/09/12/boston-beer-co2-shortage
I am not sure about bostonians, but americans, in general love their beer and they want it foamy. Football season is starting up, and beer consumption rises with football season, so I think we should expect to see the US gear up to capture the CO2 we need for beer foam and that’s can’t hurt with the global emissions issue.
Related story: Wyoming will be ready to supply the CO2 soon. That projects expects 5 million metric tons per year by 2030. Somebody needs to keep an eye on our CO2 removal projects to make sure we pull the CO2 out slowly enough to avoid problems. I am not sure what might happen if we scale up the atmospheric CO2 capture too fast. That’s a mistake we don’t need to make. Easy does it, right? Slow and sure wins the race.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90787507/wyoming-will-soon-be-home-to-the-worlds-largest-carbon-removal-facility
Cheers
Mike
Wait, do I detect just un petit soupçon of irony?
I have been reprogrammed by the And then theres physics folks to look on the bright side. ATTP appears to be generally withdrawing from the back and forth instead of joining me on the sunny side of the street. I posted this over there earlier today on a methane thread:
Scientists continue to point to methane leaks and emissions as a large problem despite the fact that it should be clear to everyone that we need to focus on CO2 emissions.
I saw this one one the net today:
“Irakulis-Loitxate and Guanter said the satellite methods behind their study were bringing emissions to light that previously would have gone unreported.
“Methane is a huge challenge across the industry. Ideally, operators would embrace this new information,” they said.
Curbing methane emissions is considered a vital part of global attempts to limit global warming.”
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/scientists-who-detected-massive-pemex-methane-leak-say-no-way-they-made-mistake-2022-09-13/
Surely, curbing methane emissions is not a vital part of global attempts to limit global warming because it is a flow, not stock gas. There is also the huge concern that discussion and focus on methane emissions will cause us to lose our focus on CO2 emissions. There is no question that CO2 is the big dog. Methane is an ankle biter in comparison to CO2. When I think about Pemex, I think about the CO2 emissions that arise when they sell their petrochemicals, not the minor leaks of flow gas that they might be producing getting their product to market.
I think we should not waste efforts worrying about methane emission leaks from the petrochemical industry. If we just continue to reduce exploring for, pumping, storing, refining and burning fossil fuels, as we have been doing for the past few decades since we became aware of the problem of fossil fuel related CO2 emissions, we will see the atmosphere stabilize and our problem with temps and acidification will be behind us.
It very well may be that these scientists made no mistake with identification of a methane leak, but they don’t seem to understand that methane is not where our focus needs to be. That seems like it might be a mistake.
Reuters has done us all a disservice by pushing this methane story.
Alaska Highway News has a good news methane and carbon story:
https://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/local-business/15-million-for-oil-and-gas-innovations-5819961
The CleanBC Industry fund is committing 15 million dollars to projects that promise to sequester carbon and reduce methane leaks. 15 MILLION dollars, with a capital M, baby. If you think that is chump change, you know some very wealthy chumps.
Our future is bright!
(Just saying that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy)
Cheers
Mike
Jean-François Fleury says
21 AUG 2022 AT 3:28 PM
“It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. …”
True or false?
JCH,
That Jean-François Fleury comment was arguing that SSP5-8.5 was impossible as we are running out of fossil fuels. If we assume oil and gas remain the FF of choice and there is no helping had from natural feedbacks (I understand the SSP modelling uses projected CO2 concentrations and doesn’t actively modelled carbon cycles), it is difficult to see where the 2,000Gt(C) will come from to provide the SSP5-8.5 emissions by 2100. So far we’ve managed AGW with just 700Gt(C).
The comment concludes by stating the view that AGW will end up somewhere between SSP1-2.6 & SSP2-4.5 which “gives by 2100 between 1,8° and 2,7° of warming…”
But the bold assertion that “It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C.” because SSP5-8.5 would struggle to find the FFs to power its AGW does overlook some of what is being said by IPCC AR6. And ditto the view that we will end up with AGW in the range +1.8°C to +2.7°C.
These global temperatures being quoted are central projections by 2100. A quick squint at IPCC AR6 WG1 fig 4.40a [FULL REPORT see PDFpage649] shows SSP5-8.5 could deliver an interesting +13.8°C by 2300. So that difficulty sourcing the required FFs is exceedingly good news.
And putting SSP2-4.5 as an upper limit to AGW would suggest there is still potential for that “strictly impossible” +4.5°C to be delivered in the post-2100 world.
(And delving into IPCC AR6 WG1 Ch4, observant readers will note the small discrepancies between the numbers in WG1 SMP Table 1 (as faithfully reported in for instance Wikithing) and those in Table 4.2.)
IMO, clearly a false assertion: we’ve been warmer in the past, so the carbon is potentially there to drive such a change. (Particularly WRT the deep past, because ‘faint young sun.’) ECS mainstream estimates rise to 4.5 C for a doubling of CO2, and the paper linked below finds potential to see CO2 @ 5x today’s levels.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/arctic-could-warm-by-17c-if-all-known-fossil-fuels-are-burned-study-says/
Not sure what more recent research has to say on the topic.
JFF: “It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. …” True or false?
BPL: False. What would prevent it?
Gavin’s Silurian Hypothesis paper on Anton Petrov’s y0utube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAF8ns-d4rc
GISTEMP LOTI has been posted for August showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.95ºC, up on July’s +0.93ºC and the 2nd highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 anomalies spanning +0.83ºC to +1.04ºC.
August 2022 becomes the 2nd warmest August in LOTI (6th in NOAA, =4th in ERA5 reanalysis), in LOTI below 2016 (+1.01ºC) while above 2019 (+0.94ºC), 2020 & 2017 (both +0.87ºC), 2014, 2021, 2015 & 2018 (+0.76ºC).
August 2022 becomes =28th in the GISTEMP LOTI all-month record (=46 in NOAA, =56th in ERA5).
In terms of the start of 2022, after eight months 2022 continues at 5th warmest with the last four months of the year to determine if 2022 maintains that 5th position or drops to 6th position (requiring a Sep-Dec average below +0.86ºC) or hops up to 4th (requiring a Sep-Dec ave above +0.94ºC), bigger moves in ranking requiring something a little dramatic over Sep-Dec.
…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +1.08ºC … … … +1.01ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +1.05ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.96ºC … … … +0.97ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.95ºC … … … +0.92ºC … … … 4th
2022 .. +0.91ºC
2015 .. +0.83ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.82ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 6th
2021 .. +0.80ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 7th
2010 .. +0.76ºC … … … +0.72ºC … … … 9th
2014 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 8th
2007 .. +0.71ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 12th
The LOTI global anomaly map continues to show the highest anomalies of the month are down in Antarctica, not a good place given the threat of SLR.
Ladies and Gentlemen
I have breaking news for you all.
Try “are the russians science savvy?” by Alexandra Borisova at http://www.themoscowtimes.com
Theree it comes out that 35% of russians today answer that the sun is revolving around the earth. The number was lower 20 years ago at about 28%.
With US citizens following right behind them at about 25% 0r 1/4 of the US population being scientifically illiterate along with a series nof poll questrions and good criteria.
Truly, it is what I also find here at this website. The frequency of the fameous desert walkers, blind believers, and flat earthers, is somewhere between 1/5 and 1/4. in the overall population. That is approximately similar with incureable racial Party background training upbringing and eternal membership among people in the normal population.. that bloody Party with P, the grand and old one.
Alexandra Borissova, who is obviously russian, states further interesting tings. They were told in the soviet that the case against Gallilei was about the copernican system yes or no. But that is not true. He was taken to court and set on index rather because he valued experimentation over Gods word.
Which is a further element that I am hoping will hit, scratch, and hurt deeply. :
Question: Do you believe in the websites and the “www.” the red, labeled, and holy scriptures, more than you are likely to value experimentation?
Because that is about being scientifically illiterate.
Mike: “The holes after explosion are very cool. I think these are also called pingos, if I am not mistaken. “ Pingos are not holes. Unless you mean negative holes (i.e. hills).
Mike: The U.S. is experiencing a shortage of carbon dioxide and Boston beermakers are beginning to worry they won’t have enough of the gas to get their products to market.
Heard the same story in Poland. Linked to the high prices of natural gas that caused a drop in production of fertilizers, which by-product was the commercial CO2.
Check out all these sea ice extent graphs. Very colorful!
https://zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/
Current worst-case estimates of how many feet of sea level rise by 2100?
JCH says
12 SEP 2022 AT 5:46 PM Jean-François Fleury says 21 AUG 2022 AT 3:28 PM
“It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. …”
True or false?
Does it count as a Bayesian prior that getting to 4,5°C by 2100 entails a rise of ~0.6°C / decade, and that it has for decades been impossible to find anyone to bet on a 0.25 °C decadal rise ?
Who said “by 2100?”
@Gavin
Any thoughts about this?
CarbonCapture Inc. Announces Five Megaton Direct Air Capture and Storage Project in Wyoming | Business Wire
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220908005446/en/CarbonCapture-Inc.-Announces-Five-Megaton-Direct-Air-Capture-and-Storage-Project-in-Wyoming
Brilliant!!! 5Mt(CO2)/y of DAC&S in Wyoming will do just dandy given Wyoming currently emits 60Mt(CO2)/y from FF use.
The company agrees that this project’s 2030 target for DAC&S is just 0.01% of global annual emissions (hopefully they don’t mean ‘2030 annual emissions’ because that would be a bit awful if emissions were running at such high numbers by then: it would be a 25% increase on today’s emissions) and elsewhere the company say “By 2050, DAC companies will capture upwards of 5 to 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.” So they do appreciate the scale of the required CO2 drawdown we need to mitigate the worse of AGW. Meinshausen et al (2020) fig2c suggests SSP1-1.9 will require net negative emissions of 230Gt(C) = 845Gt(CO2) between 2050 and 2180, the peak value shown being 14Gt(CO2)/yr. And that is the net value.
But this company does seem rather vague on the energy requirements of their project and the form of the CO2 being locked away in “the perfect CO2 storage geology” These are the major considerations for this technology which brave words will not magic away..
You’re right that the release is pretty vague. But they do allow that:
So it sounds as if there isn’t necessarily just one chemistry contemplated (though one does wonder how different chemistries can be ‘plug and play.’)
“Zero-emissions energy” also sounds promising; Carbon Engineering’s entrant was using natgas, last iteration I checked in on. Interestingly, they and their partners also expect to have a pretty large plant up & running soon: 1 MT/year, operational at about 1/2 that capacity in 2024, and ramping from there:
https://carbonengineering.com/news-updates/construction-direct-air-capture-texas/
Curious that CC is expecting about half the build time; that’s damn quick–unless they’ve already broken ground and for some inscrutable reason neglected to mention that.
Kevin McKinney,
The build-time is short probably because all these guys are doing is dumping piles of giant vacuum cleaners out in the wilds, presently on the Wyoming prairie with presumably a pipe connecting a deep Class VII Well (à la EPA). Beyond that, they don’t say a lot** and I think that is because they are expecting the DAC solution-developers as well as those with innovative storage schemes to be beating a path to their door. The electric to power the operation is shown as renewable but how much electric it will take is presumably dependent on the yet-to-be-defined technology that will be deployed, both capture and storage.
(** They say they will use “solid sorbents … a wide variety of amines, MOFs, hybrid solutions, and other novel materials”. Amines are the standard technology for scrubbing CO2 out of natural gas or chimneys but that is a liquid technology, while MOFs are so far drawing-board stuff. The clever bit will be getting scalable low–energy-use, low-cost Direct Air Capture working and then deploying a way of disposing of the CO2, again scalable low–energy-use & low-cost. The IEA say the geological storage capacity for CO2 is globally massive which sounds encouraging. And even the UK, a country not shown as very promising on the IEA’s map, has 70Gt storage off-shore according to the British Geological Survey. Mind, the practicality of such storage may be doubtful. After all, a few years back it was the BGS who were telling us how much shale gas the UK was blessed with, & they are still at it although their latest findings are so far not for the likes of us plebs.)
Hr. Chuck
Permit me to answer this:
Carbon capture and store CCS has become a very popular idea. But very few seem to know really what it entails.
To “catch” CO2 from let us say air or from exhaust gas of any kind where it is diluted, does mean you will have to compress it five times at least because the air contains only 20% O2 . C+ O2 -> CO2. and Daltons law. Compressing or up- conscentrating any gas takes energy because PdV = E
By what do you expect to “catch” that CO2 from the air?
There are several methods but most of them entail a strong caustic in water solution . For instance CO2 + OH- -> HCO3-. You make a bicarbonate. But then, your caustic is used and “saturated” with CO2. How will you re- cycle that very strong and expensive, higly conscentrated caustic?
Well, let`s say burnt lime with water, but how do you plan to re- burn that lime? Or maybe NH3 in water or as often suggested a more efficient amine, etyl butyl- propyl- amine?
OK, let us take Strong caustic soda water. When that is transformed into baking powder , that falls out in Solvays soda- process, how will you re- cycle that “soda” and compress that CO2 again into liquid?
By what will you drive, and cool that compressor?
A natural cooling agent will help yo very much, A natural icy creek for instance. But where do you find that? Or will Will you produce heat- pollution by that same factory also?
I shall try and be willing and tolerant.
. Let us say that you manage all this and produce very strong and cool selzer 1:1 CO2 + H2O. in strong steel bottles or long and large pipelines.
Calculate the energy and material costs again.
then you must store that content and re- cycle the bottles for next use.
You must store that especially strong selzer permanently. Then you have to send it out of the atmosphere or perhaps pump that large volume of the worlds production of very strong and pressurized selzer down very deep,…. and against geological pressure, where minimum needed energy electricity or nuclear again will be E = PdV. that geological pressure times that very large volume.
Can you afford those electricity bills?
See my point?
So each time “CCS” is mentioned or marketed, my quite spontaneous thought is that someone has invented and is trying to sell Perpetuum Mobile again.
The only reasonable and responsible way I can think of is to “capture” that CO2 from a source of highest possible purity and minimum volume. From the burning of lime or concrete, or from reduction of important commercial metals with elementary carbon. .
And use the product very strong and cool Selzer for making new pressure and “lift” under old and slack oil and gasfields.
Personally I rather go for the green values instead, the photosynthesis where it is done by solar and with very valuable by-products, and pehaps updated and improoved nuclear reactors.
Thank you for responding to my post. Can you break it down a little for a dummy like myself. I think what you’re saying in essence is that for something like this to work, it’s going to need to remove a lot more CO2 to make any noticeable difference.
CCS/DAC are boondoggles that cannot possibly meet the needs of society. Just look at the numbers in MAR’s post. The resources do not exist for the scale needed – and CC tech is just one industry that would have to grow massively over the next few decades **just to supposedly get to net zero**, which is incredibly dangerously slow and risks flipping tipping point after tipping point.
But in billions are being thrown at it.
Ridiculous.
Re resource limits: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/myog1Aln?utm_medium=ch_room_xerc&utm_campaign=0vIh7fkq9PMM2ZU9Db7TFQ-376286
Killian: – “CCS/DAC are boondoggles that cannot possibly meet the needs of society.”
Nearly three quarters of CO₂ captured annually is reinjected into oil fields to push more oil and gas out of the ground, to effectively produce more GHG emissions. Carbon capture technology is not new and it’s mostly not being used as a climate solution.
https://ieefa.org/articles/carbon-capture-decarbonisation-pipe-dream
My take, with an attempt to be simple: It’s a prime example of greenwashing.
Removing and storing 5 megatons CO2 a year is big for a single project, but it’s a very small fraction of what would be required to have a significant effect on climate. Still, it’s important to the present-day proposals to keep warming below 1.5 or 2C to be able to say that this would work in the future, so we can burn more than our limit of fossil fuels now. This project fits that need nicely.
Energy considerations: The laws of thermodynamics guarantee that it is impossible to burn coal (nearly pure carbon) and then put the resulting carbon dioxide back in the ground without a net loss of energy. It’s always easier in energy terms to leave the coal where it is. The story is less absolute for hydrocarbons, because you can use the extra energy you get by oxidizing the hydrogen atoms in the fuel into water, and set some aside for CCS. In practical terms, it won’t work for burning oil. Too difficult to extract, and not enough extra energy. It might in theory work for natural gas, using a really efficient process. Notice that the article doesn’t specify what fossil fuel is being burned, nor what the energy accounting is. If it’s coal, it’s just going to suck more energy than it produces. Since oil and natural gas generally need to be shipped somewhere else to be very useful (due to the low population of Wyoming), but the CO2 has to be captured onsite, I suspect that they will be burning coal.
Economic considerations: The article reads like an advertisement to attract new investors. They’re going to need lots of money to burn coal and then capture the carbon, since they’ll be operating at an energy loss. Forever. The company might still make a profit as long as they attract enough suckers – excuse me, investors – and the government keeps paying for those carbon credits that the article mentions. The original investors could do nicely if they can dump the financial risk on somebody else. If they do burn natural gas as part of the project, and manage a net energy gain after CCS, they will merely be competing at a disadvantage to the rest of the market. That’s because others still get to dump the CO2 into the air for free, instead of paying to make it go away again. They will need extra cash and/or subsidies until the free dumping privileges are eliminated, however long that takes.
Political considerations: Good move! You get to look like you’re doing something for the environment. So does the government. Everyone can pretend that they’re part of the solution. Wyoming should be an easy state to operate in. The economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuel, with many jobs on the line. There are lots of convenient holes to dump the CO2 in, and hope that it doesn’t come back up. Lots of wide-open spaces if it does. Low statewide environmental regulations help. The state is very conservative, has a low population, but two senators. If Wyoming can be brought along, the political problems of implementing huge changes to our energy economy will be reduced. No results are required before 2030. It looks like a good pilot project. (sarcasm intended)
Excellent post. Refreshing to have some clear-eyed commentary on this issue. There is n9 bigger lie out there right now than any form of mechanical carbon capture and storage. Farming, on the other hand, can sequester at least 50% of current emissions (@ 25gt: Take arable land x 2M deep x 1%/year added SOC). Add to that the *necessary* and *unavoidable* large reductions in consumption, we can be at net zero emissions within a decade – were we collectively a sane species.
John, you may be right that this is ultimately a form of greenwashing. But the project Chuck posted about, as well as the Carbon Engineering one that I mentioned, is “DAC”–that’s “Direct Air Capture.” Therefore, there is no fuel inherently being burnt at all. They extract the carbon from the free atmosphere. You’re clearly thinking of CSS, where carbon is extracted from flue gases in a power plant. The efficiency is an issue in that process because typically they are trying to extract usable energy. With DAC, that’s really not the case; they are using energy to extract CO2, which can then be either sequestered or sold for some use case. (There is the air-to-fuel case, though, in which they use the carbon to make hydrocarbon synfuel.)
I said “inherently being burnt” above for a couple of reasons–one is that the CE process, as I mentioned, was at last check still using natgas in the ‘calciner’ phase (IIRC). So there was still something of a carbon footprint there. They do allow that that can be done with RE, though. (The other is that synfuel thing.)
Thanks, Kevin. I obviously didn’t read the news release carefully enough.
That said, it makes the project look even worse. The thermodynamics of DAC are really bad, since CO2 is rather dilute in the free atmosphere. In addition, Wyoming is fairly high elevation with a rather cold climate overall. That means the partial pressure of CO2 is even lower, and extra heat may be needed to facilitate catalytic chemical reactions that might provide some efficiency.
I’m not sure what their proposed “renewable and zero carbon energy sources” are. However, unless they are looking at operating wind turbines as mechanical compressors to get greater heat and pressure for their DAC, they are taking renewable energy that could be going elsewhere to directly displace fossil fuel burning. Displacing burning would probably result in more net carbon storage than DAC. Their process runs on “high-quality carbon removal credits” for its economics.
Perhaps instead of “greenwashing” a better term would be “serial green credit laundering” for all of the entities whose reputation will be enhanced by their participation in this project. There’ll be pie in the sky, by and by, rather than excess CO2.
Killian has a good point about plants. They’re already excellent at DAC, and their carbon storage generally improves the soil. They are rather scalable. Even in Wyoming’s climate, they could probably farm quinoa, for example. A full cycle comparison of plant DAC vs. this project, including inputs and energy usage, would be interesting. I’m sure their processes, if real, would be proprietary, however,
I think you’re overlooking a possibility WRT zero-carbon energy inputs–namely that because it’s in principle time-flexible, it could be very useful to both stabilize the grid and to extract value from RE. Schedule your main production shift from late evening on to 6 AM or so, and you’re not displacing RE; rather, you’re making use of what would otherwise be wasted energy. Such a load could also be useful during the day, for those times when supply outstrips demand.
To be sure, appropriate market structures would need to be in place to enable this. But it’s a real possibility at least.
A hearty thank you to everyone who has voiced their knowledge about BECCS, DAC and the like. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere probably isn’t a great short-term solution.
The problem with DAC (direct air capture) as a means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it is that its very expensive and resource intensive, but this situation will almost certainly improve. The whole DAC industry is in its infancy , at about the same point as the first wind farms and solar farms, and look how they improved. But anyone that thinks DAC is a miracle cure probably has their head in the clouds.
In my view pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere with other methods also faces some big challenges:
The problem with enhanced rock weathering is big energy intensive mining operations and transport costs.
The problem with regenerative agriculture sequestering carbon in the soils is firstly somehow MILLIONS of farmers have to be educated and convinced and in a timely manner. Does that look easy to anyone? Farmers are notoriously resistant to change because if new systems go wrong on them it can be devastating.
Then you have to keep the sequestered carbon in the ground, which requires regenerative farming be done meticulously well and consistently for thousands of years. And you have to get past the transition period where a warming climate is forcing C02 out of the ground due to enhanced microbial activity thus countering efforts to sequester carbon. That said, regenerative agriculture is not resource intensive, and is a simple change of farming methodology. These are big advantages..
The problem with planting trees is finding enough land for plantation forests, when there are so many competing demands for more land, and then stopping the trees being cut down prematurely by greedy business interests and their lobbying machines. There is potential for enhanced tree planting on existing farms as shelter belts, and in urban areas and back yards, but there are many lobby groups opposed to such things and people don’t have unlimited funds.
The problem with all such technologies is they encourage allowing emissions to continue, and the kicking of the can down the road.
Those look like the grim realities to me. So to put total faith in just one of those approaches looks crazy to me, given the downsides of each one. However if we developed all those technologies at the same time and as best as possible, with maybe a moderate scaling up of the systems, it would at least spread the resource load, because they all use different types resources, and it could potentially add up to sequester a lot of carbon.
Carbon Engineering says they can achieve $100/ton when they reach scale.
FWIW, they also say:
Now, I’m agnostic about these claims. But I do think it’s at least worth acknowledging that they exist.
Source:
https://carbonengineering.com/our-technology/
Kevin McKinney,
That reference is a lot more informative than the waffly CarbonCapture Inc ref up-thread.
Carbon Engineering Ltd are developing a technology using potassium hydroxide capture and calcium carbonate separation.
Per ton CO2 delivered at 1.5 bar, they reckon to use 5.25Gj = 1,460kWh gas plus 365kWh electric, so a total of 1,825kWh energy. (Their A & B scenarion is 8.81Gj gas or 2,450kWh gas.) A kWh delivered of gas-generated electric releases something like 0.42kg(CO2) meaning a ton of CO2 produced would deliver 2,400kWh. So this DAC technology (which will surely get better) is using roughly 75% of the energy that would be generated by FF-power to re-capture the CO2 released by such FF-power generation. (And if the FF-power was coal it would be a rather unhelpful 130%.)
Then there is the storage which presumably isn’t so energy intensive.
Carbon Engineering Ltd are working on a project with their “partner 1PointFive and is expected to capture one million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually when complete.” Building this Permian Basin plant began in 2022. The partner 1PointFive drills holes for storage and describe the project as begining operations at 0.5Mt(CO2)/yr by 2024 with the capability to double that to 1.0Mt(CO2)/yr. They talk of “a scenario to deploy 70 DAC facilities worldwide by 2035.” 135 DAC facilities are mentioned with “increase in global policy initiatives and demand in the voluntary market.”They have a Louisiana project where thay are already drilling although I don’t see tha capture technology mentioned other than a “DAC by CarbonEngineering” logo on the webpage footer.
SSP1-1.9 shows net negative emissions of 14Gt(CO2)/yr meaning we’d need at least 14,000 of these 1Mt/yr DACS plants operating by the close of the century. And that 5.25Gj(gas)/t(CO2) for the DAC (not including storage) would be thus about 75,000Gj/yr which (if the beads on my abacus are behaving) is about half today’s 132 million million cu ft global use of natural gas.
Thanks for that. I don’t have the reference to hand, but Michael Barnard–I *think* I spelled that name right–did an analysis of CE that in my memory at least seems to chime fairly well with your numbers. He pretty much dismissed them out of hand, in fact.
I wasn’t sure his analysis was really the last word, but it was clearly serious & substantive. Hence some of my more skeptical comments above.
Presumably the Michael Barnard piece is this one – ‘Air Carbon Capture: a false climate solution promoted by the fossil fuel industry’.
He is certainly throwing a lot of numbers around. I will have a read and see if I agree with them.
Looking at the numbers in that Michael Bernard article (dated Feb 2022), does present some simplistic propaganda with its kick-off message that ” the most successful air carbon capture project to date ended up releasing 25 times more carbon than it captured.” The 25x is because this particular “project” is part of the Sleipner gas field and is stripping CO2 out of natural gas which has 25x the carbon content of the CO2 being captured. It’s been running since 1993 and a figure of 1Mt(CO2)/yr capture is quoted. So this 25x is not in any way about atmospheric CCS, or power station CCS.
The Carbon Engineering Ltd critique also begins with a description of the physical scale of the ‘filtering’ task, comparing it to the volume of the Grand Canyon which apparently is quite big, although there’s folk sayin’ it’s a lot biggerer than wot Bernard says. I make it 560 Loch Ness’s, or in English that’s 13,000 Lake Windermere’s, so a volume containing 33,000t(CO2). The argument is basically that a ton of our dry air occupies 815 cu m and at 415ppm(v) it is 0.65% CO2 by weight. So there are just 8g CO2/m^3, or 8 tons of CO2 in a cubic km of air. And if the process scrubs 30% of that CO2 out of the air (as the CE technology will be doing), it’s only 2.4 tons CO2 is taken per cu km of air processed.
But I’m not sure spouting such argument is helpful to anyone at all.
In my view the CCS issue should primarily be seen in terms of energy use as low-carbon energy will continue to be a rare resource for a long time. The cost side of things is obviously an issue but will always be one of moving goalposts, while carbon-use-in-capture that-is-also-captured measured against the net atmospheric carbon captured is only an issue as it means more storage is required, which is already an issue to be solved.
On this last carbon-used-in-capture issue, the Carbon Engineering Ltd do show the CO2 captured could be used for something rather than just stored but they are plain with their energy-use numbers being “all per ton CO2 captured from the atmosphere.”
Bernard gives some numbers for this carbon-used-in-capture. He says himself that a million ton CO2 captured “would create half a million tonnes of new CO2 from burning fossil fuels to power the technology,” so 50% ‘carbon-used-in-capture’. Additionally he quotes a figure calculated by Jacobson of 73% for “both upstream and for processing” (not sure of the actual source).
The Carbon Engineering Ltd descriptions do say the energy uses are “all per ton CO2 captured from the atmosphere.” To this captured CO2 would be added the ‘carbon-used-in-capture’ from the gas used which is about 0.25t(CO2) also needing storing. Additionally there is the electric which if supplied in a renewable/low-carbon world will not be accounted in this carbon equation. But if it is using up such electricity supply in a world still otherwise using FFs, there will be CO2 emissions requiring accounting. Thus 366kWh from gas-fuelled power stations add 0.15t(CO2) to the atmosphere and if coal, 0.27t(CO2). So the net CO2 capture is 1.0t or 0.85t or 0.73t and an additional 25%, 29% or 34% CO2 is also created in the capture process which also is requiring storage. These are less than Bernard’s 50%, but if the carbon-used-in-capture includes the 0.15t(CO2) of gas-fuelled electric, that would give the net capture of 0.85t(CO2) with [0.25 + 0.15 =] 0.40t(CO2) carbon-used or 47% which matches the Bernard 50%. And if coal-fuelled electric, net capture of 0.73t(CO2) has [0.25+0.27=] 0.52t(CO2) or 71%.And if up-stream carbon footprints of the FF extraction was added in, these numbers would be somewhat higher.
So lots and lots of numbers but I’m not sure how helpful they are to anyone.
Anybody… whatever happened to Hank Roberts? He was a pretty reliable poster and voice on realclimate.
I know–I miss Hank’s comments, too. I learned quite a bit from him, including the usefulness of Google Scholar.
“whatever happened to Hank Roberts? He was a pretty reliable poster and voice on realclimate.”?
Could the usual suspects have bored him into submission. ?
He is much missed on International talk like a climate pirate day.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/09/international-pirate-climate.html
Ray Ladbury: Weaktor, How appropriate that you would cite Jordan Peterson as your source here, as both of you suffer from extreme Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.
V: If you say so, Ray.
Rl; This is not a matter of coercion. It is a matter of necessity if the human species wants to survive in anything like its current circumstances. Of course, if you don’t view continued human survival as a goal, all bets are off. However, there would still be the matter of fairness in leaving a livable world to the cockroaches that would succeed us as the dominant species.
The question is not one of how we “force people” to act in concert with their interests and those of their progeny, but rather how we incentivize them to do so. Promising them a better world –maybe one where the richest 3000 people don’t control 4% of global wealth or where they don’t have to choose between food and medicine or where they don’t have to work 3 jobs to support the families they never see. No doubt actuality will fall short of aspiration, but the world in 100 years is going to look very much different than our current one. That is just a fact. People might want to think about designing the world they want to live in rather than simply letting our current one develop into a hellscape.
V: Both you and I know very well, Ray, that the program you would like to see is totally unworkable. (Assuming such a program could actually exist beyond the realm of wishful thinking.) Anyone with any problems on that score should consult the writings of Bjorn Lomborg, where he demonstrates not only how disastrous any program of that sort would be, both economically and socially, but also how futile. The most extreme efforts might possibly delay the worst anticipated effects by a year or so.
The title of Naomi Oreskes book says it all: “Merchants of Doubt.” In the context of real science, doubt is considered desirable. Only in the realm of religion is it seen as a problem.
I don’t share your concerns simply because I don’t buy the IPCC “consensus” and see no reason to assume the climate would be affected in any significant way by eliminating the consumption of fossil fuels. Beyond that, however, even if I did accept “the science” preached so ardently by alarmists like yourself, it seems obvious to me that undermining a source of energy that has become so central to modern civilization cannot possibly be the solution. If you want to glue yourself to a lamp post, preach endlessly to the choir and shout at the top of your lungs into the wind, you are free to do so.
What I hear from you is not an argument for implementing a solution to a serious problem, but an insistence that everyone in the world do penance for their past sins, in the hope that the Gods will take heed and respond with a miracle.
” I don’t buy the IPCC “consensus” ”
I’m curious. Who, exactly, do you envision could possibly care about your opinion over the opinions of the thousands of actual, practicing researchers conducting the original research in the area which is summarized in the IPCC reports?
But Weaktor, you don’t agree with the scientific consensus (it isn’t just the IPCC) because you are an innumerate, Dunning-Kruger poster child, so it would be difficult to find anyone whose opinion carried less value than yours.
Despite persistent–hell, even heroic–efforts of those who actually do understand science and statistics to explain the concept of correlation to you, you continue to insist that your fee-fees carry more weight and that your utter ignorance is an advantage because it makes you more “objective”
Congratulations, you have achieved epistemic closure.
As to the rest of us, we have to take action…and we have to realize that to postpone the decision, as we have done for 40 years, is to make the decision. I am sorry, but we can no longer wait for the slow students like you to catch up.
“But Weaktor, you don’t agree with the scientific consensus (it isn’t just the IPCC) because you are an innumerate, Dunning-Kruger poster child, so it would be difficult to find anyone whose opinion carried less value than yours.”
“Despite persistent–hell, even heroic–efforts of those who actually do understand science and statistics to explain the concept of correlation to you, you continue to insist that your fee-fees carry more weight and that your utter ignorance is an advantage because it makes you more “objective””
But the MODERATORS of this site must continue to allow Weaktor to post his drivel in order to keep everything “FAIR AND BALANCED” because, reasons.
Ray Ladbury: As to the rest of us, we have to take action…and we have to realize that to postpone the decision, as we have done for 40 years, is to make the decision. I am sorry, but we can no longer wait for the slow students like you to catch up.
V: You never answered my original question, Ray: “Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?” You insist “we have to take action.” Well, I’m still wondering what actions you have in mind, specifically. AND, exactly how such actions would be enforced — or, as you prefer to put it, ‘”incentivized,”
V: Well, I’m still wondering what actions you have in mind, specifically. AND, exactly how such actions would be enforced — or, as you prefer to put it, ‘”incentivized,”
BPL: A tax of $150 on CO2 emissions, to be rebated in equal amounts to every household, would work. Increase the tax by $10 per year.
And ban cutting down rainforests.
Uh, Victor, what about the program of economic equity that you dismissed out of hand?
You said:
Sounds like Lomborg–whose scholarship is to put is charitably not remarkably strong, BTW–is talking about something else.
https://www.newsweek.com/debunking-lomborg-climate-change-skeptic-75173
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-response-to-bjrn-lombor/
But let’s return to the main point. I can’t speak for Ray, but as for myself I DON’T “know” that a program of increased equity is “totally unworkable.” In fact, it looks to me as if it’s the American status quo that deserves that description–note for instance that the one thing most Americans agree on is that the country is on the wrong track:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/darreonnadavis/2022/07/05/88-of-americans-say-us-is-on-wrong-track/?sh=656f6c43287a
Meanwhile, there are a number of examples abroad that do it better than we do in regards to equity:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-work-week-by-country
Kevin McKinney says:
Uh, Victor, what about the program of economic equity that you dismissed out of hand?
V: I’m all for programs designed to promote economic equity, including hefty increases in the taxation of excessive income, including the implementation of a wealth tax. If you read some of the earlier postings on my “Mole in the Ground” blog you’ll see that I’ve held such a position for some time.
But the topic at hand is climate change, not inequality — and the socio-economic reforms mentioned by Ray look to me like red herrings, crude attempts at diversion. I’m still waiting for him to articulate exactly what reforms he has in mind that could possibly make a difference on THAT score. And how he would expect them to be implemented without the imposition of some sort of totalitarian government.
I would contend that inequity will *always* tend to promote environmental degradation, including for the foreseeable future at least, climate damage. Why? Because inequity always has a political dimension. It is precisely that dimension which allows for the environmental devastation we see (or choose not to look at) in Lousiana’s ‘Cancer Alley.’ Or in the lands Dominion Energy is trying to expropriate for an unnecessary natgas pipeline in North Carolina. Or around Midland, TX, which last time I went through conjured the name “Mordor” in my once Tolkien-addled brain. Or Canada’s Tar Sands. Or the Niger Delta, which has been called “one of the most polluted places on earth.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/9/9/niger-delta-oil-spills-bring-poverty-low-crop-yields-to-farmers
The point is, you can’t really run an FF-based economy without a bunch of folks who are poor enough or powerless enough that they have no better choice than to put up with the pollution. (Or at least, nobody has managed to do so up ’til today.)
So equity isn’t quite such a “crude attempt at diversion” at all. And it does provide a clear answer to a question you’ve asked twice now at least–to wit, how can climate be protected without resorting to “totalitarian” measures. That answer? Provide a clear vision of sustainability which promises *and delivers* a more satisfying and secure life–one less marked by a worship of profit and power, and more marked by valuing people, and life generally. Do that, and the polity will support sane policies.
Above I alluded to the need for 3 large-scale changes:
I’d note at this point that the first 2 go directly to both equity and avoiding a totalitarian society. Why? Because if you look dispassionately at typical American behavior today, most of us are constantly subjecting ourselves to messaging directed at making us feel needy, frightened and insecure. At the same time, our political elite work (much of the time) to ensure that we have rational grounds for feeling just that way, by ensuring that the private sector is always privileged to supply needs–or simulacra of them, at least–and by curtailing our power to assert greater control over our own economic lives.
The socially approved cure for these feelings is, of course, “retail therapy.” The system is calculated to drive profits, which means maximizing consumption, which, of course, entails minimizing satisfaction. To that extent, it also entails maximizing throughput and hence environmental cost. (That’s not to say that there’s no place for pollution abatement–that too, after all, is a product to be sold. But the expectation is that it’ll be sold in ever-increasing quantity–on the face of it, both unrealistic and unsustainable.)
So far, I’ve spoken mostly of the ‘carrot’–the latte, or the spa afternoon, or the vehicle/garment/device/experience/toy/service glittering for us in the agora. But there’s a stick, too–it might be the health insurance that mandates a third job (or maybe keeping the toxic one); it might be the fear of deportation in the hearts of the undocumented, keeping them from unionizing, or accessing even services to which they are legally entitled, or from reporting crimes against them; it might be various forms of implicit taxes on the poor, such as incarceration as an alternative to financial penalty. (For instance, the guy I met whose car quit on a restricted-access freeway, with the result of a 30-day jail term, and the loss of his job, and then the stranded vehicle which of course he then couldn’t redeem from impound without any income.)
I’d like to see a good deal less of both in society, and a great deal more sociability–meeting our social needs less from what we own, and more from whom we hang out with. That’s what we evolved with and for, and I think we’d be a lot happier–and a *whole* lot less prone to fall for the blandishments of faux populists and demagogues. And we’ll have a lower carbon footprint, too.
Some years ago I spent a few months as a tourist in the former Yugoslavia, led at the time by Marshall Tito. While Tito was a dictator of sorts, his brand of communism was miles away from that of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-un, etc. It didn’t take me long to realize, much to my surprise, that this was the best run country I’d ever set foot in. NO beggars, NO slums, no starvation, little to no unemployment, and, most important of all, very little inequality. While some were certainly better off than others, I saw no signs of wealth, no ostentatious mansions, no luxury vehicles, no upscale restaurants. Also no signs of intimidation. My friends spoke freely about politics, without fear of recrimination, in contrast to the highly controlled discourse so commonly found in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Albania and, of course, the USSR. Everyone, Serb, Croatian, Christian, Moslem, etc. seemed to be getting along fine and there were many “mixed” marriages.
When I developed a minor health problem my friends took me to the local clinic, a clean, modern facility where I was treated by the first female doctor I’d ever encountered. The treatment was free of charge, as it was for everyone. I’m sure there must have been some disturbing things I failed to notice, but as far as I could tell this was a country where socialism actually worked for the people rather than the political elite. It was also a poor country, where a pair of socks could serve as an appropriate birthday present.
The horrible civil war that followed Tito’s demise was, of course, a terrible tragedy that I never would have anticipated. But as far as I can tell it had nothing to do with the brand of communism/ socialism promoted by Tito but rather the re-emergence of nationalist conflicts stemming largely from the events of World War II,
All this to say that, yes, the type of government envisioned by you, Kevin, is in fact possible and was, as far as I could tell, actually thriving — for so long as it lasted, sadly. While the serious political divisions currently roiling the USA make a similar development unlikely in this country, at least for now, in principle something of that sort could possibly come about, especially if progressive Democrats could get their act together to the point that they controlled both houses of congress AND the presidency. So. As far as the political and social issues you’ve raised in your last post I can say I’m strongly inclined to agree.
But, as I must insist, while inequality might, as you’ve argued, have some bearing on climate change, the question of how the entire world can cut back on the burning of fossil fuels in a radical enough manner to meaningfully ameliorate the worst effects of global warming is a very different and far more problematic issue, as the entire world economy has come to depend so heavily on a form of energy. that pervades just about every aspect of human life. It’s not enough to claim that we need to do “whatever it takes” to address the problem because, as I noted earlier, the devil is in the details.
Hr Victor
Here I am able to agree with you for once.
If you could 0nly tell of things where you are actually experienced and rather try and build on that.
I have also been in Yugoslavia in Titos tdays and must say that the landscape and the cities were clean on the Dalmatian coast, and I really liked to see that especially the children were healthy and obviously well cared for.. Powrity and ugly rulership betrays itself especially when parents cannot afford that.
So I really wondered a lot about what happened later when it all came to a very ugly civil war. Just think of heavy artillery shelling into that very well preserved old town of Dubrovnik.
My old flame from Praha travelled with us, very good at italian and slavonic languages, and could translate for us. She later emigrated to Napoli and , married and divorcedc there, divorzio con italiano you see withn own ceremonial. They slam with the doors and say “go to Hell, I`ll not see you again!!”
But, that special order is reeserved for the arch- angel and is not in Human warrant.
I could calm and comfort her the correct catolic divorzio ceremoniel on behalf of the “evangelicals”: A- DIOS, my Darling, we meet at sunrise, for we`re bound for the Rio Grande!” for Whenever you have to leave the Bordel and quit . .
I later asked by letter what was on in Jugsoslavia, and she replied promptly as experienced from Ceskoslovensko: “The russians are behind it!”
It is lack of civil law and order that can be relied on, lack of what we know as civil constitutional order.
My cousin Brother had studied politicalm science and worked for a while for the world bank in Kasakhstan and Blelarus. He told that “they are lacking the western european renaissance and ideas of financial budget, and lack of respect for written social contracts.”
The same may have been the deepest cause in Yutgoslavia by serbian relation to the eastern church.
A money- bill is also a written and stamped civil social contract,
The same, a price- label on the free market and in the cooperative shop.
All their paper money and eventual price labels were just garbage, not to be believed in.. You cannot count and save your money and your legal and vital interests. You have to be at war for it and cheat for it all the time.
When any trade and commerce, even the tiniest one on the free market shall be a war,….. then war becomes the only thinkable form of trade and commerce, even the tiniest tomatoe on the free market
That is my explaination.
While I’m not a fan of Victors scientific views, I believe he is absolutely right to the extent that decarbonising the economy is enormously challenging and the usual prescription of renewable energy and lifestyle changes would require totalitarian government to be done IDEALLY well. There is no sign that more than a small minority of people are making significant lifestyle changes, (especially the more onerous ones) despite being well aware of the climate problem for decades now, so I contend it would require either costly financial incentives or onerous penalties both requiring a very dictatorial government.
That said wind and solar power is slowly gaining some traction, and use of coal has declined enough so far that some scientists argue we have averted 5 degrees of warming (but only 5 degrees). Americas government has just passed quite a large climate package, and my country has an emissions trading scheme. Some lifestyle changes are not onerous and some have gained traction, for example red meat consumption has declined very substantially in the UK. The point is there appear to be some things we can do that can make a difference without resorting to very impractical policies or to “totalitarian government”. Of course we need to make better progress than we are as well.
“Dont make the perfect the enemy of the good” (Voltaire)
Yugoslavia’s socio – economic model doesn’t seem so compelling to me. History shows the socialist states ( with very extensive state ownership and control) typically had a honeymoon period where things worked well, but eventually productivity stagnates and serious shortages of goods results. Hard to believe Yugoslavia would have ended up any differently. A smart benevolent dictator might prolong the life span, but they are a rare species.
Its also hard to see socialism gaining traction at any scale in the USA. Their constitution is regarded like its written on gold tablets handed down by God, and worships freedom while socialism inevitably entails giving up some freedom for the sake of the community.
The Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark are not socialist as such, however they combine socialism and capitalism in quite a successful way, combining together the best of both worlds so they compliment each other. The economic and social data is very impressive overall. This model is flexible and has proven merit over time.
Nigelj: “There is no sign that more than a small minority of people are making significant lifestyle changes, (especially the more onerous ones) despite being well aware of the climate problem for decades now, so I contend it would require either costly financial incentives or onerous penalties both requiring a very dictatorial government.”
A few more hurricanes like Ian might change some attitudes about Climate Change. I think Ian will be upgraded to a cat. 5 storm. I would like to hear some insight on how Ian is different due to ocean temperature being 85-90 degrees in the Gulf. Also the meandering path of the storm and the fact that it was moving so slow. I think Ian has some strange characteristics that might ste it apart from other hurricanes.
Thoughts?
Nigelj
“The scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Demark are not socialist as such..”
That is a more tricky discussion.
I live there. No doubt, both Norway and Sweden were socialist for a while with a practically permanent one party system with state capitalism and dictatorship of the proletariat and its c0nsequenses The dictatorship of dilettantism.
But both places also owned intact traditions of liberty and individual rights and freedom. One could not close the boarders for instance and forbid foreign litterature and the listening to foreighn radio, like it was possible under Hittler and further under Stalin and the soviet block. That makes a big difference.
And it is hard to find orthodox systematic socialistic doctrines that recommends or allows the same tyrannic features of characteristic media sensorship. . For such reasons, there were more or less serious rumors going around that “we ar the real, or really the best and most advanced, pioneering socialists and have made a socialistic state, but the Soviets do not quite know how”
I must say, I really was highly in doubt whether Stalin & Krsustsjov & al really were socialists. There was so much misery and powrity, with slums and GULAGs lacks of elementary living standards / human rights in those so called socialist states.
I visited Yugoslavia in Titos days albeit only a part of it. That looked well. But Ceskoslovensko…. They could hardly afford paint and there was heavy smog in town. All people were apparently working all day but one could hardly see the living standard results of it.
In fact, they were heavily exploited by russian imperialism colonialism and had to send all their advanced light and heavy machinery production that way against very expensive and bad quality gasoline in reward. And there were rumors of GULAGs, death camps. The big threat of “Uranium pit” if you try and flee to the west. With . Living expectation 5 years fror young students.
( Putins regime is actually converging obviously back in this direction in many details)
It was obvious cleptocracy both upstairs and downstairs.
Maybe the very simple formula for it is imperialism capitalism.
To get something, 1/4 sack of cement, an iron saw blade, 1/2 box of paint,…you must know someone who knows someone who knows someone…. who can steal it from the Factory!. Official society did not work and could not be relied on, thus private networks were higly advanced, and thus they were really very social indeed. If you happen to drive a car, you also pick up and have it full of hitchhikers. And no problem really to travel freely from town to town by “Autostop”.
The car- park was a museum of pre WW2 models that were still kept. Just like in Cuba, only 50 models chevrolet all the way still going strong or. just standing still being repaired.
The sense of humor was also very like what is known in the west from under alian
military occupation. So that is rather really what it was / is. .
Conclusion:
i am probably right. We were actually quite good socialists also on state and political level for a while, but the soviet period and soviet block looks to me rather like sheere capitalism and imperialism. Where rather MAMMON was in charge.
And the alternative for them was God. What broke the backbones of that system was eastern European catolicism.
Yes. IMO, this reorganization (or something sort of congruent) is necessary but not sufficient. In the immediate term, we must also be retiring FF capacity ASAP, managing synthetic GHGs, and improving land-use–mitigating emissions, in a word.. We’ve already spent quite a few tomes-worth of words on debating how to do that on these threads, and without anything like a consensus emerging.
That sounds discouraging, but fortunately the world is not depending on RC exclusively.
Hey, that’s a very good post there Victor! Well done.
@ Victor
“.. also a poor country, where a pair of socks could serve as an appropriate birthday present”.
How many “soft parcels” havent I got for Christmas and for Birthday?
And we were especially rich.
What matters much more is what it means and how it is given. I have been both rich and poor and rich again in my life, and see that powrity P is the quotient between what you desire and what you own.
P= D/O
Whereas wealth is the opposite , namely what you own divided through what you desire,
W = O/D
And this rules linearly over several orders of magnitude.
This is something for Killian also to be aware of and to teach further.
Powrity is to a high extent directly correlated to , maybe often directly caused by greedyness materialism, and – consumerism.
A while back I was involved in a discussion with some here about what qualifies as “science”. I and a few others held the position that the humans who, in many different locales, originally developed metallurgy and ceramics were engaging in scientific inquiry.
Putting aside that argument with respect to the early developments, anyone who visits museums would have to acknowledge that as proficiency increased (call it “engineering” if it makes you feel better), there had to be motivation, and selection, that would certainly fall under the term “marketing”, in determining the characteristics of the final product. That would include utility, but also embellishments that would not contribute to function (e.g. on a knife), and clearly ornamental objects like jewelry and sculpture.
This can be observed even in the earliest “retail” items like stone tools.
The point is that blaming “consumerism” for how we order our society is as much denial as what the Denialists do. Humans evolved with the same characteristics as our chimp relatives, being amenable to hierarchical organization both within and between groups. In fact, that may well be the default option, because it is effective in maximizing control of resources, and because you get to feel good, however low your status, as long as there is someone lower.
The hierarchy, the inequality, came first. That’s who we are. But we have the potential to transcend that, and our interaction with the physical world through science, engineering, and art in particular, has been an important and perhaps essential element in achieving that transcendence.
Those ancient Greeks, and far less sophisticated cultures before them, produced a lot of gaudy schlock products, no different from what happens today. And they had slaves. But, they figured out some pretty amazing stuff along the way. You can’t make good art without making bad art, whether as an individual or as a culture.
I can hardly believe you are serious. Please review the meaning of “consumerism.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerism
Hint: it goes way beyond figurative decoration on a knife hilt.
zebra: Humans evolved with the same characteristics as our chimp relatives, being amenable to hierarchical organization both within and between groups.
By this logic we should have other characteristics of our chimp relatives, like sex being strictly about reproduction, and infanticide being the norm. Chimps are not the only, or even the closest, relatives of us. Bonobos are as close. And their society is very different than that of chimpanzees – they prefer to make love, not war like chimpanzees, theirs are “easygoing ways, sexual equality, female bonding, and zeal for recreational sex“.
So your “The hierarchy, the inequality, came first. That’s who we are” is not as obvious as your categorical tone implies. As Brian Hare of Duke put it: If we only studied chimps, we’d get a skewed view of human evolution. Or in the context of your argument – of human nature.
And “ this is who we are” turns out to be quite pliable – some argue that the dramatic divergence between chimps and bonobos may have been caused by a small change in the availability of food on two sides of Zaire river 2.5 mln years ago ….
So “ the hierarchy and the inequality” is not necessarily “that’s what we are“.
And if the small environmental difference lead to all the differences between chimps and bonobos,
I wonder what kind of human society the massive anthropogenic climate change would usher …
Piotr and Kevin:
And yet, here we are.
Kevin tells us about the insecurity of not having health care, but in Europe, where they have health care, we see right-wing parties gaining support and winning elections. And in the USA, someone is always asking why poor White folks vote against their economic interests, by supporting similar parties. Huh, I wonder why?
What science… yes, real, long-studied science… tells us, is that a very large proportion of the population is primarily motivated by Authoritarian traits. Just like those chimps, status is what matters, and being above someone makes it ok to be below someone. And that includes your troop (tribe) being superior to the other.
But, in a reflection of that characteristic, those who are less Authoritarian by virtue of their historical circumstance can’t admit that they might have turned out just like that, given different parents and early development.
So Kevin wants to blame the success of the “faux populists” on people’s desire for material goods…he wants to see us “meeting our social needs less from what we own, and more from whom we hang out with”.
Ah yes, a wonderful sense of Kumbaya communal spirit; we have some fine examples of that “hanging out” in… The Proud Boys, the Incels, the (not-exactly-bonobo-like-eh?) women’s organizations that want to take away women’s bodily autonomy, and on and on. Hundreds of millions of people are eagerly turning out to vote for exactly those kinds of “community” values.
But this reality is unpleasant and scary, so no doubt you will want to deflect and dodge the issue. “If only people didn’t want to buy those silly gadgets, everything would be OK.”
Regarding Zebras comments. The following psychological study finds humans are inherently hierarchical, its in our DNA, and that egalitarianism is a learned thing:
https://www.rw-3.com/blog/hierarchical-vs.-egalitarian-whats-the-best-leadership-style
A close association exists between egalitarianism and hunter gatherer society, and a close association exists between hierarchies with the emergence of farming, large scale warfare and industrial society.
https://www.pnas.org/post/journal-club/did-complex-human-societies-evolve-empirical-study-backs-theories-citing-agriculture-violent-inter-state-conflict
Is it better to try and run complex industrial companies with egalitarian structures? Read on. Yes and no apparently.
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-egalitarianism-company-23291.html
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?
doi=10.1.1.488.4131&rep=rep1&type=pdf#:~:text=The%20latter%20findings%20suggest%20that,which%20egalitarian%20groups%20cannot%20force.
Can our complex industrial world as a whole function without any hierarchies, taking it very pedantically and literally? Think about that carefully. No individuals or sub groups in society would have implicit authority. It would involve holding public referenda on virtually every decision made in our complex industrial societies. It would slow decision making down to a snails pace. Its a practical impossibility. How do you deal with something as inherently hierarchical as the police with their powers?
So if we want an industrial society, and more egalitarianism and egalitarian decision making, (which I personally lean towards) its going to be limited in extent in certain situations.
I have no idea how you deal with the very strong hierarchies and authoritarianism you get in Trumps supporters that make the whole hierarchy thing toxic. Herding cats would be easier.
Zebra:
That community can be found even in blatantly delusory and toxic contexts should only underline how necessary community is to humans.
Someone responding to commentary about consumerism with examples of toxic community might want to think twice about proactively accusing interlocutors about “deflection.”
But apparently it easier to do that than defend (or respond to) the issue of toxic *consumerism.* I’m not aware of anyone here, including me, asserting that ending consumerism as a ruling ideology would solve all social problems. (“Everything would be OK”–strawman argument there.) But I think it’s pretty clear that ending consumerism as a ruling ideology would be extraordinarily helpful in lowering our throughput of material and energy.
Which is a proximate need.
Kevin, perhaps you should actually read the wiki-p article you referenced. It tells us that in the modern context, “consumerism” is driven by aspiration to status. Funny thing; that’s what Authoritarian psychology is all about, as I pointed out.
So yes, you are deflecting… you want to pretend that people are being influenced into some unnatural behavior, when in fact seeking status is perfectly natural for humans and other similar animals.
What distinguishes humans, as I said originally, is the (potential) motivation to understand and manipulate the physical world, both through function… science and engineering…, and also, through art and design, experience heightened sensory responses.
So here’s a question:
I have one cup that I use all the time for coffee, and my wife has one that she uses all the time for tea. But we have display shelves with a variety of hand-made cups and mugs.
Is our purchase of those items an example of “consumerism”, using up energy and materials for their production, or is it an example of “community”, where we are supporting and rewarding the people who made them?
For us, we don’t really need the status from having those possessions… we create stuff in other materials, and get our ego-boosts from doing that well.
So I suggest you give some more thought to your understanding of “human nature” and how to fix things. Look at history, and understand that autocratic societies are the norm, and they are “communities” even though there are egregious inequities and suffering for many of the members. What changes that is in fact usually “materialism”, when resources become relatively abundant through technological advance, and the opportunity for creativity and individualism is realized.
This falls well short of what I envisage, but is still an interesting data point, I think:
https://fortune.com/2022/10/01/china-millennials-gen-z-anti-consumerism-frugal-living-movement-retail-real-estate/
Piotr, I agree with your point overall–we can’t pronounce things about human evolution just by studying chimpanzees. But I just wanted to note that, in addition to recreation, sex among bonobos is also used for status games–who’s in and who’s out and who ranks higher than who else. In that sense (and perhaps in only that sense) they’re uncomfortably close to some human societies. ;)
My, admittedly cursory, impression of bonobos sex life – was that sex is ever-present – they have more sex than any other primates – you love me – let’s have sex, you are angry with me – let’s have sex, you are sad – let’s have sex, they brought us food – let’s have sex. With “I have a headache today” quite rare – withdrawing sex may not b very good in creating hierarchies.
See De Waal’s article in Scientific American :
“ The species is best characterized as female-centered and egalitarian [my emphasis] and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination”
For a fascinating discussion of consumerism, the economic growth imperative, socio – economic systems, the ascendancy of science, and hierarchies, read “Homo Deus” by Yuval Noah Harari.. Really strongly recommend this book.
Or, you could, you know. just re-read anything I’ve written here elsewhere for the last 15 years or so. After all, if you want to know what the future is going to be, listen to those who keep predicting it and have studied what regenerative societies are – and can design them.
Or don’t.
Seems to be the choice so far by a very wide margin.
And theoretically, at least, you have the option of asking yourself just why that might be.
Hurricane Ian hits Fort Myers. Here’s the storm surge:
Brennan Prill (WxBrenn) 1
I’ve been capturing video from this webcam in Fort Myers all day and I’ve put it into a Timelapse. Check out the storm surge rushing in! Crazy.
#Ian #flwx https://t.co/lj7a1wThga
10:37 PM – 28 Sep 2022 1 120K 32K
Yeah, that’s disturbing.
For amusement, here’s an article of mine Physics Education just published. A Facebook poster floated the idea that global warming was not due to carbon dioxide (surprise, surprise), but was caused by friction with especially dense interstellar medium (original, if idiotic). I did the math just to show it wouldn’t work:
Levenson, B.P. 2022. A demonstration that frictional heating of Earth is trivial. Phys. Ed. 57, 065025. Here’s a link:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6552/ac8fd7
The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season was looking a very weak affair at the beginning of September with the lowest ACE since 2000 having achieved ACE=2.7, the next lowest being 2002 with ACE=3.3 and all other years within the range ACE=15 to 102.
But September 2022 has proved an energetic month, the 5th highest Sept since 2000. The year 2022 for the start of October with ACE=79 now sits ahead of 9 of the 22 post-2000 years.
The strength of the end of a hurricane season doesn’t correlate with the start of the season, or with the Sept activity. And it is very variable, averaging about ACE=+30 with a range from ACE=+5 to +79.
So 2022 may end up breaking the run of seasons with ACE well above 100, a 6-year run so far 2016-21 which I argue can only be seen as unprecedented within the 170 year record. But then 2022 may yet end up being the seventh in that unbroken run.
ACE index is underestimated prior to the satellite era and will be more so the further back in time you go due to trends in observational practices over that time, so I question the validity of comparing the current run of >100 ACE years with records going back 170 years. We might reach 100 ACE this year, it would only take a couple more hurricanes to do that which given La Nina tends to enhance late season activity is certainly possible, unless we get a year like last year when despite LA Nina conditions there was very little activity from early October. It is unlikely it will be well above 100, the absence of August activity is very difficult to come back from.
Historical note: Per a letter in the July issue of Weather, the monthly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, it was Eunice Foote, an American, in 1856 who was the first to investigate the absorption of solar radiation by water vapor, and CO2, and not John Tyndall. Her paper was “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays”, American Journal of Sci. Art, vol. 22, pages 382-383. “Scientific American recognized the importance of her paper and included the words, “this we are happy to say has been done by a lady.”” The letter was written Mike Brettle.
Dan,
I’m not entirely sure how it sits in the grand hierarchy of historical science, if it is as you suggest a link to this 1856 thesis by Eunice Foote would be appropriate. And whatever, good on her, Eunice Foote.
Dan,
I’m not entirely sure how it sits in the grand hierarchy of historical science, if it is as you suggest a link to this 1856 thesis by Eunice Foote would be appropriate. And whatever, good on her, Eunice Foote.
It would simply be a Foote note.
(I’ll go ahead and see myself out.)
D: it was Eunice Foote, an American, in 1856 who was the first to investigate the absorption of solar radiation by water vapor, and CO2, and not John Tyndall.
BPL: Foote investigated the absorption of SOLAR radiation by gases. Tyndall investigated the absorption of TERRESTRIAL (longwave infrared). He gets the credit for nailing down the greenhouse effect, not Foote. I appreciate the need to remember and recognize our women scientists, but this frequent internet meme is mistaken.
It was not a meme. It was published in the Royal Meteorological Society’s current issue of “Weather”, their monthly magazine/journal and in R. Soc. J. History Sci. in 2019.. Foote, three years prior to Tyndall, recognized that changes in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would result in changes in the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere.
hr Levenson
I think you should back out here like a beaten soviett Putin Himmler Goebbels propagandist illusionist from the trained KGB thinktank on extraterrestrials.
It is obvious to us that you fight and badger glass cylinders and glass mercury thermometers and otto von Goericke – style airpumps and vacuum- pumps of brass tightened with leather, “grease”, and air- valves.
And give a politically fanatic damn to clear airs in glass- tubes under sunshine more or less, with CO2 + H2O along with Daltons law,m and William Herschels discovery of infra- red light in the sunshine that especially could heat up the thermometers and thermocoupples of those days.
The unaquaintedness to workshop laboratory science at any time and routine dooming the same for being consequently “mistaken”……..
………..on behalf of unspoken unwritten and never shown planetary extraterrestrials and extrasolar…..
…………..is Communist manifesto with o.
It is the class struggle and warfare against Gallilei, Sinful Mistaken Erroreous and deeply regrettible on behalf of the Church and all the Saints and in all languages,… I repeat….!
Your deep error and handicap in science is that you were perversely brought up to civil war and class racial warfare against Matriarchy, And never learnt how to pleace the housmaids and how to take them for serious and take your advantage of them.
They are as sinful as can be, but they often see you and judge you and treat you better if you are of any special interest..
===============000
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Hildegard von Bingen, Birgitta from Vadstena, Jeanne d`arc, queen Elisabeth 1, M.me Lavgoisier and M.me Pasteur, M.me Curie, Ellen Gleditsch, Christine Bonnevie, Mahalia Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, Oprah Winfrey along with Eunice Newton Foote…. Lise Meitner… they were qualified and they delivered, They were all true pioneers and they are our fravourites.
They were not misconsceived.
You are just unaquainted to common and normal healthy social and political matriarchy and how to live with it
How about a new October thread?
The Copernicus ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for September showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.35ºC, up on August’s +0.30ºC and the 3rd highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +0.39ºC and lowest Feb’s +0.23ºC.
Sept 2022 becomes the 5th warmest September on the ERA5 record, below 2020 (+0.43ºC), 2021 (+0.40ºC), 2019 (+0.38ºC) & 2016 (+0.36ºC), and above 2017 (+0.28ºC), 2015 (+0.27ºC), 2018 (+0.20ºC), 2014 (+0.18ºC) & 2013 (+0.17ºC).
Sept 2022 becomes the 44th highest all-month anomaly on the ERA5 record.
In terms of the start of 2022, after nine months 2022 is pretty convincingly installed as the 5th warmest year on the ERA5 record, requiring Oct-Dec to average above +0.45ºC to gain 4th, and below +0.17ºC to drop to 6th.
…….. Jan-Sep 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
2022 .. +0.31ºC
2018 .. +0.25ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 6th
2021 .. +0.24ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 5th
2015 .. +0.19ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 7th
2010 .. +0.16ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th
2014 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.11ºC … … … 9th
1998 .. +0.08ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 16th
2005 .. +0.08ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 10th
The ERA5 post points to the exceptionally high, indeed record-breaking Sept anomalies over Greenland.
And the numbers have been posted for September for RSS TLT (but as yet not uploaded into their Time Series Trend Browse Tool. Sept 2022 has a TLT anomaly of +0.72ºC, a bit up on Aug’s +0.70ºC and the 2nd highest anomaly of the year-to-date, anomalies which range +0.50ºC to +0.77ºC.
Sept 2022 becomes the 6th warmest August on the RSS TLT record, behind Septembers 2019 (+0.91ºC), 2017 (+0.90ºC), 2020 (+0.89ºC), 2016 (+0.84ºC) & 2021 (+0.77ºC), and above 2015 (+0.68ºC), 2010 (+0.66ºC), 2012 (+0.59ºC) & 2018 (+0.54ºC). Sept 2022 is the 40th highest of the all-month RSS TLT anomalies.
In terms of the start of 2022, after nine months 2022 continues at 7th warmest in RSS TLT and a final position from 5th to 8th by the end of the year continues to remain entirely plausible. A 4th place would require Oct-Dec to average above a rather warm +0.92ºC while a drop tp 9th spot requiring Oct-Dec to average below +0.48ºC.
Given the ENSO lowers TLT during a La Niña and MEI continues to show La Niña conditions, I’d reckon we shouldn’t be surprised if we see ‘scorchyissimo’ TLT values when neutral ENSO conditions begin to impact TLT.
(The trend-busting UAH TLT has yet to report for Sept.)
…….. Jan-Sep Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.89ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.85ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.75ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.69ºC … … … +0.69ºC … … … 4th
2010 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 7th
1998 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 8th
2022 .. +0.62ºC
2021 .. +0.61ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 5th
2015 .. +0.56ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 6th
2018 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … … 9th
2005 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 11th
2014 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.49ºC … … … 10th
A year-on-year graph of RSS TLT is shown here (graph 2a)