Starting a little slowly this new year, but here is this month’s open thread. Look out for various updates of the annual 2022 numbers over the next week or so…
Reader Interactions
169 Responses to "Unforced variations: Jan 2023"
Mr. Know It Allsays
2020 Ted Talk says there will be a place for EVs in the future, but not today. 14 minutes.
The Contradictions of Battery Operated Vehicles | Graham Conway | TEDxSanAntonio
You are so bold, but I know better from living in the situation
Elon Musk was extra here to thank us for buying one third at least of his pioneering Tesla. That got all dispensationes from Norwegian car import and gasoline sale high taxes and road taxes. And could exel in allmost free hydroelectric power thanks to global warming and scandinavian socialism.
Allmost common men and consumers could suddenly have their heavy and dramatically fast imported http://www..DOLLARGLIS after so many years just with mazda toyota and volkswagen.
Elon Musk and Norwegian Hydro is no mice piss in the ocean.
Which in no way diminishes its value as a demonstration case–and one with the cold-weather climate that some folks like to imagine renders EV tech impractical.
John Pollacksays
Based on personal experience, I think that there are still some issues for EVs in very cold weather. Granted, I have an older 2015 hybrid with a small battery. Mine was operable but with reduced power at -23C and a stiff wind. Maybe the newer EVs do better. Of course, even the gasoline engines won’t work if it gets cold enough, and diesel is worse. The more populated areas of southern Norway would seldom experience weather as cold as -23C.
I do think that cold weather operation needs to be considered carefully before a complete switch to EVs is required in places with severe winter cold.
Don Williamssays
The Chinese phrase for Tesla translates as ” coal-fueled vehicle”..
We learn from Switerland, who are pioneering, that electric vehicles must be regulated because they drain too much of their fameous but scarce hydroelectric powers. And shall only be allowed for necessary traffic and purposes. The remainings must run on diesel then. Or horsepowers rather than kilowatt hours.
The modern trains and railways are impressive really with that fashionable feeling of strong motors on smooth rails.
We have seen and followed Teslas on the roads. They do not drive carefully exonomically with a smooth pedal, they step on it without reading the amperemeter.
You can hear the silent electric wehicles on the roads by their weighty crushing of sand, if they could only drive carefully also.
The Horse is a rather silent animal and with convincing match- weight to pull properly. The greater matchweight does not irritate if only driven smoothly economically and carefully.
But it is less good offroad and on ice and snow, where larger wheels and lighter weight (longer legs) has the advantage. A n eg on the pedal, listen to the engine, and read the amperemeter.
The Teslas are designed to compeat on the highways at high speed. To my opinion, that is not the niche of electric vehicles. They shoulod rather be urban and suburb & local fashionable and comfortable wehicles with large coupe volume and windows , large wheels, and smooth comfortable feathering like the old diligences.
Or electric open Rikscha taxies in town. so you do not have to own a car.
Elks, Moose , Deers and Whales run on carbohydrides and carbohydrates using air as the oxidator,m and run smooth silent efficient and elegant. They are not too fat and heavy and clumsy at all.
As I was saying, most electric vehicles in Switzerland are e-bikes.
In the Swiss Alps, I was pushing up a mountain pass and here comes an older woman pedalling behind me. As she passes I realize it was an e-bike with a pedal-assist (which is what freaked me out the first time I saw it).
No dent in hydroelectric supply if everyone used e-bikes
Yes, they do. There has been electricity crisis in the EU with 10- doubbling of prices and severe ebtide in the Norwegian hydroelectric dams.. The very Norwegian situation is harmed and threatened.
I tell you, they go up in masses to the mountain vacation sites and begin re- charging their Teslas there. The network is not dimensioned for it, so it kneels. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-…
Then it snows heavily due to general global warming of western oceanic winds by fossile fuels, and they cannot get out of it due to flat batteries and no voltage on the net to re- charge that ..
The community must be called by celllphones, who also get especially flat in the snow, to come and rescue them by gasoline snowmobiles and the red cross, and gas- turbine fossile fuel military and oil industry sea rescue Sea Kng helicopters, who burn a tonne of kerosene per hour at leas and 3-4 barrels per lift as one can hear from long distance.
When will Elon Musk take that to his recognition?
In the meantime, he burns away ship loads of fossile hydrocarbons at leat each time in his falcon heavy and starship demonstrations.
Who pays? On what costs is all that? The network kneels allready and the community cannot keep up.
“We don’t look at a bird chirping and flitting through the trees and react in horror at the pitiful state it must find itself in, lacking the means to control its environment. Why should we look at pre-agricultural humans and imagine horrific misery, as many are inclined to do?”
In winter, I DO wonder how birds and other small animals can stay warm enough to survive. Fact is, many animals do not survive the winter. It’s brutal and would be no different for pre-agriculture humans in cold regions. I suspect for most of human history, human existence did, in fact, consist mostly of horrific misery in many forms: finding food, being eaten by animals or killed by bad guys, disease, injuries, filth, staying warm or cool, insects, and on and on.
The article seems to ignore human nature. Few humans would be willing to go back to a pre-civilization lifestyle . You can try it if you want. Go to the woods and live off the land. There are many YouTube videos of people doing that, but most of them have all kinds of modern gear with them. I heard Russia will give people land for homesteads but I haven’t verified that. Read “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer to see how NOT to go about living in the woods. Read “One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey” by Richard Proenneke to see how it turned out for another guy with a better plan – (he had lots of support from civilization).
Your concerns about running out of minerals are not realistic. We have not even scratched the surface of the planet. Want more minerals? Dig another hole. There is nearly an infinite supply compared to what humans use. That is true for most minerals, even for fossil fuels.
On the article’s statement about the conceit of owning property, the Pilgrims tried the non-ownership model (a commune) when they first landed in frozen, inhospitable New England in November. THAT had to be a brutal existence. With their commune system there was no incentive to work hard so shortages resulted and people died. Then they gave people their own land to do with as they wanted and the immediate result was abundance and prosperity. The reason? Human nature. Humans do what is best for themselves. They will not work hard for the collective, but they will do superhuman feats if they can keep the fruits of their labor for themselves. All communist societies have proven this – they are all failures because they deny that aspect of human nature. We see it in the USA today – many people will not get a job because of government handouts. The GOAT, the late Rush Limbaugh, tells the early story of the Pilgrims:
KIA: Want more minerals? Dig another hole. There is nearly an infinite supply compared to what humans use. That is true for most minerals, even for fossil fuels.
BPL: Wrong. You’re assuming digging to any depth has no cost to it. The deeper you dig, and the more inaccessible the place you start, the more it costs. That’s why fossil fuels are NOT available in infinite supply, or anything close to it. The whole conceit of infinite supply is insanely wrong anyway, since Earth has a finite volume, most of which is either the core or the mantle.
Mr. Know It Allsays
The volume of all mining ever done on earth is not even a drop in the bucket of the available land that could be mined. The quantity of land available to be mined is essentially infinite for our purposes.
KIA: The quantity of land available to be mined is essentially infinite for our purposes.
BPL: Prove it. Show your work.
Mr. Know It Allsays
BPL! You called my bluff! You made me do my homework! You’re mean.
:)
But, if you insist, read this article and click on the red “the book” PDF link in the second paragraph. The numbers in the table starting on page 63 of that PDF are shocking!
Tim Worstall is just deluded about the minerals issue. He says that mineral ‘resources’ are so vast that we wont run out. The quantities are vast, but he clearly doesn’t understand that over 99% of those metals based minerals are so thinly spread through the crust and are at such low concentrations, or they are so deep down, that we will never be able to economically extract them.
We are currently mining the small number of lodes near the surface where minerals are in high concentrations and over the next couple of centuries these will run out forcing us to extract minerals from low concentration lodes or extract minerals dissolved in sea water which will be expensive and will start to push up the price of technology. And as others point out extraction of minerals at low concentrations sometimes requires mining vast areas that seriously despoils the environment.
There is a minerals supply problem looming, and only a fool can’t see this. However the pessimists do also exaggerate the problem. The truth is more nuanced as is often the case with things. We will probably have to do a lot more recycling and prioritise things better.
Copper for instance is allways wanted but the best sources, green rock musroms at seeping water (vitrol) was taken and extincted first so they had to go to Cypros.
Kopparberg og Stora Støtet in Falun then was the worlds production and basis of the very swedish empire for a while. Then we found Røros Kobberverk, and even Orkla gruver that were emptied. Sold to the French who made the Liberty Statue of it, that showed to contain 2 cubic meters of gold and 7 cubic of silver when restored recently The Norwegians had not yet understood electrolysis of the raw copper first.
The swedes took away allmost all of the old lag heaps of Røros kobberverk and cold not tell us why. That was all the palladium and platinium.
And now it comes from Chile where there is only 0.07% in the sands. thus a huge amount of sands and very large mines for that copper In arid areas. The processes also take water.
moral: the mining industries may become more and more sinful.
Moral 2, todays copper grows on the junkyard, I never buy copper, and the plumber and electrician copper is very fashinable soft and pure. You only have to buy tin and antimon. Zink also grows on the junkyard. Even gold grows there. I have found it.
“With their commune system there was no incentive to work hard so shortages resulted and people died.”
Avoiding starvation would seem to be a pretty good “incentive.” Also, people had been dying in massive proportions essentially from their arrival of various diseases.
“Then they gave people their own land to do with as they wanted and the immediate result was abundance and prosperity.”
Ah, the magic invisible hand, making all well, instantly.
I haven’t read Bradford’s account, but the “just so story” quality of the version given above makes me curious to see what *really* happened.
nigeljsays
KIA. Its not as simple as just digging another hole. Minerals like copper ores are widely dispersed through the crust but the concentrations are mostly much too low to be useful. Minerals like copper ores in high concentrations only exits in a small number of lodes globally. We will most likely run out of these in the next couple of centuries, and will be mining areas with very low levels of ore, and doing a lot of recycling. As a result we probably wont be able to maintain current levels of use of technology, and we will have to prioritise what we do. Read a geology text or something.
Nigelj
Copper is a really practical metal and material, but I see they avoid using it allready for applications where it is the very best, Hydraulic brakes tubes for instance. They use iron that is much harder to repair, and it rusts.
There was a lot of pure gold in old electronics, that has disappeared. And copper and tin is less and less and less.
Copper bronses are often the very best and cheapest in production for complicated strained machinery parts, but light metal and nylon takes over. Just as good but I wonder what has really got the lesser environmental and production costs. Not for nothing churchbells and superbe cannon mortar guns and finest ship propellars and steam engine cylinders and pumps and very best engine bearings were made of bronse. Indian shivas and elephants are impossible without bronse.
Hr Knowitall
I did not see that first. You discuss lifestyle romatics. I did not see that first. Lifestyle and romantics interests me.
Me and my wife have been trying living in the miniature way a few times. Mostly on vacations, living camping in a renault 4 and in a 20 ft motorboat as easy as possible. What are the real, and only necessities of life, and resign on everything else, throw off your heavy burdens for a whilwe.
It is the nomadic life, the gypsy- and travelling peoples life, that is also quite a culture and an art.
We find and agree that we live quite as well and comfortabe, but it ends when we run out of money or have otherv duties where we live for permanent. Agriculture and gardening with handicraft song and music and politics is also quite an art that must be trained and understood, and can also be ugly, depending.
But you forgot seafood and fishing and picking flower and vegetables and wreckwood at the shores for it. “Hunter gatherers” is quite a delusion in the snobbish national socialistic sub- urban slums.
It may rather be Gypsies and experienced, successful nomades and lucky fishermen.. But it may also be beggars and robbers.. There are nomadic cheaters beggars and robbers and fierce hunters and gatherers urbanized monopoly capitalism, and what about the russian way of life now against the rather civilized agricultural Ukraina with sucessful industries also? That seems to be invading and travelling hunters and gatherers again
Fiddlers and poets, travelling showbusiness, annoucing quacky healers that are out for your cash, Para- cites,.. what about that?
Try and immagine and discuss all this called sociology and economy in more than a romantic nostalgic Marxist leninistic way.
And what about militarism and imperialism and peaceful rural and urban population being victim to that?
to keep up with the Jones or with the Kardasians, is that so easy?
Or to win and earn so you can settle for a while in Holluwood or Las Vegas?
See what also hits them. Severe climate cathastrophies. earthquakes and mudslides bushfires….. and the FBI.
Ned Kellysays
Where would we be in 2023 without the Pilgrims of 1620? I have no firm idea myself except things would be markedly different.
another quote from Ned Kelly’s dothemath link last month: seems pertinent. Beguiled by this false flattery, we tell ourselves that nothing can stop our boundless juggernaut of innovation!
In this altered state, we find ourselves on a destructive rampage, as evidenced by the severe toll on habitats and biodiversity: about 85% of primary forest is gone; vertebrate populations have declined by about 70% on average since 1970; and now 96% of mammal mass on the planet is embodied in humans and our livestock. The dots are not difficult to connect. The combination of methods and substances available to us have allowed explosive exploitation of resources on a global scale. A paltry and decreasing amount of habitat—increasingly fragmented—remains. The healthy, biodiverse regions are disappearing fast.
and
Cleverness and an illusion of control got us here, and they are not our best tools for extracting ourselves from the mess.
I have written other pieces about the foundational flaws in our growth trajectory on a finite planet; about the idiotically narrow construct of money (Box 19.1 in textbook), and how decisions based on money will be bad ones (if it makes economic sense, it almost certainly batters the ecosystem). I have posted about the cognitive distortion produced by fossil fuels, and the tragic fallacy of building an enormous human population on the back of a finite resource that threatens a devastating population crash when its availability inevitably declines. The real, ultimate value is in biodiversity and ecosystem health, which suggests de-emphasizing the primacy of humans and becoming subordinate partners on the planet rather than its self-appointed and ultimately inept overlords presiding over the demise of our transitory empire.
But stepping back and using our temporal framework as a mental guide, we are justified in asking whether our path of civilization is wrong at its very roots. That might seem extreme, but we are indeed at an extreme nexus in the history of our planet. I didn’t start out thinking this way (as the long evolution of this blog series attests). I mean, I knew our growth path could not last, and that fossil fuel substitution would be harder than many appreciated, but I never entertained the idea that civilization itself was a bad idea. It is not eagerly that I tread these waters.
Tom Murphy is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and PhD student in physics at Caltech, Murphy has spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics. He currently leads a project to test General Relativity by bouncing laser pulses off of the reflectors left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, achieving one-millimeter range precision. Murphy’s keen interest in energy topics began with his teaching a course on energy and the environment for non-science majors at UCSD. Motivated by the unprecedented challenges we face, he has applied his instrumentation skills to exploring alternative energy and associated measurement schemes.
Killiansays
Yet, when I say all the same things, I’m somehow out to lunch.
People are… not so intelligent. That’s not an insult to humanity, it’s a statement on re: what we’ve done to ourselves via poor education, ideologically-driven societies, selfishness, polluting everything (Have a fish from U.S. fresh water and get 1 mo. of your average chemical in that one meal! Free!) and so on.
nigeljsays
No Killian. I have always accepted my whole life that over population, high rates of economic growth and high per capita consumption and pollution has profound environmental effects and often damaging effects, and that the education system is sub optimal and ideologies of any sort can be problematic. The other regulars here seem to largely think the same, KIA and a couple of climate denialists excepted.
What we disagree with are SOME of the SOLUTIONS you have posted, because they just don’t look practical and they look too simplistic especially when you consider humans and their fallibilities. . I have no doubt the solutions are well meant.
Solar Jimsays
Copying my Jan 5 comment (from Dec.) to Jan, UV. –
RE: Hansen’s: Improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO2 (2xCO2), with likely range 3.5-5.5°C. Greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m2 larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2xCO2 forcing. Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone — after slow feedbacks operate — is about 10°C.
1) At over 500ppm,equivalent concentration at present, the planet will blast through 1.5 C rise in just a few years. (4C for (2 x CO2) for fast-feedback implies that all other forcing gases should be considered)
2) Since concentrations are rising, with emissions at historically high rates, radiative forcing and attendant Earth Energy Imbalance are rising.
3) Slow feedbacks may not be very slow, since “western man” continues to force the climate exceptionally. In addition, paleoclimatology indicates a planet primed for instability when forcing is so substantial..
4) At 4.1 W/m2 radiative forcing and EEI rising just this century (two decades) from about 0.5 W/m2 to about 1.2 W/m2 we seem to have a large way to go for equilibrium. Which will be catastrophic.
5) Western Man seems to have made a mission-critical error by defining uranium and fossil carbon as “Forms of Energy” (they are forms of matter).
@Solar Jim says: – Copying my Jan 5 comment (from Dec.) to Jan, UV. –
“2) Since concentrations are rising, with emissions at historically high rates, radiative forcing and attendant Earth Energy Imbalance are rising.
4) At 4.1 W/m2 radiative forcing and EEI rising just this century (two decades) from about 0.5 W/m2 to about 1.2 W/m2 we seem to have a large way to go for equilibrium. Which will be catastrophic.”
ms: — Copying my Jan 7 answer (from Dec.) to Jan, UV. –
From ~ 0.4 to 1.16W/m² in 20 years. The net increase in EEI by 0.76W/m² is caused by a decreasing albedo (shortwave out @ TOA) of 1.4W/m² while longwave out @ TOA increased by 0.56W/m².
These are NOT necessarily the symptoms that indicate an increase in CO2 concentration. (due to more climate gas, longwave out @ TOA should actually decrease and NOT increase)
I am sure that the loss of clouds and sea ice were the main causes of the increase in EEI.
In addition to the rise in temperatures caused by CO2, there is a 2nd important human-caused forcing. It is also the loss of evaporative landscapes that increasingly prevents cloud formation and is partly responsible for high temperatures, droughts and heavy rain at the land surface.
The value for the EEI has also fluctuated greatly over the years. Interestingly, it always tends towards zero (neither warming nor cooling) when the global average humidity in the atmosphere is at its highest.
Schürle, when will it be time that you write sense, comes to reason so to speak?
I can tell you as an artist and learnt epistemologist that art must stand on knowledge.
I told that to a fameous indian painter who painted garbage dadaisms. And he said “……no….. smile, smile….!”
But you can see, I deliver art, and I also mess up with dadaism and surrealism here as easy as that.
The surrealists in Oslo are getting more and more frustrated by loosing their war exacly like their military favourites and keep no regular tavern meetings downtown anymore with beer and pizza. How is that about you Mr. Schürle?
@carbonito says: – ” I can tell you as an artist and learnt epistemologist that art must stand on knowledge.”
ms: — The easiest way for anyone to view your art and epistemologies is to click on your name: —> about:blank#blocked
There are plenty of good and acceptable artists & painters in Norwegian and international psychiatric institutions – we call it “art brut” – unfortunately you are not one of them.
For a stable art production it’s not enough to claim that you are the captain of your own flying saucer.
Personality disordered wide-mouthed frogs without any ABC in the brain but a lot of LSD in the bloodstream…
Tey are also confused about their own bodies, calling their fingertips, about 10 thumbs all in all, for “mouth”.
They commit quackery, and discuss LSD
It is surrealism and dadaism somehow.
Killiansays
Told ya so.
Funny how personal animosity prevents humanity solving its problems, isn’t it? I have stated the basic points in points 1 and 3 above more times than I can count on these pages, and, again, I was right and yet, still, the Peanut Gallery peanuts and keeps this site focused solidly on,,, milquetoast, wishy-washy, nothingness.
The Peanut Gallery never understands when it’s being educated, and never will. So, post away, Jim, just don’t expect anyone here to listen.
On the other hand, if Harry and Meghan’s multimillion dollar house in Montecito is washed away by the severe flooding there, one can argue that it is because Harry’s new book picks a fight with a King whose titles include “Defender of the Faith”. One who has the Lords Spiritual and remaining 42 Bishops praying on his behalf.
Niall Ferguson’s book “Doom:The Politics of Catastrophe” documents how historically massive disasters have spawned/fed religious movements. E.g, How Christianity grew from a small foreign cult to the state religion of the Roman Empire because it had superior survival value in the Antonine and Cyprian Plagues. Climate Change may destroy academia –or at least today’s version. Clock’s ticking.
Apparently you have the “false equivalence” thing down pat.
Don Williamssays
The average voter may think even a religious correlation is more persuasive than a paper arguing climate change is causing California’s prolonged drought –at the very moment California is being submerged by massive flooding.
The interesting thing about the Michael Mann –Jem Bendell argument is that Mann is arguing climate science — that it is technically possible to avert disaster at the present time. I think he overlooks that Bendell is arguing his discipline — that while something might be technically possible it may be socially impossible.
Dansays
” many people will not get a job because of government handouts. ”
^Those tired and thinly racially-motivated GOP talking points have been completely debunked over recent years. By people such as social scientists and economists who are qualified to do such analyses. Not a surprise you bring it up as it you are never able to read or learn but just lazily regurgitate lies….even racist or bigoted ones. Such as your comments after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. (Hint: he was one of your brethren specifically.)
Adam Leasays
For a counter to the hideous right-wing trait of victim blaming, an alternative look at the benefits system and the plight of poor people, here are a couple of informative links:
Currently, In India, we are facing the effects of a changing climate. Warmer temperatures, more extreme weather events, and an increase in air pollution are all major concerns. Heat waves have become more intense and frequent, leading to drought and water shortages in some regions. There has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of floods, cyclones, and other extreme weather events. Sea levels are also rising, and glacier melt is leading to an increase in glacial lake outburst floods. Air quality has also decreased significantly in many parts of the country, leading to health concerns for many people. The Indian government is taking action to address these issues, but the effects of climate change remain a major challenge.
They’ve got to stop building new coal-fired power plants. That’s making the problem worse fast.
Adam Leasays
This is an important issue. It is fine to say the average Indian/Chinese citizen has a fraction of the carbon footprint of the average Westerner therefore the industrialised West is primarily responsible for anthropogenic climate change, but given at least some of these developing countries are trying to industrialise with the goal of enjoying the comfort and wealth the Western countries have enjoyed since the industrial revolution, if they take the same roadmap as those Western countries have done via fossil fuels, those Indians and Chinese will sooner or later have a carbon footprint approaching the average European or American, and there are a lot more of them. That is not to say they shouldn’t develop, but we/they need to find a way of developing whilst leapfrogging the dirty technologies and bringing renewable resources and ecological footprint into the development, whilst the West transitions in the same direction alongside.
Killiansays
First, let me fix this for you: “That is not to say they shouldn’t develop,” >> “That is not to say they shouldn’t industrialize and massively increase unsustainable consumption…”,
Second, that is exactly what a regenerative society will require.
Let’s stop this silly faux middle-roadism that everyone uses to defer reality.
Adam Leasays
Alternatively, lets stop the strawman arguments. It should be possible to greatly reduce hardship in these countries (which is what I mean by develop) without going down the unsuatainable path of Western countries.
The December for the ERA5 SAT reanalysis has been posted with a global anomaly of +0.27ºC, a rise on November’s anomay of +0.16ºC (Nov was the lowest anomaly of the year while October was the highest anomaly at +0.41ºC) with December becoming the 9th highest monthly anomaly of 2022.
December 2022 is the 7th warmest December on record and the 55th highest anomaly on record for all-months.
And 2022 thus becomes the 5th warmest year on record. Given the present La Niña is expected to transition into ENSO-neutral during Jan-Mar 2023 the likelihood of an El Niño arriving in mid-2023, the next year is likely to see global temperature anomalies climbing up the rankings. Looking at the MEI numbers, this transition to El Niño may be a bit less leasurely than previous transitions from strong La Niñas, so it might be a case of “hold on to your hats!!”
GISTEMP has posted its December SAT anomaly at +0.80ºC, up on November’s anomaly of +0.72ºC which was the lowest monthly anomaly of the year, with the highest being March at +1.05ºC.
December 2022 is the 8th warmest December in GISTEMP, cooler that all Decembers since 2014. The Dec 2022 anomaly sits =93rd in the all-month GISTEMP rankings.
2022 thus becomes the 6th warmest year on the GISTEMP record (also 6th in NOAA, 5th in ERA5 SAT reanalysis and in the more wobbly TLT records 2022 was 8th in RSS & 7th in UAH, lower rtanked as to be expected for TLT in a La Niña year).
James Hansen & colleagues at the Columbia University’s Earth Institute published their latest communication, dated 12 Jan 2023, beginning with:
Global surface temperature in 2022 was +1.16°C (2.1°F) in the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) analysis¹,²,³ relative to 1880-1920, tied for 5th warmest year in the instrumental record. The current La Nina cool phase of the El Nino/La Nina cycle – which dominates year-to-year global temperature fluctuation – had maximum annual cooling effect in 2022 (Fig. 1). Nevertheless, 2022 was ~0.04°C warmer than 2021, likely because of the unprecedented planetary energy imbalance (more energy coming in than going out). The already long La Nina is unlikely to continue, tropical neutral conditions are expected by Northern Hemisphere spring, with continued warming as the year progresses. Thus, 2023 should be notably warmer than 2022 and global temperature in 2024 is likely to reach +1.4-1.5°C, as our first Faustian payment of approximately +0.15°C is due.
Hansen et. al. rank the tenth warmest years in the instrumental record, based on GISS temperature analysis, as follows:
#_1 _ 2020 _ +1.29 °C (relative to 1880-1920 global mean)
#_2 _ 2016 _ +1.28 °C
#_3 _ 2019 _ +1.24 °C
#_4 _ 2017 _ +1.19 °C
#_5 _ 2015 _ +1.165 °C #_5 _ 2022 _ +1.162 °C (essentially equal with 2015)
#_7 _ 2021 _ +1.12 °C
#_7 _ 2018 _ +1.12 °C (equal with 2021)
#_9 _ 2014 _ +1.01 °C
#10 _ 2010 _ +0.99 °C https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/
Will this year, 2023, be around equal warmest on record?
Will next year, 2024, be “off the charts”?
We’ll see soon!
JCMsays
Why doesn’t the system just move some mass and heat around to eliminate a LW radiative perturbation? Is this not what radiative convective equilibrium is all about?
It’s the flux of fluid imposing constraints on atmospheric equilibrium.
Seems the only way is to somehow inhibit flux of mass and heat away from the surface, such as ongoing relentless desiccation of the landscape. This might change the timeframe and overall ability for the system to adapt to LW perturbation.
thoughts welcome.
thanks
JCMsays
put in a different way, why couldn’t inhibited convective heat transport vertically (latent flux) act to force the system? This could happen in numerous ways I figure. Mostly through boundary layer process perturbation, moisture availability, biologically mediated cloud condensation, and whatnot.
The climate system is doing what it can to remove mass and energy from the surface.
500,000 Gt (km³) of water per year, which is converted into water vapor on the earth’s surface and transports 340 billion GWh/y upwards is no small matter. However, what the climate system cannot (yet) do is to compensate for the merciless stupidity of mankind and eliminate this fundamental evil.
With me you’re running into open doors when you explain that there is simply not enough water on the land surface to keep energy transport and temperatures stable.
A few weeks ago I tried to quantify the man-made loss of evaporative landscapes.
To date, ~6000 km³ of water per year and its evaporation have been lost since the massive appearance of humans on land. The corresponding evaporation energy from this lost water mass and its energy transport into the atmosphere corresponds to the amount of ~ 3.1 W/m² in the global energy balance.
This loss only becomes measurable in the atmosphere due to the decreasing relative humidity (since 1973 = -0.16 %rh 10yr-1) and cloud cover (since 2000 = -1% 10yr-1).
While the loss of 3.1W/m² evaporation in the atmosphere “only” shifts the temperature gradient between the surface (stays warmer) and the atmosphere (stays colder), the falling cloud albedo increases the Earth’s temperature.
If we assume that the missing 6000 km³/y are completely evaporated via vegetation and photosynthesis, this volume of water can absorb a maximum of 42.3Gt CO2 – more than mankind emits annually today.
I can’t judge whether it’s stupider to deny global warming due to increasing CO2 & greenhouse gases or to ignore global warming due to decreasing evaporative landscapes and cloud cover, but climate protection through irrigation is in any case much cheaper and more effective than replacing the global, fossil machinery.
JCMsays
@macias shurly
MS “simply not enough water on the land surface”
JCM Your quantitative method with the water cycle effects is novel. There must be space allowed for a reasoned critique camp to exist. Reducing the debate to believers and deniers is absurd.
MS “what the climate system cannot (yet) do is to compensate for the merciless stupidity of mankind”
JCM The climate system is indeed compensating, but in a way which is resulting in a great deal of distress.
From whatever perspective one approaches the issue, the water cycle has always been coupled to equilibrium process. This is true whether CO2 ppm is 280 or 500.
I do not consider the hydro climate observables as feedbacks, but rather as equilibrium adjustments which coincide with radiative adjustments. These exist under the energetic constraints acting upon the system. Transfers of radiant energy to-and from the global latent heat reservoirs is a fundamental climate process.
MS “there is simply not enough water on the land surface to keep energy transport and temperatures stable”
JCM Here we should also not only consider the quantity of water, but also the duration/frequency of water cycle effects. Not only the size of the buckets, but the frequency with which buckets are replenished and lifted aloft.
A humid haze persisting over a dry desiccated landscape is the worst possible scenario. Routinely cleansed air over a moist landscape is ideal. Ecology and hydrology matter in this process.
Improve your plan by incorporating ecology into your proposal.
Draining and eroding the landscape must result in hydrological extremes. Long periods of dry followed by saturation excess flow of precipitation over unreceptive soil. A cycle of drainage events, hydrological drought, and subsequent meteorological drought. The landscape desertifying below our feet, for centuries now. The continents, under increasingly high pressure air.
This correlation is practically all I see with the ever increasing temperature trend charts. But it may reflect a certain bias in my perception.
The biosystem is the great regulator. Not only does the biosystem encourage hygroscopic condensation processes and reduced duration of supersaturation aloft, it accumulates vast stores organic carbon in soils to infiltrate and retain water. Leafy veg with long durations of green growth transpire soil water from depth, along with critical secondary aerosols of biota. Wilting, shallow-rooted plants in eroded soils do no such thing. The surface and air are intricately connected.
Vast disruption to hydrology is the great curse which has not yet been broadly recognized. Much of the perceived climate disruption is evidently coupled to this critical Earth system process.
I can’t help but feel frustrated by the reductionist discussion of climates. Furthermore, the reductionism of environment in totum to the mechanisms described by atmosphericists. Politically active atmospheric scientists risk causing net damage by displacing all matters of environment with their narrow worldview. I see it everywhere, and it has engulfed environmental politics and educational curricula.
Hey JCM – it’s always a joy to find a clear and sharp mind in this Babylonian RC desert.
JCM: “Your quantitative method with the effects of the water cycle is novel.”
ms: — I’m certainly not a great mathematician and I think the quantification is more like a milkmaid calculation that you and anyone can easily check in 5 minutes on one of the many dew point calculators on the Internet.
Relative Humidity (RH) has been declining for decades with a trend of ~ -0.16 – 0.22% per decade. For our atmosphere with a total volume of 13000 km³, a 1% drop in RH at a constant temperature of e.g. 16°C would mean a loss of ~170 km³ absolute humidity (g/m³)
If you or anyone wanted to compensate for this loss, ~ 40 x 170 km³ (6800 km³) would have to be additionally evaporated per year, since the average residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere is only ~9 days (365/40).
As additional evaporation in a GlobalEnergyBudget for land, this volume corresponds to an evaporation energy of ~3.5 W/m² or 45 L/m² per year (6800 km³ / 149 million km² x 0.68 KWh/L) and quantifies the loss of the evaporative landscapes due to changing land use from about 1948 to 2022.
The inevitable increase in sensible heat and ground temperature by 3.5 W/m² largely explains the increase in land temperature over this period. Comparative in situ studies of evaporative loss over cities (-25-50%) and agricultural areas (~40%) indicate a similarly high evaporation loss of the order of ~6800 km³. That’s ~10% of annual global evaporation over land. Around the year 1750, the relative humidity may have been even one percentage point higher.
I should also mention that dew point temperature (-1.59%) is falling faster than RH percentage (1.24%) — and this in a climate that is steadily warming – making condensation and cloud formation more & more difficult. The reduced cooling at the surface also means reduced warming in the upper troposphere, which in turn could explain the observed cooling of the lower stratosphere.
JCM: “Improve your plan by including ecology in your proposal.”
ms: — I studied biology 40 years ago, but I specialized in evolution theory – so it would actually be your job to enter the topic * water retention ecology * on my website on ~ max. one page. (Fee requests for gardening as usual – LOL).
Otherwise, the addition of 5-10L of organic material per m² and year is an average with which you can increase the soil moisture by 4-8L/m³. Carbon content/m³ corresponding to the added organic material.
The next step for me is to transport my concept to the regions and implement it there.
The Ahr Valley in West Germany is a catchment area with ~900 km² and ~60000 inhabitants, which experienced a devastating flood catastrophe in 2021, causing hundreds of death & damages of ~ $ 30 billion.
There the concept against drought and flooding is to be implemented for the first time with all the possibilities that the region and I have to offer. Maybe that interests you – the Ahr Valley lives mainly from viticulture, trout farming, tourism and some mining. The aim there is to get the fallen ~ 200mm / 48h of precipitation under control.
JCM: “I can’t help but be frustrated by the reductionist discussion of climate.”
ms: — Let’s draft a letter to the IPCC.
I have assembled all the watertight evidence to prove these omissions and reduced climate viewing. – Thanks
JCMsays
@ macias
I will consider the offers. It is much appreciated and it is very appealing.
I need to consider retaining my anonymity due to my involvement with the local watershed board. It is yet 20 years until my retirement date and there is a great deal of risk involved with disputing social norms in the current climate of things.
This is one aspect of the net damage I observe inflicted by climate politics, where the river board seems convinced that installing wind turbines will reduce hydrological and temperature extremes. They are not hearing about the full picture from self declared authorities and experts.
The board is composed of municipally elected officials who receive a relentless stream informational items related to the energy transition. The community is exposed to greater vulnerability as a consequence, in my opinion. Financial incentives for the energy transition far outweigh incentives for environmental amelioration.
If we wish to get real, The missing piece in the GCMs is constraints on boundary conditions. OLR is evidently a fixed proportion of surface flux on climate scales. The so-called optical depth perturbation from trace gas appears to be overwhelmed by convective adjustments. This could be one reason why the GCMs are not working.
Invoke this constraint and see what happens. To described climate change will thus require acknowledging the importance of transfers of radiant energy to-and from the global latent heat reservoirs. To date, this process is not computed in sufficient detail. The inter model spread in simulated latent flux exceeds 18 W m-2.
Everyone here can rest assured, humanity does certainly impose an effect on the latent flux regime, by desiccating over 5 billion hectares of the landscape. Flux of mass from the surface (latent heat) has been replaced by tangible heat. Fluid dynamics are responding in a very damaging way.
JCM: This could be one reason why the GCMs are not working.
BPL: They’re working just fine. Please stop spreading denialist memes.
JCMsays
@BPL. “Working just fine” is a relative expression, I suppose. They are indeed impressive pioneering platforms in computing. However, those who feel a smug satisfaction with the progress, who take a defensive stance in opposition to development of understanding, should perhaps consider resigning from the space. Faith based hindrance of the advancement of your niche interest is a dissonant and damaging endeavor. Your indirect armchair involvement with environmental affairs is apparent, and your viewpoint offers no virtue nor value.
JCM: Faith based hindrance of the advancement of your niche interest is a dissonant and damaging endeavor. Your indirect armchair involvement with environmental affairs is apparent, and your viewpoint offers no virtue nor value.
BPL: With all due respect, bite me.
JCMsays
@BPL
“with all due respect…”
Indeed the great paradoxical irony is that it is the personality trait of believers, beholden to their ministries of truth, be it administered through church or state, who know little of respect. Those who wish to boil down the nuances of reality into a reduced, often contradictory, conceptual framework. The best interests of the community-at-large notwithstanding. Skeptics and dissenters become the defacto enemy, a story repeated since the beginning of time.
JCMsays
The impression to ordinary folx is that conformity has become the underlying motivating factor of the science community. I hope, however, this isn’t the case. Politics creates a distorted view in certain disciplines, I think, with hordes of missionaries out to convert the savages. A sort of intelligentsia resulting from increasing societal stratification, where it becomes increasingly difficult to relate to one-another. We must all be aware of these forces.
Ray Ladburysays
I’m sorry, but when you JCM are done gratifying each other, maybe you could look into how science is actually done. You don’t “draft a letter to the IPCC.” Instead, you publish your findings in a reputable, peer-reviewed, scientific journal.
The idea that the scientific process has somehow broken down and that useful new approaches are being ignored or suppressed is bullshit of the purest ray serene.
JCMsays
@ Ray Ladbury has no idea how the dominance of atmospheric science reciprocity in the politics of environment is causing net damage. I don’t expect anyone on this site would. But the moral is to not be threatened by hydrologists and ecologists, but to develop a mutual understanding.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Oxfordshire climate lockdown trial to begin in 2024:
Unsurprisingly this statement is wrong. There is no ‘Oxford climate lockdown’. There is a plan for congestion pricing of roads, and a separate policy that aims to encourage livable neighborhoods, where essential services, e.g. shops, schools , clinics (and pubs!) are available within 15 minutes walk/cycle of where people live. Which actually sounds rather pleasant – and is needed to counteract the tendency of building poorly serviced dormitory developments where access to services is often predicated on use of private vehicles..
Ned Kellysays
A 2 hr commentary of the natural threats to civilization, climate change, ecological overshoot and limits to growth and so on. by William E. Rees: “The Fundamental Issue – Overshoot” recent video interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTuDttP2Yg
Looks into the long ignored/avoided notion of Human Ecology, exponential population growth, connects back to fossil fuel energy use, pollution, wastes, climate change impacts, and the global economic system and mindsets.
William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning in Vancouver, Canada. He researches the implications of global ecological trends for the longevity of civilization, with special foci on urban (un)sustainability and cultural/cognitive barriers to rational public policy.
This is a more holistic view of the state of the world’s problems. Seen more of this approach lately. It’s a good interview / scientific discussion which covers a lot of interrelated dynamics in a clear and constructive manner. Sorry if it is too much off topic for here, but some here might be interested in this broader aspect around climate change issues and long term solutions.
sample text about climate change being yet another symptom, and not the cause: @ 37 minutes
Q. (There) is a minority view in the environmental movement you highlight, that climate change isn’t “the problem” but instead is “a symptom” of the problem; can you unpack what you mean by this?
Rees: Sure, to do that I’m going to take a wee step back. I believe that human beings and our cognitive capacities have become obsolete in the world in which we live. If you think about the evolution of humans we grew up in relatively simple circumstances, in small groups living in home ranges that weren’t all that extensive. We lived and died within a few dozens of kilometers of each other. There was no real pressures on the human mind to think beyond simple cause effect relationships.
Bottom line is that the human brain our cognitive capacities tend to be limited in most people to rather simplistic reductionist perspectives on reality.
If you think about that, climate change is a perfect illustration because there are hundreds of things happening but we fixate on climate change. The focus gets shifted a little bit when something like a pandemic comes along. Then it’s all about the pandemic we forget about climate change. Then there’s the war in the Ukraine and we talk about that for a while and now we’re back to climate change. And nobody (very few) bothers to connect all of those dots because human beings are not inherently intrinsically capable of thinking systemically.
When’s the last time you had a dinner conversation about lags and thresholds, chaotic behavior and collapse syndrome which is called catastrophe and systems theory and so on? It just doesn’t happen okay. So climate change is our fixation because there are obvious “symptoms” that many people can relate to but it’s only one symptom – there is also plunging biodiversity, ocean acidification, soil and land erosion, on and on. Every single so-called “environmental problem” is a symptom of the same issue (cause) which is overshoot.
Overshoot is the fundamental issue.
The fundamental issue is the cause of all of these other problems. Overshoot means that human beings are using even renewable resources, the products of ecosystems, much faster than they can regenerate and we’re dumping wastes far in excess of the natural assimilative capacity of the eco-sphere.
On the one hand we’re drawing down all of our natural Capital – fish stocks are collapsing, soils are eroding at 10 to 40 times the rate of restoration, we’re polluting far beyond the capacity of the systems to assimilate. Climate change is a pollution problem because carbon dioxide is the single largest waste product by weight of industrial economies. The anthropogenic component of climate, the carbon emissions, is a waste management issue. The Earth system cannot cope in a timely manner, it will over time but not in time (for us) with the quantity of carbon dioxide that we’re putting out there.
By weight CO2 is the the largest waste product.
It’s like an invisible gas but if you add it up it actually has a weight putting out 36 billion tons a year of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of which a significant proportion is the carbon – it’s what goes in as fuel the coal oil natural gas is all carbon based and of course it has to go through the system and is emitted as waste but as you say because it’s an invisible gas no one tends to think of it as waste.
Overshoot is the problem – human beings are destroying the biophysical basis of their own existence. We are literally consuming that which we need to maintain the system even at a reasonable size and it’s not at a reasonable size any longer.
Overshoot means you’ve exceeded your carrying capacity. If you think of any farmer who has a bunch of
cattle, they know that if you put too many cows out in the pastures they’ll eat the grass until there’s nothing but mud left, then they die.
Now if you import a lot of grass from some other farmer you can keep your cattle going so that’s what humans have been doing. I mean we talk about an Urban Ecology that’s nonsense. The city is not a complete ecosystem, the city as we I currently think of it is the human equivalent of a livestock feedlot because you have all of these consumer organisms jammed into this one area. And you know, geologists geographers and urban economists often say well cities are no problem, only two or three percent of the surface area of the Earth. They’re narrow Keyhole is a Reductionist, simplistic perspective.
If we look at human beings from an Ecological point of view then each City occupies on Earth an area anywhere between a hundred and a thousand times more land than is within the built up area of the city. So the human Urban Ecosystem now is larger than the entire planet!
It’s because cities have become parasitic on their environments, because of globalization. I did an early study of Tokyo, has 38 million people the whole population of Canada. But Tokyo uses more Bio Capacity than the entire nation of Japan. Twice as much as a matter of fact. The ecological footprint of Tokyo is larger than the entire country of Japan and it’s only something like a quarter or a third of the Japanese population. Japan has exceeded its carrying capacity because of globalization.
The capacity to bring in the resources needed to sustain its Overpopulation, and because we can do that we become blinded to the reality of our Overshoot.
As long as you can import from elsewhere you are blind to the fact that you’ve exceeded your local carrying capacity. But what you’re doing in the meantime is drawing down the available productive (Bio) capacity in other places. Every country in Europe is in that circumstance. Japan is in that circumstance where they are living on imported carrying capacity or the assimilative capacity of the rest of the planet to absorb their carbon and other wastes we don’t actually measure the other wastes.
And this is in addition to the Energy Flux being provided by imported Fossil carbon and hydrocarbons. (end)
If Ukraine evolves into a medium scale nuclear war it will be even more of a distraction. Although some guys think nuclear winter/famine might be a short term fix to global warming and probably a longer term fix to the population problem.
The last section “Conclusion: Is Preparedness Possible?” lists about 33 major risks. and notes how short term threats distract from climate change. Figure 4.1 (p 70) shows results from a poll of 1800 major leaders,experts etc re how successful governments will be in handling the risks. The worse results were for “Failure of Climate Change Adaptation” and “Failure to Mitigate Climate Change” with 72% judging current measures will be Highly Ineffective” or “Ineffective”
Victorsays
Gertrude Stein mocked Ezra Pound as “the village explainer.” Imo William Rees deserves the same title.
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Thank you for sharing the conversation and the arguments about overshoot, he is right about it. However, I wish he did not repeat the same explanation for our failure to act as being due to “the human brain our cognitive capacities tend to be limited in most people to rather simplistic reductionist perspectives on reality.” Why would only he and a few others be an exception to this law of biology and sociology, allowing only their brain to understand complexity, systems theory, etc.? First of all, I find it very arrogant coming from an educator, whose main role is to share his knowledge with the “simpletons”, generously and effectively. Second, I don’t think this has been demonstrated scientifically, but if it has, I want to know.
There are so many reasons too many people do not discuss the topics he mentioned at the dinner table. He wouldn’t either if he were a cashier at XXXmart, for example. We’ll never know if the cashier has a similar or much better brain than him, but never had a chance due to their educational, socio-economic and cultural context that would make them not only discuss overshoot, but contribute to solving it.
Ned Kellysays
@Silvia
thank you, all good questions you may need to research yourself. here at least is one item by Rees which touches on the issues of human cognitive capacities. seeing it in full context of the section and the entire article is recommended of course.
section from page 18 onward
Reason, Emotion, and Instinct: Understanding the Triune Brain
a sample quote The key point is that humanity is a deeply conflicted species. We are torn, on the one hand, between what reason and moral judgment say we should do and what pure emotion and baser instincts compel us to do, particularly in stressful circumstances. As Damasio (1994) explains, “There are indeed potions in our own bodies and brains capable of forcing on us behaviors that we may or may not be able to suppress by strong resolution.” The neocortex, the seat of reason and logic, is a relatively late arrival on the evolutionary stage and does not always play a commanding role. In this light, it would be folly to assume that either individuals or society, especially global society, will necessarily deal rationally with evidence for accelerating global ecological change. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15487733.2010.11908046?needAccess=true&role=button
@Don
thank you. I noticed in that WEF opinion survey that really 8/10 most problematic issues long term are all ecosystem-climate connected. I think this maybe a confirmation (consensus) that solutions are either not known or are not being seen implemented. Nevertheless I cannot see the WEF being a party to solutions for anything.
@nigel
thank you. It would help to skim through the video or read a little of Rees to understand him and the above sample text. The issue of smaller population is not mentioned as a solution but as a direct outcome of the problems going forward.
Mike Robertssays
I think one has to distinguish between the species characteristic behaviour and the somewhat varied behaviours of the individuals of that species. Yes, some humans do seem to be able to understand what is happening, but the characteristic species behaviour overwhelms this.
William Rees’s words in that interview are very important but I doubt that enough people would be influenced by them to alter the characteristic species behaviour, even if all 8 billion of us understood those words. To me, that’s just the way it is. Humans operate in the way that all other mammalian species do so overshoot was inevitable and, given that we are in overshoot, there is no way to avoid the consequences of that.
zebrasays
Mike, humans do not “operate in the way that all other mammalian species do.” Mammalian species exhibit a wide range of behavioral characteristics, so your statement doesn’t really make sense even in general.
Perhaps most important, humans adapt to circumstance on a much shorter timescale; our ability to modify/manipulate the physical environment does not rely on biological evolution.
As I pointed out to Ned, modern humans exhibit clearly different reproductive norms, based on cultural (material and social) conditions.
There’s nothing “inevitable” about exceeding the planetary carrying capacity of humans; as I said to Ned, I looked at the figure of 300 million global population as a stable value. Do you think that with such a number maintained, there couldn’t be a very long term sustainable culture that was able to benefit from continued advancement of scientific and technical capabilities?
nigeljsays
Ned Kelly.
Very useful looking information. Haven’t the time right now to look at the videos, but yes the fundamental things driving the climate problem and our other environmental problems could definitely be argued to be over population and high per capita levels of consumption in developed countries.
To fix the climate problem based mostly or entirely on these two variables of population and consumption patterns would require something roughly like cutting 8 billion people down to about 1 billion people over the next 20 years, and dropping per capita rates of consumption of energy and other resources in developed countries by about 90% over the next 20 years.
Neither policy is practically feasible for numerous reasons. This leaves the approach of renewable energy, electric transport, moderate cuts in consumption, multiple negative emissions approaches, etcetera. These policies face challenges, but IMO are practically feasible.
A smaller sized global population is distinctly possible long term and would be helpful, but clearly that isn’t a viable solution to our immediate problems.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Scientific paper says There Is no Climate Crisis – the PDF opened right up for me:
The so called ‘scientific paper’ looks like it hasn’t been peer reviewed, or has been very badly peer reviewed, considering the spelling mistake and bad punctuation in the abstract. For example: “depends on relible, economic,that.” And you have emotive language right through the paper that is entirely out of place in a scientific study. And the quote “scientists claim CO2 is a poison” is a huge strawman fallacy. It’s very hard to know how all that got passed peer review. So its likely a lot of other information in the study is incorrect as well.
The study presents various arguments that have been debunked a hundred times already. Its a classic case of someone quite clever but trying to write a science study out of his area of expertise. His ideological views, and his anger and emotion comes through loud and clear, and this has no place in a science paper.
The author is critical of wind and solar power and promotes nuclear power. He happens to be a nuclear physicist so perhaps its not surprising that he promotes nuclear power, and it raises the issue of whether his study is a reliable picture of the real situation..
That subject is important, and I cannot quite agree with you.
Who are those anonymeous “peers” entitled to be above any next autor in the grades regardless and in any case?
I can tell you, that is a perverse variety of the highest so- vi- ett party comittee stricty within the high walls of Krjeml behind closed doors. Or the assembled Cardinals strictly locked into the Vatican to judge on the next Pope.. It is “the experts” in anonymeous plural., that is an ANIMUS- projection according to Carl Gustav Jung. Such as The assembled Gangsters or Mobsters, the anonymeous and inaugurated, leading Party comittee.
I have a higher and better and deeper and more autentic learning about that, being of inter- facultary order. . Chemistery and philosophy, thus rather superior also when it came to musical acoustics, that to my wiew is the physics of oscillating air from enlighted and trained audical minds point of wiew. Then reason and emosion must cooperate consciously and trained as left and right hand or left and right brain halves or left and right eyes. With no strict iron curtain in between. Which is rather perverse and unnatural.
The concerned scientist is very traditional in science history. Think of Darvin, Gallilei, Einstein Helmholz Humboldt John Dalton Lord Rayleigh, Herschel, …. you name them.
Whereas The narrow minded, industrially segregated, rather cyclopic one eyed type even with professional blinkers hardly delivered results of any value at any time.
But they quite often stuck their heads and minds together behind closede doors , called it a thinktank or a peoples republic, or “a Convent”. or “An edition..” that managed to acheive market and media monopoly, and stopped any news and development for decades. In many diciplines. So that “Die Wissenschaft schreitet mit den Bestattungen fort” according to Max Planc.
King Donald Grozny once said that NASA GISS is supposed to go to the moon, and not interfere with politics and affairs here on earth.
King Donald was Ignorant of the fact that it was once the very purposa and warrant of NASA.
. US space research should find things in space and on the moon and on its way there and safely back, that should come to the advantage of all US citizens and… to mankind as such.
Even I have had really great advantage of brand new NASA micro electronics for sale cheaply on the free market when it came to the physical exploration of Baroque pnevmatic oscillators from audical minds point of wiew.
James Hansen later cracked the riddle of the bottom temperatures on Venus, that were found by soviet venera sondes, and delivered that sheere along with the very paid political purpose of NASA. Being a very orthodox, clearly concerned scientist.
The Apollo landings and picking of lunar material samples for analysis, development of analytic techniques for that purpose, has also come to my great advantage in regard to elementary, practical geochemistery. 2 times I have found that , what was believed to be lunar, surely and definitely aint not lunar, . A tektite and a precambrian fossile stromatolite. Really as earthly as can be.
And next, iron meteorite just by a flake of rust, yes surely… that is extraterrestrial!
I cannot see why anonymeous “peers” should be better qualified to judge and to decide on such things. But they try too often. And that is problematic today..
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus.
I cant see a problem with the peer review process in principle. My understanding is peer review exists to reject papers that have bad maths in the sense that there are arithmetical errors, incorrect algebra and calculus, and basic errors of established laws of science. like errors with Newtons laws, and obvious typos like spelling mistakes. This is not sinister or censoring anything.
Peer review does not reject unusual or controversial theories or ideas just because they are unusual or controversial. We see plenty of that getting published. I really don’t see any evidence peer review is suppressing science in any way. I lean towards free speech myself so I’m always a bit suspicious of any process of review, but I see nothing seriously wrong with peer review.
I don’t want to go into my exact qualifications, but I studied a diverse range of subjects at university level including some humanities, maths,, science and technical subjects. I agree its useful to have some breadth like that, and I’m glad I took a variety of subjects for a couple of years, although in the end I did a degree in a specific career orientated discipline.
I have a set of examples where the anonymeous “referee” was hardly more than an unqualified, snobbish, son of a bitch trying to make establish his “gild” on it, with market and media monopoly. Picking in and blocking communication between me and possible colleagues of mine..
I also went through a patents office together with a colleague, that showed all the routines together that we knew from before in scientific publishing.
There should no such thing as the anonymeous expert editorial consultant that judges and decides.
That edition should never be sent any unpublished paper of any value. Because, whatever they receive, it might be patentable and …. it might also ruin the crooky career plans of anyone else, One never knows that for sure.
If only any crooky or unqualified person “feel” that it scratches threatens or touches, then you have it.
You pay for edition, you pay YOUR! consultants salary, and you pay for print. SENSOR behind the iron curtain also gets his chanse if he can step up between BANG….. and BANG! in time, write his own name and state proof that your paper with claims is not valid.
That is orderly edition.
When your “papers” however dirty with oily fingerprints and correctures touches the desk, you hear a BANG!, the cleark draws out a stamped chard from a clock, your RECEIVED DATUMJ on the second. The chard is torn in 2, one for you and one for the edition. Pleace pay one fortune Ft. 1- , discussion will take place on payment. That quit with article title and number received datum is defended worldwide, Anything less than 2 seconds earlier even in Japan is disqualified, and will not be the finder or discoverer of that comet or that poem or that idea.
Patenting is expensive. Wherefore we rather publish to protect our own work because, what is published cannot be patented.
There are civil legislations to it. The Norwegian constitution of 1814 instructs freedom of talk and of print with 2 exeptions. The Kings Person is holy, that meant violence to Royal law and order forbidden. And “disregard of the Religion”. And Jews and Jesuits forbidden in the country.
Blasphemia was forbidden, and that paragraph should simply be up- dated. The 6th of January event on Capitol hill for instance was clearly blasphemic the same way to my..—– feelings. and should be forbidden.
But I have had it 3-4 times at least that I have ran into a….. burglarshop…with my papers without knowing.
We shall not have to write “N N (Sensor behind theiron curtain) is a son of a bitch ” in every second sentence to protect our constructions poems inventions and papers against that.
Such necessary precausional remarks can simply be eradicated on suggestion from our
official and qualified consultant. by “Can be published if…”
Then Accepted datum sign, Dr. Lookingglass Hon Editor. stamp.
If a larger paper from Dr.T.Error is dripping from Nitroglycerine, simply state: “That is sent to the Leith Police, who will be YOUR! consultant. They know how to cash.
If a roll of toilet paper Dear Dr. Spassvogel, thanks for your paper article… it is sent to Miss Cleanshower in Bath Bathroom avenue 666 who will be your consultant. She published in the area. pleace pay Ft. 1- Miss Cleanshowers salary.
because it will take Miss Cleanshower both Kaviar and Champagne to roll out that paper in its very length and inspect it from both sides.
Easily refused Datum by “It seems published allready and for sale in any supermarket!”
Certain unpublished articles of especially high value original findings should not be sent around on anonymeous hands to the very empire and with no quit or reaction at all.
Umberto Eco and Vaclav Havel have both published on the problem.’
My case is that I had qualifications for taking a notoriousy and fameous obscure problem from quite another facultary side rather with ease and success. The “professionals, Peers..” in that case were simply not qualified. I ran into industrialized national dilettantism, and there were no other editions and periodicals for it.
Such things may often be the case when “research ” has stood still for very long time.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus,
sorry to hear of your problems, but it seems like a case of a poorly qualified peer reviewer abusing the peer review system and abusing his power. There are always people who will be badly qualified, and who abuse the system or abuse their power in any area of life. It doesn’t mean the system is bad or should be abandoned.
The problem is of course going to be bad in very centrally controlled communist leaning countries where the state controls the media etc, etc. You will get completely unjustified forms of censorship.
In places like the USA there are a range of independent privately owned publications so word gets around if one of these is bad, and people have the choice of who they submit to.
Zero Hedge is a far-right, libertarian, financial blog and news aggregator with alleged ties to Russian propaganda. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge.
The December UV thread had a couple of runs of blather (here and here) on Jim Hansen et al’s ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ apparently soon to be followed by ‘Sea Level Rise in the Pipeline’.
I think it’s fair to say that the request elsewhere on the Dec UV thread for ‘a review’ of ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ hasn’t been served by those couple of runs of blather.
‘Global warming in the pipeline’ runs to 48 pages and rattles through an assessment of ECS, then Climate Response Time followed by a long look at Aerosols, this followed by a seven-page Summary.
I haven’t read through the entirety of it but as it is presenting novel arguments it does need to be properly read. And I’ve not got beyound the ECS section at present.
The discussion of ECS homes in on paleoclimate as a way of narrowing the possible range of ECS and oddly it begins with a 1980s argument about the conclusions of a paper and where ECS would sit in the range 2.5°C-5°C for 2×CO2 given the values for LGM SSTs found , an argument that went undiscussed in that paper. And now LGM SSTs are better understood with references for this provided, the idea that ECS is in the upper end of that 2.5°C-5°C is again argued.
But what is not mentioned is that one of these three references to LGM SSTs also calculates ECS and concludes “Taking this into consideration, our LGM results place a strong constraint on minimum ECS in the climate system, which is almost certainly greater than 2°C, and more likely between 3°C–4°C”, a more usual finding for ECS. And a second of the three references says their findings agrees with this quoting the central ECS=3.4 °C. These then are not in the upper end of that ECS =2.5°C-5°C range.
‘Global warming in the pipeline’ then turns to the calculation of Forcing for the various GHGs etc and concludes the net Forcing is today not greatly dissimilar to the AR6 value (for 2021, 4.09 W/m2 with the AR6 value 4.14 W/m2) but brands this rather dramatically saying “The stunning conclusion is that the GHG increase since 1750 now produces a climate forcing equivalent to that of 2×CO2.”
The account then returns to the global temperature change from the LGM into the Holocene and also that from the PGM into the Eemian. A value for Eemian temperature is obtained, for some reason without Confidence Intervals. Forcing through LGMR is then estimated (GHG=2.3Wm^-2, albedo=3 to 5Wm^-2) and with central ΔT values for LGMR from the references, ECS is calculated as = 3.3°C-4.6°C or = 3.7°C-5.1°C, thus 3.3°C-5.1°C. Similarly for the PMGR a range of ECS = 4°C-6°C is calculated. From this the conclusion is presented “We conclude ECS is at least approximately 4°C and is almost surely in the range 3.5-5.5°C. The IPCC AR6 conclusion that 3°C is the best estimate for ECS is inconsistent with paleoclimate data.”
To me, this is all a bit of a leap. But that said ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ is saying ECS is significantly higher than the IPCC AR6 best estimate of 3°C and potentially that has always been the case. The potential of a high ESC should not be ignored. My take on it was that the impact of a high ECS (relative to a low ECS) only manifests itself slowly so if we are faced by a high ECS, the negative emissions of the late 2000s and early 2100s would/could be adjusted accordingly.
But ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ goes on to challenge that idea when considering next ‘Climate Response Time’ and then ‘Aerosols’, all of which requires reading.
Jasonsays
Thanks for your stab at that. I’m guessing other potential commenters are waiting for the peer-reviewed paper?
JCM 11 JAN 2023 “the system just move some mass and heat around to eliminate a LW radiative perturbation”. (tiny side note: I assert that Earth’s climate system isn’t sentient so it doesn’t “just move” or “just do” anything). Apparently, but I’m inferring, one -ve feedback effect of the global warming apart from the huge Planck feedback does just that. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE1VBCt8GLc at 13:56 Jennifer Kay shows “water vapor + lapse rate” at 110% net +ve feedback for the 2 of them. Though this “lapse rate” could be to do with stratospheric water vapour I’ve been inferring that it’s actually the 4% increase in global precipitation. This means 4% increase in latent heat transferred from the surface waters of the tropical oceans and spread up through the troposphere. This additional energy into the troposphere makes its infrared-active molecules collide harder (faster) and more frequently thus manufacturing more LWR and thus sending more LWR up into the stratosphere or space. Clearly, this -ve feedback, which is exactly the sort of thing that you propose, isn’t nearly enough to cancel out Earth’s Energy Imbalance that’s been caused by increasing GHGs net of aerosol pollution (itself net of snow/ice pollution). Presumably bundled cryptically into that single item with H2O GHG effect because both are H2O. Again, I’ve not yet read/heard any scientist explain that “lapse rate” feedback, only an annoying 3-second mention as an aside like a tease 8 years ago, so I’m drawing the inference because it’s obvious fact that more 4% H2O liquid & solid being formed in troposphere means more tropospheric heating and warmer parcels radiate more.
JCMsays
@Barry E Finch
my suggestion is that had the bio-geo-hydrological system not also been perturbed, coincident with the gas emission, the system might present a different response.
This is a significant confounding collinearity. My sense is that the so-called feedback regime is assumed to be unperturbed, but I do not see any evidence to support this notion. A sort of hen-and-egg problem, I think.
The feedback chain is really a product of a mental flowchart of the system, which does not necessarily relate to reality.
I do not comprehend the numbers in the UT Physics Colloquium discussion with 0.1 W m-2 precision in specific feedback response factors, when inter-model spread in the simulated global mean latent heat fluxes in the CMIP6 models exceed 18 Wm−2.
Barry E Finchsays
macias shurly 10 JAN 2023 “The net increase in EEI by 0.76W/m² is caused by a decreasing albedo (shortwave out @ TOA) of 1.4W/m² while longwave out @ TOA increased by 0.56W/m². These are NOT necessarily the symptoms that indicate an increase in CO2 concentration. (due to more climate gas, longwave out @ TOA should actually decrease and NOT increase)”.
The “NOT necessarily the symptoms” is OK but “due to more climate gas, longwave out @ TOA should actually decrease and NOT increase” is incorrect because Delta-LWR out @ TOA is a function of Delta-Earth’s-bulk emissivity and Delta-Earth’s-average-surface-temperature so you’d only be certainly correct there if Earth’s average surface temperature had not changed during the study period. So you need to do the analysis for the study period in order to show that the reduction in Earth’s bulk emissivity wasn’t countered and exceeded by an increase in Earth’s average surface temperature had not changed during the study period. If you do show that then it does indeed mean that further thought is needed (I’ve been too lazy to review A Series Of Fortunate Events and all the related gunf everywhere so far). All I can think of otherwise is if some increase in heat transfer up to the mid-upper troposphere occurred and I’ve no idea why it would have. I’m not going to be analyzing it myself because I’m feeling lazy right now and because I want to appease the Effelump or Zebra or Gnu thing and I’ve exceeded my permitted allocation of mathturbating for a while.
I have been working on a critique of a recent _Nature_ article that finds a very high value for the social cost of carbon, the net cost from now to 2300 produced by an additional ton of CO2. I argue that the article greatly exaggerates the cost by errors which should be obvious to a careful reader, one of them being the implicit assumption that there will be no improvement in most of the technologies relevant to the costs, including medicine, for the next three centuries.
The implication of my critique, if it is correct, is that the enterprise of producing estimates of the costs of climate change is broken. The important point is not that this particular article makes mistakes but that it makes obvious mistakes, should never have gotten through peer review in its present form. If an article with obvious mistakes, all of which increase its estimate of the cost of carbon, can get published in a high status scientific journal and be considered by the EPA as a possible basis for regulatory decisions, it follows that the mechanisms that are supposed to filter out bad scientific work are not working in this context, hence that none of the published estimates can be trusted.
That is a strong claim and it might be wrong, but if it is right should be a serious problem for people who accept the current orthodoxy with regard to climate. I am therefor inviting anyone interested, especially anyone inclined to accept current views on the effects of climate change, to look over my critique and tell me what is wrong with it.
Hostile reviewers are more useful, for my purposes, than friendly reviewers. This seems like a reasonable place to find some.
A little more about the cognitive issues from:
What’s blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial by William Rees 2010
page 22 Humanity must specifically confront once-adaptive genetic predispositions that have become hazardous on a crowded planet and abandon the socially constructed memes that reinforce them. It is true that people can be individualistic, unfeeling, and selfish. But, as noted above, they are also capable of social engagement, compassion, and generosity of spirit.
While the former qualities reflect the dumber instincts of primitive K-strategists, the latter must come to prevail in support of collective survival in an ecologically full world. Again, the key is to recognize that while all these colors can be found in the full spectrum of human behavior, society can make deliberate choices about which tints and shadings to emphasize in the creation of its cultural narratives.
page 23 On the contrary, most people are psychologically committed to continuous economic growth, the illusion of ever-increasing material prosperity, and the myth of progress (see Princen, 2010 in this issue). Powerful and privileged elites, those with the greatest personal stake in the status quo, control the policy levers that are steering us onto the ecological rocks. The means by which people become so deeply committed to particular beliefs has only recently been revealed.
Neurobiologists and cognitive scientists are showing that cultural norms, beliefs, and values can effectively be imprinted on the human brain (Wexler, 2006). (A mechanism for social epigenetics?) In the normal course of individual development and maturation, repeated social, cultural, and sensory “inputs” actually help to imprint the individual’s synaptic circuitry in neural images of those experiences. Once entrenched, these neural structures alter the individual’s perception of subsequent experiences and in-formation.
People tend to seek out experiences that reinforce their preset neural circuitry and to select information from their environment that matches these structures. Conversely, “when faced with in-formation that does not agree with their internal structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret, or forget that information” (Wexler, 2006) (i.e., denial has a neurological basis).
and
It seems to boil down to this: Modern society has been paralyzed by deep-seated cognitive dissonance, collective denial, and political inertia in dealing with the (un)sustainability conundrum. The problem has roots in both innate behaviors and socially constructed beliefs that seem literally to program the brain. What individuals hear and pay attention to (or ignore) can thus be understood only within the context of both social norms and the broader political-economic environment (Norgaard, 2009).
Meaning: Knowledge per se doesn’t change behavior. When asked if he thinks humanity can solve the multitude of problems leading us towards Ecological Overshoot, Rees responded: “Yes we could, but we won’t.” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTuDttP2Yg
all the best.
zebrasays
Ned, I struggle to understand the reasoning here.
1. A species that has a fertility rate lower than its replacement rate can hardly be projected to produce “ecological overshoot”… it will simply become extinct.
2. We observe that human cultures where there is some prosperity, some form of social “safety net”, and individual freedom and agency (especially for women), do indeed have such fertility rates.
3. We also observe that where there is less prosperity, and less individual freedom and agency, fertility rates are higher, since children provide economic benefit.
So, since it seems obvious that in both (2) and (3), humans are acting in their own self-interest (given their circumstances), these claims about neurological entities seem unnecessarily complicated. (I’m a big fan of Ockham, which people here will certainly attest.)
As I’ve pointed out many times, a sustainable human culture only requires that the global population be stable, and small relative to the resource base. (I use 300 million in my thought experiments.)
That’s it! All the negatives we observe in our current existence just go away, not because of noble moralizing but because of self-interest and the economic dynamics of such a balance. While there still might be individuals with psychological dysfunction leading to irrational behavior, it would be in the vast majority self-interest to prevent them from disrupting the existing conditions.
I’m happy to entertain any contradictory information from your readings.
Important note: I assume that, like me, you are attempting to discuss what a long=term sustainable culture would be like, not “how do we eliminate CO2 in the next 28 years??!!”. (Which seems to be an obligatory Strawman reaction to this.)
Don Williamssays
1) There is a counterargument that low fertility rates in the USA etc are due to high economic insecurity rather than prosperity. 60 years ago a husband could support a family while the mother reared the children — today, both parents have to be wage earners and pay child support while hoping neither of them are laid off. The share of income held by the richest 2% has soared while millions of crying toddlers have to say goodbye to mommy every morning. Congress chose that economic policy because toddlers don’t write $100,000 campaign checks and they cannot vote.
2) You assume population growth reaches some equilibrium. A counterexample from history is 75,000,000 people dying in WWII because Hitler thought Germans needed more living space. Not counting the 5 million Ukrainians who died in the Holodomor because Stalin needed some wheat.
The world would have 4 billion less people today if German scientists had not developed the process for extracting nitrogen fertilizer from the air. But every “fix” (e.g Green Revolution) merely makes the problem worse. in the longer term.
3) If climate change famine triggers desperation and mass migrations there will be war. Our civilization might not recover from WWIII.
zebrasays
Don, you lost me on #1. What “economic policy” did “Congress choose” that created all those crying toddlers?
Are you saying that Evil Capitalists influenced the government back in the 60’s to allow women to leave their proper, God-given, barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen role, and compete in the workforce, which would lead to lower wages? That the women’s lib ladies were dupes/participants in that conspiracy?
Maybe, but it is also the case that the US population has doubled since then… men and women.
And, this brings me back to an important feature in my sustainable culture design, which is that in a smaller population relative to resources condition, the power balance between labor and capital shifts. So you should be in favor of that, yes?
Yo, Piotr, The obvious is not always obvious to everyone, as you can see here.
Piotrsays
zebra: 18 Jan -” Yo, Piotr”
How … street cred of you.
zebra: The obvious is not always obvious to everyone, as you can see here.
The only obvious things so far are:
1. that you implied that benefitting from the increased competition in the workforce by “the richest 2%” must be mutually exclusive with “ the women’s lib ladies” fighting for the fair access to the employment opportunities for women. I am not sure why.
2. that you shot yourself in the foot – contradicting the fundamental claims
of the demographic transition that as a society gets more financially secure, it will lower its reproductive rates. YET here, to Dan’s argument that over last 60 years the US society got LESS financially secure and had low fertility, you countered with:
Zebra: “ the US population has doubled since then”
which suggest either
– that you argue that Dan’s financial insecurity correlates NOT with low, but with high fertility rate, which would contradict the demographic transition theory
– OR you have no idea about demographic indicators,- since you apparently think that “doubling population over 60 years” disproved Dan’ claim of low-fertility
Let check it with numbers: US population increased by 84% over 61 years, After we exclude the 45 mln of Americans not born in the US, this would make the US actual avg. growth rate, 0.75% .
That’s much lower than the US growth rate between 1950 and 1960: which was 1.7%. To illustrate the difference: – at 0.75% it takes 93 years to double without immigration, at 1.7% it take 41 years.
So your argument that the US population has ONLY less than doubled since 1960″
seems to unwittingly to SUPPORT Dan’s claim about substantial drop in fertility,
[particularly. that the above estimate used average growth rate since 1960 – while the drop in fertility took some time to develop – the US decadal pop. increase 1970/1960 was 13.3%; the 2020/2010 was 7.4%.]
=======
P.S. I am not sure what you wanted to express by the last 3 words in your:
zebra: “ the US population has doubled since then … men and women
the “…” seem to suggest that it somehow subverts Dan’s argument, but I fail to see how.
Dan, did you by any chance imply that, at the behest of “the richest 2%”, the US politicians made the US womenfolk give birth only to one gender of babies??? If yes, then the unexpected failure of their dastardly plan (“ …. men and women“) would have been well deserved.
zebrasays
Piotr, I’m just going to point out once again that sometimes you can write coherent paragraph(s), but here you do your long incoherent list thing.
You are making stuff up in your head from my very simple observation that Don’s claim about “Congress chose an economic policy” doesn’t really make any sense except as some kind of Q-conspiracy theory. That to me is what’s “obvious”, and what I wrote conveys it pretty clearly.
Don Williamssays
@zebra
1) The argument that poverty spurs high fertility rates and prosperity results in low fertility rates is contrary to US historical data. We had low fertility rates during the Great Depression and high fertility rates during the very prosperous 1950s and 1960s: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/
2) I am not expert but my understanding is that sociologists are disinclined to support single-cause theories re the behavior of human societies. For example, lower fertility rates in recent decades may have been the result of multiple causes such as the Pill and Roe v Wade legal abortion — not economic opportunity. Similarly, the 1 child fertility rate in China during the famine of Mao’s rule was probably not driven by economic opportunity.
4) Also well documented are the actions of Congress in making their rich patrons ever richer while making most Americans poorer. Huge cuts in marginal tax rates — both overt in the IRS code and covert (offshore banking,, stepped up cost basis,etc. Financial deregulation that let Wall Street billionaires steal everything not nailed down. Then Opening up the US Treasury doors to the Big Banks when the subprime fraud threatened the US economy — while dumping 6 years of 15% unemployment onto America’s black community. Shipping US jobs overseas with Globalization.
Etc Etc Etc. “Conspiracy Theory” is a phrase used by our politicians to suppress any look at the evidence.
5) What is also faith-based is the idea that 330 million Americans can continue even our poor standard of living in the face of competition for resources from 8 BILLION foreigners.
Yes, we have 6000 nukes but use of them will destroy the system which supports us. Either way, the economic system that sustains us will probably be destroyed by war or relentless population growth/resource depletion/environmental damage.
Piotrsays
zebra: 20 JAN “here you do your long incoherent list thing.
Knowing that you can’t follow a sustained argument (from Don’s you missed the main argument questioning the main assumption of demographic transition and latched instead on a tangent) – I spilt 2 paragraphs into 2 points each …. and these are the thanks I get? ;-)
zebra: “ You are making stuff up in your head from my very simple observation that Don’s claim about “Congress chose an economic policy” doesn’t really make any sense except as some kind of Q-conspiracy theory. That to me is what’s “obvious”, and what I wrote conveys it pretty clearly.”
Shouldn’t the reader be the judge of the last part? ;-) Case in point: what kind of “Q-conspiracy” were you addressing with your:
“ the US population has doubled since [1960]”?
To me this looked like challenging Don’s main argument: “ low fertility rates in the USA are due to high economic insecurity rather than prosperity.”
That’s doesn’t seem very “Q-conspiratorial” to me – so I checked your quantitative claim (“doubled”) and showed that after removal of immigration, the actual avg. growth rate was 0.75% – which is quite low, and, as such, supports Dan’s “low fertility“.
Ironically, I did in the part of my post that WASN’T the dreaded “ long [4-point!!!] list thing – and yet … you failed to understand it too. Damned if I list, damned if I don’t.
And what kind of Don’s “Q-conspiracy” have you tackled by adding “…men and women” to that sentence: “the US population has doubled since then … men and women”
“ What I wrote conveys it pretty clearly“, eh?
zebrasays
Don Williams,
OK, first, let me quote part of what I said originally:
2. We observe that human cultures where there is some prosperity, some form of social “safety net”, and individual freedom and agency (especially for women), do indeed have such fertility rates.
3. We also observe that where there is less prosperity, and less individual freedom and agency, fertility rates are higher, since children provide economic benefit.
I’m not an expert either, but I’m pretty sure that sociologists agree with those observations, based on what we see in the present; the range is from “First World” economies and social arrangements to “Third World” subsistence farming with high rates of infant mortality, and also situations where women are constrained by patriarchal norms from making their own decisions. You can look that up.
To bring up the depression and famines and post-war baby boom is illogical rhetoric; that some rare event causes lower fertility does not negate what we observe as the norm.
So, a couple of issues need clarification.
-I assumed that you were talking about the societal changes in the 60’s that allowed women (and minorities) more individual agency and access to employment, which (let’s say for simplicity) doubled the available workers, allowing the capitalists to pay less.** From your words I have to conclude that you think “mothers rearing the children”, as opposed to being doctors and lawyers and construction workers and so on, is a good idea. Is that right? If not, what exactly is the alternative?
-Now you are talking about government policies starting in the 1980’s, which clearly benefited the business class. Well, actually, you can assign some blame for that to the policies of the 60’s, where women (and minorities) were given more access to the labor force. Perhaps you need to examine the history more closely. Have you heard of the “Southern Strategy”?
People seem to forget that Reagan, who was a union-buster, was supported by union members. That’s because civil rights threatened the privilege enjoyed by “the 25%”, White males and their compliant stay-at-home wives. If a union couldn’t practice discrimination and nepotism, what was the point?
So the conditions you describe for people struggling to make ends meet are in many ways self-inflicted by a large proportion of “the working class”. This is classic Authoritarian psychology at work; feeling superior to and more powerful than someone through group identity is far more important than your status within the group. It’s ok if people get obscenely wealthy, as long as they belong to the group.
It’s not the politicians; it’s the people who vote for them. This too is pretty well established and you can look it up.
**Piotr, if including women doubles the workforce, then adding an equal number of both men and women doubles it again. That was really hard for you???
Piotrsays
zebra, 21 JAN “Piotr, if including women doubles the workforce, then adding an equal number of both men and women doubles it again. That was really hard for you???”
No, what was really hard to me !!! (?) was to understand HOW having both men and women born.. is supposed to disprove Don’s statement about the … low fertility since 1960,
Which was what you were challenging in the earlier part of the same sentence:
– Don: “There is a counterargument that low fertility rates in the USA etc are due to high economic insecurity rather than prosperity
– zebra: ” the US population has doubled since then… men and women
And to make it better – it comes from the same zebra who derides the communication skills of others: “your long incoherent thing“, and is rather proud of his own’s – see his modest: “what I wrote conveys it pretty clearly“.
Don Williamssays
@Zebra
1) I did not ascribe Congress’s support for the Rich to either Party or ideology — because I don’t think either party works to make life better for the average citizen. Look at that steady increase in the Rich’s share of national income over the past several decades –regardless of who controlled Congress and the White House.
If any politician is foolish enough support the workers, he is exterminated in the primaries. Whether the Rich will get richer– at the expense of the workers — is certainly not left up to the voters to decide in the general election. That is NOT why some billionaires dump $90 million into a US election –EACH. I briefly depart from Climate Change issue because it will be decided by US politics and we should not be naive about that process.
2) You seem to think population growth will fall with time because everyone will be getting richer. I see the reverse. Here in the USA most people have been getting poorer — with the US government charging to the national credit card to hide that fact. In 2000, the federal debt was only 2.9 times the 2000 tax revenue . In 2010, it was 6.3 times the 2010 tax revenue.. In 2021, the federal debt of $30.8 Trillion was equal to 10.5 years of the $2.93 Trillion collected from income tax, corporate tax and excise tax.
(I did not include payroll taxes since those are not even enough to stave off bankruptcy for baby boomer Medicare/Social Security. . ) Since we are the world’s biggest economy — and because we owe $Trillions to foreigners, — we will drag the rest of the world down if/when we crash.
PS Good luck with getting that money for a US transition to renewable energy from the current Rupublican House. Maybe let John Kerry go first and ask for those $billions in climate adaptation for poor countries.
PPS I have greater respect for the job American mothers do than you appear to have — it is one of the most important jobs out there. I think many women would like to take time off prior to age 30 to rear one or more kids to age 6 and then resume their career. Our CEOs are not very supportive of that — and the dog eat dog economic environment makes American men less inclined/able to take on the burden of husband/sole breadwinner.
zebrasays
Don Williams,
Don, I don’t think anyone objects to discussions about sustainability and reducing current environmental impacts, particularly the CO2 issue. My goal, though, is to try to apply a more scientific approach… so talking about politics is fine if you can make the connection between the desired result and the underlying fundamentals of the human condition, but to have such a discussion, the participants first need to agree what that desired result would be.
In your case, I’m left guessing what that is.
From your pps, and previous comments, you sound pretty much like the people I described, who would vote for Reagan (and current equivalents) because, well, Welfare Queens! Immigrants! M&M Shoes!. You think it should be like the 50’s again, with women raising children and men as “sole breadwinners”. Didn’t even consider men staying at home and raising children until six years old, and having the women build their careers straight through, right?
The women I know who are doctors and lawyers and such, and have kids, would just laugh at you, and not in a nice way.
The other “tell” is that you repeat the right-wing meme that says “they’re all the same…. (so don’t bother with politics and voting)….” .
But if I’m wrong and you really care about dealing with climate change, how about explaining why changing the economic system so that the population will increase, which is what you propose, is a good idea?
You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out that it would lead to more energy consumption and more pollution, particularly if it is in the USA, which has the highest per-capita consumption. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m willing to listen.
The norwegian coast- route, Hurtigruten, will no longer take electric cars on board. They are not shipshape, being too dangerous.
As the swiss will also restrict them because they drain too much electricity from them, we will soon get rid of them again.
But, Musk is sending up Falcon heavy again now. Using fossile fuels.
prlsays
There’s no mention of a ban on carrying electric cars on the Hurtigruten Group’s press releases page. A google search for “hurtigruten electric cars” gives hits about Hurtigruten’s electric hybrid ships, but nothing about a car ban.
And that’s why we have factchecks … ;-)
The difference between:
“ during a worst-case energy emergency, drivers would be allowed to use electric vehicles only for essential journeys..” and Carbo portraying it as: “we will soon get rid of them again“
I just saw video of Falcon Heavy lifring up from Florida, and landing again.
Ghosh… that is a large flame of fossile fuel. And the oxygen, what does it also take of energy and from which sources to refine that?
Elon Musk seems rather to be a major polluter playboy. And this time for heavy load and fuel reasons, they simply “deployed” the 3rd rocket in the atlantic without even trying to re- cycle it.
And his filling up space also with rubbish,…..
We will soon have a saturn ring of rubbish shading for the sun when all that rubbish begin to crash and desintegrate….. Might that be the solution to global warming perhaps?
Does Falcon-9 use jet fuel or hydrogen? If hydrogen, it is not using fossil fuels.
prlsays
Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 both use liquid oxygen and RP-1 as propellants.
RP-1 (alternatively, Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) is a highly refined form of kerosene outwardly similar to jet fuel, used as rocket fuel.
So yes, both Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 burn fossil fuels.
But, it is obviously alarmism to me also, because I red that all recently on the internet. And not on the 1.st of april.
Maybe it is big oil and big coal loose again?
But, what is true here in Norway may be true in Switzerland also:
They drive up en masse in their big and heavy teslas for the weekend to their luxurious private cottages that drain a lot continuosly from the net allready. Then all together set their EVs for loading to get home again also. and the net was not at all dimensioned for it. It kneels.
And then heavy snow and deep frost falls over it ,….. because Allah u akhbar! you see.
That may be what has hit them also in Switzerland. As electricity has become a vital and urgent necessity today, there must be order and dicipline also for it in case of war.
As for Hurtigruten not taking EVs on board, I red it! After there was a very ugly EV fire at a fast charging station. 100 amps 3 phase. Those leads and contacts are really very thick.
We helped loading a Nissan leaf here on 240 volt 10 ampere consumer fuses 1 sq millimeter material, that is safely dimensioned only for 3 ampere constant load. Leads and contacts got dangerously hot on lawful recommended plug in.
I tell everyone that for loading your car in your garage at home, get a technical 25 amp course legally mounted first.
This is an old problem. People first got mounted only for 15 and 25 watt lamplight in their houses. And then bought all the modern heavy loads one after the other still on the same old leads and contact materials. That you find burnt when you open it.
On Hurtigruten, it must be shipshape else……
Read the amperemeter, i say.
For new loading posts at the parking place they take it directly from and close to the central 15 kilovolt 3 phase input transformer.
I have seen at the community when they dig up the trenches. For more than a few steps of leads like in your home, they use 3 times thicker leads. And 15 kilovolt with isolators for the input to the transformer blocks.
3 phase 240 volt outdoor in the street was updated recently to 3 x 3/4″ spun soft aluminiumi in PVC isolation. That is fashionable and safe at last, and the net voltage is steady..
But, still, do not think in terms of electric heating under your pavement outdoor. because, that is sinful. .
Order, moderation and dicipline at the electrical installations and consumption become more and more a necessity.
Havila Kystruten seems to be a new company aside with Hurtigruten.
“Stops freight of electric vehicles “
prlsays
Havila Kystruten won’t carry electric, hybrid or hydrogen-powered cars, but the other main Norwegian coastal shipping company, Hurtigruten, will continue to do so:
Hurtigruten vil fortsette
Hovedkonkurrenten Hurtigruten skriver i en e-post til NRK at de vil fortsette med frakt av alle typer biler om bord på sine skip.
– Vi har fraktet biler mellom alle havnene i 40 år, og det går helt fint. Vi har ingen planer om å slutte med det.
From Google Translate:
Hurtigruten will continue
The main competitor Hurtigruten writes in an e-mail to NRK that they will continue to transport all types of cars on board their ships.
– We have been transporting cars between all the ports for 40 years, and it is going just fine. We have no plans to stop doing that.
Why you continue to insist on idiosyncratic spellings is beyond me. It doesn’t ease communication, that’s for sure.
prlsays
I’m pretty sure I know how the ammeter sitting in a box on a shelf near my computer works. I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the discussion. I can give you the definition of an ampere, too, but again, I fail to see the relevance.
regardless of your , socially & professionally historically geographically provincial mother and her silly “tounge” talkin………
……….` , grasp first that your “plain English” is as much as Englisher Platt, not at all that ideomatic and brilliant cristal clear as you have learnt that it is.
The greater the empire….. the more primitive and naive is the linguistic and philological enlightment in the imperial center and mainstreams.
You are fiercefully minulely stepped on and flattened and drillede to grasp that you are only supposed to press the buttons and maybe turn them, and never ask any questions about what is under the cowers and surfaces and your given “desktops” with labels and secret warnish, because that is betrayal of production secrets.
Not even what an ampere and what a …meter is. A speedometer,… a flowmeter…a hygrometer… a densitometer… you are to remain ignorant of what is inside those…. meters and how they actually work, and what they really are showing.
and against anyone ” alian” negroide enough who does not write and say Spee-meter Flo-meter de-meter hy- meter, you are drilled and due by routine to label: “Ideosyncratic… smile smile…”
Such manners do betray early inaugurated and minutely drilled mobster and gangster, Political Party with P- (PPP)-backglound wherever it comes in and participates to our kind help in civil life.
It is the Blood- group P you see.
And poor me if I the good old ……… Ampere- meter…. for todays consumers.
“I have no idea what point you are trying to make about ammeters and electric cars. ”
Well then, try ask someone who might know, what curfrent in apmperes has got to do with not just how fast you are driving your electric car, especially how fast you are accelerating,….. and how fast you dis- charge your batteries and get flat batteries, that is quite uncomfortable
For your next question, assume Cetane, that is C16H34 as I cannot find the formula of RP-1 jet ande rocket fuel.
Or maybe even (CH2)n as there may be alicyclic components also in those special jet fuels.
atomic weights C = 12, H= 1 thus fuelweight times 10/12 will be Carbon- weight in the fuel.
That reacts with O2 giving CO2. Carbon weight times 32/12 0r simply 8/3.
Abouth the length of the flames……. flames out of the exhaust tubes and behind special vehicles shhow how boldly and proudly they are burning away fossile fuels even without permission.
Puttler for instance in a quite frustrated situation last autumn sent up a huge flame close up to Finland, that could be seen all from there, after his Nordstream 1 and 2 was sabotaged.
On streams like that, pipelines tubes electrical leads and so on we use flow- meters to have them under good control. Wherefore thieves, rats secret gangsters and paracites, make moral propaganda against current and flow and amperemeters of any kind.
as if flowmeters and due control of leaks and currents are not relevant today.
With suddenly all those electric cars, the very net kneels because people believe in the experts and give a damn to the amperemeter. They even teach that it is irrelevant and misconsceived from my side..
I just red that the US fed is down at 30 trillion US dollars in debt now.
Some years ago they were only 18 trillions in debt and had to close down the very “Fed” for a while, unable to pay the running fees for civil service.
Even NASA was shut down for a while.
Thus, I repeat……!
Did anyone see the Concorde- disaster at Le Bourget?
Permanence of charge and of matter, you see,…. and flow of the same.
Those flames were 3 times longer than the concorde itself . That plane was really thirsty. That was a current of burning kerosene fossile fuel just right out into the air. Read the fuelpump and consumption flowmeter. That is what really costs.
prlsays
The first stage of Falcon Heavy carries a maximum of 123.5 tonnes of RP-1. Since RP-1 is a kerosene-like fuel, and assuming full combustion of the fuel, it’s pretty easy to work out a fairly good approximation of the amount of CO2 released by a fully-fuelled Falcon Heavy first stage burn, without reference to ammeters or flowmeters or any other kind of meter, or caring how long the exhaust flame is.
Can you do it?
A fully-fuelled Falcon Heavy first stage carries about half the fuel of a fully-fuelled Airbus 380.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make about ammeters and electric cars. I don’t drive a battery electric car, but my understanding is that electric cars generally do have an ammeter in their driver instruments, though it may not be graduated in amps.
We had an old Plymuth 1938 model with…. amperemeter on the dashboard. My father explained. “Look…” he said, which means read the amperemeter.
The needle stood right up at neutral. At starting, it wiggled severely negative down to the left. But then came slowly slightly over to the positive side. “Now it is loading again..” he said
And with all lamps on and whiskers and heating on in winter to see if it still charges enough. Else you will not get started again next time in the winter.
I found a tiny ” meter” on the junkyard of that good old construction and have taken it for the boat
Because, in recent cars with carburetor engines there has been a little red lamp that lights up if you dis- charge the battery. It also entails that there is any voltage there at all.
So people have never learnt in time to read the amperemeter.
When it has started, runs and charges, that lamp shal be slighly deep red. I asked a car mechanics . Why no amperemeter anymore?
—- well you see.. people come with weak or flat flat batteries and we asked: “Have you red the Amperemeter?”
—Amperemeter,.. Hæææææ?????
—- thus now we have that little red lamp and they dive into the gas station and say: ” Doctor, a red lamp has ligted up on my dashboard, can you fix it?
In my new Yanmar boat, there is a squeek that squeeks whenever the battery is discharged. Which is irritating, so I have mounted the lamp instead. But I also have that tiny old portable +- amperemeter for mounting and control over the main battery switch.. Current is so high there that you can also have a tiny balanced magnetic needle in its quite strong magnetic field, see the Ørsted experiment.
Moral: Do not ridicule Ørsteds experiment either.
Amperewindings you see, not Ammwindings, that is only for dilettants..
prlsays
Sure, if you insist. But I didn’t actually ask about what purpose ammeters have in internal combustion engined vehicles. I asked about ammeters in electric cars.
I’ve driven internal combustion cars with both ammeters and generator/alternator warning lights, and I know what they indicate.
You got the calculation of the mass ratios for carbon burning to CO2 wrong, too. The molecular weight of CO2 is 40 (12 + 2*16), not 32, so you get 40/12 (or 10/3) the mass of CO2 from burning carbon, not 32/12.
The correct English terms for current measuring devices and for magnetomotive force are ammeters and ampere-turns (or amp-turns) respectively. Ørsted’s (often Oerstead in English) law doesn’t explicitly contain winding number, but its vector integral form will correctly account for the winding number.
Barry E Finchsays
David Friedman’s opinion about possible future costs due to sea level rise is “most of the houses are like 10, 20 , 30, 40, 50 years old and what that suggests is that, less true obviously in Oxford and some other places, is that most houses get replaced, most buildings get replaced, within a period of as long as a century”. Verbatim from Oxford Hayek Society Jan 16, 2013 talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7pKldlZNqQ at 37:25 I saw on GooglesTubes in 2015. So that’s obviously an opinion that coastal infrastructure that’s exceeded 99 years old when sea level rise makes it unusable isn’t a cost because it’s reached its normal life expectancy. I’ve no opinion on that stuff, just remembered the video.
– David Friedman’s opinion about possible future costs due to sea level rise…
ms: — Mr. David Friedman’s opinion should urgently read (& understand) my alternative, holistic climate protection concept. This, of course, applies to anyone concerned about rising sea levels.
The most important positive effects of my holistic, alternative climate protection strategy are:
– stabilized sea level
– Less flood damage
– Better resistance to drought & low river water
– Secure food & crops and agricultural income
– Lower water prices
– Absorption of ~ 7 Kg CO2 / m³ retained water & an additional cooling capacity of 680 kWh for the soil and air in summer.
– higher cloud formation, especially in summer, and thus a higher albedo over the global land areas with a cooling effect on the global average temperature of the earth
– Less wind erosion & loss of species … and many more undisclosed benefits.
In principle, a simple, worldwide request to politics, agriculture, industry, but also to private individuals, whenever and wherever possible, to create a maximum of water reserves in order to use them generously for plant growth, evaporative cooling, cloud cover in drought periods in spring and summer.
I estimate the one-off global capital cost for this improved water management to be “only” ~$500 billion + usual annual maintenance costs(?).
Alone, the likely damage caused by rising sea levels will be many times higher in the medium term.
That is an odd description of my argument. The point is not that SLR isn’t a cost but that it is a smaller cost than it would be if all coastal infrastructure was expected to last forever. Some coastal infrastructure will have to be replaced because of sea level rise, which is a cost, some would be replaced anyway and will be replaced a little farther inland. At least in the US case, most housing gets replaced in less than a century.
It’s relevant for the size of the cost that, taking a meter as near the high end of the IPCC estimates of SLR by the end of the century, that will shift coastlines on average by about a hundred meters — more in some places, less in others — so the total amount of infrastucture, and the total loss of land, is not very large. Rennert et. al., the article I am criticizing for coming up with much too large a cost of carbon, attributes only about one percent of the cost to SLR.
None of this, by the way, is in the piece I am asking people here to look at and critique. So far nobody seems to have done so.
Piotrsays
DF Jan.15 “ That is an odd description of my argument. The point is not that SLR isn’t a cost but that it is a smaller cost than it would be if all coastal infrastructure was expected to last forever”.
This is an …odd description of Barry Finch’s post He DIDN’ T describe your argument as “SLR isn’t a cost.”, he merely questioned your timescale of replacement:
your most of the houses are like 10, 20 , 30, 40, 50 years old vs his “a century in Oxford”.. This might be because they are built from a different materials, but again – in my part of Canada , where the materials are like in the US – it seems more like a century than 10-50 yrs.
Furthermore, there is a difference between rebuilding a house on its original spot vs moving it to a new lot – in the latter case to your costs you have to add the value of the new ground, building new access road, new parking lot, new water, sever, gas and powerline infrastructure.
And those – may cost more than the shell of the house itself – compare the value of two similar houses in different part of a city with the only difference being the location, location location…
Finally, in many areas there may not be suitable space to move the old house to – since all the good/inexpensive grounds has already been built on. .
Solar Jimsays
The majority of world infrastructure, called seaports (like Boston, NYC, San Francisco in just the USA), aren’t going anywhere. His “economic” proposition is therefore rather absurd, especially when including all the world’s natural life-giving seashores.
Killiansays
Also, one meter by 2100 is not the high end, it is almost laughable at this point for anyone who has read the Hansen, et al., pre-print.
You better keep with the Hillbillies. They know how to moove and how to settle.
Land is rising rather rapidly here and the bedrocks are steep, so there is hardly any problem. But south in the north sea it is sinking. There they have Waterstaat and Küstenschutz.
It is the same in North America. The fastest landrising after last glaciation is northwest Hudson bay, and fastes sinking in Washington DC. You can simply read it on the geophysical maps.
Se aslso Alaska, North and south. South is rising, North is sinking.
Venesia is only slowly sinking, Napoli is allmost steady.
Amsterdam is sinking way below limits allready..
London and east anglia is sinking.
New York, Nieuv Amsterdam,… they were silly enough to set on it,…. That was not James Hansens error.
Dat Water, you see, and Hochwasser.
See also the Ganges Bramaputra delta in Bangladesh. With onland hurricanes also. That is quite a situation.
And Djakarta in Indonesia.
In Northern botnian bay they built harbours that had to be condemned only after 20 or 50 years because of rocks and stones coming up and water retreating.
In the southern Baltic sea there is the opposite situation.
Denmark is being broken up and sinking due to land sinking and sea level rising. They still hang on and struggle for life. Sothwestern Danish settlements were allready taken by storms and seas in histrorical time.
Cape Hatteras is sinking and withdrawing. Cape Kennedy seems steady and online.
The Mississippi delta and Louisianna,… what a disaster,….
The Hillbillies are pointing at you and laughing at you all the time.
Piotrsays
DF Jan.15 “ That is an odd description of my argument. The point is not that SLR isn’t a cost but that it is a smaller cost than it would be if all coastal infrastructure was expected to last forever”.
This is an …odd description of Barry Finch’s post He DIDN’ T describe your argument as “SLR isn’t a cost.”, he merely questioned your timescale of replacement: your most of the houses are like 10, 20 , 30, 40, 50 years old vs his “a century in Oxford”…
This difference might be because they are built from a differently long-lasting materials, but again – in my part of Canada , where the materials are like in the US – it seems more like a century than 10-50 yrs.
Further, there is a difference between rebuilding a house on its original spot vs moving it to a new lot – in the latter case to your costs you have to add the value of the new ground, building new access road, new parking lot, new water, sever, gas and powerline infrastructure.
And those – may cost more than the superstructure of the house itself – compare the value of two similar houses in different part of a city with the only difference being the location, location location…
Finally, in many areas there may not be suitable space to move the old house to – since all the good/inexpensive/construction-feasible grounds has already been built on.
So the saving might not be anywhere as big as you seem to imagine.
The point about Oxford was from the quote about what I said in a talk given in Oxford, not something added by Barry.
He wrote:
” So that’s obviously an opinion that coastal infrastructure that’s exceeded 99 years old when sea level rise makes it unusable isn’t a cost because it’s reached its normal life expectancy. ”
Hence he is claiming that I said that “SLR isn’t a cost,” at least with regard to replacing coastal infrastructure. Since I didn’t say that, it is indeed an odd description of my argument.
We are not talking about replacement construction a mile away, at least outside of the Nile delta, which is the most vulnerable region I know of. For the U.S. Atlantic coast, which is the region for which I found a figure for the ratio of SLR to coastline shift, we are talking about replacement of structures a hundred or two hundred meters further inland, so not much new infrastructure is required.
Total reduction of land area available to live on from SLR is very small. My estimate is about 21,000 square kilometers for the entire world — the calculation is in a chapter draft if you want to check it.
That also has my calculation of the increase in land warm enough for human habitation due to temperature contours moving towards the poles — 10.8 million square kilometers, almost three orders of magnitude larger. So suitable space is not likely to be a problem.
Piotrsays
David Friedman: “We are not talking about replacement construction a mile away at least outside of the Nile delta,
First, most of your housing infrastructure would have to be built new, EVEN if you moved only 100m inland – the coastal road and powerline that went along the shoreline houses will have to be rebuilt to lead to the new location, as will your power, water, seawater and gas connecting sections, as well as your driveway or garden.
MORE IMPORTANTLY – in coastal cities and towns where many of the affected houses are,
we are talking about replacement construction a mile or tens of miles, away:
the areas near the coast have been for centuries the premium real estate, so more often than not – all the good areas inland from the shoreline properties – has already been build upon as well.
I haven’t seen too many shoreline communities that are only 100 m wide, as you argument assumes, UNLESS the land behind those houses is … unsuitable for further building – a lagoon, wetland or steep rocks, SLR, by increasing water table in those, and salinating ground water would make them, if anything, even less suitable for building.
So in many (most?) cases you WON’T be able to relocate your home just 100 m inland, without tearing down the houses that are already there. Instead you will have to build from scratch miles or 1os of miles inland, BEHIND the existing coastal cities, towns and villages and at the expense of either nature or agricultural land.
In a case of small communities – instead of inland you could move further down the undeveloped shoreline – but it is probably suboptimal ( if it were as good as your current location, why did you built here and not there) and if you have to move entire shoreline community into the new location further down the shore, you would have to build new road, power lines, waste, waste, internet infrastructure leading to the new location – as well as building new connections of the new houses in the new location.
So other than savings on the house shell that has to be replaced some time in the future anyway,
I don’t see the massive “offsets” to the cost of rebuilding in a new place that you envision.
you parking driveway the conncetion to power,
nigeljsays
David Friedman, you are neglecting something. Buildings will become unusable well before they are directly threatened by sea water lapping at the door step, because the local drainage network stops functioning properly well before then, due to water inundation. So many buildings will have to be abandoned or relocated well before their “:use by” date where the construction is worn out or obsolete. Sea level rise is going to be quite an expensive problem.
Let’s remember folks, that China implemented the one-child policy just about 40 years ago because…. the population was rising too rapidly!
But now individuals are making the decision, not based on concern for the ecosystem or loss of species or disruption of the climate system, but yes, rational individual self-interest. And 40 years ago, having too many children was based on the same thing, because China was primarily a localized agricultural culture.
One gets the impression that neither our Loony Right, nor many on the Righteous Left, are willing to acknowledge actual “human nature”, where there is a rational response to circumstances.
Don Williamssays
The world fertility rate still exceeds the replacement rate — i.e, population continues to increase. The idea that it will halt sometime in the future is what preachers call “faith-based”.
Piotrsays
Well, the demographic transition in some countries in the past, give a hope that it will repeat itself in most(?) other countries in the future.
My main problem is WHEN – if we want to stabilize climate in the next few decades – we can’t count on demographic transition – it will deliver too late, too little. Too late – since significant reductions in population would take many generations (China stabilized its population after several generations of reducing growth rates); too little – because stabilization of population by itself does not solve the problem – it would just stabilize the emissions at the current levels, Meaning that you can’t get to net zero emissions by demographic transition UNLESS it would have resulted in a DRAMATIC reduction in the population size.
(According to Trumpers – Bill Gates/UN have already tried it, with the COVID virus and/or vaccines … ;-) )
DW: The idea that [population growth] will halt sometime in the future is what preachers call “faith-based”.
KDM: No, it’s based on the ability to read graphs of demographic trends.
Trends–unlike prophecy, per “the preachers” at least!–are not to be considered infallible guides, of course. But AFAICT, using them for projections of future states has the best track record of any method humanity has yet devised.
“Let’s remember folks, that China implemented the one-child policy just about 40 years ago because…. the population was rising too rapidly! ”
Because the government believed that the population was rising too rapidly. Your comment takes it for granted that they were correct.
Quite a lot of people in the West also believed that population was rising too rapidly, especially in poor countries, and made predictions based on that belief — that if nothing drastic was done to prevent further growth, poor countries would get poorer and hungrier. Outside of China nothing drastic was done, populations continued to grow, and poor countries got richer — still poor, but less poor than before, with quite striking declines in extreme poverty worldwide — and less hungry. Ehrlich’s predicted mass famines for the 1970’s never happened.
That is at least evidence that the Chinese government was mistaken in the beliefs that led to the one child policy.
zebrasays
David, I’m not privy to what the “beliefs” of China’s government were back then, as you seem to think you are. But I am simply observing that the people in China are much, much, more prosperous than the people in the countries you describe that continued to grow in population at a more rapid pace.
So, who knows, perhaps the government decided to make the transition from an agricultural economy to a globally dominant manufacturing one, and recognized that this required reducing population growth so resources could be directed towards that goal. If that’s the case, then it seems they were not mistaken at all.
And now, they are trying to promote population growth, but, as the article pointed out, the population resists this. Are you suggesting that the government is not mistaken this time, and it should enforce a draconian policy (analogous to one-child) of forced-birth from it female citizens?
The people in China got more prosperous because, after Mao died, they abandoned socialism in favor of a mixed economy, stopped preventing foreign investment, abandoned the policies that had been keeping them poor.
The people in South Korea are much more prosperous than the people in China even after that. Googling for South Korea’s population growth, I find:
“From 1960 to 2021 the population of South Korea increased from 25.01 million to 51.74 million people.” The population of Taiwan, also much better off than China, has grown about threefold since 1950.
zebrasays
David, actual population growth is a complex phenomenon, since death rates factor in, and the same is true for what we might define as prosperity… if you hit oil, that distorts the comparison, obviously.
You start off talking about poor countries being better off despite population growth, but “country x didn’t have a famine killing hundreds of thousands” isn’t really a useful criterion, since we have many “country y’s” that did have terrible famines.
But if you want to do a comparison, how about China with India, a more equitable pair?
Since 1960, India has tripled in population while China has doubled. Now, whether the fertility situation is the result of government policy or increased prosperity and individual agency, I don’t see how the people in those poor countries you mentioned initially would not prefer the per capita value shown for China.
Which again brings me to the actual point I was (have been) making, which is that if a human culture is in a condition of low population relative to resources available to that culture, and the individuals are free to make choices, there is no impetus for the population to begin increasing again.
And, for those who can’t do the math very well, the relationship between environmental degradation and that population/resource ratio is non-linear. (That’s for Piotr, who seems unable to grasp the obvious.)
zebrasays
Note: Copy and paste the entire address given to see the correct chart.
Piotrsays
Zebra Jan 20: Which again brings me to the actual point I was (have been) making, which is that if a human culture is in a condition of low population relative to resources available to that culture, and the individuals are free to make choices, there is no impetus for the population to begin increasing again.”
So… to make your point on a human culture with low population relative to resources available to that culture”, of all countries, you chose …. China ?
Sir, it’s a privilege to watch your mind in work
Sincerely yours
“Piotr, who seem unable to grasp the obvious“
zebrasays
Piotr,
It does seem that you do have trouble with applied quantitative reasoning. What do you think China is building all those buildings with, and all the stuff that they are selling? Are you not aware of the Silk Road project and the fact that Chinese companies own large agribusiness enterprises in the US and elsewhere? Everyone complains about their CO2 from burning coal… is coal not a resource according to your definition?
And you still keep dodging the fact that the relationship between population and environmental degradation is non-linear. Very obvious with just a bit of thought.
Piotrsays
zebra 21 JAN “ Piotr, It does seem that you do have trouble with applied quantitative reasoning
Zebra’s solution for the future sustainable world, is to have Earth’s population low relative to Earth’s resources. As an illustration of a:
“ human culture with LOW population size comparing to the resources available to [it]”
and thus. presumably, a model to emulate by the rest of the world, zebra chose … CHINA,
a country with a population of 1.4 BILLION, drawing massive, unsustainable, amounts of resources, both from inside and outside of the country and causing equally massive environmental degradation, inside and outside of the country.
Although slowing global population growth, and ultimately a shrinking global population seems potentially good environmentally, all other things being equal, whats to stop people consuming at even higher per capita rates than presently, thus negating the effect? Chinas per capita consumption has gone up as its growth has slowed.
nigeljsays
David Friedman
“Ehrlich’s predicted mass famines for the 1970’s never happened.”
Only because things like high yielding rice and wheat crops were invented. Ehrlich is right in principle, just wrong in his timing.. Eventually the population will get large enough that it comes up against the hard resource limits of the planet and no amount of innovation will stop that. You cannot have an infinite number of humans on a finite planet.
And 8 billion people is a massive and very negative environmental footprint. More people can only make that worse. Sorry but people who defend the ever increasing size of the global population are completely deluding themselves.
Russell Seitzsays
That’s really wrong, Nigel.
In 1968 Paul was still in deep scientific denial about the stellar success of Norman Borlaug’s Rockefeller Foundation sponsored crop breeding and hybridization programs in Mexico. By Earth Day the Green Revolution had begun in earnest, and so great was the human impact that Borlaug received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
Don Williamssays
Poor countries survived because of large transfers from the USA and EU — food, foreign aid, military protection, etc. Look at the riots in the Arab Spring when a poor harvest in the US Midwest raised the price of grains. Or look at the effect of food shipments hindered by the Ukraine war. Whether these transfers will be sustainable in the future is not so clear –especially with the rapid depletion of phosphate reserves in most places other than Morocco.
Piotrsays
Zebra: Jan 17: One gets the impression that neither our Loony Right, nor many on the Righteous Left, are willing to acknowledge actual “human nature”, where there is a rational response to circumstances.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, for inventing the wheel (the mechanisms behind demographic transition) and for having bravely triumphed over your imaginary opponents (the Loony Right and the Righteous Left). And your insight that people respond to their circumstances – whau. Who would have thought ?
John Pollacksays
Concerning possible artifacts of weather/climate models: While looking at my local weather situation this morning, I find a large disparity between two different high resolution models. One gives me 2 inches (5cm) of snow in the next 48 hours. The other gives me 7 inches (18 cm). The lower resolution version of the first model agrees with its hi-res counterpart. In this case, the difference appears to lie in model physics and paramaterization. The storm tracks are similar, but the precipitation is heavier in the second model, and more is in the form of snow rather than freezing rain.
Looking ahead 228 hours, the control run (16 km resolution) of the ECMWF gives me a 2m temperature of -22C, but the high resolution 8 km run gives me -3C. That’s quite a powerful butterfly! In the real world, some of this disparity could arise from snow cover. For example, 5cm might melt by then and allow warmer temperatures, but 18 cm would keep us quite a bit colder.
When looking as such disparities as a forecaster, I don’t always know what to pick. I can attempt to adjust for model bias, but sometimes even biased models are right. Higher resolution models aren’t always more accurate, either. Ensemble forecasts give me a nice statistical average, but they will almost certainly underestimate the anomaly for a high-impact event. A large disparity between models, or a model forecast of extreme conditions, serves as a warning to look at the situation closely, and continue to examine it for causes and possible model errors.
The same general principles apply to climate modeling. If an extreme climate event shows up as model physics are adjusted or resolution is increased, should I believe it? It might be a quirk of the model, or it might be that an important climate effect is coming into resolution. Averaging through it dilutes the anomaly. It also amounts to ignoring the possibility of an extreme event. Averages are a lot more stable, and you will avoid “crying wolf.” That will help your credibility, unless you wait until the wolf is at your door.
Adam Leasays
That is why probalistic forecasts should be used alongside deterministic forecasts, so the uncertainty can be seen. This is why we have things like hurricane landfall probabilities alongside the deterministic hurricane track forecast.
Piotrsays
Re: John Pollack. Jan (17) – I am not sure about “ the same principle applies“. Weather models seem to me much more vulnerable to your butterfly effect than the climate models. Weather depends on complex, nonlinear, interactions of unpredictable variables. Change their outcome ever so slightly, and a weather system goes to slightly to the left or instead to the right, and you end up with a very different weather.
Climate is about long term averages – where most of the weather’s fluctuations cancel each other out, so what’s left is a model with relatively smaller random nonlinear fluctuations and bigger role of the deterministic rules of thermodynamics.
Gavin was showing outcomes of groups of climate models. Yes, there were differences between them – but nothing of the scale of your weather model differences.
Yes, there may be spatial resolution issue – as you go from lower resolution to higher resolution and can ask yourself if the new thing I see was missed by the low-res climate models, or maybe it’s an artifact of overdetermined high-res climate model.
But the weather models have that AND their bigger vulnerability to the butterfly effect on top of that. Unless going to a higher resolution, would somehow reduced this vulnerability.
John Pollacksays
Piotr, climate is about more than long term averages. It is also about the occurrence of extreme events. For example, let’s say that the maximum expected 50-year wind speed from a tropical cyclone rises from 200 km/hr to 225 km/hr at a particular location. This would have a very tiny effect on the average wind speed, but it would have a very large effect on expected storm surges, and ought to influence how houses are constructed in that area.
In the case of my snowstorm, the 5cm model came close. Much of the precipitation fell as sleet (ice pellets) or rain as the temperature hovered near freezing, and a shallow warm layer above the surface melted the snow that fell from higher aloft. A big ice storm was narrowly averted. Big ice storms are rare in our area, but they can cause huge damage to infrastructure. Climate models that can come close on the frequency of rare, high-impact events are needed. This goes beyond the ability to correctly diagnose averages.
Piotrsays
John Pollack Jan 20: “climate is about more than long term averages. It is also about the occurrence of extreme events”
My definition, and the lower unpredictability due averaging out random fluctuations, may still apply, since in the climate context we would talk not about individual events, but their long-term averages – average frequency of their occurrence, average path or location, average strength.
But perhaps I should ask first – can you even see the extreme events in climate models and if yes – how trustworthy would be these models with respect to extreme event vs. say, temperature?
John Pollacksays
Piotr Jan 21 ” can you even see the extreme events in climate models and if yes – how trustworthy would be these models with respect to extreme event vs. say, temperature?”
It depends on the extreme you are looking at. Temperature extremes are most often generated by large-scale weather patterns that can be captured fairly well by climate models, so that meaningful statistics can be generated. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9
Tropical cyclones are smaller scale, but meaningful results are still possible: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2777
To get to smaller scale atmospheric features, such as severe thunderstorms, you can use a statistical downscaling approach which identifies precursor larger scale patterns likely to produce severe weather.
To get a better idea of how trustworthy the results are, hindcasting must be part of the effort. At least you can see how well your models and procedures have been able to reproduce the statistics of past events. (On an independent data set in the case of statistical downscaling)
I don’t see how you can expect to get a long term frequency of occurrence for extreme events without generating those individual events in your model(s) and then counting them.
Piotrsays
John Pollack:”I don’t see how you can expect to get a long term frequency of occurrence for extreme events without generating those individual events in your model(s) and then counting them.”
I didn’t expect that. In fact because i have expected the opposite, the need to have individual events generated – I digressed asking whether is even possible to generate these events within the models’ spatial (grid size) and temporal (time-step in models that have to run over decades if not centuries) constraints.
If you say that it is possible, then this closes this digression for me, and we can get back to
my point, that if climate is less unpredictable than weather thanks to averaging out individual fluctuations of individual weather event, then the same would apply to models – climate models that look for averages should be less vulnerable to unpredictability = because they average out the differences between the individual events, which are the goal of weather models.
Barry E Finchsays
There’s a technical point about the SLR, mentioned but not quantified by Stefan in a talk, in that the coast line SLR during storm surges exceeds global SLR (and I suppose regional SLR out in the ocean many kilometres) due to sea-bed friction. A higher portion that’s further from the sea bed. I’ll not be pondering that effect myself, just taking Stefan as correct. I assume tides are far too slow for that effect except at the few “tidal bore” places or chicanes in general. Then there’s the “tipping point” thing with the obvious being those subway entrances, but needs a global coastline good-sampling assessment because anecdote is worthless. I just mention in case somebody wants to find out whether sea-bed friction effect and any similar does affect the standard 100:1 horizontal:vertical ratio substantively, or not.
Can you explain the mechanics of that effect? I would think that any effects of seabed friction would apply both before and after SLR, so why would they affect the difference?
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
@Ned thank you again for continuing the conversation and providing further references.
I finally watched the entire video and read the 2010 article. Good to see a more nuanced and realistic assessment of our (limited wisdom) Sapiens species, as driven both by biological and sociocultural factors. However, what it’s not good to see is Rees’ skepticism that humanity will change timely and effectively to a sustainable system. And I strongly disagree that knowledge does not matter enough to make an impact. If it were true, there would not be constant efforts to suppress and distort it. See the latest research about Exxon’s climate scientists, which were excellent, by the way. If it were true, why would he bother to research and publish his work? Knowledge should be pursued for impact, positive impact on humanity and all life, not per se.
On the conversation with Nate, I would say it’s very interesting and intellectually rewarding, but about 20 years too late. At this point in time, we need to talk all the time about how (solutions) and make them real. They get to some talk about how, but Rees criticizes one of the most obvious: renewable energy. It does not have to be true that we will substitute the current and growing fossil energy system with renewables, we will do that while drastically reducing consumption. Instead of suggesting that governments eliminate fossil fuels subsidies, he criticizes RE subsidies. He is wrong. This is one the most effective solutions to reduce our overshoot.
Of course, I completely agree with his criticism of economics and economists, 90% of them are ignorant, as in they don’t know anything and refuse to know about the bio-physical reality that makes our existence possible and pretty much are in the business of storytelling, justifying a certain ideology, mathematizing the impossible or just plain speculation, the latter in order to pretend their field is science. The very fact that we need to qualify economics with “ecological” and create a different and unfortunately marginal branch of economics is proof that mainstream economics, one of the mots impactful socio-cultural factors leading us to overshoot and multiple major crises, has to be abandoned. As I said before, many young economists are doing just that. Next we need to work on politicians, primarily on how and whom we elect to represent us and a sustainable way of living.
I wish he did not say that we will not change. Do we need more despair? I don’t want young people to despair, I want them to make that change, I want to help them succeed.
I suggest “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst” by Robert M. Sapolsky for a much deeper and reliable knowledge about how the human brain works and expresses itself in human behavior. I will have to read it many more times to understand it better, but this my guiding neuroscience in choosing to believe that enough of us or rather the young generation will stop us from self-destruction.
SLA: Of course, I completely agree with his criticism of economics and economists, 90% of them are ignorant, as in they don’t know anything and refuse to know about the bio-physical reality that makes our existence possible and pretty much are in the business of storytelling, justifying a certain ideology, mathematizing the impossible or just plain speculation, the latter in order to pretend their field is science.
BPL: You sound like a creationist talking about biologists. Economics is very much an empirical science, with a number of solid triumphs of understanding to its credit. Don’t criticize what you’ve never studied.
I believe less and less in the unity of learnings. Formerly, I did believe very much in it.
But having seen the differences and discrepancies not to speak of “cognitive dissonance” as is told of the climate dispute and sheere cultural collisions between traditions learnings and schools, I must draw my conclusions and make that another study of tribal and etno-psychology and civil proxy- wars based in traditional snobbish class and racial – struggle.
Basic frames of reference, units and coordinate- systems and EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS
(=desktop experiments in the laboratories and classrooms to tell people for life what it actually is about)
Well before they can think for themselves,..
…. and lacks of the same…..
….. is quite often making the great difference between “schools”, Tribes, classes, and nations.
Even for economy.
If the portemonnaise, the piggy bank, the personal bank account input output and flow debet and credit and the red line…..
( = all EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS to be experienced personally first)
….is not DOGMA- tic and paradigmatic axiomatic first and you call that “economy”, then you have it.
Then there will be cognitive dissonance and cultural co0llisions.
Just see what happenhed here when I recommended people to read the amperemeter when driving an electric car.
The very basic archetype of energy and electricity current and battery charge at what costs…. and what causes it, is not observed EXPERIMENTALLY at an early enough age for the aspirands. .
No wonder, why the US federal depts, the US$. – CASSAMANCO is down at 30 * 10E 12 now.
I heard such rumors from Kasakhstan and from Belarus in the nineties explained as “You see, eastern Europe never went through the western european renaissance and never learnt what an account and a budget is about”
But I was not quite aware until recently that the same rules for the United States also now.
SALDO-CONTO-DEBET-CREDIT- NOTA- CASSAMANCO…. is all italian renaissance terms you see, and not understood everywhere..
Where can I find a recent scheme for the radiative properties of high, middle, and low clouds? I mean A, R, T (absorptance, reflectance, transmittance) in both shortwave and longwave. The latest I can track down on Google Scholar is Beck 1979, and that one goes back to Manabe and Wetherald 1967. Someone has to have produced a more up to date table since then.
SecularAnimistsays
Study just published in PNAS finds “further evidence for high-impact climate change over the next three decades”:
Data-driven predictions of the time remaining until critical global warming thresholds are reached
Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Elizabeth A. Barnes
Significance: The United Nations Paris Agreement aims to hold global warming well below 2 °C and pursue 1.5 °C. Given the clear evidence for accelerating climate impacts, the time remaining until these global thresholds are reached is a topic of considerable interest. We use machine learning methods to make truly out-of-sample predictions of that timing, based on the spatial pattern of historical temperature observations. Our results confirm that global warming is already on the verge of crossing the 1.5 °C threshold, even if the climate forcing pathway is substantially reduced in the near-term. Our predictions also suggest that even with substantial greenhouse gas mitigation, there is still a possibility of failing to hold global warming below the 2 °C threshold.
Abstract: Leveraging artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained on climate model output, we use the spatial pattern of historical temperature observations to predict the time until critical global warming thresholds are reached. Although no observations are used during the training, validation, or testing, the ANNs accurately predict the timing of historical global warming from maps of historical annual temperature. The central estimate for the 1.5 °C global warming threshold is between 2033 and 2035, including a ±1σ range of 2028 to 2039 in the Intermediate (SSP2-4.5) climate forcing scenario, consistent with previous assessments. However, our data-driven approach also suggests a substantial probability of exceeding the 2 °C threshold even in the Low (SSP1-2.6) climate forcing scenario. While there are limitations to our approach, our results suggest a higher likelihood of reaching 2 °C in the Low scenario than indicated in some previous assessments—though the possibility that 2 °C could be avoided is not ruled out. Explainable AI methods reveal that the ANNs focus on particular geographic regions to predict the time until the global threshold is reached. Our framework provides a unique, data-driven approach for quantifying the signal of climate change in historical observations and for constraining the uncertainty in climate model projections. Given the substantial existing evidence of accelerating risks to natural and human systems at 1.5 °C and 2 °C, our results provide further evidence for high-impact climate change over the next three decades.
Lies have been told, well, forever, but particularly on this site for about 7 years. They are told by those holding to what has been and must not continue to be; by those who contribute nothing new to the march of humanity and, particularly, to the solution set we need to survive the future we have backed ourselves into; by those without the imagination to consider data in such a way as to move beyond a blinkered view that what is best is always found in the exact middle of the array of options.
These lies include repetitions of narrow-minded, uninformed Hobbesian assumptions that how humans act now is how they always have, i.e., brutish, selfish. They claim “human nature” is that which we see from the exemplars of the “modern”, i.e. industrialized, over-crowded, massively complex, uncertain, disconnected society that covers most of the planet in waste.
These lies also claim nothing has been provided to support a different view, an objective view, an educated view, a non-bigoted view of what it means to be human drawn from societies that to this day live in harmony with the rest of Nature. This is the most egregious of the lies because it not only misleads all who read this forum, but also seeks to use the Ad Hom to bring into question anything posted that refutes the bigotry of the Hobbesians. This is a sad, broken tactic, and all the more so because we simply do not have time for the lies, to correct them, to reeducate those taken in by them. Time is up.
Even on Madagascar, one of the most biologically diverse, and still *relatively* unspoiled places on the planet (not my words, as you will see), we have seen a high percentage of extinctions and new estimates that 50% of all mammalian species there are at risk of extinction. If it is that bad there, it is far worse in most other areas of the planet that are neary completely and/or completely spoiled.
It is too late to listen to people saying we can’t risk any big changes, that only the middle can hold – even though the “middle way” is demonstrably maladaptive, i.e. sui-homicidal.
So, what are humans really like when integrated with Nature? Not like Hobbes’ fevered imagination.
I have often criticized Economics as voodoo. Because it is. It is early philosophy and psychology dressed up as a science and painted with gaudy numbers to make it seem legit. Steve Keen, the best economist on the planet, gets this. He understands, and understood at 18, the inherent crazy assumptions and contradictions of neo-classical Economics. The aburdities are obvious when you consider N-C Economics doen’t include the planet at all; not its functions, not its limits, nor money, finance, banking, etc.
Stop listening to lies and absurdities. The knowledge you need to understand the true nature of humanity, of how to live within the ecosystem and even enhance it, to rapidly and safely simplify to avoid Hansen, et al.’s warning of 4 or 5C by 2100, exist. They HAVE been shared here. Repeatedly.
Dishonesty has no place in public discourse. Shun those who speak that way. Before it’s too late.
UAH is reporting a TLT anomaly for Jan 2023 at -0.04ºC,this a drop on the Dec 2022 anomaly of +0.05ºC and the lowest monthly anomaly since April 2021 and before that since Aug 2014. Yet this may be a second month where a drop in the TLT anomaly is not matched by a drop in the SAT anomaly. That is, the Dec 2022 TLT anomalies dropped quite markedly while conversely the Dec 2022 SAT anomalies saw a rise on the November values. Indications from an early reanalysis (CFSR) shows Jan 2023 pretty-much unchanged from Dec 2022.
There needs to be a means to make up the shortfall when blocked weather patterns (which seem to happen a lot these days) impart unfavourable weather conditions for weeks across a large area.
2020 Ted Talk says there will be a place for EVs in the future, but not today. 14 minutes.
The Contradictions of Battery Operated Vehicles | Graham Conway | TEDxSanAntonio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1E8SQde5rk
That’ll surprise the Norwegians, where in 2021 86% of new car sales were electric vehicles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country
Norway is a drop in the ocean of the world wide car fleet.
Dr Knowitall
You are so bold, but I know better from living in the situation
Elon Musk was extra here to thank us for buying one third at least of his pioneering Tesla. That got all dispensationes from Norwegian car import and gasoline sale high taxes and road taxes. And could exel in allmost free hydroelectric power thanks to global warming and scandinavian socialism.
Allmost common men and consumers could suddenly have their heavy and dramatically fast imported http://www..DOLLARGLIS after so many years just with mazda toyota and volkswagen.
Elon Musk and Norwegian Hydro is no mice piss in the ocean.
Which in no way diminishes its value as a demonstration case–and one with the cold-weather climate that some folks like to imagine renders EV tech impractical.
Based on personal experience, I think that there are still some issues for EVs in very cold weather. Granted, I have an older 2015 hybrid with a small battery. Mine was operable but with reduced power at -23C and a stiff wind. Maybe the newer EVs do better. Of course, even the gasoline engines won’t work if it gets cold enough, and diesel is worse. The more populated areas of southern Norway would seldom experience weather as cold as -23C.
I do think that cold weather operation needs to be considered carefully before a complete switch to EVs is required in places with severe winter cold.
The Chinese phrase for Tesla translates as ” coal-fueled vehicle”..
.
Just think of that…
Pretty sure that’s, er, “invented”–to be polite about it.
But, there will be an end to that.
We learn from Switerland, who are pioneering, that electric vehicles must be regulated because they drain too much of their fameous but scarce hydroelectric powers. And shall only be allowed for necessary traffic and purposes. The remainings must run on diesel then. Or horsepowers rather than kilowatt hours.
The modern trains and railways are impressive really with that fashionable feeling of strong motors on smooth rails.
We have seen and followed Teslas on the roads. They do not drive carefully exonomically with a smooth pedal, they step on it without reading the amperemeter.
You can hear the silent electric wehicles on the roads by their weighty crushing of sand, if they could only drive carefully also.
The Horse is a rather silent animal and with convincing match- weight to pull properly. The greater matchweight does not irritate if only driven smoothly economically and carefully.
But it is less good offroad and on ice and snow, where larger wheels and lighter weight (longer legs) has the advantage. A n eg on the pedal, listen to the engine, and read the amperemeter.
The Teslas are designed to compeat on the highways at high speed. To my opinion, that is not the niche of electric vehicles. They shoulod rather be urban and suburb & local fashionable and comfortable wehicles with large coupe volume and windows , large wheels, and smooth comfortable feathering like the old diligences.
Or electric open Rikscha taxies in town. so you do not have to own a car.
Elks, Moose , Deers and Whales run on carbohydrides and carbohydrates using air as the oxidator,m and run smooth silent efficient and elegant. They are not too fat and heavy and clumsy at all.
CARBOMB said
As I was saying, most electric vehicles in Switzerland are e-bikes.
In the Swiss Alps, I was pushing up a mountain pass and here comes an older woman pedalling behind me. As she passes I realize it was an e-bike with a pedal-assist (which is what freaked me out the first time I saw it).
No dent in hydroelectric supply if everyone used e-bikes
Yes, they do. There has been electricity crisis in the EU with 10- doubbling of prices and severe ebtide in the Norwegian hydroelectric dams.. The very Norwegian situation is harmed and threatened.
I tell you, they go up in masses to the mountain vacation sites and begin re- charging their Teslas there. The network is not dimensioned for it, so it kneels. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-…
Then it snows heavily due to general global warming of western oceanic winds by fossile fuels, and they cannot get out of it due to flat batteries and no voltage on the net to re- charge that ..
The community must be called by celllphones, who also get especially flat in the snow, to come and rescue them by gasoline snowmobiles and the red cross, and gas- turbine fossile fuel military and oil industry sea rescue Sea Kng helicopters, who burn a tonne of kerosene per hour at leas and 3-4 barrels per lift as one can hear from long distance.
When will Elon Musk take that to his recognition?
In the meantime, he burns away ship loads of fossile hydrocarbons at leat each time in his falcon heavy and starship demonstrations.
Who pays? On what costs is all that? The network kneels allready and the community cannot keep up.
This is what Switzerland is doing: https://www.electrive.com/2022/12/02/switzerland-rumoured-to-ban-evs/
Quote from Ned Kelly’s dothemath link:
“We don’t look at a bird chirping and flitting through the trees and react in horror at the pitiful state it must find itself in, lacking the means to control its environment. Why should we look at pre-agricultural humans and imagine horrific misery, as many are inclined to do?”
In winter, I DO wonder how birds and other small animals can stay warm enough to survive. Fact is, many animals do not survive the winter. It’s brutal and would be no different for pre-agriculture humans in cold regions. I suspect for most of human history, human existence did, in fact, consist mostly of horrific misery in many forms: finding food, being eaten by animals or killed by bad guys, disease, injuries, filth, staying warm or cool, insects, and on and on.
The article seems to ignore human nature. Few humans would be willing to go back to a pre-civilization lifestyle . You can try it if you want. Go to the woods and live off the land. There are many YouTube videos of people doing that, but most of them have all kinds of modern gear with them. I heard Russia will give people land for homesteads but I haven’t verified that. Read “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer to see how NOT to go about living in the woods. Read “One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey” by Richard Proenneke to see how it turned out for another guy with a better plan – (he had lots of support from civilization).
Your concerns about running out of minerals are not realistic. We have not even scratched the surface of the planet. Want more minerals? Dig another hole. There is nearly an infinite supply compared to what humans use. That is true for most minerals, even for fossil fuels.
On the article’s statement about the conceit of owning property, the Pilgrims tried the non-ownership model (a commune) when they first landed in frozen, inhospitable New England in November. THAT had to be a brutal existence. With their commune system there was no incentive to work hard so shortages resulted and people died. Then they gave people their own land to do with as they wanted and the immediate result was abundance and prosperity. The reason? Human nature. Humans do what is best for themselves. They will not work hard for the collective, but they will do superhuman feats if they can keep the fruits of their labor for themselves. All communist societies have proven this – they are all failures because they deny that aspect of human nature. We see it in the USA today – many people will not get a job because of government handouts. The GOAT, the late Rush Limbaugh, tells the early story of the Pilgrims:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ-2akPZVWE
KIA: Want more minerals? Dig another hole. There is nearly an infinite supply compared to what humans use. That is true for most minerals, even for fossil fuels.
BPL: Wrong. You’re assuming digging to any depth has no cost to it. The deeper you dig, and the more inaccessible the place you start, the more it costs. That’s why fossil fuels are NOT available in infinite supply, or anything close to it. The whole conceit of infinite supply is insanely wrong anyway, since Earth has a finite volume, most of which is either the core or the mantle.
The volume of all mining ever done on earth is not even a drop in the bucket of the available land that could be mined. The quantity of land available to be mined is essentially infinite for our purposes.
KIA: The quantity of land available to be mined is essentially infinite for our purposes.
BPL: Prove it. Show your work.
BPL! You called my bluff! You made me do my homework! You’re mean.
:)
But, if you insist, read this article and click on the red “the book” PDF link in the second paragraph. The numbers in the table starting on page 63 of that PDF are shocking!
https://fee.org/articles/no-were-not-running-out-of-minerals/
Another link to the PDF:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/56f71b64746fb9cb26770c9f/1459034981724/The-No-Breakfast-Fallacy-ONLINE2.pdf
KIA
Tim Worstall is just deluded about the minerals issue. He says that mineral ‘resources’ are so vast that we wont run out. The quantities are vast, but he clearly doesn’t understand that over 99% of those metals based minerals are so thinly spread through the crust and are at such low concentrations, or they are so deep down, that we will never be able to economically extract them.
We are currently mining the small number of lodes near the surface where minerals are in high concentrations and over the next couple of centuries these will run out forcing us to extract minerals from low concentration lodes or extract minerals dissolved in sea water which will be expensive and will start to push up the price of technology. And as others point out extraction of minerals at low concentrations sometimes requires mining vast areas that seriously despoils the environment.
There is a minerals supply problem looming, and only a fool can’t see this. However the pessimists do also exaggerate the problem. The truth is more nuanced as is often the case with things. We will probably have to do a lot more recycling and prioritise things better.
Levenson
I am a chemist and gardener.
Copper for instance is allways wanted but the best sources, green rock musroms at seeping water (vitrol) was taken and extincted first so they had to go to Cypros.
Kopparberg og Stora Støtet in Falun then was the worlds production and basis of the very swedish empire for a while. Then we found Røros Kobberverk, and even Orkla gruver that were emptied. Sold to the French who made the Liberty Statue of it, that showed to contain 2 cubic meters of gold and 7 cubic of silver when restored recently The Norwegians had not yet understood electrolysis of the raw copper first.
The swedes took away allmost all of the old lag heaps of Røros kobberverk and cold not tell us why. That was all the palladium and platinium.
And now it comes from Chile where there is only 0.07% in the sands. thus a huge amount of sands and very large mines for that copper In arid areas. The processes also take water.
moral: the mining industries may become more and more sinful.
Moral 2, todays copper grows on the junkyard, I never buy copper, and the plumber and electrician copper is very fashinable soft and pure. You only have to buy tin and antimon. Zink also grows on the junkyard. Even gold grows there. I have found it.
“With their commune system there was no incentive to work hard so shortages resulted and people died.”
Avoiding starvation would seem to be a pretty good “incentive.” Also, people had been dying in massive proportions essentially from their arrival of various diseases.
“Then they gave people their own land to do with as they wanted and the immediate result was abundance and prosperity.”
Ah, the magic invisible hand, making all well, instantly.
I haven’t read Bradford’s account, but the “just so story” quality of the version given above makes me curious to see what *really* happened.
KIA. Its not as simple as just digging another hole. Minerals like copper ores are widely dispersed through the crust but the concentrations are mostly much too low to be useful. Minerals like copper ores in high concentrations only exits in a small number of lodes globally. We will most likely run out of these in the next couple of centuries, and will be mining areas with very low levels of ore, and doing a lot of recycling. As a result we probably wont be able to maintain current levels of use of technology, and we will have to prioritise what we do. Read a geology text or something.
Nigelj
Copper is a really practical metal and material, but I see they avoid using it allready for applications where it is the very best, Hydraulic brakes tubes for instance. They use iron that is much harder to repair, and it rusts.
There was a lot of pure gold in old electronics, that has disappeared. And copper and tin is less and less and less.
Copper bronses are often the very best and cheapest in production for complicated strained machinery parts, but light metal and nylon takes over. Just as good but I wonder what has really got the lesser environmental and production costs. Not for nothing churchbells and superbe cannon mortar guns and finest ship propellars and steam engine cylinders and pumps and very best engine bearings were made of bronse. Indian shivas and elephants are impossible without bronse.
Hr Knowitall
I did not see that first. You discuss lifestyle romatics. I did not see that first. Lifestyle and romantics interests me.
Me and my wife have been trying living in the miniature way a few times. Mostly on vacations, living camping in a renault 4 and in a 20 ft motorboat as easy as possible. What are the real, and only necessities of life, and resign on everything else, throw off your heavy burdens for a whilwe.
It is the nomadic life, the gypsy- and travelling peoples life, that is also quite a culture and an art.
We find and agree that we live quite as well and comfortabe, but it ends when we run out of money or have otherv duties where we live for permanent. Agriculture and gardening with handicraft song and music and politics is also quite an art that must be trained and understood, and can also be ugly, depending.
But you forgot seafood and fishing and picking flower and vegetables and wreckwood at the shores for it. “Hunter gatherers” is quite a delusion in the snobbish national socialistic sub- urban slums.
It may rather be Gypsies and experienced, successful nomades and lucky fishermen.. But it may also be beggars and robbers.. There are nomadic cheaters beggars and robbers and fierce hunters and gatherers urbanized monopoly capitalism, and what about the russian way of life now against the rather civilized agricultural Ukraina with sucessful industries also? That seems to be invading and travelling hunters and gatherers again
Fiddlers and poets, travelling showbusiness, annoucing quacky healers that are out for your cash, Para- cites,.. what about that?
Try and immagine and discuss all this called sociology and economy in more than a romantic nostalgic Marxist leninistic way.
And what about militarism and imperialism and peaceful rural and urban population being victim to that?
to keep up with the Jones or with the Kardasians, is that so easy?
Or to win and earn so you can settle for a while in Holluwood or Las Vegas?
See what also hits them. Severe climate cathastrophies. earthquakes and mudslides bushfires….. and the FBI.
Where would we be in 2023 without the Pilgrims of 1620? I have no firm idea myself except things would be markedly different.
another quote from Ned Kelly’s dothemath link last month: seems pertinent.
Beguiled by this false flattery, we tell ourselves that nothing can stop our boundless juggernaut of innovation!
In this altered state, we find ourselves on a destructive rampage, as evidenced by the severe toll on habitats and biodiversity: about 85% of primary forest is gone; vertebrate populations have declined by about 70% on average since 1970; and now 96% of mammal mass on the planet is embodied in humans and our livestock. The dots are not difficult to connect. The combination of methods and substances available to us have allowed explosive exploitation of resources on a global scale. A paltry and decreasing amount of habitat—increasingly fragmented—remains. The healthy, biodiverse regions are disappearing fast.
and
Cleverness and an illusion of control got us here, and they are not our best tools for extracting ourselves from the mess.
I have written other pieces about the foundational flaws in our growth trajectory on a finite planet; about the idiotically narrow construct of money (Box 19.1 in textbook), and how decisions based on money will be bad ones (if it makes economic sense, it almost certainly batters the ecosystem). I have posted about the cognitive distortion produced by fossil fuels, and the tragic fallacy of building an enormous human population on the back of a finite resource that threatens a devastating population crash when its availability inevitably declines. The real, ultimate value is in biodiversity and ecosystem health, which suggests de-emphasizing the primacy of humans and becoming subordinate partners on the planet rather than its self-appointed and ultimately inept overlords presiding over the demise of our transitory empire.
But stepping back and using our temporal framework as a mental guide, we are justified in asking whether our path of civilization is wrong at its very roots. That might seem extreme, but we are indeed at an extreme nexus in the history of our planet. I didn’t start out thinking this way (as the long evolution of this blog series attests). I mean, I knew our growth path could not last, and that fossil fuel substitution would be harder than many appreciated, but I never entertained the idea that civilization itself was a bad idea. It is not eagerly that I tread these waters.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/12/the-simple-story/
The Simple Story of Civilization by Tom Murphy
Tom Murphy is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and PhD student in physics at Caltech, Murphy has spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics. He currently leads a project to test General Relativity by bouncing laser pulses off of the reflectors left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, achieving one-millimeter range precision. Murphy’s keen interest in energy topics began with his teaching a course on energy and the environment for non-science majors at UCSD. Motivated by the unprecedented challenges we face, he has applied his instrumentation skills to exploring alternative energy and associated measurement schemes.
Yet, when I say all the same things, I’m somehow out to lunch.
People are… not so intelligent. That’s not an insult to humanity, it’s a statement on re: what we’ve done to ourselves via poor education, ideologically-driven societies, selfishness, polluting everything (Have a fish from U.S. fresh water and get 1 mo. of your average chemical in that one meal! Free!) and so on.
No Killian. I have always accepted my whole life that over population, high rates of economic growth and high per capita consumption and pollution has profound environmental effects and often damaging effects, and that the education system is sub optimal and ideologies of any sort can be problematic. The other regulars here seem to largely think the same, KIA and a couple of climate denialists excepted.
What we disagree with are SOME of the SOLUTIONS you have posted, because they just don’t look practical and they look too simplistic especially when you consider humans and their fallibilities. . I have no doubt the solutions are well meant.
Copying my Jan 5 comment (from Dec.) to Jan, UV. –
RE: Hansen’s: Improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO2 (2xCO2), with likely range 3.5-5.5°C. Greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m2 larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2xCO2 forcing. Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone — after slow feedbacks operate — is about 10°C.
1) At over 500ppm,equivalent concentration at present, the planet will blast through 1.5 C rise in just a few years. (4C for (2 x CO2) for fast-feedback implies that all other forcing gases should be considered)
2) Since concentrations are rising, with emissions at historically high rates, radiative forcing and attendant Earth Energy Imbalance are rising.
3) Slow feedbacks may not be very slow, since “western man” continues to force the climate exceptionally. In addition, paleoclimatology indicates a planet primed for instability when forcing is so substantial..
4) At 4.1 W/m2 radiative forcing and EEI rising just this century (two decades) from about 0.5 W/m2 to about 1.2 W/m2 we seem to have a large way to go for equilibrium. Which will be catastrophic.
5) Western Man seems to have made a mission-critical error by defining uranium and fossil carbon as “Forms of Energy” (they are forms of matter).
@Solar Jim says: – Copying my Jan 5 comment (from Dec.) to Jan, UV. –
“2) Since concentrations are rising, with emissions at historically high rates, radiative forcing and attendant Earth Energy Imbalance are rising.
4) At 4.1 W/m2 radiative forcing and EEI rising just this century (two decades) from about 0.5 W/m2 to about 1.2 W/m2 we seem to have a large way to go for equilibrium. Which will be catastrophic.”
ms: — Copying my Jan 7 answer (from Dec.) to Jan, UV. –
From ~ 0.4 to 1.16W/m² in 20 years. The net increase in EEI by 0.76W/m² is caused by a decreasing albedo (shortwave out @ TOA) of 1.4W/m² while longwave out @ TOA increased by 0.56W/m².
These are NOT necessarily the symptoms that indicate an increase in CO2 concentration. (due to more climate gas, longwave out @ TOA should actually decrease and NOT increase)
I am sure that the loss of clouds and sea ice were the main causes of the increase in EEI.
In addition to the rise in temperatures caused by CO2, there is a 2nd important human-caused forcing. It is also the loss of evaporative landscapes that increasingly prevents cloud formation and is partly responsible for high temperatures, droughts and heavy rain at the land surface.
The value for the EEI has also fluctuated greatly over the years. Interestingly, it always tends towards zero (neither warming nor cooling) when the global average humidity in the atmosphere is at its highest.
https://pub.mdpi-res.com/atmosphere/atmosphere-12-01297/article_deploy/html/images/atmosphere-12-01297-g004.png?1634310863
https://climate.metoffice.cloud/dashfigs/humidity_RH.png
The misjudgment of the IPCC and many other climate researchers of H2O is one of the biggest mistakes that mankind has ever committed.
ms: The misjudgment of the IPCC and many other climate researchers of H2O is one of the biggest mistakes that mankind has ever committed.
BPL: No, but your unwillingness to learn atmosphere physics is one of the biggest mistakes you’ve ever committed.
Repeating nonsense doesn’t turn it into sense.
Schürle, when will it be time that you write sense, comes to reason so to speak?
I can tell you as an artist and learnt epistemologist that art must stand on knowledge.
I told that to a fameous indian painter who painted garbage dadaisms. And he said “……no….. smile, smile….!”
But you can see, I deliver art, and I also mess up with dadaism and surrealism here as easy as that.
The surrealists in Oslo are getting more and more frustrated by loosing their war exacly like their military favourites and keep no regular tavern meetings downtown anymore with beer and pizza. How is that about you Mr. Schürle?
@carbonito says: – ” I can tell you as an artist and learnt epistemologist that art must stand on knowledge.”
ms: — The easiest way for anyone to view your art and epistemologies is to click on your name: —> about:blank#blocked
There are plenty of good and acceptable artists & painters in Norwegian and international psychiatric institutions – we call it “art brut” – unfortunately you are not one of them.
For a stable art production it’s not enough to claim that you are the captain of your own flying saucer.
Personality disordered wide-mouthed frogs without any ABC in the brain but a lot of LSD in the bloodstream…
Tey are also confused about their own bodies, calling their fingertips, about 10 thumbs all in all, for “mouth”.
They commit quackery, and discuss LSD
It is surrealism and dadaism somehow.
Told ya so.
Funny how personal animosity prevents humanity solving its problems, isn’t it? I have stated the basic points in points 1 and 3 above more times than I can count on these pages, and, again, I was right and yet, still, the Peanut Gallery peanuts and keeps this site focused solidly on,,, milquetoast, wishy-washy, nothingness.
The Peanut Gallery never understands when it’s being educated, and never will. So, post away, Jim, just don’t expect anyone here to listen.
One cannot listen here, Killian.
One must read… and grasp…
Since the subject periodically comes up here especially from those who can not take time to read and comprehend the specific connections between extreme events and climate, here is the peer-reviewed “Explaining Extreme Events in 2021 and 2022 from a Climate Perspective”:
https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/explaining-extreme-events-from-a-climate-perspective/?fbclid=IwAR1KmM1JqF9Z2i2ZuJ6rjZNRpFbEp7o9uwrbagS2aXP-NZ50LL_j7FTXKaI
On the other hand, if Harry and Meghan’s multimillion dollar house in Montecito is washed away by the severe flooding there, one can argue that it is because Harry’s new book picks a fight with a King whose titles include “Defender of the Faith”. One who has the Lords Spiritual and remaining 42 Bishops praying on his behalf.
Niall Ferguson’s book “Doom:The Politics of Catastrophe” documents how historically massive disasters have spawned/fed religious movements. E.g, How Christianity grew from a small foreign cult to the state religion of the Roman Empire because it had superior survival value in the Antonine and Cyprian Plagues. Climate Change may destroy academia –or at least today’s version. Clock’s ticking.
Apparently you have the “false equivalence” thing down pat.
The average voter may think even a religious correlation is more persuasive than a paper arguing climate change is causing California’s prolonged drought –at the very moment California is being submerged by massive flooding.
The interesting thing about the Michael Mann –Jem Bendell argument is that Mann is arguing climate science — that it is technically possible to avert disaster at the present time. I think he overlooks that Bendell is arguing his discipline — that while something might be technically possible it may be socially impossible.
” many people will not get a job because of government handouts. ”
^Those tired and thinly racially-motivated GOP talking points have been completely debunked over recent years. By people such as social scientists and economists who are qualified to do such analyses. Not a surprise you bring it up as it you are never able to read or learn but just lazily regurgitate lies….even racist or bigoted ones. Such as your comments after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. (Hint: he was one of your brethren specifically.)
For a counter to the hideous right-wing trait of victim blaming, an alternative look at the benefits system and the plight of poor people, here are a couple of informative links:
https://www.cashfloat.co.uk/blog/money-saving/benefits-uk/
https://www.cashfloat.co.uk/blog/money-saving/poor-people-pay-more/
Currently, In India, we are facing the effects of a changing climate. Warmer temperatures, more extreme weather events, and an increase in air pollution are all major concerns. Heat waves have become more intense and frequent, leading to drought and water shortages in some regions. There has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of floods, cyclones, and other extreme weather events. Sea levels are also rising, and glacier melt is leading to an increase in glacial lake outburst floods. Air quality has also decreased significantly in many parts of the country, leading to health concerns for many people. The Indian government is taking action to address these issues, but the effects of climate change remain a major challenge.
They’ve got to stop building new coal-fired power plants. That’s making the problem worse fast.
This is an important issue. It is fine to say the average Indian/Chinese citizen has a fraction of the carbon footprint of the average Westerner therefore the industrialised West is primarily responsible for anthropogenic climate change, but given at least some of these developing countries are trying to industrialise with the goal of enjoying the comfort and wealth the Western countries have enjoyed since the industrial revolution, if they take the same roadmap as those Western countries have done via fossil fuels, those Indians and Chinese will sooner or later have a carbon footprint approaching the average European or American, and there are a lot more of them. That is not to say they shouldn’t develop, but we/they need to find a way of developing whilst leapfrogging the dirty technologies and bringing renewable resources and ecological footprint into the development, whilst the West transitions in the same direction alongside.
First, let me fix this for you: “That is not to say they shouldn’t develop,” >> “That is not to say they shouldn’t industrialize and massively increase unsustainable consumption…”,
Second, that is exactly what a regenerative society will require.
Let’s stop this silly faux middle-roadism that everyone uses to defer reality.
Alternatively, lets stop the strawman arguments. It should be possible to greatly reduce hardship in these countries (which is what I mean by develop) without going down the unsuatainable path of Western countries.
The December for the ERA5 SAT reanalysis has been posted with a global anomaly of +0.27ºC, a rise on November’s anomay of +0.16ºC (Nov was the lowest anomaly of the year while October was the highest anomaly at +0.41ºC) with December becoming the 9th highest monthly anomaly of 2022.
December 2022 is the 7th warmest December on record and the 55th highest anomaly on record for all-months.
And 2022 thus becomes the 5th warmest year on record. Given the present La Niña is expected to transition into ENSO-neutral during Jan-Mar 2023 the likelihood of an El Niño arriving in mid-2023, the next year is likely to see global temperature anomalies climbing up the rankings. Looking at the MEI numbers, this transition to El Niño may be a bit less leasurely than previous transitions from strong La Niñas, so it might be a case of “hold on to your hats!!”
Warmest top-ten years globally in ERA5
1st … … 2016 … … +0.44ºC
2nd … … 2020 … … +0.43ºC
3rd … … 2019 … … +0.40ºC
4th … … 2017 … … +0.34ºC
5th … … 2022 … … +0.30ºC
6th … … 2021 … … +0.27ºC
7th … … 2018 … … +0.26ºC
8th … … 2015 … … +0.26ºC
9th … … 2010 … … +0.13ºC
10th … 2014 … … +0.11ºC
GISTEMP has posted its December SAT anomaly at +0.80ºC, up on November’s anomaly of +0.72ºC which was the lowest monthly anomaly of the year, with the highest being March at +1.05ºC.
December 2022 is the 8th warmest December in GISTEMP, cooler that all Decembers since 2014. The Dec 2022 anomaly sits =93rd in the all-month GISTEMP rankings.
2022 thus becomes the 6th warmest year on the GISTEMP record (also 6th in NOAA, 5th in ERA5 SAT reanalysis and in the more wobbly TLT records 2022 was 8th in RSS & 7th in UAH, lower rtanked as to be expected for TLT in a La Niña year).
GISTEMP annual SAT rankings.
1st … … 2020 … … +1.02ºC
2nd … … 2016 … … +1.01ºC
3rd … … 2019 … … +0.98ºC
4th … … 2017 … … +0.92ºC
5th … … 2015 … … +0.90ºC
6th … … 2022 … … +0.89ºC
7th … … 2021 … … +0.85ºC
8th … … 2018 … … +0.85ºC
9th … … 2014 … … +0.74ºC
10th … … 2010 … … +0.72ºC
James Hansen & colleagues at the Columbia University’s Earth Institute published their latest communication, dated 12 Jan 2023, beginning with:
Hansen et. al. rank the tenth warmest years in the instrumental record, based on GISS temperature analysis, as follows:
#_1 _ 2020 _ +1.29 °C (relative to 1880-1920 global mean)
#_2 _ 2016 _ +1.28 °C
#_3 _ 2019 _ +1.24 °C
#_4 _ 2017 _ +1.19 °C
#_5 _ 2015 _ +1.165 °C
#_5 _ 2022 _ +1.162 °C (essentially equal with 2015)
#_7 _ 2021 _ +1.12 °C
#_7 _ 2018 _ +1.12 °C (equal with 2021)
#_9 _ 2014 _ +1.01 °C
#10 _ 2010 _ +0.99 °C
https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/
Will this year, 2023, be around equal warmest on record?
Will next year, 2024, be “off the charts”?
We’ll see soon!
Why doesn’t the system just move some mass and heat around to eliminate a LW radiative perturbation? Is this not what radiative convective equilibrium is all about?
It’s the flux of fluid imposing constraints on atmospheric equilibrium.
Seems the only way is to somehow inhibit flux of mass and heat away from the surface, such as ongoing relentless desiccation of the landscape. This might change the timeframe and overall ability for the system to adapt to LW perturbation.
thoughts welcome.
thanks
put in a different way, why couldn’t inhibited convective heat transport vertically (latent flux) act to force the system? This could happen in numerous ways I figure. Mostly through boundary layer process perturbation, moisture availability, biologically mediated cloud condensation, and whatnot.
Hello JCM
The climate system is doing what it can to remove mass and energy from the surface.
500,000 Gt (km³) of water per year, which is converted into water vapor on the earth’s surface and transports 340 billion GWh/y upwards is no small matter. However, what the climate system cannot (yet) do is to compensate for the merciless stupidity of mankind and eliminate this fundamental evil.
With me you’re running into open doors when you explain that there is simply not enough water on the land surface to keep energy transport and temperatures stable.
A few weeks ago I tried to quantify the man-made loss of evaporative landscapes.
To date, ~6000 km³ of water per year and its evaporation have been lost since the massive appearance of humans on land. The corresponding evaporation energy from this lost water mass and its energy transport into the atmosphere corresponds to the amount of ~ 3.1 W/m² in the global energy balance.
This loss only becomes measurable in the atmosphere due to the decreasing relative humidity (since 1973 = -0.16 %rh 10yr-1) and cloud cover (since 2000 = -1% 10yr-1).
While the loss of 3.1W/m² evaporation in the atmosphere “only” shifts the temperature gradient between the surface (stays warmer) and the atmosphere (stays colder), the falling cloud albedo increases the Earth’s temperature.
If we assume that the missing 6000 km³/y are completely evaporated via vegetation and photosynthesis, this volume of water can absorb a maximum of 42.3Gt CO2 – more than mankind emits annually today.
I can’t judge whether it’s stupider to deny global warming due to increasing CO2 & greenhouse gases or to ignore global warming due to decreasing evaporative landscapes and cloud cover, but climate protection through irrigation is in any case much cheaper and more effective than replacing the global, fossil machinery.
@macias shurly
MS “simply not enough water on the land surface”
JCM Your quantitative method with the water cycle effects is novel. There must be space allowed for a reasoned critique camp to exist. Reducing the debate to believers and deniers is absurd.
MS “what the climate system cannot (yet) do is to compensate for the merciless stupidity of mankind”
JCM The climate system is indeed compensating, but in a way which is resulting in a great deal of distress.
From whatever perspective one approaches the issue, the water cycle has always been coupled to equilibrium process. This is true whether CO2 ppm is 280 or 500.
I do not consider the hydro climate observables as feedbacks, but rather as equilibrium adjustments which coincide with radiative adjustments. These exist under the energetic constraints acting upon the system. Transfers of radiant energy to-and from the global latent heat reservoirs is a fundamental climate process.
MS “there is simply not enough water on the land surface to keep energy transport and temperatures stable”
JCM Here we should also not only consider the quantity of water, but also the duration/frequency of water cycle effects. Not only the size of the buckets, but the frequency with which buckets are replenished and lifted aloft.
A humid haze persisting over a dry desiccated landscape is the worst possible scenario. Routinely cleansed air over a moist landscape is ideal. Ecology and hydrology matter in this process.
Improve your plan by incorporating ecology into your proposal.
Draining and eroding the landscape must result in hydrological extremes. Long periods of dry followed by saturation excess flow of precipitation over unreceptive soil. A cycle of drainage events, hydrological drought, and subsequent meteorological drought. The landscape desertifying below our feet, for centuries now. The continents, under increasingly high pressure air.
This correlation is practically all I see with the ever increasing temperature trend charts. But it may reflect a certain bias in my perception.
The biosystem is the great regulator. Not only does the biosystem encourage hygroscopic condensation processes and reduced duration of supersaturation aloft, it accumulates vast stores organic carbon in soils to infiltrate and retain water. Leafy veg with long durations of green growth transpire soil water from depth, along with critical secondary aerosols of biota. Wilting, shallow-rooted plants in eroded soils do no such thing. The surface and air are intricately connected.
Vast disruption to hydrology is the great curse which has not yet been broadly recognized. Much of the perceived climate disruption is evidently coupled to this critical Earth system process.
I can’t help but feel frustrated by the reductionist discussion of climates. Furthermore, the reductionism of environment in totum to the mechanisms described by atmosphericists. Politically active atmospheric scientists risk causing net damage by displacing all matters of environment with their narrow worldview. I see it everywhere, and it has engulfed environmental politics and educational curricula.
Hey JCM – it’s always a joy to find a clear and sharp mind in this Babylonian RC desert.
JCM: “Your quantitative method with the effects of the water cycle is novel.”
ms: — I’m certainly not a great mathematician and I think the quantification is more like a milkmaid calculation that you and anyone can easily check in 5 minutes on one of the many dew point calculators on the Internet.
Relative Humidity (RH) has been declining for decades with a trend of ~ -0.16 – 0.22% per decade. For our atmosphere with a total volume of 13000 km³, a 1% drop in RH at a constant temperature of e.g. 16°C would mean a loss of ~170 km³ absolute humidity (g/m³)
If you or anyone wanted to compensate for this loss, ~ 40 x 170 km³ (6800 km³) would have to be additionally evaporated per year, since the average residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere is only ~9 days (365/40).
As additional evaporation in a GlobalEnergyBudget for land, this volume corresponds to an evaporation energy of ~3.5 W/m² or 45 L/m² per year (6800 km³ / 149 million km² x 0.68 KWh/L) and quantifies the loss of the evaporative landscapes due to changing land use from about 1948 to 2022.
The inevitable increase in sensible heat and ground temperature by 3.5 W/m² largely explains the increase in land temperature over this period. Comparative in situ studies of evaporative loss over cities (-25-50%) and agricultural areas (~40%) indicate a similarly high evaporation loss of the order of ~6800 km³. That’s ~10% of annual global evaporation over land. Around the year 1750, the relative humidity may have been even one percentage point higher.
I should also mention that dew point temperature (-1.59%) is falling faster than RH percentage (1.24%) — and this in a climate that is steadily warming – making condensation and cloud formation more & more difficult. The reduced cooling at the surface also means reduced warming in the upper troposphere, which in turn could explain the observed cooling of the lower stratosphere.
https://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCover_and_MSU%20UAH%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage%20With201505Reference.gif
JCM: “Improve your plan by including ecology in your proposal.”
ms: — I studied biology 40 years ago, but I specialized in evolution theory – so it would actually be your job to enter the topic * water retention ecology * on my website on ~ max. one page. (Fee requests for gardening as usual – LOL).
Otherwise, the addition of 5-10L of organic material per m² and year is an average with which you can increase the soil moisture by 4-8L/m³. Carbon content/m³ corresponding to the added organic material.
The next step for me is to transport my concept to the regions and implement it there.
The Ahr Valley in West Germany is a catchment area with ~900 km² and ~60000 inhabitants, which experienced a devastating flood catastrophe in 2021, causing hundreds of death & damages of ~ $ 30 billion.
There the concept against drought and flooding is to be implemented for the first time with all the possibilities that the region and I have to offer. Maybe that interests you – the Ahr Valley lives mainly from viticulture, trout farming, tourism and some mining. The aim there is to get the fallen ~ 200mm / 48h of precipitation under control.
JCM: “I can’t help but be frustrated by the reductionist discussion of climate.”
ms: — Let’s draft a letter to the IPCC.
I have assembled all the watertight evidence to prove these omissions and reduced climate viewing. – Thanks
@ macias
I will consider the offers. It is much appreciated and it is very appealing.
I need to consider retaining my anonymity due to my involvement with the local watershed board. It is yet 20 years until my retirement date and there is a great deal of risk involved with disputing social norms in the current climate of things.
This is one aspect of the net damage I observe inflicted by climate politics, where the river board seems convinced that installing wind turbines will reduce hydrological and temperature extremes. They are not hearing about the full picture from self declared authorities and experts.
The board is composed of municipally elected officials who receive a relentless stream informational items related to the energy transition. The community is exposed to greater vulnerability as a consequence, in my opinion. Financial incentives for the energy transition far outweigh incentives for environmental amelioration.
If we wish to get real, The missing piece in the GCMs is constraints on boundary conditions. OLR is evidently a fixed proportion of surface flux on climate scales. The so-called optical depth perturbation from trace gas appears to be overwhelmed by convective adjustments. This could be one reason why the GCMs are not working.
Invoke this constraint and see what happens. To described climate change will thus require acknowledging the importance of transfers of radiant energy to-and from the global latent heat reservoirs. To date, this process is not computed in sufficient detail. The inter model spread in simulated latent flux exceeds 18 W m-2.
Everyone here can rest assured, humanity does certainly impose an effect on the latent flux regime, by desiccating over 5 billion hectares of the landscape. Flux of mass from the surface (latent heat) has been replaced by tangible heat. Fluid dynamics are responding in a very damaging way.
JCM
JCM: This could be one reason why the GCMs are not working.
BPL: They’re working just fine. Please stop spreading denialist memes.
@BPL. “Working just fine” is a relative expression, I suppose. They are indeed impressive pioneering platforms in computing. However, those who feel a smug satisfaction with the progress, who take a defensive stance in opposition to development of understanding, should perhaps consider resigning from the space. Faith based hindrance of the advancement of your niche interest is a dissonant and damaging endeavor. Your indirect armchair involvement with environmental affairs is apparent, and your viewpoint offers no virtue nor value.
JCM: Faith based hindrance of the advancement of your niche interest is a dissonant and damaging endeavor. Your indirect armchair involvement with environmental affairs is apparent, and your viewpoint offers no virtue nor value.
BPL: With all due respect, bite me.
@BPL
“with all due respect…”
Indeed the great paradoxical irony is that it is the personality trait of believers, beholden to their ministries of truth, be it administered through church or state, who know little of respect. Those who wish to boil down the nuances of reality into a reduced, often contradictory, conceptual framework. The best interests of the community-at-large notwithstanding. Skeptics and dissenters become the defacto enemy, a story repeated since the beginning of time.
The impression to ordinary folx is that conformity has become the underlying motivating factor of the science community. I hope, however, this isn’t the case. Politics creates a distorted view in certain disciplines, I think, with hordes of missionaries out to convert the savages. A sort of intelligentsia resulting from increasing societal stratification, where it becomes increasingly difficult to relate to one-another. We must all be aware of these forces.
I’m sorry, but when you JCM are done gratifying each other, maybe you could look into how science is actually done. You don’t “draft a letter to the IPCC.” Instead, you publish your findings in a reputable, peer-reviewed, scientific journal.
The idea that the scientific process has somehow broken down and that useful new approaches are being ignored or suppressed is bullshit of the purest ray serene.
@ Ray Ladbury has no idea how the dominance of atmospheric science reciprocity in the politics of environment is causing net damage. I don’t expect anyone on this site would. But the moral is to not be threatened by hydrologists and ecologists, but to develop a mutual understanding.
Oxfordshire climate lockdown trial to begin in 2024:
https://rumble.com/v24swn0-just-say-yes-to-climate-lockdowns.html
Unsurprisingly this statement is wrong. There is no ‘Oxford climate lockdown’. There is a plan for congestion pricing of roads, and a separate policy that aims to encourage livable neighborhoods, where essential services, e.g. shops, schools , clinics (and pubs!) are available within 15 minutes walk/cycle of where people live. Which actually sounds rather pleasant – and is needed to counteract the tendency of building poorly serviced dormitory developments where access to services is often predicated on use of private vehicles..
A 2 hr commentary of the natural threats to civilization, climate change, ecological overshoot and limits to growth and so on. by William E. Rees: “The Fundamental Issue – Overshoot” recent video interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTuDttP2Yg
Looks into the long ignored/avoided notion of Human Ecology, exponential population growth, connects back to fossil fuel energy use, pollution, wastes, climate change impacts, and the global economic system and mindsets.
William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning in Vancouver, Canada. He researches the implications of global ecological trends for the longevity of civilization, with special foci on urban (un)sustainability and cultural/cognitive barriers to rational public policy.
This is a more holistic view of the state of the world’s problems. Seen more of this approach lately. It’s a good interview / scientific discussion which covers a lot of interrelated dynamics in a clear and constructive manner. Sorry if it is too much off topic for here, but some here might be interested in this broader aspect around climate change issues and long term solutions.
sample text about climate change being yet another symptom, and not the cause: @ 37 minutes
Q. (There) is a minority view in the environmental movement you highlight, that climate change isn’t “the problem” but instead is “a symptom” of the problem; can you unpack what you mean by this?
Rees: Sure, to do that I’m going to take a wee step back. I believe that human beings and our cognitive capacities have become obsolete in the world in which we live. If you think about the evolution of humans we grew up in relatively simple circumstances, in small groups living in home ranges that weren’t all that extensive. We lived and died within a few dozens of kilometers of each other. There was no real pressures on the human mind to think beyond simple cause effect relationships.
Bottom line is that the human brain our cognitive capacities tend to be limited in most people to rather simplistic reductionist perspectives on reality.
If you think about that, climate change is a perfect illustration because there are hundreds of things happening but we fixate on climate change. The focus gets shifted a little bit when something like a pandemic comes along. Then it’s all about the pandemic we forget about climate change. Then there’s the war in the Ukraine and we talk about that for a while and now we’re back to climate change. And nobody (very few) bothers to connect all of those dots because human beings are not inherently intrinsically capable of thinking systemically.
When’s the last time you had a dinner conversation about lags and thresholds, chaotic behavior and collapse syndrome which is called catastrophe and systems theory and so on? It just doesn’t happen okay. So climate change is our fixation because there are obvious “symptoms” that many people can relate to but it’s only one symptom – there is also plunging biodiversity, ocean acidification, soil and land erosion, on and on. Every single so-called “environmental problem” is a symptom of the same issue (cause) which is overshoot.
Overshoot is the fundamental issue.
The fundamental issue is the cause of all of these other problems. Overshoot means that human beings are using even renewable resources, the products of ecosystems, much faster than they can regenerate and we’re dumping wastes far in excess of the natural assimilative capacity of the eco-sphere.
On the one hand we’re drawing down all of our natural Capital – fish stocks are collapsing, soils are eroding at 10 to 40 times the rate of restoration, we’re polluting far beyond the capacity of the systems to assimilate. Climate change is a pollution problem because carbon dioxide is the single largest waste product by weight of industrial economies. The anthropogenic component of climate, the carbon emissions, is a waste management issue. The Earth system cannot cope in a timely manner, it will over time but not in time (for us) with the quantity of carbon dioxide that we’re putting out there.
By weight CO2 is the the largest waste product.
It’s like an invisible gas but if you add it up it actually has a weight putting out 36 billion tons a year of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of which a significant proportion is the carbon – it’s what goes in as fuel the coal oil natural gas is all carbon based and of course it has to go through the system and is emitted as waste but as you say because it’s an invisible gas no one tends to think of it as waste.
Overshoot is the problem – human beings are destroying the biophysical basis of their own existence. We are literally consuming that which we need to maintain the system even at a reasonable size and it’s not at a reasonable size any longer.
Overshoot means you’ve exceeded your carrying capacity. If you think of any farmer who has a bunch of
cattle, they know that if you put too many cows out in the pastures they’ll eat the grass until there’s nothing but mud left, then they die.
Now if you import a lot of grass from some other farmer you can keep your cattle going so that’s what humans have been doing. I mean we talk about an Urban Ecology that’s nonsense. The city is not a complete ecosystem, the city as we I currently think of it is the human equivalent of a livestock feedlot because you have all of these consumer organisms jammed into this one area. And you know, geologists geographers and urban economists often say well cities are no problem, only two or three percent of the surface area of the Earth. They’re narrow Keyhole is a Reductionist, simplistic perspective.
If we look at human beings from an Ecological point of view then each City occupies on Earth an area anywhere between a hundred and a thousand times more land than is within the built up area of the city. So the human Urban Ecosystem now is larger than the entire planet!
It’s because cities have become parasitic on their environments, because of globalization. I did an early study of Tokyo, has 38 million people the whole population of Canada. But Tokyo uses more Bio Capacity than the entire nation of Japan. Twice as much as a matter of fact. The ecological footprint of Tokyo is larger than the entire country of Japan and it’s only something like a quarter or a third of the Japanese population. Japan has exceeded its carrying capacity because of globalization.
The capacity to bring in the resources needed to sustain its Overpopulation, and because we can do that we become blinded to the reality of our Overshoot.
As long as you can import from elsewhere you are blind to the fact that you’ve exceeded your local carrying capacity. But what you’re doing in the meantime is drawing down the available productive (Bio) capacity in other places. Every country in Europe is in that circumstance. Japan is in that circumstance where they are living on imported carrying capacity or the assimilative capacity of the rest of the planet to absorb their carbon and other wastes we don’t actually measure the other wastes.
And this is in addition to the Energy Flux being provided by imported Fossil carbon and hydrocarbons. (end)
The url is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTuDttP2Yg
If Ukraine evolves into a medium scale nuclear war it will be even more of a distraction. Although some guys think nuclear winter/famine might be a short term fix to global warming and probably a longer term fix to the population problem.
World Economic Forum put out the 2023 edition of Global Risks Report yesterday.
https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-report-2023
The last section “Conclusion: Is Preparedness Possible?” lists about 33 major risks. and notes how short term threats distract from climate change. Figure 4.1 (p 70) shows results from a poll of 1800 major leaders,experts etc re how successful governments will be in handling the risks. The worse results were for “Failure of Climate Change Adaptation” and “Failure to Mitigate Climate Change” with 72% judging current measures will be Highly Ineffective” or “Ineffective”
Gertrude Stein mocked Ezra Pound as “the village explainer.” Imo William Rees deserves the same title.
Thank you for sharing the conversation and the arguments about overshoot, he is right about it. However, I wish he did not repeat the same explanation for our failure to act as being due to “the human brain our cognitive capacities tend to be limited in most people to rather simplistic reductionist perspectives on reality.” Why would only he and a few others be an exception to this law of biology and sociology, allowing only their brain to understand complexity, systems theory, etc.? First of all, I find it very arrogant coming from an educator, whose main role is to share his knowledge with the “simpletons”, generously and effectively. Second, I don’t think this has been demonstrated scientifically, but if it has, I want to know.
There are so many reasons too many people do not discuss the topics he mentioned at the dinner table. He wouldn’t either if he were a cashier at XXXmart, for example. We’ll never know if the cashier has a similar or much better brain than him, but never had a chance due to their educational, socio-economic and cultural context that would make them not only discuss overshoot, but contribute to solving it.
@Silvia
thank you, all good questions you may need to research yourself. here at least is one item by Rees which touches on the issues of human cognitive capacities. seeing it in full context of the section and the entire article is recommended of course.
Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy http://sspp.proquest.com © 2010 Rees Fall 2010 | Volume 6 | Issue 2 13 ARTICLE
What’s blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial – William Rees
section from page 18 onward
Reason, Emotion, and Instinct: Understanding the Triune Brain
a sample quote
The key point is that humanity is a deeply conflicted species. We are torn, on the one hand, between what reason and moral judgment say we should do and what pure emotion and baser instincts compel us to do, particularly in stressful circumstances. As Damasio (1994) explains, “There are indeed potions in our own bodies and brains capable of forcing on us behaviors that we may or may not be able to suppress by strong resolution.” The neocortex, the seat of reason and logic, is a relatively late arrival on the evolutionary stage and does not always play a commanding role. In this light, it would be folly to assume that either individuals or society, especially global society, will necessarily deal rationally with evidence for accelerating global ecological change.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15487733.2010.11908046?needAccess=true&role=button
@Don
thank you. I noticed in that WEF opinion survey that really 8/10 most problematic issues long term are all ecosystem-climate connected. I think this maybe a confirmation (consensus) that solutions are either not known or are not being seen implemented. Nevertheless I cannot see the WEF being a party to solutions for anything.
@nigel
thank you. It would help to skim through the video or read a little of Rees to understand him and the above sample text. The issue of smaller population is not mentioned as a solution but as a direct outcome of the problems going forward.
I think one has to distinguish between the species characteristic behaviour and the somewhat varied behaviours of the individuals of that species. Yes, some humans do seem to be able to understand what is happening, but the characteristic species behaviour overwhelms this.
William Rees’s words in that interview are very important but I doubt that enough people would be influenced by them to alter the characteristic species behaviour, even if all 8 billion of us understood those words. To me, that’s just the way it is. Humans operate in the way that all other mammalian species do so overshoot was inevitable and, given that we are in overshoot, there is no way to avoid the consequences of that.
Mike, humans do not “operate in the way that all other mammalian species do.” Mammalian species exhibit a wide range of behavioral characteristics, so your statement doesn’t really make sense even in general.
Perhaps most important, humans adapt to circumstance on a much shorter timescale; our ability to modify/manipulate the physical environment does not rely on biological evolution.
As I pointed out to Ned, modern humans exhibit clearly different reproductive norms, based on cultural (material and social) conditions.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/01/unforced-variations-jan-2023/#comment-808607
There’s nothing “inevitable” about exceeding the planetary carrying capacity of humans; as I said to Ned, I looked at the figure of 300 million global population as a stable value. Do you think that with such a number maintained, there couldn’t be a very long term sustainable culture that was able to benefit from continued advancement of scientific and technical capabilities?
Ned Kelly.
Very useful looking information. Haven’t the time right now to look at the videos, but yes the fundamental things driving the climate problem and our other environmental problems could definitely be argued to be over population and high per capita levels of consumption in developed countries.
To fix the climate problem based mostly or entirely on these two variables of population and consumption patterns would require something roughly like cutting 8 billion people down to about 1 billion people over the next 20 years, and dropping per capita rates of consumption of energy and other resources in developed countries by about 90% over the next 20 years.
Neither policy is practically feasible for numerous reasons. This leaves the approach of renewable energy, electric transport, moderate cuts in consumption, multiple negative emissions approaches, etcetera. These policies face challenges, but IMO are practically feasible.
A smaller sized global population is distinctly possible long term and would be helpful, but clearly that isn’t a viable solution to our immediate problems.
Scientific paper says There Is no Climate Crisis – the PDF opened right up for me:
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/view/0/47745
Found it in this Zerohedge article; Comments below the article are worth a read:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/net-zero-will-lead-end-modern-civilisation-says-top-scientist
The so called ‘scientific paper’ looks like it hasn’t been peer reviewed, or has been very badly peer reviewed, considering the spelling mistake and bad punctuation in the abstract. For example: “depends on relible, economic,that.” And you have emotive language right through the paper that is entirely out of place in a scientific study. And the quote “scientists claim CO2 is a poison” is a huge strawman fallacy. It’s very hard to know how all that got passed peer review. So its likely a lot of other information in the study is incorrect as well.
The study presents various arguments that have been debunked a hundred times already. Its a classic case of someone quite clever but trying to write a science study out of his area of expertise. His ideological views, and his anger and emotion comes through loud and clear, and this has no place in a science paper.
The author is critical of wind and solar power and promotes nuclear power. He happens to be a nuclear physicist so perhaps its not surprising that he promotes nuclear power, and it raises the issue of whether his study is a reliable picture of the real situation..
Nigelj
That subject is important, and I cannot quite agree with you.
Who are those anonymeous “peers” entitled to be above any next autor in the grades regardless and in any case?
I can tell you, that is a perverse variety of the highest so- vi- ett party comittee stricty within the high walls of Krjeml behind closed doors. Or the assembled Cardinals strictly locked into the Vatican to judge on the next Pope.. It is “the experts” in anonymeous plural., that is an ANIMUS- projection according to Carl Gustav Jung. Such as The assembled Gangsters or Mobsters, the anonymeous and inaugurated, leading Party comittee.
I have a higher and better and deeper and more autentic learning about that, being of inter- facultary order. . Chemistery and philosophy, thus rather superior also when it came to musical acoustics, that to my wiew is the physics of oscillating air from enlighted and trained audical minds point of wiew. Then reason and emosion must cooperate consciously and trained as left and right hand or left and right brain halves or left and right eyes. With no strict iron curtain in between. Which is rather perverse and unnatural.
The concerned scientist is very traditional in science history. Think of Darvin, Gallilei, Einstein Helmholz Humboldt John Dalton Lord Rayleigh, Herschel, …. you name them.
Whereas The narrow minded, industrially segregated, rather cyclopic one eyed type even with professional blinkers hardly delivered results of any value at any time.
But they quite often stuck their heads and minds together behind closede doors , called it a thinktank or a peoples republic, or “a Convent”. or “An edition..” that managed to acheive market and media monopoly, and stopped any news and development for decades. In many diciplines. So that “Die Wissenschaft schreitet mit den Bestattungen fort” according to Max Planc.
I must add:
King Donald Grozny once said that NASA GISS is supposed to go to the moon, and not interfere with politics and affairs here on earth.
King Donald was Ignorant of the fact that it was once the very purposa and warrant of NASA.
. US space research should find things in space and on the moon and on its way there and safely back, that should come to the advantage of all US citizens and… to mankind as such.
Even I have had really great advantage of brand new NASA micro electronics for sale cheaply on the free market when it came to the physical exploration of Baroque pnevmatic oscillators from audical minds point of wiew.
James Hansen later cracked the riddle of the bottom temperatures on Venus, that were found by soviet venera sondes, and delivered that sheere along with the very paid political purpose of NASA. Being a very orthodox, clearly concerned scientist.
The Apollo landings and picking of lunar material samples for analysis, development of analytic techniques for that purpose, has also come to my great advantage in regard to elementary, practical geochemistery. 2 times I have found that , what was believed to be lunar, surely and definitely aint not lunar, . A tektite and a precambrian fossile stromatolite. Really as earthly as can be.
And next, iron meteorite just by a flake of rust, yes surely… that is extraterrestrial!
I cannot see why anonymeous “peers” should be better qualified to judge and to decide on such things. But they try too often. And that is problematic today..
Carbomontanus.
I cant see a problem with the peer review process in principle. My understanding is peer review exists to reject papers that have bad maths in the sense that there are arithmetical errors, incorrect algebra and calculus, and basic errors of established laws of science. like errors with Newtons laws, and obvious typos like spelling mistakes. This is not sinister or censoring anything.
Peer review does not reject unusual or controversial theories or ideas just because they are unusual or controversial. We see plenty of that getting published. I really don’t see any evidence peer review is suppressing science in any way. I lean towards free speech myself so I’m always a bit suspicious of any process of review, but I see nothing seriously wrong with peer review.
I don’t want to go into my exact qualifications, but I studied a diverse range of subjects at university level including some humanities, maths,, science and technical subjects. I agree its useful to have some breadth like that, and I’m glad I took a variety of subjects for a couple of years, although in the end I did a degree in a specific career orientated discipline.
NigeljI
I have a set of examples where the anonymeous “referee” was hardly more than an unqualified, snobbish, son of a bitch trying to make establish his “gild” on it, with market and media monopoly. Picking in and blocking communication between me and possible colleagues of mine..
I also went through a patents office together with a colleague, that showed all the routines together that we knew from before in scientific publishing.
There should no such thing as the anonymeous expert editorial consultant that judges and decides.
That edition should never be sent any unpublished paper of any value. Because, whatever they receive, it might be patentable and …. it might also ruin the crooky career plans of anyone else, One never knows that for sure.
If only any crooky or unqualified person “feel” that it scratches threatens or touches, then you have it.
You pay for edition, you pay YOUR! consultants salary, and you pay for print. SENSOR behind the iron curtain also gets his chanse if he can step up between BANG….. and BANG! in time, write his own name and state proof that your paper with claims is not valid.
That is orderly edition.
When your “papers” however dirty with oily fingerprints and correctures touches the desk, you hear a BANG!, the cleark draws out a stamped chard from a clock, your RECEIVED DATUMJ on the second. The chard is torn in 2, one for you and one for the edition. Pleace pay one fortune Ft. 1- , discussion will take place on payment. That quit with article title and number received datum is defended worldwide, Anything less than 2 seconds earlier even in Japan is disqualified, and will not be the finder or discoverer of that comet or that poem or that idea.
Patenting is expensive. Wherefore we rather publish to protect our own work because, what is published cannot be patented.
There are civil legislations to it. The Norwegian constitution of 1814 instructs freedom of talk and of print with 2 exeptions. The Kings Person is holy, that meant violence to Royal law and order forbidden. And “disregard of the Religion”. And Jews and Jesuits forbidden in the country.
Blasphemia was forbidden, and that paragraph should simply be up- dated. The 6th of January event on Capitol hill for instance was clearly blasphemic the same way to my..—– feelings. and should be forbidden.
But I have had it 3-4 times at least that I have ran into a….. burglarshop…with my papers without knowing.
We shall not have to write “N N (Sensor behind theiron curtain) is a son of a bitch ” in every second sentence to protect our constructions poems inventions and papers against that.
Such necessary precausional remarks can simply be eradicated on suggestion from our
official and qualified consultant. by “Can be published if…”
Then Accepted datum sign, Dr. Lookingglass Hon Editor. stamp.
If a larger paper from Dr.T.Error is dripping from Nitroglycerine, simply state: “That is sent to the Leith Police, who will be YOUR! consultant. They know how to cash.
If a roll of toilet paper Dear Dr. Spassvogel, thanks for your paper article… it is sent to Miss Cleanshower in Bath Bathroom avenue 666 who will be your consultant. She published in the area. pleace pay Ft. 1- Miss Cleanshowers salary.
because it will take Miss Cleanshower both Kaviar and Champagne to roll out that paper in its very length and inspect it from both sides.
Easily refused Datum by “It seems published allready and for sale in any supermarket!”
Certain unpublished articles of especially high value original findings should not be sent around on anonymeous hands to the very empire and with no quit or reaction at all.
Umberto Eco and Vaclav Havel have both published on the problem.’
My case is that I had qualifications for taking a notoriousy and fameous obscure problem from quite another facultary side rather with ease and success. The “professionals, Peers..” in that case were simply not qualified. I ran into industrialized national dilettantism, and there were no other editions and periodicals for it.
Such things may often be the case when “research ” has stood still for very long time.
Carbomontanus,
sorry to hear of your problems, but it seems like a case of a poorly qualified peer reviewer abusing the peer review system and abusing his power. There are always people who will be badly qualified, and who abuse the system or abuse their power in any area of life. It doesn’t mean the system is bad or should be abandoned.
The problem is of course going to be bad in very centrally controlled communist leaning countries where the state controls the media etc, etc. You will get completely unjustified forms of censorship.
In places like the USA there are a range of independent privately owned publications so word gets around if one of these is bad, and people have the choice of who they submit to.
The Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE) is, allegedly, a predatory science journal. See https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/2017-list-of-predatory-science-journals-published-hundreds-claim-to-be-canadian.
Zero Hedge is a far-right, libertarian, financial blog and news aggregator with alleged ties to Russian propaganda. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge.
Not very good sources, IMO.
Well, this inspires confidence in your source:
https://alcuinsociety.com/im-not-a-vanity-publisher-im-a-predatory-publisher/
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/2017-list-of-predatory-science-journals-published-hundreds-claim-to-be-canadian
Evidently CCSE hasn’t heard of the Streisand Effect. And Mr. KIA hasn’t heard of vetting his sources before spewing them all over the thread.
The December UV thread had a couple of runs of blather (here and here) on Jim Hansen et al’s ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ apparently soon to be followed by ‘Sea Level Rise in the Pipeline’.
I think it’s fair to say that the request elsewhere on the Dec UV thread for ‘a review’ of ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ hasn’t been served by those couple of runs of blather.
‘Global warming in the pipeline’ runs to 48 pages and rattles through an assessment of ECS, then Climate Response Time followed by a long look at Aerosols, this followed by a seven-page Summary.
I haven’t read through the entirety of it but as it is presenting novel arguments it does need to be properly read. And I’ve not got beyound the ECS section at present.
The discussion of ECS homes in on paleoclimate as a way of narrowing the possible range of ECS and oddly it begins with a 1980s argument about the conclusions of a paper and where ECS would sit in the range 2.5°C-5°C for 2×CO2 given the values for LGM SSTs found , an argument that went undiscussed in that paper. And now LGM SSTs are better understood with references for this provided, the idea that ECS is in the upper end of that 2.5°C-5°C is again argued.
But what is not mentioned is that one of these three references to LGM SSTs also calculates ECS and concludes “Taking this into consideration, our LGM results place a strong constraint on minimum ECS in the climate system, which is almost certainly greater than 2°C, and more likely between 3°C–4°C”, a more usual finding for ECS. And a second of the three references says their findings agrees with this quoting the central ECS=3.4 °C. These then are not in the upper end of that ECS =2.5°C-5°C range.
‘Global warming in the pipeline’ then turns to the calculation of Forcing for the various GHGs etc and concludes the net Forcing is today not greatly dissimilar to the AR6 value (for 2021, 4.09 W/m2 with the AR6 value 4.14 W/m2) but brands this rather dramatically saying “The stunning conclusion is that the GHG increase since 1750 now produces a climate forcing equivalent to that of 2×CO2.”
The account then returns to the global temperature change from the LGM into the Holocene and also that from the PGM into the Eemian. A value for Eemian temperature is obtained, for some reason without Confidence Intervals. Forcing through LGMR is then estimated (GHG=2.3Wm^-2, albedo=3 to 5Wm^-2) and with central ΔT values for LGMR from the references, ECS is calculated as = 3.3°C-4.6°C or = 3.7°C-5.1°C, thus 3.3°C-5.1°C. Similarly for the PMGR a range of ECS = 4°C-6°C is calculated. From this the conclusion is presented “We conclude ECS is at least approximately 4°C and is almost surely in the range 3.5-5.5°C. The IPCC AR6 conclusion that 3°C is the best estimate for ECS is inconsistent with paleoclimate data.”
To me, this is all a bit of a leap. But that said ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ is saying ECS is significantly higher than the IPCC AR6 best estimate of 3°C and potentially that has always been the case. The potential of a high ESC should not be ignored. My take on it was that the impact of a high ECS (relative to a low ECS) only manifests itself slowly so if we are faced by a high ECS, the negative emissions of the late 2000s and early 2100s would/could be adjusted accordingly.
But ‘Global warming in the pipeline’ goes on to challenge that idea when considering next ‘Climate Response Time’ and then ‘Aerosols’, all of which requires reading.
Thanks for your stab at that. I’m guessing other potential commenters are waiting for the peer-reviewed paper?
Glacial ice loss: still a thing, and not improving. But it remains improvable.
Study:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo1324
Discussion:
https://apnews.com/article/glaciers-two-thirds-to-disappear-by-2100-b5d622f140072f9b9848bf4c47047e49
JCM 11 JAN 2023 “the system just move some mass and heat around to eliminate a LW radiative perturbation”. (tiny side note: I assert that Earth’s climate system isn’t sentient so it doesn’t “just move” or “just do” anything). Apparently, but I’m inferring, one -ve feedback effect of the global warming apart from the huge Planck feedback does just that. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE1VBCt8GLc at 13:56 Jennifer Kay shows “water vapor + lapse rate” at 110% net +ve feedback for the 2 of them. Though this “lapse rate” could be to do with stratospheric water vapour I’ve been inferring that it’s actually the 4% increase in global precipitation. This means 4% increase in latent heat transferred from the surface waters of the tropical oceans and spread up through the troposphere. This additional energy into the troposphere makes its infrared-active molecules collide harder (faster) and more frequently thus manufacturing more LWR and thus sending more LWR up into the stratosphere or space. Clearly, this -ve feedback, which is exactly the sort of thing that you propose, isn’t nearly enough to cancel out Earth’s Energy Imbalance that’s been caused by increasing GHGs net of aerosol pollution (itself net of snow/ice pollution). Presumably bundled cryptically into that single item with H2O GHG effect because both are H2O. Again, I’ve not yet read/heard any scientist explain that “lapse rate” feedback, only an annoying 3-second mention as an aside like a tease 8 years ago, so I’m drawing the inference because it’s obvious fact that more 4% H2O liquid & solid being formed in troposphere means more tropospheric heating and warmer parcels radiate more.
@Barry E Finch
my suggestion is that had the bio-geo-hydrological system not also been perturbed, coincident with the gas emission, the system might present a different response.
This is a significant confounding collinearity. My sense is that the so-called feedback regime is assumed to be unperturbed, but I do not see any evidence to support this notion. A sort of hen-and-egg problem, I think.
The feedback chain is really a product of a mental flowchart of the system, which does not necessarily relate to reality.
I do not comprehend the numbers in the UT Physics Colloquium discussion with 0.1 W m-2 precision in specific feedback response factors, when inter-model spread in the simulated global mean latent heat fluxes in the CMIP6 models exceed 18 Wm−2.
macias shurly 10 JAN 2023 “The net increase in EEI by 0.76W/m² is caused by a decreasing albedo (shortwave out @ TOA) of 1.4W/m² while longwave out @ TOA increased by 0.56W/m². These are NOT necessarily the symptoms that indicate an increase in CO2 concentration. (due to more climate gas, longwave out @ TOA should actually decrease and NOT increase)”.
The “NOT necessarily the symptoms” is OK but “due to more climate gas, longwave out @ TOA should actually decrease and NOT increase” is incorrect because Delta-LWR out @ TOA is a function of Delta-Earth’s-bulk emissivity and Delta-Earth’s-average-surface-temperature so you’d only be certainly correct there if Earth’s average surface temperature had not changed during the study period. So you need to do the analysis for the study period in order to show that the reduction in Earth’s bulk emissivity wasn’t countered and exceeded by an increase in Earth’s average surface temperature had not changed during the study period. If you do show that then it does indeed mean that further thought is needed (I’ve been too lazy to review A Series Of Fortunate Events and all the related gunf everywhere so far). All I can think of otherwise is if some increase in heat transfer up to the mid-upper troposphere occurred and I’ve no idea why it would have. I’m not going to be analyzing it myself because I’m feeling lazy right now and because I want to appease the Effelump or Zebra or Gnu thing and I’ve exceeded my permitted allocation of mathturbating for a while.
I have been working on a critique of a recent _Nature_ article that finds a very high value for the social cost of carbon, the net cost from now to 2300 produced by an additional ton of CO2. I argue that the article greatly exaggerates the cost by errors which should be obvious to a careful reader, one of them being the implicit assumption that there will be no improvement in most of the technologies relevant to the costs, including medicine, for the next three centuries.
The implication of my critique, if it is correct, is that the enterprise of producing estimates of the costs of climate change is broken. The important point is not that this particular article makes mistakes but that it makes obvious mistakes, should never have gotten through peer review in its present form. If an article with obvious mistakes, all of which increase its estimate of the cost of carbon, can get published in a high status scientific journal and be considered by the EPA as a possible basis for regulatory decisions, it follows that the mechanisms that are supposed to filter out bad scientific work are not working in this context, hence that none of the published estimates can be trusted.
That is a strong claim and it might be wrong, but if it is right should be a serious problem for people who accept the current orthodoxy with regard to climate. I am therefor inviting anyone interested, especially anyone inclined to accept current views on the effects of climate change, to look over my critique and tell me what is wrong with it.
Hostile reviewers are more useful, for my purposes, than friendly reviewers. This seems like a reasonable place to find some.
My critique of Rennert et al. 2022
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Ideas%20I/Climate/Critque%20of%20Rennert%20et%20al.pdf
A little more about the cognitive issues from:
What’s blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial by William Rees 2010
page 22
Humanity must specifically confront once-adaptive genetic predispositions that have become hazardous on a crowded planet and abandon the socially constructed memes that reinforce them. It is true that people can be individualistic, unfeeling, and selfish. But, as noted above, they are also capable of social engagement, compassion, and generosity of spirit.
While the former qualities reflect the dumber instincts of primitive K-strategists, the latter must come to prevail in support of collective survival in an ecologically full world. Again, the key is to recognize that while all these colors can be found in the full spectrum of human behavior, society can make deliberate choices about which tints and shadings to emphasize in the creation of its cultural narratives.
page 23
On the contrary, most people are psychologically committed to continuous economic growth, the illusion of ever-increasing material prosperity, and the myth of progress (see Princen, 2010 in this issue). Powerful and privileged elites, those with the greatest personal stake in the status quo, control the policy levers that are steering us onto the ecological rocks. The means by which people become so deeply committed to particular beliefs has only recently been revealed.
Neurobiologists and cognitive scientists are showing that cultural norms, beliefs, and values can effectively be imprinted on the human brain (Wexler, 2006). (A mechanism for social epigenetics?) In the normal course of individual development and maturation, repeated social, cultural, and sensory “inputs” actually help to imprint the individual’s synaptic circuitry in neural images of those experiences. Once entrenched, these neural structures alter the individual’s perception of subsequent experiences and in-formation.
People tend to seek out experiences that reinforce their preset neural circuitry and to select information from their environment that matches these structures. Conversely, “when faced with in-formation that does not agree with their internal structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret, or forget that information” (Wexler, 2006) (i.e., denial has a neurological basis).
and
It seems to boil down to this: Modern society has been paralyzed by deep-seated cognitive dissonance, collective denial, and political inertia in dealing with the (un)sustainability conundrum. The problem has roots in both innate behaviors and socially constructed beliefs that seem literally to program the brain. What individuals hear and pay attention to (or ignore) can thus be understood only within the context of both social norms and the broader political-economic environment (Norgaard, 2009).
Mere information, including scientific analysis of a problem, is generally not enough to stimulate policy reform or effective action.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15487733.2010.11908046?needAccess=true&role=button
Meaning: Knowledge per se doesn’t change behavior. When asked if he thinks humanity can solve the multitude of problems leading us towards Ecological Overshoot, Rees responded: “Yes we could, but we won’t.” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTuDttP2Yg
all the best.
Ned, I struggle to understand the reasoning here.
1. A species that has a fertility rate lower than its replacement rate can hardly be projected to produce “ecological overshoot”… it will simply become extinct.
2. We observe that human cultures where there is some prosperity, some form of social “safety net”, and individual freedom and agency (especially for women), do indeed have such fertility rates.
3. We also observe that where there is less prosperity, and less individual freedom and agency, fertility rates are higher, since children provide economic benefit.
So, since it seems obvious that in both (2) and (3), humans are acting in their own self-interest (given their circumstances), these claims about neurological entities seem unnecessarily complicated. (I’m a big fan of Ockham, which people here will certainly attest.)
As I’ve pointed out many times, a sustainable human culture only requires that the global population be stable, and small relative to the resource base. (I use 300 million in my thought experiments.)
That’s it! All the negatives we observe in our current existence just go away, not because of noble moralizing but because of self-interest and the economic dynamics of such a balance. While there still might be individuals with psychological dysfunction leading to irrational behavior, it would be in the vast majority self-interest to prevent them from disrupting the existing conditions.
I’m happy to entertain any contradictory information from your readings.
Important note: I assume that, like me, you are attempting to discuss what a long=term sustainable culture would be like, not “how do we eliminate CO2 in the next 28 years??!!”. (Which seems to be an obligatory Strawman reaction to this.)
1) There is a counterargument that low fertility rates in the USA etc are due to high economic insecurity rather than prosperity. 60 years ago a husband could support a family while the mother reared the children — today, both parents have to be wage earners and pay child support while hoping neither of them are laid off. The share of income held by the richest 2% has soared while millions of crying toddlers have to say goodbye to mommy every morning. Congress chose that economic policy because toddlers don’t write $100,000 campaign checks and they cannot vote.
2) You assume population growth reaches some equilibrium. A counterexample from history is 75,000,000 people dying in WWII because Hitler thought Germans needed more living space. Not counting the 5 million Ukrainians who died in the Holodomor because Stalin needed some wheat.
The world would have 4 billion less people today if German scientists had not developed the process for extracting nitrogen fertilizer from the air. But every “fix” (e.g Green Revolution) merely makes the problem worse. in the longer term.
3) If climate change famine triggers desperation and mass migrations there will be war. Our civilization might not recover from WWIII.
Don, you lost me on #1. What “economic policy” did “Congress choose” that created all those crying toddlers?
Are you saying that Evil Capitalists influenced the government back in the 60’s to allow women to leave their proper, God-given, barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen role, and compete in the workforce, which would lead to lower wages? That the women’s lib ladies were dupes/participants in that conspiracy?
Maybe, but it is also the case that the US population has doubled since then… men and women.
And, this brings me back to an important feature in my sustainable culture design, which is that in a smaller population relative to resources condition, the power balance between labor and capital shifts. So you should be in favor of that, yes?
Yo, Piotr, The obvious is not always obvious to everyone, as you can see here.
zebra: 18 Jan -” Yo, Piotr”
How … street cred of you.
zebra: The obvious is not always obvious to everyone, as you can see here.
The only obvious things so far are:
1. that you implied that benefitting from the increased competition in the workforce by “the richest 2%” must be mutually exclusive with “ the women’s lib ladies” fighting for the fair access to the employment opportunities for women. I am not sure why.
2. that you shot yourself in the foot – contradicting the fundamental claims
of the demographic transition that as a society gets more financially secure, it will lower its reproductive rates. YET here, to Dan’s argument that over last 60 years the US society got LESS financially secure and had low fertility, you countered with:
Zebra: “ the US population has doubled since then”
which suggest either
– that you argue that Dan’s financial insecurity correlates NOT with low, but with high fertility rate, which would contradict the demographic transition theory
– OR you have no idea about demographic indicators,- since you apparently think that “doubling population over 60 years” disproved Dan’ claim of low-fertility
Let check it with numbers: US population increased by 84% over 61 years, After we exclude the 45 mln of Americans not born in the US, this would make the US actual avg. growth rate, 0.75% .
That’s much lower than the US growth rate between 1950 and 1960: which was 1.7%. To illustrate the difference: – at 0.75% it takes 93 years to double without immigration, at 1.7% it take 41 years.
So your argument that the US population has ONLY less than doubled since 1960″
seems to unwittingly to SUPPORT Dan’s claim about substantial drop in fertility,
[particularly. that the above estimate used average growth rate since 1960 – while the drop in fertility took some time to develop – the US decadal pop. increase 1970/1960 was 13.3%; the 2020/2010 was 7.4%.]
=======
P.S. I am not sure what you wanted to express by the last 3 words in your:
zebra: “ the US population has doubled since then … men and women
the “…” seem to suggest that it somehow subverts Dan’s argument, but I fail to see how.
Dan, did you by any chance imply that, at the behest of “the richest 2%”, the US politicians made the US womenfolk give birth only to one gender of babies??? If yes, then the unexpected failure of their dastardly plan (“ …. men and women“) would have been well deserved.
Piotr, I’m just going to point out once again that sometimes you can write coherent paragraph(s), but here you do your long incoherent list thing.
You are making stuff up in your head from my very simple observation that Don’s claim about “Congress chose an economic policy” doesn’t really make any sense except as some kind of Q-conspiracy theory. That to me is what’s “obvious”, and what I wrote conveys it pretty clearly.
@zebra
1) The argument that poverty spurs high fertility rates and prosperity results in low fertility rates is contrary to US historical data. We had low fertility rates during the Great Depression and high fertility rates during the very prosperous 1950s and 1960s:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/
2) I am not expert but my understanding is that sociologists are disinclined to support single-cause theories re the behavior of human societies. For example, lower fertility rates in recent decades may have been the result of multiple causes such as the Pill and Roe v Wade legal abortion — not economic opportunity. Similarly, the 1 child fertility rate in China during the famine of Mao’s rule was probably not driven by economic opportunity.
3) The massive spike in US income inequality since the 1980s is well documented:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States#/media/File:1970-_Relative_income_growth_by_percentiles_-_US.png The bottom 50% are not that much better off than they were in 1970 — while the Richest 1/10 percent’s income is up 500%.
4) Also well documented are the actions of Congress in making their rich patrons ever richer while making most Americans poorer. Huge cuts in marginal tax rates — both overt in the IRS code and covert (offshore banking,, stepped up cost basis,etc. Financial deregulation that let Wall Street billionaires steal everything not nailed down. Then Opening up the US Treasury doors to the Big Banks when the subprime fraud threatened the US economy — while dumping 6 years of 15% unemployment onto America’s black community. Shipping US jobs overseas with Globalization.
Etc Etc Etc. “Conspiracy Theory” is a phrase used by our politicians to suppress any look at the evidence.
5) What is also faith-based is the idea that 330 million Americans can continue even our poor standard of living in the face of competition for resources from 8 BILLION foreigners.
Yes, we have 6000 nukes but use of them will destroy the system which supports us. Either way, the economic system that sustains us will probably be destroyed by war or relentless population growth/resource depletion/environmental damage.
zebra: 20 JAN “here you do your long incoherent list thing.
Knowing that you can’t follow a sustained argument (from Don’s you missed the main argument questioning the main assumption of demographic transition and latched instead on a tangent) – I spilt 2 paragraphs into 2 points each …. and these are the thanks I get? ;-)
zebra: “ You are making stuff up in your head from my very simple observation that Don’s claim about “Congress chose an economic policy” doesn’t really make any sense except as some kind of Q-conspiracy theory. That to me is what’s “obvious”, and what I wrote conveys it pretty clearly.”
Shouldn’t the reader be the judge of the last part? ;-) Case in point: what kind of “Q-conspiracy” were you addressing with your:
“ the US population has doubled since [1960]”?
To me this looked like challenging Don’s main argument: “ low fertility rates in the USA are due to high economic insecurity rather than prosperity.”
That’s doesn’t seem very “Q-conspiratorial” to me – so I checked your quantitative claim (“doubled”) and showed that after removal of immigration, the actual avg. growth rate was 0.75% – which is quite low, and, as such, supports Dan’s “low fertility“.
Ironically, I did in the part of my post that WASN’T the dreaded “ long [4-point!!!] list thing – and yet … you failed to understand it too. Damned if I list, damned if I don’t.
And what kind of Don’s “Q-conspiracy” have you tackled by adding “…men and women” to that sentence: “the US population has doubled since then … men and women ”
“ What I wrote conveys it pretty clearly“, eh?
Don Williams,
OK, first, let me quote part of what I said originally:
I’m not an expert either, but I’m pretty sure that sociologists agree with those observations, based on what we see in the present; the range is from “First World” economies and social arrangements to “Third World” subsistence farming with high rates of infant mortality, and also situations where women are constrained by patriarchal norms from making their own decisions. You can look that up.
To bring up the depression and famines and post-war baby boom is illogical rhetoric; that some rare event causes lower fertility does not negate what we observe as the norm.
So, a couple of issues need clarification.
-I assumed that you were talking about the societal changes in the 60’s that allowed women (and minorities) more individual agency and access to employment, which (let’s say for simplicity) doubled the available workers, allowing the capitalists to pay less.** From your words I have to conclude that you think “mothers rearing the children”, as opposed to being doctors and lawyers and construction workers and so on, is a good idea. Is that right? If not, what exactly is the alternative?
-Now you are talking about government policies starting in the 1980’s, which clearly benefited the business class. Well, actually, you can assign some blame for that to the policies of the 60’s, where women (and minorities) were given more access to the labor force. Perhaps you need to examine the history more closely. Have you heard of the “Southern Strategy”?
People seem to forget that Reagan, who was a union-buster, was supported by union members. That’s because civil rights threatened the privilege enjoyed by “the 25%”, White males and their compliant stay-at-home wives. If a union couldn’t practice discrimination and nepotism, what was the point?
So the conditions you describe for people struggling to make ends meet are in many ways self-inflicted by a large proportion of “the working class”. This is classic Authoritarian psychology at work; feeling superior to and more powerful than someone through group identity is far more important than your status within the group. It’s ok if people get obscenely wealthy, as long as they belong to the group.
It’s not the politicians; it’s the people who vote for them. This too is pretty well established and you can look it up.
**Piotr, if including women doubles the workforce, then adding an equal number of both men and women doubles it again. That was really hard for you???
zebra, 21 JAN “Piotr, if including women doubles the workforce, then adding an equal number of both men and women doubles it again. That was really hard for you???”
No, what was really hard to me !!! (?) was to understand HOW having both men and women born.. is supposed to disprove Don’s statement about the … low fertility since 1960,
Which was what you were challenging in the earlier part of the same sentence:
– Don: “There is a counterargument that low fertility rates in the USA etc are due to high economic insecurity rather than prosperity
– zebra: ” the US population has doubled since then… men and women
And to make it better – it comes from the same zebra who derides the communication skills of others: “your long incoherent thing“, and is rather proud of his own’s – see his modest: “what I wrote conveys it pretty clearly“.
@Zebra
1) I did not ascribe Congress’s support for the Rich to either Party or ideology — because I don’t think either party works to make life better for the average citizen. Look at that steady increase in the Rich’s share of national income over the past several decades –regardless of who controlled Congress and the White House.
If any politician is foolish enough support the workers, he is exterminated in the primaries. Whether the Rich will get richer– at the expense of the workers — is certainly not left up to the voters to decide in the general election. That is NOT why some billionaires dump $90 million into a US election –EACH. I briefly depart from Climate Change issue because it will be decided by US politics and we should not be naive about that process.
2) You seem to think population growth will fall with time because everyone will be getting richer. I see the reverse. Here in the USA most people have been getting poorer — with the US government charging to the national credit card to hide that fact. In 2000, the federal debt was only 2.9 times the 2000 tax revenue . In 2010, it was 6.3 times the 2010 tax revenue.. In 2021, the federal debt of $30.8 Trillion was equal to 10.5 years of the $2.93 Trillion collected from income tax, corporate tax and excise tax.
(I did not include payroll taxes since those are not even enough to stave off bankruptcy for baby boomer Medicare/Social Security. . ) Since we are the world’s biggest economy — and because we owe $Trillions to foreigners, — we will drag the rest of the world down if/when we crash.
PS Good luck with getting that money for a US transition to renewable energy from the current Rupublican House. Maybe let John Kerry go first and ask for those $billions in climate adaptation for poor countries.
PPS I have greater respect for the job American mothers do than you appear to have — it is one of the most important jobs out there. I think many women would like to take time off prior to age 30 to rear one or more kids to age 6 and then resume their career. Our CEOs are not very supportive of that — and the dog eat dog economic environment makes American men less inclined/able to take on the burden of husband/sole breadwinner.
Don Williams,
Don, I don’t think anyone objects to discussions about sustainability and reducing current environmental impacts, particularly the CO2 issue. My goal, though, is to try to apply a more scientific approach… so talking about politics is fine if you can make the connection between the desired result and the underlying fundamentals of the human condition, but to have such a discussion, the participants first need to agree what that desired result would be.
In your case, I’m left guessing what that is.
From your pps, and previous comments, you sound pretty much like the people I described, who would vote for Reagan (and current equivalents) because, well, Welfare Queens! Immigrants! M&M Shoes!. You think it should be like the 50’s again, with women raising children and men as “sole breadwinners”. Didn’t even consider men staying at home and raising children until six years old, and having the women build their careers straight through, right?
The women I know who are doctors and lawyers and such, and have kids, would just laugh at you, and not in a nice way.
The other “tell” is that you repeat the right-wing meme that says “they’re all the same…. (so don’t bother with politics and voting)….” .
But if I’m wrong and you really care about dealing with climate change, how about explaining why changing the economic system so that the population will increase, which is what you propose, is a good idea?
You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out that it would lead to more energy consumption and more pollution, particularly if it is in the USA, which has the highest per-capita consumption. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m willing to listen.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Urgent news to you all:
The norwegian coast- route, Hurtigruten, will no longer take electric cars on board. They are not shipshape, being too dangerous.
As the swiss will also restrict them because they drain too much electricity from them, we will soon get rid of them again.
But, Musk is sending up Falcon heavy again now. Using fossile fuels.
There’s no mention of a ban on carrying electric cars on the Hurtigruten Group’s press releases page. A google search for “hurtigruten electric cars” gives hits about Hurtigruten’s electric hybrid ships, but nothing about a car ban.
The Swiss “ban” on electric cars seems rather more limited than you claim, too:
“If the proposal is finalized, during a worst-case energy emergency, drivers would be allowed to use electric vehicles only for essential journeys..”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/12/16/fact-check-false-claim-switzerland-banning-electric-cars/10894964002/
And that’s why we have factchecks … ;-)
The difference between:
“ during a worst-case energy emergency, drivers would be allowed to use electric vehicles only for essential journeys..” and Carbo portraying it as: “we will soon get rid of them again“
I just saw video of Falcon Heavy lifring up from Florida, and landing again.
Ghosh… that is a large flame of fossile fuel. And the oxygen, what does it also take of energy and from which sources to refine that?
Elon Musk seems rather to be a major polluter playboy. And this time for heavy load and fuel reasons, they simply “deployed” the 3rd rocket in the atlantic without even trying to re- cycle it.
And his filling up space also with rubbish,…..
We will soon have a saturn ring of rubbish shading for the sun when all that rubbish begin to crash and desintegrate….. Might that be the solution to global warming perhaps?
Does Falcon-9 use jet fuel or hydrogen? If hydrogen, it is not using fossil fuels.
Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 both use liquid oxygen and RP-1 as propellants.
So yes, both Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 burn fossil fuels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1
@ prl
I try and scare up people here, you see.
It is alarmism from my side.
But, it is obviously alarmism to me also, because I red that all recently on the internet. And not on the 1.st of april.
Maybe it is big oil and big coal loose again?
But, what is true here in Norway may be true in Switzerland also:
They drive up en masse in their big and heavy teslas for the weekend to their luxurious private cottages that drain a lot continuosly from the net allready. Then all together set their EVs for loading to get home again also. and the net was not at all dimensioned for it. It kneels.
And then heavy snow and deep frost falls over it ,….. because Allah u akhbar! you see.
That may be what has hit them also in Switzerland. As electricity has become a vital and urgent necessity today, there must be order and dicipline also for it in case of war.
As for Hurtigruten not taking EVs on board, I red it! After there was a very ugly EV fire at a fast charging station. 100 amps 3 phase. Those leads and contacts are really very thick.
We helped loading a Nissan leaf here on 240 volt 10 ampere consumer fuses 1 sq millimeter material, that is safely dimensioned only for 3 ampere constant load. Leads and contacts got dangerously hot on lawful recommended plug in.
I tell everyone that for loading your car in your garage at home, get a technical 25 amp course legally mounted first.
This is an old problem. People first got mounted only for 15 and 25 watt lamplight in their houses. And then bought all the modern heavy loads one after the other still on the same old leads and contact materials. That you find burnt when you open it.
On Hurtigruten, it must be shipshape else……
Read the amperemeter, i say.
For new loading posts at the parking place they take it directly from and close to the central 15 kilovolt 3 phase input transformer.
I have seen at the community when they dig up the trenches. For more than a few steps of leads like in your home, they use 3 times thicker leads. And 15 kilovolt with isolators for the input to the transformer blocks.
3 phase 240 volt outdoor in the street was updated recently to 3 x 3/4″ spun soft aluminiumi in PVC isolation. That is fashionable and safe at last, and the net voltage is steady..
But, still, do not think in terms of electric heating under your pavement outdoor. because, that is sinful. .
Order, moderation and dicipline at the electrical installations and consumption become more and more a necessity.
Again Isay, , read the amperemeter,
Care to share a link?
No, just think of it, that will do!
And read the amperemeter.
Yes really, it seems true.
Try
Havila Kystruten stanser frakt av elbiler
Havila Kystruten seems to be a new company aside with Hurtigruten.
“Stops freight of electric vehicles “
Havila Kystruten won’t carry electric, hybrid or hydrogen-powered cars, but the other main Norwegian coastal shipping company, Hurtigruten, will continue to do so:
From Google Translate:
https://www.nrk.no/nordland/havila-kystruten-stanser-frakt-av-elbiler-i-frykt-for-brann-1.16256402
I’m not sure why I should read an ammeter. Google and Google Translate worked just fine for me.
Hr prl
Read the amperemeter, I say, how often do I have to repeat it?
Shall I also have to explain why?
Carbo: Read the amperemeter, I say, how often do I have to repeat it?
Er, it is “ammeter” in English, no matter how often you repeat “amperemeter.”
https://www.britannica.com/technology/ammeter
Why you continue to insist on idiosyncratic spellings is beyond me. It doesn’t ease communication, that’s for sure.
I’m pretty sure I know how the ammeter sitting in a box on a shelf near my computer works. I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the discussion. I can give you the definition of an ampere, too, but again, I fail to see the relevance.
@ K McKinney
regardless of your , socially & professionally historically geographically provincial mother and her silly “tounge” talkin………
……….` , grasp first that your “plain English” is as much as Englisher Platt, not at all that ideomatic and brilliant cristal clear as you have learnt that it is.
The greater the empire….. the more primitive and naive is the linguistic and philological enlightment in the imperial center and mainstreams.
You are fiercefully minulely stepped on and flattened and drillede to grasp that you are only supposed to press the buttons and maybe turn them, and never ask any questions about what is under the cowers and surfaces and your given “desktops” with labels and secret warnish, because that is betrayal of production secrets.
Not even what an ampere and what a …meter is. A speedometer,… a flowmeter…a hygrometer… a densitometer… you are to remain ignorant of what is inside those…. meters and how they actually work, and what they really are showing.
and against anyone ” alian” negroide enough who does not write and say Spee-meter Flo-meter de-meter hy- meter, you are drilled and due by routine to label: “Ideosyncratic… smile smile…”
Such manners do betray early inaugurated and minutely drilled mobster and gangster, Political Party with P- (PPP)-backglound wherever it comes in and participates to our kind help in civil life.
It is the Blood- group P you see.
And poor me if I the good old ……… Ampere- meter…. for todays consumers.
“I have no idea what point you are trying to make about ammeters and electric cars. ”
Well then, try ask someone who might know, what curfrent in apmperes has got to do with not just how fast you are driving your electric car, especially how fast you are accelerating,….. and how fast you dis- charge your batteries and get flat batteries, that is quite uncomfortable
For your next question, assume Cetane, that is C16H34 as I cannot find the formula of RP-1 jet ande rocket fuel.
Or maybe even (CH2)n as there may be alicyclic components also in those special jet fuels.
atomic weights C = 12, H= 1 thus fuelweight times 10/12 will be Carbon- weight in the fuel.
That reacts with O2 giving CO2. Carbon weight times 32/12 0r simply 8/3.
Abouth the length of the flames……. flames out of the exhaust tubes and behind special vehicles shhow how boldly and proudly they are burning away fossile fuels even without permission.
Puttler for instance in a quite frustrated situation last autumn sent up a huge flame close up to Finland, that could be seen all from there, after his Nordstream 1 and 2 was sabotaged.
On streams like that, pipelines tubes electrical leads and so on we use flow- meters to have them under good control. Wherefore thieves, rats secret gangsters and paracites, make moral propaganda against current and flow and amperemeters of any kind.
prl
as if flowmeters and due control of leaks and currents are not relevant today.
With suddenly all those electric cars, the very net kneels because people believe in the experts and give a damn to the amperemeter. They even teach that it is irrelevant and misconsceived from my side..
I just red that the US fed is down at 30 trillion US dollars in debt now.
Some years ago they were only 18 trillions in debt and had to close down the very “Fed” for a while, unable to pay the running fees for civil service.
Even NASA was shut down for a while.
Thus, I repeat……!
Did anyone see the Concorde- disaster at Le Bourget?
Permanence of charge and of matter, you see,…. and flow of the same.
Those flames were 3 times longer than the concorde itself . That plane was really thirsty. That was a current of burning kerosene fossile fuel just right out into the air. Read the fuelpump and consumption flowmeter. That is what really costs.
The first stage of Falcon Heavy carries a maximum of 123.5 tonnes of RP-1. Since RP-1 is a kerosene-like fuel, and assuming full combustion of the fuel, it’s pretty easy to work out a fairly good approximation of the amount of CO2 released by a fully-fuelled Falcon Heavy first stage burn, without reference to ammeters or flowmeters or any other kind of meter, or caring how long the exhaust flame is.
Can you do it?
A fully-fuelled Falcon Heavy first stage carries about half the fuel of a fully-fuelled Airbus 380.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make about ammeters and electric cars. I don’t drive a battery electric car, but my understanding is that electric cars generally do have an ammeter in their driver instruments, though it may not be graduated in amps.
prl
We had an old Plymuth 1938 model with…. amperemeter on the dashboard. My father explained. “Look…” he said, which means read the amperemeter.
The needle stood right up at neutral. At starting, it wiggled severely negative down to the left. But then came slowly slightly over to the positive side. “Now it is loading again..” he said
And with all lamps on and whiskers and heating on in winter to see if it still charges enough. Else you will not get started again next time in the winter.
I found a tiny ” meter” on the junkyard of that good old construction and have taken it for the boat
Because, in recent cars with carburetor engines there has been a little red lamp that lights up if you dis- charge the battery. It also entails that there is any voltage there at all.
So people have never learnt in time to read the amperemeter.
When it has started, runs and charges, that lamp shal be slighly deep red. I asked a car mechanics . Why no amperemeter anymore?
—- well you see.. people come with weak or flat flat batteries and we asked: “Have you red the Amperemeter?”
—Amperemeter,.. Hæææææ?????
—- thus now we have that little red lamp and they dive into the gas station and say: ” Doctor, a red lamp has ligted up on my dashboard, can you fix it?
In my new Yanmar boat, there is a squeek that squeeks whenever the battery is discharged. Which is irritating, so I have mounted the lamp instead. But I also have that tiny old portable +- amperemeter for mounting and control over the main battery switch.. Current is so high there that you can also have a tiny balanced magnetic needle in its quite strong magnetic field, see the Ørsted experiment.
Moral: Do not ridicule Ørsteds experiment either.
Amperewindings you see, not Ammwindings, that is only for dilettants..
Sure, if you insist. But I didn’t actually ask about what purpose ammeters have in internal combustion engined vehicles. I asked about ammeters in electric cars.
I’ve driven internal combustion cars with both ammeters and generator/alternator warning lights, and I know what they indicate.
You got the calculation of the mass ratios for carbon burning to CO2 wrong, too. The molecular weight of CO2 is 40 (12 + 2*16), not 32, so you get 40/12 (or 10/3) the mass of CO2 from burning carbon, not 32/12.
The correct English terms for current measuring devices and for magnetomotive force are ammeters and ampere-turns (or amp-turns) respectively. Ørsted’s (often Oerstead in English) law doesn’t explicitly contain winding number, but its vector integral form will correctly account for the winding number.
David Friedman’s opinion about possible future costs due to sea level rise is “most of the houses are like 10, 20 , 30, 40, 50 years old and what that suggests is that, less true obviously in Oxford and some other places, is that most houses get replaced, most buildings get replaced, within a period of as long as a century”. Verbatim from Oxford Hayek Society Jan 16, 2013 talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7pKldlZNqQ at 37:25 I saw on GooglesTubes in 2015. So that’s obviously an opinion that coastal infrastructure that’s exceeded 99 years old when sea level rise makes it unusable isn’t a cost because it’s reached its normal life expectancy. I’ve no opinion on that stuff, just remembered the video.
@ Barry E Finch says:
– David Friedman’s opinion about possible future costs due to sea level rise…
ms: — Mr. David Friedman’s opinion should urgently read (& understand) my alternative, holistic climate protection concept. This, of course, applies to anyone concerned about rising sea levels.
The most important positive effects of my holistic, alternative climate protection strategy are:
– stabilized sea level
– Less flood damage
– Better resistance to drought & low river water
– Secure food & crops and agricultural income
– Lower water prices
– Absorption of ~ 7 Kg CO2 / m³ retained water & an additional cooling capacity of 680 kWh for the soil and air in summer.
– higher cloud formation, especially in summer, and thus a higher albedo over the global land areas with a cooling effect on the global average temperature of the earth
– Less wind erosion & loss of species … and many more undisclosed benefits.
In principle, a simple, worldwide request to politics, agriculture, industry, but also to private individuals, whenever and wherever possible, to create a maximum of water reserves in order to use them generously for plant growth, evaporative cooling, cloud cover in drought periods in spring and summer.
I estimate the one-off global capital cost for this improved water management to be “only” ~$500 billion + usual annual maintenance costs(?).
Alone, the likely damage caused by rising sea levels will be many times higher in the medium term.
https://climateprotectionhardware.wordpress.com/
(please use your google translater)
BTW – You can also find there my more detailed analysis of the CERES data, EEI and the discussed increase in LW out @ TOA that you mentioned above.
That is an odd description of my argument. The point is not that SLR isn’t a cost but that it is a smaller cost than it would be if all coastal infrastructure was expected to last forever. Some coastal infrastructure will have to be replaced because of sea level rise, which is a cost, some would be replaced anyway and will be replaced a little farther inland. At least in the US case, most housing gets replaced in less than a century.
It’s relevant for the size of the cost that, taking a meter as near the high end of the IPCC estimates of SLR by the end of the century, that will shift coastlines on average by about a hundred meters — more in some places, less in others — so the total amount of infrastucture, and the total loss of land, is not very large. Rennert et. al., the article I am criticizing for coming up with much too large a cost of carbon, attributes only about one percent of the cost to SLR.
None of this, by the way, is in the piece I am asking people here to look at and critique. So far nobody seems to have done so.
DF Jan.15 “ That is an odd description of my argument. The point is not that SLR isn’t a cost but that it is a smaller cost than it would be if all coastal infrastructure was expected to last forever”.
This is an …odd description of Barry Finch’s post He DIDN’ T describe your argument as “SLR isn’t a cost.”, he merely questioned your timescale of replacement:
your most of the houses are like 10, 20 , 30, 40, 50 years old vs his “a century in Oxford”.. This might be because they are built from a different materials, but again – in my part of Canada , where the materials are like in the US – it seems more like a century than 10-50 yrs.
Furthermore, there is a difference between rebuilding a house on its original spot vs moving it to a new lot – in the latter case to your costs you have to add the value of the new ground, building new access road, new parking lot, new water, sever, gas and powerline infrastructure.
And those – may cost more than the shell of the house itself – compare the value of two similar houses in different part of a city with the only difference being the location, location location…
Finally, in many areas there may not be suitable space to move the old house to – since all the good/inexpensive grounds has already been built on. .
The majority of world infrastructure, called seaports (like Boston, NYC, San Francisco in just the USA), aren’t going anywhere. His “economic” proposition is therefore rather absurd, especially when including all the world’s natural life-giving seashores.
Also, one meter by 2100 is not the high end, it is almost laughable at this point for anyone who has read the Hansen, et al., pre-print.
KIillian
The flat earthers are ridiculous and doomed.
You better keep with the Hillbillies. They know how to moove and how to settle.
Land is rising rather rapidly here and the bedrocks are steep, so there is hardly any problem. But south in the north sea it is sinking. There they have Waterstaat and Küstenschutz.
It is the same in North America. The fastest landrising after last glaciation is northwest Hudson bay, and fastes sinking in Washington DC. You can simply read it on the geophysical maps.
Se aslso Alaska, North and south. South is rising, North is sinking.
Venesia is only slowly sinking, Napoli is allmost steady.
Amsterdam is sinking way below limits allready..
London and east anglia is sinking.
New York, Nieuv Amsterdam,… they were silly enough to set on it,…. That was not James Hansens error.
Dat Water, you see, and Hochwasser.
See also the Ganges Bramaputra delta in Bangladesh. With onland hurricanes also. That is quite a situation.
And Djakarta in Indonesia.
In Northern botnian bay they built harbours that had to be condemned only after 20 or 50 years because of rocks and stones coming up and water retreating.
In the southern Baltic sea there is the opposite situation.
Denmark is being broken up and sinking due to land sinking and sea level rising. They still hang on and struggle for life. Sothwestern Danish settlements were allready taken by storms and seas in histrorical time.
Cape Hatteras is sinking and withdrawing. Cape Kennedy seems steady and online.
The Mississippi delta and Louisianna,… what a disaster,….
The Hillbillies are pointing at you and laughing at you all the time.
DF Jan.15 “ That is an odd description of my argument. The point is not that SLR isn’t a cost but that it is a smaller cost than it would be if all coastal infrastructure was expected to last forever”.
This is an …odd description of Barry Finch’s post He DIDN’ T describe your argument as “SLR isn’t a cost.”, he merely questioned your timescale of replacement: your most of the houses are like 10, 20 , 30, 40, 50 years old vs his “a century in Oxford”…
This difference might be because they are built from a differently long-lasting materials, but again – in my part of Canada , where the materials are like in the US – it seems more like a century than 10-50 yrs.
Further, there is a difference between rebuilding a house on its original spot vs moving it to a new lot – in the latter case to your costs you have to add the value of the new ground, building new access road, new parking lot, new water, sever, gas and powerline infrastructure.
And those – may cost more than the superstructure of the house itself – compare the value of two similar houses in different part of a city with the only difference being the location, location location…
Finally, in many areas there may not be suitable space to move the old house to – since all the good/inexpensive/construction-feasible grounds has already been built on.
So the saving might not be anywhere as big as you seem to imagine.
The point about Oxford was from the quote about what I said in a talk given in Oxford, not something added by Barry.
He wrote:
” So that’s obviously an opinion that coastal infrastructure that’s exceeded 99 years old when sea level rise makes it unusable isn’t a cost because it’s reached its normal life expectancy. ”
Hence he is claiming that I said that “SLR isn’t a cost,” at least with regard to replacing coastal infrastructure. Since I didn’t say that, it is indeed an odd description of my argument.
We are not talking about replacement construction a mile away, at least outside of the Nile delta, which is the most vulnerable region I know of. For the U.S. Atlantic coast, which is the region for which I found a figure for the ratio of SLR to coastline shift, we are talking about replacement of structures a hundred or two hundred meters further inland, so not much new infrastructure is required.
Total reduction of land area available to live on from SLR is very small. My estimate is about 21,000 square kilometers for the entire world — the calculation is in a chapter draft if you want to check it.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Ideas%20I/Climate/Land%20Gained%20and%20Lost.pdf
That also has my calculation of the increase in land warm enough for human habitation due to temperature contours moving towards the poles — 10.8 million square kilometers, almost three orders of magnitude larger. So suitable space is not likely to be a problem.
David Friedman: “We are not talking about replacement construction a mile away at least outside of the Nile delta,
First, most of your housing infrastructure would have to be built new, EVEN if you moved only 100m inland – the coastal road and powerline that went along the shoreline houses will have to be rebuilt to lead to the new location, as will your power, water, seawater and gas connecting sections, as well as your driveway or garden.
MORE IMPORTANTLY – in coastal cities and towns where many of the affected houses are,
we are talking about replacement construction a mile or tens of miles, away:
the areas near the coast have been for centuries the premium real estate, so more often than not – all the good areas inland from the shoreline properties – has already been build upon as well.
I haven’t seen too many shoreline communities that are only 100 m wide, as you argument assumes, UNLESS the land behind those houses is … unsuitable for further building – a lagoon, wetland or steep rocks, SLR, by increasing water table in those, and salinating ground water would make them, if anything, even less suitable for building.
So in many (most?) cases you WON’T be able to relocate your home just 100 m inland, without tearing down the houses that are already there. Instead you will have to build from scratch miles or 1os of miles inland, BEHIND the existing coastal cities, towns and villages and at the expense of either nature or agricultural land.
In a case of small communities – instead of inland you could move further down the undeveloped shoreline – but it is probably suboptimal ( if it were as good as your current location, why did you built here and not there) and if you have to move entire shoreline community into the new location further down the shore, you would have to build new road, power lines, waste, waste, internet infrastructure leading to the new location – as well as building new connections of the new houses in the new location.
So other than savings on the house shell that has to be replaced some time in the future anyway,
I don’t see the massive “offsets” to the cost of rebuilding in a new place that you envision.
you parking driveway the conncetion to power,
David Friedman, you are neglecting something. Buildings will become unusable well before they are directly threatened by sea water lapping at the door step, because the local drainage network stops functioning properly well before then, due to water inundation. So many buildings will have to be abandoned or relocated well before their “:use by” date where the construction is worn out or obsolete. Sea level rise is going to be quite an expensive problem.
Any thoughts?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/business/china-birth-rate.html
Let’s remember folks, that China implemented the one-child policy just about 40 years ago because…. the population was rising too rapidly!
But now individuals are making the decision, not based on concern for the ecosystem or loss of species or disruption of the climate system, but yes, rational individual self-interest. And 40 years ago, having too many children was based on the same thing, because China was primarily a localized agricultural culture.
One gets the impression that neither our Loony Right, nor many on the Righteous Left, are willing to acknowledge actual “human nature”, where there is a rational response to circumstances.
The world fertility rate still exceeds the replacement rate — i.e, population continues to increase. The idea that it will halt sometime in the future is what preachers call “faith-based”.
Well, the demographic transition in some countries in the past, give a hope that it will repeat itself in most(?) other countries in the future.
My main problem is WHEN – if we want to stabilize climate in the next few decades – we can’t count on demographic transition – it will deliver too late, too little. Too late – since significant reductions in population would take many generations (China stabilized its population after several generations of reducing growth rates); too little – because stabilization of population by itself does not solve the problem – it would just stabilize the emissions at the current levels, Meaning that you can’t get to net zero emissions by demographic transition UNLESS it would have resulted in a DRAMATIC reduction in the population size.
(According to Trumpers – Bill Gates/UN have already tried it, with the COVID virus and/or vaccines … ;-) )
DW: The idea that [population growth] will halt sometime in the future is what preachers call “faith-based”.
KDM: No, it’s based on the ability to read graphs of demographic trends.
Trends–unlike prophecy, per “the preachers” at least!–are not to be considered infallible guides, of course. But AFAICT, using them for projections of future states has the best track record of any method humanity has yet devised.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/06/2019-Revision-%E2%80%93-World-Population-Growth-1700-2100-772×550.png
“Let’s remember folks, that China implemented the one-child policy just about 40 years ago because…. the population was rising too rapidly! ”
Because the government believed that the population was rising too rapidly. Your comment takes it for granted that they were correct.
Quite a lot of people in the West also believed that population was rising too rapidly, especially in poor countries, and made predictions based on that belief — that if nothing drastic was done to prevent further growth, poor countries would get poorer and hungrier. Outside of China nothing drastic was done, populations continued to grow, and poor countries got richer — still poor, but less poor than before, with quite striking declines in extreme poverty worldwide — and less hungry. Ehrlich’s predicted mass famines for the 1970’s never happened.
That is at least evidence that the Chinese government was mistaken in the beliefs that led to the one child policy.
David, I’m not privy to what the “beliefs” of China’s government were back then, as you seem to think you are. But I am simply observing that the people in China are much, much, more prosperous than the people in the countries you describe that continued to grow in population at a more rapid pace.
So, who knows, perhaps the government decided to make the transition from an agricultural economy to a globally dominant manufacturing one, and recognized that this required reducing population growth so resources could be directed towards that goal. If that’s the case, then it seems they were not mistaken at all.
And now, they are trying to promote population growth, but, as the article pointed out, the population resists this. Are you suggesting that the government is not mistaken this time, and it should enforce a draconian policy (analogous to one-child) of forced-birth from it female citizens?
The people in China got more prosperous because, after Mao died, they abandoned socialism in favor of a mixed economy, stopped preventing foreign investment, abandoned the policies that had been keeping them poor.
The people in South Korea are much more prosperous than the people in China even after that. Googling for South Korea’s population growth, I find:
“From 1960 to 2021 the population of South Korea increased from 25.01 million to 51.74 million people.” The population of Taiwan, also much better off than China, has grown about threefold since 1950.
David, actual population growth is a complex phenomenon, since death rates factor in, and the same is true for what we might define as prosperity… if you hit oil, that distorts the comparison, obviously.
You start off talking about poor countries being better off despite population growth, but “country x didn’t have a famine killing hundreds of thousands” isn’t really a useful criterion, since we have many “country y’s” that did have terrible famines.
But if you want to do a comparison, how about China with India, a more equitable pair?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-fertility-rate-vs-level-of-prosperity?xScale=linear&zoomToSelection=true&endpointsOnly=1&time=1960..latest&country=CHN~IND
Since 1960, India has tripled in population while China has doubled. Now, whether the fertility situation is the result of government policy or increased prosperity and individual agency, I don’t see how the people in those poor countries you mentioned initially would not prefer the per capita value shown for China.
Which again brings me to the actual point I was (have been) making, which is that if a human culture is in a condition of low population relative to resources available to that culture, and the individuals are free to make choices, there is no impetus for the population to begin increasing again.
And, for those who can’t do the math very well, the relationship between environmental degradation and that population/resource ratio is non-linear. (That’s for Piotr, who seems unable to grasp the obvious.)
Note: Copy and paste the entire address given to see the correct chart.
Zebra Jan 20: Which again brings me to the actual point I was (have been) making, which is that if a human culture is in a condition of low population relative to resources available to that culture, and the individuals are free to make choices, there is no impetus for the population to begin increasing again.”
So… to make your point on a human culture with low population relative to resources available to that culture”, of all countries, you chose …. China ?
Sir, it’s a privilege to watch your mind in work
Sincerely yours
“Piotr, who seem unable to grasp the obvious“
Piotr,
It does seem that you do have trouble with applied quantitative reasoning. What do you think China is building all those buildings with, and all the stuff that they are selling? Are you not aware of the Silk Road project and the fact that Chinese companies own large agribusiness enterprises in the US and elsewhere? Everyone complains about their CO2 from burning coal… is coal not a resource according to your definition?
And you still keep dodging the fact that the relationship between population and environmental degradation is non-linear. Very obvious with just a bit of thought.
zebra 21 JAN “ Piotr, It does seem that you do have trouble with applied quantitative reasoning
Zebra’s solution for the future sustainable world, is to have Earth’s population low relative to Earth’s resources. As an illustration of a:
“ human culture with LOW population size comparing to the resources available to [it]”
and thus. presumably, a model to emulate by the rest of the world, zebra chose … CHINA,
a country with a population of 1.4 BILLION, drawing massive, unsustainable, amounts of resources, both from inside and outside of the country and causing equally massive environmental degradation, inside and outside of the country.
I bow in front of Thy stupendous Applied Quantitative Reasoning. All Hail Zebra! All Hail Zebra!
Although slowing global population growth, and ultimately a shrinking global population seems potentially good environmentally, all other things being equal, whats to stop people consuming at even higher per capita rates than presently, thus negating the effect? Chinas per capita consumption has gone up as its growth has slowed.
David Friedman
“Ehrlich’s predicted mass famines for the 1970’s never happened.”
Only because things like high yielding rice and wheat crops were invented. Ehrlich is right in principle, just wrong in his timing.. Eventually the population will get large enough that it comes up against the hard resource limits of the planet and no amount of innovation will stop that. You cannot have an infinite number of humans on a finite planet.
And 8 billion people is a massive and very negative environmental footprint. More people can only make that worse. Sorry but people who defend the ever increasing size of the global population are completely deluding themselves.
That’s really wrong, Nigel.
In 1968 Paul was still in deep scientific denial about the stellar success of Norman Borlaug’s Rockefeller Foundation sponsored crop breeding and hybridization programs in Mexico. By Earth Day the Green Revolution had begun in earnest, and so great was the human impact that Borlaug received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
Poor countries survived because of large transfers from the USA and EU — food, foreign aid, military protection, etc. Look at the riots in the Arab Spring when a poor harvest in the US Midwest raised the price of grains. Or look at the effect of food shipments hindered by the Ukraine war. Whether these transfers will be sustainable in the future is not so clear –especially with the rapid depletion of phosphate reserves in most places other than Morocco.
Zebra: Jan 17: One gets the impression that neither our Loony Right, nor many on the Righteous Left, are willing to acknowledge actual “human nature”, where there is a rational response to circumstances.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, for inventing the wheel (the mechanisms behind demographic transition) and for having bravely triumphed over your imaginary opponents (the Loony Right and the Righteous Left). And your insight that people respond to their circumstances – whau. Who would have thought ?
Concerning possible artifacts of weather/climate models: While looking at my local weather situation this morning, I find a large disparity between two different high resolution models. One gives me 2 inches (5cm) of snow in the next 48 hours. The other gives me 7 inches (18 cm). The lower resolution version of the first model agrees with its hi-res counterpart. In this case, the difference appears to lie in model physics and paramaterization. The storm tracks are similar, but the precipitation is heavier in the second model, and more is in the form of snow rather than freezing rain.
Looking ahead 228 hours, the control run (16 km resolution) of the ECMWF gives me a 2m temperature of -22C, but the high resolution 8 km run gives me -3C. That’s quite a powerful butterfly! In the real world, some of this disparity could arise from snow cover. For example, 5cm might melt by then and allow warmer temperatures, but 18 cm would keep us quite a bit colder.
When looking as such disparities as a forecaster, I don’t always know what to pick. I can attempt to adjust for model bias, but sometimes even biased models are right. Higher resolution models aren’t always more accurate, either. Ensemble forecasts give me a nice statistical average, but they will almost certainly underestimate the anomaly for a high-impact event. A large disparity between models, or a model forecast of extreme conditions, serves as a warning to look at the situation closely, and continue to examine it for causes and possible model errors.
The same general principles apply to climate modeling. If an extreme climate event shows up as model physics are adjusted or resolution is increased, should I believe it? It might be a quirk of the model, or it might be that an important climate effect is coming into resolution. Averaging through it dilutes the anomaly. It also amounts to ignoring the possibility of an extreme event. Averages are a lot more stable, and you will avoid “crying wolf.” That will help your credibility, unless you wait until the wolf is at your door.
That is why probalistic forecasts should be used alongside deterministic forecasts, so the uncertainty can be seen. This is why we have things like hurricane landfall probabilities alongside the deterministic hurricane track forecast.
Re: John Pollack. Jan (17) – I am not sure about “ the same principle applies“. Weather models seem to me much more vulnerable to your butterfly effect than the climate models. Weather depends on complex, nonlinear, interactions of unpredictable variables. Change their outcome ever so slightly, and a weather system goes to slightly to the left or instead to the right, and you end up with a very different weather.
Climate is about long term averages – where most of the weather’s fluctuations cancel each other out, so what’s left is a model with relatively smaller random nonlinear fluctuations and bigger role of the deterministic rules of thermodynamics.
Gavin was showing outcomes of groups of climate models. Yes, there were differences between them – but nothing of the scale of your weather model differences.
Yes, there may be spatial resolution issue – as you go from lower resolution to higher resolution and can ask yourself if the new thing I see was missed by the low-res climate models, or maybe it’s an artifact of overdetermined high-res climate model.
But the weather models have that AND their bigger vulnerability to the butterfly effect on top of that. Unless going to a higher resolution, would somehow reduced this vulnerability.
Piotr, climate is about more than long term averages. It is also about the occurrence of extreme events. For example, let’s say that the maximum expected 50-year wind speed from a tropical cyclone rises from 200 km/hr to 225 km/hr at a particular location. This would have a very tiny effect on the average wind speed, but it would have a very large effect on expected storm surges, and ought to influence how houses are constructed in that area.
In the case of my snowstorm, the 5cm model came close. Much of the precipitation fell as sleet (ice pellets) or rain as the temperature hovered near freezing, and a shallow warm layer above the surface melted the snow that fell from higher aloft. A big ice storm was narrowly averted. Big ice storms are rare in our area, but they can cause huge damage to infrastructure. Climate models that can come close on the frequency of rare, high-impact events are needed. This goes beyond the ability to correctly diagnose averages.
John Pollack Jan 20: “climate is about more than long term averages. It is also about the occurrence of extreme events”
My definition, and the lower unpredictability due averaging out random fluctuations, may still apply, since in the climate context we would talk not about individual events, but their long-term averages – average frequency of their occurrence, average path or location, average strength.
But perhaps I should ask first – can you even see the extreme events in climate models and if yes – how trustworthy would be these models with respect to extreme event vs. say, temperature?
Piotr Jan 21 ” can you even see the extreme events in climate models and if yes – how trustworthy would be these models with respect to extreme event vs. say, temperature?”
It depends on the extreme you are looking at. Temperature extremes are most often generated by large-scale weather patterns that can be captured fairly well by climate models, so that meaningful statistics can be generated. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9
Tropical cyclones are smaller scale, but meaningful results are still possible:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2777
To get to smaller scale atmospheric features, such as severe thunderstorms, you can use a statistical downscaling approach which identifies precursor larger scale patterns likely to produce severe weather.
To get a better idea of how trustworthy the results are, hindcasting must be part of the effort. At least you can see how well your models and procedures have been able to reproduce the statistics of past events. (On an independent data set in the case of statistical downscaling)
I don’t see how you can expect to get a long term frequency of occurrence for extreme events without generating those individual events in your model(s) and then counting them.
John Pollack:”I don’t see how you can expect to get a long term frequency of occurrence for extreme events without generating those individual events in your model(s) and then counting them.”
I didn’t expect that. In fact because i have expected the opposite, the need to have individual events generated – I digressed asking whether is even possible to generate these events within the models’ spatial (grid size) and temporal (time-step in models that have to run over decades if not centuries) constraints.
If you say that it is possible, then this closes this digression for me, and we can get back to
my point, that if climate is less unpredictable than weather thanks to averaging out individual fluctuations of individual weather event, then the same would apply to models – climate models that look for averages should be less vulnerable to unpredictability = because they average out the differences between the individual events, which are the goal of weather models.
There’s a technical point about the SLR, mentioned but not quantified by Stefan in a talk, in that the coast line SLR during storm surges exceeds global SLR (and I suppose regional SLR out in the ocean many kilometres) due to sea-bed friction. A higher portion that’s further from the sea bed. I’ll not be pondering that effect myself, just taking Stefan as correct. I assume tides are far too slow for that effect except at the few “tidal bore” places or chicanes in general. Then there’s the “tipping point” thing with the obvious being those subway entrances, but needs a global coastline good-sampling assessment because anecdote is worthless. I just mention in case somebody wants to find out whether sea-bed friction effect and any similar does affect the standard 100:1 horizontal:vertical ratio substantively, or not.
Can you explain the mechanics of that effect? I would think that any effects of seabed friction would apply both before and after SLR, so why would they affect the difference?
@Ned thank you again for continuing the conversation and providing further references.
I finally watched the entire video and read the 2010 article. Good to see a more nuanced and realistic assessment of our (limited wisdom) Sapiens species, as driven both by biological and sociocultural factors. However, what it’s not good to see is Rees’ skepticism that humanity will change timely and effectively to a sustainable system. And I strongly disagree that knowledge does not matter enough to make an impact. If it were true, there would not be constant efforts to suppress and distort it. See the latest research about Exxon’s climate scientists, which were excellent, by the way. If it were true, why would he bother to research and publish his work? Knowledge should be pursued for impact, positive impact on humanity and all life, not per se.
On the conversation with Nate, I would say it’s very interesting and intellectually rewarding, but about 20 years too late. At this point in time, we need to talk all the time about how (solutions) and make them real. They get to some talk about how, but Rees criticizes one of the most obvious: renewable energy. It does not have to be true that we will substitute the current and growing fossil energy system with renewables, we will do that while drastically reducing consumption. Instead of suggesting that governments eliminate fossil fuels subsidies, he criticizes RE subsidies. He is wrong. This is one the most effective solutions to reduce our overshoot.
Of course, I completely agree with his criticism of economics and economists, 90% of them are ignorant, as in they don’t know anything and refuse to know about the bio-physical reality that makes our existence possible and pretty much are in the business of storytelling, justifying a certain ideology, mathematizing the impossible or just plain speculation, the latter in order to pretend their field is science. The very fact that we need to qualify economics with “ecological” and create a different and unfortunately marginal branch of economics is proof that mainstream economics, one of the mots impactful socio-cultural factors leading us to overshoot and multiple major crises, has to be abandoned. As I said before, many young economists are doing just that. Next we need to work on politicians, primarily on how and whom we elect to represent us and a sustainable way of living.
I wish he did not say that we will not change. Do we need more despair? I don’t want young people to despair, I want them to make that change, I want to help them succeed.
I suggest “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst” by Robert M. Sapolsky for a much deeper and reliable knowledge about how the human brain works and expresses itself in human behavior. I will have to read it many more times to understand it better, but this my guiding neuroscience in choosing to believe that enough of us or rather the young generation will stop us from self-destruction.
Solutions: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSNoMN/TOC-NoMiracles.pdf
SLA: Of course, I completely agree with his criticism of economics and economists, 90% of them are ignorant, as in they don’t know anything and refuse to know about the bio-physical reality that makes our existence possible and pretty much are in the business of storytelling, justifying a certain ideology, mathematizing the impossible or just plain speculation, the latter in order to pretend their field is science.
BPL: You sound like a creationist talking about biologists. Economics is very much an empirical science, with a number of solid triumphs of understanding to its credit. Don’t criticize what you’ve never studied.
Hr Levenson
I believe less and less in the unity of learnings. Formerly, I did believe very much in it.
But having seen the differences and discrepancies not to speak of “cognitive dissonance” as is told of the climate dispute and sheere cultural collisions between traditions learnings and schools, I must draw my conclusions and make that another study of tribal and etno-psychology and civil proxy- wars based in traditional snobbish class and racial – struggle.
Basic frames of reference, units and coordinate- systems and EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS
(=desktop experiments in the laboratories and classrooms to tell people for life what it actually is about)
Well before they can think for themselves,..
…. and lacks of the same…..
….. is quite often making the great difference between “schools”, Tribes, classes, and nations.
Even for economy.
If the portemonnaise, the piggy bank, the personal bank account input output and flow debet and credit and the red line…..
( = all EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS to be experienced personally first)
….is not DOGMA- tic and paradigmatic axiomatic first and you call that “economy”, then you have it.
Then there will be cognitive dissonance and cultural co0llisions.
Just see what happenhed here when I recommended people to read the amperemeter when driving an electric car.
The very basic archetype of energy and electricity current and battery charge at what costs…. and what causes it, is not observed EXPERIMENTALLY at an early enough age for the aspirands. .
No wonder, why the US federal depts, the US$. – CASSAMANCO is down at 30 * 10E 12 now.
I heard such rumors from Kasakhstan and from Belarus in the nineties explained as “You see, eastern Europe never went through the western european renaissance and never learnt what an account and a budget is about”
But I was not quite aware until recently that the same rules for the United States also now.
SALDO-CONTO-DEBET-CREDIT- NOTA- CASSAMANCO…. is all italian renaissance terms you see, and not understood everywhere..
See also QVÆSTOR and REVISOR.
Gavin et al.,
Where can I find a recent scheme for the radiative properties of high, middle, and low clouds? I mean A, R, T (absorptance, reflectance, transmittance) in both shortwave and longwave. The latest I can track down on Google Scholar is Beck 1979, and that one goes back to Manabe and Wetherald 1967. Someone has to have produced a more up to date table since then.
Study just published in PNAS finds “further evidence for high-impact climate change over the next three decades”:
Data-driven predictions of the time remaining until critical global warming thresholds are reached
Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Elizabeth A. Barnes
Significance: The United Nations Paris Agreement aims to hold global warming well below 2 °C and pursue 1.5 °C. Given the clear evidence for accelerating climate impacts, the time remaining until these global thresholds are reached is a topic of considerable interest. We use machine learning methods to make truly out-of-sample predictions of that timing, based on the spatial pattern of historical temperature observations. Our results confirm that global warming is already on the verge of crossing the 1.5 °C threshold, even if the climate forcing pathway is substantially reduced in the near-term. Our predictions also suggest that even with substantial greenhouse gas mitigation, there is still a possibility of failing to hold global warming below the 2 °C threshold.
Abstract: Leveraging artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained on climate model output, we use the spatial pattern of historical temperature observations to predict the time until critical global warming thresholds are reached. Although no observations are used during the training, validation, or testing, the ANNs accurately predict the timing of historical global warming from maps of historical annual temperature. The central estimate for the 1.5 °C global warming threshold is between 2033 and 2035, including a ±1σ range of 2028 to 2039 in the Intermediate (SSP2-4.5) climate forcing scenario, consistent with previous assessments. However, our data-driven approach also suggests a substantial probability of exceeding the 2 °C threshold even in the Low (SSP1-2.6) climate forcing scenario. While there are limitations to our approach, our results suggest a higher likelihood of reaching 2 °C in the Low scenario than indicated in some previous assessments—though the possibility that 2 °C could be avoided is not ruled out. Explainable AI methods reveal that the ANNs focus on particular geographic regions to predict the time until the global threshold is reached. Our framework provides a unique, data-driven approach for quantifying the signal of climate change in historical observations and for constraining the uncertainty in climate model projections. Given the substantial existing evidence of accelerating risks to natural and human systems at 1.5 °C and 2 °C, our results provide further evidence for high-impact climate change over the next three decades.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2207183120
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/world/global-warming-critical-threshold-climate-intl/index.html
Lies have been told, well, forever, but particularly on this site for about 7 years. They are told by those holding to what has been and must not continue to be; by those who contribute nothing new to the march of humanity and, particularly, to the solution set we need to survive the future we have backed ourselves into; by those without the imagination to consider data in such a way as to move beyond a blinkered view that what is best is always found in the exact middle of the array of options.
These lies include repetitions of narrow-minded, uninformed Hobbesian assumptions that how humans act now is how they always have, i.e., brutish, selfish. They claim “human nature” is that which we see from the exemplars of the “modern”, i.e. industrialized, over-crowded, massively complex, uncertain, disconnected society that covers most of the planet in waste.
These lies also claim nothing has been provided to support a different view, an objective view, an educated view, a non-bigoted view of what it means to be human drawn from societies that to this day live in harmony with the rest of Nature. This is the most egregious of the lies because it not only misleads all who read this forum, but also seeks to use the Ad Hom to bring into question anything posted that refutes the bigotry of the Hobbesians. This is a sad, broken tactic, and all the more so because we simply do not have time for the lies, to correct them, to reeducate those taken in by them. Time is up.
Even on Madagascar, one of the most biologically diverse, and still *relatively* unspoiled places on the planet (not my words, as you will see), we have seen a high percentage of extinctions and new estimates that 50% of all mammalian species there are at risk of extinction. If it is that bad there, it is far worse in most other areas of the planet that are neary completely and/or completely spoiled.
It is too late to listen to people saying we can’t risk any big changes, that only the middle can hold – even though the “middle way” is demonstrably maladaptive, i.e. sui-homicidal.
So, what are humans really like when integrated with Nature? Not like Hobbes’ fevered imagination.
https://anthroecologycom.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/reply-to-singh/
Consider Prof. Bartlett’s microbes in a jar and ask yourselves, how close to 12 are we? Madagascar’s imminent mammalian extinctions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/10/madagascar-unique-wildlife-extinction-aoe
I have often criticized Economics as voodoo. Because it is. It is early philosophy and psychology dressed up as a science and painted with gaudy numbers to make it seem legit. Steve Keen, the best economist on the planet, gets this. He understands, and understood at 18, the inherent crazy assumptions and contradictions of neo-classical Economics. The aburdities are obvious when you consider N-C Economics doen’t include the planet at all; not its functions, not its limits, nor money, finance, banking, etc.
Economies must be thought and managed, like Nature, i.e. trophic flows: https://anthroecologycom.wordpress.com/2020/09/24/economies-are-trophic-flows/
Stop listening to lies and absurdities. The knowledge you need to understand the true nature of humanity, of how to live within the ecosystem and even enhance it, to rapidly and safely simplify to avoid Hansen, et al.’s warning of 4 or 5C by 2100, exist. They HAVE been shared here. Repeatedly.
Dishonesty has no place in public discourse. Shun those who speak that way. Before it’s too late.
UAH is reporting a TLT anomaly for Jan 2023 at -0.04ºC,this a drop on the Dec 2022 anomaly of +0.05ºC and the lowest monthly anomaly since April 2021 and before that since Aug 2014. Yet this may be a second month where a drop in the TLT anomaly is not matched by a drop in the SAT anomaly. That is, the Dec 2022 TLT anomalies dropped quite markedly while conversely the Dec 2022 SAT anomalies saw a rise on the November values. Indications from an early reanalysis (CFSR) shows Jan 2023 pretty-much unchanged from Dec 2022.
Wind and Solar Were EU’s Top Electricity Source In 2022 For First Time Ever.
Good news indeed, in context. Thanks, Steve!
Helped by the exceptional summer when 40C was reached in the UK for the first time:
https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-summer-2022-europes-hottest-record
The problem is it goes the other way sometimes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/sse-says-low-wind-dry-conditions-hit-renewable-energy-generation.html
There needs to be a means to make up the shortfall when blocked weather patterns (which seem to happen a lot these days) impart unfavourable weather conditions for weeks across a large area.