This month’s open thread for climate related topics. Please be constructive, polite, and succinct.
Reader Interactions
160 Responses to "Unforced variations: Feb 2023"
Killiansays
Adam Lea says
20 Jan 2023 at 5:38 AM
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.
Your defensiveness in lieu of addressing anything I said does not bode well for this conversation. It was not a Straw Man; I have never come across anyone using the term “development” or “sustainable development” that then went on to describe a regenerative system.
You used the term, it has a meaning in today’s common parlance, and that meaning does not align with regenerative systems. You are free to bullet point a list of 5 to 10 things that would define a regenerative form of development. I would be more than happy to applaud that and give credit where due.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Fellow space travelers, I hope 2023 is treating you right. Speaking of space travelers, did anyone get a good look at the green comet?
To help offset the carbon emissions of the 1,040 private jets (link below) which the elites took to and from Davos, perhaps we eat can lower on the food chain this year. No doubt they were eating the finest beef and lobster.
To this goal, I was wondering if some of you would be willing to share your favorite bug recipes, let us know where food quality bugs can be obtained, how to cook them, etc. Please, everyone, share your favorite bug recipes so we can reduce our carbon footprints and save the planet.
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Happy to promote this blog, as we need real solutions to ignorance:
Manchin and Cruz are correct. The government lied in the report claiming the stoves were a health hazard. Tens of millions of homes have used them for a century or longer with no health problems so it is proven that they are in fact safe. The biggest obstacle to getting rid of gas stoves isn’t politicians, it is the 100 million or so people who use one to cook their food every day! :)
For many people, replacing a gas stove with electric might be expensive if they don’t have the required electrical circuit available. Checked contractor prices lately? It’s worse than going to a medical specialist!
Don Williamssays
In my opinion, this posing by a few hurts the mitigation cause more than it helps it — by giving millions of voters the impression that environmentalists are deceitful, calculating advocates who abuse government power. Using fake excuses of “health concerns” to promote the agendas of their billionaire patrons. Arrogant people who insult our intelligence.
Many places in the USA have regulations re ventilation hoods. And do these philosopher kings think we are too stupid to crack a window?
nigeljsays
Nonsense. A simple google search shows gas stoves are a significant health hazard, with plenty of reputable sources like Scientific American. You really do inhabit some alternative universe of alternative facts. At best its deliberate ignorance. Please stop spreading your bullshit and misinformation.
Don Williamssays
Claptrap. Any open flame is a hazard if you burn it in an enclosed space with no ventilation — which is the condition the alarmist papers are assuming. But that is not a “significant health hazard “–that is Darwin in action. I have seen no papers claiming gas stoves are a hazard if used with ventilation.
Children with asthma can be “linked” to a lot of things. My niece had to be rushed to the hospital just because she smelled an air fragance in a restaurant’s bathroom. Yet she was not triggered by my gas stove, heating furnance or hot water heater.
Again, grossly exaggerated rhetoric discredits a political movement to the average voter. One could claim that passing a Tesla going in the opposite direction is a “significant health hazard” — are we supposed to ban electric cars?
nigeljsays
Don Williams. You say the dangers of gas stoves are not a health hazard provided you have good ventilation, and you provided a New York Times article in support of your contention.
The article you linked to listed 21 toxic pollutants from burning gas, including a carcinogen. It did say nitrous oxides can be kept within safe levels by good ventilation, but it didn’t discuss the other pollutants specifically, and only said that ventilation would “lower your risk.” This does not mean ventilation eliminates or even adequately reduces the risks. There tends to be no safe limit with carcinogens, or its incredibly low levels of the pollutant.
Anyone that inhabits the real world can see that many people wont ventilate properly or dont have the money for ventilation systems or building larger windows. This is just one reason of many why it would be good to go electric. These things add up together. However going electric will cost money, and so IMO low income people should get help with a state subsidy or something similar.
Sooner or later we need to transition away from gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially where its easily feasible, and gas cooking is a prime example of something that can be changed reasonably easily. And you get at least SOME additional health benefits. Replacing gas heaters with electric heat pumps can also have dramatically lower running costs, depending on where you live.
Chucksays
Don Williams says
5 FEB 2023 AT 1:58 PM
I liked you better when you were singing County music.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Clown, a worldwide experiment using hundreds of millions of gas appliances, by hundreds of millions of people for a century, says otherwise; but believe what you want. You can trust the government; ask an Indian.
nigeljsays
KIA. So because something has been used for a long time makes it safe? LOL. What complete drivel. Tobacco was used for a long time and it was presumed to be safe, until it was shown otherwise!
Nicotiana tabacum L. and N. rusica L is Emperor Montesumas revenge!.
I repeat…!
They came and raped his very empire and stole his gold.
But in the west indies they knew the tobacco allthough smoking something else. And said “look here, that is what we smoke, would you also have a puff? it cures anything!”
Thus it was propagated and sold further back in the old world.
It is hardly any psycyhedelicum or euphoricum orv centralo stimulant as often falsely advocated and pr9opagated, ” I`d run a mile for a Camel..!”
it only cures and settles its own very strong abstinence- symptoms. You get willing to run a mile for it.
Thus extreemly addictive.
And with enough side effects to ruin peoples individual and social health.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus.
“it only cures and settles its own very strong abstinence- symptoms. You get willing to run a mile for it.”
Very true. As a past tobacco smoker I certainly know this. In fact the nicotine tricks us into thinking we need it to function, or even survive, and it was some careful thought about that that enabled me to give up. I haven’t smoked in over 22 years years now.
Yes. Einstein was a heavy tobacco pipe smoker, and Churchill allways had a cigar. Fidel Castro quite often a big Havana.
But , what about repairments fror ones involuntary exposure to works of science and litterature produced under the influence of other addictive and psychotropic substances such as fossile fueling?
Mr. Know it Allsays
Scientific American is a magazine. It is not a science organization. Most journalists are some of the most left-biased folks on the planet.
nigeljsays
Your unsubstantiated claims and ad hominems mean nothing. I can give you 100 sources that say the same things! Just google the issue. Read the published science if you prefer.
Why you defend the indefensible all the time is beyond me.
That is a poor argument, Dr. Knowitall. It does not take membership in any corporative organization to be scientific.
Many unqualified people thought so in Adolphs Germania for instance and further in the late SSSR including also its dominions. It mooved even weaki minds in the remote provinces outside of the dominions to believe the same, they also joined the fameous grand old Party with P to secure their “scientific” careers and rents.
Such peculiar beliefs ruined and ruins the value and the credibility and common access to scientific knowledge everywhere.
KIA: Manchin and Cruz are correct. The government lied in the report claiming the stoves were a health hazard. Tens of millions of homes have used them for a century or longer with no health problems so it is proven that they are in fact safe.
BPL: Nonsense. Natural gas stoves can go wrong and give off carbon monoxide; it has happened to OUR stove more than once. Don’t parade your ignorance in public.
Don Williamssays
You can buy a CO monitor/alarm for a few dollars and should have one in your home even if you don’t have a gas range.
I have no problem with people honestly and openly arguing the climate change threat of natural gas . I object to some political hacks in Washington thinking they are being so clever to covertly promote an agenda by making up a bull%$t narrative of “you’re killing the children”. Propaganda that insults the intelligence alienates neutral voters more that it recruits them– and discredits innocent partners in the environmentalist movement via “guilt by association”.
“”If you ventilate, you can dramatically reduce the emission down to levels that are very unlikely to cause substantial harm,” said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital.”
Mr. Know It Allsays
Agree with the need to have a CO monitor – better yet have 2 or 3 in case one fails. Ventilation would reduce pollutant concentrations, but it isn’t even needed for most home situations. I suspect only a small fraction of homes turn on fans when they use the gas stove. Homes are fairly large enclosures – that probably helps keep concentrations down, and they all do have SOME infiltration.
In the US, it is frequently cold during deer hunting season. Hunters get cold waiting for Bambi, and head back to deer camp to warm up. They take the round out of the rifle chamber, get in the truck camper or trailer, crank up the heat, and put a pot of coffee or other beverage on the gas stove to warm up. That’s in a confined space with no ventilation in most cases. Millions of hunters do this every day of deer season, and they do not suffer ill effects. The camper would be using propane in most cases, not NG.
So, the worldwide experiment using gas cooking appliances appears to confirm near total safety even in small enclosures like campers.
Chucksays
Gas stoves are a complete distraction to hide the fact that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Drop it.
Adam Leasays
That is not a convincing argument. There are many appliances that can be dangerous if they develop a fault. Electrical devices can catch fire for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmmmzLIMxsQ
I will struggle to be convinced that my gas hob which is used for about 10 minutes at a time, emits a blue flame signifying complete combustion (i.e. minimal CO) and is used with the windows open and vent fan on (because steaming vegetables releases a lot of water vapour which I would rather vent outside) is going to have a significant detrimental impact on my health.
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Odd statement, Adam, you just gave a presentation on climate and could not have missed to show that methane is a GHG, with higher GWP than CO2. Its concentration growth is currently steep, as fossil fueled interests put us on the so called transition to net zero through the “cleaner” methane.
Heating with combustables 9is quite an art in any case, as I allways have to tell my wife, and she gets it.
Rather to my surprice, Normal women seem to be especially talented for it in any case, as if they were selected for it during the last 4 million years, Entailing that women who were not so talented at the stoves and fires were not worthy of impregnating either, during all those years.
Electricity in comparision has got advantages and…. disadvantages for many purposes.
I better heat up and blast with wood and charcoal if I have to weld over an iron.or commit bronse hard solder with borax. where gasflames are too small and weak. . For heating and ventilation, a flush on the good stove is also most efficient.
But todays consumer electricity has been carefully made fool- proof! Thus better suited for fools. That explains rather why.
Because, it has not allways been so . Early electrics was quite dangerous, and took a quite cunning electrician to be safely handled .
Combustion is still not quite foolproof. But no- one shall tell me that a brand new Tesla is foolproof either.
“We nave a new underground railway tunnel here, the longest and most expensive in Europe with speeds up to 250 Km/h . What first went wrong and did cost another state fortune was the very tunnel electric leads that had to be changed. and openings of it delayed for months.
So, they still havent quite learnt electricity either. It surely aint not quite foolproof yet.
Ray Ladburysays
Could we perhaps dispense with the sexist Just-S0 stories justifying the segregation of women to the kitchen?
There is a minority of people among us who are able to fight officially and plolitically any kind of di- morphism between masculinum and femininum, and who even term any conscepts of di- morphism for “sexism”.
They do probably belong rather strictly isolated and sexually segregated in Monastries to better find themselves and possibly get to their human rights there.
Under strict supervision and control also. It is the old traditional and probbly more healthy arrangement.
They are hardly the more normal population of normal diversity. And should thus not be our owners, officers and teachers either. .
There is more to know . about it and quite important. I have cared to know such things for my own safety..
Carbon allways burns to CO2 in any case first. C+ O2 -> CO2, you see.
But then at higher temperatures, a further chemical reaction takes place if there is more hot carbon there. CO2 + C -> 2CO
That higher temperature is seen as high orange to yellow hot, That is to be seen and known because you have no thermometer at hand there.
But the moral is that red hot glowing coal or carbon is hardly daqngerous. That gives off CO2 only, even by low ventilation. But that CO2 gas must then not be able to react further with yellow hot blasted and glowing coal. That fameous CO is called ” blast furnace gas”. That you see easily if you have a furnace and blow into it Blue flames of burning CO is showing up at the top.
Then you can think and deduce and judge for yourswelf the possible conditions for exhaust gases containing CO. and how to avoid it. A good “afterburner” where more air is let in, will help for it . And that a wide open furnace with red hot cokes or charcoal that is not blasted, being well down in the red temperatures all the way, that is safe.
There is a lot more possible poisoneous also when you begin blasting in a furnace. Salt and sand into it for instance may give quite severe heavy metal chloride vapours. Heavy metal chlorides are “volatile”. An efficient way of killing the chimney sweeper and the firemen.
Moral again, : Order in the stoves and in the furnaces!
We get the best notes from the chimney sweeper here. That is the ideal.
Think of mercury lead cadmium zink copper even silisium- and thorium- chlorides and smokes. A burnt out house or car or boat can be really ugly. But a well kept and moderate campfire is nice and pleasant.
Judge it by the heat temperature colours first of all.
The bue and even green gasflames are low molecular free carbon radicals in rapid reaction. with O2.
And we may well understand how CO can form in a combustion engine and in a closed metal funnel burner without afterburner. I have seen even acetylene H-CC-H being formed experimentally and shown in the exhaust gas..
at white hot you even have C + H2O-> CO + H2.
prlsays
In Canberra, where I live, no gas connections will be made to any new homes as of 1 Jan this year, and the city gas supply is due to be shut down in 2045.
This is primarily motivated by greenhouse gas emissions reduction, not by health effects of gas stoves, though there has been media attention to the health effects of gas stoves recently.
I myself think that making our entire life support system totally dependent upon the electrical grid will be a “substantial health hazard”. That would be our ability to cook, to boil polluted water, to heat our homes in winter and to drive our cars to transport groceries and supplies. Plus transport of supplies/food into our cities and first responder transport (police, fire, medical ambulances).
That would be an electrical grid that could be collapsed by a North Korean nuclear EMP or a solar Carrington Event. For some reason, no one is discussing that.
Climate Change is supposed to be an existential threat that requires the cooperation of all nations to fix. So why are we rebooting Cold War 2.0 with China and Russia and embarking on a nuclear arms race that will divert $Trillions needed for a transition to renewable energy? A war that has made Russia into a firm ally of China and is driving them to support nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
The most hypocritical toads of all are American evangelists like you. Victimizing the perpetrators has always been a very popular and recurrent US strategy.
HUHHH – Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — we have to go in there.
A lot of blood for little oil – I would say.
The war in Ukraine is a proxy war that is actually being waged by criminal American oligarchs, Exxon Mobil & Co against Russian Gazprom mafiosi.
Oddly enough, the tombstones (if there are any) almost always carry Ukrainian or Chechen names.
The quicker the US gets its ass out of the region, the quicker the conflict will calm down.
However, I myself assume that some particularly greedy American brain strategists have long been bathing their thoughts in the oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
Just ask Hunter Biden (Joe Biden’s son) what he was up to in Ukraine 10 years ago – and why your orange-colored idiot calls Zelenskyj and blackmails him to investigate Hunter. The USA is anything but a victim.
nigeljsays
Macias Shurly
“The war in Ukraine is a proxy war that is actually being waged by criminal American oligarchs, Exxon Mobil & Co against Russian Gazprom mafiosi.”
Please provide some hard evidence! You sound like a classic conspiracy theorist. Just because America sometimes does self interested stupid stuff like invading Iraq, does not mean America or its oligarchs is behind every evil perpetrated in the world.
Hard evidence is mostly unsuitable for convincing waxy pears and naive minds.
You always get soft evidence when you ask yourself who makes money from a war and assume that such wars don’t just fall out of the sky.
Do not commit proxy wars here. Strawmen, we call it. There is silliness and supersticion enough around here.
When you loose in your wars and missions, do not blame it like a German 0r a Puttler on your victims. Maybe your blood is not quite pure or clean.
Mr. Know It Allsays
That EMP could be delivered via a “weather” balloon, too! Was that a test run we saw last week? Are the globalists planning something to stop our emissions? Hmmmmm……. We need new conspiracy theories because all of the old conspiracy theories turned out to be true!
John Pollacksays
Such as the old conspiracy theory that the Earth is really flat, and the “globalists” are covering it up?
Dansays
“That EMP could be delivered via a “weather” balloon, too! Was that a test run we saw last week?”
Oh, like the (at least) three “test runs” that occurred while your orange messiah was in office, completely ignored them, and did not do a thing about them so as not to upset his buddy in China what with all the money Ivanka was making from there, right? lol!
Mr. Know it Allsays
Dan laughable quote: “Oh, like the (at least) three “test runs” that occurred while your orange messiah was in office,……”
Wow! Where do you get your news? ALL Trump WH officials denied that there were any balloons during his tenure. And many of those officials have TDS almost as bad as you do, so that’s essentially proof it did not happen. When Trump-hater John Bolton says it didn’t happen, it it didn’t happen – I’m surprised he didn’t lie about it to libel Trump, just like you did.
nigeljsays
KIA
There were in fact at least three suspicious weather balloons during the Trump presidency. At least some people in the Trump administration knew about them.
KIA: What benefit do “we” gain from the Ukraine war?
BPL: We defend a democracy from a conqueror.
KIA: Is “the big guy” getting his 10% cut from the sale of arms to Ukraine? That would be a mountain of cash – a real nice benefit – and cash is green, so it’s environmentally friendly. That’s a possibility
BPL: That’s a possibility if you’re a complete fucking idiot with an axe to grind. It’s more of a scurrilous accusation from someone with no morals.
Don Williamssays
1) US Climate Change Czar John Kerry acknowledged last year that Cold War 2.0 is damaging the effort to reduce CO2 emissions and halt global warming:
“In an address to a US think tank, Mr Kerry said Russia and China were not doing enough to scrap dirty fuels like coal and oil, hurting efforts to hold global warming at less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“The differences of opinion between our countries have been hardened, and sharpened, and that makes the diplomacy more complicated,” Mr Kerry said at an online event hosted by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development.
“If climate becomes one of the tools, one of the weapons in the bilateral back-and-forth, we’re cooked. We’re in serious trouble.”
2) NATO in Ukraine is an obvious threat to Russia –with stealth platforms and nukes on her doorstep enabling a surprise attack on her major cities and ICBMs sites a short distance away. We need Russia’s cooperation to deal with climate change, given her massive fossil fuel deposits. So why has Washington been trying to add Ukraine to NATO since 2008? What benefit do we gain from Ukraine that justifies a 4 degree rise in global temperatures?
NATO in Ukraine is an obvious threat to Russia –with stealth platforms and nukes on her doorstep enabling a surprise attack on her major cities and ICBMs sites a short distance away.
No. Most NATO states do not have nukes, let alone ICBMs. And Poland, which is a NATO state, is far closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg than Ukraine is, anyway.
Interestingly, Poland doesn’t currently host any nuclear weapons–although Putin’s war caused Poland to request that some be moved there, apparently:
“The request from the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, is widely seen as symbolic, as moving nuclear warheads closer to Russia would make them more vulnerable and less militarily useful, according to experts.”
All the way ’round, your argument is bogus.
nigeljsays
Don Williams. In my view if NATO disbanded or the Ukraine didn’t join NATO, it just might make Russia slightly more cooperative on the climate issue, and lead to stronger mitigation policies – but not much, because 1) Russia is a very northerly country which has some things to gain with a warming climate, and 2) Russia is a big fossil fuel exporter, and 3) Russia is a very conservative country distrustful of western science.
So theres nothing significant to gain by changing NATO and quite a lot to loose, because it would give Russia a green light to invade more countries. Not saying Americas foreign policies have been perfect, but just trying to be objective about it all.
JCMsays
“What benefit do we gain from Ukraine that justifies a 4 degree rise in global temperatures?”
There is a deep sickness which exists here on the pages of realclimate.
Don Williamssays
@ Kevin McKinney : “Poland, which is a NATO state, is far closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg than Ukraine is, anyway.”
Don:
1) I suggest you look at a map – Poland’s east border is 929 km from Moscow, Ukraine’s is only 459 km.
2) Re St Petersburg , a better example would be NATO member Estonia – which is only 146 km from St Petersburg. Biden has deployed stealth F35s to Estonia.
Gallery: American F-35 fighter jets arrive at Estonia’s Ämari Air Base | News | ERR
That might be of interest to Putin since F35s have a combat radius of 1240 km and can carry the B61 nuclear bomb. B61 Yield is 50 kt but its extreme accuracy makes its effective yield greater than a 335 kt warhead from our Minuteman ICBM. (Blast pressure drops as the cube of distance – e.g, to have the same blast pressure at twice a distance requires a yield 8 times greater. )
3) Consider also Russia’s western ICBM sites:
Kozelsk (20+ SS-27 ICBMs): 241 km from Ukraine, 800 km from Poland
Tatishchevo: ( 60 SS-27): 472 km from Ukraine, 1517 km from Poland
Teykovo: (36 SS-27): 778 km from Ukraine, 1240 km from Poland
Vypolsovo: (9 SS-27, 9 SS-25): 623 km from Ukraine, 774 km from Poland
Yoshkar-Ola (27 SS-27): 965 km from Ukraine, 1582 km from Poland
4) An interesting question is why have the NY Times and Washington Post not revealed the above info to their readers – and its destructive effect on climate change diplomacy — while campaigning loudly for a massive reduction in US carbon emissions.
5) Countries surging their manufacturing for war don’t restrain carbon emissions.
Don Williamssays
@ Nigelj re Russia’s motivation to cooperate on climate change
1) Before Ukraine, Russia had strong reasons to cooperate with John Kerry. Melting Permafrost in her northern regions is collapsing infrastructure (although Russia stands to benefit in agriculture and the Northeast passage from warming.)
Most importantly, climate change may drive a massive Chinese invasion into a warming eastern Siberia if southern China becomes uninhabitable. Russia and China have clashed on the Amur River in the past.
2) But those motivations are now gone — we have made Russia into a firm ally of China. A huge strategic gift,
3) The meme of an expansionist Russia heading toward to the English Channel always seemed like claptrap to me. Look at her population, GDP, conventional military power — a small fraction of NATOs.. Russia’s only power is her 6000 nukes — which are now protecting China’s while China races to increase her 350 nukes to match the 5400 we possess. Which means both China and Russia can dismiss John Kerry’s demands (appeals ?) for cooperation.
IF Washington really thinks climate change is a deadly threat, its actions make no sense.
zebrasays
I think I mentioned here a quote from Putin that one of his motivations for the aggression was that “the West” was moving too rapidly to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
And I’ve pointed out many times here that thinking we would get to a very low level of CO2 emissions in 20-30 years was completely unrealistic because that was being opposed by Russia and Saudi in particular… countries that were willing to use nerve agent and dismemberment against political opponents, and, obviously, interfere in our elections.
The actual “threat” to Russia from Ukraine being integrated into Europe was political, not military, because the economic and societal benefits would make a sharp contrast with conditions in Russia. (Assuming that corruption would be cleaned up and so on; the last election was at least a start in that direction.)
So the relevance to the climate topic here, as I’ve suggested in the past, is how to deal with the producers of FF and their efforts to keep at it. China, as I pointed out below, is perhaps less of a problem if the population predictions are borne out.
Ray Ladburysays
Don Williams, So, let’s turn this around–why do you think Ukraine (or Sweden or Finland) wants to join NATO. Could it perhaps be that they have a large neighbor on their border that is currently suffering the death spasms of end-stage kleptocracy? If Russia had wanted to facilitate the end of NATO, all it would have had to do was guarantee the territorial and political sovereignty of its neighbors. NATO would have withered.
But kleptocracies by their very nature cannot live within their borders. They live by plunder, always finding now frontiers to loot and new people to enslave. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine counts as one of the most serious geopolitical self-inflicted wounds since Napolean tried to march the opposite direction.
The other thing about kleptocracies–the only time they tell the truth is when they are threatening you. That is when you need to believe the dictator. Russia’s promises on climate are as meaningless as the grantees of territorial integrity they gave to Ukraine when the latter surrendered its nukes.
We cannot save climate by throwing democracy under the bus. We cannot save climate by throwing the poor under the bus. A solution that benefits only a few is not a solution that will last.
Mr. Know It Alsays
What benefit do “we” gain from the Ukraine war? Is “the big guy” getting his 10% cut from the sale of arms to Ukraine? That would be a mountain of cash – a real nice benefit – and cash is green, so it’s environmentally friendly. That’s a possibility. :)
Also, Hunter was allegedly paying “the big guy” $50K rent on his house while making $50K to $83K (depends on the source) for sitting on the Burisma board. That would be a nice benefit too!
4 degree rise ain’t nothin’ when the world elites goal is to get world population down to a total of 0.5 billion. 4 degrees might help them achieve their goal, right?
Hmmm….that war is starting to make sense. I told ya we needed new conspiracy theories! :)
Here’s another one: remember those “conspiracy theories” about that Pizza parlor that the left said were false? Why do you think we haven’t seen Ms. Maxwell’s client list that she is going to spend 20 years in the big house over? Does it make sense that the person who arranged for clients to do their dirty deeds to underage girls gets 20 years and we don’t know any of the names of those who did the dirty deeds? Nope. Maybe those Pizza parlor conspiracy theories were TRUE?
Uh-oh!
:)
nigeljsays
Don Williams,
“I myself think that making our entire life support system totally dependent upon the electrical grid will be a “substantial health hazard”. That would be our ability to cook, to boil polluted water, to heat our homes in winter and to drive our cars to transport groceries and supplies. Plus transport of supplies/food into our cities and first responder transport (police, fire, medical ambulances).That would be an electrical grid that could be collapsed by a North Korean nuclear EMP or a solar Carrington Event. For some reason, no one is discussing that. ”
We are already reliant on the electrical systems susceptible to EMP attacks. For example our cars have engine management compters vulnerable to an EMP, attack, gas supplies are contolled by electronics, etc,etc.
And we have no alternative in going further electrifying everything, because in addition to to the climate issue we will run out of fossil fuels sooner or later, and burning biomass at scale as a substitute isn’t feasible.
We probably have to accept we will be very reliant on electricity and find ways to mitigate risks. Stored electrical power would help get us through some types of emergencies. A decentralised grid relying on local generation or rooftop solar would mitigate some types of risk. Perhaps we have a two tier system where part of the economy is powered directly by electricity and part by synthetic fuels created with electricty. These could also be stored. Perhaps automobiles should have a default system where they can still function in basic mode without high level vulnerable electronics.
Don Williamssays
@NigelJ
1) There is a difference between being partially dependent upon the electrical grid and being 100% dependent. We see that today when the power goes down for a week in some areas due to ice storms dropping trees onto power lines. We hop in our gasoline cars and run to the supermarket. Our supermarkets are stocked because diesel-powered trains and trucks bring massive supplies into our cities every day. We cook on our gas stoves by candlelight.
2) The projected effects of climate change on the USA pale in comparison to what we would suffer if the grid went down while we were 100% dependent. The last time I checked, our gasoline automobiles are not disabled by EMP. EMP’s effects depend upon the length of the antenna – and our power grid has many antennas hundreds of miles long. No grid -> no EV transport.
3) Climate change impacts also pale in comparison to those of even a limited nuclear war between the USA and Russia/China.
4) To see what has been lost, look at this Reuters report from April 2021:
5) I think the argument we are spreading democracy in Ukraine is utter claptrap. We don’t have democracy here in the USA – we have a deeply corrupt oligarchy where the wealth/income goes to a few while the majority are poor and suffer what they must. Where our national debate consists of deeply misleading narratives broadcast by a few news corporations tightly controlled by a few hundred billionaires. “News” which doesn’t post the facts I posted above – or note that Russia has been invaded by France, Germany, UK and the USA in the past. A Supreme Court that says billionaires have to right to buy as many Congressmen as they want.
6) The situation is even worse with China
nigeljsays
Don Williams.
Yes there is a difference between being partially and fully dependent on the electricity grid although that is rather obvious. However I pointed out that ultimately it is going to be hard to avoid being fully reliant on electricity as the primary energy source, because of not just the climate issue but running out of fossil fuels (simplifying for the sake of brevity). You have ignored this.
And I also suggested some options for mitigating the problems. Again you have ignored these. They would help us get through shortages of electricity from temporary failures of generation system for example.
Remember if there’s a huge nuclear war, not only does this potentially disable the electricity system it disables the petrol delivery system! At best people might have a tank of petrol to get through a week. It will be more challenging with EV’s that are charged frequently, but we could mitigate that with emergency battery storage at home. And personally I’m a fan of PHEV vehicles that can run on electricity or petrol or biofuels or synthetic fuels.
Regarding your point 5 about the Ukraine. Firstly I do share some of your scepticism about Americas foreign policy motives, and its past foreign policy history (the very unjustified invasion of Iraq) and the power of oligarchs. A good book is “Blowback: The costs and consequences of American Empire.
HOWEVER the fact is Russia is no saint and invaded the Ukraine for no defensible reason! And I would say Putin is fixated on taking back all the old Soviet Union countries. Ignoring the invasion of Ukraine is just inhumane and would send a green light to China over Taiwan. I agree more with Ray Ladbury’s views on the Ukraine / Russia issue than I do with yours.
And in regard to your other comments about Russia having concerns about permafrost melting and Chinese climate refugees. Yes those are fair points, but I’m just still not persuaded that Putin would do much about mitigating the climate problem regardless of the Ukraine issue. He would likely settle with just adaptation, and defending his borders against climate refugees. The man clearly has that sort of mentality.
Don Williamssays
@NigelJ
1) I too disagree with Macias—because Macias didn’t mention Chevron. Chevron and Exxon together have invested $Billions to grab the oil and gas in Russia-Iran’s Caspian Sea.
2) Also, when Obama’s Asst Secretary of State Vicky Nuland boasted in Washington of dumping $5 billion into Ukraine for political subversion to overthrow an elected government – I mean, to spread democracy – the sign behind her said “Chevron”. Which, by the way, is not in Texas but in San Francisco.
3) That would be the Vicky Nuland who expressed deep respect for our NATO allies with the phrase “Fu*%k the EU” – when someone suggested the EU might question her handpicking Ukraine’s leadership , including deciding which leaders would be left out on the street.
4) Turkmenistan has enormous gas deposits and a pipeline run from her under the Caspian Sea and plugged into the Ukraine network from Turkey via a Black Sea pipeline could displace Russia as EU’s gas energy source – worth about $ 56 Billion a year. Figure out how to run the oil there and you’re talking an additional $93 billion /year.
5) Of course, that would not be enough to justify risking 400 US cities and 70% of the US population to nuclear extermination. Only the massive fossil fuel deposits of Russia herself would be worth that gamble.
6) The Ukrainians are expecting Great White Father in Washington will rebuild their devastated country. For free. They might want to check with our esteemed Iraqi and Afghan allies for how that will work out.
7) Fortunately, President Biden recently announced in his SOTU speech that we are going to close down Big Oil, reject their tens of $millions in campaign donations and Go Green.
Oh Wait — why are the Republicans clapping?
nigeljsays
Don Williams. Interesting links, but all the link on Chevron shows is an American multi national buying and building oil related assets in Kazakhstan. They would obviously have the permission of Khazikstans government. These multi national guys play hard ball, but that doesn’t make them criminals. What laws have they broken? Russian companies play the exact same game. Meh.
@Don Williams says: – ” I too disagree with Macias – ”
ms: — Sorry Don Williams – I was talking about American criminals, Exxon Mobile & Co.
If you don’t want to classify Chevron among the American criminals – then feel free to use the “Co” .
C – stands for Chevron and o – for Oll Other motherearthfu*%kers.
Anyway, thanks for the links and the hope-inspiring reference to Vicky Nuland.
I didn’t even know her before. Could you please let her know that I’m standing here with my pants down on the street in the middle of the EU – waiting for her.
…and more irrelevant and unpleasant tosh. Whatever.
zebrasays
I was going to (and will) make a comment about China’s population, but I just read something that challenges even my supposedly good visualization of complex physical systems. I haven’t been to the mountains for a long time now, due to getting dinged up there a while back, but supposedly the tropopause is going to drop below the summit of Mt Washington in NH! Maybe John Pollack or someone clued in to this stuff could elaborate on what sounds really nutty to me? It’s hard, but it isn’t Everest.
I’ve been knocked around by the wind in the mountains, but I don’t recall ever having to breathe ozone while experiencing it. What’s the mechanism???
John Pollacksays
The tropopause claim is an exaggeration, although conditions are quite extreme in northern New England and adjacent Canada tonight. The main polar vortex, centered on the average near the north pole, has been split into two sub-vortices for most of the winter. These have been mostly located over northern Canada and Siberia.
The Canadian vortex has intensified and moved southeast the past week or so. It is now very intense and centered over southeast Quebec. The air in the vortex is very cold aloft as well as at the surface. Because cold air is denser, this makes the troposphere shallow, and the stratosphere descends to unusually low elevations. Most of the tropopause heights I see this evening in the vortex are around 6000 meters, which is quite low. There is one weather balloon site in southeast Ontario (CWMW, Maniwaki) depicting a sounding with a tropopause indicated at 4135 m, 600 mb pressure. It would need verification, because the sounding program uses a fairly simple algorithm to come up with a tropopause. It’s not obvious at a glance, at least to me, that the little temperature bump at that level is actually the tropopause. At any rate, that’s exceptionally low, but well above the summit of Mt. Washington at a little under 2000 m.
Ozone would not be the biggest problem at Mt. Washington tonight in any case. Last I checked, their temperature was holding steady at -43C (-45F) with a steady wind around 90 mph, gusting up to 120 mph. I wouldn’t want the heat bill at the observatory, and I hope their furnace is working well. Their record low is -46C/-50F, so this sort of thing has happened before. Probably not recently, though.
Piotrsays
John Pollack: There is one weather balloon site in southeast Ontario (CWMW, Maniwaki) depicting a sounding with a tropopause indicated at 4135 m, 600 mb pressure.
Perhaps that’s the reason the Chinese send their big balloon over North America. They just wanted to investigate that interesting weather phenomenon! ;-)
zebrasays
Thanks John et al. This was from the Washington Post, which is pretty good on the weather stuff:
Even more impressive was the fact that Mount Washington, by some accounts, protruded into the stratosphere — the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Ordinarily located more than 20,000 feet above the ground even in the dead of winter, the stratosphere “folded” down in a series of bunched-up pinches. One of them helped tug a filament of the stratosphere low enough that the summit of the 6,288-foot mountain poked into it. That said, the summit did not record a noticeably dramatic uptick in ozone, which would be the case if the stratosphere fully descended to that level.
NERD ALERT…the atmospheric heights will be SO LOW tonight, anyone living above 4,000 ft or so (hello top of Mount Washington) will be in a different atmospheric layer entirely, the stratosphere! This layer is typically 4-12 miles up, but tonight it will be less than a mile! pic.twitter.com/6l6BjE05ZW
— Terry Eliasen (@TerryWBZ) February 3, 2023
Sorry I didn’t fully quote it originally; I was off to do something else. But “folds”? Still puzzled.
John Pollacksays
Thanks for the clarification, Zebra. The “fold” stuff helps me.
What they are referring to is that in a system with a vigorous jet stream, layers of stratospheric air can get folded in between tropospheric air, as if in making a giant layered pastry. However, the evidence doesn’t support this for Mt. Washington, IMHO. It’s true that the closest soundings to the north had an adiabatic lapse rate up to 790 or 800 mb,, with clearly tropospheric air below that level. Above was an almost isothermal layer that was somewhat drier, conceivably derived at least partially from the stratosphere.
The pressure level at the top of Mt. Washington was probably something like 770 mb then. (00-06 UTC Feb. 4). However, what makes me think they never saw the stratosphere was their observation record. They reported either zero or 1/16 mile (100 m) visibility in freezing fog and blowing snow until 7 am local time. Thus, they weren’t in dry stratospheric air, but very cold, high rh tropospheric air that had been subjected to adiabatic lift over the top of the mountain. i.e. They were in a cloud. By the time they broke out of the low cloud, the low pressure system was centered far to the north, and nearby soundings indicated that the tropopause had risen several thousand meters. There was still a mid layer of clouds above them, which also would have been tropospheric air.
So, not only didn’t Mt. Washington not “record a noticeably dramatic uptick in ozone” during the time in question, they never saw a noticeable downtick in humidity, which would have manifested as an abrupt increase in the visibility. That only came after 12 UTC Feb. 4, when the core of the system was well past, and temperatures were rising.
zebrasays
Makes more sense… their original use of tropopause had me visualizing a really extreme dip over a very large area.
Layers of atmosphere in the mountains is hardly unusual; I’ve climbed through rainclouds to a beautiful clear sky, and I’ve woken up to a beautiful clear (and bitterly cold) sky, and found an ice storm on the way down…. which isn’t quite so uplifting.
Anyway, I will excuse the somewhat hyperbolic language of the writers, who, as I said, usually do a pretty good job dealing with weather and climate.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Don’t know the mechanism, but I recommend not being on Mt. Washington tonight, as it may break low temperature records:
It looks like the Mt. Washington low temperature was -43.7 C = -46.6 F. Not quite as cold as the modern record, and a few degrees off from -50F in 1885.
Funny how even extreme cold spells seldom break the old records. Looks like an underlying warming trend.
Mr. Know it Allsays
Yup, 2 data points prove a climate trend, right? :)
Wanna try again?
jgnfldsays
True in isolation but still consistent with much other data. So yes, indeed a relevant comment even if not “proof’. Of course you do know there is no such thing as “proof” EVER when making inferences. Even in pure experimental situations. So consistent with theory is always nice to see,
As well, one could also ask how many extreme new warm records have been set in the equivalent time span. If it’s substantially more than two, one might start doing nonparametric tests like any good actuary would when asked to analyze extreme data.
Why don’t you wait until records are actually broken, instead of just posting whatever extreme forecasts you can dig up in advance of the event? When it comes to low temperature records, they are more often wrong than right.
Ray Ladburysays
What you’re looking at is pretty standard behavior for an extreme-value problem. Basically, if it is possible for the record to be broken (probability to the left or right of previous extreme is nonzero), the record will be broken. The more extreme the record, the longer it will take, but it will happen. Extreme values don’t give you much info about what is happening in the peak of the distribution where we live most of the time.
Kevin,
what zebra is talking: the tropopause is going to drop below the summit of Mt Washington is a local weather. Your had been rising consistently for 40 years is a (hemispheric) <climate.
The former, unless repeated again and again, and over many regions within NH – has very little on the latter.
John Pollacksays
No, it doesn’t make sense that the tropopause would descend to the summit of Mt. Washington, at a little lower than 2000 m. It does make sense that a low tropopause would be found in the middle of a strong, cold-core polar low.
I’m distinguishing weather from climate. Yes, the tropopause has been rising in general.
nigeljsays
Could global warming cause a rising tropopause overall, but also a more chaotic tropopause that occasionally descends more frequently or further than in the past ?
John Pollacksays
It’s conceivable, but it would be going against the primary trend. The energy that allows stratospheric air to descend in a localized region ultimately derives from the temperature gradient between the polar latitudes and the tropics, which intensifies jet streams. That temperature gradient is decreasing as polar amplification continues with AGW.
Low tropopause events accompany eddies of the polar vortex, intense jet streams, and outbreaks of very cold air into mid latitudes. One possible mechanism for bringing more of these events to populated mid latitudes is warming subpolar oceans with decreasing ice cover. The increased transfer of heat from the oceans could facilitate a split polar vortex, with several subvortices forming over high latitude land areas where colder air can be sustained through radiation. These subvortices are closer to mid latitudes than a vortex centered near the pole. This could facilitate more frequent cold outbreaks where they will be noticed.
That said, weather history suggests that this tendency for winters with frequent mid latitude cold outbreaks is a recurring pattern. This happened over North America in the 1930s, and again in the 1970s to early 1980s. In most cases, the temperatures recorded during those outbreaks were colder and of greater duration than currently. Earlier records were even more severe, with many set in the 1880s and 1890s. (That includes Mt. Washington.)
Killiansays
Why Exponents Matter:
This is not a topic uknown to this group, but I have used the analogy of the eternal mouse eating a ball of cheese the size of Jupiter. I have not been able to get an actual calculation for that. I had to scale it all the way down to the size of the Empire State Building. The answer shocked me. I thought I had a fair grasp of the differentials over time with the exponential function but WOW!
330,000,000 kgs
7.5 grams/day/mouse
If one mouse were to eat 330,000,000 kgs of food, it would take that person: 330,000,000 kg * 1000 g/kg = 330,000,000,000 g of food, and at 7.5 g of food per day, it would take the mouse:
330,000,000,000 g / 7.5 g/day = 44,000,000,000 days or approximately 119,028 years to eat all of the food.
44 billion days. 119k years.
But if our mouse has a spouse and keep filling up the house?
330,000,000,000 g
330,000,000,000 g / 7.5 g/person/day = 44,000,000,000 people
Population doubling: 44 billion people: log2(44,000,000,000) = log2(2^x) = x x = approx. 34.3.
So it would take approximately 34.3 days for the population to double and reach 44 billion mice, and consume 330,000,000 kgs of food.
34 days vs. 119k years!
Wow.
And so we see the drain on resources that an 8B to 10B shift can have on the viability of the planet. We go from needing 5.56 B kgs. to 6.7 B kgs., or around 20% more. And, that estimate of non-industrial food seems spot-on: industrial ag produces 1.94B kgs of food for people for a need of 5.56B kgs. which means non-industrial food is producing 66 to 67%. And that’s why we don’t need industrial ag – besides it being incredibly destructive, of course.
Anywho… exponents! Dr. Bartlett was right and his microbes and/or yeast are a perfect analogy for our foolishness.
We are Eternal Mice.
prlsays
Welcome to the world of the Wheat and chessboard problem, which was first recorded as recently as 1256CE.
I usually illustrate it with an easier to visualize example than mice eating a Jupiter-worth of cheese.
“If, as Richman wants, humans are not subject to carrying capacity, then we should be able to grow as long as we wanted: let’s assume population of 8 bln, growth rate of 0.84% per year, and average weight of a human of 62kg.
So the current weight of humanity is 0.5 bln ton.
Let’s calculate how much would all humanity weigh at the current 0.84% per year growth rate:
-in 3,600 yrs from now – as much as the Earth
– in 5,100 yrs from now – as much as the Sun
– in 11,800 yrs from now – as much as the observable Universe
Even small difference in the growth rate would make a big difference – 2.1% from around 1960 would shorten the time scale greatly!
Most species last between 1 mln and 10 mln yrs …
Yet the economists, politicians and religious leaders can’t see the end of GROWTH.
Then again – try to get elected on the promise of 0% increase in GDP.
Killiansays
I chose the thing I did because it is conceivable. Your time frames don’t fit human realities. 34 years does. It’s not Saturn, btw, it’s the Empire State Building. I chose a consumption analogy because that is the core problem.
Yes, politicians, activists, economists – even scientists, still don’t get it. Just look at Mann’s prescriptions for climate, et al.: Utter nonsense, based on the same consumptive foolishness. Just goes to show expertise in one field does not qualify one for expertise in another; one must actually study any field in which they wish to be competent. Mann, and many other climate scientists, economists, etc., are far from competent in the fields of mitigation and adaptation – i.e. regenerative systems.
Another large supersticion is that of GDP and its growth, even its relevance and healthiness.
Think of a factory A, whoose only product is to pollute a river. Then downstream , you make up another factory B, whoose only product is to clean up that river again. A and B will then contribute to the GDP. And it will take some oil, LNG, or electricity. You can even elctrify it and be very proud of that.
But, is it worth it? What is it good for more than increasing the GDP?
And how much industries of that sort is allready in the GDP?
We have a very acute discussion here. Our neighbour has got electrical heating under their outdoor pavement, and my wife has told me for years to do the same. But I say NO!.
Because, it is most sinful to burn away electric energy in large resistors.
Secondly, because it is not traditional here. We shuffle snow and we stray with sand or we even run and walk and slide on the ices. Walk barefoot and walk and even slide like a penguin, that is the safest way on ice.
Yesterday our youngest son showed us a new method. A set of spikes in very fine galosche type rubber shoes to take on and off. That is also traditional Horses allways went with spikes in the winter, and iron spikes were sold for human shoes. Showeling and sand is the very best. Conscdiousness, feeling, and awareness in your hind paws is also very educative.. The penguins do that allready. .
Adam Leasays
This somewhat reminds me of a TV documentary I saw a long time ago called the science of decay.
It showed a setup of a house with food and drink laid out as if there was a large social gathering about to happen, so lots of food like a spit roast, sandwitches, chichen breasts, and drink. A few house flies were released into the house and the house was sealed so the flies were in a self contained environment and left to their own devices. The objective was to demonstrate decay (food in this case) over a period of time (weeks).
The starting point was a handful of flies and an abundance of resources (food and drink), maybe not dissimilar to the human population on Earth just after the last ice age. The flies began breeding and multiplying in numbers and consuming the food and drink at a rapid (exponential) rate, a bit like what humans have been doing over the last few thousand years. What ultimately happened is virtually all the food was consumed and the flies, with nothing left to eat, died, hundreds of them. The bottle of wine that was left out on a table was full of dead flies when it was tipped upside down. This is analagous to the road humanity is heading down, and makes me think sometimes that humans, despite their self claimed intelligence, aren’t any more intelligent than much simpler life forms in some ways.
nigeljsays
The cheese analogy seems ok to me. Exponential human population growth has clearly created 8 billion humans and thus enormous pressure on the natural environment and the planets resources. The demographic transition will very likely stop the exponential population growth later this century which will be helpful.
The problem is growth in GDP and GDP per capita (which is a good proxy for per capita consumption) ALSO looks exponential, and with no obvious sign of slowing or stopping. It might take severe materials shortages to force this consumption to slow and stop. When gdp / consumption does slow and fall you can get reduced quality of life, a demand contraction, unemployment and pain, and the harder and faster you go into reverse gear the worse this will be.
The only plausible solution I can see is to deliberately reduce GDP / consumption fairly slowly so the system can wind down in a fairly orderly way, but plan it so its still fast enough to avoid coming up against the hard limits of the resource system abruptly. The problem is getting people to embrace even that doesnt look too hopeful ( as Piotr alludes to). I suspect humanity is in for a rather rough landing.
Adam Leasays
“When gdp / consumption does slow and fall you can get reduced quality of life, a demand contraction, unemployment and pain”
Welcome to the UK. Things are getting bad enough here that warm banks have sprung up to assist with the rapid rise in cost of energy and a couple of potent cold spells so far this winter:
So, why don’t you just say, “What Killian. et al., have been saying since I started using this site has turned out to be accurate,” rather than acting as if this is a thought you had all on your own?
Piotrsays
Killian: “why don’t you just say, “What Killian. et al., have been saying since I started using this site has turned out to be accurate,” rather than acting as if this is a thought you had all on your own?”
Yes, Nigel, why don’t you? Remember – the Gods are … surprisingly insecure, and demand constant validation from their flock. Remember Arachne, after she refused to give the Athena due credit for having taught her how to weave so beautifully? Or the poor schmock who was collecting sticks for a fire on the day devoted to praising God?
So why don’t you admit that without the Killian you would have never “thought all on your own” that exponential growth of GDP cannot last forever? Who, but the Killian, knew???
Because the rest doesn’t sound much like Killian – he is the Big Idea guy, one who sees the Promised Land (of Regenerative Agriculture), but leaves the worries of how to get there to the pedestrian minds like ours.
It’s the Devil who is in the details, and the Devil – Killian is not.
nigeljsays
Killian. I’ve always accepted that population and economic growth are exponential and are a problem, going back before I ever heard of you or this website. I’ve never once claimed they are my own original thoughts. I’ve disagreed on some of your SOLUTIONS to the problems.
You have repeatedly contested the second half of my post above thread anyway, so how can you say its repeating your thoughts? If you are saying that. Who would know.
I totally acknowledge you have posted some original thoughts like regenerative governance. If that makes you feel better.
.
Killiansays
Stop lying. The thought of simplification – you never, literally ever, get the point, as you did not here; even a dog might understand exponents, and when have I ever said you denied exponents? – has always been anathema to you. Don’t lie. Don’t Straw Man. Don’t try to B.S.
We know you. You are consistent: You are dishonest.
Now shush.
nigeljsays
Killian. Lying about what? There’s nothing dishonest in my comments. The rest of what you said is incomprehensible. Its certainly not evidence of lying.
If a dog could understand exponents why the need for the elaborate analogy? My point was you appeared to be implying I needed you to understand exponential growth and its coming up against limits, and you are very wrong about that. If you were implying something else who the hell cares anyway.
Piotr had roughly the same reaction to your comments that I did. Maybe theres small chance that might tell you something.
nigeljsays
Killian, regarding simplification. You appear to be implying that my comments above thread on economic growth needing to eventually stop and consumption fall endorse your views on simplification. No they dont.. Material you have posted and supported proposed massive 90% cuts in consumption of energy and industrial goods in the next 20 years ideally. I have repeatedly said this looks much too ambitious, much too fast, and and not plausible.
Killiansays
Shush, nigel. You can’t be honest. That makes your commenting here useless. You have always kept the same mantra: We can’t simplify, people won’t, and I don’t care if we have no choice; the end of civilization is preferable to your caveman existence.”
I paraphrase, but accurately (the caveman reference is something youy actually said). You do not, will not, consider anything but the Capitalist nonsense that got us where we are regardless how bogus the logic of that stance.
As I said, do humanity a favor and never speak on these things ever again.
K: Shush, nigel. You can’t be honest. That makes your commenting here useless.
BPL: Not as useless as your constant, whiny attacks on everybody who disagrees with you over the least little thing. This blog would have been a lot more productive and more enjoyable without you in it.
Richard Creagersays
killian- ok, let’s all join in. i ask every k-fatigued rc reader to join me in spirit as i hereby state that “what killian et al have been saying since i started using this site has turned out to be acccurate,”
further, we repent for our negligence in not continually acknowledging your priority as first identifier of all truth related to potential responses to climate change, and every other topic you have or might in future declaim upon. satisfied? now will you please get your lithium level checked? thanks.
Killiansays
Grow up. These are serious issues, and that was beyond childish – it’s suicidally stupid.
Like nigel, you never add to any thread I start nor respond with anything but venom to anything I say. You are the very definition of biased. Your fear of reality is palpable.
Shush.
zebrasays
The Ladies On Strike
There were a couple of articles in NYT that I wanted to reference, and a paper cited in one:
Like her, millions of young women have been collectively spurning motherhood in a so-called birth strike.
A 2022 survey found that more women than men — 65 percent versus 48 percent — don’t want children. They’re doubling down by avoiding matrimony (and its conventional pressures) altogether. The other term in South Korea for birth strike is “marriage strike.”
The trend is killing South Korea. For three years in a row, the country has recorded the lowest fertility rate in the world, with women of reproductive age having fewer than one child on average.
2.
By the end of the century, China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by India.
The news has been met with gloom and doom, often framed as the start of China’s inexorable decline and, more broadly, the harbinger of a demographic and economic time bomb that will strain the world’s capacity to support aging populations….
Median U.N. projections point to global population peaking in the mid-2080s at more than 10 billion, but if fertility rates continue to drop, the decline could begin decades earlier….
But the alarmist warnings are often simplistic and premature. The glass is at least half full. Shrinking populations are usually part of a natural, inevitable process, and rather than focus excessively on concerns like labor shortages and pension support, we need to look at the brighter spots for our world.
So yes, “it’s complicated”. But I thought the China case would be good way to illustrate my proposition that the relationship between population and environmental degradation is non-linear.
We are always hearing, depending on which political pole is talking, that “China is building coal plants!” or “China is building solar!” or “China is building nuclear!”. All true in my understanding. But if the projection on population is correct, what will they be building in the future?
It seems obvious to me that at some point, with a declining population, choices would be made. And in this, as in many other areas of consumption, the environmentally destructive (fossil fuels) would be the first to be abandoned. But the choice is not based on “saving the planet” in the long term, it is based on economics (and short-term environmental benefits as well.) Why would you bother with the messy business of mining or importing coal if you don’t have to rapidly increase capacity, but rather wind it down? Non-linear effect.
I’ll leave it there for the moment but I would argue that this reasoning applies to the silly gas stove “debate” and topics like regenerative agriculture. If you have a declining population, it completely changes the paradigm.
Killiansays
Population will not fall anywhere near fast enough. It will take till well past 2100 to reduce consumption anywhere near enough to reduce consumption to the necessary level. We also don’t have the resources, per Mills, Michaux and others, for even one generation of FF replacement, so population decline would have to be massive over the next 30 years, not the next 150. You need to stop beating this poor dead horse; falling population is simply not a solution to the short-term risk even though it is necessary long-term.
nigeljsays
Killian
“We also don’t have the resources, per Mills, Michaux and others, for even one generation of FF replacement,”
Do you mean Mark Mills? . He has been debunked here:
He has connections to right wing think tanks. Why you would take him seriously is baffling.
Do you mean Simon P. Michaux? His views have not been published in a peer reviewed journal to my knowledge. Other properly published researchers have a different view eg Jacobsen.
If the energy transition does prove difficult, we will have to get by with less energy which is your ultimate goal anyway! Your anti renewables position is bordering on being fanatical zealotry.
Copernicus ERA5 has reported for Jan 2023 with a global SAT anomaly of +0.25ºC, just a little down on the Dec anomaly of +0.27ºC (while UAH TLT anomaly saw a big drop). It’s the 7th warmest Jan on record (behind 2020, 2016, 2017, 2007, 2019 & 2022 and just pipping 2021 & 2018 for 7th spot.
Jack Devanneysays
I find the barcharts comparing model trends with the various data sets very useful.
Could we show a few statistics like model mean on the figures?
Killiansays
Next time you have to deal with a climate denier saying the ecosystem is too large for us to affect it, maybe use this parallel (trigger warning):
I had a guy on Clubhouse pull that we can’t possibly affect the planet nonsense. It made me try to think of a suitable analogy. I found one. We’ve all seen the spy biting down on the cyanide capsule, right? Almost instantly dead? (Apparently, it takes a lot longer than in the movies…?)
The math: Cyanide: 0.3632 grams or 0.0008 pounds can kill a 160 lb. person, or 0.000005% of the person’s body weight.
By contrast, CO2 is 0.4% of the atmosphere, or 80,000x as much atmospheric CO2 as it would take cyanide to kill a 160 lb. person, or about what I would weigh if I were currently at a healthy weight.
I guess we should wish we lived in an Everything, Everywhere, All At Once universe where cyanide was our only problem! It’s so much safer than our current load of CO2 is to our planet!
FYI.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus
What Party do you mean? I ask because the grand old Party is Americas Republican Party, which leans to the right ( very stridently in recent years). The Soviet Union Communist Party leaned to the left (although it was a perversion of left leaning views). So these are not one and the same thing.
Or do you just mean any Party of authoritarian or doctrinaire tendencies? Or just any political party at all? I can understand why people get cynical about poliitics.
By “flat earther” I assume you mean stubborn egotistical scientific cranks. Every community has a few. of those. They seem to come from all sides of politics left and right dont they?.
Some of the climate science deniers are scientific cranks, but not all. Some of the deniers seem to be drived by vested business interests, some just seem to dislike having to change their lifestyles, and some seem to have libertarian leaning or small government leaning politicial motives. Based on their comments I have read on websites. I doubt we could reduce the denialism to just one motive or category of people.
I only state it as scratching as possible also for those who really need to grasp it and get ashamed of themselves.
As one denialism seems to correlate rather strongly to fameous next ones, I tend to believe that it is a matter of basic character, that is genetically inherited more or less, that can be strengthened or mildened socially, especially by edeucation.
Protestantism and individualism is needed in any society,but it must be educated and cultivated like anything else that is more or less talented..
Let`s say that denialism is natural protestantism perverted and astray.
Piotrsays
I think you may have dropped one zero – CO2 is 0.04% of atm. (per volume).
I have been using the cyanide example for decades, although not to “the ecosystem is too large for us to affect it“, but to the more specific: “CO2 at 0.04% has much too low concentration to affect the climate“.
Another version of that is: “What’s the current ~ 1C human greenhouse effect compared to the natural one ~ 32C (?) – this one I dispatch with: “Katrina storm surge was only ~ 8 m, compared to the 3,700m of average ocean depth – so the good people of New Orleans had nothing to worry about, right?”
Another version still: “Ice melt in any given year is “only 0.00…… %” of the total volume of ice” – that’s like saying: the amount of water in the storm surge along the seawalls of New Orleans will be ONLY 0.00000.. % of the 1.35 billion km3 of the ocean volume, so the people of New Orleans can sleep soundly.
A slightly more refined myth – “ 98%of GH effect is due to water vapour so why are we obsessed with CO2” – Gavin has dealt with this in one in detail – he couldn’t find any source for the 98% number int he literature – seems to be an urban myth – one denialist quoting another denialist quoting another one … Gavin calculated the actual contribution (or rather a range depending how you approach it) – and it is large, but not as large, and more importantly- relevant mainly to the preindustrial GH; for climate change – only things that change matter, and the relative change in H2O vap, is MUCH smaller. Furthermore, that increase was almost exclusively caused by warming temps. – warmer oceans and land evaporate more water, and warmer air can hold more water – so it’s positive feedback, not forcing. Which means that it amplifies the effects of changes to the GH gasses we can directly influence – if we increase them: H2O vap will make the warming worse, if we reduce them: it will make the cooling stronger.
This puts the very reason the denialists bring up the H2O vap. – on its head:
they bring it up to say: look, since most of GH is caused by H2O vapour, and we have little influence on it – so what we do, or don’t do, has very little effect on the climate;
when in reality water vapour greatly amplifies the consequences of our actions – making either the warming or the cooling due to our changes to the other GH gasses larger – thus making the climate MORE, not less, sensitive to what we do.
With a week or two still to go in the Antipodean melting season Antarctic sea ice extent has already reached a record low minimum. For the satellite era of course:
“The melting has progressed since December 2022, especially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas in the West Antarctic; the former is virtually ice-free. That is also where the research vessel Polarstern currently is, exploring the evidence left behind of past glacials and interglacials. According to expedition leader and AWI geophysicist Prof. Karsten Gohl, who is now in the region for the seventh time, having first come in 1994: ‘I have never seen such an extreme, ice-free situation here before. The continental shelf, an area the size of Germany, is now completely ice-free. Though these conditions are advantageous for our vessel-based fieldwork, it is still troubling to consider how quickly this change has taken place.'”
The 2023 record Antarctic SIE is going to be a whole lot more emphatic than the previous record set in 2022. The 2023 The daily JAXA SIE is now at 2.06M sq km and the minimum usually seen in the second half of February so further melt can be expected.
This record minimum was previously set in 2022 (2.13M sq km) which just snatched the record from 2017 (2.15M).
A graph of the year-on-year Antarcitc SIE anomalies (so with the annual melt-freeze cycle removed) is posted here Graph 3a
Up in the Arctic, the annual maximum ice occurs a little later than the Antarctic minimum, a couple of weeks either side of 7th March. The lowest of these maximums was set in 2017 at 13.87M sq km, almost equaled by 2018 (13.89M sq km). JAXA shows 2023 has so far reached a maximum of 13.58M and currently with 13.45M sits in third place for the time of year, above 2017 (13.37M) & 2018 (13.23M). But there is plenty of time for an icy wobble in 2023 to give a maximum more like that in 2022 which was the 10th least icy at 14.39M.
The NSIDC have a post on the record-breaking Antarctic SIE minimum and why it’s happening. The NSIDC numbers are a bit different than the JAXA numbers, with the previous NSIDC record minimum 1,924M sq km set last year (this year so far down to 1.875M) while the JAXA record was 2.128M sq km, also set last year. The JAXA minimum for 2023 has now dropped below the 2 million mark, down to 1.97M.
I’m a bit disappointed that NSIDC feel the need to present a linear trend for these annual minimums as it’s certainly not a linear process.
Nemesissays
@Gavin
Taylor Lorenz from the Washington Post said:
” 9.2.2023 – Feels like every month now someone I know dies. People in their 30s and 40s should not be dying like this. How are we supposed to just carry on while people we know and care about are just dropping dead, this is so fucked”
N: I have been in excellent health shape for the entire pLandemic, lol.
BPL: People who believe in a “pLandemic” will believe anything. You have to have something wrong with you to swallow this crap.
Piotrsays
BPL: People who believe in a “pLandemic” will believe anything. You have to have something wrong with you to swallow this crap.
and by posting about “pLandemic” – they self-identify as such, and save the rest of us the time reading their posts on any other topic. Once a “pLandemic” mind, always a “pLandemic” mind.
“I can’t think of a single problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve if there were less people.” ~ David Attenborough
Ray Ladburysays
Sir David isn’t thinking very hard. How about the demographic crisis that come about when the population starts to shrink and you have a smaller workforce that has to support more and more doddering boomers in their golden years? Not only are the elderly not contributing to the economy, their large numbers mean they dominate politics, preserving advantages for themselves at the expense of young people trying to get an education so that they can be more productive.
Not a justification for continued population increase, but we do ourselves no favors if we ignore the other crises that will arise as we try to resolve our present predicaments.
Myself, I think robotic care for the elderly is going to be a huge economic sector in industrial economies of the future. Of course if that happens, the robots are going to take a lot more jobs than just personal care–making things even tougher on young folks.
We are doomed to live in a future of unintended consequences.
Adam Leasays
The problem is having more children so we can support more economically inactive people, that is unsustainable as it ultimately leads to unlimited population growth, and resources are not unlimited. Most of those extra children will become elderly eventually and then what, bear even more children, who will grow old, etc?
One reason for the demographic issue is the baby boomer generation reaching retirement age now which has temporarily inflated the elderly population. Once they die off the proportion of elderly to workforce will drop. In addition there is some evidence that life expectancy has plateaued in some countries which will also act to limit the old to young proportion.
zebrasays
Adam, your point about endless growth is correct, but the problem is first that we talk about “supporting” “economically inactive people”. I have to admit I don’t understand the math/logic here.
“Economic activity” is not the same as productive activity…. Tiktok performers don’t produce food for people in nursing homes, or deal with their disabilities, but they are clearly engaged in “economic activity”.
For me, it is much more complicated than the young/old ratio. I’m happy to listen to some more detail on this, but it seems that the issue is more about having people willing to do unpleasant tasks like caring for the elderly than “paying taxes” or “contributing to social security”.
it is women who are concerned about themselves…. not other species, or other Kumbaya noble stuff…. who can/will solve the problem, given the opportunity. They will choose a better economic life for themselves, and those who do have children will choose a better life for them by having fewer… one or two at the most.
That to me seems to be the “elephant” that you and others are unwilling to discuss.
The other factor that you ignore, as do many others, is the non-linear relationship between environmental degradation and population. When China’s population reaches half of the present number, what qualifies as rational economic choices will be completely different.
Not sure why these facts make people so uncomfortable, particularly the ones who claim they want a better future for humanity.
nigeljsays
Zebra says “So again: There are all these societies where fertility is declining, and it has nothing to do with concern for the environment and the extinction of other species. In fact, it is happening contrary to the wishes of the (primarily male) governments involved.”
For context Zebra previously said up thread “it is women who are concerned about themselves…. not other species, or other Kumbaya noble stuff…. who can/will solve the problem, given the opportunity. They will choose a better economic life for themselves, and those who do have children will choose a better life for them by having fewer… one or two at the most.”
This would all be true to an extent. Immediate economic self interest is a powerful thing or we would all be dead. However credible polling studies show many women ARE concerned about environmental issues and the fate of humanity in a general sense as below:
“In the run up to International Day of Families on 15 May, a new UK opinion poll by Population Matters has found that almost three-in-ten people between 18 and 24 years old say concerns about the environment have made them want to have fewer or no children.”
“Are ‘green’ environmental concerns — about climate change, biodiversity, pollution -deterring today’s citizens from having children? This paper, which we believe to be the first of its kind, reports preliminary evidence consistent with that increasingly discussed hypothesis. Our study has a simple longitudinal design.”
And I personally know people who have had small families or no children out of environmental or ethical concerns. So not ALL women or men are driven purely by self interested short term economic motives.
Many changes through history have been driven by ethical concerns rather than just economic self interest. An example is ending slavery.
The entire transition to renewables seemed to start out of environmental concerns and the fate of future generations. However economic self interest is also now driving the transition as people make money out of renewables, and as the climate change gets worse immediate economic security is probably driving decision making. So there is a mixture of motives. Oversimplifying motives is unscientific and leads to the wrong solutions.
Ken Fabiansays
Whilst a high population that relies on fossil fuel burning makes global warming worse, a high population that relies primarily on zero emissions energy does not. There are other problems associated with too many people but climate change doesn’t have to be one of them.
Starting with a presumption that the climate problem is a population problem leads to a range of wrong and unhelpful conclusions, Eg, the problem is deemed intrinsically unfixable without massive population reduction and whether intended or not effective climate policies require harsh, arguably crimes against humanity level tyrannical control over people’s reproductive rights. ie if you support strong climate policies you must support global tyranny. But it is false.
zebrasays
“tyrannical control over people’s reproductive choices”
Wow. Maybe you should read the NY Times. I referenced it earlier; here are the quotes:
1. ” By the end of the century, China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by India.”
2. ” Like her, millions of young women have been collectively spurning motherhood in a so-called birth strike.
A 2022 survey found that more women than men — 65 percent versus 48 percent — don’t want children. They’re doubling down by avoiding matrimony (and its conventional pressures) altogether. The other term in South Korea for birth strike is “marriage strike.”
The trend is killing South Korea. For three years in a row, the country has recorded the lowest fertility rate in the world, with women of reproductive age having fewer than one child on average.”
So you have it kind of backwards, Ken. Governments in multiple countries are trying to encourage more births, but women who are free to choose and are in modern, relatively prosperous countries, are acting with rational self-interest to limit reproduction.
And as I keep having to point out, although it should be obvious, the relationship between fossil fuel use and population is non-linear. Depending on their political position, people state: “China is building coal plants! or “China is building solar capacity!” or “China is building nuclear!”
Well, all of the above is true. But, when China’s population is half of what it is now, which of those are they more likely to discontinue because demand has dropped? Why would they keep paying for and burning dirty coal, climate change aside? And this applies in other areas as well…. think about it.
So yes, reducing population has an effect long before you get below 1 billion people, so it is something to encourage if you care about climate change. But it’s not something that requires anything but freedom for women to make economically/personally rational, self-interested, choices.
As I’ve said before, this positive news seems to make people uncomfortable rather than happy. Ron R. below apparently thinks that we men should decide what women do with their bodies, one way or the other. But we men play a very small and essentially redundant role in reproduction… reading the news tells us that women are choosing “sperm donors” more selectively when they decide to use one in a direct fashion. (This may well be one factor in the discontent we see politically.)
nigeljsays
Zebra almost always misses the point when replying to people. Every damn time.
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Excellent news on climate literacy and education for useful, positive impact work in Anthropocene: Black Mountains College in Wales aims to prepare students for life during a planetary emergency.
That’s where Senators Manchin and Cruz and many others should go back to school, if they are still capable of learning and willing to solve their ignorance.
I have another bill to propose, as an answer to their damaging and ridiculous one: The Biosphere Protection and Freedom from Ignorance Act.
Education of people and in time is maybe the most important and even only thing that can be done for human climate mitigation.
I see rather clearly, that my own conscepts and interests in this, is things I have experienced and learnt rather early, at the age before I was 21.. That sits for life and makes ones character opinions and deepest & strongest interests and “projects” of life. So a College on it is a quite good idea.
Many very fameous GURUs, pedagogic theoretics and philosophers have pointed at and claimed the same. If change and future is to be made, then start with the youth.
But quite essencial further is that there are also Fora and Media and Periodicals , institutes and societies, qualified ones, ” open to everyone regardless of domicile race religion and political opinion”
where such interested people can come together, discuss and work with it, and discuss their results and ask :” have anyone here found anything similar?”
In that context and on that, level we cannot have the Soviet Union in charge with ” moderator” =SENSOR behind the iron curtain. Who fights for his own program, existance, , career and rents, , known as Vodka Kaviar and Salami for lifetime and a Villa on Costa, (on Kryim / in Florida or Bermuda)
And for Das Kapital.
Wherefore I sell the ices, the codfish, the magpies, the foggy dews, the dirts, and the temperatures here.
Hmm. Concern for other species and the environment as a whole is just ‘Kumbaya stuff’ :/ Ok. Whatever.
Enlightened self interest (the selfish gene) will solve it, not a ubiquitous evolution to a higher consciousness. Maybe so. But men are involved too, you know. The other half of the equation. A True solution needs to involve everybody.
“The other factor that you ignore, as do many others, is the non-linear relationship between environmental degradation and population.”
Of course it’s not perfectly linear. This is the real world we’re talking about, not some computer program. There are lots of factors involved, rises and falls and unforeseen things, just as there are with climate science and the geosphere. But climate change is still the result, and population is still the ultimate cause.
“When China’s population reaches half of the present number, what qualifies as rational economic choices will be completely different.”
Sure, just as it was when it ALREADY was half the number it is now, Einstein. But still, here we are.
Anyway, I’m just pointing out to the vast majority of people, the completely clueless, the ignorers and the deniers that there IS a problem and why. Solving it I’ll leave to you endless debaters.
Both GISTEMP & NOAA have posted for January 2023, giving a global SAT anomaly up on December’s (GISS +0.87ºC, up from Dec +0.81ºC. and NOAA +0.87ºC, up from +0.85ºC). The ERA5 SAT reanalysis was slightly down in Jan (+0.25ºC, down from +0.27ºC) while UAH TLT had shown a large drop (-0.04ºC, down from +0.05ºC). RSS have yet to post for Jan.
GISTEMP, NOAA & ERA5 all show Jan 2023 as the 7th warmest January on record (behind 2016, 2020, 2017, 2007. 2019 & 2022) and for all months, Jan2023 was the =66th highest monthly anomaly in GISTEMP.
The UAH record gave Jan 2023 as the 21st warmest Jan (in a 45 year-long record) and with the =236th highest monthly anomaly.
And NOAA are now giving temperature back to 1850.
Mr. Know It Allsays
This looks like a good introduction to the science of the atmosphere – a series of 61 short videos:
Yes, I also think so. A very College dedicated to it would be very fine.
But, as far as I can see, subjects and elements to environmental questions and to geophysics glaciology oceanography meteorology and to production oecology allready exists and may have existed for 150 years at least.
I find it just as important to remind of that and to relate better to that.
Todays populism and capitalism, so called “conservatives” that seems to be the core of denialism and “The republican war against science” seems to have been at civil war against proper college and higher education as such also, for the last 150 years at least.
Wherefore I believe that I know rather who they are and were, for the last 150 years at least..
Don Williamssays
@Silvia and Carbo
Jem Bendell would ban me from the Deep Adaptation faction for saying this but I think any “climate change college curriculum” that does not include paramilitary methods, survivalist gardening and Tactical Combat Casualty Care is incomplete.
The derided “Ted Cruz conservatives” are more likely to have that knowledge whereas leftists mainly seem to be Plan B alternative protein sources. Not as aware as deer and ..er. . less fleet of foot.
I seem to agree, but I also thought that I did entail it I did not quite mention it for similar reasons, like being banned, etnically racially identified and ex- communicated by any arbitrary Jem Bendell for instance .,
I am an inaugurated and experienced member of 3 (at least) quite old esoteric practical and spiritual moovements of that sort.
“Ron R. below apparently thinks that we men should decide what women do with their bodies,”
Please don’t put words into my mouth, Zebra. I didn’t say anything of the kind. If you want to poo-poo it, and call it “kumbaya stuff” or woo (and was it you that called me a while back on this issue a “hair of fire” alarmist?) fine. Whatever. But other people that do care see a problem. And they don’t attack each other with senseless ad hominems, but stick to the issues.
zebrasays
Ron, tried to reply sooner but it didn’t post.
First, I can’t imagine I called you alarmist since on population I am the one who keeps bringing it up here.
However, here’s what you said:
“But men are involved too, you know. The other half of the equation. ”
Hence my response:
As I’ve said before, this positive news seems to make people uncomfortable rather than happy. Ron R. below apparently thinks that we men should decide what women do with their bodies, one way or the other. But we men play a very small and essentially redundant role in reproduction… reading the news tells us that women are choosing “sperm donors” more selectively when they decide to use one in a direct fashion. (This may well be one factor in the discontent we see politically.)
So again: There are all these societies where fertility is declining, and it has nothing to do with concern for the environment and the extinction of other species. In fact, it is happening contrary to the wishes of the (primarily male) governments involved.
The issue with your approach is that it doesn’t address economic and political/geopolitical realities. Whom are you trying to convince? Subsistence farmers in the global South? Putin and other Authoritarian autocrats? In both cases, for them, it is a matter of survival in the near term.
nigeljsays
Zebra says: “So again: There are all these societies where fertility is declining, and it has nothing to do with concern for the environment and the extinction of other species. In fact, it is happening contrary to the wishes of the (primarily male) governments involved.”
For related context Zebra previously said up thread “it is women who are concerned about themselves…. not other species, or other Kumbaya noble stuff…. who can/will solve the problem, given the opportunity. They will choose a better economic life for themselves, and those who do have children will choose a better life for them by having fewer… one or two at the most.”
This would all be true to an extent. Immediate economic self interest is a powerful thing or we would all be dead. However credible polling studies show many women ARE concerned about environmental issues and the fate of humanity in a general sense as below:
“In the run up to International Day of Families on 15 May, a new UK opinion poll by Population Matters has found that almost three-in-ten people between 18 and 24 years old say concerns about the environment have made them want to have fewer or no children.”
“Are ‘green’ environmental concerns — about climate change, biodiversity, pollution -deterring today’s citizens from having children? This paper, which we believe to be the first of its kind, reports preliminary evidence consistent with that increasingly discussed hypothesis. Our study has a simple longitudinal design.”
And I personally know people who have had small families or no children out of environmental or ethical concerns. So not ALL women or men are driven purely by self interested short term economic motives.
Many changes through history have been driven by ethical concerns rather than just economic self interest. An example is ending slavery.
The entire transition to renewables seemed to start out of environmental concerns and the fate of future generations. However economic self interest is also now driving the transition as people make money out of renewables, and as the climate change gets worse immediate economic security is probably driving decision making. So there is a mixture of motives. Oversimplifying motives is unscientific and leads to the wrong solutions.
Adam Leasays
Here we go again, more stimulation of climate anxiety in myself, from the UK, soon to become a toxic clone of America:
Of course you completely ignore that Richmond, VA just tied its all-time monthly high temperature for February at 83 degrees. And Elizabeth City, NC broke their all-time monthly high temperature for February at 85 degrees.
Busted again, junior!
BTW, your post and my post have nothing to do with “climate” specifically. Both are *weather*. You’ve been told this again and again but you just continue to flaunt your ignorance and show you have no learning abilities.
Mr. Know It Allsays
OH LOOK! Dan blew a cork. AGAIN! :)
Here’s some real climate science. Hope this helps:
Blizzard warning in the mountains in winter, what a surprise, NOT.
Venice canals drying up temporarily due to very high/low spring tides, next maximum is in a couple of weeks so ultimately nothing of significance.
nigeljsays
Adam Lea.
The “LTN” idea appears to restrict cars from some suburban roads. it appears to be causing chaos. What is your take on the situation?
New Zealand has tried encourage cycling, buses and pedestrian areas and restrict cars, but its causing a lot of problems and unintended consequences. I was initially enthusiastic, but I’m no longer sure we can scale back private car use very much.
And, for some contrary weather to KIAs cherrypicks, in the US southeast we are expecting (and actually have been experiencing for most of February) unusually warm weather by comparison with norms. Only 6 days this past month saw overnight lows in the 30s (F)–far below usual for this time of year. And March is coming in like–well, is it more “lamb-like” or “lion-like” to see daily highs in the low 80s?
Either way, it’s definitely not usual.
Mel Reasonersays
Feb 24, 2023. Global temperature +0.65 deg C warmer than same day in 1979 – 2000 climatology.
Mr. Know It Allsays
What is the range of error possible in the 1979 number, and in the 2023 number?
I’d assume we have better precision today, but what is the magnitude of the possible error?
How many measurements were included to calculate the 1979 number and how many were included to calculate the 2023 number?
Did they use the same methods of obtaining the data in 1979 and 2023? If by satellite, were the instruments the same type?
If satellite data was used, was the altitude of satellites the same in 1979 as in 2023?
John Pollacksays
Here’s some more interesting information: LA County contains high mountains. High mountains are cold on top. When it’s cold, it can snow. Mountains can also enhance the upward vertical motion of air, especially if the mountain range intersects a perpendicular current of air. This is known as “orographic lift” and can greatly enhance the amount of precipitation. That’s what is happening now, as the mountains in LA county encounter an atmospheric river.
Tell me, did “Potland” ever set new temperature records? Or were you consuming some product before you decided that the (meteorological) material was so interesting that you needed to inform the world?
Mr. Know It Allsays
Yes, “Potland” (who knows where they measure it) broke the old records by 3, 4, and 5 degrees F on Feb 22, 23, and 24 respectively. Those are records for those dates, not the all-time low records.
Mr KIA notes that it’s still the northern hemisphere winter, and that tides can cause local low water levels in estuarine areas (especially when combined with a lack of rain).
nigeljsays
Killian (upthread)
“You have always kept the same mantra: We can’t simplify, people won’t, and I don’t care if we have no choice; the end of civilization is preferable to your caveman existence.”
Only in your fantasy world. This is what I’ve actually said on this website regarding simplification (paraphrasing): Consumption must fall and economic growth should go to zero. This will either be forced on us by shortages of resources or we can do it voluntarily, but if we choose to do it voluntarily IMO it has to be done slowly to avoid huge practical problems and destabilising the socio economic system by causing mass unemployment. Its probably a century long project. We should also recycle as much as is practical, and transition towards regenerative agriculture, but maintaining enough fertiliser inputs and technology to ensure we maintain reasonable productivity. We should live in smaller homes and work from home where possible(given the vast quantities of resourcers buildings require this is important). This is all simplified living compared to the status quo.
I did once refer to your ideas as sounding like promoting a cave man lifestyle because that is how your comments came across. I apparently misinterpreted something you said and I withdrew that comment. I have told you this several times. You cannot be unaware of it yet you keep on insinuating I still think that way.
What I reject is elements of your version of simplification, especially comments that we should reduce energy use by 90% in two decades (ideally) because in my view it would be too much and too fast, and would cause massive practical problems and mass unemployment, and I have certainly suggested people “wont” engage with a plan like that. Anyone with more than half a brain can see they wont, unless its at the point of a gun. I also reject ideas that we should do without basic electrical appliances and that there should be no cars (at least in the short to medium term).
I reject your regenerative governance ideas because I dont believe common ownership of the means of production (or nobody owns anything is how you once described it) will work well enough judging by the many failed similar experiments. And I reject your purist, doctrinaire version of regenerative agriculture. Your version of simplification seems impractical to me. I believe BPL was slightly blunter in his depiction of it as bat shit crazy.
You are trying to claim I reject any form of simplification because I don’t agree with your version. Typical of your twisted rhetoric.
Adam Leasays
“Consumption must fall and economic growth should go to zero. This will either be forced on us by shortages of resources or we can do it voluntarily, but if we choose to do it voluntarily IMO it has to be done slowly to avoid huge practical problems and destabilising the socio economic system by causing mass unemployment. Its probably a century long project.”
I’m inclined to agree with this but the problem is we don’t have a century to turn the ship around. At the moment humanity is like the Titanic ignoring the warnings, taking action too late, and in the future, almost but not quite missing the iceberg with disasterous consequences. My fear is that both Killian and you are right, no matter how bad shit crazy some people think his advocacy is.
While 2023 has already gained the record low daily Antarctic SIE by dropping below the previous record (on 9th Feb in the JAXA record & 13th Feb in the NSIDC data), I think the value of that record can now be declared at 1.95M sq km reached on 18th Feb. The wobbles in Antarctic SIE are far less than those up North and the timing of the Antarctic minimum SIE since 2000 has occurred on average on 19th Feb+/-6 days. Years which saw the minimum occurring later than today (25th Feb) all were still showing signs of further reduction in SIE while 2023 has been on the rise for a week now.
The table of Antarctic annual daily SIE minimums shows 2023 with a big reduction on the previous record but the presence of recent years at the foot of these rankings should remind us that down South, what goes up can also go down, and visa versa.
Other recent annual minimums in 45 year record
16th … … 2016 … … 2.66 M sq km
…
24th … … 2020 … … 2.76 M sq km
…
29th … … 2021 … … 2.79 M sq km
…
41st … … 2014 … … 3.54 M sq km
…
44th … … 2015 … … 3.59 M sq km
45th … … 2013 … … 3.69 M sq km
The annual maximum SIE up in the Arctic is probably what will spawn more interest.
So far 2023 SIE has risen to 13.87M sq km, not quite above the previous record low, but there’s plenty more time for an icy wobble to push 2023 down the rankings of ‘least icy Arctic winter’, wobbles which can stretch well into March before the melt season kicks in.
Top ten least icy Arctic winters & date of maximum
JAXA daily SIE data (M sq km).
1st … 2017 … 13.88 … 6th March
2nd … 2018 … 13.89 … 17th March
3rd … 2015 … 13.94 … 15th Feb
4th … 2016 … 13.94 … 29th Feb
5th … 2011 … 14.13 … 16th March
6th … 2006 … 14.13 … 10th March
7th … 2007 … 14.21 … 24th Feb
8th … 2021 … 14.24 … 10th March
9th … 2019 … 14.27 … 12th March
10th . 2022 … 14.39 … 23rd Feb
Mr. Know It Allsays
Must be a cooling trend. 2019, 2021, and 2022 are not even in the top 7, and 2020 apparently is not even in the top 10. Excellent news!
Mr. Know Shit All,
You could indeed add 2020 to that list of non-top 7 as it sits in 11th spot. But to suggest this indicates a “cooling trend” is incorrect given the wobbly nature of this annual data.
It is possible to argue for there being a slowing in the decline of these maximum annual Arctuc SIE numbers. An OLS through the period 2004-2022 gives an average decline of 20k sq km/y while OLS for the period 1979-2003 shows an average decline of 44k sq km/y. But such argument should also acknowledge that the data 2004-23 still hasn’t deviated from wobbling either side of that 44k sq km/y decline. When extended to today, the last five years sit above that projection, the previous four years sit below. Of course, future data will show if there is a slowing of the decline or not.
As for such SIE data being useful as an indicator of temperature which would allow indication of a “cooling trend”, either polar or global, I think you’ll find the world has technology which is far more useful than this observational data for assessing temperature.
Ned Kellysays
Killian recently mentioned Michaux. I had only seen some of his work myself the last few months, some of which I will share below.
Many people are aware of the energy transition work done by Mark Jacobson, for example:
6 September 2017 – 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World
Highlights
Roadmaps for 139 countries to use 100% wind-water-solar in all energy sectors
Roadmaps avoid 1.5°C global warming and millions of annual air-pollution deaths
Roadmaps reduce social cost of energy and create 24.3 million net long-term jobs
Roadmaps reduce power disruption and increase worldwide access to energy
If fully implemented by 2050 ………. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435117300120
An example of a contrary view from a thorium GenIV nuclear promoter
Mark Z. Jacobson’s 100% Renewables (100% WWS) Roadmap to Nowhere by Conley & Maloney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2KNqluP8M0
A relatively new expert researcher voice in the field of transitioning away from Fossil Fuels long term is Simon Michaux – Associate Professor of geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) in KTR, the Circular Economy Solutions Unit.
Simon Michaux holds a degree in science (Bach App. Sc in Physics and Geology), and a Phd in Mining Engineering from JKMRC University of Queensland, Australia. He has worked in industry funded research, academia and private sector in both mining and industrial recycling. His long-term objectives include the development and transformation of the Circular Economy, into a more practical system for the industrial ecosystem to navigate the twin challenges of the scarcity of technology minerals and the transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Recent Reports/Papers include:
Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels
August 2021
DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.34895.00160 and
Assessment of the scope of tasks to completely phase out fossil fuels in Finland
April 2022
DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.24079.66723
and other articles/papers can be seen here https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Michaux-2
Summary: Michaux’s calculations for what’s required to phase out fossil fuels uses a starting point of 2018 with 84.5% of primary energy still fossil fuel based and less than 1% of the world’s vehicle fleet electric. Therefore, the first generation of renewable energy is only now coming on stream, meaning there will be no recycling availability of production materials for some time. Production will have to be sourced from mining.
When Michaux presented basic information to EU analysts, it was a shock to them. To his dismay, they had not put together the various mineral/metal data requirements to phase out fossil fuels replaced by renewables. They assumed, using assumptions and guesstimates, the metals would be available.
Simon Michaux has since become active in public outreach at seminars, webinars and interviews via Youtube. I have seen quite a few. He is a good communicator and provides much supporting analysis with useful graphs, and explains what he has done and why. He also openly points out the shortcomings, lack of data and his reliance on drawing assumptions along the way because of that current lack of data/knowledge. I may post a few of the better ones next month.
nigeljsays
Ned Kelly, Im sure your references would be right to the extent that building a renewable energy system is going to put strains on resource availability, but building a renewable energy system looks like the only plausible option. For example if we keep on burning fossil fuels we are in huge trouble. Geoengineering is high risk. Making massive voluntary short term cuts to energy consumption is not practical or realistic. Even if we didnt have a climate problem, we will run out of fossil fuels anyway so a new energy system is inevitably required.
I believe we must build out a renewable energy system as best we can, and if we run into resource constraints then we will be forced to economise on our energy use, or we will have to come up with some other solution.
nigeljsays
Ned Kelly, I would just add that nuclear power also seems like a possible option with some part to play in the generation mix. Its clean zero carbon energy ultimately.
Look for “hair-on-fire” (I used to be able to link to the actual post, but it seems I can’t anymore).
The REALITY is Zebra, but you unfortunately in your defensiveness you misunderstood it (and I understand that defensiveness since RealClimate is choked with so many – well – nevermind), is that in the REAL world, especially in the less rich East, men have a BIG say on how many children they want and simply do not Allow women have the final say. Western senses of right and wrong have no bearing on their way of thinking, as far as they are concerned. That’s NOT saying that that’s what I think is right, obviously, just what is the fact.
So, I think whom I’m trying to convince are world leaders, which, at least as far as I know (but maybe some are?) wholly avoid the issue for selfish political reasons. Trying to get the UN to take a more vocal stand (hair-on-fire?). Trying to convince the moneyed interests here in the West who are intent on obfuscating any issue that might cost them a dime (like CC). Trying to convince people in the East (not sure how many even know or care, though) to know and care. Trying to convince the world, I guess. :) My one little voice doesn’t do much though. :/
By the way (small point) just wondering how in your comment that began, “Ron R. below…” you knew of my post before it was even published? But maybe something I’m missing.
Adam Lea says
20 Jan 2023 at 5:38 AM
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.
Your defensiveness in lieu of addressing anything I said does not bode well for this conversation. It was not a Straw Man; I have never come across anyone using the term “development” or “sustainable development” that then went on to describe a regenerative system.
You used the term, it has a meaning in today’s common parlance, and that meaning does not align with regenerative systems. You are free to bullet point a list of 5 to 10 things that would define a regenerative form of development. I would be more than happy to applaud that and give credit where due.
Fellow space travelers, I hope 2023 is treating you right. Speaking of space travelers, did anyone get a good look at the green comet?
To help offset the carbon emissions of the 1,040 private jets (link below) which the elites took to and from Davos, perhaps we eat can lower on the food chain this year. No doubt they were eating the finest beef and lobster.
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/57867/hundreds-of-ultra-short-private-jet-flights-to-davos-world-economic-forum/
To this goal, I was wondering if some of you would be willing to share your favorite bug recipes, let us know where food quality bugs can be obtained, how to cook them, etc. Please, everyone, share your favorite bug recipes so we can reduce our carbon footprints and save the planet.
Happy to promote this blog, as we need real solutions to ignorance:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7027265037534691328-W_Iw
Examples of ignorance that brings us closer to the point of no return in the climate emergency? Too many, but here is one:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3841046-manchin-and-cruz-team-up-on-bill-to-protect-gas-stoves/
Manchin and Cruz are correct. The government lied in the report claiming the stoves were a health hazard. Tens of millions of homes have used them for a century or longer with no health problems so it is proven that they are in fact safe. The biggest obstacle to getting rid of gas stoves isn’t politicians, it is the 100 million or so people who use one to cook their food every day! :)
For many people, replacing a gas stove with electric might be expensive if they don’t have the required electrical circuit available. Checked contractor prices lately? It’s worse than going to a medical specialist!
In my opinion, this posing by a few hurts the mitigation cause more than it helps it — by giving millions of voters the impression that environmentalists are deceitful, calculating advocates who abuse government power. Using fake excuses of “health concerns” to promote the agendas of their billionaire patrons. Arrogant people who insult our intelligence.
Many places in the USA have regulations re ventilation hoods. And do these philosopher kings think we are too stupid to crack a window?
Nonsense. A simple google search shows gas stoves are a significant health hazard, with plenty of reputable sources like Scientific American. You really do inhabit some alternative universe of alternative facts. At best its deliberate ignorance. Please stop spreading your bullshit and misinformation.
Claptrap. Any open flame is a hazard if you burn it in an enclosed space with no ventilation — which is the condition the alarmist papers are assuming. But that is not a “significant health hazard “–that is Darwin in action. I have seen no papers claiming gas stoves are a hazard if used with ventilation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/well/live/gas-stoves-health-risks.html
Children with asthma can be “linked” to a lot of things. My niece had to be rushed to the hospital just because she smelled an air fragance in a restaurant’s bathroom. Yet she was not triggered by my gas stove, heating furnance or hot water heater.
Again, grossly exaggerated rhetoric discredits a political movement to the average voter. One could claim that passing a Tesla going in the opposite direction is a “significant health hazard” — are we supposed to ban electric cars?
Don Williams. You say the dangers of gas stoves are not a health hazard provided you have good ventilation, and you provided a New York Times article in support of your contention.
The article you linked to listed 21 toxic pollutants from burning gas, including a carcinogen. It did say nitrous oxides can be kept within safe levels by good ventilation, but it didn’t discuss the other pollutants specifically, and only said that ventilation would “lower your risk.” This does not mean ventilation eliminates or even adequately reduces the risks. There tends to be no safe limit with carcinogens, or its incredibly low levels of the pollutant.
Anyone that inhabits the real world can see that many people wont ventilate properly or dont have the money for ventilation systems or building larger windows. This is just one reason of many why it would be good to go electric. These things add up together. However going electric will cost money, and so IMO low income people should get help with a state subsidy or something similar.
Sooner or later we need to transition away from gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially where its easily feasible, and gas cooking is a prime example of something that can be changed reasonably easily. And you get at least SOME additional health benefits. Replacing gas heaters with electric heat pumps can also have dramatically lower running costs, depending on where you live.
Don Williams says
5 FEB 2023 AT 1:58 PM
I liked you better when you were singing County music.
Clown, a worldwide experiment using hundreds of millions of gas appliances, by hundreds of millions of people for a century, says otherwise; but believe what you want. You can trust the government; ask an Indian.
KIA. So because something has been used for a long time makes it safe? LOL. What complete drivel. Tobacco was used for a long time and it was presumed to be safe, until it was shown otherwise!
Nigelj
Nicotiana tabacum L. and N. rusica L is Emperor Montesumas revenge!.
I repeat…!
They came and raped his very empire and stole his gold.
But in the west indies they knew the tobacco allthough smoking something else. And said “look here, that is what we smoke, would you also have a puff? it cures anything!”
Thus it was propagated and sold further back in the old world.
It is hardly any psycyhedelicum or euphoricum orv centralo stimulant as often falsely advocated and pr9opagated, ” I`d run a mile for a Camel..!”
it only cures and settles its own very strong abstinence- symptoms. You get willing to run a mile for it.
Thus extreemly addictive.
And with enough side effects to ruin peoples individual and social health.
Carbomontanus.
“it only cures and settles its own very strong abstinence- symptoms. You get willing to run a mile for it.”
Very true. As a past tobacco smoker I certainly know this. In fact the nicotine tricks us into thinking we need it to function, or even survive, and it was some careful thought about that that enabled me to give up. I haven’t smoked in over 22 years years now.
Raw sewage ran in gutters–where there were actual gutters–for centuries, and millions lived with it.
Does your logic make that a ‘safe’ practice, too?
Luckily, advancing knowledge and technology bring preferable options. Repeatedly.
“. I haven’t smoked in over 22 years years now.”
It certainly shows.
Are your demanding reparations for your involuntary exposure to works of science and literature produced nder the influence of tobacco?
Yes. Einstein was a heavy tobacco pipe smoker, and Churchill allways had a cigar. Fidel Castro quite often a big Havana.
But , what about repairments fror ones involuntary exposure to works of science and litterature produced under the influence of other addictive and psychotropic substances such as fossile fueling?
Scientific American is a magazine. It is not a science organization. Most journalists are some of the most left-biased folks on the planet.
Your unsubstantiated claims and ad hominems mean nothing. I can give you 100 sources that say the same things! Just google the issue. Read the published science if you prefer.
Why you defend the indefensible all the time is beyond me.
KIA: Most journalists are some of the most left-biased folks on the planet.
BPL: Only from a far-right perspective.
That is a poor argument, Dr. Knowitall. It does not take membership in any corporative organization to be scientific.
Many unqualified people thought so in Adolphs Germania for instance and further in the late SSSR including also its dominions. It mooved even weaki minds in the remote provinces outside of the dominions to believe the same, they also joined the fameous grand old Party with P to secure their “scientific” careers and rents.
Such peculiar beliefs ruined and ruins the value and the credibility and common access to scientific knowledge everywhere.
KIA: Manchin and Cruz are correct. The government lied in the report claiming the stoves were a health hazard. Tens of millions of homes have used them for a century or longer with no health problems so it is proven that they are in fact safe.
BPL: Nonsense. Natural gas stoves can go wrong and give off carbon monoxide; it has happened to OUR stove more than once. Don’t parade your ignorance in public.
You can buy a CO monitor/alarm for a few dollars and should have one in your home even if you don’t have a gas range.
I have no problem with people honestly and openly arguing the climate change threat of natural gas . I object to some political hacks in Washington thinking they are being so clever to covertly promote an agenda by making up a bull%$t narrative of “you’re killing the children”. Propaganda that insults the intelligence alienates neutral voters more that it recruits them– and discredits innocent partners in the environmentalist movement via “guilt by association”.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/02/01/gas-stove-bans-explained-controversy-over-health-climate/11126667002/
“”If you ventilate, you can dramatically reduce the emission down to levels that are very unlikely to cause substantial harm,” said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital.”
Agree with the need to have a CO monitor – better yet have 2 or 3 in case one fails. Ventilation would reduce pollutant concentrations, but it isn’t even needed for most home situations. I suspect only a small fraction of homes turn on fans when they use the gas stove. Homes are fairly large enclosures – that probably helps keep concentrations down, and they all do have SOME infiltration.
In the US, it is frequently cold during deer hunting season. Hunters get cold waiting for Bambi, and head back to deer camp to warm up. They take the round out of the rifle chamber, get in the truck camper or trailer, crank up the heat, and put a pot of coffee or other beverage on the gas stove to warm up. That’s in a confined space with no ventilation in most cases. Millions of hunters do this every day of deer season, and they do not suffer ill effects. The camper would be using propane in most cases, not NG.
So, the worldwide experiment using gas cooking appliances appears to confirm near total safety even in small enclosures like campers.
Gas stoves are a complete distraction to hide the fact that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Drop it.
That is not a convincing argument. There are many appliances that can be dangerous if they develop a fault. Electrical devices can catch fire for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmmmzLIMxsQ
I will struggle to be convinced that my gas hob which is used for about 10 minutes at a time, emits a blue flame signifying complete combustion (i.e. minimal CO) and is used with the windows open and vent fan on (because steaming vegetables releases a lot of water vapour which I would rather vent outside) is going to have a significant detrimental impact on my health.
Odd statement, Adam, you just gave a presentation on climate and could not have missed to show that methane is a GHG, with higher GWP than CO2. Its concentration growth is currently steep, as fossil fueled interests put us on the so called transition to net zero through the “cleaner” methane.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/
We must stop any GHG emissions, so we must stop using gas stoves. Besides, they are a health hazard. It’s a fact.
In what regards danger, please give examples of whole buildings or whole streets exploding due to electric stoves. I can give you n due to methane.
Levenson
Heating with combustables 9is quite an art in any case, as I allways have to tell my wife, and she gets it.
Rather to my surprice, Normal women seem to be especially talented for it in any case, as if they were selected for it during the last 4 million years, Entailing that women who were not so talented at the stoves and fires were not worthy of impregnating either, during all those years.
Electricity in comparision has got advantages and…. disadvantages for many purposes.
I better heat up and blast with wood and charcoal if I have to weld over an iron.or commit bronse hard solder with borax. where gasflames are too small and weak. . For heating and ventilation, a flush on the good stove is also most efficient.
But todays consumer electricity has been carefully made fool- proof! Thus better suited for fools. That explains rather why.
Because, it has not allways been so . Early electrics was quite dangerous, and took a quite cunning electrician to be safely handled .
Combustion is still not quite foolproof. But no- one shall tell me that a brand new Tesla is foolproof either.
“We nave a new underground railway tunnel here, the longest and most expensive in Europe with speeds up to 250 Km/h . What first went wrong and did cost another state fortune was the very tunnel electric leads that had to be changed. and openings of it delayed for months.
So, they still havent quite learnt electricity either. It surely aint not quite foolproof yet.
Could we perhaps dispense with the sexist Just-S0 stories justifying the segregation of women to the kitchen?
Ladbury
There is a minority of people among us who are able to fight officially and plolitically any kind of di- morphism between masculinum and femininum, and who even term any conscepts of di- morphism for “sexism”.
They do probably belong rather strictly isolated and sexually segregated in Monastries to better find themselves and possibly get to their human rights there.
Under strict supervision and control also. It is the old traditional and probbly more healthy arrangement.
They are hardly the more normal population of normal diversity. And should thus not be our owners, officers and teachers either. .
Levenswon
I allways have to correct you, haven`t I?
There is more to know . about it and quite important. I have cared to know such things for my own safety..
Carbon allways burns to CO2 in any case first. C+ O2 -> CO2, you see.
But then at higher temperatures, a further chemical reaction takes place if there is more hot carbon there. CO2 + C -> 2CO
That higher temperature is seen as high orange to yellow hot, That is to be seen and known because you have no thermometer at hand there.
But the moral is that red hot glowing coal or carbon is hardly daqngerous. That gives off CO2 only, even by low ventilation. But that CO2 gas must then not be able to react further with yellow hot blasted and glowing coal. That fameous CO is called ” blast furnace gas”. That you see easily if you have a furnace and blow into it Blue flames of burning CO is showing up at the top.
Then you can think and deduce and judge for yourswelf the possible conditions for exhaust gases containing CO. and how to avoid it. A good “afterburner” where more air is let in, will help for it . And that a wide open furnace with red hot cokes or charcoal that is not blasted, being well down in the red temperatures all the way, that is safe.
There is a lot more possible poisoneous also when you begin blasting in a furnace. Salt and sand into it for instance may give quite severe heavy metal chloride vapours. Heavy metal chlorides are “volatile”. An efficient way of killing the chimney sweeper and the firemen.
Moral again, : Order in the stoves and in the furnaces!
We get the best notes from the chimney sweeper here. That is the ideal.
Think of mercury lead cadmium zink copper even silisium- and thorium- chlorides and smokes. A burnt out house or car or boat can be really ugly. But a well kept and moderate campfire is nice and pleasant.
Judge it by the heat temperature colours first of all.
The bue and even green gasflames are low molecular free carbon radicals in rapid reaction. with O2.
And we may well understand how CO can form in a combustion engine and in a closed metal funnel burner without afterburner. I have seen even acetylene H-CC-H being formed experimentally and shown in the exhaust gas..
at white hot you even have C + H2O-> CO + H2.
In Canberra, where I live, no gas connections will be made to any new homes as of 1 Jan this year, and the city gas supply is due to be shut down in 2045.
This is primarily motivated by greenhouse gas emissions reduction, not by health effects of gas stoves, though there has been media attention to the health effects of gas stoves recently.
The shutdown plan was announced in Aug 2022.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-04/act-no-new-gas-connections-from-2023-new-homes/101299552
I myself think that making our entire life support system totally dependent upon the electrical grid will be a “substantial health hazard”. That would be our ability to cook, to boil polluted water, to heat our homes in winter and to drive our cars to transport groceries and supplies. Plus transport of supplies/food into our cities and first responder transport (police, fire, medical ambulances).
That would be an electrical grid that could be collapsed by a North Korean nuclear EMP or a solar Carrington Event. For some reason, no one is discussing that.
Climate Change is supposed to be an existential threat that requires the cooperation of all nations to fix. So why are we rebooting Cold War 2.0 with China and Russia and embarking on a nuclear arms race that will divert $Trillions needed for a transition to renewable energy? A war that has made Russia into a firm ally of China and is driving them to support nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
DW: why are we rebooting Cold War 2.0 with China and Russia
BPL: WE aren’t. V.V. Putin and Xi are. Don’t blame the victim.
[OT]
Agreed. This is Putin’s war; submitting is always an option, but IMO, far from the best.
@bpl
The most hypocritical toads of all are American evangelists like you. Victimizing the perpetrators has always been a very popular and recurrent US strategy.
HUHHH – Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — we have to go in there.
A lot of blood for little oil – I would say.
The war in Ukraine is a proxy war that is actually being waged by criminal American oligarchs, Exxon Mobil & Co against Russian Gazprom mafiosi.
Oddly enough, the tombstones (if there are any) almost always carry Ukrainian or Chechen names.
The quicker the US gets its ass out of the region, the quicker the conflict will calm down.
However, I myself assume that some particularly greedy American brain strategists have long been bathing their thoughts in the oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
Just ask Hunter Biden (Joe Biden’s son) what he was up to in Ukraine 10 years ago – and why your orange-colored idiot calls Zelenskyj and blackmails him to investigate Hunter. The USA is anything but a victim.
Macias Shurly
“The war in Ukraine is a proxy war that is actually being waged by criminal American oligarchs, Exxon Mobil & Co against Russian Gazprom mafiosi.”
Please provide some hard evidence! You sound like a classic conspiracy theorist. Just because America sometimes does self interested stupid stuff like invading Iraq, does not mean America or its oligarchs is behind every evil perpetrated in the world.
@nigelj
Hard evidence is mostly unsuitable for convincing waxy pears and naive minds.
You always get soft evidence when you ask yourself who makes money from a war and assume that such wars don’t just fall out of the sky.
@ Schürle
Do not commit proxy wars here. Strawmen, we call it. There is silliness and supersticion enough around here.
When you loose in your wars and missions, do not blame it like a German 0r a Puttler on your victims. Maybe your blood is not quite pure or clean.
That EMP could be delivered via a “weather” balloon, too! Was that a test run we saw last week? Are the globalists planning something to stop our emissions? Hmmmmm……. We need new conspiracy theories because all of the old conspiracy theories turned out to be true!
Such as the old conspiracy theory that the Earth is really flat, and the “globalists” are covering it up?
“That EMP could be delivered via a “weather” balloon, too! Was that a test run we saw last week?”
Oh, like the (at least) three “test runs” that occurred while your orange messiah was in office, completely ignored them, and did not do a thing about them so as not to upset his buddy in China what with all the money Ivanka was making from there, right? lol!
Dan laughable quote: “Oh, like the (at least) three “test runs” that occurred while your orange messiah was in office,……”
Wow! Where do you get your news? ALL Trump WH officials denied that there were any balloons during his tenure. And many of those officials have TDS almost as bad as you do, so that’s essentially proof it did not happen. When Trump-hater John Bolton says it didn’t happen, it it didn’t happen – I’m surprised he didn’t lie about it to libel Trump, just like you did.
KIA
There were in fact at least three suspicious weather balloons during the Trump presidency. At least some people in the Trump administration knew about them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-06/us-didn-t-know-about-chinese-balloons-during-trump-until-later:
Theres nothing worse and more ugly than seeing someone repeatedly defend everything Trump did and said.
KIA: What benefit do “we” gain from the Ukraine war?
BPL: We defend a democracy from a conqueror.
KIA: Is “the big guy” getting his 10% cut from the sale of arms to Ukraine? That would be a mountain of cash – a real nice benefit – and cash is green, so it’s environmentally friendly. That’s a possibility
BPL: That’s a possibility if you’re a complete fucking idiot with an axe to grind. It’s more of a scurrilous accusation from someone with no morals.
1) US Climate Change Czar John Kerry acknowledged last year that Cold War 2.0 is damaging the effort to reduce CO2 emissions and halt global warming:
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/us-news/2022/04/20/toxic-ukraine-war-politics-hits-climate-progress-says-john-kerry/
“In an address to a US think tank, Mr Kerry said Russia and China were not doing enough to scrap dirty fuels like coal and oil, hurting efforts to hold global warming at less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“The differences of opinion between our countries have been hardened, and sharpened, and that makes the diplomacy more complicated,” Mr Kerry said at an online event hosted by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development.
“If climate becomes one of the tools, one of the weapons in the bilateral back-and-forth, we’re cooked. We’re in serious trouble.”
2) NATO in Ukraine is an obvious threat to Russia –with stealth platforms and nukes on her doorstep enabling a surprise attack on her major cities and ICBMs sites a short distance away. We need Russia’s cooperation to deal with climate change, given her massive fossil fuel deposits. So why has Washington been trying to add Ukraine to NATO since 2008? What benefit do we gain from Ukraine that justifies a 4 degree rise in global temperatures?
No. Most NATO states do not have nukes, let alone ICBMs. And Poland, which is a NATO state, is far closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg than Ukraine is, anyway.
Interestingly, Poland doesn’t currently host any nuclear weapons–although Putin’s war caused Poland to request that some be moved there, apparently:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/05/poland-us-nuclear-wars-russia-putin-ukraine
“The request from the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, is widely seen as symbolic, as moving nuclear warheads closer to Russia would make them more vulnerable and less militarily useful, according to experts.”
All the way ’round, your argument is bogus.
Don Williams. In my view if NATO disbanded or the Ukraine didn’t join NATO, it just might make Russia slightly more cooperative on the climate issue, and lead to stronger mitigation policies – but not much, because 1) Russia is a very northerly country which has some things to gain with a warming climate, and 2) Russia is a big fossil fuel exporter, and 3) Russia is a very conservative country distrustful of western science.
So theres nothing significant to gain by changing NATO and quite a lot to loose, because it would give Russia a green light to invade more countries. Not saying Americas foreign policies have been perfect, but just trying to be objective about it all.
“What benefit do we gain from Ukraine that justifies a 4 degree rise in global temperatures?”
There is a deep sickness which exists here on the pages of realclimate.
@ Kevin McKinney : “Poland, which is a NATO state, is far closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg than Ukraine is, anyway.”
Don:
1) I suggest you look at a map – Poland’s east border is 929 km from Moscow, Ukraine’s is only 459 km.
2) Re St Petersburg , a better example would be NATO member Estonia – which is only 146 km from St Petersburg. Biden has deployed stealth F35s to Estonia.
Gallery: American F-35 fighter jets arrive at Estonia’s Ämari Air Base | News | ERR
That might be of interest to Putin since F35s have a combat radius of 1240 km and can carry the B61 nuclear bomb. B61 Yield is 50 kt but its extreme accuracy makes its effective yield greater than a 335 kt warhead from our Minuteman ICBM. (Blast pressure drops as the cube of distance – e.g, to have the same blast pressure at twice a distance requires a yield 8 times greater. )
3) Consider also Russia’s western ICBM sites:
Kozelsk (20+ SS-27 ICBMs): 241 km from Ukraine, 800 km from Poland
Tatishchevo: ( 60 SS-27): 472 km from Ukraine, 1517 km from Poland
Teykovo: (36 SS-27): 778 km from Ukraine, 1240 km from Poland
Vypolsovo: (9 SS-27, 9 SS-25): 623 km from Ukraine, 774 km from Poland
Yoshkar-Ola (27 SS-27): 965 km from Ukraine, 1582 km from Poland
4) An interesting question is why have the NY Times and Washington Post not revealed the above info to their readers – and its destructive effect on climate change diplomacy — while campaigning loudly for a massive reduction in US carbon emissions.
5) Countries surging their manufacturing for war don’t restrain carbon emissions.
@ Nigelj re Russia’s motivation to cooperate on climate change
1) Before Ukraine, Russia had strong reasons to cooperate with John Kerry. Melting Permafrost in her northern regions is collapsing infrastructure (although Russia stands to benefit in agriculture and the Northeast passage from warming.)
Most importantly, climate change may drive a massive Chinese invasion into a warming eastern Siberia if southern China becomes uninhabitable. Russia and China have clashed on the Amur River in the past.
2) But those motivations are now gone — we have made Russia into a firm ally of China. A huge strategic gift,
3) The meme of an expansionist Russia heading toward to the English Channel always seemed like claptrap to me. Look at her population, GDP, conventional military power — a small fraction of NATOs.. Russia’s only power is her 6000 nukes — which are now protecting China’s while China races to increase her 350 nukes to match the 5400 we possess. Which means both China and Russia can dismiss John Kerry’s demands (appeals ?) for cooperation.
IF Washington really thinks climate change is a deadly threat, its actions make no sense.
I think I mentioned here a quote from Putin that one of his motivations for the aggression was that “the West” was moving too rapidly to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
And I’ve pointed out many times here that thinking we would get to a very low level of CO2 emissions in 20-30 years was completely unrealistic because that was being opposed by Russia and Saudi in particular… countries that were willing to use nerve agent and dismemberment against political opponents, and, obviously, interfere in our elections.
The actual “threat” to Russia from Ukraine being integrated into Europe was political, not military, because the economic and societal benefits would make a sharp contrast with conditions in Russia. (Assuming that corruption would be cleaned up and so on; the last election was at least a start in that direction.)
So the relevance to the climate topic here, as I’ve suggested in the past, is how to deal with the producers of FF and their efforts to keep at it. China, as I pointed out below, is perhaps less of a problem if the population predictions are borne out.
Don Williams, So, let’s turn this around–why do you think Ukraine (or Sweden or Finland) wants to join NATO. Could it perhaps be that they have a large neighbor on their border that is currently suffering the death spasms of end-stage kleptocracy? If Russia had wanted to facilitate the end of NATO, all it would have had to do was guarantee the territorial and political sovereignty of its neighbors. NATO would have withered.
But kleptocracies by their very nature cannot live within their borders. They live by plunder, always finding now frontiers to loot and new people to enslave. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine counts as one of the most serious geopolitical self-inflicted wounds since Napolean tried to march the opposite direction.
The other thing about kleptocracies–the only time they tell the truth is when they are threatening you. That is when you need to believe the dictator. Russia’s promises on climate are as meaningless as the grantees of territorial integrity they gave to Ukraine when the latter surrendered its nukes.
We cannot save climate by throwing democracy under the bus. We cannot save climate by throwing the poor under the bus. A solution that benefits only a few is not a solution that will last.
What benefit do “we” gain from the Ukraine war? Is “the big guy” getting his 10% cut from the sale of arms to Ukraine? That would be a mountain of cash – a real nice benefit – and cash is green, so it’s environmentally friendly. That’s a possibility. :)
Also, Hunter was allegedly paying “the big guy” $50K rent on his house while making $50K to $83K (depends on the source) for sitting on the Burisma board. That would be a nice benefit too!
4 degree rise ain’t nothin’ when the world elites goal is to get world population down to a total of 0.5 billion. 4 degrees might help them achieve their goal, right?
Hmmm….that war is starting to make sense. I told ya we needed new conspiracy theories! :)
Here’s another one: remember those “conspiracy theories” about that Pizza parlor that the left said were false? Why do you think we haven’t seen Ms. Maxwell’s client list that she is going to spend 20 years in the big house over? Does it make sense that the person who arranged for clients to do their dirty deeds to underage girls gets 20 years and we don’t know any of the names of those who did the dirty deeds? Nope. Maybe those Pizza parlor conspiracy theories were TRUE?
Uh-oh!
:)
Don Williams,
“I myself think that making our entire life support system totally dependent upon the electrical grid will be a “substantial health hazard”. That would be our ability to cook, to boil polluted water, to heat our homes in winter and to drive our cars to transport groceries and supplies. Plus transport of supplies/food into our cities and first responder transport (police, fire, medical ambulances).That would be an electrical grid that could be collapsed by a North Korean nuclear EMP or a solar Carrington Event. For some reason, no one is discussing that. ”
We are already reliant on the electrical systems susceptible to EMP attacks. For example our cars have engine management compters vulnerable to an EMP, attack, gas supplies are contolled by electronics, etc,etc.
And we have no alternative in going further electrifying everything, because in addition to to the climate issue we will run out of fossil fuels sooner or later, and burning biomass at scale as a substitute isn’t feasible.
We probably have to accept we will be very reliant on electricity and find ways to mitigate risks. Stored electrical power would help get us through some types of emergencies. A decentralised grid relying on local generation or rooftop solar would mitigate some types of risk. Perhaps we have a two tier system where part of the economy is powered directly by electricity and part by synthetic fuels created with electricty. These could also be stored. Perhaps automobiles should have a default system where they can still function in basic mode without high level vulnerable electronics.
@NigelJ
1) There is a difference between being partially dependent upon the electrical grid and being 100% dependent. We see that today when the power goes down for a week in some areas due to ice storms dropping trees onto power lines. We hop in our gasoline cars and run to the supermarket. Our supermarkets are stocked because diesel-powered trains and trucks bring massive supplies into our cities every day. We cook on our gas stoves by candlelight.
2) The projected effects of climate change on the USA pale in comparison to what we would suffer if the grid went down while we were 100% dependent. The last time I checked, our gasoline automobiles are not disabled by EMP. EMP’s effects depend upon the length of the antenna – and our power grid has many antennas hundreds of miles long. No grid -> no EV transport.
3) Climate change impacts also pale in comparison to those of even a limited nuclear war between the USA and Russia/China.
4) To see what has been lost, look at this Reuters report from April 2021:
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/putin-says-russias-greenhouse-gas-emissions-should-be-lower-than-eus-2021-04-21/
5) I think the argument we are spreading democracy in Ukraine is utter claptrap. We don’t have democracy here in the USA – we have a deeply corrupt oligarchy where the wealth/income goes to a few while the majority are poor and suffer what they must. Where our national debate consists of deeply misleading narratives broadcast by a few news corporations tightly controlled by a few hundred billionaires. “News” which doesn’t post the facts I posted above – or note that Russia has been invaded by France, Germany, UK and the USA in the past. A Supreme Court that says billionaires have to right to buy as many Congressmen as they want.
6) The situation is even worse with China
Don Williams.
Yes there is a difference between being partially and fully dependent on the electricity grid although that is rather obvious. However I pointed out that ultimately it is going to be hard to avoid being fully reliant on electricity as the primary energy source, because of not just the climate issue but running out of fossil fuels (simplifying for the sake of brevity). You have ignored this.
And I also suggested some options for mitigating the problems. Again you have ignored these. They would help us get through shortages of electricity from temporary failures of generation system for example.
Remember if there’s a huge nuclear war, not only does this potentially disable the electricity system it disables the petrol delivery system! At best people might have a tank of petrol to get through a week. It will be more challenging with EV’s that are charged frequently, but we could mitigate that with emergency battery storage at home. And personally I’m a fan of PHEV vehicles that can run on electricity or petrol or biofuels or synthetic fuels.
Regarding your point 5 about the Ukraine. Firstly I do share some of your scepticism about Americas foreign policy motives, and its past foreign policy history (the very unjustified invasion of Iraq) and the power of oligarchs. A good book is “Blowback: The costs and consequences of American Empire.
HOWEVER the fact is Russia is no saint and invaded the Ukraine for no defensible reason! And I would say Putin is fixated on taking back all the old Soviet Union countries. Ignoring the invasion of Ukraine is just inhumane and would send a green light to China over Taiwan. I agree more with Ray Ladbury’s views on the Ukraine / Russia issue than I do with yours.
And in regard to your other comments about Russia having concerns about permafrost melting and Chinese climate refugees. Yes those are fair points, but I’m just still not persuaded that Putin would do much about mitigating the climate problem regardless of the Ukraine issue. He would likely settle with just adaptation, and defending his borders against climate refugees. The man clearly has that sort of mentality.
@NigelJ
1) I too disagree with Macias—because Macias didn’t mention Chevron. Chevron and Exxon together have invested $Billions to grab the oil and gas in Russia-Iran’s Caspian Sea.
https://www.upstreamonline.com/field-development/chevron-reaches-important-milestone-at-kazakhstan-s-largest-producing-oilfield/2-1-1395483
https://medium.com/the-hillhouse-newsletter/chevron-or-exxonmobil-who-does-kazakh-media-favour-6a9a697a06b2
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/06/ukraine-crisis-great-power-oil-gas-rivals-pipelines
2) Also, when Obama’s Asst Secretary of State Vicky Nuland boasted in Washington of dumping $5 billion into Ukraine for political subversion to overthrow an elected government – I mean, to spread democracy – the sign behind her said “Chevron”. Which, by the way, is not in Texas but in San Francisco.
3) That would be the Vicky Nuland who expressed deep respect for our NATO allies with the phrase “Fu*%k the EU” – when someone suggested the EU might question her handpicking Ukraine’s leadership , including deciding which leaders would be left out on the street.
4) Turkmenistan has enormous gas deposits and a pipeline run from her under the Caspian Sea and plugged into the Ukraine network from Turkey via a Black Sea pipeline could displace Russia as EU’s gas energy source – worth about $ 56 Billion a year. Figure out how to run the oil there and you’re talking an additional $93 billion /year.
https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/the-time-now-trans-caspian-pipeline
5) Of course, that would not be enough to justify risking 400 US cities and 70% of the US population to nuclear extermination. Only the massive fossil fuel deposits of Russia herself would be worth that gamble.
6) The Ukrainians are expecting Great White Father in Washington will rebuild their devastated country. For free. They might want to check with our esteemed Iraqi and Afghan allies for how that will work out.
7) Fortunately, President Biden recently announced in his SOTU speech that we are going to close down Big Oil, reject their tens of $millions in campaign donations and Go Green.
Oh Wait — why are the Republicans clapping?
Don Williams. Interesting links, but all the link on Chevron shows is an American multi national buying and building oil related assets in Kazakhstan. They would obviously have the permission of Khazikstans government. These multi national guys play hard ball, but that doesn’t make them criminals. What laws have they broken? Russian companies play the exact same game. Meh.
@Don Williams says: – ” I too disagree with Macias – ”
ms: — Sorry Don Williams – I was talking about American criminals, Exxon Mobile & Co.
If you don’t want to classify Chevron among the American criminals – then feel free to use the “Co” .
C – stands for Chevron and o – for Oll Other motherearthfu*%kers.
Anyway, thanks for the links and the hope-inspiring reference to Vicky Nuland.
I didn’t even know her before. Could you please let her know that I’m standing here with my pants down on the street in the middle of the EU – waiting for her.
Macias Shurly says…
Well, a lot of incoherent and unsupported tosh. And now on multiple topics.
@KMcK sings: – ” if i had a hammer…”
https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/b31c059d-0001-0005-0000-000000529398_w718_r1.778_fpx27.21_fpy50.jpg
Oddly enough, you always remind me strongly of Troubadix the musician with the ugly, greasy curly beard…… a quick shave helps…..
Violent arguments are also inferiour and betraying Genosse,
and not permitted on several websites.
…and more irrelevant and unpleasant tosh. Whatever.
I was going to (and will) make a comment about China’s population, but I just read something that challenges even my supposedly good visualization of complex physical systems. I haven’t been to the mountains for a long time now, due to getting dinged up there a while back, but supposedly the tropopause is going to drop below the summit of Mt Washington in NH! Maybe John Pollack or someone clued in to this stuff could elaborate on what sounds really nutty to me? It’s hard, but it isn’t Everest.
I’ve been knocked around by the wind in the mountains, but I don’t recall ever having to breathe ozone while experiencing it. What’s the mechanism???
The tropopause claim is an exaggeration, although conditions are quite extreme in northern New England and adjacent Canada tonight. The main polar vortex, centered on the average near the north pole, has been split into two sub-vortices for most of the winter. These have been mostly located over northern Canada and Siberia.
The Canadian vortex has intensified and moved southeast the past week or so. It is now very intense and centered over southeast Quebec. The air in the vortex is very cold aloft as well as at the surface. Because cold air is denser, this makes the troposphere shallow, and the stratosphere descends to unusually low elevations. Most of the tropopause heights I see this evening in the vortex are around 6000 meters, which is quite low. There is one weather balloon site in southeast Ontario (CWMW, Maniwaki) depicting a sounding with a tropopause indicated at 4135 m, 600 mb pressure. It would need verification, because the sounding program uses a fairly simple algorithm to come up with a tropopause. It’s not obvious at a glance, at least to me, that the little temperature bump at that level is actually the tropopause. At any rate, that’s exceptionally low, but well above the summit of Mt. Washington at a little under 2000 m.
Ozone would not be the biggest problem at Mt. Washington tonight in any case. Last I checked, their temperature was holding steady at -43C (-45F) with a steady wind around 90 mph, gusting up to 120 mph. I wouldn’t want the heat bill at the observatory, and I hope their furnace is working well. Their record low is -46C/-50F, so this sort of thing has happened before. Probably not recently, though.
John Pollack: There is one weather balloon site in southeast Ontario (CWMW, Maniwaki) depicting a sounding with a tropopause indicated at 4135 m, 600 mb pressure.
Perhaps that’s the reason the Chinese send their big balloon over North America. They just wanted to investigate that interesting weather phenomenon! ;-)
Thanks John et al. This was from the Washington Post, which is pretty good on the weather stuff:
Sorry I didn’t fully quote it originally; I was off to do something else. But “folds”? Still puzzled.
Thanks for the clarification, Zebra. The “fold” stuff helps me.
What they are referring to is that in a system with a vigorous jet stream, layers of stratospheric air can get folded in between tropospheric air, as if in making a giant layered pastry. However, the evidence doesn’t support this for Mt. Washington, IMHO. It’s true that the closest soundings to the north had an adiabatic lapse rate up to 790 or 800 mb,, with clearly tropospheric air below that level. Above was an almost isothermal layer that was somewhat drier, conceivably derived at least partially from the stratosphere.
The pressure level at the top of Mt. Washington was probably something like 770 mb then. (00-06 UTC Feb. 4). However, what makes me think they never saw the stratosphere was their observation record. They reported either zero or 1/16 mile (100 m) visibility in freezing fog and blowing snow until 7 am local time. Thus, they weren’t in dry stratospheric air, but very cold, high rh tropospheric air that had been subjected to adiabatic lift over the top of the mountain. i.e. They were in a cloud. By the time they broke out of the low cloud, the low pressure system was centered far to the north, and nearby soundings indicated that the tropopause had risen several thousand meters. There was still a mid layer of clouds above them, which also would have been tropospheric air.
So, not only didn’t Mt. Washington not “record a noticeably dramatic uptick in ozone” during the time in question, they never saw a noticeable downtick in humidity, which would have manifested as an abrupt increase in the visibility. That only came after 12 UTC Feb. 4, when the core of the system was well past, and temperatures were rising.
Makes more sense… their original use of tropopause had me visualizing a really extreme dip over a very large area.
Layers of atmosphere in the mountains is hardly unusual; I’ve climbed through rainclouds to a beautiful clear sky, and I’ve woken up to a beautiful clear (and bitterly cold) sky, and found an ice storm on the way down…. which isn’t quite so uplifting.
Anyway, I will excuse the somewhat hyperbolic language of the writers, who, as I said, usually do a pretty good job dealing with weather and climate.
Don’t know the mechanism, but I recommend not being on Mt. Washington tonight, as it may break low temperature records:
https://www.masslive.com/weather/2023/02/mount-washington-temps-could-break-1885-record-at-midnight-weather-service-says.html
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/mount-washington-facing-wind-chills-around-100
Cold in Maine too: https://www.wunderground.com/severe/us/me/caribou
It looks like the Mt. Washington low temperature was -43.7 C = -46.6 F. Not quite as cold as the modern record, and a few degrees off from -50F in 1885.
Funny how even extreme cold spells seldom break the old records. Looks like an underlying warming trend.
Yup, 2 data points prove a climate trend, right? :)
Wanna try again?
True in isolation but still consistent with much other data. So yes, indeed a relevant comment even if not “proof’. Of course you do know there is no such thing as “proof” EVER when making inferences. Even in pure experimental situations. So consistent with theory is always nice to see,
As well, one could also ask how many extreme new warm records have been set in the equivalent time span. If it’s substantially more than two, one might start doing nonparametric tests like any good actuary would when asked to analyze extreme data.
Sure. Here’s a simple one with a lot more than two data points:
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2019-03-19-record-highs-outpace-record-lows
Why don’t you wait until records are actually broken, instead of just posting whatever extreme forecasts you can dig up in advance of the event? When it comes to low temperature records, they are more often wrong than right.
What you’re looking at is pretty standard behavior for an extreme-value problem. Basically, if it is possible for the record to be broken (probability to the left or right of previous extreme is nonzero), the record will be broken. The more extreme the record, the longer it will take, but it will happen. Extreme values don’t give you much info about what is happening in the peak of the distribution where we live most of the time.
That makes no sense to me. The troposphere had been rising consistently for 40 years:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi8065
Why would this not continue?
Kevin,
what zebra is talking: the tropopause is going to drop below the summit of Mt Washington is a local weather. Your had been rising consistently for 40 years is a (hemispheric) <climate.
The former, unless repeated again and again, and over many regions within NH – has very little on the latter.
No, it doesn’t make sense that the tropopause would descend to the summit of Mt. Washington, at a little lower than 2000 m. It does make sense that a low tropopause would be found in the middle of a strong, cold-core polar low.
I’m distinguishing weather from climate. Yes, the tropopause has been rising in general.
Could global warming cause a rising tropopause overall, but also a more chaotic tropopause that occasionally descends more frequently or further than in the past ?
It’s conceivable, but it would be going against the primary trend. The energy that allows stratospheric air to descend in a localized region ultimately derives from the temperature gradient between the polar latitudes and the tropics, which intensifies jet streams. That temperature gradient is decreasing as polar amplification continues with AGW.
Low tropopause events accompany eddies of the polar vortex, intense jet streams, and outbreaks of very cold air into mid latitudes. One possible mechanism for bringing more of these events to populated mid latitudes is warming subpolar oceans with decreasing ice cover. The increased transfer of heat from the oceans could facilitate a split polar vortex, with several subvortices forming over high latitude land areas where colder air can be sustained through radiation. These subvortices are closer to mid latitudes than a vortex centered near the pole. This could facilitate more frequent cold outbreaks where they will be noticed.
That said, weather history suggests that this tendency for winters with frequent mid latitude cold outbreaks is a recurring pattern. This happened over North America in the 1930s, and again in the 1970s to early 1980s. In most cases, the temperatures recorded during those outbreaks were colder and of greater duration than currently. Earlier records were even more severe, with many set in the 1880s and 1890s. (That includes Mt. Washington.)
Why Exponents Matter:
This is not a topic uknown to this group, but I have used the analogy of the eternal mouse eating a ball of cheese the size of Jupiter. I have not been able to get an actual calculation for that. I had to scale it all the way down to the size of the Empire State Building. The answer shocked me. I thought I had a fair grasp of the differentials over time with the exponential function but WOW!
330,000,000 kgs
7.5 grams/day/mouse
If one mouse were to eat 330,000,000 kgs of food, it would take that person: 330,000,000 kg * 1000 g/kg = 330,000,000,000 g of food, and at 7.5 g of food per day, it would take the mouse:
330,000,000,000 g / 7.5 g/day = 44,000,000,000 days or approximately 119,028 years to eat all of the food.
44 billion days. 119k years.
But if our mouse has a spouse and keep filling up the house?
330,000,000,000 g
330,000,000,000 g / 7.5 g/person/day = 44,000,000,000 people
Population doubling: 44 billion people: log2(44,000,000,000) = log2(2^x) = x x = approx. 34.3.
So it would take approximately 34.3 days for the population to double and reach 44 billion mice, and consume 330,000,000 kgs of food.
34 days vs. 119k years!
Wow.
And so we see the drain on resources that an 8B to 10B shift can have on the viability of the planet. We go from needing 5.56 B kgs. to 6.7 B kgs., or around 20% more. And, that estimate of non-industrial food seems spot-on: industrial ag produces 1.94B kgs of food for people for a need of 5.56B kgs. which means non-industrial food is producing 66 to 67%. And that’s why we don’t need industrial ag – besides it being incredibly destructive, of course.
Anywho… exponents! Dr. Bartlett was right and his microbes and/or yeast are a perfect analogy for our foolishness.
We are Eternal Mice.
Welcome to the world of the Wheat and chessboard problem, which was first recorded as recently as 1256CE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem
I usually illustrate it with an easier to visualize example than mice eating a Jupiter-worth of cheese.
“If, as Richman wants, humans are not subject to carrying capacity, then we should be able to grow as long as we wanted: let’s assume population of 8 bln, growth rate of 0.84% per year, and average weight of a human of 62kg.
So the current weight of humanity is 0.5 bln ton.
Let’s calculate how much would all humanity weigh at the current 0.84% per year growth rate:
-in 3,600 yrs from now – as much as the Earth
– in 5,100 yrs from now – as much as the Sun
– in 11,800 yrs from now – as much as the observable Universe
Even small difference in the growth rate would make a big difference – 2.1% from around 1960 would shorten the time scale greatly!
Most species last between 1 mln and 10 mln yrs …
Yet the economists, politicians and religious leaders can’t see the end of GROWTH.
Then again – try to get elected on the promise of 0% increase in GDP.
I chose the thing I did because it is conceivable. Your time frames don’t fit human realities. 34 years does. It’s not Saturn, btw, it’s the Empire State Building. I chose a consumption analogy because that is the core problem.
Yes, politicians, activists, economists – even scientists, still don’t get it. Just look at Mann’s prescriptions for climate, et al.: Utter nonsense, based on the same consumptive foolishness. Just goes to show expertise in one field does not qualify one for expertise in another; one must actually study any field in which they wish to be competent. Mann, and many other climate scientists, economists, etc., are far from competent in the fields of mitigation and adaptation – i.e. regenerative systems.
Hr Piotr
Another large supersticion is that of GDP and its growth, even its relevance and healthiness.
Think of a factory A, whoose only product is to pollute a river. Then downstream , you make up another factory B, whoose only product is to clean up that river again. A and B will then contribute to the GDP. And it will take some oil, LNG, or electricity. You can even elctrify it and be very proud of that.
But, is it worth it? What is it good for more than increasing the GDP?
And how much industries of that sort is allready in the GDP?
We have a very acute discussion here. Our neighbour has got electrical heating under their outdoor pavement, and my wife has told me for years to do the same. But I say NO!.
Because, it is most sinful to burn away electric energy in large resistors.
Secondly, because it is not traditional here. We shuffle snow and we stray with sand or we even run and walk and slide on the ices. Walk barefoot and walk and even slide like a penguin, that is the safest way on ice.
Yesterday our youngest son showed us a new method. A set of spikes in very fine galosche type rubber shoes to take on and off. That is also traditional Horses allways went with spikes in the winter, and iron spikes were sold for human shoes. Showeling and sand is the very best. Conscdiousness, feeling, and awareness in your hind paws is also very educative.. The penguins do that allready. .
This somewhat reminds me of a TV documentary I saw a long time ago called the science of decay.
It showed a setup of a house with food and drink laid out as if there was a large social gathering about to happen, so lots of food like a spit roast, sandwitches, chichen breasts, and drink. A few house flies were released into the house and the house was sealed so the flies were in a self contained environment and left to their own devices. The objective was to demonstrate decay (food in this case) over a period of time (weeks).
The starting point was a handful of flies and an abundance of resources (food and drink), maybe not dissimilar to the human population on Earth just after the last ice age. The flies began breeding and multiplying in numbers and consuming the food and drink at a rapid (exponential) rate, a bit like what humans have been doing over the last few thousand years. What ultimately happened is virtually all the food was consumed and the flies, with nothing left to eat, died, hundreds of them. The bottle of wine that was left out on a table was full of dead flies when it was tipped upside down. This is analagous to the road humanity is heading down, and makes me think sometimes that humans, despite their self claimed intelligence, aren’t any more intelligent than much simpler life forms in some ways.
The cheese analogy seems ok to me. Exponential human population growth has clearly created 8 billion humans and thus enormous pressure on the natural environment and the planets resources. The demographic transition will very likely stop the exponential population growth later this century which will be helpful.
The problem is growth in GDP and GDP per capita (which is a good proxy for per capita consumption) ALSO looks exponential, and with no obvious sign of slowing or stopping. It might take severe materials shortages to force this consumption to slow and stop. When gdp / consumption does slow and fall you can get reduced quality of life, a demand contraction, unemployment and pain, and the harder and faster you go into reverse gear the worse this will be.
The only plausible solution I can see is to deliberately reduce GDP / consumption fairly slowly so the system can wind down in a fairly orderly way, but plan it so its still fast enough to avoid coming up against the hard limits of the resource system abruptly. The problem is getting people to embrace even that doesnt look too hopeful ( as Piotr alludes to). I suspect humanity is in for a rather rough landing.
“When gdp / consumption does slow and fall you can get reduced quality of life, a demand contraction, unemployment and pain”
Welcome to the UK. Things are getting bad enough here that warm banks have sprung up to assist with the rapid rise in cost of energy and a couple of potent cold spells so far this winter:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/warm-spaces-energy-bills-uk-b2250449.html
So, why don’t you just say, “What Killian. et al., have been saying since I started using this site has turned out to be accurate,” rather than acting as if this is a thought you had all on your own?
Killian: “why don’t you just say, “What Killian. et al., have been saying since I started using this site has turned out to be accurate,” rather than acting as if this is a thought you had all on your own?”
Yes, Nigel, why don’t you? Remember – the Gods are … surprisingly insecure, and demand constant validation from their flock. Remember Arachne, after she refused to give the Athena due credit for having taught her how to weave so beautifully? Or the poor schmock who was collecting sticks for a fire on the day devoted to praising God?
So why don’t you admit that without the Killian you would have never “thought all on your own” that exponential growth of GDP cannot last forever? Who, but the Killian, knew???
Because the rest doesn’t sound much like Killian – he is the Big Idea guy, one who sees the Promised Land (of Regenerative Agriculture), but leaves the worries of how to get there to the pedestrian minds like ours.
It’s the Devil who is in the details, and the Devil – Killian is not.
Killian. I’ve always accepted that population and economic growth are exponential and are a problem, going back before I ever heard of you or this website. I’ve never once claimed they are my own original thoughts. I’ve disagreed on some of your SOLUTIONS to the problems.
You have repeatedly contested the second half of my post above thread anyway, so how can you say its repeating your thoughts? If you are saying that. Who would know.
I totally acknowledge you have posted some original thoughts like regenerative governance. If that makes you feel better.
.
Stop lying. The thought of simplification – you never, literally ever, get the point, as you did not here; even a dog might understand exponents, and when have I ever said you denied exponents? – has always been anathema to you. Don’t lie. Don’t Straw Man. Don’t try to B.S.
We know you. You are consistent: You are dishonest.
Now shush.
Killian. Lying about what? There’s nothing dishonest in my comments. The rest of what you said is incomprehensible. Its certainly not evidence of lying.
If a dog could understand exponents why the need for the elaborate analogy? My point was you appeared to be implying I needed you to understand exponential growth and its coming up against limits, and you are very wrong about that. If you were implying something else who the hell cares anyway.
Piotr had roughly the same reaction to your comments that I did. Maybe theres small chance that might tell you something.
Killian, regarding simplification. You appear to be implying that my comments above thread on economic growth needing to eventually stop and consumption fall endorse your views on simplification. No they dont.. Material you have posted and supported proposed massive 90% cuts in consumption of energy and industrial goods in the next 20 years ideally. I have repeatedly said this looks much too ambitious, much too fast, and and not plausible.
Shush, nigel. You can’t be honest. That makes your commenting here useless. You have always kept the same mantra: We can’t simplify, people won’t, and I don’t care if we have no choice; the end of civilization is preferable to your caveman existence.”
I paraphrase, but accurately (the caveman reference is something youy actually said). You do not, will not, consider anything but the Capitalist nonsense that got us where we are regardless how bogus the logic of that stance.
As I said, do humanity a favor and never speak on these things ever again.
K: Shush, nigel. You can’t be honest. That makes your commenting here useless.
BPL: Not as useless as your constant, whiny attacks on everybody who disagrees with you over the least little thing. This blog would have been a lot more productive and more enjoyable without you in it.
killian- ok, let’s all join in. i ask every k-fatigued rc reader to join me in spirit as i hereby state that “what killian et al have been saying since i started using this site has turned out to be acccurate,”
further, we repent for our negligence in not continually acknowledging your priority as first identifier of all truth related to potential responses to climate change, and every other topic you have or might in future declaim upon. satisfied? now will you please get your lithium level checked? thanks.
Grow up. These are serious issues, and that was beyond childish – it’s suicidally stupid.
Like nigel, you never add to any thread I start nor respond with anything but venom to anything I say. You are the very definition of biased. Your fear of reality is palpable.
Shush.
The Ladies On Strike
There were a couple of articles in NYT that I wanted to reference, and a paper cited in one:
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/china-world-population-decline.html
3. https://www.newgeography.com/content/007546-population-and-fertility-2100-10-largest-nations
For people who can’t access NYT, here are quotes:
1.
2.
So yes, “it’s complicated”. But I thought the China case would be good way to illustrate my proposition that the relationship between population and environmental degradation is non-linear.
We are always hearing, depending on which political pole is talking, that “China is building coal plants!” or “China is building solar!” or “China is building nuclear!”. All true in my understanding. But if the projection on population is correct, what will they be building in the future?
It seems obvious to me that at some point, with a declining population, choices would be made. And in this, as in many other areas of consumption, the environmentally destructive (fossil fuels) would be the first to be abandoned. But the choice is not based on “saving the planet” in the long term, it is based on economics (and short-term environmental benefits as well.) Why would you bother with the messy business of mining or importing coal if you don’t have to rapidly increase capacity, but rather wind it down? Non-linear effect.
I’ll leave it there for the moment but I would argue that this reasoning applies to the silly gas stove “debate” and topics like regenerative agriculture. If you have a declining population, it completely changes the paradigm.
Population will not fall anywhere near fast enough. It will take till well past 2100 to reduce consumption anywhere near enough to reduce consumption to the necessary level. We also don’t have the resources, per Mills, Michaux and others, for even one generation of FF replacement, so population decline would have to be massive over the next 30 years, not the next 150. You need to stop beating this poor dead horse; falling population is simply not a solution to the short-term risk even though it is necessary long-term.
Killian
“We also don’t have the resources, per Mills, Michaux and others, for even one generation of FF replacement,”
Do you mean Mark Mills? . He has been debunked here:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/is-there-a-shift-from-disbelieving-climate-change-to-attacking-renewables/
He has connections to right wing think tanks. Why you would take him seriously is baffling.
Do you mean Simon P. Michaux? His views have not been published in a peer reviewed journal to my knowledge. Other properly published researchers have a different view eg Jacobsen.
If the energy transition does prove difficult, we will have to get by with less energy which is your ultimate goal anyway! Your anti renewables position is bordering on being fanatical zealotry.
Copernicus ERA5 has reported for Jan 2023 with a global SAT anomaly of +0.25ºC, just a little down on the Dec anomaly of +0.27ºC (while UAH TLT anomaly saw a big drop). It’s the 7th warmest Jan on record (behind 2020, 2016, 2017, 2007, 2019 & 2022 and just pipping 2021 & 2018 for 7th spot.
I find the barcharts comparing model trends with the various data sets very useful.
Could we show a few statistics like model mean on the figures?
Next time you have to deal with a climate denier saying the ecosystem is too large for us to affect it, maybe use this parallel (trigger warning):
I had a guy on Clubhouse pull that we can’t possibly affect the planet nonsense. It made me try to think of a suitable analogy. I found one. We’ve all seen the spy biting down on the cyanide capsule, right? Almost instantly dead? (Apparently, it takes a lot longer than in the movies…?)
The math: Cyanide: 0.3632 grams or 0.0008 pounds can kill a 160 lb. person, or 0.000005% of the person’s body weight.
By contrast, CO2 is 0.4% of the atmosphere, or 80,000x as much atmospheric CO2 as it would take cyanide to kill a 160 lb. person, or about what I would weigh if I were currently at a healthy weight.
I guess we should wish we lived in an Everything, Everywhere, All At Once universe where cyanide was our only problem! It’s so much safer than our current load of CO2 is to our planet!
FYI.
Carbomontanus
What Party do you mean? I ask because the grand old Party is Americas Republican Party, which leans to the right ( very stridently in recent years). The Soviet Union Communist Party leaned to the left (although it was a perversion of left leaning views). So these are not one and the same thing.
Or do you just mean any Party of authoritarian or doctrinaire tendencies? Or just any political party at all? I can understand why people get cynical about poliitics.
By “flat earther” I assume you mean stubborn egotistical scientific cranks. Every community has a few. of those. They seem to come from all sides of politics left and right dont they?.
Some of the climate science deniers are scientific cranks, but not all. Some of the deniers seem to be drived by vested business interests, some just seem to dislike having to change their lifestyles, and some seem to have libertarian leaning or small government leaning politicial motives. Based on their comments I have read on websites. I doubt we could reduce the denialism to just one motive or category of people.
Nigelj
Which Party do I mean?
Is n`t that obvious ?
I only state it as scratching as possible also for those who really need to grasp it and get ashamed of themselves.
As one denialism seems to correlate rather strongly to fameous next ones, I tend to believe that it is a matter of basic character, that is genetically inherited more or less, that can be strengthened or mildened socially, especially by edeucation.
Protestantism and individualism is needed in any society,but it must be educated and cultivated like anything else that is more or less talented..
Let`s say that denialism is natural protestantism perverted and astray.
I think you may have dropped one zero – CO2 is 0.04% of atm. (per volume).
I have been using the cyanide example for decades, although not to “the ecosystem is too large for us to affect it“, but to the more specific: “CO2 at 0.04% has much too low concentration to affect the climate“.
Another version of that is: “What’s the current ~ 1C human greenhouse effect compared to the natural one ~ 32C (?) – this one I dispatch with: “Katrina storm surge was only ~ 8 m, compared to the 3,700m of average ocean depth – so the good people of New Orleans had nothing to worry about, right?”
Another version still: “Ice melt in any given year is “only 0.00…… %” of the total volume of ice” – that’s like saying: the amount of water in the storm surge along the seawalls of New Orleans will be ONLY 0.00000.. % of the 1.35 billion km3 of the ocean volume, so the people of New Orleans can sleep soundly.
A slightly more refined myth – “ 98%of GH effect is due to water vapour so why are we obsessed with CO2” – Gavin has dealt with this in one in detail – he couldn’t find any source for the 98% number int he literature – seems to be an urban myth – one denialist quoting another denialist quoting another one … Gavin calculated the actual contribution (or rather a range depending how you approach it) – and it is large, but not as large, and more importantly- relevant mainly to the preindustrial GH; for climate change – only things that change matter, and the relative change in H2O vap, is MUCH smaller. Furthermore, that increase was almost exclusively caused by warming temps. – warmer oceans and land evaporate more water, and warmer air can hold more water – so it’s positive feedback, not forcing. Which means that it amplifies the effects of changes to the GH gasses we can directly influence – if we increase them: H2O vap will make the warming worse, if we reduce them: it will make the cooling stronger.
This puts the very reason the denialists bring up the H2O vap. – on its head:
they bring it up to say: look, since most of GH is caused by H2O vapour, and we have little influence on it – so what we do, or don’t do, has very little effect on the climate;
when in reality water vapour greatly amplifies the consequences of our actions – making either the warming or the cooling due to our changes to the other GH gasses larger – thus making the climate MORE, not less, sensitive to what we do.
With a week or two still to go in the Antipodean melting season Antarctic sea ice extent has already reached a record low minimum. For the satellite era of course:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2023/02/new-record-antarctic-sea-ice-minimum-extent/
“The melting has progressed since December 2022, especially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas in the West Antarctic; the former is virtually ice-free. That is also where the research vessel Polarstern currently is, exploring the evidence left behind of past glacials and interglacials. According to expedition leader and AWI geophysicist Prof. Karsten Gohl, who is now in the region for the seventh time, having first come in 1994: ‘I have never seen such an extreme, ice-free situation here before. The continental shelf, an area the size of Germany, is now completely ice-free. Though these conditions are advantageous for our vessel-based fieldwork, it is still troubling to consider how quickly this change has taken place.'”
The 2023 record Antarctic SIE is going to be a whole lot more emphatic than the previous record set in 2022. The 2023 The daily JAXA SIE is now at 2.06M sq km and the minimum usually seen in the second half of February so further melt can be expected.
This record minimum was previously set in 2022 (2.13M sq km) which just snatched the record from 2017 (2.15M).
A graph of the year-on-year Antarcitc SIE anomalies (so with the annual melt-freeze cycle removed) is posted here Graph 3a
Up in the Arctic, the annual maximum ice occurs a little later than the Antarctic minimum, a couple of weeks either side of 7th March. The lowest of these maximums was set in 2017 at 13.87M sq km, almost equaled by 2018 (13.89M sq km). JAXA shows 2023 has so far reached a maximum of 13.58M and currently with 13.45M sits in third place for the time of year, above 2017 (13.37M) & 2018 (13.23M). But there is plenty of time for an icy wobble in 2023 to give a maximum more like that in 2022 which was the 10th least icy at 14.39M.
Or, conversely, a warm one. We shall see… which is a mantra in sea-ice watching.
Anyway, thanks for a relevant and sensible comment.
The NSIDC have a post on the record-breaking Antarctic SIE minimum and why it’s happening. The NSIDC numbers are a bit different than the JAXA numbers, with the previous NSIDC record minimum 1,924M sq km set last year (this year so far down to 1.875M) while the JAXA record was 2.128M sq km, also set last year. The JAXA minimum for 2023 has now dropped below the 2 million mark, down to 1.97M.
I’m a bit disappointed that NSIDC feel the need to present a linear trend for these annual minimums as it’s certainly not a linear process.
@Gavin
Taylor Lorenz from the Washington Post said:
” 9.2.2023 – Feels like every month now someone I know dies. People in their 30s and 40s should not be dying like this. How are we supposed to just carry on while people we know and care about are just dropping dead, this is so fucked”
https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1623494645488705536
Seems the covid jab does an outstanding job, right?^^ All these corpses are surely unvaxxed, right?^^
Btw, I feel just great, I have been in excellent health shape for the entire pLandemic, lol.
Best wishes,
Nemesis
N: I have been in excellent health shape for the entire pLandemic, lol.
BPL: People who believe in a “pLandemic” will believe anything. You have to have something wrong with you to swallow this crap.
BPL: People who believe in a “pLandemic” will believe anything. You have to have something wrong with you to swallow this crap.
and by posting about “pLandemic” – they self-identify as such, and save the rest of us the time reading their posts on any other topic. Once a “pLandemic” mind, always a “pLandemic” mind.
Ultimately, it’s all down to the elephant in the room.
https://midmiocene.wordpress.com/2022/11/15/the-elephant-in-the-room/
“I can’t think of a single problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve if there were less people.” ~ David Attenborough
Sir David isn’t thinking very hard. How about the demographic crisis that come about when the population starts to shrink and you have a smaller workforce that has to support more and more doddering boomers in their golden years? Not only are the elderly not contributing to the economy, their large numbers mean they dominate politics, preserving advantages for themselves at the expense of young people trying to get an education so that they can be more productive.
Not a justification for continued population increase, but we do ourselves no favors if we ignore the other crises that will arise as we try to resolve our present predicaments.
Myself, I think robotic care for the elderly is going to be a huge economic sector in industrial economies of the future. Of course if that happens, the robots are going to take a lot more jobs than just personal care–making things even tougher on young folks.
We are doomed to live in a future of unintended consequences.
The problem is having more children so we can support more economically inactive people, that is unsustainable as it ultimately leads to unlimited population growth, and resources are not unlimited. Most of those extra children will become elderly eventually and then what, bear even more children, who will grow old, etc?
One reason for the demographic issue is the baby boomer generation reaching retirement age now which has temporarily inflated the elderly population. Once they die off the proportion of elderly to workforce will drop. In addition there is some evidence that life expectancy has plateaued in some countries which will also act to limit the old to young proportion.
Adam, your point about endless growth is correct, but the problem is first that we talk about “supporting” “economically inactive people”. I have to admit I don’t understand the math/logic here.
“Economic activity” is not the same as productive activity…. Tiktok performers don’t produce food for people in nursing homes, or deal with their disabilities, but they are clearly engaged in “economic activity”.
For me, it is much more complicated than the young/old ratio. I’m happy to listen to some more detail on this, but it seems that the issue is more about having people willing to do unpleasant tasks like caring for the elderly than “paying taxes” or “contributing to social security”.
Dr. Ladbury
Robotic care of elderlies,….
Q:; Are n`t they Robots most of them?
“C’mon, we can be concerned about more than just ourselves, can’t we?”
As I think I’ve pointed out to you previously, and I discuss in my comment this month,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/02/unforced-variations-feb-2023/#comment-809396
it is women who are concerned about themselves…. not other species, or other Kumbaya noble stuff…. who can/will solve the problem, given the opportunity. They will choose a better economic life for themselves, and those who do have children will choose a better life for them by having fewer… one or two at the most.
That to me seems to be the “elephant” that you and others are unwilling to discuss.
The other factor that you ignore, as do many others, is the non-linear relationship between environmental degradation and population. When China’s population reaches half of the present number, what qualifies as rational economic choices will be completely different.
Not sure why these facts make people so uncomfortable, particularly the ones who claim they want a better future for humanity.
Zebra says “So again: There are all these societies where fertility is declining, and it has nothing to do with concern for the environment and the extinction of other species. In fact, it is happening contrary to the wishes of the (primarily male) governments involved.”
For context Zebra previously said up thread “it is women who are concerned about themselves…. not other species, or other Kumbaya noble stuff…. who can/will solve the problem, given the opportunity. They will choose a better economic life for themselves, and those who do have children will choose a better life for them by having fewer… one or two at the most.”
This would all be true to an extent. Immediate economic self interest is a powerful thing or we would all be dead. However credible polling studies show many women ARE concerned about environmental issues and the fate of humanity in a general sense as below:
“In the run up to International Day of Families on 15 May, a new UK opinion poll by Population Matters has found that almost three-in-ten people between 18 and 24 years old say concerns about the environment have made them want to have fewer or no children.”
https://populationmatters.org/news/2021/05/three-in-ten-young-people-want-a-small-family-for-environmental-reasons/
“Climate change is making people think twice about having children”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/climate-change-is-making-people-think-twice-about-having-children.html
“Are ‘green’ environmental concerns — about climate change, biodiversity, pollution -deterring today’s citizens from having children? This paper, which we believe to be the first of its kind, reports preliminary evidence consistent with that increasingly discussed hypothesis. Our study has a simple longitudinal design.”
https://docs.iza.org/dp15620.pdf
And I personally know people who have had small families or no children out of environmental or ethical concerns. So not ALL women or men are driven purely by self interested short term economic motives.
Many changes through history have been driven by ethical concerns rather than just economic self interest. An example is ending slavery.
The entire transition to renewables seemed to start out of environmental concerns and the fate of future generations. However economic self interest is also now driving the transition as people make money out of renewables, and as the climate change gets worse immediate economic security is probably driving decision making. So there is a mixture of motives. Oversimplifying motives is unscientific and leads to the wrong solutions.
Whilst a high population that relies on fossil fuel burning makes global warming worse, a high population that relies primarily on zero emissions energy does not. There are other problems associated with too many people but climate change doesn’t have to be one of them.
Starting with a presumption that the climate problem is a population problem leads to a range of wrong and unhelpful conclusions, Eg, the problem is deemed intrinsically unfixable without massive population reduction and whether intended or not effective climate policies require harsh, arguably crimes against humanity level tyrannical control over people’s reproductive rights. ie if you support strong climate policies you must support global tyranny. But it is false.
“tyrannical control over people’s reproductive choices”
Wow. Maybe you should read the NY Times. I referenced it earlier; here are the quotes:
1. ” By the end of the century, China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by India.”
2. ” Like her, millions of young women have been collectively spurning motherhood in a so-called birth strike.
A 2022 survey found that more women than men — 65 percent versus 48 percent — don’t want children. They’re doubling down by avoiding matrimony (and its conventional pressures) altogether. The other term in South Korea for birth strike is “marriage strike.”
The trend is killing South Korea. For three years in a row, the country has recorded the lowest fertility rate in the world, with women of reproductive age having fewer than one child on average.”
So you have it kind of backwards, Ken. Governments in multiple countries are trying to encourage more births, but women who are free to choose and are in modern, relatively prosperous countries, are acting with rational self-interest to limit reproduction.
And as I keep having to point out, although it should be obvious, the relationship between fossil fuel use and population is non-linear. Depending on their political position, people state: “China is building coal plants! or “China is building solar capacity!” or “China is building nuclear!”
Well, all of the above is true. But, when China’s population is half of what it is now, which of those are they more likely to discontinue because demand has dropped? Why would they keep paying for and burning dirty coal, climate change aside? And this applies in other areas as well…. think about it.
So yes, reducing population has an effect long before you get below 1 billion people, so it is something to encourage if you care about climate change. But it’s not something that requires anything but freedom for women to make economically/personally rational, self-interested, choices.
As I’ve said before, this positive news seems to make people uncomfortable rather than happy. Ron R. below apparently thinks that we men should decide what women do with their bodies, one way or the other. But we men play a very small and essentially redundant role in reproduction… reading the news tells us that women are choosing “sperm donors” more selectively when they decide to use one in a direct fashion. (This may well be one factor in the discontent we see politically.)
Zebra almost always misses the point when replying to people. Every damn time.
Excellent news on climate literacy and education for useful, positive impact work in Anthropocene: Black Mountains College in Wales aims to prepare students for life during a planetary emergency.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/11/new-uk-college-dedicated-climate-crisis-black-mountains
That’s where Senators Manchin and Cruz and many others should go back to school, if they are still capable of learning and willing to solve their ignorance.
I have another bill to propose, as an answer to their damaging and ridiculous one: The Biosphere Protection and Freedom from Ignorance Act.
@ Silovia Leahu-Aluas
This is really interesting
Education of people and in time is maybe the most important and even only thing that can be done for human climate mitigation.
I see rather clearly, that my own conscepts and interests in this, is things I have experienced and learnt rather early, at the age before I was 21.. That sits for life and makes ones character opinions and deepest & strongest interests and “projects” of life. So a College on it is a quite good idea.
Many very fameous GURUs, pedagogic theoretics and philosophers have pointed at and claimed the same. If change and future is to be made, then start with the youth.
But quite essencial further is that there are also Fora and Media and Periodicals , institutes and societies, qualified ones, ” open to everyone regardless of domicile race religion and political opinion”
where such interested people can come together, discuss and work with it, and discuss their results and ask :” have anyone here found anything similar?”
In that context and on that, level we cannot have the Soviet Union in charge with ” moderator” =SENSOR behind the iron curtain. Who fights for his own program, existance, , career and rents, , known as Vodka Kaviar and Salami for lifetime and a Villa on Costa, (on Kryim / in Florida or Bermuda)
And for Das Kapital.
Wherefore I sell the ices, the codfish, the magpies, the foggy dews, the dirts, and the temperatures here.
“or other Kumbaya noble stuff”
Hmm. Concern for other species and the environment as a whole is just ‘Kumbaya stuff’ :/ Ok. Whatever.
Enlightened self interest (the selfish gene) will solve it, not a ubiquitous evolution to a higher consciousness. Maybe so. But men are involved too, you know. The other half of the equation. A True solution needs to involve everybody.
“The other factor that you ignore, as do many others, is the non-linear relationship between environmental degradation and population.”
Of course it’s not perfectly linear. This is the real world we’re talking about, not some computer program. There are lots of factors involved, rises and falls and unforeseen things, just as there are with climate science and the geosphere. But climate change is still the result, and population is still the ultimate cause.
“When China’s population reaches half of the present number, what qualifies as rational economic choices will be completely different.”
Sure, just as it was when it ALREADY was half the number it is now, Einstein. But still, here we are.
Anyway, I’m just pointing out to the vast majority of people, the completely clueless, the ignorers and the deniers that there IS a problem and why. Solving it I’ll leave to you endless debaters.
Hmm. Maybe nature will solve it. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/18/sperm-count-in-decline-globally-study-finds/
Sorry for my tone. Just copied yours.
Please see my reply to Ken Fabian above.
Maslow. :)
Both GISTEMP & NOAA have posted for January 2023, giving a global SAT anomaly up on December’s (GISS +0.87ºC, up from Dec +0.81ºC. and NOAA +0.87ºC, up from +0.85ºC). The ERA5 SAT reanalysis was slightly down in Jan (+0.25ºC, down from +0.27ºC) while UAH TLT had shown a large drop (-0.04ºC, down from +0.05ºC). RSS have yet to post for Jan.
GISTEMP, NOAA & ERA5 all show Jan 2023 as the 7th warmest January on record (behind 2016, 2020, 2017, 2007. 2019 & 2022) and for all months, Jan2023 was the =66th highest monthly anomaly in GISTEMP.
The UAH record gave Jan 2023 as the 21st warmest Jan (in a 45 year-long record) and with the =236th highest monthly anomaly.
And NOAA are now giving temperature back to 1850.
This looks like a good introduction to the science of the atmosphere – a series of 61 short videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2gX-ftPVXVzU5jGY3FaYEuuu3ANvMZb
@ Silvia Leahu-Aluas
Yes, I also think so. A very College dedicated to it would be very fine.
But, as far as I can see, subjects and elements to environmental questions and to geophysics glaciology oceanography meteorology and to production oecology allready exists and may have existed for 150 years at least.
I find it just as important to remind of that and to relate better to that.
Todays populism and capitalism, so called “conservatives” that seems to be the core of denialism and “The republican war against science” seems to have been at civil war against proper college and higher education as such also, for the last 150 years at least.
Wherefore I believe that I know rather who they are and were, for the last 150 years at least..
@Silvia and Carbo
Jem Bendell would ban me from the Deep Adaptation faction for saying this but I think any “climate change college curriculum” that does not include paramilitary methods, survivalist gardening and Tactical Combat Casualty Care is incomplete.
The derided “Ted Cruz conservatives” are more likely to have that knowledge whereas leftists mainly seem to be Plan B alternative protein sources. Not as aware as deer and ..er. . less fleet of foot.
@ Don williams
I seem to agree, but I also thought that I did entail it I did not quite mention it for similar reasons, like being banned, etnically racially identified and ex- communicated by any arbitrary Jem Bendell for instance .,
I am an inaugurated and experienced member of 3 (at least) quite old esoteric practical and spiritual moovements of that sort.
I shall check up Ted Cruz.
“Ron R. below apparently thinks that we men should decide what women do with their bodies,”
Please don’t put words into my mouth, Zebra. I didn’t say anything of the kind. If you want to poo-poo it, and call it “kumbaya stuff” or woo (and was it you that called me a while back on this issue a “hair of fire” alarmist?) fine. Whatever. But other people that do care see a problem. And they don’t attack each other with senseless ad hominems, but stick to the issues.
Ron, tried to reply sooner but it didn’t post.
First, I can’t imagine I called you alarmist since on population I am the one who keeps bringing it up here.
However, here’s what you said:
“But men are involved too, you know. The other half of the equation. ”
Hence my response:
So again: There are all these societies where fertility is declining, and it has nothing to do with concern for the environment and the extinction of other species. In fact, it is happening contrary to the wishes of the (primarily male) governments involved.
The issue with your approach is that it doesn’t address economic and political/geopolitical realities. Whom are you trying to convince? Subsistence farmers in the global South? Putin and other Authoritarian autocrats? In both cases, for them, it is a matter of survival in the near term.
Zebra says: “So again: There are all these societies where fertility is declining, and it has nothing to do with concern for the environment and the extinction of other species. In fact, it is happening contrary to the wishes of the (primarily male) governments involved.”
For related context Zebra previously said up thread “it is women who are concerned about themselves…. not other species, or other Kumbaya noble stuff…. who can/will solve the problem, given the opportunity. They will choose a better economic life for themselves, and those who do have children will choose a better life for them by having fewer… one or two at the most.”
This would all be true to an extent. Immediate economic self interest is a powerful thing or we would all be dead. However credible polling studies show many women ARE concerned about environmental issues and the fate of humanity in a general sense as below:
“In the run up to International Day of Families on 15 May, a new UK opinion poll by Population Matters has found that almost three-in-ten people between 18 and 24 years old say concerns about the environment have made them want to have fewer or no children.”
https://populationmatters.org/news/2021/05/three-in-ten-young-people-want-a-small-family-for-environmental-reasons/
“Climate change is making people think twice about having children”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/climate-change-is-making-people-think-twice-about-having-children.html
“Are ‘green’ environmental concerns — about climate change, biodiversity, pollution -deterring today’s citizens from having children? This paper, which we believe to be the first of its kind, reports preliminary evidence consistent with that increasingly discussed hypothesis. Our study has a simple longitudinal design.”
https://docs.iza.org/dp15620.pdf
And I personally know people who have had small families or no children out of environmental or ethical concerns. So not ALL women or men are driven purely by self interested short term economic motives.
Many changes through history have been driven by ethical concerns rather than just economic self interest. An example is ending slavery.
The entire transition to renewables seemed to start out of environmental concerns and the fate of future generations. However economic self interest is also now driving the transition as people make money out of renewables, and as the climate change gets worse immediate economic security is probably driving decision making. So there is a mixture of motives. Oversimplifying motives is unscientific and leads to the wrong solutions.
Here we go again, more stimulation of climate anxiety in myself, from the UK, soon to become a toxic clone of America:
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/ltn-march-thousands-march-oxford-113541696.html
Interesting:
Blizzard warning for LA County – 2 feet to 7 feet of snow expected; location dependent:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2023/02/22/the-national-weather-service-in-los-angeles-just-issued-a-blizzard-warningheres-why/?sh=7704a17d30d0
Venice canals drying up due to low sea levels:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5339797/Venices-famous-canals-dry-low-tides.html
Record breaking cold possible in Potland:
https://www.koin.com/video/weather-forecast-portland%e2%80%99s-snow-chances-increase-with-record-breaking-cold/8412791/
Of course you completely ignore that Richmond, VA just tied its all-time monthly high temperature for February at 83 degrees. And Elizabeth City, NC broke their all-time monthly high temperature for February at 85 degrees.
Busted again, junior!
BTW, your post and my post have nothing to do with “climate” specifically. Both are *weather*. You’ve been told this again and again but you just continue to flaunt your ignorance and show you have no learning abilities.
OH LOOK! Dan blew a cork. AGAIN! :)
Here’s some real climate science. Hope this helps:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2gX-ftPVXVzU5jGY3FaYEuuu3ANvMZb
Blizzard warning in the mountains in winter, what a surprise, NOT.
Venice canals drying up temporarily due to very high/low spring tides, next maximum is in a couple of weeks so ultimately nothing of significance.
Adam Lea.
The “LTN” idea appears to restrict cars from some suburban roads. it appears to be causing chaos. What is your take on the situation?
New Zealand has tried encourage cycling, buses and pedestrian areas and restrict cars, but its causing a lot of problems and unintended consequences. I was initially enthusiastic, but I’m no longer sure we can scale back private car use very much.
And, for some contrary weather to KIAs cherrypicks, in the US southeast we are expecting (and actually have been experiencing for most of February) unusually warm weather by comparison with norms. Only 6 days this past month saw overnight lows in the 30s (F)–far below usual for this time of year. And March is coming in like–well, is it more “lamb-like” or “lion-like” to see daily highs in the low 80s?
Either way, it’s definitely not usual.
Feb 24, 2023. Global temperature +0.65 deg C warmer than same day in 1979 – 2000 climatology.
What is the range of error possible in the 1979 number, and in the 2023 number?
I’d assume we have better precision today, but what is the magnitude of the possible error?
How many measurements were included to calculate the 1979 number and how many were included to calculate the 2023 number?
Did they use the same methods of obtaining the data in 1979 and 2023? If by satellite, were the instruments the same type?
If satellite data was used, was the altitude of satellites the same in 1979 as in 2023?
Here’s some more interesting information: LA County contains high mountains. High mountains are cold on top. When it’s cold, it can snow. Mountains can also enhance the upward vertical motion of air, especially if the mountain range intersects a perpendicular current of air. This is known as “orographic lift” and can greatly enhance the amount of precipitation. That’s what is happening now, as the mountains in LA county encounter an atmospheric river.
Tell me, did “Potland” ever set new temperature records? Or were you consuming some product before you decided that the (meteorological) material was so interesting that you needed to inform the world?
Yes, “Potland” (who knows where they measure it) broke the old records by 3, 4, and 5 degrees F on Feb 22, 23, and 24 respectively. Those are records for those dates, not the all-time low records.
https://weather.com/weather/monthly/l/4a509f51be422416069bb8e77b6efb140f2ded2eb47414d086254bb858cc0dd7
Some suburban areas broke old records by as much as 11 degrees F. Old = 24, new = 13.
Apparently was snowy as well:
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/02/forecasters-predicted-a-trace-of-snow-then-portland-set-an-80-year-record-what-went-wrong.html
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/02/23/multnomah-county-portland-oregon-cold-weather-shelter-warming/
Mr KIA notes that it’s still the northern hemisphere winter, and that tides can cause local low water levels in estuarine areas (especially when combined with a lack of rain).
Killian (upthread)
“You have always kept the same mantra: We can’t simplify, people won’t, and I don’t care if we have no choice; the end of civilization is preferable to your caveman existence.”
Only in your fantasy world. This is what I’ve actually said on this website regarding simplification (paraphrasing): Consumption must fall and economic growth should go to zero. This will either be forced on us by shortages of resources or we can do it voluntarily, but if we choose to do it voluntarily IMO it has to be done slowly to avoid huge practical problems and destabilising the socio economic system by causing mass unemployment. Its probably a century long project. We should also recycle as much as is practical, and transition towards regenerative agriculture, but maintaining enough fertiliser inputs and technology to ensure we maintain reasonable productivity. We should live in smaller homes and work from home where possible(given the vast quantities of resourcers buildings require this is important). This is all simplified living compared to the status quo.
I did once refer to your ideas as sounding like promoting a cave man lifestyle because that is how your comments came across. I apparently misinterpreted something you said and I withdrew that comment. I have told you this several times. You cannot be unaware of it yet you keep on insinuating I still think that way.
What I reject is elements of your version of simplification, especially comments that we should reduce energy use by 90% in two decades (ideally) because in my view it would be too much and too fast, and would cause massive practical problems and mass unemployment, and I have certainly suggested people “wont” engage with a plan like that. Anyone with more than half a brain can see they wont, unless its at the point of a gun. I also reject ideas that we should do without basic electrical appliances and that there should be no cars (at least in the short to medium term).
I reject your regenerative governance ideas because I dont believe common ownership of the means of production (or nobody owns anything is how you once described it) will work well enough judging by the many failed similar experiments. And I reject your purist, doctrinaire version of regenerative agriculture. Your version of simplification seems impractical to me. I believe BPL was slightly blunter in his depiction of it as bat shit crazy.
You are trying to claim I reject any form of simplification because I don’t agree with your version. Typical of your twisted rhetoric.
“Consumption must fall and economic growth should go to zero. This will either be forced on us by shortages of resources or we can do it voluntarily, but if we choose to do it voluntarily IMO it has to be done slowly to avoid huge practical problems and destabilising the socio economic system by causing mass unemployment. Its probably a century long project.”
I’m inclined to agree with this but the problem is we don’t have a century to turn the ship around. At the moment humanity is like the Titanic ignoring the warnings, taking action too late, and in the future, almost but not quite missing the iceberg with disasterous consequences. My fear is that both Killian and you are right, no matter how bad shit crazy some people think his advocacy is.
While 2023 has already gained the record low daily Antarctic SIE by dropping below the previous record (on 9th Feb in the JAXA record & 13th Feb in the NSIDC data), I think the value of that record can now be declared at 1.95M sq km reached on 18th Feb. The wobbles in Antarctic SIE are far less than those up North and the timing of the Antarctic minimum SIE since 2000 has occurred on average on 19th Feb+/-6 days. Years which saw the minimum occurring later than today (25th Feb) all were still showing signs of further reduction in SIE while 2023 has been on the rise for a week now.
The table of Antarctic annual daily SIE minimums shows 2023 with a big reduction on the previous record but the presence of recent years at the foot of these rankings should remind us that down South, what goes up can also go down, and visa versa.
Antarctic daily SIE annual minimums JAXA SIE data (M sq km)
1st … … 2023 … … 1.95
2nd … … 2022 … … 2.13
3rd … … 2017 … … 2.15
4th … … 2018 … … 2.21
5th … … 1997 … … 2.25
6th … … 2011 … … 2.32
7th … … 1993 … … 2.37
8th … … 2006 … … 2.41
9th … … 2019 … … 2.42
10th . … 1980 … … 2.53
Other recent annual minimums in 45 year record
16th … … 2016 … … 2.66 M sq km
…
24th … … 2020 … … 2.76 M sq km
…
29th … … 2021 … … 2.79 M sq km
…
41st … … 2014 … … 3.54 M sq km
…
44th … … 2015 … … 3.59 M sq km
45th … … 2013 … … 3.69 M sq km
The annual maximum SIE up in the Arctic is probably what will spawn more interest.
So far 2023 SIE has risen to 13.87M sq km, not quite above the previous record low, but there’s plenty more time for an icy wobble to push 2023 down the rankings of ‘least icy Arctic winter’, wobbles which can stretch well into March before the melt season kicks in.
Top ten least icy Arctic winters & date of maximum
JAXA daily SIE data (M sq km).
1st … 2017 … 13.88 … 6th March
2nd … 2018 … 13.89 … 17th March
3rd … 2015 … 13.94 … 15th Feb
4th … 2016 … 13.94 … 29th Feb
5th … 2011 … 14.13 … 16th March
6th … 2006 … 14.13 … 10th March
7th … 2007 … 14.21 … 24th Feb
8th … 2021 … 14.24 … 10th March
9th … 2019 … 14.27 … 12th March
10th . 2022 … 14.39 … 23rd Feb
Must be a cooling trend. 2019, 2021, and 2022 are not even in the top 7, and 2020 apparently is not even in the top 10. Excellent news!
Mr. Know Shit All,
You could indeed add 2020 to that list of non-top 7 as it sits in 11th spot. But to suggest this indicates a “cooling trend” is incorrect given the wobbly nature of this annual data.
It is possible to argue for there being a slowing in the decline of these maximum annual Arctuc SIE numbers. An OLS through the period 2004-2022 gives an average decline of 20k sq km/y while OLS for the period 1979-2003 shows an average decline of 44k sq km/y. But such argument should also acknowledge that the data 2004-23 still hasn’t deviated from wobbling either side of that 44k sq km/y decline. When extended to today, the last five years sit above that projection, the previous four years sit below. Of course, future data will show if there is a slowing of the decline or not.
As for such SIE data being useful as an indicator of temperature which would allow indication of a “cooling trend”, either polar or global, I think you’ll find the world has technology which is far more useful than this observational data for assessing temperature.
Killian recently mentioned Michaux. I had only seen some of his work myself the last few months, some of which I will share below.
Many people are aware of the energy transition work done by Mark Jacobson, for example:
6 September 2017 – 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World
Highlights
Roadmaps for 139 countries to use 100% wind-water-solar in all energy sectors
Roadmaps avoid 1.5°C global warming and millions of annual air-pollution deaths
Roadmaps reduce social cost of energy and create 24.3 million net long-term jobs
Roadmaps reduce power disruption and increase worldwide access to energy
If fully implemented by 2050 ……….
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435117300120
An example of a contrary view from a thorium GenIV nuclear promoter
Mark Z. Jacobson’s 100% Renewables (100% WWS) Roadmap to Nowhere by Conley & Maloney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2KNqluP8M0
A relatively new expert researcher voice in the field of transitioning away from Fossil Fuels long term is Simon Michaux – Associate Professor of geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) in KTR, the Circular Economy Solutions Unit.
Simon Michaux holds a degree in science (Bach App. Sc in Physics and Geology), and a Phd in Mining Engineering from JKMRC University of Queensland, Australia. He has worked in industry funded research, academia and private sector in both mining and industrial recycling. His long-term objectives include the development and transformation of the Circular Economy, into a more practical system for the industrial ecosystem to navigate the twin challenges of the scarcity of technology minerals and the transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Recent Reports/Papers include:
Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels
August 2021
DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.34895.00160 and
Assessment of the scope of tasks to completely phase out fossil fuels in Finland
April 2022
DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.24079.66723
and other articles/papers can be seen here
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Michaux-2
Summary: Michaux’s calculations for what’s required to phase out fossil fuels uses a starting point of 2018 with 84.5% of primary energy still fossil fuel based and less than 1% of the world’s vehicle fleet electric. Therefore, the first generation of renewable energy is only now coming on stream, meaning there will be no recycling availability of production materials for some time. Production will have to be sourced from mining.
When Michaux presented basic information to EU analysts, it was a shock to them. To his dismay, they had not put together the various mineral/metal data requirements to phase out fossil fuels replaced by renewables. They assumed, using assumptions and guesstimates, the metals would be available.
Simon Michaux has since become active in public outreach at seminars, webinars and interviews via Youtube. I have seen quite a few. He is a good communicator and provides much supporting analysis with useful graphs, and explains what he has done and why. He also openly points out the shortcomings, lack of data and his reliance on drawing assumptions along the way because of that current lack of data/knowledge. I may post a few of the better ones next month.
Ned Kelly, Im sure your references would be right to the extent that building a renewable energy system is going to put strains on resource availability, but building a renewable energy system looks like the only plausible option. For example if we keep on burning fossil fuels we are in huge trouble. Geoengineering is high risk. Making massive voluntary short term cuts to energy consumption is not practical or realistic. Even if we didnt have a climate problem, we will run out of fossil fuels anyway so a new energy system is inevitably required.
I believe we must build out a renewable energy system as best we can, and if we run into resource constraints then we will be forced to economise on our energy use, or we will have to come up with some other solution.
Ned Kelly, I would just add that nuclear power also seems like a possible option with some part to play in the generation mix. Its clean zero carbon energy ultimately.
Zebra, see this link,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/11/4th-national-climate-assessment-report/#comment-713953
Look for “hair-on-fire” (I used to be able to link to the actual post, but it seems I can’t anymore).
The REALITY is Zebra, but you unfortunately in your defensiveness you misunderstood it (and I understand that defensiveness since RealClimate is choked with so many – well – nevermind), is that in the REAL world, especially in the less rich East, men have a BIG say on how many children they want and simply do not Allow women have the final say. Western senses of right and wrong have no bearing on their way of thinking, as far as they are concerned. That’s NOT saying that that’s what I think is right, obviously, just what is the fact.
So, I think whom I’m trying to convince are world leaders, which, at least as far as I know (but maybe some are?) wholly avoid the issue for selfish political reasons. Trying to get the UN to take a more vocal stand (hair-on-fire?). Trying to convince the moneyed interests here in the West who are intent on obfuscating any issue that might cost them a dime (like CC). Trying to convince people in the East (not sure how many even know or care, though) to know and care. Trying to convince the world, I guess. :) My one little voice doesn’t do much though. :/
By the way (small point) just wondering how in your comment that began, “Ron R. below…” you knew of my post before it was even published? But maybe something I’m missing.
Btw, by less rich East I’m including the South too, like Africa and India. etc. Maybe should have been clearer on that.. Sorry.